La Trape emptied the cup among the green boughs that filled the hearth, and hastened to withdraw. It seemed to be too late to make further inquiries that night; so after listening to two or three explanations which the King hazarded, but which had all too fanciful an air in my eyes, I took my leave and retired.
Whether, however, the scene had raised too violent a commotion in my mind, or I was already sickening for the illness I have mentioned, I found it impossible to sleep; and spent the greater part of the night in a fever of fears and forebodings. The responsibility which the King's presence cast upon me lay so heavily upon my waking mind that I could not lie; and long before the King's usual hour of rising I was at his door inquiring how he did. No one knew, for the page whose turn it was to sleep at his feet had not come out; but while I stood questioning, the King's voice was heard, bidding me enter. I went in, and found him sitting up with a haggard face, which told me, before he spoke, that he had slept little better than I had. The shutters were thrown wide open, and the cold morning light poured into the room with an effect rather sombre than bright; the huge figures on the tapestry looming huger from a drab and melancholy background, and the chamber presenting all those features of disorder that in a sleeping-room lie hid at night, only to show themselves in a more vivid shape in the morning.
The King sent his page out, and bade me sit by him. "I have had a bad night," he said, with a shudder. "Grand Master, I doubt that astrologer was right, and I shall never see Germany, nor carry out my designs."
Seeing the state in which he was, I could think of nothing better than to rally him, and even laugh at him. "You think so now, sire," I said. "It is the cold hour. By and by, when you have broken your fast, you will think differently."
"But, it may be, less correctly," he answered; and as he sat looking before him with gloomy eyes, he heaved a deep sigh. "My friend," he said, mournfully, "I want to live, and I am going to die."
"Of what?" I asked, gaily.
"I do not know; but I dreamed last night that a house fell on me in the Rue de la Ferronerie, and I cannot help thinking that I shall die in that way."
"Very well," I said. "It is well to know that."
He asked me peevishly what I meant.
"Only," I explained, "that, in that case, as your Majesty need never pass through that street, you have it in your hands to live for ever."