The Best Horrors by F. Marion Crawford. Francis Marion Crawford

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      "If your majesty will select a subject for conversation — " suggested Lady Brenda.

      "Let us talk of yourself — "

      " No — of yourself."

      "Very well," said the king, leaning back in his easy chair which his broad shoulders overlapped on each side. " Let us talk of myself — though I suspect that means that you wish to talk of the women I loved. Does it not?"

      "Their names are well known to history," said Lady Brenda.

      "Better than their characters. I do not think people generally have any clear conception either of Madame de Chateaubriand, Madame d'Etampes or Madame de Breze — "

      "Your majesty loved Madame de Breze?" inquired Lady Brenda, with sudden curiosity.

      "Diane was a beautiful woman — she was four and twenty years of age when she came to beg for her father's life and I was but five years older. We were made for each other, and she was a wiser woman than Anne d'Etampes, as Catherine found out. I could have loved her, but I loved another — then. One whom I have long regretted."

      " Francoise de Foix," said Lady Brenda in a low voice, for the king seemed moved.

      " Yes — Madame de Chateaubriand. I can see her now with her fair gentle face, her golden hair, her soft blue eyes, her small graceful figure. Poor Francoise ! I can never forget her last look when she said good-bye in the garden. I thought little enough of it then and I called back Primaticcio as though nothing had happened. On my faith! It was very heartless ! I hardly know how I could do it. Had I known how she was to die I would not have done it — no ! on my faith as a gentleman ! I would not have done it."

      "Indeed," said Lady Brenda, " it would have been better for France had you treated Madame de Chateaubriand less cruelly. She might have wearied you a little, but she would not have betrayed you to the emperor."

      "It is easy, when once you are dead — or if you live three centuries after an event — to say that a deed was cruel. Living people who read history look at it much as a character of the time looks at it after his death — coldly. It is impossible for you to realise exactly how matters stood, nor what I felt. I was bored, my dear madam — do you understand ? Bored—"

      "As most people are by what is too good for them," put in Lady Brenda.

      "You are severe, but there is truth in what you say. I am only a dead king, after all, and I daresay I do not judge my own life much more leniently than you do, now that it is over. But pray reflect that when a woman bores a man, the case is serious indeed."

      "Very," answered Lady Brenda, gravely. " It has recently been said, however, that only people who themselves are bores are bored by others. I mean no disrespect to your majesty; but I believe that if your majesty's mother, of blessed memory, had not conceived the idea of presenting to you Mademoiselle de Heilly, you would not have wearied poor Francoise as you did, till she began to weary you."

      "Yes, madam," said the king. " It is also true that if the serpent had not talked of apples to our mother Eve, Paradise would have continued to be a terrestrial institution. But the serpent was a great busybody, and Eve liked apples."

      " It seems to me that your majesty then plays the part of Eve," remarked Lady Brenda.

      "Can you doubt that if the serpent had addressed himself to Adam instead of to his consort, he would have been equally successful ? "

      "No," said Lady Brenda. The king laughed.

      "It would be very singular if you did," he answered. "Madame d'Angouleme treated me with the politics of the serpent — and I must say in justice that a more beautiful apple was never selected by the devil himself. It amused me at the time. Unfortunately, when we are dead the heart begins to live."

      "How strange!" exclaimed Lady Brenda. "I should have thought that it would be the reverse!"

      "You would have supposed that after death the affections are wholly destroyed? No. That is not my experience. I was heartless in my lifetime. I treated Francoise abominably, and I made Anne de Heilly's miserable husband Due d'Etampes. I made Francoise return the jewels I had given her, because Anne wanted them. She broke all the monograms out of the settings before she sent them back, and I remember being glad that she did it. I knew that Anne was betraying me, and betraying France daily, and yet I let her power increase, because I disliked the annoyance of another separation — and during all that time Francoise was languishing in her dungeon. No one told me of that, however. But when I was dead I found that I had a heart, and my heart persecutes me. I love Francoise. — Faith! madam, I do not know why I tell you these things !"

      "Pray go on," said Lady Brenda, sympathetically. " Your majesty is not the first person who has made me confidences."

      "I am sure of that," answered the king. "You have a sympathetic face. Women with blue eyes can feel for others. Francoise de Foix had blue eyes — Anne's eyes were dark."

      "Are they both here ? " asked Lady Brenda.

      "No," said Francis, listlessly. " I shall never see them again. Anne loved me for the gifts I gave her, and there are no gifts here. Francoise loved me for myself. That was not much, was it ? I took myself from her and she never forgave me. She was right, I deserved not to be forgiven, but I did not find out how sorry I was until I came where I have time to be sorry for ever. I am tormented with a new sense which in life I did not possess — the sense of an undying affection for that lady."

      "How very sad!" exclaimed Lady Brenda.

      "It is horrible. Men should not suppose that while they are alive they can be heartless with impunity. When they are dead the heart will awake and cause them bitter anguish — all the more bitter because it is a pain to which they are not accustomed. People have called me perjurer because I would not go back to Madrid. There is less reason for that accusation than for the reproach of heartlessness I incurred. Charles knew well enough that the treaty he imposed upon me could never be carried out, unless my chivalric instincts made it possible. He reckoned on my stupidity — or rather on my stupid adherence to the details of an antiquated code. What he really wanted was my marriage with Eleonora. He got it. I more than atoned for refusing to return to captivity by letting him go freely through my kingdom on his way to Ghent. Anne advised me to put him into the Bastille. If I had been the perjured wretch people have since described me I would have followed her advice. I was a better gentleman than Charles. Perhaps that is not saying much. In my lifetime I aspired to be the first gentleman in France, or in the world. My faults were such as his majesty, Charles the Sour, could not well comprehend. But he comprehended my virtues in such a way as to attempt to play upon them to his own advantage on every possible occasion. I generally chose those occasions to lapse from virtue — as when I broke my Madrid promise. He had no right to expect me to sacrifice my kingdom and the welfare of my people to my personal convictions concerning the code of honour."

      The king laughed, and in his laughter there was a coarse element which struck very disagreeably upon Lady Brenda's refined ears.

      "You say nothing?" continued the king, as he noticed her silence.

      "I do not understand politics," said Lady Brenda, wisely.

      "I fear I did not understand them either," laughed Francis, good-humouredly. "The lady who ruled my son and my son's wife always said so. I was persuaded that I understood everything when I was alive — and when a man holds such an opinion of himself he will always find fools to agree with him and women to govern СКАЧАТЬ