The Strangled Queen Read Online Free PDF

replied Artois, "you are offered safe passage to the Duchy of Burgundy, where you will be placed in a convent until the annulment has been pronounced, and thereafter to live as you please or as your family may desire."
    On first hearing, Marguerite very nearly answered, "Ye s, I accept; I declare all that is desired of me; I will sign no matter what, on condition that I may leave this place," But she saw Artois watching her from under lowered lids, a gaze ill-matched with his good-natured air; and intuitively she knew that he was, tricking her. "I shall sign," she thought, "and then they will continue to keep me here.
    Duplicity in the heart is catching. But in fact Artois was for once telling the truth; he was the bearer of an honest proposal; he even had the order with him for Marguerite's removal, should she consent to the declaration required of her.
    "It is asking me to commit a grave sin, " she said.
    `Artois burst out laughing.
    "Good God, Marguerite," he cried, "it seems to me you have comm itted others with less scruple! "
    "Perhaps I have altered and repented. I must think the matter over before deciding."
    The giant made a wry face, twisting his lips from side to side.
    "Very well, Cousin, but think quickly," he said, "because I must be back in Paris tomorrow for the funeral mass at Notre Dame. With fifty-eight miles in the saddle, even by the shortest way, and roads a couple of inches deep in mud, and daylight fading early and dawning late, and the delay for a relay of horses at Nantes, I have no time to dawdle and would much prefer not to have come all this way for nothing. Good-bye, I shall go and sleep an hour and come back to eat with you. It must not be said that I left you alone, Cousin, the first day upon which you fare well. I am sure you will have reached the right decision."
    He left like a whirl wind, as he had arrived, for he paid as much attention to his exits as his entrances, and nearly upset Private G ros-Guillaume in the staircase, as he came up bending and sweating, under a huge coffer.
    Then he disappeared into the Captain's denuded lodging and threw himself upon the one couch that still remained.
    "Bersumee, my friend, see that dinner is ready in an hour's time," he said. "And call my valet Lormet, who must be with the horsemen. Tell him to come and watch over, me while I sleep.''
    For this Hercules feared nothing but to be found defenceless by his numerous enemies, while he slept. And he preferred to any squire or equerry the guardianshi p of this short, squat, greying serv ant who followed him everywhere for the apparent purpose of handing him his coat or cloak.
    Unusually vigorous for his fifty years, all the more dangerous for his mild appearance, capable of anything in the service of "Monseigneur Robert," and above all of obliterating noiselessly in a few seconds people who were an embarrassment to his master, Lormet, purveyor of girls on occasion and a great recrui ter of roughs, was a rogue less by nature than from devotion; a killer, he had the affection of a wet-nurse for his master.
    Shy, and a clever deceiver of fools, he was an able spy. Not the least of his exploits was to have led the brothers Aunay into a trap, so that they might be taken by Robert of Artois almost in flagrante delicto at the foot of the Tower of Nesle.
    When Lormet was asked why he was so attached to the Count of Artois, he shrugged his shoulders and replied grumblingly, "Because from each of his old coats I can make two for myself."
    As soon as Lormet entered the Captain's lodging, Robert closed his eyes and fell asleep upon the instant, his arms and legs stretched wide, his chest rising and falling with th e deep breath ing of an ogre.
    A n hour later he awoke of his own accord, stretched himself like a huge tiger, stood upright, his muscles and his mind refreshed.
    Lormet was sitting on a bench: his dagger on his knees. Round - headed and narrow-eyed, he looked tenderly upon his master's awakening.
    "Now it's