When Diane retired to her apartments, Henry followed her after a short interval.
Diane was smiling serenely while her women asked her if they should help her disrobe.
‘Not yet, Marie. I think I may have a visitor.’
She had hardly spoken when there was a tap on the door.
‘Marie,’ she said, ‘should it be the Dauphin, tell him I will see him. Bring him in and leave us.’
Henry came shyly into the room, and she was reminded vividly of the boy whom she had met in the gardens on the first occasion they talked of horses.
Diane, smiling graciously, held out both her hands. Her women went out discreetly and shut the door.
‘I am so happy that you are returned,’ said Diane.
‘And I― am wretched,’ he answered.
‘Henry, that must not be. Please do not kneel to me. Why, it is I who should kneel to you. Come, sit beside me, as you used to do, and tell me what it is that makes you so wretched.’
‘You know, Diane.’
‘You mean the young Italian girl at Piedmont?’
He burst out: ‘It is true, Diane. All they say is true. I cannot understand myself. It was as though some devil possessed me.’
‘Please, do not distress yourself, Henry. You love this girl?’
‘Love? There is only one I love, only one I shall ever love in my life. I knew that all the time. But I was lonely, longing for you so much. Her hair was raven black, and it grew like yours, in ripples. You were not there, Diane, and I tried to grasp at what seemed like your shadow.’
She smiled at him, and, looking at her, he wondered how he could ever have thought the little Piedmontese could have resembled her. There was no one on Earth who could compare with Diane.
‘My dear,’ she said, gently and caressingly, ‘there is no need to be sad. You went away, but now you are back. That, it would seem to me, is a matter for rejoicing.’
‘You will forgive me?’ he pleaded. ‘You will understand? It was a passing fancy― quick to demand satisfaction, and satisfied, I found that it had gone. It grew out of my longing for you.’
‘I always knew that,’ she told him. ‘For me and for you, there is one love and one love only.’ She turned towards him, took him into her arms. ‘There is no talk of forgiveness, love,’ she went on. ‘They whispered; they jeered.
Madame d’Etampes, you know. It might have been humiliating― for some.’
‘How I hate that woman! That they should dare to humiliate you, and that I should be the cause of it, grieves me deeply. It makes me hate myself. I wish I had been killed in battle before that happened.’
She kissed him tenderly, as she had done in the beginning of their relationship. Henry’s love for her was fierce and passionate; hers for him held in it a good deal that was maternal.
‘Then would it have been my turn to be desolate,’ she said. ‘There is one thing I could not have borne― and that that you did not come back to me.’
They sat down with their arms about each other. ‘Diane― it is forgiveness, then? It is as though― that never happened?’
‘There is nothing to forgive. It is, as I always knew, and have just explained, a nothing― a bagatelle. You were lonely and she was there, this pretty little girl, to amuse you. I am grateful to her because she made you happy for a time. Tell me this, you would not like her brought here― to Paris?’
‘ No! ‘
‘You no longer love her?’
‘I love only one; I shall always love only one.’
‘Then you no longer desire her?’
‘When I realized what I had done, I never wanted to see her again. Oh Diane, my only love, can we not forget it happened?’
‘We cannot do that, for I have heard that there is to be a child.’
He flushed a deeper red.
She laughed. ‘You were ever one to forget your status. That child will be the son― or daughter― of the King of France. Had you forgotten that?’
‘I am filled with shame. You are so good, so beautiful. You understand this wickedness of mine just as you understood my weakness, my folly, my shyness, and my shame. When I am with you, I cannot help but be happy, even though I have soiled this beautiful union of ours by my infidelity.’
Diane snapped her fingers. Her eyes were brilliant; her mouth smiled, for she was thinking that the court would soon be thinking it had laughed too soon.
She was going to take charge of this matter. It pleased her that the court should see her as Henry’s beloved friend rather than his mistress; the first and most important person in his life, his spiritual love.
‘My darling‚’ she said, ‘the child must be looked after; it must be educated in accordance with its rank.’
‘It’s rank!’
‘My dear, it is your child. That alone makes it of the utmost importance in my eyes. Henry, have I your permission to take charge of this matter? When the child is born, I wish to have it brought to France. I wish, personally, to superintend its education.’
‘Diane, you are wonderful!’
‘No,’ she smiled lightly. ‘I love you and would see you respecting yourself, taking to yourself that honour which is your due.’
He put his arms about her. ‘I dreamed about you,’ he said. ‘I thought of you continually, even when I was with her.’
Diane had slid into his arms. She had put aside the practical Frenchwoman now; she was ready to receive his adoration, which, from experience, she knew would quickly change to passion.
Catherine did not see her husband until the next day. Madalenna had managed to slip out of Diane’s apartment when the lovers were sleeping, so Catherine knew what had taken place.
She spent the night weeping silently. She knew that she been wrong to hope.
The clever witch had only to smile on him to cast her spell over him.
He appeared next day, flushed and triumphant, the forgiven lover who understands that his peccadillo is to be forgotten; he was wearing the black-and-white colours of Diane.
The court admired the Sénéchale more than ever; Catherine’s hatred for her was greater. Madame d’Etampes was disappointed; more, she was worried.
When the little Piedmontese gave birth to Henry’s baby, the Sénéchale kept her word; she had the child brought to her and made arrangements for its upbringing.
It was a girl, and, to the amazement and admiration of many, the Sénéchale had the child christened Diane.
THE FRIGHTENED DAUPHINE
THERE was a tension at Loches. Everyone felt it, from Anne to the humblest worker in the kitchens. Diane, in continual conference with her young friends, the de Guises, seemed to have grown an inch taller and a good deal more haughty. She saw herself clearly now as the power behind the throne. Catherine, outwardly meek, felt a new strength within her. But for her, these two women who believed themselves to be so far above her in wit and intelligence would not be in their present position! It was stimulating to shape the destinies of others, even while, because one worked in shadow, one must be treated as though of no account.
Icy December winds were whistling through the bare branches of the trees in the palace gardens, and the snow was falling.
The King lay ill; and many believed he would never leave his bed.
It was not only the court that was uneasy; It was the whole of France. And it was not only this illness of the King’s that gave rise to tension. The Dauphin, with Charles of Orléans, and a retinue of noblemen, was travelling south to welcome Charles V of Spain into France. And the illness of Francis, together with the friendly invasion of Francis’s perennial enemy was sufficient to set tongues clacking, while speculation as to the wisdom of this unprecedented visit was offered in all the wine-shops from Paris to Le Havre and from Le Havre to Marseilles.