"Sweet Isabel, take my part;
Lend me your knees, and all my life to come
I'll lend you all my life to do you service."
SHAKSPEARE.
"Your suit's unprofitable; stand up, I say."
IDEM.
Again the scene changes to the palace of the Louvre, where so many dark
intrigues surrounded the rich chamber of the dying king; where, instead
of the sympathy of friends, and the tears of relations, jarring
ambition, and rivalry, and hatred, between brethren and kindred, between
mother and children, escorted him on his passage to the tomb, and
darkened the _last hours of his reign_. Such might have been supposed by
a moralist to be the punishment, inflicted, even upon this earth, on
him, who, if he did not instigate, ordained and prosecuted the horrible
massacre of St Bartholomew.
The state of the miserable Charles grew hourly worse, and he rapidly
approached his last moments. None knew better than his heartless mother,
as she had herself admitted, that he _must die_; but yet, with so much
artifice and intrigue did she envelope in mystery his lost condition,
that, even in the Palace of the Louvre, his own nearest relations were
ignorant how near approached the hour, which, by leaving the crown as
heirloom to a successor far away in a distant country, opened a field to
the ambitious designs of so many struggling parties in the state.
Unconscious, as many others, of the rapid advance of that fatal event,
sat in her chamber Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre, the sister of
the dying king. Her beautiful head was reclined languidly against the
tapestry of the wall, the dark colours of which formed an admirable
background to that brilliant and bejewelled portrait. A lute, of the
fashion of the day, lay upon her lap; music, dresses, scraps of poetry
in her own handwriting, caskets with jewellery, manuscripts, and
illuminated volumes, were littered in various parts of the room. A
handsome spaniel slumbered at her feet; whilst two of her ladies sat on
chests at a respectful distance, occupied in embroidery. A look of soft
pensiveness pervaded the delicate and highly expressive features of the
young Queen; but her thoughts were not bent, at that moment, either on
her suffering brother, or on those ambitious views for her husband,
which, spite of her little affection for him, she entertained, partly
out of a sort of friendship for the man she esteemed, although her hand
had been so unwillingly bestowed upon him; partly out of that innate
ambition and love of intrigue, which formed, more or less one ingredient
in the character of all the children of the crafty Catherine de Medicis.
No! they rambled unrestrained upon the souvenir of an object of woman's
preference and princess's caprice, who for some time past had no more
crossed her path. It was on that account her brow was clouded, and that
a trait of sadness shaded her smiling mouth.
As she still lay thus languidly, one of the ladies was called by an
officer from the room, and shortly returned to announce that there was a
young girl without, who besought, with earnest supplication, to see her
Majesty.
Although astonished at this request, Margaret, eager for any subject of
passing occupation that might enliven, even for a moment, an hour's
ennui, desired that she might be admitted; and shortly after a simply
dressed girl, whose sunken head could not conceal her exquisite beauty,
was ushered in. Her step as ill-assured and trembling; her face was
deadly pale.
"What would you, maiden, with the Queen of Navarre?" said Margaret
kindly. "How came you here?"
The girl raised her head, but still struggled with her emotion before
she could speak.
"Ah! I remember me," pursued the princess with a smile. "You are the
pretty Jocelyne, the fair grand-daughter of my brother Charles's
favourite old nurse, Dame Perrotte; you are she of whom all our gallants
spake with so much praise, to the great detriment and neglect of all our
ladies of the court. Nay, blush not--or rather blush--blush, it becomes
your pale face well, my dainty one. But I thought that you had left the
court with Dame Perrotte, the sturdy Huguenot, ever since. Oh yes! I
recall it all now," she continued, checking herself with a sort of
shudder. "But what brings you hither? Speak. Have you any favour to ask
that the Queen of Navarre can grant?"
"I would speak with you, madam, and alone, upon a matter of urgency and
importance," stammered Jocelyne.
The thought, that as the fair girl before her belonged to a Huguenot
family, she might have been used by the Calvinist party as a secret
agent to convey her some intelligence connected with the various plots
ripe at that period to place Henry of Navarre in a post of influence
about the crown, if not upon the throne, crossed the mind of Margaret,
and she gave instant orders that her ladies should retire. To her
surprise, as soon as they were left alone, the lovely girl threw herself
sobbing at her feet.
"Save him! save him!" cried Jocelyne, with outstretched arms. "You have
influence--you can approach the king--you can save him if you will. And
you will save him--will you not?"
"Of whom do you speak, my pretty maiden?" said the princess in surprise.
"Of Monseigneur the Count Philip de la Mole!" sobbed Jocelyne.
"Philip de la Mole!" exclaimed Margaret aghast. "What ails him, girl?
You bid me save him--Why? What mean you?"
"Oh! madam, know you not," pursued the sobbing girl, "that he has been
arrested for treason--for a conspiracy against the life of the king?
that he is at this moment a prisoner, and that his life is threatened?"
"La Mole! arrested! accused of attempting the life of Charles!" cried
the Queen of Navarre in the highest agitation. "And I knew naught of
this? Is it true? How did you learn the story? Do you come from him?
Speak, girl, speak, I say!"
"He was arrested, madam, in our very house," stammered Jocelyne,
wringing her hands. "He had sought a refuge there--and he there lay
concealed. But, alas! my poor grandmother, her wits are at times
unsettled. Oh! she knew not what she did. Believe me she did not know. A
treacherous villain worked upon her wavering mind--she betrayed him.
They took him from the room a prisoner. I would have led my grandmother
to seek his pardon at the feet of the king, who loved her so well that
he would refuse her nothing; but soldiers guarded our doors; they would
not let us pass. Then I bethought myself of the window. Our house is on
the bridge, and looks upon the river. Below was a mill and the miller's
boat. He is a good man, and kind of heart. I knew that he would row me
to the shore. Alayn, my cousin, would have prevented me; but I would not
hear him. What was the rushing stream, or the whirling mill-wheel to me?
I saw not danger when I thought I could save the noble Count."
"Brave girl! brave girl!" interrupted Margaret, in palpitating
excitement.
"There were beams and posts that descended to the water's edge," pursued
Jocelyne, her eyes sparkling and her cheek now flushed with the
animation of her tale. "Alayn aided me, although unwillingly, with cord
and linen. I reached the mill--the boat. The miller rowed me to the
shore. I knew I could not approach the king; but I bethought me of you,
madam--for they say--they say, you love him well." At these words
Jocelyne hesitated, with a mixture of feelings, in which bashful
timidity struggled with her jealousy of the great lady before whom she
knelt.
"Pursue, girl, pursue," said Margaret, an instantaneous blush again
colouring that cheek, from which alarm had driven all colour.
"Yes; and I knew that you would save him," continued the excited girl,
stretching out her hands in anguish. "He is your own brother--he--the
king, the dispenser of life and death; and he will listen to you. And
you will save the Count, will you not?"
"Yes--yes, girl! I will do all I can!" said the princess walking up and
down in agitation. "Rise, rise--your tale is confused. I know not what
all this may mean; but the truth is there. He is a prisoner! Oh, La
Mole! La Mole! Whether has your imprudence driven you? And were it for
me that he has done thus. Yes--yes I will to my brother Charles--I will
learn all--supplicate--save him!"
With these words, half murmured to herself, half addressed to Jocelyne,
the Queen of Navarre paced her room. Then making another sign to the
unhappy girl to rise and remain, she took a whistle lying on a table,
and whistled to call those without.
The hangings of the door were parted. But instead of one of her
attendant ladies, it was the calm imposing form of Catherine de Medicis
that entered the apartment.
Margaret started back as if she had seen a spectre.
"My mother!" burst involuntarily from her lips in a tone of alarm; for
she divined, by rapid instinct, that such a visit could bode naught but
evil.
The Queen-mother cast a searching glance over the two agitated females,
and smiled as if, with that quickness of intelligence which
characterised her cunning mind, she had discovered at once the meaning
of the scene before her. With an imperious wave of the hand she
signified her desire that the damsel should leave the room, since she
would speak with her daughter. In spite of her agitation and distress,
Margaret of Valois, with that implicit obedience to her mother's will
which, in common with all the children of Catherine de Medicis, (except
the unhappy Charles in the latter years of his hardly wrought and dearly
paid emancipation from her authority,) she never ventured to refuse. She
bid Jocelyne leave them; and the fair girl retired with trembling steps
and sinking heart. The apparition of the Queen-mother had appalled her.
Catherine motioned to her daughter to be seated on a low stool, and
taking herself a high-backed chair, smiled with her usual bland and
treacherous smile.
"You seem agitated, Margaret, _ma mie_," commenced the Queen-mother,
after a due pause. "I have come to condole and sympathise with you in
your distress. Much as I may have blamed your misplaced and unbecoming
attachment to an obscure courtier, almost an adventurer in this palace,
I cannot but feel that you must suffer from the discovery of the utter
baseness of this man. Look not thus surprised. I see you have already
learned his arrest--your whole manner betrays it."
"You speak of ----," stammered Margaret, trembling.
"I speak of Philip de la Mole," said the Queen coldly.
"It is true, then?" pursued her daughter. "He is arrested on a charge of
treason. Oh, no! It cannot be! He is innocent!"
"He is guilty!" said Catherine coldly. "I have evidence the most
incontrovertible, that he has conspired against the life of the king,
your brother, by the foulest acts of sorcery. A wax figure, fashioned as
a king, pierced to the heart by his very hand, has been laid before me.
Your brother's illness, his mortal pains, his malady so
incomprehensible, all declare that the hellish deed has but too much
succeeded up to this hour."
Margaret shook her head with a smile of contempt and doubt.
"But for what purpose was designed this murderous act?" pursued the
Queen-mother. "In despite of the rights of Henry of Anjou, to place his
master, your brother, the Duke of Alençon, upon the throne upon the
death of Charles. We have every proof that so it was."
"For Alençon!" stammered the princess.
"It was for him," continued Catherine, unheeding this interruption, but
with an increasing smile of satisfaction, "that these treasonable plots
were designed, and partly executed. The ambitious favourite thought, by
his master's hand, to rule the destinies of France. But the traitor will
now reap the fruits of his black treachery."
"For Alençon!" repeated Margaret in a tone of regret.
"Doubt not that I sympathise in all your sorrow at this discovery, my
child," resumed the Queen-mother. "Bitterly indeed must you feel how the
base traitor has betrayed and forgotten the woman who loved him so
fondly, so imprudently."
"For Alençon!" again muttered Margaret with sunken head.
"Be this the punishment of your folly, and its reparation," pursued
Catherine, after a pause. "Long ago should you have ceased to cherish an
attachment for one so unworthy. But you have too soft a heart, Margaret,
my girl; you are too kind. I wonder and admire the sacrifice of your own
feelings, and the woman's weakness with which you could hear and
compassionate the supplications of his mistress."
"Madam!" said the princess lifting her head in surprise.
"But even now I saw her at your feet," continued her mother, with a
slight sneer, "begging you to intercede to obtain his pardon."
"His mistress! speak you of La Mole, madam?" exclaimed Margaret.
"What! you knew not, child, what all the court can tell you," replied
Catherine, "that of this chit-faced grandchild of that old Huguenot,
whom Charles so favoured, Philip de la Mole had made his light o' love?
Ay, so it was. It was the talk and scandal of the palace. Where was he
discovered on his arrest? In the girl's chamber, as I hear. And now she
dares to come and tear her hair, and whine out for mercy for her
paramour, at your feet--at yours! Effrontery could go no further!"
"Philip! could he be so base?" murmured Margaret to herself. "But
yes--her tears--her agony! Oh! it is true! And he must love her well,
that she should thus, at the hazard of her life"----
The Queen-mother smiled with satisfaction, as she saw that mistrust had
entered Margaret's mind; but to make her purpose sure, she remained
long, to comfort and console her daughter, as she said, with words of
false sympathy, and hypocritical advice.
When at last she saw Margaret thus convinced of La Mole's utter
unworthiness, and knew that injured pride and offended dignity had
usurped in her heart the place, where, so shortly before, love alone had
throned, Catherine de Medicis rose and retired.
Margaret did not weep. She was one lightly moved by the more violent as
the tenderer feelings of a woman's heart, and she was proud. She sat
still, unmoved, with her hands clenched before her, when a slight
movement in the apartment startled her. Upon raising her head she saw
Jocelyne before her.
"You here, my mistress?" she exclaimed in anger.
"They would have bid me begone," said Jocelyne timidly; "but I concealed
myself; and when her majesty the Queen-mother had gone forth, I returned
unperceived."
"And you again dare to affront my presence?" said Margaret rising. "This
is unheard of insolence."
"Alas, madam!" replied Jocelyne trembling, "I did but seek a last
assurance that you would save him."
"Away with you, mistress," continued the princess, her eyes flashing
with anger. "La Mole is but a traitor, as are men all. Let him meet his
deserts. But I wonder at myself that I should bandy words with you. Go
to your lover, girl, and comfort him as best you may."
"My lover! he!" murmured Jocelyne; "alas! he never loved me!"
Overwhelmed with the rude reception she had so unexpectedly received
from the princess, who, but a short time before, had listened to her
with so much eager interest, the poor girl moved with unsteady step
towards the door.
"He loved you not, say you?" burst forth Margaret as to recall her.
"Speak! He loved you not--this--young Count?"
"Madam," said Jocelyne, turning her head, but with downcast eyes, "in
this dreadful moment, when he lies a prisoner, his life in danger, I can
avow, what I could scarcely dare avow even to myself, that I loved him
with a passionate and unrequited love. I loved him with an eager and
devoted affection, although his heart was not mine--poor simple
uncourtly girl as I am--although it was another's. He too loved, I
know--but it was a great and noble lady, more worthy of him than was I.
Pardon me, madam, if I dared to think she loved him too."
"Come hither, maiden, once again," said the princess in agitation. "He
loved another, you say--this Count de la Mole--and who was she?"
"Madam," replied Jocelyne in embarrassment, "I have already craved your
pardon that I should have ventured even to surmise it!"
"Ah!" sighed forth Margaret with a gleam of satisfaction in her face.
"Come back, my girl, come back!" she resumed. "I have treated you
harshly. I knew not what I did. Hear me--this Count has proved a traitor
to his king; perhaps, I may fancy, a traitor to others also; he has
conspired to turn away the rightful succession of the crown. But I
believe him not guilty of all the black arts of which he is accused. I
would save him from the unhappy consequences of his error, if I could.
But what can I do? My mother is fearfully incensed against him!"
"Oh, madam, you have access to the king!" cried Jocelyne imploringly.
"He is your brother--and the power to save or to destroy is his. He will
not refuse you, if you entreat his pardon and mercy for the Count."
Margaret shook her head doubtfully.
"Alas!" she said, with a look of distress, "other influences are at work
which mine cannot resist. I knew not all--but now I tremble."
Jocelyne still entreated, in all the agony of despair; and the young
Princess, again calling to her ladies, and learning that the
Queen-mother had returned to her own apartment, at last departed from
her chamber, bidding her fair suppliant await her return.
Long, eternally long, appeared those minutes, as the unhappy girl still
waited for that return which she imagined was to bring her the news of
life or death. To calm the agitation of her mind, she prayed. But her
thoughts were far too disturbed for prayer; and the prayer brought her
no comfort.
At length the Queen of Navarre came back to her apartment--as Jocelyne
looked in her face, she could scarcely repress a scream; that face was
one of sorrow, and disappointment--the poor girl trembled in every limb,
and did not dare to speak.
"I have done all I could," said Margaret--"His door was obstinately
closed to me--I could not see him--it was she--it was my mother, who has
done this. I know it well."
"What is to be done? whether turn for help?" cried Jocelyne in dispair.
"Oh! would that I could lay down my life to save his."
"Noble girl!" exclaimed the princess. "Thus devoted, whilst he loves
another! How far more generous than was I; ay, I believe thee--couldst
thou lay down thy life for him, thou wouldst do it."
"And is there no hope of seeking pardon at his hands?" resumed the
afflicted girl.
"In time, perhaps--at another opportunity," replied Margaret; "but now
my mother's influence triumphs."
"Another opportunity!" sobbed Jocelyne. "In time! Alas! such words are
words of mockery--the king is dying--at his death the Queen-mother will
command; and what have we then to hope?"
"Dying? the king--my brother!" exclaimed the Queen of Navarre--you rave,
girl! he is ill--I know, but"----
"Know you not, madam," interrupted Jocelyne, "what all the city of Paris
knows--that the king cannot live long--not many hours, perhaps--that he
lies upon his death-bed?"
"Charles--dying! And my mother has concealed it from me!" cried
Margaret. "I see through all her designs! she would keep us from his
presence, that he bestow not upon my husband, whom he loves, the reins
of power at his death. Charles--dying! Then there lies our only hope. If
he die, let Henry of Navarre be Regent--he will listen to my prayer--and
La Mole is saved. Yes, there lies the only chance. I will to my husband.
We may have still time to effect our purpose, and secure the Regency, in
these few _last hours of the reign_."