s under our command,
and yet, unknown to all, we will remain friends. By this means we
shall know their plots, and will thwart them, you by listening to my
enemies and I to yours. In the course of a few days we will pretend to
quarrel in order to strive one against the other. This quarrel will be
caused by the favour in which I will manage to place you with the
king, through the channel of the queen, and he will give you supreme
power, to my injury."

On the morrow Gauttier went to the house of the Spanish lady, who
before the courtiers he recognised as having known in Spain, and he
remained there seven whole days. As you can imagine, the Touranian
treated the queen as a fondly loved woman, and showed her so many
terra incognita in love, French fashions, little tendernesses, etc.,
that she nearly lost her reason through it, and swore that the French
were the only people who thoroughly understood love. You see how the
king was punished, who, to keep her virtuous, had allowed weeds to
grow in the grange of love. Their supernatural festivities touched the
queen so strongly that she made a vow of eternal love to Montsoreau,
who had awakened her, by revealing to her the joys of the proceeding.
It was arranged that the Spanish lady should take care always to be
ill; and that the only man to whom the lovers would confide their
secret should be the court physician, who was much attached to the
queen. By chance this physician had in his glottis, chords exactly
similar to those of Gauttier, so that by a freak of nature they had
the same voice, which much astonished the queen. The physician swore
on his life faithfully to serve the pretty couple, for he deplored the
sad desertion of this beautiful women, and was delighted to know she
would be served as a queen should be--a rare thing.

A month elapsed and everything was going on to the satisfaction of the
two friends, who worked the plans laid by the queen, in order to get
the government of Sicily into the hands of Pezare, to the detriment of
Montsoreau, whom the king loved for his great wisdom; but the queen
would not consent to have him, because he was so ungallant. Leufroid
dismissed the Duke of Cataneo, his principal follower, and put the
Chevalier Pezare in his place. The Venetian took no notice of his
friend the Frenchmen. Then Gauttier burst out, declaimed loudly
against the treachery and abused friendship of his former comrade, and
instantly earned the devotion of Catane