“And now,” said Albert modestly, considering himself master of ceremonies, “please have Marie-Celeste tell what she knows first,” for the suspicious little reprobate was keenly anxious to put her boasted knowledge to the test.
“Yes, I should love to hear the story as she has heard it,” answered the Queen. “Will you tell it to us, Marie-Celeste?” And Marie-Celeste, nothing loath, and willing at last to substantiate her claims in the ears of doubting Albert, rested a hand comfortably on either arm of her chair, and commenced, preceding her narration with the request, “You will correct me, won't you, if you find I do not tell it right?” to which Her Majesty smilingly acceded, first asking Miss Belmore to hand her a little jewelled miniature case from among the other treasures on the table.
“Well, this little queen,” began Marie-Celeste, “was the child of a French king, and she was born in the Louvre, the King's palace in Paris, and she was born in a very troubled time—such a troubled time, that her father, the King, went crazy; and then the little Isabel spent most of her time in the Hotel de St. Pol, on the Seine, that belonged to one of her father's ambassadors.”
“I wonder that you remember such a queer name as St. Pol and such a long word as ambassadors,” said Miss Belmore incredulously.
“Oh, I have tried very hard to remember all the names, because you can't tell the story very clearly without them. Besides, I wrote them all down in my journal one day on the steamer, and because I was coming here to Windsor to-day, I read them over only last night.”
“You haven't tol' us de name of de king den,” said Albert.
“The king was Charles the Sixth of France,” explained the Queen, who was not going to have her little story-teller disconcerted if she could help it; but Marie-Celeste confessed with perfect honesty, “I am afraid I had forgotten that name;” and Albert felt ashamed of himself, and confided in a whisper to Miss Belmore “dat he dessed he wouldn't be so mean aden.”
“Well,” continued Marie-Celeste, pausing thoughtfully a moment to think out the order of the story, “at that time and all the time in those days there was war between France and England, and the French wanted to have peace; and so the ambassador, St. Pol, who had married the sister of King Richard in England, went to Richard and told him if he would sign a truce with France Charles would give him his daughter Isabel for his queen, and with a larger dowry than was ever given to a royal bride.” (Albert was becoming too deeply impressed with the extent of Marie-Celeste's knowledge to venture the question as to what a dowry might be.) “And King Richard agreed to that; but it must just have been because he thought it would be a wise thing to do, for Isabel was only eight years old, and it would be so many years before she could really reign as a queen at all. But that's the way with kings and queens; they always have to do the things that's wise, no matter how they may feel about it, don't they?” for Marie-Celeste, to whom even the motives of royal conduct were of deepest interest, felt one could hardly ask for a more reliable source of information than the Queen's own mother.
“It is certainly true,” said Her Majesty a little gravely, “that the rulers of a great country like England have often to set aside their own preferences; but these are better times than those in which the little Isabel lived, and the idea of a king marrying a little girl of eight, no matter for what reason, would hardly be tolerated now, you know.”
“Oh, is that so?” with a look of real surprise, for Marie-Celeste's idea of royalty had come to her largely through her knowledge of the little Isabel; and her childish mind did not readily lend itself to the thought that royalty, as well as everything else in the world, was subject to change and possible improvement. Indeed, she did not care to realize anything of the sort, choosing, rather, to think of the Windsor of Isabel's time as much the same as the Windsor of Victoria's, and she would have been not a little grieved and surprised had any one insisted on pointing out to her in how many, many ways the old differed from the new.