,
the question, What news from Amboise was the very best?

A single shutter had been drawn half aside, and in the semi-obscurity
the chalk-grey face of the King showed ghost-like against the vaulted
darkness of the curtained bed. The fret of spirit through these ten or
twelve days had sapped him, worn him like so many days of consuming
fever. With one hand, the elbow propped upon the coverlid, he pushed
the draperies aside, the other was fumbling with its finger-tips at his
convulsed mouth. In impatience, or that he might breathe the freer,
the ribbons which knotted his woollen nightrobe at the throat had been
unfastened, leaving the lean, parchment-coloured chest and throat,
corded with starting sinews, nakedly open. As he leant aslant, the
curtains arching overhead, his eyes roundly open in the shadows of
their sockets, he was like a corpse new risen from its tomb and full of
horror from the dreams which had dogged its sleep.

"The very best! Tell me everything, Philip. Or, no!" The shaking
hand ceased plucking at the lip, and the shrunken arm, bare to the
elbow where the gown had slipped, was thrust out, beating the air as if
to push aside some terror. "Tell me the one--the essential----God's
name, man! can you not understand?"

"The best news possible, Sire." Commines' eyes were growing accustomed
to the gloom and no detail escaped him. "The Dauphin is innocent, is
loving--loyal."

The King shrank as if he had been struck and the cadaverous face grew
yet more ghastly. Shifting uneasily on his elbow he pushed the
curtains wide apart, rasping the rings sharply on the rod, and drawing
back his hand fumbled anew at his mouth.

"Loving, loyal--living." There was a perceptible pause, and the third
word was harsher, drier than the others, and spoken with a jerk as if
forced from the throat under compulsion. "You received my letter
written two days ago?"

"Yes, Sire, and a second last night. Thank God, with all my heart,
it----"

"Let it wait. The messenger of two days ago, has he come back?"

"Not yet. I asked Lessaix."

"Why?"

"Idle curiosity, Sire."

"Only fools are curious for nothing, and you are no fool, or were not
when you left to go to Amboise." He paused, and in the silence
Commines searched his wit for some plausible reason for the question he
had put to Lessaix. But Louis probed no further. To hear the truth
would have suited his purpose no better than it would have suited
Com