CHAPTER IX
OPPORTUNITY
In spite of her earnest efforts to prevent it, or rather because of those very efforts, events occurred as Madame de Castro had foreseen and dreaded.
Gabriel had gone from her presence sorrowful and agitated. Diane's fever had communicated itself to him in some measure, and clouded his eyes and confused his thoughts.
He passed mechanically down the stairways and along the familiar corridors of the Louvre, without paying much attention to exterior objects.
Nevertheless, as he was on the point of opening the door of the great gallery, he did remember that on his return from St. Quentin it was there that he had met Mary Stuart, and through the intervention of the young queen-dauphine had succeeded in reaching the king's presence, where the first fraud and humiliation had been practised upon him.
For he had not been deceived and outraged on one occasion only; several times had his enemies trampled upon his hope before its life was finally extinct. After he had first been made their dupe, he would have done well to expect similar treatment, and to have anticipated such exaggerated and cowardly interpretations of the letter of a sacred agreement.
While these irritating reminiscences were coursing through his brain, he opened the door and entered the gallery.
At the other end of the gallery, the corresponding door opened at the same moment.
A man entered.
It was Henri II.,—Henri, the author of, or at least the principal accessory in, the foul and dastardly deception which had forever withered Gabriel's heart and poisoned his life.
The king came forward alone, unarmed and unattended.
The offender and the offended, for the first time since the perpetration of the outrage, found themselves face to face, alone, and scarcely one hundred feet apart,—a distance which could be traversed in twenty seconds with twenty steps.
We have said that Gabriel had stopped short, motionless and rigid as a statue,—like a statue of Vengeance or of Hatred.
The king halted, as he suddenly espied the man whom for nearly a year he had seen only in his dreams.
The two stood thus for a moment without moving, as if mutually fascinated by each other.
In the whirl of sensations and thoughts which filled Gabriel's brain, the poor fellow in his distraction could fix upon no course to adopt, and form no resolution. He waited.
As for Henri, despite his proved courage, the sensation that he experienced was beyond question fear; but at the humiliating thought he held his head erect, banished his first cowardly impulse, and made up his mind what to do.
To call fur help would have been to show fear; to retire as he had come would have been to flee.
He pursued his way toward the door, where Gabriel remained as if nailed to the spot.
Moreover, a superior force, a sort of irresistible and fatal fascination, urged him on toward the pale phantom who seemed to be waiting for him.
The perplexities of his destiny began to unfold themselves around him.
Gabriel experienced a species of blind, instinctive satisfaction as he saw him approach; but still he could not succeed in evolving any distinct thought from the clouds that obscured his intellect. He simply laid his hand upon the hilt of his sword.
When the king was within a few steps of Gabriel, the personal dread which he had previously thrust away seized him anew, and held his heart fast, as it were in a vice.
He said to himself in a vague way that his last hour had come, and that it was just.
However, his step did not falter. His feet seemed to carry him along of their own accord, and independently of his own dazed will. It is thus that somnambulists go about.
When he was directly in front of Gabriel, so that he could hear his quick breathing, and might touch him with his hand, he mechanically raised his hand to his velvet cap, and saluted the young count.
Gabriel did not acknowledge the salute. He maintained his marble-like attitude; and his hand, like that of a graven image, never left his sword.
In the king's eyes Gabriel was no longer a subject, but a messenger of God, before whom he must bow; while to Gabriel Henri was no longer a king, but a man, who had slain his father, and to whom he owed nothing but bitter hatred.
However, he allowed him to pass without doing aught, and without a word.
The king, on his part, did not move aside nor turn around nor express any feeling at such lack of respect.
When the door had closed between the two men, and the charm was broken, each of them awoke, as it were, rubbed his eyes, and asked himself,—
"Was it not a dream?"
Gabriel slowly left the Louvre. He did not regret the lost opportunity, nor did he repent that he had allowed it to escape him.
He felt a sort of confused joy.
"My prey is coming to me," he thought; "already he is fluttering around my nets, and getting within reach of my spear."
He slept that night more soundly than he had done for a long while.
The king, however, was not so tranquil. He went on to Diane's apartments, where she was expecting him, and welcomed him with such transports of delight as we can imagine.
But Henri was absorbed and restless. He did not venture to speak of the Comte de Montgommery, although he fancied that Gabriel was doubtless coming from his daughter's apartments when they met. However, he did not choose to touch that chord; therefore, while he had set out to pay Diane this visit in a spirit of effusive affection and confidence, he maintained from beginning to end an air of suspicion and constraint.
He then returned to his own apartments, sad and gloomy. He felt displeased with himself and others, and his sleep that night was very troubled and broken.
It seemed to him that he was becoming involved in a labyrinth from which he should never come out alive.
"However," he said to himself, "I offered myself to that man's sword to-day in a measure; so it is evident that he does not wish to kill me."
The king, in order to distract his thoughts and seek forgetfulness for his troubles, determined to leave Paris for a time. During the days immediately following his encounter with the Comte de Montgommery, he went successively to St. Germain, Chambord, and Madame de Poitiers's Château d'Anet.
Toward the close of the month of June he was at Fontainebleau.
He was constantly moving about, and had the appearance of a man wishing to drown his trouble in motion and noise and excitement.
The approaching fêtes in connection with his daughter Élisabeth's marriage with Philip II. afforded an excuse as well as opportunity for this feverish need of continual action.
At Fontainebleau he desired to entertain the Spanish ambassador with the spectacle of a great hunt in the forest, and it was appointed to take place on the 23d of June.
The day broke hot and threatening, and the weather became very tempestuous.
Nevertheless Henri did not countermand the orders he had given, for the excitement would surely be no less in a storm.
He selected the fleetest and highest-mettled horse in his stables, and followed the hunt with a sort of fury; and it happened at one time that carried away by his own ardor and the temper of his horse, he outstripped all his companions, lost sight of the hunt completely, and missed his way in the forest.
Clouds were piling up in the sky, and ominous rumblings were heard in the distance. The storm was about to break.
Henri, leaning forward upon his foaming steed, whose headlong pace he made no attempt to slacken, but on the contrary, urging him on with voice and spur, rode on and on, more swiftly than the wind, among the trees and rocks; the dizzy gallop seemed to suit his humor, for he laughed loud and long.
For a few moments he had forgotten his troubles.
Suddenly his horse reared in terror; a dazzling flash lighted up the sky, and the sudden apparition of one of those huge white rocks which abound in the forest of Fontainebleau, towering aloft at a corner of the path, had startled him.
A loud peal of thunder increased twofold the fear of the skittish animal. He bounded forward, and the sudden movement broke the rein close to the bit, so that Henri entirely lost control.
Then began a furious, fearful mad race.
The horse, with mane erect, foaming flanks, and rigid legs, shot through the air like an arrow.
The king, clinging to the animal's neck to save himself from falling, his hair on end, and his clothes blowing about in the wind, vainly tried to seize the rein, which would have been of no use in his hands.
Any one seeing the horse and his rider pass thus in the tempest would have infallibly taken them for a vision from the infernal regions, and would have thought only of exorcising the evil spirit with the sign of the cross.
But no one was at hand; not a living soul, not an inhabited dwelling. That last chance of safety which the presence of a fellow-man affords to one in peril was lacking to this anointed horseman.
Not a woodcutter, not a beggar, not a poacher, not even a thief, to save this crowned king!
The pouring rain, and the more and more frequent peals of thunder, ever nearer at hand, drove the maddened steed to an even more headlong and terrific pace.
Henri, with staring eyes, tried in vain to recognize the path along which the fatal race was being run. At last he did succeed in fixing his position at a certain cleared space among the trees, and then he fairly shook with terror, for the path led straight to the summit of a steep rock, whose perpendicular wall overhung a deep chasm, a veritable abyss!
The king did his utmost to stop the horse with his hand and voice, but to no purpose.
To throw himself from the saddle was to break his neck against some tree-trunk or granite bowlder, and it was better not to resort to that desperate measure until the last moment.
In any event Henri felt that he was lost, and full of remorse and dread, was already commending his soul to God.
He did not know at just what part of the path he was, or whether the precipice was close at hand or at some distance; but he must be ready, and he was just about to let himself to the ground, at all hazards.
At this moment, as he cast a last look about him in all directions, he saw a man at the end of the path, mounted like himself, but standing beneath the shelter of an oak.
At that distance he could not recognize the man, whose features and form, in addition, were hidden by a long cloak and a broad-rimmed hat. But it was doubtless some gentleman who had lost his way in the forest, as he himself had done.
At last Henri felt that his safety was assured. The path was narrow, and the stranger had only to move his horse forward a step or two to block the king's passage; or by simply reaching out his hand he might stop him in his headlong course.
Nothing could be easier; and even though there were some risk attending it, the unknown, on recognizing the king, ought not to think twice about incurring the risk to save his master.
In less than one twentieth of the time it has taken to read these words, the three or four hundred paces which separated Henri from his rescuer had been traversed.
Henri, to attract attention, uttered a cry of distress and waved his hand. The stranger saw him, and made a movement; he was doubtless making ready.
But oh, in terror's name! although the maddened horse passed directly before the unknown horseman, he failed to make the slightest attempt to stop him.
Indeed, it seemed as if he fell back somewhat, to avoid any possible contact.
The king uttered a second cry, no longer appealing and imploring, but of rage and despair.
However, he thought that the iron feet of his horse seemed to be now striking on stone, and not on the sod. He had arrived at the fatal precipice.
He whispered the name of God, released his foot from the stirrup, and let himself fall to the ground, at every risk.
The rebound carried him some fifteen paces away; but miraculously, as it appeared, he fell upon a little mound of moss and grass, and sustained no injury. It was full time! Less than twenty feet away was the sheer precipice.
The poor horse, amazed at being thus relieved of his burden, gradually lessened his pace, so that when he reached the edge of the chasm, he had time to measure its width, and instinctively threw himself upon his haunches, with flaming eyes and disordered mane, and foam flying from his distended nostrils.
But if the king had been still upon his back, the shock of his sudden stop would surely have thrown him into the abyss.
Having offered a fervent prayer of thanksgiving to God, who had so evidently protected him, and having soothed and remounted his horse, his first thought was to hasten back and vent his anger upon the wretch who would so basely have left him to die, except for the intervention of God.
The stranger had remained in the same spot, still motionless beneath the folds of his black cloak.
"Wretch!" cried the king, when he had approached within ear-shot. "Did you not see the danger I was in? Did you not recognize me, regicide? And even though it were not your king, ought you not to rescue any man in such peril of his life, when you have only to stretch out your arm to do it, miscreant?"
The stranger did not move, nor did he reply; he simply raised his head slightly, which was shaded from Henri's eyes by his broad felt hat.
The king recoiled as he recognized the pale and dejected features of Gabriel. He said no more, but muttered to himself, lowering his head,—
"The Comte de Montgommery! Then I have nothing more to say."
And without another word, he put spurs to his horse and galloped off into the forest.
"He would not kill me," he said to himself, seized with a death-like tremor; "but it seems that he would let me die."
Gabriel, once more alone, repeated with a gloomy smile,—
"I feel that my prey is coming nearer, and the hour is approaching.”