The lovers thus remained, in the deepest silence, during one of those terrible hours when all reflection wounds, when the clouds of an inward tempest veil even the memory of happiness.  Marie believed that she herself was partly the cause of this frightful dejection.  She asked herself, not without horror, if the excessive joys and the violent love which she had never yet found strength to resist, did not contribute to weaken the mind and body of the king.  As she raised her eyes, bathed in tears, toward her lover, she saw the slow tears rolling down his pallid cheeks.  This mark of the sympathy that united them so moved the king that he rushed from his depression like a spurred horse.  He took Marie in his arms and placed her on the sofa.

“I will no longer be a king,” he cried.  “I will be your lover, your lover only, wholly given up to that happiness.  I will die happy, and not consumed by the cares and miseries of a throne.”

The tone of these words, the fire that shone in the half-extinct eyes of the king, gave Marie a terrible shock instead of happiness; she blamed her love as an accomplice in the malady of which the king was dying.

“Meanwhile you forget your prisoners,” she said, rising abruptly.

“Hey! what care I for them?  I give them leave to kill me.”

“What! are they murderers?”

“Oh, don’t be frightened, little one; we hold them fast.  Don’t think of them, but of me.  Do you love me?”

“Sire!” she cried.

“Sire!” he repeated, sparks darting from his eyes, so violent was the rush of his anger at the untimely respect of his mistress.  “You are in league with my mother.”

“O God!” cried Marie, looking at the picture above her prie-dieu and turning toward it to say her prayer, “grant that he comprehend me!”

“Ah!” said the king suspiciously, “you have some wrong to me upon your conscience!” Then looking at her from between his arms, he plunged his eyes into hers.  “I have heard some talk of the mad passion of a certain Entragues,” he went on wildly.  “Ever since their grandfather, the soldier Balzac, married a viscontessa at Milan that family hold their heads too high.”

Marie looked at the king with so proud an air that he was ashamed.  At that instant the cries of little Charles de Valois, who had just awakened, were heard in the next room.  Marie ran to the door.

“Come in, Bourguignonne!” she said, taking the child from its nurse and carrying it to the king.  “You are more of a child than he,” she cried, half angry, half appeased.

“He is beautiful!” said Charles IX., taking his son in his arms.

“I alone know how like he is to you,” said Marie; “already he has your smile and your gestures.”

“So tiny as that!” said the king, laughing at her.

“Oh, I know men don’t believe such things; but watch him, my Charlot, play with him.  Look there!  See!  Am I not right?”