"Hold your peace, Monsieur!" replied Catherine; "I command you to hold your peace and to leave me. Consider yourself lucky if I do not yet think best to divulge to the king your audacious offence. But never let me see you again, and henceforth consider Catherine de Médicis your bitter enemy. Yes, I shall come across you again, be sure, Monsieur d'Exmès! And now leave me."
Gabriel saluted the queen, and withdrew without a word.
"Well," he reflected when he was alone again, "one hatred more! But what difference would that make to me if I had only learned something about my father and Diane? The king's favorite and the king's wife for enemies! Fate may be preparing perhaps to make the king himself my enemy. And now for Diane, for the hour has arrived; and God grant that I may not be more sad and despairing when I part from her who loves me than I have been on leaving those who hate me!"
CHAPTER XVI
LOVER OR BROTHER?
When Jacinthe ushered Gabriel into the apartment in the Louvre occupied by Diane de Castro as the king's legitimatized daughter, she, in the pure and honest outpouring of her heart, rushed to meet her well-beloved without undertaking to dissemble her joy. She would not have refused to offer her brow to be kissed; but he contented himself with pressing her hand.
"Here you are at last, Gabriel!" said she. "How impatiently I have been awaiting you, dear! Lately I have not seemed to know whither to turn the full stream of happiness that I feel within me. I talk and laugh when I am all alone, and I am crazy with joy! But here you are, Gabriel, and we may at least have a happy hour together! But what is the matter, my love? You seem cold and serious and almost sad. Is it with such a solemn face and such cool reserve that you show your love for me, and your gratitude to God and my father?"
"To your father? Yes, let us speak of your father, Diane. As for this seriousness at which you wonder, it is my way to receive good fortune with a grave face; for I distrust her gifts, in the first place, having been unused to them heretofore, and my experience has been that she only too often hides a sorrow under the mask of a favor.
"I didn't know that you were such a philosopher, nor so unlucky, Gabriel!" replied the maiden, half in fun and half in anger. "But, come! you were saying that you wished to talk about the king; and I am very glad. How kind and generous he is, Gabriel!"
"Yes, Diane; and he loves you dearly, doesn't he?"