“The King of England!” echoed Charles, and he rose now to his feet. “I thought we were at war with him. But my memory is treacherous. You perceive, brother of England, I am planning a new mouse-trap, and my mind is somewhat preëmpted. I recall now that you are in treaty for my daughter’s hand. Katharine is a good girl, a fine upstanding girl, but I suppose--” He paused, as if to regard and hear some invisible counsellor, and then briskly resumed: “Yes, I suppose policy demands that she should marry you. We trammelled kings can never go free of policy--ey, my compère of England? No; it was through policy I wedded her mother; and we have been very unhappy, Isabeau and I. A word in your ear, son-in-law: Madame Isabeau’s soul formerly inhabited a sow, as Pythagoras teaches, and when our Saviour cast it out at Gadara, the influence of the moon drew it hither.” Henry did not say anything. Steadily his calm blue eyes appraised Dame Katharine. And King Charles went on, very knowingly: “Oho, these Latinists cannot hoodwink me, you observe, though by ordinary it chimes with my humor to appear content. Policy again, son-in-law: for once roused, I am terrible. To-day in the great hall-window, under the bleeding feet of Lazarus, I slew ten flies--very black they were, the black shrivelled souls of parricides,--and afterward I wept for it. I often weep; the Mediterranean hath its sources in my eyes, for my daughter cheats at cards. Cheats, sir!--and I her father!” The incessant peering, the stealthy cunning with which Charles whispered this, the confidence with which he clung to his destroyer’s hand, was that of a conspiring child. “Come, Father,” Katharine said. “Come away to bed, dear.” “Hideous basilisk!” he spat at her; “dare you rebel against me? Am I not King of France, and is it not blasphemy for a King of France to be mocked? Frail moths that flutter about my splendor,” he shrieked, in an unheralded frenzy, “beware of me, beware! for I am omnipotent! I am King of France, Heaven’s regent. At my command the winds go about the earth, and nightly the stars are kindled for my recreation. Perhaps I am mightier than God, but I do not remember now. The reason is written down and lies somewhere under a bench. Now I sail for England. Eia! eia! I go to ravage England, terrible and merciless. But I must have my mouse-traps, Goodman Devil, for in England the cats of the middle-sea wait unfed.” He went out of the room, giggling, and in the corridor began to sing: “A hundred thousand times good-bye! I go to seek the Evangelist, For here all persons cheat and lie....” All this while Henry remained immovable, his eyes fixed upon Katharine. Thus (she meditated) he stood among Frenchmen; he was the boulder, and they the waters that babbled and fretted about him. But she turned and met his gaze squarely. She noted now for the first time how oddly his left eyebrow drooped.