history--and much richer than we are--for all that the French have no
Pepys. “Many an old fool,” said Byron of Coleridge at his lecture,
“but such as this, never.” So it may be put of the French memoirists:
many a burgess of plain habit and shrewd observation, many a rogue
husband too; but the like of one who, being both, turned himself inside
out for the wonder of posterity, never. Indeed, it would be hard to
imagine a Latin Pepys. The French do not discharge their bosoms on
paper without reason; and the reasons which moved Pepys, whatever
they were, would not approve themselves to their minds. Cynicism, or
vanity, might suggest self-exhibition to one or another, as it did to
Casanova the Venetian, but the truth is not served that way. There was
a leaven of puritanism in Pepys such as Huguenotry never deposited
in a Frenchman. That leaven did double work in our man. It seasoned
for him his pleasant vices, and gave also a peculiar thrill to his
confessions, as if his pen, like his hair, was standing on end as he
wrote. No Frenchman needed a relish for his foibles of the kind; and
as for thrills, his nation has always kept faith and works in separate
compartments. We cannot do that.
However, they are rich enough without him. If they have no Pepys, they
have in their Pierre de L’Estoile one whom we cannot match. Imagine
a citizen of London in Elizabeth’s last and James’s first years,
observing, recording each day as it came. We have in John Evelyn, fifty
years later, a diarist of higher quality, who yet, and for that reason,
was of less historical value. He seldom stooped to the detail in which
the Parisian was versed: would that he had! L’Estoile will furnish no
such picture as Evelyn’s of the Gallery at Hampton Court on a specimen
afternoon. On the other hand, in L’Estoile, the brawling, buzzing,
swarming streets of old Paris come before us at every turn of the
leaf--and there at least he was like Pepys. If by happy chance one John
Chamberlain, a private citizen of London, whose letters were published
last year, had kept a diary, and could have kept it out of harm’s way,
he might have given just such a particularised account of his town
as L’Estoile gives of the Paris of the League, the Seize, and _La
Religion_. But he was fearful of the post, and never committed himself.
Nor would he, of course, have had such cataclysmic matter to report,
England in James’s reign was drifting towards the whirlpool: France was
already spinning madly in it.
Pierre de L’Estoile was an official of the Chancellery in Paris.
His title was “Audiencier,” and his duties, as nearly as I can
ascertain, were more like those of one of the Six Clerks of our Court
than of him whom we call Auditor. He was a man of family, of the
_noblesse de Robe_, of landed estate, of education, and of taste.
He had Greek, and Latin, bigotry and virtue; he collected coins and
medals, books, ballads, pamphlets, bibelots of all sorts. He began
to keep a diary on the day when Charles IX died, “enferme, comme un
chien qui enrage”--Whitsunday, 1574; maintained it through the riot
and effrontery, the anarchy and intrigue in which Henry III and the
_mignons_ killed and were killed; through the open war of the League,
and through the Siege of Paris. He saw the entry of Henry IV; judged
while he loved that ribald king; and caught up the flying rumours of
that day which hushed all the city, that day when he was stabbed to the
heart, “au coing de la rue de la Ferronnerie, vis-à-vis d’un notaire
nommé Poutrain,” as he sat in his coach listening to a letter which
Epernon was reading to him. He went on until 1611, and only laid his
pen down because he was about to lay down his life. His last entry is
of the 27th September: on the 8th October he was buried. He had lived
under six kings of France, had three of them die violent deaths, had
been an eyewitness of the Saint-Bartholomew. A seasoned vessel.
As he was never a courtier he could not have witnessed all the great
events which he relates. I think he saw the entry of Henry of Navarre,
if not his shocking exit. But he was out and about, all agog; he had
highly placed friends; and collected for his diary as he did for his
cabinet. I imagine he must be a “source” for such a tragic scene as
the murder of the Duc de Guise, which might have gone bodily into _Les
Quarante-Cinq_ if that fine novel had not stopped a few months short of
it. Everything is there to the hand. As first, the presages: how on the
21st of December (1588),
“the Archbishop of Lyon, having overheard the proud speeches
which the Duke had made the King in the gardens of Blois, told
him that he would have done well to use more respect, and that a
more modest bearing would have been becoming: whereupon, ‘You are
wrong,’ the Duke replied: ‘I know him better than you do. You have
to take him boldly. He is a king who likes to be made frightened.’”
And then another: on the next day,
“As the Duke went to table, to his dinner, he found a note under
his napkin wherein was written that he ought to be on his guard,
because they were on the point of doing him a bad turn. Having
read it, he wrote upon it these three words, ‘They dare not,’ and
threw it under the table. The same day he was told by his cousin
the Duc d’Elbœuf that on the morrow there would be an attempt
against his life, and answered with a laugh that, plainly, he had
been searching the almanacs.”
On the 23rd he and his brother the Cardinal attended the Council, on
summons:
“They found the guard strengthened, and more hardy than usual.
They demanded money, and asked the Duke to see to it that they
were paid, using (as it seemed) a new manner of address, less
respectful than he had been accustomed to hear. Taking no notice,
they went their ways; and for all that the Duke had had warnings
from many quarters of what was working against him--nine of them,
indeed, on that very day, whereof he put the last in his pocket,
saying aloud, ‘That is the ninth to-day’--nevertheless, so blind
was that high mind of his to things as clear as daylight, he could
not bring himself to believe that the King intended to do him an
ill turn; for God had blindfolded his eyes, as He generally does
of those whom He designs to chasten. Being then come into the
Council, in a new coat, grey in colour and very light for the time
of year, the eye on the scarred side of his face was seen to weep,
and he to let two or three drops at the nose--on account of which
he sent a page out for a handkerchief.... Presently the King sent
Revel, one of the Secretaries of State, for him, who came up just
as he was shutting down into the silver box he used to carry, the
plums and raisins which he used for his heart-weakness. He rose
immediately to attend his Majesty, and just as he came into the
ante-chamber one of the Guards in there trod upon his toe; and
though he knew very well what that meant, notwithstanding he made
no sign, but went on his way to the Chamber, as one who cannot
avoid his fate. Then, suddenly, he was seized by the arms and legs
by ten or a dozen of the Quarante-Cinq ambushed behind the arras,
and by them stabbed and murdered, uttering among other lamentable
cries this last, which was plainly heard, ‘God! I am dying! My
sins have found me out. Have mercy on me!’ Over his poor body they
flung a mean carpet, and there he lay exposed to the gibes and
indignities of them of the Court, who hailed him ‘fair King of
Paris’--the King’s name for him.”
Detail like that must have been got at first hand. When he comes to
the Cardinal, he contents himself by saying that he was despatched in
the Capuchin Convent on Christmas Eve. But the account of the Duke
carries conviction. L’Estoile had a friend at Blois--an official of the
Council, or an usher of the door. Though there is pity in his words,
“Sur ce pauvre corps fut jetté un meschant tapis,” his judgment was not
disturbed. His account closes with the stern words,
“Et ici finist le règne de Nembrot le Lorrain.”
Henry being what he was, and whose son he was, it was plain to him that
the only thing to do with the head, and crownable head, of the League
was to remove it. After the Saint-Bartholomew murder was a recognised
arm of kingship, a sort of _jus regale_, in France. But Catherine de
Médicis, who taught her sons the uses of the dagger and the dark, was
not consenting to this particular use of them. Her worthless son might
be the last of the Valois; but she dreaded the first of the Bourbons
much more than the extinction of her own race; and when Henry was
fool enough to boast, “Now I am the only King,” and (says L’Estoile)
“began immediately to be less of one than ever,” she, sickening of
such inanity, took to her bed, and died in it on the 5th of January
following the _coup d’état_.
A year later the League gave the counterstroke. Henry was murdered
at Blois by its creature, Clément the Jacobin: “poorly and miserably
slain,” says L’Estoile, “in the flower of his age, in the midst of
his garrison, surrounded, as always, by guards; in his chamber, close
to his bed, by a little rapscallion of a monk, with a jerk of his
nasty little knife.” The thing was miraculously simple, a touch-and-go
which just came off. Clément asked for an audience, was refused: Henry
heard of it and insisted on seeing him. The man was let in, found his
victim undressed and at disadvantage, gave him a letter, and while he
was reading, drove a knife into his bowels and left it there. He was
himself killed on the spot, having done what the League intended, and
more than that by a good deal. L’Estoile notes it at the moment: “The
King of Navarre is made King of France by the League.” So he was.
Civil war followed: Paris in the grip of the Seize, with the Duc de
Mayenne as Regent for the League. L’Estoile lost his appointment; for
the Chancery followed the King, and he himself could not. A Court of a
kind was maintained in the city, and he, in order to live, was forced
to serve the Seize, whom he detested and feared. He had good reason for
that. Famine and pestilence were on all sides of him, and treachery
and suspicion--under the bed, at the street corners, in the churches,
wherever people came together--and the gibbet expecting its daily
tribute. When the news came in of Arques or Ivry, of the capitulation
of Chartres or what not, it was as much as your neck was worth to be
seen to smile. Lists of names went about--you might see your own on
it any day. By a letter attached to it you could know your portion.
P. stood for _pendu_, D. for _dagué_, C. for _chassé_. L’Estoile
saw his own, with D. against it. He went in fear, naturally, but I
think he was more scandalised than afraid when they began their new
Saint-Bartholomew by hanging the President of the Council, Brisson,
and two of his fellow members. It took place in prison, and L’Estoile,
though he was not present, reports the manner of it, and the harangues
of the victims. His conclusion is good enough: “Thus, on this day,
a First President of the Court was hanged--by his clerk.” The King,
he hears, “gossant à sa manière accoustoumée,” said that he had no
better servants in all Paris than the Seize, who did his business for
him better than anything they did for their masters, and cost him no
doubloons neither.
Meantime the city was beleaguered, and very soon hungry. Cauldrons
of broth and boiled horse were set up at street-corners, and people
fought each other to get at them; bread was made of oats and bran, and
doled out by pennyweights as long as it lasted. When they had eaten
all the horses they came to the dogs, then to the cats. The siege was
maintained, the people starved. They ate tallow, dog-skin, rat-skin,
cat-skin. They made bread of men’s bones from the cemeteries; they
hunted children--L’Estoile has no doubts; many lay still, awaiting the
mercy of death. “The only things which went cheap in Paris,” he says,
“were sermons, where they served out wind to the famished people,
giving them to understand that it was very pleasing to God to die of
starvation--yea, and far better to kill one’s children than to admit
a heretic as king.” A man, he says, came to his door to beg a crust
of him to save a child’s life. While L’Estoile was fetching the bread
the baby died, in the father’s arms. He himself sent away his wife and
infant son to Corbeil: the leaguer had been raised for that purpose,
and many took advantage of the grace. Unfortunately Corbeil was taken
by the Spaniards, and his people held to ransom. There were fierce
riots; but the Seize knew that their own necks were in peril (as proved
to be true), and held out. Finally, after the farce of conversion
solemnly enacted, Henry entered his good town. As a last resource
the League had ordered the descent and procession of the Châsse of
Ste-Geneviève a few days before. L’Estoile gives the warrant in full,
with this note in addition: “Its virtue was shown forth, five days
afterwards, in the reduction of Paris.” He always girded at the Châsse.
It was brought down in July 1587 to make the rain stop. “She did no
miracle, though liberally assisted. The moon before had been a rainy
one, and they brought her down on the fifth of the new moon when there
was promise of a little fine weather. Nevertheless, it began to rain
harder than ever the next day.” He called Madame Sainte-Geneviève Diana
of the Parisians.
Well, the Béarnois came in, and heard _Te Deum_ at Notre Dame. He
made a torchlight entry, dressed in grey velvet, with a grey hat
and white _panache_. His face was “fort riant”; his hat always in
his hand to the ladies at the windows, particularly to three, “very
handsome, who were in mourning, and at a window high up, opposite
Saint-Denys-de-la-Chartre.” L’Estoile must have seen that, and admired
the ladies. And he certainly saw--he says so--the reception of Mesdames
de Nemours and Montpensier. They were held up by the passing of troops,
and put out of countenance by the insolence of the bystanders, who
“stared them full in the face without any sign of knowing who they
were.” And that to Madame de Montpensier--“Queen-Mother” to Paris
besieged!
Next day Henry played tennis all the afternoon, and hazard all night;
but L’Estoile loved that king without approving of him. His tales tell
for him and against, his esteem rises and falls. He liked his easy
manners, his old clothes, his _Ventre-Saint-Gris_, his cynicisms and
mocking humour. He does not seem to think the monarchy let down by such
_sans façon_. Anyhow, there it is; and two things are made clear by
the diary--first, that Henry was not the good fellow he is generally
reputed, and second, that he was not then thought to be so. He himself,
may be, had been too much knocked about by the world to have any
illusions left him. There was an attempt against his life in 1595. The
people seemed frantic with delight at his escape. L’Estoile relates how
he went in procession to Notre Dame.
“You never heard,” he says, “such approbation of a king by his
people as was given that day to our good Prince whenever he showed
himself. Seeing it, a lord who was close to his Majesty, said to
him, ‘Remark, sir, how happy are all your subjects at the sight of
you.’ Shaking his head, the King replied, ‘That is the people all
over. And if my greatest enemy was where I am now, and they saw
him go by, they would do as much for him as for me, and shout even
louder than they are doing now.’”
No, there were no rose-coloured curtains between Henry of Navarre and
this transitory life. He did not even pretend to approve of himself;
and if he was ashamed, as it seems he was, of his amorous entanglements
with the young Princesse de Condé, it is certain that they shocked
L’Estoile to the heart. When it comes to apologies there, there was no
spirit left in the respectable man. For this diarist was as moral as
our John Evelyn, and so far as I can find out on as good a foundation.
He could express himself on such matters with point. For instance:
“Sunday the 12th February, which was Dimanche des Brandons, Madame
had a splendid ballet at the Louvre, where nothing was forgotten
that could possibly be remembered--except God.”
A sharper saying than Evelyn would have allowed himself. But it is
the fact, as I have said, that good King Henry was not found so good
living as dead. Afterwards--under Richelieu, under Mazarin, during
the Fronde, under the Edict of Nantes--by comparison he shone. During
his lifetime he had many more enemies and far fewer friends than was
supposed. The Maréchal D’Ornano, in 1609, told him in so many words
that he was not beloved by his people, and that a very little more on
the taxes would bring back the civil war. The King said that he knew
all that, and was ready for it. D’Ornano then said that he could not
advise rough measures. “I shall freely tell you, sir, that the late
King had more of the _noblesse_ for him than you have for yourself,
and more of the people too than you will have if there be trouble. For
all that, he was obliged to leave Paris and his own house to rebels
and mutineers, and the rest of us thought ourselves lucky to get off
with our heads on our shoulders.” L’Estoile had that from “a brave and
trustworthy gentleman” who was close by at the time. The gentleman said
that the King was at first moved to anger by D’Ornano’s plain speaking,
but thanked him for it afterwards.
Bad stories of King Henry are to be had for the asking; perhaps the
worst in L’Estoile is told in a poem which he picked up, and reports.
A Madame Esther had been the King’s mistress in La Rochelle, and had
borne him a son. The child died, the King tired, and forsook her. She
came to see him at Saint-Denis when he was busy, distracted, seeking
other game: he refused to see her or hear what she had to say. She
was ill, and died in the town where he actually was, and being of the
religion, a grave was denied her. What became of her body is not
known, but “they raised to her memory,” L’Estoile says, “the following
_Tombeau_ (epitaph), which was rehearsed at Saint-Denis and everywhere:
“TOMBEAU DE MADAME ESTHER
“Here Esther lies, who from Rochelle,
Called by the King, her master, came,
Risking the life of her fair fame
With him to whom her beauty fell.
“Faithful she was, and served him well,
Bore him a son who had no name,
And died: so then her lover’s flame
Sought other kindling for a spell.
“Forsaken, hitherward her steps
Strayed, and to God she tuned her lips
For mercy, dying so: but earth
“Was closed against her. Ah, it’s bad--
No yard of all his lands and worth
For her who gave him all she had!”
A touching and simple piece. It should have gone home to a man whose
intentions were always better than his inclinations, yet always gave
way to them. The end of him, sudden and shocking as it was, can have
surprised nobody. He had enemies everywhere, and few friends. The
Catholics had never believed in him, the Protestants had ceased to
believe in him. The day before his last he had had Marie de Médicis
crowned with all the forms, though unwillingly. L’Estoile was there,
and observed two notable facts: “the first was that it had been thought
proper, on account of the subject-matter, to change the gospel of the
day, which is from Mark x--“_And the Pharisees came to him, and asked
him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife, tempting him._” That
sounds to me a little too apt to be likely.
“The other was that at the _largesse_ of gold and silver coins, which
is usual at coronations of kings and queens, there was never a cry
_Vive le Roy_, nor yet a _Vive la Reine_--which, it was remarked, had
never happened but at this coronation.” His next entry relates to the
assassination:
“_Luctus ubique, pavor, et plurima mortis imago_,” is his
conclusion of it all: “the shops are shut; everyone goes weeping
or holding up his hands, great and small, young and old; women and
maids pluck at their hair. The whole town is very quiet: instead
of running for arms we run to our prayers, and make vows for
the health and welfare of the new king. The fury of the people,
contrary to the expectation and intent of the wicked, is turned
upon the infamous parricide and his accomplices, seeking only to
ensue vengeance and to have it.”
_De mortuis!_ That is always the way. And distrusting the Queen as he
plainly did, and abhorring Concini, not the first, and not the best,
of the implanted Italians, there is little wonder at the diarist’s
dismay. He goes on, without circumlocution, to lay the crime at the
door of the “Society of Judas,” as he calls a famous companionship,
a society to whose new church the King’s heart had been promised, by
whose means, he as good as says, it was now obtained. Not without
scandal, it was presently conveyed there.
Enormous crowds viewed the king’s body, which lay in state in the
Louvre. The Jesuits were among the first to come; he says:
“Class them as you please: everybody knows the maxim they preach,
that it is lawful to kill the king who suffers two religions
in his realm. Nevertheless (_vultibus compositis ad luctum_)
they played affliction above everyone. Father Cotton, with an
exclamation truly smacking of the Court and the Society, ‘Who is
the villain,’ cries he, ‘to have killed this good prince, this
pious, this great king? Was it not a Huguenot, then?’ They tell
him, No, it was a Roman Catholic. ‘Ah, deplorable, if it be so!’
he says, and signs himself with three great crosses. Someone
present, who had overheard him, was himself overheard to say, ‘The
Huguenots don’t play those tricks.’”
But the Society took the heart to Notre-Dame-de-Boulogne.
L’Estoile survived to see the little king in Paris. He watched him
benevolently always, and has tales to tell of him, of which the
prettiest is about Pierrot, a village boy of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
When Louis had been there as Dauphin, Pierrot used to play with him;
and now that he was King, and at the Tuileries, he had the notion of
going to see him.
“The King was playing down by the lake, with a fine company about
him; but as soon as he was aware of Pierrot, his old play-fellow
(who still called him M. le Dauphin, and to those who reproved
him, swore his round Mordienne that he did not know what else to
call him), he left them all where they were to go to Pierrot, into
whose arms he flew, and kissed him in the face of everybody. He
told M. de Souvrai that they must find clothes for his friend the
very next day, so that he might stay with him, but Pierrot said he
could not do that, but must go home for fear of being beaten. His
father and mother had not been willing to let him go--but he had
gone for all that, and had brought M. le Dauphin (he called him) a
present of some sparrows.”
“Simplicité rustique,” L’Estoile calls it, and praises Louis for going
half-way to meet it. He is then very near the end of his record, and of
his earthly tether too.
Misfortunes were gathered thickly about the honest man. He was out of
his employment through age; money was very short with him. He sold
his collections piecemeal, and was glad to make fifty francs or so
here and there. He does not name the most serious of his ailments,
but I fear that it was malignant, and put recovery out of the case.
In September 1610, feeling himself in extremities, he demanded the
Sacrament, and it became a question of confession. Father des Landes,
a Jacobin and a friend of his, was chosen for the office, and demanded
of him a protestation that he would die in the Catholic, Apostolic,
Roman faith. The first two--yes, said L’Estoile; but boggled over the
third. He relates the course of the argument which he held with the
Jacobin. It branched off, as they will, into all sorts of side issues:
invocation of the Saints, Council of Trent, errors of the Popes, and
what not. He comes as near as he ever does here to putting down what
he really did--or at least what he really did not--believe. He was an
eclectic, but desperate of remedy. He would have seen the Reformed
Church Catholic, and the Catholic reformed. But that, he is aware, is a
counsel of perfection. “Three things forbid: lack of charity, lack of
zeal for the glory of God, and stubbornness, which is the last trench
of the ignorant.” And he concludes on the whole matter: “I shall hold
on then to that old stock, rotten as it is, of the Papacy. The Church
is in it, though it is not the Church.” And thereupon he had his
absolution and the Sacrament. Father des Landes was a liberal-minded
Jacobin.