“I cannot prevent it,” said the chancell_Catherine De Medici

protest of the queen-mother.”

“Robertet!” called the Duc de Guise.

When Robertet entered, the lieutenant-general pointed to the chancellor.

“I appoint you chancellor of France in the place of that traitor,” he

said. “Monsieur de Maille, take Monsieur de l’Hopital and put him in the

prison of the Prince de Conde. As for you, madame,” he added, turning

to Catherine; “your protest will not be received; you ought to be aware

that any such protest must be supported by sufficient force. I act as

the faithful subject and loyal servant of king Francois II., my master.

Go on, Antoine,” he added, looking at the surgeon.

“Monsieur de Guise,” said l’Hopital; “if you employ violence either upon

the king or upon the chancellor of France, remember that enough of

the nobility of France are in that hall to rise and arrest you as a

traitor.”

“Oh! my lords,” cried the great surgeon; “if you continue these

arguments you will soon proclaim Charles IX!--for king Francois is about

to die.”

Catherine de’ Medici, absolutely impassive, gazed from the window.

“Well, then, we shall employ force to make ourselves masters of this

room,” said the cardinal, advancing to the door.

But when he opened it even he was terrified; the whole house was

deserted! The courtiers, certain now of the death of the king, had gone

in a body to the king of Navarre.

“Well, go on, perform your duty,” cried Mary Stuart, vehemently, to

Ambroise. “I--and you, duchess,” she said to Madame de Guise,--“will

protect you.”

“Madame,” said Ambroise; “my zeal was carrying me away. The doctors,

with the exception of my friend Chapelain, prefer an injection, and it

is my duty to submit to their wishes. If I had been chief surgeon and

chief physician, which I am not, the king’s life would probably have

been saved. Give that to me, gentlemen,” he said, stretching out his

hand for the syringe, which he proceeded to fill.

“Good God!” cried Mary Start, “but I order you to--”

“Alas! madame,” said Ambroise, “I am under the direction of these

gentlemen.”

The young queen placed herself between the surgeon, the doctors, and

the other persons present. The chief physician held the king’s head,

and Ambroise made the injection into the ear. The duke and the cardinal

watched the proceeding attentively. Robertet and Monsieur de Maille

stood motionless. Madame de Fiesque, at a sign from Catherine, glided

unperceived from the room. A moment later l’Hopital boldly opened the

door of the king’s chamber.

“I arrive in good time,” said the voice of a man whose hasty steps

echoed through the great hall, and who stood the next moment on the

threshold of the open door. “Ah, messieurs, so you meant to take off the

head of my good nephew, the Prince de Conde? Instead of that, you have

forced the lion from his lair and--here I am!” added the Connetable de

Montmorency. “Ambroise, you shall not plunge your knife into the head of

my king. The first prince of the blood, Antoine de Bourbon, the Prince

de Conde, the queen-mother, the Connetable, and the chancellor forbid

the operation.”

To Catherine’s great satisfaction, the king of Navarre and the Prince de

Conde now entered the room.

“What does this mean?” said the Duc de Guise, laying his hand on his

dagger.

“It means that in my capacity as Connetable, I have dismissed the

sentinels of all your posts. _Tete Dieu_! you are not in an enemy’s

country, methinks. The king, our master, is in the midst of his loyal

subjects, and the States-general must be suffered to deliberate at

liberty. I come, messieurs, from the States-general. I carried the

protest of my nephew de Conde before that assembly, and three hundred of

those gentlemen have released him. You wish to shed royal blood and to

decimate the nobility of the kingdom, do you? Ha! in future, I defy you,

and all your schemes, Messieurs de Lorraine. If you order the king’s

head opened, by this sword which saved France from Charles V., I say it

shall not be done--”

“All the more,” said Ambroise Pare; “because it is now too late; the

suffusion has begun.”

“Your reign is over, messieurs,” said Catherine to the Guises, seeing

from Pare’s face that there was no longer any hope.

“Ah! madame, you have killed your own son,” cried Mary Stuart as

she bounded like a lioness from the bed to the window and seized the

queen-mother by the arm, gripping it violently.

“My dear,” replied Catherine, giving her daughter-in-law a cold, keen

glance in which she allowed her hatred, repressed for the last six

months, to overflow; “you, to whose inordinate love we owe this death,

you will now go to reign in your Scotland, and you will start to-morrow.

I am regent _de facto_.” The three physicians having made her a sign,

“Messieurs,” she added, addressing the Guises, “it is agreed between

Monsieur de Bourbon, appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom by the

States-general, and me that the conduct of the affairs of the State is

our business solely. Come, monsieur le chancelier.”

“The king is dead!” said the Duc de Guise, compelled to perform his

duties as Grand-master.

“Long live King Charles IX.!” cried all the noblemen who had come with

the king of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, and the Connetable.

The ceremonies which follow the death of a king of France were performed

in almost total solitude. When the king-at-arms proclaimed aloud three

times in the hall, “The king is dead!” there were very few persons

present to reply, “Vive le roi!”

The queen-mother, to whom the Comtesse de Fiesque had brought the Duc

d’Orleans, now Charles IX., left the chamber, leading her son by the

hand, and all the remaining courtiers followed her. No one was left in

the house where Francois II. had drawn his last breath, but the duke and

the cardinal, the Duchesse de Guise, Mary Stuart, and Dayelle, together

with the sentries at the door, the pages of the Grand-master, those of

the cardinal, and their private secretaries.

“Vive la France!” cried several Reformers in the street, sounding the

first cry of the opposition.

Robertet, who owed all he was to the duke and cardinal, terrified

by their scheme and its present failure, went over secretly to the

queen-mother, whom the ambassadors of Spain, England, the Empire, and

Poland, hastened to meet on the staircase, brought thither by Cardinal

de Tournon, who had gone to notify them as soon as he had made Queen

Catherine a sign from the courtyard at the moment when she protested

against the operation of Ambroise Pare.

“Well!” said the cardinal to the duke, “so the sons of Louis

d’Outre-mer, the heirs of Charles de Lorraine flinched and lacked

courage.”

“We should have been exiled to Lorraine,” replied the duke. “I declare

to you, Charles, that if the crown lay there before me I would not

stretch out my hand to pick it up. That’s for my son to do.”

“Will he have, as you have had, the army and Church on his side?”

“He will have something better.”

“What?”

“The people!”

“Ah!” exclaimed Mary Stuart, clasping the stiffened hand of her first

husband, now dead, “there is none but me to weep for this poor boy who

loved me so!”

“How can we patch up matters with the queen-mother?” said the cardinal.

“Wait till she quarrels with the Huguenots,” replied the duchess.

The conflicting interests of the house of Bourbon, of Catherine, of the

Guises, and of the Reformed party produced such confusion in the town

of Orleans that, three days after the king’s death, his body, completely

forgotten in the Bailliage and put into a coffin by the menials of the

house, was taken to Saint-Denis in a covered waggon, accompanied only

by the Bishop of Senlis and two gentlemen. When the pitiable procession

reached the little town of Etampes, a servant of the Chancelier

l’Hopital fastened to the waggon this severe inscription, which history

has preserved: “Tanneguy de Chastel, where art thou? and yet thou wert a

Frenchman!”--a stern reproach, which fell with equal force on Catherine

de’ Medici, Mary Stuart, and the Guises. What Frenchman does not know

that Tanneguy de Chastel spent thirty thousand crowns of the coinage of

that day (one million of our francs) at the funeral of Charles VII., the

benefactor of his house?

No sooner did the tolling of the bells announce to the town of Orleans

that Francois II. was dead, and the rumor spread that the Connetable de

Montmorency had ordered the flinging open of the gates of the town, than

Tourillon, the glover, rushed up into the garret of his house and went

to a secret hiding-place.

“Good heavens! can he be dead?” he cried.

Hearing the words, a man rose to his feet and answered, “Ready to

serve!”--the password of the Reformers who belonged to Calvin.

This man was Chaudieu, to whom Tourillon now related the events of the

last eight days, during which time he had prudently left the minister

alone in his hiding-place with a twelve-pound loaf of bread for his sole

nourishment.

“Go instantly to the Prince de Conde, brother: ask him to give me a

safe-conduct; and find me a horse,” cried the minister. “I must start at

once.”

“Write me a line, or he will not receive me.”

“Here,” said Chaudieu, after writing a few words, “ask for a pass from

the king of Navarre, for I must go to Geneva without a moment’s loss of

time.”

XIII. CALVIN

Two hours later all was ready, and the ardent minister was on his way

to Switzerland, accompanied by a nobleman in the service of the king of

Navarre (of whom Chaudieu pretended to be the secretary), carrying with

him despatches from the Reformers in the Dauphine. This sudden departure

was chiefly in the interests of Catherine de’ Medici, who, in order to

gain time to establish her power, had made a bold proposition to the

Reformers which was kept a profound secret. This strange proceeding

explains the understanding so suddenly apparent between herself and

the leaders of the Reform. The wily woman gave, as a pledge of her good

faith, an intimation of her desire to heal all differences between the

two churches by calling an assembly, which should be neither a council,

nor a conclave, nor a synod, but should be known by some new and

distinctive name, if Calvin consented to the project. When this secret

was afterwards divulged (be it remarked in passing) it led to an

alliance between the Duc de Guise and the Connetable de Montmorency

against Catherine and the king of Navarre,--a strange alliance! known in

history as the Triumvirate, the Marechal de Saint-Andre being the

third personage in the purely Catholic coalition to which this singular

proposition for a “colloquy” gave rise. The secret of Catherine’s wily

policy was rightly understood by the Guises; they felt certain that

the queen cared nothing for this mysterious assembly, and was only

temporizing with her new allies in order to secure a period of peace

until the majority of Charles IX.; but none the less did they deceive

the Connetable into fearing a collusion of real interests between the

queen and the Bourbons,--whereas, in reality, Catherine was playing them

all one against another.

The queen had become, as the reader will perceive, extremely powerful

in a very short time. The spirit of discussion and controversy which now

sprang up was singularly favorable to her position. The Catholics and

the Reformers were equally pleased to exhibit their brilliancy one after

another in this tournament of words; for that is what it actually was,

and no more. It is extraordinary that historians have mistaken one of

the wiliest schemes of the great queen for uncertainty and hesitation!

Catherine never went more directly to her own ends than in just such

schemes which appeared to thwart them. The king of Navarre, quite

incapable of understanding her motives, fell into her plan in all

sincerity, and despatched Chaudieu to Calvin, as we have seen. The

minister had risked his life to be secretly in Orleans and watch events;

for he was, while there, in hourly peril of being discovered and hung as

a man under sentence of banishment.

According to the then fashion of travelling, Chaudieu could not reach

Geneva before the month of February, and the negotiations were not

likely to be concluded before the end of March; consequently the

assembly could certainly not take place before the month of May,

1561. Catherine, meantime, intended to amuse the court and the various

conflicting interests by the coronation of the king, and the ceremonies

of his first “lit de justice,” at which l’Hopital and de Thou recorded

the letters-patent by which Charles IX. confided the administration to

his mother in common with the present lieutenant-general of the kingdom,

Antoine de Navarre, the weakest prince of those days.

Is it not a strange spectacle this of the great kingdom of France

waiting in suspense for the “yes” or “no” of a French burgher, hitherto

an obscure man, living for many years past in Geneva? The transalpine

pope held in check by the pontiff of Geneva! The two Lorrain princes,

lately all-powerful, now paralyzed by the momentary coalition of the

queen-mother and the first prince of the blood with Calvin! Is not

this, I say, one of the most instructive lessons ever given to kings

by history,--a lesson which should teach them to study men, to seek out

genius, and employ it, as did Louis XIV., wherever God has placed it?

Calvin, whose name was not Calvin but Cauvin, was the son of a cooper

at Noyon in Picardy. The region of his birth explains in some degree the

obstinacy combined with capricious eagerness which distinguished this

arbiter of the destinies of France in the sixteenth century. Nothing is

less known than the nature of this man, who gave birth to Geneva and to

the spirit that emanated from that city. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who had

very little historical knowledge, has completely ignored the influence

of Calvin on his republic. At first the embryo Reformer, who lived

in one of the humblest houses in the upper town, near the church of

Saint-Pierre, over a carpenter’s shop (first resemblance between him and

Robespierre), had no great authority in Geneva. In fact for a long time

his power was malevolently checked by the Genevese. The town was the

residence in those days of a citizen whose fame, like that of several

others, remained unknown to the world at large and for a time to Geneva

itself. This man, Farel, about the year 1537, detained Calvin in Geneva,

pointing out to him that the place could be made the safe centre of

a reformation more active and thorough than that of Luther. Farel and

Calvin regarded Lutheranism as an incomplete work,--insufficient in

itself and without any real grip upon France. Geneva, midway between

France and Italy, and speaking the French language, was admirably

situated for ready communication with Germany, France, and Italy. Calvin

thereupon adopted Geneva as the site of his moral fortunes; he made it

thenceforth the citadel of his ideas.

The Council of Geneva, at Farel’s entreaty, authorized Calvin in

September, 1538, to give lectures on theology. Calvin left the duties of

the ministry to Farel, his first disciple, and gave himself up patiently

to the work of teaching his doctrine. His authority, which became so

absolute in the last years of his life, was obtained with difficulty and

very slowly. The great agitator met with such serious obstacles that he

was banished for a time from Geneva on account of the severity of his

reform. A party of honest citizens still clung to their old luxury and

their old customs. But, as usually happens, these good people, fearing

ridicule, would not admit the real object of their efforts, and kept up

their warfare against the new doctrines on points altogether foreign to

the real question. Calvin insisted that _leavened bread_ should be

used for the communion, and that all feasts should be abolished except

Sundays. These innovations were disapproved of at Berne and at

Lausanne. Notice was served on the Genevese to conform to the ritual of

Switzerland. Calvin and Farel resisted; their political opponents used

this disobedience to drive them from Geneva, whence they were, in fact,

banished for several years. Later Calvin returned triumphantly at the

demand of his flock. Such persecutions always become in the end the

consecration of a moral power; and, in this case, Calvin’s return was

the beginning of his era as prophet. He then organized his religious

Terror, and the executions began. On his reappearance in the city he was

admitted into the ranks of the Genevese burghers; but even then, after

fourteen years’ residence, he was not made a member of the Council. At

the time of which we write, when Catherine sent her envoy to him, this

king of ideas had no other title than that of “pastor of the Church of

Geneva.” Moreover, Calvin never in his life received a salary of

more than one hundred and fifty francs in money yearly, fifteen

hundred-weight of wheat, and two barrels of wine. His brother, a tailor,

kept a shop close to the place Saint-Pierre, in a street now occupied

by one of the large printing establishments of Geneva. Such personal

disinterestedness, which was lacking in Voltaire, Newton, and Bacon,

but eminent in the lives of Rabelais, Spinosa, Loyola, Kant, and

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is indeed a magnificent frame to those ardent and

sublime figures.

The career of Robespierre can alone picture to the minds of the present

day that of Calvin, who, founding his power on the same bases, was as

despotic and as cruel as the lawyer of Arras. It is a noticeable fact

that Picardy (Arras and Noyon) furnished both these instruments of

reformation! Persons who wish to study the motives of the executions

ordered by Calvin will find, all relations considered, another 1793 in

Geneva. Calvin cut off the head of Jacques Gruet “for having written

impious letters, libertine verses, and for working to overthrow

ecclesiastical ordinances.” Reflect upon that sentence, and ask

yourselves if the worst tyrants in their saturnalias ever gave more

horribly burlesque reasons for their cruelties. Valentin Gentilis,

condemned to death for “involuntary heresy,” escaped execution only by

making a submission far more ignominious than was ever imposed by the

Catholic Church. Seven years before the conference which was now to take

place in Calvin’s house on the proposals of the queen-mother, Michel

Servet, _a Frenchman_, travelling through Switzerland, was arrested at

Geneva, tried, condemned, and burned alive, on Calvin’s accusation,

for having “attacked the mystery of the Trinity,” in a book which

was neither written nor published in Geneva. Remember the eloquent

remonstrance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose book, overthrowing the

Catholic religion, written in France and published in Holland, was

burned by the hangman, while the author, a foreigner, was merely

banished from the kingdom where he had endeavored to destroy the

fundamental proofs of religion and of authority. Compare the conduct

of our Parliament with that of the Genevese tyrant. Again: Bolsee

was brought to trial for “having other ideas than those of Calvin

on predestination.” Consider these things, and ask yourselves if

Fourquier-Tinville did worse. The savage religious intolerance of

Calvin was, morally speaking, more implacable than the savage political

intolerance of Robespierre. On a larger stage than that of Geneva,

Calvin would have shed more blood than did the terrible apostle of

political equality as opposed to Catholic equality. Three centuries

earlier a monk of Picardy drove the whole West upon the East. Peter the

Hermit, Calvin, and Robespierre, each at an interval of three hundred

years and all three from the same region, were, politically speaking,

the Archimedean screws of their age,--at each epoch a Thought which

found its fulcrum in the self-interest of mankind.

Calvin was undoubtedly the maker of that melancholy town called Geneva,

where, only ten years ago, a man said, pointing to a porte-cochere in

the upper town, the first ever built there: “By that door luxury has

invaded Geneva.” Calvin gave birth, by the sternness of his doctrines

and his executions, to that form of hypocritical sentiment called

“cant.”[*] According to those who practice it, good morals consist in

renouncing the arts and the charms of life, in eating richly but without

luxury, in silently amassing money without enjoying it otherwise than as

Calvin enjoyed power--by thought. Calvin imposed on all the citizens of

his adopted town the same gloomy pall which he spread over his own

life. He created in the Consistory a Calvinistic inquisition, absolutely

similar to the revolutionary tribunal of Robespierre. The Consistory

denounced the persons to be condemned to the Council, and Calvin ruled

the Council through the Consistory, just as Robespierre ruled the

Convention through the Club of the Jacobins. In this way an eminent

magistrate of Geneva was condemned to two months’ imprisonment, the loss

of all his offices, and the right of ever obtaining others “because he

led a disorderly life and was intimate with Calvin’s enemies.” Calvin

thus became a legislator. He created the austere, sober, commonplace,

and hideously sad, but irreproachable manners and customs which

characterize Geneva to the present day,--customs preceding those of

England called Puritanism, which were due to the Cameronians, disciples

of Cameron (a Frenchman deriving his doctrine from Calvin), whom Sir

Walter Scott depicts so admirably. The poverty of a man, a sovereign

master, who negotiated, power to power, with kings, demanding armies and

subsidies, and plunging both hands into their savings laid aside for the

unfortunate, proves that thought, used solely as a means of domination,

gives birth to political misers,--men who enjoy by their brains only,

and, like the Jesuits, want power for power’s sake. Pitt, Luther,

Calvin, Robespierre, all those Harpagons of power, died without a penny.

The inventory taken in Calvin’s house after his death, which comprised

all his property, even his books, amounted in value, as history records,

to two hundred and fifty francs. That of Luther came to about the same

sum; his widow, the famous Catherine de Bora, was forced to petition for

a pension of five hundred francs, which as granted to her by an Elector

of Germany. Potemkin, Richelieu, Mazarin, those men of thought and

action, all three of whom made or laid the foundation of empires, each

left over three hundred millions behind them. They had hearts; they

loved women and the arts; they built, they conquered; whereas with the

exception of the wife of Luther, the Helen of that Iliad, all the others

had no tenderness, no beating of the heart for any woman with which to

reproach themselves.

[*] _Momerie_.

This brief digression was necessary in order to explain Calvin’s

position in Geneva.

During the first days of the month of February in the year 1561, on a

soft, warm evening such as we may sometimes find at that season on Lake

Leman, two horsemen arrived at the Pre-l’Eveque,--thus called because

it was the former country-place of the Bishop of Geneva, driven from

Switzerland about thirty years earlier. These horsemen, who no doubt

knew the laws of Geneva about the closing of the gates (then a necessity

and now very ridiculous) rode in the direction of the Porte de Rive;

but they stopped their horses suddenly on catching sight of a man, about

fifty years of age, leaning on the arm of a servant-woman, and walking

slowly toward the town. This man, who was rather stout, walked with

difficulty, putting one foot after the other with pain apparently, for

he wore round shoes of black velvet, laced in front.

“It is he!” said Chaudieu to the other horseman, who immediately

dismounted, threw the reins to his companion, and went forward, opening

wide his arms to the man on foot.

The man, who was Jean Calvin, drew back to avoid the embrace, casting

a stern look at his disciple. At fifty years of age Calvin looked as

though he were sixty. Stout and stocky in figure, he seemed shorter

still because the horrible sufferings of stone in the bladder obliged

him to bend almost double as he walked. These pains were complicated by

attacks of gout of the worst kind. Every one trembled before that face,

almost as broad as it was long, on which, in spite of its roundness,

there was as little human-kindness as on that of Henry the Eighth, whom

Calvin greatly resembled. Sufferings which gave him no respite were

manifest in the deep-cut lines starting from each side of the nose and

following the curve of the moustache till they were lost in the thick

gray beard. This face, though red and inflamed like that of a heavy

drinker, showed spots where the skin was yellow. In spite of the velvet

cap, which covered the huge square head, a vast forehead of noble shape

could be seen and admired; beneath it shone two dark eyes, which must

have flashed forth flame in moments of anger. Whether by reason of his

obesity, or because of his thick, short neck, or in consequence of his

vigils and his constant labors, Calvin’s head was sunk between his

broad shoulders, which obliged him to wear a fluted ruff of very small

dimensions, on which his face seemed to lie like the head of John the

Baptist on a charger. Between his moustache and his beard could be seen,

like a rose, his small and fresh and eloquent little mouth, shaped in

perfection. The face was divided by a square nose, remarkable for the

flexibility of its entire length, the tip of which was significantly

flat, seeming the more in harmony with the prodigious power expressed by

the form of that imperial head. Though it might have been difficult

to discover on his features any trace of the weekly headaches which

tormented Calvin in the intervals of the slow fever that consumed him,

suffering, ceaselessly resisted by study and by will, gave to that mask,

superficially so florid, a certain something that was terrible. Perhaps

this impression was explainable by the color of a sort of greasy layer

on the skin, due to the sedentary habits of the toiler, showing evidence

of the perpetual struggle which went on between that valetudinarian

temperament and one of the strongest wills ever known in the history

of the human mind. The mouth, though charming, had an expression of

cruelty. Chastity, necessitated by vast designs, exacted by so many

sickly conditions, was written upon that face. Regrets were there,

notwithstanding the serenity of that all-powerful brow, together with

pain in the glance of those eyes, the calmness of which was terrifying.

Calvin’s costume brought into full relief this powerful head. He wore

the well-known cassock of black cloth, fastened round his waist by

a black cloth belt with a brass buckle, which became thenceforth the

distinctive dress of all Calvinist ministers, and was so uninteresting

to the eye that it forced the spectator’s attention upon the wearer’s

face.

“I suffer too much, Theodore, to embrace you,” said Calvin to the

elegant cavalier.

Theodore de Beze, then forty-two years of age and lately admitted, at

Calvin’s request, as a Genevese burgher, formed a violent contrast to

the terrible pastor whom he had chosen as his sovereign guide and ruler.

Calvin, like all burghers raised to moral sovereignty, and all

inventors of social systems, was eaten up with jealousy. He abhorred

his disciples; he wanted no equals; he could not bear the slightest

contradiction. Yet there was between him and this graceful cavalier

so marked a difference, Theodore de Beze was gifted with so charming a

personality enhanced by a politeness trained by court life, and Calvin

felt him to be so unlike his other surly janissaries, that the stern

reformer departed in de Beze’s case from his usual habits. He never

loved him, for this harsh legislator totally ignored all friendship,

but, not fearing him in the light of a successor, he liked to play

with Theodore as Richelieu played with his cat; he found him supple and

agile. Seeing how admirably de Beze succeeded in all his missions, he

took a fancy to the polished instrument of which he knew himself the

mainspring and the manipulator; so true is it that the sternest of men

cannot do without some semblance of affection. Theodore was Calvin’s

spoilt child; the harsh reformer never scolded him; he forgave him his

dissipations, his amours, his fine clothes and his elegance of language.

Perhaps Calvin was not unwilling to show that the Reformation had a few

men of the world to compare with the men of the court. Theodore de Beze

was anxious to introduce a taste for the arts, for literature, and for

poesy into Geneva, and Calvin listened to his plans without knitting his

thick gray eyebrows. Thus the contrast of character and person between

these two celebrated men was as complete and marked as the difference in

their minds.

Calvin acknowledged Chaudieu’s very humble salutation by a slight

inclination of the head. Chaudieu slipped the bridles of both horses

through his arms and followed the two great men of the Reformation,

walking to the left, behind de Beze, who was on Calvin’s right. The

servant-woman hastened on in advance to prevent the closing of the Porte

de Rive, by informing the captain of the guard that Calvin had been

seized with sudden acute pains.

Theodore de Beze was a native of the canton of Vezelay, which was

the first to enter the Confederation, the curious history of which

transaction has been written by one of the Thierrys. The burgher spirit

of resistance, endemic at Vezelay, no doubt, played its part in the

person of this man, in the great revolt of the Reformers; for de Beze

was undoubtedly one of the most singular personalities of the Heresy.

“You suffer still?” said Theodore to Calvin.

“A Catholic would say, ‘like a lost soul,’” replied the Reformer, with

the bitterness he gave to his slightest remarks. “Ah! I shall not be

here long, my son. What will become of you without me?”

“We shall fight by the light of your books,” said Chaudieu.

Calvin smiled; his red face changed to a pleased expression, and he

looked favorably at Chaudieu.

“Well, have you brought me news? Have they massacred many of our

people?” he said smiling, and letting a sarcastic joy shine in his brown

eyes.

“No,” said Chaudieu, “all is peaceful.”

“So much the worse,” cried Calvin; “so much the worse! All pacification

is an evil, if indeed it is not a trap. Our strength lies in

persecution. Where should we be if the Church accepted Reform?”

“But,” said Theodore, “that is precisely what the queen-mother appears

to wish.”

“She is capable of it,” remarked Calvin. “I study that woman--”

“What, at this distance?” cried Chaudieu.

“Is there any distance for the mind?” replied Calvin, sternly, for he

thought the interruption irreverent. “Catherine seeks power, and women

with that in their eye have neither honor nor faith. But what is she

doing now?”

“I bring you a proposal from her to call a species of council,” replied

Theodore de Beze.

“Near Paris?” asked Calvin, hastily.

“Yes.”

“Ha! so much the better!” exclaimed the Reformer.

“We are to try to understand each other and draw up some public

agreement which shall unite the two churches.”

“Ah! if she would only have the courage to separate the French Church

from the court of Rome, and create a patriarch for France as they did

in the Greek Church!” cried Calvin, his eyes glistening at the idea thus

presented to his mind of a possible throne. “But, my son, can the niece

of a Pope be sincere? She is only trying to gain time.”

“She has sent away the Queen of Scots,” said Chaudieu.

“One less!” remarked Calvin, as they passed through the Porte de Rive.

“Elizabeth of England will restrain that one for us. Two neighboring

queens will soon be at war with each other. One is handsome, the other

ugly,--a first cause for irritation; besides, there’s the question of

illegitimacy--”

He rubbed his hands, and the character of his joy was so evidently

ferocious that de Beze shuddered: he saw the sea of blood his master was

contemplating.

“The Guises have irritated the house of Bourbon,” said Theodore after a

pause. “They came to an open rupture at Orleans.”

“Ah!” said Calvin, “you would not believe me, my son, when I told you

the last time you started for Nerac that we should end by stirring up

war to the death between the two branches of the house of France? I

have, at least, one court, one king and royal family on my side. My

doctrine is producing its effect upon the masses. The burghers, too,

understand me; they regard as idolators all who go to Mass, who paint

the walls of their churches, and put pictures and statues within them.

Ha! it is far more easy for a people to demolish churches and palaces

than to argue the question of justification by faith, or the real

presence. Luther was an argufier, but I,--I am an army! He was a

reasoner, I am a system. In short, my sons, he was merely a skirmisher,

but I am Tarquin! Yes, _my_ faithful shall destroy pictures and pull

down churches; they shall make mill-stones of statues to grind the

flour of the peoples. There are guilds and corporations in the

States-general--I will have nothing there but individuals. Corporations

resist; they see clear where the masses are blind. We must join to

our doctrine political interests which will consolidate it, and keep

together the _materiel_ of my armies. I have satisfied the logic of

cautious souls and the minds of thinkers by this bared and naked worship

which carries religion into the world of ideas; I have made the peoples

understand the advantages of suppressing ceremony. It is for you,

Theodore, to enlist their interests; hold to that; go not beyond it.

All is said in the way of doctrine; let no one add one iota. Why does

Cameron, that little Gascon pastor, presume to write of it?”

Calvin, de Beze, and Chaudieu were mounting the steep steps of the

upper town in the midst of a crowd, but the crowd paid not the slightest

attention to the men who were unchaining the mobs of other cities and

preparing them to ravage France.

After this terrible tirade, the three marched on in silence till they

entered the little place Saint-Pierre and turned toward the pastor’s

house. On the second story of that house (never noted, and of which in

these days no one is ever told in Geneva, where, it may be remarked,

Calvin has no statue) his lodging consisted of three chambers with

common pine floors and wainscots, at the end of which were the kitchen

and the bedroom of his woman-servant. The entrance, as usually happened

in most of the burgher households of Geneva, was through the kitchen,

which opened into a little room with two windows, serving as parlor,

salon, and dining-room. Calvin’s study, where his thought had wrestled

with suffering for the last fourteen years, came next, with the bedroom

beyond it. Four oaken chairs covered with tapestry and placed around

a square table were the sole furniture of the parlor. A stove of white

porcelain, standing in one corner of the room, cast out a gentle heat.

Panels and a wainscot of pine wood left in its natural state without

decoration covered the walls. Thus the nakedness of the place was in

keeping with the sober and simple life of the Reformer.

“Well?” said de Beze as they entered, profiting by a few moments when

Chaudieu left them to put up the horse at a neighboring inn, “what am I

to do? Will you agree to the colloquy?”

“Of course,” replied Calvin. “And it is you, my son, who will fight for

us there. Be peremptory, be arbitrary. No one, neither the queen nor the

Guises nor I, wants a pacification; it would not suit us at all. I have

confidence in Duplessis-Mornay; let him play the leading part. Are we

alone?” he added, with a glance of distrust into the kitchen, where two

shirts and a few collars were stretched on a line to dry. “Go and shut

all the doors. Well,” he continued when Theodore had returned, “we

must drive the king of Navarre to join the Guises and the Connetable by

advising him to break with Queen Catherine de’ Medici. Let us all get

the benefit of that poor creature’s weakness. If he turns against

the Italian she will, when she sees herself deprived of that support,

necessarily unite with the Prince de Conde and Coligny. Perhaps this

manoeuvre will so compromise her that she will be forced to remain on

our side.”

Theodore de Beze caught the hem of Calvin’s cassock and kissed it.

“Oh! my master,” he exclaimed, “how great you are!”

“Unfortunately, my dear Theodore, I am dying. If I die without seeing

you again,” he added, sinking his voice and speaking in the ear of his

minister of foreign affairs, “remember to strike a great blow by the

hand of some one of our martyrs.”

“Another Minard to be killed?”

“Something better than a mere lawyer.”

“A king?”

“Still better!--a man who wants to be a king.”

“The Duc de Guise!” exclaimed Theodore, with an involuntary gesture.

“Well?” cried Calvin, who thought he saw disappointment or resistance

in the gesture, and did not see at the same moment the entrance of

Chaudieu. “Have we not the right to strike as we are struck?--yes, to

strike in silence and in darkness. May we not return them wound for

wound, and death for death? Would the Catholics hesitate to lay traps

for us and massacre us? Assuredly not. Let us burn their churches!

Forward, my children! And if you have devoted youths--”

“I have,” said Chaudieu.

“Use them as engines of war! our cause justifies all means. Le Balafre,

that horrible soldier, is, like me, more than a man; he is a dynasty,

just as I am a system. He is able to annihilate us; therefore, I say,

Death to the Guise!”

“I would rather have a peaceful victory, won by time and reason,” said

de Beze.

“Time!” exclaimed Calvin, dashing his chair to the ground, “reason! Are

you mad? Can reason achieve conquests? You know nothing of men, you who

deal with them, idiot! The thing that injures my doctrine, you triple

fool! is the reason that is in it. By the lightning of Saul, by the

sword of Vengeance, thou pumpkin-head, do you not see the vigor given

to my Reform by the massacre at Amboise? Ideas never grow till they

are watered with blood. The slaying of the Duc de Guise will lead to a

horrible persecution, and I pray for it with all my might. Our reverses

are preferable to success. The Reformation has an object to gain in

being attacked; do you hear me, dolt? It cannot hurt us to be defeated,

whereas Catholicism is at an end if we should win but a single

battle. Ha! what are my lieutenants?--rags, wet rags instead of men!

white-haired cravens! baptized apes! O God, grant me ten years more of

life! If I die too soon the cause of true religion is lost in the hands

of such boobies! You are as great a fool as Antoine de Navarre! Out of

my sight! Leave me; I want a better negotiator than you! You are an ass,

a popinjay, a poet! Go and make your elegies and your acrostics, you

trifler! Hence!”

The pains of his body were absolutely overcome by the fire of his anger;

even the gout subsided under this horrible excitement of his mind.

Calvin’s face flushed purple, like the sky before a storm. His vast brow

shone. His eyes flamed. He was no longer himself. He gave way utterly to

the species of epileptic motion, full of passion, which was common with

him. But in the very midst of it he was struck by the attitude of the

two witnesses; then, as he caught the words of Chaudieu saying to de

Beze, “The Burning Bush!” he sat down, was silent, and covered his face

with his two hands, the knotted veins of which were throbbing in spite

of their coarse texture.

Some minutes later, still shaken by this storm raised within him by the

continence of his life, he said in a voice of emotion:--

“My sins, which are many, cost me less trouble to subdue, than my

impatience. Oh, savage beast! shall I never vanquish you?” he cried,

beating his breast.

“My dear master,” said de Beze, in a tender voice, taking Calvin’s hand

and kissing it, “Jupiter thunders, but he knows how to smile.”

Calvin looked at his disciple with a softened eye and said:--

“Understand me, my friends.”

“I understand that the pastors of peoples bear great burdens,” replied

Theodore. “You have a world upon your shoulders.”

“I have three martyrs,” said Chaudieu, whom the master’s outburst had

rendered thoughtful, “on whom we can rely. Stuart, who killed Minard, is

at liberty--”

“You are mistaken,” said Calvin, gently, smiling after the manner of

great men who bring fair weather into their faces as though they were

ashamed of the previous storm. “I know human nature; a man may kill one

president, but not two.”

“Is it absolutely necessary?” asked de Beze.

“Again!” exclaimed Calvin, his nostrils swelling. “Come, leave me, you

will drive me to fury. Take my decision to the queen. You, Chaudieu, go

your way, and hold your flock together in Paris. God guide you! Dinah,

light my friends to the door.”

“Will you not permit me to embrace you?” said Theodore, much moved. “Who

knows what may happen to us on the morrow? We may be seized in spite of

our safe-conduct.”

“And yet you want to spare them!” cried Calvin, embracing de Beze.

Then he took Chaudieu’s hand and said: “Above all, no Huguenots, no

Reformers, but _Calvinists_! Use no term but Calvinism. Alas! this is

not ambition, for I am dying,--but it is necessary to destroy the whole

of Luther, even to the name of Lutheran and Lutheranism.”

“Ah! man divine,” cried Chaudieu, “you well deserve such honors.”

“Maintain the uniformity of the doctrine; let no one henceforth change

or remark it. We are lost if new sects issue from our bosom.”

We will here anticipate the events on which this Study is based, and

close the history of Theodore de Beze, who went to Paris with Chaudieu.

It is to be remarked that Poltrot, who fired at the Duc de Guise fifteen

months later, confessed under torture that he had been urged to the

crime by Theodore de Beze; though he retracted that avowal during

subsequent tortures; so that Bossuet, after weighing all historical

considerations, felt obliged to acquit Beze of instigating the crime.

Since Bossuet’s time, however, an apparently futile dissertation,

apropos of a celebrated song, has led a compiler of the eighteenth

century to prove that the verses on the death of the Duc de Guise, sung

by the Huguenots from one end of France to the other, was the work of

Theodore de Beze; and it is also proved that the famous song on the

burial of Marlborough was a plagiarism on it.[*]

[*] One of the most remarkable instances of the transmission

of songs is that of Marlborough. Written in the first

instance by a Huguenot on the death of the Duc de Guise in

1563, it was preserved in the French army, and appears to

have been sung with variations, suppressions, and additions

at the death of all generals of importance. When the

intestine wars were over the song followed the soldiers into

civil life. It was never forgotten (though the habit of

singing it may have lessened), and in 1781, sixty years

after the death of Marlborough, the wet-nurse of the Dauphin

was heard to sing it as she suckled her nursling. When and

why the name of the Duke of Marlborough was substituted for

that of the Duc de Guise has never been ascertained. See

“Chansons Populaires,” par Charles Nisard: Paris, Dentu,

1867.--Tr.

XIV. CATHERINE IN POWER

The day on which Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu arrived in Paris,

the court returned from Rheims, where Charles IX. was crowned. This

ceremony, which Catherine made magnificent with splendid fetes, enabled

her to gather about her the leaders of the various parties. Having

studied all interests and all factions, she found herself with two

alternatives from which to choose; either to rally them all to the

throne, or to pit them one against the other. The Connetable de

Montmorency, supremely Catholic, whose nephew, the Prince de Conde,

was leader of the Reformers, and whose sons were inclined to the new

religion, blamed the alliance of the queen-mother with the Reformation.

The Guises, on their side, were endeavoring to gain over Antoine de

Bourbon, king of Navarre, a weak prince; a manoeuvre which his wife,

Jeanne d’Albret, instructed by de Beze, allowed to succeed. The

difficulties were plain to Catherine, whose dawning power needed a

period of tranquillity. She therefore impatiently awaited Calvin’s reply

to the message which the Prince de Conde, the king of Navarre, Coligny,

d’Andelot, and the Cardinal de Chatillon had sent him through de Beze

and Chaudieu. Meantime, however, she was faithful to her promises as

to the Prince de Conde. The chancellor put an end to the proceedings in

which Christophe was involved by referring the affair to the Parliament

of Paris, which at once set aside the judgment of the committee,

declaring it without power to try a prince of the blood. The Parliament

then reopened the trial, at the request of the Guises and the

queen-mother. Lasagne’s papers had already been given to Catherine, who

burned them. The giving up of these papers was a first pledge, uselessly

made by the Guises to the queen-mother. The Parliament, no longer able

to take cognizance of those decisive proofs, reinstated the prince in

all his rights, property, and honors. Christophe, released during the

tumult at Orleans on the death of the king, was acquitted in the first

instance, and appointed, in compensation for his sufferings, solicitor

to the Parliament, at the request of his godfather Monsieur de Thou.

The Triumvirate, that coming coalition of self-interests threatened by

Catherine’s first acts, was now forming itself under her very eyes.

Just as in chemistry antagonistic substances separate at the first shock

which jars their enforced union, so in politics the alliance of opposing

interests never lasts. Catherine thoroughly understood that sooner or

later she should return to the Guises and combine with them and the

Connetable to do battle against the Huguenots. The proposed “colloquy”

which tempted the vanity of the orators of all parties, and offered an

imposing spectacle to succeed that of the coronation and enliven the

bloody ground of a religious war which, in point of fact, had already

begun, was as futile in the eyes of the Duc de Guise as in those

of Catherine. The Catholics would, in one sense be worsted; for the

Huguenots, under pretext of conferring, would be able to proclaim their

doctrine, with the sanction of the king and his mother, to the ears of

all France. The Cardinal de Lorraine, flattered by Catherine into the

idea of destroying the heresy by the eloquence of the Church,

persuaded his brother to consent; and thus the queen obtained what was

all-essential to her, six months of peace.

A slight event, occurring at this time, came near compromising the

power which Catherine had so painfully built up. The following scene,

preserved in history, took place, on the very day the envoys returned

from Geneva, in the hotel de Coligny near the Louvre. At his coronation,

Charles IX., who was greatly attached to his tutor Amyot, appointed him

grand-almoner of France. This affection was shared by his brother the

Duc d’Anjou, afterwards Henri III., another of Anjou’s pupils. Catherine

heard the news of this appointment from the two Gondis during the

journey from Rheims to Paris. She had counted on that office in the gift

of the Crown to gain a supporter in the Church with whom to oppose the

Cardinal de Lorraine. Her choice had fallen on the Cardinal de Tournon,

in whom she expected to find, as in l’Hopital, another _crutch_--the

word is her own. As soon as she reached the Louvre she sent for the

tutor, and her anger was such, on seeing the disaster to her policy

caused by the ambition of this son of a shoemaker, that she was betrayed

into using the following extraordinary language, which several memoirs

of the day have handed down to us:--

“What!” she cried, “am I, who compel the Guises, the Colignys, the

Connetables, the house of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, to serve my

ends, am I to be opposed by a priestling like you who are not satisfied

to be bishop of Auxerre?”

Amyot excused himself. He assured the queen that he had asked nothing;

the king of his own will had given him the office of which he, the son

of a poor tailor, felt himself quite unworthy.

“Be assured, _maitre_,” replied Catherine (that being the name which the

two kings, Charles IX. and Henri III., gave to the great writer) “that

you will not stand on your feet twenty-four hours hence, unless you make

your pupil change his mind.”

Between the death thus threatened and the resignation of the highest

ecclesiastical office in the gift of the crown, the son of the

shoemaker, who had lately become extremely eager after honors, and may

even have coveted a cardinal’s hat, thought it prudent to temporize.

He left the court and hid himself in the abbey of Saint-Germain. When

Charles IX. did not see him at his first dinner, he asked where he was.

Some Guisard doubtless told him of what had occurred between Amyot and

the queen-mother.

“Has he been forced to disappear because I made him grand-almoner?”

cried the king.

He thereupon rushed to his mother in the violent wrath of angry children

when their caprices are opposed.

“Madame,” he said on entering, “did I not kindly sign the letter you

asked me to send to Parliament, by means of which you govern my kingdom?

Did you not promise that if I did so my will should be yours? And

here, the first favor that I wish to bestow excites your jealousy! The

chancellor talks of declaring my majority at fourteen, three years from

now, and you wish to treat me as a child. By God, I will be king, and a

king as my father and grandfather were kings!”

The tone and manner in which these words were said gave Catherine

a revelation of her son’s true character; it was like a blow in the

breast.

“He speaks to me thus, he whom I made a king!” she thought. “Monsieur,”

she said aloud, “the office of a king, in times like these, is a very

difficult one; you do not yet know the shrewd men with whom you have

to deal. You will never have a safer and more sincere friend than your

mother, or better servants than those who have been so long attached

to her person, without whose services you might perhaps not even exist

to-day. The Guises want both your life and your throne, be sure of that.

If they could sew me into a sack and fling me into the river,” she said,

pointing to the Seine, “it would be done to-night. They know that I am a

lioness defending her young, and that I alone prevent their daring hands

from seizing your crown. To whom--to whose party does your tutor belong?

Who are his allies? What authority has he? What services can he do you?

What weight do his words carry? Instead of finding a prop to sustain

your power, you have cut the ground from under it. The Cardinal de

Lorraine is a living threat to you; he plays the king; he keeps his hat

on his head before the princes of the blood; it was urgently necessary

to invest another cardinal with powers greater than his own. But what

have you done? Is Amyot, that shoemaker, fit only to tie the ribbons

of his shoes, is he capable of making head against the Guise ambition?

However, you love Amyot, you have appointed him; your will must now

be done, monsieur. But before you make such gifts again, I pray you to

consult me in affectionate good faith. Listen to reasons of state; and

your own good sense as a child may perhaps agree with my old experience,

when you really understand the difficulties that lie before you.”

“Then I can have my master back again?” cried the king, not listening to

his mother’s words, which he considered to be mere reproaches.

“Yes, you shall have him,” she replied. “But it is not here, nor that

brutal Cypierre who will teach you how to reign.”

“It is for you to do so, my dear mother,” said the boy, mollified by his

victory and relaxing the surly and threatening look stamped by nature

upon his countenance.

Catherine sent Gondi to recall the new grand-almoner. When the Italian

discovered the place of Amyot’s retreat, and the bishop heard that the

courtier was sent by the queen, he was seized with terror and refused to

leave the abbey. In this extremity Catherine was obliged to write to him

herself, in such terms that he returned to Paris and received from her

own lips the assurance of her protection,--on condition, however, that

he would blindly promote her wishes with Charles IX.

This little domestic tempest over, the queen, now re-established in

the Louvre after an absence of more than a year, held council with her

closest friends as to the proper conduct to pursue with the young king

whom Cypierre had complimented on his firmness.

“What is best to be done?” she said to the two Gondis, Ruggiero, Birago,

and Chiverni who had lately become governor and chancellor to the Duc

d’Anjou.

“Before all else,” replied Birago, “get rid of Cypierre. He is not a

courtier; he will never accommodate himself to your ideas, and will

think he does his duty in thwarting you.”

“Whom can I trust?” cried the queen.

“One of us,” said Birago.

“On my honor!” exclaimed Gondi, “I’ll promise you to make the king as

docile as the king of Navarre.”

“You allowed the late king to perish to save your other children,”

said Albert de Gondi. “Do, then, as the great signors of Constantinople

do,--divert the anger and amuse the caprices of the present king. He

loves art and poetry and hunting, also a little girl he saw at Orleans;

_there’s_ occupation enough for him.”

“Will you really be the king’s governor?” said Catherine to the ablest

of the Gondis.

“Yes, if you will give me the necessary authority; you may even be

obliged to make me marshal of France and a duke. Cypierre is altogether

too small a man to hold the office. In future, the governor of a king of

France should be of some great dignity, like that of duke and marshal.”

“He is right,” said Birago.

“Poet and huntsman,” said Catherine in a dreamy tone.

“We will hunt and make love!” cried Gondi.

“Moreover,” remarked Chiverni, “you are sure of Amyot, who will always

fear poison in case of disobedience; so that you and he and Gondi can

hold the king in leading-strings.”

“Amyot has deeply offended me,” said Catherine.

“He does not know what he owes to you; if he did know, you would be in

danger,” replied Birago, gravely, emphasizing his words.

“Then, it is agreed,” exclaimed Catherine, on whom Birago’s reply made a

powerful impression, “that you, Gondi, are to be the king’s governor. My

son must consent to do for one of my friends a favor equal to the one

I have just permitted for his knave of a bishop. That fool has lost the

hat; for never, as long as I live, will I consent that the Pope shall

give it to him! How strong we might have been with Cardinal de Tournon!

What a trio with Tournon for grand-almoner, and l’Hopital, and de Thou!

As for the burghers of Paris, I intend to make my son cajole them; we

will get a support there.”

Accordingly, Albert de Gondi became a marshal of France and was created

Duc de Retz and governor of the king a few days later.

At the moment when this little private council ended, Cardinal de

Tournon announced to the queen the arrival of the emissaries sent to

Calvin. Admiral Coligny accompanied the party in order that his presence

might ensure them due respect at the Louvre. The queen gathered the

formidable phalanx of her maids of honor about her, and passed into

the reception hall, built by her husband, which no longer exists in the

Louvre of to-day.

At the period of which we write the staircase of the Louvre occupied

the clock tower. Catherine’s apartments were in the old buildings which

still exist in the court of the Musee. The present staircase of the

museum was built in what was formerly the _salle des ballets_. The

ballet of those days was a sort of dramatic entertainment performed by

the whole court.

Revolutionary passions gave rise to a most laughable error about Charles

IX., in connection with the Louvre. During the Revolution hostile

opinions as to this king, whose real character was masked, made a

monster of him. Joseph Cheniers tragedy was written under the influence

of certain words scratched on the window of the projecting wing of the

Louvre, looking toward the quay. The words were as follows: “It was from

this window that Charles IX., of execrable memory, fired upon French

citizens.” It is well to inform future historians and all sensible

persons that this portion of the Louvre--called to-day the old

Louvre--which projects upon the quay and is connected with the Louvre by

the room called the Apollo gallery (while the great halls of the Museum

connect the Louvre with the Tuileries) did not exist in the time of

Charles IX. The greater part of the space where the frontage on the quay

now stands, and where the Garden of the Infanta is laid out, was

then occupied by the hotel de Bourbon, which belonged to and was

the residence of the house of Navarre. It was absolutely impossible,

therefore, for Charles IX. to fire from the Louvre of Henri II. upon

a boat full of Huguenots crossing the river, although _at the present

time_ the Seine can be seen from its windows. Even if learned men and

libraries did not possess maps of the Louvre made in the time of Charles

IX., on which its then position is clearly indicated, the building

itself refutes the error. All the kings who co-operated in the work

of erecting this enormous mass of buildings never failed to put their

initials or some special monogram on the parts they had severally built.

Now the part we speak of, the venerable and now blackened wing of

the Louvre, projecting on the quay and overlooking the garden of the

Infanta, bears the monograms of Henri III. and Henri IV., which are

totally different from that of Henri II., who invariably joined his H

to the two C’s of Catherine, forming a D,--which, by the bye, has

constantly deceived superficial persons into fancying that the king put

the initial of his mistress, Diane, on great public buildings. Henri

IV. united the Louvre with his own hotel de Bourbon, its garden and

dependencies. He was the first to think of connecting Catherine de’

Medici’s palace of the Tuileries with the Louvre by his unfinished

galleries, the precious sculptures of which have been so cruelly

neglected. Even if the map of Paris, and the monograms of Henri III. and

Henri IV. did not exist, the difference of architecture is refutation

enough to the calumny. The vermiculated stone copings of the hotel de la

Force mark the transition between what is called the architecture of

the Renaissance and that of Henri III., Henri IV., and Louis XIII. This

archaeological digression (continuing the sketches of old Paris with

which we began this history) enables us to picture to our minds the then

appearance of this other corner of the old city, of which nothing now

remains but Henri IV.’s addition to the Louvre, with its admirable

bas-reliefs, now being rapidly annihilated.

When the court heard that the queen was about to give an audience to

Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu, presented by Admiral Coligny, all the

courtiers who had the right of entrance to the reception hall, hastened

thither to witness the interview. It was about six o’clock in the

evening; Coligny had just supped, and was using a toothpick as he came

up the staircase of the Louvre between the two Reformers. The practice

of using a toothpick was so inveterate a habit with the admiral that

he was seen to do it on the battle-field while planning a retreat.

“Distrust the admiral’s toothpick, the _No_ of the Connetable,

and Catherine’s _Yes_,” was a court proverb of that day. After the

Saint-Bartholomew the populace made a horrible jest on the body of

Coligny, which hung for three days at Montfaucon, by putting a grotesque

toothpick into his mouth. History has recorded this atrocious levity.

So petty an act done in the midst of that great catastrophe pictures

the Parisian populace, which deserves the sarcastic jibe of Boileau:

“Frenchmen, born _malin_, created the guillotine.” The Parisian of all

time cracks jokes and makes lampoons before, during, and after the most

horrible revolutions.

Theodore de Beze wore the dress of a courtier, black silk stockings,

low shoes with straps across the instep, tight breeches, a black silk

doublet with slashed sleeves, and a small black velvet mantle, over

which lay an elegant white fluted ruff. His beard was trimmed to a

moustache and _virgule_ (now called imperial) and he carried a sword

at his side and a cane in his hand. Whosoever knows the galleries of

Versailles or the collections of Odieuvre, knows also his round, almost

jovial face and lively eyes, surmounted by the broad forehead which

characterized the writers and poets of that day. De Beze had, what

served him admirably, an agreeable air and manner. In this he was a

great contrast to Coligny, of austere countenance, and to the sour,

bilious Chaudieu, who chose to wear on this occasion the robe and bands

of a Calvinist minister.

The scenes that happen in our day in the Chamber of Deputies, and which,

no doubt, happened in the Convention, will give an idea of how, at this

court, at this epoch, these men, who six months later were to fight to

the death in a war without quarter, could meet and talk to each other

with courtesy and even laughter. Birago, who was coldly to advise the

Saint-Bartholomew, and Cardinal de Lorraine, who charged his servant

Besme “not to miss the admiral,” now advanced to meet Coligny; Birago

saying, with a smile:--

“Well, my dear admiral, so you have really taken upon yourself to

present these gentlemen from Geneva?”

“Perhaps you will call it a crime in _me_,” replied the admiral,

jesting, “whereas if you had done it yourself you would make a merit of

it.”

“They say that the Sieur Calvin is very ill,” remarked the Cardinal de

Lorraine to Theodore de Beze. “I hope no one suspects us of giving him

his broth.”

“Ah! monseigneur; it would be too great a risk,” replied de Beze,

maliciously.

The Duc de Guise, who was watching Chaudieu, looked fixedly at his

brother and at Birago, who were both taken aback by de Beze’s answer.

“Good God!” remarked the cardinal, “heretics are not diplomatic!”

To avoid embarrassment, the queen, who was announced at this moment, had

arranged to remain standing during the audience. She began by speaking

to the Connetable, who had previously remonstrated with her vehemently

on the scandal of receiving messengers from Calvin.

“You see, my dear Connetable,” she said, “that I receive them without

ceremony.”

“Madame,” said the admiral, approaching the queen, “these are two

teachers of the new religion, who have come to an understanding with

Calvin, and who have his instructions as to a conference in which the

churches of France may be able to settle their differences.”

“This is Monsieur de Beze, to whom my wife is much attached,” said the

king of Navarre, coming forward and taking de Beze by the hand.

“And this is Chaudieu,” said the Prince de Conde. “_My friend_ the Duc

de Guise knows the soldier,” he added, looking at Le Balafre, “perhaps

he will now like to know the minister.”

This gasconade made the whole court laugh, even Catherine.

“Faith!” replied the Duc de Guise, “I am enchanted to see a _gars_ who

knows so well how to choose his men and to employ them in their right

sphere. One of your agents,” he said to Chaudieu, “actually endured the

extraordinary question without dying and without confessing a single

thing. I call myself brave; but I don’t know that I could have endured

it as he did.”

“Hum!” muttered Ambroise, “you did not say a word when I pulled the

javelin out of your face at Calais.”

Catherine, standing at the centre of a semicircle of the courtiers

and maids of honor, kept silence. She was observing the two Reformers,

trying to penetrate their minds as, with the shrewd, intelligent glance

of her black eyes, she studied them.

“One seems to be the scabbard, the other the blade,” whispered Albert de

Gondi in her ear.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Catherine at last, unable to restrain a smile,

“has your master given you permission to unite in a public conference,

at which you will be converted by the arguments of the Fathers of the

Church who are the glory of our State?”

“We have no master but the Lord,” said Chaudieu.

“But surely you will allow some little authority to the king of France?”

said Catherine, smiling.

“And much to the queen,” said de Beze, bowing low.

“You will find,” continued the queen, “that our most submissive subjects

are heretics.”

“Ah, madame!” cried Coligny, “we will indeed endeavor to make you a

noble and peaceful kingdom! Europe has profited, alas! by our internal

divisions. For the last fifty years she has had the advantage of

one-half of the French people being against the other half.”

“Are we here to sing anthems to the glory of heretics,” said the

Connetable, brutally.

“No, but to bring them to repentance,” whispered the Cardinal de

Lorraine in his ear; “we want to coax them by a little sugar.”

“Do you know what I should have done under the late king?” said the

Connetable, angrily. “I’d have called in the provost and hung those two

knaves, then and there, on the gallows of the Louvre.”

“Well, gentlemen, who are the learned men whom you have selected as our

opponents?” inquired the queen, imposing silence on the Connetable by a

look.

“Duplessis-Mornay and Theodore de Beze will speak on our side,” replied

Chaudieu.

“The court will doubtless go to Saint-Germain, and as it would be

improper that this _colloquy_ should take place in a royal residence, we

will have it in the little town of Poissy,” said Catherine.

“Shall we be safe there, madame?” asked Chaudieu.

“Ah!” replied the queen, with a sort of naivete, “you will surely know

how to take precautions. The Admiral will arrange all that with my

cousins the Guises and de Montmorency.”

“The devil take them!” cried the Connetable, “I’ll have nothing to do

with it.”

“How do you contrive to give such strength of character to your

converts?” said the queen, leading Chaudieu apart. “The son of my

furrier was actually sublime.”

“We have faith,” replied Chaudieu.

At this moment the hall presented a scene of animated groups, all

discussing the question of the proposed assembly, to which the few

words said by the queen had already given the name of the “Colloquy

of Poissy.” Catherine glanced at Chaudieu and was able to say to him

unheard:--

“Yes, a new faith!”

“Ah, madame, if you were not blinded by your alliance with the court of

Rome, you would see that we are returning to the true doctrines of Jesus

Christ, who, recognizing the equality of souls, bestows upon all men

equal rights on earth.”

“Do you think yourself the equal of Calvin?” asked the queen, shrewdly.

“No, no; we are equals only in church. What! would you unbind the tie of

the people to the throne?” she cried. “Then you are not only heretics,

you are revolutionists,--rebels against obedience to the king as you

are against that to the Pope!” So saying, she left Chaudieu abruptly and

returned to Theodore de Beze. “I count on you, monsieur,” she said, “to

conduct this colloquy in good faith. Take all the time you need.”

“I had supposed,” said Chaudieu to the Prince de Conde, the King of

Navarre, and Admiral Coligny, as they left the hall, “that a great State

matter would be treated more seriously.”

“Oh! we know very well what you want,” exclaimed the Prince de Conde,

exchanging a sly look with Theodore de Beze.

The prince now left his adherents to attend a rendezvous. This great

leader of a party was also one of the most favored gallants of the

court. The two choice beauties of that day were even then striving

with such desperate eagerness for his affections that one of them, the

Marechale de Saint-Andre, the wife of the future triumvir, gave him

her beautiful estate of Saint-Valery, hoping to win him away from the

Duchesse de Guise, the wife of the man who had tried to take his head on

the scaffold. The duchess, not being able to detach the Duc de Nemours

from Mademoiselle de Rohan, fell in love, _en attendant_, with the

leader of the Reformers.

“What a contrast to Geneva!” said Chaudieu to Theodore de Beze, as they

crossed the little bridge of the Louvre.

“The people here are certainly gayer than the Genevese. I don’t see why

they should be so treacherous,” replied de Beze.

“To treachery oppose treachery,” replied Chaudieu, whispering the words

in his companion’s ear. “I have _saints_ in Paris on whom I can rely,

and I intend to make Calvin a prophet. Christophe Lecamus shall deliver

us from our most dangerous enemy.”

“The queen-mother, for whom the poor devil endured his torture, has

already, with a high hand, caused him to be appointed solicitor to the

Parliament; and solicitors make better prosecutors than murderers. Don’t

you remember how Avenelles betrayed the secrets of our first uprising?”

“I know Christophe,” said Chaudieu, in a positive tone, as he turned to

leave the envoy from Geneva.

XV. COMPENSATION

A few days after the reception of Calvin’s emissaries by the queen,

that is to say, toward the close of the year (for the year then began at

Easter and the present calendar was not adopted until later in the reign

of Charles IX.), Christophe reclined in an easy chair beside the fire

in the large brown hall, dedicated to family life, that overlooked the

river in his father’s house, where the present drama was begun. His feet

rested on a stool; his mother and Babette Lallier had just renewed the

compresses, saturated with a solution brought by Ambroise Pare, who

was charged by Catherine de’ Medici to take care of the young man. Once

restored to his family, Christophe became the object of the most devoted

care. Babette, authorized by her father, came very morning and only

left the Lecamus household at night. Christophe, the admiration of the

apprentices, gave rise throughout the quarter to various tales, which

invested him with mysterious poesy. He had borne the worst torture; the

celebrated Ambroise Pare was employing all his skill to cure him. What

great deed had he done to be thus treated? Neither Christophe nor his

father said a word on the subject. Catherine, then all-powerful, was

concerned in their silence as well as the Prince de Conde. The constant

visits of Pare, now chief surgeon of both the king and the house of

Guise, whom the queen-mother and the Lorrains allowed to treat a youth

accused of heresy, strangely complicated an affair through which no

one saw clearly. Moreover, the rector of Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs came

several times to visit the son of his church-warden, and these

visits made the causes of Christophe’s present condition still more

unintelligible to his neighbors.

The old syndic, who had his plan, gave evasive answers to his

brother-furriers, the merchants of the neighborhood, and to all friends

who spoke to him of his son: “Yes, I am very thankful to have saved

him.”--“Well, you know, it won’t do to put your finger between the

bark and the tree.”--“My son touched fire and came near burning up my

house.”--“They took advantage of his youth; we burghers get nothing but

shame and evil by frequenting the grandees.”--“This affair decides me to

make a lawyer of Christophe; the practice of law will teach him to weigh

his words and his acts.”--“The young queen, who is now in Scotland, had

a great deal to do with it; but then, to be sure, my son may have been

imprudent.”--“I have had cruel anxieties.”--“All this may decide me to

give up my business; I do not wish ever to go to court again.”--“My son

has had enough of the Reformation; it has cracked all his joints. If it

had not been for Ambroise, I don’t know what would have become of me.”

Thanks to these ambiguous remarks and to the great discretion of such

conduct, it was generally averred in the neighborhood that Christophe

had seen the error of his ways; everybody thought it natural that the

old syndic should wish to get his son appointed to the Parliament, and

the rector’s visits no longer seemed extraordinary. As the neighbors

reflected on the old man’s anxieties they no longer thought, as they

would otherwise have done, that his ambition was inordinate. The young

lawyer, who had lain helpless for months on the bed which his family

made up for him in the old hall, was now, for the last week, able to

rise and move about by the aid of crutches. Babette’s love and his

mother’s tenderness had deeply touched his heart; and they, while they

had him helpless in their hands, lectured him severely on religion.

President de Thou paid his godson a visit during which he showed himself

most fatherly. Christophe, being now a solicitor of the Parliament, must

of course, he said, be Catholic; his oath would bind him to that; and

the president, who assumed not to doubt of his godson’s orthodoxy, ended

his remarks by saying with great earnestness:

“My son, you have been cruelly tried. I am myself ignorant of the

reasons which made the Messieurs de Guise treat you thus; but I advise

you in future to live peacefully, without entering into the troubles of

the times; for the favor of the king and queen will not be shown to the

makers of revolt. You are not important enough to play fast and loose

with the king as the Guises do. If you wish to be some day counsellor to

the Parliament remember that you cannot obtain that noble office unless

by a real and serious attachment to the royal cause.”

Nevertheless, neither President de Thou’s visit, nor the seductions of

Babette, nor the urgency of his mother, were sufficient to shake the

constancy of the martyr of the Reformation. Christophe held to his

religion all the more because he had suffered for it.

“My father will never let me marry a heretic,” whispered Babette in his

ear.

Christophe answered only by tears, which made the young girl silent and

thoughtful.

Old Lecamus maintained his paternal and magisterial dignity; he observed

his son and said little. The stern old man, after recovering his dear

Christophe, was dissatisfied with himself; he repented the tenderness he

had shown for this only son; but he admired him secretly. At no period

of his life did the syndic pull more wires to reach his ends, for he

saw the field ripe for the harvest so painfully sown, and he wanted to

gather the whole of it. Some days before the morning of which we write,

he had had, being alone with Christophe, a long conversation with him

in which he endeavored to discover the secret reason of the young man’s

resistance. Christophe, who was not without ambition, betrayed his faith

in the Prince de Conde. The generous promise of the prince, who, of

course, was only exercising his profession of prince, remained graven on

his heart; little did he think that Conde had sent him, mentally, to the

devil in Orleans, muttering, “A Gascon would have understood me better,”

when Christophe called out a touching farewell as the prince passed the

window of his dungeon.

But besides this sentiment of admiration for the prince, Christophe

had also conceived a profound reverence for the great queen, who had

explained to him by a single look the necessity which compelled her to

sacrifice him; and who during his agony had given him an illimitable

promise in a single tear. During the silent months of his weakness, as

he lay there waiting for recovery, he thought over each event at Blois

and at Orleans. He weighed, one might almost say in spite of himself,

the relative worth of these two protections. He floated between the

queen and the prince. He had certainly served Catherine more than he

had served the Reformation, and in a young man both heart and mind would

naturally incline toward the queen; less because she was a queen than

because she was a woman. Under such circumstances a man will always hope

“I cannot prevent it,” said the chancellor; “but I shall record the