to be more impressed
than his host at the sudden sight of the three canvases. Then, in a voice
perhaps slightly unsteady, but still carrying in its flood the utterance
of a steady purpose, Louis of France would catch Louis de Gonzague by the
wrist, and, pointing to the bright, smiling image of Louis de Nevers,
would repeat for the twentieth, the fiftieth, the hundredth time his
oath of vengeance against the assassin of his friend if ever that
assassin should come into his power. And hearing this oath for the
twentieth, the fiftieth, the hundredth time, Louis de Gonzague would
always smile his astute smile and incline his head gravely in sign of
sympathy with the king's feelings, and allow his fine eyes to be dimmed
for an instant with a suggestion of tears.

The room was an interesting room to any one curious as to the concerns of
the Prince de Gonzague for other reasons than the presence of the three
pictures, for to any one who knew anything about the arrangements of the
palace this room represented, as it were, a kind of debatable land
between the kingdom of Gonzague on the one side and the kingdom of Nevers
on the other. A door on the left communicated with the private apartments
of Louis de Gonzague. Cross the great room to the right, and you came to
a door communicating with the private apartments of Madame the Princess
de Gonzague. The Prince de Gonzague never passed the threshold of the
door that led to the princess's apartments. The Princess de Gonzague
never passed the threshold of the door that led to the prince's
apartments. Ever since their strange marriage the man and the woman had
lived thus apart; the man, on his part, always courteous, always
deferential, always tender, always ready to be respectfully affectionate,
and the woman, on her part, icily reserved, wrapped around in the
blackness of her widowhood, inexorably deaf to all wooing, immovably
resolute to be alone.

What rumor said was, for once, quite true. The young Duchess de Nevers,
on the night of her marriage to Prince Louis de Gonzague, had warned him
that if he attempted to approach her with the solicitations of a husband
she would take her life, and Louis de Gonzague, who, being an Italian,
was ardent, but who, being an Italian, was also very intelligent, saw
that the young wife-widow meant what she said and would keep her word,
and desisted discreetly from any attempt to play the husband. After all,
he had his consolations: he controlled