“How much of the Guises’ own plans have they been forced to reveal to you?” asked the queen, with a glance at the two brothers.
“Monsieur de Vieilleville and Monsieur de Saint-Andre have just received fresh orders, the nature of which is concealed from us; but I think the duke is intending to concentrate his best troops on the left bank. Within a few days you will all be moved to Amboise. The duke has been studying the position from this terrace and decides that Blois is not a propitious spot for his secret schemes. What can he want better?” added Chiverni, pointing to the precipices which surrounded the chateau. “There is no place in the world where the court is more secure from attack than it is here.”
“Abdicate or reign,” said Albert in a low voice to the queen, who stood motionless and thoughtful.
A terrible expression of inward rage passed over the fine ivory face of Catherine de’ Medici, who was not yet forty years old, though she had lived for twenty-six years at the court of France,—without power, she, who from the moment of her arrival intended to play a leading part! Then, in her native language, the language of Dante, these terrible words came slowly from her lips:—
“Nothing so long as that son lives!—His little wife bewitches him,” she added after a pause.
Catherine’s exclamation was inspired by a prophecy which had been made to her a few days earlier at the chateau de Chaumont on the opposite bank of the river; where she had been taken by Ruggieri, her astrologer, to obtain information as to the lives of her four children from a celebrated female seer, secretly brought there by Nostradamus (chief among the physicians of that great sixteenth century) who practised, like the Ruggieri, the Cardans, Paracelsus, and others, the occult sciences. This woman, whose name and life have eluded history, foretold one year as the length of Francois’s reign.
“Give me your opinion on all this,” said Catherine to Chiverni.
“We shall have a battle,” replied the prudent courtier. “The king of Navarre—”
“Oh! say the queen,” interrupted Catherine.
“True, the queen,” said Chiverni, smiling, “the queen has given the Prince de Conde as leader to the Reformers, and he, in his position of younger son, can venture all; consequently the cardinal talks of ordering him here.”