“Not here, but in the side chamber a little onward, which opens from your Majesty's bedchamber.”
He hastily opened a wicket at the upper end of the hall, which led into a bedchamber, small, as is usual in those old buildings; but, even for that reason, rather more comfortable than the waste hall through which they had passed. Some hasty preparations had been here made for the King's accommodation. Arras had been tacked up, a fire lighted in the rusty grate, which had been long unused, and a pallet laid down for those gentlemen who were to pass the night in his chamber, as was then usual.
“We will get beds in the hall for the rest of your attendants,” said the garrulous old man; “but we have had such brief notice, if it please your Majesty.—And if it please your Majesty to look upon this little wicket behind the arras, it opens into the little old cabinet in the thickness of the wall where Charles was slain; and there is a secret passage from below, which admitted the men who were to deal with him. And your Majesty, whose eyesight I hope is better than mine, may see the blood still on the oak floor, though the thing was done five hundred years ago.”
While he thus spoke, he kept fumbling to open the postern of which he spoke, until the King said, “Forbear, old man—forbear but a little while, when thou mayst have a newer tale to tell, and fresher blood to show.—My Lord of Crevecoeur, what say you?”
“I can but answer, Sire, that these two interior apartments are as much at your Majesty's disposal as those in your own Castle at Plessis, and that Crevecoeur, a name never blackened by treachery or assassination, has the guard of the exterior defences of it.”
“But the private passage into that closet, of which the old man speaks?” This King Louis said in a low and anxious tone, holding Crevecoeur's arm fast with one hand, and pointing to the wicket door with the other.
“It must be some dream of Mornay's,” said Crevecoeur, “or some old and absurd tradition of the place; but we will examine.”
He was about to open the closet door, when Louis answered, “No, Crevecoeur, no.—Your honour is sufficient warrant.—But what will your Duke do with me, Crevecoeur? He cannot hope to keep me long a prisoner; and—in short, give me your opinion, Crevecoeur.”
“My Lord, and Sire,” said the Count, “how the Duke of Burgundy must resent this horrible cruelty on the person of his near relative and ally, is for your Majesty to judge; and what right he may have to consider it as instigated by your Majesty's emissaries, you only can know. But my master is noble in his disposition, and made incapable, even by the very strength of his passions, of any underhand practices. Whatever he does, will be done in the face of day, and of the two nations. And I can but add, that it will be the wish of every counsellor around him—excepting perhaps one—that he should behave in this matter with mildness and generosity, as well as justice.”
“Ah! Crevecoeur,” said Louis, taking his hand as if affected by some painful recollections, “how happy is the Prince who has counsellors near him, who can guard him against the effects of his own angry passions! Their names will be read in golden letters, when the history of his reign is perused.—Noble Crevecoeur, had it been my lot to have such as thou art about my person!”