CHAPTER XVI
GUISE AND COLIGNY
After Catherine de Médicis's departure, there was a moment of silence. The young king seemed amazed at his own hardihood; while Mary, with the keen intuition of affection, could not avoid a shudder at the thought of the queen-mother's last threatening glance. The Duc de Guise was secretly delighted to find himself thus freed from an ambitious and dangerous associate before his first hour of authority was at an end.
Gabriel, who was the occasion of all this trouble, was the first to speak.
"Sire," said he, "and you, Madame, and you also, Monseigneur, I thank you with all my heart for your kind and generous treatment of a poor wretch whom Heaven itself has abandoned. But notwithstanding my profound gratitude, with which my heart is overflowing, I ask you of what use is it to turn aside danger and death from so mournful and hopeless an existence as mine? My life is of no value for any purpose, or to any person, not even myself. For that reason I would not have disputed Madame Catherine's right to take it, because henceforth it is useless to me."
He added sorrowfully in his own mind, "And because it may yet become a nuisance."
"Gabriel," the Duc de Guise rejoined, "your life has been gloriously and worthily lived in the past, and contains equal possibilities for the future. You are a man of vigor and energy, such as are in great request by those who govern empires, and are seldom available."
"Then, too," the sweet and soothing voice of Mary Stuart chimed in, "yours is a great and noble heart, Monsieur de Montgommery. I have known you for a long while, and Madame de Castro and myself have very often talked together about you."
"In short," observed François II., "your past services, Monsieur, justify me in relying upon you for like services in the future. The embers of war, which are now smouldering, may burst into a blaze at any moment, and I do not wish that a momentary despair, whatever be its cause, should deprive the country forever of a defender who is, I am sure, as loyal as he is gallant."
Gabriel listened with a grave and wondering sadness to these kind words of hope and encouragement. He gazed in turn at each of the exalted personages who had addressed them to him, and appeared to be in very deep thought.
"Well," he at last replied, "this unexpected good-will which all of you, who ought perhaps to hate me, thus demonstrate, has changed my heart and my destiny. At your service, Sire, at yours, Madame and Monseigneur, so long as you live, I place the existence of which you have made me a gift, so to speak. I was not born a villain, and your kindness touches me deeply. I was born to be devoted to somebody, to sacrifice myself, and to serve as the instrument of noble ideas and great men,—sometimes a happy, but at others a fatal instrument, alas! as God, in His wrath, knows only too well! But let us speak no more of the gloomy past, since you are good enough to believe in the possibility of a future for me. That future, however, belongs not to me, but to you; and henceforth I cherish what you admire, and think as you think. I abdicate my will. Let the beings and the objects in whom I believe, do with me as they please. My sword, my blood, my life,—all that I am, is theirs. I give my arm unreservedly and irrevocably to assist your genius, Monseigneur, as I devote my soul to religion."