His green eyes smouldered, his right hand opened and closed on the gold hilt of the dagger at his girdle:
Scared by the maniac ferocity of this reception, the young Duke precipitately withdrew.
“It is nothing. Another time, since I disturb you now.” He bowed and vanished, followed by an evil, cackling laugh.
Anjou knew how little his brother loved him, and he confesses how much he feared him in that moment. But under his fear it is obvious that there was lively resentment. He went straight in quest of his mother, whose darling he was, to bear her the tale of the King's mood, and what he accounted, no doubt rightly, the cause of it.
“It is the work of that pestilential Huguenot admiral,” he announced, at the end of a long tirade, “It is always thus with him after he has seen Coligny.”
Catherine of Medicis considered. She was a fat, comfortable woman, with a thick nose, pinched lips, and sleepy eyes.
“Charles,” she said at length, in her monotonous, emotionless voice, “is a weathercock that turns with every wind that blows upon him. You should know him by now.” And she yawned, so that one who did not know her and her habit of perpetually yawning might have supposed that she was but indifferently interested.
They were alone together in the intimate little tapestried room she called her oratory. She half sat, half reclined upon a couch of rose brocade. Anjou stood over by the window, his back to it, so that his pale face was in shadow. He considered his beautiful hands, which he was reluctant to lower, lest the blood should flow into them and mar their white perfection.
“The Admiral's influence over him is increasing,” he complained, “and he uses it to lessen our own.”
“Do I not know it?” came her dull voice.