Few are ignorant of that weakness of the vulgar which leads them to
admire in the great not so much the qualities which deserve admiration
as those which, in the eyes of the better-informed, are defects; so
that the amours of Caesar, the clock-making of Charles, and the jests
of Coligny are more in the mouths of men than their statesmanship or
valour. For one thing commendable, two that are diverting are told;
and for one man who in these days recalls the thousand great and wise
deeds of the late King a thousand remember his occasional freaks, the
duel he would have fought, or his habit of visiting the streets of
Paris by night and in disguise. That this last has been much
exaggerated, I can myself bear witness; for though Varenne or Coquet,
the Master of the Household, were his usual companions on these
occasions, he seldom failed to confess to me after the event, and more
than once I accompanied him.
If I remember rightly, it was in April or May of this year, 1606, and
consequently a few days after his return from Sedan, that he surprised
me one night as I sat at supper, and, requesting me to dismiss my
servants, let me know that he was in a flighty mood; and that nothing
would content him but to play the Caliph in my company. I was not too
willing, for I did not fail to recognise the risk to which these
expeditions exposed his person; but, in the end, I consented, making
only the condition that Maignan should follow us at a distance. This
he conceded, and I sent for two plain suits, and we dressed in my
closet. The King, delighted with the frolic, was in his wildest mood.
He uttered an infinity of jests, and cut a thousand absurd antics; and,
rallying me on my gravity, soon came near to making me repent of the
easiness which had led me to fall in with his humour.
However, it was too late to retreat, and in a moment we were standing
in the street. It would not have surprised me if he had celebrated his
freedom by some noisy extravagance there; but he refrained, and
contented himself--while Maignan locked the postern behind us--with
cocking his hat and lugging forward his sword, and assuming an air of
whimsical recklessness, as if an adventure were to be instantly
expected.
But the moon had not yet risen, the night was dark, and for some time
we met with nothing more diverting than a stumble over a dead dog, a
word with a forward wench, or a narrow escape from one of those liquid
douches that render the streets perilous for common folk and do not
spare the greatest. Naturally, I began to tire, and wished myself with
all my heart back at the Arsenal; but Henry, whose spirits a spice of
danger never failed to raise, found a hundred things to be merry over,
and some of which he made a great tale of afterwards. He would go on;
and presently, in the Rue de la Pourpointerie, which we entered as the
clocks struck the hour before midnight, his persistence was rewarded.
By that time the moon had risen; but, naturally, few were abroad so
late, and such as were to be seen belonged to a class among whom even
Henry did not care to seek adventures. Our astonishment was great
therefore when, half-way down the street--a street of tall, mean houses
neither better nor much worse than others in that quarter--we saw,
standing in the moonlight at an open door, a boy about seven years old.
The King saw him first, and, pressing my arm, stood still. On the
instant the child, who had probably seen us before we saw him, advanced
into the road to us. "Messieurs," he said, standing up boldly before
us and looking at us without fear, "my father is ill, and I cannot
close the shutter."
The boy's manner, full of self-possession, and his tone, remarkable at
his age, took us so completely by surprise--to say nothing of the late
hour and the deserted street, which gave these things their full
effect--that for a moment neither of us answered. Then the King spoke.
"Indeed, M. l'Empereur," he said gravely; "and where is the shutter?"
The boy pointed to an open shutter at the top of the house behind him.
"Ah!" Henry said. "And you wish us to close it?"
"If you please, messieurs."
"We do please," Henry replied, saluting him with mock reverence. "You
may consider the shutter closed. Lead on, Monsieur; we follow."
For the first time the boy looked doubtful; but he turned without
saying anything, and passing through the doorway, was in an instant
lost in the pitchy darkness of the entry. I laid my hand on the King's
arm, and tried to induce him not to follow; fearing much that this
might be some new thieves' trap, leading nowhither save to the POIRE
D'ANGOISSE and the poniard. But the attempt was hopeless from the
first; he broke from me and entered, and I followed him.
We groped for the balustrade and found it, and began to ascend, guided
by the boy's voice; who kept a little before us, saying continually,
"This way, messieurs; this way!" His words had so much the sound of a
signal, and the staircase was so dark and ill-smelling, that, expecting
every moment to be seized or to have a knife in my back, I found it
almost interminable. At last, however, a gleam of light appeared above
us, the boy opened a door, and we found ourselves standing on a mean,
narrow landing, the walls of which had once been whitewashed. The
child signed to us to enter, and we followed him into a bare attic,
where our heads nearly touched the ceiling.
"Messieurs, the air is keen," he said in a curiously formal tone. "Will
you please to close the shutter?"
The King, amused and full of wonder, looked round. The room contained
little besides a table, a stool, and a lamp standing in a basin on the
floor; but an alcove, curtained with black, dingy hangings, broke one
wall. "Your father lies there?" Henry said, pointing to it.
"Yes, monsieur."
"He feels the cold?"
"Yes, monsieur. Will you please to close the shutter?"
I went to it, and, leaning out, managed, with a little difficulty, to
comply. Meanwhile, the King, gazing curiously at the curtains,
gradually approached the alcove. He hesitated long, he told me
afterwards, before he touched the hangings; but at length, feeling sure
that there was something more in the business than appeared, he did so.
Drawing one gently aside, as I turned from the window, he peered in;
and saw just what he had been led to expect--a huddled form covered
with dingy bed-clothes and a grey head lying on a ragged, yellow
pillow. The man's face was turned to the wall; but, as the light fell
on him, he sighed and, with a shiver, began to move. The King dropped
the curtain.
The adventure had not turned out as well as he had hoped; and, with a
whimsical look at me, he laid a crown on the table, said a kind word to
the boy, and we went out. In a moment we were in the street.
It was my turn now to rally him, and I did so without mercy; asking if
he knew of any other beauteous damsel who wanted her shutter closed,
and whether this was the usual end of his adventures. He took the jest
in good part, laughing fully as loudly at himself as I laughed; and in
this way we had gone a hundred paces or so very merrily, when, on a
sudden, he stopped.
"What is it, sire?" I asked.
"Hola!" he said, "The boy was clean."
"Clean?"
"Yes; hands, face, clothes. All clean."
"Well, sire?"
"How could he be? His father in bed, no one even to close the shutter.
How could he be clean?"
"But, if he was, sire?"
For answer Henry seized me by the arm, turned me round without a word,
and in a moment was hurrying me back to the house. I thought that he
was going thither again, and followed reluctantly; but twenty paces
short of the door he crossed the street, and drew me into a doorway.
"Can you see the shutter?" he said. "Yes? Then watch it, my friend."
I had no option but to resign myself, and I nodded. A moist and chilly
wind, which blew through the street and penetrating our cloaks made us
shiver, did not tend to increase my enthusiasm; but the King was proof
even against this, as well as against the kennel smells and the tedium
of waiting, and presently his persistence was rewarded. The shutter
swung slowly open, the noise made by its collision with the wall coming
clearly to our ears. A minute later the boy appeared in the doorway,
and stood looking up and down.
"Well," the King whispered in my ear, "what do you make of that, my
friend?"