palace; and in the open space before it, which was at that time railed
off, was drawn up a long double line of guards, forming a lane through
which it was necessary to pass to the gates. The well-known Crillon,
celebrated for his determination and bravery, was at their head; and
the Duke of Guise, obliged to pause in order to suffer the chair of
the Queen-mother to pass on first, bowed to the commander, whom he
knew and respected.
Crillon scarcely returned his salutation, but looked frowning along
the double row of his soldiery. The people, close by the railings,
watched every movement, and a murmur of something like apprehension
for their favourite ran through them as they watched these signs. But
not a moment's pause marked the slightest hesitation in the Duke of
Guise. With his head raised and his eyes flashing, he drew forward the
hilt of his unconquered sword ready for his hand, and holding the
scabbard in his left, strode after the chair of the Queen till the
gates of the Louvre closed upon him and his train.
A number of officers and gentlemen were waiting in the vestibule to
receive the Queen-mother, who however gave her hand to the Duke of
Guise to assist her from her chair. On him they gazed with eyes of
wonder and of scrutiny, as if they would fain have discovered what
feelings were in the heart of one so hated and dreaded by the King, at
a moment when he stood with closed doors within a building filled with
his enemies, and surrounded by soldiers ready to massacre him at a
word. But the fire which the menacing look of Crillon had brought into
the eyes of the Duke had now passed away, and all was calm dignity and
easy though grave self-possession. The eye wandered not round the
hall; the lip, though not compressed, was firm and motionless, except
when he smiled in saluting some of those around whom he knew, or in
speaking a few words to the Queen-mother, whose dress had become
somewhat entangled with a mantle of sables which she had worn in the
chair.
As soon as it was detached, one of the officers of the household said,
bowing low, "His Majesty has commanded me, Madam, to conduct you and
his Highness of Guise to the chamber of her Majesty the Queen, where
he waits your coming." And he led the way up the stairs of the Louvre
to the somewhat extraordinary audience chamber which the King had
selected.
Henry, when the party entered, was sitting near the side of the bed,
surrounded by several of his officers, one of whom, Alphonzo d'Ornano
by name, whispered something over the King's shoulder with his eyes
fixed upon the Duke of Guise.
The words, which were, "Do you hold him for your friend or your
enemy?" were spoken in such a tone as almost to reach the Duke
himself. The King did not reply, but looked up at the Duke with a
frown that was quite sufficient.
"Speak but the word," said Ornano in a lower tone, "speak but the
word, and his head shall be at your feet in a minute."
The King measured Ornano and the Duke of Guise with his eyes, then
shook his head with somewhat of a scornful smile; and then, looking up
to the Duke, who had by this time come near him, he said in a dull
heavy tone, "What brings you here, my cousin?"
"My Lord," replied the Duke, "I have found it absolutely necessary to
present myself before your Majesty, in order to repel numerous
calumnies."
"Stay, cousin of Guise," said the King; and turning to Bellievre, who
stood amongst the persons behind him, he demanded abruptly, "Did you
not tell me that he would not come to Paris?"
"My Lord Duke," exclaimed Bellievre, not replying directly to the
King's question, but addressing the Duke, "did not your Highness
assure me that you would delay your journey till I returned?"
"Yes, Monsieur de Bellievre," replied the Duke. "But you did not
return."
"But I wrote you two letters, your Highness," replied Bellievre,
"reiterating his Majesty's commands for you not to come to Paris."
"Those letters," replied the Duke of Guise, with a bitter smile, "like
some other letters which have been written to me upon important
occasions, have, from some cause, failed to reach my hands.
Nevertheless, Sire, believe me when I tell you, that my object in
coming is solely to prove to your Majesty that I am not guilty either
of the crimes or the designs which base and grasping men have laid to
my charge. Believe me, that after my devotion to God and our holy
religion, there is no one whom I am so anxious to serve zealously and
devotedly as your Majesty. This you will find ever, Sire, if you will
but give me the opportunity of rendering you any service."
The King was about to reply, but the Queen-mother, who had advanced
and stood by his side, touched his arm saying, "You have not yet
spoken to me, my son." And the King turning towards her, she added
something in a low voice. The King replied in the same tone; and the
Duke of Guise, passing through the midst of the frowning faces ranged
around the royal seat, approached the Queen-consort, the mild and
unhappy Louisa, and addressed a few words to her of reverence and
respect which were gratifying to her ear. He then turned once more to
the King, who seemed to have heard what Catharine de Medici had
to say, and having given his reply, sat in moody silence. The
Queen-mother stood by with some degree of apprehension in her
countenance, as if feeling very doubtful still how the affair would
terminate. The brows of the courtiers were gloomy and undecided, and
the few followers of the Duke of Guise ranged at some distance from
the spot to which he had now advanced, kept their eyes fixed either on
him or on those surrounding the King, as if, at the least menacing
movement, they were ready to start forward in defence of their leader.
The only one that was perfectly calm was Guise himself; but he,
retreading his steps till he stood opposite the King, again addressed
the Monarch saying, "I hope, Sire, that you will give me a full
opportunity of justifying myself."
"Your conduct, cousin of Guise," replied the King, "must best justify
you for the past; and I shall judge by the event, of your intentions
for the future."
"Let it be so," replied the Duke, "and such being the case, I will
humbly take my leave of your Majesty, wishing you, from my heart,
health and happiness."
Thus saying he once more bowed low, and retired from the presence of
the King, followed by the gentlemen who had accompanied him. Not an
individual of the palace stirred a step to conduct him on his way,
though his rank, his services, his genius, and his vast renown,
rendered the piece of neglect they showed disgraceful to themselves
rather than injurious to him. He was accompanied from the gates of the
Louvre, however, and followed to the Hotel de Guise, by an infinite
number of people, who ceased not for one moment to make the streets
ring with their acclamations.
Nor were these by any means composed entirely of the lowest classes of
the people, the least respectable, or the least well-informed. On the
contrary, it must, alas! be said, that the great majority of all that
was good, upright, and noble in the city hailed his coming loudly as a
security and a safeguard.
A number, an immense number, of the inferior nobility of the realm
were mingled with the crowd that followed him, or joined the acclaim
from the windows. The robes of the law were seen continually in the
dense multitude, and almost all the courts had there numbers of their
principal members; while the municipal officers of the city, with the
exception of two or three, were there in a mass, accompanied by a
large body of the most opulent and respectable merchants.
Thus followed, the Duke of Guise proceeded to his hotel on foot as he
came, speaking from time to time with those who pressed near him with
that peculiar grace which won all hearts, and smiling with the
far-famed smile of his race, which was said never to fall upon any man
without making him feel as if he stood in the sunshine.
Already collected on the steps of the Hotel de Guise, at the news that
he was returning from the Louvre, was a group of the brightest, the
bravest, the most talented, and the most beautiful of the French
nobility,--Madame de Montpensier, Mademoiselle de St. Beuve, the
Chevalier d'Aumale, Brissac, and a thousand others. The servants and
attendants of his household in gorgeous dresses kept back the crowd
with courteous words and kindly gestures; and when he reached the
steps that led to the high doorway of the porter's lodge, on the right
of the porte cochere, he ascended a little way amongst his gratulating
friends, and then turned and bowed repeatedly to the people, pointing
out here and there some of the most popular of the citizens and
magistrates, and whispering a word to the nearest attendant, who
instantly made his way through the crowd to the spot where the
personage designated stood, and in his master's name requested that he
would come in and take some refreshment.
When this was over, he again bowed and retired; and while the
multitude separated, he walked on into his lordly halls with a number
of persons clinging round him, whom he had not seen for months--for
months which to him had been full of activity, thought, care, and
peril, and to them of anxiety for the head of their race.
As he passed along, however, to a chamber where the dinner which had
been prepared for him had remained untouched for many an hour, his eye
fell upon a boy dressed in the habit of one of his own pages; and
taking suddenly a step forward, he called the boy apart into a window,
demanding eagerly, "Well, have you found your master?"
"I have, your Highness," replied the boy, "and have found means to
give him the letter?"
"What!" exclaimed the Duke, "outwitted Villequier, and Pisani, and
all! The wit of a page against that of a politician for a thousand
crowns!"
"I dressed myself as a girl, your Highness," replied the boy, "and got
into the convent, and then through a gate into what is called the
rector's court, where Doctor Botholph and the Cure live, and where men
are admitted, and women not shut out when they like to go in; and I
got talking to the old verger of the church by the side, and he called
me a pretty little fool, and said he dared to say I would soon be
among the penitents within there; and with that I got him to tell me
every thing, and the whole story of the young Count being brought
there at night, and shut up in what are called the rector's
apartments."
As he spoke, one or two of the higher class of those whom the Duke had
selected from the crowd below, and who felt themselves privileged to
present themselves in his private apartments, entered the hall, and
instantly caught his eye.
"I cannot speak with you more at present, Ignati," he said, "nor,
perhaps, during the whole day, for there is business of life and death
before me; but come to me while I am rising to-morrow, and only tell
me in the mean time where our poor Logeres is, for I know not what
convent you mean."
"He is in the rector's court," replied the boy, "close by the convent
of the Black Penitents, in the Rue St. Denis."
"By my faith!" exclaimed the Duke in no slight surprise, "I have been
there this very day myself, and there the Queen-mother has made her
abode for the last ten days. She must be deceiving me; and yet,
perhaps, the mighty matters that occupied her mind when I saw her
might have made her forget all other things. However, Logeres shall
not be long so fettered. Come to me to-morrow, Ignati; come to me
to-morrow, as I am rising; and in the mean time, if you can find some
means of giving the Count intimation that he is not forgotten, it were
all the better."
"I will try, my Lord," replied the boy. And the Duke hurried on to
welcome his new guests, making them sit down at table with him, and
covering them with every sort of honour and distinction.
CHAP. XIII.
In our dealings with each other there is nothing which we so much
miscalculate as the ever varying value of time, and indeed it is but
too natural to look upon it as it seems to us, and not as it seems to
others. The slow idler on whose head it hangs heavy, holds the man of
business by the button, and remorselessly robs him on the king's
highway of a thing ten times more valuable than the purse that would
hang him if he took it. The man of action and of business whose days
seem but moments, forgets in his dealing with the long expecting
applicant, and the weary petitioner, that to them each moment is far
longer than his day.
The hours, not one minute of which were unfilled to the Duke of Guise,
passed slowly over the head of Charles of Montsoreau, and it seemed as
if the brief gleam of happiness which had come across his path had but
tended to make the long solitary moments seem longer and more dreary;
in fact, to give full and painful effect to solitude and want of
liberty, and yet he would not have lost that gleam for all the world.
He thought of it, he dwelt upon it, he called to mind each and every
particular; and, though it was crossed, as the memory of all such
brief meetings are, with the recollection of a thousand things which
he could have wished to have said, but which he had forgotten, and
also by many a speculation of a painful kind concerning the visit of
the Duke of Guise to the very place in which he was confined, without
the slightest effort being made for his liberation, yet it was a
consolation and a happiness and a joy to him--one of those blessings
which have been stamped by the past with the irrevocable seal of
enjoyment, which are our own, the unalienable jewels of our fate, held
for ever in the treasury of memory.
Nothing occurred through the rest of the day to call his attention, or
to rouse his feelings. He heard the distant murmur, and the shouts of
the people from time to time; but the gates were now shut, and the
sounds dull, and all passed on evenly till darkness shut up the world.
In the mean time he knew--as if to make his state of imprisonment and
inactivity more intolerable--that busy actions were taking place
without, that his own fate was deciding by the hands of others, that
his happiness and that of Marie de Clairvaut formed but a small matter
in the great bulk of political affairs which were then being weighed
between the two angry parties in the capital, and might be tossed into
this scale or that, as accident, or convenience, or policy might
direct.
Though he retired to rest as usual, he slept not, and ever and anon
when a sort of half slumber fell upon his eyes he started up, thinking
he heard some sound, a distant shout of the people, the tolling of a
bell, or the roll of some far off drum. Nothing however occurred, and
the night passed over as the day.
In the grey of the morning, however, just when the slow creaking of a
gate, or the noise of footsteps here and there breaking the previous
stillness, told that the world was beginning to awake, a few sweet
notes suddenly met his ear like those of a musical instrument, and in
a moment after he heard the same air which the boy Ignati had played
with such exquisite skill just before he freed him from his Italian
masters.
"A blessing be upon that boy," he cried, as he instantly recognised
not only the sounds but the touch. "He has come to tell me that I am
not forgotten."
Suddenly, however, before the air was half concluded, the music
stopped, and voices were heard speaking, but not so loud that the
words could be distinguished. It seemed to the young Count, and seemed
truly, that some one had sent the boy away; but though he heard no
more, those very sounds had given him hope and comfort.
Driven away by the old verger, who had now discovered the trick which
had been put upon him the day before, the boy returned with all speed
to the Hotel de Guise, and, according to the Duke's order, presented
himself in his chamber at the hour of his rising. But the Duke was
already surrounded with people, all eager to speak with him on
different affairs, and his brow was evidently dark and clouded by some
news that he had just heard.
"Send round," he was saying as the boy entered, "Send round speedily
to all the inns, and let those who are known for their fidelity be
informed that the doors of this hotel will never be shut against any
of those who have come to Paris for my service, or for that of the
church, as long as there is a chamber vacant within. And you, my good
Lords," he continued, turning to some of the gentlemen who surrounded
him, "I must call upon your hospitality, also, to provide lodging for
these poor friends of ours, whom this new and iniquitous proceeding of
the court is likely to drive from Paris. But stay, Bussi," he
continued, and his eye fell upon the page as he spoke; "you say you
saw the Prevot des Marchands but a minute ago in the Rue d'Anvoye
seeking out the lodgers in the inns, and ordering them to quit Paris
immediately. Hasten down after him quickly, and tell him from Henry of
Guise that there is a very dangerous prisoner and a zealous servant of
the church lodged in the Rue St. Denis; that he had better drive him
forth also; and that, if he wants direction to the place where he
sojourns, one of my pages shall lead him thither. You may add,
moreover, that if he do not drive him forth, I will bring him forth
before the world be a day older."
The Duke of Guise then took the pen from the ink which was standing
before him, and, though not yet half-dressed, wrote hastily the few
following words to the Queen-mother:--
"Madam,
"I am informed, on authority which I cannot doubt, that my friend, the
young Count de Logeres, is at present in your hands, kept under
restraint in the Rue St. Denis, after having been arrested in the
execution of business with which I charged him, while bearing a
passport from the King. I beseech you to set him immediately at
liberty, and also at once to order that my niece and ward,
Mademoiselle de Clairvaut, be brought to the Hotel de Guise without an
hour's delay. Let me protest to your Majesty that you have not a more
faithful and devoted servant than
"Henry of Guise."
"I will not send this by you, Ignati," said the Duke; "they would
laugh at a boy. Here, Mestroit, bear this to the Queen-mother.
Say I cast myself at her feet; and bring me back an answer without
delay.--Why, how now, St. Paul!" he continued, turning to a gentleman
who had just entered. "Your brow is as dark as a thunder-cloud. What
has happened now? Shall we be obliged to make our hotel our fortress,
and defend it to the last, like gallant men?"
"Not so, my Lord," replied the Count of St. Paul; "not near so bad as
that: but still these are times that make men look thoughtful; and,
depend upon it, the King, aided by his minions and the Politics[7], is
seeking to inclose your Highness, as it were in a net."
---------------------
[Footnote 7: That party was so called which affected to hold the
balance between the Court and the League, without giving countenance
to the Huguenots.]
---------------------
"We will break through, St. Paul! We will break through!" replied the
Duke with a smile. "But what are your tidings?"
"Why, that orders have been sent to the Swiss to come up from Corbeil,
as well as those from Meulan and Chateau Thierry; also the companies
of French guards from every quarter in the neighbourhood are called
for, and I myself saw come in, by the Faubourg St. Germain, a body of
two hundred horse, which, upon inquiry, I found to be a new levy from
some place in the South, led by a young Marquis of Montsoreau, whose
name I never heard of before."
"Whenever you hear it again, St. Paul," replied the Duke sternly,
"couple with it the word 'Traitor!' and you will do him justice. But
what force is it said they are bringing into Paris? What stay you for,
Mestroit?" he continued, seeing that the gentleman to whom he had
given the letter had not taken his departure. "What stay you for? I
would have had you there now. Go with all speed! There are horses
enough saddled in the court. I would give a thousand crowns that
letter should be in the Queen's hand before this youth's coming is
known to her. It may save us much trouble hereafter. Fail not to bring
me an answer quick. Now, St. Paul, how many men say you on your best
judgment are they bringing into Paris?"
"Why, your Highness," replied the Count, "some say ten thousand; but,
to judge more moderately from what I hear, the moment your Highness's
arrival in Paris was known, orders were sent for the march of full
seven thousand men."
"We must be very formidable creatures, Brissac," cried the Duke, "that
my coming with seven of you should need seven thousand men to meet us.
On my soul, they will make me think myself a giant. I always thought I
was a tall man--some six foot three, I believe--but, by Heavens! I
must be a Gargantua, indeed, to need seven thousand men to hold me.
Seven thousand men!" he added thoughtfully: "he has not got them, St.
Paul. There are not five thousand within fifty miles of Paris, unless
Epernon and Villequier have contrived to raise more of such
Montsoreaus against us. However, we must have eyes in all quarters.
Send out parties to watch the coming of the troops and give us their
numbers. Let some one speak to the inferior officers of the French
guards, and remind them that the Duke of Guise and the Holy League are
only striving for the maintenance of the true faith, and for the
overthrow of those minions who have swallowed up all the honours and
favours of the crown. It were well also, Brissac, that a good watch
was kept upon the proceedings in the city. I can trust, methinks, to
The Sixteen to do all that is necessary in their different quarters,
and to make full reports of all that takes place; but still a military
eye were as well here and there, from time to time, Brissac, and I
will trust that to you."
The rest of the morning passed in the same incessant activity with
which it had begun; tidings were constantly brought in from all parts
of the town and the country round concerning every movement on the
part of the court; and the hotel of the Duc de Guise was literally
besieged by his followers and partisans. Train after train of noblemen
and officers, of lawyers and citizens, followed each other during the
whole day, each bringing him information, or claiming audience on some
account. Nor were the clergy less numerous; for scarce a parish in the
capital but sent forth, in the course of that day, its train of
priests and monks to congratulate him on his arrival, or to beseech
him to hold up the tottering church of France with a strong hand.
At the same time, the order which had been given by the King in the
morning, for every stranger not domiciled in Paris to quit it within
six hours, and the proceedings of the Prevot des Marchands to execute
that order had--by driving out of the inns and taverns the multitudes
of the Duke's partisans who had followed him in scattered bodies into
Paris--now filled the Hotel de Guise with all those of the higher
classes who were thus expelled. The houses of other members of the
faction received the rest. But the stables of the hotel were all
filled to the doors; the great court itself could scarcely be crossed,
on account of the number of horses; and more than once the street
became impassable from the multitude of carriages, chairs, horses, and
attendants, who were waiting while their masters conferred with the
Duke.
It was near mid-day when the gentleman who had been dispatched to
Catharine de Medici again presented himself; and the Duke demanded,
somewhat impatiently, what had detained him so long.
"It was the Queen-mother, your Highness," replied Mestroit. "More than
an hour passed before I could obtain an audience; and when I was
admitted to present your Highness's letter, I found Monsieur de
Villequier with her."
"Did she show the letter to that son of Satan?" demanded the Duke.
"No, sir," replied the other; "on the contrary, she seemed not to wish
that he should see it, for she kept it tight in her hand after she had
read it, and told me to wait a moment, that she would give me an
answer directly."
"I would sooner unriddle the enigma of the sphynx," said the Duke,
"than I would say from what motive any one of that woman's acts
proceed; and yet she has a great mind, and a heart not altogether so
vicious as it seems. What happened then, Mestroit?"