“The improvident idiots!” said the King. “If they have thus neglected their own safety, they deserve not my protection. Pass on—I will make no quarrel for their sake.”
“The next point, I fear, will sit closer to your Majesty's heart,” said De Comines.
“Ah!” replied the King, “you mean that infernal marriage! I will not consent to the breach of the contract betwixt my daughter Joan and my cousin of Orleans—it would be wresting the sceptre of France from me and my posterity; for that feeble boy, the Dauphin, is a blighted blossom, which will wither without fruit. This match between Joan and Orleans has been my thought by day, my dream by night.—I tell thee, Sir Philip, I cannot give it up!—Besides, it is inhuman to require me, with my own hand, to destroy at once my own scheme of policy, and the happiness of a pair brought up for each other.”
“Are they, then, so much attached?” said De Comines.
“One of them at least,” said the King, “and the one for whom I am bound to be most anxious. But you smile, Sir Philip—you are no believer in the force of love.”
“Nay,” said De Comines, “if it please you, Sire, I am so little an infidel in that particular that I was about to ask whether it would reconcile you in any degree to your acquiescing in the proposed marriage betwixt the Duke of Orleans and Isabelle de Croye, were I to satisfy you that the Countess's inclinations are so much fixed on another, that it is likely it will never be a match?”
King Louis sighed. “Alas,” he said, “my good and dear friend, from what sepulchre have you drawn such dead comfort? Her inclinations, indeed!—Why, to speak truth, supposing that Orleans detested my daughter Joan, yet, but for this ill ravelled web of mischance, he must needs have married her; so you may conjecture how little chance there is of this damsel's being able to refuse him under a similar compulsion, and he a Child of France besides.—Ah, no, Philip! little fear of her standing obstinate against the suit of such a lover.—Varium et mutabile [(semper femina): woman is always inconstant and capricious], Philip.”
“Your Majesty may, in the present instance, undervalue the obstinate courage of this young lady. She comes of a race determinately wilful; and I have picked out of Crevecoeur that she has formed a romantic attachment to a young squire, who, to say truth, rendered her many services on the road.”
“Ha!” said the King—“an Archer of my Guards, by name Quentin Durward?”
“The same, as I think,” said De Comines; “he was made prisoner along with the Countess, travelling almost alone together.”