eye-witness whom we propose to quote, begins. Father Le Bel was
present at the terrible execution of the queen's vengeance on
Monaldeschi, and was furnished with copies of the whole correspondence
which had been abstracted from the possession of the Roman lady.
Having been trusted with the secret, he is wisely and honourably
silent throughout his narrative on the subject of Monaldeschi's
offence. Such particulars of the Italian's baseness and ingratitude as
have been presented here, have been gathered from the contradictory
reports which were current at the time, and which have been preserved
by the old French collectors of historical anecdotes. The details of
the extraordinary punishment of Monaldeschi's offence which are now to
follow, may be given in the words of Father Le Bel himself. The reader
will understand that his narrative begins immediately after
Christina's discovery of the perfidy of her favourite.
* * * * *
The sixth of November, sixteen hundred and fifty-seven (writes Father
Le Bel), at a quarter past nine in the morning, Queen Christina of
Sweden, being at that time lodged in the Royal Palace of
Fontainebleau, sent one of her men servants to my convent, to obtain
an interview with me. The messenger, on being admitted to my presence,
inquired if I was the superior of the convent, and when I replied in
the affirmative, informed me that I was expected to present myself
immediately before the Queen of Sweden.
Fearful of keeping her Majesty waiting, I followed the man at once to
the palace, without waiting to take any of my brethren from the
convent with me.
After a little delay in the antechamber, I was shown into the Queen's
room. She was alone; and I saw, by the expression of her face, as I
respectfully begged to be favoured with her commands, that something
was wrong. She hesitated for a moment; then told me, rather sharply,
to follow her to a place where she might speak with the certainty of
not being overheard. She led me into the Galerie des Cerfs, and,
turning round on me suddenly, asked if we had ever met before. I
informed her Majesty that I had once had the honour of presenting my
respects to her; that she had received me graciously, and that there
the interview had ended. She nodded her head and looked about her a
little; then said, very abruptly, that I wore a dress (referring to
my convent costume) which encouraged her to put perfect faith in my
honour; and she desired me to promise beforehand that I would keep the
secret with which she was about to entrust me as strictly as if I had
heard it in the confessional. I answered respectfully that it was part
of my sacred profession to be trusted with secrets; that I had never
betrayed the private affairs of any one; and that I could answer for
myself as worthy to be honoured by the confidence of a queen.
Upon this, her Majesty handed me a packet of papers sealed in three
places, but having no superscription of any sort. She ordered me to
keep it under lock and key, and to be prepared to give it her back
again before any person in whose presence she might see fit to ask me
for it. She further charged me to remember the day, the hour, and the
place in which she had given me the packet; and with that last piece
of advice she dismissed me. I left her alone in the gallery, walking
slowly away from me, with her head drooping on her bosom, and her
mind, as well as I could presume to judge, perturbed by anxious
thoughts.[1]
On Saturday, the tenth of November, at one o'clock in the afternoon, I
was sent for to the Palace again. I took the packet out of my private
cabinet, feeling that I might be asked for it; and then followed the
messenger as before. This time he led me at once to the Galerie des
Cerfs. The moment I entered it, he shut the door behind me with such
extraordinary haste and violence, that I felt a little startled. As
soon as I recovered myself, I saw her Majesty standing in the middle
of the gallery, talking to one of the gentlemen of her Court, who was
generally known by the name of The Marquis, and whom I soon
ascertained to be the Marquis Monaldeschi, Grand Equerry of the Queen
of Sweden. I approached her Majesty and made my bow--then stood before
her, waiting until she should think proper to address me.
With a stern look on her face, and with a loud, clear, steady voice,
she asked me, before the Marquis and before three other men who were
also in the gallery, for the packet which she had confided to my care.
As she made that demand, two of the three men moved back a few paces,
while the third, the captain of her guard, advanced rather nearer to
her. I handed her back the packet. She looked at it thoughtfully for a
little while; then opened it, and took out the letters and written
papers which it contained, handed them to the Marquis Monaldeschi, and
insisted on his reading them. When he had obeyed, she asked him, with
the same stern look and the same steady voice, whether he had any
knowledge of the documents which he had just been reading. The Marquis
turned deadly pale, and answered that he had now read the papers
referred to for the first time.
"Do you deny all knowledge of them?" said the Queen. "Answer me
plainly, sir. Yes or no?"
The Marquis turned paler still. "I deny all knowledge of them," he
said, in faint tones, with his eyes on the ground.
"Do you deny all knowledge of these too?" said the Queen, suddenly
producing a second packet of manuscript from under her dress, and
thrusting it in the Marquis's face.
He started, drew back a little, and answered not a word. The packet
which the Queen had given to me contained copies only. The original
papers were those which she had just thrust in the Marquis's face.
"Do you deny your own seal and your own handwriting?" she asked.
He murmured a few words, acknowledging both the seal and the
handwriting to be his own, and added some phrases of excuse, in which
he endeavoured to cast the blame that attached to the writing of the
letters on the shoulders of other persons. While he was speaking, the
three men in attendance on the Queen silently closed round him.
Her Majesty heard him to the end. "You are a traitor," she said, and
turned her back on him.
The three men, as she spoke those words, drew their swords.
The Marquis heard the clash of the blades against the scabbards, and,
looking quickly round, saw the drawn swords behind him. He caught the
Queen by the arm immediately, and drew her away with him, first into
one corner of the gallery, then into another, entreating her in the
most moving terms to listen to him, and to believe in the sincerity of
his repentance. The Queen let him go on talking without showing the
least sign of anger or impatience. Her colour never changed; the stern
look never left her countenance. There was something awful in the
clear, cold, deadly resolution which her eyes expressed while they
rested on the Marquis's face.
At last she shook herself free from his grasp, still without betraying
the slightest irritation. The three men with the drawn swords, who had
followed the Marquis silently as he led the Queen from corner to
corner of the gallery, now closed round him again, as soon as he was
left standing alone. There was perfect silence for a minute or more.
Then the Queen addressed herself to me.
"Father Le Bel," she said, "I charge you to bear witness that I treat
this man with the strictest impartiality." She pointed, while she
spoke, to the Marquis Monaldeschi with a little ebony riding-whip
that she carried in her hand. "I offer that worthless traitor all the
time he requires--more time than he has any right to ask for--to
justify himself if he can."
The Marquis hearing these words, took some letters from a place of
concealment in his dress, and gave them to the Queen, along with a
small bunch of keys. He snatched these last from his pocket so
quickly, that he drew out with them a few small silver coins which
fell to the floor. As he addressed himself to the Queen again, she
made a sign with her ebony riding-whip to the men with the drawn
swords; and they retired towards one of the windows of the gallery. I,
on my side, withdrew out of hearing. The conference which ensued
between the Queen and the Marquis lasted nearly an hour. When it was
over, her Majesty beckoned the men back again with the whip, and then
approached the place where I was standing.
"Father Le Bel," she said, in her clear, ringing, resolute tones,
"there is no need for me to remain here any longer. I leave that man,"
she pointed to the Marquis again, "to your care. Do all that you can
for the good of his soul. He has failed to justify himself, and I doom
him to die."
If I had heard sentence pronounced against myself, I could hardly have
been more terrified than I was when the Queen uttered those last
words. The Marquis heard them where he was standing, and flung himself
at her feet. I dropped on my knees by his side, and entreated her to
pardon him, or at least to visit his offence with some milder
punishment than the punishment of death.
"I have said the words," she answered, addressing herself only to me;
"and no power under Heaven shall make me unsay them. Many a man has
been broken alive on the wheel for offences which were innocence
itself, compared with the offence which this perjured traitor has
committed against me. I have trusted him as I might have trusted a
brother; he has infamously betrayed that trust; and I exercise my
royal rights over the life of a traitor. Say no more to me. I tell you
again, he is doomed to die."
With those words the Queen quitted the gallery, and left me alone with
Monaldeschi and the three executioners who were waiting to kill him.
The unhappy man dropped on his knees at my feet, imploring me to
follow the Queen, and make one more effort to obtain his pardon.
Before I could answer a word, the three men surrounded him, held the
points of their swords to his sides--without, however, actually
touching him--and angrily recommended him to make his confession to
me, without wasting any more time. I entreated them, with the tears
in my eyes, to wait as long as they could, so as to give the Queen
time to reflect, and, perhaps, to falter in her deadly intentions
towards the Marquis. I succeeded in producing such an impression on
the chief of the three men, that he left us, to obtain an interview
with the Queen, and to ascertain if there was any change in her
purpose. After a very short absence he came back, shaking his head.
"There is no hope for you," he said, addressing Monaldeschi. "Make
your peace with Heaven. Prepare yourself to die!"
"Go to the Queen!" cried the Marquis, kneeling before me with clasped
hands. "Go to the Queen yourself; make one more effort to save me! O,
Father Le Bel, run one more risk--venture one last entreaty--before
you leave me to die!"
"Will you wait till I come back?" I said to the three men.
"We will wait," they answered, and lowered their sword-points to the
ground.
I found the Queen alone in her room, without the slightest appearance
of agitation in her face or her manner. Nothing that I could say had
the slightest effect on her. I adjured her by all that religion holds
most sacred, to remember that the noblest privilege of any sovereign
is the privilege of granting mercy; that the first of Christian duties
is the duty of forgiving. She heard me unmoved. Seeing that
entreaties were thrown away, I ventured, at my own proper hazard, on
reminding her that she was not living now in her own kingdom of
Sweden, but that she was the guest of the King of France, and lodged
in one of his own palaces; and I boldly asked her if she had
calculated the possible consequences of authorising the killing of one
of her attendants inside the walls of Fontainebleau, without any
preliminary form of trial, or any official notification of the offence
that he had committed. She answered me coldly, that it was enough that
she knew the unpardonable nature of the offence of which Monaldeschi
had been guilty; that she stood in a perfectly independent position
towards the King of France; that she was absolute mistress of her own
actions, at all times and in all places; and that she was accountable
to nobody under Heaven for her conduct towards her subjects and
servants, over whose lives and liberties she possessed sovereign
rights, which no consideration whatever should induce her to resign.
Fearful as I was of irritating her, I still ventured on reiterating my
remonstrances. She cut them short by hastily signing to me to leave
her.
As she dismissed me, I thought I saw a slight change pass over her
face; and it occurred to me that she might not have been indisposed at
that moment to grant some respite, if she could have done so without
appearing to falter in her resolution, and without running the risk
of letting Monaldeschi escape her. Before I passed the door, I
attempted to take advantage of the disposition to relent which I
fancied I had perceived in her; but she angrily reiterated the gesture
of dismissal before I had spoken half-a-dozen words. With a heavy
heart, I yielded to necessity, and left her.
On returning to the gallery, I found the three men standing round the
Marquis, with their sword-points on the floor, exactly as I had left
them.
"Is he to live or to die?" they asked when I came in.
There was no need for me to reply in words; my face answered the
question. The Marquis groaned heavily, but said nothing. I sat myself
down on a stool, and beckoned to him to come to me, and begged him, as
well as my terror and wretchedness would let me, to think of
repentance, and to prepare for another world. He began his confession
kneeling at my feet, with his head on my knees. After continuing it
for some time, he suddenly started to his feet with a scream of
terror. I contrived to quiet him, and to fix his thoughts again on
heavenly things. He completed his confession, speaking sometimes in
Latin, sometimes in French, sometimes in Italian, according as he
could best explain himself in the agitation which now possessed him.
Just as he had concluded, the Queen's chaplain entered the gallery.
Without waiting to receive absolution, the unhappy Marquis rushed away
from me to the chaplain, and, still clinging desperately to the hope
of life, besought him to intercede with the Queen. The two talked
together in low tones, holding each other by the hand. When their
conference was over, the chaplain left the gallery again, taking with
him the chief of the three executioners who were appointed to carry
out the Queen's deadly purpose. After a short absence, this man
returned without the chaplain. "Get your absolution," he said briefly
to the Marquis, "and make up your mind to die."
Saying these words, he seized Monaldeschi; pressed him back against
the wall at the end of the gallery, just under the picture of Saint
Germain; and, before I could interfere, or even turn aside from the
sight, struck at the Marquis's right side with his sword. Monaldeschi
caught the blade with his hand, cutting three of his fingers in the
act. At the same moment the point touched his side and glanced off.
Upon this, the man who had struck at him exclaimed, "He has armour
under his clothes," and, at the same moment, stabbed Monaldeschi in
the face. As he received the wound, he turned round towards me, and
cried out loudly, "Father Le Bel! Father Le Bel!"
I advanced towards him immediately. As I did so, the man who had
wounded him retired a little, and signed to his two companions to
withdraw also. The Marquis, with one knee on the ground, asked pardon
of God, and said certain last words in my ear. I immediately gave him
absolution, telling him that he must atone for his sins by suffering
death, and that he must pardon those who were about to kill him.
Having heard my words, he flung himself forward on the floor. While he
was falling, one of the three executioners who had not assailed him as
yet, struck at his head, and wounded him on the surface of the skull.
The Marquis sank on his face; then raised himself a little, and signed
to the men to kill him outright, by striking him on the neck. The same
man who had last wounded him, obeyed by cutting two or three times at
his neck, without, however, doing him any great injury. For it was
indeed true that he wore armour under his clothes, which armour
consisted of a shirt of mail weighing nine or ten pounds, and rising
so high round his neck, inside his collar, as to defend it
successfully from any chance blow with a sword.
Seeing this, I came forward to exhort the Marquis to bear his
sufferings with patience, for the remission of his sins. While I was
speaking, the chief of the three executioners advanced, and asked me
if I did not think it was time to give Monaldeschi the finishing
stroke. I pushed the man violently away from me, saying that I had no
advice to offer on the matter, and telling him that if I had any
orders to give, they would be for the sparing of the Marquis's life,
and not for the hastening of his death. Hearing me speak in those
terms, the man asked my pardon, and confessed that he had done wrong
in addressing me on the subject at all.
He had hardly finished making his excuses to me, when the door of the
gallery opened. The unhappy Marquis hearing the sound, raised himself
from the floor, and, seeing that the person who entered was the
Queen's chaplain, dragged himself along the gallery, holding on by the
tapestry that hung from the walls, until he reached the feet of the
holy man. There, he whispered a few words (as if he was confessing) to
the chaplain, who, after first asking my permission, gave him
absolution, and then returned to the Queen.
As the chaplain closed the door, the man who had struck the Marquis on
the neck, stabbed him adroitly with a long narrow sword in the throat,
just above the edge of the shirt of mail. Monaldeschi sank on his
right side, and spoke no more. For a quarter of an hour longer he
still breathed, during which time I prayed by him, and exhorted him as
I best could. When the bleeding from this last wound ceased, his life
ceased with it. It was then a quarter to four o'clock. The death agony
of the miserable man had lasted, from the time of the Queen's first
pronouncing sentence on him, for nearly three hours.
I said the De Profundis over his body. While I was praying, the three
executioners sheathed their swords, and the chief of them rifled the
Marquis's pockets. Finding nothing on him but a prayer-book and a
small knife, the chief beckoned to his companions, and they all three
marched to the door in silence, went out, and left me alone with the
corpse.
A few minutes afterwards I followed them, to go and report what had
happened to the Queen.
I thought her colour changed a little when I told her that Monaldeschi
was dead; but those cold clear eyes of hers never softened, and her
voice was still as steady and firm as when I first heard its tones on
entering the gallery that day. She spoke very little, only saying to
herself, "He is dead, and he deserved to die!" Then, turning to me,
she added, "Father, I leave the care of burying him to you; and, for
my own part, I will charge myself with the expense of having masses
enough said for the repose of his soul." I ordered the body to be
placed in a coffin, which I instructed the bearers to remove to the
churchyard on a tumbril, in consequence of the great weight of the
corpse, of the misty rain that was falling, and of the bad state of
the roads. On Monday, the twelfth of November, at a quarter to six in
the evening, the Marquis was buried in the parish church of Avon,
near the font of holy water. The next day the Queen sent one hundred
livres, by two of her servants, for masses for the repose of his soul.
* * * * *
Thus ends the extraordinary narrative of Father Le Bel. It is
satisfactory to record, as some evidence of the progress of humanity,
that this barbarous murder, which would have passed unnoticed in the
feudal times, as an ordinary and legitimate exercise of a sovereign's
authority over a vassal, excited, in the middle of the seventeenth
century, the utmost disgust and horror throughout Paris. The prime
minister at that period, Cardinal Mazarin (by no means an
over-scrupulous man, as all readers of French history know), wrote
officially to Christina, informing her that "a crime so atrocious as
that which had just been committed under her sanction, in the Palace
of Fontainebleau, must be considered as a sufficient cause for
banishing the Queen of Sweden from the court and dominions of his
sovereign, who, in common with every honest man in the kingdom, felt
horrified at the lawless outrage which had just been committed on the
soil of France."
To this letter Queen Christina sent the following answer, which, as a
specimen of spiteful effrontery, has probably never been matched:
"MONSIEUR MAZARIN,--Those who have communicated to you the details of
the death of my equerry, Monaldeschi, knew nothing at all about it. I
think it highly absurd that you should have compromised so many people
for the sake of informing yourself about one simple fact. Such a
proceeding on your part, ridiculous as it is, does not, however, much
astonish me. What I am amazed at, is, that you and the king your
master should have dared to express disapproval of what I have done.
"Understand, all of you--servants and masters, little people and
great--that it was my sovereign pleasure to act as I did. I neither
owe, nor render, an account of my actions to any one,--least of all,
to a bully like you.
* * * * *
"It may be well for you to know, and to report to any one whom you can
get to listen to you, that Christina cares little for your court, and
less still for you. When I want to revenge myself, I have no need of
your formidable power to help me. My honour obliged me to act as I
did; my will is my law, and you ought to know how to respect it....
Understand, if you please, that wherever I choose to live, there I am
Queen; and that the men about me, rascals as they may be, are better
than you and the ragamuffins whom you keep in your service.
* * * * *
"Take my advice, Mazarin, and behave yourself for the future so as to
merit my favour; you cannot, for your own sake, be too anxious to
deserve it Heaven preserve you from venturing on any more disparaging
remarks about my conduct! I shall hear of them, if I am at the other
end of the world, for I have friends and followers in my service who
are as unscrupulous and as vigilant as any in yours, though it is
probable enough that they are not quite so heavily bribed."
After replying to the prime minister of France in those terms,
Christina was wise enough to leave the kingdom immediately.
For three years more, she pursued her travels. At the expiration of
that time, her cousin, the king of Sweden, in whose favour she had
abdicated, died. She returned at once to her own country, with the
object of possessing herself once more of the royal power. Here, the
punishment of the merciless crime that she had sanctioned overtook her
at last. The brave and honest people of Sweden refused to be governed
by the woman who had ordered the murder of Monaldeschi, and who had
forsaken the national religion for which her father died. Threatened
with the loss of her revenues as well as the loss of her sovereignty,
if she remained in Sweden, the proud and merciless Christina yielded
for the first time in her life. She resigned once more all right and
title to the royal dignity, and left her native country for the last
time. The final place of her retirement was Rome. She died there in
the year sixteen hundred and eighty-nine. Even in the epitaph which
she ordered to be placed on her tomb, the strange and daring character
of the woman breaks out. The whole record of that wild and wicked
existence, was summed up with stern brevity in this one line:
CHRISTINA LIVED SEVENTY-TWO YEARS.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Although Father Le Bel discreetly abstains from mentioning the
fact, it seems clear from the context that he was permitted to read,
and that he did read, the papers contained in the packet.
SOCIAL GRIEVANCES.--II.
A PETITION TO THE NOVEL-WRITERS.
[Communicated by a Romantic Old Gentleman.]
I hope nobody will be alarmed if I confess that I am about to disclose
the existence of a Disreputable Society, in one of the most
respectable counties in England. I dare not be more particular as to
the locality, and I cannot possibly mention the members by name. But I
have no objection to admit that I am perpetual Secretary, that my wife
is President, that my daughters are Council, and that my nieces form
the Society. Our object is to waste our time, misemploy our
intellects, and ruin our morals--or, in other words, to enjoy the
prohibited luxury of novel-reading.