"In what does that prediction weaken the one I have told you of?" asked Catherine.
"Just wait, Madame!" said Henri: "I have somewhere the nativity which was cast for me last year. Do you remember what destiny it foretold for me?"
"Very indistinctly, Sire."
"According to that horoscope, Madame, it is written in the stars that I shall die in a duel! Surely, that would be a rare and novel experience for a king. But a duel, in my humble opinion, is not the image of Mars, but the god himself."
"What is your conclusion from that, Sire?"
"Why, this, Madame: that since all these prophecies are contradictory and inconsistent, the surest way is to have no faith in any of them. The deceitful things give one another the lie, you can see yourself."
"So your Majesty will persist in leaving the Louvre during the next few days?"
"Under any other circumstances I should be most happy, Madame, to gratify you by remaining with you; but I have promised and publicly announced that I would be present at these festivities; so I must attend them."
"At all events, Sire, you will not enter the lists, will you?"
"There, again, my pledged word requires me, to my great regret, to refuse you, Madame. But what possible danger can there be for me in these sports? I am grateful to you from the bottom of my heart for your solicitude; yet let me assure you that your fears are altogether imaginary, and that to yield to them would be to imply a false belief that danger could possibly attend this courtly, good-natured jousting, which I by no means propose to have done away with on my account."