The _entr'acte_ lasted ten minutes,--ten centuries, rather! Fortunately, Catherine, talking busily with Mary Stuart, did not call Gabriel to her side. He would have been quite capable of declining to go, even if it had been his everlasting ruin. When the comedy began again amid shouts of laughter and noisy applause,-- "Well?" Gabriel inquired. "Well, what?" replied Diane, feigning an indifference that she was very far from feeling. "Oh, yes, you were asking me, I believe, if I love you. Well, then! Didn't I answer you just now, thus: 'I love you as much as you love me'?" "Ah!" cried Gabriel, "do you realize what you are saying, Diane? Do you know the extent of this love of mine to which you say that yours is equal?" "But," said the little dissembler, "if you want me to know about it, the least you can do is to tell me." "Listen to me, then, Diane, and you will see that since I left you six years ago every action of every hour of my life has tended to bring me nearer to you. It was only on my arrival at Paris a month after your departure from Vimoutiers, that I learned who you were: the daughter of the king and Madame de Valentinois. But it was not your title as a daughter of France that terrified me; it was your title as wife of the Duc de Castro, and yet something said to me: 'No matter! raise yourself to her level; win some renown for yourself, so that some day she may hear your name at least, and may admire you as others fear you.' Such were my thoughts, Diane; and I entered the service of the Duc de Guise, as the one who seemed most likely to put me in a way to win the honorable name at which my ambition pointed, speedily and well. In brief, I was shut up with him within the walls of Metz in the following year, and did my best to bring about the almost-despaired-of result, the raising of the siege. It was at Metz, where I remained to restore the fortification and repair all the damage inflicted in sixty-five days of assault, that I heard of the taking of Hesdin by the imperial troops and the death of the Duc de Castro, your husband. He had never even seen you again, Diane! Oh, I pitied him, but how I did fight at Renty! Ask Monsieur de Guise about it. I was also at Abbeville, Dinant, Bavay, and Cateau-Cambrésis. I was everywhere where the fire of musketry was to be heard; and I can fairly say that there has been no glorious action during this reign in which I have not had some little share.