“Will you have a peach?” she said, offering him some delicious fruit on a gold plate. “See these grapes, these pears; I went to Vincennes myself and gathered them for you.”
“Yes, I’ll eat them; there is no poison there except a philter from your hands.”
“You ought to eat a great deal of fruit, Charles; it would cool your blood, which you heat by such excitements.”
“Must I love you less?”
“Perhaps so,” she said. “If the things you love injure you—and I have feared it—I shall find strength in my heart to refuse them. I adore Charles more than I love the king; I want the man to live, released from the tortures that make him grieve.”
“Royalty has ruined me.”
“Yes,” she replied. “If you were only a poor prince, like your brother-in-law of Navarre, without a penny, possessing only a miserable little kingdom in Spain where he never sets his foot, and Bearn in France which doesn’t give him revenue enough to feed him, I should be happy, much happier than if I were really Queen of France.”
“But you are more than the Queen of France. She has King Charles for the sake of the kingdom only; royal marriages are only politics.”
Marie smiled and made a pretty little grimace as she said: “Yes, yes, I know that, sire. And my sonnet, have you written it?”
“Dearest, verses are as difficult to write as treaties of peace; but you shall have them soon. Ah, me! life is so easy here, I wish I might never leave you. However, we must send for those Italians and question them. Tete-Dieu! I thought one Ruggiero in the kingdom was one too many, but it seems there are two. Now listen, my precious; you don’t lack sense, you would make an excellent lieutenant of police, for you can penetrate things—”