Part 175 (1/2)

Catharine had stopped and was waiting for him.

She signed to the two soldiers to go on, and laying her hand on Henry's arm, said:

”This court has two gates. At one, behind the apartments of the King, if you refuse the regency, a good horse and freedom await you. At the other, through which you have just pa.s.sed, if you listen to the voice of ambition--What do you say?”

”I say that if the King makes me regent, madame, I, and not you, shall give orders to the soldiers. I say that if I leave the castle at night, all these pikes, halberds, and muskets shall be lowered before me.”

”Madman!” murmured Catharine, exasperated, ”believe me, and do not play this terrible game of life and death with me.”

”Why not?” said Henry, looking closely at Catharine; ”why not with you as well as with another, since up to this time I have won?”

”Go to the King's apartments, monsieur, since you are unwilling to believe or listen to anything,” said Catharine, pointing to the stairway with one hand, and with the other toying with one of the two poisoned daggers she always wore in the black s.h.a.green case, which has become historical.

”Pa.s.s before me, madame,” said Henry; ”so long as I am not regent, the honor of precedence belongs to you.”

Catharine, thwarted in all her plans, did not attempt to struggle, but ascended the stairs ahead of the King of Navarre.

CHAPTER LXIV.

THE REGENCY.

The King, beginning to grow impatient, had summoned Monsieur de Nancey to his room, and had just given him orders to go in search of Henry, when the latter appeared.

On seeing his brother-in-law at the door Charles uttered a cry of joy, but Henry stood motionless, as startled as if he had come face to face with a corpse.

The two physicians who were at the bedside and the priest who had been with Charles withdrew.

Charles was not loved, and yet many were weeping in the antechambers. At the death of kings, good or bad, there are always persons who lose something and who fear they will not find it again under the successor.

The mourning, the sobbing, the words of Catharine, the sinister and majestic surroundings of the last moments of a king, the sight of the King himself, suffering from a malady common enough afterwards, but which, at that time, was new to science, produced on Henry's mind, which was still youthful and consequently still susceptible, such a terrible impression that in spite of his determination not to cause Charles fresh anxiety as to his condition, he could not as we have said repress the feeling of terror which came to his face on perceiving the dying man dripping with blood.

Charles smiled sadly. Nothing of those around them escapes the dying.

”Come, Henriot,” said he, extending his hand with a gentleness of voice Henry had never before noticed in him. ”Come in; I have been very unhappy at not seeing you for so long. I have tormented you greatly during my life, my poor friend, and sometimes, believe me, I have reproached myself for it. Sometimes I have taken the hands of those who tormented you, it is true, but a king cannot control circ.u.mstances, and besides my mother Catharine, my brothers D'Anjou and D'Alencon, I had to consider during my lifetime something else which was troublesome and which ceases the moment I draw near to death--state policy.”

”Sire,” murmured Henry, ”I remember only the love I have always had for my brother, the respect I have always felt for my King.”

”Yes, yes, you are right,” said Charles, ”and I am grateful to you for saying this, Henriot, for truly you have suffered a great deal under my reign without counting the fact that it was during my reign that your poor mother died. But you must have seen that I was often driven?

Sometimes I have resisted, but oftener I have yielded from very fatigue.

But, as you said, let us not talk of the past. Now it is the present which concerns me; it is the future which frightens me.”

And the poor King hid his livid face in his emaciated hands.

After a moment's silence he shook his head as if to drive away all gloomy thoughts, thus causing a shower of blood to fall about him.

”We must save the state,” he continued in a low tone, leaning towards Henry. ”We must prevent its falling into the hands of fanatics or women.”

As we have just said, Charles uttered these words in a low tone, yet Henry thought he heard behind the headboard something like a dull exclamation of anger. Perhaps some opening made in the wall at the instigation of Charles himself permitted Catharine to hear this final conversation.