Catherine took the seat from which her son had risen; and leaving him standing before her in an attitude which ill-repressed trouble combined with natural awkwardness of manner to render peculiarly ungainly, she seemed to study for a time, and with satisfaction, his confusion and constraint. But then, begging him to be seated near her, she commenced speaking to him of various matters, of his own pleasures and amusements, of the newest dress, of the fêtes interrupted by the King's illness, of the effect which this illness, and the supposed danger of Charles, had produced upon the jarring parties in the state; of the audacity of the Huguenots, who now first began, since the massacre of St Bartholomew's day, again to raise their heads, and cause fresh disquietude to the government. And thus proceeding step by step to the point at which she desired to arrive, the wily Queen-mother resembled the cat, which creeps slowly onwards, until it springs at last with one bound upon its victim.
"Alas!" she said, with an air of profound sorrow, "so quickly do treachery and ingratitude grow up around us, that we no longer can discern who are our friends and who our enemies. We bestow favours; but it is as if we gave food to the dog, who bites our fingers as he takes it. We cherish a friend; and it is an adder we nurse in our bosoms. That young man who left us but just now, the Count La Mole—he cannot hear us surely;"—the Duke of Alençon assured her, with ill-concealed agitation, that his favourite was out of ear-shot—"that young man—La Mole!—you love him well, I know, my son; and you know not that it is a traitor you have taken to your heart."
"La Mole—a traitor! how? impossible!" stammered the young Duke.
"Your generous and candid heart comprehends not treachery in those it loves," pursued his mother; "but I have, unhappily, the proofs in my own power. Philip de la Mole conspires against your brother's crown."
The Duke of Alençon grew deadly pale; and he seemed to support himself with difficulty; but he stammered with faltering tongue,
"Conspires? how? for whom? Surely, madam, you are most grossly misinformed?"
"Unhappily, my son," pursued Catherine—"and my heart bleeds to say it—I have it no longer in my power to doubt."
"Madam, it is false," stammered again the young Duke, rising hastily from his chair, with an air of assurance which he did not feel. "This is some calumny."
"Sit down, my son, and listen to me for a while," said the Queen-mother with a bland, quiet smile. "I speak not unadvisedly. Be not so moved."
Alençon again sat down unwillingly, subdued by the calm superiority of his mother's manner.