The imposing old man then took a chair, and seated himself. Cosmo,
astonished at this boldness, dared not imitate it.

Charles IX. remarked, with cutting sarcasm: "The king is not here,
monsieur, but a lady is, whose permission it was your duty to await."

"He whom you see before you, madame," said the old man, "is as far above
kings as kings are above their subjects; you will think me courteous
when you know my powers."

Hearing these audacious words, with Italian emphasis, Charles and Marie
looked at each other, and also at Cosmo, who, with his eyes fixed on his
brother, seemed to be asking himself: "How does he intend to get us out
of the danger in which we are?"

In fact, there was but one person present who could understand the
boldness and the art of Lorenzo Ruggiero's first step; and that person
was neither the king nor his young mistress, on whom that great seer
had already flung the spell of his audacity,--it was Cosmo Ruggiero,
his wily brother. Though superior himself to the ablest men at court,
perhaps even to Catherine de' Medici herself, the astrologer always
recognized his brother Lorenzo as his master.

Buried in studious solitude, the old savant weighed and estimated
sovereigns, most of whom were worn out by the perpetual turmoil of
politics, the crises of which at this period came so suddenly and
were so keen, so intense, so unexpected. He knew their ennui, their
lassitude, their disgust with things about them; he knew the ardor with
which they sought what seemed to them new or strange or fantastic; above
all, how they loved to enter some unknown intellectual region to escape
their endless struggle with men and events. To those who have exhausted
statecraft, nothing remains but the realm of pure thought. Charles the
Fifth proved this by his abdication. Charles IX., who wrote sonnets and
forged blades to escape the exhausting cares of an age in which both
throne and king were threatened, to whom royalty had brought only cares
and never pleasures, was likely to be roused to a high pitch of interest
by the bold denial of his power thus uttered by Lorenzo. Religious
doubt was not surprising in an age when Catholicism was so violently
arraigned; but the upsetting of all religion, given as the basis of a
strange, mysterious art, would surely strike the king's mind, and drag
it from its present preoccupations. The essential thing for the two
brothers was to make the king forget his suspicions by turning h