These are my troops as a leaguer; now add, and compare." "You are joking, are you not, Chicot ?" "Is it a time to joke, when you are alone, against all the world ?" Henri assumed an air of royal dignity.

"Alone I am," said he, "but at the same time I alone command.

You show me an army, but where is the chief?
You will say, M.de Guise; but do I not keep him at Nancy?
M.de Mayenne, you say yourself, is at Soissons, the Duc d'Anjou is at Brussels, and the king of Navarre at Pau; so that if I am alone, I am free.

I am like a hunter in the midst of a plain, waiting to see his prey come within his reach." "On the contrary; you are the game whom the hunters track to his lair." "Chicot!" "Well! let me hear whom you have seen come." "No one." "Yet some one has come." "Of those whom I named ?" "Not exactly, but nearly." "Who ?" "A woman." "My sister Margot ?" "No; the Duchesse de Montpensier." "She! at Paris ?" "Mon Dieu! yes." "Well, if she be; I do not fear women." "True; but she comes as the avant courier to announce the arrival of her brother." "Of M.de Guise ?" "Yes." "And do you think that embarrasses me?
Give me ink and paper." "What for?
To sign an order for M.de Guise to remain at Nancy ?" "Exactly; the idea must be good, since you had it also." "Execrable, on the contrary." "Why ?" "As soon as he receives it he will know he is wanted at Paris, and he will come." The king grew angry.

"If you only returned to talk like this," said he, "you had better have stayed away." "What would you have?
Phantoms never flatter.