"He has given me patience these ten years, sire!" she retorted passionately. "Patience to see myself flouted by your favourites, insulted and displaced, and set aside! But this is too much! It was enough that you made yourself the laughing-stock of France once with this madame! I will not have it again—no: though twenty of your counsellors frown at me!"
"Your Majesty seems displeased," I said. "But as I am quite in the dark—"
"Liar!" she cried, giving way to her fury. "When you were with her this morning! When you saw her! When you stooped to—"
"Madame!" the King said sternly, "if you forget yourself, be good enough to remember that you are speaking to French gentlemen, not to traders of Florence!"
She sneered. "You think to wound me by that!" she cried, breathing quickly. "But I have my grandfather's blood in me, sire; and no King of France—"
"One King of France will presently make your uncle of that blood sing small!" the King answered viciously. "So much for that; and for the rest, sweetheart, softly, softly!"
"Oh!" she cried, "I will go: I will not stay to be outraged by that woman's presence!"
I had now an inkling what was the matter; and discerning that the quarrel was a more serious matter than their every-day bickerings, and threatened to go to lengths that might end in disaster, I ignored the insult her Majesty had flung at me, and entreated her to be calm. "If I understand aright, madame," I said, "you have some grievance against his Majesty. Of that I know nothing. But I also understand that you allege something against me; and it is to speak to that, I presume, that I am summoned. If you will deign to put the matter into words—"
"Words!" she cried. "You have words enough! But get out of this, Master Grave-Airs, if you can! Did you, or did you not, tell me this morning that the Princess of Conde was in Brussels?"
"I did, madame."