The pale foreheads of both the young men, visible above their masks, showed that they felt they had been led further in the work of witchcraft than was their intention; but they did not expostulate. It was the Duke who now first rallied, and throwing down a heavy purse of coin on the table before the astrologer, he called to his companion to follow him.
Scarcely had the young men left the apartment, when the pannel by which Catherine of Medicis had disappeared, again opened, and she entered the room. Her face was pale, cold, and calm as usual.
"You heard them, Ruggieri!" she said, with her customary bland smile. "Alençon would be king, and that ambitious fool drives him to snatch his brother's crown. The Queen-mother is to be arrested, and imprisoned as a rebel to her usurping son. A notable scheme, forsooth! Her courier to recall Henry of Anjou from Poland has been intercepted also! But that mischance must be remedied immediately. Ay! and avenged. Biragne shall have instant orders. With this proof in my possession, the life of that La Mole is mine," continued she, tearing in twain the white linen cloth, and displaying beneath it a small wax figure, bearing the semblance of a king, with a crown upon
its head, in which the gold pin was still left sticking, by the manner in which this operation was performed. "Little treasure of vengeance, thou art mine! Ruggieri, man, that plot was acted to the life. Verily, verily, you were right. Charles dies; and troubled and harassed will be the last hours of his reign."
CHAPTER II.
"There is so hot a summer in my bosom,
That all my bowels crumble up to dust;
I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen
Upon a parchment; and against this fire
Do I shrink up."
Shakspeare.
"Ambition is a great man's madness,
That is not kept in chains and close-pent rooms
But in fair lightsome lodgings, and is girt
With the wild noise of prattling visitants,
Which makes it lunatic beyond all cure."
Webster.
In a room belonging to the lower apartments of the old palace of the Louvre, reclined, in one of the large but incommodious chairs of the time, a young man, whose pale, haggard face, and prematurely furrowed brow, betrayed deep suffering both from moral and physical causes. The thick lids of his heavy dark eyes closed over them with languor, as if he no longer possessed the force to open them; whilst his pale thin lips were distorted as if with pain. His whole air bore the stamp of exhaustion of mind and body.
The dress of this personage was dark and of an extreme plainness and simplicity, in times when the fashion of attire demanded so much display—it bore somewhat the appearance of a hunting costume. The room, on the contrary, betrayed a strange mixture of great richness and luxury with much confusion and disorder. The hangings of the doors were of the finest stuffs, and embroidered with gold and jewellery; tapestry of price covered the walls. A raised curtain of heavy and costly tissue discovered a small oratory, in which were visible a crucifix and other religious ornaments of great value. But in the midst of this display of wealth and greatness, were to be seen the most incongruous objects. Beneath a bench in a corner of the room was littered straw, on which lay several young puppies; in other choice nooks slept two or three great hounds. Hunting horns were hung against the tapestry, or lay scattered on the floor; an arquebuss rested against the oratory door-stall—the instrument of death beside the retreat of religious aspiration. Upon a standing desk, in the middle of the room, lay a book, the coloured designs of which showed that it treated of the "noble science of venerye," whilst around its pages hung the beads of a chaplet. Against the wall of the room opposite the reclining young man, stood one of the heavy chests used at that period for seats, as much as depositories of clothes and other objects; but the occupant of this seat was a strange one. It was a large ape, the light brown colour of whose hair bordered so much upon the green as to give the animal, in certain lights, a perfectly verdant aspect. It sat "moping and mowing" in sulky loneliness, as if its grimaces were intended to caricature the expression of pain which crossed the young man's face—a strange distorted mirror of that suffering form.