"I speak to you of this love which fills my whole soul, Madame, to explain my saying that I ought to understand and excuse, yes, even admire, the blind fatalities and insatiable demands of an engrossing passion. So far from blaming it, as the common people do, or of pulling it to pieces like the philosophers, or of condemning it like the priests, I kneel before it and adore it as a blessing from the Most High. It makes the heart into which it enters purer and more noble and divine; and did not Jesus Himself consecrate it when He said to Mary Magdalene that she was blessed above all other women for having loved so well?" Diane de Poitiers changed her position, and with eyes half closed stretched herself out carelessly on her couch. "I wonder how much longer his sermon is going to last," she was thinking. "Thus you see, Madame," continued Gabriel, "that love is in my eyes a holy thing, and more than that, it is omnipotent. If the husband of Madame de Castro were living still, I should love her just the same, and should not even try to overcome the irresistible impulse. It is only a false love which can be subdued; and true love no more flees from itself than it commands its own beginning. So, Madame, you yourself, chosen and beloved by the greatest king in the world,--you ought not to be, on that account, out of all danger of contracting a sincere passion; and if you had been unable to resist it, I should pity you and envy you, but I would not condemn you." Still unbroken silence on the part of the Duchesse de Valentinois. Amused astonishment was the only emotion expressed upon her face. Gabriel went on with still more warmth, as if to melt this brazen heart with the flames that were seething in his own. "A king falls in love with your adorable beauty, as may well be imagined. You are touched by his affection; but may it not be that your heart does not respond to it, much as it would like to do so? Alas! yes. But standing near the king, a handsome gentleman, gallant and devoted, sees you and loves you; and this more obscure but not less powerful passion meets a response in your heart, which has not opened to admit the thought of a king. But are you not a queen too, a queen of beauty, just as the king who loves you is king in power? Are you not as independent and free as he? Is it titles which win hearts? Who could prevent you from having for one day, for one hour even, in your kind and loving heart, preferred the subject to the master? It is not I, at all events, who would have so little sympathy with lofty sentiments as to esteem it a crime in Diane de Poitiers that being beloved of Henri II., she had loved the Comte de Montgommery." Diane, at this home-thrust, made a sudden movement and half rose from her seat, opening her great bright eyes to their fullest extent. Too few persons at court knew her secret for her not to have felt a shock at these words of Gabriel.