"Yes, Monsieur Cardinal."
"Have you taken sufficient precautions against any surprise on the part of the Huguenot band known by the name of the 'Avengers of Israel' and captained by a felon nicknamed the 'One-Eyed'?"
"Monsieur Cardinal, I answer with my life for the safety of the Queen. The Huguenot forces need not alarm us. His Majesty's army covers our escort. Marshal Tavannes is notified of the Queen's arrival; he has undoubtedly kept clear the route followed by her Majesty. I told your Eminence before that it would have been better to push straight ahead until we joined the army of Marshal Tavannes, instead of spending the night at this abbey."
"Do you imagine the Queen and I can travel like a couple of troopers, without alighting for rest?"
"Monsieur Cardinal," replied Count Neroweg of Plouernel haughtily, "it is not for others to remind me of the respect I owe her Majesty."
"Monsieur!" exclaimed the Cardinal angrily, "you seem to forget that you are addressing a Prince of the house of Lorraine. Be more respectful!"
"Monsieur Cardinal, if you know the history of your house, I know the history of mine. Pepin of Heristal, the grandfather of Charlemagne, from whom you pretend to descend, was but a rather insignificant specimen when the house of Neroweg, illustrious in Germany long before the Frankish conquest, was already established in Gaul for two centuries on its Salic domains of Auvergne, which it held from the sword of one of its own ancestors, a leude of Clovis—"
"Lower your tone, monsieur! Do not oblige me to remind you that Colonel Plouernel, your brother, is one of the military chiefs of the rebels who have risen in arms against the Church and the Crown."
The colloquy was interrupted at this point by the arrival of a page who hurried to announce to the Cardinal the entry of the Queen into the cloister.
Leaving Count Neroweg under the stigma of insinuated treason, the prelate stepped down from his litter in order to hasten to the Queen's side and render her his homage. Catherine De Medici was then in her fiftieth year. Not now was she, as on that fateful January 21, 1535, merely a Princess, and the young butt of the arrows of the Duchess of Etampes. Since then, Francis I had died and had been succeeded to the throne by her husband as Henry II, who, dying later from the consequences of an accident at a tourney, left her Queen Regent—absolute monarch. In point of appearance also Catherine De Medici was now her complete self. She preserved the traces of her youthful beauty. A slight corpulence impaired in nothing the majesty of her stature. Her shoulders, arms and hands—all of a dazzling whiteness—would, thanks to the perfection of their lines, have presented a noble model for a sculptor. Her hair preserved its pristine blackness, and was on this evening covered by the hood of a damask mantle, violet like her trailing robe, which exposed a front of brass. Cunning, perfidy, cruelty, were stamped upon her striking countenance. Catherine De Medici leaned upon the arm of her lover, the Cardinal of Lorraine, and entered the abbey, followed by her maids of honor, a bevy of ravishing young girls.