," he said; "do you really say what
you mean?"

"I say it reluctantly, sire," replied the grand-daughter of Henry IV.,
firmly, her beautiful black eyes flashing. "I regret to have to confide
such matters to your majesty, but I feel myself too unhappy at your
majesty's court; and I wish to return to my own family."

"Madame, madame," exclaimed the king, as he approached her.

"Listen to me, sire," continued the young woman, acquiring by degrees
that ascendency over her interrogator which her beauty and her nervous
nature conferred; "young as I am, I have already suffered humiliation,
and have endured disdain here. Oh! do not contradict me, sire," she
said, with a smile. The king colored.

"Then," she continued, "I had reasoned myself into the belief that
Heaven called me into existence with that object--I, the daughter of a
powerful monarch; that since my father had been deprived of life, Heaven
could well smite my pride. I have suffered greatly; I have been the
cause, too, of my mother suffering much; but I vowed that if Providence
ever placed me in a position of independence, even were it that of a
workman of the lower classes, who gains her bread by her labor, I would
never suffer humiliation again. That day has now arrived; I have been
restored to the fortune due to my rank and to my birth; I have even
ascended again the steps of a throne, and I thought that, in allying
myself with a French prince, I should find in him a relation, a friend,
an equal; but I perceive I have found only a master, and I rebel. My
mother shall know nothing of it; you whom I respect, and whom I--love--"

The king started; never had any voice so gratified his ear.

"You, sire, who know all, since you have come here; you will, perhaps,
understand me. If you had not come, I should have gone to you. I wish
for permission to go away. I leave it to your delicacy of feeling to
exculpate and to protect me."

"My dear sister," murmured the king, overpowered by this bold attack,
"have you reflected upon the enormous difficulty of the project you have
conceived?"

"Sire, I do not reflect, I feel. Attacked, I instinctively repel the
attack, nothing more."

"Come, tell me, what have they done to you?" said the king.

The princess, it will have been seen, by this peculiarly feminine
maneuver, had escaped every reproach, and advanced on her side a far
more serious one; from the accused she became the accuser. It is an
infallible sign of guilt;