I started at the words; but they brought me to myself, and with a bow I turned and passed into the ante-chamber. Some one was just quitting the room as I entered, for I caught the flash of a gay cloak as the Italian closed the door opposite to me, after his departing visitor, and then turned round with that eternal, treacherous smile of his, saying:
“Per Bacco! Your audience has been a long one!”
“’Tis likely to be longer still. Her Majesty wishes to see you. We go to the King.”
He lifted his eyebrows slightly at my last words, only saying, however, as he stepped to the archway:
“Her nightly visit. It will not continue for long.”
“Is it really so bad?”
He stopped, his hands resting on the folds of the curtain; then, bending forward, he said in a low tone:
“I keep relays of horses to two frontiers.”
There was no more said, and we stepped into the cabinet. Marcilly had returned, radiant and happy; but, in the quick glance I cast around me on entering I did not see Marie, and from my soul I was glad of this. I could not have endured meeting her. In the tumult then in my heart it would have been impossible to have faced her without betraying myself.
There was a whispered word or so between Catherine and her chamberlain, and then she spoke loudly, and with an imperious note in her voice: