As for her, she seemed inexhaustible; it was as though she danced a wild dance and bewitched the King into sharing it with her.

On New Year’s Eve her gaiety seemed to reach its climax. The King never left her side.

When she rose to dance she held out her arms to him and François watching with his mother and sister had never felt his hopes so low.

“She is a witch,” hissed Louise. “She has breathed new life into him. He looks ten years younger than he did before his marriage. He was never so besotted with Anne as he is with this one, and Anne could lead him by the nose.”

“Oh, Mother,” sighed Marguerite, “who would have thought it would have come to this? Each night she is in his bed. There can be one outcome.”

“All our hopes … all our plans …,” moaned Louise.

“And at that time,” muttered François, “when the crown seemed about to be placed on my head!”

The trinity was in despair.

The Queen was aware of this. Mischief would lighten her eyes every time she met one of the family. Yet behind her gaiety there was a certain brooding, a watchfulness.

The heat of the ballroom had been excessive; outside the temperature was at freezing point.

They had danced and retired late to their apartments; the Queen lay in her royal bed, rejoicing. There could be no love-making tonight. He was too ill. He could not pretend to her as glibly as he did to others.

She had comforted him. “My poor Louis, you are so tired. You shall sleep. I shall be close to you … thus … and when you have rested you will feel well again.”

She bent over him and, looking up into her round young face, he longed to caress her; but she was right, he was too tired.

So he lay still and she lay beside him, keeping her fingers laced in his.

And she thought: It cannot be long now. Something tells me.

She was sorry and yet exulting. She wanted to throw herself into his arms and ask his pardon. She wanted to say: I wish you dead, Louis, and I hate myself for wishing it; but I cannot stop this wish.

It was long before she slept. She kept thinking of the heated ballroom, and she fancied she could still hear the sound of music mingling with the howling wind outside. Faces flashed in and out of her mind. François, lean and hungry … hungry for her body, half loving her, half hating her, since the tournament in which Charles had beaten him. Louise, alert and fearful, those glances which covered the whole of her body, speculatively fearful; and Marguerite so anxious that her brother’s way to the throne should not be blocked. The King … whose spirit yearned toward a greater amorousness than his body would allow.

She thought of Charles in the arena—the dreadful moment when she thought the German would unseat him and perhaps inflict some injury. Then she remembered him, victorious, receiving the prize from her hands.

How long? How long? she asked herself.

She did not have to wait for the answer.

She would never forget waking on the morning of New Year’s Day when the wintry light filtered into the bedchamber and on to the gray face of the man in the bed. She leaned over him in deep compassion and said: “Louis … you are very sick today?”

He did not answer her. He did not even know it was his beautiful Queen who had spoken.

Then she knew that the day for which she had prayed and yearned had come.

The door of the cage was opening; she would soon be free.

Yet when she looked down at that withered face, at the bleak, unseeing eyes, she could only murmur: “The pity of it!”


DRESSED COMPLETELY IN WHITE, Mary sat alone in that room in the Hôtel de Clugny which was known as la chambre de la reine blanche. Here she was to remain, in accordance with custom, for six weeks while she mourned her husband.