ert de Gondi, "and you will escape the
odium of executions."

"Ah!" cried the queen, "but I am ignorant of the strength and also of
the plans of the Reformers; and I have no safe way of communicating with
them. If I were detected in any manoeuvre of that kind, either by
the queen, who watches me like an infant in a cradle, or by those two
jailers over there, I should be banished from France and sent back to
Florence with a terrible escort, commanded by Guise minions. Thank you,
no, my daughter-in-law!--but I wish _you_ the fate of being a prisoner
in your own home, that you may know what you have made me suffer."

"Their plans!" exclaimed Chiverni; "the duke and the cardinal know what
they are, but those two foxes will not divulge them. If you could induce
them to do so, madame, I would sacrifice myself for your sake and come
to an understanding with the Prince de Conde."

"How much of the Guises' own plans have they been forced to reveal to
you?" asked the queen, with a glance at the two brothers.

"Monsieur de Vieilleville and Monsieur de Saint-Andre have just received
fresh orders, the nature of which is concealed from us; but I think
the duke is intending to concentrate his best troops on the left bank.
Within a few days you will all be moved to Amboise. The duke has been
studying the position from this terrace and decides that Blois is not a
propitious spot for his secret schemes. What can he want better?" added
Chiverni, pointing to the precipices which surrounded the chateau.
"There is no place in the world where the court is more secure from
attack than it is here."

"Abdicate or reign," said Albert in a low voice to the queen, who stood
motionless and thoughtful.

A terrible expression of inward rage passed over the fine ivory face of
Catherine de' Medici, who was not yet forty years old, though she had
lived for twenty-six years at the court of France,--without power, she,
who from the moment of her arrival intended to play a leading part!
Then, in her native language, the language of Dante, these terrible
words came slowly from her lips:--

"Nothing so long as that son lives!--His little wife bewitches him," she
added after a pause.

Catherine's exclamation was inspired by a prophecy which had been made
to her a few days earlier at the chateau de Chaumont on the opposite
bank of the river; where she had been taken by Ruggieri, her astrologer,
to obtain information as to the lives of her four children