_Henry III.--The League--Siege of Paris by Henry IV.--His Conversion,
Reign and Assassination_
When the third of Catherine's sons, having resigned the sovereignty of
Poland, was being consecrated at Rheims, the crown is said to have
twice slipped from his head, the insentient diadem itself shrinking in
horror from the brow of a prince destined to pollute it with deeper
shame. Treacherous and bloody, Henry mingled grovelling piety with
debauchery, and made of the court at Paris a veritable Alsatia, where
paid assassins who stabbed from behind and _mignons_ who struck to the
face, were part of the train of every prince. The king's minions with
their insolent bearing, their extravagant and effeminate dress, their
hair powdered and curled, their neck-ruffles so broad that their heads
resembled the head of John the Baptist on a charger,--gambling,
blaspheming swashbucklers--were hateful alike to Huguenot and
Catholic. On 29th April 1578 three of them fought out a famous quarrel
with three of the Guises' bullies at the horse market subsequently
converted into the Place Royale. The duel began at five o'clock in the
morning and was fought so furiously that three of the combatants lost
their lives. Quelus, the king's favourite minion, with fifteen wounds,
lingered for thirty-three days, Henry constantly at his bedside and
offering in vain large sums of money to the surgeons to save him.
Less than four years after St. Bartholomew the Peace of 1576 gave the
Huguenots all they had ever demanded or hoped for. In 1582 died the
Duke of Alencon, Catherine's last surviving son and heir to the
throne; Henry, in spite of a pilgrimage on foot by himself and his
queen to Notre Dame de Clery from which they returned with blistered
feet, gave no hope of posterity and the Catholic party were confronted
by the possibility of the sceptre of St. Louis descending to a
relapsed heretic. A tremendous wave of feeling ran through France, and
a Holy League was formed to meet the danger, with the Duke of Guise as
leader. The king tried in vain to win some of the Huguenot and League
partisans by the solemn institution of the Order of the Holy
Ghost,[121] in the church of the Augustinians, to commemorate his
elevation to the thrones of Poland and France on the day of Pentecost.
The people were equally recalcitrant. When Henry entered Paris after
the campaign of 1587, they shouted for their idol, the Balafre,[122]
crying, "Saul has slain his thousands but David his tens of
thousands." The king in his jealousy and disgust forbade Guise to
enter Paris; Guise coolly ignored the command, and a few months later
arrived at the head of a formidable train of nobles, amid the joyous
acclamation of the people, who greeted him with chants of "_Hosannah,
Filio David!_" Angry scenes followed. The duke sternly called his
master to duty, and warned him to take vigorous measures against the
Huguenots or lose his crown; the king, pale with anger, dismissed him
and prepared to strike.
[Footnote 121: Examples of magnificent costumes of the order may be
seen in the Cluny Museum.]
[Footnote 122: The Duke of Guise was so called from his face being
scarred by a wound received at the battle of Dolmans.]
On the night of the 11th May a force of Royal Guards and 4,000 Swiss
mercenaries entered Paris, but the Parisians, with that genius for
insurrection which has always characterised them, were equal to the
occasion. The sixteen sections into which the communal government of
the city was divided met; in the morning the people were under arms;
and barricades and chains blocked the streets. The St. Antoine
section, ever to the front, stood up to the king's Guards and to the
Swiss advancing to occupy their quarter, defeated them, and with
exultant cries rushed to threaten the Louvre itself. Henry was forced
to send his mother to treat with the duke; she returned with terms
that meant a virtual abdication. Henry took horse and fled, vowing he
would come back only through a breach in the walls. But Guise was
supreme in Paris, and the pitiful monarch was soon forced to yield; he
signed the terms of his own humiliation, and went to Blois to meet
Guise and the States-General with bitterness in his heart, brooding
over his revenge. Visitors to the chateau of Blois, which has the same
thrilling interest for the traveller as the palace of Holyrood, will
recall the scene of the tragic end of Guise, the incidents of which
the official guardians are wont to recite with dramatic gesture.
Fearless and impatient of warnings, the great captain fell into the
trap prepared for him and was done to death in the king's chamber,
like a lion caught in the toils. Henry, who had heard mass and prayed
that God would be gracious to him and permit the success of his
enterprise, hastened to his mother, now aged and dying. "Madame," said
he, "I have killed the king of Paris and am become once more king of
France." The Cardinal of Lorraine, separated from the king's chamber
only by a partition, paled as he heard his nephew's struggles. "_Ne
bougez pas_," said the Marshal of Aumont putting his hand to his
sword, "the king has some accounts to settle with you too." Next
morning the old cardinal was led out and hewn in pieces. The two
bodies were burnt and the ashes scattered to the winds to prevent
their being worshipped as relics: it was Christmas Eve of 1588.
The stupid crime brought its inevitable consequences--
"Revenge and hate bring forth their kind,
Like the foul cubs their parents are."
The Commune of Paris and the Leaguers were stung to fury; the Sorbonne
declared the king deposed; the pope banned him and a popular preacher
called for another blood-letting. Henry, in a final act of shame and
despair, flung himself into the king of Navarre's arms, and on the
31st July 1589, the two Henrys encamped at St. Cloud and threatened
Paris with an army of 40,000 men. On the morrow Jacques Clement, a
young Dominican friar, after preparing himself by fasting, prayer and
holy communion, left Paris with a forged letter for the king, reached
the camp and asked for a private interview. While Henry was reading
the letter the friar snatched a knife from his sleeve and mortally
stabbed him.[123] He lingered until 2nd August, and after pronouncing
Henry of Navarre his lawful successor and bidding his Council swear
allegiance to the new dynasty, the last of the thirteen Valois kings
passed to his doom. Catherine de' Medici had already preceded him,
burdened with the anathemas of the Cardinal of Bourbon. The people of
Paris swore that if her body were brought to St. Denis they would
fling it to the shambles or into the Seine, and a famous theologian,
preaching at St. Bartholomew's church, declared to the faithful that
he knew not if it were right to pray God for her soul, but that if
they cared to give her in charity a Pater or an Ave they might do so
for what it was worth. This was the reward of her thirty years of
devoted toil, of vigils and of plots to further the Catholic cause.
Not until a quarter of a century had passed were her ashes laid beside
those of her husband in the rich Renaissance tomb, which still exists,
in the royal church of St. Denis. Jacques Clement, who had been cut to
pieces by the king's Guards, was worshipped as a martyr, and his
mother rewarded for having given birth to the saviour of France.
[Footnote 123: The king had premonitions of a violent end. One day,
after keeping Easter at Negeon with great devotion, he suddenly
returned to the Louvre and ordered all the lions, bears, bulls, and
other wild animals kept in the _Hotel des Lions_, reconstructed in
1570 for Charles IX., for baiting by dogs, to be shot. He had dreamt
that he was set upon and eaten by wild beasts.]
Henry of Navarre, unable to carry on the siege with a divided army,
directed his course for Normandy. The exultant Parisians proclaimed
the Cardinal of Bourbon king, under the title of Charles X., and the
Duke of Mayenne, with a large army, marched forth to give battle to
Henry. So confident were the Leaguers of victory, that their leaders
hired windows along the Rue St. Antoine to witness the return of the
duke bringing the "Bearnais"[124] dead or a prisoner. Henry did indeed
return, but it was after a victorious campaign. He captured the
Faubourg St. Jacques, and fell upon the abbey of St. Germain des Pres
while the astonished monks were preparing to sing mass, climbed the
steeple of the church and gazed on Paris. Having refreshed his troops,
the Bearnais suffered them to pillage the city south of the Seine, and
turned to the west to fix his capital at Tours. In 1590 he won the
brilliant victory at Ivry over the armies of the League and of Spain
which Macaulay has popularised in a stirring poem: the road to Paris
was open and Henry sat down to besiege the city.
[Footnote 124: So called derisively, because he was born and brought
up in the poor province of Bearn, in the Pyrenees.]
The Leaguers fought and suffered with the utmost constancy;
reliquaries were melted down for money, church bells for cannon, and
the clergy and religious orders were caught by the military
enthusiasm. The bishop of Senlis and the prior of the Carthusians, two
valiant Maccabees, were seen, crucifix in one hand, a pike in the
other, leading a procession of armed priests, monks and scholars
through the streets. Friars from the mendicant orders were among them,
their habits tucked up, hoods thrown back, casques on their heads and
cuirasses on their breasts. All marched sword by side, dagger in
girdle, musket on shoulder, the strangest army of the church militant
ever seen. As they passed the Pont Notre Dame the papal legate was
crossing in his carriage, and was asked to stop and give his blessing.
After this benediction a salvo of musketry was called for, and some of
the host of the Lord, forgetting that their guns were loaded with
ball, killed a papal officer and wounded a servant of the ambassador
of Spain.
Four months the Parisians endured starvation and all the attendant
horrors of a siege, the incidents of which, as described by
contemporaries, are so ghastly that the pen recoils from transcribing
them. At length, when they were at the last extremity, the Duke of
Parma arrived with a Spanish army, forced Henry to raise the siege,
and revictualled the city. After war, anarchy. In November 1591 it was
discovered that secret letters were passing between Brizard, an
officer in the service of the Duke of Mayenne in Paris, and a royalist
at St. Denis. The sections demanded Brizard's instant execution, and
on his discharge by the Parlement the _cure_ of St. Jacques fulminated
against that body and declared that cold steel must be tried (_faut
jouer des couteaux_). A secret revolutionary committee of ten was
appointed, and a _papier rouge_ or lists of suspects in all the
districts of Paris was drawn up under three categories: P. (_pendus_),
those to be hanged; D. (_dagues_), those to be poignarded; C.
(_chasses_), those to be expelled. On the night of the 15th November a
meeting was held at the house of the _cure_ of St. Jacques, and in the
morning the president of the Parlement, Brisson, was seized and
dragged to the Petit Chatelet, where a revolutionary tribunal, in
black cloaks, on which were sewn large red crosses, condemned him to
death. Meanwhile two councillors of the Parlement, Larcher and Tardif,
had been seized, the latter by the _cure_ of St. Cosme, and haled to
the Chatelet. All three were dragged to a room, and the executioner
was forced to hang them from a beam; the bodies were then stripped, an
inscription was hung about their necks, and they were suspended from
the gallows in the Place de Greve. The sections believed that Paris
would rise: they only shocked the more orderly citizens. The Duke of
Mayenne, who was at Lyons, on the receipt of the news hastened to
Paris, temporised a while and, when sure of support, seized four of
the most dangerous leaders of the sections and hanged them without
trial in the Salle basse of the Louvre. All save the more violent
partisans were now weary of the strife and the Leaguers themselves
were divided. The sections aimed at a theocratic democracy; another
party favoured the Duke of Mayenne; a third, the Duke of Guise; a
fourth, the Infanta of Spain. It was decided to convoke the
States-General at Paris in 1593, and a conference was arranged with
Henry's supporters at Suresnes. Crowds flocked there, crying, "Peace,
peace; blessed be they who bring it; cursed they who prevent it."
Henry knew the supreme moment was come. France was still profoundly
Catholic: he must choose between his religion and France. He chose to
heal his country's wounds and perhaps to save her very existence.
Learned theologians were deputed to confer with him at Paris, whom he
astonished and confounded by his knowledge of Scripture; they declared
that they had never met a heretic better able to defend his cause. But
on 23rd July 1573, he professed himself convinced, and the same
evening wrote to his mistress, Gabrielle d'Estrees, that he had spoken
with the bishops, and that a hundred anxieties were making St. Denis
hateful to him. "On Sunday," he adds, "I am to take the perilous leap.
_Bonjour_, my heart; come to me early to-morrow. It seems a year since
I saw you. A million times I kiss the fair hands of my angel and the
mouth of my dear mistress."
On Sunday, under the great portal of St. Denis, the archbishop of
Bourges sat enthroned in a chair covered with white damask and
embroidered with the arms of France and of Navarre. He was attended by
many prelates and the prior and monks of St. Denis: the cross and the
book of the Gospels were held before him. Henry drew nigh. "Who are
you?" demanded the archbishop. "I am the king." "What do you ask?" "I
wish to be received in the bosom of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman
Church." "Is it your will?" "Yes, I will and desire it." Henry then
knelt and made profession of his faith, kissed the prelate's ring,
received his blessing and was led to the choir, where he knelt before
the high altar and repeated his profession of faith on the holy
Gospels amid cries of "_Vive le roi!_"
The clerical extremists in Paris anathematised all concerned. Violent
_cures_ again donned their armour, children were baptised and mass was
sung by cuirassed priests. The _cure_ of St. Cosme seized a partisan,
and with other fanatics of the League hastened to the Latin Quarter to
raise the university. But the people were heartsick of the whole
business; and when Henry entered Paris after his coronation at
Chartres, resplendent in velvet robes embroidered with gold and seated
on his dapple grey charger, his famous helmet with its white plumes
ever in his hand saluting the ladies at the windows, he was hailed
with shouts of joy. Shops were reopened, the artisan took up his tools
and the merchant went to his counter with a sigh of relief. A general
amnesty was proclaimed, and the Spanish garrison were allowed to
depart with their arms. As they filed out of the Porte St. Denis in
heavy rain, three thousand strong, the king was sitting at a window
above the gates. "Remember me to your master," he cried, "but do not
return." On the morrow the provost and sheriffs and chief citizens
came to the Louvre bearing presents of sweetmeats, sugar-plums and
malmsey wine. "Yesterday I received your hearts, to-day I receive your
sweets," the king remarked; all were charmed by his wit, his
forbearance and generosity. The stubborn university was last to give
way, but when the doctors of theology learnt that Henry had touched
for the king's evil and that many had been cured, they too were
convinced. Paris, "well worth a mass," was wooed and won. The
memorable Edict of Nantes established liberty of worship and political
equality for the Protestants. The war with Spain was brought to a
successful issue, and Henry, with his minister the Duke of Sully,
probably the greatest financial genius France has ever known, by wise
and firm statesmanship lifted the country from bankruptcy to
prosperity and contentment.
[Illustration: HOTEL DE SULLY.]
Henry, like one of his predecessors, had of _bastards et bastardes une
moult belle compagnie_, but as yet no legitimate heir. A divorce from
Marguerite of Valois and a politic marriage with the pope's niece,
Marie de' Medici,[125] gave him a magnificent dowry (600,000 golden
crowns and a yearly income of 20,000), an additional bond to the
papacy, and several children. Margot, once convinced that the divorce
was not to enable Henry to marry that _bagasse_ Gabrielle, made small
objection and soon consoled herself. In 1606 one of her discarded
lovers was executed in front of her dwelling in the palace of the
archbishop of Sens for having shot his rival in her affections, a
young page of twenty, as he was handing her into her carriage.
[Footnote 125: Her majesty, we learn from the _Memoires_ of L'Estoile,
was of a rich figure, stout, fine eyes and complexion. She used no
paint, powder or other _vilanie_.]
Like all his race, Henry was susceptible to the charms of the
daughters of Eve, but, unlike his descendants, he never sacrificed
France to their tears and wiles. When the question of the succession
was urgent and he thought of marrying Gabrielle d'Estrees, Sully
opposed the union. The impatient Gabrielle used all her powers of
fascination to compass the dismissal of the great minister, who was
present at the interview in her room at the cloister of St. Germain,
and who has left us a vivid description of the scene. Gabrielle burst
into passionate reproaches and employed in turn all the arts of
feminine guile. Her eyes streaming with tears, sobbing and wailing,
she seized her royal lover's hand and smothered it with kisses; she
called for a poignard that by plunging it into her heart he might
behold his image graven there; she appealed to his love for their
children and flung herself hysterically on the bed, protesting she
could live no longer seeing herself disgraced, and a servant whom so
many complained of, preferred to a mistress whom all praised. It was
of no avail. "Let me tell you," answered Henry, calmly, "if I must
choose between you and Sully, I would sooner part with ten mistresses
such as you than one faithful servant such as he."
In 1610 the king was making great preparations for a war with Austria,
and, on the 14th May, desiring to consult Sully, who was unwell in his
rooms at the Arsenal, he determined to spare him the fatigue of
travelling to the Louvre, and to drive to the Arsenal. With much
foreboding the king had agreed to the coronation of Marie de' Medici,
which had been celebrated at St. Denis with great pomp. The ceremony
was attended by two sinister incidents: the Gospel for the day, taken
from Mark x., included the answer of Jesus to the Pharisees who
tempted Him by asking--"Is it lawful for a man to put away his
wife?"--the Gospel was hurriedly changed; and when the usual largesse
of gold and silver pieces was thrown to the crowd not a voice cried,
"_Vive le roi_," or "_Vive la reine_." That night the king tossed
restless on his bed, pursued by evil dreams. On the morrow his
counsellors begged him to defer his journey, but nineteen plots to
assassinate him had already failed: he gently put aside their
warnings, and repeated his favourite maxim that fear had no place in a
generous heart. It was a warm day, and the king entered his open
carriage, attended by the Dukes of Epernon and Montbazon and five
other courtiers; a number of _valets de pied_ followed him. In the
narrow Rue de la Ferronnerie the carriage was stopped by a block in
the traffic, and the servants were sent round by the cemetery of the
Innocents. While the king was listening to the reading of a letter by
the Duke of Epernon, one Francis Ravaillac, who had been watching his
opportunity for twelve months, placed his foot on a wheel of the
coach, leaned forward, and plunged a knife into the king's breast.
Before he could be seized he pulled out the fatal steel and doubled
his thrust, piercing him to the heart. "_Je suis blesse_," cried
Henry, and never spoke again. Ravaillac was seized, and all the
refined cruelties inflicted on regicides were practised upon him. He
was dragged to the Place de Greve, his right hand cut off, and, with
the fatal knife, flung into the flames; the flesh was torn from his
arms, breast and legs; melted lead and boiling oil were poured into
the wounds. Horses were then tied to each of his four limbs, the body
was torn to pieces and burnt to ashes.[126] Some writers have
inculpated the Jesuits for the murder, but it may more reasonably be
attributed to the fury of a crazy fanatic. Certain it is that Henry's
heart was given to the Jesuits for the church of their college of la
Fleche, which was founded by him.
[Footnote 126: In 1586 six poor wretches convicted of plotting the
assassination of Queen Elizabeth were dragged to Tyburn, "hanged but
for a moment, taken down while the susceptibility of agony was
unimpaired and cut in pieces afterwards with due precautions for the
protraction of the pain."--Froude's _History_.]
The first Bourbon king has left his impress on the architecture of
Paris. "Soon as he was master of Paris," says a contemporary, "one saw
naught but masons at work." Small progress had been made during the
reign of Henry II.'s three sons with their father's plans for the
rebuilding of the Louvre. The work had been continued along the river
front after Lescot's death in 1578 by Baptiste du Cerceau, and
Catherine de' Medici had erected a gallery on the south, known as the
Petite Galerie--a ground-floor building with a terrace on top,
intended for a meeting-place and promenade but not for residence. She
had also begun in 1564 the palace of the Tuileries, which, like the
Louvre, was designed to be a quadrangular building and of which the
west wing alone was ever constructed, but abandoned it on being warned
by her astrologer, Ruggieri, that she should die under the ruins of a
house near St Germain.[127] Henry, soon after he had entered Paris,
elaborated a vast scheme for finishing the Tuileries, demolishing the
churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas, quadrupling the size of the
old Louvre, and joining the two palaces by continuing the Grande
Galerie, already begun by Catherine, to the west, to afford a means of
escape in the event of an attack on the Louvre. Towards the east the
hotels d'Alencon, de Bourbon and the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois
were to be demolished, and a great open space was to be levelled
between the new east front of the Louvre and the Pont Neuf. At Henry's
accession Catherine's architects, Philibert de l'Orme and Jean
Bullant, had completed the superb domed central pavilion of the
Tuileries, with its two contiguous galleries, and begun the end
pavilions, the former using the Ionic order as a delicate flattery of
Catherine, "since among the ancients that order was employed in
temples dedicated to a goddess." The gardens, with the famous maze and
Palissy's beautiful grotto or fountain, had been completed in 1476,
and for some years were a favourite promenade for Catherine and her
court. Henry's plans were so far carried out that on New Year's day,
1606, he could lead the Dauphin along the Grande Galerie to the
Pavilion de Flore at the extreme west of the river front, and enter
the south wing of the Tuileries which had been extended to meet it.
The Pavilion de Flore thus became the angle of junction between the
two palaces. An upper floor was imposed on the Petite Galerie, and
adorned with paintings representing the kings of France. Unhappily the
fire of 1661 destroyed all the portraits save that of Marie de' Medici
by Porbus, and all the subsequent decorations by Poussin. Henry
intended the ground floor of the Grande Galerie for the accommodation
of his best craftsmen--painters, sculptors, goldsmiths, tapestry
weavers, smiths, and others. The quadrangle, however, remained as the
last Valois had left it--half Renaissance, half Gothic--and the
north-east and south-east towers of the original chateau were still
standing to be drawn by Sylvestre towards the middle of the
seventeenth century.
[Footnote 127: The new palace was situated in the parish of St.
Germain l'Auxerrois, the parish church of the Louvre.]
The unfinished Hotel de Ville was taken in hand after more than
half-a-century and practically completed.[128] The larger, north
portion of the Pont Neuf was built, the two islets west of the Cite
were incorporated with the island to form the Place Dauphine and the
ground that now divides the two sections of the bridge--a new street,
the Rue Dauphine, being cut through the garden of the Augustins and
the ruins of the college of St. Denis. The Place Royale (now des
Vosges) was designed and partly built--that charming relic of
seventeenth and eighteenth century fashionable Paris, where Moliere's
_Precieuses_ lived.
[Footnote 128: The north tower was left only partially constructed,
and was finished by Louis XIII.]
Henry also partly rebuilt the Hotel Dieu, created new streets, and
widened others.[129] New fountains and quays were built; the Porte du
Temple was reopened, and the Porte des Tournelles constructed.
Unhappily, some of the old wooden bridges remained, and on Sunday,
22nd December 1596, the Pont aux Meuniers (Miller's Bridge), just
below the Pont au Change, suddenly collapsed, with all its shops and
houses, and sixty persons perished. They were not much regretted, for
most of them had enriched themselves by the plunder of Huguenots, and
during the troubles of the League. The bridge was rebuilt of wood, at
the cost of the captain of the corps of archers, and as the houses
were painted each with the figure of a bird, the new bridge was known
as the Pont aux Oiseaux (Bridge of Birds). It spanned the river from
the end of the Rue St. Denis and the arch of the Grand Chatelet to the
Tour de l'Horloge of the Palais de Justice. In 1621, however, it and
the Pont au Change were consumed by fire in a few hours and, in 1639,
the two wooden bridges were replaced by a bridge of stone, the Pont au
Change, which stood until rebuilt in 1858.
[Footnote 129: By a curious coincidence the widening of the Rue de la
Ferronnerie had been ordered just before the king was assassinated.]
[Illustration: OLD HOUSES NEAR PONT ST. MICHEL, SHOWING SPIRE OF THE
STE. CHAPELLE.]
We are able to give the impression which the Paris of Henri Quatre
made on an English traveller, a friend of Ben Jonson and author of
_Coryat's Crudities, hastily gobbled up in five months' Travell_. The
first objects that met Coryat's eye are characteristic. As he
travelled along the St. Denis road he passed "seven[130] faire
pillars of freestone at equal distances, each with an image of St.
Denis and his two companions, and a little this side of Paris was the
fairest gallows I ever saw, built on Montfaucon, which consisted of
fourteene fair pillars of freestone." He notes "the fourteene gates of
Paris, the goodly buildings, mostly of fair, white stone and"--a
detail always unpleasantly impressed on travellers--"the evil-smelling
streets, which are the dirtiest and the most stinking I ever saw in
any city in my life. Lutetia! well dothe it brooke being so called
from the Latin word _lutum_, which signifieth dirt." Coryat was
impressed by the bridges--"the goodly bridge of white freestone nearly
finished (the Pont Neuf); a famous bridge that far exceedeth this,
having one of the fairest streets in Paris called our Ladies street;
the bridge of Exchange where the goldsmiths live; St. Michael's
bridge, and the bridge of Birds." He admires the "Via Jacobea, full of
booke-sellers' faire shoppes, most plentifully furnished with bookes,
and the fair building, very spacious and broad, where the Judges sit
in the Palais de Justice, the roofs sumptuously gilt and embossed,
with an exceeding multitude of great, long bosses hanging downward."
Coryat next visited the fine quadrangle of the Louvre, whose outside
was exquisitely wrought with festoons, and decked with many stately
pillars and images. From Queen Mary's bedroom he went to a room[131]
"which excelleth not only all that are now in the world but also all
that were since the creation thereof, even a gallery, a perfect
description whereof would require a large volume, with a roofe of most
glittering and admirable beauty. Yea, so unspeakably fair is it that a
man can hardly comprehend it in his mind that hath not seen it with
his bodily eyes." The Tuileries gardens were the finest he ever beheld
for length of delectable walks.
[Footnote 130: They marked the seven resting-places of the saint as he
journeyed to St. Denis after his martyrdom.]
[Footnote 131: The Grande Galerie.]
Next day Coryat saw the one thing above all he desired to see, "that
most rare ornament of learning Isaac Casaubon," who told him to
observe "a certain profane, superstitious ceremony of the papists--a
bedde carried after a very ethnicall manner, or rather a canopy in the
form of a bedde, under which the Bishop of the city, with certain
priests, carry the Sacrament. The procession of Corpus Christi," he
adds, "though the papists esteemed it very holy, was methinks very
pitiful. The streets were sumptuously adorned with paintings and rich
cloth of arras, the costliest they could provide, the shews of Our
Lady street being so hyperbolical in pomp that it exceedeth all the
rest by many degrees. Upon public tables in the streets they exposed
rich plate as ever I saw in my life, exceeding costly goblets and what
not tending to pomp; and on the middest of the tables stood a golden
crucifix and divers other gorgeous images. Following the clergy, in
capes exceeding rich, came many couples of little singing choristers,
which, pretty innocent punies, were so egregiously deformed that moved
great pity in any relenting spectator, being so clean shaved round
about their heads that a man could perceive no more than the very
rootes of their hair."
At the royal suburb Coryat saw "St. Denis, his head enclosed in a
wonderful, rich helmet, beset with exceeding abundant pretious
stones," but the skull itself he "beheld not plainly, only the
forepart through a pretty, crystall glass, and by light of a wax
candle."