Jane hung her head.  “I remember.”

“Well?”

She then put her hand in mine and murmured, “I am ready any time you wish.”

Great heaven!  I thought I should go out of my senses.  She should have told me gradually.  I had to do something to express my exultation, so I walked over to a bronze statue of Bacchus, about my size—­that is, height—­put my hat—­which I had been carrying under my arm—­on his head, cut a few capers in an entirely new and equally antic step, and then drew back and knocked that Bacchus down.  Jane thought I had gone stark mad, and her eyes grew big with wonder, but I walked proudly back to her after my victory over Bacchus, and reassured her—­with a few of Mary’s messages that I had still left over, if the truth must be told.  Then we made arrangements that resulted in our marriage next morning.

Accordingly, Queen Mary and one or two others went with us down to a little church, where, as fortune would have it, there was a little priest ready to join together in the holy bonds of wedlock little Jane and little me.  Everything so appropriate, you see; I suppose in the whole world we couldn’t have found another set of conditions so harmonious.  Mary laughed and cried, and laughed again, and clapped her hands over and over, and said it was “like a play wedding”; and, as she kissed Jane, quietly slipped over her head a beautiful diamond necklace that was worth full ten thousand pounds—­aside, that is, from the millions of actual value, because it came from Mary.  “A play wedding” it was; and a play life it has been ever since.

We were barely settled at court in Paris when Mary began to put her plans in motion and unsettle things generally.  I could not but recall Henry’s sympathy toward Louis, for the young queen soon took it upon herself to make life a burden to the Father of his People; and, in that particular line, I suppose she had no equal in all the length and breadth of Christendom.

I heartily detested King Louis, largely, I think, because of prejudice absorbed from Mary, but he was, in fact, a fairly good old man, and at times I could but pity him.  He was always soft in heart and softer in head, especially where women were concerned.  Take his crazy attempt to seize the Countess of Croy while he was yet Duke of Orleans; and his infatuation for the Italian woman, for whom he built the elaborate burial vault—­much it must have comforted her.  Then his marriage to dictatorial little Anne of Brittany, for whom he had induced Pope Alexander to divorce him from the poor little crippled owlet, Joan.  In consideration of this divorce he had put Caesar Borgia, Pope Alexander’s son, on his feet, financially and politically.  I think he must have wanted the owlet back again before he was done with Anne, because Anne was a termagant—­and ruled him with the heaviest rod of iron she could lift.  But this last passion—­the flickering, sputtering flame of his dotage—­was the