Thus saying she quitted the room for a moment, and the Duke remained behind with his arms crossed upon his bosom in deep thought. She returned in a moment, however, saying that she had sent one of her gentlemen upon the errand, and the next minute as the gates were opened for some one to go out, long and reiterated shouts of "A Guise! A Guise! Long live the Guise!" were heard echoing round the building. Catharine de Medici smiled and looked at the Duke. "How often have I heard," she said, "those same light Parisian tongues exclaim the name of different princes! I remember well, Guise, when first I came from my fair native land, how the glad multitude shouted on my way; how all the streets were strewed with flowers; and how, if I had believed the words I heard, I should have fancied that not a man in all the land but would have died to serve me; and yet, not long after, I have heard execrations murmured in the throats of the dull multitude while I passed by, and the name of Diana of Poitiers echoed through the streets. Then have I not heard the names of a Francis and a Henry shouted far and wide? and after Jarnac and Moncontour, the heavens were scarcely high enough to hold the sounds of his name who now sits upon the throne of France. To-day it is Guise they call upon!--Who shall it be to-morrow? And then another and another still shall come, the object of an hour's love changed into hatred in a moment." "It is too true, madam," replied the Duke. "Popularity is the most fleeting, the most vacillating--if you will, the most contemptible--of all those means and opportunities which Heaven gives us to be made use of for great ends. But nevertheless, madam, we must so make use of them all; and as this same popularity is one of the briefest of the whole, so must we be the more ready, the more prompt, the more decided in taking advantage of the short hour of brightness. I may be wrong in thinking," he continued after the pause of a moment or two, "I may be wrong in thinking that my well-being and that of the state and church of this realm are intimately bound up together. It may be, and probably is, a delusion of human vanity. Nevertheless, such being my opinion, none can say that I am wrong in taking advantage of the moment of my popularity to do the best that I can both for the church and for the state. Such, I assure you, madam, is my object; and if I benefit myself at all in these transactions, it can be, and shall be, but collaterally; while in the mean time I incur perils which I know and yet fear not."