CHAPTER XLVIII.

TWO HEADS FOR ONE CROWN.

"Ask Monsieur d'Alencon to come to me," said Charles as he dismissed his mother.

Monsieur de Nancey, in accordance with the remark of the King that henceforth he was to obey him alone, hastened to the duke's apartments and delivered word for word the order he had just received.

The Duc d'Alencon gave a start. He had always feared Charles, and now more than ever since by conspiring he had reason to be afraid.

Nevertheless, he went to his brother in all haste.

Charles was standing up, whistling a hunting-song.

As he entered, the Duc d'Alencon caught from the gla.s.sy eye of the King one of those bitter looks of hatred which he knew so well.

"Your Majesty has sent for me," said he. "Here I am; what does your Majesty desire?"

"I desire to tell you, my good brother, that as a reward for the great friendship you bear me I have decided to-day to do for you the thing you most want."

"For me?"

"Yes, for you. Think what for some time you have been dreaming of, without daring to ask it of me, and I will give it to you."

"Sire," said Francois, "I swear to you that I desire nothing but the continued good health of the King."

"In that case you will be glad to know, D'Alencon, that the indisposition I experienced at the time the Poles arrived has pa.s.sed by.

Thanks to Henriot, I escaped a furious wild boar, which would have ripped me open, and I am so well that I do not envy the most healthy man in my kingdom. Without being an unkind brother you can, therefore, ask for something besides the continuation of my health, which is excellent."

"I want nothing, sire."

"Yes, yes, Francois," said Charles, impatiently, "you desire the crown of Navarre, since you have had an understanding with Henriot and De Mouy,--with the first, that he would abdicate; with the second, that he would give it to you. Well! Henriot renounces it! De Mouy has told me of your wish, and this crown for which you are ambitious"--

"Well?" asked D'Alencon in a trembling voice.

"Well, the devil! it is yours."

D'Alencon turned frightfully pale; then suddenly the blood rushed from his heart, which almost burst, flowed to his face, and his cheeks became suffused with a burning flush. The favor the King granted him at that moment threw him into despair.

"But, sire," said he, trembling with emotion and trying in vain to recover his self-possession, "I never desired and certainly never asked for such a thing."

"That is possible," said the King, "for you are very discreet, brother; but it has been desired and asked for you."

"Sire, I swear to you that never"--

"Do not swear."

"But, sire, are you going to exile me, then?"

"Do you call this exile, Francois? Plague it, you are hard to please!

What better do you hope for?"

D'Alencon bit his lips in despair.

"Faith!" continued Charles, affecting kindness, "I did not think you were so popular, Francois, especially with the Huguenots. But they have sought you, and I have to confess to myself that I was mistaken.

Besides, I could ask nothing better than to have one of my family--my brother who loves me and who is incapable of betraying me--at the head of a party which for thirty years has made war against us. This will quell everything as if by enchantment, to say nothing of the fact that we shall all be kings in the family. There will be no one except poor Henriot who will be nothing but my friend. But he is not ambitious and he shall take this t.i.tle which no one else claims."

"Oh, sire! you are mistaken. I claim this t.i.tle, and who has a better right to it than I? Henry is only your brother by marriage. I am your brother by blood, and more than this, my love--Sire, I beg you, keep me near you."

"No, no, Francois," replied Charles; "that would be to your unhappiness."

"How so?"

"For many reasons."

"But, sire, shall you ever find as faithful a companion as I am? From my childhood I have never left your Majesty."

"I know that very well; and sometimes I have wished you farther away."

"What does your Majesty mean?"

"Nothing, nothing; I understand myself. Oh, what fine hunts you will have there, Francois! How I envy you! Do you know that in those devilish mountains they hunt the bear as here we do the wild boar? You will send us all such magnificent skins! They hunt there with a dagger, you know; they wait for the animal, excite him, irritate him; he advances towards the hunter, and when within four feet of him he rises on his hind legs.

It is then that they plunge the steel into his heart as Henry did to the boar at our last hunt. It is dangerous sport, but you are brave, Francois, and the danger will be a real pleasure for you."

"Ah! your Majesty increases my grief, for I shall hunt with you no more."

"By Heaven! so much the better!" said the King. "It helps neither of us to hunt together."

"What does your Majesty mean?"

"That hunting with me causes you such pleasure and rouses in you such emotion that you who are the personification of skill, you who with any musket can bring down a magpie a hundred feet away, the last time we hunted together failed at twenty paces to hit a wild boar; but with your weapon, a weapon, too, with which you are familiar, you broke the leg of my best horse. The devil, Francois, that makes one reflect, you know!"

"Oh! sire, pardon me, it was from emotion," said D'Alencon, who had become livid.

"Yes," replied Charles, "I can well imagine what the emotion was; and it is on account of this emotion that I realize all that it means when I say to you: 'Believe me, Francois, when one has such emotions it is best for us to hunt at a distance from each other. Think about it, brother, not while you are with me, because I can see my presence troubles you, but when you are alone, and you will see that I have every reason to fear that in another hunt you might be seized with another emotion.

There is nothing like emotion for causing the hand to rise, and you might kill the rider instead of the horse, the king instead of the beast. Plague it, a bullet aimed too high or too low changes an entire government. We have an example of this in our own family. When Montgommery killed our father, Henry II., by accident--emotion, perhaps--the blow placed our brother, Francois II., on the throne and sent our father Henry to Saint Denis. So little is necessary for Providence to effect much!"

The duke felt the perspiration running down his face at this attack, as formidable as it was unforeseen.

It would have been impossible for the King to show more clearly that he had surmised all. Veiling his anger under a jesting manner, Charles was perhaps more terrible than as if he had let himself pour forth the lava of hate which was consuming his heart; his vengeance seemed in proportion to his rancor. As the one grew sharper, the other increased, and for the first time D'Alencon felt remorse, or rather regret for having meditated a crime which had not succeeded. He had sustained the struggle as long as he could, but at this final blow he bent his head, and Charles saw dawning in his eyes that devouring fire which in beings of a tender nature ploughs the furrow from which spring tears.

But D'Alencon was one of those who weep only from anger. Charles fixed on him his vulture gaze, watching the feelings which succeeded one another across the face of the young man, and all those sensations appeared to him as accurately, thanks to the deep study he had made of his family as if the heart of the duke had been an open book.

He left him a moment, crushed, motionless, and mute; then in a voice stamped with the firmness of hatred:

"Brother," said he, "we have declared to you our resolution; it is immutable. You will go."