He felt a sort of confused joy.
"My prey is coming to me," he thought; "already he is fluttering around my nets, and getting within reach of my spear."
He slept that night more soundly than he had done for a long while.
The king, however, was not so tranquil. He went on to Diane's apartments, where she was expecting him, and welcomed him with such transports of delight as we can imagine.
But Henri was absorbed and restless. He did not venture to speak of the Comte de Montgommery, although he fancied that Gabriel was doubtless coming from his daughter's apartments when they met. However, he did not choose to touch that chord; therefore, while he had set out to pay Diane this visit in a spirit of effusive affection and confidence, he maintained from beginning to end an air of suspicion and constraint.
He then returned to his own apartments, sad and gloomy. He felt displeased with himself and others, and his sleep that night was very troubled and broken.
It seemed to him that he was becoming involved in a labyrinth from which he should never come out alive.
"However," he said to himself, "I offered myself to that man's sword to-day in a measure; so it is evident that he does not wish to kill me."
The king, in order to distract his thoughts and seek forgetfulness for his troubles, determined to leave Paris for a time. During the days immediately following his encounter with the Comte de Montgommery, he went successively to St. Germain, Chambord, and Madame de Poitiers's Château d'Anet.
Toward the close of the month of June he was at Fontainebleau.