"You seem agitated, Margaret, _ma mie_," commenced the Queen-mother, after a due pause. "I have come to condole and sympathise with you in your distress. Much as I may have blamed your misplaced and unbecoming attachment to an obscure courtier, almost an adventurer in this palace, I cannot but feel that you must suffer from the discovery of the utter baseness of this man. Look not thus surprised. I see you have already learned his arrest--your whole manner betrays it." "You speak of ----," stammered Margaret, trembling. "I speak of Philip de la Mole," said the Queen coldly. "It is true, then?" pursued her daughter. "He is arrested on a charge of treason. Oh, no! It cannot be! He is innocent!" "He is guilty!" said Catherine coldly. "I have evidence the most incontrovertible, that he has conspired against the life of the king, your brother, by the foulest acts of sorcery. A wax figure, fashioned as a king, pierced to the heart by his very hand, has been laid before me. Your brother's illness, his mortal pains, his malady so incomprehensible, all declare that the hellish deed has but too much succeeded up to this hour." Margaret shook her head with a smile of contempt and doubt. "But for what purpose was designed this murderous act?" pursued the Queen-mother. "In despite of the rights of Henry of Anjou, to place his master, your brother, the Duke of Alencon, upon the throne upon the death of Charles. We have every proof that so it was." "For Alencon!" stammered the princess. "It was for him," continued Catherine, unheeding this interruption, but with an increasing smile of satisfaction, "that these treasonable plots were designed, and partly executed. The ambitious favourite thought, by his master's hand, to rule the destinies of France. But the traitor will now reap the fruits of his black treachery." "For Alencon!" repeated Margaret in a tone of regret. "Doubt not that I sympathise in all your sorrow at this discovery, my child," resumed the Queen-mother. "Bitterly indeed must you feel how the base traitor has betrayed and forgotten the woman who loved him so fondly, so imprudently." "For Alencon!" again muttered Margaret with sunken head. "Be this the punishment of your folly, and its reparation," pursued Catherine, after a pause. "Long ago should you have ceased to cherish an attachment for one so unworthy. But you have too soft a heart, Margaret, my girl; you are too kind. I wonder and admire the sacrifice of your own feelings, and the woman's weakness with which you could hear and compassionate the supplications of his mistress." "Madam!" said the princess lifting her head in surprise. "But even now I saw her at your feet," continued her mother, with a slight sneer, "begging you to intercede to obtain his pardon." "His mistress! speak you of La Mole, madam?" exclaimed Margaret.