"And yet," said Elizabeth, after a moment's mournful reflection, "if I
obey my presentiments, your news will make no difference to our plans
for departure."

"Nay, mother," said Andre firmly, "you would not force me to quit the
country to the detriment of my honour. If I have made you feel some of
the bitterness and sorrow that have spoiled my own young days because
of my cowardly enemies, it is not from a poor spirit, but because I was
powerless, and knew it, to take any sort of striking vengeance for their
secret insults, their crafty injuries, their underhand intrigues. It was
not because my arm wanted strength, but because my head wanted a crown.
I might have put an end to some of these wretched beings, the least
dangerous maybe; but it would have been striking in the dark; the
ringleaders would have escaped, and I should never have really got to
the bottom of their infernal plots. So I have silently eaten out my own
heart in shame and indignation. Now that my sacred rights are recognised
by the Church, you will see, my mother, how these terrible barons, the
queen's counsellors, the governors of the kingdom, will lower their
heads in the dust: for they are threatened with no sword and no
struggle; no peer of their own is he who speaks, but the king; it is
by him they are accused, by the law they shall be condemned, and shall
suffer on the scaffold."

"O my beloved son," cried the queen in tears, "I never doubted your
noble feelings or the justice of your claims; but when your life is in
danger, to what voice can I listen but the voice of fear? what can move
my counsels but the promptings of love?"

"Mother, believe me, if the hands and hearts alike of these cowards had