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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Michel and Angle, by Gilbert Parker, v3
+#79 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+Title: Michel and Angele [A Ladder of Swords], Volume 3.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6252]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 31, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MICHEL AND ANGELE, PARKER, V3 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+MICHEL AND ANGELE
+
+[A Ladder of Swords]
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 3.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+It seemed an unspeakable smallness in a man of such high place in the
+State, whose hand had tied and untied myriad knots of political and court
+intrigue, that he should stoop to a game which any pettifogging hanger-on
+might play-and reap scorn in the playing.  By insidious arts, Leicester
+had in his day turned the Queen's mind to his own will; had foiled the
+diplomacy of the Spaniard, the German and the Gaul; had by subterranean
+means checkmated the designs of the Medici; had traced his way through
+plot and counter-plot, hated by most, loved by none save, maybe, his
+Royal mistress to whom he was now more a custom than a cherished friend.
+Year upon year he had built up his influence.  None had championed him
+save himself, and even from the consequences of rashness and folly he had
+risen to a still higher place in the kingdom.  But such as Leicester are
+ever at last a sacrifice to the laborious means by which they achieve
+their greatest ends-means contemptible and small.
+
+To the great intriguers every little detail, every commonplace
+insignificance is used--and must be used by them alone--to further their
+dark causes.  They cannot trust their projects to brave lieutenants, to
+faithful subordinates.  They cannot say, "Here is the end; this is the
+work to be done; upon your shoulders be the burden!"  They must "stoop to
+conquer."  Every miserable detail becomes of moment, until by-and-by the
+art of intrigue and conspiracy begins to lose proportion in their minds.
+The detail has ever been so important, conspiracy so much second nature,
+that they must needs be intriguing and conspiring when the occasion is
+trifling and the end negligible.
+
+To all intriguers life has lost romance; there is no poem left in nature;
+no ideal, personal, public or national, detains them in its wholesome
+influence; no great purpose allures them; they have no causes for which
+to die--save themselves.  They are so honeycombed with insincerity and
+the vice of thought, that by-and-by all colours are as one, all pathways
+the same; because, whichever hue of light breaks upon their world they
+see it through the grey-cloaked mist of falsehood; and whether the path
+be good or bad they would still walk in it crookedly.  How many men and
+women Leicester had tracked or lured to their doom; over how many men and
+women he had stepped to his place of power, history speaks not carefully;
+but the traces of his deeds run through a thousand archives, and they
+suggest plentiful sacrifices to a subverted character.
+
+Favourite of a Queen, he must now stoop to set a trap for the ruin of
+as simple a soul as ever stepped upon the soil of England; and his dark
+purposes had not even the excuse of necessity on the one hand, of love or
+passion on the other.  An insane jealousy of the place the girl had won
+in the consideration of the Queen, of her lover who, he thought, had won
+a still higher place in the same influence, was his only motive for
+action at first.  His cruelty was not redeemed even by the sensuous
+interest the girl might arouse in a reckless nature by her beauty and her
+charm.
+
+So the great Leicester--the Gipsy, as the dead Sussex had called him--lay
+in wait in Greenwich Park for Angele to pass, like some orchard thief in
+the blossoming trees.  Knowing the path by which she would come to her
+father's cottage from the palace, he had placed himself accordingly.
+He had thought he might have to wait long or come often for the perfect
+opportunity; but it seemed as if Fate played his game for him, and that
+once again the fruit he would pluck should fall into his palm.  Bright-
+eyed, and elated from a long talk with the Duke's Daughter, who had given
+her a message from the Queen, Angele had abstractedly taken the wrong
+path in the wood.  Leicester saw that it would lead her into the maze
+some distance off.  Making a detour, he met her at the moment she
+discovered her mistake.  The light from the royal word her friend had
+brought was still in her face; but it was crossed by perplexity now.
+
+He stood still as though astonished at seeing her, a smile upon his face.
+So perfectly did he play his part that she thought the meeting
+accidental; and though in her heart she had a fear of the man and knew
+how bitter an enemy he was of Michel's, his urbane power, his skilful
+diplomacy of courtesy had its way.  These complicated lives, instinct
+with contradiction, have the interest of forbidden knowledge.  The dark
+experiences of life leave their mark and give such natures that touch of
+mystery which allures even those who have high instincts and true
+feelings, as one peeps over a hidden depth and wonders what lies beyond
+the dark.  So Angele, suddenly arrested, was caught by the sense of
+mystery in the man, by the fascination of finesse, of dark power; and it
+was womanlike that all on an instant she should dream of the soul of
+goodness in things evil.
+
+Thus in life we are often surprised out of long years of prejudice, and
+even of dislike and suspicion, by some fortuitous incident, which might
+have chanced to two who had every impulse towards each other, not such
+antagonisms as lay between Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and this
+Huguenot refugee.  She had every cue to hate hum.  Each moment of her
+life in England had been beset with peril because of him-peril to the
+man she loved, therefore peril to herself.  And yet, so various is the
+nature of woman, that, while steering straitly by one star, she levies
+upon the light of other stars.  Faithful and sincere, yet loving power,
+curious and adventurous, she must needs, without intention, without
+purpose, stray into perilous paths.
+
+As Leicester stepped suddenly into Angele's gaze, she was only, as it
+were, conscious of a presence in itself alluring by virtue of the history
+surrounding it.  She was surprised out of an instinctive dislike, and the
+cue she had to loathe him was for the moment lost.
+
+Unconsciously, unintentionally, she smiled at him now, then, realising,
+retreated, shrinking from him, her face averted.  Man or woman had found
+in Leicester the delicate and intrepid gamester, exquisite in the choice
+of detail, masterful in the breadth of method.  And now, as though his
+whole future depended on this interview, he brought to bear a life-long
+skill to influence her.  He had determined to set the Queen against her.
+He did not know--not even he--that she had saved the Queen's life on that
+auspicious May Day when Harry Lee had fought the white knight Michel de
+la Foret and halved the honours of the lists with him.  If he had but
+known that the Queen had hid from him this fact--this vital thing
+touching herself and England, he would have viewed his future with a
+vaster distrust.  But there could be no surer sign of Elizabeth's growing
+coldness and intended breach than that she had hid from him the dreadful
+incident of the poisoned glove, and the swift execution of the would-be
+murderer, and had made Cecil her only confidant.  But he did know that
+Elizabeth herself had commanded Michel de la Foret to the lists; and his
+mad jealousy impelled him to resort to a satanic cunning towards these
+two fugitives, who seemed to have mounted within a few short days as far
+as had he in thrice as many years to a high place in the regard of the
+Majesty of England.
+
+To disgrace them both; to sow distrust of the girl in the Queen's mind;
+to make her seem the opposite of what she was; to drop in her own mind
+suspicion of her lover; to drive her to some rash act, some challenge of
+the Queen herself--that was his plan.  He knew how little Elizabeth's
+imperious spirit would brook any challenge from this fearless girl
+concerning De la Foret.  But to convince her that the Queen favoured
+Michel in some shadowed sense, that De la Foret was privy to a dark
+compact--so deep a plot was all worthy of a larger end.  He had well
+inspired the Court of France through its ambassador to urge the Medici to
+press actively and bitterly for De la Foret's return to France and to the
+beheading sword that waited for him; and his task had been made light by
+international difficulties, which made the heart of Elizabeth's foreign
+policy friendship with France and an alliance against Philip of Spain.
+She had, therefore, opened up, even in the past few days, negotiations
+once again for the long-talked-of marriage with the Duke of Anjou, the
+brother of the King, son of the Medici.  State policy was involved, and,
+if De la Foret might be a counter, the pledge of exchange in the game,
+as it were, the path would once more be clear.
+
+He well believed that Elizabeth's notice of De la Foret was but a fancy
+that would pass, as a hundred times before such fancies had come and
+gone; but against that brighter prospect there lay the fact that never
+before had she shown himself such indifference.  In the past she had
+raged against him, she had imprisoned him; she had driven him from her
+presence in her anger, but always her paroxysms of rage had been
+succeeded by paroxysms of tenderness.  Now he saw a colder light in the
+sky, a greyer horizon met his eye.  So at every corner of the compass he
+played for the breaking of the spell.
+
+Yet as he now bowed low before Angele there seemed to show in his face a
+very candour of surprise, of pleasure, joined to a something friendly and
+protective in his glance and manner.  His voice insinuated that bygones
+should be bygones; it suggested that she had misunderstood him.  It
+pleaded against the injustice of her prejudice.
+
+"So far from home!" he said with a smile.
+
+"More miles from home," she replied, thinking of never-returning days in
+France, "than I shall ever count again."
+
+"But no, methinks the palace is within a whisper," he responded.
+
+"Lord Leicester knows well I am a prisoner; that I no longer abide in the
+palace," she answered.
+
+He laughed lightly.  "An imprisonment in a Queen's friendship.  I bethink
+me, it is three hours since I saw you go to the palace.  It is a few
+worthless seconds since you have got your freedom."
+
+She nettled at his tone.  "Lord Leicester takes great interest in my
+unimportant goings and comings.  I cannot think it is because I go and
+come."
+
+He chose to misunderstand her meaning.  Drawing closer he bent over her
+shoulder.  "Since your arrival here, my only diary is the tally of your
+coming and going."  Suddenly, as though by an impulse of great frankness,
+he added in a low tone:
+
+"And is it strange that I should follow you--that I should worship grace
+and virtue?  Men call me this and that.  You have no doubt been filled
+with dark tales of my misdeeds.  Has there been one in the Court, even
+one, who, living by my bounty or my patronage, has said one good word of
+me?  And why?  For long years the Queen, who, maybe, might have been
+better counselled, chose me for her friend, adviser--because I was true
+to her.  I have lived for the Queen, and living for her have lived for
+England.  Could I keep--I ask you, could I keep myself blameless in the
+midst of flattery, intrigue, and conspiracy?  I admit that I have played
+with fiery weapons in my day; and must needs still do so.  The
+incorruptible cannot exist in the corrupted air of this Court.  You have
+come here with the light of innocence and truth about you.  At first I
+could scarce believe that such goodness lived, hardly understood it.  The
+light half-blinded and embarrassed; but, at last, I saw!  You of all this
+Court have made me see what sort of life I might have lived.  You have
+made me dream the dreams of youth and high unsullied purpose once again.
+Was it strange that in the dark pathways of the Court I watched your
+footsteps come and go, carrying radiance with you?  No--Leicester has
+learned how sombre, sinister, has been his past, by a presence which is
+the soul of beauty, of virtue, and of happy truth.  Lady, my heart is
+yours.  I worship you."
+
+Overborne for the moment by the eager, searching eloquence of his words,
+she had listened bewildered to him.  Now she turned upon him with panting
+breath and said:
+
+"My lord, my lord, I will hear no more.  You know I love Monsieur de la
+Foret, for whose sake I am here in England--for whose sake I still
+remain."
+
+"'Tis a labour of love but ill requited," he answered with suggestion in
+his tone.
+
+"What mean you, my lord?" she asked sharply, a kind of blind agony in
+her voice; for she felt his meaning, and though she did not believe him,
+and knew in her soul he slandered, there was a sting, for slander ever
+scorches where it touches.
+
+"Can you not see?" he said.  "May Day--why did the Queen command him to
+the lists?  Why does she keep him here-in the palace?  Why, against the
+will of France, her ally, does she refuse to send him forth?  Why,
+unheeding the laughter of the Court, does she favour this unimportant
+stranger, brave though he be?  Why should she smile upon him?  .  .  .
+Can you not see, sweet lady?"
+
+"You know well why the Queen detains him here," she answered calmly now.
+"In the Queen's understanding with France, exiles who preach the faith
+are free from extradition.  You heard what the Queen required of him--
+that on Trinity Day he should preach before her, and upon this preaching
+should depend his safety."
+
+"Indeed, so her Majesty said with great humour," replied Leicester.  "So
+indeed she said; but when we hide our faces a thin veil suffices.  The
+man is a soldier--a soldier born.  Why should he turn priest now?  I pray
+you, think again.  He was quick of wit; the Queen's meaning was clear to
+him; he rose with seeming innocence to the fly, and she landed him at the
+first toss.  But what is forward bodes no good to you, dear star of
+heaven.  I have known the Queen for half a lifetime.  She has wild whims
+and dangerous fancies, fills her hours of leisure with experiences--an
+artist is the Queen.  She means no good to you."
+
+She had made as if to leave him, though her eyes searched in vain for the
+path which she should take; but she now broke in impatiently:
+
+"Poor, unnoted though I am, the Queen of England is my friend," she
+answered.  "What evil could she wish me?  From me she has naught to fear.
+I am not an atom in her world.  Did she but lift her finger I am done.
+But she knows that, humble though I be, I would serve her to my last
+breath; because I know, my Lord Leicester, how many there are who serve
+her foully, faithlessly; and there should be those by her who would serve
+her singly."
+
+His eyes half closed, he beat his toe upon the ground.  He frowned, as
+though he had no wish to hurt her by words which he yet must speak.  With
+calculated thought he faltered.
+
+"Yet do you not think it strange," he said at last, "that Monsieur de la
+Foret should be within the palace ever, and that you should be banished
+from the palace?  Have you never seen the fly and the spider in the web?
+Do you not know that they who have the power to bless or ban, to give joy
+or withhold it, appear to give when they mean to withhold?  God bless us
+all--how has your innocence involved your judgment!"
+
+She suddenly flushed to the eyes.  "I have wit enough," she said acidly,
+"to feel that truth which life's experience may not have taught me.  It
+is neither age nor evil that teaches one to judge 'twixt black and white.
+God gives the true divination to human hearts that need."
+
+It was a contest in which Leicester revelled--simplicity and single-
+mindedness against the multifarious and double-tongued.  He had made many
+efforts in his time to conquer argument and prejudice.  When he chose,
+none could be more insinuating or turn the flank of a proper argument by
+more adroit suggestion.  He used his power now.
+
+"You think she means well by you?  You think that she, who has a thousand
+ladies of a kingdom at her call, of the best and most beautiful--and
+even," his voice softened, "though you are more beautiful than all, that
+beauty would soften her towards you?  When was it Elizabeth loved beauty?
+When was it that her heart warmed towards those who would love or wed?
+Did she not imprison me, even in these palace grounds, for one whole year
+because I sought to marry?  Has she not a hundred times sent from her
+presence women with faces like flowers because they were in contrast to
+her own?  Do you see love blossoming at this Court?  God's Son! but she
+would keep us all like babes in Eden an' she could, unmated and unloved."
+
+He drew quickly to her and leant over her, whispering down her shoulder.
+"Do you think there is any reason why all at once she should change her
+mind and cherish lovers?"
+
+She looked up at him fearlessly and firmly.
+
+"In truth, I do.  My Lord Leicester, you have lived in the circle of her
+good pleasure, near to her noble Majesty, as you say, for half a
+lifetime.  Have you not found a reason why now or any time she should
+cherish love and lovers?  Ah, no, you have seen her face, you have heard
+her voice, but you have not known her heart!"
+
+"Ah, opportunity lacked," he said in irony and with a reminiscent smile.
+"I have been busy with State affairs, I have not sat on cushions,
+listening to royal fingers on the virginals.  Still, I ask you, do you
+think there is a reason why from her height she should stoop down to
+rescue you or give you any joy?  Wherefore should the Queen do aught to
+serve you?  Wherefore should she save your lover?"
+
+It was on Angele's lips to answer, "Because I saved her life on May Day."
+It was on her lips to tell of the poisoned glove, but she only smiled,
+and said:
+
+"But, yes, I think, my lord, there is a reason, and in that reason I have
+faith."
+
+Leicester saw how firmly she was fixed in her idea, how rooted was her
+trust in the Queen's intentions towards her; and he guessed there was
+something hidden which gave her such supreme confidence.
+
+"If she means to save him, why does she not save him now?  Why not end
+the business in a day--not stretch it over these long mid-summer weeks?"
+
+"I do not think it strange," she answered.  "He is a political prisoner.
+Messages must come and go between England and France.  Besides, who
+calleth for haste?  Is it I who have most at stake?  It is not the first
+time I have been at Court, my lord.  In these high places things are
+orderly,"--a touch of sarcasm came into her tone,--"life is not a mighty
+rushing wind, save to those whom vexing passion drives to hasty deeds."
+
+She made to move on once more, but paused, still not certain of her way.
+
+"Permit me to show you," he said with a laugh and a gesture towards a
+path.  "Not that--this is the shorter.  I will take you to a turning
+which leads straight to your durance--and another which leads elsewhere."
+
+She could not say no, because she had, in very truth, lost her way, and
+she might wander far and be in danger.  Also, she had no fear of him.
+Steeled to danger in the past, she was not timid; but, more than all, the
+game of words between them had had its fascination.  The man himself, by
+virtue of what he was, had his fascination also.  The thing inherent in
+all her sex, to peep over the hedge, to skirt dangerous fires lightly, to
+feel the warmth distantly and not be scorched--that was in her, too; and
+she lived according to her race and the long predisposition of the ages.
+Most women like her--as good as she--have peeped and stretched out hands
+to the alluring fire and come safely through, wiser and no better.  But
+many, too, bewildered and confused by what they see--as light from a
+mirror flashed into the eye half blinds--have peeped over the hedge and,
+miscalculating their power of self-control, have entered in, and returned
+no more into the quiet garden of unstraying love.
+
+Leicester quickly put on an air of gravity.  "I warn you that danger lies
+before you.  If you cross the Queen--and you will cross the Queen when
+you know the truth, as I know it--you will pay a heavy price for refusing
+Leicester as your friend."
+
+She made a protesting motion and seemed about to speak, but suddenly,
+with a passionate gesture, Leicester added: "Let them go their way.
+Monsieur de la Foret will be tossed aside before another winter comes.
+Do you think he can abide here in the midst of plot and intrigue, and
+hated by the people of the Court?  He is doomed.  But more, he is
+unworthy of you; while I can serve you well, and I can love you well."
+She shrank away from him.  "No, do not turn from me, for in very truth,
+Leicester's heart has been pierced by the inevitable arrow.  You think I
+mean you evil?"
+
+He paused with a sudden impulse continued: "No! no!  And if there be a
+saving grace in marriage, marriage it shall be, if you will but hear me.
+You shall be my wife--Leicester's wife.  As I have mounted to power so I
+will hold power with you--with you, the brightest spirit that ever
+England saw.  Worthy of a kingdom with you beside me, I shall win to
+greater, happier days; and at Kenilworth, where kings and queens have
+lodged, you shall be ruler.  We will leave this Court until Elizabeth,
+betrayed by those who know not how to serve her, shall send for me again.
+Here--the power behind the throne--you and I will sway this realm through
+the aging, sentimental Queen.  Listen, and look at me in the eyes--
+I speak the truth, you read my heart.  You think I hated you and hated De
+la Foret.  By all the gods, it's true I hated him, because I saw that he
+would come between me and the Queen.  A man must have one great passion.
+Life itself must be a passion.  Power was my passion--power, not the
+Queen.  You have broken all that down.  I yield it all to you--for your
+sake and my own.  I would steal from life yet before my sun goes to its
+setting a few years of truth and honesty and clear design.  At heart I am
+a patriot--a loyal Englishman.  Your cause--the cause of Protestantism--
+did I not fight for it at Rochelle?  Have I not ever urged the Queen to
+spend her revenue for your cause, to send her captains and her men to
+fight for it?"
+
+She raised her head in interest, and her lips murmured: "Yes, yes, I know
+you did that."
+
+He saw his advantage and pursued it.  "See, I will be honest with you--
+honest, at last, as I have wished in vain to be, for honesty was
+misunderstood.  It is not so with you--you understand.  Dear, light of
+womanhood, I speak the truth now.  I have been evil in my day I admit it
+--evil because I was in the midst of evil.  I betrayed because I was
+betrayed; I slew, else I should have been slain.  We have had dark days
+in England, privy conspiracy and rebellion; and I have had to thread my
+way through dreadful courses by a thousand blind paths.  Would it be no
+joy to you if I, through your influence, recast my life--remade my
+policy, renewed my youth--pursuing principle where I have pursued
+opportunity?  Angele, come to Kenilworth with me.  Leave De la Foret to
+his fate.  The way to happiness is with me.  Will you come?"
+
+He had made his great effort.  As he spoke he almost himself believed
+that he told the truth.  Under the spell of his own emotional power it
+seemed as though he meant to marry her, as though he could find happiness
+in the union.  He had almost persuaded himself to be what he would have
+her to believe he might be.
+
+Under the warmth and convincing force of his words her pulses had beat
+faster, her heart had throbbed in her throat, her eyes had glistened;
+but not with that light which they had shed for Michel de la Foret.
+How different was this man's wooing--its impetuous, audacious, tender
+violence, with that quiet, powerful, almost sacred gravity of her
+Camisard lover!  It is this difference--the weighty, emotional
+difference--between a desperate passion and a pure love which has ever
+been so powerful in twisting the destinies of a moiety of the world to
+misery, who otherwise would have stayed contented, inconspicuous and
+good.  Angele would have been more than human if she had not felt the
+spell of the ablest intriguer, of the most fascinating diplomatist of his
+day.
+
+Before he spoke of marriage the thrill--the unconvincing thrill though it
+was--of a perilous temptation was upon her; but the very thing most meant
+to move her only made her shudder; for in her heart of hearts she knew
+that he was ineradicably false.  To be married to one constitutionally
+untrue would be more terrible a fate for her than to be linked to him in
+a lighter, more dissoluble a bond.  So do the greatest tricksters of this
+world overdo their part, so play the wrong card when every past
+experience suggests it is the card to play.  He knew by the silence that
+followed his words, and the slow, steady look she gave him, that she was
+not won nor on the way to the winning.
+
+"My lord," she said at last, and with a courage which steadied her
+affrighted and perturbed innocence, "you are eloquent, you are fruitful
+of flattery, of those things which have, I doubt not, served you well in
+your day.  But, if you see your way to a better life, it were well you
+should choose one of nobler mould than I.  I am not made for sacrifice,
+to play the missioner and snatch brands from the burning.  I have enough
+to do to keep my own feet in the ribbon-path of right.  You must look
+elsewhere for that guardian influence which is to make of you a paragon."
+
+"No, no," he answered sharply, "you think the game not worth the candle
+--you doubt me and what I can do for you; my sincerity, my power you
+doubt."
+
+"Indeed, yes, I doubt both," she answered gravely, "for you would have me
+believe that I have power to lead you.  With how small a mind you credit
+me!  You think, too, that you sway this kingdom; but I know that you
+stand upon a cliff's edge, and that the earth is fraying 'neath your
+tread.  You dare to think that you have power to drag down with you the
+man who honours me with--"
+
+"With his love, you'd say.  Yet he will leave you fretting out your soul
+until the sharp-edged truth cuts your heart in twain.  Have you no pride?
+I care not what you say of me--say your worst, and I will not resent it,
+for I will still prove that your way lies with me."
+
+She gave a bitter sigh, and touched her forehead with trembling fingers.
+"If words could prove it, I had been convinced but now, for they are well
+devised, and they have music too; but such a music, my lord, as would
+drown the truth in the soul of a woman.  Your words allure, but you have
+learned the art of words.  You yourself--oh, my lord, you who have tasted
+all the pleasures of this world, could you then have the heart to steal
+from one who has so little that little which gives her happiness?"
+
+"You know not what can make you happy--I can teach you that.  By God's
+Son!  but you have wit and intellect and are a match for a prince, not
+for a cast off Camisard.  I shall ere long be Lord--Lieutenant of
+these Isles-of England and Ireland.  Come to my nest.  We will fly far
+--ah, your eye brightens, your heart leaps to mine--I feel it now, I--"
+
+"Oh, have done, have done," she passionately broke in; "I would rather
+die, be torn upon the rack, burnt at the stake, than put my hand in
+yours!  And you do not wish it--you speak but to destroy, not to cherish.
+While you speak to me I see all those"--she made a gesture as though to
+put something from her "all those to whom you have spoken as you have
+done to me.  I hear the myriad falsehoods you have told--one whelming
+confusion.  I feel the blindness which has crept upon them--those poor
+women--as you have sown the air with the dust of the passion which you
+call love.  Oh, you never knew what love meant, my lord!  I doubt if,
+when you lay in your mother's arms, you turned to her with love.  You
+never did one kindly act for love, no generous thought was ever born in
+you by love.  Sir, I know it as though it were written in a book; your
+life has been one long calculation--your sympathy or kindness a
+calculated thing.  Good-nature, emotion you may have had, but never the
+divine thing by which the world is saved.  Were there but one little
+place where that Eden flower might bloom within your heart, you could not
+seek to ruin that love which lives in mine and fills it, conquering all
+the lesser part of me.  I never knew of how much love I was capable until
+I heard you speak today.  Out of your life's experience, out of all that
+you have learned of women good and evil, you--for a selfish, miserable
+purpose--would put the gyves upon my wrists, make me a pawn in your dark
+game; a pawn which you would lose without a thought as the game went on.
+
+"If you must fight, my lord, if you must ruin Monsieur de la Foret and a
+poor Huguenot girl, do it by greater means than this.  You have power,
+you say.  Use it then; destroy us, if you will.  Send us to the Medici:
+bring us to the block, murder us--that were no new thing to Lord
+Leicester.  But do not stoop to treachery and falsehood to thrust us
+down.  Oh, you have made me see the depths of shame to-day!  But yet,"
+her voice suddenly changed, a note of plaintive force filled it--"I have
+learned much this hour--more than I ever knew.  Perhaps it is that we
+come to knowledge only through fire and tears."  She smiled sadly.
+"I suppose that sometime some day, this page of life would have scorched
+my sight.  Oh, my lord, what was there in me that you dared speak so to
+me?  Was there naught to have stayed your tongue and stemmed the tide in
+which you would engulf me?" He had listened as in a dream at first.  She
+had read him as he might read himself, had revealed him with the certain
+truth, as none other had done in all his days.  He was silent for a long
+moment, then raised his hand in protest.
+
+"You have a strange idea of what makes offence and shame.  I offered you
+marriage," he said complacently.  "And when I come to think upon it,
+after all that you have said, fair Huguenot, I see no cause for railing.
+You call me this and that; to you I am a liar, a rogue, a cut-throat,
+what you will; and yet, and yet, I will have my way--I will have my way
+in the end."
+
+"You offered me marriage--and meant it not.  Do I not know?  Did you rely
+so little on your compelling powers, my lord, that you must needs resort
+to that bait?  Do you think that you will have your way to-morrow if you
+have failed to-day?"
+
+With a quick change of tone and a cold, scornful laugh he rejoined: "Do
+you intend to measure swords with me?"
+
+"No, no, my lord," she answered quietly; "what should one poor unfriended
+girl do in contest with the Earl of Leicester?  But yet, in very truth,
+I have friends, and in my hour of greatest need I shall go seeking."
+
+She was thinking of the Queen.  He guessed her thought.
+
+"You will not be so mad," he said urbanely again.  "Of what can you
+complain to the Queen?  Tut, tut, you must seek other friends than the
+Majesty of England!"
+
+"Then, my lord, I will," she answered bravely.  "I will seek the help of
+such a Friend as fails not when all fails, even He who putteth down the
+mighty from their seats and exalteth the humble."
+
+"Well, well, if I have not touched your heart," he answered gallantly,
+"I at least have touched your wit and intellect.  Once more I offer you
+alliance.  Think well before you decline."
+
+He had no thought that he would succeed, but it was ever his way to
+return to the charge.  It had been the secret of his life's success so
+far.  He had never taken a refusal.  He had never believed that when man
+or woman said no that no was meant; and, if it were meant, he still
+believed that constant dropping would wear away the stone.  He still held
+that persistence was the greatest lever in the world, that unswerving
+persistence was the master of opportunity.
+
+They had now come to two paths in the park leading different ways.
+
+"This road leads to Kenilworth, this to your prison," he said with a slow
+gesture, his eyes fixed upon hers.  "I will go to my prison, then," she
+said, stepping forward, "and alone, by your leave."
+
+Leicester was a good sportsman.  Though he had been beaten all along the
+line, he hid his deep chagrin, choked down the rage that was in him.
+Smiling, he bowed low.
+
+"I will do myself the honour to visit your prison to-morrow," he said.
+
+"My father will welcome you, my lord," she answered, and, gathering up
+her skirt, ran down the pathway.
+
+He stood unmoving, and watched her disappear.  "But I shall have my way
+with them both," he said aloud.
+
+The voice of a singer sounded in the green wood.  Half consciously
+Leicester listened.  The words came shrilling through the trees:
+
+                   "Oh, love, it is a lily flower,
+                    (Sing, my captain, sing, my lady!)
+                    The sword shall cleave it,
+                    Life shall leave it
+                    Who shall know the hour?
+                    (Sing, my lady, still!)"
+
+Presently the jingling of bells mingled with the song, then a figure in
+motley burst upon him.  It was the Queen's fool.
+
+"Brother, well met--most happily met!" he cried.  "And why well met,
+fool?" asked Leicester.  "Prithee, my work grows heavy, brother.  I seek
+another fool for the yoke.  Here are my bells for you.  I will keep my
+cap.  And so we will work together, fool: you for the morning, I for the
+afternoon, and the devil take the night-time!  So God be with you,
+Obligato!"
+
+With a laugh he leaped into the undergrowth, and left Leicester standing
+with the bells in his hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Angele had come to know, as others in like case have ever done, how
+wretched indeed is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours.  She had
+saved the Queen's life upon May Day, and on the evening of that day the
+Queen had sent for her, had made such high and tender acknowledgment of
+her debt as would seem to justify for her perpetual honour.  And what
+Elizabeth said she meant; but in a life set in forests of complications
+and opposing interests the political overlapped the personal in her
+nature.  Thus it was that she had kept the princes of the world dangling,
+advancing towards marriage with them, retreating suddenly, setting off
+one house against the other, allying herself to one European power
+to-day, with another to-morrow, her own person and her crown the pawn
+with which she played.  It was not a beautiful thing in a woman, but it
+was what a woman could do; and, denied other powers given to men--as to
+her father--she resorted to astute but doubtful devices to advance her
+diplomacy.  Over all was self-infatuation, the bane of princes, the curse
+of greatness, the source of wide injustice.  It was not to be expected,
+as Leicester had said, that Elizabeth, save for the whim of the moment,
+would turn aside to confer benefit upon Angele or to keep her in mind,
+unless constrained to do so for some political reason.
+
+The girl had charmed the Queen, had, by saving her life, made England
+her long debtor; but Leicester had judged rightly in believing that the
+Queen might find the debt irksome; that her gratitude would be corroded
+by other destructive emotions.  It was true that Angele had saved her
+life, but Michel had charmed her eye.  He had proved himself a more
+gallant fighter than any in her kingdom; and had done it, as he had said,
+in her honour.  So, as her admiration for Michel grew, her debt to Angele
+became burdensome; and, despite her will, there stole into her mind the
+old petulance and smothered anger against beauty and love and marriage.
+She could ill bear that one near her person should not be content to
+flourish in the light and warmth of her own favour, setting aside all
+other small affections.  So it was that she had sent Angele to her father
+and kept De la Foret in the palace.  Perplexed, troubled by new
+developments, the birth of a son to Mary Queen of Scots, the demand of
+her Parliament that she should marry, the pressure of foreign policy
+which compelled her to open up again negotiations for marriage with the
+Duke of Anjou--all these combined to detach her from the interest she had
+suddenly felt in Angele.  But, by instinct, she knew also that Leicester,
+through jealousy, had increased the complication; and, fretful under the
+long influence he had had upon her, she steadily lessened intercourse
+with him.  The duel he fought with Lempriere on May Day came to her ears
+through the Duke's Daughter, and she seized upon it with sharp petulance.
+First she ostentatiously gave housing and care to Lempriere, and went to
+visit him; then, having refused Leicester audience, wrote to him.
+
+"What is this I hear," she scrawled upon the paper, "that you have forced
+a quarrel with the Lord of Rozel, and have well-ny ta'en his life!  Is
+swording then your dearest vice that you must urge it on a harmless
+gentle man, and my visitor?  Do you think you hold a charter of freedom
+for your self-will?  Have a care, Leicester, or, by God!  you shall know
+another sword surer than your own."
+
+The rage of Leicester on receiving this knew no bounds; for though he had
+received from Elizabeth stormy letters before, none had had in it the
+cold irony of this missive.  The cause of it?  Desperation seized him.
+With a mad disloyalty he read in every word of Elizabeth's letter, Michel
+de la Foret, refugee.  With madder fury he determined to strike for the
+immediate ruin of De la Foret, and Angele with him--for had she not
+thrice repulsed him as though he had been some village captain?  After
+the meeting in the maze he had kept his promise of visiting her "prison."
+By every art, and without avail, he had through patient days sought to
+gain an influence over her; for he saw that if he could but show the
+Queen that the girl was open to his advances, accepted his protection,
+her ruin would be certain--in anger Elizabeth would take revenge upon
+both refugees.  But however much he succeeded with Monsieur Aubert, he
+failed wholly with Angele.  She repulsed him still with the most certain
+courtesy, with the greatest outward composure; but she had to make her
+fight alone, for the Queen forbade intercourse with Michel, and she must
+have despaired but for the messages sent now and then by the Duke's
+Daughter.
+
+Through M. Aubert, to whom Leicester was diligently courteous, and whom
+he sought daily, discussing piously the question of religion so dear to
+the old man's heart, he strove to foster in Angele's mind the suspicion
+he had ventured at their meeting in the maze, that the Queen, through
+personal interest in Michel, was saving his life to keep him in her
+household.  So well did he work on the old man's feelings that when he
+offered his own protection to M. Aubert and Angele, whatever the issue
+with De la Foret might be, he was met with an almost tearful response of
+gratitude.  It was the moment to convey a deep distrust of De la Foret to
+the mind of the old refugee, and it was subtly done.
+
+Were it not better to leave the Court where only danger surrounded them,
+and find safety on Leicester's own estate, where no man living could
+molest them?  Were it not well to leave Michel de la Foret to his fate,
+what ever it would be?  Thrice within a week the Queen had sent for De la
+Foret--what reason was there for that, unless the Queen had a secret
+personal interest in him?  Did M. Aubert think it was only a rare touch
+of humour which had turned De la Foret into a preacher, and set his fate
+upon a sermon to be preached before the Court?  He himself had long held
+high office, had been near to her Majesty, and he could speak with more
+knowledge than he might use--it grieved him that Mademoiselle Aubert
+should be placed in so painful a position.
+
+Sometimes as the two talked Angele would join them; and then there was
+a sudden silence, which made her flush with embarrassment, anxiety or
+anger.  In vain did she assume a cold composure, in vain school herself
+to treat Leicester with a precise courtesy; in vain her heart protested
+the goodness of De la Foret and high uprightness of the Queen; the
+persistent suggestions of the dark Earl worked upon her mind in spite
+of all.  Why had the Queen forbidden her to meet Michel, or write to him,
+or to receive letters from him?  Why had the Queen, who had spoken such
+gratitude, deserted her?  And now even the Duke's Daughter wrote to her
+no more, sent her no further messages.  She felt herself a prisoner, and
+that the Queen had forgotten her debt.  She took to wandering to that
+part of the palace-grounds where she could see the windows of the tower
+her lover inhabited.  Her old habit of cheerful talk deserted her, and
+she brooded.  It was long before she heard of the duel between the
+Seigneur and Lord Leicester--the Duke's Daughter had kept this from her,
+lest she should be unduly troubled--and when, in anxiety, she went to the
+house where Lempriere had been quartered, he had gone, none could tell
+her whither.  Buonespoir was now in close confinement, by secret orders
+of Leicester, and not allowed to walk abroad; and thus with no friend
+save her father, now so much under the influence of the Earl, she was
+bitterly solitary.  Bravely she fought the growing care and suspicion in
+her heart; but she was being tried beyond her strength.  Her father had
+urged her to make personal appeal to the Queen; and at times, despite her
+better judgment, she was on the verge of doing so.  Yet what could she
+say?  She could not go to the Queen of England and cry out, like a silly
+milk-maid: "You have taken my lover--give him back to me!"  What proof
+had she that the Queen wanted her lover?  And if she spoke, the
+impertinence of the suggestion might send back to the fierce Medici that
+same lover, to lose his head.
+
+Leicester, who now was playing the game as though it were a hazard for
+states and kingdoms, read the increasing trouble in her face; and waited
+confidently for the moment when in desperation she would lose her self-
+control and go to the Queen.
+
+But he did not reckon with the depth of the girl's nature and her true
+sense of life.  Her brain told her that what she was tempted to do she
+should not; that her only way was to wait; to trust that the Queen of
+England was as much true woman as Queen, and as much Queen as true woman;
+and that the one was held in high equipoise by the other.  Besides,
+Trinity Day would bring the end of it all, and that was not far off.  She
+steeled her will to wait till then, no matter how dark the sky might be.
+
+As time went on, Leicester became impatient.  He had not been able to
+induce M. Aubert to compel Angele to accept a quiet refuge at Kenilworth;
+he saw that this plan would not work, and he deployed his mind upon
+another.  If he could but get Angele to seek De la Foret in his apartment
+in the palace, and then bring the matter to Elizabeth's knowledge with
+sure proof, De la Foret's doom would be sealed.  At great expense,
+however; for, in order to make the scheme effective, Angele should visit
+De la Foret at night.  This would mean the ruin of the girl as well.
+Still that could be set right; because, once De la Foret was sent to the
+Medici the girl's character could be cleared; and, if not, so much the
+surer would she come at last to his protection.  What he had professed in
+cold deliberation had become in some sense a fact.  She had roused in him
+an eager passion.  He might even dare, when De la Foret was gone, to
+confess his own action in the matter to the Queen, once she was again
+within his influence.  She had forgiven him more than that in the past,
+when he had made his own mad devotion to herself excuse for his rashness
+or misconduct.
+
+He waited opportunity, he arranged all details carefully, he secured the
+passive agents of his purpose; and when the right day came he acted.
+
+About ten o'clock one night, a half-hour before the closing of the palace
+gates, when no one could go in or go out save by permit of the Lord
+Chamberlain, a footman from a surgeon of the palace came to Angele,
+bearing a note which read:
+
+     "Your friend is very ill, and asks for you.  Come hither alone; and
+     now, if you would come at all."
+
+Her father was confined to bed with some ailment of the hour, and asleep
+--it were no good to awaken him.  Her mind was at once made up.  There
+was no time to ask permission of the Queen.  She knew the surgeon's
+messengers by sight, this one was in the usual livery, and his master's
+name was duly signed.  In haste she made herself ready, and went forth
+into the night with the messenger, her heart beating hard, a pitiful
+anxiety shaking her.  Her steps were fleet between the lodge and the
+palace.  They were challenged nowhere, and the surgeon's servant,
+entering a side door of the palace, led her hastily through gloomy halls
+and passages where they met no one, though once in a dark corridor some
+one brushed against her.  She wondered why there were no servants to show
+the way, why the footman carried no torch or candle; but haste and
+urgency seemed due excuse, and she thought only of Michel, and that she
+would soon see him-dying, dead perhaps before she could touch his hand!
+At last they emerged into a lighter and larger hallway, where her guide
+suddenly paused, and said to Angel, motioning towards a door: "Enter.
+He is there."
+
+For a moment she stood still, scarce able to breathe, her heart hurt her
+so.  It seemed to her as though life itself was arrested.  As the
+servant, without further words, turned and left her, she knocked, opened
+the door without awaiting a reply, and stepping into semidarkness, said
+softly:
+
+"Michel!  Michel!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+At Angle's entrance a form slowly raised itself on a couch, and a voice,
+not Michel's, said: "Mademoiselle--by our Lady, 'tis she!"
+
+It was the voice of the Seigneur of Rozel, and Angle started back amazed.
+
+"You, Monsieur--you!" she gasped.  "It was you that sent for me?"
+
+"Send?  Not I--I have not lost my manners yet.  Rozel at Court is no
+greater fool than Lempriere in Jersey."
+
+Angle wrung her hands.  "I thought it De la Foret who was ill.  The
+surgeon said to come quickly."  Lempriere braced himself against the
+wall, for he was weak, and his fever still high.  "Ill?--not he.  As
+sound in body and soul as any man in England.  That is a friend, that De
+la Foret lover of yours, or I'm no butler to the Queen.  He gets leave
+and brings me here and coaxes me back to life again--with not a wink of
+sleep for him these five days past till now."
+
+Angel had drawn nearer, and now stood beside the couch, trembling and
+fearful, for it came to her mind that she had been made the victim of
+some foul device.  The letter had read: "Your friend is ill."  True,
+the Seigneur was her friend, but he had not sent for her.
+
+"Where is De la Foret?" she asked quickly.  "Yonder, asleep," said
+the Seigneur, pointing to a curtain which divided the room from one
+adjoining.  Angel ran quickly towards the door, then stopped short.  No,
+she would not waken him.  She would go back at once.  She would leave the
+palace by the way she came.  Without a word she turned and went towards
+the door opening into the hallway.  With her hand upon the latch she
+stopped short again; for she realised that she did not know her way
+through the passages and corridors, and that she must make herself known
+to the servants of the palace to obtain guidance and exit.  As she stood
+helpless and confused, the Seigneur called hoarsely: "De la Foret--De la
+Foret!"  Before Angele could decide upon her course, the curtain of the
+other room was thrust aside, and De la Foret entered.  He was scarce
+awake, and he yawned contentedly.  He did not see Angele, but turned
+towards Lempriere.  For once the Seigneur had a burst of inspiration.
+He saw that Angele was in the shadow, and that De la Foret had not
+observed her.  He determined that the lovers should meet alone.
+
+"Your arm, De la Foret," he grunted.  "I'll get me to the bed in yonder
+room--'tis easier than this couch."  "Two hours ago you could not bear
+the bed, and must get you to the couch--and now!  Seigneur, do you know
+the weight you are?" he added, laughing, as he stooped, and helping
+Lempriere gently to his feet, raised him slowly in his arms and went
+heavily with him to the bedroom.  Angele watched him with a strange
+thrill of timid admiration and delight.  Surely it could not be that
+Michel--her Michel--could be bought from his allegiance by any influence
+on earth.  There was the same old simple laugh on his lips, as, with
+chaffing words, he carried the huge Seigneur to the other room.  Her
+heart acquitted him then and there of all blame, past or to come.
+
+"Michel!" she said aloud involuntarily--the call of her spirit which
+spoke on her lips against her will.
+
+De la Foret had helped Lempriere to the bed again as he heard his name
+called, and he stood suddenly still, looking straight before him into
+space.  Angele's voice seemed ghostly and unreal.
+
+"Michel!" he heard again, and he came forward into the room where she
+was.  Yet once again she said the word scarcely above a whisper, for the
+look of rapt wonder and apprehension in his manner overcame her.  Now he
+turned towards her, where she stood in the shadow by the door.  He saw
+her, but even yet he did not stir, for she seemed to him still an
+apparition.
+
+With a little cry she came forward to him.  "Michel--help me!" she
+murmured, and stretched out her hands.  With a cry of joy he took her in
+his arms and pressed her to his heart.  Then a realisation of danger came
+to him.
+
+"Why did you come?" he asked.
+
+She told him hastily.  He heard with astonishment, and then said: "There
+is some foul trick here.  Have you the message?"  She handed it to him.
+"It is the surgeon's writing, verily," he said; "but it is still a
+trick, for the sick man here is Rozel.  I see it all.  You and I
+forbidden to meet--it was a trick to bring you here."
+
+"Oh, let me go!" she cried.  "Michel, Michel, take me hence."  She
+turned towards the door.
+
+"The gates are closed," he said, as a cannon boomed on the evening air.
+
+Angele trembled violently.  "Oh, what will come of this?" she cried, in
+tearful despair.
+
+"Be patient, sweet, and let me think," he answered.  At that moment there
+came a knocking at the door, then it was thrown open, and there stepped
+inside the Earl of Leicester, preceded by a page bearing a torch.
+
+"Is Michel de la Foret within?" he called; then stopped short, as though
+astonished, seeing Angele.  "So!  so!" he said, with a contemptuous
+laugh.  Michel de la Foret's fingers twitched.  He quickly stepped in
+front of Angele, and answered: "What is your business here, my lord?"
+
+Leicester languorously took off a glove, and seemed to stifle a yawn in
+it; then said: "I came to take you into my service, to urge upon you for
+your own sake to join my troops, going upon duty in the North; for I fear
+that if you stay here the Queen Mother of France will have her way.  But
+I fear I am too late.  A man who has sworn himself into service d'amour
+has no time for service de la guerre."
+
+"I will gladly give an hour from any service I may follow to teach the
+Earl of Leicester that he is less a swordsman than a trickster."
+
+Leicester flushed, but answered coolly: "I can understand your chagrin.
+You should have locked your door.  It is the safer custom."  He bowed
+lightly towards Angele.  "You have not learned our English habits of
+discretion, Monsieur de la Foret.  I would only do you service.  I
+appreciate your choler.  I should be no less indignant.  So, in the
+circumstances, I will see that the gates are opened, of course you did
+not realise the flight of time,--and I will take Mademoiselle to her
+lodgings.  You may rely on my discretion.  I am wholly at your service
+--tout a vous, as who should say in your charming language."
+
+The insolence was so veiled in perfect outward courtesy that it must have
+seemed impossible for De la Foret to reply in terms equal to the moment.
+He had, however, no need to reply, for the door of the room suddenly
+opened, and two pages stepped inside with torches.
+
+They were followed by a gentleman in scarlet and gold, who said, "The
+Queen!" and stepped aside.
+
+An instant afterwards Elizabeth, with the Duke's Daughter, entered.
+
+The three dropped upon their knees, and Elizabeth waved without the pages
+and the gentleman-in-waiting.  When the doors closed, the Queen eyed the
+three kneeling figures, and as her glance fell on Leicester a strange
+glitter came into her eyes.  She motioned all to rise, and with a hand
+upon the arm of the Duke's Daughter, said to Leicester:
+
+"What brings the Earl of Leicester here?"
+
+"I came to urge upon Monsieur the wisdom of holding to the Sword and
+leaving the Book to the butter-fingered religious.  Your Majesty needs
+good soldiers."
+
+He bowed, but not low, and it was clear he was bent upon a struggle.  He
+was confounded by the Queen's presence, he could not guess why she should
+have come; and that she was prepared for what she saw was clear.
+
+"And brought an eloquent pleader with you?"  She made a scornful gesture
+towards Angele.
+
+"Nay, your Majesty; the lady's zeal outran my own, and crossed the
+threshold first."
+
+The Queen's face wore a look that Leicester had never seen on it before,
+and he had observed it in many moods.
+
+"You found the lady here, then?"
+
+"With Monsieur alone.  Seeing she was placed unfortunately, I offered to
+escort her hence to her father.  But your Majesty came upon the moment."
+
+There was a ring of triumph in Leicester's voice.  No doubt, by some
+chance, the Queen had become aware of Angele's presence, he thought.
+Fate had forestalled the letter he had already written on this matter
+and meant to send her within the hour.  Chance had played into his hands
+with perfect suavity.  The Queen, less woman now than Queen, enraged by
+the information got he knew not how, had come at once to punish the gross
+breach of her orders and a dark misconduct-so he thought.
+
+The Queen's look, as she turned it on Angele, apparently had in it what
+must have struck terror to even a braver soul than that of the helpless
+Huguenot girl.
+
+"So it is thus you spend the hours of night?  God's faith, but you are
+young to be so wanton!" she cried in a sharp voice.  "Get you from my
+sight and out of my kingdom as fast as horse and ship may carry you--as
+feet may bear you."  Leicester's face lighted to hear.  "Your high
+Majesty," pleaded the girl, dropping on her knees, "I am innocent.  As
+God lives, I am innocent."
+
+"The man, then, only is guilty?" the Queen rejoined with scorn.  "Is it
+innocent to be here at night, my palace gates shut, with your lover-
+alone?"  Leicester laughed at the words.
+
+"Your Majesty, oh, your gracious Majesty, hear me.  We were not alone--
+not alone--"
+
+There was a rustle of curtains, a heavy footstep, and Lempriere of Rozel
+staggered into the room.  De la Foret ran to help him, and throwing an
+arm around him, almost carried him towards the couch.  Lempriere,
+however, slipped from De la Foret's grasp to his knees on the floor
+before the Queen.
+
+"Not alone, your high and sacred Majesty, I am here--I have been here
+through all.  I was here when Mademoiselle came, brought hither by trick
+of some knave not fit to be your immortal Majesty's subject.  I speak the
+truth, for I am butler to your Majesty and no liar.  I am Lempriere of
+Rozel."
+
+No man's self-control could meet such a surprise without wavering.
+Leicester was confounded, for he had not known that Lempriere was housed
+with De la Foret.  For a moment he could do naught but gaze at Lempriere.
+Then, as the Seigneur suddenly swayed and would have fallen, the instinct
+of effective courtesy, strong in him, sent him with arms outstretched to
+lift him up.  Together, without a word, he and De la Foret carried him to
+the couch and laid him down.  That single act saved Leicester's life.
+There was something so naturally (though, in truth, it was so
+hypocritically) kind in the way he sprang to his enemy's assistance that
+an old spirit of fondness stirred in the Queen's breast, and she looked
+strangely at him.  When, however, they had disposed of Lempriere and
+Leicester had turned again towards her, she said: "Did you think I had no
+loyal and true gentlemen at my Court, my lord?  Did you think my leech
+would not serve me as fair as he would serve the Earl of Leicester?  You
+have not bought us all, Robert Dudley, who have bought and sold so long.
+The good leech did your bidding and sent your note to the lady; but there
+your bad play ended and Fate's began.  A rabbit's brains, Leicester--and
+a rabbit's end.  Fate has the brains you need."
+
+Leicester's anger burst forth now under the lash of ridicule.  "I cannot
+hope to win when your Majesty plays Fate in caricature."
+
+With a little gasp of rage Elizabeth leaned over and slapped his face
+with her long glove.  "Death of my life, but I who made you do unmake
+you!" she cried.
+
+He dropped his hand on his sword.  "If you were but a man, and not--" he
+said, then stopped short, for there was that in the Queen's face which
+changed his purpose.  Anger was shaking her, but there were tears in her
+eyes.  The woman in her was stronger than the Queen.  It was nothing to
+her at this moment that she might have his life as easily as she had
+struck his face with her glove; this man had once shown the better part
+of himself to her, and the memory of it shamed her for his own sake now.
+She made a step towards the door, then turned and spoke:
+
+"My Lord, I have no palace and no ground wherein your footstep will not
+be trespass.  Pray you, remember."
+
+She turned towards Lempriere, who lay on his couch faint and panting.
+"For you, my Lord of Rozel, I wish you better health, though you have
+lost it somewhat in a good cause."
+
+Her glance fell on De la Foret.  Her look softened.  "I will hear you
+preach next Sunday, sir."
+
+There was an instant's pause, and then she said to Angele, with gracious
+look and in a low voice: "You have heard from me that calumny which the
+innocent never escape.  To try you I neglected you these many days; to
+see your nature even more truly than I knew it, I accused you but now.
+You might have been challenged first by one who could do you more harm
+than Elizabeth of England, whose office is to do good, not evil.  Nets
+are spread for those whose hearts are simple, and your feet have been
+caught.  Be thankful that we understand; and know that Elizabeth is your
+loving friend.  You have had trials--I have kept you in suspense--there
+has been trouble for us all; but we are better now; our minds are more
+content; so all may be well, please God!  You will rest this night with
+our lady-dove here, and to-morrow early you shall return in peace to your
+father.  You have a good friend in our cousin."  She made a gentle motion
+towards the Duke's Daughter.  "She has proved it so.  In my leech
+she has a slave.  To her you owe this help in time of need.  She hath
+wisdom, too, and we must listen to her, even as I have done this day."
+
+She inclined her head towards the door.  Leicester opened it, and as she
+passed out she gave him one look which told him that his game was lost,
+if not for ever, yet for time uncertain and remote.  "You must not blame
+the leech, my lord," she said, suddenly turning back.  "The Queen of
+England has first claim on the duty of her subjects.  They serve me for
+love; you they help at need as time-servers."
+
+She stepped on, then paused again and looked back.  "Also I forbid
+fighting betwixt you," she said, in a loud voice, looking at De la Foret
+and Leicester.
+
+Without further sign or look, she moved on.  Close behind came Angele and
+the Duke's Daughter, and Leicester followed at some distance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Not far from the palace, in a secluded place hidden by laburnum, roses,
+box and rhododendrons, there was a quaint and beautiful retreat.  High
+up on all sides of a circle of green the flowering trees and shrubs
+interlaced their branches, and the grass, as smooth as velvet, was of
+such a note as soothed the eye and quieted the senses.  In one segment of
+the verdant circle was a sort of open bower made of poles, up which roses
+climbed and hung across in gay festoons; and in two other segments mossy
+banks made resting-places.  Here, in days gone by, when Robert Dudley,
+Earl of Leicester, first drew the eyes of his Queen upon him, Elizabeth
+came to listen to his vows of allegiance, which swam in floods of
+passionate devotion to her person.  Christopher Hatton, Sir Henry Lee,
+the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Sussex, a race of gallants, had knelt
+upon this pleasant sward.  Here they had declared a devotion that,
+historically platonic, had a personal passion which, if rewarded by no
+personal requital, must have been an expensive outlay of patience and
+emotion.
+
+But those days had gone.  Robert Dudley had advanced far past his
+fellows, had locked himself into the chamber of the Queen's confidence,
+had for long proved himself necessary to her, had mingled deference and
+admiration with an air of monopoly, and had then advanced to an air of
+possession, of suggested control.  Then had begun his decline.  England
+and England's Queen could have but one ruler, and upon an occasion in the
+past Elizabeth made it clear by the words she used: "God's death, my
+Lord, I have wished you well; but my favour is not so locked up for you
+that others shall not partake thereof; and, if you think to rule here,
+I will take a course to see you forthcoming.  I will have here but one
+mistress and no master."
+
+In these words she but declared what was the practice of her life, the
+persistent passion of her rule.  The world could have but one sun, and
+every man or woman who sought its warmth must be a sun-worshipper.  There
+could be no divided faith, no luminaries in the sky save those which
+lived by borrowed radiance.
+
+Here in this bright theatre of green and roses poets had sung the praises
+of this Queen to her unblushing and approving face; here ladies thrice as
+beautiful as she had begged her to tell them the secret of her beauty, so
+much greater than that of any living woman; and she was pleased even when
+she knew they flattered but to gain her smile--it was the tribute that
+power exacts.  The place was a cenotaph of past romance and pleasure.
+Every leaf of every tree and flower had impressions of glories, of love,
+ambition and intrigue, of tears and laughter, of joyousness and ruin.
+Never a spot in England where so much had been said and done, so far
+reaching in effect and influence.  But its glory was departed, its day
+was done, it was a place of dreams and memories: the Queen came here no
+more.  Many years had withered since she had entered this charmed spot;
+and that it remained so fine was but evidence of the care of those to
+whom she had given strict orders seven years past, that in and out of
+season it must be ever kept as it had erstwhile been.  She had never
+entered the place since the day the young Marquis of Wessex, whom she had
+imprisoned for marrying secretly and without her consent, on his release
+came here, and, with a concentrated bitterness and hate, had told her
+such truths as she never had heard from man or woman since she was born.
+He had impeached her in such cold and murderous terms as must have made
+wince even a woman with no pride.  To Elizabeth it was gall and wormwood.
+When he at last demanded the life of the young wife who had died in
+enforced seclusion, because she had married the man she loved, Elizabeth
+was so confounded that she hastily left the place, saying no word in
+response.  This attack had been so violent, so deadly, that she had
+seemed unnerved, and forbore to command him to the Tower or to death.
+
+"You, in whose breast love never stirred, deny the right to others whom
+God blessed with it," he cried.  "Envious of mortal happiness that dare
+exist outside your will or gift, you sunder and destroy.  You, in whose
+hands was power to give joy, gave death.  What you have sown you shall
+reap.  Here on this spot I charge you with high treason, with treachery
+to the people over whom you have power as a trust, which trust you have
+made a scourge."
+
+With such words as these he had assailed her, and for the first time in
+her life she had been confounded.  In safety he had left the place, and
+taken his way to Italy, from which he had never returned, though she had
+sent for him in kindness.  Since that day Elizabeth had never come
+hither; and by-and-by none of her Court came save the Duke's Daughter,
+and her fool, who both made it their resort.  Here the fool came upon the
+Friday before Trinity Day, bringing with him Lempriere and Buonespoir,
+to whom he had much attached himself.
+
+It was a day of light and warmth, and the place was like a basket of
+roses.  Having seen the two serving-men dispose, in a convenient place,
+the refreshment which Lempriere's appetite compelled, the fool took
+command of the occasion and made the two sit upon a bank, while he
+prepared the repast.
+
+Strangest of the notable trio was the dwarfish fool with his shaggy black
+head, twisted mouth, and watchful, wandering eye, whose foolishness was
+but the flaunting cover of shrewd observation and trenchant vision.
+Going where he would, and saying what he listed, now in the Queen's inner
+chamber, then in the midst of the Council, unconsidered, and the butt of
+all, he paid for his bed and bounty by shooting shafts of foolery which
+as often made his listeners shrink as caused their laughter.  The Queen
+he called Delicio, and Leicester, Obligato--as one who piped to another's
+dance.  He had taken to Buonespoir at the first glance, and had
+frequented him, and Lempriere had presently been added to his favour.
+He had again and again been messenger between them, as also of late
+between Angele and Michel, whose case he viewed from a stand-point of
+great cheerfulness, and treated them as children playing on the sands--
+as, indeed, he did the Queen and all near to her.  But Buonespoir, the
+pirate, was to him reality and the actual, and he called him Bono
+Publico.  At first Lempriere, ever jealous of his importance, was
+inclined to treat him with elephantine condescension; but he could not
+long hold out against the boon archness of the jester, and he collapsed
+suddenly into as close a friendship as that between himself and
+Buonespoir.
+
+A rollicking spirt was his own fullest stock-in-trade, and it won him
+like a brother.
+
+So it was that here, in the very bosom of the forest, lured by the pipe
+the fool played, Lempriere burst forth into song, in one hand a bottle
+of canary, in the other a handful of comfits:
+
+                   "Duke William was a Norman
+                    (Spread the sail to the breeze!)
+                    That did to England ride;
+                    At Hastings by the Channel
+                    (Drink the wine to the lees!)
+                    Our Harold the Saxon died.
+                    If there be no cakes from Normandy,
+                    There'll be more ale in England!"
+
+"Well sung, nobility, and well said," cried Buonespoir, with a rose by
+the stem in his mouth, one hand beating time to the music, the other
+clutching a flagon of muscadella; "for the Normans are kings in England,
+and there's drink in plenty at the Court of our Lady Duchess."
+
+"Delicio shall never want while I have a penny of hers to spend," quoth
+the fool, feeling for another tune.  "Should conspirators prevail, and
+the damnedest be, she hath yet the Manor of Rozel and my larder," urged
+Lempriere, with a splutter through the canary.
+
+"That shall be only when the Fifth wind comes--it is so ordained,
+Nuncio!" said the fool blinking.  Buonespoir set down his flagon.
+"And what wind is the Fifth wind?" he asked, scratching his bullethead,
+his child-like, widespread eyes smiling the question.
+
+"There be now four winds--the North wind and his sisters, the East, the
+West, and South.  When God sends a Fifth wind, then conspirators shall
+wear crowns.  Till then Delicio shall sow and I shall reap, as is
+Heaven's will."
+
+Lempriere lay back and roared with laughter.  "Before Belial, there never
+was such another as thou, fool.  Conspirators shall die and not prevail,
+for a man may not marry his sister, and the North wind shall have no
+progeny.  So there shall be no Fifth wind."
+
+"Proved, proved," cried the fool.  "The North wind shall go whistle for a
+mate--there shall be no Fifth wind.  So, Delicio shall still sail by the
+compass, and shall still compass all, and yet be compassed by none; for
+it is written, Who compasseth Delicio existeth not."
+
+Buonespoir watched a lark soaring, as though its flight might lead him
+through the fool's argument clearly.  Lempriere closed his eye, and
+struggled with it, his lips outpursed, his head sunk on his breast.
+Suddenly his eyes opened, he brought the bottle of canary down with a
+thud on the turf.  "'Fore Michael and all angels, I have it, fool; I
+travel, I conceive.  De Carteret of St. Ouen's must have gone to the
+block ere conceiving so.  I must conceive thus of the argument.  He who
+compasseth the Queen existeth not, for compassing, he dieth."
+
+"So it is by the hour-glass and the fortune told in the porringer.  You
+have conceived like a man, Nuncio."
+
+"And conspirators, I conceive, must die, so long as there be honest men
+to slay them," rejoined the Seigneur.
+
+"Must only honest men slay conspirators?  Oh, Shadrach, Meshach, and
+Abednego!" wheezed Buonespoir with a grin.  He placed his hand upon his
+head in self-pity.  "Buonespoir, art thou damned by muscadella?" he
+murmured.
+
+"But thou art purged of the past, Bono Publico," answered the fool.
+"Since Delicio hath looked upon thee she hath shredded the Tyburn lien
+upon thee--thou art flushed like a mountain spring; and conspirators
+shall fall down by thee if thou, passant, dost fall by conspirators in
+the way.  Bono Publico, thou shalt live by good company.  Henceforth
+contraband shall be spurned and the book of grace opened."
+
+Buonespoir's eyes laughed like a summer sky, but he scratched his head
+and turned over the rose-stem in his mouth reflectively.  "So be it,
+then, if it must be; but yesterday the Devon sea-sweeper, Francis Drake,
+overhauled me in my cottage, coming from the Queen, who had infused him
+of me.  'I have heard of you from a high masthead,' said he.  'If the
+Spanish main allure you, come with me.  There be galleons yonder still;
+they shall cough up doubloons.'  'It hath a sound of piracy,' said I.
+'I am expurgated.  My name is written on clean paper now, blessed be the
+name of the Queen!'  'Tut, tut, Buonesperado,' laughed he, 'you shall
+forget that Tyburn is not a fable if you care to have doubloons reminted
+at the Queen's mint.  It is meet Spanish Philip's head be molted to
+oblivion, and Elizabeth's raised, so that good silver be purged of Popish
+alloy.'  But that I had sworn by the little finger of St. Peter when the
+moon was full, never to leave the English seas, I also would have gone
+with Drake of Devon this day.  It is a man and a master of men that Drake
+of Devon."
+
+"'Tis said that when a man hath naught left but life, and hath treated
+his honour like a poor relation, he goes to the Spanish main with Drake
+and Grenville," said Lempriere.
+
+"Then must Obligato go, for he hath such credentials," said the fool,
+blowing thistle-down in the air.  "Yesterday was no Palm Sunday to
+Leicester.  Delicio's head was high.  'Imperial Majesty,' quoth Obligato,
+his knees upon the rushes, 'take my life but send me not forth into
+darkness where I shall see my Queen no more.  By the light of my Queen's
+eyes have I walked, and pains of hell are my Queen's displeasure.'
+'Methinks thy humbleness is tardy,' quoth Delicio.  'No cock shall crow
+by my nest,' said she.  'And, by the mantle of Elijah, I am out with sour
+faces and men of phlegm and rheum.  I will be gay once more.  So get thee
+gone to Kenilworth, and stray not from it on thy peril.  Take thy malaise
+with thee, and I shall laugh again.'  Behold he goeth.  So that was the
+end of Obligato, and now cometh another tune."
+
+"She hath good cheer?" asked Lempriere eagerly.  "I have never seen
+Delicio smile these seven years as she smiled to-day; and when she kissed
+Amicitia I sent for my confessor and made my will.  Delicio hath come to
+spring-time, and the voice of the turtle is in her ear."  "Amicitia--and
+who is Amicitia?" asked Lempriere, well flushed with wine.
+
+"She who hath brought Obligato to the diminuendo and finale," answered
+the fool; "even she who hath befriended the Huguenottine of the black
+eyes."
+
+"Ah, she, the Duke's Daughter--v'la, that is a flower of a lady!  Did she
+not say that my jerkin fitted neatly when I did act as butler to her
+adorable Majesty three months syne?  She hath no mate in the world save
+Mademoiselle Aubert, whom I brought hither to honour and to fame."
+
+"To honour and fame, was it--but by the hill of desperandum, Nuncio,"
+said the fool, prodding him with his stick of bells.
+
+"'Desperandum'!  I know not Latin; it amazes me," said Lempriere, waving
+a lofty hand.
+
+"She--the Huguenottine--was a-mazed also, and from the maze was played by
+Obligato."
+
+"How so!  how so!" cried the Seigneur, catching at his meaning.  "Did
+Leicester waylay and siege?  'Sblood, had I known this, I'd have broached
+him and swallowed him even on crutches."
+
+"She made him raise the siege, she turned his own guns upon him, and in
+the end hath driven him hence."  By rough questioning Lempriere got from
+the fool by snatches the story of the meeting in the maze, which had left
+Leicester standing with the jester's ribboned bells in his hand.  Then
+the Seigneur got to his feet, and hugged the fool, bubbling with
+laughter.
+
+"By all the blood of all the saints, I will give thee burial in my own
+grave when all's done," he spluttered; "for there never was such fooling,
+never such a wise fool come since Confucius and the Khan.  Good be with
+you, fool, and thanks be for such a lady.  Thanks be also for the Duke's
+Daughter.  Ah, how she laid Leicester out!  She washed him up the shore
+like behemoth, and left him gaping."
+
+Buonespoir intervened.  "And what shall come of it?  What shall be the
+end?  The Honeyflower lies at anchor--there be three good men in waiting,
+Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and--"
+
+The Seigneur interrupted.  "There's little longer waiting.  All's well!
+Her high hereditary Majesty smiled on me when she gave Leicester conge
+and fiery quittance.  She hath me in favour, and all shall be well with
+Michel and Angele.  O fool, fool, fantastic and flavoured fool, sing me
+a song of good content, for if this business ends not with crescendo and
+bell-ringing, I am no butler to the Queen nor keep good company!"
+
+Seating themselves upon the mossy bank, their backs to the westward sun,
+the fool peered into the green shadows and sang with a soft melancholy an
+ancient song that another fool had sung to the first Tudor:
+
+                   "When blows the wind and drives the sleet,
+                    And all the trees droop down;
+                    When all the world is sad,
+                    'tis meet Good company be known:
+                    And in my heart good company
+                    Sits by the fire and sings to me.
+
+                   "When warriors return, and one
+                    That went returns no more;
+                    When dusty is the road we run,
+                    And garners have no store;
+                    One ingle-nook right warm shall be
+                    Where my heart hath good company.
+
+                   "When man shall flee and woman fail,
+                    And folly mock and hope deceive,
+                    Let cowards beat the breast and wail,
+                    I'll homeward hie; I will not grieve:
+                    I'll draw the blind, I'll there set free
+                    My heart's beloved boon company.
+
+                   "When kings shall favour, ladies call
+                    My service to their side;
+                    When roses grow upon the wall
+                    Of life, with love inside;
+                    I'll get me home with joy to be
+                    In my heart's own good company!"
+
+"Oh, fool, oh, beneficent fool, well done!  'Tis a song for a man--
+'twould shame De Carteret of St. Ouen's to his knees," cried Lempriere.
+
+"Oh, benignant fool, well done!  'twould draw me from my meals," said a
+voice behind the three; and, turning hastily about, they saw, smiling and
+applausive, the Duke's Daughter.  Beside her was Angele.
+
+The three got to their feet, and each made obeisance after his kind-
+Buonespoir ducking awkwardly, his blue eyes bulging with pleasure,
+Lempriere swelling with vanity and spreading wide acknowledgment of their
+presence, the fool condescending a wave of welcome.  "Oh!  abundant
+Amicitia!" cried the fool to the Duke's Daughter, "thou art saved by so
+doing.  So get thee to thanksgiving and God's mercy."
+
+"Wherefore am I saved by being drawn from my meals by thy music, fool?"
+she asked, linking her arm in Angele's.
+
+"Because thou art more enamoured of lampreys than of man; and it is
+written that thou shalt love thy fellow man, and he that loveth not is
+lost: therefore thou art lost if thou lingerest at meals."
+
+"Is it so, then?  And this lady--what thinkest thou?  Must she also
+abstain and seek good company?"
+
+"No, verily, Amicitia, for she is good company itself, and so she may
+sleep in the larder and have no fear."
+
+"And what think you--shall she be happy?  Shall she have gifts of fate?"
+
+"Discriminately so, Amicitia.  She shall have souvenirs and no suspicions
+of Fate.  But she shall not linger here, for all lingerers in Delicio's
+Court are spied upon--not for their soul's good.  She shall go hence,
+and--"
+
+"Ay, princely lady, she shall go hence," interposed Lempriere, who had
+panted to speak, and could bear silence no longer.  "Her high Majesty
+will kiss her on the brow, and in Jersey Isle she shall blossom and bloom
+and know bounty--or never more shall I have privilege and perquage."
+
+He lumbered forward and kissed Angele's hand as though conferring
+distinction, but with great generosity.  "I said that all should go well,
+and so it shall.  Rozel shall prevail.  The Queen knows on what rock to
+build, as I made warrant for her, and will still do so."
+
+His vanity was incorrigible, but through it ran so child-like a spirit
+that it bred friendship and repulsed not.  The Duke's Daughter pressed
+the arm of Angele, who replied:
+
+"Indeed it has been so according to your word, and we are--I am--shall
+ever be beholden.  In storm you have been with us, so true a pilot and so
+brave a sailor; and if we come to port and the quiet shore, there shall
+be spread a feast of remembrance which shall never grow cold, Seigneur."
+
+                   "One ingle-nook right warm shall be
+                    Where my heart hath good company,"
+
+sang the fool, and catching by the arm Buonespoir, who ducked his head in
+farewell, ran him into the greenwood.  Angele came forward as if to stay
+Buonespoir, but stopped short reflectively.  As she did so, the Duke's
+Daughter whispered quickly into Lempriere's ear.
+
+Swelling with pride he nodded, and said: "I will reach him and discover
+myself to him, and bring him, if he stray, most undoubted and infallible
+lady," and with an air of mystery he made a heavily respectful exit.
+
+Left alone, the two ladies seated themselves in the bower of roses, and
+for a moment were silent.  Presently the Duke's Daughter laughed aloud.
+
+"In what seas of dear conceit swims your leviathan Seigneur, heart's-
+ease?"
+
+Angele stole a hand into the cool palm of the other.  "He was builded for
+some lonely sea all his own.  Creation cheated him.  But God give me ever
+such friends as he, and I shall indeed 'have good company' and fear no
+issue."  She sighed.
+
+"Remains there still a fear?  Did you not have good promise in the
+Queen's words that night?"
+
+"Ay, so it seemed, and so it seemed before--on May Day, and yet--"
+
+"And yet she banished you, and tried you, and kept you heart-sick?
+Sweet, know you not how bitter a thing it is to owe a debt of love to one
+whom we have injured?  So it was with her.  The Queen is not a saint, but
+very woman.  Marriage she hath ever contemned and hated; men she hath
+desired to keep her faithful and impassioned servitors.  So does power
+blind us.  And the braver the man, the more she would have him in her
+service, at her feet, the centre of the world."
+
+"I had served her in a crisis, an hour of peril.  Was naught due me?"
+
+The Duke's Daughter drew her close.  "She never meant but that all should
+be well.  And because you had fastened on her feelings as never I have
+seen another of your sex, so for the moment she resented it; and because
+De la Foret was yours--ah, if you had each been naught to the other, how
+easy it would have run!  Do you not understand?"
+
+"Nay, then, and yea, then--and I put it from me.  See, am I not happy
+now?  Upon your friendship I build."
+
+"Sweet, I did what I could.  Leicester filled her ears with poison
+every day, mixed up your business and great affairs with France,
+sought to convey that you both were not what you are; until at last I
+countermarched him."  She laughed merrily.  "Ay, I can laugh now, but it
+was all hanging by a thread, when my leech sent his letter that brought
+you to the palace.  It had grieved me that I might not seek you, or write
+to you in all those sad days; but the only way to save you was by keeping
+the Queen's command; for she had known of Leicester's visits to you, of
+your meeting in the maze, and she was set upon it that alone, all alone,
+you should be tried to the last vestige of your strength.  If you had
+failed--"
+
+"If I had failed--" Angele closed her eyes and shuddered.  "I had not
+cared for myself, but Michel--" "If you had failed, there had been no
+need to grieve for Michel.  He then had not grieved for thee.  But see,
+the wind blows fair, and in my heart I have no fear of the end.  You
+shall go hence in peace.  This morning the Queen was happier than I have
+seen her these many years: a light was in her eye brighter than showeth
+to the Court.  She talked of this place, recalled the hours spent here,
+spoke even softly of Leicester.  And that gives me warrant for the
+future.  She has relief in his banishment, and only recalls older and
+happier days when, if her cares were no greater, they were borne by the
+buoyancy of girlhood and youth.  Of days spent here she talked until mine
+own eyes went blind.  She said it was a place for lovers, and if she knew
+any two lovers who were true lovers, and had been long parted, she would
+send them here."
+
+"There be two true lovers, and they have been long parted," murmured
+Angele.
+
+"But she commanded these lovers not to meet till Trinity Day, and she
+brooks not disobedience even in herself.  How could she disobey her own
+commands?  But"--her eyes were on the greenwood and the path that led
+into the circle--"but she would shut her eyes to-day, and let the world
+move on without her, let lovers thrive, and birds be nesting without heed
+or hap.  Disobedience shall thrive when the Queen connives at it--and so
+I leave you to your disobedience, sweet."
+
+With a laugh she sprang to her feet, and ran.  Amazed and bewildered
+Angele gazed after her.  As she stood looking she heard her name called
+softly.
+
+Turning, she saw Michel.  They were alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+When De la Foret and Angele saw the Queen again it was in the royal
+chapel.
+
+Perhaps the longest five minutes of M. de la Foret's life were those in
+which he waited the coming of the Queen on that Trinity Sunday which was
+to decide his fate.  When he saw Elizabeth enter the chapel his eyes
+swam, till the sight of them was lost in the blur of colour made by the
+motions of gorgeously apparelled courtiers and the people of the
+household.  When the Queen had taken her seat and all was quiet, he
+struggled with himself to put on such a front of simple boldness as he
+would wear upon day of battle.  The sword the Queen had given him was at
+his side, and his garb was still that of a gentleman, not of a Huguenot
+minister such as Elizabeth in her grim humour, and to satisfy her bond
+with France, would make of him this day.
+
+The brown of his face had paled in the weeks spent in the palace and in
+waiting for this hour; anxiety had toned the ruddy vigour of his bearing;
+but his figure was the figure of a soldier, and his hand that of a strong
+man.  He shook a little as he bowed to her Majesty, but that passed, and
+when at last his eye met that of the Duke's Daughter he grew steady; for
+she gave him as plainly as though her tongue spoke, a message from
+Angele.  Angele herself he did not see--she was kneeling in an obscure
+corner, her father's hand in hers, all the passion of her life pouring
+out in prayer.
+
+De la Foret drew himself up with an iron will.  No nobler figure of a man
+ever essayed to preach the Word, and so Elizabeth thought; and she
+repented of the bitter humour which had set this trial as his chance of
+life in England and his freedom from the hand of Catherine.  The man
+bulked larger in her eyes than he had ever done, and she struggled with
+herself to keep the vow she had made to the Duke's Daughter the night
+that Angele had been found in De la Foret's rooms.  He had been the
+immediate cause, fated or accidental, of the destined breach between
+Leicester and herself; he had played a significant part in her own life.
+Glancing at her courtiers, she saw that none might compare with him, the
+form and being of calm boldness and courage.  She sighed she knew scarce
+why.
+
+When De la Foret first opened his mouth and essayed to call the
+worshippers to prayer, no words came forth--only a dry whisper.  Some
+ladies simpered, and more than one courtier laughed silently.  Michel
+saw, and his face flamed up.  But he laid a hand on himself, and a moment
+afterwards his voice came forth, clear, musical, and resonant, speaking
+simple words, direct and unlacquered sentences, passionately earnest
+withal.  He stilled the people to a unison of sentiment, none the less
+interested and absorbed because it was known that he had been the cause
+of the great breach between the Queen and the favourite.  Ere he had
+spoken far, flippant gallants had ceased to flutter handkerchiefs, to
+move their swords idly upon the floor.
+
+He took for his text: "Stand and search for the old paths."  The
+beginning of all systems of religion, the coming of the Nazarene, the
+rise and growth of Christianity, the martyrdoms of the early church, the
+invasion of the truth by false doctrine, the abuses of the Church, the
+Reformation, the martyrdom of the Huguenots for the return to the early
+principles of Christianity, the "search for the old paths," he set forth
+in a tone generous but not fiery, presently powerful and searching, yet
+not declamatory.  At the last he raised the sword that hung by his side,
+and the Book that lay before him, and said:
+
+"And what matter which it is we wield--this steel that strikes for God,
+or this Book which speaks of Him?  For the Book is the sword of the
+Spirit, and the sword is the life of humanity; for all faith must be
+fought for, and all that is has been won by strife.  But the paths
+wherein ye go to battle must be the old paths; your sword shall be your
+staff by day, and the Book your lantern by night.  That which ye love ye
+shall teach, and that which ye teach ye shall defend; and if your love be
+a true love your teaching shall be a great teaching, and your sword a
+strong sword which none may withstand.  It shall be the pride of
+sovereign and of people; and so neither 'height, nor depth, nor any other
+creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.'"
+
+Ere he had ended, some of the ladies were overcome, the eyes of the
+Duke's Daughter were full of tears, and Elizabeth said audibly, when he
+ceased speaking: "On my soul, I have no bishop with a tongue like his.
+Would that my Lord of Ely were here to learn how truth should be spoke.
+Henceforth my bishops shall first be Camisards."
+
+Of that hour's joyful business the Queen wrote thus to the Medici before
+the day was done:
+
+Cancelling all other letters on the matter, this M. de la Foret shall
+stay in my kingdom.  I may not be the headsman of one of my faith--as
+eloquent a preacher as he was a brave soldier.  Abiding by the strict
+terms of our treaty with my brother of France, he shall stay with us in
+peace, and in our own care.  He hath not the eloquence of a Knox, but he
+hath the true thing in him, and that speaks.
+
+To the Duke's Daughter the Queen said: "On my soul, he shall be married
+instantly, or my ladies will carry him off and murder him for love."
+
+And so it was that the heart of Elizabeth the Queen warmed again and
+dearly towards two Huguenot exiles, and showed that in doing justice she
+also had not so sour a heart towards her sex as was set down to her
+credit.  Yet she made one further effort to keep De la Foret in her
+service.  When Michel, once again, declined, dwelt earnestly on his duty
+towards the widow of his dead chief, and begged leave to share her exile
+in Jersey, Elizabeth said: "On my soul, but I did not think there was any
+man on earth so careless of princes' honours!"
+
+To this De la Foret replied that he had given his heart and life to one
+cause, and since Montgomery had lost all, even life, the least Michel de
+la Foret could do was to see that the woman who loved him be not
+unprotected in the world.  Also, since he might not at this present fight
+for the cause, he could speak for it; and he thanked the Queen of England
+for having shown him his duty.  All that he desired was to be quiet for a
+space somewhere in "her high Majesty's good realm," till his way was
+clear to him.
+
+"You would return to Jersey, then, with our friend of Rozel?" Elizabeth
+said, with a gesture towards Lempriere, who, now recovered from his
+wound, was present at the audience.
+
+De la Foret inclined his head.  "If it be your high Majesty's pleasure."
+
+And Lempriere of Rozel said: "He would return with myself your noble
+Majesty's friend before all the world, and Buonespoir his ship the
+Honeyflower."
+
+Elizabeth's lips parted in a smile, for she was warmed with the luxury of
+doing good, and she answered:
+
+"I know not what the end of this will be, whether our loyal Lempriere
+will become a pirate or Buonespoir a butler to my Court; but it is too
+pretty a hazard to forego in a world of chance.  By the rood, but I have
+never, since I sat on my father's throne, seen black so white as I have
+done this past three months.  You shall have your Buonespoir, good Rozel;
+but if he plays pirate any more--tell him this from his Queen--upon an
+English ship, I will have his head, if I must needs send Drake of Devon
+to overhaul him."
+
+That same hour the Queen sent for Angele, and by no leave, save her own,
+arranged the wedding-day, and ordained that it should take place at
+Southampton, whither the Comtesse de Montgomery had come on her way to
+Greenwich to plead for the life of Michel de la Foret, and to beg
+Elizabeth to relieve her poverty.  Both of which things Elizabeth did,
+as the annals of her life record.
+
+After Elizabeth--ever self-willed--had declared her way about the
+marriage ceremony, looking for no reply save that of silent obedience,
+she made Angele sit at her feet and tell her whole story again from first
+to last.  They were alone, and Elizabeth showed to this young refugee
+more of her own heart than any other woman had ever seen.  Not by words
+alone, for she made no long story; but once she stooped and kissed Angele
+upon the cheek, and once her eyes filled up with tears, and they dropped
+upon her lap unheeded.  All the devotion shown herself as a woman had
+come to naught; and it may be that this thought stirred in her now.  She
+remembered how Leicester and herself had parted, and how she was denied
+all those soft resources of regret which were the right of the meanest
+women in her realm.  For, whatever she might say to her Parliament and
+people, she knew that all was too late--that she would never marry and
+that she must go childless and uncomforted to her grave.  Years upon
+years of delusion of her people, of sacrifice to policy, had at last
+become a self-delusion, to which her eyes were not full opened yet--she
+sought to shut them tight.  But these refugees, coming at the moment of
+her own struggle, had changed her heart from an ever-growing bitterness
+to human sympathy.  When Angele had ended her tale once more, the Queen
+said:
+
+"God knows, ye shall not linger in my Court.  Such lives have no place
+here.  Get you back to my Isle of Jersey, where ye may live in peace.
+Here all is noise, self-seeking and time-service.  If ye twain are not
+happy I will say the world should never have been made."
+
+Before they left Greenwich Palace--M. Aubert and Angele, De la Foret,
+Lempriere, and Buonespoir--the Queen made Michel de la Foret the gift of
+a chaplaincy to the Crown.  To Monsieur Aubert she gave a small pension,
+and in Angele's hands she placed a deed of dower worthy of a generosity
+greater than her own.
+
+At Southampton, Michel and Angele were married by royal license,
+and with the Comtesse de Montgomery set sail in Buonespoir's boat,
+the Honeyflower, which brought them safe to St. Helier's, in the Isle
+of Jersey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+Followed several happy years for Michel and Angele.  The protection of
+the Queen herself, the chaplaincy she had given De la Foret, the
+friendship with the Governor of the island; and the boisterous tales
+Lempriere had told of those days at Greenwich Palace quickened the
+sympathy and held the interest of the people at large; while the simple
+lives of the two won their way into the hearts of all, even, at last, to
+that of De Carteret of St. Ouen's.  It was Angele herself who brought the
+two Seigneurs together at her own good table; and it needed all her tact
+on that occasion to prevent the ancient foes from drinking all the wine
+in her cellar.
+
+There was no parish in Jersey that did not know their goodness, but
+mostly in the parishes of St. Martin's and Rozel were their faithful
+labours done.  From all parts of the island people came to hear Michel
+speak, though that was but seldom; and when he spoke he always wore the
+sword the Queen had given him, and used the Book he had studied in her
+palace.  It was to their home that Buonespoir the pirate--faithful to his
+promise to the Queen that he would harry English ships no more came
+wounded, after an engagement with a French boat sent to capture him,
+carried thither by Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  It was there he
+died, after having drunk a bottle of St. Ouen's muscadella, brought
+secretly to him by his unchanging friend, Lempriere, so hastening the
+end.
+
+The Comtesse de Montgomery, who lived in a cottage near by, came
+constantly to the little house on the hillside by Rozel Bay.  She had
+never loved her own children more than she did the brown-haired child
+with the deep-blue eyes, which was the one pledge of the great happiness
+of Michel and Angele.
+
+Soon after this child was born, M. Aubert had been put to rest in St.
+Martin's churchyard, and there his tombstone might be seen so late as a
+hundred years ago.  So things went softly by for seven years, and then
+Madame de Montgomery journeyed to England, on invitation of the Queen and
+to better fortune, and Angele and De la Foret were left to their quiet
+life in Jersey.  Sometimes this quiet was broken by bitter news from
+France, of fresh persecution, and fresh struggle on the part of the
+Huguenots.  Thereafter for hours, sometimes for days, De la Foret would
+be lost in sorrowful and restless meditation; and then he fretted against
+his peaceful calling and his uneventful life.  But the gracious hand of
+his wife and the eyes of his child led him back to cheerful ways again.
+
+Suddenly one day came the fearful news from England that the plague had
+broken out, and that thousands were dying.  The flight from London was
+like the flight of the children of Israel into the desert.  The dead-
+carts filled with decaying bodies rattled through the foul streets, to
+drop their horrid burdens into the great pit at Aldgate; the bells of
+London tolled all day and all night for the passing of human souls.
+Hundreds of homes, isolated because of a victim of the plague found
+therein, became ghastly breeding-places of the disease, and then silent,
+disgusting graves.  If a man shivered in fear, or staggered from
+weakness, or for very hunger turned sick, he was marked as a victim, and
+despite his protests was huddled away with the real victims to die the
+awful death.  From every church, where clergy were left to pray, went up
+the cry for salvation from "plague, pestilence, and famine."  Scores of
+ships from Holland and from France lay in the Channel, not allowed to
+touch the shores of England, nor permitted to return whence they came.
+On the very day that news of this reached Jersey, came a messenger from
+the Queen of England for Michel de la Foret to hasten to her Court for
+that she had need of him, and it was a need which would bring him honour.
+Even as the young officer who brought the letter handed it to De la Foret
+in the little house on the hill-side above Rozel Bay, he was taken
+suddenly ill, and fell at the Camisard's feet.
+
+De la Foret straightway raised him in his arms.  He called to his wife,
+but, bidding her not come near, he bore the doomed man away to the lonely
+Ecrehos Rocks lying within sight of their own doorway.  Suffering no one
+to accompany him, he carried the sick man to the boat which had brought
+the Queen's messenger to Rozel Bay.  The sailors of the vessel fled, and
+alone De la Foret set sail for the Ecrehos.
+
+There upon the black rocks the young man died, and Michel buried him in
+the shore-bed of the Maitre Ile.  Then, after two days--for he could bear
+suspense no longer--he set sail for Jersey.  Upon that journey there is
+no need to dwell.  Any that hath ever loved a woman and a child must
+understand.  A deep fear held him all the way, and when he stepped on
+shore at Rozel Bay he was as one who had come from the grave, haggard and
+old.
+
+Hurrying up the hillside to his doorway, he called aloud to his wife, to
+his child.  Throwing open the door, he burst in.  His dead child lay upon
+a couch, and near by, sitting in a chair, with the sweat of the dying on
+her brow, was Angele.  As he dropped on his knee beside her, she smiled
+and raised her hand as if to touch him, but the hand dropped and the head
+fell forward on his breast.  She was gone into a greater peace.
+
+Once more Michel made a journey-alone--to the Ecrehos, and there, under
+the ruins of the old Abbey of Val Richer, he buried the twain he had
+loved.  Not once in all the terrible hours had he shed a tear; not once
+had his hand trembled; his face was like stone, and his eyes burned with
+an unearthly light.
+
+He did not pray beside the graves; but he knelt and kissed the earth
+again and again.  He had doffed his robes of peace, and now wore the garb
+of a soldier, armed at all points fully.  Rising from his knees, he
+turned his face towards Jersey.
+
+"Only mine!  Only mine!" he said aloud in a dry, bitter voice.
+
+In the whole island, only his loved ones had died of the plague.  The
+holiness and charity and love of Michel and Angele had ended so!
+
+When once more he set forth upon the Channel, he turned his back on
+Jersey and shaped his course towards France, having sent Elizabeth his
+last excuses for declining a service which would have given him honour,
+fame and regard.  He was bent upon a higher duty.
+
+Not long did he wait for the death he craved.  Next year, in a Huguenot
+sortie from Anvers, he was slain.  He died with these words on his lips:
+
+"Maintenant, Angele!"
+
+In due time the island people forgot them both, but the Seigneur of Rozel
+caused a stone to be set up on the highest point of land that faces
+France, and on the stone were carved the names of Michel and Angele.
+Having done much hard service for his country and for England's Queen,
+Lempriere at length hung up his sword and gave his years to peace.  From
+the Manor of Rozel he was wont to repair constantly to the little white
+house, which remained as the two had left it,--his own by order of the
+Queen,--and there, as time went on, he spent most of his days.  To the
+last he roared with laughter if ever the name of Buonespoir was mentioned
+in his presence; he swaggered ever before the Royal Court and De Carteret
+of St. Ouen's; and he spoke proudly of his friendship with the Duke's
+Daughter, who had admired the cut of his jerkin at the Court of
+Elizabeth.  But in the house where Angele had lived he moved about as
+though in the presence of a beloved sleeper he would not awake.
+
+Michel and Angele had had their few years of exquisite life and love,
+and had gone; Lempriere had longer measure of life and little love, and
+who shall say which had more profit of breath and being?  The generations
+have passed away, and the Angel of Equity hath a smiling pity as she
+scans the scales and the weighing of the Past.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Never believed that when man or woman said no that no was meant
+Slander ever scorches where it touches
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MICHEL AND ANGELE, PARKER, V3 ***
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