第68章

"Oh, sire, I am weary of these suspicions!" I answered, affecting an indifference I did not feel. "If your Majesty does not--"But he cut me short. "Answer me!" he said harshly, his mouth working in his beard and his eyes gleaming with excitement.

"Have you not deceived me?"

"No, sire!" I said.

"Yet you have told me day by day that Madame de Conde remained in Brussels?""Certainly!"

"And you still say so?"

"Most certainly!" I answered firmly, beginning to think that his passion had turned his brain. "I had despatches to that effect this morning.""Of what date?"

"Three days gone. The courier travelled night and day.""They may be true, and still she may be here to-day?" he said, staring at me.

"Impossible, sire!"

"But, man, I have just seen her!" he cried impatiently.

"Madame de Conde?"

"Yes, Madame de Conde, or I am a madman!" Henry answered, speaking a little more moderately. "I saw her gallop out of the patch of rocks at the end of the Dormoir--where the trees begin.

She did not heed the line of the hounds, but turned straight down the boxwood ride; and, after that, led as I followed. Did you not see her?""No, sire," I said, inexpressibly alarmed--I could take it for nothing but fantasy--"I saw no one.""And I saw her as clearly as I see you," he answered. "She wore the yellow ostrich-feather she wore last year, and rode her favourite chestnut horse with a white stocking. But I could have sworn to her by her figure alone; and she waved her hand to me.""But, sire, out of the many ladies riding to-day--""There is no lady wearing a yellow feather," he answered passionately. "And the horse! And I knew her, man! Besides, she waved to me! And, for the others--why should they turn from the hunt and take to the woods?"I could not answer this, but I looked at him in fear; for, as it was impossible that the Princess de Conde could be here, I saw no alternative but to think him smitten with madness. The extravagance of the passion which he had entertained for her, and the wrath into which the news of her flight with her young husband had thrown him, to say nothing of the depression under which he had since suffered, rendered the idea not so unlikely as it now seems. At any rate, I was driven for a moment to entertain it; and gazed at him in silence, a prey to the most dreadful apprehensions.

We stood in a narrow ride, bordered by evergreens, with which that part of the forest is planted; and but for the songs of the birds the stillness would have been absolute. On a sudden the King removed his eyes from me, and, walking his horse a pace or two along the ride, uttered a cry of joy.

He pointed to the ground. "We are right!" he said. "There are her tracks! Come! We will overtake her yet!"I looked, and saw the fresh prints of a horse's shoes, and felt a great weight roll off my mind, for at least he had seen someone.

I no longer hesitated to fall in with his humour, but, riding after him, kept at his elbow until he reached the end of the ride. Here, a vista opening right and left, and the ground being hard and free from tracks, we stood at a loss; until the King, whose eyesight was always of the keenest, uttered an exclamation, and started from me at a gallop.

I followed more slowly, and saw him dismount and pick up a glove, which, even at that distance, he had discerned lying in the middle of one of the paths. He cried, with a flushed face, that it was Madame de Conde's; and added: "It has her perfume--her perfume, which no one else uses!"I confess that this so staggered me that I knew not what to think; but, between sorrow at seeing my master so infatuated and bewilderment at a riddle that grew each moment more perplexing, Isat gaping at Henry like a man without counsel. However, at the moment, he needed none, but, getting to his saddle as quickly as he could, he began again to follow the tracks of the horse's feet, which here were visible, the path running through a beech wood. The branches were still bare, and the shining trunks stood up like pillars, the ground about them being soft. We followed the prints through this wood for a mile and a half or more, and then, with a cry, the King darted from me, and, in an instant, was racing through the wood at break-neck speed.

I had a glimpse of a woman flying far ahead of us; and now hidden from us by the trunks and now disclosed; and could even see enough to determine that she wore a yellow feather drooping from her hat, and was in figure not unlike the Princess. But that was all; for, once started, the inequalities of the ground drew my eyes from the flying form, and, losing it, I could not again recover it. On the contrary, it was all I could do to keep up with the King; and of the speed at which the woman was riding, could best judge by the fact that in less than five minutes he, too, pulled-up with a gesture of despair, and waited for me to come abreast of him.

"You saw her?" he said, his face grim, and with something of suspicion lurking in it.

"Yes, sire," I answered, "I saw a woman, and a woman with a yellow feather; but whether it was the Princess--""It was!" he said. "If not, why should she flee from us?"To that, again, I had not a word to say, and for a moment we rode in silence. Observing, however, that this last turn had brought us far on the way home, I called the King's attention to this;but he had sunk into a fit of gloomy abstraction, and rode along with his eyes on the ground. We proceeded thus until the slender path we followed brought up into the great road that leads through the forest to the kennels and the new canal.

Here I asked him if he would not return to the chase, as the day was still young.

"Mon Dieu, no!" he answered passionately. "I have other work to do. Hark ye, M. le Duc, do you still think that she is in Brussels?""I swear that she was there three days ago, sire!""And you are not deceiving me? If it be so, God forgive you, for I shall not!""It is no trick of mine, sire," I answered firmly.

"Trick?" he cried, with a flash of his eyes. "A trick, you say?