Marguerite de Valois Part 62

"I have already provided for this, madame; and I shall bring you some to-morrow."

"You would not find me in before nine o'clock to-morrow evening; I shall be occupied with my devotions during the day."

"I will be at the Louvre at nine o'clock, then, madame."

"Madame de Sauve has beautiful hands and beautiful lips," said Catharine in a careless tone. "What pomade does she use?"

"For her hands?"

"Yes, for her hands first."

"Heliotrope."

"What for her lips?"

"She is going to try a new opiate of my invention. I was going to bring your majesty a box of it at the same time."

Catharine mused an instant.

"She is certainly a very beautiful creature," said she, pursuing her secret thoughts; "and the pa.s.sion of the Bearnais for her is not strange at all."

"And she is so devoted to your majesty," said Rene. "At least I should think so."

Catharine smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

"When a woman loves, is she faithful to any one but her lover? You must have given her some philter, Rene."

"I swear I have not, madame."

"Well, well; we'll say no more about it. Show me this new opiate you spoke of, that is to make her lips fresher and rosier than ever."

Rene approached a shelf and showed Catharine six small boxes of the same shape, _i.e._, round silver boxes ranged side by side.

"This is the only philter she ever asked me for," observed Rene; "it is true, as your majesty says, I composed it expressly for her, for her lips are so tender that the sun and wind affect them equally."

Catharine opened one of the boxes; it contained a most fascinating carmine paste.

"Give me some paste for my hands, Rene," said she; "I will take it away with me."

Rene took the taper, and went to seek, in a private compartment, what the queen asked for. As he turned, he fancied that he saw the queen quickly conceal a box under her mantle; he was, however, too familiar with these little thefts of the queen mother to have the rudeness to seem to perceive the movement; so wrapping the cosmetic she demanded in a paper bag, ornamented with fleurs-de-lis:

"Here it is, madame," he said.

"Thanks, Rene," returned the queen; then, after a moment's silence: "Do not give Madame de Sauve that paste for a week or ten days; I wish to make the first trial of it myself."

And she prepared to go.

"Your majesty, do you desire me to accompany you?" asked Rene.

"Only to the end of the bridge," replied Catharine; "my gentlemen and my litter wait for me there."

They left the house, and at the end of the Rue de la Barillerie four gentlemen on horseback and a plain litter were waiting.

On his return Rene's first care was to count his boxes of opiates. One was wanting.

CHAPTER XXI.

MADAME DE SAUVE'S APARTMENT.

Catharine was not deceived in her suspicions. Henry had resumed his former habits and went every evening to Madame de Sauve's. At first he accomplished this with the greatest secrecy; but gradually he grew negligent and ceased to take any precautions, so that Catharine had no trouble in finding out that while Marguerite was still nominally Queen of Navarre, Madame de Sauve was the real queen.

At the beginning of this story we said a word or two about Madame de Sauve's apartment; but the door opened by Dariole to the King of Navarre closed hermetically behind him, so that these rooms, the scene of the Bearnais's mysterious amours, are totally unknown to us. The quarters, like those furnished by princes for their dependents in the palaces occupied by them in order to have them within reach, were smaller and less convenient than what she could have found in the city itself. As the reader already knows, they were situated on the second floor of the palace, almost immediately above those occupied by Henry himself. The door opened into a corridor, the end of which was lighted by an arched window with small leaded panes, so that even in the loveliest days of the year only a dubious light filtered through. During the winter, after three o'clock in the afternoon, it was necessary to light a lamp, but as this contained no more oil than in summer, it went out by ten o'clock, and thus, as soon as the winter days arrived, gave the two lovers the greatest security.

A small antechamber, carpeted with yellow flowered damask; a reception-room with hangings of blue velvet; a sleeping-room, the bed adorned with twisted columns and rose-satin curtains, enshrining a _ruelle_ ornamented with a looking-gla.s.s set in silver, and two paintings representing the loves of Venus and Adonis,--such was the residence, or as one would say nowadays the nest, of the lovely lady-in-waiting to Queen Catharine de Medicis.

If one had looked sharply one would have found, opposite a toilet-table provided with every accessory, a small door in a dark corner of this room opening into a sort of oratory where, raised on two steps, stood a _priedieu_. In this little chapel on the wall hung three or four paintings, to the highest degree spiritual, as if to serve as a corrective to the two mythological pictures which we mentioned. Among these paintings were hung on gilded nails weapons such as women carried.

That evening, which was the one following the scenes which we have described as taking place at Maitre Rene's, Madame de Sauve, seated in her bedroom on a couch, was telling Henry about her fears and her love, and was giving him as a proof of her love the devotion which she had shown on the famous night following Saint Bartholomew's, the night which, it will be remembered, Henry spent in his wife's quarters.

Henry on his side was expressing his grat.i.tude to her. Madame de Sauve was charming that evening in her simple batiste wrapper; and Henry was very grateful.

At the same time, as Henry was really in love, he was dreamy. Madame de Sauve, who had come actually to love instead of pretending to love as Catharine had commanded, kept gazing at Henry to see if his eyes were in accord with his words.

"Come, now, Henry," she was saying, "be honest; that night which you spent in the boudoir of her majesty the Queen of Navarre, with Monsieur de la Mole at your feet, didn't you feel sorry that that worthy gentleman was between you and the queen's bedroom?"

"Certainly I did, sweetheart," said Henry, "for the only way that I could reach this room where I am so comfortable, where at this instant I am so happy, was for me to pa.s.s through the queen's room."

Madame de Sauve smiled.

"And you have not been there since?"

"Only as I have told you."

"You will never go to her without informing me?"

"Never."

"Would you swear to it?"

"Certainly I would, if I were still a Huguenot, but"--

"But what?"

"But the Catholic religion, the dogmas of which I am now learning, teach me that one must never take an oath."