Part 63 (1/2)
”Gascon!” exclaimed Madame de Sauve, shaking her head.
”But now it is my turn, Charlotte,” said Henry. ”If I ask you some questions, will you answer?”
”Certainly I will,” replied the young woman, ”I have nothing to hide from you.”
”Now look here, Charlotte,” said the king, ”explain to me just for once how it came about that after the desperate resistance which you made to me before my marriage, you became less cruel to me who am an awkward Bearnais, an absurd provincial, a prince too poverty-stricken, indeed, to keep the jewels of his crown polished.”
”Henry,” said Charlotte, ”you are asking the explanation of the enigma which the philosophers of all countries have been trying to determine for the past three thousand years! Henry, never ask a woman why she loves you; be satisfied with asking, 'Do you love me?'”
”Do you love me, Charlotte?” asked Henry.
”I love you,” replied Madame de Sauve, with a fascinating smile, dropping her pretty hand into her lover's.
Henry retained the hand.
”But,” he went on to say, following out his thought, ”supposing I have guessed the word which the philosophers have been vainly trying to find for three thousand years--at least as far as you are concerned, Charlotte?”
Madame de Sauve blushed.
”You love me,” pursued Henry, ”consequently I have nothing else to ask you and I consider myself the happiest man in the world. But you know happiness is always accompanied by some lack. Adam, in the midst of Eden, was not perfectly happy, and he bit into that miserable apple which imposed upon us all that love for novelty that makes every one spend his life in the search for something unknown. Tell me, my darling, in order to help me to find mine, didn't Queen Catharine at first bid you love me?”
”Henry,” exclaimed Madame de Sauve, ”speak lower when you speak of the queen mother!”
”Oh!” exclaimed Henry, with a spontaneity and boldness which deceived Madame de Sauve herself, ”it was a good thing formerly to distrust her, kind mother that she is, but then we were not on good terms; but now that I am her daughter's husband”--
”Madame Marguerite's husband!” exclaimed Charlotte, flus.h.i.+ng with jealousy.
”Speak low in your turn,” said Henry; ”now that I am her daughter's husband we are the best friends in the world. What was it they wanted?
For me to become a Catholic, so it seems. Well, grace has touched me, and by the intercession of Saint Bartholomew I have become one. We live together like brethren in a happy family--like good Christians.”
”And Queen Marguerite?”
”Queen Marguerite?” repeated Henry; ”oh, well, she is the link uniting us.”
”But, Henry, you said that the Queen of Navarre, as a reward for the devotion I showed her, had been generous to me. If what you say is true, if this generosity, for which I have cherished deep grat.i.tude toward her, is genuine, she is a connecting link easy to break. So you cannot trust to this support, for you have not made your pretended intimacy impose on any one.”
”Still I do rest on it, and for three months it has been the bolster on which I have slept.”
”Then, Henry!” cried Madame de Sauve, ”you have deceived me, and Madame Marguerite is really your wife.”
Henry smiled.
”There, Henry,” said Madame de Sauve, ”you have given me one of those exasperating smiles which make me feel the cruel desire to scratch your eyes out, king though you are.”
”Then,” said Henry, ”I seem to be imposing now by means of this pretended friends.h.i.+p, since there are moments when, king though I am, you desire to scratch out my eyes, because you believe that it exists!”
”Henry! Henry!” said Madame de Sauve, ”I believe that G.o.d himself does not know what your thoughts are.”
”My sweetheart,” said Henry, ”I think that Catharine first told you to love me, next, that your heart told you the same thing, and that when those two voices are speaking to you, you hear only your heart's. Now here I am. I love you and love you with my whole heart, and that is the very reason why if ever I should have secrets I should not confide them to you,--for fear of compromising you, of course,--for the queen's friends.h.i.+p is changeable, it is a mother-in-law's.”