nt's mournful reflection, "if I
obey my presentiments, your news will make no difference to our plans for
departure."

"Nay, mother," said Andre firmly, "you would not force me to quit the
country to the detriment of my honour. If I have made you feel some of
the bitterness and sorrow that have spoiled my own young days because of
my cowardly enemies, it is not from a poor spirit, but because I was
powerless, and knew it, to take any sort of striking vengeance for their
secret insults, their crafty injuries, their underhand intrigues. It was
not because my arm wanted strength, but because my head wanted a crown.
I might have put an end to some of these wretched beings, the least
dangerous maybe; but it would have been striking in the dark; the
ringleaders would have escaped, and I should never have really got to the
bottom of their infernal plots. So I have silently eaten out my own heart
in shame and indignation. Now that my sacred rights are recognised by the
Church, you will see, my mother, how these terrible barons, the queen's
counsellors, the governors of the kingdom, will lower their heads in the
dust: for they are threatened with no sword and no struggle; no peer of
their own is he who speaks, but the king; it is by him they are accused,
by the law they shall be condemned, and shall suffer on the scaffold."

"O my beloved son," cried the queen in tears, "I never doubted your noble
feelings or the justice of your claims; but when your life is in danger,
to what voice can I listen but the voice of fear? what can move my
counsels but the promptings of love?"

"Mother, believe me, if the hands and hearts alike of these cowards had
not trembled, you would have lost your son long ago."

"It is not violence that I fear, my son, it is treachery."

"My life, like every man's, belongs to God, and the lowest of sbirri may
take it as I turn the corner of the street; but a king owes something to
his people."

The poor mother long tried to bend the resolution of Andre by reason and
entreaties; but when she had spoken her last word and shed her last tear,
she summoned Bertram de Baux, chief-justice of the kingdom, and Marie,
Duchess of Durazzo. Trusting in the old man's wisdom and the girl's
innocence, she commended her son to them in the tenderest and most
affecting words; then drawing from her own hand a ring richly wrought,
and taking the prince aside, she slipped it upon his finger, saying in a
voice that trembled