The gay guffaws of the beautiful sinners were interrupted by the solemn entrance of their governess.
"Silence!" she commanded. "Silence, young ladies! Her Majesty is close by, in conference with Monseigneur the Cardinal."
"Oh, dear Countess!" answered Blanche of Verceil, endeavoring to smother the outbursts of her laughter. "If you only knew what a wicked pasquil we have just read! According to the author it would seem that we emerge from our dormitory like the goddess Truth out of her fountain, or with as scant clothing on our limbs as Madam Eve in her paradise."
"Less noise, you crazy lasses! Less noise!" ordered the governess; and addressing Anna Bell: "Come, dearest, the Queen wishes to have a talk with you after her conference with his Excellency the Cardinal. You are to wait for her summons in a cabinet, which is separated from the Queen's apartment by the little corridor. When you hear her bell ring three times, the usual summons, you are to go in."
Anna Bell went out with the governess, leaving her lightheaded and lighthearted companions in the room laughing and exchanging witticisms upon the pasquils.
CHAPTER II.
ANNA BELL.
Catherine De Medici and Cardinal Charles of Lorraine were in the midst of a conversation that started immediately after supper. The prelate, complaisant, sly and attentive to the slightest word of the Italian woman, showed himself alternately reserved and familiar, according to the turn that the conversation took. The Queen, on the other hand, intent, not so much upon what the retainer of the Guises said, as upon fathoming what he suppressed, at once hated and feared him, and sought to surprise upon his face the hidden secrets of his thoughts. Both the one and the other stood on their guard, the two accomplices in intrigue and crime vying with each other in dissimulation and perfidy, the Italian woman crafty, the prelate cautious.
"Monsignor Cardinal," remarked Catherine De Medici with a touch of irony in her tone, "you remind me at this moment—you must excuse the comparison, I am a huntress you know—"
"Your Majesty unites all the deities—Juno on her throne, Diana in the woods, Venus in her temple of Cytheria—"
"Mercy, Monsignor Cardinal, let us drop those mythological queens. They are old, they have lived their time—Diana, with the rest of them; they now inhabit the empyrean."