Pardaillan suddenly appeared, sent by the two Lorrain princes and by the king to escort the queens. The captain of the guard called for by Mary Stuart followed the young officer, who was devoted to the Guises. “Go and tell the king and the grand-master and the cardinal, from me, to come here at once, and say that I should not take the liberty of sending for them if something of the utmost importance had not occurred. Go, Pardaillan.--As for you, Lewiston, keep guard over that traitor of a Reformer,” she said to the Scotchman in his mother-tongue, pointing to Christophe. The young queen and queen-mother maintained a total silence until the arrival of the king and princes. The moments that elapsed were terrible. Mary Stuart had betrayed to her mother-in-law, in its fullest extent, the part her uncles were inducing her to play; her constant and habitual distrust and espionage were now revealed, and her young conscience told her how dishonoring to a great queen was the work that she was doing. Catherine, on the other hand, had yielded out of fear; she was still afraid of being rightly understood, and she trembled for her future. Both women, one ashamed and angry, the other filled with hatred and yet calm, went to the embrasure of the window and leaned against the casing, one to right, the other to left, silent; but their feelings were expressed in such speaking glances that they averted their eyes and, with mutual artfulness, gazed through the window at the sky. These two great and superior women had, at this crisis, no greater art of behavior than the vulgarest of their sex. Perhaps it is always thus when circumstances arise which overwhelm the human being. There is, inevitably, a moment when genius itself feels its littleness in presence of great catastrophes. As for Christophe, he was like a man in the act of rolling down a precipice. Lewiston, the Scotch captain, listened to this silence, watching the son of the furrier and the two queens with soldierly curiosity. The entrance of the king and Mary Stuart’s two uncles put an end to the painful situation. VIII. MARTYRDOM The cardinal went straight to the queen-mother. “I hold the threads of the conspiracy of the heretics,” said Catherine. “They have sent me this treaty and these documents by the hands of that child,” she added. During the time that Catherine was explaining matters to the cardinal, Queen Mary whispered a few words to the grand-master. “What is all this about?” asked the young king, who was left alone in the midst of the violent clash of interests. “The proofs of what I was telling to your Majesty have not been long in reaching us,” said the cardinal, who had grasped the papers. The Duc de Guise drew his brother aside without caring that he interrupted him, and said in his ear, “This makes me lieutenant-general without opposition.”