Catherine looked around the room as if seeking to find words for her reply. At last she broke out:
“What would you have me do? I am powerless. Ah!”—she hissed, rather than spoke—“they compass me like bees—I can give you no help.”
“Your Majesty has only to extend to us the King’s peace for our late alleged offences,” said Marcilly. “We would then be free of the streets of Orleans. That is all the aid we seek. We answer for the rest.”
“We must get that to-night if it is to be of any use,” I added.
She had played her game long enough, whatever her object was in thus delaying. Perhaps it was to test our sincerity. Who can tell? But now she yielded, yet even in yielding remained an actress. She glanced at me for a moment, and then turned to Marcilly with a smile on her face.
“Monsieur le Comte! There is some one else whose pardon you should first seek, for not having seen her before. You will find her waiting in the passage,” and with a wave of her hand she indicated the door by which she had entered the room.
I knew what she meant, and for a moment my brain seemed to reel; but I felt the Queen’s eyes on me, and steadied myself. Marcilly had gone like a flash, but as he opened the door there was a glad cry—such a cry, such a tone as could only come from the heart of a woman who loved, and it stabbed me like a knife. I knew in a moment that my house of cards had come down. I felt—I cannot tell why—that the love I thought mine was never mine, and with this sprang up a bitter resentment against Marie. It was Jean whom she loved, whom she had always loved, and I—I had been fooled. To think that I had been fighting a phantom all this time! To think that those struggles with myself, those victories gained, those hours of abasement, were due to a spectre of my own creating! How different would the past year have been had I but known! Had I but guessed! But to have been fooled! To have been made a sport and plaything, to while away the dull hours of a born coquette—I, Gaspard de Vibrac, Knight of the King’s Order! In a moment it seemed that all my love had turned to a bitter hatred. There was a new madness burning in me, not the madness of passion, of love, but the more baleful fires of hatred and revenge.
And I was wrong even then in the conclusion I jumped to. I know now that it is possible for a woman, a good and pure woman, to mistake the feelings of her heart, to imagine she loves where she does not, and to tread on the edge of a moral precipice, where a false step means the ruin of a soul. And because such a woman was strong enough to save herself, I was base enough to brand her coquette, vile enough to think of revenge. I could hear nothing except that glad cry of welcome; I saw as in a dream before me the figures of the Queen-Mother and our two friends engaged in earnest converse. What they said was nothing to me. I did not hear a word. Once or twice I fancied they looked at me, but I paid no heed to them, standing a little apart, leaning on the hilt of my sword, my soul once more adrift on that dark sea from which but so short a while since I thought I had come safe to port. So I stood until the tension was broken by Catherine’s measured voice:
“Monsieur de Vibrac! Be so good as to call Bentivoglio here. We will see the King at once.”