They left the room by a secret door, still busily conversing.
"Alas! alas!" murmured Mary Stuart, kissing the cold hand of poor François; "there is no one but me to weep for him, my poor darling, who loved me so dearly."
"And me, Madame," said Gabriel de Montgommery, who had thus far kept in the background, but now came forward with tears in his eyes.
"Oh, thanks, my friend!" said Mary, with a grateful look in which her whole soul shone out.
"And I will do more than weep," said Gabriel, beneath his breath, following from afar, with an angry eye, the Constable de Montmorency, who was strutting about beside Catherine de Médicis. "Yes, perhaps I may avenge him, when I begin anew the unfinished work of my own vengeance. Now that this constable has returned to power, the contest between us is not at an end!"
Thus, even in the presence of death Gabriel, alas! kept in view his personal affairs.
Surely Regnier la Planche was right in saying "that it is a bad thing to be king simply to die."
And he was equally right when he added, "During the reign of François II. France was the theatre whereon were enacted many horrible tragedies which posterity will contemplate with wonder and abhorrence."