he double doors draped on each side with heavy
curtains.

Seated at the upper end of a long table covered with blue velvet, which
stood in the middle of the room, the king, near to whom the young
queen was seated in an arm-chair, waited for his mother. Robertet, the
secretary, was mending pens. The two cardinals, the grand-master, the
chancellor, the keeper of the seals, and all the rest of the council
looked at the little king, wondering why he did not give them the usual
order to sit down.

The two Lorrain princes attributed the queen-mother's absence to some
trick of their niece. Incited presently by a significant glance, the
audacious cardinal said to his Majesty:--

"Is it the king's good pleasure to begin the council without waiting for
Madame la reine-mere?"

Francois II., without daring to answer directly, said: "Messieurs, be
seated."

The cardinal then explained succinctly the dangers of the situation.
This great political character, who showed extraordinary ability under
these pressing circumstances, led up to the question of the lieutenancy
of the kingdom in the midst of the deepest silence. The young king
doubtless felt the tyranny that was being exercised over him; he knew
that his mother had a deep sense of the rights of the Crown and was
fully aware of the danger that threatened his power; he therefore
replied to a positive question addressed to him by the cardinal by
saying:--

"We will wait for the queen, my mother."

Suddenly enlightened by the queen-mother's delay, Mary Stuart recalled,
in a flash of thought, three circumstances which now struck her vividly;
first, the bulk of the papers presented to her mother-in-law, which she
had noticed, absorbed as she was,--for a woman who seems to see nothing
is often a lynx; next, the place where Christophe had carried them to
keep them separate from hers: "Why so?" she thought to herself; and
thirdly, she remembered the cold, indifferent glance of the young man,
which she suddenly attributed to the hatred of the Reformers to a niece
of the Guises. A voice cried to her, "He may have been an emissary of
the Huguenots!" Obeying, like all excitable natures, her first impulse,
she exclaimed:--

"I will go and fetch my mother myself!"

Then she left the room hurriedly, ran down the staircase, to the
amazement of the courtiers and the ladies of honor, entered her
mother-in-law's apartments, crossed the guard-room, opened the door of
the chamber with th