elf. You have exasperated
her Majesty; you have driven her in despair to seek and act upon the
councils of this scoundrel Concini. There never was an attachment of
yours that did not beget trouble with the Queen, but never such trouble
as I have been foreseeing from your attachment to the Princess of Conde.
Sire, will you not consider where you stand?"

"They are lies, I tell you," Henry stormed. But Sully the uncompromising
gravely shook his head. "At least," Henry amended, "they are gross
exaggerations. Oh, I confess to you, my friend, that I am sick with love
of her. Day and night I see nothing but her gracious image. I sigh and
fret and fume like any callow lad of twenty. I suffer the tortures of
the damned. And yet... and yet, I swear to you, Sully, that I will curb
this passion though it kill me. I will stifle these fires, though they
consume my soul to ashes. No harm shall come to her from me. No harm
has come yet. I swear it. These stories that are put about are the
inventions of Concini to set my wife against me. Do you know how far
he and his wife have dared to go? They have persuaded the Queen to eat
nothing that is not prepared in the kitchen they have set up for her
in their own apartments. What can you conclude from that but that they
suggest that I desire to poison her?"

"Why suffer it, sire?" quoth Sully gravely. "Send the pair packing back
to Florence, and so be rid of them."

Henry rose in agitation. "I have a mind to. Ventre St. Gris! I have a
mind to. Yes, it is the only thing. You can manage it, Sully. Disabuse
her mind of her Suspicions regarding the Princess of Conde; make my
peace with her; convince her of my sincerity, of my firm intention
to have done with gallantry, so that she on her side will make me the
sacrifice of banishing the Concinis. You will do this, my friend?"

It was no less than Sully had been expecting from past experience,
and the task was one in which he was by now well-practiced; but the
situation had never before been quite so difficult. He rose.

"Why, surely, sire," said he. "But her Majesty on her side may require
something more to reconcile her to the sacrifice. She may reopen the
question of her coronation so long and--in her view--so unreasonably
postponed."

Henry's face grew overcast, his brows knit. "I have always had an
instinct against it, as you know, Grand Master," said he, "and this
instinct is strengthened by what that letter has taught me. If she will