Henry laughs and looks at Gabrielle, who has changed colour; but the King does not observe it and continues his story. “ ‘Sirrah,’ I said to him, ‘you malign a charming lady.’ ‘Devil take her!’ replied the churlish ferrymen; ‘I wish she were in heaven.’ So I rode away without paying my toll. The fellow bellowed after me, and ran, but could not catch me. We will call this drôle hither, and divert ourselves with him.”
As Henry proceeds with his story, Gabrielle’s look of pain has deepened.
“I pray your Majesty to do nothing of the kind,” she answers sharply; “I do not love coarse jokes.” Henry looks at her with surprise.
“I am wretched enough already, heaven knows, without being mocked by the ribaldry of a low bargeman, who, after all, has reason for what he says. Why did you tell me this story, Henry?” she adds in a plaintive tone, bursting into tears. “Am I not degraded enough already?”
“How, Gabrielle, this from you? when, spite of every obstacle, within a few weeks you will be crowned my queen?”
A knock is now heard at the door, and Sully enters. He looks hot and surly. He barely salutes the King, and scowls at Gabrielle, who instantly retreats to the farther corner of the room. Sully wears a threadbare doublet, his grey hair is uncombed over his forehead, and he carries some papers in his hand.
“Sire,” he says, addressing the King abruptly and unfolding these papers, “if you pass this document, you had better declare yourself at once the husband of her grace there, the Duchesse de Beaufort.” Sully points at Gabrielle, who cowers in the corner.
Poor Gabrielle is thunderstruck, and trembles at the certainty of a violent scene. She had often had to bear at different times roughness, and even rudeness, from Sully, but such language as this she had never heard. What does it mean?
The King takes the papers in his hand.