“That is too obvious, monsieur,” snapped the elderly, prudent and virtuous countess. “Nevertheless, whilst in France perhaps monsieur will perceive the convenience of conforming to French customs. Let me call for a chair for Monsieur le Duc.”
“I do not want a chair, madame.”
The countess cast her eyes to Heaven, as if to say, “I suppose one cannot expect anything else in a foreigner,” and let him kneel as he insisted, placing herself, however, protectingly at the Queen’s pillow.
Nevertheless, entirely unabashed, heeding Madame de Lannoi’s presence no more than if she had been part of the room’s furniture, the Duke delivered himself freely of what was in his mind. He had been obliged to return to Amiens on a matter of State. It was unthinkable that he should be so near to her Majesty and not hasten to cast himself at her feet; and whilst gladdening the eyes of his body with the sight of her matchless perfection, the image of which was ever before the eyes of his soul, allow himself the only felicity life now held for him—that of protesting himself her utter slave. This, and much more of the kind, did he pour out, what time the Queen, embarrassed and annoyed beyond utterance, could only stare at him in silence.
Apart from the matchless impudence of it, it was also of a rashness beyond pardon. Unless Madame de Lannoi were the most circumspect of women, here was a fine tale for Court gossips, and for the King’s ears, a tale that must hopelessly compromise the Queen. For that, Buckingham, in his self-sufficiency and arrogance, appears to have cared nothing. One suspects that it would have pleased his vanity to have his name linked with the Queen’s by the lips of scandal.
She found her tongue at last.
“Monsieur le Duc,” she said in her confusion, “it was not necessary, it was not worth while, to have asked audience of me for this. You have leave to go.”
He looked up in doubt, and saw only confusion; attributed it perhaps to the presence of that third party to which himself he had been so indifferent. He kissed the coverlet again, stumbled to his feet, and reached the door. Thence he sent her a flaming glance of his bold eyes, and hand on heart—
“Adieu, madame!” said he in tragic tones, and so departed.
Madame de Lannoi was discreet, and related at the time nothing of what had passed at that interview. But that the interview itself had taken place under such conditions was enough to set the tongue of gossip wagging. An echo of it reached the King, together with the story of that other business in the garden, and he was glad to know that the Duke of Buckingham was back in London. Richelieu, to vent his own malice against the Queen, sought to feed the King’s suspicions.