The carriage which contained Beatrice of Ferrara rolled on with slow
and measured pace through the narrow and tortuous streets of old
Paris, till at length, as it was performing the difficult man[oe]uvre
of turning a sharp angle, it was encountered by a small party of
horsemen, in the simple garments of peace, which, at that warlike
period, was a less common occurrence than to see every one who could
bear them clad in grim arms. The right of staring into carriages, when
the velvet curtains were withdrawn, was already established in Paris;
and it needed but a brief glance to make the principal cavalier of the
group draw in his bridle rein, beckon the coachman to stop, and,
springing to the ground, approach the _portiere_ of the vehicle
wherein Beatrice was placed. As usual in those days, she was not
alone; but, while a number of lackeys graced the outside of her
carriage, two or three female attendants were seated in the interior
of the machine, leaving still a space within its ample bulk for many
another, had it been necessary. More than one pair of eyes were thus
upon her; and yet Beatrice, though brought up in a court--where
feelings themselves were nearly reckoned contraband, and all
expression of them prohibited altogether--could not repress the very
evident signs of agitation which the approach of that cavalier
occasioned. Her cheek reddened, her breathing became short, and she
sank back upon the embroidered cushions of the carriage, as if she
would fain have avoided the meeting. The agitation lasted but a
moment, however; and as soon as he spoke, she was herself again:
perhaps gaining courage from seeing that his own cheek was flushed,
and that his own voice trembled as he addressed her.
"A thousand, thousand pardons, lady!" he said, standing bareheaded by
the door, "for stopping your carriage in the streets; but these
unfortunate wars have rendered it so long since we have met, that most
anxious am I----!"
"My lord Count d'Aubin," replied Beatrice, raising her head proudly,
"the time of your absence from Paris has not seemed to me so long as
to make me rejoice that it is at an end!"
"I have no right to expect another answer," replied D'Aubin, in a low
voice; "and yet, Beatrice, perhaps I could say something in my own
defence."
"Which I should be most unwilling to hear," replied the lady, coldly.
"I doubt not, sir Count, that you can say much in your own defence: I
never yet knew man that could not, but a plain idiot, or one born
dumb. But what is your defence to me? I am neither your judge nor your
accuser. If your own heart charges you with ambition, or avarice, or
falsehood, plead your cause with it, and, doubtless, you will meet
with a most lenient judge. Will you bid the coachman drive on, sir?
this is a foolish interruption, and a narrow street."
"Oh, Beatrice!" exclaimed the Count d'Aubin, piqued by her coldness,
"at least delay one moment, till you tell me you are well and happy: I
have just heard that you have been ill--very ill."
"I have, sir," she replied; "I caught the fever that was prevalent
here; but I am well again, as you see, and should be perfectly happy,
if I did not hear King Henry's artillery above once a week, and if
people would not stop my carriage in the streets."
"And is that all you will say to me, Beatrice?" asked the Count, in
the same low tone which he had hitherto used--"is that all you will
say, after all that has passed?"
"I know nothing, sir, that has passed between us," replied Beatrice
aloud, "except that once or twice, in a fit of wine or folly, you
vowed that you loved Beatrice of Ferrara better than life, or wealth,
or rank, or station; and that she received those vows as she has done
a thousand others, from a thousand brighter persons than Philip Count
d'Aubin, namely, as idle words, which foolish men will speak to
foolish women, for want of better wit and more pleasant conversation;
as words which you had probably spoken to a hundred others, before you
spoke them to me, and which you will yet, in all probability, speak to
a hundred more, who will believe them just as much as I did, and
forget them quite as soon. Once more, sir, then, will you order the
coachman to drive on, or let me do so, and retire from the wheel, lest
it strike you, and the Catholic League lose a valiant convert by an
ignoble death?"
"Nay, there at least you do me wrong!" replied the Count d'Aubin: "the
Catholic League has no convert in me; I am here, under a safe conduct,
on matters of no slight importance to my good cousin St. Real: but to
his Majesty will I adhere, so long as he and I both live!"
"Indeed!" cried Beatrice, with a light laugh. "Is there anything in
which the fickle Count d'Aubin will not be fickle? Nay, nay, make no
rash vows; remember, you have not yet heard all the golden arguments
which his Highness, the lieutenant-general of the kingdom and the
League can hold out. Suppose he offer you the hand of some rich
heiress; could you resist, sir Count? could you resist?"
D'Aubin coloured, perhaps because Beatrice had gone deeper into the
secrets of his inmost thoughts than he felt agreeable. He answered,
however, boldly, "I could resist anything against my honour."
"Honour!" exclaimed Beatrice, with a scoff: "honour! Marguerite, tell
the coachman to drive on. Honour!"
D'Aubin drew back, with an air at once of pain and anger, made a
silent sign to the coachman to proceed, and, springing on his horse,
galloped down the street, followed by his attendants, at a pace which
risked their own necks upon the unequal causeway of the town, and
which certainly showed but little consideration for the safety of the
passengers. The emotions of Philip d'Aubin, however, were such as did
not permit of consideration for himself or others. He felt himself
condemned, and he believed himself despised, by the only woman that,
perhaps, he had ever truly loved. The better feelings of his heart,
too, rose against him: he knew that his conduct was ungenerous; and he
felt that, had the time been one when faith and honour towards woman
were aught but mere names, his behaviour would have been dishonourable
in the eyes of mankind, as well as in the stern code of abstract right
and wrong: and unhappy is the man who has no other means of justifying
himself to his own heart but by pleading the follies and vices of his
age. D'Aubin did plead those follies and vices, however, and he
pleaded them successfully, so far as in soon banishing reflection
went; but there was a sting left behind, which was the more bitter,
perhaps, as mortified vanity had no small share in the pain that he
suffered. He had believed that he could not so soon be treated with
scorn and indifference; he had fancied that his hold on the heart of
Beatrice of Ferrara was too strong to be shaken off so easily; and
though he had no definite object in retaining that hold, though other
passions had for the time triumphed over affection, and placed a
barrier between himself and her which he was not willing to overleap,
yet still the lingering love that would not be banished was wounded by
her bitter tone; and, joined to humbled pride and offended vanity,
made his feelings aught but pleasing.
In the meantime, the carriage of Beatrice of Ferrara bore her on with
a heart in which sensations as bitter were thronging; though, as we
have seen in her conversation with Eugenie de Menancourt, her feelings
towards her lover were less keen and scornful than her words might
lead him to believe. On the state of her bosom, however, there is no
necessity to dwell here, as many an occasion will present itself for
explaining it in her own words; and it may be better, also, to let her
thus speak for herself, because in endeavouring to depict
abstractedly, by means of cold descriptions, that varying and
chameleon-like thing, the human heart, one is often led into seeming
contradictions, from the infinite variety of hues which it takes,
according to the things which surround it.
The carriage rolled on and entered the court-yard of the splendid
mansion in which she dwelt. Here Beatrice alighted; but she did not go
into the house, for a hand-litter or chair,--one of the most ancient
of French conveyances,--waited under the archway, as if prepared by
her previous order, with its two bearers, and a single armed
attendant; and this new conveyance received her as soon as she set
foot out of the other. The door was immediately closed, and the
blinds, filled with their small squares of painted glass, were drawn
up, Beatrice merely saying to the attendant who stood beside her as
she shut out the gaze of the passers-by, "To Armandi's!"
The bearers instantly lifted their burden, and began their course at
the same peculiar trot which has probably been the pace of chair-men
in all ages; nor from this did they cease or pause till they reached
one of the most showy, if not one of the richest, shops in the city.
Standing forth from the building, under a little projecting penthouse,
to secure the wares against both sun and rain, was along range of
glass cases, containing every sort of cosmetic then in vogue, from the
plain essence of violets, wherewith the simple burgher's wife perfumed
her robe of ceremony, to the rich ointment compounded from a thousand
rare ingredients, wherewith the King himself masked his own effeminate
countenance against the night air whilst he slept. Behind these cases
was the shop itself, hanging in which might be seen a crowd of various
objects for the gratification of vanity and luxury,--the black velvet
mask, or loupe, the embroidered and many-coloured gloves, the splendid
hair-pins and enamelled clasps, the girdles of gold and silver
filigree and precious stones, together with many another part of dress
or ornament, some full of grace and taste, some fantastic and absurd,
and some scarcely within the bounds of common decency. Beyond the
shop, again, but separated from it by a partition of glass, covered in
the inside with curtains of crimson silk, was the inner shop, or most
private receptacle for all those peculiarly rich or fragile wares
which Armandi, the famous perfumer of that day, did not choose to
expose, to tempt cupidity, or lose their freshness, in the more
exposed parts of his dwelling. Here, too, report whispered, were
concealed those drugs and secret preparations, his skill in
compounding which, it was said, had been much more the cause of his
great favour with Catherine de Medicis than his art as a perfumer,
which was the ostensible motive of her calling him from Italy to take
up his abode in her husband's capital. However this might be, certain
it is that, after the sudden death of the Queen of Navarre, the
suspicions of the Huguenots turned strangely against Armandi, to whose
diabolical skill they very generally attributed the loss of their
beloved princess: and it is more than probable that he would have
fallen a victim to their indignation, whether just or unjust, had not
the horrors of St. Bartholomew shortly after delivered him from the
presence of his adversaries in Paris.
Nevertheless, although suspicion might be strong, and the man's
character as infamous as such suspicions could render it, yet the shop
of Armandi was not less the resort of the beautiful and the fair, and
even of the gentle and good: for it is most extraordinary how far
female charity will extend towards those who contribute to the
gratification of vanity and satisfy the thirst for novelty. The newest
fashions, the most beautiful objects of art and luxury, the freshest
and most costly rarities were nowhere to be found but at his shop; and
no one chose to believe that Armandi dealt in poisons--but those who
wanted them.
Thither, then, the chair, or _litiere encaissee_, as it was called, of
Beatrice of Ferrara, was borne at an hour when the greater part of the
gay Parisians were busy with that employment which few people love
better, namely, that of eating the good things which their own
gastronomic art produces. The bearers halted not at the steps which
led into the shop, but proceeded till the chair was brought parallel
to a door in the partition, between the outer and the inner chamber,
so that she could pass at once from the one into the other. Her
countenance, however, bore but little the expression of one going to
buy trinkets, or to amuse oneself by turning over the light
frivolities of such a place as that in which she stood. The usual fire
of her eye was somewhat quelled, and a degree of melancholy, perhaps
of anxiety, unusual with her at any time, had, since her meeting with
the Count d'Aubin, pervaded her whole countenance. The doors of the
partition and that of the chair had been both thrown open as soon as
the gilded lions' feet of the latter touched the floor, and there
stood the Signor Armandi, dressed in silks and velvets of rose colour
and sky blue, with his mustachio turning up almost to his eyes, and a
small jewelled dagger occupying the place of the sword, which his
calling did not permit him to wear in Paris. His face was dressed in
sweet complacent smiles; and, as he bowed three times to the very
ground before his lovely visiter, his head was certainly "dropping
odours;" for no one held his own perfumes in higher veneration than he
did himself.
"Enchanted and honoured are my eyes to see you once again, lady most
fair and chaste!" said he, in high-flown Italian. "I heard that you
had been upon that sad couch, where the head is propped by the thorns
of sickness, rather than by the roses of love."
"Hush, hush, Armandi!" cried Beatrice, with an impatient wave of the
hand; "you should know me better than to speak such trash to me. I
neither use your cosmetics, nor will hear your nonsense. I have come
upon more weighty matters."
"For whatever you have come, most beautiful of the beautiful," replied
the other, affecting to subdue his exalted tone; "you have come to
command, and I am here to obey. Speak! your words are law to Armandi."
"When followed by the necessary seal of gold, I know they are,"
answered Beatrice, gravely. "Now hear me, then. I wish--I wish--" she
paused and hesitated, and the perfumer, accustomed to receive
communications of too delicate a nature to bear the coarse vehicle of
language, hastened to aid her.
"You wish, perhaps," he said, in a soft voice, "to see some friend,
and require the magical influence of Armandi to bring him to your
presence----"
"Out, villain!" cried Beatrice, her eyes flashing fire. "For whom do
you take me, pitiful slave? Do you fancy yourself speaking to Clara de
Villefranche, or Marguerite de Tours en Brie, or, higher still in rank
and infamy, Marguerite de Valois? Out, I say! Talk not to me of such
things;--I wish--I wish--"
"Perhaps you wish to see some friend no more," said the soft voice of
the perfumer, apparently not in the least offended by the hard terms
she had given him, and equally disposed to do her good and
uncompromising service of any kind. "Perhaps you wish the magical
influence of Armandi to remove from your sight some one who has been
in it too long, and troubles you?"
A bitter and painful smile played round the beautiful lips of Beatrice
of Ferrara, while, bowing her head slowly, she replied, after a
moment's thought, "Perhaps I do."
"Then I am right at last," said Armandi, softly, rubbing his hands
together. "I am right at last; and you have nothing to do, fair lady,
but to name the person, and the time, and the manner, and it shall be
done to your full satisfaction; though I must hint that all the
preparations for rendering disagreeable people invisible are somewhat
expensive; and the amount depends greatly upon the mode. Would you
have it slow and quietly, that he or she should disappear? That is the
best and easiest plan, and also the least expensive--for there is the
less risk."
"No!" replied Beatrice, firmly, "I would have it act at once--in a
moment, and so potently, that no physician on the earth can find skill
sufficient to undo that which has been done."
"Of the latter be quite sure," replied the perfumer. "But with regard
to the former, it is much more dangerous, as a sudden catastrophe
leads instantly to examination. Now, a few drops of sweet _aqua
tophana_ has its calm and tranquillizing effects so gradually, that no
doubt or suspicion is awakened; and you can surely wait patiently for
a month, or a fortnight, to give it time to act?"
"You mistake," replied Beatrice, thoughtfully; "you mistake: yet say,
how are such things managed? Let me hear, that I may judge."
"Why, lady," replied Armandi, with a mysterious smile, "there are
secrets in all things on this earth, from the fine composition of a
lady's heart, to the simples of poor Armandi. Nevertheless, although
the mysteries of the art must remain hidden in my own bosom, as I
enjoy the blessing of having been born in the same land with one so
beautiful, and as I know that you were deeply beloved by my late royal
and honoured mistress, though somewhat frowning on the soft pleasures
of her court, I will, without reserve, reveal to you how your purpose
may be best effected."
Thus saying, he took a small silver key from his pocket, and opened a
Venetian cabinet, that stood near. "See here!" he said, producing a
small gilded phial, containing, apparently, a quantity of a perfectly
limpid fluid; "see here! the water that Adam found in the first
fountain he met in Eden was not more clear than this; and yet the
fruit of the tree that stood near it was not more certain death. No
odour is to be discerned therein: to the eye it has no colour; to the
lip no taste; and yet, like many another thing, with all this seeming
simplicity, it is the most potent of all things, having power
unlimited over life and death. Three drops of this, in the simplest
beverage, will ensure that slow and gradual decay, which, at the end
of a year, shall leave him who drinks it a clod in his mother earth. A
larger dose will shorten the time by one half; and a larger still will
reduce the time to a few weeks or days. The only difficulty is how to
give it: but that I will find means for when I know the person."
"It will not do!" replied Beatrice; "it will not do! it is not quick
enough. Have you no other means?"
"Many, lady! many!" replied the perfumer, smiling; "but, in good
sooth, you are as impatient as a young lover. All our art has been
tasked to render the means at once slow and secure, so as, in cases of
necessity, to effect our deliverance from enemies without calling
suspicion on ourselves. See here! this artificial rose, so like the
natural flower, that the eye must be keen, indeed, which, at the
distance of half a yard, could detect the difference. The scent, too,
is the same----"
"But why do you keep it under that glass ball?" demanded Beatrice,
interrupting the long description with which he was proceeding.
"Because, lady," replied the Italian, "that rose, placed in as fair a
bosom as your own, and worn there for one half-hour, would lose its
scent, and the wearer health and life within a week. Its odour,
therefore, is too valuable to trust to the common air."
"And those gloves?" asked Beatrice; "those gloves, so beautifully
embroidered, for what purpose are they designed?"
"Heaven forbid that I should see them on your hands!" replied Armandi;
"though I have heard that they were once worn by a queen--who is since
dead. But you spoke of quicker means. Here is this small box of
powder, containing a certain salt that, in the twinkling of an eye,
extinguishes the fire of the heart, and the light of the mind, and
leaves nothing but the ashes behind. We often use it, diluted with
other things, for other purposes; but I would not administer one dose
of that, to any one of note, for a less sum than ten thousand golden
Henrys, though the whole box is scarcely worth a hundred crowns. But
so quick is its effect, and so marked the traces that it leaves
behind, that the chirurgeon were a fool who did not at once pronounce
the cause of death in him who took it."
"Give me yon _bonbonnière_," said Beatrice, pointing to a painted
trifle on one of the tables. "And now," she continued, as the man gave
it her, "is that enough for one dose?" and as she spoke, she emptied
part of the powder from the box which contained it into the
_bonbonnière_--"Is that enough for one dose?"
"It is enough to kill the King's army!" replied the man. "But what
mean you, lady? What do you intend to do?"
"The person for whom I mean this drug," replied Beatrice, "shall
receive it from no hands but my own. You shall risk nothing. There is
a jewel, worth one half your shop," she added, drawing a ring from her
finger, and casting it upon the table; "and the powder is mine."
"But, lady! lady!" cried the perfumer, regarding the diamond with
eager and experienced eyes, and yet trembling for the consequences
which his fair visitor's strong passions might bring upon himself;
"but, lady, if you should be discovered! You are young and
inexperienced in such matters. They must be performed with a calm
hand, and a steady eye, and an unquivering lip: and if you should be
discovered, and put to the torture, you would betray me."
"However I may contemn thee, man," answered Beatrice, "there is no
power on earth that could make me betray thee. But rest satisfied; I
take the powder from thee, whether thou wilt or not;--but I will make
thee easy, and tell thee, that if one grain thereof ever passes any
human lip, that lip will be my own. It is well to be prepared for all
things--to have ever at hand a ready remedy for all the ills of
life--to possess the means of snatching ourselves from the grasp of
circumstance: and, in the path which I may be called to tread, the
time may well come when I shall wish to change this world for another.
I leave to better moralists to decide whether it be right or not,
courageous or cowardly, to shake off a life that we are tired of. For
my part, I will bear it to the utmost; and, when I can endure it no
longer, then will I try another path."
"If such be your purpose, lady," answered the perfumer, with a sweet
smile, and a low inclination, "far be it from me to oppose you. Every
one, as you say, should be prepared for all things; and I hold that
man not half prepared who does not possess the means of limiting the
power his enemies have over him to simple death, a fate that all must
undergo. Men think far too much of death: it is but cutting off a few
short hours from a long race of pain and anxiety: far oftener is it a
mercy than a wrong. Men think too much of death!"
"You think little enough of it in others, at least," answered
Beatrice, looking upon him with curiosity and hate, not unmingled with
that peculiar kind and degree of admiration, which wonder always more
or less produces. "Have I not heard that you were busy amongst the
busiest on the night of St. Bartholomew?"
"Not I, lady! not I!" exclaimed the perfumer, with a look of disgust
and horror at the very name of that fearful massacre. "Not I, indeed!
not for the world would I have borne a part, either in that shameful
affair, or in the late brutal murder of the great Duke and the
Cardinal de Guise."
"Why, how now!" cried Beatrice. "Would you, who hold life so lightly,
and take it so carelessly from others; would you affect scruples at
slaying those you consider heretics, or at putting away ambitious
tyrants?"
"Lady, you mistake it altogether," answered the dealer in poisons,
with a grim smile. "The Huguenots are heretics, and damnable heretics,
since such is your good pleasure and the Pope's: but in that capacity
I have nought to do with them. The Guises were tyrants if you will;
though Heaven forbid that any ears but yours should hear me say so!
But they tyrannised not over me. What I objected to, was the manner of
the thing; and it is the manner that, in this world, makes the only
difference between crime and virtue. What is murder in one manner, is
war and glory in another; what is fraud in a merchant, is skill in a
minister; what is base when done in a burgher's coat and with a
simpering smile, is noble when done in royal robes and with a kingly
frown. Now, what could be more beastly, or brutal, or indecent, than
to cut the throats of some hundreds of men in their beds, stain all
their pillows with blood, and throw the old admiral himself,
half-naked, out of a window? What could be more cruel than to put them
for hours in mortal terror; inflict upon them excruciating wounds,
and, in some instances, leave them half dead, half-living, when the
whole might have been effected without pain, without fear, without
bloodshed, in the midst of some gay banquet, or some pleasant carouse:
where they would all have died as if they were going to sleep! Nay,
nay, lady! our late royal mistress made there a great and a cruel
mistake; and as for the Guises--Pho! was ever anything so stupid and
so filthy as to swim the King's own closet with gore, and have a man
reeling and tumbling about in the midst, under the strokes of
half-a-dozen daggers! I cannot conceive how the King, who is as
delicate a gentleman as any in all France, could consent to such an
indecency."
Beatrice of Ferrara listened, but she thought deeply too; for there
was something in the character of the man who spoke--such a blending
of frivolity and foppery with cold-blooded villany, that it led her
thoughts far on into the wilds of speculation; and was not without its
moral for herself. She saw, from his example, how easy it is for any
one to persuade oneself of anything on earth, however much opposed to
reason, or to virtue. She saw that there are no bounds to self-deceit,
that it is illimitable, and that there was never yet a crime so base,
so horrible, so revolting, for which it will not find a pleasant mask
and a gay robe;--she saw it, and she began to doubt whether all her
own reasonings in regard to self-destruction had not derived their
strength from the same source. She resolved that, ere she ever thought
again of attempting such an act, she would consider well, and
scrutinise her own feelings minutely; but still, with the usual
weakness of human nature, she would not lose her hold upon the means
of doing that which she more than half believed to be wrong. Without
replying to the perfumer's dissertation, she turned thoughtfully
towards the door; but, as she did so, she took the poison which she
had purchased from the table, and concealed it in her bosom.
Armandi hastened to open the door between the inner and the outer
shop, and, with low reverence, presented the tips of his delicate
fingers to lead the lady to her chair; but at that very moment the
clatter of many horses' feet, and the rush and murmur of a passing
crowd, made them both pause, and turn their eyes towards the street.
The matter did not remain long unexplained. A considerable body of
those mercenary soldiers, who, from their blackened arms, were called
the black reitters, were passing along before the house: but their
march through the streets of Paris was so common an occurrence, that
it would have attracted no crowd to gaze, in the present instance, had
not some additional circumstance given another kind of interest to
their appearance on this occasion. In the midst of them, however, well
mounted, but disarmed, appeared a handsome and noble-looking young
man--no other than the Marquis of St. Real--followed by about twenty
retainers, also disarmed, and bearing those black scarfs which were,
at that time, symbols of military mourning. There was nothing either
depressed or anxious in the countenance of St. Real; and he gazed
about at the many interesting objects which the streets of the capital
presented, with the calm and inquiring glance of a person mentally at
ease: but, at the same time, on either side of the file in which he
and his followers rode, appeared a body of the reitters, with their
short matchlocks rested on their knees, their hands upon the triggers,
and their matches lighted; evidently showing, that those they guarded
were brought into Paris in the condition of prisoners.
The moment this spectacle met her eyes, Beatrice of Ferrara called to
the armed attendant who had accompanied her chair, and who, like his
mistress, had now turned to gaze upon the cavalcade as it passed by.
"Quick!" she cried, "follow them quick, Bertrand! follow them quick,
and leave them not till you see their prisoner safely lodged. Make
sure of the place, and then bring all the tidings you can gather to
me."
The servant, accustomed to comprehend and to obey at once the orders
of a mistress whose mind was itself as rapid as the lightning, sprang
from the door, without a word, and, mingling in the crowd, followed
the reitters on their way. Beatrice remained in silence till the last
had passed, and then, entering her chair, was borne back to her own
dwelling.