I. THE COURT UNDER CHARLES IX.
Between eleven o’clock and midnight toward the end of October, 1573,
two Italians, Florentines and brothers, Albert de Gondi, Duc de Retz
and marshal of France, and Charles de Gondi la Tour, Grand-master of
the robes of Charles IX., were sitting on the roof of a house in the
rue Saint-Honore, at the edge of a gutter. This gutter was one of those
stone channels which in former days were constructed below the roofs of
houses to receive the rain-water, discharging it at regular intervals
through those long gargoyles carved in the shape of fantastic animals
with gaping mouths. In spite of the zeal with which our present general
pulls down and demolishes venerable buildings, there still existed many
of these projecting gutters until, quite recently, an ordinance of the
police as to water-conduits compelled them to disappear. But even so,
a few of these carved gargoyles still remain, chiefly in the _quartier_
Saint-Antoine, where low rents and values hinder the building of new
storeys under the eaves of the roofs.
It certainly seems strange that two personages invested with such
important offices should be playing the part of cats. But whosoever
will burrow into the historic treasures of those days, when personal
interests jostled and thwarted each other around the throne till the
whole political centre of France was like a skein of tangled thread,
will readily understand that the two Florentines were cats indeed, and
very much in their places in a gutter. Their devotion to the person
of the queen-mother, Catherine de’ Medici--who had brought them to the
court of France and foisted them into their high offices--compelled them
not to recoil before any of the consequences of their intrusion. But to
explain how and why these courtiers were thus perched, it is necessary
to relate a scene which had taken place an hour earlier not far from
this very gutter, in that beautiful brown room of the Louvre, all that
now remains to us of the apartments of Henri II., in which after supper
the courtiers had been paying court to the two queens, Catherine de’
Medici and Elizabeth of Austria, and to their son and husband King
Charles IX.
In those days the majority of the burghers and great lords supped at
six, or at seven o’clock, but the more refined and elegant supped at
eight or even nine. This repast was the dinner of to-day. Many persons
erroneously believe that etiquette was invented by Louis XIV.; on the
contrary it was introduced into France by Catherine de’ Medici, who made
it so severe that the Connetable de Montmorency had more difficulty in
obtaining permission to enter the court of the Louvre on horseback than
in winning his sword; moreover, that unheard-of distinction was granted
to him only on account of his great age. Etiquette, which was, it
is true, slightly relaxed under the first two Bourbon kings, took an
Oriental form under the Great Monarch, for it was introduced from the
Eastern Empire, which derived it from Persia. In 1573 few persons had
the right to enter the courtyard of the Louvre with their servants and
torches (under Louis XIV. the coaches of none but dukes and peers were
allowed to pass under the peristyle); moreover, the cost of obtaining
entrance after supper to the royal apartments was very heavy. The
Marechal de Retz, whom we have just seen, perched on a gutter, offered
on one occasion a thousand crowns of that day, six thousand francs of
our present money, to the usher of the king’s cabinet to be allowed to
speak to Henri III. on a day when he was not on duty. To an historian
who knows the truth, it is laughable to see the well-known picture of
the courtyard at Blois, in which the artist has introduced a courtier on
horseback!
On the present occasion, therefore, none but the most eminent personages
in the kingdom were in the royal apartments. The queen, Elizabeth
of Austria, and her mother-in-law, Catherine de’ Medici, were seated
together on the left of the fireplace. On the other side sat the
king, buried in an arm-chair, affecting a lethargy consequent on
digestion,--for he had just supped like a prince returned from hunting;
possibly he was seeking to avoid conversation in presence of so many
persons who were spies upon his thoughts. The courtiers stood erect and
uncovered at the end of the room. Some talked in a low voice;
others watched the king, awaiting the bestowal of a look or a word.
Occasionally one was called up by the queen-mother, who talked with him
for a few moments; another risked saying a word to the king, who replied
with either a nod or a brief sentence. A German nobleman, the Comte de
Solern, stood at the corner of the fireplace behind the young queen, the
granddaughter of Charles V., whom he had accompanied into France. Near
to her on a stool sat her lady of honor, the Comtesse de Fiesque, a
Strozzi, and a relation of Catherine de’ Medici. The beautiful Madame de
Sauves, a descendant of Jacques Coeur, mistress of the king of Navarre,
then of the king of Poland, and lastly of the Duc d’Alencon, had
been invited to supper; but she stood like the rest of the court, her
husband’s rank (that of secretary of State) giving her no right to be
seated. Behind these two ladies stood the two Gondis, talking to them.
They alone of this dismal assembly were smiling. Albert Gondi, now Duc
de Retz, marshal of France, and gentleman of the bed-chamber, had been
deputed to marry the queen by proxy at Spire. In the first line of
courtiers nearest to the king stood the Marechal de Tavannes, who was
present on court business; Neufville de Villeroy, one of the ablest
bankers of the period, who laid the foundation of the great house of
that name; Birago and Chiverni, gentlemen of the queen-mother, who,
knowing her preference for her son Henri (the brother whom Charles
IX. regarded as an enemy), attached themselves especially to him; then
Strozzi, Catherine’s cousin; and finally, a number of great lords,
among them the old Cardinal de Lorraine and his nephew, the young Duc de
Guise, who were held at a distance by the king and his mother. These
two leaders of the Holy Alliance, and later of the League (founded in
conjunction with Spain a few years earlier), affected the submission of
servants who are only waiting an opportunity to make themselves masters.
Catherine and Charles IX. watched each other with close attention.
At this gloomy court, as gloomy as the room in which it was held, each
individual had his or her own reasons for being sad or thoughtful. The
young queen, Elizabeth, was a prey to the tortures of jealousy, and
could ill-disguise them, though she smiled upon her husband, whom she
passionately adored, good and pious woman that she was! Marie Touchet,
the only mistress Charles IX. ever had and to whom he was loyally
faithful, had lately returned from the chateau de Fayet in Dauphine,
whither she had gone to give birth to a child. She brought back
to Charles IX. a son, his only son, Charles de Valois, first Comte
d’Auvergne, and afterward Duc d’Angouleme. The poor queen, in addition
to the mortification of her abandonment, now endured the pang of knowing
that her rival had borne a son to her husband while she had brought him
only a daughter. And these were not her only troubles and disillusions,
for Catherine de’ Medici, who had seemed her friend in the first
instance, now, out of policy, favored her betrayal, preferring to
serve the mistress rather than the wife of the king,--for the following
reason.
When Charles IX. openly avowed his passion for Marie Touchet, Catherine
showed favor to the girl in the interests of her own desire for
domination. Marie Touchet, who was very young when brought to court,
came at an age when all the noblest sentiments are predominant. She
loved the king for himself alone. Frightened at the fate to which
ambition had led the Duchesse de Valentinois (better known as Diane
de Poitiers), she dreaded the queen-mother, and greatly preferred her
simple happiness to grandeur. Perhaps she thought that lovers as young
as the king and herself could never struggle successfully against the
queen-mother. As the daughter of Jean Touchet, Sieur de Beauvais and
Quillard, she was born between the burgher class and the lower
nobility; she had none of the inborn ambitions of the Pisseleus and
Saint-Valliers, girls of rank, who battled for their families with the
hidden weapons of love. Marie Touchet, without family or friends,
spared Catherine de’ Medici all antagonism with her son’s mistress; the
daughter of a great house would have been her rival. Jean Touchet,
the father, one of the finest wits of the time, a man to whom poets
dedicated their works, wanted nothing at court. Marie, a young girl
without connections, intelligent and well-educated, and also simple and
artless, whose desires would probably never be aggressive to the
royal power, suited the queen-mother admirably. In short, she made the
parliament recognize the son to whom Marie Touchet had just given birth
in the month of April, and she allowed him to take the title of Comte
d’Auvergne, assuring Charles IX. that she would leave the boy her
personal property, the counties of Auvergne and Laraguais. At a later
period, Marguerite de Valois, queen of Navarre, contested this legacy
after she was queen of France, and the parliament annulled it. But later
still, Louis XIII., out of respect for the Valois blood, indemnified the
Comte d’Auvergne by the gift of the duchy of Angouleme.
Catherine had already given Marie Touchet, who asked nothing, the manor
of Belleville, an estate close to Vincennes which carried no title; and
thither she went whenever the king hunted and spent the night at the
castle. It was in this gloomy fortress that Charles IX. passed the
greater part of his last years, ending his life there, according to some
historians, as Louis XII. had ended his.
The queen-mother kept close watch upon her son. All the occupations of
his personal life, outside of politics, were reported to her. The king
had begun to look upon his mother as an enemy, but the kind intentions
she expressed toward his son diverted his suspicions for a time.
Catherine’s motives in this matter were never understood by Queen
Elizabeth, who, according to Brantome, was one of the gentlest queens
that ever reigned, who never did harm or even gave pain to any one, “and
was careful to read her prayer-book secretly.” But this single-minded
princess began at last to see the precipices yawning around the
throne,--a dreadful discovery, which might indeed have made her quail;
it was some such remembrance, no doubt, that led her to say to one of
her ladies, after the death of the king, in reply to a condolence that
she had no son, and could not, therefore, be regent and queen-mother:
“Ah! I thank God that I have no son. I know well what would have
happened. My poor son would have been despoiled and wronged like the
king, my husband, and I should have been the cause of it. God had mercy
on the State; he has done all for the best.”
This princess, whose portrait Brantome thinks he draws by saying that
her complexion was as beautiful and delicate as the ladies of her suite
were charming and agreeable, and that her figure was fine though rather
short, was of little account at her own court. Suffering from a double
grief, her saddened attitude added another gloomy tone to a scene which
most young queens, less cruelly injured, might have enlivened. The pious
Elizabeth proved at this crisis that the qualities which are the shining
glory of women in the ordinary ways of life can be fatal to a sovereign.
A princess able to occupy herself with other things besides her
prayer-book might have been a useful helper to Charles IX., who found no
prop to lean on, either in his wife or in his mistress.
The queen-mother, as she sat there in that brown room, was closely
observing the king, who, during supper, had exhibited a boisterous
good-humor which she felt to be assumed in order to mask some intention
against her. This sudden gaiety contrasted too vividly with the struggle
of mind he endeavored to conceal by his eagerness in hunting, and by
an almost maniacal toil at his forge, where he spent many hours in
hammering iron; and Catherine was not deceived by it. Without being
able even to guess which of the statesmen about the king was employed
to prepare or negotiate it (for Charles IX. contrived to mislead his
mother’s spies), Catherine felt no doubt whatever that some scheme for
her overthrow was being planned. The unlooked-for presence of Tavannes,
who arrived at the same time as Strozzi, whom she herself had summoned,
gave her food for thought. Strong in the strength of her political
combination, Catherine was above the reach of circumstances; but she was
powerless against some hidden violence. As many persons are ignorant of
the actual state of public affairs then so complicated by the various
parties that distracted France, the leaders of which had each their
private interests to carry out, it is necessary to describe, in a few
words, the perilous game in which the queen-mother was now engaged. To
show Catherine de’ Medici in a new light is, in fact, the root and stock
of our present history.
Two words explain this woman, so curiously interesting to study, a woman
whose influence has left such deep impressions upon France. Those words
are: Power and Astrology. Exclusively ambitious, Catherine de’ Medici
had no other passion than that of power. Superstitious and fatalistic,
like so many superior men, she had no sincere belief except in occult
sciences. Unless this double mainspring is known, the conduct of
Catherine de’ Medici will remain forever misunderstood. As we
picture her faith in judicial astrology, the light will fall upon two
personages, who are, in fact, the philosophical subjects of this Study.
There lived a man for whom Catherine cared more than for any of her
children; his name was Cosmo Ruggiero. He lived in a house belonging to
her, the hotel de Soissons; she made him her supreme adviser. It was his
duty to tell her whether the stars ratified the advice and judgment of
her ordinary counsellors. Certain remarkable antecedents warranted the
power which Cosmo Ruggiero retained over his mistress to her last hour.
One of the most learned men of the sixteenth century was physician to
Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duc d’Urbino, Catherine’s father. This physician
was called Ruggiero the Elder (Vecchio Ruggier and Roger l’Ancien in the
French authors who have written on alchemy), to distinguish him from his
two sons, Lorenzo Ruggiero, called the Great by cabalistic writers, and
Cosmo Ruggiero, Catherine’s astrologer, also called Roger by several
French historians. In France it was the custom to pronounce the name
in general as Ruggieri. Ruggiero the elder was so highly valued by the
Medici that the two dukes, Cosmo and Lorenzo, stood godfathers to his
two sons. He cast, in concert with the famous mathematician, Basilio,
the horoscope of Catherine’s nativity, in his official capacity as
mathematicion, astrologer, and physician to the house of Medici; three
offices which are often confounded.
At the period of which we write the occult sciences were studied with an
ardor that may surprise the incredulous minds of our own age, which is
supremely analytical. Perhaps such minds may find in this historical
sketch the dawn, or rather the germ, of the positive sciences which have
flowered in the nineteenth century, though without the poetic grandeur
given to them by the audacious Seekers of the sixteenth, who, instead
of using them solely for mechanical industries, magnified Art and
fertilized Thought by their means. The protection universally given
to occult science by the sovereigns of those days was justified by the
noble creations of many inventors, who, starting in quest of the Great
Work (the so-called philosophers’ stone), attained to astonishing
results. At no period were the sovereigns of the world more eager for
the study of these mysteries. The Fuggers of Augsburg, in whom all
modern Luculluses will recognize their princes, and all bankers their
masters, were gifted with powers of calculation it would be difficult to
surpass. Well, those practical men, who loaned the funds of all Europe
to the sovereigns of the sixteenth century (as deeply in debt as the
kings of the present day), those illustrious guests of Charles V. were
sleeping partners in the crucibles of Paracelsus. At the beginning of
the sixteenth century, Ruggiero the elder was the head of that secret
university from which issued the Cardans, the Nostradamuses, and the
Agrippas (all in their turn physicians of the house of Valois); also the
astronomers, astrologers, and alchemists who surrounded the princes of
Christendom and were more especially welcomed and protected in France by
Catherine de’ Medici. In the nativity drawn by Basilio and Ruggiero the
elder, the principal events of Catherine’s life were foretold with a
correctness which is quite disheartening for those who deny the power
of occult science. This horoscope predicted the misfortunes which during
the siege of Florence imperilled the beginning of her life; also her
marriage with a son of the king of France, the unexpected succession
of that son to his father’s throne, the birth of her children,
their number, and the fact that three of her sons would be kings in
succession, that two of her daughters would be queens, and that all
of them were destined to die without posterity. This prediction was so
fully realized that many historians have assumed that it was written
after the events.
It is well known that Nostradamus took to the chateau de Chaumont,
whither Catherine went after the conspiracy of La Renaudie, a woman who
possessed the faculty of reading the future. Now, during the reign of
Francois II., while the queen had with her her four sons, all young and
in good health, and before the marriage of her daughter Elizabeth with
Philip II., king of Spain, or that of her daughter Marguerite with Henri
de Bourbon, king of Navarre (afterward Henri IV.), Nostradamus and this
woman reiterated the circumstances formerly predicted in the famous
nativity. This woman, who was no doubt gifted with second sight, and who
belonged to the great school of Seekers of the Great Work, though the
particulars of her life and name are lost to history, stated that the
last crowned child would be assassinated. Having placed the queen-mother
in front of a magic mirror, in which was reflected a wheel on the
several spokes of which were the faces of her children, the sorceress
set the wheel revolving, and Catherine counted the number of revolutions
which it made. Each revolution was for each son one year of his reign.
Henri IV. was also put upon the wheel, which then made twenty-four
rounds, and the woman (some historians have said it was a man) told the
frightened queen that Henri de Bourbon would be king of France and reign
that number of years. From that time forth Catherine de’ Medici vowed
a mortal hatred to the man whom she knew would succeed the last of her
Valois sons, who was to die assassinated. Anxious to know what her own
death would be, she was warned to beware of Saint-Germain. Supposing,
therefore, that she would be either put to death or imprisoned in the
chateau de Saint-Germain, she would never so much as put her foot there,
although that residence was far more convenient for her political plans,
owing to its proximity to Paris, than the other castles to which she
retreated with the king during the troubles. When she was taken suddenly
ill, a few days after the murder of the Duc de Guise at Blois, she
asked the name of the bishop who came to assist her. Being told it was
Saint-Germain, she cried out, “I am dead!” and did actually die on the
morrow,--having, moreover, lived the exact number of years given to her
by all her horoscopes.
These predictions, which were known to the Cardinal de Lorraine,
who regarded them as witchcraft, were now in process of realization.
Francois II. had reigned his two revolutions of the wheel, and Charles
IX. was now making his last turn. If Catherine said the strange words
which history has attributed to her when her son Henri started for
Poland,--“You will soon return,”--they must be set down to her faith in
occult science and not to the intention of poisoning Charles IX.
Many other circumstances corroborated Catherine’s faith in the occult
sciences. The night before the tournament at which Henri II. was killed,
Catherine saw the fatal blow in a dream. Her astrological council, then
composed of Nostradamus and the two Ruggieri, had already predicted
to her the death of the king. History has recorded the efforts made
by Catherine to persuade her husband not to enter the lists. The
prognostic, and the dream produced by the prognostic, were verified. The
memoirs of the day relate another fact that was no less singular. The
courier who announced the victory of Moncontour arrived in the
night, after riding with such speed that he killed three horses. The
queen-mother was awakened to receive the news, to which she replied,
“I knew it already.” In fact, as Brantome relates, she had told of her
son’s triumph the evening before, and narrated several circumstances of
the battle. The astrologer of the house of Bourbon predicted that the
youngest of all the princes descended from Saint-Louis (the son of
Antoine de Bourbon) would ascend the throne of France. This prediction,
related by Sully, was accomplished in the precise terms of the
horoscope; which led Henri IV. to say that by dint of lying these people
sometimes hit the truth. However that may be, if most of the great
minds of that epoch believed in this vast science,--called Magic by the
masters of judicial astrology, and Sorcery by the public,--they were
justified in doing so by the fulfilment of horoscopes.
It was for the use of Cosmo Ruggiero, her mathematician, astronomer, and
astrologer, that Catherine de’ Medici erected the tower behind the Halle
aux Bles,--all that now remains of the hotel de Soissons. Cosmo Ruggiero
possessed, like confessors, a mysterious influence, the possession of
which, like them again, sufficed him. He cherished an ambitious
thought superior to all vulgar ambitions. This man, whom dramatists and
romance-writers depict as a juggler, owned the rich abbey of Saint-Mahe
in Lower Brittany, and refused many high ecclesiastical dignities; the
gold which the superstitious passions of the age poured into his coffers
sufficed for his secret enterprise; and the queen’s hand, stretched
above his head, preserved every hair of it from danger.
II. SCHEMES AGAINST SCHEMES
The thirst for power which consumed the queen-mother, her desire for
dominion, was so great that in order to retain it she had, as we have
seen, allied herself to the Guises, those enemies of the throne; to keep
the reins of power, now obtained, within her hands, she was using every
means, even to the sacrifice of her friends and that of her children.
This woman, of whom one of her enemies said at her death, “It is more
than a queen, it is monarchy itself that has died,”--this woman could
not exist without the intrigues of government, as a gambler can live
only by the emotions of play. Although she was an Italian of the
voluptuous race of the Medici, the Calvinists who calumniated her never
accused her of having a lover. A great admirer of the maxim, “Divide to
reign,” she had learned the art of perpetually pitting one force against
another. No sooner had she grasped the reins of power than she was
forced to keep up dissensions in order to neutralize the strength of two
rival houses, and thus save the Crown. Catherine invented the game of
political see-saw (since imitated by all princes who find themselves
in a like situation), by instigating, first the Calvinists against the
Guises, and then the Guises against the Calvinists. Next, after pitting
the two religions against each other in the heart of the nation,
Catherine instigated the Duc d’Anjou against his brother Charles
IX. After neutralizing events by opposing them to one another, she
neutralized men, by holding the thread of all their interests in her
hands. But so fearful a game, which needs the head of a Louis XI.
to play it, draws down inevitably the hatred of all parties upon the
player, who condemns himself forever to the necessity of conquering; for
one lost game will turn every selfish interest into an enemy.
The greater part of the reign of Charles IX. witnessed the triumph of
the domestic policy of this astonishing woman. What adroit persuasion
must Catherine have employed to have obtained the command of the armies
for the Duc d’Anjou under a young and brave king, thirsting for glory,
capable of military achievement, generous, and in presence, too, of the
Connetable de Montmorency. In the eyes of the statesmen of Europe the
Duc d’Anjou had all the honors of the Saint-Bartholomew, and Charles IX.
all the odium. After inspiring the king with a false and secret jealousy
of his brother, she used that passion to wear out by the intrigues of
fraternal jealousy the really noble qualities of Charles IX. Cypierre,
the king’s first governor, and Amyot, his first tutor, had made him
so great a man, they had paved the way for so noble a reign, that the
queen-mother began to hate her son as soon as she found reason to fear
the loss of the power she had so slowly and so painfully obtained. On
these general grounds most historians have believed that Catherine de’
Medici felt a preference for Henri III.; but her conduct at the period
of which we are now writing, proves the absolute indifference of her
heart toward all her children.
When the Duc d’Anjou went to reign in Poland Catherine was deprived
of the instrument by which she had worked to keep the king’s passions
occupied in domestic intrigues, which neutralized his energy in other
directions. She then set up the conspiracy of La Mole and Coconnas, in
which her youngest son, the Duc d’Alencon (afterwards Duc d’Anjou, on
the accession of Henri III.) took part, lending himself very willingly
to his mother’s wishes, and displaying an ambition much encouraged by
his sister Marguerite, then queen of Navarre. This secret conspiracy had
now reached the point to which Catherine sought to bring it. Its object
was to put the young duke and his brother-in-law, the king of Navarre,
at the head of the Calvinists, to seize the person of Charles IX.,
and imprison that king without an heir,--leaving the throne to the Duc
d’Alencon, whose intention it was to establish Calvinism as the religion
of France. Calvin, as we have already said, had obtained, a few days
before his death, the reward he had so deeply coveted,--the Reformation
was now called Calvinism in his honor.
If Le Laboureur and other sensible writers had not already proved that
La Mole and Coconnas,--arrested fifty nights after the day on which our
present history begins, and beheaded the following April,--even, we
say, if it had not been made historically clear that these men were the
victims of the queen-mother’s policy, the part which Cosmo Ruggiero took
in this affair would go far to show that she secretly directed their
enterprise. Ruggiero, against whom the king had suspicions, and for whom
he cherished a hatred the motives of which we are about to explain, was
included in the prosecution. He admitted having given to La Mole a wax
figure representing the king, which was pierced through the heart by two
needles. This method of casting spells constituted a crime, which, in
those days, was punished by death. It presents one of the most startling
and infernal images of hatred that humanity could invent; it pictures
admirably the magnetic and terrible working in the occult world of a
constant malevolent desire surrounding the person doomed to death; the
effects of which on the person are exhibited by the figure of wax. The
law in those days thought, and thought justly, that a desire to which an
actual form was given should be regarded as a crime of _lese majeste_.
Charles IX. demanded the death of Ruggiero; Catherine, more powerful
than her son, obtained from the Parliament, through the young
counsellor, Lecamus, a commutation of the sentence, and Cosmo was sent
to the galleys. The following year, on the death of the king, he was
pardoned by a decree of Henri III., who restored his pension, and
received him at court.
But, to return now to the moment of which we are writing, Catherine had,
by this time, struck so many blows on the heart of her son that he was
eagerly desirous of casting off her yoke. During the absence of Marie
Touchet, Charles IX., deprived of his usual occupation, had taken to
observing everything about him. He cleverly set traps for the persons in
whom he trusted most, in order to test their fidelity. He spied on
his mother’s actions, concealing from her all knowledge of his own,
employing for this deception the evil qualities she had fostered in him.
Consumed by a desire to blot out the horror excited in France by the
Saint-Bartholomew, he busied himself actively in public affairs; he
presided at the Council, and tried to seize the reins of government by
well-laid schemes. Though the queen-mother endeavored to check these
attempts of her son by employing all the means of influence over his
mind which her maternal authority and a long habit of domineering gave
her, his rush into distrust was so vehement that he went too far at the
first bound ever to return from it. The day on which his mother’s speech
to the king of Poland was reported to him, Charles IX., conscious of his
failing health, conceived the most horrible suspicions, and when such
thoughts take possession of the mind of a son and a king nothing can
remove them. In fact, on his deathbed, at the moment when he confided
his wife and daughter to Henri IV., he began to put the latter on his
guard against Catherine, so that she cried out passionately, endeavoring
to silence him, “Do not say that, monsieur!”
Though Charles IX. never ceased to show her the outward respect of
which she was so tenacious that she would never call the kings her sons
anything but “Monsieur,” the queen-mother had detected in her son’s
manner during the last few months an ill-disguised purpose of vengeance.
But clever indeed must be the man who counted on taking Catherine
unawares. She held ready in her hand at this moment the conspiracy
of the Duke d’Alencon and La Mole, in order to counteract, by
another fraternal struggle, the efforts Charles IX. was making toward
emancipation. But, before employing this means, she wanted to remove
his distrust of her, which would render impossible their future
reconciliation; for was he likely to restore power to the hands of a
mother whom he thought capable of poisoning him? She felt herself at
this moment in such serious danger that she had sent for Strozzi, her
relation and a soldier noted for his promptitude of action. She took
counsel in secret with Birago and the two Gondis, and never did she so
frequently consult her oracle, Cosmo Ruggiero, as at the present crisis.
Though the habit of dissimulation, together with advancing age, had
given the queen-mother that well-known abbess face, with its haughty
and macerated mask, expressionless yet full of depth, inscrutable yet
vigilant, remarked by all who have studied her portrait, the courtiers
now observed some clouds on her icy countenance. No sovereign was ever
so imposing as this woman from the day when she succeeded in restraining
the Guises after the death of Francois II. Her black velvet cap, made
with a point upon the forehead (for she never relinquished her widow’s
mourning) seemed a species of feminine cowl around the cold, imperious
face, to which, however, she knew how to give, at the right moment, a
seductive Italian charm. Catherine de’ Medici was so well made that she
was accused of inventing side-saddles to show the shape of her legs,
which were absolutely perfect. Women followed her example in this
respect throughout Europe, which even then took its fashions from
France. Those who desire to bring this grand figure before their minds
will find that the scene now taking place in the brown hall of the
Louvre presents it in a striking aspect.
The two queens, different in spirit, in beauty, in dress, and now
estranged,--one naive and thoughtful, the other thoughtful and gravely
abstracted,--were far too preoccupied to think of giving the order
awaited by the courtiers for the amusements of the evening. The
carefully concealed drama, played for the last six months by the mother
and son was more than suspected by many of the courtiers; but the
Italians were watching it with special anxiety, for Catherine’s failure
involved their ruin.
During this evening Charles IX., weary with the day’s hunting, looked
to be forty years old. He had reached the last stages of the malady
of which he died, the symptoms of which were such that many reflecting
persons were justified in thinking that he was poisoned. According to
de Thou (the Tacitus of the Valois) the surgeons found suspicious
spots--_ex causa incognita reperti livores_--on his body. Moreover, his
funeral was even more neglected than that of Francois II. The body was
conducted from Saint-Lazare to Saint-Denis by Brantome and a few archers
of the guard under command of the Comte de Solern. This circumstances,
coupled with the supposed hatred of the mother to the son, may or
may not give color to de Thou’s supposition, but it proves how little
affection Catherine felt for any of her children,--a want of feeling
which may be explained by her implicit faith in the predictions of
judicial astrology. This woman was unable to feel affection for the
instruments which were destined to fail her. Henri III. was the last
king under whom her reign of power was to last; that was the sole
consideration of her heart and mind.
In these days, however, we can readily believe that Charles IX. died a
natural death. His excesses, his manner of life, the sudden development
of his faculties, his last spasmodic attempt to recover the reins of
power, his desire to live, the abuse of his vital strength, his final
sufferings and last pleasures, all prove to an impartial mind that he
died of consumption, a disease scarcely studied at that time, and very
little understood, the symptoms of which might, not unnaturally, lead
Charles IX. to believe himself poisoned. The real poison which his
mother gave him was in the fatal counsels of the courtiers whom she
placed about him,--men who led him to waste his intellectual as well
as his physical vigor, thus bringing on a malady which was purely
fortuitous and not constitutional. Under these harrowing circumstances,
Charles IX. displayed a gloomy majesty of demeanor which was not
unbecoming to a king. The solemnity of his secret thoughts was reflected
on his face, the olive tones of which he inherited from his mother. This
ivory pallor, so fine by candlelight, so suited to the expression of
melancholy thought, brought out vigorously the fire of the blue-black
eyes, which gazed from their thick and heavy lids with the keen
perception our fancy lends to kings, their color being a cloak for
dissimulation. Those eyes were terrible,--especially from the movement
of their brows, which he could raise or lower at will on his bald, high
forehead. His nose was broad and long, thick at the end,--the nose of
a lion; his ears were large, his hair sandy, his lips blood-red, like
those of all consumptives, the upper lip thin and sarcastic, the lower
one firm, and full enough to give an impression of the noblest qualities
of the heart. The wrinkles of his brow, the youth of which was killed by
dreadful cares, inspired the strongest interest; remorse, caused by the
uselessness of the Saint-Bartholomew, accounted for some, but there were
two others on that face which would have been eloquent indeed to any
student whose premature genius had led him to divine the principles of
modern physiology. These wrinkles made a deeply indented furrow going
from each cheek-bone to each corner of the mouth, revealing the inward
efforts of an organization wearied by the toil of thought and the
violent excitements of the body. Charles IX. was worn-out. If policy did
not stifle remorse in the breasts of those who sit beneath the purple,
the queen-mother, looking at her own work, would surely have felt it.
Had Catherine foreseen the effect of her intrigues upon her son, would
she have recoiled from them? What a fearful spectacle was this! A king
born vigorous, and now so feeble; a mind powerfully tempered, shaken by
distrust; a man clothed with authority, conscious of no support; a firm
mind brought to the pass of having lost all confidence in itself! His
warlike valor had changed by degrees to ferocity; his discretion
to deceit; the refined and delicate love of a Valois was now a mere
quenchless thirst for pleasure. This perverted and misjudged great
man, with all the many facets of a noble soul worn-out,--a king without
power, a generous heart without a friend, dragged hither and thither by
a thousand conflicting intrigues,--presented the melancholy spectacle of
a youth, only twenty-four years old, disillusioned of life, distrusting
everybody and everything, now resolving to risk all, even his life, on
a last effort. For some time past he had fully understood his royal
mission, his power, his resources, and the obstacles which his mother
opposed to the pacification of the kingdom; but alas! this light now
burned in a shattered lantern.
Two men, whom Charles IX. loved sufficiently to protect under
circumstances of great danger,--Jean Chapelain, his physician, whom he
saved from the Saint-Bartholomew, and Ambroise Pare, with whom he went
to dine when Pare’s enemies were accusing him of intending to poison the
king,--had arrived this evening in haste from the provinces, recalled
by the queen-mother. Both were watching their master anxiously. A few
courtiers spoke to them in a low voice; but the men of science made
guarded answers, carefully concealing the fatal verdict which was in
their minds. Every now and then the king would raise his heavy eyelids
and give his mother a furtive look which he tried to conceal from those
about him. Suddenly he sprang up and stood before the fireplace.
“Monsieur de Chiverni,” he said abruptly, “why do you keep the title of
chancellor of Anjou and Poland? Are you in our service, or in that of
our brother?”
“I am all yours, sire,” replied Chiverni, bowing low.
“Then come to me to-morrow; I intend to send you to Spain. Very strange
things are happening at the court of Madrid, gentlemen.”
The king looked at his wife and flung himself back into his chair.
“Strange things are happening everywhere,” said the Marechal de
Tavannes, one of the friends of the king’s youth, in a low voice.
The king rose again and led this companion of his youthful pleasures
apart into the embrasure of the window at the corner of the room,
saying, when they were out of hearing:--
“I want you. Remain here when the others go. I shall know to-night
whether you are for me or against me. Don’t look astonished. I am about
to burst my bonds. My mother is the cause of all the evil about me.
Three months hence I shall be king indeed, or dead. Silence, if you
value your life! You will have my secret, you and Solern and Villeroy
only. If it is betrayed, it will be by one of you three. Don’t keep near
me; go and pay your court to my mother. Tell her I am dying, and that
you don’t regret it, for I am only a poor creature.”
The king was leaning on the shoulder of his old favorite, and pretending
to tell him of his ailments, in order to mislead the inquisitive eyes
about him; then, not wishing to make his aversion too visible, he went
up to his wife and mother and talked with them, calling Birago to their
side.
Just then Pinard, one of the secretaries of State, glided like an eel
through the door and along the wall until he reached the queen-mother,
in whose ear he said a few words, to which she replied by an affirmative
sign. The king did not ask his mother the meaning of this conference,
but he returned to his seat and kept silence, darting terrible looks of
anger and suspicion all about him.
This little circumstance seemed of enormous consequence in the eyes
of the courtiers; and, in truth, so marked an exercise of power by the
queen-mother, without reference to the king, was like a drop of water
overflowing the cup. Queen Elizabeth and the Comtesse de Fiesque now
retired, but the king paid no attention to their movements, though the
queen-mother rose and attended her daughter-in-law to the door; after
which the courtiers, understanding that their presence was unwelcome,
took their leave. By ten o’clock no one remained in the hall but a few
intimates,--the two Gondis, Tavannes, Solern, Birago, the king, and the
queen-mother.
The king sat plunged in the blackest melancholy. The silence was
oppressive. Catherine seemed embarrassed. She wished to leave the
room, and waited for the king to escort her to the door; but he still
continued obstinately lost in thought. At last she rose to bid him
good-night, and Charles IX. was forced to do likewise. As she took
his arm and made a few steps toward the door, she bent to his ear and
whispered:--
“Monsieur, I have important things to say to you.”
Passing a mirror on her way, she glanced into it and made a sign with
her eyes to the two Gondis, which escaped the king’s notice, for he was
at the moment exchanging looks of intelligence with the Comte de Solern
and Villeroy. Tavannes was thoughtful.
“Sire,” said the latter, coming out of his reverie, “I think you are
royally ennuyed; don’t you ever amuse yourself now? _Vive Dieu_! have
you forgotten the times when we used to vagabondize about the streets at
night?”
“Ah! those were the good old times!” said the king, with a sigh.
“Why not bring them back?” said Birago, glancing significantly at the
Gondis as he took his leave.
“Yes, I always think of those days with pleasure,” said Albert de Gondi,
Duc de Retz.
“I’d like to see you on the roofs once more, monsieur le duc,” remarked
Tavannes. “Damned Italian cat! I wish he might break his neck!” he added
in a whisper to the king.
“I don’t know which of us two could climb the quickest in these days,”
replied de Gondi; “but one thing I do know, that neither of us fears to
die.”
“Well, sire, will you start upon a frolic in the streets to-night, as
you did in the days of your youth?” said the other Gondi, master of the
Wardrobe.
The days of his youth! so at twenty-four years of age the wretched king
seemed no longer young to any one, not even to his flatterers!
Tavannes and his master now reminded each other, like two school-boys,
of certain pranks they had played in Paris, and the evening’s amusement
was soon arranged. The two Italians, challenged to climb roofs, and jump
from one to another across alleys and streets, wagered that they would
follow the king wherever he went. They and Tavannes went off to change
their clothes. The Comte de Solern, left alone with the king, looked at
him in amazement. Though the worthy German, filled with compassion
for the hapless position of the king of France, was honor and fidelity
itself, he was certainly not quick of perception. Charles IX.,
surrounded by hostile persons, unable to trust any one, not even his
wife (who had been guilty of some indiscretions, unaware as she was that
his mother and his servants were his enemies), had been fortunate enough
to find in Monsieur de Solern a faithful friend in whom he could place
entire confidence. Tavannes and Villeroy were trusted with only a part
of the king’s secrets. The Comte de Solern alone knew the whole of the
plan which he was now about to carry out. This devoted friend was also
useful to his master, in possessing a body of discreet and affectionate
followers, who blindly obeyed his orders. He commanded a detachment of
the archers of the guards, and for the last few days he had been sifting
out the men who were faithfully attached to the king, in order to make
a company of tried men when the need came. The king took thought of
everything.
“Why are you surprised, Solern?” he said. “You know very well I need a
pretext to be out to-night. It is true, I have Madame de Belleville,
but this is better; for who knows whether my mother does not hear of all
that goes on at Marie’s?”
Monsieur de Solern, who was to follow the king, asked if he might not
take a few of his Germans to patrol the streets, and Charles consented.
About eleven o’clock the king, who was now very gay, set forth with his
three courtiers,--namely, Tavannes and the two Gondis.
“I’ll go and take my little Marie by surprise,” said Charles IX. to
Tavannes, “as we pass through the rue de l’Autruche.” That street being
on the way to the rue Saint-Honore, it would have been strange indeed
for the king to pass the house of his love without stopping.
Looking out for a chance of mischief,--a belated burgher to frighten,
or a watchman to thrash--the king went along with his nose in the air,
watching all the lighted windows to see what was happening, and striving
to hear the conversations. But alas! he found his good city of Paris in
a state of deplorable tranquillity. Suddenly, as he passed the house
of a perfumer named Rene, who supplied the court, the king, noticing
a strong light from a window in the roof, was seized by one of those
apparently hasty inspirations which, to some minds, suggest a previous
intention.
This perfumer was strongly suspected of curing rich uncles who thought
themselves ill. The court laid at his door the famous “Elixir of
Inheritance,” and even accused him of poisoning Jeanne d’Albret, mother
of Henri of Navarre, who was buried (in spite of Charles IX.’s positive
order) without her head being opened. For the last two months the king
had sought some way of sending a spy into Rene’s laboratory, where, as
he was well aware, Cosmo Ruggiero spent much time. The king intended,
if anything suspicious were discovered, to proceed in the matter alone,
without the assistance of the police or law, with whom, as he well knew,
his mother would counteract him by means of either corruption or fear.
It is certain that during the sixteenth century, and the years that
preceded and followed it, poisoning was brought to a perfection unknown
to modern chemistry, as history itself will prove. Italy, the cradle of
modern science, was, at this period, the inventor and mistress of these
secrets, many of which are now lost. Hence the reputation for that crime
which weighed for the two following centuries on Italy. Romance-writers
have so greatly abused it that wherever they have introduced Italians
into their tales they have almost always made them play the part of
assassins and poisoners.[*] If Italy then had the traffic in subtle
poisons which some historians attribute to her, we should remember her
supremacy in the art of toxicology, as we do her pre-eminence in all
other human knowledge and art in which she took the lead in Europe.
The crimes of that period were not her crimes specially. She served the
passions of the age, just as she built magnificent edifices, commanded
armies, painted noble frescos, sang romances, loved queens, delighted
kings, devised ballets and fetes, and ruled all policies. The horrible
art of poisoning reached to such a pitch in Florence that a woman,
dividing a peach with a duke, using a golden fruit-knife with one side
of its blade poisoned, ate one half of the peach herself and killed the
duke with the other half. A pair of perfumed gloves were known to have
infiltrated mortal illness through the pores of the skin. Poison
was instilled into bunches of natural roses, and the fragrance, when
inhaled, gave death. Don John of Austria was poisoned, it was said, by a
pair of boots.
[*] Written sixty-six years ago.--Tr.
Charles IX. had good reason to be curious in the matter; we know already
the dark suspicions and beliefs which now prompted him to surprise the
perfumer Rene at his work.
The old fountain at the corner of the rue de l’Arbre-See, which has
since been rebuilt, offered every facility for the royal vagabonds to
climb upon the roof of a house not far from that of Rene, which the king
wished to visit. Charles, followed by his companions, began to ramble
over the roofs, to the great terror of the burghers awakened by the
tramp of these false thieves, who called to them in saucy language,
listened to their talk, and even pretended to force an entrance. When
the Italians saw the king and Tavannes threading their way among the
roofs of the house next to that of Rene, Albert de Gondi sat down,
declaring that he was tired, and his brother followed his example.
“So much the better,” thought the king, glad to leave his spies behind
him.
Tavannes began to laugh at the two Florentines, left sitting alone in
the midst of deep silence, in a place where they had nought but the
skies above them, and the cats for auditors. But the brothers made use
of their position to exchange thoughts they would not dare to utter on
any other spot in the world,--thoughts inspired by the events of the
evening.
“Albert,” said the Grand-master to the marechal, “the king will get the
better of the queen-mother; we are doing a foolish thing for our own
interests to stay by those of Catherine. If we go over to the king now,
when he is searching everywhere for support against her and for able
men to serve him, we shall not be driven away like wild beasts when the
queen-mother is banished, imprisoned, or killed.”
“You wouldn’t get far with such ideas, Charles,” replied the marechal,
gravely. “You’d follow the king into the grave, and he won’t live long;
he is ruined by excesses. Cosmo Ruggiero predicts his death within a
year.”
“The dying boar has often killed the huntsman,” said Charles de Gondi.
“This conspiracy of the Duc d’Alencon, the king of Navarre, and the
Prince de Conde, with whom La Mole and Coconnas are negotiating, is more
dangerous than useful. In the first place, the king of Navarre, whom the
queen-mother hoped to catch in the very act, distrusts her, and declines
to run his head into the noose. He means to profit by the conspiracy
without taking any of its risks. Besides, the notion now is to put the
crown on the head of the Duc d’Alencon, who has turned Calvinist.”
“_Budelone_! but don’t you see that this conspiracy enables the
queen-mother to find out what the Huguenots can do with the Duc
d’Alencon, and what the king can do with the Huguenots?--for the king is
even now negotiating with them; but he’ll be finely pilloried to-morrow,
when Catherine reveals to him the counter-conspiracy which will
neutralize all his projects.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Charles de Gondi, “by dint of profiting by our advice
she’s clever and stronger than we! Well, that’s all right.”
“All right for the Duc d’Anjou, who prefers to be king of France rather
than king of Poland; I am going now to explain the matter to him.”
“When do you start, Albert?”
“To-morrow. I am ordered to accompany the king of Poland; and I expect
to join him in Venice, where the patricians have taken upon themselves
to amuse and delay him.”
“You are prudence itself!”
“_Che bestia_! I swear to you there is not the slightest danger for
either of us in remaining at court. If there were, do you think I would
go away? I should stay by the side of our kind mistress.”
“Kind!” exclaimed the Grand-master; “she is a woman to drop all her
instruments the moment she finds them heavy.”
“_O coglione_! you pretend to be a soldier, and you fear death! Every
business has its duties, and we have ours in making our fortune. By
attaching ourselves to kings, the source of all temporal power which
protects, elevates, and enriches families, we are forced to give them
as devoted a love as that which burns in the hearts of martyrs toward
heaven. We must suffer in their cause; when they sacrifice us to
the interests of their throne we may perish, for we die as much for
ourselves as for them, but our name and our families perish not.
_Ecco_!”
“You are right as to yourself, Albert; for they have given you the
ancient title and duchy of de Retz.”
“Now listen to me,” replied his brother. “The queen hopes much from the
cleverness of the Ruggieri; she expects them to bring the king once
more under her control. When Charles refused to use Rene’s perfumes any
longer the wary woman knew at once on whom his suspicions really rested.
But who can tell the schemes that are in his mind? Perhaps he is only
hesitating as to what fate he shall give his mother; he hates her, you
know. He said a few words about it to his wife; she repeated them to
Madame de Fiesque, and Madame de Fiesque told the queen-mother. Since
then the king has kept away from his wife.”
“The time has come,” said Charles de Gondi.
“To do what?” asked the marechal.
“To lay hold of the king’s mind,” replied the Grand-master, who, if
he was not so much in the queen’s confidence as his brother, was by no
means less clear-sighted.
“Charles, I have opened a great career to you,” said his brother
gravely. “If you wish to be a duke also, be, as I am, the accomplice
and cat’s-paw of our mistress; she is the strongest here, and she will
continue in power. Madame de Sauves is on her side, and the king of
Navarre and the Duc d’Alencon are still for Madame de Sauves. Catherine
holds the pair in a leash under Charles IX., and she will hold them in
future under Henri III. God grant that Henri may not prove ungrateful.”
“How so?”
“His mother is doing too much for him.”
“Hush! what noise is that I hear in the rue Saint-Honore?” cried the
Grand-master. “Listen! there is some one at Rene’s door! Don’t you hear
the footsteps of many men. Can they have arrested the Ruggieri?”
“Ah, _diavolo_! this is prudence indeed. The king has not shown his
usual impetuosity. But where will they imprison them? Let us go down
into the street and see.”
The two brothers reached the corner of the rue de l’Autruche just as the
king was entering the house of his mistress, Marie Touchet. By the light
of the torches which the concierge carried, they distinguished Tavannes
and the two Ruggieri.
“Hey, Tavannes!” cried the grand-master, running after the king’s
companion, who had turned and was making his way back to the Louvre,
“What happened to you?”
“We fell into a nest of sorcerers and arrested two, compatriots of
yours, who may perhaps be able to explain to the minds of French
gentlemen how you, who are not Frenchmen, have managed to lay hands on
two of the chief offices of the Crown,” replied Tavannes, half jesting,
half in earnest.
“But the king?” inquired the Grand-master, who cared little for
Tavanne’s enmity.
“He stays with his mistress.”
“We reached our present distinction through an absolute devotion to our
masters,--a noble course, my dear Tavannes, which I see that you also
have adopted,” replied Albert de Gondi.
The three courtiers walked on in silence. At the moment when they
parted, on meeting their servants who then escorted them, two men glided
swiftly along the walls of the rue de l’Autruche. These men were the
king and the Comte de Solern, who soon reached the banks of the Seine,
at a point where a boat and two rowers, carefully selected by de Solern,
awaited them. In a very few moments they reached the other shore.
“My mother has not gone to bed,” cried the king. “She will see us; we
chose a bad place for the interview.”
“She will think it a duel,” replied Solern; “and she cannot possibly
distinguish who we are at this distance.”
“Well, let her see me!” exclaimed Charles IX. “I am resolved now!”
The king and his confidant sprang ashore and walked quickly in the
direction of the Pre-aux-Clercs. When they reached it the Comte de
Solern, preceding the king, met a man who was evidently on the watch,
and with whom he exchanged a few words; the man then retired to a
distance. Presently two other men, who seemed to be princes by the marks
of respect which the first man paid to them, left the place where they
were evidently hiding behind the broken fence of a field, and approached
the king, to whom they bent the knee. But Charles IX. raised them before
they touched the ground, saying:--
“No ceremony, we are all gentlemen here.”
A venerable old man, who might have been taken for the Chancelier de
l’Hopital, had the latter not died in the preceding year, now joined the
three gentlemen, all four walking rapidly so as to reach a spot where
their conference could not be overheard by their attendants. The Comte
de Solern followed at a slight distance to keep watch over the king.
That faithful servant was filled with a distrust not shared by Charles
IX., a man to whom life was now a burden. He was the only person on the
king’s side who witnessed this mysterious conference, which presently
became animated.
“Sire,” said one of the new-comers, “the Connetable de Montmorency,
the closest friend of the king your father, agreed with the Marechal de
Saint-Andre in declaring that Madame Catherine ought to be sewn up in a
sack and flung into the river. If that had been done then, many worthy
persons would still be alive.”
“I have enough executions on my conscience, monsieur,” replied the king.
“But, sire,” said the youngest of the four personages, “if you merely
banish her, from the depths of her exile Queen Catherine will continue
to stir up strife, and to find auxiliaries. We have everything to fear
from the Guises, who, for the last nine years, have schemed for a vast
Catholic alliance, in the secret of which your Majesty is not included;
and it threatens your throne. This alliance was invented by Spain,
which will never renounce its project of destroying the boundary of the
Pyrenees. Sire, Calvinism will save France by setting up a moral barrier
between her and a nation which covets the empire of the world. If the
queen-mother is exiled, she will turn for help to Spain and to the
Guises.”
“Gentlemen,” said the king, “know this, if by your help peace without
distrust is once established, I will take upon myself the duty of making
all subjects tremble. _Tete-Dieu_! it is time indeed for royalty to
assert itself. My mother is right in that, at any rate. You ought to
know that it is to your interest was well as mine, for your hands, your
fortunes depend upon our throne. If religion is overthrown, the hands
you allow to do it will be laid next upon the throne and then upon you.
I no longer care to fight ideas with weapons that cannot touch them.
Let us see now if Protestantism will make progress when left to itself;
above all, I would like to see with whom and what the spirit of that
faction will wrestle. The admiral, God rest his soul! was not my enemy;
he swore to me to restrain the revolt within spiritual limits, and
to leave the ruling of the kingdom to the monarch, his master, with
submissive subjects. Gentlemen, if the matter be still within your
power, set that example now; help your sovereign to put down a spirit
of rebellion which takes tranquillity from each and all of us. War is
depriving us of revenue; it is ruining the kingdom. I am weary of these
constant troubles; so weary, that if it is absolutely necessary I will
sacrifice my mother. Nay, I will go farther; I will keep an equal number
of Protestants and Catholics about me, and I will hold the axe of
Louis XI. above their heads to force them to be on good terms. If
the Messieurs de Guise plot a Holy Alliance to attack our crown, the
executioner shall begin with their heads. I see the miseries of my
people, and I will make short work of the great lords who care little
for consciences,--let them hold what opinions they like; what I want in
future is submissive subjects, who will work, according to my will, for
the prosperity of the State. Gentlemen, I give you ten days to negotiate
with your friends, to break off your plots, and to return to me who will
be your father. If you refuse you will see great changes. I shall use
the mass of the people, who will rise at my voice against the lords.
I will make myself a king who pacificates his kingdom by striking down
those who are more powerful even than you, and who dare defy him. If
the troops fail me, I have my brother of Spain, on whom I shall call
to defend our menaced thrones, and if I lack a minister to carry out my
will, he can lend me the Duke of Alba.”
“But in that case, sire, we should have Germans to oppose to your
Spaniards,” said one of his hearers.
“Cousin,” replied Charles IX., coldly, “my wife’s name is Elizabeth of
Austria; support might fail you on the German side. But, for Heaven’s
sake, let us fight, if fight we must, alone, without the help of
foreigners. You are the object of my mother’s hatred, and you stand near
enough to me to be my second in the duel I am about to fight with
her; well then, listen to what I now say. You seem to me so worthy of
confidence that I offer you the post of _connetable_; _you_ will not
betray me like the other.”
The prince to whom Charles IX. had addressed himself, struck his hand
into that of the king, exclaiming:
“_Ventre-saint-gris_! brother; this is enough to make me forget many
wrongs. But, sire, the head cannot march without the tail, and ours is a
long tail to drag. Give me more than ten days; we want at least a month
to make our friends hear reason. At the end of that time we shall be
masters.”
“A month, so be it! My only negotiator will be Villeroy; trust no one
else, no matter what is said to you.”
“One month,” echoed the other seigneurs, “that is sufficient.”
“Gentlemen, we are five,” said the king,--“five men of honor. If any
betrayal takes place, we shall know on whom to avenge it.”
The three strangers kissed the hand of Charles IX. and took leave of him
with every mark of the utmost respect. As the king recrossed the Seine,
four o’clock was ringing from the clock-tower of the Louvre. Lights were
on in the queen-mother’s room; she had not yet gone to bed.
“My mother is still on the watch,” said Charles to the Comte de Solern.
“She has her forge as you have yours,” remarked the German.
“Dear count, what do you think of a king who is reduced to become a
conspirator?” said Charles IX., bitterly, after a pause.
“I think, sire, that if you would allow me to fling that woman into the
river, as your young cousin said, France would soon be at peace.”
“What! a parricide in addition to the Saint-Bartholomew, count?” cried
the king. “No, no! I will exile her. Once fallen, my mother will no
longer have either servants or partisans.”
“Well, then, sire,” replied the Comte de Solern, “give me the order to
arrest her at once and take her out of the kingdom; for to-morrow she
will have forced you to change your mind.”
“Come to my forge,” said the king, “no one can overhear us there;
besides, I don’t want my mother to suspect the capture of the Ruggieri.
If she knows I am in my work-shop she’ll suppose nothing, and we can
consult about the proper measures for her arrest.”
As the king entered a lower room of the palace, which he used for a
workshop, he called his companion’s attention to the forge and his
implements with a laugh.
“I don’t believe,” he said, “among all the kings that France will ever
have, there’ll be another to take pleasure in such work as that. But
when I am really king, I’ll forge no swords; they shall all go back into
their scabbards.”
“Sire,” said the Comte de Solern, “the fatigues of tennis and hunting,
your toil at this forge, and--if I may say it--love, are chariots which
the devil is offering you to get the faster to Saint-Denis.”
“Solern,” said the king, in a piteous tone, “if you knew the fire they
have put into my soul and body! nothing can quench it. Are you sure of
the men who are guarding the Ruggieri?”
“As sure as of myself.”
“Very good; then, during this coming day I shall take my own course.
Think of the proper means of making the arrest, and I will give you my
final orders by five o’clock at Madame de Belleville’s.”
As the first rays of dawn were struggling with the lights of the
workshop, Charles IX., left alone by the departure of the Comte de
Solern, heard the door of the apartment turn on its hinges, and saw his
mother standing within it in the dim light like a phantom. Though very
nervous and impressible, the king did not quiver, albeit, under the
circumstances in which he then stood, this apparition had a certain air
of mystery and horror.
“Monsieur,” she said, “you are killing yourself.”
“I am fulfilling my horoscope,” he replied with a bitter smile. “But
you, madame, you appear to be as early as I.”
“We have both been up all night, monsieur; but with very different
intentions. While you have been conferring with your worst enemies in
the open fields, concealing your acts from your mother, assisted by
Tavannes and the Gondis, with whom you have been scouring the town, I
have been reading despatches which contained the proofs of a
terrible conspiracy in which your brother, the Duc d’Alencon, your
brother-in-law, the king of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, and half the
nobles of your kingdom are taking part. Their purpose is nothing less
than to take the crown from your head and seize your person. Those
gentlemen have already fifty thousand good troops behind them.”
“Bah!” exclaimed the king, incredulously.
“Your brother has turned Huguenot,” she continued.
“My brother! gone over to the Huguenots!” cried Charles, brandishing the
piece of iron which he held in his hand.
“Yes; the Duc d’Alencon, Huguenot at heart, will soon be one before the
eyes of the world. Your sister, the queen of Navarre, has almost ceased
to love you; she cares more for the Duc d’Alencon; she cares of Bussy;
and she loves that little La Mole.”
“What a heart!” exclaimed the king.
“That little La Mole,” went on the queen, “wishes to make himself a
great man by giving France a king of his own stripe. He is promised,
they say, the place of connetable.”
“Curse that Margot!” cried the king. “This is what comes of her marriage
with a heretic.”
“Heretic or not is of no consequence; the trouble is that, in spite of
my advice, you have brought the head of the younger branch too near the
throne by that marriage, and Henri’s purpose is now to embroil you with
the rest and make you kill one another. The house of Bourbon is the
enemy of the house of Valois; remember that, monsieur. All younger
branches should be kept in a state of poverty, for they are born
conspirators. It is sheer folly to give them arms when they have none,
or to leave them in possession of arms when they seize them. Let every
younger son be made incapable of doing harm; that is the law of Crowns;
the Sultans of Asia follow it. The proofs of this conspiracy are in my
room upstairs, where I asked you to follow me last evening, when you
bade me good-night; but instead of doing so, it seems you had other
plans. I therefore waited for you. If we do not take the proper measures
immediately you will meet the fate of Charles the Simple within a
month.”
“A month!” exclaimed the king, thunderstruck at the coincidence of that
period with the delay asked for by the princes themselves. “‘In a
month we shall be masters,’” he added to himself, quoting their words.
“Madame,” he said aloud, “what are your proofs?”
“They are unanswerable, monsieur; they come from my daughter Marguerite.
Alarmed herself at the possibilities of such a combination, her love for
the throne of the Valois has proved stronger, this time, than all her
other loves. She asks, as the price of her revelations that nothing
shall be done to La Mole; but the scoundrel seems to me a dangerous
villain whom we had better be rid of, as well as the Comte de Coconnas,
your brother d’Alencon’s right hand. As for the Prince de Conde, he
consents to everything, provided I am thrown into the sea; perhaps that
is the wedding present he gives me in return for the pretty wife I gave
him! All this is a serious matter, monsieur. You talk of horoscopes!
I know of the prediction which gives the throne of the Valois to the
Bourbons, and if we do not take care it will be fulfilled. Do not be
angry with your sister; she has behaved well in this affair. My son,”
continued the queen, after a pause, giving a tone of tenderness to
her words, “evil persons on the side of the Guises are trying to sow
dissensions between you and me; and yet we are the only ones in the
kingdom whose interests are absolutely identical. You blame me, I know,
for the Saint-Bartholomew; you accuse me of having forced you into
it. Catholicism, monsieur, must be the bond between France, Spain,
and Italy, three countries which can, by skilful management, secretly
planned, be united in course of time, under the house of Valois. Do not
deprive yourself of such chances by loosing the cord which binds the
three kingdoms in the bonds of a common faith. Why should not the Valois
and the Medici carry out for their own glory the scheme of Charles the
Fifth, whose head failed him? Let us fling off that race of Jeanne la
Folle. The Medici, masters of Florence and of Rome, will force Italy to
support your interests; they will guarantee you advantages by treaties
of commerce and alliance which shall recognize your fiefs in Piedmont,
the Milanais, and Naples, where you have rights. These, monsieur, are
the reasons of the war to the death which we make against the Huguenots.
Why do you force me to repeat these things? Charlemagne was wrong in
advancing toward the north. France is a body whose heart is on the Gulf
of Lyons, and its two arms over Spain and Italy. Therefore, she must
rule the Mediterranean, that basket into which are poured all the riches
of the Orient, now turned to the profit of those seigneurs of Venice,
in the very teeth of Philip II. If the friendship of the Medici and your
rights justify you in hoping for Italy, force, alliances, or a possible
inheritance may give you Spain. Warn the house of Austria as to
this,--that ambitious house to which the Guelphs sold Italy, and which
is even now hankering after Spain. Though your wife is of that house,
humble it! Clasp it so closely that you will smother it! _There_ are
the enemies of your kingdom; thence comes help to the Reformers. Do not
listen to those who find their profit in causing us to disagree, and who
torment your life by making you believe I am your secret enemy. Have _I_
prevented you from having heirs? Why has your mistress given you a son,
and your wife a daughter? Why have you not to-day three legitimate heirs
to root out the hopes of these seditious persons? Is it I, monsieur,
who am responsible for such failures? If you had an heir, would the Duc
d’Alencon be now conspiring?”
As she ended these words, Catherine fixed upon her son the magnetic
glance of a bird of prey upon its victim. The daughter of the Medici
became magnificent; her real self shone upon her face, which, like
that of a gambler over the green table, glittered with vast cupidities.
Charles IX. saw no longer the mother of one man, but (as was said of
her) the mother of armies and of empires,--_mater castrorum_. Catherine
had now spread wide the wings of her genius, and boldly flown to the
heights of the Medici and Valois policy, tracing once more the mighty
plans which terrified in earlier days her husband Henri II., and which,
transmitted by the genius of the Medici to Richelieu, remain in writing
among the papers of the house of Bourbon. But Charles IX., hearing the
unusual persuasions his mother was using, thought that there must be
some necessity for them, and he began to ask himself what could be her
motive. He dropped his eyes; he hesitated; his distrust was not lessened
by her studied phrases. Catherine was amazed at the depths of suspicion
she now beheld in her son’s heart.
“Well, monsieur,” she said, “do you not understand me? What are we, you
and I, in comparison with the eternity of royal crowns? Do you suppose
me to have other designs than those that ought to actuate all royal
persons who inhabit the sphere where empires are ruled?”
“Madame, I will follow you to your cabinet; we must act--”
“Act!” cried Catherine; “let our enemies alone; let _them_ act; take
them red-handed, and law and justice will deliver you from their
assaults. For God’s sake, monsieur, show them good-will.”
The queen withdrew; the king remained alone for a few moments, for he
was utterly overwhelmed.
“On which side is the trap?” thought he. “Which of the two--she or
they--deceive me? What is my best policy? _Deus, discerne causam meam_!”
he muttered with tears in his eyes. “Life is a burden to me! I prefer
death, natural or violent, to these perpetual torments!” he cried
presently, bringing down his hammer upon the anvil with such force that
the vaults of the palace trembled.
“My God!” he said, as he went outside and looked up at the sky, “thou
for whose holy religion I struggle, give me the light of thy countenance
that I may penetrate the secrets of my mother’s heart while I question
the Ruggieri.”
III. MARIE TOUCHET
The little house of Madame de Belleville, where Charles IX. had
deposited his prisoners, was the last but one in the rue de l’Autruche
on the side of the rue Saint-Honore. The street gate, flanked by two
little brick pavilions, seemed very simple in those days, when gates and
their accessories were so elaborately treated. It had two pilasters
of stone cut in facets, and the coping represented a reclining woman
holding a cornucopia. The gate itself, closed by enormous locks, had
a wicket through which to examine those who asked admittance. In each
pavilion lived a porter; for the king’s extremely capricious pleasure
required a porter by day and by night. The house had a little courtyard,
paved like those of Venice. At this period, before carriages were
invented, ladies went about on horseback, or in litters, so that
courtyards could be made magnificent without fear of injury from horses
or carriages. This fact is always to be remembered as an explanation
of the narrowness of streets, the small size of courtyards, and certain
other details of the private dwellings of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries.
The house, of one story only above the ground-floor, was capped by a
sculptured frieze, above which rose a roof with four sides, the peak
being flattened to form a platform. Dormer windows were cut in this
roof, with casings and pediments which the chisel of some great artist
had covered with arabesques and dentils; each of the three windows on
the main floor were equally beautiful in stone embroidery, which the
brick of the walls showed off to great advantage. On the ground-floor,
a double portico, very delicately decorated, led to the entrance door,
which was covered with bosses cut with facets in the Venetian manner,--a
style of decoration which was further carried on round the windows
placed to right and left of the door.
A garden, carefully laid out in the fashion of the times and filled with
choice flowers, occupied a space behind the house equal to that of the
courtyard in front. A grape-vine draped its walls. In the centre of a
grass plot rose a silver fir-tree. The flower-borders were separated
from the grass by meandering paths which led to an arbor of clipped yews
at the farther end of the little garden. The walls were covered with a
mosaic of variously colored pebbles, coarse in design, it is true, but
pleasing to the eye from the harmony of its tints with those of the
flower-beds. The house had a carved balcony on the garden side, above
the door, and also on the front toward the courtyard, and around the
middle windows. On both sides of the house the ornamentation of the
principal window, which projected some feet from the wall, rose to the
frieze; so that it formed a little pavilion, hung there like a lantern.
The casings of the other windows were inlaid on the stone with precious
marbles.
In spite of the exquisite taste displayed in the little house, there
was an air of melancholy about it. It was darkened by the buildings
that surrounded it and by the roofs of the hotel d’Alencon which threw
a heavy shadow over both court and garden; moreover, a deep silence
reigned there. But this silence, these half-lights, this solitude,
soothed a royal soul, which could there surrender itself to a single
emotion, as in a cloister where men pray, or in some sheltered home
wherein they love.
It is easy now to imagine the interior charm and choiceness of this
haven, the sole spot in his kingdom where this dying Valois could pour
out his soul, reveal his sufferings, exercise his taste for art, and
give himself up to the poesy he loved,--pleasures denied him by the
cares of a cruel royalty. Here, alone, were his great soul and his high
intrinsic worth appreciated; here he could give himself up,
for a few brief months, the last of his life, to the joys of
fatherhood,--pleasures into which he flung himself with the frenzy that
a sense of his coming and dreadful death impressed on all his actions.
In the afternoon of the day succeeding the night-scene we have just
described, Marie Touchet was finishing her toilet in the oratory, which
was the boudoir of those days. She was arranging the long curls of her
beautiful black hair, blending them with the velvet of a new coif, and
gazing intently into her mirror.
“It is nearly four o’clock; that interminable council must surely be
over,” she thought to herself. “Jacob has returned from the Louvre;
he says that everybody he saw was excited about the number of the
councillors summoned and the length of the session. What can have
happened? Is it some misfortune? Good God! surely _he_ knows how
suspense wears out the soul! Perhaps he has gone a-hunting? If he is
happy and amused, it is all right. When I see him gay, I forget all I
have suffered.”