“What answer did the Connetable send to the Guises?”

“He replied that he was the servant of the king and would await his orders.  On receiving that answer the cardinal, to suppress all resistance, determined to propose the appointment of his brother as lieutenant-general of the kingdom.”

“Have they got as far as that?” exclaimed Catherine, alarmed.  “Well, did Monsieur l’Hopital send me no other message?”

“He told me to say to you, madame, that you alone could stand between the Crown and the Guises.”

“Does he think that I ought to use the Huguenots as a weapon?”

“Ah! madame,” cried Chiverni, surprised at such astuteness, “we never dreamed of casting you into such difficulties.”

“Does he know the position I am in?” asked the queen, calmly.

“Very nearly.  He thinks you were duped after the death of the king into accepting that castle on Madame Diane’s overthrow.  The Guises consider themselves released toward the queen by having satisfied the woman.”

“Yes,” said the queen, looking at the two Gondi, “I made a blunder.”

“A blunder of the gods,” replied Charles de Gondi.

“Gentlemen,” said Catherine, “if I go over openly to the Reformers I shall become the slave of a party.”

“Madame,” said Chiverni, eagerly, “I approve entirely of your meaning.  You must use them, but not serve them.”

“Though your support does, undoubtedly, for the time being lie there,” said Charles de Gondi, “we must not conceal from ourselves that success and defeat are both equally perilous.”

“I know it,” said the queen; “a single false step would be a pretext on which the Guises would seize at once to get rid of me.”

“The niece of a Pope, the mother of four Valois, a queen of France, the widow of the most ardent persecutor of the Huguenots, an Italian Catholic, the aunt of Leo X.,—­can she ally herself with the Reformation?” asked Charles de Gondi.

“But,” said his brother Albert, “if she seconds the Guises does she not play into the hands of a usurpation?  We have to do with men who see a crown to seize in the coming struggle between Catholicism and Reform.  It is possible to support the Reformers without abjuring.”

“Reflect, madame, that your family, which ought to have been wholly devoted to the king of France, is at this moment the servant of the king of Spain; and to-morrow it will be that of the Reformation if the Reformation could make a king of the Duke of Florence.”

“I am certainly disposed to lend a hand, for a time, to the Huguenots,” said Catherine, “if only to revenge myself on that soldier and that priest and that woman!” As she spoke, she called attention with her subtile Italian glance to the duke and cardinal, and then to the second floor of the chateau on which were the apartments of her son and Mary Stuart.  “That trio has taken from my hands the reins