ack in haste. Her cold physiognomy expressed, however,
neither anger nor alarm, as she quietly remarked to her son--

"Remove that horrid animal, Charles: see how savage he is?"

"And why should I remove Congo, mother?" rejoined Charles, with a
sneer upon his lip; "he is the only friend you have left me."

"Sickness makes you forgetful and unjust, my son," replied the Mother.

"Yes, the only friend you have left me," pursued the son bitterly,
"except my poor dogs. Have you not so acted in my name, that you have
left me not one kindred soul to love me; that in the whole wide
kingdom of France, there remains not a voice, much less a heart, to
bless its miserable king?"

"If you say that you have no friends," responded the Queen-mother,
"you may speak more truly than you would. For they are but false
friends; and real enemies, who have instilled into your mind the evil
thoughts of a mother, who has worked only for your glory and your
good."

"No, not one," continued the young King, unheeding her, but dismissing
at the same time the ape from his knee with a blow that sent him
screaming and mouthing to his accustomed seat upon the chest. "Not
one! Where is Perotte, my poor old nurse? She loved me--she was a real
mother to me. She! And where is she now? Did not that deed of horror,
to which you counselled me, to which you urged me almost by
force--that order, which, on the fatal night of St Bartholomew, gave
signal for the massacre of all her co-religionists, drive her from my
side? Did she not curse me--me, who at your instigation caused the
blood of her friends and kindred to be shed--and leave me, her
nursling, her boy, her Charlot, whom she loved till then, with that
curse upon her lips? And do they not say that her horror of him who
has sucked her milk, and lain upon her bosom, and of his damning deed,
has frenzied her brain, and rendered her witless? Poor woman!" And the
miserable King buried his haggard face between his hands.

"She was a wretched Huguenot, and no fitting companion and confidant
for a Catholic and a king," said the Queen, in a tone of mildness,
which contrasted strangely with the harshness of her words. "You
should return thanks to all the blessed Saints, that she has willingly
renounced that influence about your person, which could tend only to
endanger the salvation of your soul."

"My soul! Ay! who has destroyed it?" muttered Charles in a hollow
tone.

The Queen-mother remained silent, bu