‘Everything,’ he said; and the Italian nodded, and sank into thought.
‘If I assist you to that, good sir,’ says he presently, looking at his client, ‘it will be a very friendly act on my part.’
‘Sir,’ replied the Frenchman, ‘I require a friendly act.’
Signior David looked down, ever so lightly, at the jewel in his hand, which the poet had put there. ‘But!’ and he raised his eyebrows over it, ‘it will be impossible for future rhapsodists to devise an act more friendly than this! It might be—I do not say that it will be, for I am a simple scribe, as you see—it might be a partaking which Achilles would never have allowed to Patroclus.’
‘But you, signore, are not Achilles,’ urged Monsieur de Châtelard.
The Italian shrugged. ‘I have not yet found Achilles in this country; but many have offered themselves to be Patroclus. ‘Come,’ he added, with a pleasant grin, ‘Come, I will serve you. We will be friends. For the moment I recommend discretion. Her Majesty returned but two days ago, and is already in the midst of affairs. This annoys her extremely. She thought she had done with business and might begin her dancing. But I cannot think that she will dance very long, the way matters are tending.’
Monsieur de Châtelard went away, to brace himself for the opening scene of a new act. He came often back again to see his friend, to submit to his judgment such and such a theory. How should the lover encounter his mistress, against whose person he had dared, but not dared enough, the storming of the sweet citadel? Here was the gist of all his inquiry.
‘Show yourself, dear sir, show yourself!’ was his friend’s advice, whose own tactics consisted in never showing himself and in making his absence felt.
The Frenchman, finally, did show himself, with very little result one way or the other. The Queen, occupied as she had been with Huntly’s ruin, and now with the patching up of a comfortable fragment out of it, hardly knew that he was there. This was the way of it. A lightly-built young man with a bush of crimped hair sprang out of the press in hall at the hour of the coucher, and fell upon his knees. ‘Ha, Monsieur de Châtelard, you return?’ If she smiled upon him, it was because she smiled on all the world when the world allowed it.
‘Sovereign, the poor minstrel returns!’