"I have my lackey, who not only is a faithful fellow, but who has even occasionally aided me in this sort of thing."

"Send for him, and confer with him. You know the chamber hung with the King's arms, do you not? Well, your breakfast shall be served there; and from there you shall give your orders. The place will aid you to collect your wits in case they are scattered. Then when my son returns from the hunt, you are to go into my oratory, and wait until the time comes."

"But how are we to get into the room? Probably the king suspects something, and he will shut himself up in it."

"I have a duplicate key to every door," said Catharine, "and the bolts have been removed from Henry's room. Adieu, Monsieur de Maurevel, for a while. I will have you taken to the King's armory. Ah! by the way!

remember that the order of a King must be carried out before anything else. No excuse is admissible; a defeat, even a failure, would compromise the honor of the King. It is a serious matter."

And Catharine, without giving Maurevel time to answer, called Monsieur de Nancey, the captain of the guards, and ordered him to conduct Maurevel to the king's armory.

"My G.o.d!" exclaimed Maurevel as he followed his guide, "I have risen to the hierarchy of a.s.sa.s.sination; from a simple gentleman to a captain, from a captain to an admiral, from an admiral to a king without a crown.

Who knows if I shall not some day be a king with a crown!"

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

THE HUNT.

The outrider who had turned aside the boar and who had told the King that the animal had not left the place was not mistaken. Scarcely were the bloodhounds put on the trail before it plunged into the thickets, and from a cl.u.s.ter of thorn bushes drove out the boar which the outrider had recognized by its track. It was a recluse; that is, the strangest kind of animal.

It started straight ahead and crossed the road fifty feet from the King, followed only by the bloodhound which had driven it back. The first relay of dogs was at once let loose, twenty in number, which sprang after it.

Hunting was Charles' chief pa.s.sion. Scarcely had the animal crossed the road before he started after it, followed by the Duc d'Alencon and Henry, to whom a sign had indicated that he must not leave Charles.

The rest of the hunters followed the King.

At the time of which we are writing, the royal forests were far from being what they are to-day, great parks intersected by carriage roads.

Then traffic was almost wanting. Kings had not yet conceived the idea of being merchants, and of dividing their woods into fellings, copses, and forests. The trees, planted, not by learned foresters, but by the hand of G.o.d, who threw the grain to the will of the winds, were not arranged in quincunxes, but grew as they pleased, as they do to-day in any virginal forest of America. In short, a forest in those days was a den of the wild boar, the stag, the wolf, and robbers; and a dozen paths starting from one point starred that of Bondy, surrounded by a circular road as the circle of a wheel surrounds its fellies.

To carry the comparison further, the nave would not be a bad representation of the single point where the parties meet in the centre of the wood, where the wandering hunters rally to start out again towards the point where the lost animal again appears.

At the end of a quarter of an hour there happened what always happens in such cases. Insurmountable obstacles rose in the path of the hunters, the cries of the dogs were lost in the distance, and the King returned to the meeting-place cursing and swearing as was his habit.

"Well, D'Alencon! Well, Henriot!" said he, "there you are, by Heaven, as calm and unruffled as nuns following their abbess. That is not hunting.

Why, D'Alencon, you look as though you had just stepped out of a band-box, and you are so saturated with perfumery that if you were to pa.s.s between the boar and my dogs, you might put them off the scent. And you, Henry, where is your spear, your musket? Let us see!"

"Sire," said Henry, "of what use is a musket? I know that your Majesty likes to shoot the beast when the dogs have caught it. As to a spear, I am clumsy enough with this weapon, which is not much used among our mountains, where we hunt the bear with a simple dagger."

"By Heavens, Henry, when you return to your Pyrenees you will have to send me a whole cartload of bears. It must be a pretty hunt that is carried on at such close quarters with an animal which might strangle us. Listen, I think I hear the dogs. No, I am mistaken." The King took his horn and blew a blast; several horns answered him. Suddenly an outrider appeared who blew another blast.

"The boar! the boar!" cried the King.

He galloped off, followed by the rest of the hunters who had rallied round him.

The outrider was not mistaken. As the King advanced they began to hear the barking of the pack, which consisted of more than sixty dogs, for one after another they had let loose all the relays placed at the points the boar had already pa.s.sed. The King saw the boar again, and taking advantage of a clump of high trees, he rushed after him, blowing his horn with all his might.

For some time the princes followed him. But the King had such a strong horse and was so carried away by his ardor, and he rode over such rough roads and through such thick underbrush, that at first the ladies, then the Duc de Guise and his gentlemen, and finally the two princes, were forced to abandon him. Tavannes held out for a time longer, but at length he too gave up.

Except Charles and a few outriders who, excited over a promised reward, would not leave the King, everyone had gathered about the open s.p.a.ce in the centre of the wood. The two princes were together on a narrow path, the Duc de Guise and his gentlemen had halted a hundred feet from them.

Further on were the ladies.

"Does it not really seem," said the Duc d'Alencon to Henry, indicating by a wink the Duc de Guise, "that that man with his escort sheathed in steel is the real king? Poor princes that we are, he does not even honor us by a glance."

"Why should he treat us better than we treat our own relatives?" replied Henry. "Why, brother, are not you and I prisoners at the court of France, hostages from our party?"

Duc Francois started at these words, and looked at Henry as if to provoke further explanation; but Henry had said more than he usually did and was silent.

"What do you mean, Henry?" asked the Duc Francois, visibly annoyed that his brother-in-law by stopping had left him to open the conversation.

"I say, brother," said Henry, "that all these men who are so well armed, whose duty seems to be not to lose sight of us, look exactly like guards preventing two people from running away."

"Running away? why? how?" asked D'Alencon, admirably successful in his pretended surprise and innocence.

"You have a magnificent mount, Francois," said Henry, following out his thoughts, while apparently changing the conversation. "I am sure he could make seven leagues in an hour, and twenty between now and noon. It is a fine day. And one feels like saying good-by. See the beautiful cross-road. Does it not tempt you, Francois? As to me, my spurs burn me."

Francois did not reply. But he first turned red and then white. Then he bent his head, as if listening for sounds from the hunters.

"The news from Poland is having its effect," said Henry, "and my dear brother-in-law has his plans. He would like me to escape, but I shall not do so by myself."

Scarcely had this thought pa.s.sed through his mind before several new converts, who had come to court during the past two or three months, galloped up and smiled pleasantly on the two princes. The Duc d'Alencon, provoked by Henry's remarks, had but one word to say, one gesture to make, and it was evident that thirty or forty hors.e.m.e.n, who at that moment gathered around them as though to oppose the troop belonging to Monsieur de Guise, favored his flight; but he turned aside his head, and, raising his horn to his lips, he sounded the rally. But the newcomers, as if they thought that the hesitation on the part of the Duc d'Alencon was due to the presence of the followers of the De Guises, had by degrees glided among them and the two princes, and had drawn themselves up in echelons with a strategic skill which showed the usual military disposition. In fact, to reach the Duc d'Alencon and the King of Navarre it would have been necessary to pa.s.s through this company, while, as far as eye could reach, a perfectly free road stretched out before the brothers.

Suddenly from among the trees, ten feet from the King of Navarre, another gentleman appeared, as yet unperceived by the two princes. Henry was trying to think who he was, when the gentleman raised his hat and Henry recognized him as the Vicomte de Turenne, one of the leaders of the Protestant party, who was supposed to be in Poitou.

The vicomte even ventured to make a sign which clearly meant,

"Will you come?"

But having consulted the impa.s.sable face and dull eye of the Duc d'Alencon, Henry turned his head two or three times over his shoulder as if something was the matter with his neck or doublet.

This was a refusal. The vicomte understood it, put both spurs to his horse and disappeared in the thicket. At that moment the pack was heard approaching, then they saw the boar followed by the dogs cross the end of the path where they were all gathered; then Charles IX., like an infernal hunter, hatless, the horn at his mouth blowing enough to burst his lungs; three or four outriders followed. Tavannes had disappeared.

"The King!" cried the Duc d'Alencon, and he rode after him.

Rea.s.sured by the presence of his good friends, Henry signed to them not to leave, and advanced towards the ladies.

"Well!" said Marguerite, taking a few steps towards him.

"Well, madame," said Henry, "we are hunting the wild boar."

"Is that all?"

"Yes, the wind has changed since morning; but I believe you predicted this."

"These changes of the wind are bad for hunting, are they not, monsieur?"

asked Marguerite.