"It is too true, madam," replied the Duke. "Popularity is the most fleeting, the most vacillating--if you will, the most contemptible--of all those means and opportunities which Heaven gives us to be made use of for great ends. But nevertheless, madam, we must so make use of them all; and as this same popularity is one of the briefest of the whole, so must we be the more ready, the more prompt, the more decided in taking advantage of the short hour of brightness. I may be wrong in thinking," he continued after the pause of a moment or two, "I may be wrong in thinking that my well-being and that of the state and church of this realm are intimately bound up together. It may be, and probably is, a delusion of human vanity. Nevertheless, such being my opinion, none can say that I am wrong in taking advantage of the moment of my popularity to do the best that I can both for the church and for the state. Such, I assure you, madam, is my object; and if I benefit myself at all in these transactions, it can be, and shall be, but collaterally; while in the mean time I incur perils which I know and yet fear not."
Thus went on the conversation between the Queen and the Duke of Guise for nearly half an hour, at the end of which time the gentleman who had been dispatched to the King returned, bearing his Majesty's reply, which was, that since his mother desired it, she might bring the Duke of Guise to his presence, and Catherine prepared immediately to set out. Her chair was brought round; and after speaking a few words with the superior of the convent, she placed herself in the vehicle, the Duke of Guise walking by her side. The gentlemen who had come with him gave their horses to the grooms, and followed on foot; and several servants and attendants ran on before to clear the way through the people.
The moment the gates were opened, a spectacle struck the eyes of the Queen and the Duke, such as no city in the world perhaps, except Paris, could produce. In the short period which had elapsed since the Duke's arrival, the news had spread from one end of the capital to the other, and the whole of its multitudes were poured out into the streets or lining the windows, or crowning the house-tops. With a rapidity scarcely to be conceived, scaffoldings had been raised in that short space of time in different parts of the streets, to enable the multitude to see the Duke better as he passed[[6]]; in many places, velvets and rich tapestries were hung out upon the fronts of the houses, as if some solemn procession of the church were taking place; the ladies of the higher classes at the windows, or on their scaffolds, were generally without the masks which they usually wore in the streets; and again, when the gates of the convent opened, and the Queen and the Duke issued forth, the air seemed actually rent with the acclamations of the people, and a long line of waving hats and handkerchiefs was seen all the way up the Rue St. Denis.
The same gratulations as before met the Duke on every side as he passed along; the populace seemed absolutely inclined to worship him, and many threw themselves upon their knees as he passed. He looked round upon the dense mass of people, upon the crowded houses, upon the waving hands; he heard from every tongue a welcome, at every step a gratulation, and it was impossible for the heart of man not to feel at that moment a pride and a confidence fit to bear him strongly on his perilous way.
All the way down the Rue St. Denis, and through every other street that he passed, the same scene presented itself, the same acclamations followed him, so that the shouts thundered in the ear of the King as he sat in the Louvre.
At length the Queen and those who accompanied her approached the palace; and in the open space before it, which was at that time railed off, was drawn up a long double line of guards, forming a lane through which it was necessary to pass to the gates. The well-known Crillon, celebrated for his determination and bravery, was at their head; and the Duke of Guise, obliged to pause in order to suffer the chair of the Queen-mother to pass on first, bowed to the commander, whom he knew and respected.
Crillon scarcely returned his salutation, but looked frowning along the double row of his soldiery. The people, close by the railings, watched every movement, and a murmur of something like apprehension for their favourite ran through them as they watched these signs. But not a moment's pause marked the slightest hesitation in the Duke of Guise. With his head raised and his eyes flashing, he drew forward the hilt of his unconquered sword ready for his hand, and holding the scabbard in his left, strode after the chair of the Queen till the gates of the Louvre closed upon him and his train.
A number of officers and gentlemen were waiting in the vestibule to receive the Queen-mother, who however gave her hand to the Duke of Guise to assist her from her chair. On him they gazed with eyes of wonder and of scrutiny, as if they would fain have discovered what feelings were in the heart of one so hated and dreaded by the King, at a moment when he stood with closed doors within a building filled with his enemies, and surrounded by soldiers ready to massacre him at a word. But the fire which the menacing look of Crillon had brought into the eyes of the Duke had now passed away, and all was calm dignity and easy though grave self-possession. The eye wandered not round the hall; the lip, though not compressed, was firm and motionless, except when he smiled in saluting some of those around whom he knew, or in speaking a few words to the Queen-mother, whose dress had become somewhat entangled with a mantle of sables which she had worn in the chair.
As soon as it was detached, one of the officers of the household said, bowing low, "His Majesty has commanded me, Madam, to conduct you and his Highness of Guise to the chamber of her Majesty the Queen, where he waits your coming." And he led the way up the stairs of the Louvre to the somewhat extraordinary audience chamber which the King had selected.
Henry, when the party entered, was sitting near the side of the bed, surrounded by several of his officers, one of whom, Alphonzo d'Ornano by name, whispered something over the King's shoulder with his eyes fixed upon the Duke of Guise.