An Enemy to the King. Robert Neilson Stephens

while they glanced indifferently at me. Various officers of the court, whose duty or privilege it was to attend the King's rising, passed in, none heeding me or guessing that I waited there for the word on which my life depended. I examined the tapestry over and over again, noticing, particularly, the redoubtable expression of a horseman with lance in rest, and wondering how he had ever emerged from the tower behind him, of which the gateway was half his size.

      A page came out of the doorway through which De Quelus had disappeared.

       Did he bring word to me? No. He glanced at me casually, and passed on,

       leaving the gallery at the other end. Presently he returned, preceding

       Marguerite, the Queen of Navarre, whom he had gone to summon.

      "More trouble in the royal family," I said to myself. The King must have scented another plot, to have summoned his sister before the time for the petite levée. I feared that this would hinder his consideration of my case.

      Suddenly a tall figure, wearing a doublet of cloth of silver, gray velvet breeches, gray mantle, and gray silk stockings, strode rapidly through the gallery, and curtly commanded the usher to announce him. While awaiting the usher's return, he stood still, stroking now his light mustaches, and now his fine, curly blonde beard, which was little more than delicate down on his chin. As his glance roved over the gallery it fell for a moment on me, but he did not know me, and his splendid blue eyes turned quickly away. His face had a pride, a nobility, a subtlety that I never saw united in another. He was four inches more than six feet high, slender, and of perfect proportion, erect, commanding, and in the flower of youth. How I admired him, though my heart sank at the sight of him; for I knew he had come to demand my death! It was the Duke of Guise. Presently the curtains parted, he passed in, and they fell behind him.

      And now my heart beat like a hammer on an anvil. Had De Quelus forgotten me?

      Again the curtains parted. Marguerite came out, but this time entirely alone. As soon as she had passed the halberdiers, her eyes fell on me, but she gave no sign of recognition. When she came near me, she said, in a low tone, audible to me alone, and without seeming to be aware of my presence:

      "Follow me. Make no sign—your life depends on it!"

      She passed on, and turned out of the gallery towards her own apartments. For a moment I stood motionless; then, with a kind of instinctive sense of what ought to be done, for all thought seemed paralyzed within me, I made as if to return to the chamberlains' apartments, from which I had come. Reaching the place where Marguerite's corridor turned off, I pretended for an instant to be at a loss which way to go; then I turned in the direction taken by Marguerite. If the halberdiers, at the entrance to the King's apartments, saw me do this, they could but think I had made a mistake, and it was not their duty to come after me. Should I seek to intrude whither I had no right of entrance, I should encounter guards to hinder me.

      Marguerite had waited for me in the corridor, out of sight of the halberdiers.

      "Quickly, monsieur!" she said, and glided rapidly on. She led me boldly to her own apartments and through two or three chambers, passing, on the way, guards, pages, and ladies in waiting, before whom I had the wit to assume the mien of one who was about to do some service for her, and had come to receive instructions. So my entrance seemed to pass as nothing remarkable. At last we entered a cabinet, where I was alone with her. She opened the door of a small closet.

      "Monsieur," she said, "conceal yourself in this closet until I return. I am going to be present at the petite levée of the King. Do not stir, for they will soon be searching the palace, with orders for your arrest. Had you not come after me, at once, two of the Scotch Guards would have found you where you waited. I slipped out while they were listening to the orders that my mother added to the King's."

      I fell on my knee, within the closet.

      "Madame," I said, trembling with gratitude, "you are more than a queen.

       You are an angel of goodness."

      "No; I am merely a woman who does not forget an obligation. I have heard, from one of my maids, who heard it from a friend of yours, how you knocked a too inquisitive person into the moat beneath my window. I had to burn the rope that was used that night, but I have since procured another, which may have to be put to a similar purpose!"

      And, with a smile, she shut the closet door upon me.