“It should be so, and can be so, where a monarch boldly demands the right exercised unquestioned by the meanest hind. Whom shall you offend by stoutly claiming your right? Not France, for you will wed one of her daughters; not the king, for he is anxious to bestow upon you the lady you may prefer. Whom then? Merely the Duke of Vendôme, whose vaulting ambition it is to place a crown upon the head of his daughter, though its weight may crush her.”
The king looked fixedly at the perturbed young man, and a faint smile chased away the sternness of his countenance.
“I have never known an instance,” he said slowly, “where the burden of a crown was urged as an objection even by the most romantic of women.”
“It would be so urged by Mary of Vendôme, were she allowed to give utterance to her wishes.”
“You know her then?”
“I am proud to claim her as a friend, and to assert she is the very pearl of France.”
“Ha, you interest me. You hint, then, that I come a bootless wooer? That is turning the tables indeed, and now you rouse an emulation which heretofore was absent in me. You think I cannot win and wear this jewel of the realm?”
“That you may wear it there is no doubt; that you may win it is another matter. Mary will place her listless hand in yours, knowing thus she pleases the king and her father, but it is rumoured her affections are fixed upon another.”