"On discretion and good appetite?" said Villon gravely. "I fear, Monsieur d'Argenton, His Majesty in his present health has more need of the second than the first."
"Take your ribald impertinences elsewhere, but beware how you attempt them upon me elsewhere," answered Commines, with a stern contempt. "Here Monseigneur and mademoiselle's presence protect you."
"But if I took them elsewhere, even to Paris—and, heavens! how I wish I could—Amboise would be duller than ever," protested Villon, then added, with a significance of tone which gave the careless words a weight, "let us hope that Monseigneur and mademoiselle can protect each other as well as me."
Again there was a dangerous silence, and this time it was Ursula de
Vesc who turned aside the threatening storm.
"Monsieur La Mothe is to cure our dullness. Tell us a story, monsieur, if you will neither sing nor play. We love a story, do we not, Charles?"
"A story?" repeated La Mothe slowly. The chance suggestion, more than half malicious, had given him an unexpected opening, and he was turning in his mind how best to use it. "Why, yes, I think I might. Once upon a time——"
"Wait a moment," said Charles. "Here, Ursula," and he rose from his stool as he spoke, "you sit down and I will sit at your feet and lean against your knee. There! That is better. Now we are both comfortable. What is the story about, monsieur?"
"It is an eastern tale, Monseigneur."
"I like the east better than the west, don't you, Ursula?" and he looked up in the girl's face with a laugh, then at Commines in a way which lent the words point and meaning. Valmy, La Mothe remembered, lay towards the west. "Now, monsieur, we are ready."
"There was once a king of the Genie who dwelt in a certain part of Arabia. He was a very great and a very wise king, the greatest and wisest his kingdom had known for many centuries. During his reign he had added province to province——"