"Your highness is perhaps less well aware than might be desirable, of
how many things a woman's eyes are capable of doing, at one and the
same time!"--retorted the Italian.

"I only wish," cried Don John impatiently, "that instead of having
occasion to read me those Jeremiads, you had been here to witness the
friendship you so strangely exaggerate! A ball, an excursion on the
Meuse, a boar hunt in the forest of Marlagne, constitute the pastimes
you are pleased to magnify into an imperial ovation."

"Much may be confided amid the splendour of a ball-room,--much in one
poor half hour of a greenwood rendezvous!"--persisted the provoking
Ottavio.

"Ay--_much_ indeed!" responded Don John, with a sigh so deep that it
startled by its significance the attention of his brother in arms.
"But not to such a woman as the Queen of Henri the Béarnais!"
returned the Prince. "By our Lady of Liesse! I wish no worse to that
heretic prince, than to have placed his honour in the keeping of the
_gente Margot_."

Fain would Gonzaga have pursued the conversation, which had taken a
turn that promised wonders for the interest of the despatches he had
undertaken to forward to the Escurial, in elucidation of the designs
and sentiments of Don John,--towards whom his allegiance was as the
kisses of Judas! But the imperial scion, (who, when he pleased, could
assume the unapproachability of the blood royal,) made it apparent
that he was no longer in a mood to be questioned. Having proposed to
the new-comer (to whom, as an experienced commander, he destined the
colonelship of his cavalry,) that they should proceed to a survey of