My lord the Bishop could bear it no longer.
"He will say presently," he cried, snorting with indignation, "that it is not the dog! It is that his Eminence would say," with a sneer, "if he dared!"
His Eminence shrugged his shoulders very slightly, and turned the palms of his hands outwards. "Oh," he said, "if her Majesty is satisfied I am."
"M'dieu!" the Queen cried, with a spirt of anger—"what do you mean?" But she turned to the lady who held the dog, and took it from her. "It is the dog!" she said, her colour high. "Do you think that I do not know my own dog?" she continued. And she set the dog on its feet. She called it "Flore! Flore!" It turned to her and wagged its tail eagerly, and jumped upon her skirts, and licked her hand.
"Poor Flore!" said the Cardinal. "Flore!" It went to him.
"Certainly its name is Flore," he said: yet he continued to scan it with a puzzled eye. "It is the dog, I suppose. But it used to die at the word of command, I think?"
"What it did, it will do!" Monseigneur de Beauvais cried scornfully. "But I see that your Eminence was right in one thing you said."
The Cardinal bowed.
"That I should be envied!" the Bishop retorted, with a sneer. And he glanced round the circle. There was a slight though general titter; a great lady at the Queen's elbow laughed out.
"Flore," said the Queen, "die! Die, good dog. Do you hear, m'dieu! die!"