"Trifle not with sacred matters! Do you not know that in fourteen years, the first day of the year 1000, this world will cease to be and with it the people who inhabit it?"
Struck by the coldness of her lover's answers, Blanche brusquely stepped back. Her brows contracted, her nostrils dilated, her breast heaved in pain, and she darted a look at Hugh that seemed to wish to fathom the very bottom of his heart. For a few instants her gaze remained fixed upon him; she then cried in a voice trembling with rage: "You love some other woman! You love me no more!"
"Heaven and earth! Am I also to be despised.... I the Queen!... Yes, you love some other woman, your own wife, perhaps; that Adelaide of Poitiers whom you promised me you would rid yourself of by a divorce!" Further utterances having expired upon her lips, the wife of King Louis the Do-nothing broke down sobbing, and with eyes that glistened with fury she shook her fists at the Count of Paris: "Hugh, if I were sure of that, I would kill both you and your wife; I would stab you both to death!"
"Blanche," said Hugh slowly and watching the effect of his words upon the face of the Queen, who, with eyes fixed upon the ground, seemed to be meditating some sinister project: "I am not merely Count of Paris and Duke of France, as my ancestors were, I am also Abbot of Saint Martin of Tours and of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, abbot not only by virtue of my cowl--but by virtue of my faith. Accordingly, I blame your incredulity on the subject of the approaching end of the world. The holiest bishops have prophesied it, and have urged the faithful to hasten to save their souls during the fourteen years that still separate them from the last judgment.... Fourteen years!... A very short period within which to gain the eternal paradise!"
"By the hell that burns in my heart, the man is delivering a sermon to me!" cried the Queen with an outburst of caustic laughter. "What are you driving at? Are you spreading a snare for me? Malediction! this man is a compound of ruse, artifice and darkness, and yet I love him! I am insane!... Oh, there must be some magic charm in this!" and biting into her handkerchief with suppressed rage, she said to him: "I shall not interrupt again, even if I should choke with anger. Proceed, Hugh the Capet! Explain yourself!"