But the Duc de Guise, feeling that no intervention could so surely turn the old constable's reserve to anger as his own, interposed with the most courteous formality of manner,—
"Since Monsieur de Montmorency is about to quit the court, he would do well, I think, before his departure, to hand to his Majesty the royal seal, which the late king intrusted to him, and which we need from this time."
Le Balafré was not mistaken. These apparently simple words excited the jealous constable's wrath to the highest pitch.
"Here is the seal," he said bitterly, as he produced it from beneath his doublet. "I intended to hand it to his Majesty without requiring him to ask it of me; but I see that his Majesty is surrounded by persons disposed to advise him to heap insults upon those who deserve nothing but gratitude."
"To whom does Monsieur de Montmorency mean to refer?" asked Catherine, haughtily.
"What? I spoke of those by whom his Majesty is surrounded, Madame," snarled the constable, giving the rein to his natural testiness and brutality.
But he had chosen his time ill; and Catherine was only awaiting an opportunity to burst out.
She rose, and casting all decorum to the winds, began to reproach the constable for the harsh and disdainful manner he had always adopted toward her, his hostility for everything Florentine, the preference which he had openly shown to the mistress over the lawful wife. She was not ignorant of the fact that it was to him that all the humiliation suffered by her countrymen who had followed her to France was to be attributed. She knew, too, that during the early years of her married life Montmorency had had the hardihood to suggest to Henri that he should cast her off as being barren, and that since then he had basely slandered her.
To this the constable, who was little accustomed to reproof, replied with a sneer, which was in itself a fresh affront.
Meanwhile the Duc de Guise had had time to take François II.'s orders, or rather to dictate those orders to him in a low tone; and now, calmly raising his voice, he proceeded to crush his rival, to the unbounded delight of Catherine de Médicis.