He stared at her vacuously. Some such rumour had already reached him, and he conceived that here was definite confirmation of it.
“You may determine now who are your friends, who your loyal servants,” she told him. “How is so much force to be resisted in the state in which you find yourself? The Catholics exhausted, and weary as they are by a civil war in which their king was of little account to them, are going to arm so as to offer what resistance they can without depending upon you. Thus, within your State you will have two great parties under arms, neither of which can be called your own. Unless you stir yourself, and quickly, unless you choose now between friends and foes, you will find yourself alone, isolated, in grave peril, without authority or power.”
He sank overwhelmed to a chair, and took his head in his hands, cogitating. When next he looked at her there was positive fear in his great eyes, a fear evoked by contemplation of the picture which her words had painted for him.
He looked from her to Anjou.
“What then?” he asked. “What then? How is the danger to be averted?”
“By a simple stroke of the sword,” she answered calmly. “Slice off at a blow the head of this beast of rebellion, this hydra of heresy.”
He huddled back, horror in his eyes. His hands slid slowly along the carved arms of his chair, and clenched the ends so tightly that his knuckles looked like knobs of marble.
“Kill the Admiral?” he said slowly.
“The Admiral and the chief Huguenot leaders,” she said, much in the tone she might have used, were it a matter of wringing the necks of a dozen capons.
“Ah, ca! Par la Mort Dieu!” He heaved himself up, raging. “Thus would your hatred of him be served. Thus would you—”