"Ah! your Majesty cannot conceive how precious that word has become to me since the day it was given."
"Very well! it shall be kept, Monsieur. But the doors are open. To table, messieurs, to table!"
François thereupon joined the Emperor, and the two together walked at the head of the procession formed by the illustrious guests. Both wings of the folding doors being thrown open, the two sovereigns entered side by side and took places facing each other, Charles between Eleanora and Madame d'Etampes, François between Catherine de Medicis and Marguerite de Navarre.
The banquet was exquisite and the guests in the best of spirits. François was in his element, and enjoyed himself in kingly fashion, but laughed like a serf at all the tales told him by Marguerite de Navarre. Charles overwhelmed Madame d'Etampes with compliments and attentions. The others talked of art and politics, and so the time passed.
At dessert, as was customary, the pages brought water for the guests to wash their hands. Thereupon Madame d'Etampes took the ewer and basin intended for Charles V. from the hands of the servitor, while Marguerite did the same for François, poured water from the ewer into the basin, and, kneeling upon one knee, according to the Spanish etiquette, presented the basin to the Emperor. He dipped the ends of his fingers, gazing at his noble and beautiful attendant the while, and laughingly dropped the superb ring, of which we have spoken, into the water.
"Your Majesty is losing your ring," said Anne, dipping her own taper fingers into the water, and daintily picking up the jewel, which she handed to the Emperor.
"Keep the ring, madame," the Emperor replied, in a low voice; "the hands in which it now is are too noble and too beautiful for me to take it from them again. It is to bind the bargain for the Duchy of Milan," he added, in a still lower tone.
The duchess smiled and said no more. The pebble had fallen at her feet, but the pebble was worth a million.