mournfully.

The King looked up, and laughed. "Down on your knees, then," said
he, "and render thanks to Heaven."

But I shook my head very soberly. "To Your Majesty it is a
pleasing comedy," said I, "but to me, helas! it is nearer far to
tragedy."

"Come, Marcel," said he, "may I not laugh a little? One grows so
sad with being King of France! Tell me what vexes you."

"Mademoiselle de Lavedan has promised that she will marry me only
when I have saved her father from the scaffold. I came to do it,
very full of hope, Sire. But his wife has forestalled me and,
seemingly, doomed him irrevocably."

His glance fell; his countenance resumed its habitual gloom. Then
he looked up again, and in the melancholy depths of his eyes I saw
a gleam of something that was very like affection.

"You know that I love you, Marcel," he said gently. "Were you my
own son I could not love you more. You are a profligate, dissolute
knave, and your scandals have rung in my ears more than once; yet
you are different from these other fools, and at least you have
never wearied me. To have done that is to have done something.
I would not lose you, Marcel; as lose you I shall if you marry this
rose of Languedoc, for I take it that she is too sweet a flower to
let wither in the stale atmosphere of Courts. This man, this
Vicomte de Lavedan, has earned his death. Why should I not let him