Part 46 (2/2)
”Oh, madame,” replied Charlotte, ”that is a fact I will not even try to deny--least of all in your presence.”
”So, then, the King of Navarre prefers my daughter to you; a circ.u.mstance, I presume, not to your wishes, and certainly not what we agreed should be the case.”
”Alas, madame,” cried Charlotte, bursting into a torrent of tears which now flowed from no feigned source, ”if it be so, I can but say I am very unfortunate!”
”It is so,” said Catharine, darting the two-fold keenness of her eyes like a double poniard into Madame de Sauve's heart.
”But who can make you believe that?” asked Charlotte.
”Go down to the Queen of Navarre's _pazza_, and you will find your lover there!”
”Oh!” exclaimed Madame de Sauve.
Catharine shrugged her shoulders.
”Are you jealous, pray?” asked the queen mother.
”I?” exclaimed Madame de Sauve, recalling her fast-failing strength.
”Yes, you! I should like to see a Frenchwoman's jealousy.”
”But,” said Madame de Sauve, ”how should your majesty expect me to be jealous except out of vanity? I love the King of Navarre only as far as your majesty's service requires it.”
Catharine gazed at her for a moment with dreamy eyes.
”What you tell me may on the whole be true,” she murmured.
”Your majesty reads my heart.”
”And your heart is wholly devoted to me?”
”Command me, madame, and you shall judge for yourself.”
”Well, then, Carlotta, since you are ready to sacrifice yourself in my service, you must still continue for my sake to be in love with the King of Navarre and, above all, to be very jealous,--jealous as an Italian woman.”
”But, madame,” asked Charlotte, ”how does an Italian woman show her jealousy?”
”I will tell you,” replied Catharine, and after nodding her head two or three times she left the room as deliberately and noiselessly as she had come in.
Charlotte, confused by the keen look of those eyes dilated like a cat's or a panther's without thereby losing anything of their inscrutability, allowed her to go without uttering a single word, without even letting her breathing be heard, and she did not even take a respiration until she heard the door close behind her and Dariole came to say that the terrible apparition had departed.
”Dariole,” said she, ”draw up an armchair close to my bed and spend the night in it. I beg you to do so, for I should not dare to stay alone.”
Dariole obeyed; but in spite of the company of her faithful attendant, who stayed near her, in spite of the light from the lamp which she commanded to be left burning for the sake of greater tranquillity, Madame de Sauve also did not fall asleep till daylight, so insistently rang in her ears the metallic accent of Catharine's voice.
<script>