d papers--a treatise on hunting lay cheek by jowl
with a Book of Hours; a string of rosary beads and a dog-whip lay
across an open copy of Ronsard's verses. The King was quite the vilest
poetaster of his day.

Charles looked over his shoulder as his brother entered. The scowl on
his face deepened when he saw who came, and with a grunt he viciously
kicked the liver-coloured hound that lay stretched at his feet. The
hound fled yelping to a corner, the Duke checked, startled, in his
advance.

"Well?" growled the King. "Well? Am I never to have peace? Am I never to
be alone? What now? Bowels of God! What do you want?"

His green eyes smouldered, his right hand opened and closed on the gold
hilt of the dagger at his girdle:

Scared by the maniac ferocity of this reception, the young Duke
precipitately withdrew.

"It is nothing. Another time, since I disturb you now." He bowed and
vanished, followed by an evil, cackling laugh.

Anjou knew how little his brother loved him, and he confesses how much
he feared him in that moment. But under his fear it is obvious that
there was lively resentment. He went straight in quest of his mother,
whose darling he was, to bear her the tale of the King's mood, and what
he accounted, no doubt rightly, the cause of it.

"It is the work of that pestilential Huguenot admiral," he announced, at
the end of a long tirade, "It is always thus with him after he has seen
Coligny."

Catherine of Medicis considered. She was a fat, comfortable woman, with
a thick nose, pinched lips, and sleepy eyes.

"Charles," she said at length, in her monotonous, emotionless voice, "is
a weathercock that turns with every wind that blows upon him. You should
know him by now." And she yawned, so that one who did not know her and
her habit of perpetually yawning might have supposed that she was but
indifferently interested.

They were alone together in the intimate little tapestried room she
called her oratory. She half sat, half reclined upon a couch of rose
brocade. Anjou stood over by the window, his back to it, so that his
pale face was in shadow. He considered his beautiful hands, which he was
reluctant to lower, lest the blood should flow into them and mar their
white perfection.

"The Admiral's influence over him is increasing," he complained, "and he
uses it to lessen our own."

"Do I not know it?" came her dull voice.

"It is time to end it," said Anjou passionately, "before he ends us.
Your inf