"Your outburst of the other day, Monsieur de Helville was very natural, very much to your credit, and though the shame of your most unworthy suspicion nearly cost me my life, you are pardoned. Listen now. Spain is tangled in Italy, and with all her will to trouble France she has not the power; the princes of Italy, Sforza, Visconti, Medici, Este, and a dozen other pigmies, are my friends; James of Scotland and John of Portugal are my close allies; England," and he snapped his fingers contemptuously, "England is a muzzled dog; Austria stands upon its mercenaries, and my pay is better than Maximilian's. Only little Navarre is left, and through my niece, Queen Catherine, half Navarre is already mine. Have you ever had a cinder in your eye, Monsieur de Helville? a speck almost too petty to be seen, and yet it frets, and frets, and frets? That miserable half of little Navarre is the petty speck in the eye of France, and Gaston de Foix, the seven years' son of the Count of Narbonne, is the edge that frets and frets and frets." Again he paused, and this time I was fool enough to speak. "I do not understand, Sire, how so young a child----" "God's name, man, who bid you understand? I said, Listen! And will not the child grow? and is he not in collateral line for the crown? The father is past middle age and spent, but the child will become the man, and through that miserable half of Navarre there will be a way open for Spain to strike France twenty years hence. Who knows what feeble brain may govern France when that day comes? I--I--I can hardly hope--D'Argenton! my cordial; quick--quick--um--um--um--there! that is past." He sat back in his chair, very white and breathing heavily, while from a wide-mouthed crystal he sucked loudly and with evident satisfaction, long sips of a yellowish fluid. "Let the rest wait till to-morrow, Sire," said Commines, who bent over him. But if Louis did not spare his servants neither did he spare himself. "Will to-morrow be less full than to-day? Besides, I am in a fever until this question of Navarre is settled. We must have the child, Monsieur de Helville." "How, Sire?"