"Ay, that was the open sky o'erhead!
And you saw by the flash on his forehead,
By the hope in those eyes wide and steady,
He was leagues in the desert already."
The King laughed: "Was there a man among them all who would brave Bluebeard?" Not as a challenge did he say this—he knew well that it were almost certain death:
"Once hold you, those jaws want no fresh hold!"
But Francis had scarcely finished speaking when (as all the world knows) a glove fluttered down into the arena and fell close to the lion. It was the glove of De Lorge's lady. They were sitting together, and he had been, as Ronsard could see, "weighing out fine speeches like gold from a balance." . . . He now delayed not an instant, but leaped over the barrier and walked straight up to the glove. The lion never moved; he was still staring (as all of us, with aching hearts, have seen such an one stare from his cage) at the far, unseen, remembered land. . . . De Lorge picked up the glove, calmly; calmly he walked back to the place where he had leaped the barrier before, leaped it again, and (once more, as all the world knows) dashed the glove in the lady's face. Every eye was on them. The King cried out in applause that he would have done the same:
". . . 'Twas mere vanity,
Not love, set that task to humanity!"
—and, having the royal word for it, all the lords and ladies turned with loathing from De Lorge's "queen dethroned."
All but Peter Ronsard. He noticed that she retained undisturbed her self-possession amid the Court's mockery.
"As if from no pleasing experiment
She rose, yet of pain not much heedful,
So long as the process was needful.