Part 51

When he had done, there was a moment's utter silence. Then the King spoke, his voice almost plaintive.

“What is to be done, then? But what is to be done?”

It was the Queen who answered him, harshly and angrily.

“When the Roman purple and a princely title are but masks to cover a swindler, there is only one thing to be done. This swindler must be exposed and punished.”

“But,” the King faltered, “we have not heard the Cardinal.”

“Can you think that Bohmer, that any man, would dare to lie upon such a matter?”

“But consider, madame, the Cardinal's rank and family,” calmly interposed the prudent Miromesnil; “consider the stir, the scandal that must ensue if this matter is made public.”

But the obedient daughter of Marie Therese, hating Rohan at her mother's bidding and for her mother's sake, was impatient of any such wise considerations.

“What shall the scandal signify to us?” she demanded. The King looked at Breteuil.

“And you, Baron? What is your view?”

Breteuil, Rohan's mortal enemy, raised his shoulders and flipped the document.

“In the face of this, Sire, it seems to me that the only course is to arrest the Cardinal.”

“You believe, then--” began the King, and checked, leaving the sentence unfinished.

But Breteuil had understood.

“I know that the Cardinal must be pressed for money,” he said. “Ever prodigal in his expenditure, he is further saddled with the debts of the Prince de Guimenee.”

“And you can believe,” the King cried, “that a Prince of the House of Rohan, however pressed for money, could--Oh, it is unimaginable!”

“Yet has he not stolen my name?” the Queen cut in. “Is he not proven a common, stupid forger?”

“We have not heard him,” the King reminded her gently.

“And His Eminence might be able to explain,” ventured Miromesnil. “It were certainly prudent to give him the opportunity.”

Slowly the King nodded his great, powdered head. “Go and find him. Bring him at once!” he bade Breteuil; and Breteuil bowed and departed.

Very soon he returned, and he held the door whilst the handsome Cardinal, little dreaming what lay before him, serene and calm, a commanding figure in his cassock of scarlet watered silk, rustled forward into the royal presence, and so came face to face with the Queen for the first time since that romantic night a year ago in the Grove of Venus.

Abruptly the King launched his thunderbolt.

“Cousin,” he asked, “what purchase is this of a diamond necklace that you are said to have made in the Queen's name?”

King and Cardinal looked into each other's eyes, the King's narrowing, the Cardinal's dilating, the King leaning forward in his chair, elbows on the table, the Cardinal standing tense and suddenly rigid.

Slowly the colour ebbed from Rohan's face, leaving it deathly pale. His eyes sought the Queen, and found her contemptuous glance, her curling lip. Then at last his handsome head sank a little forward.

“Sire,” he said unsteadily, “I see that I have been duped. But I have duped nobody.”

“You have no reason to be troubled, then. You need but to explain.”

Explain! That was precisely what he could not do. Besides, what was the nature of the explanation demanded of him? Whilst he stood stricken there, it was the Queen who solved this question.