“Oh! ‘tis all very charming, I know that,” she said, withdrawing her cheek from the king; “but it is your business to reign, if you please, my sweet sire.”
“Why talk of reigning? This morning I wish—”
“Why say wish when you have only to will all? That’s not the speech of a king, nor that of a lover.—But no more of love just now; let us drop it! We have business more important to speak of.”
“Oh!” cried the king, “it is long since we have had any business. Is it amusing?”
“No,” said Mary, “not at all; we are to move from Blois.”
“I’ll wager, darling, you have seen your uncles, who manage so well that I, at seventeen years of age, am no better than a roi faineant. In fact, I don’t know why I have attended any of the councils since the first. They could manage matters just as well by putting the crown in my chair; I see only through their eyes, and am forced to consent to things blindly.”
“Oh! monsieur,” said the queen, rising from the king’s knee with a little air of indignation, “you said you would never worry me again on this subject, and that my uncles used the royal power only for the good of your people. Your people!—they are so nice! They would gobble you up like a strawberry if you tried to rule them yourself. You want a warrior, a rough master with mailed hands; whereas you—you are a darling whom I love as you are; whom I should never love otherwise,—do you hear me, monsieur?” she added, kissing the forehead of the lad, who seemed inclined to rebel at her speech, but softened at her kisses.
“Oh! how I wish they were not your uncles!” cried Francois II. “I particularly dislike the cardinal; and when he puts on his wheedling air and his submissive manner and says to me, bowing: ‘Sire, the honor of the crown and the faith of your fathers forbid your Majesty to—this and that,’ I am sure he is working only for his cursed house of Lorraine.”
“Oh, how well you mimicked him!” cried the queen. “But why don’t you make the Guises inform you of what is going on, so that when you attain your grand majority you may know how to reign yourself? I am your wife, and your honor is mine. Trust me! we will reign together, my darling; but it won’t be a bed of roses for us until the day comes when we have our own wills. There is nothing so difficult for a king as to reign. Am I a queen, for example? Don’t you know that your mother returns me evil for all the good my uncles do to raise the splendor of your throne? Hey! what difference between them! My uncles are great princes, nephews of Charlemagne, filled with ardor and ready to die for you; whereas this daughter of a doctor or a shopkeeper, queen of France by accident, scolds like a burgher-woman who can’t manage her own household. She is discontented because she can’t set every one by the ears; and then she looks at me with a sour, pale face, and says from her pinched lips: ‘My daughter, you are a queen; I am only the second woman in the kingdom’ (she is really furious, you know, my darling), ‘but if I were in your place I should not wear crimson velvet while all the court is in mourning; neither should I appear in public with my own hair and no jewels, because what is not becoming in a simple lady is still less becoming in a queen. Also I should not dance myself, I should content myself with seeing others dance.’—that is what she says to me—”
“Heavens!” cried the king, “I think I hear her coming. If she were to know—”