“Roger, Roger!” cried Teresa in an anguish, as the sound of his footsteps died away—“Come back! Come back!”
And falling on her knees by the Queen’s side, she burst into wild weeping.
“If the King has gone for ever, my brother is gone too,” she sobbed—“Oh, dearest Majesty, have you no heart?”
“None!” said the Queen with a strained smile, while the slow, hot tears began to fall from her aching eyes—“None! What heart I had is gone! It follows the King!”
CHAPTER XXXIV. — ABDICATION
A great storm was gathering. The heavy purple clouds which had arisen in the west at sunset, when all that was mortal of Lotys had been sent forth to a lonely burial in the sea, had gradually spread over the whole sky, darkening in hue as they moved, and rolling together in huge opaque masses, which presently began to close in and become denser as the night advanced. By and by a wild wind awoke, as it were, from the very cavities of ocean, and the waves began to hiss warnings all along the coast, and to rise higher and higher over each other’s shoulders as the gale steadily increased. Réné Ronsard, sitting in his cottage, feeble and somewhat ailing, heard the beginnings of the tempest with long-accustomed ears. He was depressed in spirit, yet not altogether solitary, for he had with him a kindly companion in Professor von Glauben. The Professor had been one of the many who had attended the strange funeral-pageant of the afternoon, not only out of interest in, and regret for, the fate of the woman whose unique character he had admired, and whose difficult position he had pitied; but also because he had suffered from an unpleasant presentiment to which he could give no name. If he could have described his forebodings at all, he would have said they were more or less connected with the King,—but how or why, he would not have been able to explain, save that since the death of Lotys, his Sovereign master had no longer looked the same man. Stricken as with a blight, and grown suddenly old, his manner and appearance were as of one devoured by a secret despair,—a corroding disease,—of which the end could only be disastrous. Overcome by the pain and distress of being the constant witness of a sorrow which he felt to the heart, yet could not relieve, the Professor, on returning from the scene of Lotys’s impressive funeral, had put ashore on The Islands, instead of going back to the mainland. He had sought permission from the King to remain with Ronsard for the night,—and the permission had been readily, almost eagerly granted. The King, indeed, had seemed glad to be relieved of the too anxious solicitude of his physician, who, he knew, was well aware of the concealed agony of mind which tortured and well-nigh maddened him,—and the Professor, keenly observant, was equally conscious that, under the immediate circumstances, his attendance might seem more of an intrusion than a duty.
“De Launay was not far wrong when he prophesied danger for the King as the result of his beginning to think for himself;” he mused—“Yet it has come—this danger—in a different way to that in which we expected it! It is a bold move for the ruler of a country to make personal examination into the needs of his people,—but it is seldom that, while engaged in such a task, the ruler himself becomes ruled, by a stronger force than even his own temporal power!”
And now, sitting with old Réné Ronsard, by a fire which had been kindled on this somewhat chilly night for his better comfort, he was, despite the impression of sadness and disaster which hung upon his mind as darkly as the clouds were hanging in heaven, doing his best to rouse both himself and his companion to greater cheerfulness. The wind, shaking the lattice, and now and then screaming dismally under the door, did not inspire him to gaiety, but his thoughts were principally for Ronsard, who was inclined to yield to an overpowering despondency.