"Oh, I think, good father, I could protect myself," replied Rose d'Albret. "Those thorns my cousin De Chazeul talks of, would be quite hedge enough, I should imagine,--but hark, there are guns in the wood--and there again!"
All listened, and two or three more shots were distinctly heard.
"I thought we had a truce here?" said Rose d'Albret.
"True, amongst ourselves," answered the Marquis de Chazeul; "but we cannot get others always to observe it; and 'tis not unlikely that these are a party of Henry de Bourbon's heretic soldiers wandering about, and committing some of their usual acts of violence and plunder. He is now besieging Dreux, I find."
"Why, I have always heard," said Rose d'Albret, "that the King is strict and scrupulous in restraining his soldiers from such excesses."
"The King?" exclaimed Chazeul, with his lip curling. "Pray call him some other name, sweet Rose. He may be a king of heretics, but he is no king of mine, nor of any other Catholics."
"Hush, hush!" cried Walter de la Tremblade, "you must not let Monsieur de Liancourt hear you make such rash speeches. He acknowledges him as King of right, though not in fact,--his religion being the only bar."
"And that an insurmountable one," said the Marquis; "if he were to profess himself converted to-morrow, who would believe him? I am sure not I."
"Nay, cousin," replied Rose d'Albret, "one who is so frank and free, so true to all men, so strict a keeper of his word as the King is reported to be, would never falsify the truth in that. Remember, too, I am his humble cousin; for the counts of Marennes come from the same stock as the old kings of Navarre."
"Ay, a hundred degrees removed," said Chazeul; "I have no fear, dear Rose, of your blood being contaminated by his."