Now there was neither blessing nor cursing. The Bearnais did not kiss the picture of his mother. A scabbard clattered on the stone floor, was caught deftly, and snapped into its place on his belt.
"Where is my other pistol? Ah, I remember—D'Aubigné took it to clean. Lend me one of yours, Jean-aux-Choux. Is it primed and loaded?"
"He is with my lady mistress, the daughter of Francis the Scot, and with him are only the Sorbonne doctor and your cousin D'Albret for all retinue."
"Oh, ho," said Henry of Navarre, "a lady—more dangerous still. Hold the candle there, Jean-aux-Choux. I must look less like a hodman and more like a king."
And he drew from his inner pocket a little glass that fitted a frame, and a pocket-comb, with which he arranged his locks and the curls of his beard with a care at which the stout Calvinist, Anthony Arpajon, chafed and fumed.
"It is for the sake of his mother," whispered Jean in his ear, to comfort him, after the King had finished at last and signified that he was ready to descend. "She taught him that cleanliness is next to godliness," said Jean, "and now, when he is a man, the habit clings to him still."
"If he were somewhat less of a man," said the Calvinist, in the same whisper, "he would be the better king."
"Ah, wait," said Jean-aux-Choux—"wait till you have seen him on a battle-front, and you will be sure that, for all his faults, there never was a more manly man or a kinglier king!"