"While I," added Mary Stuart, "assure you that your devotion always will meet with equal confidence on our part, and that you shall be one of those friends from whom we have no secrets, and to whom we will refuse nothing."
The young count, more deeply touched than he chose to confess to himself, bowed, and touched respectfully with his lips the hand which the queen held out to him.
He then pressed the hand of the Duc de Guise, and receiving his dismissal by a kindly gesture from the king, withdrew, being thenceforth bound, by force of a generous action, to the son of the man upon whom he had sworn to be revenged even in the persons of his children.
Gabriel found Admiral de Coligny awaiting him when he reached home.
Aloyse had informed the admiral, who had come to pay a friendly visit to his companion-in-arms at St. Quentin, that her master had been summoned to the Louvre that morning; she had imparted her anxiety to him, and Coligny had determined to remain until the count's return should reassure them both.
He received Gabriel with much cordiality, and questioned him as to what had taken place.
Without going into details, Gabriel merely told him that upon his offering a simple explanation of his connection with the deplorable death of Henri II. he had been dismissed unharmed personally and with his honor unsullied.
"It could not have been otherwise," exclaimed the admiral; "for the whole nobility of France would have protested as one man against any suspicion which would have cast a blot upon the fame of one of its worthiest members."
"Let us drop the subject," said Gabriel, with sorrowful constraint. "I am very glad to see you, Monsieur l'Amiral. You know that I am already at heart a member of your sect, for I have told you and written you to that effect. Since you think that I would not bring discredit upon the faith in which I believe, I not only wish to, but I do now abjure the faith in which I was brought up; your discourse and Master Paré's, the books I have read and my own reflections, have completely convinced me, and I am with you heart and soul."
"Welcome news! and it comes very opportunely," said the admiral.