"And why?"
"To take your place."
"Our bitterest enemies are our own kith and kin," cried the King, starting up in a fury, and striding up and down the room. "Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother! Coligny was right; my executioners are in the conventicles, they are at the Louvre. You are either impostors or regicides!—Jacob, call in Solern."
"My Lord," said Marie Touchet, "the Ruggieri have your word of honor. You have chosen to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge; do not complain of its bitterness."
The King smiled with an expression of deep contempt; his material sovereignty seemed small in his eyes in comparison with the supreme intellectual sovereignty of old Lorenzo Ruggieri. Charles IX. could scarcely govern France; the Grand Master of the Rosicrucians commanded an intelligent and submissive people.
"Be frank; I give you my word as a gentleman that your reply, even if it should contain the avowal of the worst crimes, shall be as though it had never been spoken," the King said. "Do you study poisons?"
"To know what will secure life, it is needful to know what will cause death."
"You have the secret of many poisons?"
"Yes, but in theory only, and not in practice; we know them, but do not use them."
"Has my mother asked for any?"