Marie believed herself to be in some sort to blame for this terrible dejection. She wondered, not without alarm, whether the King's extravagant joy at welcoming her back, and the vehement passion she could not contend with, were not helping to wreck his mind and frame. As she looked up at her lover, her eyes streaming with tears that bathed her face, she saw tears in his eyes too and on his colorless cheeks. This sympathy, uniting them even in sorrow, touched Charles IX. so deeply, that he started up like a horse that feels the spur. He put his arm round Marie's waist, and before she knew what he was doing had drawn her down on the couch. "I will be King no more!" he said. "I will be nothing but your lover, and forget everything in that joy. I will die happy, and not eaten up with the cares of a throne." The tone in which he spoke, the fire that blazed in eyes, just now so dull, instead of pleasing Marie, gave her a terrible pang; at that moment she blamed her love for contributing to the illness of which the King was dying. "You forget your prisoners," said she, starting up suddenly. "What do I care about the men? They have my permission to kill me." "What? Assassins!" said she. "Do not be uneasy, we have them safe, dear child.--Now, think not of them, but of me. Say, do you not love me?" "Sire!" she cried. "Sire!" he repeated, flashing sparks from his eyes, so violent was his first surge of fury at his mistress' ill-timed deference. "You are in collusion with my mother." "Great God!" cried Marie, turning to the picture over her praying-chair, and trying to get to it to put up a prayer. "Oh! make him understand me!" "What!" said the King sternly. "Have you any sin on your soul?" And still holding her in his arms, he looked deep into her eyes. "I have heard of the mad passion of one d'Entragues for you," he went on, looking wildly at her, "and since their grandfather Capitaine Balzac married a Visconti of Milan, those rascals hesitate at nothing." Marie gave the King such a look of pride that he was ashamed. Just then the cry was heard of the infant Charles de Valois from the adjoining room; he was just awake, and his nurse was no doubt bringing him to his mother. "Come in, la Bourguignonne," said Marie, taking the child from his nurse and bringing him to the King. "You are more of a child than he," she said, half angry, but half pleased. "He is a fine boy," said Charles IX., taking his son in his arms. "No one but me can know how like you he is," said Marie. "He has your smile and ways already." "What, so young?" said the King, smiling. "Men will never believe such things," said she; "but look, my Charlot, play with him, look at him--now, am I not right?" "It is true," said the King, startled by a movement on the infant's part, which struck him as the miniature reproduction of a trick of his own. "Pretty flower!" said his mother. "He will never go away from me; he will never make me unhappy."