The Royal Succession Read Online Free PDF

Italian.
    `Si, Monsignore.'
    * `So you ar e Messire Guccio Baglioni?'

    `The Count de Bouville recommends you to me that I may take you under my protection and conceal you from the enemies who are searching for you.'
    `If you will do me that favour, Monseigneur.'
    `It appears that you have had an unfortunate adventure which has compelled you to fly in that livery,' went on the Cardinal in his rapid, toneless voice. `Tell me about it. Bouville says that you formed part of his escort when he brought Queen Clemence to France. Indeed, I remember now. I saw you with him. And you are the nephew of Messire Tolomei, the Captain-General of the Lombards of Paris. Excellent, excellent! Tell me your troubles.'
    He had sat down and was toying mechanically with a revolving reading-desk on which were a number of the books he used in his work. He now felt calm and relaxed, ready to distract his mind with other people's little problems.
    Guccio Baglioni had ridden three hundred miles in less than four days. He could no longer feel his limbs; there was a thick fog in his head and he would have given anything in the world to stretch himself out on the floor and sleep and sleep.
    He managed to master himself; his safety, his love and his future all made it necessary that he should control his fatigue for a little longer.
    `Well, Monseigneur, I married a daughter of the nobility,' he replied.
    It seemed to him that these words had issued from another's lips. They were not those he would have wished to utter. He would have liked to explain to the Cardinal that an unparalleled disaster had overtaken him, that he was the most crushed and harrowed of men, that his life was threatened, that he had been separated, perhaps for ever, from the one woman without whom he could not live, that this woman was to be shut up in a convent, that events had befallen them during the last two weeks with such sudden violence that time seemed to have lost its normal dimensions, and that he felt he was hardly still living in the world he knew. And yet his whole tragedy, when it had to be put into words, was reduced to the single phrase: `Monseigneur, I married a daughter of the nobility.'
    `Indeed,' said the Cardinal, `and what is her name?' `Marie de Cressay.'
    `Oh, Cressay; I don't know it.'
    `But I had to marry her secretly, Monseigneur; her family were opposed to it.'
    `Because you're a Lombard? Naturally; they're still rather old - fashioned in France. In Italy, of course ... So you wish to obtain an annulment? Well ... if the marriage was secret. ..'
    `No, Monseigneur, I love her and she loves me,' said Guccio. `But her family has discovered that she is with child, and her brothers have pursued me to try and kill me.'
    `They may do so, they have a customary right to do so. You have put yourself in the position of a ravisher. Who married you?'
    `Father Vicenzo.'
    `Fra Vicenzo? I don't know him.'
    `The worst of it is, Monseigneur, that the priest is dead. So I can never prove that we are really married. But don't think I'm a coward, Monseigneur; I wanted to fight. But my uncle went and asked the advice of Messire de Bouville...'
    '... who wisely advised you to go away for a time.'
    `But Marie is going to be shut up in a convent! Do you think, Monseigneur, that you will be able to get her out? Do you think I shall ever see her again?'
    `One thing at a time, my dear son,' replied the Cardinal, still revolving his reading-desk. `A convent? What better place could she be in at the moment? You must trust in God's infinite mercy, of which we all stand in such great need.'
    Guccio lowered his head with an exhausted air. His black hair was covered with dust.
    `Has your uncle good commercial relations with the Bardi?' went on the Cardinal.
    `Indeed yes, Monseigneur. The Bardi are your bankers, I believe,' replied Guccio with automatic politeness.
    `Yes, they are my bankers. But I find them less easy to deal with these days than they were in the past. They've become such an