THE PROCESSION.
As soon as the collation was over, the king had entered his room
with Chicot, to put on his penitent’s robe and had come out an
instant after, with bare feet, a cord round his waist, and his hood
over his face; the courtiers had made the same toilet. The weather
was magnificent, and the pavements were strewn with flowers; an
immense crowd lined the roads to the four places where the king
was to stop. The clergy of St. Germain led the procession, and
the Archbishop of Paris followed, carrying the holy sacrament;
between them walked young boys, shaking censers, and young girls
scattering roses. Then came the king, followed by his four friends,
barefooted and frocked like himself.
The Duc d’Anjou followed in his ordinary dress, accompanied by
his Angevins. Next came the principal courtiers, and then the
bourgeois. It was one o’clock when they left the Louvre. Crillon
and the French guards were about to follow, but the king signed
to them to remain. It was near six in the evening before they
arrived before the old abbey, where they saw the prior and the
monks drawn up on the threshold to wait for his majesty. The
Duc d’Anjou, a little before, had pleaded great fatigue, and
had asked leave to retire to his hotel, which had been granted
to him. His gentlemen had retired with him, as if to proclaim
that they followed the duke and not the king, besides which,
they did not wish to fatigue themselves before the morrow. At
the door of the abbey the king dismissed his four favorites,
that they also might take some repose. The archbishop also, who
had eaten nothing since morning, was dropping with fatigue, so
the king took pity on him and on the other priests and dismissed
them all. Then, turning to the prior, Joseph Foulon, “Here I am,
my father,” said he; “I come, sinner as I am, to seek repose in
your solitude.”
The prior bowed, and the royal penitent mounted the steps of
the abbey, striking his breast at each step, and the door was
immediately closed behind him.
“We will first,” said the prior, “conduct your majesty into the
crypt, which we have ornamented in our best manner to do honor
to the King of heaven and earth.”
No sooner had the king passed through the somber arcade, lined
with monks, and turned the corner which led to the chapel, than
twenty hoods were thrown into the air, and eyes were seen brilliant
with joy and triumph. Certainly, they were not monkish or peaceful
faces displayed, but bristling mustaches and embrowned skins, many
scarred by wounds, and by the side of the proudest of all, who
displayed the most celebrated scar, stood a woman covered with
a frock, and looking triumphant and happy. This woman, shaking
a pair of golden scissors which hung by her side, cried:
“Ah! my brothers, at last we have the Valois!”
“Ma foi, sister, I believe so.”
“Not yet,” murmured the cardinal.
“How so?”
“Shall we have enough bourgeois guards to make head against Crillon
and his guards?”
“We have better than bourgeois guards; and, believe me, there
will not be a musket-shot exchanged.”
“How so?” said the duchess. “I should have liked a little
disturbance.”
“Well, sister, you will be deprived of it. When the king is taken
he will cry out, but no one will answer; then, by persuasion or
by violence, but without showing ourselves, we shall make him
sign his abdication. The news will soon spread through the city,
and dispose in our favor both the bourgeois and the troops.”
“The plan is good, and cannot fail,” said the duchess. “It is
rather brutal,” said the Duc de Guise; “besides which, the king
will refuse to sign the abdication. He is brave, and will rather
die.”
“Let him die, then.”
“Not so,” replied the duke, firmly. “I will mount the throne of
a prince who abdicates and is despised, but not of an assassinated
man who is pitied. Besides, in your plans you forget M. le Duc
d’Anjou, who will claim the crown.”
“Let him claim, mordieu!” said Mayenne; “he shall be comprised
in his brother’s act of abdication. He is in connection with
the Huguenots, and is unworthy to reign.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Pardieu! did he not escape from the Louvre by the aid of the
King of Navarre?”
“Well?”
“Then another clause in favor of our house shall follow; this
clause shall make you lieutenant-general of the kingdom, from
which to the throne is only a step.”
“Yes, yes,” said the cardinal, “all that is settled; but it is
probable that the French guards, to make sure that the abdication
is a genuine one, and above all, a voluntary one, will insist
upon seeing the king, and will force the gates of the abbey if
they are not admitted. Crillon does not understand joking, and
he is just the man to say to the king, ‘Sire, your life is in
danger; but, before everything, let us save our honor.’”
“The general has taken his precautions. If it be necessary to
sustain a siege, we have here eighty gentlemen, and I have
distributed arms to a hundred monks. We could hold out for a
month against the army; besides, in case of danger, we have the
cave to fly to with our prey.”
“What is the Duc d’Anjou doing?”
“In the hour of danger he has failed, as usual. He has gone home,
no doubt, waiting for news of us, through Bussy or Monsoreau.”
“Mon Dieu! he should have been here; not at home.”
“You are wrong, brother,” said the cardinal; “the people and
the nobles would have seen in it a snare to entrap the family.
As you said just now, we must, above all things, avoid playing
the part of usurper. We must inherit. By leaving the Duc d’Anjou
free, and the queen-mother independent, no one will have anything
to accuse us of. If we acted otherwise, we should have against
us Bussy, and a hundred other dangerous swords.”
“Bah! Bussy is going to fight against the king’s minions.”
“Pardieu! he will kill them, and then he will join us,” said
the Duc de Guise; “he is a superior man, and one whom I much
esteem, and I will make him general of the army in Italy, where
war is sure to break out.”
“And I,” said the duchess, “if I become a widow, will marry him.”
“Who is near the king?” asked the duke.
“The prior and Brother Gorenflot.”
“Is he in the cell?”
“Oh no! he will look first at the crypt and the relics.”
At this moment a bell sounded.
“The king is returning,” said the Duc de Guise; “let us become
monks again.” And immediately the hoods covered ardent eyes and
speaking scars, and twenty or thirty monks, conducted by the
three brothers, went towards the crypt.