“Truly,” replies Bourbon, with a sigh; “but I know not what princess of the blood would enable me to accommodate your highness’s suit in so agreeable a manner.”
“Have you not yourself formed some opinion on the subject?” asks Louise, looking at the Constable with undisguised tenderness.
“No, madame, I have not. Since the hand of your beautiful daughter, Madame Marguerite, is engaged, I know no one.”
“But—” and she hesitates, and again turns her eyes upon him, which the Constable does not observe, as he is adjusting the hilt of his dagger—“but—you forget, Duke, that I am a widow.”
As she speaks she places her hand upon that of the Constable, and gazes into his face. Bourbon starts violently and looks up. Louise de Savoie, still holding his hand, meets his gaze with an unmistakable expression. She is forty years old, but vain and intriguing. There is a pause. Then the Constable rises and drops the hand which had rested so softly upon his own. His handsome face darkens into a look of disgust. A flush of rage sends the blood tingling to the cheeks of Louise.
“Your highness mistakes me,” says Bourbon. “The respect I owe to his Majesty, the disparity of our years, my own feelings, all render such an union impossible. Your highness does me great honour, but I do not at present intend to contract any other alliance. If his Majesty goes to law with me, why I will fight him, madame,—that is all.”
“Enough,” answers Louise, in a hoarse voice, “I understand.” The Constable makes a profound obeisance and retires.
This interview was the first act in that long and intricate drama by which the spite of a mortified woman drove the Duc de Bourbon—the greatest general of his age, under whom the arms of France never knew defeat—to become a traitor to his king and to France.
CHAPTER III.
BROTHER AND SISTER.
YEARS have passed; Francis, with his wife, Queen Claude, daughter of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany, is at Chambord, in the Touraine. Claude, but for the Salic law, would have been Queen of France. In her childhood, she was affianced to Charles, son of Philip the Fair, afterwards Charles V. of Germany, the great rival of Francis. Francis had never loved her, the union had been political; yet Claude is gentle and devoted, and he says of her, “that her soul is as a rose without a thorn.” This queen—the darling of her parents—can neither bear the indifference nor the infidelity of her brilliant husband, and dies of her neglected love at the early age of twenty-five.