Marie believed that she
herself was partly the cause of this frightful dejection. She asked
herself, not without horror, if the excessive joys and the violent love
which she had never yet found strength to resist, did not contribute to
weaken the mind and body of the king. As she raised her eyes, bathed in
tears, toward her lover, she saw the slow tears rolling down his pallid
cheeks. This mark of the sympathy that united them so moved the king
that he rushed from his depression like a spurred horse. He took Marie
in his arms and placed her on the sofa.

"I will no longer be a king," he cried. "I will be your lover, your
lover only, wholly given up to that happiness. I will die happy, and not
consumed by the cares and miseries of a throne."

The tone of these words, the fire that shone in the half-extinct eyes of
the king, gave Marie a terrible shock instead of happiness; she blamed
her love as an accomplice in the malady of which the king was dying.

"Meanwhile you forget your prisoners," she said, rising abruptly.

"Hey! what care I for them? I give them leave to kill me."

"What! are they murderers?"

"Oh, don't be frightened, little one; we hold them fast. Don't think of
them, but of me. Do you love me?"

"Sire!" she cried.

"Sire!" he repeated, sparks darting from his eyes, so violent was the
rush of his anger at the untimely respect of his mistress. "You are in
league with my mother."

"O God!" cried Marie, looking at the picture above her _prie-dieu_ and
turning toward it to say her prayer, "grant that he comprehend me!"

"Ah!" said the king suspiciously, "you have some wrong to me upon your
conscience!" Then looking at her from between his arms, he plunged his
eyes into hers. "I have heard some talk of the mad passion of a certain
Entragues," he went on wildly. "Ever since their grandfather, the
soldier Balzac, married a viscontessa at Milan that family hold their
heads too high."

Marie looked at the king with so proud an air that he was ashamed.
At that instant the cries of little Charles de Valois, who had just
awakened, were heard in the next room. Marie ran to the door.

"Come in, Bourguignonne!" she said, taking the child from its nurse and
carrying it to the king. "You are more of a child than he," she cried,
half angry, half appeased.

"He is beautiful!" said Charles IX., taking his son in his arms.

"I alone know how like he is to you," said Marie; "already he has your
smile and your g