However, Eustacie was enchanted.  It was like a prince and princess in Mere Perinne’s fairy tales.  Could they go like a shepherd and shepherdess?  She had no fears-no scruples.  Would she not be with her husband?  It was the most charming frolic in the world.  So the King seemed to think it, though he was determined to call it all the Queen’s doing—­the first intrigue of her own, making her like all the rest of us—­the Queen’s little comedy.  He undertook to lead the chase as far as possible in the direction of Normandy, when the young pair might ride on to an inn, meet fresh horses, and proceed to Chateau Leurre, and thence to England.  He would himself provide a safe-conduct, which, as Berenger suggested, would represent them as a young Englishman taking home his young wife.  Eustacie wanted at least to masquerade as an Englishwoman, and played off all the fragments of the language she had caught as a child, but Berenger only laughed at her, and said they just fitted the French bride.  It was very pretty to laugh at Eustacie; she made such a droll pretence at pouting with her rosebud lips, and her merry velvety eyes belied them so drolly.

Such was to be the Queen’s pastoral; but when Elisabeth found the responsibility so entirely thrown on her, she began to look grave and frightened.  It was no doubt much more than she had intended when she brought about the meeting between the young people, and the King, who had planned the elopement, seemed still resolved to make all appear her affair.  She looked all day more like the grave, spiritless being she was at court than like the bright young rural queen of the evening before, and she was long in her little oratory chapel in the evening.  Berenger, who was waiting in the hall with the other Huguenot gentlemen, thought her devotions interminable since they delayed all her ladies.  At length, however, a page came up to him, and said in a low voice, ’The Queen desires the presence of M. le Baron de Ribaumont.’

He followed the messenger, and found himself in the little chapel, before a gaily-adorned altar, and numerous little shrines and niches round.  Sidney would have dreaded a surreptitious attempt to make him conform, but Berenger had no notion of such perils,—­he only saw that Eustacie was standing by the Queen’s chair, and a kindly-looking Austrian priest, the Queen’s confessor, held a book in his hand.

The Queen came to meet him.  ‘For my sake,’ she said, with all her sweetness, ’to ease my mind, I should like to see my little Eustacie made entirely your own ere you go.  Father Meinhard tells me it is safer that, when the parties were under twelve years old, the troth should be again exchanged.  No other ceremony is needed.’

‘I desire nothing but to have her made indissolubly my own,’ said Berenger, bowing.

‘And the King permits,’ added Elisabeth.

The King growled out, ‘It is your comedy, Madame; I meddle not.’