D'Alencon stood motionless. It was not Henry, then, who had mounted the secret staircase. All the agony he had undergone during the last quarter of an hour had been useless. What he thought was over or almost over was only beginning.

Francois opened the door of his chamber, then holding it so he listened.

This time he could not be mistaken, it was Henry himself; he recognized his step and the peculiar jingle of his spurs.

Henry's door opened and closed.

D'Alencon returned to his room and sank into an armchair.

"Good!" said he, "this is what is now taking place: he has pa.s.sed through the antechamber, the first room, the sleeping-room; then he glances to see if his sword, his purse, his dagger are there; at last he finds the book open on his table.

"'What book is this?' he asks himself. 'Who has brought it?'

"Then he draws nearer, sees the picture of the horseman calling his falcon, wants to read, tries to turn the leaves."

A cold perspiration started to the brow of Francois.

"Will he call? Is the effect of the poison sudden? No, no, for my mother said he would die of slow consumption."

This thought somewhat rea.s.sured him.

Ten minutes pa.s.sed thus, a century of agony, dragging by second after second, each supplying all that the imagination could invent in the way of maddening terror, a world of visions.

D'Alencon could stand it no longer. He rose and crossed the antechamber, which was beginning to fill with gentlemen.

"Good morning, gentlemen," said he, "I am going to the King."

And to distract his consuming anxiety, and perhaps to prepare an _alibi_, D'Alencon descended to his brother's apartments. Why did he go there? He did not know. What had he to say? Nothing! It was not Charles he sought--it was Henry he fled.

He took the winding staircase and found the door of the King's apartments half opened. The guards let the duke enter without opposition. On hunting days there was neither etiquette nor orders.

Francois traversed successively the antechamber, the salon, and the bedroom without meeting any one. He thought Charles must be in the armory and opened the door leading thither.

The King was seated before a table, in a deep carved armchair. He had his back to the door, and appeared to be absorbed in what he was doing.

The duke approached on tiptoe; Charles was reading.

"By Heaven!" cried he, suddenly, "this is a fine book. I had heard of it, but I did not know it could be had in France."

D'Alencon listened and advanced a step.

"Cursed leaves!" said the King, wetting his thumb and applying it to the pages; "it looks as though they had been stuck together on purpose to conceal the wonders they contain from the eyes of man."

D'Alencon bounded forward. The book over which Charles was bending was the one he had left in Henry's room. A dull cry broke from him.

"Ah, is it you, Francois?" said Charles, "you are welcome; come and see the finest book on hunting which ever came from the pen of man."

D'Alencon's first impulse was to s.n.a.t.c.h the volume from the hands of his brother; but an infernal thought restrained him; a frightful smile pa.s.sed over his pallid lips, and he rubbed his hand across his eyes like a man dazed. Then recovering himself by degrees, but without moving:

"Sire," he asked, "how did this book come into your Majesty's possession?"

"I went into Henriot's room this morning to see if he was ready; he was not there, he was probably strolling about the kennels or the stables; at any rate, instead of him I found this treasure, which I brought here to read at my leisure."

And the King again moistened his thumb, and again turned over an obstinate page.

"Sire," stammered D'Alencon, whose hair stood on end, and whose whole body was seized with a terrible agony. "Sire, I came to tell you"--

"Let me finish this chapter, Francois," said Charles, "and then you shall tell me anything you wish. I have read or rather devoured fifty pages."

"He has tasted the poison twenty-five times," murmured Francois; "my brother is a dead man!"

Then the thought came to him that there was a G.o.d in heaven who perhaps after all was not chance.

With trembling hand the duke wiped away the cold perspiration which stood in drops on his brow, and waited in silence, as his brother had bade him do, until the chapter was finished.

CHAPTER L.

HAWKING.

Charles still read. In his curiosity he seemed to devour the pages, and each page, as we have said, either because of the dampness to which it had been exposed for so long or from some other cause, adhered to the next.

With haggard eyes D'Alencon gazed at this terrible spectacle, the end of which he alone could see.

"Oh!" he murmured, "what will happen? I shall go away, into exile, and seek an imaginary throne, while at the first news of Charles's illness Henry will return to some fortified town near the capital, and watch this prey sent us by chance, able at a single stride to reach Paris; so that before the King of Poland even hears the news of my brother's death the dynasty will be changed. This cannot be!"

Such were the thoughts which dominated the first involuntary feeling of horror that had urged Francois to warn Charles. It was the never-failing fatality which seemed to preserve Henry and follow the Valois which the duke was again going to try to thwart. In an instant his whole plan with regard to Henry was altered. It was Charles and not Henry who had read the poisoned book. Henry was to have gone, and gone condemned to die.

The moment fate had again saved him, Henry must remain; for Henry was less to be feared in the Bastille or as prisoner at Vincennes than as the King of Navarre at the head of thirty thousand men.

The Duc d'Alencon let Charles finish his chapter, and when the King had raised his head:

"Brother," said the duke, "I have waited because your Majesty ordered me to do so, but I regret it, because I have something of the greatest importance to say to you."

"Go to the devil!" said Charles, whose cheeks were slowly turning a dull red, either because he had been too much engrossed in his reading or because the poison had begun to act. "Go to the devil! If you have come to discuss that same subject again, you shall leave as did the King of Poland. I rid myself of him, and I will do the same to you without further talk about it."

"It is not about my leaving, brother, that I want to speak to you, but about some one else who is going away. Your Majesty has touched me in my most sensitive point, my love for you as a brother, my devotion to you as a subject; and I hope to prove to you that I am no traitor."

"Well," said Charles, as he leaned his elbow on the book, crossed his legs, and looked at D'Alencon like a man who is trying to be patient.

"Some fresh report, some accusation?"

"No, sire, a certainty, a plot, which my foolish scruples alone prevented my revealing to you before."

"A plot?" said Charles, "well, let us hear about it."

"Sire," said Francois, "while your Majesty hawks near the river in the plain of Vesinet the King of Navarre will escape to the forest of Saint Germain, where a troop of friends will be waiting to flee with him."

"Ah, I knew it," said Charles, "another calumny against my poor Henry!