Henri I. de Bourbon, Prince de Condé--His personal appearance
and character--Jeanne d’Albret presents Henri of Navarre and
Condé to the army--The “Admiral’s pages”--The “Journey of the
Princes”--Battle of Arnay-le-Duc--Condé at La Rochelle--Henri
of Navarre is betrothed to Marguerite de Valois, and Condé to
Marie de Clèves--An awkward lover--Marriage of Condé--Massacre
of Saint-Bartholomew--The King of Navarre and Condé are ordered
to abjure their religion--Firmness of the latter, who, however,
at length yields--Humiliating position of Condé--Intrigue
between his wife and the Duc d’Anjou--Condé at the siege of La
Rochelle--Anjou elected King of Poland--He offers the hand of
his discarded mistress, Mlle. de Châteauneuf, to Nantouillet,
provost of Paris--Unpleasant consequences of the provost’s
refusal of this honour.
By his two marriages, Louis I., Prince de Condé, had had eleven
children, of whom seven--six sons and a daughter--survived him.[87] The
eldest son, Henri de Bourbon, was at this time in his seventeenth year.
In appearance, he was very short, like his father, and very slightly
built, with a countenance which betokened an extremely sensitive
nature, a nervous and delicate constitution: a high forehead, large,
expressive blue eyes, a long face, a long, straight nose, and thin
lips. In character, save in the matter of physical courage, the new
head of the House of Condé had little in common with his predecessor.
Nor is this surprising, since few princes have passed a more gloomy
boyhood. The constant companion of his mother during the last sad years
of her life, he had shared with her the hardships and dangers of the
civil war, and had been shut up in Orléans, amid the horrors of that
terrible siege. Returning home, he had seen the poor princess, “to
whom he had plighted his boundless reverence and love,”[88] slowly
languish away before his eyes, worn out by sickness and sorrow. Then
had come Condé’s second marriage, and the lad had been left to the care
of bigoted divines, who had brought him up in the strictest tenets
of the Calvinistic faith. Finally, scarcely had he been summoned to
take his place by his father’s side, than that father had been foully
slain. Thus, at the age of sixteen, Henri de Bourbon had experienced
little of life but its sorrows, and was a thoughtful, grave, and almost
melancholy youth, without any of those social qualities which had made
his father so popular, but very superior to him in the earnestness of
his religious convictions, and ready, as we shall see hereafter, to
suffer for the truth in circumstances which overcame the courage and
constancy of some even of the boldest.
On the day of Jarnac, the young prince and his cousin, Henri of
Navarre, had been with the Protestant army. But they had not been
permitted to take any part in the engagement, and had been ordered to
retire to Saintes, where they were joined by Jeanne d’Albret, who at
the first news of the defeat had left La Rochelle. Taking the two lads
with her, the indomitable Queen of Navarre hastened to the Huguenot
camp at Tonnay-Charente, and, in an eloquent speech, presented them to
the troops, and made each of them swear “on his honour, soul, and life”
never to abandon the cause. The army received them with acclamations,
and the young Prince of Béarn was forthwith chosen as its leader;
while, as a mark of its respect and gratitude for the hero whom it had
lost, the new Prince de Condé was associated with him in command.
For more than two years the double signature, “Henry, Henry de
Bourbon,” appeared at the foot of the official documents of the
Reformed party.[89] But, though always accompanied by the two young
princes, and nominally acting as their lieutenant and counsellor,
Coligny had henceforward the undivided command of the Huguenot army,
as well as the principal voice in determining the policy of his party;
and, by the camp-fire, the lads were commonly referred to as “the
Admiral’s pages.”
The young Béarnais, with his good-humoured, sunburned face, his
broad shoulders, and his wiry frame strengthened and developed by
the manly, out-door life which he had led amid the keen and bracing
air of the Pyrenees, presented a singular contrast to his slight,
delicate-looking, grave cousin. The Queen of Navarre had charged him to
love Condé as a brother and “cultivate with him an affection cemented
by the ties of blood and religion which should never be severed.”
But, though the prince, ever a dutiful son, seems to have made some
effort to follow her instructions, and though, during the remainder
of the Queen’s life, an appearance of close intimacy was strictly
maintained between the cousins, their characters and tastes were far
too dissimilar for much sympathy to have existed between them, and, in
later years, their relations became at times very strained indeed.
The summer and autumn of 1569 were disastrous to the Protestant cause.
Although, owing to the jealousy between the Court generals, in May,
the Duke of Zweibrücken’s German mercenaries were able to cross the
Loire and join the main Huguenot army, the combined forces effected
comparatively little, and at the beginning of October they experienced
a crushing defeat in the bloody battle of Moncontour.
If the Royalists had followed up their success, this might have proved
a fatal blow to the Protestants; but Charles IX., jealous of the
success of Anjou, the nominal commander at Moncontour, himself took
command of the army, and frittered its strength away in besieging
Saint-Jean-d’Angely, thus giving the Huguenots time to reorganize their
forces. Always greatest in adversity, Coligny, taking with him Henry
of Navarre and the young Condé, started southwards from Parthenay (6
October), on that wonderful march afterwards known as the “Journey
of the Princes.” A month later saw him at Montauban, where he stayed
for a while to rest his troops, and then, crossing the Garonne, he
mercilessly ravaged the country south of that river. Recrossing to the
north bank, where he was joined by Montgommery with reinforcements, he
swept down on Toulouse, burned the country houses of the members of
the Parlement in revenge for the judicial murder of one of the late
Prince de Condé’s gentlemen two years before, passed by the walls of
Carcassonne and Montpellier, and entered Nîmes. Here he turned to the
North, and marched through Dauphiné and the Lyonnais to the very heart
of France, carrying terror and devastation wherever he went.
Meanwhile, a Catholic force under the Maréchal de Cossé had gathered
in the Orléannais and marched eastwards to intercept his advance.
At Arnay-le-Duc, on 26 June 1570, the two armies met. The Royalists
outnumbered their adversaries by more than two to one, and were well
provided with artillery, whereas the Huguenots had not a single gun.
But Coligny took up a masterly position, which prevented the enemy
either from employing their cannon or from outflanking him, and drove
them back with heavy loss.
It was in this engagement that the two young princes received their
“baptism of fire.” Hitherto, notwithstanding their urgent entreaties,
Coligny had refused to allow them to expose themselves. Thus, though
they had been with the army at Moncontour, they had been ordered to
the rear before the battle actually began, accompanied by so large an
escort that, according to d’Aubigné, the Huguenot forces were thereby
seriously weakened. On the present occasion, however, Coligny’s
position was too critical for him to spare an escort, and Henri of
Navarre was accordingly given the nominal command of the first line of
cavalry, while Condé was at the head of the second. Both took part in
several charges, and gave abundant proof that they had inherited the
bravery of their warlike ancestors.
The victory of Arnay-le-Duc, following closely as it did on a series of
Huguenot successes in the West of France, had important consequences.
The miserable condition of the country, the exhausted finances, the
enmity between the Montmorency and Lorraine factions of the Catholic
party, the jealousy between Charles IX. and Anjou, and the fear of
active intervention by England, had all combined to persuade Catherine
that it was impossible to carry on the war much longer; and she now
decided that peace must be made with as little delay as possible.
Pius V. and Philip II. made every effort to dissuade her, the former
warning her that “there could be no communion between Satan and the
sons of light;” but their remonstrances were unheeded, and on 8 August,
the Peace of Saint-Germain put an end to the war, and accorded the
Protestants infinitely greater concessions than any which they had yet
obtained.[90]
The two years which followed “_la paix boiteuse et malassise_,”[91] as
the Peace of Saint-Germain was wittily called, were passed by Condé
chiefly at La Rochelle, which had now become the headquarters of the
Huguenots, and was one of the four towns which they were permitted to
hold as security for the strict observance of the edict. The religious
earnestness and gravity so far beyond his years which the young prince
showed had gained him the entire confidence of Coligny, who had decided
to delegate to him the direction of the Protestants of the West; and it
was Condé who, in the Admiral’s absence, executed his orders in Poitou
and Saintonge and kept him informed of all that was passing there.
During the greater part of the year 1571, Jeanne d’Albret and Henri
of Navarre were also at La Rochelle. If Condé had little affection
for his cousin, to his aunt he was warmly attached, while she, on her
side, seems to have looked upon him almost as a second son. As for his
step-mother, the dowager-princess, his feelings towards her were the
reverse of cordial. Not only had she never shown him any sympathy or
affection, but, having recently abandoned the Reformed faith herself,
she had surrendered her sons and stepsons to their uncle, the Cardinal
de Bourbon, to be brought up in the Catholic religion. Her conduct,
which was denounced by the Huguenots as an act of infamous treachery
to her dead husband, had naturally occasioned Condé the most intense
indignation, but, since it had occurred during the war, he had, of
course, been powerless to interfere.
In order to flatter the Huguenots and allay their suspicions, while,
at the same time, weakening their power of offence, by bringing their
nominal chief directly under her own influence, Catherine de’ Medici
was now anxious to arrange a marriage between her only unmarried
daughter, Marguerite de Valois, and Henri of Navarre; and from the
beginning of 1571 active negotiations were carried on between the
Court and La Rochelle, and Biron, Cossé, and Castelnau were in turn
despatched thither to confer with Jeanne d’Albret and the Protestant
leaders. Jeanne received the overtures of the Court with mixed
feelings. She was intensely ambitious for her idolized son and desirous
of doing everything in her power to promote the interests of her
party. But she hated Catherine and all the Valois, and entertained
the most profound distrust of their professions of friendship; and,
had the decision rested with her alone, the proffered alliance would
most certainly have been rejected. However, the Huguenot leaders were
practically unanimous in urging her to consent; the nobility of her
own little kingdom likewise pronounced for the marriage; and Henri
himself added his persuasions to theirs. And so, with a very bad grace,
the Queen yielded, and early in January, 1572, left Pau for Blois, to
settle the preliminaries with Catherine.
The negotiations for the marriage of Henri of Navarre had been preceded
by the arrangement by Jeanne d’Albret of a very advantageous match for
the young Prince de Condé. The wife selected for him was his cousin,
Marie de Clèves, Marquise d’Isles, the youngest of the three daughters
of François de Clèves, Duc de Nevers, and Marguerite de Bourbon.[92]
Marie de Clèves was not only a great heiress, but an extremely
beautiful girl, and Condé considered himself a very fortunate young
man. He had reason to think differently, however, before he had been
married many weeks.
Condé and his bride-elect were both at Blois when the Queen of Navarre
arrived there. It was some years since Jeanne had passed any time at
the Court, and it had changed very much for the worse in the interval.
In a letter to her son, she stigmatizes it, with good reason, as “the
most vicious and corrupt society that ever existed.” “No one that
I see here,” she writes, “is exempt from its evil influences. Your
cousin, the marchioness,[93] is so greatly changed that she gives no
sign of belonging to the Religion, if it be not that she abstains
from attending Mass; for, in all else, save that she abstains from
this idolatry, she conducts herself like other Papists, and my sister
_Madame la Princesse_[94] sets an even worse example. This I
write to you in confidence. The bearer of this letter will tell you
how the King emancipates himself; it is a pity. I would not for any
consideration that you should abide here. For this reason, I desire
to see you married, that you and your wife may withdraw yourselves
from this corruption; for, although I believed it to be very great,
it surpasses my anticipation. Here, it is not the men who solicit the
women, but the women the men. If you were here, you would never escape,
save by some remarkable mercy of God.”
Although Jeanne strenuously resisted all attempts of the King and
Catherine to draw her son to Blois, she felt perfectly at ease in
regard to Condé’s presence there, for the young prince’s Calvinism was
of that rigid type which made no distinction between pleasure and vice,
and, unlike his cousin, he had never shown any inclination for feminine
society. He had, nevertheless, quickly succumbed to the charms of his
beautiful _fiancée_, though his awkward attempts at love-making
must have aroused no small amount of amusement; for the Queen of
Navarre wrote to her son that “if he could not make love with better
grace than his cousin, she counselled him to leave the matter alone.”
The marriage of Condé and Marie de Clèves took place on 10 August,
1572, at the Château of Blandy, near Melun, the seat of the Marquise
de Rothelin, mother of the Dowager-Princesse de Condé, in the presence
of Charles IX., Henri of Navarre, his _fiancée_ Marguerite de
Valois, the two queens, Catherine de’ Medici and Elizabeth of Austria,
and a great number of noblemen of both religions; and was celebrated
“_tout-à-fait à la Huguenote_.” For the Reformers, however, it
seemed to take place under somewhat mournful auspices, since she who
had planned it was no more. Jeanne d’Albret had arrived in Paris in the
last week in May; on 4 June she was taken ill, and on the 9th she died,
at the age of forty-four. Sinister rumour were circulated concerning
her death, and it was asserted that the Queen-Mother had caused her to
be poisoned. But, as we have pointed out in a previous work, there can
be no question that Jeanne’s health had been gradually failing for some
time past, and the most trustworthy evidence goes to indicate that she
died a natural death.[95]
Immediately after the marriage, Condé and his bride came to Paris
for the marriage of the young King of Navarre, which was celebrated
with the utmost magnificence on Monday, 18 August. But the wedding
festivities were of very brief duration; for on the Friday came the
attempted assassination of Coligny, and on the Sunday the terrible
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, to which Catherine had been driven by the
failure of the lesser crime.
Very early in the morning--the massacre had begun about two hours
after midnight by the murder of Coligny at his lodging in the Rue des
Fossés-Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois--the King of Navarre and Condé, who
were both lodged with their brides in the Louvre, were arrested and
conducted to Charles IX.’s cabinet. “Take that _canaille_ away!”
cried Charles, pointing to the attendants of Navarre, who had been
apprehended with their master; and the hapless gentlemen were led
out and mercilessly butchered in the courtyard of the palace. Then
the half-mad King, who was beside himself with passion, informed the
princes that all that was being done was by his orders; that they had
allowed themselves to be made the leaders of his enemies, and that
their lives were justly forfeited. As, however, they were his kinsmen
and connections, he would pardon them, if they conformed to the
religion of their ancestors, the only one he would henceforth tolerate
in his realm. If not, they must prepare to share the fate of their
friends.
Navarre, of a more politic and wary disposition than his cousin, and,
besides, somewhat indifferent on the subject of religion, assumed a
conciliatory tone, begging the King not to compel him to outrage his
conscience, and to consider that he was now not only his kinsman, but
closely connected with him by marriage. Condé, on the other hand,
courageously replied that he refused to believe the King capable of
violating his most sacred pledges, but that he was accountable for his
religion to God alone, and would remain faithful to it, even if it cost
him his life. “Madman! conspirator! rebel! son of a rebel!” cried the
infuriated monarch. “If in three days you do not change your tone, I
will have you strangled!” And he dismissed them from his presence, with
directions that they should be most strictly guarded.
The conversion of the two princes greatly occupied the Court. The young
Queen of Navarre, a fervent Catholic, spared no effort to persuade
her husband to return to the fold of the Church, and found zealous
auxiliaries in the Cardinal de Bourbon, the Queen’s confessor the
Jesuit Maldonato, and Sureau des Roziers, an ex-Huguenot pastor, who
had been converted to Catholicism by the sound of arquebuses. The
astute Béarnais, who already seems to have had some presentiment of
the part he was one day to play, was not the man to sacrifice a great
future to his attachment to the Reformed doctrines, and accordingly
feigned to lend an attentive ear to the arguments of his teachers.
Condé was the object of like solicitation, to which, however, he
replied with anger and contempt. His obstinacy so enraged the King
that one day, when he learned that the prince had proved more than
usually contumacious, he called for his arms, swearing that he would
proceed to his cousin’s apartments, at the head of his guards, and
slay him with his own hand. Probably, he only intended to intimidate
him into submission; but his queen, the gentle and pious Elizabeth of
Austria, believing that he was in earnest, threw herself at his feet,
and besought him not to stain his hands with his kinsman’s blood. His
Majesty yielded to her entreaties and contented himself with summoning
Condé to his presence, and, when he appeared, shouting in a voice of
thunder: “Mass, death, or Bastille! Choose!” “God allows me not, my
lord and king,” replied the prince quietly, “to choose the first. Of
the others, be it at your pleasure, whichever God may in His providence
direct!”
Despite this bold answer, he shortly afterwards consented to abjure,
“laying upon the head of Des Roziers the risk of his damnation”; the
King of Navarre did likewise; and on 3 October, the “converted” princes
addressed to the Pope a very humble letter, begging him to accept their
submission and admit them into the fold. Condé and Marie de Clèves
also expressed their regret for having allowed themselves to be united
in wedlock without the rites of Holy Church.
Gregory XIII., who had just caused a medal to be struck with his own
portrait on one side, and, on the other, a destroying angel immolating
the Huguenots, was graciously pleased to accord the petition of the
young couple, and granted them absolution and dispensation, in virtue
of which they were married again, this time according to the Catholic
ritual, in the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (December, 1572).
Notwithstanding their abjuration, the King of Navarre and Condé
were still regarded with suspicion and remained in a sort of
quasi-captivity. Their position was a difficult one, and it must have
needed all their self-control to prevent them from openly resenting the
sneers and taunts which the nobles of the Court felt themselves safe in
levelling at them. “On All Hallows’ Eve,” writes L’Estoile, “the King
of Navarre was playing tennis with the Duc de Guise, when the scant
consideration which was shown this little prisoner of a kinglet, at
whom he threw all kinds of jests and taunts, deeply pained a number of
honest people who were watching them play.”[96]
The “kinglet,” however, knew how to accommodate himself to
circumstances, and was often able to turn the laugh on his own side by
some lively repartée. After a while, too, Charles IX., who had always
entertained a strong liking for Henri, began to treat him with kindness
and even affection, in consequence of which even the Guises felt
obliged to show him a certain degree of deference.
[Illustration: HENRI I DE BOURBON, PRINCE DE CONDÉ
FROM A LITHOGRAPH BY DELPECH, AFTER THE PAINTING BY MAUZAISSE]
With Condé, however, it was very different. To one of his austere
nature, this Court, which had degenerated to such an appalling extent,
owing to the corruption of morals produced by the civil wars, that vice
had become the mode, and virtue, even ordinary decency, was mocked at
and derided, must have seemed the very anti-chamber of hell; and he was
at no pains to conceal the disgust with which it inspired him. The King
of Navarre might drink and gamble with the murderers of his faithful
followers, and make love to the high-born courtesans who had passed
obscene jests on the stripped corpses of the Huguenot nobles as they
lay in the courtyard of the Louvre on that terrible morning. Policy
required, he said, that he and his cousin should dissimulate their
feelings. Well, let him do it! For himself, he would have no dealings
with them, beyond that which ordinary courtesy demanded. And so he
stood aloof, a gloomy, silent figure--an object of suspicion, dislike
and derision to King and courtiers alike--with none to sympathize or
condole with him in his loneliness and humiliation.
For even his wife had failed him. She was but a giddy butterfly,
who, though educated in the Reformed Faith, had never professed any
attachment for it, and had forsaken it without a regret. As for her
husband, she appears to have married him merely because he happened
to be the best match which offered itself, and because her relatives
desired it. His sombre nature, embittered by the new trials to which he
was being subjected, was but little to her taste, and she infinitely
preferred the society of the Duc d’Anjou, who had conceived for her a
most violent passion.
If we are to believe Brantôme, this affair had begun some few months
before the lady’s marriage to Condé, and Anjou had not been permitted
to sigh in vain. “This same prince [Anjou],” he writes, “aware that
she [Marie de Clèves] was about to marry a prince [Condé] who had
displeased him and very much troubled the State of his brother [Charles
IX.], debauched her ... and then, in two months’ time, she was given to
the aforesaid prince [Condé] to wife, as a pretended virgin, which was
a very sweet revenge.”
We can well believe that the seduction of the promised wife of an
enemy would have been just the kind of exploit to appeal to the future
Henri III.; but Brantôme is too incorrigible a scandalmonger for much
reliance to be placed on his unsupported testimony. However, that
may be, Anjou’s admiration for Marie de Clèves was now the talk of
the Court, and the poet Philippe Desportes, who prostituted his muse
to the services of the last Valois, as we shall see Malherbe, at a
later date, minister to the amorous fancies of Henri IV., hastened
to immortalize the affair in verse, and composed an elegy, in which
the lovers figured under the names of Eurylas and Olympias, and the
jealousy of the husband was unmercifully ridiculed.
Anjou was already provided with a mistress in the person of one
of Catherine’s maids-of-honour, Renée de Rieux, demoiselle de
Châteauneuf--called _la belle_ Châteauneuf--a ravishing blonde of
twenty summers, with wonderful blue eyes, a complexion of lilies and
roses, and “hair which looked like a crown of gold.” She passed for the
most perfect beauty of the Court, and one could pay a lady no higher
compliment than to say that she resembled her.[97]
Mlle. de Châteauneuf was so proud of the distinction which his Royal
Highness had conferred upon her that she was prepared to make any
sacrifice rather than lose him. Anjou already showed a marked taste
for the ornaments and dress proper to the other sex--a caprice which
he carried to the most extravagant lengths when he became King of
France[98]--and wore habitually “a double row of rings on his fingers
and pendants in his ears.” In the hope of retaining his wayward
affections, the poor lady ruined herself in jewellery, and covered her
royal lover with gold chains and costly trinkets of every description.
He accepted them all with alacrity; nevertheless, the star of _la
belle_ Châteauneuf paled before that of the Princesse de Condé and
she suffered the fate which had befallen Isabelle de Limeuil. She was
not called upon to restore the presents which Anjou had made her--she
had given far more than she had ever received--but, on the other hand,
she had the mortification of seeing those which she had made the prince
decorating the person of her triumphant rival. “In order to show,”
writes Brantôme, “that he had abandoned his former mistress for her
[the Princesse de Condé], and that he desired to honour and serve her
entirely, without bestowing a thought on the other, he gave her all
the favours, jewels, rings, portraits, bracelets, and pretty conceits
of every kind which his former mistress had given him, which being
perceived by her, she was like to die with mortification, and was
unable to keep silence about it, but was contented to compromise the
reputation of the other by compromising her own.”
The amours of Anjou and Marie de Clèves were interrupted by the
outbreak of the fourth civil war. For a moment, Catherine had deluded
herself into the belief that the Huguenot party was expiring at her
feet, but she soon learned that religions do not die beneath the knives
of assassins. Coligny, La Rochefoucauld, Soubise, Pilles, and other
aristocratic leaders had perished in the St. Bartholomew; Navarre and
Condé had been constrained to renounce their faith; Montgommery and
La Noue were in exile; the Protestant noblesse was disheartened and
disorganized by the loss of its chiefs. But the popular element in the
Reform party saved it, and raised the banner which was falling from
the hands of the nobility. The citizens of La Rochelle, Montauban and
Sancerre continued the struggle which the Bourbons and Châtillons had
begun, demanding not only religious toleration, but the redress of
political grievances; and other towns in the South and West followed
their example.
The Government determined on the reduction of La Rochelle, and a
formidable army was despatched thither, under the command of Anjou;
and the “converted” Bourbons were ordered to accompany it. The unhappy
Condé must have felt that his cup of humiliation was indeed filled to
overflowing when he found himself marching against the stronghold of
Protestantism--against those brave citizens amongst whom he counted so
many personal friends--beneath the banner of the man who, after causing
his father to be murdered, had robbed him of the affection of his wife.
When the siege began, he courted danger with the eagerness of a man
weary of life; but, as not infrequently happens in such circumstances,
the balls passed him by, and, though men fell fast around him, he
himself remained unscathed.
La Rochelle offered an heroic resistance, and at the end of four months
the royal army had lost nearly 20,000 men, including the Duc d’Aumale,
and was no nearer success than when the trenches were opened. In the
meanwhile, Anjou, thanks to the dexterity of his mother’s diplomatic
agents, had been elected King of Poland; and, on the pretext that it
was undesirable that the Polish Ambassadors should find him engaged
in besieging a Protestant town, acceptable terms were offered to the
Rochellois, and the siege was raised. A month later (July, 1573), the
Edict of Boulogne granted the Huguenots even better terms than had been
promised them by the Peace of Saint-Germain.
The new King of Poland seemed in no hurry to take possession of his
throne, and manifested very little enthusiasm for what he regarded
as a kind of exile, far removed from the Court of the Valois and the
pleasures which he held so dear. He had become so desperately enamoured
of the Princesse de Condé that the prospect of parting from her was
extremely distasteful to him, and he also feared, that, in the event
of the death of Charles IX.--the unhappy King, who had been a changed
man since the St. Bartholomew, was now in consumption, and it was
obvious that he had not long to live--his absence might result in his
younger brother, François, Duc d’Alençon, seizing the throne. These
considerations led him to linger in Paris until the end of September;
and it was only when the King informed him that, “if he did not go of
his own free will, he would make him go by force,” that he took his
departure.
Before leaving Paris, his Polish Majesty, smitten perhaps by
compunction for the shabby way in which he had treated Mlle. de
Châteauneuf, sought to make amends by providing her with a husband. In
this intention, he cast his eyes upon a very wealthy citizen, Duprat
de Nantouillet, provost of Paris. The provost, however, showed himself
very little flattered by the rôle proposed to him and peremptorily
declined the lady’s hand. Transported with rage, the prince determined
to be revenged, and, having taken counsel with Charles IX. and the King
of Navarre, sent word to Nantouillet that they were all three coming
to sup with him, and proceeded to his house, accompanied by a band of
courtiers. Their visit occurred at a most inconvenient moment for the
worthy provost, who happened to have selected that very day to pay off
a little score of his own against some rival in love or politics, for
which purpose he had concealed four bravos in his house. However, he
put the best face on the matter he could, and provided his uninvited
guests with a most sumptuous repast, which had such an exhilarating
effect upon some of the company, that they finished up the evening by
breaking open their host’s coffers, and carrying off all his silver
plate and about 50,000 livres in money.
Next morning, Christophe de Thou, First President of the Parlement of
Paris, requested an audience of Charles IX. and told him that this
nocturnal escapade had excited the greatest indignation in the city.
His Majesty swore that he had had nothing whatever to do with it, and
that it was a gross calumny to assert that he was responsible. “I am
delighted to hear it,” replied the magistrate, “and I am going to order
an enquiry and punish the guilty.” “No, no!” cried the King, “don’t
trouble yourself about this matter; simply tell Nantouillet that, if
he demands satisfaction for the loss he has suffered, he will get the
worst of it.”
The unfortunate Nantouillet thereupon decided to put up with the loss
of his plate and money, lest a worse fate should befall him. But his
troubles were not yet over, for one day, while walking in the street,
he happened to meet Mlle. de Châteauneuf, on horseback. No sooner did
the indignant beauty perceive the man who had dared to refuse her hand,
than she rode up to him, and proceeded to belabour him soundly with her
riding-whip, to the great amusement of the onlookers.