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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Catherine de' Medici, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Catherine de' Medici
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Release Date: June 26, 2004 [EBook #1854]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CATHERINE DE' MEDICI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+                        Catherine de' Medici
+
+                                 By
+
+                          Honore de Balzac
+
+
+                           Translated by
+
+                    Katherine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+  To Monsieur le Marquis de Pastoret, Member of the Academie des
+  Beaux-Arts.
+
+  When we think of the enormous number of volumes that have been
+  published on the question as to where Hannibal crossed the Alps,
+  without our being able to decide to-day whether it was (according
+  to Whittaker and Rivaz) by Lyon, Geneva, the Great Saint-Bernard,
+  and the valley of Aosta; or (according to Letronne, Follard,
+  Saint-Simon and Fortia d'Urbano) by the Isere, Grenoble,
+  Saint-Bonnet, Monte Genevra, Fenestrella, and the Susa passage;
+  or (according to Larauza) by the Mont Cenis and the Susa; or
+  (according to Strabo, Polybius and Lucanus) by the Rhone, Vienne,
+  Yenne, and the Dent du Chat; or (according to some intelligent
+  minds) by Genoa, La Bochetta, and La Scrivia,--an opinion which I
+  share and which Napoleon adopted,--not to speak of the verjuice
+  with which the Alpine rocks have been bespattered by other learned
+  men,--is it surprising, Monsieur le marquis, to see modern history
+  so bemuddled that many important points are still obscure, and the
+  most odious calumnies still rest on names that ought to be
+  respected?
+
+  And let me remark, in passing, that Hannibal's crossing has been
+  made almost problematical by these very elucidations. For
+  instance, Pere Menestrier thinks that the Scoras mentioned by
+  Polybius is the Saona; Letronne, Larauza and Schweighauser think
+  it is the Isere; Cochard, a learned Lyonnais, calls it the Drome,
+  and for all who have eyes to see there are between Scoras and
+  Scrivia great geographical and linguistical resemblances,--to say
+  nothing of the probability, amounting almost to certainty, that
+  the Carthaginian fleet was moored in the Gulf of Spezzia or the
+  roadstead of Genoa. I could understand these patient researches if
+  there were any doubt as to the battle of Canna; but inasmuch as
+  the results of that great battle are known, why blacken paper with
+  all these suppositions (which are, as it were, the arabesques of
+  hypothesis) while the history most important to the present day,
+  that of the Reformation, is full of such obscurities that we are
+  ignorant of the real name of the man who navigated a vessel by
+  steam to Barcelona at the period when Luther and Calvin were
+  inaugurating the insurrection of thought.[*]
+
+  You and I hold, I think, the same opinion, after having made, each
+  in his own way, close researches as to the grand and splendid
+  figure of Catherine de' Medici. Consequently, I have thought that
+  my historical studies upon that queen might properly be dedicated
+  to an author who has written so much on the history of the
+  Reformation; while at the same time I offer to the character and
+  fidelity of a monarchical writer a public homage which may,
+  perhaps, be valuable on account of its rarity.
+
+  [*] The name of the man who tried this experiment at Barcelona
+  should be given as Salomon de Caux, not Caus. That great man
+  has always been unfortunate; even after his death his name is
+  mangled. Salomon, whose portrait taken at the age of forty-six
+  was discovered by the author of the "Comedy of Human Life" at
+  Heidelberg, was born at Caux in Normandy. He was the author of
+  a book entitled "The Causes of Moving Forces," in which he
+  gave the theory of the expansion and condensation of steam.
+  He died in 1635.
+
+
+
+
+                        CATHERINE DE' MEDICI
+
+
+
+                            INTRODUCTION
+
+There is a general cry of paradox when scholars, struck by some
+historical error, attempt to correct it; but, for whoever studies
+modern history to its depths, it is plain that historians are
+privileged liars, who lend their pen to popular beliefs precisely as
+the newspapers of the day, or most of them, express the opinions of
+their readers.
+
+Historical independence has shown itself much less among lay writers
+than among those of the Church. It is from the Benedictines, one of
+the glories of France, that the purest light has come to us in the
+matter of history,--so long, of course, as the interests of the order
+were not involved. About the middle of the eighteenth century great
+and learned controversialists, struck by the necessity of correcting
+popular errors endorsed by historians, made and published to the world
+very remarkable works. Thus Monsieur de Launoy, nicknamed the
+"Expeller of Saints," made cruel war upon the saints surreptitiously
+smuggled into the Church. Thus the emulators of the Benedictines, the
+members (too little recognized) of the Academie des Inscriptions et
+Belles-lettres, began on many obscure historical points a series of
+monographs, which are admirable for patience, erudition, and logical
+consistency. Thus Voltaire, for a mistaken purpose and with ill-judged
+passion, frequently cast the light of his mind on historical
+prejudices. Diderot undertook in this direction a book (much too long)
+on the era of imperial Rome. If it had not been for the French
+Revolution, /criticism/ applied to history might then have prepared
+the elements of a good and true history of France, the proofs for
+which had long been gathered by the Benedictines. Louis XVI., a just
+mind, himself translated the English work in which Walpole endeavored
+to explain Richard III.,--a work much talked of in the last century.
+
+Why do personages so celebrated as kings and queens, so important as
+the generals of armies, become objects of horror or derision? Half the
+world hesitates between the famous song on Marlborough and the history
+of England, and it also hesitates between history and popular
+tradition as to Charles IX. At all epochs when great struggles take
+place between the masses and authority, the populace creates for
+itself an /ogre-esque/ personage--if it is allowable to coin a word to
+convey a just idea. Thus, to take an example in our own time, if it
+had not been for the "Memorial of Saint Helena," and the controversies
+between the Royalists and the Bonapartists, there was every
+probability that the character of Napoleon would have been
+misunderstood. A few more Abbe de Pradits, a few more newspaper
+articles, and from being an emperor, Napoleon would have turned into
+an ogre.
+
+How does error propagate itself? The mystery is accomplished under our
+very eyes without our perceiving it. No one suspects how much solidity
+the art of printing has given both to the envy which pursues
+greatness, and to the popular ridicule which fastens a contrary sense
+on a grand historical act. Thus, the name of the Prince de Polignac is
+given throughout the length and breadth of France to all bad horses
+that require whipping; and who knows how that will affect the opinion
+of the future as to the /coup d'Etat/ of the Prince de Polignac
+himself? In consequence of a whim of Shakespeare--or perhaps it may
+have been a revenge, like that of Beaumarchais on Bergasse (Bergearss)
+--Falstaff is, in England, a type of the ridiculous; his very name
+provokes laughter; he is the king of clowns. Now, instead of being
+enormously pot-bellied, absurdly amorous, vain, drunken, old, and
+corrupted, Falstaff was one of the most distinguished men of his time,
+a Knight of the Garter, holding a high command in the army. At the
+accession of Henry V. Sir John Falstaff was only thirty-four years
+old. This general, who distinguished himself at the battle of
+Agincourt, and there took prisoner the Duc d'Alencon, captured, in
+1420, the town of Montereau, which was vigorously defended. Moreover,
+under Henry VI. he defeated ten thousand French troops with fifteen
+hundred weary and famished men.
+
+So much for war. Now let us pass to literature, and see our own
+Rabelais, a sober man who drank nothing but water, but is held to be,
+nevertheless, an extravagant lover of good cheer and a resolute
+drinker. A thousand ridiculous stories are told about the author of
+one of the finest books in French literature,--"Pantagruel." Aretino,
+the friend of Titian, and the Voltaire of his century, has, in our
+day, a reputation the exact opposite of his works and of his
+character; a reputation which he owes to a grossness of wit in keeping
+with the writings of his age, when broad farce was held in honor, and
+queens and cardinals wrote tales which would be called, in these days,
+licentious. One might go on multiplying such instances indefinitely.
+
+In France, and that, too, during the most serious epoch of modern
+history, no woman, unless it be Brunehaut or Fredegonde, has suffered
+from popular error so much as Catherine de' Medici; whereas Marie de'
+Medici, all of whose actions were prejudicial to France, has escaped
+the shame which ought to cover her name. Marie de' Medici wasted the
+wealth amassed by Henri IV.; she never purged herself of the charge of
+having known of the king's assassination; her /intimate/ was
+d'Epernon, who did not ward off Ravaillac's blow, and who was proved
+to have known the murderer personally for a long time. Marie's conduct
+was such that she forced her son to banish her from France, where she
+was encouraging her other son, Gaston, to rebel; and the victory
+Richelieu at last won over her (on the Day of the Dupes) was due
+solely to the discovery the cardinal made, and imparted to Louis
+XIII., of secret documents relating to the death of Henri IV.
+
+Catherine de' Medici, on the contrary, saved the crown of France; she
+maintained the royal authority in the midst of circumstances under
+which more than one great prince would have succumbed. Having to make
+head against factions and ambitions like those of the Guises and the
+house of Bourbon, against men such as the two Cardinals of Lorraine,
+the two Balafres, and the two Condes, against the queen Jeanne
+d'Albret, Henri IV., the Connetable de Montmorency, Calvin, the three
+Colignys, Theodore de Beze, she needed to possess and to display the
+rare qualities and precious gifts of a statesman under the mocking
+fire of the Calvinist press.
+
+Those facts are incontestable. Therefore, to whosoever burrows into
+the history of the sixteenth century in France, the figure of
+Catherine de' Medici will seem like that of a great king. When calumny
+is once dissipated by facts, recovered with difficulty from among the
+contradictions of pamphlets and false anecdotes, all explains itself
+to the fame of this extraordinary woman, who had none of the
+weaknesses of her sex, who lived chaste amid the license of the most
+dissolute court in Europe, and who, in spite of her lack of money,
+erected noble public buildings, as if to repair the loss caused by the
+iconoclasms of the Calvinists, who did as much harm to art as to the
+body politic. Hemmed in between the Guises who claimed to be the heirs
+of Charlemagne and the factious younger branch who sought to screen
+the treachery of the Connetable de Bourbon behind the throne,
+Catherine, forced to combat heresy which was seeking to annihilate the
+monarchy, without friends, aware of treachery among the leaders of the
+Catholic party, foreseeing a republic in the Calvinist party,
+Catherine employed the most dangerous but the surest weapon of public
+policy,--craft. She resolved to trick and so defeat, successively, the
+Guises who were seeking the ruin of the house of Valois, the Bourbons
+who sought the crown, and the Reformers (the Radicals of those days)
+who dreamed of an impossible republic--like those of our time; who
+have, however, nothing to reform. Consequently, so long as she lived,
+the Valois kept the throne of France. The great historian of that
+time, de Thou, knew well the value of this woman when, on hearing of
+her death, he exclaimed: "It is not a woman, it is monarchy itself
+that has died!"
+
+Catherine had, in the highest degree, the sense of royalty, and she
+defended it with admirable courage and persistency. The reproaches
+which Calvinist writers have cast upon her are to her glory; she
+incurred them by reason only of her triumphs. Could she, placed as she
+was, triumph otherwise than by craft? The whole question lies there.
+
+As for violence, that means is one of the most disputed questions of
+public policy; in our time it has been answered on the Place Louis
+XV., where they have now set up an Egyptian stone, as if to obliterate
+regicide and offer a symbol of the system of materialistic policy
+which governs us; it was answered at the Carmes and at the Abbaye;
+answered on the steps of Saint-Roch; answered once more by the people
+against the king before the Louvre in 1830, as it has since been
+answered by Lafayette's best of all possible republics against the
+republican insurrection at Saint-Merri and the rue Transnonnain. All
+power, legitimate or illegitimate, must defend itself when attacked;
+but the strange thing is that where the people are held heroic in
+their victory over the nobility, power is called murderous in its duel
+with the people. If it succumbs after its appeal to force, power is
+then called imbecile. The present government is attempting to save
+itself by two laws from the same evil Charles X. tried to escape by
+two ordinances; is it not a bitter derision? Is craft permissible in
+the hands of power against craft? may it kill those who seek to kill
+it? The massacres of the Revolution have replied to the massacres of
+Saint-Bartholomew. The people, become king, have done against the king
+and the nobility what the king and the nobility did against the
+insurgents of the sixteenth century. Therefore the popular historians,
+who know very well that in a like case the people will do the same
+thing over again, have no excuse for blaming Catherine de' Medici and
+Charles IX.
+
+"All power," said Casimir Perier, on learning what power ought to be,
+"is a permanent conspiracy." We admire the anti-social maxims put
+forth by daring writers; why, then, this disapproval which, in France,
+attaches to all social truths when boldly proclaimed? This question
+will explain, in itself alone, historical errors. Apply the answer to
+the destructive doctrines which flatter popular passions, and to the
+conservative doctrines which repress the mad efforts of the people,
+and you will find the reason of the unpopularity and also the
+popularity of certain personages. Laubardemont and Laffemas were, like
+some men of to-day, devoted to the defence of power in which they
+believed. Soldiers or judges, they all obeyed royalty. In these days
+d'Orthez would be dismissed for having misunderstood the orders of the
+ministry, but Charles X. left him governor of a province. The power of
+the many is accountable to no one; the power of one is compelled to
+render account to its subjects, to the great as well as to the small.
+
+Catherine, like Philip the Second and the Duke of Alba, like the
+Guises and Cardinal Granvelle, saw plainly the future that the
+Reformation was bringing upon Europe. She and they saw monarchies,
+religion, authority shaken. Catherine wrote, from the cabinet of the
+kings of France, a sentence of death to that spirit of inquiry which
+then began to threaten modern society; a sentence which Louis XIV.
+ended by executing. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes was an
+unfortunate measure only so far as it caused the irritation of all
+Europe against Louis XIV. At another period England, Holland, and the
+Holy Roman Empire would not have welcomed banished Frenchmen and
+encouraged revolt in France.
+
+Why refuse, in these days, to the majestic adversary of the most
+barren of heresies the grandeur she derived from the struggle itself?
+Calvinists have written much against the "craftiness" of Charles IX.;
+but travel through France, see the ruins of noble churches, estimate
+the fearful wounds given by the religionists to the social body, learn
+what vengeance they inflicted, and you will ask yourself, as you
+deplore the evils of individualism (the disease of our present France,
+the germ of which was in the questions of liberty of conscience then
+agitated),--you will ask yourself, I say, on which side were the
+executioners. There are, unfortunately, as Catherine herself says in
+the third division of this Study of her career, "in all ages
+hypocritical writers always ready to weep over the fate of two hundred
+scoundrels killed necessarily." Caesar, who tried to move the senate to
+pity the attempt of Catiline, might perhaps have got the better of
+Cicero could he have had an Opposition and its newspapers at his
+command.
+
+Another consideration explains the historical and popular disfavor in
+which Catherine is held. The Opposition in France has always been
+Protestant, because it has had no policy but that of /negation/; it
+inherits the theories of Lutherans, Calvinists, and Protestants on the
+terrible words "liberty," "tolerance," "progress," and "philosophy."
+Two centuries have been employed by the opponents of power in
+establishing the doubtful doctrine of the /libre arbitre/,--liberty of
+will. Two other centuries were employed in developing the first
+corollary of liberty of will, namely, liberty of conscience. Our
+century is endeavoring to establish the second, namely, political
+liberty.
+
+Placed between the ground already lost and the ground still to be
+defended, Catherine and the Church proclaimed the salutary principle
+of modern societies, /una fides, unus dominus/, using their power of
+life and death upon the innovators. Though Catherine was vanquished,
+succeeding centuries have proved her justification. The product of
+liberty of will, religious liberty, and political liberty (not,
+observe this, to be confounded with civil liberty) is the France of
+to-day. What is the France of 1840? A country occupied exclusively
+with material interests,--without patriotism, without conscience;
+where power has no vigor; where election, the fruit of liberty of will
+and political liberty, lifts to the surface none but commonplace men;
+where brute force has now become a necessity against popular violence;
+where discussion, spreading into everything, stifles the action of
+legislative bodies; where money rules all questions; where
+individualism--the dreadful product of the division of property /ad
+infinitum/--will suppress the family and devour all, even the nation,
+which egoism will some day deliver over to invasion. Men will say,
+"Why not the Czar?" just as they said, "Why not the Duc d'Orleans?" We
+don't cling to many things even now; but fifty years hence we shall
+cling to nothing.
+
+Thus, according to Catherine de' Medici and according to all those who
+believe in a well-ordered society, in /social man/, the subject cannot
+have liberty of will, ought not to /teach/ the dogma of liberty of
+conscience, or demand political liberty. But, as no society can exist
+without guarantees granted to the subject against the sovereign, there
+results for the subject /liberties/ subject to restriction. Liberty,
+no; liberties, yes,--precise and well-defined liberties. That is in
+harmony with the nature of things.
+
+It is, assuredly, beyond the reach of human power to prevent the
+liberty of thought; and no sovereign can interfere with money. The
+great statesmen who were vanquished in the long struggle (it lasted
+five centuries) recognized the right of subjects to great liberties;
+but they did not admit their right to publish anti-social thoughts,
+nor did they admit the indefinite liberty of the subject. To them the
+words "subject" and "liberty" were terms that contradicted each other;
+just as the theory of citizens being all equal constitutes an
+absurdity which nature contradicts at every moment. To recognize the
+necessity of a religion, the necessity of authority, and then to leave
+to subjects the right to deny religion, attack its worship, oppose the
+exercise of power by public expression communicable and communicated
+by thought, was an impossibility which the Catholics of the sixteenth
+century would not hear of.
+
+Alas! the victory of Calvinism will cost France more in the future
+than it has yet cost her; for religious sects and humanitarian,
+equality-levelling politics are, to-day, the tail of Calvinism; and,
+judging by the mistakes of the present power, its contempt for
+intellect, its love for material interests, in which it seeks the
+basis of its support (though material interests are the most
+treacherous of all supports), we may predict that unless some
+providence intervenes, the genius of destruction will again carry the
+day over the genius of preservation. The assailants, who have nothing
+to lose and all to gain, understand each other thoroughly; whereas
+their rich adversaries will not make any sacrifice either of money or
+self-love to draw to themselves supporters.
+
+The art of printing came to the aid of the opposition begun by the
+Vaudois and the Albigenses. As soon as human thought, instead of
+condensing itself, as it was formerly forced to do to remain in
+communicable form, took on a multitude of garments and became, as it
+were, the people itself, instead of remaining a sort of axiomatic
+divinity, there were two multitudes to combat,--the multitude of
+ideas, and the multitude of men. The royal power succumbed in that
+warfare, and we are now assisting, in France, at its last combination
+with elements which render its existence difficult, not to say
+impossible. Power is action, and the elective principle is discussion.
+There is no policy, no statesmanship possible where discussion is
+permanent.
+
+Therefore we ought to recognize the grandeur of the woman who had the
+eyes to see this future and fought it bravely. That the house of
+Bourbon was able to succeed to the house of Valois, that it found a
+crown preserved to it, was due solely to Catherine de' Medici. Suppose
+the second Balafre had lived? No matter how strong the Bearnais was,
+it is doubtful whether he could have seized the crown, seeing how
+dearly the Duc de Mayenne and the remains of the Guise party sold it
+to him. The means employed by Catherine, who certainly had to reproach
+herself with the deaths of Francois II. and Charles IX., whose lives
+might have been saved in time, were never, it is observable, made the
+subject of accusations by either the Calvinists or modern historians.
+Though there was no poisoning, as some grave writers have said, there
+was other conduct almost as criminal; there is no doubt she hindered
+Pare from saving one, and allowed the other to accomplish his own doom
+by moral assassination. But the sudden death of Francois II., and that
+of Charles IX., were no injury to the Calvinists, and therefore the
+causes of these two events remained in their secret sphere, and were
+never suspected either by the writers of the people of that day; they
+were not divined except by de Thou, l'Hopital, and minds of that
+calibre, or by the leaders of the two parties who were coveting or
+defending the throne, and believed such means necessary to their end.
+
+Popular songs attacked, strangely enough, Catherine's morals. Every
+one knows the anecdote of the soldier who was roasting a goose in the
+courtyard of the chateau de Tours during the conference between
+Catherine and Henri IV., singing, as he did so, a song in which the
+queen was grossly insulted. Henri IV. drew his sword to go out and
+kill the man; but Catherine stopped him and contented herself with
+calling from the window to her insulter:--
+
+"Eh! but it was Catherine who gave you the goose."
+
+Though the executions at Amboise were attributed to Catherine, and
+though the Calvinists made her responsible for all the inevitable
+evils of that struggle, it was with her as it was, later, with
+Robespierre, who is still waiting to be justly judged. Catherine was,
+moreover, rightly punished for her preference for the Duc d'Anjou, to
+whose interests the two elder brothers were sacrificed. Henri III.,
+like all spoilt children, ended in becoming absolutely indifferent to
+his mother, and he plunged voluntarily into the life of debauchery
+which made of him what his mother had made of Charles IX., a husband
+without sons, a king without heirs. Unhappily the Duc d'Alencon,
+Catherine's last male child, had already died, a natural death.
+
+The last words of the great queen were like a summing up of her
+lifelong policy, which was, moreover, so plain in its common-sense
+that all cabinets are seen under similar circumstances to put it in
+practice.
+
+"Enough cut off, my son," she said when Henri III. came to her
+death-bed to tell her that the great enemy of the crown was dead,
+"/now piece together/."
+
+By which she meant that the throne should at once reconcile itself
+with the house of Lorraine and make use of it, as the only means of
+preventing evil results from the hatred of the Guises,--by holding out
+to them the hope of surrounding the king. But the persistent craft and
+dissimulation of the woman and the Italian, which she had never failed
+to employ, was incompatible with the debauched life of her son.
+Catherine de' Medici once dead, the policy of the Valois died also.
+
+Before undertaking to write the history of the manners and morals of
+this period in action, the author of this Study has patiently and
+minutely examined the principal reigns in the history of France, the
+quarrel of the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, that of the Guises and
+the Valois, each of which covers a century. His first intention was to
+write a picturesque history of France. Three women--Isabella of
+Bavaria, Catharine and Marie de' Medici--hold an enormous place in it,
+their sway reaching from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century,
+ending in Louis XIV. Of these three queens, Catherine is the finer and
+more interesting. Hers was virile power, dishonored neither by the
+terrible amours of Isabella nor by those, even more terrible, though
+less known, of Marie de' Medici. Isabella summoned the English into
+France against her son, and loved her brother-in-law, the Duc
+d'Orleans. The record of Marie de' Medici is heavier still. Neither
+had political genius.
+
+It was in the course of these studies that the writer acquired the
+conviction of Catherine's greatness; as he became initiated into the
+constantly renewed difficulties of her position, he saw with what
+injustice historians--all influenced by Protestants--had treated this
+queen. Out of this conviction grew the three sketches which here
+follow; in which some erroneous opinions formed upon Catherine, also
+upon the persons who surrounded her, and on the events of her time,
+are refuted. If this book is placed among the Philosophical Studies,
+it is because it shows the Spirit of a Time, and because we may
+clearly see in it the influence of thought.
+
+But before entering the political arena, where Catherine will be seen
+facing the two great difficulties of her career, it is necessary to
+give a succinct account of her preceding life, from the point of view
+of impartial criticism, in order to take in as much as possible of
+this vast and regal existence up to the moment when the first part of
+the present Study begins.
+
+Never was there any period, in any land, in any sovereign family, a
+greater contempt for legitimacy than in the famous house of the
+Medici. On the subject of power they held the same doctrine now
+professed by Russia, namely: to whichever head the crown goes, he is
+the true, the legitimate sovereign. Mirabeau had reason to say: "There
+has been but one mesalliance in my family,--that of the Medici"; for
+in spite of the paid efforts of genealogists, it is certain that the
+Medici, before Everardo de' Medici, /gonfaloniero/ of Florence in
+1314, were simple Florentine merchants who became very rich. The first
+personage in this family who occupies an important place in the
+history of the famous Tuscan republic is Silvestro de' Medici,
+/gonfaloniero/ in 1378. This Silvestro had two sons, Cosmo and Lorenzo
+de' Medici.
+
+From Cosmo are descended Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Duc de Nemours,
+the Duc d'Urbino, father of Catherine, Pope Leo X., Pope Clement VII.,
+and Alessandro, not Duke of Florence, as historians call him, but Duke
+/della citta di Penna/, a title given by Pope Clement VII., as a
+half-way station to that of Grand-duke of Tuscany.
+
+From Lorenzo are descended the Florentine Brutus Lorenzino, who killed
+Alessandro, Cosmo, the first grand-duke, and all the sovereigns of
+Tuscany till 1737, at which period the house became extinct.
+
+But neither of the two branches--the branch Cosmo and the branch
+Lorenzo--reigned through their direct and legitimate lines until the
+close of the sixteenth century, when the grand-dukes of Tuscany began
+to succeed each other peacefully. Alessandro de' Medici, he to whom
+the title of Duke /della citta di Penna/ was given, was the son of the
+Duke d'Urbino, Catherine's father, by a Moorish slave. For this reason
+Lorenzino claimed a double right to kill Alessandro,--as a usurper in
+his house, as well as an oppressor of the city. Some historians
+believe that Alessandro was the son of Clement VII. The fact that led
+to the recognition of this bastard as chief of the republic and head
+of the house of the Medici was his marriage with Margaret of Austria,
+natural daughter of Charles V.
+
+Francesco de' Medici, husband of Bianca Capello, accepted as his son a
+child of poor parents bought by the celebrated Venetian; and, strange
+to say, Ferdinando, on succeeding Francesco, maintained the
+substituted child in all his rights. That child, called Antonio de'
+Medici, was considered during four reigns as belonging to the family;
+he won the affection of everybody, rendered important services to the
+family, and died universally regretted.
+
+Nearly all the first Medici had natural children, whose careers were
+invariably brilliant. For instance, the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici,
+afterwards Pope under the name of Clement VII., was the illegitimate
+son of Giuliano I. Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici was also a bastard,
+and came very near being Pope and the head of the family.
+
+Lorenzo II., the father of Catherine, married in 1518, for his second
+wife, Madeleine de la Tour de Boulogne, in Auvergne, and died April
+25, 1519, a few days after his wife, who died in giving birth to
+Catherine. Catherine was therefore orphaned of father and mother as
+soon as she drew breath. Hence the strange adventures of her
+childhood, mixed up as they were with the bloody efforts of the
+Florentines, then seeking to recover their liberty from the Medici.
+The latter, desirous of continuing to reign in Florence, behaved with
+such circumspection that Lorenzo, Catherine's father, had taken the
+name of Duke d'Urbino.
+
+At Lorenzo's death, the head of the house of the Medici was Pope Leo
+X., who sent the illegitimate son of Giuliano, Giulio de' Medici, then
+cardinal, to govern Florence. Leo X. was great-uncle to Catherine, and
+this Cardinal Giulio, afterward Clement VII., was her uncle by the
+left hand.
+
+It was during the siege of Florence, undertaken by the Medici to force
+their return there, that the Republican party, not content with having
+shut Catherine, then nine years old, into a convent, after robbing her
+of all her property, actually proposed, on the suggestion of one named
+Batista Cei, to expose her between two battlements on the walls to the
+artillery of the Medici. Bernardo Castiglione went further in a
+council held to determine how matters should be ended: he was of
+opinion that, so far from returning her to the Pope as the latter
+requested, she ought to be given to the soldiers for dishonor. This
+will show how all popular revolutions resemble each other. Catherine's
+subsequent policy, which upheld so firmly the royal power, may well
+have been instigated in part by such scenes, of which an Italian girl
+of nine years of age was assuredly not ignorant.
+
+The rise of Alessandro de' Medici, to which the bastard Pope Clement
+VII. powerfully contributed, was no doubt chiefly caused by the
+affection of Charles V. for his famous illegitimate daughter Margaret.
+Thus Pope and emperor were prompted by the same sentiment. At this
+epoch Venice had the commerce of the world; Rome had its moral
+government; Italy still reigned supreme through the poets, the
+generals, the statesmen born to her. At no period of the world's
+history, in any land, was there ever seen so remarkable, so abundant a
+collection of men of genius. There were so many, in fact, that even
+the lesser princes were superior men. Italy was crammed with talent,
+enterprise, knowledge, science, poesy, wealth, and gallantry, all the
+while torn by intestinal warfare and overrun with conquerors
+struggling for possession of her finest provinces. When men are so
+strong, they do not fear to admit their weaknesses. Hence, no doubt,
+this golden age for bastards. We must, moreover, do the illegitimate
+children of the house of the Medici the justice to say that they were
+ardently devoted to the glory, power, and increase of wealth of that
+famous family. Thus as soon as the /Duca della citta di Penna/, son of
+the Moorish woman, was installed as tyrant of Florence, he espoused
+the interest of Pope Clement VII., and gave a home to the daughter of
+Lorenzo II., then eleven years of age.
+
+When we study the march of events and that of men in this curious
+sixteenth century, we ought never to forget that public policy had for
+its element a perpetual craftiness and a dissimulation which
+destroyed, in all characters, the straightforward, upright bearing our
+imaginations demand of eminent personages. In this, above all, is
+Catherine's absolution. It disposes of the vulgar and foolish
+accusations of treachery launched against her by the writers of the
+Reformation. This was the great age of that statesmanship the code of
+which was written by Macchiavelli as well as by Spinosa, by Hobbes as
+well as by Montesquieu,--for the dialogue between Sylla and Eucrates
+contains Montesquieu's true thought, which his connection with the
+Encyclopedists did not permit him to develop otherwise than as he did.
+
+These principles are to-day the secret law of all cabinets in which
+plans for the conquest and maintenance of great power are laid. In
+France we blamed Napoleon when he made use of that Italian genius for
+craft which was bred in his bone,--though in his case it did not
+always succeed. But Charles V., Catherine, Philip II., and Pope Julius
+would not have acted otherwise than as he did in the affair of Spain.
+History, in the days when Catherine was born, if judged from the point
+of view of honesty, would seem an impossible tale. Charles V., obliged
+to sustain Catholicism against the attacks of Luther, who threatened
+the Throne in threatening the Tiara, allowed the siege of Rome and
+held Pope Clement VII. in prison! This same Clement, who had no
+bitterer enemy than Charles V., courted him in order to make
+Alessandro de' Medici ruler of Florence, and obtained his favorite
+daughter for that bastard. No sooner was Alessandro established than
+he, conjointly with Clement VII., endeavored to injure Charles V. by
+allying himself with Francois I., king of France, by means of
+Catherine de' Medici; and both of them promised to assist Francois in
+reconquering Italy. Lorenzino de' Medici made himself the companion of
+Alessandro's debaucheries for the express purpose of finding an
+opportunity to kill him. Filippo Strozzi, one of the great minds of
+that day, held this murder in such respect that he swore that his sons
+should each marry a daughter of the murderer; and each son religiously
+fulfilled his father's oath when they might all have made, under
+Catherine's protection, brilliant marriages; for one was the rival of
+Doria, the other a marshal of France. Cosmo de' Medici, successor of
+Alessandro, with whom he had no relationship, avenged the death of
+that tyrant in the cruellest manner, with a persistency lasting twelve
+years; during which time his hatred continued keen against the persons
+who had, as a matter of fact, given him the power. He was eighteen
+years old when called to the sovereignty; his first act was to declare
+the rights of Alessandro's legitimate sons null and void,--all the
+while avenging their father's death! Charles V. confirmed the
+disinheriting of his grandsons, and recognized Cosmo instead of the
+son of Alessandro and his daughter Margaret. Cosmo, placed on the
+throne by Cardinal Cibo, instantly exiled the latter; and the cardinal
+revenged himself by accusing Cosmo (who was the first grand-duke) of
+murdering Alessandro's son. Cosmo, as jealous of his power as Charles
+V. was of his, abdicated in favor of his son Francesco, after causing
+the death of his other son, Garcia, to avenge the death of Cardinal
+Giovanni de' Medici, whom Garcia had assassinated. Cosmo the First and
+his son Francesco, who ought to have been devoted, body and soul, to
+the house of France, the only power on which they might really have
+relied, made themselves the lacqueys of Charles V. and Philip II., and
+were consequently the secret, base, and perfidious enemies of
+Catherine de' Medici, one of the glories of their house.
+
+Such were the leading contradictory and illogical traits, the
+treachery, knavery, and black intrigues of a single house, that of the
+Medici. From this sketch, we may judge of the other princes of Italy
+and Europe. All the envoys of Cosmos I. to the court of France had, in
+their secret instructions, an order to poison Strozzi, Catherine's
+relation, when he arrived. Charles V. had already assassinated three
+of the ambassadors of Francois I.
+
+It was early in the month of October, 1533, that the /Duca della citta
+di Penna/ started from Florence for Livorno, accompanied by the sole
+heiress of Lorenzo II., namely, Catherine de' Medici. The duke and the
+Princess of Florence, for that was the title by which the young girl,
+then fourteen years of age, was known, left the city surrounded by a
+large retinue of servants, officers, and secretaries, preceded by
+armed men, and followed by an escort of cavalry. The young princess
+knew nothing as yet of what her fate was to be, except that the Pope
+was to have an interview at Livorno with the Duke Alessandro; but her
+uncle, Filippo Strozzi, very soon informed her of the future before
+her.
+
+Filippo Strozzi had married Clarice de' Medici, half-sister on the
+father's side of Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, father of
+Catherine; but this marriage, which was brought about as much to
+convert one of the firmest supporters of the popular party to the
+cause of the Medici as to facilitate the recall of that family, then
+banished from Florence, never shook the stern champion from his
+course, though he was persecuted by his own party for making it. In
+spite of all apparent changes in his conduct (for this alliance
+naturally affected it somewhat) he remained faithful to the popular
+party, and declared himself openly against the Medici as soon as he
+foresaw their intention to enslave Florence. This great man even
+refused the offer of a principality made to him by Leo X.
+
+At the time of which we are now writing Filippo Strozzi was a victim
+to the policy of the Medici, so vacillating in its means, so fixed and
+inflexible in its object. After sharing the misfortunes and the
+captivity of Clement VII. when the latter, surprised by the Colonna,
+took refuge in the Castle of Saint-Angelo, Strozzi was delivered up by
+Clement as a hostage and taken to Naples. As the Pope, when he got his
+liberty, turned savagely on his enemies, Strozzi came very near losing
+his life, and was forced to pay an enormous sum to be released from a
+prison where he was closely confined. When he found himself at liberty
+he had, with an instinct of kindness natural to an honest man, the
+simplicity to present himself before Clement VII., who had perhaps
+congratulated himself on being well rid of him. The Pope had such good
+cause to blush for his own conduct that he received Strozzi extremely
+ill.
+
+Strozzi thus began, early in life, his apprenticeship in the
+misfortunes of an honest man in politics,--a man whose conscience
+cannot lend itself to the capriciousness of events; whose actions are
+acceptable only to the virtuous; and who is therefore persecuted by
+the world,--by the people, for opposing their blind passions; by power
+for opposing its usurpations. The life of such great citizens is a
+martyrdom, in which they are sustained only by the voice of their
+conscience and an heroic sense of social duty, which dictates their
+course in all things. There were many such men in the republic of
+Florence, all as great as Strozzi, and as able as their adversaries
+the Medici, though vanquished by the superior craft and wiliness of
+the latter. What could be more worthy of admiration than the conduct
+of the chief of the Pazzi at the time of the conspiracy of his house,
+when, his commerce being at that time enormous, he settled all his
+accounts with Asia, the Levant, and Europe before beginning that great
+attempt; so that, if it failed, his correspondents should lose
+nothing.
+
+The history of the establishment of the house of the Medici in the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is a magnificent tale which still
+remains to be written, though men of genius have already put their
+hands to it. It is not the history of a republic, nor of a society,
+nor of any special civilization; it is the history of /statesmen/,
+the eternal history of Politics,--that of usurpers, that of conquerors.
+
+As soon as Filippo Strozzi returned to Florence he re-established the
+preceding form of government and ousted Ippolito de' Medici, another
+bastard, and the very Alessandro with whom, at the later period of
+which we are now writing, he was travelling to Livorno. Having
+completed this change of government, he became alarmed at the evident
+inconstancy of the people of Florence, and, fearing the vengeance of
+Clement VII., he went to Lyon to superintend a vast house of business
+he owned there, which corresponded with other banking-houses of his
+own in Venice, Rome, France, and Spain. Here we find a strange thing.
+These men who bore the weight of public affairs and of such a struggle
+as that with the Medici (not to speak of contentions with their own
+party) found time and strength to bear the burden of a vast business
+and all its speculations, also of banks and their complications, which
+the multiplicity of coinages and their falsification rendered even
+more difficult than it is in our day. The name "banker" comes from the
+/banc/ (Anglice, /bench/) upon which the banker sat, and on which he
+rang the gold and silver pieces to try their quality. After a time
+Filippo found in the death of his wife, whom he adored, a pretext for
+renewing his relations with the Republican party, whose secret police
+becomes the more terrible in all republics, because every one makes
+himself a spy in the name of a liberty which justifies everything.
+
+Filippo returned to Florence at the very moment when that city was
+compelled to adopt the yoke of Alessandro; but he had previously gone
+to Rome and seen Pope Clement VII., whose affairs were now so
+prosperous that his disposition toward Strozzi was much changed. In
+the hour of triumph the Medici were so much in need of a man like
+Filippo--were it only to smooth the return of Alessandro--that Clement
+urged him to take a seat at the Council of the bastard who was about
+to oppress the city; and Strozzi consented to accept the diploma of a
+senator.
+
+But, for the last two years and more, he had seen, like Seneca and
+Burrhus, the beginnings of tyranny in his Nero. He felt himself, at
+the moment of which we write, an object of so much distrust on the
+part of the people and so suspected by the Medici whom he was
+constantly resisting, that he was confident of some impending
+catastrophe. Consequently, as soon as he heard from Alessandro of the
+negotiation for Catherine's marriage with the son of Francois I., the
+final arrangements for which were to be made at Livorno, where the
+negotiators had appointed to meet, he formed the plan of going to
+France, and attaching himself to the fortunes of his niece, who needed
+a guardian.
+
+Alessandro, delighted to rid himself of a man so unaccommodating in
+the affairs of Florence, furthered a plan which relieved him of one
+murder at least, and advised Strozzi to put himself at the head of
+Catherine's household. In order to dazzle the eyes of France the
+Medici had selected a brilliant suite for her whom they styled, very
+unwarrantably, the Princess of Florence, and who also went by the name
+of the little Duchess d'Urbino. The cortege, at the head of which rode
+Alessandro, Catherine, and Strozzi, was composed of more than a
+thousand persons, not including the escort and servants. When the last
+of it issued from the gates of Florence the head had passed that first
+village beyond the city where they now braid the Tuscan straw hats. It
+was beginning to be rumored among the people that Catherine was to
+marry a son of Francois I.; but the rumor did not obtain much belief
+until the Tuscans beheld with their own eyes this triumphal procession
+from Florence to Livorno.
+
+Catherine herself, judging by all the preparations she beheld, began
+to suspect that her marriage was in question, and her uncle then
+revealed to her the fact that the first ambitious project of his house
+had aborted, and that the hand of the dauphin had been refused to her.
+Alessandro still hoped that the Duke of Albany would succeed in
+changing this decision of the king of France who, willing as he was to
+buy the support of the Medici in Italy, would only grant them his
+second son, the Duc d'Orleans. This petty blunder lost Italy to
+France, and did not prevent Catherine from becoming queen.
+
+The Duke of Albany, son of Alexander Stuart, brother of James III.,
+king of Scotland, had married Anne de la Tour de Boulogne, sister of
+Madeleine de la Tour de Boulogne, Catherine's mother; he was therefore
+her maternal uncle. It was through her mother that Catherine was so
+rich and allied to so many great families; for, strangely enough, her
+rival, Diane de Poitiers, was also her cousin. Jean de Poitiers,
+father of Diane, was son of Jeanne de Boulogne, aunt of the Duchess
+d'Urbino. Catherine was also a cousin of Mary Stuart, her
+daughter-in-law.
+
+Catherine now learned that her dowry in money was a hundred thousand
+ducats. A ducat was a gold piece of the size of an old French louis,
+though less thick. (The old louis was worth twenty-four francs--the
+present one is worth twenty). The Comtes of Auvergne and Lauraguais
+were also made a part of the dowry, and Pope Clement added one hundred
+thousand ducats in jewels, precious stones, and other wedding gifts;
+to which Alessandro likewise contributed his share.
+
+On arriving at Livorno, Catherine, still so young, must have been
+flattered by the extreme magnificence displayed by Pope Clement ("her
+uncle in Notre-Dame," then head of the house of the Medici), in order
+to outdo the court of France. He had already arrived at Livorno in one
+of his galleys, which was lined with crimson satin fringed with gold,
+and covered with a tent-like awning in cloth of gold. This galley, the
+decoration of which cost twenty thousand ducats, contained several
+apartments destined for the bride of Henri of France, all of which
+were furnished with the richest treasures of art the Medici could
+collect. The rowers, magnificently apparelled, and the crew were under
+the command of a prior of the order of the Knights of Rhodes. The
+household of the Pope were in three other galleys. The galleys of the
+Duke of Albany, anchored near those of Clement VII., added to the size
+and dignity of the flotilla.
+
+Duke Alessandro presented the officers of Catherine's household to the
+Pope, with whom he had a secret conference, in which, it would appear,
+he presented to his Holiness Count Sebastiano Montecuculi, who had
+just left, somewhat abruptly, the service of Charles V. and that of
+his two generals, Antonio di Leyva and Ferdinando di Gonzago. Was
+there between the two bastards, Giulio and Alessandro, a premeditated
+intention of making the Duc d'Orleans dauphin? What reward was
+promised to Sebastiano Montecuculi, who, before entering the service
+of Charles V. had studied medicine? History is silent on that point.
+We shall see presently what clouds hang round that fact. The obscurity
+is so great that, quite recently, grave and conscientious historians
+have admitted Montecuculi's innocence.
+
+Catherine then heard officially from the Pope's own lips of the
+alliance reserved for her. The Duke of Albany had been able to do no
+more than hold the king of France, and that with difficulty, to his
+promise of giving Catherine the hand of his second son, the Duc
+d'Orleans. The Pope's impatience was so great, and he was so afraid
+that his plans would be thwarted either by some intrigue of the
+emperor, or by the refusal of France, or by the grandees of the
+kingdom looking with evil eye upon the marriage, that he gave orders
+to embark at once, and sailed for Marseille, where he arrived toward
+the end of October, 1533.
+
+Notwithstanding its wealth, the house of the Medici was eclipsed on
+this occasion by the court of France. To show the lengths to which the
+Medici pushed their magnificence, it is enough to say that the "dozen"
+put into the bride's purse by the Pope were twelve gold medals of
+priceless historical value, which were then unique. But Francois I.,
+who loved the display of festivals, distinguished himself on this
+occasion. The wedding festivities of Henri de Valois and Catherine de'
+Medici lasted thirty-four days.
+
+It is useless to repeat the details, which have been given in all the
+histories of Provence and Marseille, as to this celebrated interview
+between the Pope and the king of France, which was opened by a jest of
+the Duke of Albany as to the duty of keeping fasts,--a jest mentioned
+by Brantome and much enjoyed by the court, which shows the tone of the
+manners of that day.
+
+Many conjectures have been made as to Catherine's barrenness, which
+lasted ten years. Strange calumnies still rest upon this queen, all of
+whose actions were fated to be misjudged. It is sufficient to say that
+the cause was solely in Henri II. After the difficulty was removed,
+Catherine had ten children. The delay was, in one respect, fortunate
+for France. If Henri II. had had children by Diane de Poitiers the
+politics of the kingdom would have been dangerously complicated. When
+the difficulty was removed the Duchesse de Valentinois had reached the
+period of a woman's second youth. This matter alone will show that the
+true life of Catherine de' Medici is still to be written, and also--as
+Napoleon said with profound wisdom--that the history of France should
+be either in one volume only, or one thousand.
+
+Here is a contemporaneous and succinct account of the meeting of
+Clement VII. and the king of France:
+
+  "His Holiness the Pope, having been conducted to the palace, which
+  was, as I have said, prepared beyond the port, every one retired
+  to their own quarters till the morrow, when his Holiness was to
+  make his entry; the which was made with great sumptuousness and
+  magnificence, he being seated in a chair carried on the shoulders
+  of two men and wearing his pontifical robes, but not the tiara.
+  Pacing before him was a white hackney, bearing the sacrament of
+  the altar,--the said hackney being led by reins of white silk held
+  by two footmen finely equipped. Next came all the cardinals in
+  their robes, on pontifical mules, and Madame la Duchesse d'Urbino
+  in great magnificence, accompanied by a vast number of ladies and
+  gentlemen, both French and Italian.
+
+  "The Holy Father having arrived in the midst of this company at
+  the place appointed for his lodging, every one retired; and all
+  this, being well-ordered, took place without disorder or tumult.
+  While the Pope was thus making his entry, the king crossed the
+  water in a frigate and went to the lodging the Pope had just
+  quitted, in order to go the next day and make obeisance to the
+  Holy Father as a Most Christian king.
+
+  "The next day the king being prepared set forth for the palace
+  where was the Pope, accompanied by the princes of the blood, such
+  as Monseigneur le Duc de Vendomois (father of the Vidame de
+  Chartres), the Comte de Sainct-Pol, Messieurs de Montpensier and
+  la Roche-sur-Yon, the Duc de Nemours (brother of the Duc de
+  Savoie) who died in this said place, the Duke of Albany, and many
+  others, whether counts, barons, or seigneurs; nearest to the king
+  was the Seigneur de Montmorency, his Grand-master.
+
+  "The king, being arrived at the palace, was received by the Pope
+  and all the college of cardinals, assembled in consistory, most
+  civilly. This done, each retired to the place ordained for him,
+  the king taking with him several cardinals to feast them,--among
+  them Cardinal de' Medici, nephew of the Pope, a very splendid man
+  with a fine retinue.
+
+  "On the morrow those persons chosen by his Holiness and by the
+  king began to assemble to discuss the matters for which the
+  meeting was made. First, the matter of the Faith was treated of,
+  and a bull was put forth repressing heresy and preventing that
+  things come to greater combustion than they now are.
+
+  "After this was concluded the marriage of the Duc d'Orleans,
+  second son of the king, with Catherine de' Medici, Duchesse
+  d'Urbino, niece of his Holiness, under the conditions such, or
+  like to those, as were proposed formerly by the Duke of Albany.
+  The said espousals were celebrated with great magnificence, and
+  our Holy Father himself wedded the pair. The marriage thus
+  consummated, the Holy Father held a consistory at which he created
+  four cardinals and devoted them to the king,--to wit: Cardinal Le
+  Veneur, formerly bishop of Lisieux and grand almoner; the Cardinal
+  de Boulogne of the family of la Chambre, brother on the mother's
+  side of the Duke of Albany; the Cardinal de Chatillon of the house
+  of Coligny, nephew of the Sire de Montmorency, and the Cardinal de
+  Givry."
+
+When Strozzi delivered the dowry in presence of the court he noticed
+some surprise on the part of the French seigneurs; they even said
+aloud that it was little enough for such a mesalliance (what would
+they have said in these days?). Cardinal Ippolito replied, saying:--
+
+"You must be ill-informed as to the secrets of your king. His Holiness
+has bound himself to give to France three pearls of inestimable value,
+namely: Genoa, Milan, and Naples."
+
+The Pope left Sebastiano Montecuculi to present himself to the court
+of France, to which the count offered his services, complaining of his
+treatment by Antonio di Leyva and Ferdinando di Gonzago, for which
+reason his services were accepted. Montecuculi was not made a part of
+Catherine's household, which was wholly composed of French men and
+women, for, by a law of the monarchy, the execution of which the
+Pope saw with great satisfaction, Catherine was naturalized by
+letters-patent as a Frenchwoman before the marriage. Montecuculi was
+appointed in the first instance to the household of the queen, the
+sister of Charles V. After a while he passed into the service of the
+dauphin as cup-bearer.
+
+The new Duchesse d'Orleans soon found herself a nullity at the court
+of Francois I. Her young husband was in love with Diane de Poitiers,
+who certainly, in the matter of birth, could rival Catherine, and was
+far more of a great lady than the little Florentine. The daughter of
+the Medici was also outdone by Queen Eleonore, sister of Charles V.,
+and by Madame d'Etampes, whose marriage with the head of the house of
+Brosse made her one of the most powerful and best titled women in
+France. Catherine's aunt the Duchess of Albany, the Queen of Navarre,
+the Duchesse de Guise, the Duchesse de Vendome, Madame la Connetable
+de Montmorency, and other women of like importance, eclipsed by birth
+and by their rights, as well as by their power at the most sumptuous
+court of France (not excepting that of Louis XIV.), the daughter of
+the Florentine grocers, who was richer and more illustrious through
+the house of the Tour de Boulogne than by her own family of Medici.
+
+The position of his niece was so bad and difficult that the republican
+Filippo Strozzi, wholly incapable of guiding her in the midst of such
+conflicting interests, left her after the first year, being recalled
+to Italy by the death of Clement VII. Catherine's conduct, when we
+remember that she was scarcely fifteen years old, was a model of
+prudence. She attached herself closely to the king, her father-in-law;
+she left him as little as she could, following him on horseback both
+in hunting and in war. Her idolatry for Francois I. saved the house of
+the Medici from all suspicion when the dauphin was poisoned. Catherine
+was then, and so was her husband, at the headquarters of the king in
+Provence; for Charles V. had speedily invaded France and the late
+scene of the marriage festivities had become the theatre of a cruel
+war.
+
+At the moment when Charles V. was put to flight, leaving the bones of
+his army in Provence, the dauphin was returning to Lyon by the Rhone.
+He stopped to sleep at Tournon, and, by way of pastime, practised some
+violent physical exercises,--which were nearly all the education his
+brother and he, in consequence of their detention as hostages, had
+ever received. The prince had the imprudence--it being the month of
+August, and the weather very hot--to ask for a glass of water, which
+Montecuculi, as his cup-bearer, gave to him, with ice in it. The
+dauphin died almost immediately. Francois I. adored his son. The
+dauphin was, according to all accounts, a charming young man. His
+father, in despair, gave the utmost publicity to the proceedings
+against Montecuculi, which he placed in the hands of the most able
+magistrates of that day. The count, after heroically enduring the
+first tortures without confessing anything, finally made admissions by
+which he implicated Charles V. and his two generals, Antonio di Leyva
+and Ferdinando di Gonzago. No affair was ever more solemnly debated.
+Here is what the king did, in the words of an ocular witness:--
+
+  "The king called an assembly at Lyon of all the princes of his
+  blood, all the knights of his order, and other great personages of
+  the kingdom; also the legal and papal nuncio, the cardinals who
+  were at his court, together with the ambassadors of England,
+  Scotland, Portugal, Venice, Ferrara, and others; also all the
+  princes and noble strangers, both Italian and German, who were
+  then residing at his court in great numbers. These all being
+  assembled, he caused to be read to them, in presence of each
+  other, from beginning to end, the trial of the unhappy man who
+  poisoned Monseigneur the late dauphin,--with all the
+  interrogatories, confessions, confrontings, and other ceremonies
+  usual in criminal trials; he, the king, not being willing that the
+  sentence should be executed until all present had given their
+  opinion on this heinous and miserable case."
+
+The fidelity, devotion, and cautious skill of the Comte de Montecuculi
+may seem extraordinary in our time, when all the world, even ministers
+of State, tell everything about the least little event with which they
+have to do; but in those days princes could find devoted servants, or
+knew how to choose them. Monarchical Moreys existed because in those
+days there was /faith/. Never ask devotion of /self-interest/, because
+such interest may change; but expect all from sentiments, religious
+faith, monarchical faith, patriotic faith. Those three beliefs
+produced such men as the Berthereaus of Geneva, the Sydneys and
+Straffords of England, the murderers of Thomas a Becket, the Jacques
+Coeurs, the Jeanne d'Arcs, the Richelieus, Dantons, Bonchamps,
+Talmonts, and also the Clements, Chabots, and others.
+
+The dauphin was poisoned in the same manner, and possibly by the same
+drug which afterwards served MADAME under Louis XIV. Pope Clement VII.
+had been dead two years; Duke Alessandro, plunged in debauchery,
+seemed to have no interest in the elevation of the Duc d'Orleans;
+Catherine, then seventeen, and full of admiration for her
+father-in-law, was with him at the time; Charles V. alone appeared to
+have an interest in his death, for Francois I. was negotiating for his
+son an alliance which would assuredly have aggrandized France. The
+count's confession was therefore very skilfully based on the passions
+and politics of the moment; Charles V. was then flying from France,
+leaving his armies buried in Provence with his happiness, his
+reputation, and his hopes of dominion. It is to be remarked that if
+torture had forced admissions from an innocent man, Francois I. gave
+Montecuculi full liberty to speak in presence of an imposing assembly,
+and before persons in whose eyes innocence had some chance to triumph.
+The king, who wanted the truth, sought it in good faith.
+
+In spite of her now brilliant future, Catherine's situation at court
+was not changed by the death of the dauphin. Her barrenness gave
+reason to fear a divorce in case her husband should ascend the throne.
+The dauphin was under the spell of Diane de Poitiers, who assumed to
+rival Madame d'Etampes, the king's mistress. Catherine redoubled in
+care and cajolery of her father-in-law, being well aware that her sole
+support was in him. The first ten years of Catherine's married life
+were years of ever-renewed grief, caused by the failure, one by one,
+of her hopes of pregnancy, and the vexations of her rivalry with
+Diane. Imagine what must have been the life of a young princess,
+watched by a jealous mistress who was supported by a powerful party,
+--the Catholic party,--and by the two powerful alliances Diane had
+made in marrying one daughter to Robert de la Mark, Duc de Bouillon,
+Prince of Sedan, and the other to Claude de Lorraine, Duc d'Aumale.
+
+Catherine, helpless between the party of Madame d'Etampes and the
+party of the Senechale (such was Diane's title during the reign of
+Francois I.), which divided the court and politics into factions for
+these mortal enemies, endeavored to make herself the friend of both
+Diane de Poitiers and Madame d'Etampes. She, who was destined to
+become so great a queen, played the part of a servant. Thus she served
+her apprenticeship in that double-faced policy which was ever the
+secret motor of her life. Later, the /queen/ was to stand between
+Catholics and Calvinists, just as the /woman/ had stood for ten years
+between Madame d'Etampes and Madame de Poitiers. She studied the
+contradictions of French politics; she saw Francois I. sustaining
+Calvin and the Lutherans in order to embarrass Charles V., and then,
+after secretly and patiently protecting the Reformation in Germany,
+and tolerating the residence of Calvin at the court of Navarre, he
+suddenly turned against it with excessive rigor. Catherine beheld on
+the one hand the court, and the women of the court, playing with the
+fire of heresy, and on the other, Diane at the head of the Catholic
+party with the Guises, solely because the Duchesse d'Etampes supported
+Calvin and the Protestants.
+
+Such was the political education of this queen, who saw in the cabinet
+of the king of France the same errors committed as in the house of the
+Medici. The dauphin opposed his father in everything; he was a bad
+son. He forgot the cruel but most vital maxim of royalty, namely, that
+thrones need solidarity; and that a son who creates opposition during
+the lifetime of his father must follow that father's policy when he
+mounts the throne. Spinosa, who was as great a statesman as he was a
+philosopher, said--in the case of one king succeeding another by
+insurrection or crime,--
+
+  "If the new king desires to secure the safety of his throne and of
+  his own life he must show such ardor in avenging the death of his
+  predecessor that no one shall feel a desire to commit the same
+  crime. But to avenge it /worthily/ it is not enough to shed the
+  blood of his subjects, he must approve the axioms of the king he
+  replaces, and take the same course in governing."
+
+It was the application of this maxim which gave Florence to the
+Medici. Cosmo I. caused to be assassinated at Venice, after eleven
+years' sway, the Florentine Brutus, and, as we have already said,
+persecuted the Strozzi. It was forgetfulness of this maxim which
+ruined Louis XVI. That king was false to every principle of royal
+government when he re-established the parliaments suppressed by his
+grandfather. Louis XV. saw the matter clearly. The parliaments, and
+notably that of Paris, counted for fully half in the troubles which
+necessitated the convocation of the States-general. The fault of Louis
+XV. was, that in breaking down that barrier which separated the throne
+from the people he did not erect a stronger; in other words, that he
+did not substitute for parliament a strong constitution of the
+provinces. There lay the remedy for the evils of the monarchy; thence
+should have come the voting on taxes, the regulation of them, and a
+slow approval of reforms that were necessary to the system of
+monarchy.
+
+The first act of Henri II. was to give his confidence to the
+Connetable de Montmorency, whom his father had enjoined him to leave
+in disgrace. The Connetable de Montmorency was, with Diane de
+Poitiers, to whom he was closely bound, the master of the State.
+Catherine was therefore less happy and less powerful after she became
+queen of France than while she was dauphiness. From 1543 she had a
+child every year for ten years, and was occupied with maternal cares
+during the period covered by the last three years of the reign of
+Francois I. and nearly the whole of the reign of Henri II. We may see
+in this recurring fecundity the influence of a rival, who was able
+thus to rid herself of the legitimate wife,--a barbarity of feminine
+policy which must have been one of Catherine's grievances against
+Diane.
+
+Thus set aside from public life, this superior woman passed her time
+in observing the self-interests of the court people and of the various
+parties which were formed about her. All the Italians who had followed
+her were objects of violent suspicion. After the execution of
+Montecuculi the Connetable de Montmorency, Diane, and many of the
+keenest politicians of the court were filled with suspicion of the
+Medici; though Francois I. always repelled it. Consequently, the
+Gondi, Strozzi, Ruggieri, Sardini, etc.,--in short, all those who were
+called distinctively "the Italians,"--were compelled to employ greater
+resources of mind, shrewd policy, and courage, to maintain themselves
+at court against the weight of disfavor which pressed upon them.
+
+During her husband's reign Catherine's amiability to Diane de Poitiers
+went to such great lengths that intelligent persons must regard it as
+proof of that profound dissimulation which men, events, and the
+conduct of Henri II. compelled Catherine de' Medici to employ. But
+they go too far when they declare that she never claimed her rights as
+wife and queen. In the first place, the sense of dignity which
+Catherine possessed in the highest degree forbade her claiming what
+historians call her rights as a wife. The ten children of the marriage
+explain Henri's conduct; and his wife's maternal occupations left him
+free to pass his time with Diane de Poitiers. But the king was never
+lacking in anything that was due to himself; and he gave Catherine an
+"entry" into Paris, to be crowned as queen, which was worthy of all
+such pageants that had ever taken place. The archives of the
+Parliament, and those of the Cour des Comptes, show that those two
+great bodies went to meet her outside of Paris as far as Saint Lazare.
+Here is an extract from du Tillet's account of it:--
+
+  "A platform had been erected at Saint-Lazare, on which was a
+  throne (du Tillet calls it a /chair de parement/). Catherine took
+  her seat upon it, wearing a surcoat, or species of ermine
+  short-cloak covered with precious stones, a bodice beneath it with
+  the royal mantle, and on her head a crown enriched with pearls and
+  diamonds, and held in place by the Marechale de la Mark, her lady
+  of honor. Around her /stood/ the princes of the blood, and other
+  princes and seigneurs, richly apparelled, also the chancellor of
+  France in a robe of gold damask on a background of crimson-red.
+  Before the queen, and on the same platform, were seated, in two
+  rows, twelve duchesses or countesses, wearing ermine surcoats,
+  bodices, robes, and circlets,--that is to say, the coronets of
+  duchesses and countesses. These were the Duchesses d'Estouteville,
+  Montpensier (elder and younger); the Princesses de la
+  Roche-sur-Yon; the Duchesses de Guise, de Nivernois, d'Aumale, de
+  Valentinois (Diane de Poitiers), Mademoiselle la batarde legitimee
+  de France (the title of the king's daughter, Diane, who was
+  Duchesse de Castro-Farnese and afterwards Duchesse de
+  Montmorency-Damville), Madame la Connetable, and Mademoiselle de
+  Nemours; without mentioning other demoiselles who were not seated.
+  The four presidents of the courts of justice, wearing their caps,
+  several other members of the court, and the clerk du Tillet, mounted
+  the platform, made reverent bows, and the chief judge, Lizet,
+  kneeling down, harangued the queen. The chancellor then knelt down
+  and answered. The queen made her entry at half-past three o'clock in
+  an open litter, having Madame Marguerite de France sitting
+  opposite to her, and on either side of the litter the Cardinals of
+  Amboise, Chatillon, Boulogne, and de Lenoncourt in their episcopal
+  robes. She left her litter at the church of Notre-Dame, where she
+  was received by the clergy. After offering her prayer, she was
+  conducted by the rue de la Calandre to the palace, where the royal
+  supper was served in the great hall. She there appeared, seated at
+  the middle of the marble table, beneath a velvet dais strewn with
+  golden fleur-de-lis."
+
+We may here put an end to one of those popular beliefs which are
+repeated in many writers from Sauval down. It has been said that Henri
+II. pushed his neglect of the proprieties so far as to put the
+initials of his mistress on the buildings which Catherine advised him
+to continue or to begin with so much magnificence. But the double
+monogram which can be seen at the Louvre offers a daily denial to
+those who are so little clear-sighted as to believe in silly nonsense
+which gratuitously insults our kings and queens. The H or Henri and
+the two C's of Catherine which back it, appear to represent the two
+D's of Diane. The coincidence may have pleased Henri II., but it is
+none the less true that the royal monogram contained officially the
+initial of the king and that of the queen. This is so true that the
+monogram can still be seen on the column of the Halle au Ble, which
+was built by Catherine alone. It can also be seen in the crypt of
+Saint-Denis, on the tomb which Catherine erected for herself in her
+lifetime beside that of Henri II., where her figure is modelled from
+nature by the sculptor to whom she sat for it.
+
+On a solemn occasion, when he was starting, March 25, 1552, for his
+expedition into Germany, Henri II. declared Catherine regent during
+his absence, and also in case of his death. Catherine's most cruel
+enemy, the author of "Marvellous Discourses on Catherine the Second's
+Behavior" admits that she carried on the government with universal
+approval and that the king was satisfied with her administration.
+Henri received both money and men at the time he wanted them; and
+finally, after the fatal day of Saint-Quentin, Catherine obtained
+considerable sums of money from the people of Paris, which she sent to
+Compiegne, where the king then was.
+
+In politics, Catherine made immense efforts to obtain a little
+influence. She was clever enough to bring the Connetable de
+Montmorency, all-powerful under Henri II., to her interests. We all
+know the terrible answer that the king made, on being harassed by
+Montmorency in her favor. This answer was the result of an attempt by
+Catherine to give the king good advice, in the few moments she was
+ever alone with him, when she explained the Florentine policy of
+pitting the grandees of the kingdom one against another and
+establishing the royal authority on their ruins. But Henri II., who
+saw things only through the eyes of Diane and the Connetable, was a
+truly feudal king and the friend of all the great families of his
+kingdom.
+
+After the futile attempt of the Connetable in her favor, which must
+have been made in the year 1556, Catherine began to cajole the Guises
+for the purpose of detaching them from Diane and opposing them to the
+Connetable. Unfortunately, Diane and Montmorency were as vehement
+against the Protestants as the Guises. There was therefore not the
+same animosity in their struggle as there might have been had the
+religious question entered it. Moreover, Diane boldly entered the
+lists against the queen's project by coquetting with the Guises and
+giving her daughter to the Duc d'Aumale. She even went so far that
+certain authors declared she gave more than mere good-will to the
+gallant Cardinal de Lorraine; and the lampooners of the time made the
+following quatrain on Henri II:
+
+  "Sire, if you're weak and let your will relax
+  Till Diane and Lorraine do govern you,
+  Pound, knead and mould, re-melt and model you,
+  Sire, you are nothing--nothing else than wax."
+
+It is impossible to regard as sincere the signs of grief and the
+ostentation of mourning which Catherine showed on the death of Henri
+II. The fact that the king was attached by an unalterable passion to
+Diane de Poitiers naturally made Catherine play the part of a
+neglected wife who adores her husband; but, like all women who act by
+their head, she persisted in this dissimulation and never ceased to
+speak tenderly of Henri II. In like manner Diane, as we know, wore
+mourning all her life for her husband the Senechal de Breze. Her
+colors were black and white, and the king was wearing them at the
+tournament when he was killed. Catherine, no doubt in imitation of her
+rival, wore mourning for Henri II. for the rest of her life. She
+showed a consummate perfidy toward Diane de Poitiers, to which
+historians have not given due attention. At the king's death the
+Duchesse de Valentinois was completely disgraced and shamefully
+abandoned by the Connetable, a man who was always below his
+reputation. Diane offered her estate and chateau of Chenonceaux to the
+queen. Catherine then said, in presence of witnesses:--
+
+"I can never forget that she made the happiness of my dear Henri. I am
+ashamed to accept her gift; I wish to give her a domain in place of
+it, and I shall offer her that of Chaumont-sur-Loire."
+
+Accordingly, the deed of exchange was signed at Blois in 1559. Diane,
+whose sons-in-law were the Duc d'Aumale and the Duc de Bouillon (then
+a sovereign prince), kept her wealth, and died in 1566 aged sixty-six.
+She was therefore nineteen years older than Henri II. These dates,
+taken from her epitaph which was copied from her tomb by the historian
+who concerned himself so much about her at the close of the last
+century, clear up quite a number of historical difficulties. Some
+historians have declared she was forty, others that she was sixteen at
+the time of her father's condemnation in 1523; in point of fact she
+was then twenty-four. After reading everything for and against her
+conduct towards Francois I. we are unable to affirm or to deny
+anything. This is one of the passages of history that will ever remain
+obscure. We may see by what happens in our own day how history is
+falsified at the very moment when events happen.
+
+Catherine, who had founded great hopes on the age of her rival, tried
+more than once to overthrow her. It was a dumb, underhand, terrible
+struggle. The day came when Catherine believed herself for a moment on
+the verge of success. In 1554, Diane, who was ill, begged the king to
+go to Saint-Germain and leave her for a short time until she
+recovered. This stately coquette did not choose to be seen in the
+midst of medical appliances and without the splendors of apparel.
+Catherine arranged, as a welcome to her husband, a magnificent ballet,
+in which six beautiful young girls were to recite a poem in his honor.
+She chose for this function Miss Fleming, a relation of her uncle the
+Duke of Albany, the handsomest young woman, some say, that was ever
+seen, white and very fair; also one of her own relations, Clarice
+Strozzi, a magnificent Italian with superb black hair, and hands that
+were of rare beauty; Miss Lewiston, maid of honor to Mary Stuart; Mary
+Stuart herself; Madame Elizabeth of France (who was afterwards that
+unfortunate Queen of Spain); and Madame Claude. Elizabeth and Claude
+were eight and nine years old, Mary Stuart twelve; evidently the queen
+intended to bring forward Miss Fleming and Clarice Strozzi and present
+them without rivals to the king. The king fell in love with Miss
+Fleming, by whom he had a natural son, Henri de Valois, Comte
+d'Angouleme, grand-prior of France. But the power and influence of
+Diane were not shaken. Like Madame de Pompadour with Louis XV., the
+Duchesse de Valentinois forgave all. But what sort of love did this
+attempt show in Catherine? Was it love to her husband or love of
+power? Women may decide.
+
+A great deal is said in these days of the license of the press; but it
+is difficult to imagine the lengths to which it went when printing was
+first invented. We know that Aretino, the Voltaire of his time, made
+kings and emperors tremble, more especially Charles V.; but the world
+does not know so well the audacity and license of pamphlets. The
+chateau de Chenonceaux, which we have just mentioned, was given to
+Diane, or rather not given, she was implored to accept it to make her
+forget one of the most horrible publications ever levelled against a
+woman, and which shows the violence of the warfare between herself and
+Madame d'Etampes. In 1537, when she was thirty-eight years of age, a
+rhymester of Champagne named Jean Voute, published a collection of
+Latin verses in which were three epigrams upon her. It is to be
+supposed that the poet was sure of protection in high places, for the
+pamphlet has a preface in praise of itself, signed by Salmon Macrin,
+first valet-de-chambre to the king. Only one passage is quotable from
+these epigrams, which are entitled: IN PICTAVIAM, ANAM AULIGAM.
+
+"A painted trap catches no game," says the poet, after telling Diane
+that she painted her face and bought her teeth and hair. "You may buy
+all that superficially makes a woman, but you can't buy that your
+lover wants; for he wants life, and you are dead."
+
+This collection, printed by Simon de Colines, is dedicated to a
+bishop!--to Francois Bohier, the brother of the man who, to save his
+credit at court and redeem his offence, offered to Diane, on the
+accession of Henri II., the chateau de Chenonceaux, built by his
+father, Thomas Bohier, a councillor of state under four kings: Louis
+XI., Charles VIII., Louis XII., and Francois I. What were the
+pamphlets published against Madame de Pompadour and against
+Marie-Antoinette compared to these verses, which might have been
+written by Martial? Voute must have made a bad end. The estate and
+chateau cost Diane nothing more than the forgiveness enjoined by the
+gospel. After all, the penalties inflicted on the press, though not
+decreed by juries, were somewhat more severe than those of to-day.
+
+The queens of France, on becoming widows, were required to remain in
+the king's chamber forty days without other light than that of wax
+tapers; they did not leave the room until after the burial of the
+king. This inviolable custom was a great annoyance to Catherine, who
+feared cabals; and, by chance, she found a means to evade it, thus:
+Cardinal de Lorraine, leaving, very early in the morning, the house of
+the /belle Romaine/, a celebrated courtesan of the period, who lived
+in the rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, was set upon and maltreated by a
+party of libertines. "On which his holiness, being much astonished"
+(says Henri Estienne), "gave out that the heretics were preparing
+ambushes against him." The court at once removed from Paris to
+Saint-Germain, and the queen-mother, declaring that she would not
+abandon the king her son, went with him.
+
+The accession of Francois II., the period at which Catherine
+confidently believed she could get possession of the regal power, was
+a moment of cruel disappointment, after the twenty-six years of misery
+she had lived through at the court of France. The Guises laid hands on
+power with incredible audacity. The Duc de Guise was placed in command
+of the army; the Connetable was dismissed; the cardinal took charge of
+the treasury and the clergy.
+
+Catherine now began her political career by a drama which, though it
+did not have the dreadful fame of those of later years, was,
+nevertheless, most horrible; and it must, undoubtedly, have accustomed
+her to the terrible after emotions of her life. While appearing to be
+in harmony with the Guises, she endeavored to pave the way for her
+ultimate triumph by seeking a support in the house of Bourbon, and the
+means she took were as follows: Whether it was that (before the death
+of Henri II.), and after fruitlessly attempting violent measures, she
+wished to awaken jealousy in order to bring the king back to her; or
+whether as she approached middle-age it seemed to her cruel that she
+had never known love, certain it is that she showed a strong interest
+in a seigneur of the royal blood, Francois de Vendome, son of Louis de
+Vendome (the house from which that of the Bourbons sprang), and Vidame
+de Chartres, the name under which he is known in history. The secret
+hatred which Catherine bore to Diane was revealed in many ways, to
+which historians, preoccupied by political interests, have paid no
+attention. Catherine's attachment to the vidame proceeded from the
+fact that the young man had offered an insult to the favorite. Diane's
+greatest ambition was for the honor of an alliance with the royal
+family of France. The hand of her second daughter (afterwards Duchesse
+d'Aumale) was offered on her behalf to the Vidame de Chartres, who was
+kept poor by the far-sighted policy of Francois I. In fact, when the
+Vidame de Chartres and the Prince de Conde first came to court,
+Francois I. gave them--what? The office of chamberlain, with a paltry
+salary of twelve hundred crowns a year, the same that he gave to the
+simplest gentlemen. Though Diane de Poitiers offered an immense dowry,
+a fine office under the crown, and the favor of the king, the vidame
+refused. After which, this Bourbon, already factious, married Jeanne,
+daughter of the Baron d'Estissac, by whom he had no children. This act
+of pride naturally commended him to Catherine, who greeted him after
+that with marked favor and made a devoted friend of him.
+
+Historians have compared the last Duc de Montmorency, beheaded at
+Toulouse, to the Vidame de Chartres, in the art of pleasing, in
+attainments, accomplishments, and talent. Henri II. showed no
+jealousy; he seemed not even to suppose that a queen of France could
+fail in her duty, or a Medici forget the honor done to her by a
+Valois. But during this time when the queen was, it is said,
+coquetting with the Vidame de Chartres, the king, after the birth of
+her last child, had virtually abandoned her. This attempt at making
+him jealous was to no purpose, for Henri died wearing the colors of
+Diane de Poitiers.
+
+At the time of the king's death Catherine was, therefore, on terms of
+gallantry with the vidame,--a situation which was quite in conformity
+with the manners and morals of a time when love was both so chivalrous
+and so licentious that the noblest actions were as natural as the most
+blamable; although historians, as usual, have committed the mistake in
+this case of taking the exception for the rule.
+
+The four sons of Henri II. of course rendered null the position of the
+Bourbons, who were all extremely poor and were now crushed down by the
+contempt which the Connetable de Montmorency's treachery brought upon
+them, in spite of the fact that the latter had thought best to fly the
+kingdom.
+
+The Vidame de Chartres--who was to the first Prince de Conde what
+Richelieu was to Mazarin, his father in policy, his model, and, above
+all, his master in gallantry--concealed the excessive ambition of his
+house beneath an external appearance of light-hearted gaiety. Unable
+during the reign of Henri II. to make head against the Guises, the
+Montmorencys, the Scottish princes, the cardinals, and the Bouillons,
+he distinguished himself by his graceful bearing, his manners, his
+wit, which won him the favor of many charming women and the heart of
+some for whom he cared nothing. He was one of those privileged beings
+whose seductions are irresistible, and who owe to love the power of
+maintaining themselves according to their rank. The Bourbons would not
+have resented, as did Jarnac, the slander of la Chataigneraie; they
+were willing enough to accept the lands and castles of their
+mistresses,--witness the Prince de Conde, who accepted the estate of
+Saint-Valery from Madame la Marechale de Saint-Andre.
+
+During the first twenty days of mourning after the death of Henri II.
+the situation of the vidame suddenly changed. As the object of the
+queen mother's regard, and permitted to pay his court to her as court
+is paid to a queen, very secretly, he seemed destined to play an
+important role, and Catherine did, in fact, resolve to use him. The
+vidame received letters from her for the Prince de Conde, in which she
+pointed out to the latter the necessity of an alliance against the
+Guises. Informed of this intrigue, the Guises entered the queen's
+chamber for the purpose of compelling her to issue an order consigning
+the vidame to the Bastille, and Catherine, to save herself, was under
+the hard necessity of obeying them. After a captivity of some months,
+the vidame died on the very day he left prison, which was shortly
+before the conspiracy of Amboise. Such was the conclusion of the first
+and only amour of Catherine de' Medici. Protestant historians have
+said that the queen caused the vidame to be poisoned, to lay the
+secret of her gallantries in a tomb!
+
+We have now shown what was the apprenticeship of this woman for the
+exercise of her royal power.
+
+
+
+
+                                PART I
+
+                         THE CALVINIST MARTYR
+
+
+
+                                  I
+
+       A HOUSE WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS AT THE CORNER OF A STREET
+       WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS IN A PARIS WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS
+
+Few persons in the present day know how plain and unpretentious were
+the dwellings of the burghers of Paris in the sixteenth century, and
+how simple their lives. Perhaps this simplicity of habits and of
+thought was the cause of the grandeur of that old bourgeoisie which
+was certainly grand, free, and noble,--more so, perhaps, than the
+bourgeoisie of the present day. Its history is still to be written; it
+requires and it awaits a man of genius. This reflection will doubtless
+rise to the lips of every one after reading the almost unknown
+incident which forms the basis of this Study and is one of the most
+remarkable facts in the history of that bourgeoisie. It will not be
+the first time in history that conclusion has preceded facts.
+
+In 1560, the houses of the rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie skirted the
+left bank of the Seine, between the pont Notre-Dame and the pont au
+Change. A public footpath and the houses then occupied the space
+covered by the present roadway. Each house, standing almost in the
+river, allowed its dwellers to get down to the water by stone or
+wooden stairways, closed and protected by strong iron railings or
+wooden gates, clamped with iron. The houses, like those in Venice, had
+an entrance on /terra firma/ and a water entrance. At the moment when
+the present sketch is published, only one of these houses remains to
+recall the old Paris of which we speak, and that is soon to disappear;
+it stands at the corner of the Petit-Pont, directly opposite to the
+guard-house of the Hotel-Dieu.
+
+Formerly each dwelling presented on the river-side the fantastic
+appearance given either by the trade of its occupant and his habits,
+or by the originality of the exterior constructions invented by the
+proprietors to use or abuse the Seine. The bridges being encumbered
+with more mills than the necessities of navigation could allow, the
+Seine formed as many enclosed basins as there were bridges. Some of
+these basins in the heart of old Paris would have offered precious
+scenes and tones of color to painters. What a forest of crossbeams
+supported the mills with their huge sails and their wheels! What
+strange effects were produced by the piles or props driven into the
+water to project the upper floors of the houses above the stream!
+Unfortunately, the art of genre painting did not exist in those days,
+and that of engraving was in its infancy. We have therefore lost that
+curious spectacle, still offered, though in miniature, by certain
+provincial towns, where the rivers are overhung with wooden houses,
+and where, as at Vendome, the basins, full of water grasses, are
+enclosed by immense iron railings, to isolate each proprietor's share
+of the stream, which extends from bank to bank.
+
+The name of this street, which has now disappeared from the map,
+sufficiently indicates the trade that was carried on in it. In those
+days the merchants of each class of commerce, instead of dispersing
+themselves about the city, kept together in the same neighborhood and
+protected themselves mutually. Associated in corporations which
+limited their number, they were still further united into guilds by
+the Church. In this way prices were maintained. Also, the masters were
+not at the mercy of their workmen, and did not obey their whims as
+they do to-day; on the contrary, they made them their children, their
+apprentices, took care of them, and taught them the intricacies of the
+trade. In order to become a master, a workman had to produce a
+masterpiece, which was always dedicated to the saint of his guild.
+Will any one dare to say that the absence of competition destroyed the
+desire for perfection, or lessened the beauty of products? What say
+you, you whose admiration for the masterpieces of past ages has
+created the modern trade of the sellers of bric-a-brac?
+
+In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the trade of the furrier was
+one of the most flourishing industries. The difficulty of obtaining
+furs, which, being all brought from the north, required long and
+perilous journeys, gave a very high price and value to those products.
+Then, as now, high prices led to consumption; for vanity likes to
+override obstacles. In France, as in other kingdoms, not only did
+royal ordinances restrict the use of furs to the nobility (proved by
+the part which ermine plays in the old blazons), but also certain rare
+furs, such as /vair/ (which was undoubtedly Siberian sable), could not
+be worn by any but kings, dukes, and certain lords clothed with
+official powers. A distinction was made between the greater and lesser
+/vair/. The very name has been so long disused, that in a vast number
+of editions of Perrault's famous tale, Cinderella's slipper, which was
+no doubt of /vair/ (the fur), is said to have been made of /verre/
+(glass). Lately one of our most distinguished poets was obliged to
+establish the true orthography of the word for the instruction of his
+brother-feuilletonists in giving an account of the opera of the
+"Cenerentola," where the symbolic slipper has been replaced by a ring,
+which symbolizes nothing at all.
+
+Naturally the sumptuary laws about the wearing of fur were perpetually
+infringed upon, to the great satisfaction of the furriers. The
+costliness of stuffs and furs made a garment in those days a durable
+thing,--as lasting as the furniture, the armor, and other items of
+that strong life of the fifteenth century. A woman of rank, a
+seigneur, all rich men, also all the burghers, possessed at the most
+two garments for each season, which lasted their lifetime and beyond
+it. These garments were bequeathed to their children. Consequently the
+clause in the marriage-contract relating to arms and clothes, which in
+these days is almost a dead letter because of the small value of
+wardrobes that need constant renewing, was then of much importance.
+Great costs brought with them solidity. The toilet of a woman
+constituted a large capital; it was reckoned among the family
+possessions, and was kept in those enormous chests which threaten to
+break through the floors of our modern houses. The jewels of a woman
+of 1840 would have been the /undress/ ornaments of a great lady in
+1540.
+
+To-day, the discovery of America, the facilities of transportation,
+the ruin of social distinctions which has paved the way for the ruin
+of apparent distinctions, has reduced the trade of the furrier to what
+it now is,--next to nothing. The article which a furrier sells to-day,
+as in former days, for twenty /livres/ has followed the depreciation
+of money: formerly the /livre/, which is now worth one franc and is
+usually so called, was worth twenty francs. To-day, the lesser
+bourgeoisie and the courtesans who edge their capes with sable, are
+ignorant than in 1440 an ill-disposed police-officer would have
+incontinently arrested them and marched them before the justice at the
+Chatelet. Englishwomen, who are so fond of ermine, do not know that in
+former times none but queens, duchesses, and chancellors were allowed
+to wear that royal fur. There are to-day in France several ennobled
+families whose true name is Pelletier or Lepelletier, the origin of
+which is evidently derived from some rich furrier's counter, for most
+of our burgher's names began in some such way.
+
+This digression will explain, not only the long feud as to precedence
+which the guild of drapers maintained for two centuries against the
+guild of furriers and also of mercers (each claiming the right to walk
+first, as being the most important guild in Paris), but it will also
+serve to explain the importance of the Sieur Lecamus, a furrier
+honored with the custom of two queens, Catherine de' Medici and Mary
+Stuart, also the custom of the parliament,--a man who for twenty years
+was the syndic of his corporation, and who lived in the street we have
+just described.
+
+The house of Lecamus was one of three which formed the three angles of
+the open space at the end of the pont au Change, where nothing now
+remains but the tower of the Palais de Justice, which made the fourth
+angle. On the corner of this house, which stood at the angle of the
+pont au Change and the quai now called the quai aux Fleurs, the
+architect had constructed a little shrine for a Madonna, which was
+always lighted by wax-tapers and decked with real flowers in summer
+and artificial ones in winter. On the side of the house toward the rue
+du Pont, as on the side toward the rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie, the
+upper story of the house was supported by wooden pillars. All the
+houses in this mercantile quarter had an arcade behind these pillars,
+where the passers in the street walked under cover on a ground of
+trodden mud which kept the place always dirty. In all French towns
+these arcades or galleries are called /les piliers/, a general term to
+which was added the name of the business transacted under them,--as
+"piliers des Halles" (markets), "piliers de la Boucherie" (butchers).
+
+These galleries, a necessity in the Parisian climate, which is so
+changeable and so rainy, gave this part of the city a peculiar
+character of its own; but they have now disappeared. Not a single
+house in the river bank remains, and not more than about a hundred
+feet of the old "piliers des Halles," the last that have resisted the
+action of time, are left; and before long even that relic of the
+sombre labyrinth of old Paris will be demolished. Certainly, the
+existence of such old ruins of the middle-ages is incompatible with
+the grandeurs of modern Paris. These observations are meant not so
+much to regret the destruction of the old town, as to preserve in
+words, and by the history of those who lived there, the memory of a
+place now turned to dust, and to excuse the following description,
+which may be precious to a future age now treading on the heels of our
+own.
+
+The walls of this house were of wood covered with slate. The spaces
+between the uprights had been filled in, as we may still see in some
+provincial towns, with brick, so placed, by reversing their thickness,
+as to make a pattern called "Hungarian point." The window-casings and
+lintels, also in wood, were richly carved, and so was the corner
+pillar where it rose above the shrine of the Madonna, and all the
+other pillars in front of the house. Each window, and each main beam
+which separated the different storeys, was covered with arabesques of
+fantastic personages and animals wreathed with conventional foliage.
+On the street side, as on the river side, the house was capped with a
+roof looking as if two cards were set up one against the other,--thus
+presenting a gable to the street and a gable to the water. This roof,
+like the roof of a Swiss chalet, overhung the building so far that on
+the second floor there was an outside gallery with a balustrade, on
+which the owners of the house could walk under cover and survey the
+street, also the river basin between the bridges and the two lines of
+houses.
+
+These houses on the river bank were very valuable. In those days a
+system of drains and fountains was still to be invented; nothing of
+the kind as yet existed except the circuit sewer, constructed by
+Aubriot, provost of Paris under Charles the Wise, who also built the
+Bastille, the pont Saint-Michel and other bridges, and was the first
+man of genius who ever thought of the sanitary improvement of Paris.
+The houses situated like that of Lecamus took from the river the water
+necessary for the purposes of life, and also made the river serve as a
+natural drain for rain-water and household refuse. The great works
+that the "merchants' provosts" did in this direction are fast
+disappearing. Middle-aged persons alone can remember to have seen the
+great holes in the rue Montmartre, rue du Temple, etc., down which the
+waters poured. Those terrible open jaws were in the olden time of
+immense benefit to Paris. Their place will probably be forever marked
+by the sudden rise of the paved roadways at the spots where they
+opened,--another archaeological detail which will be quite inexplicable
+to the historian two centuries hence. One day, about 1816, a little
+girl who was carrying a case of diamonds to an actress at the Ambigu,
+for her part as queen, was overtaken by a shower and so nearly washed
+down the great drainhole in the rue du Temple that she would have
+disappeared had it not been for a passer who heard her cries.
+Unluckily, she had let go the diamonds, which were, however, recovered
+later at a man-hole. This event made a great noise, and gave rise to
+many petitions against these engulfers of water and little girls. They
+were singular constructions about five feet high, furnished with iron
+railings, more or less movable, which often caused the inundation of
+the neighboring cellars, whenever the artificial river produced by
+sudden rains was arrested in its course by the filth and refuse
+collected about these railings, which the owners of the abutting
+houses sometimes forgot to open.
+
+The front of this shop of the Sieur Lecamus was all window, formed of
+sashes of leaded panes, which made the interior very dark. The furs
+were taken for selection to the houses of rich customers. As for those
+who came to the shop to buy, the goods were shown to them outside,
+between the pillars,--the arcade being, let us remark, encumbered
+during the day-time with tables, and clerks sitting on stools, such as
+we all remember seeing some fifteen years ago under the "piliers des
+Halles." From these outposts, the clerks and apprentices talked,
+questioned, answered each other, and called to the passers,--customs
+which the great Walter Scott has made use of in his "Fortunes of
+Nigel."
+
+The sign, which represented an ermine, hung outside, as we still see
+in some village hostelries, from a rich bracket of gilded iron
+filagree. Above the ermine, on one side of the sign, were the words:--
+
+                 LECAMVS
+
+                 FURRIER
+
+TO MADAME LA ROYNE ET DU ROY NOSTRE SIRE.
+
+On the other side of the sign were the words:--
+
+         TO MADAME LA ROYNE-MERE
+
+       AND MESSIEURS DV PARLEMENT.
+
+The words "Madame la Royne-mere" had been lately added. The gilding
+was fresh. This addition showed the recent changes produced by the
+sudden and violent death of Henri II., which overturned many fortunes
+at court and began that of the Guises.
+
+The back-shop opened on the river. In this room usually sat the
+respectable proprietor himself and Mademoiselle Lecamus. In those days
+the wife of a man who was not noble had no right to the title of dame,
+"madame"; but the wives of the burghers of Paris were allowed to use
+that of "mademoiselle," in virtue of privileges granted and confirmed
+to their husbands by the several kings to whom they had done service.
+Between this back-shop and the main shop was the well of a
+corkscrew-staircase which gave access to the upper story, where were
+the great ware-room and the dwelling-rooms of the old couple, and the
+garrets lighted by skylights, where slept the children, the servant-woman,
+the apprentices, and the clerks.
+
+This crowding of families, servants, and apprentices, the little space
+which each took up in the building where the apprentices all slept in
+one large chamber under the roof, explains the enormous population of
+Paris then agglomerated on one-tenth of the surface of the present
+city; also the queer details of private life in the middle ages; also,
+the contrivances of love which, with all due deference to historians,
+are found only in the pages of the romance-writers, without whom they
+would be lost to the world. At this period very great /seigneurs/,
+such, for instance, as Admiral de Coligny, occupied three rooms, and
+their suites lived at some neighboring inn. There were not, in those
+days, more than fifty private mansions in Paris, and those were fifty
+palaces belonging to sovereign princes, or to great vassals, whose way
+of living was superior to that of the greatest German rulers, such as
+the Duke of Bavaria and the Elector of Saxony.
+
+The kitchen of the Lecamus family was beneath the back-shop and looked
+out upon the river. It had a glass door opening upon a sort of iron
+balcony, from which the cook drew up water in a bucket, and where the
+household washing was done. The back-shop was made the dining-room,
+office, and salon of the merchant. In this important room (in all such
+houses richly panelled and adorned with some special work of art, and
+also a carved chest) the life of the merchant was passed; there the
+joyous suppers after the work of the day was over, there the secret
+conferences on the political interests of the burghers and of royalty
+took place. The formidable corporations of Paris were at that time
+able to arm a hundred thousand men. Therefore the opinions of the
+merchants were backed by their servants, their clerks, their
+apprentices, their workmen. The burghers had a chief in the "provost
+of the merchants" who commanded them, and in the Hotel de Ville, a
+palace where they possessed the right to assemble. In the famous
+"burghers' parlor" their solemn deliberations took place. Had it not
+been for the continual sacrifices which by that time made war
+intolerable to the corporations, who were weary of their losses and of
+the famine, Henri IV., that factionist who became king, might never
+perhaps have entered Paris.
+
+Every one can now picture to himself the appearance of this corner of
+old Paris, where the bridge and quai still are, where the trees of the
+quai aux Fleurs now stand, but where no trace remains of the period of
+which we write except the tall and famous tower of the Palais de
+Justice, from which the signal was given for the Saint Bartholomew.
+Strange circumstance! one of the houses standing at the foot of that
+tower then surrounded by wooden shops, that, namely, of Lecamus, was
+about to witness the birth of facts which were destined to prepare for
+that night of massacre, which was, unhappily, more favorable than
+fatal to Calvinism.
+
+At the moment when our history begins, the audacity of the new
+religious doctrines was putting all Paris in a ferment. A Scotchman
+named Stuart had just assassinated President Minard, the member of the
+Parliament to whom public opinion attributed the largest share in the
+execution of Councillor Anne du Bourg; who was burned on the place de
+Greve after the king's tailor--to whom Henri II. and Diane de Poitiers
+had caused the torture of the "question" to be applied in their very
+presence. Paris was so closely watched that the archers compelled all
+passers along the street to pray before the shrines of the Madonna so
+as to discover heretics by their unwillingness or even refusal to do
+an act contrary to their beliefs.
+
+The two archers who were stationed at the corner of the Lecamus house
+had departed, and Cristophe, son of the furrier, vehemently suspected
+of deserting Catholicism, was able to leave the shop without fear of
+being made to adore the Virgin. By seven in the evening, in April,
+1560, darkness was already falling, and the apprentices, seeing no
+signs of customers on either side of the arcade, were beginning to
+take in the merchandise exposed as samples beneath the pillars, in
+order to close the shop. Christophe Lecamus, an ardent young man about
+twenty-two years old, was standing on the sill of the shop-door,
+apparently watching the apprentices.
+
+"Monsieur," said one of them, addressing Christophe and pointing to a
+man who was walking to and fro under the gallery with an air of
+indecision, "perhaps that's a thief or a spy; anyhow, the shabby
+wretch can't be an honest man; if he wanted to speak to us he would
+come over frankly, instead of sidling along as he does--and what a
+face!" continued the apprentice, mimicking the man, "with his nose in
+his cloak, his yellow eyes, and that famished look!"
+
+When the stranger thus described caught sight of Christophe alone on
+the door-sill, he suddenly left the opposite gallery where he was then
+walking, crossed the street rapidly, and came under the arcade in
+front of the Lecamus house. There he passed slowly along in front of
+the shop, and before the apprentices returned to close the outer
+shutters he said to Christophe in a low voice:--
+
+"I am Chaudieu."
+
+Hearing the name of one of the most illustrious ministers and devoted
+actors in the terrible drama called "The Reformation," Christophe
+quivered as a faithful peasant might have quivered on recognizing his
+disguised king.
+
+"Perhaps you would like to see some furs? Though it is almost dark I
+will show you some myself," said Christophe, wishing to throw the
+apprentices, whom he heard behind him, off the scent.
+
+With a wave of his hand he invited the minister to enter the shop, but
+the latter replied that he preferred to converse outside. Christophe
+then fetched his cap and followed the disciple of Calvin.
+
+Though banished by an edict, Chaudieu, the secret envoy of Theodore de
+Beze and Calvin (who were directing the French Reformation from
+Geneva), went and came, risking the cruel punishment to which the
+Parliament, in unison with the Church and Royalty, had condemned one
+of their number, the celebrated Anne du Bourg, in order to make a
+terrible example. Chaudieu, whose brother was a captain and one of
+Admiral Coligny's best soldiers, was a powerful auxiliary by whose arm
+Calvin shook France at the beginning of the twenty two years of
+religious warfare now on the point of breaking out. This minister
+was one of the hidden wheels whose movements can best exhibit the
+wide-spread action of the Reform.
+
+Chaudieu led Christophe to the water's edge through an underground
+passage, which was like that of the Marion tunnel filled up by the
+authorities about ten years ago. This passage, which was situated
+between the Lecamus house and the one adjoining it, ran under the rue
+de la Vieille-Pelleterie, and was called the Pont-aux-Fourreurs. It
+was used by the dyers of the City to go to the river and wash their
+flax and silks, and other stuffs. A little boat was at the entrance of
+it, rowed by a single sailor. In the bow was a man unknown to
+Christophe, a man of low stature and very simply dressed. Chaudieu and
+Christophe entered the boat, which in a moment was in the middle of
+the Seine; the sailor then directed its course beneath one of the
+wooden arches of the pont au Change, where he tied up quickly to an
+iron ring. As yet, no one had said a word.
+
+"Here we can speak without fear; there are no traitors or spies here,"
+said Chaudieu, looking at the two as yet unnamed men. Then, turning an
+ardent face to Christophe, "Are you," he said, "full of that devotion
+that should animate a martyr? Are you ready to endure all for our
+sacred cause? Do you fear the tortures applied to the Councillor du
+Bourg, to the king's tailor,--tortures which await the majority of
+us?"
+
+"I shall confess the gospel," replied Lecamus, simply, looking at the
+windows of his father's back-shop.
+
+The family lamp, standing on the table where his father was making up
+his books for the day, spoke to him, no doubt, of the joys of family
+and the peaceful existence which he now renounced. The vision was
+rapid, but complete. His mind took in, at a glance, the burgher
+quarter full of its own harmonies, where his happy childhood had been
+spent, where lived his promised bride, Babette Lallier, where all
+things promised him a sweet and full existence; he saw the past; he
+saw the future, and he sacrificed it, or, at any rate, he staked it
+all. Such were the men of that day.
+
+"We need ask no more," said the impetuous sailor; "we know him for one
+of our /saints/. If the Scotchman had not done the deed he would kill
+us that infamous Minard."
+
+"Yes," said Lecamus, "my life belongs to the church; I shall give it
+with joy for the triumph of the Reformation, on which I have seriously
+reflected. I know that what we do is for the happiness of the peoples.
+In two words: Popery drives to celibacy, the Reformation establishes
+the family. It is time to rid France of her monks, to restore their
+lands to the Crown, who will, sooner or later, sell them to the
+burghers. Let us learn to die for our children, and make our families
+some day free and prosperous."
+
+The face of the young enthusiast, that of Chaudieu, that of the
+sailor, that of the stranger seated in the bow, lighted by the last
+gleams of the twilight, formed a picture which ought the more to be
+described because the description contains in itself the whole history
+of the times--if it is, indeed, true that to certain men it is given
+to sum up in their own persons the spirit of their age.
+
+The religious reform undertaken by Luther in Germany, John Knox in
+Scotland, Calvin in France, took hold especially of those minds in the
+lower classes into which thought had penetrated. The great lords
+sustained the movement only to serve interests that were foreign to
+the religious cause. To these two classes were added adventurers,
+ruined noblemen, younger sons, to whom all troubles were equally
+acceptable. But among the artisan and merchant classes the new faith
+was sincere and based on calculation. The masses of the poorer people
+adhered at once to a religion which gave the ecclesiastical property
+to the State, and deprived the dignitaries of the Church of their
+enormous revenues. Commerce everywhere reckoned up the profits of this
+religious operation, and devoted itself body, soul, and purse, to the
+cause.
+
+But among the young men of the French bourgeoisie the Protestant
+movement found that noble inclination to sacrifices of all kinds which
+inspires youth, to which selfishness is, as yet, unknown. Eminent men,
+sagacious minds, discerned the Republic in the Reformation; they
+desired to establish throughout Europe the government of the United
+Provinces, which ended by triumphing over the greatest Power of those
+times,--Spain, under Philip the Second, represented in the Low
+Countries by the Duke of Alba. Jean Hotoman was then meditating his
+famous book, in which this project is put forth,--a book which spread
+throughout France the leaven of these ideas, which were stirred up
+anew by the Ligue, repressed by Richelieu, then by Louis XIV., always
+protected by the younger branches, by the house of Orleans in 1789, as
+by the house of Bourbon in 1589. Whoso says "Investigate" says
+"Revolt." All revolt is either the cloak that hides a prince, or the
+swaddling-clothes of a new mastery. The house of Bourbon, the younger
+sons of the Valois, were at work beneath the surface of the
+Reformation.
+
+At the moment when the little boat floated beneath the arch of the
+pont au Change the question was strangely complicated by the ambitions
+of the Guises, who were rivalling the Bourbons. Thus the Crown,
+represented by Catherine de' Medici, was able to sustain the struggle
+for thirty years by pitting the one house against the other house;
+whereas later, the Crown, instead of standing between various jealous
+ambitions, found itself without a barrier, face to face with the
+people: Richelieu and Louis XIV. had broken down the barrier of the
+Nobility; Louis XV. had broken down that of the Parliaments. Alone
+before the people, as Louis XVI. was, a king must inevitably succumb.
+
+Christophe Lecamus was a fine representative of the ardent and devoted
+portion of the people. His wan face had the sharp hectic tones which
+distinguish certain fair complexions; his hair was yellow, of a
+coppery shade; his gray-blue eyes were sparkling. In them alone was
+his fine soul visible; for his ill-proportioned face did not atone for
+its triangular shape by the noble mien of an elevated mind, and his
+low forehead indicated only extreme energy. Life seemed to centre in
+his chest, which was rather hollow. More nervous than sanguine,
+Cristophe's bodily appearance was thin and threadlike, but wiry. His
+pointed noise expressed the shrewdness of the people, and his
+countenance revealed an intelligence capable of conducting itself well
+on a single point of the circumference, without having the faculty of
+seeing all around it. His eyes, the arching brows of which, scarcely
+covered with a whitish down, projected like an awning, were strongly
+circled by a pale-blue band, the skin being white and shining at the
+spring of the nose,--a sign which almost always denotes excessive
+enthusiasm. Christophe was of the people,--the people who devote
+themselves, who fight for their devotions, who let themselves be
+inveigled and betrayed; intelligent enough to comprehend and serve an
+idea, too upright to turn it to his own account, too noble to sell
+himself.
+
+Contrasting with this son of Lecamus, Chaudieu, the ardent minister,
+with brown hair thinned by vigils, a yellow skin, an eloquent mouth, a
+militant brow, with flaming brown eyes, and a short and prominent
+chin, embodied well the Christian faith which brought to the
+Reformation so many sincere and fanatical pastors, whose courage and
+spirit aroused the populations. The aide-de-camp of Calvin and
+Theodore de Beze contrasted admirably with the son of the furrier. He
+represented the fiery cause of which the effect was seen in
+Christophe.
+
+The sailor, an impetuous being, tanned by the open air, accustomed to
+dewy nights and burning days, with closed lips, hasty gestures, orange
+eyes, ravenous as those of a vulture, and black, frizzled hair, was
+the embodiment of an adventurer who risks all in a venture, as a
+gambler stakes all on a card. His whole appearance revealed terrific
+passions, and an audacity that flinched at nothing. His vigorous
+muscles were made to be quiescent as well as to act. His manner was
+more audacious than noble. His nose, though thin, turned up and
+snuffed battle. He seemed agile and capable. You would have known him
+in all ages for the leader of a party. If he were not of the
+Reformation, he might have been Pizarro, Fernando Cortez, or Morgan
+the Exterminator,--a man of violent action of some kind.
+
+The fourth man, sitting on a thwart wrapped in his cloak, belonged,
+evidently, to the highest portion of society. The fineness of his
+linen, its cut, the material and scent of his clothing, the style and
+skin of his gloves, showed him to be a man of courts, just as his
+bearing, his haughtiness, his composure and his all-embracing glance
+proved him to be a man of war. The aspect of this personage made a
+spectator uneasy in the first place, and then inclined him to respect.
+We respect a man who respects himself. Though short and deformed, his
+manners instantly redeemed the disadvantages of his figure. The ice
+once broken, he showed a lively rapidity of decision, with an
+indefinable dash and fire which made him seem affable and winning. He
+had the blue eyes and the curved nose of the house of Navarre, and the
+Spanish cut of the marked features which were in after days the type
+of the Bourbon kings.
+
+In a word, the scene now assumed a startling interest.
+
+"Well," said Chaudieu, as young Lecamus ended his speech, "this
+boatman is La Renaudie. And here is Monsiegneur the Prince de Conde,"
+he added, motioning to the deformed little man.
+
+Thus these four men represented the faith of the people, the spirit of
+the Scriptures, the mailed hand of the soldier, and royalty itself
+hidden in that dark shadow of the bridge.
+
+"You shall now know what we expect of you," resumed the minister,
+after allowing a short pause for Christophe's astonishment. "In order
+that you may make no mistake, we feel obliged to initiate you into the
+most important secrets of the Reformation."
+
+The prince and La Renaudie emphasized the minister's speech by a
+gesture, the latter having paused to allow the prince to speak, if he
+so wished. Like all great men engaged in plotting, whose system it is
+to conceal their hand until the decisive moment, the prince kept
+silence--but not from cowardice. In these crises he was always the
+soul of the conspiracy; recoiling from no danger and ready to risk his
+own head; but from a sort of royal dignity he left the explanation of
+the enterprise to his minister, and contented himself with studying
+the new instrument he was about to use.
+
+"My child," said Chaudieu, in the Huguenot style of address, "we are
+about to do battle for the first time with the Roman prostitute. In a
+few days either our legions will be dying on the scaffold, or the
+Guises will be dead. This is the first call to arms on behalf of our
+religion in France, and France will not lay down those arms till they
+have conquered. The question, mark you this, concerns the nation, not
+the kingdom. The majority of the nobles of the kingdom see plainly
+what the Cardinal de Lorraine and his brother are seeking. Under
+pretext of defending the Catholic religion, the house of Lorraine
+means to claim the crown of France as its patrimony. Relying on the
+Church, it has made the Church a formidable ally; the monks are its
+support, its acolytes, its spies. It has assumed the post of guardian
+to the throne it is seeking to usurp; it protects the house of Valois
+which it means to destroy. We have decided to take up arms because the
+liberties of the people and the interests of the nobles are equally
+threatened. Let us smother at its birth a faction as odious as that of
+the Burgundians who formerly put Paris and all France to fire and
+sword. It required a Louis XI. to put a stop to the quarrel between
+the Burgundians and the Crown; and to-day a prince de Conde is needed
+to prevent the house of Lorraine from re-attempting that struggle.
+This is not a civil war; it is a duel between the Guises and the
+Reformation,--a duel to the death! We will make their heads fall, or
+they shall have ours."
+
+"Well said!" cried the prince.
+
+"In this crisis, Christophe," said La Renaudie, "we mean to neglect
+nothing which shall strengthen our party,--for there is a party in the
+Reformation, the party of thwarted interests, of nobles sacrificed to
+the Lorrains, of old captains shamefully treated at Fontainebleau,
+from which the cardinal has banished them by setting up gibbets on
+which to hang those who ask the king for the cost of their equipment
+and their back-pay."
+
+"This, my child," resumed Chaudieu, observing a sort of terror in
+Christophe, "this it is which compels us to conquer by arms instead of
+conquering by conviction and by martyrdom. The queen-mother is on the
+point of entering into our views. Not that she means to abjure; she
+has not reached that decision as yet; but she may be forced to it by
+our triumph. However that may be, Queen Catherine, humiliated and in
+despair at seeing the power she expected to wield on the death of the
+king passing into the hands of the Guises, alarmed at the empire of
+the young queen, Mary, niece of the Lorrains and their auxiliary,
+Queen Catherine is doubtless inclined to lend her support to the
+princes and lords who are now about to make an attempt which will
+deliver her from the Guises. At this moment, devoted as she may seem
+to them, she hates them; she desires their overthrow, and will try to
+make use of us against them; but Monseigneur the Prince de Conde
+intends to make use of her against all. The queen-mother will,
+undoubtedly, consent to all our plans. We shall have the Connetable on
+our side; Monseigneur has just been to see him at Chantilly; but he
+does not wish to move without an order from his masters. Being the
+uncle of Monseigneur, he will not leave him in the lurch; and this
+generous prince does not hesitate to fling himself into danger to
+force Anne de Montmorency to a decision. All is prepared, and we have
+cast our eyes on you as the means of communicating to Queen Catherine
+our treaty of alliance, the drafts of edicts, and the bases of the new
+government. The court is at Blois. Many of our friends are with it;
+but they are to be our future chiefs, and, like Monseigneur," he
+added, motioning to the prince, "they must not be suspected. The
+queen-mother and our friends are so closely watched that it is
+impossible to employ as intermediary any known person of importance;
+they would instantly be suspected and kept from communicating with
+Madame Catherine. God sends us at this crisis the shepherd David and
+his sling to do battle with Goliath of Guise. Your father,
+unfortunately for him a good Catholic, is furrier to the two queens.
+He is constantly supplying them with garments. Get him to send you on
+some errand to the court. You will excite no suspicion, and you cannot
+compromise Queen Catherine in any way. All our leaders would lose
+their heads if a single imprudent act allowed their connivance with
+the queen-mother to be seen. Where a great lord, if discovered, would
+give the alarm and destroy our chances, an insignificant man like you
+will pass unnoticed. See! The Guises keep the town so full of spies
+that we have only the river where we can talk without fear. You are
+now, my son, like a sentinel who must die at his post. Remember this:
+if you are discovered, we shall all abandon you; we shall even cast,
+if necessary, opprobrium and infamy upon you. We shall say that you
+are a creature of the Guises, made to play this part to ruin us. You
+see therefore that we ask of you a total sacrifice."
+
+"If you perish," said the Prince de Conde, "I pledge my honor as a
+noble that your family shall be sacred for the house of Navarre; I
+will bear it on my heart and serve it in all things."
+
+"Those words, my prince, suffice," replied Christophe, without
+reflecting that the conspirator was a Gascon. "We live in times when
+each man, prince or burgher, must do his duty."
+
+"There speaks the true Huguenot. If all our men were like that," said
+La Renaudie, laying his hand on Christophe's shoulder, "we should be
+conquerors to-morrow."
+
+"Young man," resumed the prince, "I desire to show you that if
+Chaudieu preaches, if the nobleman goes armed, the prince fights.
+Therefore, in this hot game all stakes are played."
+
+"Now listen to me," said La Renaudie. "I will not give you the papers
+until you reach Beaugency; for they must not be risked during the
+whole of your journey. You will find me waiting for you there on the
+wharf; my face, voice, and clothes will be so changed you cannot
+recognize me, but I shall say to you, 'Are you a /guepin/?' and you
+will answer, 'Ready to serve.' As to the performance of your mission,
+these are the means: You will find a horse at the 'Pinte Fleurie,"
+close to Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. You will there ask for Jean le
+Breton, who will take you to the stable and give you one of my ponies
+which is known to do thirty leagues in eight hours. Leave by the gate
+of Bussy. Breton has a pass for me; use it yourself, and make your way
+by skirting the towns. You can thus reach Orleans by daybreak."
+
+"But the horse?" said young Lecamus.
+
+"He will not give out till you reach Orleans," replied La Renaudie.
+"Leave him at the entrance of the faubourg Bannier; for the gates are
+well guarded, and you must not excite suspicion. It is for you,
+friend, to play your part intelligently. You must invent whatever
+fable seems to you best to reach the third house to the left on
+entering Orleans; it belongs to a certain Tourillon, glove-maker.
+Strike three blows on the door, and call out: 'On service from
+Messieurs de Guise!' The man will appear to be a rabid Guisist; no one
+knows but our four selves that he is one of us. He will give you a
+faithful boatman,--another Guisist of his own cut. Go down at once to
+the wharf, and embark in a boat painted green and edged with white.
+You will doubtless land at Beaugency to-morrow about mid-day. There I
+will arrange to find you a boat which will take you to Blois without
+running any risk. Our enemies the Guises do not watch the rivers, only
+the landings. Thus you will be able to see the queen-mother to-morrow
+or the day after."
+
+"Your words are written there," said Christophe, touching his
+forehead.
+
+Chaudieu embraced his child with singular religious effusion; he was
+proud of him.
+
+"God keep thee!" he said, pointing to the ruddy light of the sinking
+sun, which was touching the old roofs covered with shingles and
+sending its gleams slantwise through the forest of piles among which
+the water was rippling.
+
+"You belong to the race of the Jacques Bonhomme," said La Renaudie,
+pressing Christophe's hand.
+
+"We shall meet again, /monsieur/," said the prince, with a gesture of
+infinite grace, in which there was something that seemed almost
+friendship.
+
+With a stroke of his oars La Renaudie put the boat at the lower step
+of the stairway which led to the house. Christophe landed, and the
+boat disappeared instantly beneath the arches of the pont au Change.
+
+
+
+                                  II
+
+                             THE BURGHERS
+
+Christophe shook the iron railing which closed the stairway on the
+river, and called. His mother heard him, opened one of the windows of
+the back shop, and asked what he was doing there. Christophe answered
+that he was cold and wanted to get in.
+
+"Ha! my master," said the Burgundian maid, "you went out by the
+street-door, and you return by the water-gate. Your father will be
+fine and angry."
+
+Christophe, bewildered by a confidence which had just brought him into
+communication with the Prince de Conde, La Renaudie, and Chaudieu, and
+still more moved at the prospect of impending civil war, made no
+answer; he ran hastily up from the kitchen to the back shop; but his
+mother, a rabid Catholic, could not control her anger.
+
+"I'll wager those three men I saw you talking with are Ref--"
+
+"Hold your tongue, wife!" said the cautious old man with white hair
+who was turning over a thick ledger. "You dawdling fellows," he went
+on, addressing three journeymen, who had long finished their suppers,
+"why don't you go to bed? It is eight o'clock, and you have to be up
+at five; besides, you must carry home to-night President de Thou's cap
+and mantle. All three of you had better go, and take your sticks and
+rapiers; and then, if you meet scamps like yourselves, at least you'll
+be in force."
+
+"Are we going to take the ermine surcoat the young queen has ordered
+to be sent to the hotel des Soissons? there's an express going from
+there to Blois for the queen-mother," said one of the clerks.
+
+"No," said his master, "the queen-mother's bill amounts to three
+thousand crowns; it is time to get the money, and I am going to Blois
+myself very soon."
+
+"Father, I do not think it right at your age and in these dangerous
+times to expose yourself on the high-roads. I am twenty-two years old,
+and you ought to employ me on such errands," said Christophe, eyeing
+the box which he supposed contained the surcoat.
+
+"Are you glued to your seats?" cried the old man to his apprentices,
+who at once jumped up and seized their rapiers, cloaks, and Monsieur
+de Thou's furs.
+
+The next day the Parliament was to receive in state, as its president,
+this illustrious judge, who, after signing the death warrant of
+Councillor du Bourg, was destined before the close of the year to sit
+in judgment on the Prince de Conde!
+
+"Here!" said the old man, calling to the maid, "go and ask friend
+Lallier if he will come and sup with us and bring the wine; we'll
+furnish the victuals. Tell him, above all, to bring his daughter."
+
+Lecamus, the syndic of the guild of furriers, was a handsome old man
+of sixty, with white hair, and a broad, open brow. As court furrier
+for the last forty years, he had witnessed all the revolutions of the
+reign of Francois I. He had seen the arrival at the French court of
+the young girl Catherine de' Medici, then scarcely fifteen years of
+age. He had observed her giving way before the Duchesse d'Etampes, her
+father-in-law's mistress; giving way before the Duchesse de
+Valentinois, the mistress of her husband the late king. But the
+furrier had brought himself safely through all the chances and changes
+by which court merchants were often involved in the disgrace and
+overthrow of mistresses. His caution led to his good luck. He
+maintained an attitude of extreme humility. Pride had never caught him
+in its toils. He made himself so small, so gentle, so compliant, of so
+little account at court and before the queens and princesses and
+favorites, that this modesty, combined with good-humor, had kept the
+royal sign above his door.
+
+Such a policy was, of course, indicative of a shrewd and perspicacious
+mind. Humble as Lecamus seemed to the outer world, he was despotic in
+his own home; there he was an autocrat. Most respected and honored by
+his brother craftsmen, he owed to his long possession of the first
+place in the trade much of the consideration that was shown to him. He
+was, besides, very willing to do kindnesses to others, and among the
+many services he had rendered, none was more striking than the
+assistance he had long given to the greatest surgeon of the sixteenth
+century, Ambroise Pare, who owed to him the possibility of studying
+for his profession. In all the difficulties which came up among the
+merchants Lecamus was always conciliating. Thus a general good opinion
+of him consolidated his position among his equals; while his borrowed
+characteristics kept him steadily in favor with the court.
+
+Not only this, but having intrigued for the honor of being on the
+vestry of his parish church, he did what was necessary to bring him
+into the odor of sanctity with the rector of Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs,
+who looked upon him as one of the men most devoted to the Catholic
+religion in Paris. Consequently, at the time of the convocation of the
+States-General he was unanimously elected to represent the /tiers
+etat/ through the influence of the clergy of Paris,--an influence
+which at that period was immense. This old man was, in short, one of
+those secretly ambitious souls who will bend for fifty years before
+all the world, gliding from office to office, no one exactly knowing
+how it came about that he was found securely and peacefully seated at
+last where no man, even the boldest, would have had the ambition at
+the beginning of life to fancy himself; so great was the distance, so
+many the gulfs and the precipices to cross! Lecamus, who had immense
+concealed wealth, would not run any risks, and was silently preparing
+a brilliant future for his son. Instead of having the personal
+ambition which sacrifices the future to the present, he had family
+ambition,--a lost sentiment in our time, a sentiment suppressed by the
+folly of our laws of inheritance. Lecamus saw himself first president
+of the Parliament of Paris in the person of his grandson.
+
+Christophe, godson of the famous historian de Thou, was given a most
+solid education; but it had led him to doubt and to the spirit of
+examination which was then affecting both the Faculties and the
+students of the universities. Christophe was, at the period of which
+we are now writing, pursuing his studies for the bar, that first step
+toward the magistracy. The old furrier was pretending to some
+hesitation as to his son. Sometimes he seemed to wish to make
+Christophe his successor; then again he spoke of him as a lawyer; but
+in his heart he was ambitious of a place for this son as Councillor of
+the Parliament. He wanted to put the Lecamus family on a level with
+those old and celebrated burgher families from which came the
+Pasquiers, the Moles, the Mirons, the Seguiers, Lamoignon, du Tillet,
+Lecoigneux, Lescalopier, Goix, Arnauld, those famous sheriffs and
+grand-provosts of the merchants, among whom the throne found such
+strong defenders.
+
+Therefore, in order that Christophe might in due course of time
+maintain his rank, he wished to marry him to the daughter of the
+richest jeweller in the city, his friend Lallier, whose nephew was
+destined to present to Henri IV. the keys of Paris. The strongest
+desire rooted in the heart of the worthy burgher was to use half of
+his fortune and half of that of the jeweller in the purchase of a
+large and beautiful seignorial estate, which, in those days, was a
+long and very difficult affair. But his shrewd mind knew the age in
+which he lived too well to be ignorant of the great movements which
+were now in preparation. He saw clearly, and he saw justly, and knew
+that the kingdom was about to be divided into two camps. The useless
+executions in the Place de l'Estrapade, that of the king's tailor and
+the more recent one of the Councillor Anne du Bourg, the actual
+connivance of the great lords, and that of the favorite of Francois I.
+with the Reformers, were terrible indications. The furrier resolved to
+remain, whatever happened, Catholic, royalist, and parliamentarian;
+but it suited him, privately, that Christophe should belong to the
+Reformation. He knew he was rich enough to ransom his son if
+Christophe was too much compromised; and on the other hand if France
+became Calvinist his son could save the family in the event of one of
+those furious Parisian riots, the memory of which was ever-living with
+the bourgeoisie,--riots they were destined to see renewed through four
+reigns.
+
+But these thoughts the old furrier, like Louis XI., did not even say
+to himself; his wariness went so far as to deceive his wife and son.
+This grave personage had long been the chief man of the richest and
+most populous quarter of Paris, that of the centre, under the title of
+/quartenier/,--the title and office which became so celebrated some
+fifteen months later. Clothed in cloth like all the prudent burghers
+who obeyed the sumptuary laws, Sieur Lecamus (he was tenacious of that
+title which Charles V. granted to the burghers of Paris, permitting
+them also to buy baronial estates and call their wives by the fine
+name of /demoiselle/, but not by that of madame) wore neither gold
+chains nor silk, but always a good doublet with large tarnished silver
+buttons, cloth gaiters mounting to the knee, and leather shoes with
+clasps. His shirt, of fine linen, showed, according to the fashion of
+the time, in great puffs between his half-opened jacket and his
+breeches. Though his large and handsome face received the full light
+of the lamp standing on the table, Christophe had no conception of the
+thoughts which lay buried beneath the rich and florid Dutch skin of
+the old man; but he understood well enough the advantage he himself
+had expected to obtain from his affection for pretty Babette Lallier.
+So Christophe, with the air of a man who had come to a decision,
+smiled bitterly as he heard of the invitation to his promised bride.
+
+When the Burgundian cook and the apprentices had departed on their
+several errands, old Lecamus looked at his wife with a glance which
+showed the firmness and resolution of his character.
+
+"You will not be satisfied till you have got that boy hanged with your
+damned tongue," he said, in a stern voice.
+
+"I would rather see him hanged and saved than living and a Huguenot,"
+she answered, gloomily. "To think that a child whom I carried nine
+months in my womb should be a bad Catholic, and be doomed to hell for
+all eternity!"
+
+She began to weep.
+
+"Old silly," said the furrier; "let him live, if only to convert him.
+You said, before the apprentices, a word which may set fire to our
+house, and roast us all, like fleas in a straw bed."
+
+The mother crossed herself, and sat down silently.
+
+"Now, then, you," said the old man, with a judicial glance at his son,
+"explain to me what you were doing on the river with--come closer,
+that I may speak to you," he added, grasping his son by the arm, and
+drawing him to him--"with the Prince de Conde," he whispered.
+Christophe trembled. "Do you suppose the court furrier does not know
+every face that frequents the palace? Think you I am ignorant of what
+is going on? Monseigneur the Grand Master has been giving orders to
+send troops to Amboise. Withdrawing troops from Paris to send them to
+Amboise when the king is at Blois, and making them march through
+Chartres and Vendome, instead of going by Orleans--isn't the meaning
+of that clear enough? There'll be troubles. If the queens want their
+surcoats, they must send for them. The Prince de Conde has perhaps
+made up his mind to kill Messieurs de Guise; who, on their side,
+expect to rid themselves of him. The prince will use the Huguenots to
+protect himself. Why should the son of a furrier get himself into that
+fray? When you are married, and when you are councillor to the
+Parliament, you will be as prudent as your father. Before belonging to
+the new religion, the son of a furrier ought to wait until the rest of
+the world belongs to it. I don't condemn the Reformers; it is not my
+business to do so; but the court is Catholic, the two queens are
+Catholic, the Parliament is Catholic; we must supply them with furs,
+and therefore we must be Catholic ourselves. You shall not go out from
+here, Christophe; if you do, I will send you to your godfather,
+President de Thou, who will keep you night and day blackening paper,
+instead of blackening your soul in company with those damned
+Genevese."
+
+"Father," said Christophe, leaning upon the back of the old man's
+chair, "send me to Blois to carry that surcoat to Queen Mary and get
+our money from the queen-mother. If you do not, I am lost; and you
+care for your son."
+
+"Lost?" repeated the old man, without showing the least surprise. "If
+you stay here you can't be lost; I shall have my eye on you all the
+time."
+
+"They will kill me here."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"The most powerful among the Huguenots have cast their eyes on me to
+serve them in a certain matter; if I fail to do what I have just
+promised to do, they will kill me in open day, here in the street, as
+they killed Minard. But if you send me to court on your affairs,
+perhaps I can justify myself equally well to both sides. Either I
+shall succeed without having run any danger at all, and shall then win
+a fine position in the party; or, if the danger turns out very great,
+I shall be there simply on your business."
+
+The father rose as if his chair was of red-hot iron.
+
+"Wife," he said, "leave us; and watch that we are left quite alone,
+Christophe and I."
+
+When Mademoiselle Lecamus had left them the furrier took his son by a
+button and led him to the corner of the room which made the angle of
+the bridge.
+
+"Christophe," he said, whispering in his ear as he had done when he
+mentioned the name of the Prince of Conde, "be a Huguenot, if you have
+that vice; but be so cautiously, in the depths of your soul, and not
+in a way to be pointed at as a heretic throughout the quarter. What
+you have just confessed to me shows that the leaders have confidence
+in you. What are you going to do for them at court?"
+
+"I cannot tell you that," replied Christophe; "for I do not know
+myself."
+
+"Hum! hum!" muttered the old man, looking at his son, "the scamp means
+to hoodwink his father; he'll go far. You are not going to court," he
+went on in a low tone, "to carry remittances to Messieurs de Guise or
+to the little king our master, or to the little Queen Marie. All those
+hearts are Catholic; but I would take my oath the Italian woman has
+some spite against the Scotch girl and against the Lorrains. I know
+her. She has a desperate desire to put her hand into the dough. The
+late king was so afraid of her that he did as the jewellers do, he cut
+diamond by diamond, he pitted one woman against another. That caused
+Queen Catherine's hatred to the poor Duchesse de Valentinois, from
+whom she took the beautiful chateau of Chenonceaux. If it hadn't been
+for the Connetable, the duchess might have been strangled. Back, back,
+my son; don't put yourself in the hands of that Italian, who has no
+passion except in her brain; and that's a bad kind of woman! Yes, what
+they are sending you to do at court may give you a very bad headache,"
+cried the father, seeing that Christophe was about to reply. "My son,
+I have plans for your future which you will not upset by making
+yourself useful to Queen Catherine; but, heavens and earth! don't risk
+your head. Messieurs de Guise would cut it off as easily as the
+Burgundian cuts a turnip, and then those persons who are now employing
+you will disown you utterly."
+
+"I know that, father," said Christophe.
+
+"What! are you really so strong, my son? You know it, and are willing
+to risk all?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"By the powers above us!" cried the father, pressing his son in his
+arms, "we can understand each other; you are worthy of your father. My
+child, you'll be the honor of the family, and I see that your old
+father can speak plainly with you. But do not be more Huguenot than
+Messieurs de Coligny. Never draw your sword; be a pen man; keep to
+your future role of lawyer. Now, then, tell me nothing until after you
+have succeeded. If I do not hear from you by the fourth day after you
+reach Blois, that silence will tell me that you are in some danger.
+The old man will go to save the young one. I have not sold furs for
+thirty-two years without a good knowledge of the wrong side of court
+robes. I have the means of making my way through many doors."
+
+Christophe opened his eyes very wide as he heard his father talking
+thus; but he thought there might be some parental trap in it, and he
+made no reply further than to say:--
+
+"Well, make out the bill, and write a letter to the queen; I must
+start at once, or the greatest misfortunes may happen."
+
+"Start? How?"
+
+"I shall buy a horse. Write at once, in God's name."
+
+"Hey! mother! give your son some money," cried the furrier to his
+wife.
+
+The mother returned, went to her chest, took out a purse of gold, and
+gave it to Christophe, who kissed her with emotion.
+
+"The bill was all ready," said his father; "here it is. I will write
+the letter at once."
+
+Christophe took the bill and put it in his pocket.
+
+"But you will sup with us, at any rate," said the old man. "In such a
+crisis you ought to exchange rings with Lallier's daughter."
+
+"Very well, I will go and fetch her," said Christophe.
+
+The young man was distrustful of his father's stability in the matter.
+The old man's character was not yet fully known to him. He ran up to
+his room, dressed himself, took a valise, came downstairs softly and
+laid it on a counter in the shop, together with his rapier and cloak.
+
+"What the devil are you doing?" asked his father, hearing him.
+
+Christophe came up to the old man and kissed him on both cheeks.
+
+"I don't want any one to see my preparations for departure, and I have
+put them on a counter in the shop," he whispered.
+
+"Here is the letter," said his father.
+
+Christophe took the paper and went out as if to fetch his young
+neighbor.
+
+A few moments after his departure the goodman Lallier and his daughter
+arrived, preceded by a servant-woman, bearing three bottles of old
+wine.
+
+"Well, where is Christophe?" said old Lecamus.
+
+"Christophe!" exclaimed Babette. "We have not seen him."
+
+"Ha! ha! my son is a bold scamp! He tricks me as if I had no beard. My
+dear crony, what think you he will turn out to be? We live in days
+when the children have more sense than their fathers."
+
+"Why, the quarter has long been saying he is in some mischief," said
+Lallier.
+
+"Excuse him on that point, crony," said the furrier. "Youth is
+foolish; it runs after new things; but Babette will keep him quiet;
+she is newer than Calvin."
+
+Babette smiled; she loved Christophe, and was angry when anything was
+said against him. She was one of those daughters of the old
+bourgeoisie brought up under the eyes of a mother who never left her.
+Her bearing was gentle and correct as her face; she always wore
+woollen stuffs of gray, harmonious in tone; her chemisette, simply
+pleated, contrasted its whiteness against the gown. Her cap of brown
+velvet was like an infant's coif, but it was trimmed with a ruche and
+lappets of tanned gauze, that is, of a tan color, which came down on
+each side of her face. Though fair and white as a true blonde, she
+seemed to be shrewd and roguish, all the while trying to hide her
+roguishness under the air and manner of a well-trained girl. While the
+two servant-women went and came, laying the cloth and placing the
+jugs, the great pewter dishes, and the knives and forks, the jeweller
+and his daughter, the furrier and his wife, sat before the tall
+chimney-piece draped with lambrequins of red serge and black fringes,
+and were talking of trifles. Babette asked once or twice where
+Christophe could be, and the father and mother of the young Huguenot
+gave evasive answers; but when the two families were seated at table,
+and the two servants had retired to the kitchen, Lecamus said to his
+future daughter-in-law:--
+
+"Christophe has gone to court."
+
+"To Blois! Such a journey as that without bidding me good-bye!" she
+said.
+
+"The matter was pressing," said the old mother.
+
+"Crony," said the furrier, resuming a suspended conversation. "We are
+going to have troublous times in France. The Reformers are bestirring
+themselves."
+
+"If they triumph, it will only be after a long war, during which
+business will be at a standstill," said Lallier, incapable of rising
+higher than the commercial sphere.
+
+"My father, who saw the wars between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs
+told me that our family would never have come out safely if one of his
+grandfathers--his mother's father--had not been a Goix, one of those
+famous butchers in the Market who stood by the Burgundians; whereas
+the other, the Lecamus, was for the Armagnacs; they seemed ready to
+flay each other alive before the world, but they were excellent
+friends in the family. So, let us both try to save Christophe; perhaps
+the time may come when he will save us."
+
+"You are a shrewd one," said the jeweller.
+
+"No," replied Lecamus. "The burghers ought to think of themselves; the
+populace and the nobility are both against them. The Parisian
+bourgeoisie alarms everybody except the king, who knows it is his
+friend."
+
+"You who are so wise and have seen so many things," said Babette,
+timidly, "explain to me what the Reformers really want."
+
+"Yes, tell us that, crony," cried the jeweller. "I knew the late
+king's tailor, and I held him to be a man of simple life, without
+great talent; he was something like you; a man to whom they'd give the
+sacrament without confession; and behold! he plunged to the depths of
+this new religion,--he! a man whose two ears were worth all of a
+hundred thousand crowns apiece. He must have had secrets to reveal to
+induce the king and the Duchesse de Valentinois to be present at his
+torture."
+
+"And terrible secrets, too!" said the furrier. "The Reformation, my
+friends," he continued in a low voice, "will give back to the
+bourgeoisie the estates of the Church. When the ecclesiastical
+privileges are suppressed the Reformers intend to ask that the
+/vilain/ shall be imposed on nobles as well as on burghers, and they
+mean to insist that the king alone shall be above others--if indeed,
+they allow the State to have a king."
+
+"Suppress the Throne!" ejaculated Lallier.
+
+"Hey! crony," said Lecamus, "in the Low Countries the burghers govern
+themselves with burgomasters of their own, who elect their own
+temporary head."
+
+"God bless me, crony; we ought to do these fine things and yet stay
+Catholics," cried the jeweller.
+
+"We are too old, you and I, to see the triumph of the Parisian
+bourgeoisie, but it will triumph, I tell you, in times to come as it
+did of yore. Ha! the king must rest upon it in order to resist, and we
+have always sold him our help dear. The last time, all the burghers
+were ennobled, and he gave them permission to buy seignorial estates
+and take titles from the land without special letters from the king.
+You and I, grandsons of the Goix through our mothers, are not we as
+good as any lord?"
+
+These words were so alarming to the jeweller and the two women that
+they were followed by a dead silence. The ferments of 1789 were
+already tingling in the veins of Lecamus, who was not yet so old but
+what he could live to see the bold burghers of the Ligue.
+
+"Are you selling well in spite of these troubles?" said Lallier to
+Mademoiselle Lecamus.
+
+"Troubles always do harm," she replied.
+
+"That's one reason why I am so set on making my son a lawyer," said
+Lecamus; "for squabbles and law go on forever."
+
+The conversation then turned to commonplace topics, to the great
+satisfaction of the jeweller, who was not fond of either political
+troubles or audacity of thought.
+
+
+
+                                 III
+
+                         THE CHATEAU DE BLOIS
+
+The banks of the Loire, from Blois to Angers, were the favorite resort
+of the last two branches of the royal race which occupied the throne
+before the house of Bourbon. That beautiful valley plain so well
+deserves the honor bestowed upon it by kings that we must here repeat
+what was said of it by one of our most eloquent writers:--
+
+  "There is one province in France which is never sufficiently
+  admired. Fragrant as Italy, flowery as the banks of the
+  Guadalquivir, beautiful especially in its own characteristics,
+  wholly French, having always been French,--unlike in that respect
+  to our northern provinces, which have degenerated by contact with
+  Germany, and to our southern provinces, which have lived in
+  concubinage with Moors, Spaniards, and all other nationalities
+  that adjoined them. This pure, chaste, brave, and loyal province
+  is Touraine. Historic France is there! Auvergne is Auvergne,
+  Languedoc is only Languedoc; but Touraine is France; the most
+  national river for Frenchmen is the Loire, which waters Touraine.
+  For this reason we ought not to be surprised at the great number
+  of historically noble buildings possessed by those departments
+  which have taken the name, or derivations of the name, of the
+  Loire. At every step we take in this land of enchantment we
+  discover a new picture, bordered, it may be, by a river, or a
+  tranquil lake reflecting in its liquid depths a castle with
+  towers, and woods and sparkling waterfalls. It is quite natural
+  that in a region chosen by Royalty for its sojourn, where the
+  court was long established, great families and fortunes and
+  distinguished men should have settled and built palaces as grand
+  as themselves."
+
+But is it not incomprehensible that Royalty did not follow the advice
+indirectly given by Louis XI. to place the capital of the kingdom at
+Tours? There, without great expense, the Loire might have been made
+accessible for the merchant service, and also for vessels-of-war of
+light draught. There, too, the seat of government would have been safe
+from the dangers of invasion. Had this been done, the northern cities
+would not have required such vast sums of money spent to fortify them,
+--sums as vast as were those expended on the sumptuous glories of
+Versailles. If Louis XIV. had listened to Vauban, who wished to build
+his great palace at Mont Louis, between the Loire and the Cher,
+perhaps the revolution of 1789 might never have taken place.
+
+These beautiful shores still bear the marks of royal tenderness. The
+chateaus of Chambord, Amboise, Blois, Chenonceaux, Chaumont,
+Plessis-les-Tours, all those which the mistresses of kings, financiers,
+and nobles built at Veretz, Azay-le-Rideau, Usse, Villandri, Valencay,
+Chanteloup, Duretal, some of which have disappeared, though most of
+them still remain, are admirable relics which remind us of the marvels
+of a period that is little understood by the literary sect of the
+Middle-agists.
+
+Among all these chateaus, that of Blois, where the court was then
+staying, is one on which the magnificence of the houses of Orleans and
+of Valois has placed its brilliant sign-manual,--making it the most
+interesting of all for historians, archaeologists, and Catholics. It
+was at the time of which we write completely isolated. The town,
+enclosed by massive walls supported by towers, lay below the
+fortress,--for the chateau served, in fact, as fort and
+pleasure-house. Above the town, with its blue-tiled, crowded roofs
+extending then, as now, from the river to the crest of the hill which
+commands the right bank, lies a triangular plateau, bounded to the
+west by a streamlet, which in these days is of no importance, for it
+flows beneath the town; but in the fifteenth century, so say
+historians, it formed quite a deep ravine, of which there still
+remains a sunken road, almost an abyss, between the suburbs of the
+town and the chateau.
+
+It was on this plateau, with a double exposure to the north and south,
+that the counts of Blois built, in the architecture of the twelfth
+century, a castle where the famous Thibault de Tircheur, Thibault le
+Vieux, and others held a celebrated court. In those days of pure
+fuedality, in which the king was merely /primus inter pares/ (to use
+the fine expression of a king of Poland), the counts of Champagne, the
+counts of Blois, those of Anjou, the simple barons of Normandie, the
+dukes of Bretagne, lived with the splendor of sovereign princes and
+gave kings to the proudest kingdoms. The Plantagenets of Anjou, the
+Lusignans of Poitou, the Roberts of Normandie, maintained with a bold
+hand the royal races, and sometimes simple knights like du Glaicquin
+refused the purple, preferring the sword of a connetable.
+
+When the Crown annexed the county of Blois to its domain, Louis XII.,
+who had a liking for this residence (perhaps to escape Plessis of
+sinister memory), built at the back of the first building another
+building, facing east and west, which connected the chateau of the
+counts of Blois with the rest of the old structures, of which nothing
+now remains but the vast hall in which the States-general were held
+under Henri III.
+
+Before he became enamoured of Chambord, Francois I. wished to complete
+the chateau of Blois by adding two other wings, which would have made
+the structure a perfect square. But Chambord weaned him from Blois,
+where he built only one wing, which in his time and that of his
+grandchildren was the only inhabited part of the chateau. This third
+building erected by Francois I. is more vast and far more decorated
+than the Louvre, the chateau of Henri II. It is in the style of
+architecture now called Renaissance, and presents the most fantastic
+features of that style. Therefore, at a period when a strict and
+jealous architecture ruled construction, when the Middle Ages were not
+even considered, at a time when literature was not as clearly welded
+to art as it is now, La Fontaine said of the chateau de Blois, in his
+hearty, good-humored way: "The part that Francois I. built, if looked
+at from the outside, pleased me better than all the rest; there I saw
+numbers of little galleries, little windows, little balconies, little
+ornamentations without order or regularity, and they make up a grand
+whole which I like."
+
+The chateau of Blois had, therefore, the merit of representing three
+orders of architecture, three epochs, three systems, three dominions.
+Perhaps there is no other royal residence that can compare with it in
+that respect. This immense structure presents to the eye in one
+enclosure, round one courtyard, a complete and perfect image of that
+grand presentation of the manners and customs and life of nations
+which is called Architecture. At the moment when Christophe was to
+visit the court, that part of the adjacent land which in our day is
+covered by a fourth palace, built seventy years later (by Gaston, the
+rebellious brother of Louis XIII., then exiled to Blois), was an open
+space containing pleasure-grounds and hanging gardens, picturesquely
+placed among the battlements and unfinished turrets of Francois I.'s
+chateau.
+
+These gardens communicated, by a bridge of a fine, bold construction
+(which the old men of Blois may still remember to have seen
+demolished) with a pleasure-ground on the other side of the chateau,
+which, by the lay of the land, was on the same level. The nobles
+attached to the Court of Anne de Bretagne, or those of that province
+who came to solicit favors, or to confer with the queen as to the fate
+and condition of Brittany, awaited in this pleasure-ground the
+opportunity for an audience, either at the queen's rising, or at her
+coming out to walk. Consequently, history has given the name of
+"Perchoir aux Bretons" to this piece of ground, which, in our day, is
+the fruit-garden of a worthy bourgeois, and forms a projection into
+the place des Jesuites. The latter place was included in the gardens
+of this beautiful royal residence, which had, as we have said, its
+upper and its lower gardens. Not far from the place des Jesuites may
+still be seen a pavilion built by Catherine de' Medici, where,
+according to the historians of Blois, warm mineral baths were placed
+for her to use. This detail enables us to trace the very irregular
+disposition of the gardens, which went up or down according to the
+undulations of the ground, becoming extremely intricate around the
+chateau,--a fact which helped to give it strength, and caused, as we
+shall see, the discomfiture of the Duc de Guise.
+
+The gardens were reached from the chateau through external and
+internal galleries, the most important of which was called the
+"Galerie des Cerfs" on account of its decoration. This gallery led to
+the magnificent staircase which, no doubt, inspired the famous double
+staircase of Chambord. It led, from floor to floor, to all the
+apartments of the castle.
+
+Though La Fontaine preferred the chateau of Francois I. to that of
+Louis XII., perhaps the naivete of that of the good king will give
+true artists more pleasure, while at the same time they admire the
+magnificent structure of the knightly king. The elegance of the two
+staircases which are placed at each end of the chateau of Louis XII.,
+the delicate carving and sculpture, so original in design, which
+abound everywhere, the remains of which, though time has done its
+worst, still charm the antiquary, all, even to the semi-cloistral
+distribution of the apartments, reveals a great simplicity of manners.
+Evidently, the /court/ did not yet exist; it had not developed, as it
+did under Francois I. and Catherine de' Medici, to the great detriment
+of feudal customs. As we admire the galleries, or most of them, the
+capitals of the columns, and certain figurines of exquisite delicacy,
+it is impossible not to imagine that Michel Columb, that great
+sculptor, the Michel-Angelo of Brittany, passed that way for the
+pleasure of Queen Anne, whom he afterwards immortalized on the tomb of
+her father, the last duke of Brittany.
+
+Whatever La Fontaine may choose to say about the "little galleries"
+and the "little ornamentations," nothing can be more grandiose than
+the dwelling of the splendid Francois. Thanks to I know not what
+indifference, to forgetfulness perhaps, the apartments occupied by
+Catherine de' Medici and her son Francois II. present to us to-day the
+leading features of that time. The historian can there restore the
+tragic scenes of the drama of the Reformation,--a drama in which the
+dual struggle of the Guises and of the Bourbons against the Valois was
+a series of most complicated acts, the plot of which was here
+unravelled.
+
+The chateau of Francois I. completely crushes the artless habitation
+of Louis XII. by its imposing masses. On the side of the gardens, that
+is, toward the modern place des Jesuites, the castle presents an
+elevation nearly double that which it shows on the side of the
+courtyard. The ground-floor on this side forms the second floor on the
+side of the gardens, where are placed the celebrated galleries. Thus
+the first floor above the ground-floor toward the courtyard (where
+Queen Catherine was lodged) is the third floor on the garden side, and
+the king's apartments were four storeys above the garden, which at the
+time of which we write was separated from the base of the castle by a
+deep moat. The chateau, already colossal as viewed from the courtyard,
+appears gigantic when seen from below, as La Fontaine saw it. He
+mentions particularly that he did not enter either the courtyard or
+the apartments, and it is to be remarked that from the place des
+Jesuites all the details seem small. The balconies on which the
+courtiers promenaded; the galleries, marvellously executed; the
+sculptured windows, whose embrasures are so deep as to form boudoirs
+--for which indeed they served--resemble at that great height the
+fantastic decorations which scene-painters give to a fairy palace at
+the opera.
+
+But in the courtyard, although the three storeys above the
+ground-floor rise as high as the clock-tower of the Tuileries, the
+infinite delicacy of the architecture reveals itself to the rapture of
+our astonished eyes. This wing of the great building, in which the two
+queens, Catherine de' Medici and Mary Stuart, held their sumptuous
+court, is divided in the centre by a hexagon tower, in the empty well
+of which winds up a spiral staircase,--a Moorish caprice, designed by
+giants, made by dwarfs, which gives to this wonderful facade the
+effect of a dream. The baluster of this staircase forms a spiral
+connecting itself by a square landing to five of the six sides of the
+tower, requiring at each landing transversal corbels which are
+decorated with arabesque carvings without and within. This bewildering
+creation of ingenious and delicate details, of marvels which give
+speech to stones, can be compared only to the deeply worked and
+crowded carving of the Chinese ivories. Stone is made to look like
+lace-work. The flowers, the figures of men and animals clinging to the
+structure of the stairway, are multiplied, step by step, until they
+crown the tower with a key-stone on which the chisels of the art of
+the sixteenth century have contended against the naive cutters of
+images who fifty years earlier had carved the key-stones of Louis
+XII.'s two stairways.
+
+However dazzled we may be by these recurring forms of indefatigable
+labor, we cannot fail to see that money was lacking to Francois I. for
+Blois, as it was to Louis XIV. for Versailles. More than one figurine
+lifts its delicate head from a block of rough stone behind it; more
+than one fantastic flower is merely indicated by chiselled touches on
+the abandoned stone, though dampness has since laid its blossoms of
+mouldy greenery upon it. On the facade, side by side with the tracery
+of one window, another window presents its masses of jagged stone
+carved only by the hand of time. Here, to the least artistic and the
+least trained eye, is a ravishing contrast between this frontage,
+where marvels throng, and the interior frontage of the chateau of
+Louis XII., which is composed of a ground-floor of arcades of fairy
+lightness supported by tiny columns resting at their base on a
+graceful platform, and of two storeys above it, the windows of which
+are carved with delightful sobriety. Beneath the arcade is a gallery,
+the walls of which are painted in fresco, the ceiling also being
+painted; traces can still be found of this magnificence, derived from
+Italy, and testifying to the expeditions of our kings, to which the
+principality of Milan then belonged.
+
+Opposite to Francois I.'s wing was the chapel of the counts of Blois,
+the facade of which is almost in harmony with the architecture of the
+later dwelling of Louis XII. No words can picture the majestic
+solidity of these three distinct masses of building. In spite of their
+nonconformity of style, Royalty, powerful and firm, demonstrating its
+dangers by the greatness of its precautions, was a bond, uniting these
+three edifices, so different in character, two of which rested against
+the vast hall of the States-general, towering high like a church.
+
+Certainly, neither the simplicity nor the strength of the burgher
+existence (which were depicted at the beginning of this history) in
+which Art was always represented, were lacking to this royal
+habitation. Blois was the fruitful and brilliant example to which the
+Bourgeoisie and Feudality, Wealth and Nobility, gave such splendid
+replies in the towns and in the rural regions. Imagination could not
+desire any other sort of dwelling for the prince who reigned over
+France in the sixteenth century. The richness of seignorial garments,
+the luxury of female adornment, must have harmonized delightfully with
+the lace-work of these stones so wonderfully manipulated. From floor
+to floor, as the king of France went up the marvellous staircase of
+his chateau of Blois, he could see the broad expanse of the beautiful
+Loire, which brought him news of all his kingdom as it lay on either
+side of the great river, two halves of a State facing each other, and
+semi-rivals. If, instead of building Chambord in a barren, gloomy
+plain two leagues away, Francois I. had placed it where, seventy years
+later, Gaston built his palace, Versailles would never have existed,
+and Blois would have become, necessarily, the capital of France.
+
+Four Valois and Catherine de' Medici lavished their wealth on the wing
+built by Francois I. at Blois. Who can look at those massive
+partition-walls, the spinal column of the castle, in which are sunken
+deep alcoves, secret staircases, cabinets, while they themselves
+enclose halls as vast as that great council-room, the guardroom, and
+the royal chambers, in which, in our day, a regiment of infantry is
+comfortably lodged--who can look at all this and not be aware of the
+prodigalities of Crown and court? Even if a visitor does not at once
+understand how the splendor within must have corresponded with the
+splendor without, the remaining vestiges of Catherine de' Medici's
+cabinet, where Christophe was about to be introduced, would bear
+sufficient testimony to the elegances of Art which peopled these
+apartments with animated designs in which salamanders sparkled among
+the wreaths, and the palette of the sixteenth century illumined the
+darkest corners with its brilliant coloring. In this cabinet an
+observer will still find traces of that taste for gilding which
+Catherine brought with her from Italy; for the princesses of her house
+loved, in the words of the author already quoted, to veneer the
+castles of France with the gold earned by their ancestors in commerce,
+and to hang out their wealth on the walls of their apartments.
+
+The queen-mother occupied on the first upper floor of the apartments
+of Queen Claude of France, wife of Francois I., in which may still be
+seen, delicately carved, the double C accompanied by figures, purely
+white, of swans and lilies, signifying /candidior candidis/--more
+white than the whitest--the motto of the queen whose name began, like
+that of Catherine, with a C, and which applied as well to the daughter
+of Louis XII. as to the mother of the last Valois; for no suspicion,
+in spite of the violence of Calvinist calumny, has tarnished the
+fidelity of Catherine de' Medici to Henri II.
+
+The queen-mother, still charged with the care of two young children
+(him who was afterward Duc d'Alencon, and Marguerite, the wife of
+Henri IV., the sister whom Charles IX. called Margot), had need of the
+whole of the first upper floor.
+
+The king, Francois II., and the queen, Mary Stuart, occupied, on the
+second floor, the royal apartments which had formerly been those of
+Francois I. and were, subsequently, those of Henri III. This floor,
+like that taken by the queen-mother, is divided in two parts
+throughout its whole length by the famous partition-wall, which is
+more than four feet thick, against which rests the enormous walls
+which separate the rooms from each other. Thus, on both floors, the
+apartments are in two distinct halves. One half, to the south, looking
+to the courtyard, served for public receptions and for the transaction
+of business; whereas the private apartments were placed, partly to
+escape the heat, to the north, overlooking the gardens, on which side
+is the splendid facade with its balconies and galleries looking out
+upon the open country of the Vendomois, and down upon the "Perchoir
+des Bretons" and the moat, the only side of which La Fontaine speaks.
+
+The chateau of Francois I. was, in those days, terminated by an
+enormous unfinished tower which was intended to mark the colossal
+angle of the building when the succeeding wing was built. Later,
+Gaston took down one side of it, in order to build his palace on to
+it; but he never finished the work, and the tower remained in ruins.
+This royal stronghold served as a prison or dungeon, according to
+popular tradition.
+
+As we wander to-day through the halls of this matchless chateau, so
+precious to art and to history, what poet would not be haunted by
+regrets, and grieved for France, at seeing the arabesques of
+Catherine's boudoir /whitewashed/ and almost obliterated, by order of
+the quartermaster of the barracks (this royal residence is now a
+barrack) at the time of an outbreak of cholera. The panels of
+Catherine's boudoir, a room of which we are about to speak, is the
+last remaining relic of the rich decorations accumulated by five
+artistic kings. Making our way through the labyrinth of chambers,
+halls, stairways, towers, we may say to ourselves with solemn
+certitude: "Here Mary Stuart cajoled her husband on behalf of the
+Guises." "There, the Guises insulted Catherine." "Later, at that very
+spot the second Balafre fell beneath the daggers of the avengers of
+the Crown." "A century earlier, from this very window, Louis XII. made
+signs to his friend Cardinal d'Amboise to come to him." "Here, on this
+balcony, d'Epernon, the accomplice of Ravaillac, met Marie de' Medici,
+who knew, it was said, of the proposed regicide, and allowed it to be
+committed."
+
+In the chapel, where the marriage of Henri IV. and Marguerite de
+Valois took place, the sole remaining fragment of the chateau of the
+counts of Blois, a regiment now makes it shoes. This wonderful
+structure, in which so many styles may still be seen, so many great
+deeds have been performed, is in a state of dilapidation which
+disgraces France. What grief for those who love the great historic
+monuments of our country to know that soon those eloquent stones will
+be lost to sight and knowledge, like others at the corner of the rue
+de la Vieille-Pelleterie; possibly, they will exist nowhere but in
+these pages.
+
+It is necessary to remark that, in order to watch the royal court more
+closely, the Guises, although they had a house of their own in the
+town, which still exists, had obtained permission to occupy the upper
+floor above the apartments of Louis XII., the same lodgings afterwards
+occupied by the Duchesse de Nemours under the roof.
+
+The young king, Francois II., and his bride Mary Stuart, in love with
+each other like the girl and boy of sixteen which they were, had been
+abruptly transferred, in the depth of winter, from the chateau de
+Saint-Germain, which the Duc de Guise thought liable to attack, to the
+fortress which the chateau of Blois then was, being isolated and
+protected on three sides by precipices, and admirably defended as to
+its entrance. The Guises, uncles of Mary Stuart, had powerful reasons
+for not residing in Paris and for keeping the king and court in a
+castle the whole exterior surroundings of which could easily be
+watched and defended. A struggle was now beginning around the throne,
+between the house of Lorraine and the house of Valois, which was
+destined to end in this very chateau, twenty-eight years later, namely
+in 1588, when Henri III., under the very eyes of his mother, at that
+moment deeply humiliated by the Lorrains, heard fall upon the floor of
+his own cabinet, the head of the boldest of all the Guises, the second
+Balafre, son of that first Balafre by whom Catherine de' Medici was
+now being tricked, watched, threatened, and virtually imprisoned.
+
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+                           THE QUEEN-MOTHER
+
+This noble chateau of Blois was to Catherine de' Medici the narrowest
+of prisons. On the death of her husband, who had always held her in
+subjection, she expected to reign; but, on the contrary, she found
+herself crushed under the thraldom of strangers, whose polished
+manners were really far more brutal than those of jailers. No action
+of hers could be done secretly. The women who attended her either had
+lovers among the Guises or were watched by Argus eyes. These were
+times when passions notably exhibited the strange effects produced in
+all ages by the strong antagonism of two powerful conflicting
+interests in the State. Gallantry, which served Catherine so well, was
+also an auxiliary of the Guises. The Prince de Conde, the first leader
+of the Reformation, was a lover of the Marechale de Saint-Andre, whose
+husband was the tool of the Grand Master. The cardinal, convinced by
+the affair of the Vidame de Chartres, that Catherine was more
+unconquered than invulnerable as to love, was paying court to her. The
+play of all these passions strangely complicated those of politics,
+--making, as it were, a double game of chess, in which both parties
+had to watch the head and heart of their opponent, in order to know,
+when a crisis came, whether the one would betray the other.
+
+Though she was constantly in presence of the Cardinal de Lorraine or
+of Duc Francois de Guise, who both distrusted her, the closest and
+ablest enemy of Catherine de' Medici was her daughter-in-law, Queen
+Mary, a fair little creature, malicious as a waiting-maid, proud as a
+Stuart wearing three crowns, learned as an old pedant, giddy as a
+school-girl, as much in love with her husband as a courtesan is with
+her lover, devoted to her uncles whom she admired, and delighted to
+see the king share (at her instigation) the regard she had for them. A
+mother-in-law is always a person whom the daughter-in-law is inclined
+not to like; especially when she wears the crown and wishes to retain
+it, which Catherine had imprudently made but too well known. Her
+former position, when Diane de Poitiers had ruled Henri II., was more
+tolerable than this; then at least she received the external honors
+that were due to a queen, and the homage of the court. But now the
+duke and the cardinal, who had none but their own minions about them,
+seemed to take pleasure in abasing her. Catherine, hemmed in on all
+sides by their courtiers, received, not only day by day but from hour
+to hour, terrible blows to her pride and her self-love; for the Guises
+were determined to treat her on the same system of repression which
+the late king, her husband, had so long pursued.
+
+The thirty-six years of anguish which were now about to desolate
+France may, perhaps, be said to have begun by the scene in which the
+son of the furrier of the two queens was sent on the perilous errand
+which makes him the chief figure of our present Study. The danger into
+which this zealous Reformer was about to fall became imminent the very
+morning on which he started from the port of Beaugency for the chateau
+de Blois, bearing precious documents which compromised the highest
+heads of the nobility, placed in his hands by that wily partisan, the
+indefatigable La Renaudie, who met him, as agreed upon, at Beaugency,
+having reached that port before him.
+
+While the tow-boat, in which Christophe now embarked floated, impelled
+by a light east wind, down the river Loire the famous Cardinal de
+Lorraine, and his brother the second Duc de Guise, one of the greatest
+warriors of those days, were contemplating, like eagles perched on a
+rocky summit, their present situation, and looking prudently about
+them before striking the great blow by which they intended to kill the
+Reform in France at Amboise,--an attempt renewed twelve years later in
+Paris, August 24, 1572, on the feast of Saint-Bartholomew.
+
+During the night three /seigneurs/, who each played a great part in
+the twelve years' drama which followed this double plot now laid by
+the Guises and also by the Reformers, had arrived at Blois from
+different directions, each riding at full speed, and leaving their
+horses half-dead at the postern-gate of the chateau, which was guarded
+by captains and soldiers absolutely devoted to the Duc de Guise, the
+idol of all warriors.
+
+One word about that great man,--a word that must tell, in the first
+instance, whence his fortunes took their rise.
+
+His mother was Antoinette de Bourbon, great-aunt of Henri IV. Of what
+avail is consanguinity? He was, at this moment, aiming at the head of
+his cousin the Prince de Conde. His niece was Mary Stuart. His wife
+was Anne, daughter of the Duke of Ferrara. The Grand Connetable de
+Montmorency called the Duc de Guise "Monseigneur" as he would the
+king,--ending his letter with "Your very humble servant." Guise, Grand
+Master of the king's household, replied "Monsieur le connetable," and
+signed, as he did for the Parliament, "Your very good friend."
+
+As for the cardinal, called the transalpine pope, and his Holiness, by
+Estienne, he had the whole monastic Church of France on his side, and
+treated the Holy Father as an equal. Vain of his eloquence, and one of
+the greatest theologians of his time, he kept incessant watch over
+France and Italy by means of three religious orders who were
+absolutely devoted to him, toiling day and night in his service and
+serving him as spies and counsellors.
+
+These few words will explain to what heights of power the duke and the
+cardinal had attained. In spite of their wealth and the enormous
+revenues of their several offices, they were so personally
+disinterested, so eagerly carried away on the current of their
+statesmanship, and so generous at heart, that they were always in
+debt, doubtless after the manner of Caesar. When Henri III. caused the
+death of the second Balafre, whose life was a menace to him, the house
+of Guise was necessarily ruined. The costs of endeavoring to seize the
+crown during a whole century will explain the lowered position of this
+great house during the reigns of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., when the
+sudden death of MADAME told all Europe the infamous part which a
+Chevalier de Lorraine had debased himself to play.
+
+Calling themselves the heirs of the dispossessed Carolovingians, the
+duke and cardinal acted with the utmost insolence towards Catherine
+de' Medici, the mother-in-law of their niece. The Duchesse de Guise
+spared her no mortification. This duchesse was a d'Este, and Catherine
+was a Medici, the daughter of upstart Florentine merchants, whom the
+sovereigns of Europe had never yet admitted into their royal
+fraternity. Francois I. himself has always considered his son's
+marriage with a Medici as a mesalliance, and only consented to it
+under the expectation that his second son would never be dauphin.
+Hence his fury when his eldest son was poisoned by the Florentine
+Montecuculi. The d'Estes refused to recognize the Medici as Italian
+princes. Those former merchants were in fact trying to solve the
+impossible problem of maintaining a throne in the midst of republican
+institutions. The title of grand-duke was only granted very tardily by
+Philip the Second, king of Spain, to reward those Medici who bought it
+by betraying France their benefactress, and servilely attaching
+themselves to the court of Spain, which was at the very time covertly
+counteracting them in Italy.
+
+"Flatter none but your enemies," the famous saying of Catherine de'
+Medici, seems to have been the political rule of life with that family
+of merchant princes, in which great men were never lacking until their
+destinies became great, when they fell, before their time, into that
+degeneracy in which royal races and noble families are wont to end.
+
+For three generations there had been a great Lorrain warrior and a
+great Lorrain churchman; and, what is more singular, the churchmen all
+bore a strong resemblance in the face to Ximenes, as did Cardinal
+Richelieu in after days. These five great cardinals all had sly, mean,
+and yet terrible faces; while the warriors, on the other hand, were of
+that type of Basque mountaineer which we see in Henri IV. The two
+Balafres, father and son, wounded and scarred in the same manner, lost
+something of this type, but not the grace and affability by which, as
+much as by their bravery, they won the hearts of the soldiery.
+
+It is not useless to relate how the present Grand Master received his
+wound; for it was healed by the heroic measures of a personage of our
+drama,--by Ambroise Pare, the man we have already mentioned as under
+obligations to Lecamus, syndic of the guild of furriers. At the siege
+of Calais the duke had his face pierced through and through by a
+lance, the point of which, after entering the cheek just below the
+right eye, went through to the neck, below the left eye, and remained,
+broken off, in the face. The duke lay dying in his tent in the midst
+of universal distress, and he would have died had it not been for the
+devotion and prompt courage of Ambroise Pare. "The duke is not dead,
+gentlemen," he said to the weeping attendants, "but he soon will die
+if I dare not treat him as I would a dead man; and I shall risk doing
+so, no matter what it may cost me in the end. See!" And with that he
+put his left foot on the duke's breast, took the broken wooden end of
+the lance in his fingers, shook and loosened it by degrees in the
+wound, and finally succeeded in drawing out the iron head, as if he
+were handling a thing and not a man. Though he saved the prince by
+this heroic treatment, he could not prevent the horrible scar which
+gave the great soldier his nickname,--Le Balafre, the Scarred. This
+name descended to the son, and for a similar reason.
+
+Absolutely masters of Francois II., whom his wife ruled through their
+mutual and excessive passion, these two great Lorrain princes, the
+duke and the cardinal, were masters of France, and had no other enemy
+at court than Catherine de' Medici. No great statesmen ever played a
+closer or more watchful game.
+
+The mutual position of the ambitious widow of Henri II. and the
+ambitious house of Lorraine was pictured, as it were, to the eye by a
+scene which took place on the terrace of the chateau de Blois very
+early in the morning of the day on which Christophe Lecamus was
+destined to arrive there. The queen-mother, who feigned an extreme
+attachment to the Guises, had asked to be informed of the news brought
+by the three /seigneurs/ coming from three different parts of the
+kingdom; but she had the mortification of being courteously dismissed
+by the cardinal. She then walked to the parterres which overhung the
+Loire, where she was building, under the superintendence of her
+astrologer, Ruggieri, an observatory, which is still standing, and
+from which the eye may range over the whole landscape of that
+delightful valley. The two Lorrain princes were at the other end of
+the terrace, facing the Vendomois, which overlooks the upper part of
+the town, the perch of the Bretons, and the postern gate of the
+chateau.
+
+Catherine had deceived the two brothers by pretending to a slight
+displeasure; for she was in reality very well pleased to have an
+opportunity to speak to one of the three young men who had arrived in
+such haste. This was a young nobleman named Chiverni, apparently a
+tool of the cardinal, in reality a devoted servant of Catherine.
+Catherine also counted among her devoted servants two Florentine
+nobles, the Gondi; but they were so suspected by the Guises that she
+dared not send them on any errand away from the court, where she kept
+them, watched, it is true, in all their words and actions, but where
+at least they were able to watch and study the Guises and counsel
+Catherine. These two Florentines maintained in the interests of the
+queen-mother another Italian, Birago,--a clever Piedmontese, who
+pretended, with Chiverni, to have abandoned their mistress, and gone
+over to the Guises, who encouraged their enterprises and employed them
+to watch Catherine.
+
+Chiverni had come from Paris and Ecouen. The last to arrive was
+Saint-Andre, who was marshal of France and became so important that
+the Guises, whose creature he was, made him the third person in the
+triumvirate they formed the following year against Catherine. The
+other /seigneur/ who had arrived during the night was Vieilleville,
+also a creature of the Guises and a marshal of France, who was
+returning from a secret mission known only to the Grand Master, who
+had entrusted it to him. As for Saint-Andre, he was in charge of
+military measures taken with the object of driving all Reformers under
+arms into Amboise; a scheme which now formed the subject of a council
+held by the duke and cardinal, Birago, Chiverni, Vieilleville, and
+Saint-Andre. As the two Lorrains employed Birago, it is to be supposed
+that they relied upon their own powers; for they knew of his
+attachment to the queen-mother. At this singular epoch the double part
+played by many of the political men of the day was well known to both
+parties; they were like cards in the hands of gamblers,--the cleverest
+player won the game. During this council the two brothers maintained
+the most impenetrable reserve. A conversation which now took place
+between Catherine and certain of her friends will explain the object
+of this council, held by the Guises in the open air, in the hanging
+gardens, at break of day, as if they feared to speak within the walls
+of the chateau de Blois.
+
+The queen-mother, under pretence of examining the observatory then in
+process of construction, walked in that direction accompanied by the
+two Gondis, glancing with a suspicious and inquisitive eye at the
+group of enemies who were still standing at the farther end of the
+terrace, and from whom Chiverni now detached himself to join the
+queen-mother. She was then at the corner of the terrace which looks
+down upon the Church of Saint-Nicholas; there, at least, there could
+be no danger of the slightest overhearing. The wall of the terrace is
+on a level with the towers of the church, and the Guises invariably
+held their council at the farther corner of the same terrace at the
+base of the great unfinished keep or dungeon,--going and returning
+between the Perchoir des Bretons and the gallery by the bridge which
+joined them to the gardens. No one was within sight. Chiverni raised
+the hand of the queen-mother to kiss it, and as he did so he slipped a
+little note from his hand to hers, without being observed by the two
+Italians. Catherine turned to the angle of the parapet and read as
+follows:--
+
+
+  You are powerful enough to hold the balance between the leaders
+  and to force them into a struggle as to who shall serve you; your
+  house is full of kings, and you have nothing to fear from the
+  Lorrains or the Bourbons provided you pit them one against the
+  other, for both are striving to snatch the crown from your
+  children. Be the mistress and not the servant of your counsellors;
+  support them, in turn, one against the other, or the kingdom will
+  go from bad to worse, and mighty wars may come of it.
+
+L'Hopital.
+
+
+The queen put the letter in the hollow of her corset, resolving to
+burn it as soon as she was alone.
+
+"When did you see him?" she asked Chiverni.
+
+"On my way back from visiting the Connetable, at Melun, where I met
+him with the Duchesse de Berry, whom he was most impatient to convey
+to Savoie, that he might return here and open the eyes of the
+chancellor Olivier, who is now completely duped by the Lorrains. As
+soon as Monsieur l'Hopital saw the true object of the Guises he
+determined to support your interests. That is why he is so anxious to
+get here and give you his vote at the councils."
+
+"Is he sincere?" asked Catherine. "You know very well that if the
+Lorrains have put him in the council it is that he may help them to
+reign."
+
+"L'Hopital is a Frenchman who comes of too good a stock not to be
+honest and sincere," said Chiverni; "Besides, his note is a
+sufficiently strong pledge."
+
+"What answer did the Connetable send to the Guises?"
+
+"He replied that he was the servant of the king and would await his
+orders. On receiving that answer the cardinal, to suppress all
+resistance, determined to propose the appointment of his brother as
+lieutenant-general of the kingdom."
+
+"Have they got as far as that?" exclaimed Catherine, alarmed. "Well,
+did Monsieur l'Hopital send me no other message?"
+
+"He told me to say to you, madame, that you alone could stand between
+the Crown and the Guises."
+
+"Does he think that I ought to use the Huguenots as a weapon?"
+
+"Ah! madame," cried Chiverni, surprised at such astuteness, "we never
+dreamed of casting you into such difficulties."
+
+"Does he know the position I am in?" asked the queen, calmly.
+
+"Very nearly. He thinks you were duped after the death of the king
+into accepting that castle on Madame Diane's overthrow. The Guises
+consider themselves released toward the queen by having satisfied the
+woman."
+
+"Yes," said the queen, looking at the two Gondi, "I made a blunder."
+
+"A blunder of the gods," replied Charles de Gondi.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Catherine, "if I go over openly to the Reformers I
+shall become the slave of a party."
+
+"Madame," said Chiverni, eagerly, "I approve entirely of your meaning.
+You must use them, but not serve them."
+
+"Though your support does, undoubtedly, for the time being lie there,"
+said Charles de Gondi, "we must not conceal from ourselves that
+success and defeat are both equally perilous."
+
+"I know it," said the queen; "a single false step would be a pretext
+on which the Guises would seize at once to get rid of me."
+
+"The niece of a Pope, the mother of four Valois, a queen of France,
+the widow of the most ardent persecutor of the Huguenots, an Italian
+Catholic, the aunt of Leo X.,--can /she/ ally herself with the
+Reformation?" asked Charles de Gondi.
+
+"But," said his brother Albert, "if she seconds the Guises does she
+not play into the hands of a usurpation? We have to do with men who
+see a crown to seize in the coming struggle between Catholicism and
+Reform. It is possible to support the Reformers without abjuring."
+
+"Reflect, madame, that your family, which ought to have been wholly
+devoted to the king of France, is at this moment the servant of the
+king of Spain; and to-morrow it will be that of the Reformation if the
+Reformation could make a king of the Duke of Florence."
+
+"I am certainly disposed to lend a hand, for a time, to the
+Huguenots," said Catherine, "if only to revenge myself on that soldier
+and that priest and that woman!" As she spoke, she called attention
+with her subtile Italian glance to the duke and cardinal, and then to
+the second floor of the chateau on which were the apartments of her
+son and Mary Stuart. "That trio has taken from my hands the reins of
+State, for which I waited long while the old woman filled my place,"
+she said gloomily, glancing toward Chenonceaux, the chateau she had
+lately exchanged with Diane de Poitiers against that of Chaumont.
+"/Ma/," she added in Italian, "it seems that these reforming gentry in
+Geneva have not the wit to address themselves to me; and, on my
+conscience, I cannot go to them. Not one of you would dare to risk
+carrying them a message!" She stamped her foot. "I did hope you would
+have met the cripple at Ecouen--/he/ has sense," she said to Chiverni.
+
+"The Prince de Conde was there, madame," said Chiverni, "but he could
+not persuade the Connetable to join him. Monsieur de Montmorency wants
+to overthrow the Guises, who have sent him into exile, but he will not
+encourage heresy."
+
+"What will ever break these individual wills which are forever
+thwarting royalty? God's truth!" exclaimed the queen, "the great
+nobles must be made to destroy each other, as Louis XI., the greatest
+of your kings, did with those of his time. There are four or five
+parties now in this kingdom, and the weakest of them is that of my
+children."
+
+"The Reformation is an /idea/," said Charles de Gondi; "the parties
+that Louis XI. crushed were moved by self-interests only."
+
+"Ideas are behind selfish interests," replied Chiverni. "Under Louis
+XI. the idea was the great Fiefs--"
+
+"Make heresy an axe," said Albert de Gondi, "and you will escape the
+odium of executions."
+
+"Ah!" cried the queen, "but I am ignorant of the strength and also of
+the plans of the Reformers; and I have no safe way of communicating
+with them. If I were detected in any manoeuvre of that kind, either by
+the queen, who watches me like an infant in a cradle, or by those two
+jailers over there, I should be banished from France and sent back to
+Florence with a terrible escort, commanded by Guise minions. Thank
+you, no, my daughter-in-law!--but I wish /you/ the fate of being a
+prisoner in your own home, that you may know what you have made me
+suffer."
+
+"Their plans!" exclaimed Chiverni; "the duke and the cardinal know
+what they are, but those two foxes will not divulge them. If you could
+induce them to do so, madame, I would sacrifice myself for your sake
+and come to an understanding with the Prince de Conde."
+
+"How much of the Guises' own plans have they been forced to reveal to
+you?" asked the queen, with a glance at the two brothers.
+
+"Monsieur de Vieilleville and Monsieur de Saint-Andre have just
+received fresh orders, the nature of which is concealed from us; but I
+think the duke is intending to concentrate his best troops on the left
+bank. Within a few days you will all be moved to Amboise. The duke has
+been studying the position from this terrace and decides that Blois is
+not a propitious spot for his secret schemes. What can he want
+better?" added Chiverni, pointing to the precipices which surrounded
+the chateau. "There is no place in the world where the court is more
+secure from attack than it is here."
+
+"Abdicate or reign," said Albert in a low voice to the queen, who
+stood motionless and thoughtful.
+
+A terrible expression of inward rage passed over the fine ivory face
+of Catherine de' Medici, who was not yet forty years old, though she
+had lived for twenty-six years at the court of France,--without power,
+she, who from the moment of her arrival intended to play a leading
+part! Then, in her native language, the language of Dante, these
+terrible words came slowly from her lips:--
+
+"Nothing so long as that son lives!--His little wife bewitches him,"
+she added after a pause.
+
+Catherine's exclamation was inspired by a prophecy which had been made
+to her a few days earlier at the chateau de Chaumont on the opposite
+bank of the river; where she had been taken by Ruggieri, her
+astrologer, to obtain information as to the lives of her four children
+from a celebrated female seer, secretly brought there by Nostradamus
+(chief among the physicians of that great sixteenth century) who
+practised, like the Ruggieri, the Cardans, Paracelsus, and others, the
+occult sciences. This woman, whose name and life have eluded history,
+foretold one year as the length of Francois's reign.
+
+"Give me your opinion on all this," said Catherine to Chiverni.
+
+"We shall have a battle," replied the prudent courtier. "The king of
+Navarre--"
+
+"Oh! say the queen," interrupted Catherine.
+
+"True, the queen," said Chiverni, smiling, "the queen has given the
+Prince de Conde as leader to the Reformers, and he, in his position of
+younger son, can venture all; consequently the cardinal talks of
+ordering him here."
+
+"If he comes," cried the queen, "I am saved!"
+
+Thus the leaders of the great movement of the Reformation in France
+were justified in hoping for an ally in Catherine de' Medici.
+
+"There is one thing to be considered," said the queen. "The Bourbons
+may fool the Huguenots and the Sieurs Calvin and de Beze may fool the
+Bourbons, but are we strong enough to fool Huguenots, Bourbons, and
+Guises? In presence of three such enemies it is allowable to feel
+one's pulse."
+
+"But they have not the king," said Albert de Gondi. "You will always
+triumph, having the king on your side."
+
+"/Maladetta Maria/!" muttered Catherine between her teeth.
+
+"The Lorrains are, even now, endeavoring to turn the burghers against
+you," remarked Birago.
+
+
+
+                                  V
+
+                              THE COURT
+
+The hope of gaining the crown was not the result of a premeditated
+plan in the minds of the restless Guises. Nothing warranted such a
+hope or such a plan. Circumstances alone inspired their audacity. The
+two cardinals and the two Balafres were four ambitious minds, superior
+in talents to all the other politicians who surrounded them. This
+family was never really brought low except by Henri IV.; a factionist
+himself, trained in the great school of which Catherine and the Guises
+were masters,--by whose lessons he had profited but too well.
+
+At this moment the two brothers, the duke and cardinal, were the
+arbiters of the greatest revolution attempted in Europe since that of
+Henry VIII. in England, which was the direct consequence of the
+invention of printing. Adversaries to the Reformation, they meant to
+stifle it, power being in their hands. But their opponent, Calvin,
+though less famous than Luther, was far the stronger of the two.
+Calvin saw government where Luther saw dogma only. While the stout
+beer-drinker and amorous German fought with the devil and flung an
+inkbottle at his head, the man from Picardy, a sickly celibate, made
+plans of campaign, directed battles, armed princes, and roused whole
+peoples by sowing republican doctrines in the hearts of the burghers
+--recouping his continual defeats in the field by fresh progress in
+the mind of the nations.
+
+The Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duc de Guise, like Philip the Second
+and the Duke of Alba, knew where and when the monarchy was threatened,
+and how close the alliance ought to be between Catholicism and
+Royalty. Charles the Fifth, drunk with the wine of Charlemagne's cup,
+believing too blindly in the strength of his monarchy, and confident
+of sharing the world with Suleiman, did not at first feel the blow at
+his head; but no sooner had Cardinal Granvelle made him aware of the
+extent of the wound than he abdicated. The Guises had but one scheme,
+--that of annihilating heresy at a single blow. This blow they were
+now to attempt, for the first time, to strike at Amboise;
+failing there they tried it again, twelve years later, at the
+Saint-Bartholomew,--on the latter occasion in conjunction with
+Catherine de' Medici, enlightened by that time by the flames of a
+twelve years' war, enlightened above all by the significant word
+"republic," uttered later and printed by the writers of the Reformation,
+but already foreseen (as we have said before) by Lecamus, that type of
+the Parisian bourgeoisie.
+
+The two Guises, now on the point of striking a murderous blow at the
+heart of the French nobility, in order to separate it once for all
+from a religious party whose triumph would be its ruin, still stood
+together on the terrace, concerting as to the best means of revealing
+their coup-d'Etat to the king, while Catherine was talking with her
+counsellors.
+
+"Jeanne d'Albret knew what she was about when she declared herself
+protectress of the Huguenots! She has a battering-ram in the
+Reformation, and she knows how to use it," said the duke, who fathomed
+the deep designs of the Queen of Navarre, one of the great minds of
+the century.
+
+"Theodore de Beze is now at Nerac," remarked the cardinal, "after
+first going to Geneva to take Calvin's orders."
+
+"What men these burghers know how to find!" exclaimed the duke.
+
+"Ah! we have none on our side of the quality of La Renaudie!" cried
+the cardinal. "He is a true Catiline."
+
+"Such men always act for their own interests," replied the duke.
+"Didn't I fathom La Renaudie? I loaded him with favors; I helped him
+to escape when he was condemned by the parliament of Bourgogne; I
+brought him back from exile by obtaining a revision of his sentence; I
+intended to do far more for him; and all the while he was plotting a
+diabolical conspiracy against us! That rascal has united the
+Protestants of Germany with the heretics of France by reconciling the
+differences that grew up between the dogmas of Luther and those of
+Calvin. He has brought the discontented great seigneurs into the party
+of the Reformation without obliging them to abjure Catholicism openly.
+For the last year he has had thirty captains under him! He is
+everywhere at once,--at Lyon, in Languedoc, at Nantes! It was he who
+drew up those minutes of a consultation which were hawked about all
+Germany, in which the theologians declared that force might be
+resorted to in order to withdraw the king from our rule and tutelage;
+the paper is now being circulated from town to town. Wherever we look
+for him we never find him! And yet I have never done him anything but
+good! It comes to this, that we must now either thrash him like a dog,
+or try to throw him a golden bridge by which he will cross into our
+camp."
+
+"Bretagne, Languedoc, in fact the whole kingdom is in league to deal
+us a mortal blow," said the cardinal. "After the fete was over
+yesterday I spent the rest of the night in reading the reports sent me
+by the monks; in which I found that the only persons who have
+compromised themselves are poor gentlemen, artisans, as to whom it
+doesn't signify whether you hang them or let them live. The Colignys
+and Condes do not show their hand as yet, though they hold the threads
+of the whole conspiracy."
+
+"Yes," replied the duke, "and, therefore, as soon as that lawyer
+Avenelles sold the secret of the plot, I told Braguelonne to let the
+conspirators carry it out. They have no suspicion that we know it;
+they are so sure of surprising us that the leaders may possibly show
+themselves then. My advice is to allow ourselves to be beaten for
+forty-eight hours."
+
+"Half an hour would be too much," cried the cardinal, alarmed.
+
+"So this is your courage, is it?" retorted the Balafre.
+
+The cardinal, quite unmoved, replied: "Whether the Prince de Conde is
+compromised or not, if we are certain that he is the leader, we should
+strike him down at once and secure tranquillity. We need judges rather
+than soldiers for this business--and judges are never lacking. Victory
+is always more certain in the parliament than on the field, and it
+costs less."
+
+"I consent, willingly," said the duke; "but do you think the Prince de
+Conde is powerful enough to inspire, himself alone, the audacity of
+those who are making this first attack upon us? Isn't there, behind
+him--"
+
+"The king of Navarre," said the cardinal.
+
+"Pooh! a fool who speaks to me cap in hand!" replied the duke. "The
+coquetries of that Florentine woman seem to blind your eyes--"
+
+"Oh! as for that," exclaimed the priest, "if I do play the gallant
+with her it is only that I may read to the bottom of her heart."
+
+"She has no heart," said the duke, sharply; "she is even more
+ambitious than you and I."
+
+"You are a brave soldier," said the cardinal; "but, believe me, I
+distance you in this matter. I have had Catherine watched by Mary
+Stuart long before you even suspected her. She has no more religion
+than my shoe; if she is not the soul of this plot it is not for want
+of will. But we shall now be able to test her on the scene itself, and
+find out then how she stands by us. Up to this time, however, I am
+certain she has held no communication whatever with the heretics."
+
+"Well, it is time now to reveal the whole plot to the king, and to the
+queen-mother, who, you say, knows nothing of it,--that is the sole
+proof of her innocence; perhaps the conspirators have waited till the
+last moment, expecting to dazzle her with the probabilities of
+success. La Renaudie must soon discover by my arrangements that we are
+warned. Last night Nemours was to follow detachments of the Reformers
+who are pouring in along the cross-roads, and the conspirators will be
+forced to attack us at Amboise, which place I intend to let them
+enter. Here," added the duke, pointing to three sides of the rock on
+which the chateau de Blois is built; "we should have an assault
+without any result; the Huguenots could come and go at will. Blois is
+an open hall with four entrances; whereas Amboise is a sack with a
+single mouth."
+
+"I shall not leave Catherine's side," said the cardinal.
+
+"We have made a blunder," remarked the duke, who was playing with his
+dagger, tossing it into the air and catching it by the hilt. "We ought
+to have treated her as we did the Reformers,--given her complete
+freedom of action and caught her in the act."
+
+The cardinal looked at his brother for an instant and shook his head.
+
+"What does Pardaillan want?" said the duke, observing the approach of
+the young nobleman who was later to become celebrated by his encounter
+with La Renaudie, in which they both lost their lives.
+
+"Monseigneur, a man sent by the queen's furrier is at the gate, and
+says he has an ermine suit to convey to her. Am I to let him enter?"
+
+"Ah! yes,--the ermine coat she spoke of yesterday," returned the
+cardinal; "let the shop-fellow pass; she will want the garment for the
+voyage down the Loire."
+
+"How did he get here without being stopped until he reached the gate?"
+asked the duke.
+
+"I do not know," replied Pardaillan.
+
+"I'll ask to see him when he is with the queen," thought the Balafre.
+"Let him wait in the /salle des gardes/," he said aloud. "Is he young,
+Pardaillan?"
+
+"Yes, monseigneur; he says he is a son of Lecamus the furrier."
+
+"Lecamus is a good Catholic," remarked the cardinal, who, like his
+brother the duke, was endowed with Caesar's memory. "The rector of
+Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs relies upon him; he is the provost of that
+quarter."
+
+"Nevertheless," said the duke, "make the son talk with the captain of
+the Scotch guard," laying an emphasis on the verb which was readily
+understood. "Ambroise is in the chateau; he can tell us whether the
+fellow is really the son of Lecamus, for the old man did him good
+service in times past. Send for Ambroise Pare."
+
+It was at this moment that Queen Catherine went, unattended, toward
+the two brothers, who hastened to meet her with their accustomed show
+of respect, in which the Italian princess detected constant irony.
+
+"Messieurs," she said, "will you deign to inform me of what is about
+to take place? Is the widow of your former master of less importance
+in your esteem than the Sieurs Vieilleville, Birago, and Chiverni?"
+
+"Madame," replied the cardinal, in a tone of gallantry, "our duty as
+men, taking precedence of that of statecraft, forbids us to alarm the
+fair sex by false reports. But this morning there is indeed good
+reason to confer with you on the affairs of the country. You must
+excuse my brother for having already given orders to the gentlemen you
+mention,--orders which were purely military, and therefore did not
+concern you; the matters of real importance are still to be decided.
+If you are willing, we will now go the /lever/ of the king and queen;
+it is nearly time."
+
+"But what is all this, Monsieur le duc?" cried Catherine, pretending
+alarm. "Is anything the matter?"
+
+"The Reformation, madame, is no longer a mere heresy; it is a party,
+which has taken arms and is coming here to snatch the king away from
+you."
+
+Catherine, the cardinal, the duke, and the three gentlemen made their
+way to the staircase through the gallery, which was crowded with
+courtiers who, being off duty, no longer had the right of entrance to
+the royal apartments, and stood in two hedges on either side. Gondi,
+who watched them while the queen-mother talked with the Lorraine
+princes, whispered in her ear, in good Tuscan, two words which
+afterwards became proverbs,--words which are the keynote to one aspect
+of her regal character: "Odiate e aspettate"--"Hate and wait."
+
+Pardaillan, who had gone to order the officer of the guard at the gate
+of the chateau to let the clerk of the queen's furrier enter, found
+Christophe open-mouthed before the portal, staring at the facade built
+by the good king Louis XII., on which there was at that time a much
+greater number of grotesque carvings than we see there to-day,
+--grotesque, that is to say, if we may judge by those that remain to us.
+For instance, persons curious in such matters may remark the figurine
+of a woman carved on the capital of one of the portal columns, with
+her robe caught up to show to a stout monk crouching in the capital of
+the corresponding column "that which Brunelle showed to Marphise";
+while above this portal stood, at the time of which we write, the
+statue of Louis XII. Several of the window-casings of this facade,
+carved in the same style, and now, unfortunately, destroyed, amused,
+or seemed to amuse Christophe, on whom the arquebusiers of the guard
+were raining jests.
+
+"He would like to live there," said the sub-corporal, playing with the
+cartridges of his weapon, which were prepared for use in the shape of
+little sugar-loaves, and slung to the baldricks of the men.
+
+"Hey, Parisian!" said another; "you never saw the like of that, did
+you?"
+
+"He recognizes the good King Louis XII.," said a third.
+
+Christophe pretended not to hear, and tried to exaggerate his
+amazement, the result being that his silly attitude and his behavior
+before the guard proved an excellent passport to the eyes of
+Pardaillan.
+
+"The queen has not yet risen," said the young captain; "come and wait
+for her in the /salle des gardes/."
+
+Christophe followed Pardaillan rather slowly. On the way he stopped to
+admire the pretty gallery in the form of an arcade, where the
+courtiers of Louis XII. awaited the reception-hour when it rained, and
+where, at the present moment, were several seigneurs attached to the
+Guises; for the staircase (so well preserved to the present day) which
+led to their apartments is at the end of this gallery in a tower, the
+architecture of which commends itself to the admiration of intelligent
+beholders.
+
+"Well, well! did you come here to study the carving of images?" cried
+Pardaillan, as Christophe stopped before the charming sculptures of
+the balustrade which unites, or, if you prefer it, separates the
+columns of each arcade.
+
+Christophe followed the young officer to the grand staircase, not
+without a glance of ecstasy at the semi-Moorish tower. The weather was
+fine, and the court was crowded with staff-officers and seigneurs,
+talking together in little groups,--their dazzling uniforms and
+court-dresses brightening a spot which the marvels of architecture,
+then fresh and new, had already made so brilliant.
+
+"Come in here," said Pardaillan, making Lecamus a sign to follow him
+through a carved wooden door leading to the second floor, which the
+door-keeper opened on recognizing the young officer.
+
+It is easy to imagine Christophe's amazement as he entered the great
+/salle des gardes/, then so vast that military necessity has since
+divided it by a partition into two chambers. It occupied on the second
+floor (that of the king), as did the corresponding hall on the first
+floor (that of the queen-mother), one third of the whole front of the
+chateau facing the courtyard; and it was lighted by two windows to
+right and two to left of the tower in which the famous staircase winds
+up. The young captain went to the door of the royal chamber, which
+opened upon this vast hall, and told one of the two pages on duty to
+inform Madame Dayelles, the queen's bedchamber woman, that the furrier
+was in the hall with her surcoat.
+
+On a sign from Pardaillan Christophe placed himself near an officer,
+who was seated on a stool at the corner of a fireplace as large as his
+father's whole shop, which was at the end of the great hall, opposite
+to a precisely similar fireplace at the other end. While talking to
+this officer, a lieutenant, he contrived to interest him with an
+account of the stagnation of trade. Christophe seemed so thoroughly a
+shopkeeper that the officer imparted that conviction to the captain of
+the Scotch guard, who came in from the courtyard to question Lecamus,
+all the while watching him covertly and narrowly.
+
+However much Christophe Lecamus had been warned, it was impossible for
+him to really apprehend the cold ferocity of the interests between
+which Chaudieu had slipped him. To an observer of this scene, who had
+known the secrets of it as the historian understands it in the light
+of to-day, there was indeed cause to tremble for this young man,--the
+hope of two families,--thrust between those powerful and pitiless
+machines, Catherine and the Guises. But do courageous beings, as a
+rule, measure the full extent of their dangers? By the way in which
+the port of Blois, the chateau, and the town were guarded, Christophe
+was prepared to find spies and traps everywhere; and he therefore
+resolved to conceal the importance of his mission and the tension of
+his mind under the empty-headed and shopkeeping appearance with which
+he presented himself to the eyes of young Pardaillan, the officer of
+the guard, and the Scottish captain.
+
+The agitation which, in a royal castle, always attends the hour of the
+king's rising, was beginning to show itself. The great lords, whose
+horses, pages, or grooms remained in the outer courtyard,--for no one,
+except the king and the queens, had the right to enter the inner
+courtyard on horseback,--were mounting by groups the magnificent
+staircase, and filling by degrees the vast hall, the beams of which
+are now stripped of the decorations that then adorned them. Miserable
+little red tiles have replaced the ingenious mosaics of the floors;
+and the thick walls, then draped with the crown tapestries and glowing
+with all the arts of that unique period of the splendors of humanity,
+are now denuded and whitewashed! Reformers and Catholics were pressing
+in to hear the news and to watch faces, quite as much as to pay their
+duty to the king. Francois II.'s excessive love for Mary Stuart, to
+which neither the queen-mother nor the Guises made any opposition, and
+the politic compliance of Mary Stuart herself, deprived the king of
+all regal power. At seventeen years of age he knew nothing of royalty
+but its pleasures, or of marriage beyond the indulgence of first
+passion. As a matter of fact, all present paid their court to Queen
+Mary and to her uncles, the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duc de Guise,
+rather than to the king.
+
+This stir took place before Christophe, who watched the arrival of
+each new personage with natural eagerness. A magnificent portiere, on
+either side of which stood two pages and two soldiers of the Scotch
+guard, then on duty, showed him the entrance to the royal chamber,
+--the chamber so fatal to the son of the present Duc de Guise, the
+second Balafre, who fell at the foot of the bed now occupied by Mary
+Stuart and Francois II. The queen's maids of honor surrounded the
+fireplace opposite to that where Christophe was being "talked with" by
+the captain of the guard. This second fireplace was considered the
+/chimney of honor/. It was built in the thick wall of the Salle de
+Conseil, between the door of the royal chamber and that of the
+council-hall, so that the maids of honor and the lords in waiting who
+had the right to be there were on the direct passage of the king and
+queen. The courtiers were certain on this occasion of seeing
+Catherine, for her maids of honor, dressed like the rest of the court
+ladies, in black, came up the staircase from the queen-mother's
+apartment, and took their places, marshalled by the Comtesse de
+Fiesque, on the side toward the council-hall and opposite to the maids
+of honor of the young queen, led by the Duchesse de Guise, who
+occupied the other side of the fireplace on the side of the royal
+bedroom. The courtiers left an open space between the ranks of these
+young ladies (who all belonged to the first families of the kingdom),
+which none but the greatest lords had the right to enter. The Comtesse
+de Fiesque and the Duchesse de Guise were, in virtue of their office,
+seated in the midst of these noble maids, who were all standing.
+
+The first gentleman who approached the dangerous ranks was the Duc
+d'Orleans, the king's brother, who had come down from his apartment on
+the third floor, accompanied by Monsieur de Cypierre, his governor.
+This young prince, destined before the end of the year to reign under
+the title of Charles IX., was only ten years old and extremely timid.
+The Duc d'Anjou and the Duc d'Alencon, his younger brothers, also the
+Princesse Marguerite, afterwards the wife of Henri IV. (la Reine
+Margot), were too young to come to court, and were therefore kept by
+their mother in her own apartments. The Duc d'Orleans, richly dressed
+after the fashion of the times, in silken trunk-hose, a close-fitting
+jacket of cloth of gold embroidered with black flowers, and a little
+mantle of embroidered velvet, all black, for he still wore mourning
+for his father, bowed to the two ladies of honor and took his place
+beside his mother's maids. Already full of antipathy for the adherents
+of the house of Guise, he replied coldly to the remarks of the duchess
+and leaned his arm on the back of the chair of the Comtesse de
+Fiesque. His governor, Monsieur de Cypierre, one of the noblest
+characters of that day, stood beside him like a shield. Amyot
+(afterwards Bishop of Auxerre and translator of Plutarch), in the
+simple soutane of an abbe, also accompanied the young prince, being
+his tutor, as he was of the two other princes, whose affection became
+so profitable to him.
+
+Between the "chimney of honor" and the other chimney at the end of the
+hall, around which were grouped the guards, their captain, a few
+courtiers, and Christophe carrying his box of furs, the Chancellor
+Olivier, protector and predecessor of l'Hopital, in the robes which
+the chancellors of France have always worn, was walking up and down
+with the Cardinal de Tournon, who had recently returned from Rome. The
+pair were exchanging a few whispered sentences in the midst of great
+attention from the lords of the court, massed against the wall which
+separated the /salle des gardes/ from the royal bedroom, like a living
+tapestry backed by the rich tapestry of art crowded by a thousand
+personages. In spite of the present grave events, the court presented
+the appearance of all courts in all lands, at all epochs, and in the
+midst of the greatest dangers. The courtiers talked of trivial
+matters, thinking of serious ones; they jested as they studied faces,
+and apparently concerned themselves about love and the marriage of
+rich heiresses amid the bloodiest catastrophes.
+
+"What did you think of yesterday's fete?" asked Bourdeilles, seigneur
+of Brantome, approaching Mademoiselle de Piennes, one of the
+queen-mother's maids of honor.
+
+"Messieurs du Baif et du Bellay were inspired with delightful ideas,"
+she replied, indicating the organizers of the fete, who were standing
+near. "I thought it all in the worst taste," she added in a low voice.
+
+"You had no part to play in it, I think?" remarked Mademoiselle de
+Lewiston from the opposite ranks of Queen Mary's maids.
+
+"What are you reading there, madame?" asked Amyot of the Comtesse de
+Fiesque.
+
+"'Amadis de Gaule,' by the Seigneur des Essarts, commissary in
+ordinary to the king's artillery," she replied.
+
+"A charming work," remarked the beautiful girl who was afterwards so
+celebrated under the name of Fosseuse when she was lady of honor to
+Queen Marguerite of Navarre.
+
+"The style is a novelty in form," said Amyot. "Do you accept such
+barbarisms?" he added, addressing Brantome.
+
+"They please the ladies, you know," said Brantome, crossing over to
+the Duchesse de Guise, who held the "Decamerone" in her hand. "Some of
+the women of your house must appear in the book, madame," he said. "It
+is a pity that the Sieur Boccaccio did not live in our day; he would
+have known plenty of ladies to swell his volume--"
+
+"How shrewd that Monsieur de Brantome is," said the beautiful
+Mademoiselle de Limueil to the Comtesse de Fiesque; "he came to us
+first, but he means to remain in the Guise quarters."
+
+"Hush!" said Madame de Fiesque glancing at the beautiful Limueil.
+"Attend to what concerns yourself."
+
+The young girl turned her eyes to the door. She was expecting Sardini,
+a noble Italian, with whom the queen-mother, her relative, married her
+after an "accident" which happened in the dressing-room of Catherine
+de' Medici herself; but which the young lady won the honor of having a
+queen as midwife.
+
+"By the holy Alipantin! Mademoiselle Davila seems to me prettier and
+prettier every morning," said Monsieur de Robertet, secretary of
+State, bowing to the ladies of the queen-mother.
+
+The arrival of the secretary of State made no commotion whatever,
+though his office was precisely what that of a minister is in these
+days.
+
+"If you really think so, monsieur," said the beauty, "lend me the
+squib which was written against the Messieurs de Guise; I know it was
+lent to you."
+
+"It is no longer in my possession," replied the secretary, turning
+round to bow to the Duchesse de Guise.
+
+"I have it," said the Comte de Grammont to Mademoiselle Davila, "but I
+will give it you on one condition only."
+
+"Condition! fie!" exclaimed Madame de Fiesque.
+
+"You don't know what it is," replied Grammont.
+
+"Oh! it is easy to guess," remarked la Limueil.
+
+The Italian custom of calling ladies, as peasants call their wives,
+"/la/ Such-a-one" was then the fashion at the court of France.
+
+"You are mistaken," said the count, hastily, "the matter is simply to
+give a letter from my cousin de Jarnac to one of the maids on the
+other side, Mademoiselle de Matha."
+
+"You must not compromise my young ladies," said the Comtesse de
+Fiesque. "I will deliver the letter myself.--Do you know what is
+happening in Flanders?" she continued, turning to the Cardinal de
+Tournon. "It seems that Monsieur d'Egmont is given to surprises."
+
+"He and the Prince of Orange," remarked Cypierre, with a significant
+shrug of his shoulders.
+
+"The Duke of Alba and Cardinal Granvelle are going there, are they
+not, monsieur?" said Amyot to the Cardinal de Tournon, who remained
+standing, gloomy and anxious between the opposing groups after his
+conversation with the chancellor.
+
+"Happily we are at peace; we need only conquer heresy on the stage,"
+remarked the young Duc d'Orleans, alluding to a part he had played the
+night before,--that of a knight subduing a hydra which bore upon its
+foreheads the word "Reformation."
+
+Catherine de' Medici, agreeing in this with her daughter-in-law, had
+allowed a theatre to be made of the great hall (afterwards arranged
+for the Parliament of Blois), which, as we have already said,
+connected the chateau of Francois I. with that of Louis XII.
+
+The cardinal made no answer to Amyot's question, but resumed his walk
+through the centre of the hall, talking in low tones with Monsieur de
+Robertet and the chancellor. Many persons are ignorant of the
+difficulties which secretaries of State (subsequently called
+ministers) met with at the first establishment of their office, and
+how much trouble the kings of France had in creating it. At this epoch
+a secretary of State like Robertet was purely and simply a writer; he
+counted for almost nothing among the princes and grandees who decided
+the affairs of State. His functions were little more than those of the
+superintendent of finances, the chancellor, and the keeper of the
+seals. The kings granted seats at the council by letters-patent to
+those of their subjects whose advice seemed to them useful in the
+management of public affairs. Entrance to the council was given in
+this way to a president of the Chamber of Parliament, to a bishop, or
+to an untitled favorite. Once admitted to the council, the subject
+strengthened his position there by obtaining various crown offices on
+which devolved such prerogatives as the sword of a Constable, the
+government of provinces, the grand-mastership of artillery, the baton
+of a marshal, a leading rank in the army, or the admiralty, or a
+captaincy of the galleys, often some office at court, like that of
+grand-master of the household, now held, as we have already said, by
+the Duc de Guise.
+
+"Do you think that the Duc de Nemours will marry Francoise?" said
+Madame de Guise to the tutor of the Duc d'Orleans.
+
+"Ah, madame," he replied, "I know nothing but Latin."
+
+This answer made all who were within hearing of it smile. The
+seduction of Francoise de Rohan by the Duc de Nemours was the topic of
+all conversations; but, as the duke was cousin to Francois II., and
+doubly allied to the house of Valois through his mother, the Guises
+regarded him more as the seduced than the seducer. Nevertheless, the
+power of the house of Rohan was such that the Duc de Nemours was
+obliged, after the death of Francois II., to leave France on
+consequence of suits brought against him by the Rohans; which suits
+the Guises settled. The duke's marriage with the Duchesse de Guise
+after Poltrot's assassination of her husband in 1563, may explain the
+question which she put to Amyot, by revealing the rivalry which must
+have existed between Mademoiselle de Rohan and the duchess.
+
+"Do see that group of the discontented over there?" said the Comte de
+Grammont, motioning toward the Messieurs de Coligny, the Cardinal de
+Chatillon, Danville, Thore, Moret, and several other seigneurs
+suspected of tampering with the Reformation, who were standing between
+two windows on the other side of the fireplace.
+
+"The Huguenots are bestirring themselves," said Cypierre. "We know
+that Theodore de Beze has gone to Nerac to induce the Queen of Navarre
+to declare for the Reformers--by abjuring publicly," he added, looking
+at the /bailli/ of Orleans, who held the office of chancellor to the
+Queen of Navarre, and was watching the court attentively.
+
+"She will do it!" said the /bailli/, dryly.
+
+This personage, the Orleans Jacques Coeur, one of the richest burghers
+of the day, was named Groslot, and had charge of Jeanne d'Albret's
+business with the court of France.
+
+"Do you really think so?" said the chancellor of France, appreciating
+the full importance of Groslot's declaration.
+
+"Are you not aware," said the burgher, "that the Queen of Navarre has
+nothing of the woman in her except sex? She is wholly for things
+virile; her powerful mind turns to the great affairs of State; her
+heart is invincible under adversity."
+
+"Monsieur le cardinal," whispered the Chancellor Olivier to Monsieur
+de Tournon, who had overheard Groslot, "what do you think of that
+audacity?"
+
+"The Queen of Navarre did well in choosing for her chancellor a man
+from whom the house of Lorraine borrows money, and who offers his
+house to the king, if his Majesty visits Orleans," replied the
+cardinal.
+
+The chancellor and the cardinal looked at each other, without
+venturing to further communicate their thoughts; but Robertet
+expressed them, for he thought it necessary to show more devotion to
+the Guises than these great personages, inasmuch as he was smaller
+than they.
+
+"It is a great misfortune that the house of Navarre, instead of
+abjuring the religion of its fathers, does not abjure the spirit of
+vengeance and rebellion which the Connetable de Bourbon breathed into
+it," he said aloud. "We shall see the quarrels of the Armagnacs and
+the Bourguignons revive in our day."
+
+"No," said Groslot, "there's another Louis XI. in the Cardinal de
+Lorraine."
+
+"And also in Queen Catherine," replied Robertet.
+
+At this moment Madame Dayelle, the favorite bedchamber woman of Queen
+Mary Stuart, crossed the hall, and went toward the royal chamber. Her
+passage caused a general commotion.
+
+"We shall soon enter," said Madame de Fisque.
+
+"I don't think so," replied the Duchesse de Guise. "Their Majesties
+will come out; a grand council is to be held."
+
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+                   THE LITTLE LEVER OF FRANCOIS II.
+
+Madame Dayelle glided into the royal chamber after scratching on the
+door,--a respectful custom, invented by Catherine de' Medici and
+adopted by the court of France.
+
+"How is the weather, my dear Dayelle?" said Queen Mary, showing her
+fresh young face out of the bed, and shaking the curtains.
+
+"Ah! madame--"
+
+"What's the matter, my Dayelle? You look as if the archers of the
+guard were after you."
+
+"Oh! madame, is the king still asleep?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We are to leave the chateau; Monsieur le cardinal requests me to tell
+you so, and to ask you to make the king agree to it.
+
+"Do you know why, my good Dayelle?"
+
+"The Reformers want to seize you and carry you off."
+
+"Ah! that new religion does not leave me a minute's peace! I dreamed
+last night that I was in prison,--I, who will some day unite the
+crowns of the three noblest kingdoms in the world!"
+
+"Therefore it could only be a dream, madame."
+
+"Carry me off! well, 'twould be rather pleasant; but on account of
+religion, and by heretics--oh, that would be horrid."
+
+The queen sprang from the bed and placed herself in a large arm-chair
+of red velvet before the fireplace, after Dayelle had given her a
+dressing-gown of black velvet, which she fastened loosely round her
+waist by a silken cord. Dayelle lit the fire, for the mornings are
+cool on the banks of the Loire in the month of May.
+
+"My uncles must have received some news during the night?" said the
+queen, inquiringly to Dayelle, whom she treated with great
+familiarity.
+
+"Messieurs de Guise have been walking together from early morning on
+the terrace, so as not to be overheard by any one; and there they
+received messengers, who came in hot haste from all the different
+points of the kingdom where the Reformers are stirring. Madame la
+reine mere was there too, with her Italians, hoping she would be
+consulted; but no, she was not admitted to the council."
+
+"She must have been furious."
+
+"All the more because she was so angry yesterday," replied Dayelle.
+"They say that when she saw your Majesty appear in that beautiful
+dress of woven gold, with the charming veil of tan-colored crape, she
+was none too pleased--"
+
+"Leave us, my good Dayelle, the king is waking up. Let no one, even
+those who have the little /entrees/, disturb us; an affair of State is
+in hand, and my uncles will not disturb us."
+
+"Why! my dear Mary, already out of bed? Is it daylight?" said the
+young king, waking up.
+
+"My dear darling, while we were asleep the wicked waked, and now they
+are forcing us to leave this delightful place."
+
+"What makes you think of wicked people, my treasure? I am sure we
+enjoyed the prettiest fete in the world last night--if it were not for
+the Latin words those gentlemen will put into our French."
+
+"Ah!" said Mary, "your language is really in very good taste, and
+Rabelais exhibits it finely."
+
+"You are such a learned woman! I am so vexed that I can't sing your
+praises in verse. If I were not the king, I would take my brother's
+tutor, Amyot, and let him make me as accomplished as Charles."
+
+"You need not envy your brother, who writes verses and shows them to
+me, asking for mine in return. You are the best of the four, and will
+make as good a king as you are the dearest of lovers. Perhaps that is
+why your mother does not like you! But never mind! I, dear heart, will
+love you for all the world."
+
+"I have no great merit in loving such a perfect queen," said the
+little king. "I don't know what prevented me from kissing you before
+the whole court when you danced the /branle/ with the torches last
+night! I saw plainly that all the other women were mere servants
+compared to you, my beautiful Mary."
+
+"It may be only prose you speak, but it is ravishing speech, dear
+darling, for it is love that says those words. And you--you know well,
+my beloved, that were you only a poor little page, I should love you
+as much as I do now. And yet, there is nothing so sweet as to whisper
+to one's self: 'My lover is king!'"
+
+"Oh! the pretty arm! Why must we dress ourselves? I love to pass my
+fingers through your silky hair and tangle its blond curls. Ah ca!
+sweet one, don't let your women kiss that pretty throat and those
+white shoulders any more; don't allow it, I say. It is too much that
+the fogs of Scotland ever touched them!"
+
+"Won't you come with me to see my dear country? The Scotch love you;
+there are no rebellions /there/!"
+
+"Who rebels in this our kingdom?" said Francois, crossing his
+dressing-gown and taking Mary Stuart on his knee.
+
+"Oh! 'tis all very charming, I know that," she said, withdrawing her
+cheek from the king; "but it is your business to reign, if you please,
+my sweet sire."
+
+"Why talk of reigning? This morning I wish--"
+
+"Why say /wish/ when you have only to will all? That's not the speech
+of a king, nor that of a lover.--But no more of love just now; let us
+drop it! We have business more important to speak of."
+
+"Oh!" cried the king, "it is long since we have had any business. Is
+it amusing?"
+
+"No," said Mary, "not at all; we are to move from Blois."
+
+"I'll wager, darling, you have seen your uncles, who manage so well
+that I, at seventeen years of age, am no better than a /roi faineant/.
+In fact, I don't know why I have attended any of the councils since
+the first. They could manage matters just as well by putting the crown
+in my chair; I see only through their eyes, and am forced to consent
+to things blindly."
+
+"Oh! monsieur," said the queen, rising from the king's knee with a
+little air of indignation, "you said you would never worry me again on
+this subject, and that my uncles used the royal power only for the
+good of your people. Your people!--they are so nice! They would gobble
+you up like a strawberry if you tried to rule them yourself. You want
+a warrior, a rough master with mailed hands; whereas you--you are a
+darling whom I love as you are; whom I should never love otherwise,
+--do you hear me, monsieur?" she added, kissing the forehead of the
+lad, who seemed inclined to rebel at her speech, but softened at her
+kisses.
+
+"Oh! how I wish they were not your uncles!" cried Francois II. "I
+particularly dislike the cardinal; and when he puts on his wheedling
+air and his submissive manner and says to me, bowing: 'Sire, the honor
+of the crown and the faith of your fathers forbid your Majesty to
+--this and that,' I am sure he is working only for his cursed house
+of Lorraine."
+
+"Oh, how well you mimicked him!" cried the queen. "But why don't you
+make the Guises inform you of what is going on, so that when you
+attain your grand majority you may know how to reign yourself? I am
+your wife, and your honor is mine. Trust me! we will reign together,
+my darling; but it won't be a bed of roses for us until the day comes
+when we have our own wills. There is nothing so difficult for a king
+as to reign. Am I a queen, for example? Don't you know that your
+mother returns me evil for all the good my uncles do to raise the
+splendor of your throne? Hey! what difference between them! My uncles
+are great princes, nephews of Charlemagne, filled with ardor and ready
+to die for you; whereas this daughter of a doctor or a shopkeeper,
+queen of France by accident, scolds like a burgher-woman who can't
+manage her own household. She is discontented because she can't set
+every one by the ears; and then she looks at me with a sour, pale
+face, and says from her pinched lips: 'My daughter, you are a queen; I
+am only the second woman in the kingdom' (she is really furious, you
+know, my darling), 'but if I were in your place I should not wear
+crimson velvet while all the court is in mourning; neither should I
+appear in public with my own hair and no jewels, because what is not
+becoming in a simple lady is still less becoming in a queen. Also I
+should not dance myself, I should content myself with seeing others
+dance.'--that is what she says to me--"
+
+"Heavens!" cried the king, "I think I hear her coming. If she were to
+know--"
+
+"Oh, how you tremble before her. She worries you. Only say so, and we
+will send her away. Faith, she's Florentine and we can't help her
+tricking you, but when it comes to worrying--"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Mary, hold your tongue!" said Francois, frightened
+and also pleased; "I don't want you to lose her good-will."
+
+"Don't be afraid that she will ever break with /me/, who will some day
+wear the three noblest crowns in the world, my dearest little king,"
+cried Mary Stuart. "Though she hates me for a thousand reasons she is
+always caressing me in the hope of turning me against my uncles."
+
+"Hates you!"
+
+"Yes, my angel; and if I had not proofs of that feeling such as women
+only understand, for they alone know its malignity, I would forgive
+her perpetual opposition to our dear love, my darling. Is it my fault
+that your father could not endure Mademoiselle Medici or that his son
+loves me? The truth is, she hates me so much that if you had not put
+yourself into a rage, we should each have had our separate chamber at
+Saint-Germain, and also here. She pretended it was the custom of the
+kings and queens of France. Custom, indeed! it was your father's
+custom, and that is easily understood. As for your grandfather,
+Francois, the good man set up the custom for the convenience of his
+loves. Therefore, I say, take care. And if we have to leave this
+place, be sure that we are not separated."
+
+"Leave Blois! Mary, what do you mean? I don't wish to leave this
+beautiful chateau, where we can see the Loire and the country all
+round us, with a town at our feet and all these pretty gardens. If I
+go away it will be to Italy with you, to see St. Peter's, and
+Raffaelle's pictures."
+
+"And the orange-trees? Oh! my darling king, if you knew the longing
+your Mary has to ramble among the orange-groves in fruit and flower!"
+
+"Let us go, then!" cried the king.
+
+"Go!" exclaimed the grand-master as he entered the room. "Yes, sire,
+you must leave Blois. Pardon my boldness in entering your chamber; but
+circumstances are stronger than etiquette, and I come to entreat you
+to hold a council."
+
+Finding themselves thus surprised, Mary and Francois hastily
+separated, and on their faces was the same expression of offended
+royal majesty.
+
+"You are too much of a grand-master, Monsieur de Guise," said the
+king, though controlling his anger.
+
+"The devil take lovers," murmured the cardinal in Catherine's ear.
+
+"My son," said the queen-mother, appearing behind the cardinal; "it is
+a matter concerning your safety and that of your kingdom."
+
+"Heresy wakes while you have slept, sire," said the cardinal.
+
+"Withdraw into the hall," cried the little king, "and then we will
+hold a council."
+
+"Madame," said the grand-master to the young queen; "the son of your
+furrier has brought some furs, which was just in time for the journey,
+for it is probable we shall sail down the Loire. But," he added,
+turning to the queen-mother, "he also wishes to speak to you, madame.
+While the king dresses, you and Madame la reine had better see and
+dismiss him, so that we may not be delayed and harassed by this
+trifle."
+
+"Certainly," said Catherine, thinking to herself, "If he expects to
+get rid of me by any such trick he little knows me."
+
+The cardinal and the duke withdrew, leaving the two queens and the
+king alone together. As they crossed the /salle des gardes/ to enter
+the council-chamber, the grand-master told the usher to bring the
+queen's furrier to him. When Christophe saw the usher approaching from
+the farther end of the great hall, he took him, on account of his
+uniform, for some great personage, and his heart sank within him. But
+that sensation, natural as it was at the approach of the critical
+moment, grew terrible when the usher, whose movement had attracted the
+eyes of all that brilliant assembly upon Christophe, his homely face
+and his bundles, said to him:--
+
+"Messeigneurs the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Grand-master wish to
+speak to you in the council chamber."
+
+"Can I have been betrayed?" thought the helpless ambassador of the
+Reformers.
+
+Christophe followed the usher with lowered eyes, which he did not
+raise till he stood in the great council-chamber, the size of which is
+almost equal to that of the /salle des gardes/. The two Lorrain
+princes were there alone, standing before the magnificent fireplace,
+which backs against that in the /salle des gardes/ around which the
+ladies of the two queens were grouped.
+
+"You have come from Paris; which route did you take?" said the
+cardinal.
+
+"I came by water, monseigneur," replied the reformer.
+
+"How did you enter Blois?" asked the grand-master.
+
+"By the docks, monseigneur."
+
+"Did no one question you?" exclaimed the duke, who was watching the
+young man closely.
+
+"No, monseigneur. To the first soldier who looked as if he meant to
+stop me I said I came on duty to the two queens, to whom my father was
+furrier."
+
+"What is happening in Paris?" asked the cardinal.
+
+"They are still looking for the murderer of the President Minard."
+
+"Are you not the son of my surgeon's greatest friend?" said the Duc de
+Guise, misled by the candor of Christophe's expression after his first
+alarm had passed away.
+
+"Yes, monseigneur."
+
+The Grand-master turned aside, abruptly raised the portiere which
+concealed the double door of the council-chamber, and showed his face
+to the whole assembly, among whom he was searching for the king's
+surgeon. Ambroise Pare, standing in a corner, caught a glance which
+the duke cast upon him, and immediately advanced. Ambroise, who at
+this time was inclined to the reformed religion, eventually adopted
+it; but the friendship of the Guises and that of the kings of France
+guaranteed him against the evils which overtook his co-religionists.
+The duke, who considered himself under obligations for life to
+Ambroise Pare, had lately caused him to be appointed chief-surgeon to
+the king.
+
+"What is it, monseigneur?" said Ambroise. "Is the king ill? I think it
+likely."
+
+"Likely? Why?"
+
+"The queen is too pretty," replied the surgeon.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed the duke in astonishment. "However, that is not the
+matter now," he added after a pause. "Ambroise, I want you to see
+a friend of yours." So saying he drew him to the door of the
+council-room, and showed him Christophe.
+
+"Ha! true, monseigneur," cried the surgeon, extending his hand to the
+young furrier. "How is your father, my lad?"
+
+"Very well, Maitre Ambroise," replied Christophe.
+
+"What are you doing at court?" asked the surgeon. "It is not your
+business to carry parcels; your father intends you for the law. Do you
+want the protection of these two great princes to make you a
+solicitor?"
+
+"Indeed I do!" said Christophe; "but I am here only in the interests
+of my father; and if you could intercede for us, please do so," he
+added in a piteous tone; "and ask the Grand Master for an order to pay
+certain sums that are due to my father, for he is at his wit's end
+just now for money."
+
+The cardinal and the duke glanced at each other and seemed satisfied.
+
+"Now leave us," said the duke to the surgeon, making him a sign. "And
+you my friend," turning to Christophe; "do your errand quickly and
+return to Paris. My secretary will give you a pass, for it is not
+safe, /mordieu/, to be travelling on the high-roads!"
+
+Neither of the brothers formed the slightest suspicion of the grave
+importance of Christophe's errand, convinced, as they now were, that
+he was really the son of the good Catholic Lecamus, the court furrier,
+sent to collect payment for their wares.
+
+"Take him close to the door of the queen's chamber; she will probably
+ask for him soon," said the cardinal to the surgeon, motioning to
+Christophe.
+
+While the son of the furrier was undergoing this brief examination in
+the council-chamber, the king, leaving the queen in company with her
+mother-in-law, had passed into his dressing-room, which was entered
+through another small room next to the chamber.
+
+Standing in the wide recess of an immense window, Catherine looked at
+the gardens, her mind a prey to painful thoughts. She saw that in all
+probability one of the greatest captains of the age would be foisted
+that very day into the place and power of her son, the king of France,
+under the formidable title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom.
+Before this peril she stood alone, without power of action, without
+defence. She might have been likened to a phantom, as she stood there
+in her mourning garments (which she had not quitted since the death of
+Henri II.) so motionless was her pallid face in the grasp of her
+bitter reflections. Her black eyes floated in that species of
+indecision for which great statesmen are so often blamed, though it
+comes from the vast extent of the glance with which they embrace all
+difficulties,--setting one against the other, and adding up, as it
+were, all chances before deciding on a course. Her ears rang, her
+blood tingled, and yet she stood there calm and dignified, all the
+while measuring in her soul the depths of the political abyss which
+lay before her, like the natural depths which rolled away at her feet.
+This day was the second of those terrible days (that of the arrest of
+the Vidame of Chartres being the first) which she was destined to meet
+in so great numbers throughout her regal life; it also witnessed her
+last blunder in the school of power. Though the sceptre seemed
+escaping from her hands, she wished to seize it; and she did seize it
+by a flash of that power of will which was never relaxed by either the
+disdain of her father-in-law, Francois I., and his court,--where, in
+spite of her rank of dauphiness, she had been of no account,--or the
+constant repulses of her husband, Henri II., and the terrible
+opposition of her rival, Diane de Poitiers. A man would never have
+fathomed this thwarted queen; but the fair-haired Mary--so subtle, so
+clever, so girlish, and already so well-trained--examined her out of
+the corners of her eyes as she hummed an Italian air and assumed a
+careless countenance. Without being able to guess the storms of
+repressed ambition which sent the dew of a cold sweat to the forehead
+of the Florentine, the pretty Scotch girl, with her wilful, piquant
+face, knew very well that the advancement of her uncle the Duc de
+Guise to the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom was filling the
+queen-mother with inward rage. Nothing amused her more than to watch
+her mother-in-law, in whom she saw only an intriguing woman of low
+birth, always ready to avenge herself. The face of the one was grave
+and gloomy, and somewhat terrible, by reason of the livid tones which
+transform the skin of Italian women to yellow ivory by daylight,
+though it recovers its dazzling brilliancy under candlelight; the face
+of the other was fair and fresh and gay. At sixteen, Mary Stuart's
+skin had that exquisite blond whiteness which made her beauty so
+celebrated. Her fresh and piquant face, with its pure lines, shone
+with the roguish mischief of childhood, expressed in the regular
+eyebrows, the vivacious eyes, and the archness of the pretty mouth.
+Already she displayed those feline graces which nothing, not even
+captivity nor the sight of her dreadful scaffold, could lessen. The
+two queens--one at the dawn, the other in the midsummer of life
+--presented at this moment the utmost contrast. Catherine was an
+imposing queen, an impenetrable widow, without other passion than that
+of power. Mary was a light-hearted, careless bride, making playthings
+of her triple crowns. One foreboded great evils,--foreseeing the
+assassination of the Guises as the only means of suppressing enemies
+who were resolved to rise above the Throne and the Parliament;
+foreseeing also the bloodshed of a long and bitter struggle; while
+the other little anticipated her own judicial murder. A sudden and
+strange reflection calmed the mind of the Italian.
+
+"That sorceress and Ruggiero both declare this reign is coming to an
+end; my difficulties will not last long," she thought.
+
+And so, strangely enough, an occult science forgotten in our day--that
+of astrology--supported Catherine at this moment, as it did, in fact,
+throughout her life; for, as she witnessed the minute fulfilment of
+the prophecies of those who practised the art, her belief in it
+steadily increased.
+
+"You are very gloomy, madame," said Mary Stuart, taking from the hands
+of her waiting-woman, Dayelle, a little cap and placing the point of
+it on the parting of her hair, while two wings of rich lace surrounded
+the tufts of blond curls which clustered on her temples.
+
+The pencil of many painters have so frequently represented this
+head-dress that it is thought to have belonged exclusively to Mary Queen
+of Scots; whereas it was really invented by Catherine de' Medici, when
+she put on mourning for Henri II. But she never knew how to wear it
+with the grace of her daughter-in-law, to whom it was becoming. This
+annoyance was not the least among the many which the queen-mother
+cherished against the young queen.
+
+"Is the queen reproving me?" said Catherine, turning to Mary.
+
+"I owe you all respect, and should not dare to do so," said the
+Scottish queen, maliciously, glancing at Dayelle.
+
+Placed between the rival queens, the favorite waiting-woman stood
+rigid as an andiron; a smile of comprehension might have cost her her
+life.
+
+"Can I be as gay as you, after losing the late king, and now beholding
+my son's kingdom about to burst into flames?"
+
+"Public affairs do not concern women," said Mary Stuart. "Besides, my
+uncles are there."
+
+These words were, under the circumstances, like so many poisoned
+arrows.
+
+"Let us look at our furs, madame," replied the Italian, sarcastically;
+"that will employ us on our legitimate female affairs while your
+uncles decide those of the kingdom."
+
+"Oh! but we will go the Council, madame; we shall be more useful than
+you think."
+
+"We!" said Catherine, with an air of astonishment. "But I do not
+understand Latin, myself."
+
+"You think me very learned," cried Mary Stuart, laughing, "but I
+assure you, madame, I study only to reach the level of the Medici, and
+learn how to /cure/ the wounds of the kingdom."
+
+Catherine was silenced by this sharp thrust, which referred to the
+origin of the Medici, who were descended, some said, from a doctor of
+medicine, others from a rich druggist. She made no direct answer.
+Dayelle colored as her mistress looked at her, asking for the applause
+that even queens demand from their inferiors if there are no other
+spectators.
+
+"Your charming speeches, madame, will unfortunately cure the wounds of
+neither Church nor State," said Catherine at last, with her calm and
+cold dignity. "The science of my fathers in that direction gave them
+thrones; whereas if you continue to trifle in the midst of danger you
+are liable to lose yours."
+
+It was at this moment that Ambroise Pare, the chief surgeon, scratched
+softly on the door, and Madame Dayelle, opening it, admitted
+Christophe.
+
+
+
+                                 VII
+
+                        A DRAMA IN A SURCOAT
+
+The young reformer intended to study Catherine's face, all the while
+affecting a natural embarrassment at finding himself in such a place;
+but his proceedings were much hastened by the eagerness with which the
+younger queen darted to the cartons to see her surcoat.
+
+"Madame," said Christophe, addressing Catherine.
+
+He turned his back on the other queen and on Dayelle, instantly
+profiting by the attention the two women were eager to bestow upon the
+furs to play a bold stroke.
+
+"What do you want of me?" said Catherine giving him a searching look.
+
+Christophe had put the treaty proposed by the Prince de Conde, the
+plan of the Reformers, and the detail of their forces in his bosom
+between his shirt and his cloth jacket, folding them, however, within
+the bill which Catherine owed to the furrier.
+
+"Madame," he said, "my father is in horrible need of money, and if you
+will deign to cast your eyes over your bill," here he unfolded the
+paper and put the treaty on the top of it, "you will see that your
+Majesty owes him six thousand crowns. Have the goodness to take pity
+on us. See, madame!" and he held the treaty out to her. "Read it; the
+account dates from the time the late king came to the throne."
+
+Catherine was bewildered by the preamble of the treaty which met her
+eye, but she did not lose her head. She folded the paper quickly,
+admiring the audacity and presence of mind of the youth, and feeling
+sure that after performing such a masterly stroke he would not fail to
+understand her. She therefore tapped him on the head with the folded
+paper, saying:--
+
+"It is very clumsy of you, my little friend, to present your bill
+before the furs. Learn to know women. You must never ask us to pay
+until the moment when we are satisfied."
+
+"Is that traditional?" said the young queen, turning to her
+mother-in-law, who made no reply.
+
+"Ah, mesdames, pray excuse my father," said Christophe. "If he had not
+had such need of money you would not have had your furs at all. The
+country is in arms, and there are so many dangers to run in getting
+here that nothing but our great distress would have brought me. No one
+but me was willing to risk them."
+
+"The lad is new to his business," said Mary Stuart, smiling.
+
+It may not be useless, for the understanding of this trifling, but
+very important scene, to remark that a surcoat was, as the name
+implies (/sur cotte/), a species of close-fitting spencer which women
+wore over their bodies and down to their thighs, defining the figure.
+This garment protected the back, chest, and throat from cold. These
+surcoats were lined with fur, a band of which, wide or narrow as the
+case might be, bordered the outer material. Mary Stuart, as she tried
+the garment on, looked at herself in a large Venetian mirror to see
+the effect behind, thus leaving her mother-in-law an opportunity to
+examine the papers, the bulk of which might have excited the young
+queen's suspicions had she noticed it.
+
+"Never tell women of the dangers you have run when you have come out
+of them safe and sound," she said, turning to show herself to
+Christophe.
+
+"Ah! madame, I have your bill, too," he said, looking at her with
+well-played simplicity.
+
+The young queen eyed him, but did not take the paper; and she noticed,
+though without at the moment drawing any conclusions, that he had
+taken her bill from his pocket, whereas he had carried Queen
+Catherine's in his bosom. Neither did she find in the lad's eyes that
+glance of admiration which her presence invariably excited in all
+beholders. But she was so engrossed by her surcoat that, for the
+moment, she did not ask herself the meaning of such indifference.
+
+"Take the bill, Dayelle," she said to her waiting-woman; "give it to
+Monsieur de Versailles (Lomenie) and tell him from me to pay it."
+
+"Oh! madame," said Christophe, "if you do not ask the king or
+monseigneur the grand-master to sign me an order your gracious word
+will have no effect."
+
+"You are rather more eager than becomes a subject, my friend," said
+Mary Stuart. "Do you not believe my royal word?"
+
+The king now appeared, in silk stockings and trunk-hose (the breeches
+of that period), but without his doublet and mantle; he had, however,
+a rich loose coat of velvet edged with minever.
+
+"Who is the wretch who dares to doubt your word?" he said,
+overhearing, in spite of his distance, his wife's last words.
+
+The door of the dressing-room was hidden by the royal bed. This room
+was afterwards called "the old cabinet," to distinguish it from the
+fine cabinet of pictures which Henri III. constructed at the
+farther end of the same suite of rooms, next to the hall of the
+States-general. It was in the old cabinet that Henri III. hid the
+murderers when he sent for the Duc de Guise, while he himself remained
+hidden in the new cabinet during the murder, only emerging in time to
+see the overbearing subject for whom there were no longer prisons,
+tribunals, judges, nor even laws, draw his last breath. Were it not for
+these terrible circumstances the historian of to-day could hardly trace
+the former occupation of these cabinets, now filled with soldiers. A
+quartermaster writes to his mistress on the very spot where the
+pensive Catherine once decided on her course between the parties.
+
+"Come with me, my friend," said the queen-mother, "and I will see that
+you are paid. Commerce must live, and money is its backbone."
+
+"Go, my lad," cried the young queen, laughing; "my august mother knows
+more than I do about commerce."
+
+Catherine was about to leave the room without replying to this last
+taunt; but she remembered that her indifference to it might provoke
+suspicion, and she answered hastily:--
+
+"But you, my dear, understand the business of love."
+
+Then she descended to her own apartments.
+
+"Put away these furs, Dayelle, and let us go to the Council,
+monsieur," said Mary to the young king, enchanted with the opportunity
+of deciding in the absence of the queen-mother so important a question
+as the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom.
+
+Mary Stuart took the king's arm. Dayelle went out before them,
+whispering to the pages; one of whom (it was young Teligny, who
+afterwards perished so miserably during the Saint-Bartholomew) cried
+out:--
+
+"The king!"
+
+Hearing the words, the two soldiers of the guard presented arms, and
+the two pages went forward to the door of the Council-room through the
+lane of courtiers and that of the maids of honor of the two queens.
+All the members of the Council then grouped themselves about the door
+of their chamber, which was not very far from the door to the
+staircase. The grand-master, the cardinal, and the chancellor advanced
+to meet the young sovereign, who smiled to several of the maids of
+honor and replied to the remarks of a few courtiers more privileged
+than the rest. But the queen, evidently impatient, drew Francois II.
+as quickly as possible toward the Council-chamber. When the sound of
+arquebuses, dropping heavily on the floor, had announced the entrance
+of the couple, the pages replaced their caps upon their heads, and the
+private talk among the courtiers on the gravity of the matters now
+about to be discussed began again.
+
+"They sent Chiverni to fetch the Connetable, but he has not come,"
+said one.
+
+"There is not a single prince of the blood present," said another.
+
+"The chancellor and Monsieur de Tournon looked anxious," remarked a
+third.
+
+"The grand-master sent word to the keeper of the seals to be sure not
+to miss this Council; therefore you may be certain they will issue
+letters-patent."
+
+"Why does the queen-mother stay in her own apartments at such a time?"
+
+"They'll cut out plenty of work for us," remarked Groslot to Cardinal
+de Chatillon.
+
+In short, everybody had a word to say. Some went and came, in and out
+of the great hall; others hovered about the maids of honor of both
+queens, as if it might be possible to catch a few words through a wall
+three feet thick or through the double doors draped on each side with
+heavy curtains.
+
+Seated at the upper end of a long table covered with blue velvet,
+which stood in the middle of the room, the king, near to whom the
+young queen was seated in an arm-chair, waited for his mother.
+Robertet, the secretary, was mending pens. The two cardinals, the
+grand-master, the chancellor, the keeper of the seals, and all the
+rest of the council looked at the little king, wondering why he did
+not give them the usual order to sit down.
+
+The two Lorrain princes attributed the queen-mother's absence to some
+trick of their niece. Incited presently by a significant glance, the
+audacious cardinal said to his Majesty:--
+
+"Is it the king's good pleasure to begin the council without waiting
+for Madame la reine-mere?"
+
+Francois II., without daring to answer directly, said: "Messieurs, be
+seated."
+
+The cardinal then explained succinctly the dangers of the situation.
+This great political character, who showed extraordinary ability under
+these pressing circumstances, led up to the question of the
+lieutenancy of the kingdom in the midst of the deepest silence. The
+young king doubtless felt the tyranny that was being exercised over
+him; he knew that his mother had a deep sense of the rights of the
+Crown and was fully aware of the danger that threatened his power; he
+therefore replied to a positive question addressed to him by the
+cardinal by saying:--
+
+"We will wait for the queen, my mother."
+
+Suddenly enlightened by the queen-mother's delay, Mary Stuart
+recalled, in a flash of thought, three circumstances which now
+struck her vividly; first, the bulk of the papers presented to her
+mother-in-law, which she had noticed, absorbed as she was,--for a woman
+who seems to see nothing is often a lynx; next, the place where
+Christophe had carried them to keep them separate from hers: "Why so?"
+she thought to herself; and thirdly, she remembered the cold,
+indifferent glance of the young man, which she suddenly attributed to
+the hatred of the Reformers to a niece of the Guises. A voice cried to
+her, "He may have been an emissary of the Huguenots!" Obeying, like all
+excitable natures, her first impulse, she exclaimed:--
+
+"I will go and fetch my mother myself!"
+
+Then she left the room hurriedly, ran down the staircase, to the
+amazement of the courtiers and the ladies of honor, entered her
+mother-in-law's apartments, crossed the guard-room, opened the door of
+the chamber with the caution of a thief, glided like a shadow over the
+carpet, saw no one, and bethought her that she should surely surprise
+the queen-mother in that magnificent dressing-room which comes between
+the bedroom and the oratory. The arrangement of this oratory, to which
+the manners of that period gave a role in private life like that of
+the boudoirs of our day, can still be traced.
+
+By an almost inexplicable chance, when we consider the state of
+dilapidation into which the Crown has allowed the chateau of Blois to
+fall, the admirable woodwork of Catherine's cabinet still exists; and
+in those delicately carved panels, persons interested in such things
+may still see traces of Italian splendor, and discover the secret
+hiding-places employed by the queen-mother. An exact description of
+these curious arrangements is necessary in order to give a clear
+understanding of what was now to happen. The woodwork of the oratory
+then consisted of about a hundred and eighty oblong panels, one
+hundred of which still exist, all presenting arabesques of different
+designs, evidently suggested by the most beautiful arabesques of
+Italy. The wood is live-oak. The red tones, seen through the layer of
+whitewash put on to avert cholera (useless precaution!), shows very
+plainly that the ground of the panels was formerly gilt. Certain
+portions of the design, visible where the wash has fallen away, seem
+to show that they once detached themselves from the gilded ground in
+colors, either blue, or red, or green. The multitude of these panels
+shows an evident intention to foil a search; but even if this could be
+doubted, the concierge of the chateau, while devoting the memory of
+Catherine to the execration of the humanity of our day, shows at the
+base of these panels and close to the floor a rather heavy foot-board,
+which can be lifted, and beneath which still remain the ingenious
+springs which move the panels. By pressing a knob thus hidden, the
+queen was able to open certain panels known to her alone, behind
+which, sunk in the wall, were hiding-places, oblong like the panels,
+and more or less deep. It is difficult, even in these days of
+dilapidation, for the best-trained eye to detect which of those panels
+is thus hinged; but when the eye was distracted by colors and gilding,
+cleverly used to conceal the joints, we can readily conceive that to
+find one or two such panels among two hundred was almost an impossible
+thing.
+
+At the moment when Mary Stuart laid her hand on the somewhat
+complicated lock of the door of this oratory, the queen-mother, who
+had just become convinced of the greatness of the Prince de Conde's
+plans, had touched the spring hidden beneath the foot-board, and one
+of the mysterious panels had turned over on its hinges. Catherine was
+in the act of lifting the papers from the table to hide them,
+intending after that to secure the safety of the devoted messenger who
+had brought them to her, when, hearing the sudden opening of the door,
+she at once knew that none but Queen Mary herself would dare thus to
+enter without announcement.
+
+"You are lost!" she said to Christophe, perceiving that she could no
+longer put away the papers, nor close with sufficient rapidity the
+open panel, the secret of which was now betrayed.
+
+Christophe answered her with a glance that was sublime.
+
+"/Povero mio/!" said Catherine, before she looked at her
+daughter-in-law. "Treason, madame! I hold the traitors at last,"
+she cried. "Send for the duke and the cardinal; and see that that
+man," pointing to Christophe, "does not escape."
+
+In an instant the able woman had seen the necessity of sacrificing the
+poor youth. She could not hide him; it was impossible to save him.
+Eight days earlier it might have been done; but the Guises now knew of
+the plot; they must already possess the lists she held in her hand,
+and were evidently drawing the Reformers into a trap. Thus, rejoiced
+to find in these adversaries the very spirit she desired them to have,
+her policy now led her to make a merit of the discovery of their plot.
+These horrible calculations were made during the rapid moment while
+the young queen was opening the door. Mary Stuart stood dumb for an
+instant; the gay look left her eyes, which took on the acuteness that
+suspicion gives to the eyes of all, and which, in hers, became
+terrible from the suddenness of the change. She glanced from
+Christophe to the queen-mother and from the queen-mother back to
+Christophe,--her face expressing malignant doubt. Then she seized a
+bell, at the sound of which one of the queen-mother's maids of honor
+came running in.
+
+"Mademoiselle du Rouet, send for the captain of the guard," said Mary
+Stuart to the maid of honor, contrary to all etiquette, which was
+necessarily violated under the circumstances.
+
+While the young queen gave this order, Catherine looked intently at
+Christophe, as if saying to him, "Courage!"
+
+The Reformer understood, and replied by another glance, which seemed
+to say, "Sacrifice me, as /they/ have sacrificed me!"
+
+"Rely on me," said Catherine by a gesture. Then she absorbed herself
+in the documents as her daughter-in-law turned to him.
+
+"You belong to the Reformed religion?" inquired Mary Stuart of
+Christophe.
+
+"Yes, madame," he answered.
+
+"I was not mistaken," she murmured as she again noticed in the eyes of
+the young Reformer the same cold glance in which dislike was hidden
+beneath an expression of humility.
+
+Pardaillan suddenly appeared, sent by the two Lorrain princes and by
+the king to escort the queens. The captain of the guard called for by
+Mary Stuart followed the young officer, who was devoted to the Guises.
+
+"Go and tell the king and the grand-master and the cardinal, from me,
+to come here at once, and say that I should not take the liberty of
+sending for them if something of the utmost importance had not
+occurred. Go, Pardaillan.--As for you, Lewiston, keep guard over
+that traitor of a Reformer," she said to the Scotchman in his
+mother-tongue, pointing to Christophe.
+
+The young queen and queen-mother maintained a total silence until the
+arrival of the king and princes. The moments that elapsed were
+terrible.
+
+Mary Stuart had betrayed to her mother-in-law, in its fullest extent,
+the part her uncles were inducing her to play; her constant and
+habitual distrust and espionage were now revealed, and her young
+conscience told her how dishonoring to a great queen was the work that
+she was doing. Catherine, on the other hand, had yielded out of fear;
+she was still afraid of being rightly understood, and she trembled for
+her future. Both women, one ashamed and angry, the other filled with
+hatred and yet calm, went to the embrasure of the window and leaned
+against the casing, one to right, the other to left, silent; but their
+feelings were expressed in such speaking glances that they averted
+their eyes and, with mutual artfulness, gazed through the window at
+the sky. These two great and superior women had, at this crisis, no
+greater art of behavior than the vulgarest of their sex. Perhaps it is
+always thus when circumstances arise which overwhelm the human being.
+There is, inevitably, a moment when genius itself feels its littleness
+in presence of great catastrophes.
+
+As for Christophe, he was like a man in the act of rolling down a
+precipice. Lewiston, the Scotch captain, listened to this silence,
+watching the son of the furrier and the two queens with soldierly
+curiosity. The entrance of the king and Mary Stuart's two uncles put
+an end to the painful situation.
+
+
+
+                                 VIII
+
+                              MARTYRDOM
+
+The cardinal went straight to the queen-mother.
+
+"I hold the threads of the conspiracy of the heretics," said
+Catherine. "They have sent me this treaty and these documents by the
+hands of that child," she added.
+
+During the time that Catherine was explaining matters to the cardinal,
+Queen Mary whispered a few words to the grand-master.
+
+"What is all this about?" asked the young king, who was left alone in
+the midst of the violent clash of interests.
+
+"The proofs of what I was telling to your Majesty have not been long
+in reaching us," said the cardinal, who had grasped the papers.
+
+The Duc de Guise drew his brother aside without caring that
+he interrupted him, and said in his ear, "This makes me
+lieutenant-general without opposition."
+
+A shrewd glance was the cardinal's only answer; showing his brother
+that he fully understood the advantages to be gained from Catherine's
+false position.
+
+"Who sent you here?" said the duke to Christophe.
+
+"Chaudieu, the minister," he replied.
+
+"Young man, you lie!" said the soldier, sharply; "it was the Prince de
+Conde."
+
+"The Prince de Conde, monseigneur!" replied Christophe, with a puzzled
+look. "I never met him. I am studying law with Monsieur de Thou; I am
+his secretary, and he does not know that I belong to the Reformed
+religion. I yielded only to the entreaties of the minister."
+
+"Enough!" exclaimed the cardinal. "Call Monsieur de Robertet," he said
+to Lewiston, "for this young scamp is slyer than an old statesman; he
+has managed to deceive my brother, and me too; an hour ago I would
+have given him the sacrament without confession."
+
+"You are not a child, /morbleu/!" cried the duke, "and we'll treat you
+as a man."
+
+"The heretics have attempted to beguile your august mother," said the
+cardinal, addressing the king, and trying to draw him apart to win him
+over to their ends.
+
+"Alas!" said the queen-mother to her son, assuming a reproachful look
+and stopping the king at the moment when the cardinal was leading him
+into the oratory to subject him to his dangerous eloquence, "you see
+the result of the situation in which I am; they think me irritated by
+the little influence that I have in public affairs,--I, the mother of
+four princes of the house of Valois!"
+
+The young king listened attentively. Mary Stuart, seeing the frown
+upon his brow, took his arm and led him away into the recess of the
+window, where she cajoled him with sweet speeches in a low voice, no
+doubt like those she had used that morning in their chamber. The two
+Guises read the documents given up to them by Catherine. Finding that
+they contained information which their spies, and Monsieur
+Braguelonne, the lieutenant of the Chatelet, had not obtained, they
+were inclined to believe in the sincerity of Catherine de' Medici.
+Robertet came and received certain secret orders relative to
+Christophe. The youthful instrument of the leaders of the Reformation
+was then led away by four soldiers of the Scottish guard, who took him
+down the stairs and delivered him to Monsieur de Montresor, provost of
+the chateau. That terrible personage himself, accompanied by six of
+his men, conducted Christophe to the prison in the vaulted cellar of
+the tower, now in ruins, which the concierge of the chateau de Blois
+shows you with the information that these were the dungeons.
+
+After such an event the Council could be only a formality. The king,
+the young queen, the Grand-master, and the cardinal returned to it,
+taking with them the vanquished Catherine, who said no word except to
+approve the measures proposed by the Guises. In spite of a slight
+opposition from the Chancelier Olivier (the only person present who
+said one word that expressed the independence to which his office
+bound him), the Duc de Guise was appointed lieutenant-general of the
+kingdom. Robertet brought the required documents, showing a devotion
+which might be called collusion. The king, giving his arm to his
+mother, recrossed the /salle des gardes/, announcing to the court as
+he passed along that on the following day he should leave Blois for
+the chateau of Amboise. The latter residence had been abandoned since
+the time when Charles VIII. accidentally killed himself by striking
+his head against the casing of a door on which he had ordered
+carvings, supposing that he could enter without stooping below the
+scaffolding. Catherine, to mask the plans of the Guises, remarked
+aloud that they intended to complete the chateau of Amboise for the
+Crown at the same time that her own chateau of Chemonceaux was
+finished. But no one was the dupe of that pretext, and all present
+awaited great events.
+
+After spending about two hours endeavoring to see where he was in the
+obscurity of the dungeon, Christophe ended by discovering that the
+place was sheathed in rough woodwork, thick enough to make the square
+hole into which he was put both healthy and habitable. The door, like
+that of a pig-pen, was so low that he stooped almost double on
+entering it. Beside this door was a heavy iron grating, opening upon a
+sort of corridor, which gave a little light and a little air. This
+arrangement, in all respects like that of the dungeons of Venice,
+showed plainly that the architecture of the chateau of Blois belonged
+to the Venetian school, which during the Middle Ages, sent so many
+builders into all parts of Europe. By tapping this species of pit
+above the woodwork Christophe discovered that the walls which
+separated his cell to right and left from the adjoining ones were made
+of brick. Striking one of them to get an idea of its thickness, he was
+somewhat surprised to hear return blows given on the other side.
+
+"Who are you?" said his neighbor, speaking to him through the
+corridor.
+
+"I am Christophe Lecamus."
+
+"I," replied the voice, "am Captain Chaudieu, brother of the minister.
+I was taken prisoner to-night at Beaugency; but, luckily, there is
+nothing against me."
+
+"All is discovered," said Christophe; "you are fortunate to be saved
+from the fray."
+
+"We have three thousand men at this moment in the forests of the
+Vendomois, all determined men, who mean to abduct the king and the
+queen-mother during their journey. Happily La Renaudie was cleverer
+than I; he managed to escape. You had only just left us when the Guise
+men surprised us--"
+
+"But I don't know La Renaudie."
+
+"Pooh! my brother has told me all about it," said the captain.
+
+Hearing that, Christophe sat down upon his bench and made no further
+answer to the pretended captain, for he knew enough of the police to
+be aware how necessary it was to act with prudence in a prison. In the
+middle of the night he saw the pale light of a lantern in the
+corridor, after hearing the ponderous locks of the iron door which
+closed the cellar groan as they were turned. The provost himself had
+come to fetch Christophe. This attention to a prisoner who had been
+left in his dark dungeon for hours without food, struck the poor lad
+as singular. One of the provost's men bound his hands with a rope and
+held him by the end of it until they reached one of the lower halls of
+the chateau of Louis XII., which was evidently the antechamber to the
+apartments of some important personage. The provost and his men bade
+him sit upon a bench, and the man then bound his feet as he had before
+bound his hands. On a sign from Monsieur de Montresor the man left the
+room.
+
+"Now listen to me, my friend," said the provost-marshal, toying with
+the collar of the Order; for, late as the hour was, he was in full
+uniform.
+
+This little circumstance gave the young man several thoughts; he saw
+that all was not over; on the contrary, it was evidently neither to
+hang nor yet to condemn him that he was brought here.
+
+"My friend, you may spare yourself cruel torture by telling me all you
+know of the understanding between Monsieur le Prince de Conde and
+Queen Catherine. Not only will no harm be done to you, but you shall
+enter the service of Monseigneur the lieutenant-general of the
+kingdom, who likes intelligent men and on whom your honest face has
+produced a good impression. The queen-mother is about to be sent back
+to Florence, and Monsieur de Conde will no doubt be brought to trial.
+Therefore, believe me, humble folks ought to attach themselves to the
+great men who are in power. Tell me all; and you will find your profit
+in it."
+
+"Alas, monsieur," replied Christophe; "I have nothing to tell. I told
+all I know to Messieurs de Guise in the queen's chamber. Chaudieu
+persuaded me to put those papers under the eyes of the queen-mother;
+assuring me that they concerned the peace of the kingdom."
+
+"You have never seen the Prince de Conde?"
+
+"Never."
+
+Thereupon Monsieur de Montresor left Christophe and went into the
+adjoining room; but the youth was not left long alone. The door
+through which he had been brought opened and gave entrance to several
+men, who did not close it. Sounds that were far from reassuring were
+heard from the courtyard; men were bringing wood and machinery,
+evidently intended for the punishment of the Reformer's messenger.
+Christophe's anxiety soon had matter for reflection in the
+preparations which were made in the hall before his eyes.
+
+Two coarse and ill-dressed serving-men obeyed the orders of a stout,
+squat, vigorous man, who cast upon Christophe, as he entered, the
+glance of a cannibal upon his victim; he looked him over and
+/estimated/ him,--measuring, like a connoisseur, the strength of his
+nerves, their power and their endurance. The man was the executioner
+of Blois. Coming and going, his assistants brought in a mattress,
+several mallets and wooden wedges, also planks and other articles, the
+use of which was not plain, nor their look comforting to the poor boy
+concerned in these preparations, whose blood now curdled in his veins
+from a vague but most terrible apprehension. Two personages entered
+the hall at the moment when Monsieur de Montresor reappeared.
+
+"Hey, nothing ready!" cried the provost-marshal, to whom the
+new-comers bowed with great respect. "Don't you know," he said,
+addressing the stout man and his two assistants, "that Monseigneur the
+cardinal thinks you already at work? Doctor," added the provost, turning
+to one of the new-comers, "this is the man"; and he pointed to
+Christophe.
+
+The doctor went straight to the prisoner, unbound his hands, and
+struck him on the breast and back. Science now continued, in a serious
+manner, the truculent examination of the executioner's eye. During
+this time a servant in the livery of the house of Guise brought in
+several arm-chairs, a table, and writing-materials.
+
+"Begin the /proces verbal/," said Monsieur de Montresor, motioning to
+the table the second personage, who was dressed in black, and was
+evidently a clerk. Then the provost went up to Christophe, and said to
+him in a very gentle way: "My friend, the chancellor, having learned
+that you refuse to answer me in a satisfactory manner, decrees that
+you be put to the question, ordinary and extraordinary."
+
+"Is he in good health, and can he bear it?" said the clerk to the
+doctor.
+
+"Yes," replied the latter, who was one of the physicians of the house
+of Lorraine.
+
+"In that case, retire to the next room; we will send for you whenever
+we require your advice."
+
+The physician left the hall.
+
+His first terror having passed, Christophe rallied his courage; the
+hour of his martyrdom had come. Thenceforth he looked with cold
+curiosity at the arrangements that were made by the executioner and
+his men. After hastily preparing a bed, the two assistants got ready
+certain appliances called /boots/; which consisted of several planks,
+between which each leg of the victim was placed. The legs thus placed
+were brought close together. The apparatus used by binders to press
+their volumes between two boards, which they fasten by cords, will
+give an exact idea of the manner in which each leg of the prisoner was
+bound. We can imagine the effect produced by the insertion of wooden
+wedges, driven in by hammers between the planks of the two bound legs,
+--the two sets of planks of course not yielding, being themselves
+bound together by ropes. These wedges were driven in on a line with
+the knees and the ankles. The choice of these places where there is
+little flesh, and where, consequently, the wedge could only be forced
+in by crushing the bones, made this form of torture, called the
+"question," horribly painful. In the "ordinary question" four wedges
+were driven in,--two at the knees, two at the ankles; but in the
+"extraordinary question" the number was increased to eight, provided
+the doctor certified that the prisoner's vitality was not exhausted.
+At the time of which we write the "boots" were also applied in the
+same manner to the hands and wrists; but, being pressed for time, the
+cardinal, the lieutenant-general, and the chancellor spared Christophe
+that additional suffering.
+
+The /proces verbal/ was begun; the provost dictated a few sentences as
+he walked up and down with a meditative air, asking Christophe his
+name, baptismal name, age, and profession; then he inquired the name
+of the person from whom he had received the papers he had given to the
+queen.
+
+"From the minister Chaudieu," answered Christophe.
+
+"Where did he give them to you?"
+
+"In Paris."
+
+"In giving them to you he must have told you whether the queen-mother
+would receive you with pleasure?"
+
+"He told me nothing of that kind," said Christophe. "He merely asked
+me to give them to Queen Catherine secretly."
+
+"You must have seen Chaudieu frequently, or he would not have known
+that you were going to Blois."
+
+"The minister did not know from me that in carrying furs to the queen
+I was also to ask on my father's behalf for the money the queen-mother
+owes him; and I did not have time to ask the minister who had told him
+of it."
+
+"But these papers, which were given to you without being sealed or
+enveloped, contained a treaty between the rebels and Queen Catherine.
+You must have seen that they exposed you to the punishment of all
+those who assist in a rebellion."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The persons who persuaded you to this act of high treason must have
+promised you rewards and the protection of the queen-mother."
+
+"I did it out of attachment to Chaudieu, the only person whom I saw in
+the matter."
+
+"Do you persist in saying you did not see the Prince de Conde?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The Prince de Conde did not tell you that the queen-mother was
+inclined to enter into his views against the Messieurs de Guise?"
+
+"I did not see him."
+
+"Take care! one of your accomplices, La Renaudie, has been arrested.
+Strong as he is, he was not able to bear the 'question,' which will
+now be put to you; he confessed at last that both he and the Prince de
+Conde had an interview with you. If you wish to escape the torture of
+the question, I exhort you to tell me the simple truth. Perhaps you
+will thus obtain your full pardon."
+
+Christophe answered that he could not state a thing of which he had no
+knowledge, or give himself accomplices when he had none. Hearing these
+words, the provost-marshal signed to the executioner and retired
+himself to the inner room. At that fatal sign Christophe's brows
+contracted, his forehead worked with nervous convulsion, as he
+prepared himself to suffer. His hands closed with such violence that
+the nails entered the flesh without his feeling them. Three men seized
+him, took him to the camp bed and laid him there, letting his legs
+hang down. While the executioner fastened him to the rough bedstead
+with strong cords, the assistants bound his legs into the "boots."
+Presently the cords were tightened, by means of a wrench, without the
+pressure causing much pain to the young Reformer. When each leg was
+thus held as it were in a vice, the executioner grasped his hammer and
+picked up the wedges, looking alternately at the victim and at the
+clerk.
+
+"Do you persist in your denial?" asked the clerk.
+
+"I have told the truth," replied Christophe.
+
+"Very well. Go on," said the clerk, closing his eyes.
+
+The cords were tightened with great force. This was perhaps the most
+painful moment of the torture; the flesh being suddenly compressed,
+the blood rushed violently toward the breast. The poor boy could not
+restrain a dreadful cry and seemed about to faint. The doctor was
+called in. After feeling Christophe's pulse, he told the executioner
+to wait a quarter of an hour before driving the first wedge in, to let
+the action of the blood subside and allow the victim to recover his
+full sensitiveness. The clerk suggested, kindly, that if he could not
+bear this beginning of sufferings which he could not escape, it would
+be better to reveal all at once; but Christophe made no reply except
+to say, "The king's tailor! the king's tailor!"
+
+"What do you mean by those words?" asked the clerk.
+
+"Seeing what torture I must bear," said Christophe, slowly, hoping to
+gain time to rest, "I call up all my strength, and try to increase it
+by thinking of the martyrdom borne by the king's tailor for the holy
+cause of the Reformation, when the question was applied to him in
+presence of Madame la Duchesse de Valentinois and the king. I shall
+try to be worthy of him."
+
+While the physician exhorted the unfortunate lad not to force them to
+have recourse to more violent measures, the cardinal and the duke,
+impatient to know the result of the interrogations, entered the hall
+and themselves asked Christophe to speak the truth, immediately. The
+young man repeated the only confession he had allowed himself to make,
+which implicated no one but Chaudieu. The princes made a sign, on
+which the executioner and his assistant seized their hammers, taking
+each a wedge, which then they drove in between the joints, standing
+one to right, the other to left of their victim; the executioner's
+wedge was driven in at the knees, his assistant's at the ankles.
+
+The eyes of all present fastened on those of Christophe, and he, no
+doubt excited by the presence of those great personages, shot forth
+such burning glances that they appeared to have all the brilliancy of
+flame. As the third and fourth wedges were driven in, a dreadful groan
+escaped him. When he saw the executioner take up the wedges for the
+"extraordinary question" he said no word and made no sound, but his
+eyes took on so terrible a fixity, and he cast upon the two great
+princes who were watching him a glance so penetrating, that the duke
+and cardinal were forced to drop their eyes. Philippe le Bel met with
+the same resistance when the torture of the pendulum was applied in
+his presence to the Templars. That punishment consisted in striking
+the victim on the breast with one arm of the balance pole with which
+money is coined, its end being covered with a pad of leather. One of
+the knights thus tortured, looked so intently at the king that
+Philippe could not detach his eyes from him. At the third blow the
+king left the chamber on hearing the knight summon him to appear
+within a year before the judgment-seat of God,--as, in fact, he did.
+At the fifth blow, the first of the "extraordinary question,"
+Christophe said to the cardinal: "Monseigneur, put an end to my
+torture; it is useless."
+
+The cardinal and the duke re-entered the adjoining hall, and
+Christophe distinctly heard the following words said by Queen
+Catherine: "Go on; after all, he is only a heretic."
+
+She judged it prudent to be more stern to her accomplice than the
+executioners themselves.
+
+The sixth and seventh wedges were driven in without a word of
+complaint from Christophe. His face shone with extraordinary
+brilliancy, due, no doubt, to the excess of strength which his fanatic
+devotion gave him. Where else but in the feelings of the soul can we
+find the power necessary to bear such sufferings? Finally, he smiled
+when he saw the executioner lifting the eighth and last wedge. This
+horrible torture had lasted by this time over an hour.
+
+The clerk now went to call the physician that he might decide whether
+the eighth wedge could be driven in without endangering the life of the
+victim. During this delay the duke returned to look at Christophe.
+
+"/Ventre-de-biche/! you are a fine fellow," he said to him, bending
+down to whisper the words. "I love brave men. Enter my service, and
+you shall be rich and happy; my favors shall heal those wounded limbs.
+I do not propose to you any baseness; I will not ask you to return to
+your party and betray its plans,--there are always traitors enough for
+that, and the proof is in the prisons of Blois; tell me only on what
+terms are the queen-mother and the Prince de Conde?"
+
+"I know nothing about it, monseigneur," replied Christophe Lecamus.
+
+The physician came, examined the victim, and said that he could bear
+the eighth wedge.
+
+"Then insert it," said the cardinal. "After all, as the queen says, he
+is only a heretic," he added, looking at Christophe with a dreadful
+smile.
+
+At this moment Catherine came with slow steps from the adjoining
+apartment and stood before Christophe, coldly observing him. Instantly
+she was the object of the closest attention on the part of the two
+brothers, who watched alternately the queen and her accomplice. On
+this solemn test the whole future of that ambitious woman depended;
+she felt the keenest admiration for Christophe, yet she gazed sternly
+at him; she hated the Guises, and she smiled upon them!
+
+"Young man," said the queen, "confess that you have seen the Prince de
+Conde, and you will be richly rewarded."
+
+"Ah! what a business this is for you, madame!" cried Christophe,
+pitying her.
+
+The queen quivered.
+
+"He insults me!" she exclaimed. "Why do you not hang him?" she cried,
+turning to the two brothers, who stood thoughtful.
+
+"What a woman!" said the duke in a glance at his brother, consulting
+him by his eye, and leading him to the window.
+
+"I shall stay in France and be revenged upon them," thought the queen.
+"Come, make him confess, or let him die!" she said aloud, addressing
+Montresor.
+
+The provost-marshal turned away his eyes, the executioners were busy
+with the wedges; Catherine was free to cast one glance upon the
+martyr, unseen by others, which fell on Christophe like the dew. The
+eyes of the great queen seemed to him moist; two tears were in them,
+but they did not fall. The wedges were driven; a plank was broken by
+the blow. Christophe gave one dreadful cry, after which he was silent;
+his face shone,--he believed he was dying.
+
+"Let him die?" said the cardinal, echoing the queen's last words with
+a sort of irony; "no, no! don't break that thread," he said to the
+provost.
+
+The duke and the cardinal consulted together in a low voice.
+
+"What is to be done with him?" asked the executioner.
+
+"Send him to the prison at Orleans," said the duke, addressing
+Monsieur de Montresor; "and don't hang him without my order."
+
+The extreme sensitiveness to which Christophe's internal organism had
+been brought, increased by a resistance which called into play every
+power of the human body, existed to the same degree, in his senses. He
+alone heard the following words whispered by the Duc de Guise in the
+ear of his brother the cardinal:
+
+"I don't give up all hope of getting the truth out of that little
+fellow yet."
+
+When the princes had left the hall the executioners unbound the legs
+of their victim roughly and without compassion.
+
+"Did any one ever see a criminal with such strength?" said the chief
+executioner to his aids. "The rascal bore that last wedge when he
+ought to have died; I've lost the price of his body."
+
+"Unbind me gently; don't make me suffer, friends," said poor
+Christophe. "Some day I will reward you--"
+
+"Come, come, show some humanity," said the physician. "Monseigneur
+esteems the young man, and told me to look after him."
+
+"I am going to Amboise with my assistants,--take care of him
+yourself," said the executioner, brutally. "Besides, here comes the
+jailer."
+
+The executioner departed, leaving Christophe in the hands of the
+soft-spoken doctor, who by the aid of Christophe's future jailer,
+carried the poor boy to a bed, brought him some broth, helped him
+to swallow it, sat down beside him, felt his pulse, and tried to
+comfort him.
+
+"You won't die of this," he said. "You ought to feel great inward
+comfort, knowing that you have done your duty.--The queen-mother bids
+me take care of you," he added in a whisper.
+
+"The queen is very good," said Christophe, whose terrible sufferings
+had developed an extraordinary lucidity in his mind, and who, after
+enduring such unspeakable sufferings, was determined not to compromise
+the results of his devotion. "But she might have spared me much agony
+be telling my persecutors herself the secrets that I know nothing
+about, instead of urging them on."
+
+Hearing that reply, the doctor took his cap and cloak and left
+Christophe, rightly judging that he could worm nothing out of a man of
+that stamp. The jailer of Blois now ordered the poor lad to be carried
+away on a stretcher by four men, who took him to the prison in the
+town, where Christophe immediately fell into the deep sleep which,
+they say, comes to most mothers after the terrible pangs of
+childbirth.
+
+
+
+                                  IX
+
+                        THE TUMULT AT AMBOISE
+
+By moving the court to the chateau of Amboise, the two Lorrain princes
+intended to set a trap for the leader of the party of the Reformation,
+the Prince de Conde, whom they had made the king summon to his
+presence. As vassal of the Crown and prince of the blood, Conde was
+bound to obey the summons of his sovereign. Not to come to Amboise
+would constitute the crime of treason; but if he came, he put himself
+in the power of the Crown. Now, at this moment, as we have seen, the
+Crown, the council, the court, and all their powers were solely in the
+hands of the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine. The Prince de
+Conde showed, at this delicate crisis, a presence of mind and a
+decision and willingness which made him the worthy exponent of Jeanne
+d'Albret and the valorous general of the Reformers. He travelled at
+the rear of the conspirators as far as Vendome, intending to support
+them in case of their success. When the first uprising ended by a
+brief skirmish, in which the flower of the nobility beguiled by Calvin
+perished, the prince arrived, with fifty noblemen, at the chateau of
+Amboise on the very day after that fight, which the politic Guises
+termed "the Tumult of Amboise." As soon as the duke and cardinal heard
+of his coming they sent the Marechal de Saint-Andre with an escort of
+a hundred men to meet him. When the prince and his own escort reached
+the gates of the chateau the marechal refused entrance to the latter.
+
+"You must enter alone, monseigneur," said the Chancellor Olivier, the
+Cardinal de Tournon, and Birago, who were stationed outside of the
+portcullis.
+
+"And why?"
+
+"You are suspected of treason," replied the chancellor.
+
+The prince, who saw that his suite were already surrounded by the
+troop of the Duc de Nemours, replied tranquilly: "If that is so, I
+will go alone to my cousin, and prove to him my innocence."
+
+He dismounted, talked with perfect freedom of mind to Birago, the
+Cardinal de Tournon, the chancellor, and the Duc de Nemours, from whom
+he asked for particulars of the "tumult."
+
+"Monseigneur," replied the duke, "the rebels had confederates in
+Amboise. A captain, named Lanoue, had introduced armed men, who opened
+the gate to them, through which they entered and made themselves
+masters of the town--"
+
+"That is to say, you opened the mouth of a sack, and they ran into
+it," replied the prince, looking at Birago.
+
+"If they had been supported by the attack which Captain Chaudieu,
+the preacher's brother, was expected to make before the gate of the
+Bon-Hommes, they would have been completely successful," replied the
+Duc de Nemours. "But in consequence of the position which the Duc de
+Guise ordered me to take up, Captain Chaudieu was obliged to turn my
+flank to avoid a fight. So instead of arriving by night, like the rest,
+this rebel and his men got there at daybreak, by which time the king's
+troops had crushed the invaders of the town."
+
+"And you had a reserve force to recover the gate which had been opened
+to them?" said the prince.
+
+"Monsieur le Marechal de Saint-Andre was there with five hundred
+men-at-arms."
+
+The prince gave the highest praise to these military arrangements.
+
+"The lieutenant-general must have been fully aware of the plans of the
+Reformers, to have acted as he did," he said in conclusion. "They were
+no doubt betrayed."
+
+The prince was treated with increasing harshness. After separating him
+from his escort at the gates, the cardinal and the chancellor barred
+his way when he reached the staircase which led to the apartments of
+the king.
+
+"We are directed by his Majesty, monseigneur, to take you to your own
+apartments," they said.
+
+"Am I, then, a prisoner?"
+
+"If that were the king's intention you would not be accompanied by a
+prince of the Church, nor by me," replied the chancellor.
+
+These two personages escorted the prince to an apartment, where guards
+of honor--so-called--were given him. There he remained, without seeing
+any one, for some hours. From his window he looked down upon the Loire
+and the meadows of the beautiful valley stretching from Amboise to
+Tours. He was reflecting on the situation, and asking himself whether
+the Guises would really dare anything against his person, when the
+door of his chamber opened and Chicot, the king's fool, formerly a
+dependent of his own, entered the room.
+
+"They told me you were in disgrace," said the prince.
+
+"You'd never believe how virtuous the court has become since the death
+of Henri II."
+
+"But the king loves a laugh."
+
+"Which king,--Francois II., or Francois de Lorraine?"
+
+"You are not afraid of the duke, if you talk in that way!"
+
+"He wouldn't punish me for it, monseigneur," replied Chicot, laughing.
+
+"To what do I owe the honor of this visit?"
+
+"Hey! Isn't it due to you on your return? I bring you my cap and
+bells."
+
+"Can I go out?"
+
+"Try."
+
+"Suppose I do go out, what then?"
+
+"I should say that you had won the game by playing against the rules."
+
+"Chicot, you alarm me. Are you sent here by some one who takes an
+interest in me?"
+
+"Yes," said Chicot, nodding. He came nearer to the prince, and made
+him understand that they were being watched and overheard.
+
+"What have you to say to me?" asked the Prince de Conde, in a low
+voice.
+
+"Boldness alone can pull you out of this scrape; the message comes
+from the queen-mother," replied the fool, slipping his words into the
+ear of the prince.
+
+"Tell those who sent you," replied Conde, "that I should not have
+entered this chateau if I had anything to reproach myself with, or to
+fear."
+
+"I rush to report that lofty answer!" cried the fool.
+
+Two hours later, that is, about one o'clock in the afternoon, before
+the king's dinner, the chancellor and Cardinal de Tournon came to
+fetch the prince and present him to Francois II. in the great gallery
+of the chateau of Amboise, where the councils were held. There, before
+the whole court, Conde pretended surprise at the coldness with which
+the little king received him, and asked the reason of it.
+
+"You are accused, cousin," said the queen-mother, sternly, "of taking
+part in the conspiracy of the Reformers; and you must prove yourself a
+faithful subject and a good Catholic, if you do not desire to draw
+down upon your house the anger of the king."
+
+Hearing these words said, in the midst of the most profound silence,
+by Catherine de' Medici, on whose right arm the king was leaning, the
+Duc d'Orleans being on her left side, the Prince de Conde recoiled
+three steps, laid his hand on his sword with a proud motion, and
+looked at all the persons who surrounded him.
+
+"Those who said that, madame," he cried in an angry voice, "lied in
+their throats!"
+
+Then he flung his glove at the king's feet, saying: "Let him who
+believes that calumny come forward!"
+
+The whole court trembled as the Duc de Guise was seen to leave his
+place; but instead of picking up the glove, he advanced to the
+intrepid hunchback.
+
+"If you desire a second in that duel, monseigneur, do me the honor to
+accept my services," he said. "I will answer for you; I know that you
+will show the Reformers how mistaken they are if they think to have
+you for their leader."
+
+The prince was forced to take the hand of the lieutenant-general of
+the kingdom. Chicot picked up the glove and returned it to Monsieur de
+Conde.
+
+"Cousin," said the little king, "you must draw your sword only for the
+defence of the kingdom. Come and dine."
+
+The Cardinal de Lorraine, surprised at his brother's action, drew him
+away to his own apartments. The Prince de Conde, having escaped his
+apparent danger, offered his hand to Mary Stuart to lead her to the
+dining hall; but all the while that he made her flattering speeches he
+pondered in his mind what trap the astute Balafre was setting for him.
+In vain he worked his brains, for it was not until Queen Mary herself
+betrayed it that he guessed the intention of the Guises.
+
+"'Twould have been a great pity," she said laughing, "if so clever a
+head had fallen; you must admit that my uncle has been generous."
+
+"Yes, madame; for my head is only useful on my shoulders, though one
+of them is notoriously higher than the other. But is this really your
+uncle's generosity? Is he not getting the credit of it rather cheaply?
+Do you think it would be so easy to take off the head of a prince of
+the blood?"
+
+"All is not over yet," she said. "We shall see what your conduct will
+be at the execution of the noblemen, your friends, at which the
+Council has decided to make a great public display of severity."
+
+"I shall do," said the prince, "whatever the king does."
+
+"The king, the queen-mother, and myself will be present at the
+execution, together with the whole court and the ambassadors--"
+
+"A fete!" said the prince, sarcastically.
+
+"Better than that," said the young queen, "an /act of faith/, an act
+of the highest policy. 'Tis a question of forcing the noblemen of
+France to submit themselves to the Crown, and compelling them to give
+up their tastes for plots and factions--"
+
+"You will not break their belligerent tempers by the show of danger,
+madame; you will risk the Crown itself in the attempt," replied the
+prince.
+
+At the end of the dinner, which was gloomy enough, Queen Mary had the
+cruel boldness to turn the conversation openly upon the trial of the
+noblemen on the charge of being seized with arms in their hands, and
+to speak of the necessity of making a great public show of their
+execution.
+
+"Madame," said Francois II., "is it not enough for the king of France
+to know that so much brave blood is to flow? Must he make a triumph of
+it?"
+
+"No, sire; but an example," replied Catherine.
+
+"It was the custom of your father and your grandfather to be present
+at the burning of heretics," said Mary Stuart.
+
+"The kings who reigned before me did as they thought best, and I
+choose to do as I please," said the little king.
+
+"Philip the Second," remarked Catherine, "who is certainly a great
+king, lately postponed an /auto da fe/ until he could return from the
+Low Countries to Valladolid."
+
+"What do you think, cousin?" said the king to Prince de Conde.
+
+"Sire, you cannot avoid it, and the papal nuncio and all the
+ambassadors should be present. I shall go willingly, as these ladies
+take part in the fete."
+
+Thus the Prince de Conde, at a glance from Catherine de' Medici,
+bravely chose his course.
+
+              *     *     *     *     *
+
+At the moment when the Prince de Conde was entering the chateau
+d'Amboise, Lecamus, the furrier of the two queens, was also arriving
+from Paris, brought to Amboise by the anxiety into which the news of
+the tumult had thrown both his family and that of Lallier. When the
+old man presented himself at the gate of the chateau, the captain of
+the guard, on hearing that he was the queens' furrier, said:--
+
+"My good man, if you want to be hanged you have only to set foot in
+this courtyard."
+
+Hearing these words, the father, in despair, sat down on a stone at a
+little distance and waited until some retainer of the two queens or
+some servant-woman might pass who would give him news of his son. But
+he sat there all day without seeing any one whom he knew, and was
+forced at last to go down into the town, where he found, not without
+some difficulty, a lodging in a hostelry on the public square where
+the executions took place. He was obliged to pay a pound a day to
+obtain a room with a window looking on the square. The next day he had
+the courage to watch, from his window, the execution of all the
+abettors of the rebellion who were condemned to be broken on the wheel
+or hanged, as persons of little importance. He was happy indeed not to
+see his own son among the victims.
+
+When the execution was over he went into the square and put himself in
+the way of the clerk of the court. After giving his name, and slipping
+a purse full of crowns into the man's hand, he begged him to look on
+the records and see if the name of Christophe Lecamus appeared in
+either of the three preceding executions. The clerk, touched by the
+manner and the tones of the despairing father, took him to his own
+house. After a careful search he was able to give the old man an
+absolute assurance that Christophe was not among the persons thus far
+executed, nor among those who were to be put to death within a few
+days.
+
+"My dear man," said the clerk, "Parliament has taken charge of the
+trial of the great lords implicated in the affair, and also that of
+the principal leaders. Perhaps your son is detained in the prisons of
+the chateau, and he may be brought forth for the magnificent execution
+which their Excellencies the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine
+are now preparing. The heads of twenty-seven barons, eleven counts,
+and seven marquises,--in all, fifty noblemen or leaders of the
+Reformers,--are to be cut off. As the justiciary of the county of
+Tourine is quite distinct from that of the parliament of Paris, if you
+are determined to know about your son, I advise you to go and see the
+Chancelier Olivier, who has the management of this great trial under
+orders from the lieutenant-general of the kingdom."
+
+The poor old man, acting on this advice, went three times to see the
+chancellor, standing in a long queue of persons waiting to ask mercy
+for their friends. But as the titled men were made to pass before the
+burghers, he was obliged to give up the hope of speaking to the
+chancellor, though he saw him several times leave the house to go
+either to the chateau or to the committee appointed by the Parliament,
+--passing each time between a double hedge of petitioners who were
+kept back by the guards to allow him free passage. It was a horrible
+scene of anguish and desolation; for among these petitioners were many
+women, wives, mothers, daughters, whole families in distress. Old
+Lecamus gave much gold to the footmen of the chateau, entreating them
+to put certain letters which he wrote into the hand either of Dayelle,
+Queen Mary's woman, or into that of the queen-mother; but the footmen
+took the poor man's money and carried the letters, according to the
+general order of the cardinal, to the provost-marshal. By displaying
+such unheard-of cruelty the Guises knew that they incurred great
+dangers from revenge, and never did they take such precautions for
+their safety as they did while the court was at Amboise; consequently,
+neither the greatest of all corrupters, gold, nor the incessant and
+active search which the old furrier instituted gave him the slightest
+gleam of light on the fate of his son. He went about the little town
+with a mournful air, watching the great preparations made by order of
+the cardinal for the dreadful show at which the Prince de Conde had
+agreed to be present.
+
+Public curiosity was stimulated from Paris to Nantes by the means
+adopted on this occasion. The execution was announced from all pulpits
+by the rectors of the churches, while at the same time they gave
+thanks for the victory of the king over the heretics. Three handsome
+balconies, the middle one more sumptuous than the other two, were
+built against the terrace of the chateau of Amboise, at the foot of
+which the executions were appointed to take place. Around the open
+square, stagings were erected, and these were filled with an immense
+crowd of people attracted by the wide-spread notoriety given to this
+"act of faith." Ten thousand persons camped in the adjoining fields
+the night before the day on which the horrible spectacle was appointed
+to take place. The roofs on the houses were crowded with spectators,
+and windows were let at ten pounds apiece,--an enormous sum in those
+days. The poor old father had engaged, as we may well believe, one of
+the best places from which the eye could take in the whole of the
+terrible scene, where so many men of noble blood were to perish on a
+vast scaffold covered with black cloth, erected in the middle of the
+open square. Thither, on the morning of the fatal day, they brought
+the /chouquet/,--a name given to the block on which the condemned man
+laid his head as he knelt before it. After this they brought an
+arm-chair draped with black, for the clerk of the Parliament, whose
+business it was to call up the condemned noblemen to their death and
+read their sentences. The whole square was guarded from early morning
+by the Scottish guard and the gendarmes of the king's household, in
+order to keep back the crowd which threatened to fill it before the
+hour of the execution.
+
+After a solemn mass said at the chateau and in the churches of the
+town, the condemned lords, the last of the conspirators who were left
+alive, were led out. These gentlemen, some of whom had been put to the
+torture, were grouped at the foot of the scaffold and surrounded by
+monks, who endeavored to make them abjure the doctrines of Calvin. But
+not a single man listened to the words of the priests who had been
+appointed for this duty by the Cardinal of Lorraine; among whom the
+gentlemen no doubt feared to find spies of the Guises. In order to
+avoid the importunity of these antagonists they chanted a psalm, put
+into French verse by Clement Marot. Calvin, as we all know, had
+ordained that prayers to God should be in the language of each
+country, as much from a principle of common sense as in opposition to
+the Roman worship. To those in the crowd who pitied these unfortunate
+gentlemen it was a moving incident to hear them chant the following
+verse at the very moment when the king and court arrived and took
+their places:--
+
+  "God be merciful unto us,
+    And bless us!
+  And show us the light of his countenance,
+    And be merciful unto us."
+
+The eyes of all the Reformers turned to their leader, the Prince de
+Conde, who was placed intentionally between Queen Mary and the young
+Duc d'Orleans. Catherine de' Medici was beside the king, and the rest
+of the court were on her left. The papal nuncio stood behind Queen
+Mary; the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, the Duc de Guise, was on
+horseback below the balcony, with two of the marshals of France and
+his staff captains. When the Prince de Conde appeared all the
+condemned noblemen who knew him bowed to him, and the brave hunchback
+returned their salutation.
+
+"It would be hard," he remarked to the Duc d'Orleans, "not to be civil
+to those about to die."
+
+The two other balconies were filled by invited guests, courtiers, and
+persons on duty about the court. In short, the whole company of the
+chateau de Blois had come to Amboise to assist at this festival of
+death, precisely as it passed, a little later, from the pleasures of a
+court to the perils of war, with an easy facility, which will always
+seem to foreigners one of the main supports of their policy toward
+France.
+
+The poor syndic of the furriers of Paris was filled with the keenest
+joy at not seeing his son among the fifty-seven gentlemen who were
+condemned to die.
+
+At a sign from the Duc de Guise, the clerk seated on the scaffold
+cried in a loud voice:--
+
+"Jean-Louis-Alberic, Baron de Raunay, guilty of heresy, of the crime
+of /lese-majeste/, and assault with armed hand against the person of
+the king."
+
+A tall handsome man mounted the scaffold with a firm step, bowed to
+the people and the court, and said:
+
+"That sentence lies. I took arms to deliver the king from his enemies,
+the Guises."
+
+He placed his head on the block, and it fell. The Reformers chanted:--
+
+  "Thou, O God! hast proved us;
+    Thou hast tried us;
+  As silver is tried in the fire,
+    So hast thou purified us."
+
+"Robert-Jean-Rene Briquemart, Comte de Villemongis, guilty of the
+crime of /lese-majeste/, and of attempts against the person of the
+king!" called the clerk.
+
+The count dipped his hands in the blood of the Baron de Raunay, and
+said:--
+
+"May this blood recoil upon those who are really guilty of those
+crimes."
+
+The Reformers chanted:--
+
+  "Thou broughtest us into the snare;
+    Thou laidest afflictions upon our loins;
+  Thou hast suffered our enemies
+    To ride over us."
+
+"You must admit, monseigneur," said the Prince de Conde to the papal
+nuncio, "that if these French gentlemen know how to conspire, they
+also know how to die."
+
+"What hatreds, brother!" whispered the Duchesse de Guise to the
+Cardinal de Lorraine, "you are drawing down upon the heads of our
+children!"
+
+"The sight makes me sick," said the young king, turning pale at the
+flow of blood.
+
+"Pooh! only rebels!" replied Catherine de' Medici.
+
+The chants went on; the axe still fell. The sublime spectacle of men
+singing as they died, and, above all, the impression produced upon the
+crowd by the progressive diminution of the chanting voices, superseded
+the fear inspired by the Guises.
+
+"Mercy!" cried the people with one voice, when they heard the solitary
+chant of the last and most important of the great lords, who was saved
+to be the final victim. He alone remained at the foot of the steps by
+which the others had mounted the scaffold, and he chanted:--
+
+  "Thou, O God, be merciful unto us,
+    And bless us,
+  And cause thy face to shine upon us.
+    Amen!"
+
+"Come, Duc de Nemours," said the Prince de Conde, weary of the part he
+was playing; "you who have the credit of the skirmish, and who helped
+to make these men prisoners, do you not feel under an obligation to
+ask mercy for this one? It is Castelnau, who, they say, received your
+word of honor that he should be courteously treated if he
+surrendered."
+
+"Do you think I waited till he was here before trying to save him?"
+said the Duc de Nemours, stung by the stern reproach.
+
+The clerk called slowly--no doubt he was intentionally slow:--
+
+"Michel-Jean-Louis, Baron de Castelnau-Chalosse, accused and convicted
+of the crime of /lese-majeste/, and of attempts against the person of
+the king."
+
+"No," said Castelnau, proudly, "it cannot be a crime to oppose the
+tyranny and the projected usurpation of the Guises."
+
+The executioner, sick of his task, saw a movement in the king's
+gallery, and fumbled with his axe.
+
+"Monsieur le baron," he said, "I do not want to execute you; a
+moment's delay may save you."
+
+All the people again cried, "Mercy!"
+
+"Come!" said the king, "mercy for that poor Castelnau, who saved the
+life of the Duc d'Orleans."
+
+The cardinal intentionally misunderstood the king's speech.
+
+"Go on," he motioned to the executioner, and the head of Castelnau
+fell at the very moment when the king had pronounced his pardon.
+
+"That head, cardinal, goes to your account," said Catherine de'
+Medici.
+
+The day after this dreadful execution the Prince de Conde returned to
+Navarre.
+
+The affair produced a great sensation in France and at all the foreign
+courts. The torrents of noble blood then shed caused such anguish to
+the chancellor Olivier that his honorable mind, perceiving at last the
+real end and aim of the Guises disguised under a pretext of defending
+religion and the monarchy, felt itself no longer able to make head
+against them. Though he was their creature, he was not willing to
+sacrifice his duty and the Throne to their ambition; and he withdrew
+from his post, suggesting l'Hopital as his rightful successor.
+Catherine, hearing of Olivier's suggestion, immediately proposed
+Birago, and put much warmth into her request. The cardinal, knowing
+nothing of the letter written by l'Hopital to the queen-mother, and
+supposing him faithful to the house of Lorraine, pressed his
+appointment in opposition to that of Birago, and Catherine allowed
+herself to seem vanquished. From the moment that l'Hopital entered
+upon his duties he took measures against the Inquisition, which the
+Cardinal de Lorraine was desirous of introducing into France; and he
+thwarted so successfully all the anti-gallican policy of the Guises,
+and proved himself so true a Frenchmen, that in order to subdue him he
+was exiled, within three months of his appointment, to his
+country-seat of Vignay, near Etampes.
+
+The worthy old Lecamus waited impatiently till the court left Amboise,
+being unable to find an opportunity to speak to either of the queens,
+and hoping to put himself in their way as the court advanced along the
+river-bank on its return to Blois. He disguised himself as a pauper,
+at the risk of being taken for a spy, and by means of this travesty,
+he mingled with the crowd of beggars which lined the roadway. After
+the departure of the Prince de Conde, and the execution of the
+leaders, the duke and cardinal thought they had sufficiently silenced
+the Reformers to allow the queen-mother a little more freedom. Lecamus
+knew that, instead of travelling in a litter, Catherine intended to go
+on horseback, /a la planchette/,--such was the name given to a sort of
+stirrup invented for or by the queen-mother, who, having hurt her leg
+on some occasion, ordered a velvet-covered saddle with a plank on
+which she could place both feet by sitting sideways on the horse and
+passing one leg through a depression in the saddle. As the
+queen-mother had very handsome legs, she was accused of inventing this
+method of riding, in order to show them. The old furrier fortunately
+found a moment when he could present himself to her sight; but the
+instant that the queen recognized him she gave signs of displeasure.
+
+"Go away, my good man, and let no one see you speak to me," she said
+with anxiety. "Get yourself elected deputy to the States-general, by
+the guild of your trade, and act for me when the Assembly convenes at
+Orleans; you shall know whom to trust in the matter of your son."
+
+"Is he living?" asked the old man.
+
+"Alas!" said the queen, "I hope so."
+
+Lecamus was obliged to return to Paris with nothing better than those
+doubtful words and the secret of the approaching convocation of the
+States-general, thus confided to him by the queen-mother.
+
+
+
+                                  X
+
+                           COSMO RUGGIERO
+
+The Cardinal de Lorraine obtained, within a few days of the events
+just related, certain revelations as to the culpability of the court
+of Navarre. At Lyon, and at Mouvans in Dauphine, a body of Reformers,
+under command of the most enterprising prince of the house of Bourbon
+had endeavored to incite the populace to rise. Such audacity, after
+the bloody executions at Amboise, astonished the Guises, who (no doubt
+to put an end to heresy by means known only to themselves) proposed
+the convocation of the States-general at Orleans. Catherine de'
+Medici, seeing a chance of support to her policy in a national
+representation, joyfully agreed to it. The cardinal, bent on
+recovering his prey and degrading the house of Bourbon, convoked the
+States for the sole purpose of bringing the Prince de Conde and the
+king of Navarre (Antoine de Bourbon, father of Henri IV.) to Orleans,
+--intending to make use of Christophe to convict the prince of high
+treason if he succeeded in again getting him within the power of the
+Crown.
+
+After two months had passed in the prison at Blois, Christophe was
+removed on a litter to a tow-boat, which sailed up the Loire to
+Orleans, helped by a westerly wind. He arrived there in the evening
+and was taken at once to the celebrated tower of Saint-Aignan. The
+poor lad, who did not know what to think of his removal, had plenty of
+time to reflect on his conduct and on his future. He remained there
+two months, lying on his pallet, unable to move his legs. The bones of
+his joints were broken. When he asked for the help of a surgeon of the
+town, the jailer replied that the orders were so strict about him that
+he dared not allow any one but himself even to bring him food. This
+severity, which placed him virtually in solitary confinement, amazed
+Christophe. To his mind, he ought either to be hanged or released; for
+he was, of course, entirely ignorant of the events at Amboise.
+
+In spite of certain secret advice sent to them by Catherine de'
+Medici, the two chiefs of the house of Bourbon resolved to be present
+at the States-general, so completely did the autograph letters they
+received from the king reassure them; and no sooner had the court
+established itself at Orleans than it learned, not without amazement,
+from Groslot, chancellor of Navarre, that the Bourbon princes had
+arrived.
+
+Francois II. established himself in the house of the chancellor of
+Navarre, who was also /bailli/, in other words, chief justice of the
+law courts, at Orleans. This Groslot, whose dual position was one of
+the singularities of this period--when Reformers themselves owned
+abbeys--Groslot, the Jacques Coeur of Orleans, one of the richest
+burghers of the day, did not bequeath his name to the house, for in
+after years it was called Le Bailliage, having been, undoubtedly,
+purchased either by the heirs of the Crown or by the provinces as the
+proper place in which to hold the legal courts. This charming
+structure, built by the bourgeoisie of the sixteenth century, which
+completes so admirably the history of a period in which king, nobles,
+and burghers rivalled each other in the grace, elegance, and richness
+of their dwellings (witness Varangeville, the splendid manor-house of
+Ango, and the mansion, called that of Hercules, in Paris), exists to
+this day, though in a state to fill archaeologists and lovers of the
+Middle Ages with despair. It would be difficult, however, to go to
+Orleans and not take notice of the Hotel-de-Ville which stands on the
+place de l'Estape. This hotel-de-ville, or town-hall, is the former
+Bailliage, the mansion of Groslot, the most illustrious house in
+Orleans, and the most neglected.
+
+The remains of this old building will still show, to the eyes of an
+archaeologist, how magnificent it was at a period when the houses of
+the burghers were commonly built of wood rather than stone, a period
+when noblemen alone had the right to build /manors/,--a significant
+word. Having served as the dwelling of the king at a period when the
+court displayed much pomp and luxury, the hotel Groslot must have been
+the most splendid house in Orleans. It was here, on the place de
+l'Estape, that the Guises and the king reviewed the burgher guard, of
+which Monsieur de Cypierre was made the commander during the sojourn
+of the king. At this period the cathedral of Sainte-Croix, afterward
+completed by Henri IV.,--who chose to give that proof of the sincerity
+of his conversion,--was in process of erection, and its neighborhood,
+heaped with stones and cumbered with piles of wood, was occupied by
+the Guises and their retainers, who were quartered in the bishop's
+palace, now destroyed.
+
+The town was under military discipline, and the measures taken by the
+Guises proved how little liberty they intended to leave to the
+States-general, the members of which flocked into the town, raising the
+rents of the poorest lodgings. The court, the burgher militia, the
+nobility, and the burghers themselves were all in a state of expectation,
+awaiting some /coup-d'Etat/; and they found themselves not mistaken
+when the princes of the blood arrived. As the Bourbon princes entered
+the king's chamber, the court saw with terror the insolent bearing of
+Cardinal de Lorraine. Determined to show his intentions openly, he
+remained covered, while the king of Navarre stood before him
+bare-headed. Catherine de' Medici lowered her eyes, not to show the
+indignation that she felt. Then followed a solemn explanation between
+the young king and the two chiefs of the younger branch. It was short,
+for that the first words of the Prince de Conde Francois II.
+interrupted him, with threatening looks:
+
+"Messieurs, my cousins, I had supposed the affair of Amboise over; I
+find it is not so, and you are compelling us to regret the indulgence
+which we showed."
+
+"It is not the king so much as the Messieurs de Guise who now address
+us," replied the Prince de Conde.
+
+"Adieu, monsieur," cried the little king, crimson with anger. When he
+left the king's presence the prince found his way barred in the great
+hall by two officers of the Scottish guard. As the captain of the
+French guard advanced, the prince drew a letter from his doublet, and
+said to him in presence of the whole court:--
+
+"Can you read that paper aloud to me, Monsieur de Maille-Breze?"
+
+"Willingly," said the French captain:--
+
+  "'My cousin, come in all security; I give you my royal word that
+  you can do so. If you have need of a safe conduct, this letter
+  will serve as one.'"
+
+"Signed?" said the shrewd and courageous hunchback.
+
+"Signed 'Francois,'" said Maille.
+
+"No, no!" exclaimed the prince, "it is signed: 'Your good cousin and
+friend, Francois,'--Messieurs," he said to the Scotch guard, "I follow
+you to the prison to which you are ordered, on behalf of the king, to
+conduct me. There is enough nobility in this hall to understand the
+matter!"
+
+The profound silence which followed these words ought to have
+enlightened the Guises, but silence is that to which all princes
+listen least.
+
+"Monseigneur," said the Cardinal de Tournon, who was following the
+prince, "you know well that since the affair at Amboise you have made
+certain attempts both at Lyon and at Mouvans in Dauphine against the
+royal authority, of which the king had no knowledge when he wrote to
+you in those terms."
+
+"Tricksters!" cried the prince, laughing.
+
+"You have made a public declaration against the Mass and in favor of
+heresy."
+
+"We are masters in Navarre," said the prince.
+
+"You mean to say in Bearn. But you owe homage to the Crown," replied
+President de Thou.
+
+"Ha! you here, president?" cried the prince, sarcastically. "Is the
+whole Parliament with you?"
+
+So saying, he cast a look of contempt upon the cardinal and left the
+hall. He saw plainly enough that they meant to have his head. The
+next day, when Messieurs de Thou, de Viole, d'Espesse, the
+procureur-general Bourdin, and the chief clerk of the court du Tillet,
+entered his presence, he kept them standing, and expressed his regrets
+to see them charged with a duty which did not belong to them. Then he
+said to the clerk, "Write down what I say," and dictated as follows:--
+
+  "I, Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Conde, peer of the kingdom,
+  Marquis de Conti, Comte de Soissons, prince of the blood of
+  France, do declare that I formally refuse to recognize any
+  commission appointed to try me, because, in my quality and in
+  virtue of the privilege appertaining to all members of the royal
+  house, I can only be accused, tried, and judged by the Parliament
+  of peers, both Chambers assembled, the king being seated on his
+  bed of justice."
+
+"You ought to know that, gentlemen, better than others," he added;
+"and this reply is all that you will get from me. For the rest, I
+trust in God and my right."
+
+The magistrates continued to address him notwithstanding his obstinate
+silence. The king of Navarre was left at liberty, but closely watched;
+his prison was larger than that of the prince, and this was the only
+real difference in the position of the two brothers,--the intention
+being that their heads should fall together.
+
+Christophe was therefore kept in the strictest solitary confinement by
+order of the cardinal and the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, for
+no other purpose than to give the judges proof of the culpability of
+the Prince de Conde. The letters seized on Lasagne, the prince's
+secretary, though intelligible to statesmen, where not sufficiently
+plain proof for judges. The cardinal intended to confront the prince
+and Christophe by accident; and it was not without intention that the
+young Reformer was placed in one of the lower rooms in the tower of
+Saint-Aignan, with a window looking on the prison yard. Each time that
+Christophe was brought before the magistrates, and subjected to a
+close examination, he sheltered himself behind a total and complete
+denial, which prolonged his trial until after the opening of the
+States-general.
+
+Old Lecamus, who by that time had got himself elected deputy of the
+/tiers-etat/ by the burghers of Paris, arrived at Orleans a few days
+after the arrest of the Prince de Conde. This news, which reached him
+at Etampes, redoubled his anxiety; for he fully understood--he, who
+alone knew of Christophe's interview with the prince under the bridge
+near his own house--that his son's fate was closely bound up with that
+of the leader of the Reformed party. He therefore determined to study
+the dark tangle of interests which were struggling together at court
+in order to discover some means of rescuing his son. It was useless to
+think of Queen Catherine, who refused to see her furrier. No one about
+the court whom he was able to address could give him any satisfactory
+information about Christophe; and he fell at last into a state of such
+utter despair that he was on the verge of appealing to the cardinal
+himself, when he learned that Monsieur de Thou (and this was the great
+stain upon that good man's life) had consented to be one of the judges
+of the Prince de Conde. The old furrier went at once to see him, and
+learned at last that Christophe was still living, though a prisoner.
+
+Tourillon, the glover (to whom La Renaudie sent Christophe on his way
+to Blois), had offered a room in his house to the Sieur Lecamus for
+the whole time of his stay in Orleans during the sittings of the
+States-general. The glover believed the furrier to be, like himself,
+secretly attached to the Reformed religion; but he soon saw that a
+father who fears for the life of his child pays no heed to shades of
+religious opinion, but flings himself prone upon the bosom of God
+without caring what insignia men give to Him. The poor old man,
+repulsed in all his efforts, wandered like one bewildered through the
+streets. Contrary to his expectations, his money availed him nothing;
+Monsieur de Thou had warned him that if he bribed any servant of the
+house of Guise he would merely lose his money, for the duke and
+cardinal allowed nothing that related to Christophe to transpire. De
+Thou, whose fame is somewhat tarnished by the part he played at this
+crisis, endeavored to give some hope to the poor father; but he
+trembled so much himself for the fate of his godson that his attempts
+at consolation only alarmed the old man still more. Lecamus roamed the
+streets; in three months he had shrunk visibly. His only hope now lay
+in the warm friendship which for so many years had bound him to the
+Hippocrates of the sixteenth century. Ambroise Pare tried to say a
+word to Queen Mary on leaving the chamber of the king, who was then
+indisposed; but no sooner had he named Christophe than the daughter of
+the Stuarts, nervous at the prospect of her fate should any evil
+happen to the king, and believing that the Reformers were attempting
+to poison him, cried out:--
+
+"If my uncles had only listened to me, that fanatic would have been
+hanged already."
+
+The evening on which this fatal answer was repeated to old Lecamus, by
+his friend Pare on the place de l'Estape, he returned home half dead
+to his own chamber, refusing to eat any supper. Tourillon, uneasy
+about him, went up to his room and found him in tears; the aged eyes
+showed the inflamed red lining of their lids, so that the glover
+fancied for a moment that he was weeping tears of blood.
+
+"Comfort yourself, father," said the Reformer; "the burghers of
+Orleans are furious to see their city treated as though it were taken
+by assault, and guarded by the soldiers of Monsieur de Cypierre. If
+the life of the Prince de Conde is in any real danger we will soon
+demolish the tower of Saint-Aignan; the whole town is on the side of
+the Reformers, and it will rise in rebellion; you may be sure of
+that!"
+
+"But, even if they hang the Guises, it will not give me back my son,"
+said the wretched father.
+
+At that instant some one rapped cautiously on Tourillon's outer door,
+and the glover went downstairs to open it himself. The night was dark.
+In these troublous times the masters of all households took minute
+precautions. Tourillon looked through the peep-holes cut in the door,
+and saw a stranger, whose accent indicated an Italian. The man, who
+was dressed in black, asked to speak with Lecamus on matters of
+business, and Tourillon admitted him. When the furrier caught sight of
+his visitor he shuddered violently; but the stranger managed, unseen
+by Tourillon, to lay his fingers on his lips. Lecamus, understanding
+the gesture, said immediately:--
+
+"You have come, I suppose, to offer furs?"
+
+"/Si/," said the Italian, discreetly.
+
+This personage was no other than the famous Ruggiero, astrologer to
+the queen-mother. Tourillon went below to his own apartment, feeling
+convinced that he was one too many in that of his guest.
+
+"Where can we talk without danger of being overheard?" said the
+cautious Florentine.
+
+"We ought to be in the open fields for that," replied Lecamus. "But we
+are not allowed to leave the town; you know the severity with which
+the gates are guarded. No one can leave Orleans without a pass from
+Monsieur de Cypierre," he added,--"not even I, who am a member of the
+States-general. Complaint is to be made at to-morrow's session of this
+restriction of liberty."
+
+"Work like a mole, but don't let your paws be seen in anything, no
+matter what," said the wary Italian. "To-morrow will, no doubt, prove
+a decisive day. Judging by my observations, you may, perhaps, recover
+your son to-morrow, or the day after."
+
+"May God hear you--you who are thought to traffic with the devil!"
+
+"Come to my place," said the astrologer, smiling. "I live in the tower
+of Sieur Touchet de Beauvais, the lieutenant of the Bailliage, whose
+daughter the little Duc d'Orleans has taken such a fancy to; it is
+there that I observe the planets. I have drawn the girl's horoscope,
+and it says that she will become a great lady and be beloved by a
+king. The lieutenant, her father, is a clever man; he loves science,
+and the queen sent me to lodge with him. He has had the sense to be a
+rabid Guisist while awaiting the reign of Charles IX."
+
+The furrier and the astrologer reached the house of the Sieur de
+Beauvais without being met or even seen; but, in case Lecamus' visit
+should be discovered, the Florentine intended to give a pretext of an
+astrological consultation on his son's fate. When they were safely at
+the top of the tower, where the astrologer did his work, Lecamus said
+to him:--
+
+"Is my son really living?"
+
+"Yes, he still lives," replied Ruggiero; "and the question now is how
+to save him. Remember this, seller of skins, I would not give two
+farthings for yours if ever in all your life a single syllable should
+escape you of what I am about to say."
+
+"That is a useless caution, my friend; I have been furrier to the
+court since the time of the late Louis XII.; this is the fourth reign
+that I have seen."
+
+"And you may soon see the fifth," remarked Ruggiero.
+
+"What do you know about my son?"
+
+"He has been put to the question."
+
+"Poor boy!" said the old man, raising his eyes to heaven.
+
+"His knees and ankles were a bit injured, but he has won a royal
+protection which will extend over his whole life," said the Florentine
+hastily, seeing the terror of the poor father. "Your little Christophe
+has done a service to our great queen, Catherine. If we manage to pull
+him out of the claws of the Guises you will see him some day
+councillor to the Parliament. Any man would gladly have his bones
+cracked three times over to stand so high in the good graces of this
+dear sovereign,--a grand and noble genius, who will triumph in the end
+over all obstacles. I have drawn the horoscope of the Duc de Guise; he
+will be killed within a year. Well, so Christophe saw the Prince de
+Conde--"
+
+"You who read the future ought to know the past," said the furrier.
+
+"My good man, I am not questioning you, I am telling you a fact. Now,
+if your son, who will to-morrow be placed in the prince's way as he
+passes, should recognize him, or if the prince should recognize your
+son, the head of Monsieur de Conde will fall. God knows what will
+become of his accomplice! However, don't be alarmed. Neither your son
+nor the prince will die; I have drawn their horoscope,--they will
+live; but I do not know in what way they will get out of this affair.
+Without distrusting the certainty of my calculations, we must do
+something to bring about results. To-morrow the prince will receive,
+from sure hands, a prayer-book in which we convey the information to
+him. God grant that your son be cautious, for him we cannot warn. A
+single glance of recognition will cost the prince's life. Therefore,
+although the queen-mother has every reason to trust in Christophe's
+faithfulness--"
+
+"They've put it to a cruel test!" cried the furrier.
+
+"Don't speak so! Do you think the queen-mother is on a bed of roses?
+She is taking measures as if the Guises had already decided on the
+death of the prince, and right she is, the wise and prudent queen! Now
+listen to me; she counts on you to help her in all things. You have
+some influence with the /tiers-etat/, where you represent the body of
+the guilds of Paris, and though the Guisards may promise you to set
+your son at liberty, try to fool them and maintain the independence of
+the guilds. Demand the queen-mother as regent; the king of Navarre
+will publicly accept the proposal at the session of the
+States-general."
+
+"But the king?"
+
+"The king will die," replied Ruggiero; "I have read his horoscope.
+What the queen-mother requires you to do for her at the States-general
+is a very simple thing; but there is a far greater service which she
+asks of you. You helped Ambroise Pare in his studies, you are his
+friend--"
+
+"Ambroise now loves the Duc de Guise more than he loves me; and he is
+right, for he owes his place to him. Besides, he is faithful to the
+king. Though he inclines to the Reformed religion, he will never do
+anything against his duty."
+
+"Curse these honest men!" cried the Florentine. "Ambroise boasted this
+evening that he could bring the little king safely through his present
+illness (for he is really ill). If the king recovers his health, the
+Guises triumph, the princes die, the house of Bourbon becomes extinct,
+we shall return to Florence, your son will be hanged, and the Lorrains
+will easily get the better of the other sons of France--"
+
+"Great God!" exclaimed Lecamus.
+
+"Don't cry out in that way,--it is like a burgher who knows nothing of
+the court,--but go at once to Ambroise and find out from him what he
+intends to do to save the king's life. If there is anything decided
+on, come back to me at once, and tell me the treatment in which he has
+such faith."
+
+"But--" said Lecamus.
+
+"Obey blindly, my dear friend; otherwise you will get your mind
+bewildered."
+
+"He is right," thought the furrier. "I had better not know more"; and
+he went at once in search of the king's surgeon, who lived at a
+hostelry in the place du Martroi.
+
+Catherine de' Medici was at this moment in a political extremity very
+much like that in which poor Christophe had seen her at Blois. Though
+she had been in a way trained by the struggle, though she had
+exercised her lofty intellect by the lessons of that first defeat, her
+present situation, while nearly the same, had become more critical,
+more perilous than it was at Amboise. Events, like the woman herself,
+had magnified. Though she seemed to be in full accordance with the
+Guises, Catherine held in her hand the threads of a wisely planned
+conspiracy against her terrible associates, and was only awaiting a
+propitious moment to throw off the mask. The cardinal had just
+obtained the positive certainty that Catherine was deceiving him. Her
+subtle Italian spirit felt that the Younger branch was the best
+hindrance she could offer to the ambition of the duke and the
+cardinal; and (in spite of the advice of the two Gondis, who urged her
+to let the Guises wreak their vengeance on the Bourbons) she defeated
+the scheme concocted by them with Spain to seize the province of
+Bearn, by warning Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre, of that
+threatened danger. As this state secret was known only to them and to
+the queen-mother, the Guises knew of course who had betrayed it, and
+resolved to send her back to Florence. But in order to make themselves
+perfectly sure of what they called her treason against the State (the
+State being the house of Lorraine), the duke and cardinal confided to
+her their intention of getting rid of the king of Navarre. The
+precautions instantly taken by Antoine proved conclusively to the two
+brothers that the secrets known only to them and the queen-mother had
+been divulged by the latter. The cardinal instantly taxed her with
+treachery, in presence of Francois II.,--threatening her with an edict
+of banishment in case of future indiscretion, which might, as they
+said, put the kingdom in danger.
+
+Catherine, who then felt herself in the utmost peril, acted in the
+spirit of a great king, giving proof of her high capacity. It must be
+added, however, that she was ably seconded by her friends. L'Hopital
+managed to send her a note, written in the following terms:--
+
+  "Do not allow a prince of the blood to be put to death by a
+  committee; or you will yourself be carried off in some way."
+
+Catherine sent Birago to Vignay to tell the chancellor (l'Hopital) to
+come to Orleans at once, in spite of his being in disgrace. Birago
+returned the very night of which we are writing, and was now a few
+miles from Orleans with l'Hopital, who heartily avowed himself for the
+queen-mother. Chiverni, whose fidelity was very justly suspected by
+the Guises, had escaped from Orleans and reached Ecouen in ten hours,
+by a forced march which almost cost him his life. There he told the
+Connetable de Montmorency of the peril of his nephew, the Prince de
+Conde, and the audacious hopes of the Guises. The Connetable, furious
+at the thought that the prince's life hung upon that of Francois II.,
+started for Orleans at once with a hundred noblemen and fifteen
+hundred cavalry. In order to take the Messieurs de Guise by surprise
+he avoided Paris, and came direct from Ecouen to Corbeil, and from
+Corbeil to Pithiviers by the valley of the Essonne.
+
+"Soldier against soldier, we must leave no chances," he said on the
+occasion of this bold march.
+
+Anne de Montmorency, who had saved France at the time of the invasion
+of Provence by Charles V., and the Duc de Guise, who had stopped the
+second invasion by the emperor at Metz, were, in truth, the two great
+warriors of France at this period. Catherine had awaited this precise
+moment to rouse the inextinguishable hatred of the Connetable, whose
+disgrace and banishment were the work of the Guises. The Marquis de
+Simeuse, however, who commanded at Gien, being made aware of the large
+force approaching under command of the Connetable, jumped on his horse
+hoping to reach Orleans in time to warn the duke and cardinal.
+
+Sure that the Connetable would come to the rescue of his nephew, and
+full of confidence in the Chancelier l'Hopital's devotion to the royal
+cause, the queen-mother revived the hopes and the boldness of the
+Reformed party. The Colignys and the friends of the house of Bourbon,
+aware of their danger, now made common cause with the adherents of the
+queen-mother. A coalition between these opposing interests, attacked
+by a common enemy, formed itself silently in the States-general, where
+it soon became a question of appointing Catherine as regent in case
+the king should die. Catherine, whose faith in astrology was much
+greater than her faith in the Church, now dared all against her
+oppressors, seeing that her son was ill and apparently dying at the
+expiration of the time assigned to his life by the famous sorceress,
+whom Nostradamus had brought to her at the chateau of Chaumont.
+
+
+
+                                  XI
+
+                            AMBROISE PARE
+
+Some days before the terrible end of the reign of Francois II., the
+king insisted on sailing down the Loire, wishing not to be in the town
+of Orleans on the day when the Prince de Conde was executed. Having
+yielded the head of the prince to the Cardinal de Lorraine, he was
+equally in dread of a rebellion among the townspeople and of the
+prayers and supplications of the Princesse de Conde. At the moment of
+embarkation, one of the cold winds which sweep along the Loire at the
+beginning of winter gave him so sharp an ear-ache that he was obliged
+to return to his apartments; there he took to his bed, not leaving it
+again until he died. In contradiction of the doctors, who, with the
+exception of Chapelain, were his enemies, Ambroise Pare insisted that
+an abscess was formed in the king's head, and that unless an issue
+were given to it, the danger of death would increase daily.
+Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, and the curfew law, which
+was sternly enforced in Orleans, at this time practically in a state
+of siege, Pare's lamp shone from his window, and he was deep in study,
+when Lecamus called to him from below. Recognizing the voice of his
+old friend, Pare ordered that he should be admitted.
+
+"You take no rest, Ambroise; while saving the lives of others you are
+wasting your own," said the furrier as he entered, looking at the
+surgeon, who sat, with opened books and scattered instruments, before
+the head of a dead man, lately buried and now disinterred, in which he
+had cut an opening.
+
+"It is a matter of saving the king's life."
+
+"Are you sure of doing it, Ambroise?" cried the old man, trembling.
+
+"As sure as I am of my own existence. The king, my old friend, has a
+morbid ulcer pressing on his brain, which will presently suffice it if
+no vent is given to it, and the danger is imminent. But by boring the
+skull I expect to release the pus and clear the head. I have already
+performed this operation three times. It was invented by a
+Piedmontese; but I have had the honor to perfect it. The first
+operation I performed was at the siege of Metz, on Monsieur de Pienne,
+whom I cured, who was afterwards all the more intelligent in
+consequence. His was an abscess caused by the blow of an arquebuse.
+The second was on the head of a pauper, on whom I wanted to prove the
+value of the audacious operation Monsieur de Pienne had allowed me to
+perform. The third I did in Paris on a gentleman who is now entirely
+recovered. Trepanning--that is the name given to the operation--is
+very little known. Patients refuse it, partly because of the
+imperfection of the instruments; but I have at last improved them. I
+am practising now on this skull, that I may be sure of not failing
+to-morrow, when I operate on the head of the king."
+
+"You ought indeed to be very sure you are right, for your own head
+would be in danger in case--"
+
+"I'd wager my life I can cure him," replied Ambroise, with the
+conviction of a man of genius. "Ah! my old friend, where's the danger
+of boring into a skull with proper precautions? That is what soldiers
+do in battle every day of their lives, without taking any
+precautions."
+
+"My son," said the burgher, boldly, "do you know that to save the king
+is to ruin France? Do you know that this instrument of yours will
+place the crown of the Valois on the head of the Lorrain who calls
+himself the heir of Charlemagne? Do you know that surgery and policy
+are at this moment sternly opposed to each other? Yes, the triumph of
+your genius will be the death of your religion. If the Guises gain the
+regency, the blood of the Reformers will flow like water. Be a greater
+citizen than you are a surgeon; oversleep yourself to-morrow morning
+and leave a free field to the other doctors who if they cannot cure
+the king will cure France."
+
+"I!" exclaimed Pare. "I leave a man to die when I can cure him? No,
+no! were I to hang as an abettor of Calvin I shall go early to court.
+Do you not feel that the first and only reward I shall ask will be the
+life of your Christophe? Surely at such a moment Queen Mary can deny
+me nothing."
+
+"Alas! my friend," returned Lecamus, "the little king has refused the
+pardon of the Prince de Conde to the princess. Do not kill your
+religion by saving the life of a man who ought to die."
+
+"Do not you meddle with God's ordering of the future!" cried Pare.
+"Honest men can have but one motto: /Fais ce que dois, advienne que
+pourra/!--do thy duty, come what will. That is what I did at the siege
+of Calais when I put my foot on the face of the Duc de Guise,--I ran
+the risk of being strangled by his friends and his servants; but
+to-day I am surgeon to the king; moreover I am of the Reformed
+religion; and yet the Guises are my friends. I shall save the king,"
+cried the surgeon, with the sacred enthusiasm of a conviction bestowed
+by genius, "and God will save France!"
+
+A knock was heard on the street door and presently one of Pare's
+servants gave a paper to Lecamus, who read aloud these terrifying
+words:--
+
+  "A scaffold is being erected at the convent of the Recollets: the
+  Prince de Conde will be beheaded there to-morrow."
+
+Ambroise and Lecamus looked at each other with an expression of the
+deepest horror.
+
+"I will go and see it for myself," said the furrier.
+
+No sooner was he in the open street than Ruggiero took his arm and
+asked by what means Ambroise Pare proposed to save the king. Fearing
+some trickery, the old man, instead of answering, replied that he
+wished to go and see the scaffold. The astrologer accompanied him to
+the place des Recollets, and there, truly enough, they found the
+carpenters putting up the horrible framework by torchlight.
+
+"Hey, my friend," said Lecamus to one of the men, "what are you doing
+here at this time of night?"
+
+"We are preparing for the hanging of heretics, as the blood-letting at
+Amboise didn't cure them," said a young Recollet who was
+superintending the work.
+
+"Monseigneur the cardinal is very right," said Ruggiero, prudently;
+"but in my country we do better."
+
+"What do you do?" said the young priest.
+
+"We burn them."
+
+Lecamus was forced to lean on the astrologer's arm, for his legs gave
+way beneath him; he thought it probable that on the morrow his son
+would hang from one of those gibbets. The poor old man was thrust
+between two sciences, astrology and surgery, both of which promised
+him the life of his son, for whom in all probability that scaffold was
+now erecting. In the trouble and distress of his mind, the Florentine
+was able to knead him like dough.
+
+"Well, my worthy dealer in minever, what do you say now to the
+Lorraine jokes?" whispered Ruggiero.
+
+"Alas! you know I would give my skin if that of my son were safe and
+sound."
+
+"That is talking like your trade," said the Italian; "but explain to
+me the operation which Ambroise means to perform upon the king, and in
+return I will promise you the life of your son."
+
+"Faithfully?" exclaimed the old furrier.
+
+"Shall I swear it to you?" said Ruggiero.
+
+Thereupon the poor old man repeated his conversation with Ambroise
+Pare to the astrologer, who, the moment that the secret of the great
+surgeon was divulged to him, left the poor father abruptly in the
+street in utter despair.
+
+"What the devil does he mean, that miscreant?" cried Lecamus, as he
+watched Ruggiero hurrying with rapid steps to the place de l'Estape.
+
+Lecamus was ignorant of the terrible scene that was taking place
+around the royal bed, where the imminent danger of the king's death
+and the consequent loss of power to the Guises had caused the hasty
+erection of the scaffold for the Prince de Conde, whose sentence had
+been pronounced, as it were by default,--the execution of it being
+delayed by the king's illness.
+
+Absolutely no one but the persons on duty were in the halls,
+staircases, and courtyard of the royal residence, Le Bailliage. The
+crowd of courtiers were flocking to the house of the king of Navarre,
+on whom the regency would devolve on the death of the king, according
+to the laws of the kingdom. The French nobility, alarmed by the
+audacity of the Guises, felt the need of rallying around the chief of
+the younger branch, when, ignorant of the queen-mother's Italian
+policy, they saw her the apparent slave of the duke and cardinal.
+Antoine de Bourbon, faithful to his secret agreement with Catherine,
+was bound not to renounce the regency in her favor until the
+States-general had declared for it.
+
+The solitude in which the king's house was left had a powerful effect
+on the mind of the Duc de Guise when, on his return from an
+inspection, made by way of precaution through the city, he found no
+one there but the friends who were attached exclusively to his own
+fortunes. The chamber in which was the king's bed adjoined the great
+hall of the Bailliage. It was at that period panelled in oak. The
+ceiling, composed of long, narrow boards carefully joined and painted,
+was covered with blue arabesques on a gold ground, a part of which
+being torn down about fifty years ago was instantly purchased by a
+lover of antiquities. This room, hung with tapestry, the floor being
+covered with a carpet, was so dark and gloomy that the torches threw
+scarcely any light. The vast four-post bedstead with its silken
+curtains was like a tomb. Beside her husband, close to his pillow, sat
+Mary Stuart, and near her the Cardinal de Lorraine. Catherine was
+seated in a chair at a little distance. The famous Jean Chapelain, the
+physician on duty (who was afterwards chief physician to Charles IX.)
+was standing before the fireplace. The deepest silence reigned. The
+young king, pale and shrunken, lay as if buried in his sheets, his
+pinched little face scarcely showing on the pillow. The Duchesse de
+Guise, sitting on a stool, attended Queen Mary, while on the other
+side, near Catherine, in the recess of a window, Madame de Fiesque
+stood watching the gestures and looks of the queen-mother; for she
+knew the dangers of her position.
+
+In the hall, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, Monsieur de
+Cypierre, governor of the Duc d'Orleans and now appointed governor of
+the town, occupied one corner of the fireplace with the two Gondis.
+Cardinal de Tournon, who in this crisis espoused the interests of the
+queen-mother on finding himself treated as an inferior by the Cardinal
+de Lorraine, of whom he was certainly the ecclesiastical equal,
+talked in a low voice to the Gondis. The marshals de Vieilleville
+and Saint-Andre and the keeper of the seals, who presided at the
+States-general, were talking together in a whisper of the dangers to
+which the Guises were exposed.
+
+The lieutenant-general of the kingdom crossed the room on his
+entrance, casting a rapid glance about him, and bowed to the Duc
+d'Orleans whom he saw there.
+
+"Monseigneur," he said, "this will teach you to know men. The Catholic
+nobility of the kingdom have gone to pay court to a heretic prince,
+believing that the States-general will give the regency to the heirs
+of a traitor who long detained in prison your illustrious
+grandfather."
+
+Then having said these words, which were destined to plough a furrow
+in the heart of the young prince, he passed into the bedroom, where
+the king was not so much asleep as plunged in a heavy torpor. The Duc
+de Guise was usually able to correct the sinister aspect of his
+scarred face by an affable and pleasing manner, but on this occasion,
+when he saw the instrument of his power breaking in his very hands, he
+was unable to force a smile. The cardinal, whose civil courage was
+equal to his brother's military daring, advanced a few steps to meet
+him.
+
+"Robertet thinks that little Pinard is sold to the queen-mother," he
+whispered, leading the duke into the hall; "they are using him to work
+upon the members of the States-general."
+
+"Well, what does it signify if we are betrayed by a secretary when all
+else betrays us?" cried the lieutenant-general. "The town is for the
+Reformation, and we are on the eve of a revolt. Yes! the /Wasps/ are
+discontented"; he continued, giving the Orleans people their nickname;
+"and if Pare does not save the king we shall have a terrible uprising.
+Before long we shall be forced to besiege Orleans, which is nothing
+but a bog of Huguenots."
+
+"I have been watching that Italian woman," said the cardinal, "as she
+sits there with absolute insensibility. She is watching and waiting,
+God forgive her! for the death of her son; and I ask myself whether we
+should not do a wise thing to arrest her at once, and also the king of
+Navarre."
+
+"It is already more than we want upon our hands to have the Prince de
+Conde in prison," replied the duke.
+
+The sound of a horseman riding in haste to the gate of the Bailliage
+echoed through the hall. The duke and cardinal went to the window, and
+by the light of the torches which were in the portico the duke
+recognized on the rider's hat the famous Lorraine cross, which the
+cardinal had lately ordered his partisans to wear. He sent an officer
+of the guard, who was stationed in the antechamber, to give entrance
+to the new-comer; and went himself, followed by his brother, to meet
+him on the landing.
+
+"What is it, my dear Simeuse?" asked the duke, with that charm of
+manner which he always displayed to military men, as soon as he
+recognized the governor of Gien.
+
+"The Connetable has reached Pithiviers; he left Ecouen with two
+thousand cavalry and one hundred nobles."
+
+"With their suites?"
+
+"Yes, monseigneur," replied Simeuse; "in all, two thousand six hundred
+men. Some say that Thore is behind them with a body of infantry. If
+the Connetable delays awhile, expecting his son, you still have time
+to repulse him."
+
+"Is that all you know? Are the reasons of this sudden call to arms
+made known?"
+
+"Montmorency talks as little as he writes; go you and meet him,
+brother, while I prepare to welcome him with the head of his nephew,"
+said the cardinal, giving orders that Robertet be sent to him at once.
+
+"Vieilleville!" cried the duke to the marechal, who came immediately.
+"The Connetable has the audacity to come here under arms; if I go to
+meet him will you be responsible to hold the town?"
+
+"As soon as you leave it the burghers will fly to arms; and who can
+answer for the result of an affair between cavalry and citizens in
+these narrow streets?" replied the marechal.
+
+"Monseigneur," said Robertet, rushing hastily up the stairs, "the
+Chancelier de l'Hopital is at the gate and asks to enter; are we to
+let him in?"
+
+"Yes, open the gate," answered the cardinal. "Connetable and
+chancelier together would be dangerous; we must separate them. We have
+been boldly tricked by the queen-mother into choosing l'Hopital as
+chancellor."
+
+Robertet nodded to a captain of the guard, who awaited an answer at
+the foot of the staircase; then he turned round quickly to receive the
+orders of the cardinal.
+
+"Monseigneur, I take the liberty," he said, making one last effort,
+"to point out that the sentence should be approved by /the king in
+council/. If you violate the law on a prince of the blood, it will not
+be respected for either a cardinal or a Duc de Guise."
+
+"Pinard has upset your mind, Robertet," said the cardinal, sternly.
+"Do you not know that the king signed the order of execution the day
+he was about to leave Orleans, in order that the sentence might be
+carried out in his absence?"
+
+The lieutenant-general listened to this discussion without a word, but
+he took his brother by the arm and led him into a corner of the hall.
+
+"Undoubtedly," he said, "the heirs of Charlemagne have the right to
+recover the crown which was usurped from their house by Hugh Capet;
+but can they do it? The pear is not yet ripe. Our nephew is dying, and
+the whole court has gone over to the king of Navarre."
+
+"The king's heart failed him, or the Bearnais would have been stabbed
+before now," said the cardinal; "and we could easily have disposed of
+the Valois children."
+
+"We are very ill-placed here," said the duke; "the rebellion of the
+town will be supported by the States-general. L'Hopital, whom we
+protected while the queen-mother opposed his appointment, is to-day
+against us, and yet it is all-important that we should have the
+justiciary with us. Catherine has too many supporters at the present
+time; we cannot send her back to Italy. Besides, there are still three
+Valois princes--"
+
+"She is no longer a mother, she is all queen," said the cardinal. "In
+my opinion, this is the moment to make an end of her. Vigor, and more
+and more vigor! that's my prescription!" he cried.
+
+So saying, the cardinal returned to the king's chamber, followed by
+the duke. The priest went straight to the queen-mother.
+
+"The papers of Lasagne, the secretary of the Prince de Conde, have
+been communicated to you, and you now know that the Bourbons are
+endeavoring to dethrone your son."
+
+"I know all that," said Catherine.
+
+"Well, then, will you give orders to arrest the king of Navarre?"
+
+"There is," she said with dignity, "a lieutenant-general of the
+kingdom."
+
+At this instant Francois II. groaned piteously, complaining aloud of
+the terrible pains in his ear. The physician left the fireplace where
+he was warming himself, and went to the bedside to examine the king's
+head.
+
+"Well, monsieur?" said the Duc de Guise, interrogatively.
+
+"I dare not take upon myself to apply a blister to draw the abscess.
+Maitre Ambroise has promised to save the king's life by an operation,
+and I might thwart it."
+
+"Let us postpone the treatment till to-morrow morning," said
+Catherine, coldly, "and order all the physicians to be present; for we
+all know the calumnies to which the death of kings gives rise."
+
+She went to her son and kissed his hand; then she withdrew to her own
+apartments.
+
+"With what composure that audacious daughter of a shop-keeper alluded
+to the death of the dauphin, poisoned by Montecuculi, one of her own
+Italian followers!" said Mary Stuart.
+
+"Mary!" cried the little king, "my grandfather never doubted her
+innocence."
+
+"Can we prevent that woman from coming here to-morrow?" said the queen
+to her uncles in a low voice.
+
+"What will become of us if the king dies?" returned the cardinal, in a
+whisper. "Catherine will shovel us all into his grave."
+
+Thus the question was plainly put between Catherine de' Medici and the
+house of Lorraine during that fatal night. The arrival of the
+Connetable de Montmorency and the Chancelier de l'Hopital were
+distinct indications of rebellion; the morning of the next day would
+therefore be decisive.
+
+
+
+                                 XII
+
+                         DEATH OF FRANCOIS II
+
+On the morrow the queen-mother was the first to enter the king's
+chamber. She found no one there but Mary Stuart, pale and weary, who
+had passed the night in prayer beside the bed. The Duchesse de Guise
+had kept her mistress company, and the maids of honor had taken turns
+in relieving one another. The young king slept. Neither the duke nor
+the cardinal had yet appeared. The priest, who was bolder than the
+soldier, had, it was afterward said, put forth his utmost energy
+during the night to induce his brother to make himself king. But, in
+face of the assembled States-general, and threatened by a battle with
+Montmorency, the Balafre declared the circumstances unfavorable; he
+refused, against his brother's utmost urgency, to arrest the king of
+Navarre, the queen-mother, l'Hopital, the Cardinal de Tournon, the
+Gondis, Ruggiero, and Birago, objecting that such violent measures
+would bring on a general rebellion. He postponed the cardinal's scheme
+until the fate of Francois II. should be determined.
+
+The deepest silence reigned in the king's chamber. Catherine,
+accompanied by Madame de Fiesque, went to the bedside and gazed at her
+son with a semblance of grief that was admirably simulated. She put
+her handkerchief to her eyes and walked to the window where Madame de
+Fiesque brought her a seat. Thence she could see into the courtyard.
+
+It had been agreed between Catherine and the Cardinal de Tournon that
+if the Connetable should successfully enter the town the cardinal
+would come to the king's house with the two Gondis; if otherwise, he
+would come alone. At nine in the morning the duke and cardinal,
+followed by their gentlemen, who remained in the hall, entered the
+king's bedroom,--the captain on duty having informed them that
+Ambroise Pare had arrived, together with Chapelain and three other
+physicians, who hated Pare and were all in the queen-mother's
+interests.
+
+A few moments later and the great hall of the Bailliage presented much
+the same aspect as that of the Salle des gardes at Blois on the day
+when Christophe was put to the torture and the Duc de Guise was
+proclaimed lieutenant-governor of the kingdom,--with the single
+exception that whereas love and joy overflowed the royal chamber and
+the Guises triumphed, death and mourning now reigned within that
+darkened room, and the Guises felt that power was slipping through
+their fingers. The maids of honor of the two queens were again in
+their separate camps on either side of the fireplace, in which glowed
+a monstrous fire. The hall was filled with courtiers. The news--spread
+about, no one knew how--of some daring operation contemplated by
+Ambroise Pare to save the king's life, had brought back the lords and
+gentlemen who had deserted the house the day before. The outer
+staircase and courtyard were filled by an anxious crowd. The scaffold
+erected during the night for the Prince de Conde opposite to the
+convent of the Recollets, had amazed and startled the whole nobility.
+All present spoke in a low voice and the talk was the same mixture as
+at Blois, of frivolous and serious, light and earnest matters. The
+habit of expecting troubles, sudden revolutions, calls to arms,
+rebellions, and great events, which marked the long period during
+which the house of Valois was slowly being extinguished in spite of
+Catherine de' Medici's great efforts to preserve it, took its rise at
+this time.
+
+A deep silence prevailed for a certain distance beyond the door of the
+king's chamber, which was guarded by two halberdiers, two pages, and
+by the captain of the Scotch guard. Antoine de Bourbon, king of
+Navarre, held a prisoner in his own house, learned by his present
+desertion the hopes of the courtiers who had flocked to him the day
+before, and was horrified by the news of the preparations made during
+the night for the execution of his brother.
+
+Standing before the fireplace in the great hall of the Bailliage was
+one of the greatest and noblest figures of that day,--the Chancelier
+de l'Hopital, wearing his crimson robe lined and edged with ermine,
+and his cap on his head according to the privilege of his office.
+This courageous man, seeing that his benefactors were traitorous and
+self-seeking, held firmly to the cause of the kings, represented by the
+queen-mother; at the risk of losing his head, he had gone to Rouen to
+consult with the Connetable de Montmorency. No one ventured to draw
+him from the reverie in which he was plunged. Robertet, the secretary
+of State, two marshals of France, Vieilleville, and Saint-Andre, and
+the keeper of the seals, were collected in a group before the
+chancellor. The courtiers present were not precisely jesting; but
+their talk was malicious, especially among those who were not for the
+Guises.
+
+Presently voices were heard to rise in the king's chamber. The two
+marshals, Robertet, and the chancellor went nearer to the door; for
+not only was the life of the king in question, but, as the whole court
+knew well, the chancellor, the queen-mother, and her adherents were in
+the utmost danger. A deep silence fell on the whole assembly.
+
+Ambroise Pare had by this time examined the king's head; he thought
+the moment propitious for his operation; if it was not performed
+suffusion would take place, and Francois II. might die at any moment.
+As soon as the duke and cardinal entered the chamber he explained to
+all present that in so urgent a case it was necessary to trepan the
+head, and he now waited till the king's physician ordered him to
+perform the operation.
+
+"Cut the head of my son as though it were a plank!--with that horrible
+instrument!" cried Catherine de' Medici. "Maitre Ambroise, I will not
+permit it."
+
+The physicians were consulting together; but Catherine spoke in so
+loud a voice that her words reached, as she intended they should,
+beyond the door.
+
+"But, madame, if there is no other way to save him?" said Mary Stuart,
+weeping.
+
+"Ambroise," cried Catherine; "remember that your head will answer for
+the king's life."
+
+"We are opposed to the treatment suggested by Maitre Ambroise," said
+the three physicians. "The king can be saved by injecting through the
+ear a remedy which will draw the contents of the abscess through that
+passage."
+
+The Duc de Guise, who was watching Catherine's face, suddenly went up
+to her and drew her into the recess of the window.
+
+"Madame," he said, "you wish the death of your son; you are in league
+with our enemies, and have been since Blois. This morning the
+Counsellor Viole told the son of your furrier that the Prince de
+Conde's head was about to be cut off. That young man, who, when the
+question was applied, persisted in denying all relations with the
+prince, made a sign of farewell to him as he passed before the window
+of his dungeon. You saw your unhappy accomplice tortured with royal
+insensibility. You are now endeavoring to prevent the recovery of your
+eldest son. Your conduct forces us to believe that the death of the
+dauphin, which placed the crown on your husband's head was not a
+natural one, and that Montecuculi was your--"
+
+"Monsieur le chancilier!" cried Catherine, at a sign from whom Madame
+de Fiesque opened both sides of the bedroom door.
+
+The company in the hall then saw the scene that was taking place in
+the royal chamber: the livid little king, his face half dead, his eyes
+sightless, his lips stammering the word "Mary," as he held the hand of
+the weeping queen; the Duchesse de Guise motionless, frightened by
+Catherine's daring act; the duke and cardinal, also alarmed, keeping
+close to the queen-mother and resolving to have her arrested on the
+spot by Maille-Breze; lastly, the tall Ambroise Pare, assisted by the
+king's physician, holding his instrument in his hand but not daring to
+begin the operation, for which composure and total silence were as
+necessary as the consent of the other surgeons.
+
+"Monsieur le chancelier," said Catherine, "the Messieurs de Guise wish
+to authorize a strange operation upon the person of the king; Ambroise
+Pare is preparing to cut open his head. I, as the king's mother and a
+member of the council of the regency,--I protest against what appears
+to me a crime of /lese-majeste/. The king's physicians advise an
+injection through the ear, which seems to me as efficacious and less
+dangerous than the brutal operation proposed by Pare."
+
+When the company in the hall heard these words a smothered murmur rose
+from their midst; the cardinal allowed the chancellor to enter the
+bedroom and then he closed the door.
+
+"I am lieutenant-general of the kingdom," said the Duc de Guise; "and
+I would have you know, Monsieur le chancelier, that Ambroise, the
+king's surgeon, answers for his life."
+
+"Ah! if this be the turn that things are taking!" exclaimed Ambroise
+Pare. "I know my rights and how I should proceed." He stretched his
+arm over the bed. "This bed and the king are mine. I claim to be sole
+master of this case and solely responsible. I know the duties of my
+office; I shall operate upon the king without the sanction of the
+physicians."
+
+"Save him!" said the cardinal, "and you shall be the richest man in
+France."
+
+"Go on!" cried Mary Stuart, pressing the surgeon's hand.
+
+"I cannot prevent it," said the chancellor; "but I shall record the
+protest of the queen-mother."
+
+"Robertet!" called the Duc de Guise.
+
+When Robertet entered, the lieutenant-general pointed to the
+chancellor.
+
+"I appoint you chancellor of France in the place of that traitor," he
+said. "Monsieur de Maille, take Monsieur de l'Hopital and put him in
+the prison of the Prince de Conde. As for you, madame," he added,
+turning to Catherine; "your protest will not be received; you ought to
+be aware that any such protest must be supported by sufficient force.
+I act as the faithful subject and loyal servant of king Francois II.,
+my master. Go on, Antoine," he added, looking at the surgeon.
+
+"Monsieur de Guise," said l'Hopital; "if you employ violence either
+upon the king or upon the chancellor of France, remember that enough
+of the nobility of France are in that hall to rise and arrest you as a
+traitor."
+
+"Oh! my lords," cried the great surgeon; "if you continue these
+arguments you will soon proclaim Charles IX!--for king Francois is
+about to die."
+
+Catherine de' Medici, absolutely impassive, gazed from the window.
+
+"Well, then, we shall employ force to make ourselves masters of this
+room," said the cardinal, advancing to the door.
+
+But when he opened it even he was terrified; the whole house was
+deserted! The courtiers, certain now of the death of the king, had
+gone in a body to the king of Navarre.
+
+"Well, go on, perform your duty," cried Mary Stuart, vehemently, to
+Ambroise. "I--and you, duchess," she said to Madame de Guise,--"will
+protect you."
+
+"Madame," said Ambroise; "my zeal was carrying me away. The doctors,
+with the exception of my friend Chapelain, prefer an injection, and it
+is my duty to submit to their wishes. If I had been chief surgeon and
+chief physician, which I am not, the king's life would probably have
+been saved. Give that to me, gentlemen," he said, stretching out his
+hand for the syringe, which he proceeded to fill.
+
+"Good God!" cried Mary Start, "but I order you to--"
+
+"Alas! madame," said Ambroise, "I am under the direction of these
+gentlemen."
+
+The young queen placed herself between the surgeon, the doctors, and
+the other persons present. The chief physician held the king's head,
+and Ambroise made the injection into the ear. The duke and the
+cardinal watched the proceeding attentively. Robertet and Monsieur de
+Maille stood motionless. Madame de Fiesque, at a sign from Catherine,
+glided unperceived from the room. A moment later l'Hopital boldly
+opened the door of the king's chamber.
+
+"I arrive in good time," said the voice of a man whose hasty steps
+echoed through the great hall, and who stood the next moment on the
+threshold of the open door. "Ah, messieurs, so you meant to take off
+the head of my good nephew, the Prince de Conde? Instead of that, you
+have forced the lion from his lair and--here I am!" added the
+Connetable de Montmorency. "Ambroise, you shall not plunge your knife
+into the head of my king. The first prince of the blood, Antoine de
+Bourbon, the Prince de Conde, the queen-mother, the Connetable, and
+the chancellor forbid the operation."
+
+To Catherine's great satisfaction, the king of Navarre and the Prince
+de Conde now entered the room.
+
+"What does this mean?" said the Duc de Guise, laying his hand on his
+dagger.
+
+"It means that in my capacity as Connetable, I have dismissed the
+sentinels of all your posts. /Tete Dieu/! you are not in an enemy's
+country, methinks. The king, our master, is in the midst of his loyal
+subjects, and the States-general must be suffered to deliberate at
+liberty. I come, messieurs, from the States-general. I carried the
+protest of my nephew de Conde before that assembly, and three hundred
+of those gentlemen have released him. You wish to shed royal blood and
+to decimate the nobility of the kingdom, do you? Ha! in future, I defy
+you, and all your schemes, Messieurs de Lorraine. If you order the
+king's head opened, by this sword which saved France from Charles V.,
+I say it shall not be done--"
+
+"All the more," said Ambroise Pare; "because it is now too late; the
+suffusion has begun."
+
+"Your reign is over, messieurs," said Catherine to the Guises, seeing
+from Pare's face that there was no longer any hope.
+
+"Ah! madame, you have killed your own son," cried Mary Stuart as she
+bounded like a lioness from the bed to the window and seized the
+queen-mother by the arm, gripping it violently.
+
+"My dear," replied Catherine, giving her daughter-in-law a cold, keen
+glance in which she allowed her hatred, repressed for the last six
+months, to overflow; "you, to whose inordinate love we owe this death,
+you will now go to reign in your Scotland, and you will start
+to-morrow. I am regent /de facto/." The three physicians having made
+her a sign, "Messieurs," she added, addressing the Guises, "it is
+agreed between Monsieur de Bourbon, appointed lieutenant-general of
+the kingdom by the States-general, and me that the conduct of the
+affairs of the State is our business solely. Come, monsieur le
+chancelier."
+
+"The king is dead!" said the Duc de Guise, compelled to perform his
+duties as Grand-master.
+
+"Long live King Charles IX.!" cried all the noblemen who had come with
+the king of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, and the Connetable.
+
+The ceremonies which follow the death of a king of France were
+performed in almost total solitude. When the king-at-arms proclaimed
+aloud three times in the hall, "The king is dead!" there were very few
+persons present to reply, "Vive le roi!"
+
+The queen-mother, to whom the Comtesse de Fiesque had brought the Duc
+d'Orleans, now Charles IX., left the chamber, leading her son by the
+hand, and all the remaining courtiers followed her. No one was left in
+the house where Francois II. had drawn his last breath, but the duke
+and the cardinal, the Duchesse de Guise, Mary Stuart, and Dayelle,
+together with the sentries at the door, the pages of the Grand-master,
+those of the cardinal, and their private secretaries.
+
+"Vive la France!" cried several Reformers in the street, sounding the
+first cry of the opposition.
+
+Robertet, who owed all he was to the duke and cardinal, terrified by
+their scheme and its present failure, went over secretly to the
+queen-mother, whom the ambassadors of Spain, England, the Empire, and
+Poland, hastened to meet on the staircase, brought thither by Cardinal
+de Tournon, who had gone to notify them as soon as he had made Queen
+Catherine a sign from the courtyard at the moment when she protested
+against the operation of Ambroise Pare.
+
+"Well!" said the cardinal to the duke, "so the sons of Louis
+d'Outre-mer, the heirs of Charles de Lorraine flinched and lacked
+courage."
+
+"We should have been exiled to Lorraine," replied the duke. "I declare
+to you, Charles, that if the crown lay there before me I would not
+stretch out my hand to pick it up. That's for my son to do."
+
+"Will he have, as you have had, the army and Church on his side?"
+
+"He will have something better."
+
+"What?"
+
+"The people!"
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Mary Stuart, clasping the stiffened hand of her first
+husband, now dead, "there is none but me to weep for this poor boy who
+loved me so!"
+
+"How can we patch up matters with the queen-mother?" said the
+cardinal.
+
+"Wait till she quarrels with the Huguenots," replied the duchess.
+
+The conflicting interests of the house of Bourbon, of Catherine, of
+the Guises, and of the Reformed party produced such confusion in the
+town of Orleans that, three days after the king's death, his body,
+completely forgotten in the Bailliage and put into a coffin by the
+menials of the house, was taken to Saint-Denis in a covered waggon,
+accompanied only by the Bishop of Senlis and two gentlemen. When the
+pitiable procession reached the little town of Etampes, a servant of
+the Chancelier l'Hopital fastened to the waggon this severe
+inscription, which history has preserved: "Tanneguy de Chastel, where
+art thou? and yet thou wert a Frenchman!"--a stern reproach, which
+fell with equal force on Catherine de' Medici, Mary Stuart, and the
+Guises. What Frenchman does not know that Tanneguy de Chastel spent
+thirty thousand crowns of the coinage of that day (one million of our
+francs) at the funeral of Charles VII., the benefactor of his house?
+
+No sooner did the tolling of the bells announce to the town of Orleans
+that Francois II. was dead, and the rumor spread that the Connetable
+de Montmorency had ordered the flinging open of the gates of the town,
+than Tourillon, the glover, rushed up into the garret of his house and
+went to a secret hiding-place.
+
+"Good heavens! can he be dead?" he cried.
+
+Hearing the words, a man rose to his feet and answered, "Ready to
+serve!"--the password of the Reformers who belonged to Calvin.
+
+This man was Chaudieu, to whom Tourillon now related the events of the
+last eight days, during which time he had prudently left the minister
+alone in his hiding-place with a twelve-pound loaf of bread for his
+sole nourishment.
+
+"Go instantly to the Prince de Conde, brother: ask him to give me a
+safe-conduct; and find me a horse," cried the minister. "I must start
+at once."
+
+"Write me a line, or he will not receive me."
+
+"Here," said Chaudieu, after writing a few words, "ask for a pass from
+the king of Navarre, for I must go to Geneva without a moment's loss
+of time."
+
+
+
+                                 XIII
+
+                                CALVIN
+
+Two hours later all was ready, and the ardent minister was on his way
+to Switzerland, accompanied by a nobleman in the service of the king
+of Navarre (of whom Chaudieu pretended to be the secretary), carrying
+with him despatches from the Reformers in the Dauphine. This sudden
+departure was chiefly in the interests of Catherine de' Medici, who,
+in order to gain time to establish her power, had made a bold
+proposition to the Reformers which was kept a profound secret. This
+strange proceeding explains the understanding so suddenly apparent
+between herself and the leaders of the Reform. The wily woman gave, as
+a pledge of her good faith, an intimation of her desire to heal all
+differences between the two churches by calling an assembly, which
+should be neither a council, nor a conclave, nor a synod, but should
+be known by some new and distinctive name, if Calvin consented to the
+project. When this secret was afterwards divulged (be it remarked in
+passing) it led to an alliance between the Duc de Guise and the
+Connetable de Montmorency against Catherine and the king of Navarre,
+--a strange alliance! known in history as the Triumvirate, the Marechal
+de Saint-Andre being the third personage in the purely Catholic
+coalition to which this singular proposition for a "colloquy" gave
+rise. The secret of Catherine's wily policy was rightly understood by
+the Guises; they felt certain that the queen cared nothing for this
+mysterious assembly, and was only temporizing with her new allies in
+order to secure a period of peace until the majority of Charles IX.;
+but none the less did they deceive the Connetable into fearing a
+collusion of real interests between the queen and the Bourbons,
+--whereas, in reality, Catherine was playing them all one against
+another.
+
+The queen had become, as the reader will perceive, extremely powerful
+in a very short time. The spirit of discussion and controversy which
+now sprang up was singularly favorable to her position. The Catholics
+and the Reformers were equally pleased to exhibit their brilliancy one
+after another in this tournament of words; for that is what it
+actually was, and no more. It is extraordinary that historians have
+mistaken one of the wiliest schemes of the great queen for uncertainty
+and hesitation! Catherine never went more directly to her own ends
+than in just such schemes which appeared to thwart them. The king of
+Navarre, quite incapable of understanding her motives, fell into her
+plan in all sincerity, and despatched Chaudieu to Calvin, as we have
+seen. The minister had risked his life to be secretly in Orleans and
+watch events; for he was, while there, in hourly peril of being
+discovered and hung as a man under sentence of banishment.
+
+According to the then fashion of travelling, Chaudieu could not reach
+Geneva before the month of February, and the negotiations were not
+likely to be concluded before the end of March; consequently the
+assembly could certainly not take place before the month of May, 1561.
+Catherine, meantime, intended to amuse the court and the various
+conflicting interests by the coronation of the king, and the
+ceremonies of his first "lit de justice," at which l'Hopital and de
+Thou recorded the letters-patent by which Charles IX. confided
+the administration to his mother in common with the present
+lieutenant-general of the kingdom, Antoine de Navarre, the weakest
+prince of those days.
+
+Is it not a strange spectacle this of the great kingdom of France
+waiting in suspense for the "yes" or "no" of a French burgher,
+hitherto an obscure man, living for many years past in Geneva? The
+transalpine pope held in check by the pontiff of Geneva! The two
+Lorrain princes, lately all-powerful, now paralyzed by the momentary
+coalition of the queen-mother and the first prince of the blood with
+Calvin! Is not this, I say, one of the most instructive lessons ever
+given to kings by history,--a lesson which should teach them to study
+men, to seek out genius, and employ it, as did Louis XIV., wherever
+God has placed it?
+
+Calvin, whose name was not Calvin but Cauvin, was the son of a cooper
+at Noyon in Picardy. The region of his birth explains in some degree
+the obstinacy combined with capricious eagerness which distinguished
+this arbiter of the destinies of France in the sixteenth century.
+Nothing is less known than the nature of this man, who gave birth to
+Geneva and to the spirit that emanated from that city. Jean-Jacques
+Rousseau, who had very little historical knowledge, has completely
+ignored the influence of Calvin on his republic. At first the embryo
+Reformer, who lived in one of the humblest houses in the upper town,
+near the church of Saint-Pierre, over a carpenter's shop (first
+resemblance between him and Robespierre), had no great authority in
+Geneva. In fact for a long time his power was malevolently checked by
+the Genevese. The town was the residence in those days of a citizen
+whose fame, like that of several others, remained unknown to the world
+at large and for a time to Geneva itself. This man, Farel, about the
+year 1537, detained Calvin in Geneva, pointing out to him that the
+place could be made the safe centre of a reformation more active and
+thorough than that of Luther. Farel and Calvin regarded Lutheranism as
+an incomplete work,--insufficient in itself and without any real grip
+upon France. Geneva, midway between France and Italy, and speaking the
+French language, was admirably situated for ready communication with
+Germany, France, and Italy. Calvin thereupon adopted Geneva as the
+site of his moral fortunes; he made it thenceforth the citadel of his
+ideas.
+
+The Council of Geneva, at Farel's entreaty, authorized Calvin in
+September, 1538, to give lectures on theology. Calvin left the duties
+of the ministry to Farel, his first disciple, and gave himself up
+patiently to the work of teaching his doctrine. His authority, which
+became so absolute in the last years of his life, was obtained with
+difficulty and very slowly. The great agitator met with such serious
+obstacles that he was banished for a time from Geneva on account of
+the severity of his reform. A party of honest citizens still clung to
+their old luxury and their old customs. But, as usually happens, these
+good people, fearing ridicule, would not admit the real object of
+their efforts, and kept up their warfare against the new doctrines on
+points altogether foreign to the real question. Calvin insisted that
+/leavened bread/ should be used for the communion, and that all feasts
+should be abolished except Sundays. These innovations were disapproved
+of at Berne and at Lausanne. Notice was served on the Genevese to
+conform to the ritual of Switzerland. Calvin and Farel resisted; their
+political opponents used this disobedience to drive them from Geneva,
+whence they were, in fact, banished for several years. Later Calvin
+returned triumphantly at the demand of his flock. Such persecutions
+always become in the end the consecration of a moral power; and, in
+this case, Calvin's return was the beginning of his era as prophet. He
+then organized his religious Terror, and the executions began. On his
+reappearance in the city he was admitted into the ranks of the
+Genevese burghers; but even then, after fourteen years' residence, he
+was not made a member of the Council. At the time of which we write,
+when Catherine sent her envoy to him, this king of ideas had no other
+title than that of "pastor of the Church of Geneva." Moreover, Calvin
+never in his life received a salary of more than one hundred and fifty
+francs in money yearly, fifteen hundred-weight of wheat, and two
+barrels of wine. His brother, a tailor, kept a shop close to the place
+Saint-Pierre, in a street now occupied by one of the large printing
+establishments of Geneva. Such personal disinterestedness, which was
+lacking in Voltaire, Newton, and Bacon, but eminent in the lives of
+Rabelais, Spinosa, Loyola, Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is indeed
+a magnificent frame to those ardent and sublime figures.
+
+The career of Robespierre can alone picture to the minds of the
+present day that of Calvin, who, founding his power on the same bases,
+was as despotic and as cruel as the lawyer of Arras. It is a
+noticeable fact that Picardy (Arras and Noyon) furnished both these
+instruments of reformation! Persons who wish to study the motives of
+the executions ordered by Calvin will find, all relations considered,
+another 1793 in Geneva. Calvin cut off the head of Jacques Gruet "for
+having written impious letters, libertine verses, and for working to
+overthrow ecclesiastical ordinances." Reflect upon that sentence, and
+ask yourselves if the worst tyrants in their saturnalias ever gave
+more horribly burlesque reasons for their cruelties. Valentin
+Gentilis, condemned to death for "involuntary heresy," escaped
+execution only by making a submission far more ignominious than was
+ever imposed by the Catholic Church. Seven years before the conference
+which was now to take place in Calvin's house on the proposals of the
+queen-mother, Michel Servet, /a Frenchman/, travelling through
+Switzerland, was arrested at Geneva, tried, condemned, and burned
+alive, on Calvin's accusation, for having "attacked the mystery of the
+Trinity," in a book which was neither written nor published in Geneva.
+Remember the eloquent remonstrance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose
+book, overthrowing the Catholic religion, written in France and
+published in Holland, was burned by the hangman, while the author, a
+foreigner, was merely banished from the kingdom where he had
+endeavored to destroy the fundamental proofs of religion and of
+authority. Compare the conduct of our Parliament with that of the
+Genevese tyrant. Again: Bolsee was brought to trial for "having other
+ideas than those of Calvin on predestination." Consider these things,
+and ask yourselves if Fourquier-Tinville did worse. The savage
+religious intolerance of Calvin was, morally speaking, more implacable
+than the savage political intolerance of Robespierre. On a larger
+stage than that of Geneva, Calvin would have shed more blood than did
+the terrible apostle of political equality as opposed to Catholic
+equality. Three centuries earlier a monk of Picardy drove the whole
+West upon the East. Peter the Hermit, Calvin, and Robespierre, each at
+an interval of three hundred years and all three from the same region,
+were, politically speaking, the Archimedean screws of their age,--at
+each epoch a Thought which found its fulcrum in the self-interest of
+mankind.
+
+Calvin was undoubtedly the maker of that melancholy town called
+Geneva, where, only ten years ago, a man said, pointing to a
+porte-cochere in the upper town, the first ever built there: "By that
+door luxury has invaded Geneva." Calvin gave birth, by the sternness
+of his doctrines and his executions, to that form of hypocritical
+sentiment called "cant."[*] According to those who practice it, good
+morals consist in renouncing the arts and the charms of life, in
+eating richly but without luxury, in silently amassing money without
+enjoying it otherwise than as Calvin enjoyed power--by thought. Calvin
+imposed on all the citizens of his adopted town the same gloomy pall
+which he spread over his own life. He created in the Consistory a
+Calvinistic inquisition, absolutely similar to the revolutionary
+tribunal of Robespierre. The Consistory denounced the persons to be
+condemned to the Council, and Calvin ruled the Council through the
+Consistory, just as Robespierre ruled the Convention through the Club
+of the Jacobins. In this way an eminent magistrate of Geneva was
+condemned to two months' imprisonment, the loss of all his offices, and
+the right of ever obtaining others "because he led a disorderly life
+and was intimate with Calvin's enemies." Calvin thus became a
+legislator. He created the austere, sober, commonplace, and hideously
+sad, but irreproachable manners and customs which characterize Geneva
+to the present day,--customs preceding those of England called
+Puritanism, which were due to the Cameronians, disciples of Cameron
+(a Frenchman deriving his doctrine from Calvin), whom Sir Walter Scott
+depicts so admirably. The poverty of a man, a sovereign master, who
+negotiated, power to power, with kings, demanding armies and subsidies,
+and plunging both hands into their savings laid aside for the
+unfortunate, proves that thought, used solely as a means of domination,
+gives birth to political misers,--men who enjoy by their brains only,
+and, like the Jesuits, want power for power's sake. Pitt, Luther,
+Calvin, Robespierre, all those Harpagons of power, died without a
+penny. The inventory taken in Calvin's house after his death, which
+comprised all his property, even his books, amounted in value, as
+history records, to two hundred and fifty francs. That of Luther came
+to about the same sum; his widow, the famous Catherine de Bora, was
+forced to petition for a pension of five hundred francs, which as
+granted to her by an Elector of Germany. Potemkin, Richelieu, Mazarin,
+those men of thought and action, all three of whom made or laid the
+foundation of empires, each left over three hundred millions behind
+them. They had hearts; they loved women and the arts; they built, they
+conquered; whereas with the exception of the wife of Luther, the Helen
+of that Iliad, all the others had no tenderness, no beating of the heart
+for any woman with which to reproach themselves.
+
+[*] /Momerie/.
+
+This brief digression was necessary in order to explain Calvin's
+position in Geneva.
+
+During the first days of the month of February in the year 1561, on a
+soft, warm evening such as we may sometimes find at that season on
+Lake Leman, two horsemen arrived at the Pre-l'Eveque,--thus called
+because it was the former country-place of the Bishop of Geneva,
+driven from Switzerland about thirty years earlier. These horsemen,
+who no doubt knew the laws of Geneva about the closing of the gates
+(then a necessity and now very ridiculous) rode in the direction of
+the Porte de Rive; but they stopped their horses suddenly on catching
+sight of a man, about fifty years of age, leaning on the arm of a
+servant-woman, and walking slowly toward the town. This man, who was
+rather stout, walked with difficulty, putting one foot after the other
+with pain apparently, for he wore round shoes of black velvet, laced
+in front.
+
+"It is he!" said Chaudieu to the other horseman, who immediately
+dismounted, threw the reins to his companion, and went forward,
+opening wide his arms to the man on foot.
+
+The man, who was Jean Calvin, drew back to avoid the embrace, casting
+a stern look at his disciple. At fifty years of age Calvin looked as
+though he were sixty. Stout and stocky in figure, he seemed shorter
+still because the horrible sufferings of stone in the bladder obliged
+him to bend almost double as he walked. These pains were complicated
+by attacks of gout of the worst kind. Every one trembled before that
+face, almost as broad as it was long, on which, in spite of its
+roundness, there was as little human-kindness as on that of Henry the
+Eighth, whom Calvin greatly resembled. Sufferings which gave him no
+respite were manifest in the deep-cut lines starting from each side of
+the nose and following the curve of the moustache till they were lost
+in the thick gray beard. This face, though red and inflamed like that
+of a heavy drinker, showed spots where the skin was yellow. In spite
+of the velvet cap, which covered the huge square head, a vast forehead
+of noble shape could be seen and admired; beneath it shone two dark
+eyes, which must have flashed forth flame in moments of anger. Whether
+by reason of his obesity, or because of his thick, short neck, or in
+consequence of his vigils and his constant labors, Calvin's head was
+sunk between his broad shoulders, which obliged him to wear a fluted
+ruff of very small dimensions, on which his face seemed to lie like
+the head of John the Baptist on a charger. Between his moustache and
+his beard could be seen, like a rose, his small and fresh and eloquent
+little mouth, shaped in perfection. The face was divided by a square
+nose, remarkable for the flexibility of its entire length, the tip of
+which was significantly flat, seeming the more in harmony with the
+prodigious power expressed by the form of that imperial head. Though
+it might have been difficult to discover on his features any trace of
+the weekly headaches which tormented Calvin in the intervals of the
+slow fever that consumed him, suffering, ceaselessly resisted by study
+and by will, gave to that mask, superficially so florid, a certain
+something that was terrible. Perhaps this impression was explainable
+by the color of a sort of greasy layer on the skin, due to the
+sedentary habits of the toiler, showing evidence of the perpetual
+struggle which went on between that valetudinarian temperament and one
+of the strongest wills ever known in the history of the human mind.
+The mouth, though charming, had an expression of cruelty. Chastity,
+necessitated by vast designs, exacted by so many sickly conditions,
+was written upon that face. Regrets were there, notwithstanding the
+serenity of that all-powerful brow, together with pain in the glance
+of those eyes, the calmness of which was terrifying.
+
+Calvin's costume brought into full relief this powerful head. He wore
+the well-known cassock of black cloth, fastened round his waist by a
+black cloth belt with a brass buckle, which became thenceforth the
+distinctive dress of all Calvinist ministers, and was so uninteresting
+to the eye that it forced the spectator's attention upon the wearer's
+face.
+
+"I suffer too much, Theodore, to embrace you," said Calvin to the
+elegant cavalier.
+
+Theodore de Beze, then forty-two years of age and lately admitted, at
+Calvin's request, as a Genevese burgher, formed a violent contrast to
+the terrible pastor whom he had chosen as his sovereign guide and
+ruler. Calvin, like all burghers raised to moral sovereignty, and all
+inventors of social systems, was eaten up with jealousy. He abhorred
+his disciples; he wanted no equals; he could not bear the slightest
+contradiction. Yet there was between him and this graceful cavalier so
+marked a difference, Theodore de Beze was gifted with so charming a
+personality enhanced by a politeness trained by court life, and Calvin
+felt him to be so unlike his other surly janissaries, that the stern
+reformer departed in de Beze's case from his usual habits. He never
+loved him, for this harsh legislator totally ignored all friendship,
+but, not fearing him in the light of a successor, he liked to play
+with Theodore as Richelieu played with his cat; he found him supple
+and agile. Seeing how admirably de Beze succeeded in all his missions,
+he took a fancy to the polished instrument of which he knew himself
+the mainspring and the manipulator; so true is it that the sternest of
+men cannot do without some semblance of affection. Theodore was
+Calvin's spoilt child; the harsh reformer never scolded him; he
+forgave him his dissipations, his amours, his fine clothes and his
+elegance of language. Perhaps Calvin was not unwilling to show that
+the Reformation had a few men of the world to compare with the men of
+the court. Theodore de Beze was anxious to introduce a taste for the
+arts, for literature, and for poesy into Geneva, and Calvin listened
+to his plans without knitting his thick gray eyebrows. Thus the
+contrast of character and person between these two celebrated men was
+as complete and marked as the difference in their minds.
+
+Calvin acknowledged Chaudieu's very humble salutation by a slight
+inclination of the head. Chaudieu slipped the bridles of both horses
+through his arms and followed the two great men of the Reformation,
+walking to the left, behind de Beze, who was on Calvin's right. The
+servant-woman hastened on in advance to prevent the closing of the
+Porte de Rive, by informing the captain of the guard that Calvin had
+been seized with sudden acute pains.
+
+Theodore de Beze was a native of the canton of Vezelay, which was the
+first to enter the Confederation, the curious history of which
+transaction has been written by one of the Thierrys. The burgher
+spirit of resistance, endemic at Vezelay, no doubt, played its part in
+the person of this man, in the great revolt of the Reformers; for de
+Beze was undoubtedly one of the most singular personalities of the
+Heresy.
+
+"You suffer still?" said Theodore to Calvin.
+
+"A Catholic would say, 'like a lost soul,'" replied the Reformer, with
+the bitterness he gave to his slightest remarks. "Ah! I shall not be
+here long, my son. What will become of you without me?"
+
+"We shall fight by the light of your books," said Chaudieu.
+
+Calvin smiled; his red face changed to a pleased expression, and he
+looked favorably at Chaudieu.
+
+"Well, have you brought me news? Have they massacred many of our
+people?" he said smiling, and letting a sarcastic joy shine in his
+brown eyes.
+
+"No," said Chaudieu, "all is peaceful."
+
+"So much the worse," cried Calvin; "so much the worse! All
+pacification is an evil, if indeed it is not a trap. Our strength lies
+in persecution. Where should we be if the Church accepted Reform?"
+
+"But," said Theodore, "that is precisely what the queen-mother appears
+to wish."
+
+"She is capable of it," remarked Calvin. "I study that woman--"
+
+"What, at this distance?" cried Chaudieu.
+
+"Is there any distance for the mind?" replied Calvin, sternly, for he
+thought the interruption irreverent. "Catherine seeks power, and women
+with that in their eye have neither honor nor faith. But what is she
+doing now?"
+
+"I bring you a proposal from her to call a species of council,"
+replied Theodore de Beze.
+
+"Near Paris?" asked Calvin, hastily.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ha! so much the better!" exclaimed the Reformer.
+
+"We are to try to understand each other and draw up some public
+agreement which shall unite the two churches."
+
+"Ah! if she would only have the courage to separate the French Church
+from the court of Rome, and create a patriarch for France as they did
+in the Greek Church!" cried Calvin, his eyes glistening at the idea
+thus presented to his mind of a possible throne. "But, my son, can the
+niece of a Pope be sincere? She is only trying to gain time."
+
+"She has sent away the Queen of Scots," said Chaudieu.
+
+"One less!" remarked Calvin, as they passed through the Porte de Rive.
+"Elizabeth of England will restrain that one for us. Two neighboring
+queens will soon be at war with each other. One is handsome, the other
+ugly,--a first cause for irritation; besides, there's the question of
+illegitimacy--"
+
+He rubbed his hands, and the character of his joy was so evidently
+ferocious that de Beze shuddered: he saw the sea of blood his master
+was contemplating.
+
+"The Guises have irritated the house of Bourbon," said Theodore after
+a pause. "They came to an open rupture at Orleans."
+
+"Ah!" said Calvin, "you would not believe me, my son, when I told you
+the last time you started for Nerac that we should end by stirring up
+war to the death between the two branches of the house of France? I
+have, at least, one court, one king and royal family on my side. My
+doctrine is producing its effect upon the masses. The burghers, too,
+understand me; they regard as idolators all who go to Mass, who paint
+the walls of their churches, and put pictures and statues within them.
+Ha! it is far more easy for a people to demolish churches and palaces
+than to argue the question of justification by faith, or the real
+presence. Luther was an argufier, but I,--I am an army! He was a
+reasoner, I am a system. In short, my sons, he was merely a
+skirmisher, but I am Tarquin! Yes, /my/ faithful shall destroy
+pictures and pull down churches; they shall make mill-stones of
+statues to grind the flour of the peoples. There are guilds and
+corporations in the States-general--I will have nothing there but
+individuals. Corporations resist; they see clear where the masses are
+blind. We must join to our doctrine political interests which will
+consolidate it, and keep together the /materiel/ of my armies. I have
+satisfied the logic of cautious souls and the minds of thinkers by
+this bared and naked worship which carries religion into the world of
+ideas; I have made the peoples understand the advantages of
+suppressing ceremony. It is for you, Theodore, to enlist their
+interests; hold to that; go not beyond it. All is said in the way of
+doctrine; let no one add one iota. Why does Cameron, that little
+Gascon pastor, presume to write of it?"
+
+Calvin, de Beze, and Chaudieu were mounting the steep steps of the
+upper town in the midst of a crowd, but the crowd paid not the
+slightest attention to the men who were unchaining the mobs of other
+cities and preparing them to ravage France.
+
+After this terrible tirade, the three marched on in silence till they
+entered the little place Saint-Pierre and turned toward the pastor's
+house. On the second story of that house (never noted, and of which in
+these days no one is ever told in Geneva, where, it may be remarked,
+Calvin has no statue) his lodging consisted of three chambers with
+common pine floors and wainscots, at the end of which were the kitchen
+and the bedroom of his woman-servant. The entrance, as usually
+happened in most of the burgher households of Geneva, was through the
+kitchen, which opened into a little room with two windows, serving as
+parlor, salon, and dining-room. Calvin's study, where his thought had
+wrestled with suffering for the last fourteen years, came next, with
+the bedroom beyond it. Four oaken chairs covered with tapestry and
+placed around a square table were the sole furniture of the parlor. A
+stove of white porcelain, standing in one corner of the room, cast out
+a gentle heat. Panels and a wainscot of pine wood left in its natural
+state without decoration covered the walls. Thus the nakedness of the
+place was in keeping with the sober and simple life of the Reformer.
+
+"Well?" said de Beze as they entered, profiting by a few moments when
+Chaudieu left them to put up the horse at a neighboring inn, "what am
+I to do? Will you agree to the colloquy?"
+
+"Of course," replied Calvin. "And it is you, my son, who will fight
+for us there. Be peremptory, be arbitrary. No one, neither the queen
+nor the Guises nor I, wants a pacification; it would not suit us at
+all. I have confidence in Duplessis-Mornay; let him play the leading
+part. Are we alone?" he added, with a glance of distrust into the
+kitchen, where two shirts and a few collars were stretched on a line
+to dry. "Go and shut all the doors. Well," he continued when Theodore
+had returned, "we must drive the king of Navarre to join the Guises
+and the Connetable by advising him to break with Queen Catherine de'
+Medici. Let us all get the benefit of that poor creature's weakness.
+If he turns against the Italian she will, when she sees herself
+deprived of that support, necessarily unite with the Prince de Conde
+and Coligny. Perhaps this manoeuvre will so compromise her that she
+will be forced to remain on our side."
+
+Theodore de Beze caught the hem of Calvin's cassock and kissed it.
+
+"Oh! my master," he exclaimed, "how great you are!"
+
+"Unfortunately, my dear Theodore, I am dying. If I die without seeing
+you again," he added, sinking his voice and speaking in the ear of his
+minister of foreign affairs, "remember to strike a great blow by the
+hand of some one of our martyrs."
+
+"Another Minard to be killed?"
+
+"Something better than a mere lawyer."
+
+"A king?"
+
+"Still better!--a man who wants to be a king."
+
+"The Duc de Guise!" exclaimed Theodore, with an involuntary gesture.
+
+"Well?" cried Calvin, who thought he saw disappointment or resistance
+in the gesture, and did not see at the same moment the entrance of
+Chaudieu. "Have we not the right to strike as we are struck?--yes, to
+strike in silence and in darkness. May we not return them wound for
+wound, and death for death? Would the Catholics hesitate to lay traps
+for us and massacre us? Assuredly not. Let us burn their churches!
+Forward, my children! And if you have devoted youths--"
+
+"I have," said Chaudieu.
+
+"Use them as engines of war! our cause justifies all means. Le
+Balafre, that horrible soldier, is, like me, more than a man; he is a
+dynasty, just as I am a system. He is able to annihilate us;
+therefore, I say, Death to the Guise!"
+
+"I would rather have a peaceful victory, won by time and reason," said
+de Beze.
+
+"Time!" exclaimed Calvin, dashing his chair to the ground, "reason!
+Are you mad? Can reason achieve conquests? You know nothing of men,
+you who deal with them, idiot! The thing that injures my doctrine, you
+triple fool! is the reason that is in it. By the lightning of Saul, by
+the sword of Vengeance, thou pumpkin-head, do you not see the vigor
+given to my Reform by the massacre at Amboise? Ideas never grow till
+they are watered with blood. The slaying of the Duc de Guise will lead
+to a horrible persecution, and I pray for it with all my might. Our
+reverses are preferable to success. The Reformation has an object to
+gain in being attacked; do you hear me, dolt? It cannot hurt us to be
+defeated, whereas Catholicism is at an end if we should win but a
+single battle. Ha! what are my lieutenants?--rags, wet rags instead of
+men! white-haired cravens! baptized apes! O God, grant me ten years
+more of life! If I die too soon the cause of true religion is lost in
+the hands of such boobies! You are as great a fool as Antoine de
+Navarre! Out of my sight! Leave me; I want a better negotiator than
+you! You are an ass, a popinjay, a poet! Go and make your elegies and
+your acrostics, you trifler! Hence!"
+
+The pains of his body were absolutely overcome by the fire of his
+anger; even the gout subsided under this horrible excitement of his
+mind. Calvin's face flushed purple, like the sky before a storm. His
+vast brow shone. His eyes flamed. He was no longer himself. He gave
+way utterly to the species of epileptic motion, full of passion, which
+was common with him. But in the very midst of it he was struck by the
+attitude of the two witnesses; then, as he caught the words of
+Chaudieu saying to de Beze, "The Burning Bush!" he sat down, was
+silent, and covered his face with his two hands, the knotted veins of
+which were throbbing in spite of their coarse texture.
+
+Some minutes later, still shaken by this storm raised within him by
+the continence of his life, he said in a voice of emotion:--
+
+"My sins, which are many, cost me less trouble to subdue, than my
+impatience. Oh, savage beast! shall I never vanquish you?" he cried,
+beating his breast.
+
+"My dear master," said de Beze, in a tender voice, taking Calvin's
+hand and kissing it, "Jupiter thunders, but he knows how to smile."
+
+Calvin looked at his disciple with a softened eye and said:--
+
+"Understand me, my friends."
+
+"I understand that the pastors of peoples bear great burdens," replied
+Theodore. "You have a world upon your shoulders."
+
+"I have three martyrs," said Chaudieu, whom the master's outburst had
+rendered thoughtful, "on whom we can rely. Stuart, who killed Minard,
+is at liberty--"
+
+"You are mistaken," said Calvin, gently, smiling after the manner of
+great men who bring fair weather into their faces as though they were
+ashamed of the previous storm. "I know human nature; a man may kill
+one president, but not two."
+
+"Is it absolutely necessary?" asked de Beze.
+
+"Again!" exclaimed Calvin, his nostrils swelling. "Come, leave me, you
+will drive me to fury. Take my decision to the queen. You, Chaudieu,
+go your way, and hold your flock together in Paris. God guide you!
+Dinah, light my friends to the door."
+
+"Will you not permit me to embrace you?" said Theodore, much moved.
+"Who knows what may happen to us on the morrow? We may be seized in
+spite of our safe-conduct."
+
+"And yet you want to spare them!" cried Calvin, embracing de Beze.
+Then he took Chaudieu's hand and said: "Above all, no Huguenots, no
+Reformers, but /Calvinists/! Use no term but Calvinism. Alas! this is
+not ambition, for I am dying,--but it is necessary to destroy the
+whole of Luther, even to the name of Lutheran and Lutheranism."
+
+"Ah! man divine," cried Chaudieu, "you well deserve such honors."
+
+"Maintain the uniformity of the doctrine; let no one henceforth change
+or remark it. We are lost if new sects issue from our bosom."
+
+We will here anticipate the events on which this Study is based, and
+close the history of Theodore de Beze, who went to Paris with
+Chaudieu. It is to be remarked that Poltrot, who fired at the Duc de
+Guise fifteen months later, confessed under torture that he had been
+urged to the crime by Theodore de Beze; though he retracted that
+avowal during subsequent tortures; so that Bossuet, after weighing all
+historical considerations, felt obliged to acquit Beze of instigating
+the crime. Since Bossuet's time, however, an apparently futile
+dissertation, apropos of a celebrated song, has led a compiler of the
+eighteenth century to prove that the verses on the death of the Duc de
+Guise, sung by the Huguenots from one end of France to the other, was
+the work of Theodore de Beze; and it is also proved that the famous
+song on the burial of Marlborough was a plagiarism on it.[*]
+
+[*] One of the most remarkable instances of the transmission of songs
+is that of Marlborough. Written in the first instance by a
+Huguenot on the death of the Duc de Guise in 1563, it was
+preserved in the French army, and appears to have been sung with
+variations, suppressions, and additions at the death of all
+generals of importance. When the intestine wars were over the song
+followed the soldiers into civil life. It was never forgotten
+(though the habit of singing it may have lessened), and in 1781,
+sixty years after the death of Marlborough, the wet-nurse of the
+Dauphin was heard to sing it as she suckled her nursling. When and
+why the name of the Duke of Marlborough was substituted for that
+of the Duc de Guise has never been ascertained. See "Chansons
+Populaires," par Charles Nisard: Paris, Dentu, 1867.--Tr.
+
+
+
+                                XIV
+
+                          CATHERINE IN POWER
+
+The day on which Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu arrived in Paris, the
+court returned from Rheims, where Charles IX. was crowned. This
+ceremony, which Catherine made magnificent with splendid fetes,
+enabled her to gather about her the leaders of the various parties.
+Having studied all interests and all factions, she found herself with
+two alternatives from which to choose; either to rally them all to the
+throne, or to pit them one against the other. The Connetable de
+Montmorency, supremely Catholic, whose nephew, the Prince de Conde,
+was leader of the Reformers, and whose sons were inclined to the new
+religion, blamed the alliance of the queen-mother with the
+Reformation. The Guises, on their side, were endeavoring to gain over
+Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, a weak prince; a manoeuvre which
+his wife, Jeanne d'Albret, instructed by de Beze, allowed to succeed.
+The difficulties were plain to Catherine, whose dawning power needed a
+period of tranquillity. She therefore impatiently awaited Calvin's
+reply to the message which the Prince de Conde, the king of Navarre,
+Coligny, d'Andelot, and the Cardinal de Chatillon had sent him through
+de Beze and Chaudieu. Meantime, however, she was faithful to her
+promises as to the Prince de Conde. The chancellor put an end to the
+proceedings in which Christophe was involved by referring the affair
+to the Parliament of Paris, which at once set aside the judgment of
+the committee, declaring it without power to try a prince of the
+blood. The Parliament then reopened the trial, at the request of the
+Guises and the queen-mother. Lasagne's papers had already been given
+to Catherine, who burned them. The giving up of these papers was a
+first pledge, uselessly made by the Guises to the queen-mother. The
+Parliament, no longer able to take cognizance of those decisive
+proofs, reinstated the prince in all his rights, property, and honors.
+Christophe, released during the tumult at Orleans on the death of the
+king, was acquitted in the first instance, and appointed, in
+compensation for his sufferings, solicitor to the Parliament, at the
+request of his godfather Monsieur de Thou.
+
+The Triumvirate, that coming coalition of self-interests threatened by
+Catherine's first acts, was now forming itself under her very eyes.
+Just as in chemistry antagonistic substances separate at the first
+shock which jars their enforced union, so in politics the alliance of
+opposing interests never lasts. Catherine thoroughly understood that
+sooner or later she should return to the Guises and combine with them
+and the Connetable to do battle against the Huguenots. The proposed
+"colloquy" which tempted the vanity of the orators of all parties, and
+offered an imposing spectacle to succeed that of the coronation and
+enliven the bloody ground of a religious war which, in point of fact,
+had already begun, was as futile in the eyes of the Duc de Guise as in
+those of Catherine. The Catholics would, in one sense be worsted; for
+the Huguenots, under pretext of conferring, would be able to proclaim
+their doctrine, with the sanction of the king and his mother, to the
+ears of all France. The Cardinal de Lorraine, flattered by Catherine
+into the idea of destroying the heresy by the eloquence of the Church,
+persuaded his brother to consent; and thus the queen obtained what was
+all-essential to her, six months of peace.
+
+A slight event, occurring at this time, came near compromising the
+power which Catherine had so painfully built up. The following scene,
+preserved in history, took place, on the very day the envoys returned
+from Geneva, in the hotel de Coligny near the Louvre. At his
+coronation, Charles IX., who was greatly attached to his tutor Amyot,
+appointed him grand-almoner of France. This affection was shared by
+his brother the Duc d'Anjou, afterwards Henri III., another of Anjou's
+pupils. Catherine heard the news of this appointment from the two
+Gondis during the journey from Rheims to Paris. She had counted on
+that office in the gift of the Crown to gain a supporter in the Church
+with whom to oppose the Cardinal de Lorraine. Her choice had fallen on
+the Cardinal de Tournon, in whom she expected to find, as in
+l'Hopital, another /crutch/--the word is her own. As soon as she
+reached the Louvre she sent for the tutor, and her anger was such, on
+seeing the disaster to her policy caused by the ambition of this son
+of a shoemaker, that she was betrayed into using the following
+extraordinary language, which several memoirs of the day have handed
+down to us:--
+
+"What!" she cried, "am I, who compel the Guises, the Colignys, the
+Connetables, the house of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, to serve my
+ends, am I to be opposed by a priestling like you who are not
+satisfied to be bishop of Auxerre?"
+
+Amyot excused himself. He assured the queen that he had asked nothing;
+the king of his own will had given him the office of which he, the son
+of a poor tailor, felt himself quite unworthy.
+
+"Be assured, /maitre/," replied Catherine (that being the name which
+the two kings, Charles IX. and Henri III., gave to the great writer)
+"that you will not stand on your feet twenty-four hours hence, unless
+you make your pupil change his mind."
+
+Between the death thus threatened and the resignation of the highest
+ecclesiastical office in the gift of the crown, the son of the
+shoemaker, who had lately become extremely eager after honors, and may
+even have coveted a cardinal's hat, thought it prudent to temporize.
+He left the court and hid himself in the abbey of Saint-Germain. When
+Charles IX. did not see him at his first dinner, he asked where he
+was. Some Guisard doubtless told him of what had occurred between
+Amyot and the queen-mother.
+
+"Has he been forced to disappear because I made him grand-almoner?"
+cried the king.
+
+He thereupon rushed to his mother in the violent wrath of angry
+children when their caprices are opposed.
+
+"Madame," he said on entering, "did I not kindly sign the letter you
+asked me to send to Parliament, by means of which you govern my
+kingdom? Did you not promise that if I did so my will should be yours?
+And here, the first favor that I wish to bestow excites your jealousy!
+The chancellor talks of declaring my majority at fourteen, three years
+from now, and you wish to treat me as a child. By God, I will be king,
+and a king as my father and grandfather were kings!"
+
+The tone and manner in which these words were said gave Catherine a
+revelation of her son's true character; it was like a blow in the
+breast.
+
+"He speaks to me thus, he whom I made a king!" she thought.
+"Monsieur," she said aloud, "the office of a king, in times like
+these, is a very difficult one; you do not yet know the shrewd men
+with whom you have to deal. You will never have a safer and more
+sincere friend than your mother, or better servants than those who
+have been so long attached to her person, without whose services you
+might perhaps not even exist to-day. The Guises want both your life
+and your throne, be sure of that. If they could sew me into a sack and
+fling me into the river," she said, pointing to the Seine, "it would
+be done to-night. They know that I am a lioness defending her young,
+and that I alone prevent their daring hands from seizing your crown.
+To whom--to whose party does your tutor belong? Who are his allies?
+What authority has he? What services can he do you? What weight do his
+words carry? Instead of finding a prop to sustain your power, you have
+cut the ground from under it. The Cardinal de Lorraine is a living
+threat to you; he plays the king; he keeps his hat on his head before
+the princes of the blood; it was urgently necessary to invest another
+cardinal with powers greater than his own. But what have you done? Is
+Amyot, that shoemaker, fit only to tie the ribbons of his shoes, is he
+capable of making head against the Guise ambition? However, you love
+Amyot, you have appointed him; your will must now be done, monsieur.
+But before you make such gifts again, I pray you to consult me in
+affectionate good faith. Listen to reasons of state; and your own good
+sense as a child may perhaps agree with my old experience, when you
+really understand the difficulties that lie before you."
+
+"Then I can have my master back again?" cried the king, not listening
+to his mother's words, which he considered to be mere reproaches.
+
+"Yes, you shall have him," she replied. "But it is not here, nor that
+brutal Cypierre who will teach you how to reign."
+
+"It is for you to do so, my dear mother," said the boy, mollified by
+his victory and relaxing the surly and threatening look stamped by
+nature upon his countenance.
+
+Catherine sent Gondi to recall the new grand-almoner. When the Italian
+discovered the place of Amyot's retreat, and the bishop heard that the
+courtier was sent by the queen, he was seized with terror and refused
+to leave the abbey. In this extremity Catherine was obliged to write
+to him herself, in such terms that he returned to Paris and received
+from her own lips the assurance of her protection,--on condition,
+however, that he would blindly promote her wishes with Charles IX.
+
+This little domestic tempest over, the queen, now re-established in
+the Louvre after an absence of more than a year, held council with her
+closest friends as to the proper conduct to pursue with the young king
+whom Cypierre had complimented on his firmness.
+
+"What is best to be done?" she said to the two Gondis, Ruggiero,
+Birago, and Chiverni who had lately become governor and chancellor to
+the Duc d'Anjou.
+
+"Before all else," replied Birago, "get rid of Cypierre. He is not a
+courtier; he will never accommodate himself to your ideas, and will
+think he does his duty in thwarting you."
+
+"Whom can I trust?" cried the queen.
+
+"One of us," said Birago.
+
+"On my honor!" exclaimed Gondi, "I'll promise you to make the king as
+docile as the king of Navarre."
+
+"You allowed the late king to perish to save your other children,"
+said Albert de Gondi. "Do, then, as the great signors of
+Constantinople do,--divert the anger and amuse the caprices of the
+present king. He loves art and poetry and hunting, also a little girl
+he saw at Orleans; /there's/ occupation enough for him."
+
+"Will you really be the king's governor?" said Catherine to the ablest
+of the Gondis.
+
+"Yes, if you will give me the necessary authority; you may even be
+obliged to make me marshal of France and a duke. Cypierre is
+altogether too small a man to hold the office. In future, the governor
+of a king of France should be of some great dignity, like that of duke
+and marshal."
+
+"He is right," said Birago.
+
+"Poet and huntsman," said Catherine in a dreamy tone.
+
+"We will hunt and make love!" cried Gondi.
+
+"Moreover," remarked Chiverni, "you are sure of Amyot, who will always
+fear poison in case of disobedience; so that you and he and Gondi can
+hold the king in leading-strings."
+
+"Amyot has deeply offended me," said Catherine.
+
+"He does not know what he owes to you; if he did know, you would be in
+danger," replied Birago, gravely, emphasizing his words.
+
+"Then, it is agreed," exclaimed Catherine, on whom Birago's reply made
+a powerful impression, "that you, Gondi, are to be the king's
+governor. My son must consent to do for one of my friends a favor
+equal to the one I have just permitted for his knave of a bishop. That
+fool has lost the hat; for never, as long as I live, will I consent
+that the Pope shall give it to him! How strong we might have been with
+Cardinal de Tournon! What a trio with Tournon for grand-almoner, and
+l'Hopital, and de Thou! As for the burghers of Paris, I intend to make
+my son cajole them; we will get a support there."
+
+Accordingly, Albert de Gondi became a marshal of France and was
+created Duc de Retz and governor of the king a few days later.
+
+At the moment when this little private council ended, Cardinal de
+Tournon announced to the queen the arrival of the emissaries sent to
+Calvin. Admiral Coligny accompanied the party in order that his
+presence might ensure them due respect at the Louvre. The queen
+gathered the formidable phalanx of her maids of honor about her, and
+passed into the reception hall, built by her husband, which no longer
+exists in the Louvre of to-day.
+
+At the period of which we write the staircase of the Louvre occupied
+the clock tower. Catherine's apartments were in the old buildings
+which still exist in the court of the Musee. The present staircase of
+the museum was built in what was formerly the /salle des ballets/. The
+ballet of those days was a sort of dramatic entertainment performed by
+the whole court.
+
+Revolutionary passions gave rise to a most laughable error about
+Charles IX., in connection with the Louvre. During the Revolution
+hostile opinions as to this king, whose real character was masked,
+made a monster of him. Joseph Cheniers tragedy was written under the
+influence of certain words scratched on the window of the projecting
+wing of the Louvre, looking toward the quay. The words were as
+follows: "It was from this window that Charles IX., of execrable
+memory, fired upon French citizens." It is well to inform future
+historians and all sensible persons that this portion of the Louvre
+--called to-day the old Louvre--which projects upon the quay and is
+connected with the Louvre by the room called the Apollo gallery (while
+the great halls of the Museum connect the Louvre with the Tuileries)
+did not exist in the time of Charles IX. The greater part of the space
+where the frontage on the quay now stands, and where the Garden of the
+Infanta is laid out, was then occupied by the hotel de Bourbon, which
+belonged to and was the residence of the house of Navarre. It was
+absolutely impossible, therefore, for Charles IX. to fire from the
+Louvre of Henri II. upon a boat full of Huguenots crossing the river,
+although /at the present time/ the Seine can be seen from its windows.
+Even if learned men and libraries did not possess maps of the Louvre
+made in the time of Charles IX., on which its then position is clearly
+indicated, the building itself refutes the error. All the kings who
+co-operated in the work of erecting this enormous mass of buildings
+never failed to put their initials or some special monogram on the
+parts they had severally built. Now the part we speak of, the
+venerable and now blackened wing of the Louvre, projecting on the quay
+and overlooking the garden of the Infanta, bears the monograms of
+Henri III. and Henri IV., which are totally different from that of
+Henri II., who invariably joined his H to the two C's of Catherine,
+forming a D,--which, by the bye, has constantly deceived superficial
+persons into fancying that the king put the initial of his mistress,
+Diane, on great public buildings. Henri IV. united the Louvre with his
+own hotel de Bourbon, its garden and dependencies. He was the first to
+think of connecting Catherine de' Medici's palace of the Tuileries
+with the Louvre by his unfinished galleries, the precious sculptures
+of which have been so cruelly neglected. Even if the map of Paris, and
+the monograms of Henri III. and Henri IV. did not exist, the
+difference of architecture is refutation enough to the calumny. The
+vermiculated stone copings of the hotel de la Force mark the
+transition between what is called the architecture of the Renaissance
+and that of Henri III., Henri IV., and Louis XIII. This archaeological
+digression (continuing the sketches of old Paris with which we began
+this history) enables us to picture to our minds the then appearance
+of this other corner of the old city, of which nothing now remains but
+Henri IV.'s addition to the Louvre, with its admirable bas-reliefs,
+now being rapidly annihilated.
+
+When the court heard that the queen was about to give an audience to
+Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu, presented by Admiral Coligny, all the
+courtiers who had the right of entrance to the reception hall,
+hastened thither to witness the interview. It was about six o'clock in
+the evening; Coligny had just supped, and was using a toothpick as he
+came up the staircase of the Louvre between the two Reformers. The
+practice of using a toothpick was so inveterate a habit with the
+admiral that he was seen to do it on the battle-field while planning a
+retreat. "Distrust the admiral's toothpick, the /No/ of the
+Connetable, and Catherine's /Yes/," was a court proverb of that day.
+After the Saint-Bartholomew the populace made a horrible jest on the
+body of Coligny, which hung for three days at Montfaucon, by putting a
+grotesque toothpick into his mouth. History has recorded this
+atrocious levity. So petty an act done in the midst of that great
+catastrophe pictures the Parisian populace, which deserves the
+sarcastic jibe of Boileau: "Frenchmen, born /malin/, created the
+guillotine." The Parisian of all time cracks jokes and makes lampoons
+before, during, and after the most horrible revolutions.
+
+Theodore de Beze wore the dress of a courtier, black silk stockings,
+low shoes with straps across the instep, tight breeches, a black silk
+doublet with slashed sleeves, and a small black velvet mantle, over
+which lay an elegant white fluted ruff. His beard was trimmed to a
+moustache and /virgule/ (now called imperial) and he carried a sword
+at his side and a cane in his hand. Whosoever knows the galleries of
+Versailles or the collections of Odieuvre, knows also his round,
+almost jovial face and lively eyes, surmounted by the broad forehead
+which characterized the writers and poets of that day. De Beze had,
+what served him admirably, an agreeable air and manner. In this he was
+a great contrast to Coligny, of austere countenance, and to the sour,
+bilious Chaudieu, who chose to wear on this occasion the robe and
+bands of a Calvinist minister.
+
+The scenes that happen in our day in the Chamber of Deputies, and
+which, no doubt, happened in the Convention, will give an idea of how,
+at this court, at this epoch, these men, who six months later were to
+fight to the death in a war without quarter, could meet and talk to
+each other with courtesy and even laughter. Birago, who was coldly to
+advise the Saint-Bartholomew, and Cardinal de Lorraine, who charged
+his servant Besme "not to miss the admiral," now advanced to meet
+Coligny; Birago saying, with a smile:--
+
+"Well, my dear admiral, so you have really taken upon yourself to
+present these gentlemen from Geneva?"
+
+"Perhaps you will call it a crime in /me/," replied the admiral,
+jesting, "whereas if you had done it yourself you would make a merit
+of it."
+
+"They say that the Sieur Calvin is very ill," remarked the Cardinal de
+Lorraine to Theodore de Beze. "I hope no one suspects us of giving him
+his broth."
+
+"Ah! monseigneur; it would be too great a risk," replied de Beze,
+maliciously.
+
+The Duc de Guise, who was watching Chaudieu, looked fixedly at his
+brother and at Birago, who were both taken aback by de Beze's answer.
+
+"Good God!" remarked the cardinal, "heretics are not diplomatic!"
+
+To avoid embarrassment, the queen, who was announced at this moment,
+had arranged to remain standing during the audience. She began by
+speaking to the Connetable, who had previously remonstrated with her
+vehemently on the scandal of receiving messengers from Calvin.
+
+"You see, my dear Connetable," she said, "that I receive them without
+ceremony."
+
+"Madame," said the admiral, approaching the queen, "these are two
+teachers of the new religion, who have come to an understanding with
+Calvin, and who have his instructions as to a conference in which the
+churches of France may be able to settle their differences."
+
+"This is Monsieur de Beze, to whom my wife is much attached," said the
+king of Navarre, coming forward and taking de Beze by the hand.
+
+"And this is Chaudieu," said the Prince de Conde. "/My friend/ the Duc
+de Guise knows the soldier," he added, looking at Le Balafre, "perhaps
+he will now like to know the minister."
+
+This gasconade made the whole court laugh, even Catherine.
+
+"Faith!" replied the Duc de Guise, "I am enchanted to see a /gars/ who
+knows so well how to choose his men and to employ them in their right
+sphere. One of your agents," he said to Chaudieu, "actually endured
+the extraordinary question without dying and without confessing a
+single thing. I call myself brave; but I don't know that I could have
+endured it as he did."
+
+"Hum!" muttered Ambroise, "you did not say a word when I pulled the
+javelin out of your face at Calais."
+
+Catherine, standing at the centre of a semicircle of the courtiers and
+maids of honor, kept silence. She was observing the two Reformers,
+trying to penetrate their minds as, with the shrewd, intelligent
+glance of her black eyes, she studied them.
+
+"One seems to be the scabbard, the other the blade," whispered Albert
+de Gondi in her ear.
+
+"Well, gentlemen," said Catherine at last, unable to restrain a smile,
+"has your master given you permission to unite in a public conference,
+at which you will be converted by the arguments of the Fathers of the
+Church who are the glory of our State?"
+
+"We have no master but the Lord," said Chaudieu.
+
+"But surely you will allow some little authority to the king of
+France?" said Catherine, smiling.
+
+"And much to the queen," said de Beze, bowing low.
+
+"You will find," continued the queen, "that our most submissive
+subjects are heretics."
+
+"Ah, madame!" cried Coligny, "we will indeed endeavor to make you a
+noble and peaceful kingdom! Europe has profited, alas! by our internal
+divisions. For the last fifty years she has had the advantage of
+one-half of the French people being against the other half."
+
+"Are we here to sing anthems to the glory of heretics," said the
+Connetable, brutally.
+
+"No, but to bring them to repentance," whispered the Cardinal de
+Lorraine in his ear; "we want to coax them by a little sugar."
+
+"Do you know what I should have done under the late king?" said the
+Connetable, angrily. "I'd have called in the provost and hung those
+two knaves, then and there, on the gallows of the Louvre."
+
+"Well, gentlemen, who are the learned men whom you have selected as
+our opponents?" inquired the queen, imposing silence on the Connetable
+by a look.
+
+"Duplessis-Mornay and Theodore de Beze will speak on our side,"
+replied Chaudieu.
+
+"The court will doubtless go to Saint-Germain, and as it would be
+improper that this /colloquy/ should take place in a royal residence,
+we will have it in the little town of Poissy," said Catherine.
+
+"Shall we be safe there, madame?" asked Chaudieu.
+
+"Ah!" replied the queen, with a sort of naivete, "you will surely know
+how to take precautions. The Admiral will arrange all that with my
+cousins the Guises and de Montmorency."
+
+"The devil take them!" cried the Connetable, "I'll have nothing to do
+with it."
+
+"How do you contrive to give such strength of character to your
+converts?" said the queen, leading Chaudieu apart. "The son of my
+furrier was actually sublime."
+
+"We have faith," replied Chaudieu.
+
+At this moment the hall presented a scene of animated groups, all
+discussing the question of the proposed assembly, to which the few
+words said by the queen had already given the name of the "Colloquy of
+Poissy." Catherine glanced at Chaudieu and was able to say to him
+unheard:--
+
+"Yes, a new faith!"
+
+"Ah, madame, if you were not blinded by your alliance with the court
+of Rome, you would see that we are returning to the true doctrines of
+Jesus Christ, who, recognizing the equality of souls, bestows upon all
+men equal rights on earth."
+
+"Do you think yourself the equal of Calvin?" asked the queen,
+shrewdly. "No, no; we are equals only in church. What! would you
+unbind the tie of the people to the throne?" she cried. "Then you are
+not only heretics, you are revolutionists,--rebels against obedience
+to the king as you are against that to the Pope!" So saying, she left
+Chaudieu abruptly and returned to Theodore de Beze. "I count on you,
+monsieur," she said, "to conduct this colloquy in good faith. Take all
+the time you need."
+
+"I had supposed," said Chaudieu to the Prince de Conde, the King of
+Navarre, and Admiral Coligny, as they left the hall, "that a great
+State matter would be treated more seriously."
+
+"Oh! we know very well what you want," exclaimed the Prince de Conde,
+exchanging a sly look with Theodore de Beze.
+
+The prince now left his adherents to attend a rendezvous. This great
+leader of a party was also one of the most favored gallants of the
+court. The two choice beauties of that day were even then striving
+with such desperate eagerness for his affections that one of them, the
+Marechale de Saint-Andre, the wife of the future triumvir, gave him
+her beautiful estate of Saint-Valery, hoping to win him away from the
+Duchesse de Guise, the wife of the man who had tried to take his head
+on the scaffold. The duchess, not being able to detach the Duc de
+Nemours from Mademoiselle de Rohan, fell in love, /en attendant/, with
+the leader of the Reformers.
+
+"What a contrast to Geneva!" said Chaudieu to Theodore de Beze, as
+they crossed the little bridge of the Louvre.
+
+"The people here are certainly gayer than the Genevese. I don't see
+why they should be so treacherous," replied de Beze.
+
+"To treachery oppose treachery," replied Chaudieu, whispering the
+words in his companion's ear. "I have /saints/ in Paris on whom I can
+rely, and I intend to make Calvin a prophet. Christophe Lecamus shall
+deliver us from our most dangerous enemy."
+
+"The queen-mother, for whom the poor devil endured his torture, has
+already, with a high hand, caused him to be appointed solicitor to the
+Parliament; and solicitors make better prosecutors than murderers.
+Don't you remember how Avenelles betrayed the secrets of our first
+uprising?"
+
+"I know Christophe," said Chaudieu, in a positive tone, as he turned
+to leave the envoy from Geneva.
+
+
+
+                                  XV
+
+                             COMPENSATION
+
+A few days after the reception of Calvin's emissaries by the queen,
+that is to say, toward the close of the year (for the year then began
+at Easter and the present calendar was not adopted until later in the
+reign of Charles IX.), Christophe reclined in an easy chair beside the
+fire in the large brown hall, dedicated to family life, that
+overlooked the river in his father's house, where the present drama
+was begun. His feet rested on a stool; his mother and Babette Lallier
+had just renewed the compresses, saturated with a solution brought by
+Ambroise Pare, who was charged by Catherine de' Medici to take care of
+the young man. Once restored to his family, Christophe became the
+object of the most devoted care. Babette, authorized by her father,
+came very morning and only left the Lecamus household at night.
+Christophe, the admiration of the apprentices, gave rise throughout
+the quarter to various tales, which invested him with mysterious
+poesy. He had borne the worst torture; the celebrated Ambroise Pare
+was employing all his skill to cure him. What great deed had he done
+to be thus treated? Neither Christophe nor his father said a word on
+the subject. Catherine, then all-powerful, was concerned in their
+silence as well as the Prince de Conde. The constant visits of Pare,
+now chief surgeon of both the king and the house of Guise, whom the
+queen-mother and the Lorrains allowed to treat a youth accused of
+heresy, strangely complicated an affair through which no one saw
+clearly. Moreover, the rector of Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs came several
+times to visit the son of his church-warden, and these visits made the
+causes of Christophe's present condition still more unintelligible to
+his neighbors.
+
+The old syndic, who had his plan, gave evasive answers to his
+brother-furriers, the merchants of the neighborhood, and to all friends
+who spoke to him of his son: "Yes, I am very thankful to have saved him."
+--"Well, you know, it won't do to put your finger between the bark and
+the tree."--"My son touched fire and came near burning up my house."
+--"They took advantage of his youth; we burghers get nothing but shame
+and evil by frequenting the grandees."--"This affair decides me to
+make a lawyer of Christophe; the practice of law will teach him to
+weigh his words and his acts."--"The young queen, who is now in
+Scotland, had a great deal to do with it; but then, to be sure, my son
+may have been imprudent."--"I have had cruel anxieties."--"All this
+may decide me to give up my business; I do not wish ever to go to
+court again."--"My son has had enough of the Reformation; it has
+cracked all his joints. If it had not been for Ambroise, I don't know
+what would have become of me."
+
+Thanks to these ambiguous remarks and to the great discretion of such
+conduct, it was generally averred in the neighborhood that Christophe
+had seen the error of his ways; everybody thought it natural that the
+old syndic should wish to get his son appointed to the Parliament, and
+the rector's visits no longer seemed extraordinary. As the neighbors
+reflected on the old man's anxieties they no longer thought, as they
+would otherwise have done, that his ambition was inordinate. The young
+lawyer, who had lain helpless for months on the bed which his family
+made up for him in the old hall, was now, for the last week, able to
+rise and move about by the aid of crutches. Babette's love and his
+mother's tenderness had deeply touched his heart; and they, while they
+had him helpless in their hands, lectured him severely on religion.
+President de Thou paid his godson a visit during which he showed
+himself most fatherly. Christophe, being now a solicitor of the
+Parliament, must of course, he said, be Catholic; his oath would bind
+him to that; and the president, who assumed not to doubt of his
+godson's orthodoxy, ended his remarks by saying with great
+earnestness:
+
+"My son, you have been cruelly tried. I am myself ignorant of the
+reasons which made the Messieurs de Guise treat you thus; but I advise
+you in future to live peacefully, without entering into the troubles
+of the times; for the favor of the king and queen will not be shown to
+the makers of revolt. You are not important enough to play fast and
+loose with the king as the Guises do. If you wish to be some day
+counsellor to the Parliament remember that you cannot obtain that
+noble office unless by a real and serious attachment to the royal
+cause."
+
+Nevertheless, neither President de Thou's visit, nor the seductions of
+Babette, nor the urgency of his mother, were sufficient to shake the
+constancy of the martyr of the Reformation. Christophe held to his
+religion all the more because he had suffered for it.
+
+"My father will never let me marry a heretic," whispered Babette in
+his ear.
+
+Christophe answered only by tears, which made the young girl silent
+and thoughtful.
+
+Old Lecamus maintained his paternal and magisterial dignity; he
+observed his son and said little. The stern old man, after recovering
+his dear Christophe, was dissatisfied with himself; he repented the
+tenderness he had shown for this only son; but he admired him
+secretly. At no period of his life did the syndic pull more wires to
+reach his ends, for he saw the field ripe for the harvest so painfully
+sown, and he wanted to gather the whole of it. Some days before the
+morning of which we write, he had had, being alone with Christophe, a
+long conversation with him in which he endeavored to discover the
+secret reason of the young man's resistance. Christophe, who was not
+without ambition, betrayed his faith in the Prince de Conde. The
+generous promise of the prince, who, of course, was only exercising
+his profession of prince, remained graven on his heart; little did he
+think that Conde had sent him, mentally, to the devil in Orleans,
+muttering, "A Gascon would have understood me better," when Christophe
+called out a touching farewell as the prince passed the window of his
+dungeon.
+
+But besides this sentiment of admiration for the prince, Christophe
+had also conceived a profound reverence for the great queen, who had
+explained to him by a single look the necessity which compelled her to
+sacrifice him; and who during his agony had given him an illimitable
+promise in a single tear. During the silent months of his weakness, as
+he lay there waiting for recovery, he thought over each event at Blois
+and at Orleans. He weighed, one might almost say in spite of himself,
+the relative worth of these two protections. He floated between the
+queen and the prince. He had certainly served Catherine more than he
+had served the Reformation, and in a young man both heart and mind
+would naturally incline toward the queen; less because she was a queen
+than because she was a woman. Under such circumstances a man will
+always hope more from a woman than from a man.
+
+"I sacrificed myself for her; what will she do for me?"
+
+This question Christophe put to himself almost involuntarily as he
+remembered the tone in which she had said the words, /Povero mio/! It
+is difficult to believe how egotistical a man can become when he lies
+on a bed of sickness. Everything, even the exclusive devotion of which
+he is the object, drives him to think only of himself. By exaggerating
+in his own mind the obligation which the Prince de Conde was under to
+him he had come to expect that some office would be given to him at
+the court of Navarre. Still new to the world of political life, he
+forgot its contending interests and the rapid march of events which
+control and force the hand of all leaders of parties; he forgot it the
+more because he was practically a prisoner in solitary confinement on
+his bed in that old brown room. Each party is, necessarily, ungrateful
+while the struggle lasts; when it triumphs it has too many persons to
+reward not to be ungrateful still. Soldiers submit to this
+ingratitude; but their leaders turn against the new master at whose
+side they have acted and suffered like equals for so long. Christophe,
+who alone remembered his sufferings, felt himself already among the
+leaders of the Reformation by the fact of his martyrdom. His father,
+that old fox of commerce, so shrewd, so perspicacious, ended by
+divining the secret thought of his son; consequently, all his
+manoeuvres were now based on the natural expectancy to which Christophe
+had yielded himself.
+
+"Wouldn't it be a fine thing," he had said to Babette, in presence of
+the family a few days before his interview with his son, "to be the
+wife of a counsellor of the Parliament? You would be called /madame/!"
+
+"You are crazy, /compere/," said Lallier. "Where would you get ten
+thousand crowns' income from landed property, which a counsellor must
+have, according to law; and from whom could you buy the office? No one
+but the queen-mother and regent could help your son into Parliament,
+and I'm afraid he's too tainted with the new opinions for that."
+
+"What would you pay to see your daughter the wife of a counsellor?"
+
+"Ah! you want to look into my purse, shrewd-head!" said Lallier.
+
+Counsellor to the Parliament! The words worked powerfully in
+Christophe's brain.
+
+Sometime after this conversation, one morning when Christophe was
+gazing at the river and thinking of the scene which began this
+history, of the Prince de Conde, Chaudieu, La Renaudie, of his journey
+to Blois,--in short, the whole story of his hopes,--his father came
+and sat down beside him, scarcely concealing a joyful thought beneath
+a serious manner.
+
+"My son," he said, "after what passed between you and the leaders of
+the Tumult of Amboise, they owe you enough to make the care of your
+future incumbent on the house of Navarre."
+
+"Yes," replied Christophe.
+
+"Well," continued his father, "I have asked their permission to buy a
+legal practice for you in the province of Bearn. Our good friend Pare
+undertook to present the letters which I wrote on your behalf to the
+Prince de Conde and the queen of Navarre. Here, read the answer of
+Monsieur de Pibrac, vice-chancellor of Navarre:--
+
+  To the Sieur Lecamus, /syndic of the guild of furriers/:
+
+  Monseigneur le Prince de Conde desires me to express his regret
+  that he cannot do what you ask for his late companion in the tower
+  of Saint-Aignan, whom he perfectly remembers, and to whom,
+  meanwhile, he offers the place of gendarme in his company; which
+  will put your son in the way of making his mark as a man of
+  courage, which he is.
+
+  The queen of Navarre awaits an opportunity to reward the Sieur
+  Christophe, and will not fail to take advantage of it.
+
+  Upon which, Monsieur le syndic, we pray God to have you in His
+  keeping.
+
+Pibrac,
+
+At Nerac.
+Chancellor of Navarre.
+
+
+"Nerac, Pibrac, crack!" cried Babette. "There's no confidence to be
+placed in Gascons; they think only of themselves."
+
+Old Lecamus looked at his son, smiling scornfully.
+
+"They propose to put on horseback a poor boy whose knees and ankles
+were shattered for their sakes!" cried the mother. "What a wicked
+jest!"
+
+"I shall never see you a counsellor of Navarre," said his father.
+
+"I wish I knew what Queen Catherine would do for me, if I made a claim
+upon her," said Christophe, cast down by the prince's answer.
+
+"She made you no promise," said the old man, "but I am certain that
+/she/ will never mock you like these others; she will remember your
+sufferings. Still, how can the queen make a counsellor of the
+Parliament out of a protestant burgher?"
+
+"But Christophe has not abjured!" cried Babette. "He can very well
+keep his private opinions secret."
+
+"The Prince de Conde would be less disdainful of a counsellor of the
+Parliament," said Lallier.
+
+"Well, what say you, Christophe?" urged Babette.
+
+"You are counting without the queen," replied the young lawyer.
+
+A few days after this rather bitter disillusion, an apprentice brought
+Christophe the following laconic little missive:--
+
+  Chaudieu wishes to see his son.
+
+"Let him come in!" cried Christophe.
+
+"Oh! my sacred martyr!" said the minister, embracing him; "have you
+recovered from your sufferings?"
+
+"Yes, thanks to Pare."
+
+"Thanks rather to God, who gave you the strength to endure the
+torture. But what is this I hear? Have you allowed them to make you a
+solicitor? Have you taken the oath of fidelity? Surely you will not
+recognize that prostitute, the Roman, Catholic, and apostolic Church?"
+
+"My father wished it."
+
+"But ought we not to leave fathers and mothers and wives and children,
+all, all, for the sacred cause of Calvinism; nay, must we not suffer
+all things? Ah! Christophe, Calvin, the great Calvin, the whole party,
+the whole world, the Future counts upon your courage and the grandeur
+of your soul. We want your life."
+
+It is a remarkable fact in the mind of man that the most devoted
+spirits, even while devoting themselves, build romantic hopes upon
+their perilous enterprises. When the prince, the soldier, and the
+minister had asked Christophe, under the bridge, to convey to
+Catherine the treaty which, if discovered, would in all probability
+cost him his life, the lad had relied on his nerve, upon chance, upon
+the powers of his mind, and confident in such hopes he bravely, nay,
+audaciously put himself between those terrible adversaries, the Guises
+and Catherine. During the torture he still kept saying to himself: "I
+shall come out of it! it is only pain!" But when this second and
+brutal demand, "Die, we want your life," was made upon a boy who was
+still almost helpless, scarcely recovered from his late torture, and
+clinging all the more to life because he had just seen death so near,
+it was impossible for him to launch into further illusions.
+
+Christophe answered quietly:--
+
+"What is it now?"
+
+"To fire a pistol courageously, as Stuart did on Minard."
+
+"On whom?"
+
+"The Duc de Guise."
+
+"A murder?"
+
+"A vengeance. Have you forgotten the hundred gentlemen massacred on
+the scaffold at Amboise? A child who saw that butchery, the little
+d'Aubigne cried out, 'They have slaughtered France!'"
+
+"You should receive the blows of others and give none; that is the
+religion of the gospel," said Christophe. "If you imitate the
+Catholics in their cruelty, of what good is it to reform the Church?"
+
+"Oh! Christophe, they have made you a lawyer, and now you argue!" said
+Chaudieu.
+
+"No, my friend," replied the young man, "but parties are ungrateful;
+and you will be, both you and yours, nothing more than puppets of the
+Bourbons."
+
+"Christophe, if you could hear Calvin, you would know how we wear them
+like gloves! The Bourbons are the gloves, we are the hand."
+
+"Read that," said Christophe, giving Chaudieu Pibrac's letter
+containing the answer of the Prince de Conde.
+
+"Oh! my son; you are ambitious, you can no longer make the sacrifice
+of yourself!--I pity you!"
+
+With those fine words Chaudieu turned and left him.
+
+Some days after that scene, the Lallier family and the Lecamus family
+were gathered together in honor of the formal betrothal of Christophe
+and Babette, in the old brown hall, from which Christophe's bed had
+been removed; for he was now able to drag himself about and even mount
+the stairs without his crutches. It was nine o'clock in the evening
+and the company were awaiting Ambroise Pare. The family notary sat
+before a table on which lay various contracts. The furrier was selling
+his house and business to his head-clerk, who was to pay down forty
+thousand francs for the house and then mortgage it as security for the
+payment of the goods, for which, however, he paid twenty thousand
+francs on account.
+
+Lecamus was also buying for his son a magnificent stone house, built
+by Philibert de l'Orme in the rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs, which he
+gave to Christophe as a marriage portion. He also took two hundred
+thousand francs from his own fortune, and Lallier gave as much more,
+for the purchase of a fine seignorial manor in Picardy, the price of
+which was five hundred thousand francs. As this manor was a tenure
+from the Crown it was necessary to obtain letters-patent (called
+/rescriptions/) granted by the king, and also to make payment to the
+Crown of considerable feudal dues. The marriage had been postponed
+until this royal favor was obtained. Though the burghers of Paris had
+lately acquired the right to purchase manors, the wisdom of the privy
+council had been exercised in putting certain restrictions on the sale
+of those estates which were dependencies of the Crown; and the one
+which old Lecamus had had in his eye for the last dozen years was
+among them. Ambroise was pledged to bring the royal ordinance that
+evening; and the old furrier went and came from the hall to the door
+in a state of impatience which showed how great his long-repressed
+ambition had been. Ambroise at last appeared.
+
+"My old friend!" cried the surgeon, in an agitated manner, with a
+glance at the supper table, "let me see your linen. Good. Oh! you must
+have wax candles. Quick, quick! get out your best things!"
+
+"Why? what is it all about?" asked the rector of
+Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs.
+
+"The queen-mother and the young king are coming to sup with you,"
+replied the surgeon. "They are only waiting for an old counsellor who
+agreed to sell his place to Christophe, and with whom Monsieur de Thou
+has concluded a bargain. Don't appear to know anything; I have escaped
+from the Louvre to warn you."
+
+In a second the whole family were astir; Christophe's mother and
+Babette's aunt bustled about with the celerity of housekeepers
+suddenly surprised. But in spite of the apparent confusion into which
+the news had thrown the entire family, the precautions were promptly
+made, with an activity that was nothing short of marvellous.
+Christophe, amazed and confounded by such a favor, was speechless,
+gazing mechanically at what went on.
+
+"The queen and king here in our house!" said the old mother.
+
+"The queen!" repeated Babette. "What must we say and do?"
+
+In less than an hour all was changed; the hall was decorated; the
+supper-table sparkled. Presently the noise of horses sounded in the
+street. The light of torches carried by the horsemen of the escort
+brought all the burghers of the neighborhood to their windows. The
+noise soon subsided and the escort rode away, leaving the queen-mother
+and her son, King Charles IX., Charles de Gondi, now Grand-master of
+the wardrobe and governor of the king, Monsieur de Thou, Pinard,
+secretary of State, the old counsellor, and two pages, under the
+arcade before the door.
+
+"My worthy people," said the queen as she entered, "the king, my son,
+and I have come to sign the marriage-contract of the son of my
+furrier,--but only on condition that he remains a Catholic. A man must
+be a Catholic to enter Parliament; he must be a Catholic to own land
+which derives from the Crown; he must be a Catholic if he would sit at
+the king's table. That is so, is it not, Pinard?"
+
+The secretary of State entered and showed the letters-patent.
+
+"If we are not all Catholics," said the little king, "Pinard will
+throw those papers into the fire. But we are all Catholics here, I
+think," he continued, casting his somewhat haughty eyes over the
+company.
+
+"Yes, sire," replied Christophe, bending his injured knees with
+difficulty, and kissing the hand which the king held out to him.
+
+Queen Catherine stretched out her hand to Christophe and, raising him
+hastily, drew him aside into a corner, saying in a low voice:--
+
+"Ah ca! my lad, no evasions here. Are you playing above-board now?"
+
+"Yes, madame," he answered, won by the dazzling reward and the honor
+done him by the grateful queen.
+
+"Very good. Monsieur Lecamus, the king, my son, and I permit you to
+purchase the office of the goodman Groslay, counsellor of the
+Parliament, here present. Young man, you will follow, I hope, in the
+steps of your predecessor."
+
+De Thou advanced and said: "I will answer for him, madame."
+
+"Very well; draw up the deed, notary," said Pinard.
+
+"Inasmuch as the king our master does us the favor to sign my
+daughter's marriage contract," cried Lallier, "I will pay the whole
+price of the manor."
+
+"The ladies may sit down," said the young king, graciously: "As a
+wedding present to the bride I remit, with my mother's consent, all my
+dues and rights in the manor."
+
+Old Lecamus and Lallier fell on their knees and kissed the king's
+hand.
+
+"/Mordieu/! sire, what quantities of money these burghers have!"
+whispered de Gondi in his ear.
+
+The young king laughed.
+
+"As their Highnesses are so kind," said old Lecamus, "will they permit
+me to present to them my successor, and ask them to continue to him
+the royal patent of furrier to their Majesties?"
+
+"Let us see him," said the king.
+
+Lecamus led forward his successor, who was livid with fear.
+
+"If my mother consents, we will now sit down to table," said the
+little king.
+
+Old Lecamus had bethought himself of presenting to the king a silver
+goblet which he had bought of Benvenuto Cellini when the latter stayed
+in Paris at the hotel de Nesle. This treasure of art had cost the
+furrier no less than two thousand crowns.
+
+"Oh! my dear mother, see this beautiful work!" cried the young king,
+lifting the goblet by its stem.
+
+"It was made in Florence," replied Catherine.
+
+"Pardon me, madame," said Lecamus, "it was made in Paris by a
+Florentine. All that is made in Florence would belong to your Majesty;
+that which is made in France is the king's."
+
+"I accept it, my good man," cried Charles IX.; "and it shall
+henceforth be my particular drinking cup."
+
+"It is beautiful enough," said the queen, examining the masterpiece,
+"to be included among the crown-jewels. Well, Maitre Ambroise," she
+whispered in the surgeon's ear, with a glance at Christophe, "have you
+taken good care of him? Will he walk again?"
+
+"He will run," replied the surgeon, smiling. "Ah! you have cleverly
+made him a renegade."
+
+"Ha!" said the queen, with the levity for which she has been blamed,
+though it was only on the surface, "the Church won't stand still for
+want of one monk!"
+
+The supper was gay; the queen thought Babette pretty, and, in the
+regal manner which was natural to her, she slipped upon the girl's
+finger a diamond ring which compensated in value for the goblet
+bestowed upon the king. Charles IX., who afterwards became rather too
+fond of these invasions of burgher homes, supped with a good appetite.
+Then, at a word from his new governor (who, it is said, was instructed
+to make him forget the virtuous teachings of Cypierre), he obliged all
+the men present to drink so deeply that the queen, observing that the
+gaiety was about to become too noisy, rose to leave the room. As she
+rose, Christophe, his father, and the two women took torches and
+accompanied her to the shop-door. There Christophe ventured to touch
+the queen's wide sleeve and to make her a sign that he had something
+to say. Catherine stopped, made a gesture to the father and the two
+women to leave her, and said, turning to Christophe:
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It may serve you to know, madame," replied Christophe, whispering in
+her ear, "that the Duc de Guise is being followed by assassins."
+
+"You are a loyal subject," said Catherine, smiling, "and I shall never
+forget you."
+
+She held out to him her hand, so celebrated for its beauty, first
+ungloving it, which was indeed a mark of favor,--so much so that
+Christophe, then and there, became altogether royalist as he kissed
+that adorable hand.
+
+"So they mean to rid me of that bully without my having a finger in
+it," thought she as she replaced her glove.
+
+Then she mounted her mule and returned to the Louvre, attended by her
+two pages.
+
+Christophe went back to the supper-table, but was thoughtful and
+gloomy even while he drank; the fine, austere face of Ambroise Pare
+seemed to reproach him for his apostasy. But subsequent events
+justified the manoeuvres of the old syndic. Christophe would certainly
+not have escaped the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew; his wealth and his
+landed estates would have made him a mark for the murderers. History
+has recorded the cruel fate of the wife of Lallier's successor, a
+beautiful woman, whose naked body hung by the hair for three days from
+one of the buttresses of the Pont au Change. Babette trembled as she
+thought that she, too, might have endured the same treatment if
+Christophe had continued a Calvinist,--for such became the name of the
+Reformers. Calvin's personal ambition was thus gratified, though not
+until after his death.
+
+Such was the origin of the celebrated parliamentary house of Lecamus.
+Tallemant des Reaux is in error when he states that they came
+originally from Picardy. It is only true that the Lecamus family found
+it for their interest in after days to date from the time the old
+furrier bought their principal estate, which, as we have said, was
+situated in Picardy. Christophe's son, who succeeded him under Louis
+XIII., was the father of the rich president Lecamus who built, in the
+reign of Louis XIV., that magnificent mansion which shares with the
+hotel Lambert the admiration of Parisians and foreigners, and was
+assuredly one of the finest buildings in Paris. It may still be seen
+in the rue Thorigny, though at the beginning of the Revolution it was
+pillaged as having belonged to Monsieur de Juigne, the archbishop of
+Paris. All the decorations were then destroyed; and the tenants who
+lodge there have greatly damaged it; nevertheless this palace, which
+is reached through the old house in the rue de la Pelleterie, still
+shows the noble results obtained in former days by the spirit of
+family. It may be doubted whether modern individualism, brought about
+by the equal division of inheritances, will ever raise such noble
+buildings.
+
+
+
+
+                               PART II
+
+                     THE SECRETS OF THE RUGGIERI
+
+
+
+                                  I
+
+                     THE COURT UNDER CHARLES IX.
+
+Between eleven o'clock and midnight toward the end of October, 1573,
+two Italians, Florentines and brothers, Albert de Gondi, Duc de Retz
+and marshal of France, and Charles de Gondi la Tour, Grand-master of
+the robes of Charles IX., were sitting on the roof of a house in the
+rue Saint-Honore, at the edge of a gutter. This gutter was one of
+those stone channels which in former days were constructed below the
+roofs of houses to receive the rain-water, discharging it at regular
+intervals through those long gargoyles carved in the shape of
+fantastic animals with gaping mouths. In spite of the zeal with which
+our present general pulls down and demolishes venerable buildings,
+there still existed many of these projecting gutters until, quite
+recently, an ordinance of the police as to water-conduits compelled
+them to disappear. But even so, a few of these carved gargoyles still
+remain, chiefly in the /quartier/ Saint-Antoine, where low rents and
+values hinder the building of new storeys under the eaves of the
+roofs.
+
+It certainly seems strange that two personages invested with such
+important offices should be playing the part of cats. But whosoever
+will burrow into the historic treasures of those days, when personal
+interests jostled and thwarted each other around the throne till the
+whole political centre of France was like a skein of tangled thread,
+will readily understand that the two Florentines were cats indeed, and
+very much in their places in a gutter. Their devotion to the person of
+the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici--who had brought them to the
+court of France and foisted them into their high offices--compelled
+them not to recoil before any of the consequences of their intrusion.
+But to explain how and why these courtiers were thus perched, it is
+necessary to relate a scene which had taken place an hour earlier not
+far from this very gutter, in that beautiful brown room of the Louvre,
+all that now remains to us of the apartments of Henri II., in which
+after supper the courtiers had been paying court to the two queens,
+Catherine de' Medici and Elizabeth of Austria, and to their son and
+husband King Charles IX.
+
+In those days the majority of the burghers and great lords supped at
+six, or at seven o'clock, but the more refined and elegant supped at
+eight or even nine. This repast was the dinner of to-day. Many persons
+erroneously believe that etiquette was invented by Louis XIV.; on the
+contrary it was introduced into France by Catherine de' Medici, who
+made it so severe that the Connetable de Montmorency had more
+difficulty in obtaining permission to enter the court of the Louvre on
+horseback than in winning his sword; moreover, that unheard-of
+distinction was granted to him only on account of his great age.
+Etiquette, which was, it is true, slightly relaxed under the first two
+Bourbon kings, took an Oriental form under the Great Monarch, for it
+was introduced from the Eastern Empire, which derived it from Persia.
+In 1573 few persons had the right to enter the courtyard of the Louvre
+with their servants and torches (under Louis XIV. the coaches of none
+but dukes and peers were allowed to pass under the peristyle);
+moreover, the cost of obtaining entrance after supper to the royal
+apartments was very heavy. The Marechal de Retz, whom we have just
+seen, perched on a gutter, offered on one occasion a thousand crowns
+of that day, six thousand francs of our present money, to the usher of
+the king's cabinet to be allowed to speak to Henri III. on a day when
+he was not on duty. To an historian who knows the truth, it is
+laughable to see the well-known picture of the courtyard at Blois, in
+which the artist has introduced a courtier on horseback!
+
+On the present occasion, therefore, none but the most eminent
+personages in the kingdom were in the royal apartments. The queen,
+Elizabeth of Austria, and her mother-in-law, Catherine de' Medici,
+were seated together on the left of the fireplace. On the other side
+sat the king, buried in an arm-chair, affecting a lethargy consequent
+on digestion,--for he had just supped like a prince returned from
+hunting; possibly he was seeking to avoid conversation in presence of
+so many persons who were spies upon his thoughts. The courtiers stood
+erect and uncovered at the end of the room. Some talked in a low
+voice; others watched the king, awaiting the bestowal of a look or a
+word. Occasionally one was called up by the queen-mother, who talked
+with him for a few moments; another risked saying a word to the king,
+who replied with either a nod or a brief sentence. A German nobleman,
+the Comte de Solern, stood at the corner of the fireplace behind the
+young queen, the granddaughter of Charles V., whom he had accompanied
+into France. Near to her on a stool sat her lady of honor, the
+Comtesse de Fiesque, a Strozzi, and a relation of Catherine de'
+Medici. The beautiful Madame de Sauves, a descendant of Jacques Coeur,
+mistress of the king of Navarre, then of the king of Poland, and
+lastly of the Duc d'Alencon, had been invited to supper; but she stood
+like the rest of the court, her husband's rank (that of secretary of
+State) giving her no right to be seated. Behind these two ladies stood
+the two Gondis, talking to them. They alone of this dismal assembly
+were smiling. Albert Gondi, now Duc de Retz, marshal of France, and
+gentleman of the bed-chamber, had been deputed to marry the queen by
+proxy at Spire. In the first line of courtiers nearest to the king
+stood the Marechal de Tavannes, who was present on court business;
+Neufville de Villeroy, one of the ablest bankers of the period, who
+laid the foundation of the great house of that name; Birago and
+Chiverni, gentlemen of the queen-mother, who, knowing her preference
+for her son Henri (the brother whom Charles IX. regarded as an enemy),
+attached themselves especially to him; then Strozzi, Catherine's
+cousin; and finally, a number of great lords, among them the old
+Cardinal de Lorraine and his nephew, the young Duc de Guise, who were
+held at a distance by the king and his mother. These two leaders of
+the Holy Alliance, and later of the League (founded in conjunction
+with Spain a few years earlier), affected the submission of servants
+who are only waiting an opportunity to make themselves masters.
+Catherine and Charles IX. watched each other with close attention.
+
+At this gloomy court, as gloomy as the room in which it was held, each
+individual had his or her own reasons for being sad or thoughtful. The
+young queen, Elizabeth, was a prey to the tortures of jealousy, and
+could ill-disguise them, though she smiled upon her husband, whom she
+passionately adored, good and pious woman that she was! Marie Touchet,
+the only mistress Charles IX. ever had and to whom he was loyally
+faithful, had lately returned from the chateau de Fayet in Dauphine,
+whither she had gone to give birth to a child. She brought back to
+Charles IX. a son, his only son, Charles de Valois, first Comte
+d'Auvergne, and afterward Duc d'Angouleme. The poor queen, in addition
+to the mortification of her abandonment, now endured the pang of
+knowing that her rival had borne a son to her husband while she had
+brought him only a daughter. And these were not her only troubles and
+disillusions, for Catherine de' Medici, who had seemed her friend in
+the first instance, now, out of policy, favored her betrayal,
+preferring to serve the mistress rather than the wife of the king,
+--for the following reason.
+
+When Charles IX. openly avowed his passion for Marie Touchet,
+Catherine showed favor to the girl in the interests of her own desire
+for domination. Marie Touchet, who was very young when brought to
+court, came at an age when all the noblest sentiments are predominant.
+She loved the king for himself alone. Frightened at the fate to which
+ambition had led the Duchesse de Valentinois (better known as Diane de
+Poitiers), she dreaded the queen-mother, and greatly preferred her
+simple happiness to grandeur. Perhaps she thought that lovers as young
+as the king and herself could never struggle successfully against the
+queen-mother. As the daughter of Jean Touchet, Sieur de Beauvais and
+Quillard, she was born between the burgher class and the lower
+nobility; she had none of the inborn ambitions of the Pisseleus and
+Saint-Valliers, girls of rank, who battled for their families with the
+hidden weapons of love. Marie Touchet, without family or friends,
+spared Catherine de' Medici all antagonism with her son's mistress;
+the daughter of a great house would have been her rival. Jean Touchet,
+the father, one of the finest wits of the time, a man to whom poets
+dedicated their works, wanted nothing at court. Marie, a young girl
+without connections, intelligent and well-educated, and also simple
+and artless, whose desires would probably never be aggressive to the
+royal power, suited the queen-mother admirably. In short, she made the
+parliament recognize the son to whom Marie Touchet had just given
+birth in the month of April, and she allowed him to take the title of
+Comte d'Auvergne, assuring Charles IX. that she would leave the boy
+her personal property, the counties of Auvergne and Laraguais. At a
+later period, Marguerite de Valois, queen of Navarre, contested this
+legacy after she was queen of France, and the parliament annulled it.
+But later still, Louis XIII., out of respect for the Valois blood,
+indemnified the Comte d'Auvergne by the gift of the duchy of
+Angouleme.
+
+Catherine had already given Marie Touchet, who asked nothing, the
+manor of Belleville, an estate close to Vincennes which carried no
+title; and thither she went whenever the king hunted and spent the
+night at the castle. It was in this gloomy fortress that Charles IX.
+passed the greater part of his last years, ending his life there,
+according to some historians, as Louis XII. had ended his.
+
+The queen-mother kept close watch upon her son. All the occupations of
+his personal life, outside of politics, were reported to her. The king
+had begun to look upon his mother as an enemy, but the kind intentions
+she expressed toward his son diverted his suspicions for a time.
+Catherine's motives in this matter were never understood by Queen
+Elizabeth, who, according to Brantome, was one of the gentlest queens
+that ever reigned, who never did harm or even gave pain to any one,
+"and was careful to read her prayer-book secretly." But this
+single-minded princess began at last to see the precipices yawning
+around the throne,--a dreadful discovery, which might indeed have made
+her quail; it was some such remembrance, no doubt, that led her to say
+to one of her ladies, after the death of the king, in reply to a
+condolence that she had no son, and could not, therefore, be regent and
+queen-mother:
+
+"Ah! I thank God that I have no son. I know well what would have
+happened. My poor son would have been despoiled and wronged like the
+king, my husband, and I should have been the cause of it. God had
+mercy on the State; he has done all for the best."
+
+This princess, whose portrait Brantome thinks he draws by saying that
+her complexion was as beautiful and delicate as the ladies of her
+suite were charming and agreeable, and that her figure was fine though
+rather short, was of little account at her own court. Suffering from a
+double grief, her saddened attitude added another gloomy tone to a
+scene which most young queens, less cruelly injured, might have
+enlivened. The pious Elizabeth proved at this crisis that the
+qualities which are the shining glory of women in the ordinary ways of
+life can be fatal to a sovereign. A princess able to occupy herself
+with other things besides her prayer-book might have been a useful
+helper to Charles IX., who found no prop to lean on, either in his
+wife or in his mistress.
+
+The queen-mother, as she sat there in that brown room, was closely
+observing the king, who, during supper, had exhibited a boisterous
+good-humor which she felt to be assumed in order to mask some
+intention against her. This sudden gaiety contrasted too vividly with
+the struggle of mind he endeavored to conceal by his eagerness in
+hunting, and by an almost maniacal toil at his forge, where he spent
+many hours in hammering iron; and Catherine was not deceived by it.
+Without being able even to guess which of the statesmen about the king
+was employed to prepare or negotiate it (for Charles IX. contrived to
+mislead his mother's spies), Catherine felt no doubt whatever that
+some scheme for her overthrow was being planned. The unlooked-for
+presence of Tavannes, who arrived at the same time as Strozzi, whom
+she herself had summoned, gave her food for thought. Strong in the
+strength of her political combination, Catherine was above the reach
+of circumstances; but she was powerless against some hidden violence.
+As many persons are ignorant of the actual state of public affairs
+then so complicated by the various parties that distracted France, the
+leaders of which had each their private interests to carry out, it is
+necessary to describe, in a few words, the perilous game in which the
+queen-mother was now engaged. To show Catherine de' Medici in a new
+light is, in fact, the root and stock of our present history.
+
+Two words explain this woman, so curiously interesting to study, a
+woman whose influence has left such deep impressions upon France.
+Those words are: Power and Astrology. Exclusively ambitious, Catherine
+de' Medici had no other passion than that of power. Superstitious and
+fatalistic, like so many superior men, she had no sincere belief
+except in occult sciences. Unless this double mainspring is known, the
+conduct of Catherine de' Medici will remain forever misunderstood. As
+we picture her faith in judicial astrology, the light will fall upon
+two personages, who are, in fact, the philosophical subjects of this
+Study.
+
+There lived a man for whom Catherine cared more than for any of her
+children; his name was Cosmo Ruggiero. He lived in a house belonging
+to her, the hotel de Soissons; she made him her supreme adviser. It
+was his duty to tell her whether the stars ratified the advice and
+judgment of her ordinary counsellors. Certain remarkable antecedents
+warranted the power which Cosmo Ruggiero retained over his mistress to
+her last hour. One of the most learned men of the sixteenth century
+was physician to Lorenzo de' Medici, Duc d'Urbino, Catherine's father.
+This physician was called Ruggiero the Elder (Vecchio Ruggier and
+Roger l'Ancien in the French authors who have written on alchemy), to
+distinguish him from his two sons, Lorenzo Ruggiero, called the Great
+by cabalistic writers, and Cosmo Ruggiero, Catherine's astrologer,
+also called Roger by several French historians. In France it was the
+custom to pronounce the name in general as Ruggieri. Ruggiero the
+elder was so highly valued by the Medici that the two dukes, Cosmo and
+Lorenzo, stood godfathers to his two sons. He cast, in concert with
+the famous mathematician, Basilio, the horoscope of Catherine's
+nativity, in his official capacity as mathematicion, astrologer, and
+physician to the house of Medici; three offices which are often
+confounded.
+
+At the period of which we write the occult sciences were studied with
+an ardor that may surprise the incredulous minds of our own age, which
+is supremely analytical. Perhaps such minds may find in this
+historical sketch the dawn, or rather the germ, of the positive
+sciences which have flowered in the nineteenth century, though without
+the poetic grandeur given to them by the audacious Seekers of the
+sixteenth, who, instead of using them solely for mechanical
+industries, magnified Art and fertilized Thought by their means. The
+protection universally given to occult science by the sovereigns of
+those days was justified by the noble creations of many inventors,
+who, starting in quest of the Great Work (the so-called philosophers'
+stone), attained to astonishing results. At no period were the
+sovereigns of the world more eager for the study of these mysteries.
+The Fuggers of Augsburg, in whom all modern Luculluses will recognize
+their princes, and all bankers their masters, were gifted with powers
+of calculation it would be difficult to surpass. Well, those practical
+men, who loaned the funds of all Europe to the sovereigns of the
+sixteenth century (as deeply in debt as the kings of the present day),
+those illustrious guests of Charles V. were sleeping partners in the
+crucibles of Paracelsus. At the beginning of the sixteenth century,
+Ruggiero the elder was the head of that secret university from which
+issued the Cardans, the Nostradamuses, and the Agrippas (all in their
+turn physicians of the house of Valois); also the astronomers,
+astrologers, and alchemists who surrounded the princes of Christendom
+and were more especially welcomed and protected in France by Catherine
+de' Medici. In the nativity drawn by Basilio and Ruggiero the elder,
+the principal events of Catherine's life were foretold with a
+correctness which is quite disheartening for those who deny the power
+of occult science. This horoscope predicted the misfortunes which
+during the siege of Florence imperilled the beginning of her life;
+also her marriage with a son of the king of France, the unexpected
+succession of that son to his father's throne, the birth of her
+children, their number, and the fact that three of her sons would be
+kings in succession, that two of her daughters would be queens, and
+that all of them were destined to die without posterity. This
+prediction was so fully realized that many historians have assumed
+that it was written after the events.
+
+It is well known that Nostradamus took to the chateau de Chaumont,
+whither Catherine went after the conspiracy of La Renaudie, a woman
+who possessed the faculty of reading the future. Now, during the reign
+of Francois II., while the queen had with her her four sons, all young
+and in good health, and before the marriage of her daughter Elizabeth
+with Philip II., king of Spain, or that of her daughter Marguerite
+with Henri de Bourbon, king of Navarre (afterward Henri IV.),
+Nostradamus and this woman reiterated the circumstances formerly
+predicted in the famous nativity. This woman, who was no doubt gifted
+with second sight, and who belonged to the great school of Seekers of
+the Great Work, though the particulars of her life and name are lost
+to history, stated that the last crowned child would be assassinated.
+Having placed the queen-mother in front of a magic mirror, in which
+was reflected a wheel on the several spokes of which were the faces of
+her children, the sorceress set the wheel revolving, and Catherine
+counted the number of revolutions which it made. Each revolution was
+for each son one year of his reign. Henri IV. was also put upon the
+wheel, which then made twenty-four rounds, and the woman (some
+historians have said it was a man) told the frightened queen that
+Henri de Bourbon would be king of France and reign that number of
+years. From that time forth Catherine de' Medici vowed a mortal hatred
+to the man whom she knew would succeed the last of her Valois sons,
+who was to die assassinated. Anxious to know what her own death would
+be, she was warned to beware of Saint-Germain. Supposing, therefore,
+that she would be either put to death or imprisoned in the chateau de
+Saint-Germain, she would never so much as put her foot there, although
+that residence was far more convenient for her political plans, owing
+to its proximity to Paris, than the other castles to which she
+retreated with the king during the troubles. When she was taken
+suddenly ill, a few days after the murder of the Duc de Guise at
+Blois, she asked the name of the bishop who came to assist her. Being
+told it was Saint-Germain, she cried out, "I am dead!" and did
+actually die on the morrow,--having, moreover, lived the exact number
+of years given to her by all her horoscopes.
+
+These predictions, which were known to the Cardinal de Lorraine, who
+regarded them as witchcraft, were now in process of realization.
+Francois II. had reigned his two revolutions of the wheel, and Charles
+IX. was now making his last turn. If Catherine said the strange words
+which history has attributed to her when her son Henri started for
+Poland,--"You will soon return,"--they must be set down to her faith
+in occult science and not to the intention of poisoning Charles IX.
+
+Many other circumstances corroborated Catherine's faith in the occult
+sciences. The night before the tournament at which Henri II. was
+killed, Catherine saw the fatal blow in a dream. Her astrological
+council, then composed of Nostradamus and the two Ruggieri, had
+already predicted to her the death of the king. History has recorded
+the efforts made by Catherine to persuade her husband not to enter the
+lists. The prognostic, and the dream produced by the prognostic, were
+verified. The memoirs of the day relate another fact that was no less
+singular. The courier who announced the victory of Moncontour arrived
+in the night, after riding with such speed that he killed three
+horses. The queen-mother was awakened to receive the news, to which
+she replied, "I knew it already." In fact, as Brantome relates, she
+had told of her son's triumph the evening before, and narrated several
+circumstances of the battle. The astrologer of the house of Bourbon
+predicted that the youngest of all the princes descended from
+Saint-Louis (the son of Antoine de Bourbon) would ascend the throne of
+France. This prediction, related by Sully, was accomplished in the
+precise terms of the horoscope; which led Henri IV. to say that by
+dint of lying these people sometimes hit the truth. However that may
+be, if most of the great minds of that epoch believed in this vast
+science,--called Magic by the masters of judicial astrology, and
+Sorcery by the public,--they were justified in doing so by the
+fulfilment of horoscopes.
+
+It was for the use of Cosmo Ruggiero, her mathematician, astronomer,
+and astrologer, that Catherine de' Medici erected the tower behind the
+Halle aux Bles,--all that now remains of the hotel de Soissons. Cosmo
+Ruggiero possessed, like confessors, a mysterious influence, the
+possession of which, like them again, sufficed him. He cherished an
+ambitious thought superior to all vulgar ambitions. This man, whom
+dramatists and romance-writers depict as a juggler, owned the rich
+abbey of Saint-Mahe in Lower Brittany, and refused many high
+ecclesiastical dignities; the gold which the superstitious passions of
+the age poured into his coffers sufficed for his secret enterprise;
+and the queen's hand, stretched above his head, preserved every hair
+of it from danger.
+
+
+
+                                  II
+
+                       SCHEMES AGAINST SCHEMES
+
+The thirst for power which consumed the queen-mother, her desire for
+dominion, was so great that in order to retain it she had, as we have
+seen, allied herself to the Guises, those enemies of the throne; to
+keep the reins of power, now obtained, within her hands, she was using
+every means, even to the sacrifice of her friends and that of her
+children. This woman, of whom one of her enemies said at her death,
+"It is more than a queen, it is monarchy itself that has died,"--this
+woman could not exist without the intrigues of government, as a
+gambler can live only by the emotions of play. Although she was an
+Italian of the voluptuous race of the Medici, the Calvinists who
+calumniated her never accused her of having a lover. A great admirer
+of the maxim, "Divide to reign," she had learned the art of
+perpetually pitting one force against another. No sooner had she
+grasped the reins of power than she was forced to keep up dissensions
+in order to neutralize the strength of two rival houses, and thus save
+the Crown. Catherine invented the game of political see-saw (since
+imitated by all princes who find themselves in a like situation), by
+instigating, first the Calvinists against the Guises, and then the
+Guises against the Calvinists. Next, after pitting the two religions
+against each other in the heart of the nation, Catherine instigated
+the Duc d'Anjou against his brother Charles IX. After neutralizing
+events by opposing them to one another, she neutralized men, by
+holding the thread of all their interests in her hands. But so fearful
+a game, which needs the head of a Louis XI. to play it, draws down
+inevitably the hatred of all parties upon the player, who condemns
+himself forever to the necessity of conquering; for one lost game will
+turn every selfish interest into an enemy.
+
+The greater part of the reign of Charles IX. witnessed the triumph of
+the domestic policy of this astonishing woman. What adroit persuasion
+must Catherine have employed to have obtained the command of the
+armies for the Duc d'Anjou under a young and brave king, thirsting for
+glory, capable of military achievement, generous, and in presence,
+too, of the Connetable de Montmorency. In the eyes of the statesmen of
+Europe the Duc d'Anjou had all the honors of the Saint-Bartholomew,
+and Charles IX. all the odium. After inspiring the king with a false
+and secret jealousy of his brother, she used that passion to wear out
+by the intrigues of fraternal jealousy the really noble qualities of
+Charles IX. Cypierre, the king's first governor, and Amyot, his first
+tutor, had made him so great a man, they had paved the way for so
+noble a reign, that the queen-mother began to hate her son as soon as
+she found reason to fear the loss of the power she had so slowly and
+so painfully obtained. On these general grounds most historians have
+believed that Catherine de' Medici felt a preference for Henri III.;
+but her conduct at the period of which we are now writing, proves the
+absolute indifference of her heart toward all her children.
+
+When the Duc d'Anjou went to reign in Poland Catherine was deprived of
+the instrument by which she had worked to keep the king's passions
+occupied in domestic intrigues, which neutralized his energy in other
+directions. She then set up the conspiracy of La Mole and Coconnas, in
+which her youngest son, the Duc d'Alencon (afterwards Duc d'Anjou, on
+the accession of Henri III.) took part, lending himself very willingly
+to his mother's wishes, and displaying an ambition much encouraged by
+his sister Marguerite, then queen of Navarre. This secret conspiracy
+had now reached the point to which Catherine sought to bring it. Its
+object was to put the young duke and his brother-in-law, the king of
+Navarre, at the head of the Calvinists, to seize the person of Charles
+IX., and imprison that king without an heir,--leaving the throne to
+the Duc d'Alencon, whose intention it was to establish Calvinism as
+the religion of France. Calvin, as we have already said, had obtained,
+a few days before his death, the reward he had so deeply coveted,--the
+Reformation was now called Calvinism in his honor.
+
+If Le Laboureur and other sensible writers had not already proved that
+La Mole and Coconnas,--arrested fifty nights after the day on which
+our present history begins, and beheaded the following April,--even,
+we say, if it had not been made historically clear that these men were
+the victims of the queen-mother's policy, the part which Cosmo
+Ruggiero took in this affair would go far to show that she secretly
+directed their enterprise. Ruggiero, against whom the king had
+suspicions, and for whom he cherished a hatred the motives of which we
+are about to explain, was included in the prosecution. He admitted
+having given to La Mole a wax figure representing the king, which was
+pierced through the heart by two needles. This method of casting
+spells constituted a crime, which, in those days, was punished by
+death. It presents one of the most startling and infernal images of
+hatred that humanity could invent; it pictures admirably the magnetic
+and terrible working in the occult world of a constant malevolent
+desire surrounding the person doomed to death; the effects of which on
+the person are exhibited by the figure of wax. The law in those days
+thought, and thought justly, that a desire to which an actual form was
+given should be regarded as a crime of /lese majeste/. Charles IX.
+demanded the death of Ruggiero; Catherine, more powerful than her son,
+obtained from the Parliament, through the young counsellor, Lecamus, a
+commutation of the sentence, and Cosmo was sent to the galleys. The
+following year, on the death of the king, he was pardoned by a decree
+of Henri III., who restored his pension, and received him at court.
+
+But, to return now to the moment of which we are writing, Catherine
+had, by this time, struck so many blows on the heart of her son that
+he was eagerly desirous of casting off her yoke. During the absence of
+Marie Touchet, Charles IX., deprived of his usual occupation, had
+taken to observing everything about him. He cleverly set traps for the
+persons in whom he trusted most, in order to test their fidelity. He
+spied on his mother's actions, concealing from her all knowledge of
+his own, employing for this deception the evil qualities she had
+fostered in him. Consumed by a desire to blot out the horror excited
+in France by the Saint-Bartholomew, he busied himself actively in
+public affairs; he presided at the Council, and tried to seize the
+reins of government by well-laid schemes. Though the queen-mother
+endeavored to check these attempts of her son by employing all the
+means of influence over his mind which her maternal authority and a
+long habit of domineering gave her, his rush into distrust was so
+vehement that he went too far at the first bound ever to return from
+it. The day on which his mother's speech to the king of Poland was
+reported to him, Charles IX., conscious of his failing health,
+conceived the most horrible suspicions, and when such thoughts take
+possession of the mind of a son and a king nothing can remove them. In
+fact, on his deathbed, at the moment when he confided his wife and
+daughter to Henri IV., he began to put the latter on his guard against
+Catherine, so that she cried out passionately, endeavoring to silence
+him, "Do not say that, monsieur!"
+
+Though Charles IX. never ceased to show her the outward respect of
+which she was so tenacious that she would never call the kings her
+sons anything but "Monsieur," the queen-mother had detected in her
+son's manner during the last few months an ill-disguised purpose of
+vengeance. But clever indeed must be the man who counted on taking
+Catherine unawares. She held ready in her hand at this moment the
+conspiracy of the Duke d'Alencon and La Mole, in order to counteract,
+by another fraternal struggle, the efforts Charles IX. was making
+toward emancipation. But, before employing this means, she wanted to
+remove his distrust of her, which would render impossible their future
+reconciliation; for was he likely to restore power to the hands of a
+mother whom he thought capable of poisoning him? She felt herself at
+this moment in such serious danger that she had sent for Strozzi, her
+relation and a soldier noted for his promptitude of action. She took
+counsel in secret with Birago and the two Gondis, and never did she so
+frequently consult her oracle, Cosmo Ruggiero, as at the present
+crisis.
+
+Though the habit of dissimulation, together with advancing age, had
+given the queen-mother that well-known abbess face, with its haughty
+and macerated mask, expressionless yet full of depth, inscrutable yet
+vigilant, remarked by all who have studied her portrait, the courtiers
+now observed some clouds on her icy countenance. No sovereign was ever
+so imposing as this woman from the day when she succeeded in
+restraining the Guises after the death of Francois II. Her black
+velvet cap, made with a point upon the forehead (for she never
+relinquished her widow's mourning) seemed a species of feminine cowl
+around the cold, imperious face, to which, however, she knew how to
+give, at the right moment, a seductive Italian charm. Catherine de'
+Medici was so well made that she was accused of inventing side-saddles
+to show the shape of her legs, which were absolutely perfect. Women
+followed her example in this respect throughout Europe, which even
+then took its fashions from France. Those who desire to bring this
+grand figure before their minds will find that the scene now taking
+place in the brown hall of the Louvre presents it in a striking
+aspect.
+
+The two queens, different in spirit, in beauty, in dress, and now
+estranged,--one naive and thoughtful, the other thoughtful and gravely
+abstracted,--were far too preoccupied to think of giving the order
+awaited by the courtiers for the amusements of the evening. The
+carefully concealed drama, played for the last six months by the
+mother and son was more than suspected by many of the courtiers; but
+the Italians were watching it with special anxiety, for Catherine's
+failure involved their ruin.
+
+During this evening Charles IX., weary with the day's hunting, looked
+to be forty years old. He had reached the last stages of the malady of
+which he died, the symptoms of which were such that many reflecting
+persons were justified in thinking that he was poisoned. According to
+de Thou (the Tacitus of the Valois) the surgeons found suspicious
+spots--/ex causa incognita reperti livores/--on his body. Moreover,
+his funeral was even more neglected than that of Francois II. The body
+was conducted from Saint-Lazare to Saint-Denis by Brantome and a few
+archers of the guard under command of the Comte de Solern. This
+circumstances, coupled with the supposed hatred of the mother to the
+son, may or may not give color to de Thou's supposition, but it proves
+how little affection Catherine felt for any of her children,--a want
+of feeling which may be explained by her implicit faith in the
+predictions of judicial astrology. This woman was unable to feel
+affection for the instruments which were destined to fail her. Henri
+III. was the last king under whom her reign of power was to last; that
+was the sole consideration of her heart and mind.
+
+In these days, however, we can readily believe that Charles IX. died a
+natural death. His excesses, his manner of life, the sudden
+development of his faculties, his last spasmodic attempt to recover
+the reins of power, his desire to live, the abuse of his vital
+strength, his final sufferings and last pleasures, all prove to an
+impartial mind that he died of consumption, a disease scarcely studied
+at that time, and very little understood, the symptoms of which might,
+not unnaturally, lead Charles IX. to believe himself poisoned. The
+real poison which his mother gave him was in the fatal counsels of the
+courtiers whom she placed about him,--men who led him to waste his
+intellectual as well as his physical vigor, thus bringing on a malady
+which was purely fortuitous and not constitutional. Under these
+harrowing circumstances, Charles IX. displayed a gloomy majesty of
+demeanor which was not unbecoming to a king. The solemnity of his
+secret thoughts was reflected on his face, the olive tones of which he
+inherited from his mother. This ivory pallor, so fine by candlelight,
+so suited to the expression of melancholy thought, brought out
+vigorously the fire of the blue-black eyes, which gazed from their
+thick and heavy lids with the keen perception our fancy lends to
+kings, their color being a cloak for dissimulation. Those eyes were
+terrible,--especially from the movement of their brows, which he could
+raise or lower at will on his bald, high forehead. His nose was broad
+and long, thick at the end,--the nose of a lion; his ears were large,
+his hair sandy, his lips blood-red, like those of all consumptives,
+the upper lip thin and sarcastic, the lower one firm, and full enough
+to give an impression of the noblest qualities of the heart. The
+wrinkles of his brow, the youth of which was killed by dreadful cares,
+inspired the strongest interest; remorse, caused by the uselessness of
+the Saint-Bartholomew, accounted for some, but there were two others
+on that face which would have been eloquent indeed to any student
+whose premature genius had led him to divine the principles of modern
+physiology. These wrinkles made a deeply indented furrow going from
+each cheek-bone to each corner of the mouth, revealing the inward
+efforts of an organization wearied by the toil of thought and the
+violent excitements of the body. Charles IX. was worn-out. If policy
+did not stifle remorse in the breasts of those who sit beneath the
+purple, the queen-mother, looking at her own work, would surely have
+felt it. Had Catherine foreseen the effect of her intrigues upon her
+son, would she have recoiled from them? What a fearful spectacle was
+this! A king born vigorous, and now so feeble; a mind powerfully
+tempered, shaken by distrust; a man clothed with authority, conscious
+of no support; a firm mind brought to the pass of having lost all
+confidence in itself! His warlike valor had changed by degrees to
+ferocity; his discretion to deceit; the refined and delicate love of a
+Valois was now a mere quenchless thirst for pleasure. This perverted
+and misjudged great man, with all the many facets of a noble soul
+worn-out,--a king without power, a generous heart without a friend,
+dragged hither and thither by a thousand conflicting intrigues,
+--presented the melancholy spectacle of a youth, only twenty-four
+years old, disillusioned of life, distrusting everybody and everything,
+now resolving to risk all, even his life, on a last effort. For some
+time past he had fully understood his royal mission, his power, his
+resources, and the obstacles which his mother opposed to the
+pacification of the kingdom; but alas! this light now burned in a
+shattered lantern.
+
+Two men, whom Charles IX. loved sufficiently to protect under
+circumstances of great danger,--Jean Chapelain, his physician, whom he
+saved from the Saint-Bartholomew, and Ambroise Pare, with whom he went
+to dine when Pare's enemies were accusing him of intending to poison
+the king,--had arrived this evening in haste from the provinces,
+recalled by the queen-mother. Both were watching their master
+anxiously. A few courtiers spoke to them in a low voice; but the men
+of science made guarded answers, carefully concealing the fatal
+verdict which was in their minds. Every now and then the king would
+raise his heavy eyelids and give his mother a furtive look which he
+tried to conceal from those about him. Suddenly he sprang up and stood
+before the fireplace.
+
+"Monsieur de Chiverni," he said abruptly, "why do you keep the title
+of chancellor of Anjou and Poland? Are you in our service, or in that
+of our brother?"
+
+"I am all yours, sire," replied Chiverni, bowing low.
+
+"Then come to me to-morrow; I intend to send you to Spain. Very
+strange things are happening at the court of Madrid, gentlemen."
+
+The king looked at his wife and flung himself back into his chair.
+
+"Strange things are happening everywhere," said the Marechal de
+Tavannes, one of the friends of the king's youth, in a low voice.
+
+The king rose again and led this companion of his youthful pleasures
+apart into the embrasure of the window at the corner of the room,
+saying, when they were out of hearing:--
+
+"I want you. Remain here when the others go. I shall know to-night
+whether you are for me or against me. Don't look astonished. I am
+about to burst my bonds. My mother is the cause of all the evil about
+me. Three months hence I shall be king indeed, or dead. Silence, if
+you value your life! You will have my secret, you and Solern and
+Villeroy only. If it is betrayed, it will be by one of you three.
+Don't keep near me; go and pay your court to my mother. Tell her I am
+dying, and that you don't regret it, for I am only a poor creature."
+
+The king was leaning on the shoulder of his old favorite, and
+pretending to tell him of his ailments, in order to mislead the
+inquisitive eyes about him; then, not wishing to make his aversion too
+visible, he went up to his wife and mother and talked with them,
+calling Birago to their side.
+
+Just then Pinard, one of the secretaries of State, glided like an eel
+through the door and along the wall until he reached the queen-mother,
+in whose ear he said a few words, to which she replied by an
+affirmative sign. The king did not ask his mother the meaning of this
+conference, but he returned to his seat and kept silence, darting
+terrible looks of anger and suspicion all about him.
+
+This little circumstance seemed of enormous consequence in the eyes of
+the courtiers; and, in truth, so marked an exercise of power by the
+queen-mother, without reference to the king, was like a drop of water
+overflowing the cup. Queen Elizabeth and the Comtesse de Fiesque now
+retired, but the king paid no attention to their movements, though the
+queen-mother rose and attended her daughter-in-law to the door; after
+which the courtiers, understanding that their presence was unwelcome,
+took their leave. By ten o'clock no one remained in the hall but a few
+intimates,--the two Gondis, Tavannes, Solern, Birago, the king, and
+the queen-mother.
+
+The king sat plunged in the blackest melancholy. The silence was
+oppressive. Catherine seemed embarrassed. She wished to leave the
+room, and waited for the king to escort her to the door; but he still
+continued obstinately lost in thought. At last she rose to bid him
+good-night, and Charles IX. was forced to do likewise. As she took his
+arm and made a few steps toward the door, she bent to his ear and
+whispered:--
+
+"Monsieur, I have important things to say to you."
+
+Passing a mirror on her way, she glanced into it and made a sign with
+her eyes to the two Gondis, which escaped the king's notice, for he
+was at the moment exchanging looks of intelligence with the Comte de
+Solern and Villeroy. Tavannes was thoughtful.
+
+"Sire," said the latter, coming out of his reverie, "I think you are
+royally ennuyed; don't you ever amuse yourself now? /Vive Dieu/! have
+you forgotten the times when we used to vagabondize about the streets
+at night?"
+
+"Ah! those were the good old times!" said the king, with a sigh.
+
+"Why not bring them back?" said Birago, glancing significantly at the
+Gondis as he took his leave.
+
+"Yes, I always think of those days with pleasure," said Albert de
+Gondi, Duc de Retz.
+
+"I'd like to see you on the roofs once more, monsieur le duc,"
+remarked Tavannes. "Damned Italian cat! I wish he might break his
+neck!" he added in a whisper to the king.
+
+"I don't know which of us two could climb the quickest in these days,"
+replied de Gondi; "but one thing I do know, that neither of us fears
+to die."
+
+"Well, sire, will you start upon a frolic in the streets to-night, as
+you did in the days of your youth?" said the other Gondi, master of
+the Wardrobe.
+
+The days of his youth! so at twenty-four years of age the wretched
+king seemed no longer young to any one, not even to his flatterers!
+
+Tavannes and his master now reminded each other, like two school-boys,
+of certain pranks they had played in Paris, and the evening's
+amusement was soon arranged. The two Italians, challenged to climb
+roofs, and jump from one to another across alleys and streets, wagered
+that they would follow the king wherever he went. They and Tavannes
+went off to change their clothes. The Comte de Solern, left alone with
+the king, looked at him in amazement. Though the worthy German, filled
+with compassion for the hapless position of the king of France, was
+honor and fidelity itself, he was certainly not quick of perception.
+Charles IX., surrounded by hostile persons, unable to trust any one,
+not even his wife (who had been guilty of some indiscretions, unaware
+as she was that his mother and his servants were his enemies), had
+been fortunate enough to find in Monsieur de Solern a faithful friend
+in whom he could place entire confidence. Tavannes and Villeroy were
+trusted with only a part of the king's secrets. The Comte de Solern
+alone knew the whole of the plan which he was now about to carry out.
+This devoted friend was also useful to his master, in possessing a
+body of discreet and affectionate followers, who blindly obeyed his
+orders. He commanded a detachment of the archers of the guards, and
+for the last few days he had been sifting out the men who were
+faithfully attached to the king, in order to make a company of tried
+men when the need came. The king took thought of everything.
+
+"Why are you surprised, Solern?" he said. "You know very well I need a
+pretext to be out to-night. It is true, I have Madame de Belleville,
+but this is better; for who knows whether my mother does not hear of
+all that goes on at Marie's?"
+
+Monsieur de Solern, who was to follow the king, asked if he might not
+take a few of his Germans to patrol the streets, and Charles
+consented. About eleven o'clock the king, who was now very gay, set
+forth with his three courtiers,--namely, Tavannes and the two Gondis.
+
+"I'll go and take my little Marie by surprise," said Charles IX. to
+Tavannes, "as we pass through the rue de l'Autruche." That street
+being on the way to the rue Saint-Honore, it would have been strange
+indeed for the king to pass the house of his love without stopping.
+
+Looking out for a chance of mischief,--a belated burgher to frighten,
+or a watchman to thrash--the king went along with his nose in the air,
+watching all the lighted windows to see what was happening, and
+striving to hear the conversations. But alas! he found his good city
+of Paris in a state of deplorable tranquillity. Suddenly, as he passed
+the house of a perfumer named Rene, who supplied the court, the king,
+noticing a strong light from a window in the roof, was seized by one
+of those apparently hasty inspirations which, to some minds, suggest a
+previous intention.
+
+This perfumer was strongly suspected of curing rich uncles who thought
+themselves ill. The court laid at his door the famous "Elixir of
+Inheritance," and even accused him of poisoning Jeanne d'Albret,
+mother of Henri of Navarre, who was buried (in spite of Charles IX.'s
+positive order) without her head being opened. For the last two months
+the king had sought some way of sending a spy into Rene's laboratory,
+where, as he was well aware, Cosmo Ruggiero spent much time. The king
+intended, if anything suspicious were discovered, to proceed in the
+matter alone, without the assistance of the police or law, with whom,
+as he well knew, his mother would counteract him by means of either
+corruption or fear.
+
+It is certain that during the sixteenth century, and the years that
+preceded and followed it, poisoning was brought to a perfection
+unknown to modern chemistry, as history itself will prove. Italy, the
+cradle of modern science, was, at this period, the inventor and
+mistress of these secrets, many of which are now lost. Hence the
+reputation for that crime which weighed for the two following
+centuries on Italy. Romance-writers have so greatly abused it that
+wherever they have introduced Italians into their tales they have
+almost always made them play the part of assassins and poisoners.[*]
+If Italy then had the traffic in subtle poisons which some historians
+attribute to her, we should remember her supremacy in the art of
+toxicology, as we do her pre-eminence in all other human knowledge and
+art in which she took the lead in Europe. The crimes of that period
+were not her crimes specially. She served the passions of the age,
+just as she built magnificent edifices, commanded armies, painted
+noble frescos, sang romances, loved queens, delighted kings, devised
+ballets and fetes, and ruled all policies. The horrible art of
+poisoning reached to such a pitch in Florence that a woman, dividing a
+peach with a duke, using a golden fruit-knife with one side of its
+blade poisoned, ate one half of the peach herself and killed the duke
+with the other half. A pair of perfumed gloves were known to have
+infiltrated mortal illness through the pores of the skin. Poison was
+instilled into bunches of natural roses, and the fragrance, when
+inhaled, gave death. Don John of Austria was poisoned, it was said, by
+a pair of boots.
+
+[*] Written sixty-six years ago.--Tr.
+
+Charles IX. had good reason to be curious in the matter; we know
+already the dark suspicions and beliefs which now prompted him to
+surprise the perfumer Rene at his work.
+
+The old fountain at the corner of the rue de l'Arbre-See, which has
+since been rebuilt, offered every facility for the royal vagabonds to
+climb upon the roof of a house not far from that of Rene, which the
+king wished to visit. Charles, followed by his companions, began to
+ramble over the roofs, to the great terror of the burghers awakened by
+the tramp of these false thieves, who called to them in saucy
+language, listened to their talk, and even pretended to force an
+entrance. When the Italians saw the king and Tavannes threading their
+way among the roofs of the house next to that of Rene, Albert de Gondi
+sat down, declaring that he was tired, and his brother followed his
+example.
+
+"So much the better," thought the king, glad to leave his spies behind
+him.
+
+Tavannes began to laugh at the two Florentines, left sitting alone in
+the midst of deep silence, in a place where they had nought but the
+skies above them, and the cats for auditors. But the brothers made use
+of their position to exchange thoughts they would not dare to utter on
+any other spot in the world,--thoughts inspired by the events of the
+evening.
+
+"Albert," said the Grand-master to the marechal, "the king will get
+the better of the queen-mother; we are doing a foolish thing for our
+own interests to stay by those of Catherine. If we go over to the king
+now, when he is searching everywhere for support against her and for
+able men to serve him, we shall not be driven away like wild beasts
+when the queen-mother is banished, imprisoned, or killed."
+
+"You wouldn't get far with such ideas, Charles," replied the marechal,
+gravely. "You'd follow the king into the grave, and he won't live
+long; he is ruined by excesses. Cosmo Ruggiero predicts his death
+within a year."
+
+"The dying boar has often killed the huntsman," said Charles de Gondi.
+"This conspiracy of the Duc d'Alencon, the king of Navarre, and the
+Prince de Conde, with whom La Mole and Coconnas are negotiating, is
+more dangerous than useful. In the first place, the king of Navarre,
+whom the queen-mother hoped to catch in the very act, distrusts her,
+and declines to run his head into the noose. He means to profit by the
+conspiracy without taking any of its risks. Besides, the notion now is
+to put the crown on the head of the Duc d'Alencon, who has turned
+Calvinist."
+
+"/Budelone/! but don't you see that this conspiracy enables the
+queen-mother to find out what the Huguenots can do with the Duc
+d'Alencon, and what the king can do with the Huguenots?--for the king
+is even now negotiating with them; but he'll be finely pilloried
+to-morrow, when Catherine reveals to him the counter-conspiracy which
+will neutralize all his projects."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Charles de Gondi, "by dint of profiting by our advice
+she's clever and stronger than we! Well, that's all right."
+
+"All right for the Duc d'Anjou, who prefers to be king of France
+rather than king of Poland; I am going now to explain the matter to
+him."
+
+"When do you start, Albert?"
+
+"To-morrow. I am ordered to accompany the king of Poland; and I expect
+to join him in Venice, where the patricians have taken upon themselves
+to amuse and delay him."
+
+"You are prudence itself!"
+
+"/Che bestia/! I swear to you there is not the slightest danger for
+either of us in remaining at court. If there were, do you think I
+would go away? I should stay by the side of our kind mistress."
+
+"Kind!" exclaimed the Grand-master; "she is a woman to drop all her
+instruments the moment she finds them heavy."
+
+"/O coglione/! you pretend to be a soldier, and you fear death! Every
+business has its duties, and we have ours in making our fortune. By
+attaching ourselves to kings, the source of all temporal power which
+protects, elevates, and enriches families, we are forced to give them
+as devoted a love as that which burns in the hearts of martyrs toward
+heaven. We must suffer in their cause; when they sacrifice us to the
+interests of their throne we may perish, for we die as much for
+ourselves as for them, but our name and our families perish not.
+/Ecco/!"
+
+"You are right as to yourself, Albert; for they have given you the
+ancient title and duchy of de Retz."
+
+"Now listen to me," replied his brother. "The queen hopes much from
+the cleverness of the Ruggieri; she expects them to bring the king
+once more under her control. When Charles refused to use Rene's
+perfumes any longer the wary woman knew at once on whom his suspicions
+really rested. But who can tell the schemes that are in his mind?
+Perhaps he is only hesitating as to what fate he shall give his
+mother; he hates her, you know. He said a few words about it to his
+wife; she repeated them to Madame de Fiesque, and Madame de Fiesque
+told the queen-mother. Since then the king has kept away from his
+wife."
+
+"The time has come," said Charles de Gondi.
+
+"To do what?" asked the marechal.
+
+"To lay hold of the king's mind," replied the Grand-master, who, if he
+was not so much in the queen's confidence as his brother, was by no
+means less clear-sighted.
+
+"Charles, I have opened a great career to you," said his brother
+gravely. "If you wish to be a duke also, be, as I am, the accomplice
+and cat's-paw of our mistress; she is the strongest here, and she will
+continue in power. Madame de Sauves is on her side, and the king of
+Navarre and the Duc d'Alencon are still for Madame de Sauves.
+Catherine holds the pair in a leash under Charles IX., and she will
+hold them in future under Henri III. God grant that Henri may not
+prove ungrateful."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"His mother is doing too much for him."
+
+"Hush! what noise is that I hear in the rue Saint-Honore?" cried the
+Grand-master. "Listen! there is some one at Rene's door! Don't you
+hear the footsteps of many men. Can they have arrested the Ruggieri?"
+
+"Ah, /diavolo/! this is prudence indeed. The king has not shown his
+usual impetuosity. But where will they imprison them? Let us go down
+into the street and see."
+
+The two brothers reached the corner of the rue de l'Autruche just as
+the king was entering the house of his mistress, Marie Touchet. By the
+light of the torches which the concierge carried, they distinguished
+Tavannes and the two Ruggieri.
+
+"Hey, Tavannes!" cried the grand-master, running after the king's
+companion, who had turned and was making his way back to the Louvre,
+"What happened to you?"
+
+"We fell into a nest of sorcerers and arrested two, compatriots of
+yours, who may perhaps be able to explain to the minds of French
+gentlemen how you, who are not Frenchmen, have managed to lay hands on
+two of the chief offices of the Crown," replied Tavannes, half
+jesting, half in earnest.
+
+"But the king?" inquired the Grand-master, who cared little for
+Tavanne's enmity.
+
+"He stays with his mistress."
+
+"We reached our present distinction through an absolute devotion to
+our masters,--a noble course, my dear Tavannes, which I see that you
+also have adopted," replied Albert de Gondi.
+
+The three courtiers walked on in silence. At the moment when they
+parted, on meeting their servants who then escorted them, two men
+glided swiftly along the walls of the rue de l'Autruche. These men
+were the king and the Comte de Solern, who soon reached the banks of
+the Seine, at a point where a boat and two rowers, carefully selected
+by de Solern, awaited them. In a very few moments they reached the
+other shore.
+
+"My mother has not gone to bed," cried the king. "She will see us; we
+chose a bad place for the interview."
+
+"She will think it a duel," replied Solern; "and she cannot possibly
+distinguish who we are at this distance."
+
+"Well, let her see me!" exclaimed Charles IX. "I am resolved now!"
+
+The king and his confidant sprang ashore and walked quickly in the
+direction of the Pre-aux-Clercs. When they reached it the Comte de
+Solern, preceding the king, met a man who was evidently on the watch,
+and with whom he exchanged a few words; the man then retired to a
+distance. Presently two other men, who seemed to be princes by the
+marks of respect which the first man paid to them, left the place
+where they were evidently hiding behind the broken fence of a field,
+and approached the king, to whom they bent the knee. But Charles IX.
+raised them before they touched the ground, saying:--
+
+"No ceremony, we are all gentlemen here."
+
+A venerable old man, who might have been taken for the Chancelier de
+l'Hopital, had the latter not died in the preceding year, now joined
+the three gentlemen, all four walking rapidly so as to reach a spot
+where their conference could not be overheard by their attendants. The
+Comte de Solern followed at a slight distance to keep watch over the
+king. That faithful servant was filled with a distrust not shared by
+Charles IX., a man to whom life was now a burden. He was the only
+person on the king's side who witnessed this mysterious conference,
+which presently became animated.
+
+"Sire," said one of the new-comers, "the Connetable de Montmorency,
+the closest friend of the king your father, agreed with the Marechal
+de Saint-Andre in declaring that Madame Catherine ought to be sewn up
+in a sack and flung into the river. If that had been done then, many
+worthy persons would still be alive."
+
+"I have enough executions on my conscience, monsieur," replied the
+king.
+
+"But, sire," said the youngest of the four personages, "if you merely
+banish her, from the depths of her exile Queen Catherine will continue
+to stir up strife, and to find auxiliaries. We have everything to fear
+from the Guises, who, for the last nine years, have schemed for a vast
+Catholic alliance, in the secret of which your Majesty is not
+included; and it threatens your throne. This alliance was invented by
+Spain, which will never renounce its project of destroying the
+boundary of the Pyrenees. Sire, Calvinism will save France by setting
+up a moral barrier between her and a nation which covets the empire of
+the world. If the queen-mother is exiled, she will turn for help to
+Spain and to the Guises."
+
+"Gentlemen," said the king, "know this, if by your help peace without
+distrust is once established, I will take upon myself the duty of
+making all subjects tremble. /Tete-Dieu/! it is time indeed for
+royalty to assert itself. My mother is right in that, at any rate. You
+ought to know that it is to your interest was well as mine, for your
+hands, your fortunes depend upon our throne. If religion is
+overthrown, the hands you allow to do it will be laid next upon the
+throne and then upon you. I no longer care to fight ideas with weapons
+that cannot touch them. Let us see now if Protestantism will make
+progress when left to itself; above all, I would like to see with whom
+and what the spirit of that faction will wrestle. The admiral, God
+rest his soul! was not my enemy; he swore to me to restrain the revolt
+within spiritual limits, and to leave the ruling of the kingdom to the
+monarch, his master, with submissive subjects. Gentlemen, if the
+matter be still within your power, set that example now; help your
+sovereign to put down a spirit of rebellion which takes tranquillity
+from each and all of us. War is depriving us of revenue; it is ruining
+the kingdom. I am weary of these constant troubles; so weary, that if
+it is absolutely necessary I will sacrifice my mother. Nay, I will go
+farther; I will keep an equal number of Protestants and Catholics
+about me, and I will hold the axe of Louis XI. above their heads to
+force them to be on good terms. If the Messieurs de Guise plot a Holy
+Alliance to attack our crown, the executioner shall begin with their
+heads. I see the miseries of my people, and I will make short work of
+the great lords who care little for consciences,--let them hold what
+opinions they like; what I want in future is submissive subjects, who
+will work, according to my will, for the prosperity of the State.
+Gentlemen, I give you ten days to negotiate with your friends, to
+break off your plots, and to return to me who will be your father. If
+you refuse you will see great changes. I shall use the mass of the
+people, who will rise at my voice against the lords. I will make
+myself a king who pacificates his kingdom by striking down those who
+are more powerful even than you, and who dare defy him. If the troops
+fail me, I have my brother of Spain, on whom I shall call to defend
+our menaced thrones, and if I lack a minister to carry out my will, he
+can lend me the Duke of Alba."
+
+"But in that case, sire, we should have Germans to oppose to your
+Spaniards," said one of his hearers.
+
+"Cousin," replied Charles IX., coldly, "my wife's name is Elizabeth of
+Austria; support might fail you on the German side. But, for Heaven's
+sake, let us fight, if fight we must, alone, without the help of
+foreigners. You are the object of my mother's hatred, and you stand
+near enough to me to be my second in the duel I am about to fight with
+her; well then, listen to what I now say. You seem to me so worthy of
+confidence that I offer you the post of /connetable/; /you/ will not
+betray me like the other."
+
+The prince to whom Charles IX. had addressed himself, struck his hand
+into that of the king, exclaiming:
+
+"/Ventre-saint-gris/! brother; this is enough to make me forget many
+wrongs. But, sire, the head cannot march without the tail, and ours is
+a long tail to drag. Give me more than ten days; we want at least a
+month to make our friends hear reason. At the end of that time we
+shall be masters."
+
+"A month, so be it! My only negotiator will be Villeroy; trust no one
+else, no matter what is said to you."
+
+"One month," echoed the other seigneurs, "that is sufficient."
+
+"Gentlemen, we are five," said the king,--"five men of honor. If any
+betrayal takes place, we shall know on whom to avenge it."
+
+The three strangers kissed the hand of Charles IX. and took leave of
+him with every mark of the utmost respect. As the king recrossed the
+Seine, four o'clock was ringing from the clock-tower of the Louvre.
+Lights were on in the queen-mother's room; she had not yet gone to
+bed.
+
+"My mother is still on the watch," said Charles to the Comte de
+Solern.
+
+"She has her forge as you have yours," remarked the German.
+
+"Dear count, what do you think of a king who is reduced to become a
+conspirator?" said Charles IX., bitterly, after a pause.
+
+"I think, sire, that if you would allow me to fling that woman into
+the river, as your young cousin said, France would soon be at peace."
+
+"What! a parricide in addition to the Saint-Bartholomew, count?" cried
+the king. "No, no! I will exile her. Once fallen, my mother will no
+longer have either servants or partisans."
+
+"Well, then, sire," replied the Comte de Solern, "give me the order to
+arrest her at once and take her out of the kingdom; for to-morrow she
+will have forced you to change your mind."
+
+"Come to my forge," said the king, "no one can overhear us there;
+besides, I don't want my mother to suspect the capture of the
+Ruggieri. If she knows I am in my work-shop she'll suppose nothing,
+and we can consult about the proper measures for her arrest."
+
+As the king entered a lower room of the palace, which he used for a
+workshop, he called his companion's attention to the forge and his
+implements with a laugh.
+
+"I don't believe," he said, "among all the kings that France will ever
+have, there'll be another to take pleasure in such work as that. But
+when I am really king, I'll forge no swords; they shall all go back
+into their scabbards."
+
+"Sire," said the Comte de Solern, "the fatigues of tennis and hunting,
+your toil at this forge, and--if I may say it--love, are chariots
+which the devil is offering you to get the faster to Saint-Denis."
+
+"Solern," said the king, in a piteous tone, "if you knew the fire they
+have put into my soul and body! nothing can quench it. Are you sure of
+the men who are guarding the Ruggieri?"
+
+"As sure as of myself."
+
+"Very good; then, during this coming day I shall take my own course.
+Think of the proper means of making the arrest, and I will give you my
+final orders by five o'clock at Madame de Belleville's."
+
+As the first rays of dawn were struggling with the lights of the
+workshop, Charles IX., left alone by the departure of the Comte de
+Solern, heard the door of the apartment turn on its hinges, and saw
+his mother standing within it in the dim light like a phantom. Though
+very nervous and impressible, the king did not quiver, albeit, under
+the circumstances in which he then stood, this apparition had a
+certain air of mystery and horror.
+
+"Monsieur," she said, "you are killing yourself."
+
+"I am fulfilling my horoscope," he replied with a bitter smile. "But
+you, madame, you appear to be as early as I."
+
+"We have both been up all night, monsieur; but with very different
+intentions. While you have been conferring with your worst enemies in
+the open fields, concealing your acts from your mother, assisted by
+Tavannes and the Gondis, with whom you have been scouring the town, I
+have been reading despatches which contained the proofs of a
+terrible conspiracy in which your brother, the Duc d'Alencon, your
+brother-in-law, the king of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, and half the
+nobles of your kingdom are taking part. Their purpose is nothing less
+than to take the crown from your head and seize your person. Those
+gentlemen have already fifty thousand good troops behind them."
+
+"Bah!" exclaimed the king, incredulously.
+
+"Your brother has turned Huguenot," she continued.
+
+"My brother! gone over to the Huguenots!" cried Charles, brandishing
+the piece of iron which he held in his hand.
+
+"Yes; the Duc d'Alencon, Huguenot at heart, will soon be one before
+the eyes of the world. Your sister, the queen of Navarre, has almost
+ceased to love you; she cares more for the Duc d'Alencon; she cares of
+Bussy; and she loves that little La Mole."
+
+"What a heart!" exclaimed the king.
+
+"That little La Mole," went on the queen, "wishes to make himself a
+great man by giving France a king of his own stripe. He is promised,
+they say, the place of connetable."
+
+"Curse that Margot!" cried the king. "This is what comes of her
+marriage with a heretic."
+
+"Heretic or not is of no consequence; the trouble is that, in spite of
+my advice, you have brought the head of the younger branch too near
+the throne by that marriage, and Henri's purpose is now to embroil you
+with the rest and make you kill one another. The house of Bourbon is
+the enemy of the house of Valois; remember that, monsieur. All younger
+branches should be kept in a state of poverty, for they are born
+conspirators. It is sheer folly to give them arms when they have none,
+or to leave them in possession of arms when they seize them. Let every
+younger son be made incapable of doing harm; that is the law of
+Crowns; the Sultans of Asia follow it. The proofs of this conspiracy
+are in my room upstairs, where I asked you to follow me last evening,
+when you bade me good-night; but instead of doing so, it seems you had
+other plans. I therefore waited for you. If we do not take the proper
+measures immediately you will meet the fate of Charles the Simple
+within a month."
+
+"A month!" exclaimed the king, thunderstruck at the coincidence of
+that period with the delay asked for by the princes themselves. "'In a
+month we shall be masters,'" he added to himself, quoting their words.
+"Madame," he said aloud, "what are your proofs?"
+
+"They are unanswerable, monsieur; they come from my daughter
+Marguerite. Alarmed herself at the possibilities of such a
+combination, her love for the throne of the Valois has proved
+stronger, this time, than all her other loves. She asks, as the price
+of her revelations that nothing shall be done to La Mole; but the
+scoundrel seems to me a dangerous villain whom we had better be rid
+of, as well as the Comte de Coconnas, your brother d'Alencon's right
+hand. As for the Prince de Conde, he consents to everything, provided
+I am thrown into the sea; perhaps that is the wedding present he gives
+me in return for the pretty wife I gave him! All this is a serious
+matter, monsieur. You talk of horoscopes! I know of the prediction
+which gives the throne of the Valois to the Bourbons, and if we do not
+take care it will be fulfilled. Do not be angry with your sister; she
+has behaved well in this affair. My son," continued the queen, after a
+pause, giving a tone of tenderness to her words, "evil persons on the
+side of the Guises are trying to sow dissensions between you and me;
+and yet we are the only ones in the kingdom whose interests are
+absolutely identical. You blame me, I know, for the Saint-Bartholomew;
+you accuse me of having forced you into it. Catholicism, monsieur,
+must be the bond between France, Spain, and Italy, three countries
+which can, by skilful management, secretly planned, be united in
+course of time, under the house of Valois. Do not deprive yourself of
+such chances by loosing the cord which binds the three kingdoms in the
+bonds of a common faith. Why should not the Valois and the Medici
+carry out for their own glory the scheme of Charles the Fifth, whose
+head failed him? Let us fling off that race of Jeanne la Folle. The
+Medici, masters of Florence and of Rome, will force Italy to support
+your interests; they will guarantee you advantages by treaties of
+commerce and alliance which shall recognize your fiefs in Piedmont,
+the Milanais, and Naples, where you have rights. These, monsieur, are
+the reasons of the war to the death which we make against the
+Huguenots. Why do you force me to repeat these things? Charlemagne was
+wrong in advancing toward the north. France is a body whose heart is
+on the Gulf of Lyons, and its two arms over Spain and Italy.
+Therefore, she must rule the Mediterranean, that basket into which are
+poured all the riches of the Orient, now turned to the profit of those
+seigneurs of Venice, in the very teeth of Philip II. If the friendship
+of the Medici and your rights justify you in hoping for Italy, force,
+alliances, or a possible inheritance may give you Spain. Warn the
+house of Austria as to this,--that ambitious house to which the
+Guelphs sold Italy, and which is even now hankering after Spain.
+Though your wife is of that house, humble it! Clasp it so closely that
+you will smother it! /There/ are the enemies of your kingdom; thence
+comes help to the Reformers. Do not listen to those who find their
+profit in causing us to disagree, and who torment your life by making
+you believe I am your secret enemy. Have /I/ prevented you from having
+heirs? Why has your mistress given you a son, and your wife a
+daughter? Why have you not to-day three legitimate heirs to root out
+the hopes of these seditious persons? Is it I, monsieur, who am
+responsible for such failures? If you had an heir, would the Duc
+d'Alencon be now conspiring?"
+
+As she ended these words, Catherine fixed upon her son the magnetic
+glance of a bird of prey upon its victim. The daughter of the Medici
+became magnificent; her real self shone upon her face, which, like
+that of a gambler over the green table, glittered with vast
+cupidities. Charles IX. saw no longer the mother of one man, but (as
+was said of her) the mother of armies and of empires,--/mater
+castrorum/. Catherine had now spread wide the wings of her genius, and
+boldly flown to the heights of the Medici and Valois policy, tracing
+once more the mighty plans which terrified in earlier days her husband
+Henri II., and which, transmitted by the genius of the Medici to
+Richelieu, remain in writing among the papers of the house of Bourbon.
+But Charles IX., hearing the unusual persuasions his mother was using,
+thought that there must be some necessity for them, and he began to
+ask himself what could be her motive. He dropped his eyes; he
+hesitated; his distrust was not lessened by her studied phrases.
+Catherine was amazed at the depths of suspicion she now beheld in her
+son's heart.
+
+"Well, monsieur," she said, "do you not understand me? What are we,
+you and I, in comparison with the eternity of royal crowns? Do you
+suppose me to have other designs than those that ought to actuate all
+royal persons who inhabit the sphere where empires are ruled?"
+
+"Madame, I will follow you to your cabinet; we must act--"
+
+"Act!" cried Catherine; "let our enemies alone; let /them/ act; take
+them red-handed, and law and justice will deliver you from their
+assaults. For God's sake, monsieur, show them good-will."
+
+The queen withdrew; the king remained alone for a few moments, for he
+was utterly overwhelmed.
+
+"On which side is the trap?" thought he. "Which of the two--she or
+they--deceive me? What is my best policy? /Deus, discerne causam
+meam/!" he muttered with tears in his eyes. "Life is a burden to me! I
+prefer death, natural or violent, to these perpetual torments!" he
+cried presently, bringing down his hammer upon the anvil with such
+force that the vaults of the palace trembled.
+
+"My God!" he said, as he went outside and looked up at the sky, "thou
+for whose holy religion I struggle, give me the light of thy
+countenance that I may penetrate the secrets of my mother's heart
+while I question the Ruggieri."
+
+
+
+                                 III
+
+                            MARIE TOUCHET
+
+The little house of Madame de Belleville, where Charles IX. had
+deposited his prisoners, was the last but one in the rue de l'Autruche
+on the side of the rue Saint-Honore. The street gate, flanked by two
+little brick pavilions, seemed very simple in those days, when gates
+and their accessories were so elaborately treated. It had two
+pilasters of stone cut in facets, and the coping represented a
+reclining woman holding a cornucopia. The gate itself, closed by
+enormous locks, had a wicket through which to examine those who asked
+admittance. In each pavilion lived a porter; for the king's extremely
+capricious pleasure required a porter by day and by night. The house
+had a little courtyard, paved like those of Venice. At this period,
+before carriages were invented, ladies went about on horseback, or in
+litters, so that courtyards could be made magnificent without fear of
+injury from horses or carriages. This fact is always to be remembered
+as an explanation of the narrowness of streets, the small size of
+courtyards, and certain other details of the private dwellings of the
+fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
+
+The house, of one story only above the ground-floor, was capped by a
+sculptured frieze, above which rose a roof with four sides, the peak
+being flattened to form a platform. Dormer windows were cut in this
+roof, with casings and pediments which the chisel of some great artist
+had covered with arabesques and dentils; each of the three windows on
+the main floor were equally beautiful in stone embroidery, which the
+brick of the walls showed off to great advantage. On the ground-floor,
+a double portico, very delicately decorated, led to the entrance door,
+which was covered with bosses cut with facets in the Venetian manner,
+--a style of decoration which was further carried on round the windows
+placed to right and left of the door.
+
+A garden, carefully laid out in the fashion of the times and filled
+with choice flowers, occupied a space behind the house equal to that
+of the courtyard in front. A grape-vine draped its walls. In the
+centre of a grass plot rose a silver fir-tree. The flower-borders were
+separated from the grass by meandering paths which led to an arbor of
+clipped yews at the farther end of the little garden. The walls were
+covered with a mosaic of variously colored pebbles, coarse in design,
+it is true, but pleasing to the eye from the harmony of its tints with
+those of the flower-beds. The house had a carved balcony on the garden
+side, above the door, and also on the front toward the courtyard, and
+around the middle windows. On both sides of the house the
+ornamentation of the principal window, which projected some feet from
+the wall, rose to the frieze; so that it formed a little pavilion,
+hung there like a lantern. The casings of the other windows were
+inlaid on the stone with precious marbles.
+
+In spite of the exquisite taste displayed in the little house, there
+was an air of melancholy about it. It was darkened by the buildings
+that surrounded it and by the roofs of the hotel d'Alencon which threw
+a heavy shadow over both court and garden; moreover, a deep silence
+reigned there. But this silence, these half-lights, this solitude,
+soothed a royal soul, which could there surrender itself to a single
+emotion, as in a cloister where men pray, or in some sheltered home
+wherein they love.
+
+It is easy now to imagine the interior charm and choiceness of this
+haven, the sole spot in his kingdom where this dying Valois could pour
+out his soul, reveal his sufferings, exercise his taste for art, and
+give himself up to the poesy he loved,--pleasures denied him by the
+cares of a cruel royalty. Here, alone, were his great soul and his
+high intrinsic worth appreciated; here he could give himself up, for a
+few brief months, the last of his life, to the joys of fatherhood,
+--pleasures into which he flung himself with the frenzy that a sense
+of his coming and dreadful death impressed on all his actions.
+
+In the afternoon of the day succeeding the night-scene we have just
+described, Marie Touchet was finishing her toilet in the oratory,
+which was the boudoir of those days. She was arranging the long curls
+of her beautiful black hair, blending them with the velvet of a new
+coif, and gazing intently into her mirror.
+
+"It is nearly four o'clock; that interminable council must surely be
+over," she thought to herself. "Jacob has returned from the Louvre; he
+says that everybody he saw was excited about the number of the
+councillors summoned and the length of the session. What can have
+happened? Is it some misfortune? Good God! surely /he/ knows how
+suspense wears out the soul! Perhaps he has gone a-hunting? If he is
+happy and amused, it is all right. When I see him gay, I forget all I
+have suffered."
+
+She drew her hands round her slender waist as if to smooth some
+trifling wrinkle in her gown, turning sideways to see if its folds
+fell properly, and as she did so, she caught sight of the king on the
+couch behind her. The carpet had so muffled the sound of his steps
+that he had slipped in softly without being heard.
+
+"You frightened me!" she said, with a cry of surprise, which was
+quickly repressed.
+
+"Were you thinking of me?" said the king.
+
+"When do I not think of you?" she answered, sitting down beside him.
+
+She took off his cap and cloak, passing her hands through his hair as
+though she combed it with her fingers. Charles let her do as she
+pleased, but made no answer. Surprised at this, Marie knelt down to
+study the pale face of her royal master, and then saw the signs of a
+dreadful weariness and a more consummate melancholy than any she had
+yet consoled. She repressed her tears and kept silence, that she might
+not irritate by mistaken words the sorrow which, as yet, she did not
+understand. In this she did as tender women do under like
+circumstances. She kissed that forehead, seamed with untimely
+wrinkles, and those livid cheeks, trying to convey to the worn-out
+soul the freshness of hers,--pouring her spirit into the sweet
+caresses which met with no response. Presently she raised her head to
+the level of the king's, clasping him softly in her arms; then she lay
+still, her face hidden on that suffering breast, watching for the
+opportune moment to question his dejected mind.
+
+"My Charlot," she said at last, "will you not tell your poor,
+distressed Marie the troubles that cloud that precious brow, and
+whiten those beautiful red lips?"
+
+"Except Charlemagne," he said in a hollow voice, "all the kings of
+France named Charles have ended miserably."
+
+"Pooh!" she said, "look at Charles VIII."
+
+"That poor prince!" exclaimed the king. "In the flower of his age he
+struck his head against a low door at the chateau of Amboise, which he
+was having decorated, and died in horrible agony. It was his death
+which gave the crown to our family."
+
+"Charles VII. reconquered his kingdom."
+
+"Darling, he died" (the king lowered his voice) "of hunger; for he
+feared being poisoned by the dauphin, who had already caused the death
+of his beautiful Agnes. The father feared his son; to-day the son
+dreads his mother!"
+
+"Why drag up the past?" she said hastily, remembering the dreadful
+life of Charles VI.
+
+"Ah! sweetest, kings have no need to go to sorcerers to discover their
+coming fate; they need only turn to history. I am at this moment
+endeavoring to escape the fate of Charles the Simple, who was robbed
+of his crown, and died in prison after seven years' captivity."
+
+"Charles V. conquered the English," she cried triumphantly.
+
+"No, not he, but du Guesclin. He himself, poisoned by Charles de
+Navarre, dragged out a wretched existence."
+
+"Well, Charles IV., then?"
+
+"He married three times to obtain an heir, in spite of the masculine
+beauty of the children of Philippe le Bel. The first house of Valois
+ended with him, and the second is about to end in the same way. The
+queen has given me only a daughter, and I shall die without leaving
+her pregnant; for a long minority would be the greatest curse I could
+bequeath to the kingdom. Besides, if I had a son, would he live? The
+name of Charles is fatal; Charlemagne exhausted the luck of it. If I
+left a son I would tremble at the thought that he would be Charles X."
+
+"Who is it that wants to seize your crown?"
+
+"My brother d'Alencon conspires against it. Enemies are all about me."
+
+"Monsieur," said Marie, with a charming little pout, "do tell me
+something gayer."
+
+"Ah! my little jewel, my treasure, don't call me 'monsieur,' even in
+jest; you remind me of my mother, who stabs me incessantly with that
+title, by which she seems to snatch away my crown. She says 'my son'
+to the Duc d'Anjou--I mean the king of Poland."
+
+"Sire," exclaimed Marie, clasping her hands as though she were
+praying, "there is a kingdom where you are worshipped. Your Majesty
+fills it with his glory, his power; and there the word 'monsieur,'
+means 'my beloved lord.'"
+
+She unclasped her hands, and with a pretty gesture pointed to her
+heart. The words were so /musiques/ (to use a word of the times which
+depicted the melodies of love) that Charles IX. caught her round the
+waist with the nervous force that characterized him, and seated her on
+his knee, rubbing his forehead gently against the pretty curls so
+coquettishly arranged. Marie thought the moment favorable; she
+ventured a few kisses, which Charles allowed rather than accepted,
+then she said softly:--
+
+"If my servants were not mistaken you were out all night in the
+streets, as in the days when you played the pranks of a younger son."
+
+"Yes," replied the king, still lost in his own thoughts.
+
+"Did you fight the watchman and frighten some of the burghers? Who are
+the men you brought here and locked up? They must be very criminal, as
+you won't allow any communication with them. No girl was ever locked
+in as carefully, and they have not had a mouthful to eat since they
+came. The Germans whom Solern left to guard them won't let any one go
+near the room. Is it a joke you are playing; or is it something
+serious?"
+
+"Yes, you are right," said the king, coming out of his reverie, "last
+night I did scour the roofs with Tavannes and the Gondis. I wanted to
+try my old follies with the old companions; but my legs were not what
+they once were; I did not dare leap the streets; though we did jump
+two alleys from one roof to the next. At the second, however, Tavannes
+and I, holding on to a chimney, agreed that we couldn't do it again.
+If either of us had been alone we couldn't have done it then."
+
+"I'll wager that you sprang first." The king smiled. "I know why you
+risk your life in that way."
+
+"And why, you little witch?"
+
+"You are tired of life."
+
+"Ah, sorceress! But I am being hunted down by sorcery," said the king,
+resuming his anxious look.
+
+"My sorcery is love," she replied, smiling. "Since the happy day when
+you first loved me, have I not always divined your thoughts? And--if
+you will let me speak the truth--the thoughts which torture you to-day
+are not worthy of a king."
+
+"Am I a king?" he said bitterly.
+
+"Cannot you be one? What did Charles VII. do? He listened to his
+mistress, monseigneur, and he reconquered his kingdom, invaded by the
+English as yours is now by the enemies of our religion. Your last
+/coup d'Etat/ showed you the course you have to follow. Exterminate
+heresy."
+
+"You blamed the Saint-Bartholomew," said Charles, "and now you--"
+
+"That is over," she said; "besides, I agree with Madame Catherine that
+it was better to do it yourselves than let the Guises do it."
+
+"Charles VII. had only men to fight; I am face to face with ideas,"
+resumed the king. "We can kill men, but we can't kill words! The
+Emperor Charles V. gave up the attempt; his son Philip has spent his
+strength upon it; we shall all perish, we kings, in that struggle. On
+whom can I rely? To right, among the Catholics, I find the Guises, who
+are my enemies; to left, the Calvinists, who will never forgive me the
+death of my poor old Coligny, nor that bloody day in August; besides,
+they want to suppress the throne; and in front of me what have I?--my
+mother!"
+
+"Arrest her; reign alone," said Marie in a low voice, whispering in
+his ear.
+
+"I meant to do so yesterday; to-day I no longer intend it. You speak
+of it rather coolly."
+
+"Between the daughter of an apothecary and that of a doctor there is
+no great difference," replied Touchet, always ready to laugh at the
+false origin attributed to her.
+
+The king frowned.
+
+"Marie, don't take such liberties. Catherine de' Medici is my mother,
+and you ought to tremble lest--"
+
+"What is it you fear?"
+
+"Poison!" cried the king, beside himself.
+
+"Poor child!" cried Marie, restraining her tears; for the sight of
+such strength united to such weakness touched her deeply. "Ah!" she
+continued, "you make me hate Madame Catherine, who has been so good to
+me; her kindness now seems perfidy. Why is she so kind to me, and bad
+to you? During my stay in Dauphine I heard many things about the
+beginning of your reign which you concealed from me; it seems to me
+that the queen, your mother, is the real cause of all your troubles."
+
+"In what way?" cried the king, deeply interested.
+
+"Women whose souls and whose intentions are pure use virtue wherewith
+to rule the men they love; but women who do not seek good rule men
+through their evil instincts. Now, the queen made vices out of certain
+of your noblest qualities, and she taught you to believe that your
+worst inclinations were virtues. Was that the part of a mother? Be a
+tyrant like Louis XI.; inspire terror; imitate Philip II.; banish the
+Italians; drive out the Guises; confiscate the lands of the
+Calvinists. Out of this solitude you will rise a king; you will save
+the throne. The moment is propitious; your brother is in Poland."
+
+"We are two children at statecraft," said Charles, bitterly; "we know
+nothing except how to love. Alas! my treasure, yesterday I, too,
+thought all these things; I dreamed of accomplishing great deeds--bah!
+my mother blew down my house of cards! From a distance we see great
+questions outlined like the summits of mountains, and it is easy to
+say: 'I'll make an end of Calvinism; I'll bring those Guises to task;
+I'll separate from the Court of Rome; I'll rely upon my people, upon
+the burghers--' ah! yes, from afar it all seems simple enough! but try
+to climb those mountains and the higher you go the more the
+difficulties appear. Calvinism, in itself, is the last thing the
+leaders of that party care for; and the Guises, those rabid Catholics,
+would be sorry indeed to see the Calvinists put down. Each side
+considers its own interests exclusively, and religious opinions are
+but a cloak for insatiable ambition. The party of Charles IX. is the
+feeblest of all. That of the king of Navarre, that of the king of
+Poland, that of the Duc d'Alencon, that of the Condes, that of the
+Guises, that of my mother, are all intriguing one against another, but
+they take no account of me, not even in my own council. My mother, in
+the midst of so many contending elements, is, nevertheless, the
+strongest among them; she has just proved to me the inanity of my
+plans. We are surrounded by rebellious subjects who defy the law. The
+axe of Louis XI. of which you speak, is lacking to us. Parliament
+would not condemn the Guises, nor the king of Navarre, nor the Condes,
+nor my brother. No! the courage to assassinate is needed; the throne
+will be forced to strike down those insolent men who suppress both law
+and justice; but where can we find the faithful arm? The council I
+held this morning has disgusted me with everything; treason
+everywhere; contending interests all about me. I am tired with the
+burden of my crown. I only want to die in peace."
+
+He dropped into a sort of gloomy somnolence.
+
+"Disgusted with everything!" repeated Marie Touchet, sadly; but she
+did not disturb the black torpor of her lover.
+
+Charles was the victim of a complete prostration of mind and body,
+produced by three things,--the exhaustion of all his faculties,
+aggravated by the disheartenment of realizing the extent of an evil;
+the recognized impossibility of surmounting his weakness; and the
+aspect of difficulties so great that genius itself would dread them.
+The king's depression was in proportion to the courage and the
+loftiness of ideas to which he had risen during the last few months.
+In addition to this, an attack of nervous melancholy, caused by his
+malady, had seized him as he left the protracted council which had
+taken place in his private cabinet. Marie saw that he was in one of
+those crises when the least word, even of love, would be importunate
+and painful; so she remained kneeling quietly beside him, her head on
+his knee, the king's hand buried in her hair, and he himself
+motionless, without a word, without a sigh, as still as Marie herself,
+--Charles IX. in the lethargy of impotence, Marie in the stupor of
+despair which comes to a loving woman when she perceives the
+boundaries at which love ends.
+
+The lovers thus remained, in the deepest silence, during one of those
+terrible hours when all reflection wounds, when the clouds of an
+inward tempest veil even the memory of happiness. Marie believed that
+she herself was partly the cause of this frightful dejection. She
+asked herself, not without horror, if the excessive joys and the
+violent love which she had never yet found strength to resist, did not
+contribute to weaken the mind and body of the king. As she raised her
+eyes, bathed in tears, toward her lover, she saw the slow tears
+rolling down his pallid cheeks. This mark of the sympathy that united
+them so moved the king that he rushed from his depression like a
+spurred horse. He took Marie in his arms and placed her on the sofa.
+
+"I will no longer be a king," he cried. "I will be your lover, your
+lover only, wholly given up to that happiness. I will die happy, and
+not consumed by the cares and miseries of a throne."
+
+The tone of these words, the fire that shone in the half-extinct eyes
+of the king, gave Marie a terrible shock instead of happiness; she
+blamed her love as an accomplice in the malady of which the king was
+dying.
+
+"Meanwhile you forget your prisoners," she said, rising abruptly.
+
+"Hey! what care I for them? I give them leave to kill me."
+
+"What! are they murderers?"
+
+"Oh, don't be frightened, little one; we hold them fast. Don't think
+of them, but of me. Do you love me?"
+
+"Sire!" she cried.
+
+"Sire!" he repeated, sparks darting from his eyes, so violent was the
+rush of his anger at the untimely respect of his mistress. "You are in
+league with my mother."
+
+"O God!" cried Marie, looking at the picture above her /prie-dieu/ and
+turning toward it to say her prayer, "grant that he comprehend me!"
+
+"Ah!" said the king suspiciously, "you have some wrong to me upon your
+conscience!" Then looking at her from between his arms, he plunged his
+eyes into hers. "I have heard some talk of the mad passion of a
+certain Entragues," he went on wildly. "Ever since their grandfather,
+the soldier Balzac, married a viscontessa at Milan that family hold
+their heads too high."
+
+Marie looked at the king with so proud an air that he was ashamed. At
+that instant the cries of little Charles de Valois, who had just
+awakened, were heard in the next room. Marie ran to the door.
+
+"Come in, Bourguignonne!" she said, taking the child from its nurse
+and carrying it to the king. "You are more of a child than he," she
+cried, half angry, half appeased.
+
+"He is beautiful!" said Charles IX., taking his son in his arms.
+
+"I alone know how like he is to you," said Marie; "already he has your
+smile and your gestures."
+
+"So tiny as that!" said the king, laughing at her.
+
+"Oh, I know men don't believe such things; but watch him, my Charlot,
+play with him. Look there! See! Am I not right?"
+
+"True!" exclaimed the king, astonished by a motion of the child which
+seemed the very miniature of a gesture of his own.
+
+"Ah, the pretty flower!" cried the mother. "Never shall he leave us!
+/He/ will never cause me grief."
+
+The king frolicked with his son; he tossed him in his arms, and kissed
+him passionately, talking the foolish, unmeaning talk, the pretty,
+baby language invented by nurses and mothers. His voice grew
+child-like. At last his forehead cleared, joy returned to his saddened
+face, and then, as Marie saw that he had forgotten his troubles, she
+laid her head upon his shoulder and whispered in his ear:--
+
+"Won't you tell me, Charlot, why you have made me keep murderers in my
+house? Who are these men, and what do you mean to do with them? In
+short, I want to know what you were doing on the roofs. I hope there
+was no woman in the business?"
+
+"Then you love me as much as ever!" cried the king, meeting the clear,
+interrogatory glance that women know so well how to cast upon
+occasion.
+
+"You doubted /me/," she replied, as a tear shone on her beautiful
+eyelashes.
+
+"There are women in my adventure," said the king; "but they are
+sorceresses. How far had I told you?"
+
+"You were on the roofs near by--what street was it?"
+
+"Rue Saint-Honore, sweetest," said the king, who seemed to have
+recovered himself. Collecting this thoughts, he began to explain to
+his mistress what had happened, as if to prepare her for a scene that
+was presently to take place in her presence.
+
+"As I was passing through the street last night on a frolic," he said,
+"I chanced to see a bright light from the dormer window of the house
+occupied by Rene, my mother's glover and perfumer, and once yours. I
+have strong doubts about that man and what goes on in his house. If I
+am poisoned, the drug will come from there."
+
+"I shall dismiss him to-morrow."
+
+"Ah! so you kept him after I had given him up?" cried the king. "I
+thought my life was safe with you," he added gloomily; "but no doubt
+death is following me even here."
+
+"But, my dearest, I have only just returned from Dauphine with our
+dauphin," she said, smiling, "and Rene has supplied me with nothing
+since the death of the Queen of Navarre. Go on; you climbed to the
+roof of Rene's house?"
+
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+                           THE KING'S TALE
+
+"Yes," returned the king. "In a second I was there, followed by
+Tavannes, and then we clambered to a spot where I could see without
+being seen the interior of that devil's kitchen, in which I beheld
+extraordinary things which inspired me to take certain measures. Did
+you ever notice the end of the roof of that cursed perfumer? The
+windows toward the street are always closed and dark, except the last,
+from which can be seen the hotel de Soissons and the observatory which
+my mother built for that astrologer, Cosmo Ruggiero. Under the roof
+are lodging-rooms and a gallery which have no windows except on the
+courtyard, so that in order to see what was going on within, it was
+necessary to go where no man before ever dreamed of climbing,--along
+the coping of a high wall which adjoins the roof of Rene's house. The
+men who set up in that house the furnaces by which they distil death,
+reckoned on the cowardice of Parisians to save them from being
+overlooked; but they little thought of Charles de Valois! I crept
+along the coping until I came to a window, against the casing of which
+I was able to stand up straight with my arm round a carved monkey
+which ornamented it."
+
+"What did you see, dear heart?" said Marie, trembling.
+
+"A den, where works of darkness were being done," replied the king.
+"The first object on which my eyes lighted was a tall old man seated
+in a chair, with a magnificent white beard, like that of old
+l'Hopital, and dressed like him in a black velvet robe. On his broad
+forehead furrowed deep with wrinkles, on his crown of white hair, on
+his calm, attentive face, pale with toil and vigils, fell the
+concentrated rays of a lamp from which shone a vivid light. His
+attention was divided between an old manuscript, the parchment of
+which must have been centuries old, and two lighted furnaces on which
+heretical compounds were cooking. Neither the floor nor the ceiling of
+the laboratory could be seen, because of the myriads of hanging
+skeletons, bodies of animals, dried plants, minerals, and articles of
+all kinds that masked the walls; while on the floor were books,
+instruments for distilling, chests filled with utensils for magic and
+astrology; in one place I saw horoscopes and nativities, phials,
+wax-figures under spells, and possibly poisons. Tavannes and I were
+fascinated, I do assure you, by the sight of this devil's-arsenal.
+Only to see it puts one under a spell, and if I had not been King of
+France, I might have been awed by it. 'You can tremble for both of
+us,' I whispered to Tavannes. But Tavannes' eyes were already caught
+by the most mysterious feature of the scene. On a couch, near the old
+man, lay a girl of strangest beauty,--slender and long like a snake,
+white as ermine, livid as death, motionless as a statue. Perhaps it
+was a woman just taken from her grave, on whom they were trying
+experiments, for she seemed to wear a shroud; her eyes were fixed, and
+I could not see that she breathed. The old fellow paid no attention to
+her. I looked at him so intently that, after a while, his soul seemed
+to pass into mine. By dint of studying him, I ended by admiring the
+glance of his eye,--so keen, so profound, so bold, in spite of the
+chilling power of age. I admired his mouth, mobile with thoughts
+emanating from a desire which seemed to be the solitary desire of his
+soul, and was stamped upon every line of the face. All things in that
+man expressed a hope which nothing discouraged, and nothing could
+check. His attitude,--a quivering immovability,--those outlines so
+free, carved by a single passion as by the chisel of a sculptor, that
+IDEA concentrated on some experiment criminal or scientific, that
+seeking Mind in quest of Nature, thwarted by her, bending but never
+broken under the weight of its own audacity, which it would not
+renounce, threatening creation with the fire it derived from it,--ah!
+all that held me in a spell for the time being. I saw before me an old
+man who was more of a king than I, for his glance embraced the world
+and mastered it. I will forge swords no longer; I will soar above the
+abysses of existence, like that man; for his science, methinks, is
+true royalty! Yes, I believe in occult science."
+
+"You, the eldest son, the defender of the Holy Catholic, Apostolic,
+and Roman Church?" said Marie.
+
+"I."
+
+"What happened to you? Go on, go on; I will fear for you, and you will
+have courage for me."
+
+"Looking at a clock, the old man rose," continued the king. "He went
+out, I don't know where; but I heard the window on the side toward the
+rue Saint-Honore open. Soon a brilliant light gleamed out upon the
+darkness; then I saw in the observatory of the hotel de Soissons
+another light replying to that of the old man, and by it I beheld the
+figure of Cosmo Ruggiero on the tower. 'See, they communicate!' I said
+to Tavannes, who from that moment thought the matter frightfully
+suspicious, and agreed with me that we ought to seize the two men and
+search, incontinently, their accursed workshop. But before proceeding
+to do so, we wanted to see what was going to happen. After about
+fifteen minutes the door opened, and Cosmo Ruggiero, my mother's
+counsellor,--the bottomless pit which holds the secrets of the court,
+he from whom all women ask help against their husbands and lovers, and
+all the men ask help against their unfaithful wives and mistresses, he
+who traffics on the future as on the past, receiving pay with both
+hands, who sells horoscopes and is supposed to know all things,--that
+semi-devil came in, saying to the old man, 'Good-day to you, brother.'
+With him he brought a hideous old woman,--toothless, humpbacked,
+twisted, bent, like a Chinese image, only worse. She was wrinkled as a
+withered apple; her skin was saffron-colored; her chin bit her nose;
+her mouth was a mere line scarcely visible; her eyes were like the
+black spots on a dice; her forehead emitted bitterness; her hair
+escaped in straggling gray locks from a dirty coif; she walked with a
+crutch; she smelt of heresy and witchcraft. The sight of her actually
+frightened us, Tavannes and me! We didn't think her a natural woman.
+God never made a woman so fearful as that. She sat down on a stool
+near the pretty snake with whom Tavannes was in love. The two brothers
+paid no attention to the old woman nor to the young woman, who
+together made a horrible couple,--on the one side life in death, on
+the other death in life--"
+
+"Ah! my sweet poet!" cried Marie, kissing the king.
+
+"'Good-day, Cosmo,' replied the old alchemist. And they both looked
+into the furnace. 'What strength has the moon to-day?' asked the
+elder. 'But, /caro Lorenzo/,' replied my mother's astrologer, 'the
+September tides are not yet over; we can learn nothing while that
+disorder lasts.' 'What says the East to-night?' 'It discloses in the
+air a creative force which returns to earth all that earth takes from
+it. The conclusion is that all things here below are the product of a
+slow transformation, but that all diversities are the forms of one and
+the same substance.' 'That is what my predecessor thought,' replied
+Lorenzo. 'This morning Bernard Palissy told me that metals were the
+result of compression, and that fire, which divides all, also unites
+all; fire has the power to compress as well as to separate. That man
+has genius.' Though I was placed where it was impossible for them to
+see me, Cosmo said, lifting the hand of the dead girl: 'Some one is
+near us! Who is it' 'The king,' she answered. I at once showed myself
+and rapped on the window. Ruggiero opened it, and I sprang into that
+hellish kitchen, followed by Tavannes. 'Yes, the king,' I said to the
+two Florentines, who seemed terrified. 'In spite of your furnaces and
+your books, your sciences and your sorceries, you did not foresee my
+visit. I am very glad to meet the famous Lorenzo Ruggiero, of whom my
+mother speaks mysteriously,' I said, addressing the old man, who rose
+and bowed. 'You are in this kingdom without my consent, my good man.
+For whom are you working here, you whose ancestors from father to son
+have been devoted in heart to the house of Medici? Listen to me! You
+dive into so many purses that by this time, if you are grasping men,
+you have piled up gold. You are too shrewd and cautious to cast
+yourselves imprudently into criminal actions; but, nevertheless, you
+are not here in this kitchen without a purpose. Yes, you have some
+secret scheme, you who are satisfied neither by gold nor power. Whom
+do you serve,--God or the devil? What are you concocting here? I
+choose to know the whole truth; I am a man who can hear it and keep
+silence about your enterprise, however blamable it maybe. Therefore
+you will tell me all, without reserve. If you deceive me you will be
+treated severely. Pagans or Christians, Calvinists or Mohammedans, you
+have my royal word that you shall leave the kingdom in safety if you
+have any misdemeanors to relate. I shall leave you for the rest of the
+night and the forenoon of to-morrow to examine your thoughts; for you
+are now my prisoners, and you will at once follow me to a place where
+you will be guarded carefully.' Before obeying me the two Italians
+consulted each other by a subtle glance; then Lorenzo Ruggiero said I
+might be assured that no torture could wring their secrets from them;
+that in spite of their apparent feebleness neither pain nor human
+feelings had any power of them; confidence alone could make their
+mouth say what their mind contained. I must not, he said, be surprised
+if they treated as equals with a king who recognized God only as above
+him, for their thoughts came from God alone. They therefore claimed
+from me as much confidence and trust as they should give to me. But
+before engaging themselves to answer me without reserve they must
+request me to put my left hand into that of the young girl lying
+there, and my right into that of the old woman. Not wishing them to
+think I was afraid of their sorcery, I held out my hands; Lorenzo took
+the right, Cosmo the left, and each placed a hand in that of each
+woman, so that I was like Jesus Christ between the two thieves. During
+the time that the two witches were examining my hands Cosmo held a
+mirror before me and asked me to look into it; his brother, meanwhile,
+was talking with the two women in a language unknown to me. Neither
+Tavannes nor I could catch the meaning of a single sentence. Before
+bringing the men here we put seals on all the outlets of the
+laboratory, which Tavannes undertook to guard until such time as, by
+my express orders, Bernard Palissy, and Chapelain, my physician, could
+be brought there to examine thoroughly the drugs the place contained
+and which were evidently made there. In order to keep the Ruggieri
+ignorant of this search, and to prevent them from communicating with a
+single soul outside, I put the two devils in your lower rooms in
+charge of Solern's Germans, who are better than the walls of a jail.
+Rene, the perfumer, is kept under guard in his own house by Solern's
+equerry, and so are the two witches. Now, my sweetest, inasmuch as I
+hold the keys of the whole cabal,--the kings of Thune, the chiefs of
+sorcery, the gypsy fortune-tellers, the masters of the future, the
+heirs of all past soothsayers,--I intend by their means to read /you/,
+to know your heart; and, together, we will find out what is to happen
+to us."
+
+"I shall be glad if they can lay my heart bare before you," said
+Marie, without the slightest fear.
+
+"I know why sorcerers don't frighten you,--because you are a witch
+yourself."
+
+"Will you have a peach?" she said, offering him some delicious fruit
+on a gold plate. "See these grapes, these pears; I went to Vincennes
+myself and gathered them for you."
+
+"Yes, I'll eat them; there is no poison there except a philter from
+your hands."
+
+"You ought to eat a great deal of fruit, Charles; it would cool your
+blood, which you heat by such excitements."
+
+"Must I love you less?"
+
+"Perhaps so," she said. "If the things you love injure you--and I have
+feared it--I shall find strength in my heart to refuse them. I adore
+Charles more than I love the king; I want the man to live, released
+from the tortures that make him grieve."
+
+"Royalty has ruined me."
+
+"Yes," she replied. "If you were only a poor prince, like your
+brother-in-law of Navarre, without a penny, possessing only a
+miserable little kingdom in Spain where he never sets his foot, and
+Bearn in France which doesn't give him revenue enough to feed him, I
+should be happy, much happier than if I were really Queen of France."
+
+"But you are more than the Queen of France. She has King Charles for
+the sake of the kingdom only; royal marriages are only politics."
+
+Marie smiled and made a pretty little grimace as she said: "Yes, yes,
+I know that, sire. And my sonnet, have you written it?"
+
+"Dearest, verses are as difficult to write as treaties of peace; but
+you shall have them soon. Ah, me! life is so easy here, I wish I might
+never leave you. However, we must send for those Italians and question
+them. /Tete-Dieu/! I thought one Ruggiero in the kingdom was one too
+many, but it seems there are two. Now listen, my precious; you don't
+lack sense, you would make an excellent lieutenant of police, for you
+can penetrate things--"
+
+"But, sire, we women suppose all we fear, and we turn what is probable
+into truths; that is the whole of our art in a nutshell."
+
+"Well, help me to sound these men. Just now all my plans depend on the
+result of their examination. Are they innocent? Are they guilty? My
+mother is behind them."
+
+"I hear Jacob's voice in the next room," said Marie.
+
+Jacob was the favorite valet of the king, and the one who accompanied
+him on all his private excursions. He now came to ask if it was the
+king's good pleasure to speak to the two prisoners. The king made a
+sign in the affirmative, and the mistress of the house gave her
+orders.
+
+"Jacob," she said, "clear the house of everybody, except the nurse and
+Monsieur le Dauphin d'Auvergne, who may remain. As for you, stay in
+the lower hall; but first, close the windows, draw the curtains of the
+salon, and light the candles."
+
+The king's impatience was so great that while these preparations were
+being made he sat down upon a raised seat at the corner of a lofty
+fireplace of white marble in which a bright fire was blazing, placing
+his pretty mistress by his side. His portrait, framed in velvet, was
+over the mantle in place of a mirror. Charles IX. rested his elbow on
+the arm of the seat as if to watch the two Florentines the better
+under cover of his hand.
+
+The shutters closed, and the curtains drawn, Jacob lighted the wax
+tapers in a tall candelabrum of chiselled silver, which he placed on
+the table where the Florentines were to stand,--an object, by the bye,
+which they would readily recognize as the work of their compatriot,
+Benvenuto Cellini. The richness of the room, decorated in the taste of
+Charles IX., now shone forth. The red-brown of the tapestries showed
+to better advantage than by daylight. The various articles of
+furniture, delicately made or carved, reflected in their ebony panels
+the glow of the fire and the sparkle of the lights. Gilding, soberly
+applied, shone here and there like eyes, brightening the brown color
+which prevailed in this nest of love.
+
+Jacob presently gave two knocks, and, receiving permission, ushered in
+the Italians. Marie Touchet was instantly affected by the grandeur of
+Lorenzo's presence, which struck all those who met him, great and
+small alike. The silvery whiteness of the old man's beard was
+heightened by a robe of black velvet; his brow was like a marble dome.
+His austere face, illumined by two black eyes which cast a pointed
+flame, conveyed an impression of genius issuing from solitude, and all
+the more effective because its power had not been dulled by contact
+with men. It was like the steel of a blade that had never been
+fleshed.
+
+As for Cosmo Ruggiero, he wore the dress of a courtier of the time.
+Marie made a sign to the king to assure him that he had not
+exaggerated his description, and to thank him for having shown her
+these extraordinary men.
+
+"I would like to have seen the sorceresses, too," she whispered in his
+ear.
+
+
+
+                                  V
+
+                            THE ALCHEMISTS
+
+Again absorbed in thought, Charles IX. made her no answer; he was idly
+flicking crumbs of bread from his doublet and breeches.
+
+"Your science cannot change the heavens or make the sun to shine,
+messieurs," he said at last, pointing to the curtains which the gray
+atmosphere of Paris darkened.
+
+"Our science can make the skies what we like, sire," replied Lorenzo
+Ruggiero. "The weather is always fine for those who work in a
+laboratory by the light of a furnace."
+
+"That is true," said the king. "Well, father," he added, using an
+expression familiar to him when addressing old men, "explain to us
+clearly the object of your studies."
+
+"What will guarantee our safety?"
+
+"The word of a king," replied Charles IX., whose curiosity was keenly
+excited by the question.
+
+Lorenzo Ruggiero seemed to hesitate, and Charles IX. cried out: "What
+hinders you? We are here alone."
+
+"But is the King of France here?" asked Lorenzo.
+
+Charles reflected an instant, and then answered, "No."
+
+The imposing old man then took a chair, and seated himself. Cosmo,
+astonished at this boldness, dared not imitate it.
+
+Charles IX. remarked, with cutting sarcasm: "The king is not here,
+monsieur, but a lady is, whose permission it was your duty to await."
+
+"He whom you see before you, madame," said the old man, "is as far
+above kings as kings are above their subjects; you will think me
+courteous when you know my powers."
+
+Hearing these audacious words, with Italian emphasis, Charles and
+Marie looked at each other, and also at Cosmo, who, with his eyes
+fixed on his brother, seemed to be asking himself: "How does he intend
+to get us out of the danger in which we are?"
+
+In fact, there was but one person present who could understand the
+boldness and the art of Lorenzo Ruggiero's first step; and that person
+was neither the king nor his young mistress, on whom that great seer
+had already flung the spell of his audacity,--it was Cosmo Ruggiero,
+his wily brother. Though superior himself to the ablest men at court,
+perhaps even to Catherine de' Medici herself, the astrologer always
+recognized his brother Lorenzo as his master.
+
+Buried in studious solitude, the old savant weighed and estimated
+sovereigns, most of whom were worn out by the perpetual turmoil of
+politics, the crises of which at this period came so suddenly and were
+so keen, so intense, so unexpected. He knew their ennui, their
+lassitude, their disgust with things about them; he knew the ardor
+with which they sought what seemed to them new or strange or
+fantastic; above all, how they loved to enter some unknown
+intellectual region to escape their endless struggle with men and
+events. To those who have exhausted statecraft, nothing remains but
+the realm of pure thought. Charles the Fifth proved this by his
+abdication. Charles IX., who wrote sonnets and forged blades to escape
+the exhausting cares of an age in which both throne and king were
+threatened, to whom royalty had brought only cares and never
+pleasures, was likely to be roused to a high pitch of interest by the
+bold denial of his power thus uttered by Lorenzo. Religious doubt was
+not surprising in an age when Catholicism was so violently arraigned;
+but the upsetting of all religion, given as the basis of a strange,
+mysterious art, would surely strike the king's mind, and drag it from
+its present preoccupations. The essential thing for the two brothers
+was to make the king forget his suspicions by turning his mind to new
+ideas.
+
+The Ruggieri were well aware that their stake in this game was their
+own life, and the glances, so humble, and yet so proud, which they
+exchanged with the searching, suspicious eyes of Marie and the king,
+were a scene in themselves.
+
+"Sire," said Lorenzo Ruggiero, "you have asked me for the truth; but,
+to show the truth in all her nakedness, I must also show you and make
+you sound the depths of the well from which she comes. I appeal to the
+gentleman and the poet to pardon words which the eldest son of the
+Church might take for blasphemy,--I believe that God does not concern
+himself with human affairs."
+
+Though determined to maintain a kingly composure, Charles IX. could
+not repress a motion of surprise.
+
+"Without that conviction I should have no faith whatever in the
+miraculous work to which my life is devoted. To do that work I must
+have this belief; and if the finger of God guides all things, then--I
+am a madman. Therefore, let the king understand, once for all, that
+this work means a victory to be won over the present course of Nature.
+I am an alchemist, sire. But do not think, as the common-minded do,
+that I seek to make gold. The making of gold is not the object but an
+incident of our researches; otherwise our toil could not be called the
+GREAT WORK. The Great Work is something far loftier than that. If,
+therefore, I were forced to admit the presence of God in matter, my
+voice must logically command the extinction of furnaces kept burning
+throughout the ages. But to deny the direct action of God in the world
+is not to deny God; do not make that mistake. We place the Creator of
+all things far higher than the sphere to which religions have degraded
+Him. Do not accuse of atheism those who look for immortality. Like
+Lucifer, we are jealous of our God; and jealousy means love. Though
+the doctrine of which I speak is the basis of our work, all our
+disciples are not imbued with it. Cosmo," said the old man, pointing
+to his brother, "Cosmo is devout; he pays for masses for the repose of
+our father's soul, and he goes to hear them. Your mother's astrologer
+believes in the divinity of Christ, in the Immaculate Conception, in
+Transubstantiation; he believes also in the Pope's indulgences and in
+hell, and in a multitude of such things. His hour has not yet come. I
+have drawn his horoscope; he will live to be almost a centenarian; he
+will live through two more reigns, and he will see two kings of France
+assassinated."
+
+"Who are they?" asked the king.
+
+"The last of the Valois and the first of the Bourbons," replied
+Lorenzo. "But Cosmo shares my opinion. It is impossible to be an
+alchemist and a Catholic, to have faith in the despotism of man over
+matter, and also in the sovereignty of the divine."
+
+"Cosmo to die a centenarian!" exclaimed the king, with his terrible
+frown of the eyebrows.
+
+"Yes, sire," replied Lorenzo, with authority; "and he will die
+peaceably in his bed."
+
+"If you have power to foresee the moment of your death, why are you
+ignorant of the outcome of your researches?" asked the king.
+
+Charles IX. smiled as he said this, looking triumphantly at Marie
+Touchet. The brothers exchanged a rapid glance of satisfaction.
+
+"He begins to be interested," thought they. "We are saved!"
+
+"Our prognostics depend on the immediate relations which exist at the
+time between man and Nature; but our purpose itself is to change those
+relations entirely," replied Lorenzo.
+
+The king was thoughtful.
+
+"But, if you are certain of dying you are certain of defeat," he said,
+at last.
+
+"Like our predecessors," replied Lorenzo, raising his hand and letting
+it fall again with an emphatic and solemn gesture, which presented
+visibly the grandeur of his thought. "But your mind has bounded to the
+confines of the matter, sire; we must return upon our steps. If you do
+not know the ground on which our edifice is built, you may well think
+it doomed to crumble with our lives, and so judge the Science
+cultivated from century to century by the greatest among men, as the
+common herd judge of it."
+
+The king made a sign of assent.
+
+"I think," continued Lorenzo, "that this earth belongs to man; he is
+the master of it, and he can appropriate to his use all forces and all
+substances. Man is not a creation issuing directly from the hand of
+God; but the development of a principle sown broadcast into the
+infinite of ether, from which millions of creatures are produced,
+--differing beings in different worlds, because the conditions
+surrounding life are varied. Yes, sire, the subtle element which we
+call /life/ takes its rise beyond the visible worlds; creation divides
+that principle according to the centres into which it flows; and all
+beings, even the lowest, share it, taking so much as they can take of
+it at their own risk and peril. It is for them to protect themselves
+from death,--the whole purpose of alchemy lies there, sire. If man,
+the most perfect animal on this globe, bore within himself a portion
+of the divine, he would not die; but he does die. To solve this
+difficulty, Socrates and his school invented the Soul. I, the
+successor of so many great and unknown kings, the rulers of this
+science, I stand for the ancient theories, not the new. I believe in
+the transformations of matter which I see, and not in the possible
+eternity of a soul which I do not see. I do not recognize that world
+of the soul. If such a world existed, the substances whose magnificent
+conjunction produced your body, and are so dazzling in that of Madame,
+would not resolve themselves after your death each into its own
+element, water to water, fire to fire, metal to metal, just as the
+elements of my coal, when burned, return to their primitive molecules.
+If you believe that a certain part of us survives, /we/ do not
+survive; for all that makes our actual being perishes. Now, it is this
+actual being that I am striving to continue beyond the limit assigned
+to life; it is our present transformation to which I wish to give a
+greater duration. Why! the trees live for centuries, but man lives
+only years, though the former are passive, the others active; the
+first motionless and speechless, the others gifted with language and
+motion. No created thing should be superior in this world to man,
+either in power or in duration. Already we are widening our
+perceptions, for we look into the stars; therefore we ought to be able
+to lengthen the duration of our lives. I place life before power. What
+good is power if life escapes us? A wise man should have no other
+purpose than to seek, not whether he has some other life within him,
+but the secret springs of his actual form, in order that he may
+prolong its existence at his will. That is the desire which has
+whitened my hair; but I walk boldly in the darkness, marshalling to
+the search all those great intellects that share my faith. Life will
+some day be ours,--ours to control."
+
+"Ah! but how?" cried the king, rising hastily.
+
+"The first condition of our faith being that the earth belongs to man,
+you must grant me that point," said Lorenzo.
+
+"So be it!" said Charles de Valois, already under the spell.
+
+"Then, sire, if we take God out of this world, what remains? Man. Let
+us therefore examine our domain. The material world is composed of
+elements; these elements are themselves principles; these principles
+resolve themselves into an ultimate principle, endowed with motion.
+The number THREE is the formula of creation: Matter, Motion, Product."
+
+"Stop!" cried the king, "what proof is there of this?"
+
+"Do you not see the effects?" replied Lorenzo. "We have tried in our
+crucibles the acorn which produces the oak, and the embryo from which
+grows a man; from this tiny substance results a single principle, to
+which some force, some movement must be given. Since there is no
+overruling creator, this principle must give to itself the outward
+forms which constitute our world--for this phenomenon of life is the
+same everywhere. Yes, for metals as for human beings, for plants as
+for men, life begins in an imperceptible embryo which develops itself.
+A primitive principle exists; let us seize it at the point where it
+begins to act upon itself, where it is a unit, where it is a principle
+before taking definite form, a cause before being an effect; we must
+see it single, without form, susceptible of clothing itself with all
+the outward forms we shall see it take. When we are face to face with
+this atomic particle, when we shall have caught its movement at the
+very instant of motion, /then/ we shall know the law; thenceforth we
+are the masters of life, masters who can impose upon that principle
+the form we choose,--with gold to win the world, and the power to make
+for ourselves centuries of life in which to enjoy it! That is what my
+people and I are seeking. All our strength, all our thoughts are
+strained in that direction; nothing distracts us from it. One hour
+wasted on any other passion is a theft committed against our true
+grandeur. Just as you have never found your hounds relinquishing the
+hunted animal or failing to be in at the death, so I have never seen
+one of my patient disciples diverted from this great quest by the love
+of woman or a selfish thought. If an adept seeks power and wealth, the
+desire is instigated by our needs; he grasps treasure as a thirsty dog
+laps water while he swims a stream, because his crucibles are in need
+of a diamond to melt or an ingot of gold to reduce to powder. To each
+his own work. One seeks the secret of vegetable nature; he watches the
+slow life of plants; he notes the parity of motion among all the
+species, and the parity of their nutrition; he finds everywhere the
+need of sun and air and water, to fecundate and nourish them. Another
+scrutinizes the blood of animals. A third studies the laws of
+universal motion and its connection with celestial revolutions. Nearly
+all are eager to struggle with the intractable nature of metal, for
+while we find many principles in other things, we find all metals like
+unto themselves in every particular. Hence a common error as to our
+work. Behold these patient, indefatigable athletes, ever vanquished,
+yet ever returning to the combat! Humanity, sire, is behind us, as the
+huntsman is behind your hounds. She cries to us: 'Make haste! neglect
+nothing! sacrifice all, even a man, ye who sacrifice yourselves!
+Hasten! hasten! Beat down the arms of DEATH, mine enemy!' Yes, sire,
+we are inspired by a hope which involves the happiness of all coming
+generations. We have buried many men--and what men!--dying of this
+Search. Setting foot in this career we cannot work for ourselves; we
+may die without discovering the Secret; and our death is that of those
+who do not believe in another life; it is this life that we have
+sought, and failed to perpetuate. We are glorious martyrs; we have the
+welfare of the race at heart; we have failed but we live again in our
+successors. As we go through this existence we discover secrets with
+which we endow the liberal and the mechanical arts. From our furnaces
+gleam lights which illumine industrial enterprises, and perfect them.
+Gunpowder issued from our alembics; nay, we have mastered the
+lightning. In our persistent vigils lie political revolutions."
+
+"Can this be true?" cried the king, springing once more from his
+chair.
+
+"Why not?" said the grand-master of the new Templars. "/Tradidit
+mundum disputationibus/! God has given us the earth. Hear this once
+more: man is master here below; matter is his; all forces, all means
+are at his disposal. Who created us? Motion. What power maintains life
+in us? Motion. Why cannot science seize the secret of that motion?
+Nothing is lost here below; nothing escapes from our planet to go
+elsewhere,--otherwise the stars would stumble over each other; the
+waters of the deluge are still with us in their principle, and not a
+drop is lost. Around us, above us, beneath us, are to be found the
+elements from which have come innumerable hosts of men who have
+crowded the earth before and since the deluge. What is the secret of
+our struggle? To discover the force that disunites, and then, /then/
+we shall discover that which binds. We are the product of a visible
+manufacture. When the waters covered the globe men issued from them
+who found the elements of their life in the crust of the earth, in the
+air, and in the nourishment derived from them. Earth and air possess,
+therefore, the principle of human transformations; those
+transformations take place under our eyes, by means of that which is
+also under our eyes. We are able, therefore, to discover that secret,
+--not limiting the effort of the search to one man or to one age, but
+devoting humanity in its duration to it. We are engaged, hand to hand,
+in a struggle with Matter, into whose secret, I, the grand-master of
+our order, seek to penetrate. Christophe Columbus gave a world to the
+King of Spain; I seek an ever-living people for the King of France.
+Standing on the confines which separate us from a knowledge of
+material things, a patient observer of atoms, I destroy forms, I
+dissolve the bonds of combinations; I imitate death that I may learn
+how to imitate life. I strike incessantly at the door of creation, and
+I shall continue so to strike until the day of my death. When I am
+dead the knocker will pass into other hands equally persistent with
+those of the mighty men who handed it to me. Fabulous and
+uncomprehended beings, like Prometheus, Ixion, Adonis, Pan, and
+others, who have entered into the religious beliefs of all countries
+and all ages, prove to the world that the hopes we now embody were
+born with the human races. Chaldea, India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, the
+Moors, have transmitted from one to another Magic, the highest of all
+the occult sciences, which holds within it, as a precious deposit the
+fruits of the studies of each generation. In it lay the tie that bound
+the grand and majestic institution of the Templars. Sire, when one of
+your predecessors burned the Templars, he burned men only,--their
+Secret lived. The reconstruction of the Temple is a vow of an unknown
+nation, a race of daring seekers, whose faces are turned to the Orient
+of /life/,--all brothers, all inseparable, all united by one idea, and
+stamped with the mark of toil. I am the sovereign leader of that
+people, sovereign by election, not by birth. I guide them onward to a
+knowledge of the essence of life. Grand-master, Red-Cross-bearers,
+companions, adepts, we forever follow the imperceptible molecule which
+still escapes our eyes. But soon we shall make ourselves eyes more
+powerful than those which Nature has given us; we shall attain to a
+sight of the primitive atom, the corpuscular element so persistently
+sought by the wise and learned of all ages who have preceded us in the
+glorious search. Sire, when a man is astride of that abyss, when he
+commands bold divers like my disciples, all other human interests are
+as nothing. Therefore we are not dangerous. Religious disputes and
+political struggles are far away from us; we have passed beyond and
+above them. No man takes others by the throat when his whole strength
+is given to a struggle with Nature. Besides, in our science results
+are perceivable; we can measure effects and predict them; whereas all
+things are uncertain and vacillating in the struggles of men and their
+selfish interests. We decompose the diamond in our crucibles, and we
+shall make diamonds, we shall make gold! We shall impel vessels (as
+they have at Barcelona) with fire and a little water! We test the
+wind, and we shall make wind; we shall make light; we shall renew the
+face of empires with new industries! But we shall never debase
+ourselves to mount a throne to be crucified by the peoples!"
+
+In spite of his strong determination not to be taken in by Italian
+wiles, the king, together with his gentle mistress, was already caught
+and snared by the ambiguous phrases and doublings of this pompous and
+humbugging loquacity. The eyes of the two lovers showed how their
+minds were dazzled by the mysterious riches of power thus displayed;
+they saw, as it were, a series of subterranean caverns filled with
+gnomes at their toil. The impatience of their curiosity put to flight
+all suspicion.
+
+"But," cried the king, "if this be so, you are great statesmen who can
+enlighten us."
+
+"No, sire," said Lorenzo, naively.
+
+"Why not?" asked the king.
+
+"Sire, it is not given to any man to foresee what will happen when
+thousands of men are gathered together. We can tell what one man will
+do, how long he will live, whether he will be happy or unhappy; but we
+cannot tell what a collection of wills may do; and to calculate the
+oscillations of their selfish interests is more difficult still, for
+interests are men /plus/ things. We can, in solitude, see the future
+as a whole, and that is all. The Protestantism that now torments you
+will be destroyed in turn by its material consequences, which will
+turn to theories in due time. Europe is at the present moment getting
+the better of religion; to-morrow it will attack royalty."
+
+"Then the Saint-Bartholomew was a great conception?"
+
+"Yes, sire; for if the people triumph it will have a Saint-Bartholomew
+of its own. When religion and royalty are destroyed the people will
+attack the nobles; after the nobles, the rich. When Europe has become
+a mere troop of men without consistence or stability, because without
+leaders, it will fall a prey to brutal conquerors. Twenty times
+already has the world seen that sight, and Europe is now preparing to
+renew it. Ideas consume the ages as passions consume men. When man is
+cured, humanity may possibly cure itself. Science is the essence of
+humanity, and we are its pontiffs; whoso concerns himself about the
+essence cares little about the individual life."
+
+"To what have you attained, so far?" asked the king.
+
+"We advance slowly; but we lose nothing that we have won."
+
+"Then you are the king of sorcerers?" retorted the king, piqued at
+being of no account in the presence of this man.
+
+The majestic grand-master of the Rosicrucians cast a look on Charles
+IX. which withered him.
+
+"You are the king of men," he said; "I am the king of ideas. If we
+were sorcerers, you would already have burned us. We have had our
+martyrs."
+
+"But by what means are you able to cast nativities?" persisted the
+king. "How did you know that the man who came to your window last
+night was King of France? What power authorized one of you to tell my
+mother the fate of her three sons? Can you, grand-master of an art
+which claims to mould the world, can you tell me what my mother is
+planning at this moment?"
+
+"Yes, sire."
+
+This answer was given before Cosmo could pull his brother's robe to
+enjoin silence.
+
+"Do you know why my brother, the King of Poland, has returned?"
+
+"Yes, sire."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"To take your place."
+
+"Our most cruel enemies are our nearest in blood!" exclaimed the king,
+violently, rising and walking about the room with hasty steps. "Kings
+have neither brothers, nor sons, nor mothers. Coligny was right; my
+murderers are not among the Huguenots, but in the Louvre. You are
+either imposters or regicides!--Jacob, call Solern."
+
+"Sire," said Marie Touchet, "the Ruggieri have your word as a
+gentleman. You wanted to taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge;
+do not complain of its bitterness."
+
+The king smiled, with an expression of bitter self-contempt; he
+thought his material royalty petty in presence of the august
+intellectual royalty of Lorenzo Ruggiero. Charles IX. knew that he
+could scarcely govern France, but this grand-master of Rosicrucians
+ruled a submissive and intelligent world.
+
+"Answer me truthfully; I pledge my word as a gentleman that your
+answer, in case it confesses dreadful crimes, shall be as if it were
+never uttered," resumed the king. "Do you deal with poisons?"
+
+"To discover that which gives life, we must also have full knowledge
+of that which kills."
+
+"Do you possess the secret of many poisons?"
+
+"Yes, sire,--in theory, but not in practice. We understand all
+poisons, but do not use them."
+
+"Has my mother asked you for any?" said the king, breathlessly.
+
+"Sire," replied Lorenzo, "Queen Catherine is too able a woman to
+employ such means. She knows that the sovereign who poisons dies by
+poison. The Borgias, also Bianca Capello, Grand Duchess of Tuscany,
+are noted examples of the dangers of that miserable resource. All
+things are known at courts; there can be no concealment. It may be
+possible to kill a poor devil--and what is the good of that?--but to
+aim at great men cannot be done secretly. Who shot Coligny? It could
+only be you, or the queen-mother, or the Guises. Not a soul is
+doubtful of that. Believe me, poison cannot be twice used with
+impunity in statecraft. Princes have successors. As for other men, if,
+like Luther, they are sovereigns through the power of ideas, their
+doctrines are not killed by killing them. The queen is from Florence;
+she knows that poison should never be used except as a weapon of
+personal revenge. My brother, who has not been parted from her since
+her arrival in France, knows the grief that Madame Diane caused your
+mother. But she never thought of poisoning her, though she might
+easily have done so. What could your father have said? Never had a
+woman a better right to do it; and she could have done it with
+impunity; but Madame de Valentinois still lives."
+
+"But what of those waxen images?" asked the king.
+
+"Sire," said Cosmo, "these things are so absolutely harmless that we
+lend ourselves to the practice to satisfy blind passions, just as
+physicians give bread pills to imaginary invalids. A disappointed
+woman fancies that by stabbing the heart of a wax-figure she has
+brought misfortunes upon the head of the man who has been unfaithful
+to her. What harm in that? Besides, it is our revenue."
+
+"The Pope sells indulgences," said Lorenzo Ruggiero, smiling.
+
+"Has my mother practised these spells with waxen images?"
+
+"What good would such harmless means be to one who has the actual
+power to do all things?"
+
+"Has Queen Catherine the power to save you at this moment?" inquired
+the king, in a threatening manner.
+
+"Sire, we are not in any danger," replied Lorenzo, tranquilly. "I knew
+before I came into this house that I should leave it safely, just as I
+know that the king will be evilly disposed to my brother Cosmo a few
+weeks hence. My brother may run some danger then, but he will escape
+it. If the king reigns by the sword, he also reigns by justice," added
+the old man, alluding to the famous motto on a medal struck for
+Charles IX.
+
+"You know all, and you know that I shall die soon, which is very
+well," said the king, hiding his anger under nervous impatience; "but
+how will my brother die,--he whom you say is to be Henri III.?"
+
+"By a violent death."
+
+"And the Duc d'Alencon?"
+
+"He will not reign."
+
+"Then Henri de Bourbon will be king of France?"
+
+"Yes, sire."
+
+"How will he die?"
+
+"By a violent death."
+
+"When I am dead what will become of madame?" asked the king, motioning
+to Marie Touchet.
+
+"Madame de Belleville will marry, sire."
+
+"You are imposters!" cried Marie Touchet. "Send them away, sire."
+
+"Dearest, the Ruggieri have my word as a gentleman," replied the king,
+smiling. "Will madame have children?" he continued.
+
+"Yes, sire; and madame will live to be more than eighty years old."
+
+"Shall I order them to be hanged?" said the king to his mistress. "But
+about my son, the Comte d'Auvergne?" he continued, going into the next
+room to fetch the child.
+
+"Why did you tell him I should marry?" said Marie to the two brothers,
+the moment they were alone.
+
+"Madame," replied Lorenzo, with dignity, "the king bound us to tell
+the truth, and we have told it."
+
+"/Is/ that true?" she exclaimed.
+
+"As true as it is that the governor of the city of Orleans is madly in
+love with you."
+
+"But I do not love him," she cried.
+
+"That is true, madame," replied Lorenzo; "but your horoscope declares
+that you will marry the man who is in love with you at the present
+time."
+
+"Can you not lie a little for my sake?" she said smiling; "for if the
+king believes your predictions--"
+
+"Is it not also necessary that he should believe our innocence?"
+interrupted Cosmo, with a wily glance at the young favorite. "The
+precautions taken against us by the king have made us think during the
+time we have spent in your charming jail that the occult sciences have
+been traduced to him."
+
+"Do not feel uneasy," replied Marie. "I know him; his suspicions are
+at an end."
+
+"We are innocent," said the grand-master of the Rosicrucians, proudly.
+
+"So much the better for you," said Marie, "for your laboratory, and
+your retorts and phials are now being searched by order of the king."
+
+The brothers looked at each other smiling. Marie Touchet took that
+smile for one of innocence, though it really signified: "Poor fools!
+can they suppose that if we brew poisons, we do not hide them?"
+
+"Where are the king's searchers?"
+
+"In Rene's laboratory," replied Marie.
+
+Again the brothers glanced at each other with a look which said: "The
+hotel de Soissons is inviolable."
+
+The king had so completely forgotten his suspicions that when, as he
+took his boy in his arms, Jacob gave him a note from Chapelain, he
+opened it with the certainty of finding in his physician's report that
+nothing had been discovered in the laboratory but what related
+exclusively to alchemy.
+
+"Will he live a happy man?" asked the king, presenting his son to the
+two alchemists.
+
+"That is a question which concerns Cosmo," replied Lorenzo, signing
+his brother.
+
+Cosmo took the tiny hand of the child, and examined it carefully.
+
+"Monsieur," said Charles IX. to the old man, "if you find it necessary
+to deny the existence of the soul in order to believe in the
+possibility of your enterprise, will you explain to my why you should
+doubt what your power does? Thought, which you seek to nullify, is the
+certainty, the torch which lights your researches. Ha! ha! is not that
+the motion of a spirit within you, while you deny such motion?" cried
+the king, pleased with his argument, and looking triumphantly at his
+mistress.
+
+"Thought," replied Lorenzo Ruggiero, "is the exercise of an inward
+sense; just as the faculty of seeing several objects and noticing
+their size and color is an effect of sight. It has no connection with
+what people choose to call another life. Thought is a faculty which
+ceases, with the forces which produced it, when we cease to breathe."
+
+"You are logical," said the king, surprised. "But alchemy must
+therefore be an atheistical science.'
+
+"A materialist science, sire, which is a very different thing.
+Materialism is the outcome of Indian doctrines, transmitted through
+the mysteries of Isis to Chaldea and Egypt, and brought to Greece by
+Pythagoras, one of the demigods of humanity. His doctrine of
+re-incarnation is the mathematics of materialism, the vital law of its
+phases. To each of the different creations which form the terrestrial
+creation belongs the power of retarding the movement which sweeps on
+the rest."
+
+"Alchemy is the science of sciences!" cried Charles IX.,
+enthusiastically. "I want to see you at work."
+
+"Whenever it pleases you, sire; you cannot be more interested than
+Madame the Queen-mother."
+
+"Ah! so this is why she cares for you?" exclaimed the king.
+
+"The house of Medici has secretly protected our Search for more than a
+century."
+
+"Sire," said Cosmo, "this child will live nearly a hundred years; he
+will have trials; nevertheless, he will be happy and honored, because
+he has in his veins the blood of the Valois."
+
+"I will go and see you in your laboratory, messieurs," said the king,
+his good-humor quite restored. "You may now go."
+
+The brothers bowed to Marie and to the king and then withdrew. They
+went down the steps of the portico gravely, without looking or
+speaking to each other; neither did they turn their faces to the
+windows as they crossed the courtyard, feeling sure that the king's
+eye watched them. But as they passed sideways out of the gate into the
+street they looked back and saw Charles IX. gazing after them from a
+window. When the alchemist and the astrologer were safely in the rue
+de l'Autruche, they cast their eyes before and behind them, to see if
+they were followed or overheard; then they continued their way to the
+moat of the Louvre without uttering a word. Once there, however,
+feeling themselves securely alone, Lorenzo said to Cosmo, in the
+Tuscan Italian of that day:--
+
+"Affe d'Iddio! how we have fooled him!"
+
+"Much good may it do him; let him make what he can of it!" said Cosmo.
+"We have given him a helping hand,--whether the queen pays it back to
+us or not."
+
+Some days after this scene, which struck the king's mistress as
+forcibly as it did the king, Marie suddenly exclaimed, in one of those
+moments when the soul seems, as it were, disengaged from the body in
+the plenitude of happiness:--
+
+"Charles, I understand Lorenzo Ruggiero; but did you observe that
+Cosmo said nothing?"
+
+"True," said the king, struck by that sudden light. "After all, there
+was as much falsehood as truth in what they said. Those Italians are
+as supple as the silk they weave."
+
+This suspicion explains the rancor which the king showed against Cosmo
+when the trial of La Mole and Coconnas took place a few weeks later.
+Finding him one of the agents of that conspiracy, he thought the
+Italians had tricked him; for it was proved that his mother's
+astrologer was not exclusively concerned with stars, the powder of
+projection, and the primitive atom. Lorenzo had by that time left the
+kingdom.
+
+In spite of the incredulity which most persons show in these matters,
+the events which followed the scene we have narrated confirmed the
+predictions of the Ruggieri.
+
+The king died within three months.
+
+Charles de Gondi followed Charles IX. to the grave, as had been
+foretold to him jestingly by his brother the Marechal de Retz, a
+friend of the Ruggieri, who believed in their predictions.
+
+Marie Touchet married Charles de Balzac, Marquis d'Entragues, the
+governor of Orleans, by whom she had two daughters. The most
+celebrated of these daughters, the half-sister of the Comte
+d'Auvergne, was the mistress of Henri IV., and it was she who
+endeavored, at the time of Biron's conspiracy, to put her brother on
+the throne of France by driving out the Bourbons.
+
+The Comte d'Auvergne, who became the Duc d'Angouleme, lived into the
+reign of Louis XIV. He coined money on his estates and altered the
+inscriptions; but Louis XIV. let him do as he pleased, out of respect
+for the blood of the Valois.
+
+Cosmo Ruggiero lived till the middle of the reign of Louis XIII.; he
+witnessed the fall of the house of the Medici in France, also that of
+the Concini. History has taken pains to record that he died an
+atheist, that is, a materialist.
+
+The Marquise d'Entragues was over eighty when she died.
+
+The famous Comte de Saint-Germain, who made so much noise under Louis
+XIV., was a pupil of Lorenzo and Cosmo Ruggiero. This celebrated
+alchemist lived to be one hundred and thirty years old,--an age which
+some biographers give to Marion de Lorme. He must have heard from the
+Ruggieri the various incidents of the Saint-Bartholomew and of the
+reigns of the Valois kings, which he afterwards recounted in the first
+person singular, as though he had played a part in them. The Comte de
+Saint-Germain was the last of the alchemists who knew how to clearly
+explain their science; but he left no writings. The cabalistic
+doctrine presented in this Study is that taught by this mysterious
+personage.
+
+And here, behold a strange thing! Three lives, that of the old man
+from whom I have obtained these facts, that of the Comte de
+Saint-Germain, and that of Cosmo Ruggiero, suffice to cover the whole
+of European history from Francois I. to Napoleon! Only fifty such lives
+are needed to reach back to the first known period of the world. "What
+are fifty generations for the study of the mysteries of life?" said
+the Comte de Saint-Germain.
+
+
+
+
+                               PART III
+
+
+
+                                  I
+
+                              TWO DREAMS
+
+In 1786 Bodard de Saint-James, treasurer of the navy, excited more
+attention and gossip as to his luxury than any other financier in
+Paris. At this period he was building his famous "Folie" at Neuilly,
+and his wife had just bought a set of feathers to crown the tester of
+her bed, the price of which had been too great for even the queen to
+pay.
+
+Bodard owned the magnificent mansion in the place Vendome, which the
+/fermier-general/, Dange, had lately been forced to leave. That
+celebrated epicurean was now dead, and on the day of his interment his
+intimate friend, Monsieur de Bievre, raised a laugh by saying that he
+"could now pass through the place Vendome without /danger/." This
+allusion to the hellish gambling which went on in the dead man's
+house, was his only funeral oration. The house is opposite to the
+Chancellerie.
+
+To end in a few words the history of Bodard,--he became a poor man,
+having failed for fourteen millions after the bankruptcy of the Prince
+de Guemenee. The stupidity he showed in not anticipating that
+"serenissime disaster," to use the expression of Lebrun Pindare, was
+the reason why no notice was taken of his misfortunes. He died, like
+Bourvalais, Bouret, and so many others, in a garret.
+
+Madame Bodard de Saint-James was ambitious, and professed to receive
+none but persons of quality at her house,--an old absurdity which is
+ever new. To her thinking, even the parliamentary judges were of small
+account; she wished for titled persons in her salons, or at all
+events, those who had the right of entrance at court. To say that many
+/cordons bleus/ were seen at her house would be false; but it is quite
+certain that she managed to obtain the good-will and civilities of
+several members of the house of Rohan, as was proved later in the
+affair of the too celebrated diamond necklace.
+
+One evening--it was, I think, in August, 1786--I was much surprised to
+meet in the salons of this lady, so exacting in the matter of
+gentility, two new faces which struck me as belonging to men of
+inferior social position. She came to me presently in the embrasure of
+a window where I had ensconced myself.
+
+"Tell me," I said to her, with a glance toward one of the new-comers,
+"who and what is that queer species? Why do you have that kind of
+thing here?"
+
+"He is charming."
+
+"Do you see him through a prism of love, or am I blind?"
+
+"You are not blind," she said, laughing. "The man is as ugly as a
+caterpillar; but he has done me the most immense service a woman can
+receive from a man."
+
+As I looked at her rather maliciously she hastened to add: "He's a
+physician, and he has completely cured me of those odious red blotches
+which spoiled my complexion and made me look like a peasant woman."
+
+I shrugged my shoulders with disgust.
+
+"He is a charlatan."
+
+"No," she said, "he is the surgeon of the court pages. He has a fine
+intellect, I assure you; in fact, he is a writer, and a very learned
+man."
+
+"Heavens! if his style resembles his face!" I said scoffingly. "But
+who is the other?"
+
+"What other?"
+
+"That spruce, affected little popinjay over there, who looks as if he
+had been drinking verjuice."
+
+"He is a rather well-born man," she replied; "just arrived from some
+province, I forget which--oh! from Artois. He is sent here to conclude
+an affair in which the Cardinal de Rohan is interested, and his
+Eminence in person had just presented him to Monsieur de Saint-James.
+It seems they have both chosen my husband as arbitrator. The
+provincial didn't show his wisdom in that; but fancy what simpletons
+the people who sent him here must be to trust a case to a man of his
+sort! He is as meek as a sheep and as timid as a girl. His Eminence is
+very kind to him."
+
+"What is the nature of the affair?"
+
+"Oh! a question of three hundred thousand francs."
+
+"Then the man is a lawyer?" I said, with a slight shrug.
+
+"Yes," she replied.
+
+Somewhat confused by this humiliating avowal, Madame Bodard returned
+to her place at a faro-table.
+
+All the tables were full. I had nothing to do, no one to speak to, and
+I had just lost two thousand crowns to Monsieur de Laval. I flung
+myself on a sofa near the fireplace. Presently, if there was ever a
+man on earth most utterly astonished it was I, when, on looking up, I
+saw, seated on another sofa on the opposite side of the fireplace,
+Monsieur de Calonne, the comptroller-general. He seemed to be dozing,
+or else he was buried in one of those deep meditations which overtake
+statesmen. When I pointed out the famous minister to Beaumarchais, who
+happened to come near me at that moment, the father of Figaro
+explained the mystery of his presence in that house without uttering a
+word. He pointed first at my head, then at Bodard's with a malicious
+gesture which consisted in turning to each of us two fingers of his
+hand while he kept the others doubled up. My first impulse was to rise
+and say something rousing to Calonne; then I paused, first, because I
+thought of a trick I could play the statesman, and secondly, because
+Beaumarchais caught me familiarly by the hand.
+
+"Why do you do that, monsieur?" I said.
+
+He winked at the comptroller.
+
+"Don't wake him," he said in a low voice. "A man is happy when
+asleep."
+
+"Pray, is sleep a financial scheme?" I whispered.
+
+"Indeed, yes!" said Calonne, who had guessed our words from the mere
+motion of our lips. "Would to God we could sleep long, and then the
+awakening you are about to see would never happen."
+
+"Monseigneur," said the dramatist, "I must thank you--"
+
+"For what?"
+
+"Monsieur de Mirabeau has started for Berlin. I don't know whether we
+might not both have drowned ourselves in that affair of 'les Eaux.'"
+
+"You have too much memory, and too little gratitude," replied the
+minister, annoyed at having one of his secrets divulged in my
+presence.
+
+"Possibly," said Beaumarchais, cut to the quick; "but I have millions
+that can balance many a score."
+
+Calonne pretended not to hear.
+
+It was long past midnight when the play ceased. Supper was announced.
+There were ten of us at table: Bodard and his wife, Calonne,
+Beaumarchais, the two strange men, two pretty women, whose names I
+will not give here, a /fermier-general/, Lavoisier, and myself. Out of
+thirty guests who were in the salon when I entered it, only these ten
+remained. The two /queer species/ did not consent to stay until they
+were urged to do so by Madame Bodard, who probably thought she was
+paying her obligations to the surgeon by giving him something to eat,
+and pleasing her husband (with whom she appeared, I don't precisely
+know why, to be coquetting) by inviting the lawyer.
+
+The supper began by being frightfully dull. The two strangers and the
+/fermier-general/ oppressed us. I made a sign to Beaumarchais to
+intoxicate the son of Esculapius, who sat on his right, giving him to
+understand that I would do the same by the lawyer, who was next to me.
+As there seemed no other way to amuse ourselves, and it offered a
+chance to draw out the two men, who were already sufficiently
+singular, Monsieur de Calonne smiled at our project. The ladies
+present also shared in the bacchanal conspiracy, and the wine of
+Sillery crowned our glasses again and again with its silvery foam. The
+surgeon was easily managed; but at the second glass which I offered to
+my neighbor the lawyer, he told me with the frigid politeness of a
+usurer that he should drink no more.
+
+At this instant Madame de Saint-James chanced to introduce, I scarcely
+know how, the topic of the marvellous suppers to the Comte de
+Cagliostro, given by the Cardinal de Rohan. My mind was not very
+attentive to what the mistress of the house was saying, because I was
+watching with extreme curiosity the pinched and livid face of my
+little neighbor, whose principal feature was a turned-up and at the
+same time pointed nose, which made him, at times, look very like a
+weasel. Suddenly his cheeks flushed as he caught the words of a
+dispute between Madame de Saint-James and Monsieur de Calonne.
+
+"But I assure you, monsieur," she was saying, with an imperious air,
+"that I /saw/ Cleopatra, the queen."
+
+"I can believe it, madame," said my neighbor, "for I myself have
+spoken to Catherine de' Medici."
+
+"Oh! oh!" exclaimed Monsieur de Calonne.
+
+The words uttered by the little provincial were said in a voice of
+strange sonorousness, if I may be permitted to borrow that expression
+from the science of physics. This sudden clearness of intonation,
+coming from a man who had hitherto scarcely spoken, and then in a low
+and modulated tone, surprised all present exceedingly.
+
+"Why, he is talking!" said the surgeon, who was now in a satisfactory
+state of drunkenness, addressing Beaumarchais.
+
+"His neighbor must have pulled his wires," replied the satirist.
+
+My man flushed again as he overheard the words, though they were said
+in a low voice.
+
+"And pray, how was the late queen?" asked Calonne, jestingly.
+
+"I will not swear that the person with whom I supped last night at the
+house of the Cardinal de Rohan was Catherine de' Medici in person.
+That miracle would justly seem impossible to Christians as well as to
+philosophers," said the little lawyer, resting the tips of his fingers
+on the table, and leaning back in his chair as if preparing to make a
+speech. "Nevertheless, I do assert that the woman I saw resembled
+Catherine de' Medici as closely as though they were twin-sisters. She
+was dressed in a black velvet gown, precisely like that of the queen
+in the well-known portrait which belongs to the king; on her head was
+the pointed velvet coif, which is characteristic of her; and she had
+the wan complexion, and the features we all know well. I could not
+help betraying my surprise to his Eminence. The suddenness of the
+evocation seemed to me all the more amazing because Monsieur de
+Cagliostro had been unable to divine the name of the person with whom
+I wished to communicate. I was confounded. The magical spectacle of a
+supper, where one of the illustrious women of past times presented
+herself, took from me my presence of mind. I listened without daring
+to question. When I roused myself about midnight from the spell of
+that magic, I was inclined to doubt my senses. But even this great
+marvel seemed natural in comparison with the singular hallucination to
+which I was presently subjected. I don't know in what words I can
+describe to you the state of my senses. But I declare, in the
+sincerity of my heart, I no longer wonder that souls have been found
+weak enough, or strong enough, to believe in the mysteries of magic
+and in the power of demons. For myself, until I am better informed, I
+regard as possible the apparitions which Cardan and other
+thaumaturgists describe."
+
+These words, said with indescribable eloquence of tone, were of a
+nature to rouse the curiosity of all present. We looked at the speaker
+and kept silence; our eyes alone betrayed our interest, their pupils
+reflecting the light of the wax-candles in the sconces. By dint of
+observing this unknown little man, I fancied I could see the pores of
+his skin, especially those of his forehead, emitting an inward
+sentiment with which he was saturated. This man, apparently so cold
+and formal, seemed to contain within him a burning altar, the flames
+of which beat down upon us.
+
+"I do not know," he continued, "if the Figure evoked followed me
+invisibly, but no sooner had my head touched the pillow in my own
+chamber than I saw once more that grand Shade of Catherine rise before
+me. I felt myself, instinctively, in a luminous sphere, and my eyes,
+fastened upon the queen with intolerable fixity, saw naught but her.
+Suddenly, she bent toward me."
+
+At these words the ladies present made a unanimous movement of
+curiosity.
+
+"But," continued the lawyer, "I am not sure that I ought to relate
+what happened, for though I am inclined to believe it was all a dream,
+it concerns grave matters.
+
+"Of religion?" asked Beaumarchais.
+
+"If there is any impropriety," remarked Calonne, "these ladies will
+excuse it."
+
+"It relates to the government," replied the lawyer.
+
+"Go on, then," said the minister; "Voltaire, Diderot, and their
+fellows have already begun to tutor us on that subject."
+
+Calonne became very attentive, and his neighbor, Madame de Genlis,
+rather anxious. The little provincial still hesitated, and
+Beaumarchais said to him somewhat roughly:--
+
+"Go on, /maitre/, go on! Don't you know that when the laws allow but
+little liberty the people seek their freedom in their morals?"
+
+Thus adjured, the small man told his tale:--
+
+"Whether it was that certain ideas were fermenting in my brain, or
+that some strange power impelled me, I said to her: 'Ah! madame, you
+committed a very great crime.' 'What crime?' she asked in a grave
+voice. 'The crime for which the signal was given from the clock of the
+palace on the 24th of August,' I answered. She smiled disdainfully,
+and a few deep wrinkles appeared on her pallid cheeks. 'You call that
+a crime which was only a misfortune,' she said. 'The enterprise, being
+ill-managed, failed; the benefit we expected for France, for Europe,
+for the Catholic Church was lost. Impossible to foresee that. Our
+orders were ill executed; we did not find as many Montlucs as we
+needed. Posterity will not hold us responsible for the failure of
+communications, which deprived our work of the unity of movement which
+is essential to all great strokes of policy; that was our misfortune!
+If on the 25th of August not the shadow of a Huguenot had been left in
+France, I should go down to the uttermost posterity as a noble image
+of Providence. How many, many times have the clear-sighted souls of
+Sixtus the Fifth, Richelieu, Bossuet, reproached me secretly for
+having failed in that enterprise after having the boldness to conceive
+it! How many and deep regrets for that failure attended my deathbed!
+Thirty years after the Saint-Bartholomew the evil it might have cured
+was still in existence. That failure caused ten times more blood to
+flow in France than if the massacre of August 24th had been completed
+on the 26th. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in honor of which
+you have struck medals, has cost more tears, more blood, more
+money, and killed the prosperity of France far more than three
+Saint-Bartholomews. Letellier with his pen gave effect to a decree
+which the throne had secretly promulgated since my time; but, though
+the vast execution was necessary of the 25th of August, 1572, on the 25th
+of August, 1685, it was useless. Under the second son of Henri de Valois
+heresy had scarcely conceived an offspring; under the second son of
+Henri de Bourbon that teeming mother had cast her spawn over the whole
+universe. You accuse me of a crime, and you put up statues to the son
+of Anne of Austria! Nevertheless, he and I attempted the same thing;
+he succeeded, I failed; but Louis XIV. found the Protestants without
+arms, whereas in my reign they had powerful armies, statesmen,
+warriors, and all Germany on their side.' At these words, slowly
+uttered, I felt an inward shudder pass through me. I fancied I
+breathed the fumes of blood from I know not what great mass of
+victims. Catherine was magnified. She stood before me like an evil
+genius; she sought, it seemed to me, to enter my consciousness and
+abide there."
+
+"He dreamed all that," whispered Beaumarchais; "he certainly never
+invented it."
+
+"'My reason is bewildered,' I said to the queen. 'You praise yourself
+for an act which three generations of men have condemned, stigmatized,
+and--' 'Add,' she rejoined, 'that historians have been more unjust
+toward me than my contemporaries. None have defended me. I, rich and
+all-powerful, am accused of ambition! I am taxed with cruelty,--I who
+have but two deaths upon my conscience. Even to impartial minds I am
+still a problem. Do you believe that I was actuated by hatred, that
+vengeance and fury were the breath of my nostrils?' She smiled with
+pity. 'No,' she continued, 'I was cold and calm as reason itself. I
+condemned the Huguenots without pity, but without passion; they were
+the rotten fruit in my basket and I cast them out. Had I been Queen of
+England, I should have treated seditious Catholics in the same way.
+The life of our power in those days depended on their being but one
+God, one Faith, one Master in the State. Happily for me, I uttered my
+justification in one sentence which history is transmitting. When
+Birago falsely announced to me the loss of the battle of Dreux, I
+answered: "Well then; we will go to the Protestant churches." Did I
+hate the reformers? No, I esteemed them much, and I knew them little.
+If I felt any aversion to the politicians of my time, it was to that
+base Cardinal de Lorraine, and to his brother the shrewd and brutal
+soldier who spied upon my every act. They were the real enemies of my
+children; they sought to snatch the crown; I saw them daily at work
+and they wore me out. If /we/ had not ordered the Saint-Bartholomew,
+the Guises would have done the same thing by the help of Rome and the
+monks. The League, which was powerful only in consequence of my old
+age, would have begun in 1573.' 'But, madame, instead of ordering that
+horrible murder (pardon my plainness) why not have employed the vast
+resources of your political power in giving to the Reformers those
+wise institutions which made the reign of Henri IV. so glorious and so
+peaceful?' She smiled again and shrugged her shoulders, the hollow
+wrinkles of her pallid face giving her an expression of the bitterest
+sarcasm. 'The peoples,' she said, 'need periods of rest after savage
+feuds; there lies the secret of that reign. But Henri IV. committed
+two irreparable blunders. He ought neither to have abjured
+Protestantism, nor, after becoming a Catholic himself, should he have
+left France Catholic. He, alone, was in a position to have changed the
+whole of France without a jar. Either not a stole, or not a
+conventicle--that should have been his motto. To leave two bitter
+enemies, two antagonistic principles in a government with nothing to
+balance them, that is the crime of kings; it is thus that they sow
+revolutions. To God alone belongs the right to keep good and evil
+perpetually together in his work. But it may be,' she said
+reflectively, 'that that sentence was inscribed on the foundation of
+Henri IV.'s policy, and it may have caused his death. It is impossible
+that Sully did not cast covetous eyes on the vast wealth of the
+clergy,--which the clergy did not possess in peace, for the nobles
+robbed them of at least two-thirds of their revenue. Sully, the
+Reformer, himself owned abbeys.' She paused, and appeared to reflect.
+'But,' she resumed, 'remember you are asking the niece of a Pope to
+justify her Catholicism.' She stopped again. 'And yet, after all,' she
+added with a gesture of some levity, 'I should have made a good
+Calvinist! Do the wise men of your century still think that religion
+had anything to do with that struggle, the greatest which Europe has
+ever seen?--a vast revolution, retarded by little causes which,
+however, will not be prevented from overwhelming the world because I
+failed to smother it; a revolution,' she said, giving me a solemn
+look, 'which is still advancing, and which you might consummate. Yes,
+/you/, who hear me!' I shuddered. 'What! has no one yet understood
+that the old interests and the new interests seized Rome and Luther as
+mere banners? What! do they not know Louis IX., to escape just such a
+struggle, dragged a population a hundredfold more in number than I
+destroyed from their homes and left their bones on the sands of Egypt,
+for which he was made a saint? while I--But I,' she added, '/failed/.'
+She bowed her head and was silent for some moments. I no longer beheld
+a queen, but rather one of those ancient druidesses to whom human
+lives are sacrificed; who unroll the pages of the future and exhume
+the teachings of the past. But soon she uplifted her regal and
+majestic form. 'Luther and Calvin,' she said, 'by calling the
+attention of the burghers to the abuses of the Roman Church, gave
+birth in Europe to a spirit of investigation which was certain to lead
+the peoples to examine all things. Examination leads to doubt. Instead
+of faith, which is necessary to all societies, those two men drew
+after them, in the far distance, a strange philosophy, armed with
+hammers, hungry for destruction. Science sprang, sparkling with her
+specious lights, from the bosom of heresy. It was far less a question
+of reforming a Church than of winning indefinite liberty for man
+--which is the death of power. I saw that. The consequence of the
+successes won by the religionists in their struggle against the
+priesthood (already better armed and more formidable than the Crown)
+was the destruction of the monarchical power raised by Louis IX. at
+such vast cost upon the ruins of feudality. It involved, in fact,
+nothing less than the annihilation of religion and royalty, on the
+ruins of which the whole burgher class of Europe meant to stand. The
+struggle was therefore war without quarter between the new ideas and
+the law,--that is, the old beliefs. The Catholics were the emblem of
+the material interests of royalty, of the great lords, and of the
+clergy. It was a duel to the death between two giants; unfortunately,
+the Saint-Bartholomew proved to be only a wound. Remember this:
+because a few drops of blood were spared at that opportune moment,
+torrents were compelled to flow at a later period. The intellect which
+soars above a nation cannot escape a great misfortune; I mean the
+misfortune of finding no equals capable of judging it when it succumbs
+beneath the weight of untoward events. My equals are few; fools are in
+the majority: that statement explains it all. If my name is execrated
+in France, the fault lies with the commonplace minds who form the mass
+of all generations. In the great crises through which I passed, the
+duty of reigning was not the mere giving of audiences, reviewing of
+troops, signing of decrees. I may have committed mistakes, for I was
+but a woman. But why was there then no man who rose above his age? The
+Duke of Alba had a soul of iron; Philip II. was stupefied by Catholic
+belief; Henri IV. was a gambling soldier and a libertine; the Admiral,
+a stubborn mule. Louis XI. lived too soon, Richelieu too late.
+Virtuous or criminal, guilty or not in the Saint-Bartholomew, I accept
+the onus of it; I stand between those two great men,--the visible link
+of an unseen chain. The day will come when some paradoxical writer
+will ask if the peoples have not bestowed the title of executioner
+among their victims. It will not be the first time that humanity has
+preferred to immolate a god rather than admit its own guilt. You are
+shedding upon two hundred clowns, sacrificed for a purpose, the tears
+you refuse to a generation, a century, a world! You forget that
+political liberty, the tranquillity of a nation, nay, knowledge
+itself, are gifts on which destiny has laid a tax of blood!' 'But,' I
+exclaimed, with tears in my eyes, 'will the nations never be happy at
+less cost?' 'Truth never leaves her well but to bathe in the blood
+which refreshes her,' she replied. 'Christianity, itself the essence
+of all truth, since it comes from God, was fed by the blood of
+martyrs, which flowed in torrents; and shall it not ever flow? You
+will learn this, you who are destined to be one of the builders of the
+social edifice founded by the Apostles. So long as you level heads you
+will be applauded, but take your trowel in hand, begin to reconstruct,
+and your fellows will kill you.' Blood! blood! the word sounded in my
+ears like a knell. 'According to you,' I cried, 'Protestantism has the
+right to reason as you do!' But Catherine had disappeared, as if some
+puff of air had suddenly extinguished the supernatural light which
+enabled my mind to see that Figure whose proportions had gradually
+become gigantic. And then, without warning, I found within me a
+portion of myself which adopted the monstrous doctrine delivered by
+the Italian. I woke, weeping, bathed in sweat, at the moment when my
+reason told me firmly, in a gentle voice, that neither kings nor
+nations had the right to apply such principles, fit only for a world
+of atheists."
+
+"How would you save a falling monarchy?" asked Beaumarchais.
+
+"God is present," replied the little lawyer.
+
+"Therefore," remarked Monsieur de Calonne, with the inconceivable
+levity which characterized him, "we have the agreeable resource of
+believing ourselves the instruments of God, according to the Gospel of
+Bossuet."
+
+As soon as the ladies discovered that the tale related only to a
+conversation between the queen and the lawyer, they had begun to
+whisper and to show signs of impatience,--interjecting, now and then,
+little phrases through his speech. "How wearisome he is!" "My dear,
+when will he finish?" were among those which reached my ear.
+
+When the strange little man had ceased speaking the ladies too were
+silent; Monsieur Bodard was sound asleep; the surgeon, half drunk;
+Monsieur de Calonne was smiling at the lady next him. Lavoisier,
+Beaumarchais, and I alone had listened to the lawyer's dream. The
+silence at this moment had something solemn about it. The gleam of the
+candles seemed to me magical. A sentiment bound all three of us by
+some mysterious tie to that singular little man, who made me, strange
+to say, conceive, suddenly, the inexplicable influences of fanaticism.
+Nothing less than the hollow, cavernous voice of Beaumarchais's
+neighbor, the surgeon, could, I think, have roused me.
+
+"I, too, have dreamed," he said.
+
+I looked at him more attentively, and a feeling of some strange horror
+came over me. His livid skin, his features, huge and yet ignoble, gave
+an exact idea of what you must allow me to call the /scum/ of the
+earth. A few bluish-black spots were scattered over his face, like
+bits of mud, and his eyes shot forth an evil gleam. The face seemed,
+perhaps, darker, more lowering than it was, because of the white hair
+piled like hoarfrost on his head.
+
+"That man must have buried many a patient," I whispered to my neighbor
+the lawyer.
+
+"I wouldn't trust him with my dog," he answered.
+
+"I hate him involuntarily."
+
+"For my part, I despise him."
+
+"Perhaps we are unjust," I remarked.
+
+"Ha! to-morrow he may be as famous as Volange the actor."
+
+Monsieur de Calonne here motioned us to look at the surgeon, with a
+gesture that seemed to say: "I think he'll be very amusing."
+
+"Did you dream of a queen?" asked Beaumarchais.
+
+"No, I dreamed of a People," replied the surgeon, with an emphasis
+which made us laugh. "I was then in charge of a patient whose leg I
+was to amputate the next day--"
+
+"Did you find the People in the leg of your patient?" asked Monsieur
+de Calonne.
+
+"Precisely," replied the surgeon.
+
+"How amusing!" cried Madame de Genlis.
+
+"I was somewhat surprised," went on the speaker, without noticing the
+interruption, and sticking his hands into the gussets of his breeches,
+"to hear something talking to me within that leg. I then found I had
+the singular faculty of entering the being of my patient. Once within
+his skin I saw a marvellous number of little creatures which moved,
+and thought, and reasoned. Some of them lived in the body of the man,
+others lived in his mind. His ideas were things which were born, and
+grew, and died; they were sick and well, and gay, and sad; they all
+had special countenances; they fought with each other, or they
+embraced each other. Some ideas sprang forth and went to live in the
+world of intellect. I began to see that there were two worlds, two
+universes,--the visible universe, and the invisible universe; that the
+earth had, like man, a body and a soul. Nature illumined herself for
+me; I felt her immensity when I saw the oceans of beings who, in
+masses and in species, spread everywhere, making one sole and uniform
+animated Matter, from the stone of the earth to God. Magnificent
+vision! In short, I found a universe within my patient. When I
+inserted my knife into his gangrened leg I cut into a million of those
+little beings. Oh! you laugh, madame; let me tell you that you are
+eaten up by such creatures--"
+
+"No personalities!" interposed Monsieur de Calonne. "Speak for
+yourself and for your patient."
+
+"My patient, frightened by the cries of his animalcules, wanted to
+stop the operation; but I went on regardless of his remonstrances;
+telling him that those evil animals were already gnawing at his bones.
+He made a sudden movement of resistance, not understanding that what I
+did was for his good, and my knife slipped aside, entered my own body,
+and--"
+
+"He is stupid," said Lavoisier.
+
+"No, he is drunk," replied Beaumarchais.
+
+"But, gentlemen, my dream has a meaning," cried the surgeon.
+
+"Oh! oh!" exclaimed Bodard, waking up; "my leg is asleep!"
+
+"Your animalcules must be dead," said his wife.
+
+"That man has a vocation," announced my little neighbor, who had
+stared imperturbably at the surgeon while he was speaking.
+
+"It is to yours," said the ugly man, "what the action is to the word,
+the body to the soul."
+
+But his tongue grew thick, his words were indistinct, and he said no
+more. Fortunately for us the conversation took another turn. At the
+end of half an hour we had forgotten the surgeon of the king's pages,
+who was fast asleep. Rain was falling in torrents as we left the
+supper-table.
+
+"The lawyer is no fool," I said to Beaumarchais.
+
+"True, but he is cold and dull. You see, however, that the provinces
+are still sending us worthy men who take a serious view of political
+theories and the history of France. It is a leaven which will rise."
+
+"Is your carriage here?" asked Madame de Saint-James, addressing me.
+
+"No," I replied, "I did not think that I should need it to-night."
+
+Madame de Saint-James then rang the bell, ordered her own carriage to
+be brought round, and said to the little lawyer in a low voice:--
+
+"Monsieur de Robespierre, will you do me the kindness to drop Monsieur
+Marat at his own door?--for he is not in a state to go alone."
+
+"With pleasure, madame," replied Monsieur de Robespierre, with his
+finical gallantry. "I only wish you had requested me to do something
+more difficult."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Catherine de' Medici, by Honore de Balzac
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diff --git a/old/20040626-1854.zip b/old/20040626-1854.zip
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@@ -0,0 +1,12559 @@
+Project Gutenberg Etext Catherine de Medici, by Honore de Balzac
+#73 in our series by Honore de Balzac
+
+
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+Catherine de' Medici
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+by Honore de Balzac
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+Translated by Katherine Prescott Wormeley
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+August, 1999  [Etext #1854]
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+Project Gutenberg Etext Catherine de Medici, by Honore de Balzac
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+
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+
+
+
+Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
+and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
+
+
+
+
+
+Catherine de' Medici
+
+by Honore de Balzac
+
+Translated by Katherine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+  To Monsieur le Marquis de Pastoret, Member of the Academie des
+  Beaux-Arts.
+
+  When we think of the enormous number of volumes that have been
+  published on the question as to where Hannibal crossed the Alps,
+  without our being able to decide to-day whether it was (according
+  to Whittaker and Rivaz) by Lyon, Geneva, the Great Saint-Bernard,
+  and the valley of Aosta; or (according to Letronne, Follard,
+  Saint-Simon and Fortia d'Urbano) by the Isere, Grenoble, Saint-
+  Bonnet, Monte Genevra, Fenestrella, and the Susa passage; or
+  (according to Larauza) by the Mont Cenis and the Susa; or
+  (according to Strabo, Polybius and Lucanus) by the Rhone, Vienne,
+  Yenne, and the Dent du Chat; or (according to some intelligent
+  minds) by Genoa, La Bochetta, and La Scrivia,--an opinion which I
+  share and which Napoleon adopted,--not to speak of the verjuice
+  with which the Alpine rocks have been bespattered by other learned
+  men,--is it surprising, Monsieur le marquis, to see modern history
+  so bemuddled that many important points are still obscure, and the
+  most odious calumnies still rest on names that ought to be
+  respected?
+
+  And let me remark, in passing, that Hannibal's crossing has been
+  made almost problematical by these very elucidations. For
+  instance, Pere Menestrier thinks that the Scoras mentioned by
+  Polybius is the Saona; Letronne, Larauza and Schweighauser think
+  it is the Isere; Cochard, a learned Lyonnais, calls it the Drome,
+  and for all who have eyes to see there are between Scoras and
+  Scrivia great geographical and linguistical resemblances,--to say
+  nothing of the probability, amounting almost to certainty, that
+  the Carthaginian fleet was moored in the Gulf of Spezzia or the
+  roadstead of Genoa. I could understand these patient researches if
+  there were any doubt as to the battle of Canna; but inasmuch as
+  the results of that great battle are known, why blacken paper with
+  all these suppositions (which are, as it were, the arabesques of
+  hypothesis) while the history most important to the present day,
+  that of the Reformation, is full of such obscurities that we are
+  ignorant of the real name of the man who navigated a vessel by
+  steam to Barcelona at the period when Luther and Calvin were
+  inaugurating the insurrection of thought.[*]
+
+  You and I hold, I think, the same opinion, after having made, each
+  in his own way, close researches as to the grand and splendid
+  figure of Catherine de' Medici. Consequently, I have thought that
+  my historical studies upon that queen might properly be dedicated
+  to an author who has written so much on the history of the
+  Reformation; while at the same time I offer to the character and
+  fidelity of a monarchical writer a public homage which may,
+  perhaps, be valuable on account of its rarity.
+
+  [*] The name of the man who tried this experiment at Barcelona
+  should be given as Salomon de Caux, not Caus. That great man
+  has always been unfortunate; even after his death his name is
+  mangled. Salomon, whose portrait taken at the age of forty-six
+  was discovered by the author of the "Comedy of Human Life" at
+  Heidelberg, was born at Caux in Normandy. He was the author of
+  a book entitled "The Causes of Moving Forces," in which he
+  gave the theory of the expansion and condensation of steam.
+  He died in 1635.
+
+
+
+
+CATHERINE DE' MEDICI
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+There is a general cry of paradox when scholars, struck by some
+historical error, attempt to correct it; but, for whoever studies
+modern history to its depths, it is plain that historians are
+privileged liars, who lend their pen to popular beliefs precisely as
+the newspapers of the day, or most of them, express the opinions of
+their readers.
+
+Historical independence has shown itself much less among lay writers
+than among those of the Church. It is from the Benedictines, one of
+the glories of France, that the purest light has come to us in the
+matter of history,--so long, of course, as the interests of the order
+were not involved. About the middle of the eighteenth century great
+and learned controversialists, struck by the necessity of correcting
+popular errors endorsed by historians, made and published to the world
+very remarkable works. Thus Monsieur de Launoy, nicknamed the
+"Expeller of Saints," made cruel war upon the saints surreptitiously
+smuggled into the Church. Thus the emulators of the Benedictines, the
+members (too little recognized) of the Academie des Inscriptions et
+Belles-lettres, began on many obscure historical points a series of
+monographs, which are admirable for patience, erudition, and logical
+consistency. Thus Voltaire, for a mistaken purpose and with ill-judged
+passion, frequently cast the light of his mind on historical
+prejudices. Diderot undertook in this direction a book (much too long)
+on the era of imperial Rome. If it had not been for the French
+Revolution, /criticism/ applied to history might then have prepared
+the elements of a good and true history of France, the proofs for
+which had long been gathered by the Benedictines. Louis XVI., a just
+mind, himself translated the English work in which Walpole endeavored
+to explain Richard III.,--a work much talked of in the last century.
+
+Why do personages so celebrated as kings and queens, so important as
+the generals of armies, become objects of horror or derision? Half the
+world hesitates between the famous song on Marlborough and the history
+of England, and it also hesitates between history and popular
+tradition as to Charles IX. At all epochs when great struggles take
+place between the masses and authority, the populace creates for
+itself an /ogre-esque/ personage--if it is allowable to coin a word to
+convey a just idea. Thus, to take an example in our own time, if it
+had not been for the "Memorial of Saint Helena," and the controversies
+between the Royalists and the Bonapartists, there was every
+probability that the character of Napoleon would have been
+misunderstood. A few more Abbe de Pradits, a few more newspaper
+articles, and from being an emperor, Napoleon would have turned into
+an ogre.
+
+How does error propagate itself? The mystery is accomplished under our
+very eyes without our perceiving it. No one suspects how much solidity
+the art of printing has given both to the envy which pursues
+greatness, and to the popular ridicule which fastens a contrary sense
+on a grand historical act. Thus, the name of the Prince de Polignac is
+given throughout the length and breadth of France to all bad horses
+that require whipping; and who knows how that will affect the opinion
+of the future as to the /coup d'Etat/ of the Prince de Polignac
+himself? In consequence of a whim of Shakespeare--or perhaps it may
+have been a revenge, like that of Beaumarchais on Bergasse (Bergearss)
+--Falstaff is, in England, a type of the ridiculous; his very name
+provokes laughter; he is the king of clowns. Now, instead of being
+enormously pot-bellied, absurdly amorous, vain, drunken, old, and
+corrupted, Falstaff was one of the most distinguished men of his time,
+a Knight of the Garter, holding a high command in the army. At the
+accession of Henry V. Sir John Falstaff was only thirty-four years
+old. This general, who distinguished himself at the battle of
+Agincourt, and there took prisoner the Duc d'Alencon, captured, in
+1420, the town of Montereau, which was vigorously defended. Moreover,
+under Henry VI. he defeated ten thousand French troops with fifteen
+hundred weary and famished men.
+
+So much for war. Now let us pass to literature, and see our own
+Rabelais, a sober man who drank nothing but water, but is held to be,
+nevertheless, an extravagant lover of good cheer and a resolute
+drinker. A thousand ridiculous stories are told about the author of
+one of the finest books in French literature,--"Pantagruel." Aretino,
+the friend of Titian, and the Voltaire of his century, has, in our
+day, a reputation the exact opposite of his works and of his
+character; a reputation which he owes to a grossness of wit in keeping
+with the writings of his age, when broad farce was held in honor, and
+queens and cardinals wrote tales which would be called, in these days,
+licentious. One might go on multiplying such instances indefinitely.
+
+In France, and that, too, during the most serious epoch of modern
+history, no woman, unless it be Brunehaut or Fredegonde, has suffered
+from popular error so much as Catherine de' Medici; whereas Marie de'
+Medici, all of whose actions were prejudicial to France, has escaped
+the shame which ought to cover her name. Marie de' Medici wasted the
+wealth amassed by Henri IV.; she never purged herself of the charge of
+having known of the king's assassination; her /intimate/ was
+d'Epernon, who did not ward off Ravaillac's blow, and who was proved
+to have known the murderer personally for a long time. Marie's conduct
+was such that she forced her son to banish her from France, where she
+was encouraging her other son, Gaston, to rebel; and the victory
+Richelieu at last won over her (on the Day of the Dupes) was due
+solely to the discovery the cardinal made, and imparted to Louis
+XIII., of secret documents relating to the death of Henri IV.
+
+Catherine de' Medici, on the contrary, saved the crown of France; she
+maintained the royal authority in the midst of circumstances under
+which more than one great prince would have succumbed. Having to make
+head against factions and ambitions like those of the Guises and the
+house of Bourbon, against men such as the two Cardinals of Lorraine,
+the two Balafres, and the two Condes, against the queen Jeanne
+d'Albret, Henri IV., the Connetable de Montmorency, Calvin, the three
+Colignys, Theodore de Beze, she needed to possess and to display the
+rare qualities and precious gifts of a statesman under the mocking
+fire of the Calvinist press.
+
+Those facts are incontestable. Therefore, to whosoever burrows into
+the history of the sixteenth century in France, the figure of
+Catherine de' Medici will seem like that of a great king. When calumny
+is once dissipated by facts, recovered with difficulty from among the
+contradictions of pamphlets and false anecdotes, all explains itself
+to the fame of this extraordinary woman, who had none of the
+weaknesses of her sex, who lived chaste amid the license of the most
+dissolute court in Europe, and who, in spite of her lack of money,
+erected noble public buildings, as if to repair the loss caused by the
+iconoclasms of the Calvinists, who did as much harm to art as to the
+body politic. Hemmed in between the Guises who claimed to be the heirs
+of Charlemagne and the factious younger branch who sought to screen
+the treachery of the Connetable de Bourbon behind the throne,
+Catherine, forced to combat heresy which was seeking to annihilate the
+monarchy, without friends, aware of treachery among the leaders of the
+Catholic party, foreseeing a republic in the Calvinist party,
+Catherine employed the most dangerous but the surest weapon of public
+policy,--craft. She resolved to trick and so defeat, successively, the
+Guises who were seeking the ruin of the house of Valois, the Bourbons
+who sought the crown, and the Reformers (the Radicals of those days)
+who dreamed of an impossible republic--like those of our time; who
+have, however, nothing to reform. Consequently, so long as she lived,
+the Valois kept the throne of France. The great historian of that
+time, de Thou, knew well the value of this woman when, on hearing of
+her death, he exclaimed: "It is not a woman, it is monarchy itself
+that has died!"
+
+Catherine had, in the highest degree, the sense of royalty, and she
+defended it with admirable courage and persistency. The reproaches
+which Calvinist writers have cast upon her are to her glory; she
+incurred them by reason only of her triumphs. Could she, placed as she
+was, triumph otherwise than by craft? The whole question lies there.
+
+As for violence, that means is one of the most disputed questions of
+public policy; in our time it has been answered on the Place Louis
+XV., where they have now set up an Egyptian stone, as if to obliterate
+regicide and offer a symbol of the system of materialistic policy
+which governs us; it was answered at the Carmes and at the Abbaye;
+answered on the steps of Saint-Roch; answered once more by the people
+against the king before the Louvre in 1830, as it has since been
+answered by Lafayette's best of all possible republics against the
+republican insurrection at Saint-Merri and the rue Transnonnain. All
+power, legitimate or illegitimate, must defend itself when attacked;
+but the strange thing is that where the people are held heroic in
+their victory over the nobility, power is called murderous in its duel
+with the people. If it succumbs after its appeal to force, power is
+then called imbecile. The present government is attempting to save
+itself by two laws from the same evil Charles X. tried to escape by
+two ordinances; is it not a bitter derision? Is craft permissible in
+the hands of power against craft? may it kill those who seek to kill
+it? The massacres of the Revolution have replied to the massacres of
+Saint-Bartholomew. The people, become king, have done against the king
+and the nobility what the king and the nobility did against the
+insurgents of the sixteenth century. Therefore the popular historians,
+who know very well that in a like case the people will do the same
+thing over again, have no excuse for blaming Catherine de' Medici and
+Charles IX.
+
+"All power," said Casimir Perier, on learning what power ought to be,
+"is a permanent conspiracy." We admire the anti-social maxims put
+forth by daring writers; why, then, this disapproval which, in France,
+attaches to all social truths when boldly proclaimed? This question
+will explain, in itself alone, historical errors. Apply the answer to
+the destructive doctrines which flatter popular passions, and to the
+conservative doctrines which repress the mad efforts of the people,
+and you will find the reason of the unpopularity and also the
+popularity of certain personages. Laubardemont and Laffemas were, like
+some men of to-day, devoted to the defence of power in which they
+believed. Soldiers or judges, they all obeyed royalty. In these days
+d'Orthez would be dismissed for having misunderstood the orders of the
+ministry, but Charles X. left him governor of a province. The power of
+the many is accountable to no one; the power of one is compelled to
+render account to its subjects, to the great as well as to the small.
+
+Catherine, like Philip the Second and the Duke of Alba, like the
+Guises and Cardinal Granvelle, saw plainly the future that the
+Reformation was bringing upon Europe. She and they saw monarchies,
+religion, authority shaken. Catherine wrote, from the cabinet of the
+kings of France, a sentence of death to that spirit of inquiry which
+then began to threaten modern society; a sentence which Louis XIV.
+ended by executing. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes was an
+unfortunate measure only so far as it caused the irritation of all
+Europe against Louis XIV. At another period England, Holland, and the
+Holy Roman Empire would not have welcomed banished Frenchmen and
+encouraged revolt in France.
+
+Why refuse, in these days, to the majestic adversary of the most
+barren of heresies the grandeur she derived from the struggle itself?
+Calvinists have written much against the "craftiness" of Charles IX.;
+but travel through France, see the ruins of noble churches, estimate
+the fearful wounds given by the religionists to the social body, learn
+what vengeance they inflicted, and you will ask yourself, as you
+deplore the evils of individualism (the disease of our present France,
+the germ of which was in the questions of liberty of conscience then
+agitated),--you will ask yourself, I say, on which side were the
+executioners. There are, unfortunately, as Catherine herself says in
+the third division of this Study of her career, "in all ages
+hypocritical writers always ready to weep over the fate of two hundred
+scoundrels killed necessarily." Caesar, who tried to move the senate to
+pity the attempt of Catiline, might perhaps have got the better of
+Cicero could he have had an Opposition and its newspapers at his
+command.
+
+Another consideration explains the historical and popular disfavor in
+which Catherine is held. The Opposition in France has always been
+Protestant, because it has had no policy but that of /negation/; it
+inherits the theories of Lutherans, Calvinists, and Protestants on the
+terrible words "liberty," "tolerance," "progress," and "philosophy."
+Two centuries have been employed by the opponents of power in
+establishing the doubtful doctrine of the /libre arbitre/,--liberty of
+will. Two other centuries were employed in developing the first
+corollary of liberty of will, namely, liberty of conscience. Our
+century is endeavoring to establish the second, namely, political
+liberty.
+
+Placed between the ground already lost and the ground still to be
+defended, Catherine and the Church proclaimed the salutary principle
+of modern societies, /una fides, unus dominus/, using their power of
+life and death upon the innovators. Though Catherine was vanquished,
+succeeding centuries have proved her justification. The product of
+liberty of will, religious liberty, and political liberty (not,
+observe this, to be confounded with civil liberty) is the France of
+to-day. What is the France of 1840? A country occupied exclusively
+with material interests,--without patriotism, without conscience;
+where power has no vigor; where election, the fruit of liberty of will
+and political liberty, lifts to the surface none but commonplace men;
+where brute force has now become a necessity against popular violence;
+where discussion, spreading into everything, stifles the action of
+legislative bodies; where money rules all questions; where
+individualism--the dreadful product of the division of property /ad
+infinitum/--will suppress the family and devour all, even the nation,
+which egoism will some day deliver over to invasion. Men will say,
+"Why not the Czar?" just as they said, "Why not the Duc d'Orleans?" We
+don't cling to many things even now; but fifty years hence we shall
+cling to nothing.
+
+Thus, according to Catherine de' Medici and according to all those who
+believe in a well-ordered society, in /social man/, the subject cannot
+have liberty of will, ought not to /teach/ the dogma of liberty of
+conscience, or demand political liberty. But, as no society can exist
+without guarantees granted to the subject against the sovereign, there
+results for the subject /liberties/ subject to restriction. Liberty,
+no; liberties, yes,--precise and well-defined liberties. That is in
+harmony with the nature of things.
+
+It is, assuredly, beyond the reach of human power to prevent the
+liberty of thought; and no sovereign can interfere with money. The
+great statesmen who were vanquished in the long struggle (it lasted
+five centuries) recognized the right of subjects to great liberties;
+but they did not admit their right to publish anti-social thoughts,
+nor did they admit the indefinite liberty of the subject. To them the
+words "subject" and "liberty" were terms that contradicted each other;
+just as the theory of citizens being all equal constitutes an
+absurdity which nature contradicts at every moment. To recognize the
+necessity of a religion, the necessity of authority, and then to leave
+to subjects the right to deny religion, attack its worship, oppose the
+exercise of power by public expression communicable and communicated
+by thought, was an impossibility which the Catholics of the sixteenth
+century would not hear of.
+
+Alas! the victory of Calvinism will cost France more in the future
+than it has yet cost her; for religious sects and humanitarian,
+equality-levelling politics are, to-day, the tail of Calvinism; and,
+judging by the mistakes of the present power, its contempt for
+intellect, its love for material interests, in which it seeks the
+basis of its support (though material interests are the most
+treacherous of all supports), we may predict that unless some
+providence intervenes, the genius of destruction will again carry the
+day over the genius of preservation. The assailants, who have nothing
+to lose and all to gain, understand each other thoroughly; whereas
+their rich adversaries will not make any sacrifice either of money or
+self-love to draw to themselves supporters.
+
+The art of printing came to the aid of the opposition begun by the
+Vaudois and the Albigenses. As soon as human thought, instead of
+condensing itself, as it was formerly forced to do to remain in
+communicable form, took on a multitude of garments and became, as it
+were, the people itself, instead of remaining a sort of axiomatic
+divinity, there were two multitudes to combat,--the multitude of
+ideas, and the multitude of men. The royal power succumbed in that
+warfare, and we are now assisting, in France, at its last combination
+with elements which render its existence difficult, not to say
+impossible. Power is action, and the elective principle is discussion.
+There is no policy, no statesmanship possible where discussion is
+permanent.
+
+Therefore we ought to recognize the grandeur of the woman who had the
+eyes to see this future and fought it bravely. That the house of
+Bourbon was able to succeed to the house of Valois, that it found a
+crown preserved to it, was due solely to Catherine de' Medici. Suppose
+the second Balafre had lived? No matter how strong the Bearnais was,
+it is doubtful whether he could have seized the crown, seeing how
+dearly the Duc de Mayenne and the remains of the Guise party sold it
+to him. The means employed by Catherine, who certainly had to reproach
+herself with the deaths of Francois II. and Charles IX., whose lives
+might have been saved in time, were never, it is observable, made the
+subject of accusations by either the Calvinists or modern historians.
+Though there was no poisoning, as some grave writers have said, there
+was other conduct almost as criminal; there is no doubt she hindered
+Pare from saving one, and allowed the other to accomplish his own doom
+by moral assassination. But the sudden death of Francois II., and that
+of Charles IX., were no injury to the Calvinists, and therefore the
+causes of these two events remained in their secret sphere, and were
+never suspected either by the writers of the people of that day; they
+were not divined except by de Thou, l'Hopital, and minds of that
+calibre, or by the leaders of the two parties who were coveting or
+defending the throne, and believed such means necessary to their end.
+
+Popular songs attacked, strangely enough, Catherine's morals. Every
+one knows the anecdote of the soldier who was roasting a goose in the
+courtyard of the chateau de Tours during the conference between
+Catherine and Henri IV., singing, as he did so, a song in which the
+queen was grossly insulted. Henri IV. drew his sword to go out and
+kill the man; but Catherine stopped him and contented herself with
+calling from the window to her insulter:--
+
+"Eh! but it was Catherine who gave you the goose."
+
+Though the executions at Amboise were attributed to Catherine, and
+though the Calvinists made her responsible for all the inevitable
+evils of that struggle, it was with her as it was, later, with
+Robespierre, who is still waiting to be justly judged. Catherine was,
+moreover, rightly punished for her preference for the Duc d'Anjou, to
+whose interests the two elder brothers were sacrificed. Henri III.,
+like all spoilt children, ended in becoming absolutely indifferent to
+his mother, and he plunged voluntarily into the life of debauchery
+which made of him what his mother had made of Charles IX., a husband
+without sons, a king without heirs. Unhappily the Duc d'Alencon,
+Catherine's last male child, had already died, a natural death.
+
+The last words of the great queen were like a summing up of her
+lifelong policy, which was, moreover, so plain in its common-sense
+that all cabinets are seen under similar circumstances to put it in
+practice.
+
+"Enough cut off, my son," she said when Henri III. came to her death-
+bed to tell her that the great enemy of the crown was dead, "/now
+piece together/."
+
+By which she meant that the throne should at once reconcile itself
+with the house of Lorraine and make use of it, as the only means of
+preventing evil results from the hatred of the Guises,--by holding out
+to them the hope of surrounding the king. But the persistent craft and
+dissimulation of the woman and the Italian, which she had never failed
+to employ, was incompatible with the debauched life of her son.
+Catherine de' Medici once dead, the policy of the Valois died also.
+
+Before undertaking to write the history of the manners and morals of
+this period in action, the author of this Study has patiently and
+minutely examined the principal reigns in the history of France, the
+quarrel of the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, that of the Guises and
+the Valois, each of which covers a century. His first intention was to
+write a picturesque history of France. Three women--Isabella of
+Bavaria, Catharine and Marie de' Medici--hold an enormous place in it,
+their sway reaching from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century,
+ending in Louis XIV. Of these three queens, Catherine is the finer and
+more interesting. Hers was virile power, dishonored neither by the
+terrible amours of Isabella nor by those, even more terrible, though
+less known, of Marie de' Medici. Isabella summoned the English into
+France against her son, and loved her brother-in-law, the Duc
+d'Orleans. The record of Marie de' Medici is heavier still. Neither
+had political genius.
+
+It was in the course of these studies that the writer acquired the
+conviction of Catherine's greatness; as he became initiated into the
+constantly renewed difficulties of her position, he saw with what
+injustice historians--all influenced by Protestants--had treated this
+queen. Out of this conviction grew the three sketches which here
+follow; in which some erroneous opinions formed upon Catherine, also
+upon the persons who surrounded her, and on the events of her time,
+are refuted. If this book is placed among the Philosophical Studies,
+it is because it shows the Spirit of a Time, and because we may
+clearly see in it the influence of thought.
+
+But before entering the political arena, where Catherine will be seen
+facing the two great difficulties of her career, it is necessary to
+give a succinct account of her preceding life, from the point of view
+of impartial criticism, in order to take in as much as possible of
+this vast and regal existence up to the moment when the first part of
+the present Study begins.
+
+Never was there any period, in any land, in any sovereign family, a
+greater contempt for legitimacy than in the famous house of the
+Medici. On the subject of power they held the same doctrine now
+professed by Russia, namely: to whichever head the crown goes, he is
+the true, the legitimate sovereign. Mirabeau had reason to say: "There
+has been but one mesalliance in my family,--that of the Medici"; for
+in spite of the paid efforts of genealogists, it is certain that the
+Medici, before Everardo de' Medici, /gonfaloniero/ of Florence in
+1314, were simple Florentine merchants who became very rich. The first
+personage in this family who occupies an important place in the
+history of the famous Tuscan republic is Silvestro de' Medici,
+/gonfaloniero/ in 1378. This Silvestro had two sons, Cosmo and Lorenzo
+de' Medici.
+
+From Cosmo are descended Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Duc de Nemours,
+the Duc d'Urbino, father of Catherine, Pope Leo X., Pope Clement VII.,
+and Alessandro, not Duke of Florence, as historians call him, but Duke
+/della citta di Penna/, a title given by Pope Clement VII., as a half-
+way station to that of Grand-duke of Tuscany.
+
+From Lorenzo are descended the Florentine Brutus Lorenzino, who killed
+Alessandro, Cosmo, the first grand-duke, and all the sovereigns of
+Tuscany till 1737, at which period the house became extinct.
+
+But neither of the two branches--the branch Cosmo and the branch
+Lorenzo--reigned through their direct and legitimate lines until the
+close of the sixteenth century, when the grand-dukes of Tuscany began
+to succeed each other peacefully. Alessandro de' Medici, he to whom
+the title of Duke /della citta di Penna/ was given, was the son of the
+Duke d'Urbino, Catherine's father, by a Moorish slave. For this reason
+Lorenzino claimed a double right to kill Alessandro,--as a usurper in
+his house, as well as an oppressor of the city. Some historians
+believe that Alessandro was the son of Clement VII. The fact that led
+to the recognition of this bastard as chief of the republic and head
+of the house of the Medici was his marriage with Margaret of Austria,
+natural daughter of Charles V.
+
+Francesco de' Medici, husband of Bianca Capello, accepted as his son a
+child of poor parents bought by the celebrated Venetian; and, strange
+to say, Ferdinando, on succeeding Francesco, maintained the
+substituted child in all his rights. That child, called Antonio de'
+Medici, was considered during four reigns as belonging to the family;
+he won the affection of everybody, rendered important services to the
+family, and died universally regretted.
+
+Nearly all the first Medici had natural children, whose careers were
+invariably brilliant. For instance, the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici,
+afterwards Pope under the name of Clement VII., was the illegitimate
+son of Giuliano I. Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici was also a bastard,
+and came very near being Pope and the head of the family.
+
+Lorenzo II., the father of Catherine, married in 1518, for his second
+wife, Madeleine de la Tour de Boulogne, in Auvergne, and died April
+25, 1519, a few days after his wife, who died in giving birth to
+Catherine. Catherine was therefore orphaned of father and mother as
+soon as she drew breath. Hence the strange adventures of her
+childhood, mixed up as they were with the bloody efforts of the
+Florentines, then seeking to recover their liberty from the Medici.
+The latter, desirous of continuing to reign in Florence, behaved with
+such circumspection that Lorenzo, Catherine's father, had taken the
+name of Duke d'Urbino.
+
+At Lorenzo's death, the head of the house of the Medici was Pope Leo
+X., who sent the illegitimate son of Giuliano, Giulio de' Medici, then
+cardinal, to govern Florence. Leo X. was great-uncle to Catherine, and
+this Cardinal Giulio, afterward Clement VII., was her uncle by the
+left hand.
+
+It was during the siege of Florence, undertaken by the Medici to force
+their return there, that the Republican party, not content with having
+shut Catherine, then nine years old, into a convent, after robbing her
+of all her property, actually proposed, on the suggestion of one named
+Batista Cei, to expose her between two battlements on the walls to the
+artillery of the Medici. Bernardo Castiglione went further in a
+council held to determine how matters should be ended: he was of
+opinion that, so far from returning her to the Pope as the latter
+requested, she ought to be given to the soldiers for dishonor. This
+will show how all popular revolutions resemble each other. Catherine's
+subsequent policy, which upheld so firmly the royal power, may well
+have been instigated in part by such scenes, of which an Italian girl
+of nine years of age was assuredly not ignorant.
+
+The rise of Alessandro de' Medici, to which the bastard Pope Clement
+VII. powerfully contributed, was no doubt chiefly caused by the
+affection of Charles V. for his famous illegitimate daughter Margaret.
+Thus Pope and emperor were prompted by the same sentiment. At this
+epoch Venice had the commerce of the world; Rome had its moral
+government; Italy still reigned supreme through the poets, the
+generals, the statesmen born to her. At no period of the world's
+history, in any land, was there ever seen so remarkable, so abundant a
+collection of men of genius. There were so many, in fact, that even
+the lesser princes were superior men. Italy was crammed with talent,
+enterprise, knowledge, science, poesy, wealth, and gallantry, all the
+while torn by intestinal warfare and overrun with conquerors
+struggling for possession of her finest provinces. When men are so
+strong, they do not fear to admit their weaknesses. Hence, no doubt,
+this golden age for bastards. We must, moreover, do the illegitimate
+children of the house of the Medici the justice to say that they were
+ardently devoted to the glory, power, and increase of wealth of that
+famous family. Thus as soon as the /Duca della citta di Penna/, son of
+the Moorish woman, was installed as tyrant of Florence, he espoused
+the interest of Pope Clement VII., and gave a home to the daughter of
+Lorenzo II., then eleven years of age.
+
+When we study the march of events and that of men in this curious
+sixteenth century, we ought never to forget that public policy had for
+its element a perpetual craftiness and a dissimulation which
+destroyed, in all characters, the straightforward, upright bearing our
+imaginations demand of eminent personages. In this, above all, is
+Catherine's absolution. It disposes of the vulgar and foolish
+accusations of treachery launched against her by the writers of the
+Reformation. This was the great age of that statesmanship the code of
+which was written by Macchiavelli as well as by Spinosa, by Hobbes as
+well as by Montesquieu,--for the dialogue between Sylla and Eucrates
+contains Montesquieu's true thought, which his connection with the
+Encyclopedists did not permit him to develop otherwise than as he did.
+
+These principles are to-day the secret law of all cabinets in which
+plans for the conquest and maintenance of great power are laid. In
+France we blamed Napoleon when he made use of that Italian genius for
+craft which was bred in his bone,--though in his case it did not
+always succeed. But Charles V., Catherine, Philip II., and Pope Julius
+would not have acted otherwise than as he did in the affair of Spain.
+History, in the days when Catherine was born, if judged from the point
+of view of honesty, would seem an impossible tale. Charles V., obliged
+to sustain Catholicism against the attacks of Luther, who threatened
+the Throne in threatening the Tiara, allowed the siege of Rome and
+held Pope Clement VII. in prison! This same Clement, who had no
+bitterer enemy than Charles V., courted him in order to make
+Alessandro de' Medici ruler of Florence, and obtained his favorite
+daughter for that bastard. No sooner was Alessandro established than
+he, conjointly with Clement VII., endeavored to injure Charles V. by
+allying himself with Francois I., king of France, by means of
+Catherine de' Medici; and both of them promised to assist Francois in
+reconquering Italy. Lorenzino de' Medici made himself the companion of
+Alessandro's debaucheries for the express purpose of finding an
+opportunity to kill him. Filippo Strozzi, one of the great minds of
+that day, held this murder in such respect that he swore that his sons
+should each marry a daughter of the murderer; and each son religiously
+fulfilled his father's oath when they might all have made, under
+Catherine's protection, brilliant marriages; for one was the rival of
+Doria, the other a marshal of France. Cosmo de' Medici, successor of
+Alessandro, with whom he had no relationship, avenged the death of
+that tyrant in the cruellest manner, with a persistency lasting twelve
+years; during which time his hatred continued keen against the persons
+who had, as a matter of fact, given him the power. He was eighteen
+years old when called to the sovereignty; his first act was to declare
+the rights of Alessandro's legitimate sons null and void,--all the
+while avenging their father's death! Charles V. confirmed the
+disinheriting of his grandsons, and recognized Cosmo instead of the
+son of Alessandro and his daughter Margaret. Cosmo, placed on the
+throne by Cardinal Cibo, instantly exiled the latter; and the cardinal
+revenged himself by accusing Cosmo (who was the first grand-duke) of
+murdering Alessandro's son. Cosmo, as jealous of his power as Charles
+V. was of his, abdicated in favor of his son Francesco, after causing
+the death of his other son, Garcia, to avenge the death of Cardinal
+Giovanni de' Medici, whom Garcia had assassinated. Cosmo the First and
+his son Francesco, who ought to have been devoted, body and soul, to
+the house of France, the only power on which they might really have
+relied, made themselves the lacqueys of Charles V. and Philip II., and
+were consequently the secret, base, and perfidious enemies of
+Catherine de' Medici, one of the glories of their house.
+
+Such were the leading contradictory and illogical traits, the
+treachery, knavery, and black intrigues of a single house, that of the
+Medici. From this sketch, we may judge of the other princes of Italy
+and Europe. All the envoys of Cosmos I. to the court of France had, in
+their secret instructions, an order to poison Strozzi, Catherine's
+relation, when he arrived. Charles V. had already assassinated three
+of the ambassadors of Francois I.
+
+It was early in the month of October, 1533, that the /Duca della citta
+di Penna/ started from Florence for Livorno, accompanied by the sole
+heiress of Lorenzo II., namely, Catherine de' Medici. The duke and the
+Princess of Florence, for that was the title by which the young girl,
+then fourteen years of age, was known, left the city surrounded by a
+large retinue of servants, officers, and secretaries, preceded by
+armed men, and followed by an escort of cavalry. The young princess
+knew nothing as yet of what her fate was to be, except that the Pope
+was to have an interview at Livorno with the Duke Alessandro; but her
+uncle, Filippo Strozzi, very soon informed her of the future before
+her.
+
+Filippo Strozzi had married Clarice de' Medici, half-sister on the
+father's side of Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, father of
+Catherine; but this marriage, which was brought about as much to
+convert one of the firmest supporters of the popular party to the
+cause of the Medici as to facilitate the recall of that family, then
+banished from Florence, never shook the stern champion from his
+course, though he was persecuted by his own party for making it. In
+spite of all apparent changes in his conduct (for this alliance
+naturally affected it somewhat) he remained faithful to the popular
+party, and declared himself openly against the Medici as soon as he
+foresaw their intention to enslave Florence. This great man even
+refused the offer of a principality made to him by Leo X.
+
+At the time of which we are now writing Filippo Strozzi was a victim
+to the policy of the Medici, so vacillating in its means, so fixed and
+inflexible in its object. After sharing the misfortunes and the
+captivity of Clement VII. when the latter, surprised by the Colonna,
+took refuge in the Castle of Saint-Angelo, Strozzi was delivered up by
+Clement as a hostage and taken to Naples. As the Pope, when he got his
+liberty, turned savagely on his enemies, Strozzi came very near losing
+his life, and was forced to pay an enormous sum to be released from a
+prison where he was closely confined. When he found himself at liberty
+he had, with an instinct of kindness natural to an honest man, the
+simplicity to present himself before Clement VII., who had perhaps
+congratulated himself on being well rid of him. The Pope had such good
+cause to blush for his own conduct that he received Strozzi extremely
+ill.
+
+Strozzi thus began, early in life, his apprenticeship in the
+misfortunes of an honest man in politics,--a man whose conscience
+cannot lend itself to the capriciousness of events; whose actions are
+acceptable only to the virtuous; and who is therefore persecuted by
+the world,--by the people, for opposing their blind passions; by power
+for opposing its usurpations. The life of such great citizens is a
+martyrdom, in which they are sustained only by the voice of their
+conscience and an heroic sense of social duty, which dictates their
+course in all things. There were many such men in the republic of
+Florence, all as great as Strozzi, and as able as their adversaries
+the Medici, though vanquished by the superior craft and wiliness of
+the latter. What could be more worthy of admiration than the conduct
+of the chief of the Pazzi at the time of the conspiracy of his house,
+when, his commerce being at that time enormous, he settled all his
+accounts with Asia, the Levant, and Europe before beginning that great
+attempt; so that, if it failed, his correspondents should lose
+nothing.
+
+The history of the establishment of the house of the Medici in the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is a magnificent tale which still
+remains to be written, though men of genius have already put their
+hands to it. It is not the history of a republic, nor of a society,
+nor of any special civilization; it is the history of STATESMEN, the
+eternal history of Politics,--that of usurpers, that of conquerors.
+
+As soon as Filippo Strozzi returned to Florence he re-established the
+preceding form of government and ousted Ippolito de' Medici, another
+bastard, and the very Alessandro with whom, at the later period of
+which we are now writing, he was travelling to Livorno. Having
+completed this change of government, he became alarmed at the evident
+inconstancy of the people of Florence, and, fearing the vengeance of
+Clement VII., he went to Lyon to superintend a vast house of business
+he owned there, which corresponded with other banking-houses of his
+own in Venice, Rome, France, and Spain. Here we find a strange thing.
+These men who bore the weight of public affairs and of such a struggle
+as that with the Medici (not to speak of contentions with their own
+party) found time and strength to bear the burden of a vast business
+and all its speculations, also of banks and their complications, which
+the multiplicity of coinages and their falsification rendered even
+more difficult than it is in our day. The name "banker" comes from the
+/banc/ (Anglice, /bench/) upon which the banker sat, and on which he
+rang the gold and silver pieces to try their quality. After a time
+Filippo found in the death of his wife, whom he adored, a pretext for
+renewing his relations with the Republican party, whose secret police
+becomes the more terrible in all republics, because every one makes
+himself a spy in the name of a liberty which justifies everything.
+
+Filippo returned to Florence at the very moment when that city was
+compelled to adopt the yoke of Alessandro; but he had previously gone
+to Rome and seen Pope Clement VII., whose affairs were now so
+prosperous that his disposition toward Strozzi was much changed. In
+the hour of triumph the Medici were so much in need of a man like
+Filippo--were it only to smooth the return of Alessandro--that Clement
+urged him to take a seat at the Council of the bastard who was about
+to oppress the city; and Strozzi consented to accept the diploma of a
+senator.
+
+But, for the last two years and more, he had seen, like Seneca and
+Burrhus, the beginnings of tyranny in his Nero. He felt himself, at
+the moment of which we write, an object of so much distrust on the
+part of the people and so suspected by the Medici whom he was
+constantly resisting, that he was confident of some impending
+catastrophe. Consequently, as soon as he heard from Alessandro of the
+negotiation for Catherine's marriage with the son of Francois I., the
+final arrangements for which were to be made at Livorno, where the
+negotiators had appointed to meet, he formed the plan of going to
+France, and attaching himself to the fortunes of his niece, who needed
+a guardian.
+
+Alessandro, delighted to rid himself of a man so unaccommodating in
+the affairs of Florence, furthered a plan which relieved him of one
+murder at least, and advised Strozzi to put himself at the head of
+Catherine's household. In order to dazzle the eyes of France the
+Medici had selected a brilliant suite for her whom they styled, very
+unwarrantably, the Princess of Florence, and who also went by the name
+of the little Duchess d'Urbino. The cortege, at the head of which rode
+Alessandro, Catherine, and Strozzi, was composed of more than a
+thousand persons, not including the escort and servants. When the last
+of it issued from the gates of Florence the head had passed that first
+village beyond the city where they now braid the Tuscan straw hats. It
+was beginning to be rumored among the people that Catherine was to
+marry a son of Francois I.; but the rumor did not obtain much belief
+until the Tuscans beheld with their own eyes this triumphal procession
+from Florence to Livorno.
+
+Catherine herself, judging by all the preparations she beheld, began
+to suspect that her marriage was in question, and her uncle then
+revealed to her the fact that the first ambitious project of his house
+had aborted, and that the hand of the dauphin had been refused to her.
+Alessandro still hoped that the Duke of Albany would succeed in
+changing this decision of the king of France who, willing as he was to
+buy the support of the Medici in Italy, would only grant them his
+second son, the Duc d'Orleans. This petty blunder lost Italy to
+France, and did not prevent Catherine from becoming queen.
+
+The Duke of Albany, son of Alexander Stuart, brother of James III.,
+king of Scotland, had married Anne de la Tour de Boulogne, sister of
+Madeleine de la Tour de Boulogne, Catherine's mother; he was therefore
+her maternal uncle. It was through her mother that Catherine was so
+rich and allied to so many great families; for, strangely enough, her
+rival, Diane de Poitiers, was also her cousin. Jean de Poitiers,
+father of Diane, was son of Jeanne de Boulogne, aunt of the Duchess
+d'Urbino. Catherine was also a cousin of Mary Stuart, her daughter-in-
+law.
+
+Catherine now learned that her dowry in money was a hundred thousand
+ducats. A ducat was a gold piece of the size of an old French louis,
+though less thick. (The old louis was worth twenty-four francs--the
+present one is worth twenty). The Comtes of Auvergne and Lauraguais
+were also made a part of the dowry, and Pope Clement added one hundred
+thousand ducats in jewels, precious stones, and other wedding gifts;
+to which Alessandro likewise contributed his share.
+
+On arriving at Livorno, Catherine, still so young, must have been
+flattered by the extreme magnificence displayed by Pope Clement ("her
+uncle in Notre-Dame," then head of the house of the Medici), in order
+to outdo the court of France. He had already arrived at Livorno in one
+of his galleys, which was lined with crimson satin fringed with gold,
+and covered with a tent-like awning in cloth of gold. This galley, the
+decoration of which cost twenty thousand ducats, contained several
+apartments destined for the bride of Henri of France, all of which
+were furnished with the richest treasures of art the Medici could
+collect. The rowers, magnificently apparelled, and the crew were under
+the command of a prior of the order of the Knights of Rhodes. The
+household of the Pope were in three other galleys. The galleys of the
+Duke of Albany, anchored near those of Clement VII., added to the size
+and dignity of the flotilla.
+
+Duke Alessandro presented the officers of Catherine's household to the
+Pope, with whom he had a secret conference, in which, it would appear,
+he presented to his Holiness Count Sebastiano Montecuculi, who had
+just left, somewhat abruptly, the service of Charles V. and that of
+his two generals, Antonio di Leyva and Ferdinando di Gonzago. Was
+there between the two bastards, Giulio and Alessandro, a premeditated
+intention of making the Duc d'Orleans dauphin? What reward was
+promised to Sebastiano Montecuculi, who, before entering the service
+of Charles V. had studied medicine? History is silent on that point.
+We shall see presently what clouds hang round that fact. The obscurity
+is so great that, quite recently, grave and conscientious historians
+have admitted Montecuculi's innocence.
+
+Catherine then heard officially from the Pope's own lips of the
+alliance reserved for her. The Duke of Albany had been able to do no
+more than hold the king of France, and that with difficulty, to his
+promise of giving Catherine the hand of his second son, the Duc
+d'Orleans. The Pope's impatience was so great, and he was so afraid
+that his plans would be thwarted either by some intrigue of the
+emperor, or by the refusal of France, or by the grandees of the
+kingdom looking with evil eye upon the marriage, that he gave orders
+to embark at once, and sailed for Marseille, where he arrived toward
+the end of October, 1533.
+
+Notwithstanding its wealth, the house of the Medici was eclipsed on
+this occasion by the court of France. To show the lengths to which the
+Medici pushed their magnificence, it is enough to say that the "dozen"
+put into the bride's purse by the Pope were twelve gold medals of
+priceless historical value, which were then unique. But Francois I.,
+who loved the display of festivals, distinguished himself on this
+occasion. The wedding festivities of Henri de Valois and Catherine de'
+Medici lasted thirty-four days.
+
+It is useless to repeat the details, which have been given in all the
+histories of Provence and Marseille, as to this celebrated interview
+between the Pope and the king of France, which was opened by a jest of
+the Duke of Albany as to the duty of keeping fasts,--a jest mentioned
+by Brantome and much enjoyed by the court, which shows the tone of the
+manners of that day.
+
+Many conjectures have been made as to Catherine's barrenness, which
+lasted ten years. Strange calumnies still rest upon this queen, all of
+whose actions were fated to be misjudged. It is sufficient to say that
+the cause was solely in Henri II. After the difficulty was removed,
+Catherine had ten children. The delay was, in one respect, fortunate
+for France. If Henri II. had had children by Diane de Poitiers the
+politics of the kingdom would have been dangerously complicated. When
+the difficulty was removed the Duchesse de Valentinois had reached the
+period of a woman's second youth. This matter alone will show that the
+true life of Catherine de' Medici is still to be written, and also--as
+Napoleon said with profound wisdom--that the history of France should
+be either in one volume only, or one thousand.
+
+Here is a contemporaneous and succinct account of the meeting of
+Clement VII. and the king of France:
+
+  "His Holiness the Pope, having been conducted to the palace, which
+  was, as I have said, prepared beyond the port, every one retired
+  to their own quarters till the morrow, when his Holiness was to
+  make his entry; the which was made with great sumptuousness and
+  magnificence, he being seated in a chair carried on the shoulders
+  of two men and wearing his pontifical robes, but not the tiara.
+  Pacing before him was a white hackney, bearing the sacrament of
+  the altar,--the said hackney being led by reins of white silk held
+  by two footmen finely equipped. Next came all the cardinals in
+  their robes, on pontifical mules, and Madame la Duchesse d'Urbino
+  in great magnificence, accompanied by a vast number of ladies and
+  gentlemen, both French and Italian.
+
+  "The Holy Father having arrived in the midst of this company at
+  the place appointed for his lodging, every one retired; and all
+  this, being well-ordered, took place without disorder or tumult.
+  While the Pope was thus making his entry, the king crossed the
+  water in a frigate and went to the lodging the Pope had just
+  quitted, in order to go the next day and make obeisance to the
+  Holy Father as a Most Christian king.
+
+  "The next day the king being prepared set forth for the palace
+  where was the Pope, accompanied by the princes of the blood, such
+  as Monseigneur le Duc de Vendomois (father of the Vidame de
+  Chartres), the Comte de Sainct-Pol, Messieurs de Montpensier and
+  la Roche-sur-Yon, the Duc de Nemours (brother of the Duc de
+  Savoie) who died in this said place, the Duke of Albany, and many
+  others, whether counts, barons, or seigneurs; nearest to the king
+  was the Seigneur de Montmorency, his Grand-master.
+
+  "The king, being arrived at the palace, was received by the Pope
+  and all the college of cardinals, assembled in consistory, most
+  civilly. This done, each retired to the place ordained for him,
+  the king taking with him several cardinals to feast them,--among
+  them Cardinal de' Medici, nephew of the Pope, a very splendid man
+  with a fine retinue.
+
+  "On the morrow those persons chosen by his Holiness and by the
+  king began to assemble to discuss the matters for which the
+  meeting was made. First, the matter of the Faith was treated of,
+  and a bull was put forth repressing heresy and preventing that
+  things come to greater combustion than they now are.
+
+  "After this was concluded the marriage of the Duc d'Orleans,
+  second son of the king, with Catherine de' Medici, Duchesse
+  d'Urbino, niece of his Holiness, under the conditions such, or
+  like to those, as were proposed formerly by the Duke of Albany.
+  The said espousals were celebrated with great magnificence, and
+  our Holy Father himself wedded the pair. The marriage thus
+  consummated, the Holy Father held a consistory at which he created
+  four cardinals and devoted them to the king,--to wit: Cardinal Le
+  Veneur, formerly bishop of Lisieux and grand almoner; the Cardinal
+  de Boulogne of the family of la Chambre, brother on the mother's
+  side of the Duke of Albany; the Cardinal de Chatillon of the house
+  of Coligny, nephew of the Sire de Montmorency, and the Cardinal de
+  Givry."
+
+When Strozzi delivered the dowry in presence of the court he noticed
+some surprise on the part of the French seigneurs; they even said
+aloud that it was little enough for such a mesalliance (what would
+they have said in these days?). Cardinal Ippolito replied, saying:--
+
+"You must be ill-informed as to the secrets of your king. His Holiness
+has bound himself to give to France three pearls of inestimable value,
+namely: Genoa, Milan, and Naples."
+
+The Pope left Sebastiano Montecuculi to present himself to the court
+of France, to which the count offered his services, complaining of his
+treatment by Antonio di Leyva and Ferdinando di Gonzago, for which
+reason his services were accepted. Montecuculi was not made a part of
+Catherine's household, which was wholly composed of French men and
+women, for, by a law of the monarchy, the execution of which the Pope
+saw with great satisfaction, Catherine was naturalized by letters-
+patent as a Frenchwoman before the marriage. Montecuculi was appointed
+in the first instance to the household of the queen, the sister of
+Charles V. After a while he passed into the service of the dauphin as
+cup-bearer.
+
+The new Duchesse d'Orleans soon found herself a nullity at the court
+of Francois I. Her young husband was in love with Diane de Poitiers,
+who certainly, in the matter of birth, could rival Catherine, and was
+far more of a great lady than the little Florentine. The daughter of
+the Medici was also outdone by Queen Eleonore, sister of Charles V.,
+and by Madame d'Etampes, whose marriage with the head of the house of
+Brosse made her one of the most powerful and best titled women in
+France. Catherine's aunt the Duchess of Albany, the Queen of Navarre,
+the Duchesse de Guise, the Duchesse de Vendome, Madame la Connetable
+de Montmorency, and other women of like importance, eclipsed by birth
+and by their rights, as well as by their power at the most sumptuous
+court of France (not excepting that of Louis XIV.), the daughter of
+the Florentine grocers, who was richer and more illustrious through
+the house of the Tour de Boulogne than by her own family of Medici.
+
+The position of his niece was so bad and difficult that the republican
+Filippo Strozzi, wholly incapable of guiding her in the midst of such
+conflicting interests, left her after the first year, being recalled
+to Italy by the death of Clement VII. Catherine's conduct, when we
+remember that she was scarcely fifteen years old, was a model of
+prudence. She attached herself closely to the king, her father-in-law;
+she left him as little as she could, following him on horseback both
+in hunting and in war. Her idolatry for Francois I. saved the house of
+the Medici from all suspicion when the dauphin was poisoned. Catherine
+was then, and so was her husband, at the headquarters of the king in
+Provence; for Charles V. had speedily invaded France and the late
+scene of the marriage festivities had become the theatre of a cruel
+war.
+
+At the moment when Charles V. was put to flight, leaving the bones of
+his army in Provence, the dauphin was returning to Lyon by the Rhone.
+He stopped to sleep at Tournon, and, by way of pastime, practised some
+violent physical exercises,--which were nearly all the education his
+brother and he, in consequence of their detention as hostages, had
+ever received. The prince had the imprudence--it being the month of
+August, and the weather very hot--to ask for a glass of water, which
+Montecuculi, as his cup-bearer, gave to him, with ice in it. The
+dauphin died almost immediately. Francois I. adored his son. The
+dauphin was, according to all accounts, a charming young man. His
+father, in despair, gave the utmost publicity to the proceedings
+against Montecuculi, which he placed in the hands of the most able
+magistrates of that day. The count, after heroically enduring the
+first tortures without confessing anything, finally made admissions by
+which he implicated Charles V. and his two generals, Antonio di Leyva
+and Ferdinando di Gonzago. No affair was ever more solemnly debated.
+Here is what the king did, in the words of an ocular witness:--
+
+  "The king called an assembly at Lyon of all the princes of his
+  blood, all the knights of his order, and other great personages of
+  the kingdom; also the legal and papal nuncio, the cardinals who
+  were at his court, together with the ambassadors of England,
+  Scotland, Portugal, Venice, Ferrara, and others; also all the
+  princes and noble strangers, both Italian and German, who were
+  then residing at his court in great numbers. These all being
+  assembled, he caused to be read to them, in presence of each
+  other, from beginning to end, the trial of the unhappy man who
+  poisoned Monseigneur the late dauphin,--with all the
+  interrogatories, confessions, confrontings, and other ceremonies
+  usual in criminal trials; he, the king, not being willing that the
+  sentence should be executed until all present had given their
+  opinion on this heinous and miserable case."
+
+The fidelity, devotion, and cautious skill of the Comte de Montecuculi
+may seem extraordinary in our time, when all the world, even ministers
+of State, tell everything about the least little event with which they
+have to do; but in those days princes could find devoted servants, or
+knew how to choose them. Monarchical Moreys existed because in those
+days there was /faith/. Never ask devotion of /self-interest/, because
+such interest may change; but expect all from sentiments, religious
+faith, monarchical faith, patriotic faith. Those three beliefs
+produced such men as the Berthereaus of Geneva, the Sydneys and
+Straffords of England, the murderers of Thomas a Becket, the Jacques
+Coeurs, the Jeanne d'Arcs, the Richelieus, Dantons, Bonchamps,
+Talmonts, and also the Clements, Chabots, and others.
+
+The dauphin was poisoned in the same manner, and possibly by the same
+drug which afterwards served MADAME under Louis XIV. Pope Clement VII.
+had been dead two years; Duke Alessandro, plunged in debauchery,
+seemed to have no interest in the elevation of the Duc d'Orleans;
+Catherine, then seventeen, and full of admiration for her father-in-
+law, was with him at the time; Charles V. alone appeared to have an
+interest in his death, for Francois I. was negotiating for his son an
+alliance which would assuredly have aggrandized France. The count's
+confession was therefore very skilfully based on the passions and
+politics of the moment; Charles V. was then flying from France,
+leaving his armies buried in Provence with his happiness, his
+reputation, and his hopes of dominion. It is to be remarked that if
+torture had forced admissions from an innocent man, Francois I. gave
+Montecuculi full liberty to speak in presence of an imposing assembly,
+and before persons in whose eyes innocence had some chance to triumph.
+The king, who wanted the truth, sought it in good faith.
+
+In spite of her now brilliant future, Catherine's situation at court
+was not changed by the death of the dauphin. Her barrenness gave
+reason to fear a divorce in case her husband should ascend the throne.
+The dauphin was under the spell of Diane de Poitiers, who assumed to
+rival Madame d'Etampes, the king's mistress. Catherine redoubled in
+care and cajolery of her father-in-law, being well aware that her sole
+support was in him. The first ten years of Catherine's married life
+were years of ever-renewed grief, caused by the failure, one by one,
+of her hopes of pregnancy, and the vexations of her rivalry with
+Diane. Imagine what must have been the life of a young princess,
+watched by a jealous mistress who was supported by a powerful party,--
+the Catholic party,--and by the two powerful alliances Diane had made
+in marrying one daughter to Robert de la Mark, Duc de Bouillon, Prince
+of Sedan, and the other to Claude de Lorraine, Duc d'Aumale.
+
+Catherine, helpless between the party of Madame d'Etampes and the
+party of the Senechale (such was Diane's title during the reign of
+Francois I.), which divided the court and politics into factions for
+these mortal enemies, endeavored to make herself the friend of both
+Diane de Poitiers and Madame d'Etampes. She, who was destined to
+become so great a queen, played the part of a servant. Thus she served
+her apprenticeship in that double-faced policy which was ever the
+secret motor of her life. Later, the /queen/ was to stand between
+Catholics and Calvinists, just as the /woman/ had stood for ten years
+between Madame d'Etampes and Madame de Poitiers. She studied the
+contradictions of French politics; she saw Francois I. sustaining
+Calvin and the Lutherans in order to embarrass Charles V., and then,
+after secretly and patiently protecting the Reformation in Germany,
+and tolerating the residence of Calvin at the court of Navarre, he
+suddenly turned against it with excessive rigor. Catherine beheld on
+the one hand the court, and the women of the court, playing with the
+fire of heresy, and on the other, Diane at the head of the Catholic
+party with the Guises, solely because the Duchesse d'Etampes supported
+Calvin and the Protestants.
+
+Such was the political education of this queen, who saw in the cabinet
+of the king of France the same errors committed as in the house of the
+Medici. The dauphin opposed his father in everything; he was a bad
+son. He forgot the cruel but most vital maxim of royalty, namely, that
+thrones need solidarity; and that a son who creates opposition during
+the lifetime of his father must follow that father's policy when he
+mounts the throne. Spinosa, who was as great a statesman as he was a
+philosopher, said--in the case of one king succeeding another by
+insurrection or crime,--
+
+  "If the new king desires to secure the safety of his throne and of
+  his own life he must show such ardor in avenging the death of his
+  predecessor that no one shall feel a desire to commit the same
+  crime. But to avenge it /worthily/ it is not enough to shed the
+  blood of his subjects, he must approve the axioms of the king he
+  replaces, and take the same course in governing."
+
+It was the application of this maxim which gave Florence to the
+Medici. Cosmo I. caused to be assassinated at Venice, after eleven
+years' sway, the Florentine Brutus, and, as we have already said,
+persecuted the Strozzi. It was forgetfulness of this maxim which
+ruined Louis XVI. That king was false to every principle of royal
+government when he re-established the parliaments suppressed by his
+grandfather. Louis XV. saw the matter clearly. The parliaments, and
+notably that of Paris, counted for fully half in the troubles which
+necessitated the convocation of the States-general. The fault of Louis
+XV. was, that in breaking down that barrier which separated the throne
+from the people he did not erect a stronger; in other words, that he
+did not substitute for parliament a strong constitution of the
+provinces. There lay the remedy for the evils of the monarchy; thence
+should have come the voting on taxes, the regulation of them, and a
+slow approval of reforms that were necessary to the system of
+monarchy.
+
+The first act of Henri II. was to give his confidence to the
+Connetable de Montmorency, whom his father had enjoined him to leave
+in disgrace. The Connetable de Montmorency was, with Diane de
+Poitiers, to whom he was closely bound, the master of the State.
+Catherine was therefore less happy and less powerful after she became
+queen of France than while she was dauphiness. From 1543 she had a
+child every year for ten years, and was occupied with maternal cares
+during the period covered by the last three years of the reign of
+Francois I. and nearly the whole of the reign of Henri II. We may see
+in this recurring fecundity the influence of a rival, who was able
+thus to rid herself of the legitimate wife,--a barbarity of feminine
+policy which must have been one of Catherine's grievances against
+Diane.
+
+Thus set aside from public life, this superior woman passed her time
+in observing the self-interests of the court people and of the various
+parties which were formed about her. All the Italians who had followed
+her were objects of violent suspicion. After the execution of
+Montecuculi the Connetable de Montmorency, Diane, and many of the
+keenest politicians of the court were filled with suspicion of the
+Medici; though Francois I. always repelled it. Consequently, the
+Gondi, Strozzi, Ruggieri, Sardini, etc.,--in short, all those who were
+called distinctively "the Italians,"--were compelled to employ greater
+resources of mind, shrewd policy, and courage, to maintain themselves
+at court against the weight of disfavor which pressed upon them.
+
+During her husband's reign Catherine's amiability to Diane de Poitiers
+went to such great lengths that intelligent persons must regard it as
+proof of that profound dissimulation which men, events, and the
+conduct of Henri II. compelled Catherine de' Medici to employ. But
+they go too far when they declare that she never claimed her rights as
+wife and queen. In the first place, the sense of dignity which
+Catherine possessed in the highest degree forbade her claiming what
+historians call her rights as a wife. The ten children of the marriage
+explain Henri's conduct; and his wife's maternal occupations left him
+free to pass his time with Diane de Poitiers. But the king was never
+lacking in anything that was due to himself; and he gave Catherine an
+"entry" into Paris, to be crowned as queen, which was worthy of all
+such pageants that had ever taken place. The archives of the
+Parliament, and those of the Cour des Comptes, show that those two
+great bodies went to meet her outside of Paris as far as Saint Lazare.
+Here is an extract from du Tillet's account of it:--
+
+  "A platform had been erected at Saint-Lazare, on which was a
+  throne (du Tillet calls it a /chair de parement/). Catherine took
+  her seat upon it, wearing a surcoat, or species of ermine short-
+  cloak covered with precious stones, a bodice beneath it with the
+  royal mantle, and on her head a crown enriched with pearls and
+  diamonds, and held in place by the Marechale de la Mark, her lady
+  of honor. Around her /stood/ the princes of the blood, and other
+  princes and seigneurs, richly apparelled, also the chancellor of
+  France in a robe of gold damask on a background of crimson-red.
+  Before the queen, and on the same platform, were seated, in two
+  rows, twelve duchesses or countesses, wearing ermine surcoats,
+  bodices, robes, and circlets,--that is to say, the coronets of
+  duchesses and countesses. These were the Duchesses d'Estouteville,
+  Montpensier (elder and younger); the Princesses de la Roche-sur-
+  Yon; the Duchesses de Guise, de Nivernois, d'Aumale, de
+  Valentinois (Diane de Poitiers), Mademoiselle la batarde legitimee
+  de France (the title of the king's daughter, Diane, who was
+  Duchesse de Castro-Farnese and afterwards Duchesse de Montmorency-
+  Damville), Madame la Connetable, and Mademoiselle de Nemours;
+  without mentioning other demoiselles who were not seated. The four
+  presidents of the courts of justice, wearing their caps, several
+  other members of the court, and the clerk du Tillet, mounted the
+  platform, made reverent bows, and the chief judge, Lizet, kneeling
+  down, harangued the queen. The chancellor then knelt down and
+  answered. The queen made her entry at half-past three o'clock in
+  an open litter, having Madame Marguerite de France sitting
+  opposite to her, and on either side of the litter the Cardinals of
+  Amboise, Chatillon, Boulogne, and de Lenoncourt in their episcopal
+  robes. She left her litter at the church of Notre-Dame, where she
+  was received by the clergy. After offering her prayer, she was
+  conducted by the rue de la Calandre to the palace, where the royal
+  supper was served in the great hall. She there appeared, seated at
+  the middle of the marble table, beneath a velvet dais strewn with
+  golden fleur-de-lis."
+
+We may here put an end to one of those popular beliefs which are
+repeated in many writers from Sauval down. It has been said that Henri
+II. pushed his neglect of the proprieties so far as to put the
+initials of his mistress on the buildings which Catherine advised him
+to continue or to begin with so much magnificence. But the double
+monogram which can be seen at the Louvre offers a daily denial to
+those who are so little clear-sighted as to believe in silly nonsense
+which gratuitously insults our kings and queens. The H or Henri and
+the two C's of Catherine which back it, appear to represent the two
+D's of Diane. The coincidence may have pleased Henri II., but it is
+none the less true that the royal monogram contained officially the
+initial of the king and that of the queen. This is so true that the
+monogram can still be seen on the column of the Halle au Ble, which
+was built by Catherine alone. It can also be seen in the crypt of
+Saint-Denis, on the tomb which Catherine erected for herself in her
+lifetime beside that of Henri II., where her figure is modelled from
+nature by the sculptor to whom she sat for it.
+
+On a solemn occasion, when he was starting, March 25, 1552, for his
+expedition into Germany, Henri II. declared Catherine regent during
+his absence, and also in case of his death. Catherine's most cruel
+enemy, the author of "Marvellous Discourses on Catherine the Second's
+Behavior" admits that she carried on the government with universal
+approval and that the king was satisfied with her administration.
+Henri received both money and men at the time he wanted them; and
+finally, after the fatal day of Saint-Quentin, Catherine obtained
+considerable sums of money from the people of Paris, which she sent to
+Compiegne, where the king then was.
+
+In politics, Catherine made immense efforts to obtain a little
+influence. She was clever enough to bring the Connetable de
+Montmorency, all-powerful under Henri II., to her interests. We all
+know the terrible answer that the king made, on being harassed by
+Montmorency in her favor. This answer was the result of an attempt by
+Catherine to give the king good advice, in the few moments she was
+ever alone with him, when she explained the Florentine policy of
+pitting the grandees of the kingdom one against another and
+establishing the royal authority on their ruins. But Henri II., who
+saw things only through the eyes of Diane and the Connetable, was a
+truly feudal king and the friend of all the great families of his
+kingdom.
+
+After the futile attempt of the Connetable in her favor, which must
+have been made in the year 1556, Catherine began to cajole the Guises
+for the purpose of detaching them from Diane and opposing them to the
+Connetable. Unfortunately, Diane and Montmorency were as vehement
+against the Protestants as the Guises. There was therefore not the
+same animosity in their struggle as there might have been had the
+religious question entered it. Moreover, Diane boldly entered the
+lists against the queen's project by coquetting with the Guises and
+giving her daughter to the Duc d'Aumale. She even went so far that
+certain authors declared she gave more than mere good-will to the
+gallant Cardinal de Lorraine; and the lampooners of the time made the
+following quatrain on Henri II:
+
+  "Sire, if you're weak and let your will relax
+  Till Diane and Lorraine do govern you,
+  Pound, knead and mould, re-melt and model you,
+  Sire, you are nothing--nothing else than wax."
+
+It is impossible to regard as sincere the signs of grief and the
+ostentation of mourning which Catherine showed on the death of Henri
+II. The fact that the king was attached by an unalterable passion to
+Diane de Poitiers naturally made Catherine play the part of a
+neglected wife who adores her husband; but, like all women who act by
+their head, she persisted in this dissimulation and never ceased to
+speak tenderly of Henri II. In like manner Diane, as we know, wore
+mourning all her life for her husband the Senechal de Breze. Her
+colors were black and white, and the king was wearing them at the
+tournament when he was killed. Catherine, no doubt in imitation of her
+rival, wore mourning for Henri II. for the rest of her life. She
+showed a consummate perfidy toward Diane de Poitiers, to which
+historians have not given due attention. At the king's death the
+Duchesse de Valentinois was completely disgraced and shamefully
+abandoned by the Connetable, a man who was always below his
+reputation. Diane offered her estate and chateau of Chenonceaux to the
+queen. Catherine then said, in presence of witnesses:--
+
+"I can never forget that she made the happiness of my dear Henri. I am
+ashamed to accept her gift; I wish to give her a domain in place of
+it, and I shall offer her that of Chaumont-sur-Loire."
+
+Accordingly, the deed of exchange was signed at Blois in 1559. Diane,
+whose sons-in-law were the Duc d'Aumale and the Duc de Bouillon (then
+a sovereign prince), kept her wealth, and died in 1566 aged sixty-six.
+She was therefore nineteen years older than Henri II. These dates,
+taken from her epitaph which was copied from her tomb by the historian
+who concerned himself so much about her at the close of the last
+century, clear up quite a number of historical difficulties. Some
+historians have declared she was forty, others that she was sixteen at
+the time of her father's condemnation in 1523; in point of fact she
+was then twenty-four. After reading everything for and against her
+conduct towards Francois I. we are unable to affirm or to deny
+anything. This is one of the passages of history that will ever remain
+obscure. We may see by what happens in our own day how history is
+falsified at the very moment when events happen.
+
+Catherine, who had founded great hopes on the age of her rival, tried
+more than once to overthrow her. It was a dumb, underhand, terrible
+struggle. The day came when Catherine believed herself for a moment on
+the verge of success. In 1554, Diane, who was ill, begged the king to
+go to Saint-Germain and leave her for a short time until she
+recovered. This stately coquette did not choose to be seen in the
+midst of medical appliances and without the splendors of apparel.
+Catherine arranged, as a welcome to her husband, a magnificent ballet,
+in which six beautiful young girls were to recite a poem in his honor.
+She chose for this function Miss Fleming, a relation of her uncle the
+Duke of Albany, the handsomest young woman, some say, that was ever
+seen, white and very fair; also one of her own relations, Clarice
+Strozzi, a magnificent Italian with superb black hair, and hands that
+were of rare beauty; Miss Lewiston, maid of honor to Mary Stuart; Mary
+Stuart herself; Madame Elizabeth of France (who was afterwards that
+unfortunate Queen of Spain); and Madame Claude. Elizabeth and Claude
+were eight and nine years old, Mary Stuart twelve; evidently the queen
+intended to bring forward Miss Fleming and Clarice Strozzi and present
+them without rivals to the king. The king fell in love with Miss
+Fleming, by whom he had a natural son, Henri de Valois, Comte
+d'Angouleme, grand-prior of France. But the power and influence of
+Diane were not shaken. Like Madame de Pompadour with Louis XV., the
+Duchesse de Valentinois forgave all. But what sort of love did this
+attempt show in Catherine? Was it love to her husband or love of
+power? Women may decide.
+
+A great deal is said in these days of the license of the press; but it
+is difficult to imagine the lengths to which it went when printing was
+first invented. We know that Aretino, the Voltaire of his time, made
+kings and emperors tremble, more especially Charles V.; but the world
+does not know so well the audacity and license of pamphlets. The
+chateau de Chenonceaux, which we have just mentioned, was given to
+Diane, or rather not given, she was implored to accept it to make her
+forget one of the most horrible publications ever levelled against a
+woman, and which shows the violence of the warfare between herself and
+Madame d'Etampes. In 1537, when she was thirty-eight years of age, a
+rhymester of Champagne named Jean Voute, published a collection of
+Latin verses in which were three epigrams upon her. It is to be
+supposed that the poet was sure of protection in high places, for the
+pamphlet has a preface in praise of itself, signed by Salmon Macrin,
+first valet-de-chambre to the king. Only one passage is quotable from
+these epigrams, which are entitled: IN PICTAVIAM, ANAM AULIGAM.
+
+"A painted trap catches no game," says the poet, after telling Diane
+that she painted her face and bought her teeth and hair. "You may buy
+all that superficially makes a woman, but you can't buy that your
+lover wants; for he wants life, and you are dead."
+
+This collection, printed by Simon de Colines, is dedicated to a
+bishop!--to Francois Bohier, the brother of the man who, to save his
+credit at court and redeem his offence, offered to Diane, on the
+accession of Henri II., the chateau de Chenonceaux, built by his
+father, Thomas Bohier, a councillor of state under four kings: Louis
+XI., Charles VIII., Louis XII., and Francois I. What were the
+pamphlets published against Madame de Pompadour and against Marie-
+Antoinette compared to these verses, which might have been written by
+Martial? Voute must have made a bad end. The estate and chateau cost
+Diane nothing more than the forgiveness enjoined by the gospel. After
+all, the penalties inflicted on the press, though not decreed by
+juries, were somewhat more severe than those of to-day.
+
+The queens of France, on becoming widows, were required to remain in
+the king's chamber forty days without other light than that of wax
+tapers; they did not leave the room until after the burial of the
+king. This inviolable custom was a great annoyance to Catherine, who
+feared cabals; and, by chance, she found a means to evade it, thus:
+Cardinal de Lorraine, leaving, very early in the morning, the house of
+the /belle Romaine/, a celebrated courtesan of the period, who lived
+in the rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, was set upon and maltreated by a
+party of libertines. "On which his holiness, being much astonished"
+(says Henri Estienne), "gave out that the heretics were preparing
+ambushes against him." The court at once removed from Paris to Saint-
+Germain, and the queen-mother, declaring that she would not abandon
+the king her son, went with him.
+
+The accession of Francois II., the period at which Catherine
+confidently believed she could get possession of the regal power, was
+a moment of cruel disappointment, after the twenty-six years of misery
+she had lived through at the court of France. The Guises laid hands on
+power with incredible audacity. The Duc de Guise was placed in command
+of the army; the Connetable was dismissed; the cardinal took charge of
+the treasury and the clergy.
+
+Catherine now began her political career by a drama which, though it
+did not have the dreadful fame of those of later years, was,
+nevertheless, most horrible; and it must, undoubtedly, have accustomed
+her to the terrible after emotions of her life. While appearing to be
+in harmony with the Guises, she endeavored to pave the way for her
+ultimate triumph by seeking a support in the house of Bourbon, and the
+means she took were as follows: Whether it was that (before the death
+of Henri II.), and after fruitlessly attempting violent measures, she
+wished to awaken jealousy in order to bring the king back to her; or
+whether as she approached middle-age it seemed to her cruel that she
+had never known love, certain it is that she showed a strong interest
+in a seigneur of the royal blood, Francois de Vendome, son of Louis de
+Vendome (the house from which that of the Bourbons sprang), and Vidame
+de Chartres, the name under which he is known in history. The secret
+hatred which Catherine bore to Diane was revealed in many ways, to
+which historians, preoccupied by political interests, have paid no
+attention. Catherine's attachment to the vidame proceeded from the
+fact that the young man had offered an insult to the favorite. Diane's
+greatest ambition was for the honor of an alliance with the royal
+family of France. The hand of her second daughter (afterwards Duchesse
+d'Aumale) was offered on her behalf to the Vidame de Chartres, who was
+kept poor by the far-sighted policy of Francois I. In fact, when the
+Vidame de Chartres and the Prince de Conde first came to court,
+Francois I. gave them--what? The office of chamberlain, with a paltry
+salary of twelve hundred crowns a year, the same that he gave to the
+simplest gentlemen. Though Diane de Poitiers offered an immense dowry,
+a fine office under the crown, and the favor of the king, the vidame
+refused. After which, this Bourbon, already factious, married Jeanne,
+daughter of the Baron d'Estissac, by whom he had no children. This act
+of pride naturally commended him to Catherine, who greeted him after
+that with marked favor and made a devoted friend of him.
+
+Historians have compared the last Duc de Montmorency, beheaded at
+Toulouse, to the Vidame de Chartres, in the art of pleasing, in
+attainments, accomplishments, and talent. Henri II. showed no
+jealousy; he seemed not even to suppose that a queen of France could
+fail in her duty, or a Medici forget the honor done to her by a
+Valois. But during this time when the queen was, it is said,
+coquetting with the Vidame de Chartres, the king, after the birth of
+her last child, had virtually abandoned her. This attempt at making
+him jealous was to no purpose, for Henri died wearing the colors of
+Diane de Poitiers.
+
+At the time of the king's death Catherine was, therefore, on terms of
+gallantry with the vidame,--a situation which was quite in conformity
+with the manners and morals of a time when love was both so chivalrous
+and so licentious that the noblest actions were as natural as the most
+blamable; although historians, as usual, have committed the mistake in
+this case of taking the exception for the rule.
+
+The four sons of Henri II. of course rendered null the position of the
+Bourbons, who were all extremely poor and were now crushed down by the
+contempt which the Connetable de Montmorency's treachery brought upon
+them, in spite of the fact that the latter had thought best to fly the
+kingdom.
+
+The Vidame de Chartres--who was to the first Prince de Conde what
+Richelieu was to Mazarin, his father in policy, his model, and, above
+all, his master in gallantry--concealed the excessive ambition of his
+house beneath an external appearance of light-hearted gaiety. Unable
+during the reign of Henri II. to make head against the Guises, the
+Montmorencys, the Scottish princes, the cardinals, and the Bouillons,
+he distinguished himself by his graceful bearing, his manners, his
+wit, which won him the favor of many charming women and the heart of
+some for whom he cared nothing. He was one of those privileged beings
+whose seductions are irresistible, and who owe to love the power of
+maintaining themselves according to their rank. The Bourbons would not
+have resented, as did Jarnac, the slander of la Chataigneraie; they
+were willing enough to accept the lands and castles of their
+mistresses,--witness the Prince de Conde, who accepted the estate of
+Saint-Valery from Madame la Marechale de Saint-Andre.
+
+During the first twenty days of mourning after the death of Henri II.
+the situation of the vidame suddenly changed. As the object of the
+queen mother's regard, and permitted to pay his court to her as court
+is paid to a queen, very secretly, he seemed destined to play an
+important role, and Catherine did, in fact, resolve to use him. The
+vidame received letters from her for the Prince de Conde, in which she
+pointed out to the latter the necessity of an alliance against the
+Guises. Informed of this intrigue, the Guises entered the queen's
+chamber for the purpose of compelling her to issue an order consigning
+the vidame to the Bastille, and Catherine, to save herself, was under
+the hard necessity of obeying them. After a captivity of some months,
+the vidame died on the very day he left prison, which was shortly
+before the conspiracy of Amboise. Such was the conclusion of the first
+and only amour of Catherine de' Medici. Protestant historians have
+said that the queen caused the vidame to be poisoned, to lay the
+secret of her gallantries in a tomb!
+
+We have now shown what was the apprenticeship of this woman for the
+exercise of her royal power.
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+THE CALVINIST MARTYR
+
+
+
+I
+
+A HOUSE WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS AT THE CORNER OF A STREET
+WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS IN A PARIS WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS
+
+Few persons in the present day know how plain and unpretentious were
+the dwellings of the burghers of Paris in the sixteenth century, and
+how simple their lives. Perhaps this simplicity of habits and of
+thought was the cause of the grandeur of that old bourgeoisie which
+was certainly grand, free, and noble,--more so, perhaps, than the
+bourgeoisie of the present day. Its history is still to be written; it
+requires and it awaits a man of genius. This reflection will doubtless
+rise to the lips of every one after reading the almost unknown
+incident which forms the basis of this Study and is one of the most
+remarkable facts in the history of that bourgeoisie. It will not be
+the first time in history that conclusion has preceded facts.
+
+In 1560, the houses of the rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie skirted the
+left bank of the Seine, between the pont Notre-Dame and the pont au
+Change. A public footpath and the houses then occupied the space
+covered by the present roadway. Each house, standing almost in the
+river, allowed its dwellers to get down to the water by stone or
+wooden stairways, closed and protected by strong iron railings or
+wooden gates, clamped with iron. The houses, like those in Venice, had
+an entrance on /terra firma/ and a water entrance. At the moment when
+the present sketch is published, only one of these houses remains to
+recall the old Paris of which we speak, and that is soon to disappear;
+it stands at the corner of the Petit-Pont, directly opposite to the
+guard-house of the Hotel-Dieu.
+
+Formerly each dwelling presented on the river-side the fantastic
+appearance given either by the trade of its occupant and his habits,
+or by the originality of the exterior constructions invented by the
+proprietors to use or abuse the Seine. The bridges being encumbered
+with more mills than the necessities of navigation could allow, the
+Seine formed as many enclosed basins as there were bridges. Some of
+these basins in the heart of old Paris would have offered precious
+scenes and tones of color to painters. What a forest of crossbeams
+supported the mills with their huge sails and their wheels! What
+strange effects were produced by the piles or props driven into the
+water to project the upper floors of the houses above the stream!
+Unfortunately, the art of genre painting did not exist in those days,
+and that of engraving was in its infancy. We have therefore lost that
+curious spectacle, still offered, though in miniature, by certain
+provincial towns, where the rivers are overhung with wooden houses,
+and where, as at Vendome, the basins, full of water grasses, are
+enclosed by immense iron railings, to isolate each proprietor's share
+of the stream, which extends from bank to bank.
+
+The name of this street, which has now disappeared from the map,
+sufficiently indicates the trade that was carried on in it. In those
+days the merchants of each class of commerce, instead of dispersing
+themselves about the city, kept together in the same neighborhood and
+protected themselves mutually. Associated in corporations which
+limited their number, they were still further united into guilds by
+the Church. In this way prices were maintained. Also, the masters were
+not at the mercy of their workmen, and did not obey their whims as
+they do to-day; on the contrary, they made them their children, their
+apprentices, took care of them, and taught them the intricacies of the
+trade. In order to become a master, a workman had to produce a
+masterpiece, which was always dedicated to the saint of his guild.
+Will any one dare to say that the absence of competition destroyed the
+desire for perfection, or lessened the beauty of products? What say
+you, you whose admiration for the masterpieces of past ages has
+created the modern trade of the sellers of bric-a-brac?
+
+In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the trade of the furrier was
+one of the most flourishing industries. The difficulty of obtaining
+furs, which, being all brought from the north, required long and
+perilous journeys, gave a very high price and value to those products.
+Then, as now, high prices led to consumption; for vanity likes to
+override obstacles. In France, as in other kingdoms, not only did
+royal ordinances restrict the use of furs to the nobility (proved by
+the part which ermine plays in the old blazons), but also certain rare
+furs, such as /vair/ (which was undoubtedly Siberian sable), could not
+be worn by any but kings, dukes, and certain lords clothed with
+official powers. A distinction was made between the greater and lesser
+/vair/. The very name has been so long disused, that in a vast number
+of editions of Perrault's famous tale, Cinderella's slipper, which was
+no doubt of /vair/ (the fur), is said to have been made of /verre/
+(glass). Lately one of our most distinguished poets was obliged to
+establish the true orthography of the word for the instruction of his
+brother-feuilletonists in giving an account of the opera of the
+"Cenerentola," where the symbolic slipper has been replaced by a ring,
+which symbolizes nothing at all.
+
+Naturally the sumptuary laws about the wearing of fur were perpetually
+infringed upon, to the great satisfaction of the furriers. The
+costliness of stuffs and furs made a garment in those days a durable
+thing,--as lasting as the furniture, the armor, and other items of
+that strong life of the fifteenth century. A woman of rank, a
+seigneur, all rich men, also all the burghers, possessed at the most
+two garments for each season, which lasted their lifetime and beyond
+it. These garments were bequeathed to their children. Consequently the
+clause in the marriage-contract relating to arms and clothes, which in
+these days is almost a dead letter because of the small value of
+wardrobes that need constant renewing, was then of much importance.
+Great costs brought with them solidity. The toilet of a woman
+constituted a large capital; it was reckoned among the family
+possessions, and was kept in those enormous chests which threaten to
+break through the floors of our modern houses. The jewels of a woman
+of 1840 would have been the /undress/ ornaments of a great lady in
+1540.
+
+To-day, the discovery of America, the facilities of transportation,
+the ruin of social distinctions which has paved the way for the ruin
+of apparent distinctions, has reduced the trade of the furrier to what
+it now is,--next to nothing. The article which a furrier sells to-day,
+as in former days, for twenty /livres/ has followed the depreciation
+of money: formerly the /livre/, which is now worth one franc and is
+usually so called, was worth twenty francs. To-day, the lesser
+bourgeoisie and the courtesans who edge their capes with sable, are
+ignorant than in 1440 an ill-disposed police-officer would have
+incontinently arrested them and marched them before the justice at the
+Chatelet. Englishwomen, who are so fond of ermine, do not know that in
+former times none but queens, duchesses, and chancellors were allowed
+to wear that royal fur. There are to-day in France several ennobled
+families whose true name is Pelletier or Lepelletier, the origin of
+which is evidently derived from some rich furrier's counter, for most
+of our burgher's names began in some such way.
+
+This digression will explain, not only the long feud as to precedence
+which the guild of drapers maintained for two centuries against the
+guild of furriers and also of mercers (each claiming the right to walk
+first, as being the most important guild in Paris), but it will also
+serve to explain the importance of the Sieur Lecamus, a furrier
+honored with the custom of two queens, Catherine de' Medici and Mary
+Stuart, also the custom of the parliament,--a man who for twenty years
+was the syndic of his corporation, and who lived in the street we have
+just described.
+
+The house of Lecamus was one of three which formed the three angles of
+the open space at the end of the pont au Change, where nothing now
+remains but the tower of the Palais de Justice, which made the fourth
+angle. On the corner of this house, which stood at the angle of the
+pont au Change and the quai now called the quai aux Fleurs, the
+architect had constructed a little shrine for a Madonna, which was
+always lighted by wax-tapers and decked with real flowers in summer
+and artificial ones in winter. On the side of the house toward the rue
+du Pont, as on the side toward the rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie, the
+upper story of the house was supported by wooden pillars. All the
+houses in this mercantile quarter had an arcade behind these pillars,
+where the passers in the street walked under cover on a ground of
+trodden mud which kept the place always dirty. In all French towns
+these arcades or galleries are called /les piliers/, a general term to
+which was added the name of the business transacted under them,--as
+"piliers des Halles" (markets), "piliers de la Boucherie" (butchers).
+
+These galleries, a necessity in the Parisian climate, which is so
+changeable and so rainy, gave this part of the city a peculiar
+character of its own; but they have now disappeared. Not a single
+house in the river bank remains, and not more than about a hundred
+feet of the old "piliers des Halles," the last that have resisted the
+action of time, are left; and before long even that relic of the
+sombre labyrinth of old Paris will be demolished. Certainly, the
+existence of such old ruins of the middle-ages is incompatible with
+the grandeurs of modern Paris. These observations are meant not so
+much to regret the destruction of the old town, as to preserve in
+words, and by the history of those who lived there, the memory of a
+place now turned to dust, and to excuse the following description,
+which may be precious to a future age now treading on the heels of our
+own.
+
+The walls of this house were of wood covered with slate. The spaces
+between the uprights had been filled in, as we may still see in some
+provincial towns, with brick, so placed, by reversing their thickness,
+as to make a pattern called "Hungarian point." The window-casings and
+lintels, also in wood, were richly carved, and so was the corner
+pillar where it rose above the shrine of the Madonna, and all the
+other pillars in front of the house. Each window, and each main beam
+which separated the different storeys, was covered with arabesques of
+fantastic personages and animals wreathed with conventional foliage.
+On the street side, as on the river side, the house was capped with a
+roof looking as if two cards were set up one against the other,--thus
+presenting a gable to the street and a gable to the water. This roof,
+like the roof of a Swiss chalet, overhung the building so far that on
+the second floor there was an outside gallery with a balustrade, on
+which the owners of the house could walk under cover and survey the
+street, also the river basin between the bridges and the two lines of
+houses.
+
+These houses on the river bank were very valuable. In those days a
+system of drains and fountains was still to be invented; nothing of
+the kind as yet existed except the circuit sewer, constructed by
+Aubriot, provost of Paris under Charles the Wise, who also built the
+Bastille, the pont Saint-Michel and other bridges, and was the first
+man of genius who ever thought of the sanitary improvement of Paris.
+The houses situated like that of Lecamus took from the river the water
+necessary for the purposes of life, and also made the river serve as a
+natural drain for rain-water and household refuse. The great works
+that the "merchants' provosts" did in this direction are fast
+disappearing. Middle-aged persons alone can remember to have seen the
+great holes in the rue Montmartre, rue du Temple, etc., down which the
+waters poured. Those terrible open jaws were in the olden time of
+immense benefit to Paris. Their place will probably be forever marked
+by the sudden rise of the paved roadways at the spots where they
+opened,--another archaeological detail which will be quite inexplicable
+to the historian two centuries hence. One day, about 1816, a little
+girl who was carrying a case of diamonds to an actress at the Ambigu,
+for her part as queen, was overtaken by a shower and so nearly washed
+down the great drainhole in the rue du Temple that she would have
+disappeared had it not been for a passer who heard her cries.
+Unluckily, she had let go the diamonds, which were, however, recovered
+later at a man-hole. This event made a great noise, and gave rise to
+many petitions against these engulfers of water and little girls. They
+were singular constructions about five feet high, furnished with iron
+railings, more or less movable, which often caused the inundation of
+the neighboring cellars, whenever the artificial river produced by
+sudden rains was arrested in its course by the filth and refuse
+collected about these railings, which the owners of the abutting
+houses sometimes forgot to open.
+
+The front of this shop of the Sieur Lecamus was all window, formed of
+sashes of leaded panes, which made the interior very dark. The furs
+were taken for selection to the houses of rich customers. As for those
+who came to the shop to buy, the goods were shown to them outside,
+between the pillars,--the arcade being, let us remark, encumbered
+during the day-time with tables, and clerks sitting on stools, such as
+we all remember seeing some fifteen years ago under the "piliers des
+Halles." From these outposts, the clerks and apprentices talked,
+questioned, answered each other, and called to the passers,--customs
+which the great Walter Scott has made use of in his "Fortunes of
+Nigel."
+
+The sign, which represented an ermine, hung outside, as we still see
+in some village hostelries, from a rich bracket of gilded iron
+filagree. Above the ermine, on one side of the sign, were the words:--
+
+                 LECAMVS
+
+                 FURRIER
+
+TO MADAME LA ROYNE ET DU ROY NOSTRE SIRE.
+
+On the other side of the sign were the words:--
+
+         TO MADAME LA ROYNE-MERE
+
+       AND MESSIEURS DV PARLEMENT.
+
+The words "Madame la Royne-mere" had been lately added. The gilding
+was fresh. This addition showed the recent changes produced by the
+sudden and violent death of Henri II., which overturned many fortunes
+at court and began that of the Guises.
+
+The back-shop opened on the river. In this room usually sat the
+respectable proprietor himself and Mademoiselle Lecamus. In those days
+the wife of a man who was not noble had no right to the title of dame,
+"madame"; but the wives of the burghers of Paris were allowed to use
+that of "mademoiselle," in virtue of privileges granted and confirmed
+to their husbands by the several kings to whom they had done service.
+Between this back-shop and the main shop was the well of a corkscrew-
+staircase which gave access to the upper story, where were the great
+ware-room and the dwelling-rooms of the old couple, and the garrets
+lighted by skylights, where slept the children, the servant-woman, the
+apprentices, and the clerks.
+
+This crowding of families, servants, and apprentices, the little space
+which each took up in the building where the apprentices all slept in
+one large chamber under the roof, explains the enormous population of
+Paris then agglomerated on one-tenth of the surface of the present
+city; also the queer details of private life in the middle ages; also,
+the contrivances of love which, with all due deference to historians,
+are found only in the pages of the romance-writers, without whom they
+would be lost to the world. At this period very great /seigneurs/,
+such, for instance, as Admiral de Coligny, occupied three rooms, and
+their suites lived at some neighboring inn. There were not, in those
+days, more than fifty private mansions in Paris, and those were fifty
+palaces belonging to sovereign princes, or to great vassals, whose way
+of living was superior to that of the greatest German rulers, such as
+the Duke of Bavaria and the Elector of Saxony.
+
+The kitchen of the Lecamus family was beneath the back-shop and looked
+out upon the river. It had a glass door opening upon a sort of iron
+balcony, from which the cook drew up water in a bucket, and where the
+household washing was done. The back-shop was made the dining-room,
+office, and salon of the merchant. In this important room (in all such
+houses richly panelled and adorned with some special work of art, and
+also a carved chest) the life of the merchant was passed; there the
+joyous suppers after the work of the day was over, there the secret
+conferences on the political interests of the burghers and of royalty
+took place. The formidable corporations of Paris were at that time
+able to arm a hundred thousand men. Therefore the opinions of the
+merchants were backed by their servants, their clerks, their
+apprentices, their workmen. The burghers had a chief in the "provost
+of the merchants" who commanded them, and in the Hotel de Ville, a
+palace where they possessed the right to assemble. In the famous
+"burghers' parlor" their solemn deliberations took place. Had it not
+been for the continual sacrifices which by that time made war
+intolerable to the corporations, who were weary of their losses and of
+the famine, Henri IV., that factionist who became king, might never
+perhaps have entered Paris.
+
+Every one can now picture to himself the appearance of this corner of
+old Paris, where the bridge and quai still are, where the trees of the
+quai aux Fleurs now stand, but where no trace remains of the period of
+which we write except the tall and famous tower of the Palais de
+Justice, from which the signal was given for the Saint Bartholomew.
+Strange circumstance! one of the houses standing at the foot of that
+tower then surrounded by wooden shops, that, namely, of Lecamus, was
+about to witness the birth of facts which were destined to prepare for
+that night of massacre, which was, unhappily, more favorable than
+fatal to Calvinism.
+
+At the moment when our history begins, the audacity of the new
+religious doctrines was putting all Paris in a ferment. A Scotchman
+named Stuart had just assassinated President Minard, the member of the
+Parliament to whom public opinion attributed the largest share in the
+execution of Councillor Anne du Bourg; who was burned on the place de
+Greve after the king's tailor--to whom Henri II. and Diane de Poitiers
+had caused the torture of the "question" to be applied in their very
+presence. Paris was so closely watched that the archers compelled all
+passers along the street to pray before the shrines of the Madonna so
+as to discover heretics by their unwillingness or even refusal to do
+an act contrary to their beliefs.
+
+The two archers who were stationed at the corner of the Lecamus house
+had departed, and Cristophe, son of the furrier, vehemently suspected
+of deserting Catholicism, was able to leave the shop without fear of
+being made to adore the Virgin. By seven in the evening, in April,
+1560, darkness was already falling, and the apprentices, seeing no
+signs of customers on either side of the arcade, were beginning to
+take in the merchandise exposed as samples beneath the pillars, in
+order to close the shop. Christophe Lecamus, an ardent young man about
+twenty-two years old, was standing on the sill of the shop-door,
+apparently watching the apprentices.
+
+"Monsieur," said one of them, addressing Christophe and pointing to a
+man who was walking to and fro under the gallery with an air of
+indecision, "perhaps that's a thief or a spy; anyhow, the shabby
+wretch can't be an honest man; if he wanted to speak to us he would
+come over frankly, instead of sidling along as he does--and what a
+face!" continued the apprentice, mimicking the man, "with his nose in
+his cloak, his yellow eyes, and that famished look!"
+
+When the stranger thus described caught sight of Christophe alone on
+the door-sill, he suddenly left the opposite gallery where he was then
+walking, crossed the street rapidly, and came under the arcade in
+front of the Lecamus house. There he passed slowly along in front of
+the shop, and before the apprentices returned to close the outer
+shutters he said to Christophe in a low voice:--
+
+"I am Chaudieu."
+
+Hearing the name of one of the most illustrious ministers and devoted
+actors in the terrible drama called "The Reformation," Christophe
+quivered as a faithful peasant might have quivered on recognizing his
+disguised king.
+
+"Perhaps you would like to see some furs? Though it is almost dark I
+will show you some myself," said Christophe, wishing to throw the
+apprentices, whom he heard behind him, off the scent.
+
+With a wave of his hand he invited the minister to enter the shop, but
+the latter replied that he preferred to converse outside. Christophe
+then fetched his cap and followed the disciple of Calvin.
+
+Though banished by an edict, Chaudieu, the secret envoy of Theodore de
+Beze and Calvin (who were directing the French Reformation from
+Geneva), went and came, risking the cruel punishment to which the
+Parliament, in unison with the Church and Royalty, had condemned one
+of their number, the celebrated Anne du Bourg, in order to make a
+terrible example. Chaudieu, whose brother was a captain and one of
+Admiral Coligny's best soldiers, was a powerful auxiliary by whose arm
+Calvin shook France at the beginning of the twenty two years of
+religious warfare now on the point of breaking out. This minister was
+one of the hidden wheels whose movements can best exhibit the wide-
+spread action of the Reform.
+
+Chaudieu led Christophe to the water's edge through an underground
+passage, which was like that of the Marion tunnel filled up by the
+authorities about ten years ago. This passage, which was situated
+between the Lecamus house and the one adjoining it, ran under the rue
+de la Vieille-Pelleterie, and was called the Pont-aux-Fourreurs. It
+was used by the dyers of the City to go to the river and wash their
+flax and silks, and other stuffs. A little boat was at the entrance of
+it, rowed by a single sailor. In the bow was a man unknown to
+Christophe, a man of low stature and very simply dressed. Chaudieu and
+Christophe entered the boat, which in a moment was in the middle of
+the Seine; the sailor then directed its course beneath one of the
+wooden arches of the pont au Change, where he tied up quickly to an
+iron ring. As yet, no one had said a word.
+
+"Here we can speak without fear; there are no traitors or spies here,"
+said Chaudieu, looking at the two as yet unnamed men. Then, turning an
+ardent face to Christophe, "Are you," he said, "full of that devotion
+that should animate a martyr? Are you ready to endure all for our
+sacred cause? Do you fear the tortures applied to the Councillor du
+Bourg, to the king's tailor,--tortures which await the majority of
+us?"
+
+"I shall confess the gospel," replied Lecamus, simply, looking at the
+windows of his father's back-shop.
+
+The family lamp, standing on the table where his father was making up
+his books for the day, spoke to him, no doubt, of the joys of family
+and the peaceful existence which he now renounced. The vision was
+rapid, but complete. His mind took in, at a glance, the burgher
+quarter full of its own harmonies, where his happy childhood had been
+spent, where lived his promised bride, Babette Lallier, where all
+things promised him a sweet and full existence; he saw the past; he
+saw the future, and he sacrificed it, or, at any rate, he staked it
+all. Such were the men of that day.
+
+"We need ask no more," said the impetuous sailor; "we know him for one
+of our /saints/. If the Scotchman had not done the deed he would kill
+us that infamous Minard."
+
+"Yes," said Lecamus, "my life belongs to the church; I shall give it
+with joy for the triumph of the Reformation, on which I have seriously
+reflected. I know that what we do is for the happiness of the peoples.
+In two words: Popery drives to celibacy, the Reformation establishes
+the family. It is time to rid France of her monks, to restore their
+lands to the Crown, who will, sooner or later, sell them to the
+burghers. Let us learn to die for our children, and make our families
+some day free and prosperous."
+
+The face of the young enthusiast, that of Chaudieu, that of the
+sailor, that of the stranger seated in the bow, lighted by the last
+gleams of the twilight, formed a picture which ought the more to be
+described because the description contains in itself the whole history
+of the times--if it is, indeed, true that to certain men it is given
+to sum up in their own persons the spirit of their age.
+
+The religious reform undertaken by Luther in Germany, John Knox in
+Scotland, Calvin in France, took hold especially of those minds in the
+lower classes into which thought had penetrated. The great lords
+sustained the movement only to serve interests that were foreign to
+the religious cause. To these two classes were added adventurers,
+ruined noblemen, younger sons, to whom all troubles were equally
+acceptable. But among the artisan and merchant classes the new faith
+was sincere and based on calculation. The masses of the poorer people
+adhered at once to a religion which gave the ecclesiastical property
+to the State, and deprived the dignitaries of the Church of their
+enormous revenues. Commerce everywhere reckoned up the profits of this
+religious operation, and devoted itself body, soul, and purse, to the
+cause.
+
+But among the young men of the French bourgeoisie the Protestant
+movement found that noble inclination to sacrifices of all kinds which
+inspires youth, to which selfishness is, as yet, unknown. Eminent men,
+sagacious minds, discerned the Republic in the Reformation; they
+desired to establish throughout Europe the government of the United
+Provinces, which ended by triumphing over the greatest Power of those
+times,--Spain, under Philip the Second, represented in the Low
+Countries by the Duke of Alba. Jean Hotoman was then meditating his
+famous book, in which this project is put forth,--a book which spread
+throughout France the leaven of these ideas, which were stirred up
+anew by the Ligue, repressed by Richelieu, then by Louis XIV., always
+protected by the younger branches, by the house of Orleans in 1789, as
+by the house of Bourbon in 1589. Whoso says "Investigate" says
+"Revolt." All revolt is either the cloak that hides a prince, or the
+swaddling-clothes of a new mastery. The house of Bourbon, the younger
+sons of the Valois, were at work beneath the surface of the
+Reformation.
+
+At the moment when the little boat floated beneath the arch of the
+pont au Change the question was strangely complicated by the ambitions
+of the Guises, who were rivalling the Bourbons. Thus the Crown,
+represented by Catherine de' Medici, was able to sustain the struggle
+for thirty years by pitting the one house against the other house;
+whereas later, the Crown, instead of standing between various jealous
+ambitions, found itself without a barrier, face to face with the
+people: Richelieu and Louis XIV. had broken down the barrier of the
+Nobility; Louis XV. had broken down that of the Parliaments. Alone
+before the people, as Louis XVI. was, a king must inevitably succumb.
+
+Christophe Lecamus was a fine representative of the ardent and devoted
+portion of the people. His wan face had the sharp hectic tones which
+distinguish certain fair complexions; his hair was yellow, of a
+coppery shade; his gray-blue eyes were sparkling. In them alone was
+his fine soul visible; for his ill-proportioned face did not atone for
+its triangular shape by the noble mien of an elevated mind, and his
+low forehead indicated only extreme energy. Life seemed to centre in
+his chest, which was rather hollow. More nervous than sanguine,
+Cristophe's bodily appearance was thin and threadlike, but wiry. His
+pointed noise expressed the shrewdness of the people, and his
+countenance revealed an intelligence capable of conducting itself well
+on a single point of the circumference, without having the faculty of
+seeing all around it. His eyes, the arching brows of which, scarcely
+covered with a whitish down, projected like an awning, were strongly
+circled by a pale-blue band, the skin being white and shining at the
+spring of the nose,--a sign which almost always denotes excessive
+enthusiasm. Christophe was of the people,--the people who devote
+themselves, who fight for their devotions, who let themselves be
+inveigled and betrayed; intelligent enough to comprehend and serve an
+idea, too upright to turn it to his own account, too noble to sell
+himself.
+
+Contrasting with this son of Lecamus, Chaudieu, the ardent minister,
+with brown hair thinned by vigils, a yellow skin, an eloquent mouth, a
+militant brow, with flaming brown eyes, and a short and prominent
+chin, embodied well the Christian faith which brought to the
+Reformation so many sincere and fanatical pastors, whose courage and
+spirit aroused the populations. The aide-de-camp of Calvin and
+Theodore de Beze contrasted admirably with the son of the furrier. He
+represented the fiery cause of which the effect was seen in
+Christophe.
+
+The sailor, an impetuous being, tanned by the open air, accustomed to
+dewy nights and burning days, with closed lips, hasty gestures, orange
+eyes, ravenous as those of a vulture, and black, frizzled hair, was
+the embodiment of an adventurer who risks all in a venture, as a
+gambler stakes all on a card. His whole appearance revealed terrific
+passions, and an audacity that flinched at nothing. His vigorous
+muscles were made to be quiescent as well as to act. His manner was
+more audacious than noble. His nose, though thin, turned up and
+snuffed battle. He seemed agile and capable. You would have known him
+in all ages for the leader of a party. If he were not of the
+Reformation, he might have been Pizarro, Fernando Cortez, or Morgan
+the Exterminator,--a man of violent action of some kind.
+
+The fourth man, sitting on a thwart wrapped in his cloak, belonged,
+evidently, to the highest portion of society. The fineness of his
+linen, its cut, the material and scent of his clothing, the style and
+skin of his gloves, showed him to be a man of courts, just as his
+bearing, his haughtiness, his composure and his all-embracing glance
+proved him to be a man of war. The aspect of this personage made a
+spectator uneasy in the first place, and then inclined him to respect.
+We respect a man who respects himself. Though short and deformed, his
+manners instantly redeemed the disadvantages of his figure. The ice
+once broken, he showed a lively rapidity of decision, with an
+indefinable dash and fire which made him seem affable and winning. He
+had the blue eyes and the curved nose of the house of Navarre, and the
+Spanish cut of the marked features which were in after days the type
+of the Bourbon kings.
+
+In a word, the scene now assumed a startling interest.
+
+"Well," said Chaudieu, as young Lecamus ended his speech, "this
+boatman is La Renaudie. And here is Monsiegneur the Prince de Conde,"
+he added, motioning to the deformed little man.
+
+Thus these four men represented the faith of the people, the spirit of
+the Scriptures, the mailed hand of the soldier, and royalty itself
+hidden in that dark shadow of the bridge.
+
+"You shall now know what we expect of you," resumed the minister,
+after allowing a short pause for Christophe's astonishment. "In order
+that you may make no mistake, we feel obliged to initiate you into the
+most important secrets of the Reformation."
+
+The prince and La Renaudie emphasized the minister's speech by a
+gesture, the latter having paused to allow the prince to speak, if he
+so wished. Like all great men engaged in plotting, whose system it is
+to conceal their hand until the decisive moment, the prince kept
+silence--but not from cowardice. In these crises he was always the
+soul of the conspiracy; recoiling from no danger and ready to risk his
+own head; but from a sort of royal dignity he left the explanation of
+the enterprise to his minister, and contented himself with studying
+the new instrument he was about to use.
+
+"My child," said Chaudieu, in the Huguenot style of address, "we are
+about to do battle for the first time with the Roman prostitute. In a
+few days either our legions will be dying on the scaffold, or the
+Guises will be dead. This is the first call to arms on behalf of our
+religion in France, and France will not lay down those arms till they
+have conquered. The question, mark you this, concerns the nation, not
+the kingdom. The majority of the nobles of the kingdom see plainly
+what the Cardinal de Lorraine and his brother are seeking. Under
+pretext of defending the Catholic religion, the house of Lorraine
+means to claim the crown of France as its patrimony. Relying on the
+Church, it has made the Church a formidable ally; the monks are its
+support, its acolytes, its spies. It has assumed the post of guardian
+to the throne it is seeking to usurp; it protects the house of Valois
+which it means to destroy. We have decided to take up arms because the
+liberties of the people and the interests of the nobles are equally
+threatened. Let us smother at its birth a faction as odious as that of
+the Burgundians who formerly put Paris and all France to fire and
+sword. It required a Louis XI. to put a stop to the quarrel between
+the Burgundians and the Crown; and to-day a prince de Conde is needed
+to prevent the house of Lorraine from re-attempting that struggle.
+This is not a civil war; it is a duel between the Guises and the
+Reformation,--a duel to the death! We will make their heads fall, or
+they shall have ours."
+
+"Well said!" cried the prince.
+
+"In this crisis, Christophe," said La Renaudie, "we mean to neglect
+nothing which shall strengthen our party,--for there is a party in the
+Reformation, the party of thwarted interests, of nobles sacrificed to
+the Lorrains, of old captains shamefully treated at Fontainebleau,
+from which the cardinal has banished them by setting up gibbets on
+which to hang those who ask the king for the cost of their equipment
+and their back-pay."
+
+"This, my child," resumed Chaudieu, observing a sort of terror in
+Christophe, "this it is which compels us to conquer by arms instead of
+conquering by conviction and by martyrdom. The queen-mother is on the
+point of entering into our views. Not that she means to abjure; she
+has not reached that decision as yet; but she may be forced to it by
+our triumph. However that may be, Queen Catherine, humiliated and in
+despair at seeing the power she expected to wield on the death of the
+king passing into the hands of the Guises, alarmed at the empire of
+the young queen, Mary, niece of the Lorrains and their auxiliary,
+Queen Catherine is doubtless inclined to lend her support to the
+princes and lords who are now about to make an attempt which will
+deliver her from the Guises. At this moment, devoted as she may seem
+to them, she hates them; she desires their overthrow, and will try to
+make use of us against them; but Monseigneur the Prince de Conde
+intends to make use of her against all. The queen-mother will,
+undoubtedly, consent to all our plans. We shall have the Connetable on
+our side; Monseigneur has just been to see him at Chantilly; but he
+does not wish to move without an order from his masters. Being the
+uncle of Monseigneur, he will not leave him in the lurch; and this
+generous prince does not hesitate to fling himself into danger to
+force Anne de Montmorency to a decision. All is prepared, and we have
+cast our eyes on you as the means of communicating to Queen Catherine
+our treaty of alliance, the drafts of edicts, and the bases of the new
+government. The court is at Blois. Many of our friends are with it;
+but they are to be our future chiefs, and, like Monseigneur," he
+added, motioning to the prince, "they must not be suspected. The
+queen-mother and our friends are so closely watched that it is
+impossible to employ as intermediary any known person of importance;
+they would instantly be suspected and kept from communicating with
+Madame Catherine. God sends us at this crisis the shepherd David and
+his sling to do battle with Goliath of Guise. Your father,
+unfortunately for him a good Catholic, is furrier to the two queens.
+He is constantly supplying them with garments. Get him to send you on
+some errand to the court. You will excite no suspicion, and you cannot
+compromise Queen Catherine in any way. All our leaders would lose
+their heads if a single imprudent act allowed their connivance with
+the queen-mother to be seen. Where a great lord, if discovered, would
+give the alarm and destroy our chances, an insignificant man like you
+will pass unnoticed. See! The Guises keep the town so full of spies
+that we have only the river where we can talk without fear. You are
+now, my son, like a sentinel who must die at his post. Remember this:
+if you are discovered, we shall all abandon you; we shall even cast,
+if necessary, opprobrium and infamy upon you. We shall say that you
+are a creature of the Guises, made to play this part to ruin us. You
+see therefore that we ask of you a total sacrifice."
+
+"If you perish," said the Prince de Conde, "I pledge my honor as a
+noble that your family shall be sacred for the house of Navarre; I
+will bear it on my heart and serve it in all things."
+
+"Those words, my prince, suffice," replied Christophe, without
+reflecting that the conspirator was a Gascon. "We live in times when
+each man, prince or burgher, must do his duty."
+
+"There speaks the true Huguenot. If all our men were like that," said
+La Renaudie, laying his hand on Christophe's shoulder, "we should be
+conquerors to-morrow."
+
+"Young man," resumed the prince, "I desire to show you that if
+Chaudieu preaches, if the nobleman goes armed, the prince fights.
+Therefore, in this hot game all stakes are played."
+
+"Now listen to me," said La Renaudie. "I will not give you the papers
+until you reach Beaugency; for they must not be risked during the
+whole of your journey. You will find me waiting for you there on the
+wharf; my face, voice, and clothes will be so changed you cannot
+recognize me, but I shall say to you, 'Are you a /guepin/?' and you
+will answer, 'Ready to serve.' As to the performance of your mission,
+these are the means: You will find a horse at the 'Pinte Fleurie,"
+close to Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. You will there ask for Jean le
+Breton, who will take you to the stable and give you one of my ponies
+which is known to do thirty leagues in eight hours. Leave by the gate
+of Bussy. Breton has a pass for me; use it yourself, and make your way
+by skirting the towns. You can thus reach Orleans by daybreak."
+
+"But the horse?" said young Lecamus.
+
+"He will not give out till you reach Orleans," replied La Renaudie.
+"Leave him at the entrance of the faubourg Bannier; for the gates are
+well guarded, and you must not excite suspicion. It is for you,
+friend, to play your part intelligently. You must invent whatever
+fable seems to you best to reach the third house to the left on
+entering Orleans; it belongs to a certain Tourillon, glove-maker.
+Strike three blows on the door, and call out: 'On service from
+Messieurs de Guise!' The man will appear to be a rabid Guisist; no one
+knows but our four selves that he is one of us. He will give you a
+faithful boatman,--another Guisist of his own cut. Go down at once to
+the wharf, and embark in a boat painted green and edged with white.
+You will doubtless land at Beaugency to-morrow about mid-day. There I
+will arrange to find you a boat which will take you to Blois without
+running any risk. Our enemies the Guises do not watch the rivers, only
+the landings. Thus you will be able to see the queen-mother to-morrow
+or the day after."
+
+"Your words are written there," said Christophe, touching his
+forehead.
+
+Chaudieu embraced his child with singular religious effusion; he was
+proud of him.
+
+"God keep thee!" he said, pointing to the ruddy light of the sinking
+sun, which was touching the old roofs covered with shingles and
+sending its gleams slantwise through the forest of piles among which
+the water was rippling.
+
+"You belong to the race of the Jacques Bonhomme," said La Renaudie,
+pressing Christophe's hand.
+
+"We shall meet again, /monsieur/," said the prince, with a gesture of
+infinite grace, in which there was something that seemed almost
+friendship.
+
+With a stroke of his oars La Renaudie put the boat at the lower step
+of the stairway which led to the house. Christophe landed, and the
+boat disappeared instantly beneath the arches of the pont au Change.
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE BURGHERS
+
+Christophe shook the iron railing which closed the stairway on the
+river, and called. His mother heard him, opened one of the windows of
+the back shop, and asked what he was doing there. Christophe answered
+that he was cold and wanted to get in.
+
+"Ha! my master," said the Burgundian maid, "you went out by the
+street-door, and you return by the water-gate. Your father will be
+fine and angry."
+
+Christophe, bewildered by a confidence which had just brought him into
+communication with the Prince de Conde, La Renaudie, and Chaudieu, and
+still more moved at the prospect of impending civil war, made no
+answer; he ran hastily up from the kitchen to the back shop; but his
+mother, a rabid Catholic, could not control her anger.
+
+"I'll wager those three men I saw you talking with are Ref--"
+
+"Hold your tongue, wife!" said the cautious old man with white hair
+who was turning over a thick ledger. "You dawdling fellows," he went
+on, addressing three journeymen, who had long finished their suppers,
+"why don't you go to bed? It is eight o'clock, and you have to be up
+at five; besides, you must carry home to-night President de Thou's cap
+and mantle. All three of you had better go, and take your sticks and
+rapiers; and then, if you meet scamps like yourselves, at least you'll
+be in force."
+
+"Are we going to take the ermine surcoat the young queen has ordered
+to be sent to the hotel des Soissons? there's an express going from
+there to Blois for the queen-mother," said one of the clerks.
+
+"No," said his master, "the queen-mother's bill amounts to three
+thousand crowns; it is time to get the money, and I am going to Blois
+myself very soon."
+
+"Father, I do not think it right at your age and in these dangerous
+times to expose yourself on the high-roads. I am twenty-two years old,
+and you ought to employ me on such errands," said Christophe, eyeing
+the box which he supposed contained the surcoat.
+
+"Are you glued to your seats?" cried the old man to his apprentices,
+who at once jumped up and seized their rapiers, cloaks, and Monsieur
+de Thou's furs.
+
+The next day the Parliament was to receive in state, as its president,
+this illustrious judge, who, after signing the death warrant of
+Councillor du Bourg, was destined before the close of the year to sit
+in judgment on the Prince de Conde!
+
+"Here!" said the old man, calling to the maid, "go and ask friend
+Lallier if he will come and sup with us and bring the wine; we'll
+furnish the victuals. Tell him, above all, to bring his daughter."
+
+Lecamus, the syndic of the guild of furriers, was a handsome old man
+of sixty, with white hair, and a broad, open brow. As court furrier
+for the last forty years, he had witnessed all the revolutions of the
+reign of Francois I. He had seen the arrival at the French court of
+the young girl Catherine de' Medici, then scarcely fifteen years of
+age. He had observed her giving way before the Duchesse d'Etampes, her
+father-in-law's mistress; giving way before the Duchesse de
+Valentinois, the mistress of her husband the late king. But the
+furrier had brought himself safely through all the chances and changes
+by which court merchants were often involved in the disgrace and
+overthrow of mistresses. His caution led to his good luck. He
+maintained an attitude of extreme humility. Pride had never caught him
+in its toils. He made himself so small, so gentle, so compliant, of so
+little account at court and before the queens and princesses and
+favorites, that this modesty, combined with good-humor, had kept the
+royal sign above his door.
+
+Such a policy was, of course, indicative of a shrewd and perspicacious
+mind. Humble as Lecamus seemed to the outer world, he was despotic in
+his own home; there he was an autocrat. Most respected and honored by
+his brother craftsmen, he owed to his long possession of the first
+place in the trade much of the consideration that was shown to him. He
+was, besides, very willing to do kindnesses to others, and among the
+many services he had rendered, none was more striking than the
+assistance he had long given to the greatest surgeon of the sixteenth
+century, Ambroise Pare, who owed to him the possibility of studying
+for his profession. In all the difficulties which came up among the
+merchants Lecamus was always conciliating. Thus a general good opinion
+of him consolidated his position among his equals; while his borrowed
+characteristics kept him steadily in favor with the court.
+
+Not only this, but having intrigued for the honor of being on the
+vestry of his parish church, he did what was necessary to bring him
+into the odor of sanctity with the rector of Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs,
+who looked upon him as one of the men most devoted to the Catholic
+religion in Paris. Consequently, at the time of the convocation of the
+States-General he was unanimously elected to represent the /tiers
+etat/ through the influence of the clergy of Paris,--an influence
+which at that period was immense. This old man was, in short, one of
+those secretly ambitious souls who will bend for fifty years before
+all the world, gliding from office to office, no one exactly knowing
+how it came about that he was found securely and peacefully seated at
+last where no man, even the boldest, would have had the ambition at
+the beginning of life to fancy himself; so great was the distance, so
+many the gulfs and the precipices to cross! Lecamus, who had immense
+concealed wealth, would not run any risks, and was silently preparing
+a brilliant future for his son. Instead of having the personal
+ambition which sacrifices the future to the present, he had family
+ambition,--a lost sentiment in our time, a sentiment suppressed by the
+folly of our laws of inheritance. Lecamus saw himself first president
+of the Parliament of Paris in the person of his grandson.
+
+Christophe, godson of the famous historian de Thou, was given a most
+solid education; but it had led him to doubt and to the spirit of
+examination which was then affecting both the Faculties and the
+students of the universities. Christophe was, at the period of which
+we are now writing, pursuing his studies for the bar, that first step
+toward the magistracy. The old furrier was pretending to some
+hesitation as to his son. Sometimes he seemed to wish to make
+Christophe his successor; then again he spoke of him as a lawyer; but
+in his heart he was ambitious of a place for this son as Councillor of
+the Parliament. He wanted to put the Lecamus family on a level with
+those old and celebrated burgher families from which came the
+Pasquiers, the Moles, the Mirons, the Seguiers, Lamoignon, du Tillet,
+Lecoigneux, Lescalopier, Goix, Arnauld, those famous sheriffs and
+grand-provosts of the merchants, among whom the throne found such
+strong defenders.
+
+Therefore, in order that Christophe might in due course of time
+maintain his rank, he wished to marry him to the daughter of the
+richest jeweller in the city, his friend Lallier, whose nephew was
+destined to present to Henri IV. the keys of Paris. The strongest
+desire rooted in the heart of the worthy burgher was to use half of
+his fortune and half of that of the jeweller in the purchase of a
+large and beautiful seignorial estate, which, in those days, was a
+long and very difficult affair. But his shrewd mind knew the age in
+which he lived too well to be ignorant of the great movements which
+were now in preparation. He saw clearly, and he saw justly, and knew
+that the kingdom was about to be divided into two camps. The useless
+executions in the Place de l'Estrapade, that of the king's tailor and
+the more recent one of the Councillor Anne du Bourg, the actual
+connivance of the great lords, and that of the favorite of Francois I.
+with the Reformers, were terrible indications. The furrier resolved to
+remain, whatever happened, Catholic, royalist, and parliamentarian;
+but it suited him, privately, that Christophe should belong to the
+Reformation. He knew he was rich enough to ransom his son if
+Christophe was too much compromised; and on the other hand if France
+became Calvinist his son could save the family in the event of one of
+those furious Parisian riots, the memory of which was ever-living with
+the bourgeoisie,--riots they were destined to see renewed through four
+reigns.
+
+But these thoughts the old furrier, like Louis XI., did not even say
+to himself; his wariness went so far as to deceive his wife and son.
+This grave personage had long been the chief man of the richest and
+most populous quarter of Paris, that of the centre, under the title of
+/quartenier/,--the title and office which became so celebrated some
+fifteen months later. Clothed in cloth like all the prudent burghers
+who obeyed the sumptuary laws, Sieur Lecamus (he was tenacious of that
+title which Charles V. granted to the burghers of Paris, permitting
+them also to buy baronial estates and call their wives by the fine
+name of /demoiselle/, but not by that of madame) wore neither gold
+chains nor silk, but always a good doublet with large tarnished silver
+buttons, cloth gaiters mounting to the knee, and leather shoes with
+clasps. His shirt, of fine linen, showed, according to the fashion of
+the time, in great puffs between his half-opened jacket and his
+breeches. Though his large and handsome face received the full light
+of the lamp standing on the table, Christophe had no conception of the
+thoughts which lay buried beneath the rich and florid Dutch skin of
+the old man; but he understood well enough the advantage he himself
+had expected to obtain from his affection for pretty Babette Lallier.
+So Christophe, with the air of a man who had come to a decision,
+smiled bitterly as he heard of the invitation to his promised bride.
+
+When the Burgundian cook and the apprentices had departed on their
+several errands, old Lecamus looked at his wife with a glance which
+showed the firmness and resolution of his character.
+
+"You will not be satisfied till you have got that boy hanged with your
+damned tongue," he said, in a stern voice.
+
+"I would rather see him hanged and saved than living and a Huguenot,"
+she answered, gloomily. "To think that a child whom I carried nine
+months in my womb should be a bad Catholic, and be doomed to hell for
+all eternity!"
+
+She began to weep.
+
+"Old silly," said the furrier; "let him live, if only to convert him.
+You said, before the apprentices, a word which may set fire to our
+house, and roast us all, like fleas in a straw bed."
+
+The mother crossed herself, and sat down silently.
+
+"Now, then, you," said the old man, with a judicial glance at his son,
+"explain to me what you were doing on the river with--come closer,
+that I may speak to you," he added, grasping his son by the arm, and
+drawing him to him--"with the Prince de Conde," he whispered.
+Christophe trembled. "Do you suppose the court furrier does not know
+every face that frequents the palace? Think you I am ignorant of what
+is going on? Monseigneur the Grand Master has been giving orders to
+send troops to Amboise. Withdrawing troops from Paris to send them to
+Amboise when the king is at Blois, and making them march through
+Chartres and Vendome, instead of going by Orleans--isn't the meaning
+of that clear enough? There'll be troubles. If the queens want their
+surcoats, they must send for them. The Prince de Conde has perhaps
+made up his mind to kill Messieurs de Guise; who, on their side,
+expect to rid themselves of him. The prince will use the Huguenots to
+protect himself. Why should the son of a furrier get himself into that
+fray? When you are married, and when you are councillor to the
+Parliament, you will be as prudent as your father. Before belonging to
+the new religion, the son of a furrier ought to wait until the rest of
+the world belongs to it. I don't condemn the Reformers; it is not my
+business to do so; but the court is Catholic, the two queens are
+Catholic, the Parliament is Catholic; we must supply them with furs,
+and therefore we must be Catholic ourselves. You shall not go out from
+here, Christophe; if you do, I will send you to your godfather,
+President de Thou, who will keep you night and day blackening paper,
+instead of blackening your soul in company with those damned
+Genevese."
+
+"Father," said Christophe, leaning upon the back of the old man's
+chair, "send me to Blois to carry that surcoat to Queen Mary and get
+our money from the queen-mother. If you do not, I am lost; and you
+care for your son."
+
+"Lost?" repeated the old man, without showing the least surprise. "If
+you stay here you can't be lost; I shall have my eye on you all the
+time."
+
+"They will kill me here."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"The most powerful among the Huguenots have cast their eyes on me to
+serve them in a certain matter; if I fail to do what I have just
+promised to do, they will kill me in open day, here in the street, as
+they killed Minard. But if you send me to court on your affairs,
+perhaps I can justify myself equally well to both sides. Either I
+shall succeed without having run any danger at all, and shall then win
+a fine position in the party; or, if the danger turns out very great,
+I shall be there simply on your business."
+
+The father rose as if his chair was of red-hot iron.
+
+"Wife," he said, "leave us; and watch that we are left quite alone,
+Christophe and I."
+
+When Mademoiselle Lecamus had left them the furrier took his son by a
+button and led him to the corner of the room which made the angle of
+the bridge.
+
+"Christophe," he said, whispering in his ear as he had done when he
+mentioned the name of the Prince of Conde, "be a Huguenot, if you have
+that vice; but be so cautiously, in the depths of your soul, and not
+in a way to be pointed at as a heretic throughout the quarter. What
+you have just confessed to me shows that the leaders have confidence
+in you. What are you going to do for them at court?"
+
+"I cannot tell you that," replied Christophe; "for I do not know
+myself."
+
+"Hum! hum!" muttered the old man, looking at his son, "the scamp means
+to hoodwink his father; he'll go far. You are not going to court," he
+went on in a low tone, "to carry remittances to Messieurs de Guise or
+to the little king our master, or to the little Queen Marie. All those
+hearts are Catholic; but I would take my oath the Italian woman has
+some spite against the Scotch girl and against the Lorrains. I know
+her. She has a desperate desire to put her hand into the dough. The
+late king was so afraid of her that he did as the jewellers do, he cut
+diamond by diamond, he pitted one woman against another. That caused
+Queen Catherine's hatred to the poor Duchesse de Valentinois, from
+whom she took the beautiful chateau of Chenonceaux. If it hadn't been
+for the Connetable, the duchess might have been strangled. Back, back,
+my son; don't put yourself in the hands of that Italian, who has no
+passion except in her brain; and that's a bad kind of woman! Yes, what
+they are sending you to do at court may give you a very bad headache,"
+cried the father, seeing that Christophe was about to reply. "My son,
+I have plans for your future which you will not upset by making
+yourself useful to Queen Catherine; but, heavens and earth! don't risk
+your head. Messieurs de Guise would cut it off as easily as the
+Burgundian cuts a turnip, and then those persons who are now employing
+you will disown you utterly."
+
+"I know that, father," said Christophe.
+
+"What! are you really so strong, my son? You know it, and are willing
+to risk all?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"By the powers above us!" cried the father, pressing his son in his
+arms, "we can understand each other; you are worthy of your father. My
+child, you'll be the honor of the family, and I see that your old
+father can speak plainly with you. But do not be more Huguenot than
+Messieurs de Coligny. Never draw your sword; be a pen man; keep to
+your future role of lawyer. Now, then, tell me nothing until after you
+have succeeded. If I do not hear from you by the fourth day after you
+reach Blois, that silence will tell me that you are in some danger.
+The old man will go to save the young one. I have not sold furs for
+thirty-two years without a good knowledge of the wrong side of court
+robes. I have the means of making my way through many doors."
+
+Christophe opened his eyes very wide as he heard his father talking
+thus; but he thought there might be some parental trap in it, and he
+made no reply further than to say:--
+
+"Well, make out the bill, and write a letter to the queen; I must
+start at once, or the greatest misfortunes may happen."
+
+"Start? How?"
+
+"I shall buy a horse. Write at once, in God's name."
+
+"Hey! mother! give your son some money," cried the furrier to his
+wife.
+
+The mother returned, went to her chest, took out a purse of gold, and
+gave it to Christophe, who kissed her with emotion.
+
+"The bill was all ready," said his father; "here it is. I will write
+the letter at once."
+
+Christophe took the bill and put it in his pocket.
+
+"But you will sup with us, at any rate," said the old man. "In such a
+crisis you ought to exchange rings with Lallier's daughter."
+
+"Very well, I will go and fetch her," said Christophe.
+
+The young man was distrustful of his father's stability in the matter.
+The old man's character was not yet fully known to him. He ran up to
+his room, dressed himself, took a valise, came downstairs softly and
+laid it on a counter in the shop, together with his rapier and cloak.
+
+"What the devil are you doing?" asked his father, hearing him.
+
+Christophe came up to the old man and kissed him on both cheeks.
+
+"I don't want any one to see my preparations for departure, and I have
+put them on a counter in the shop," he whispered.
+
+"Here is the letter," said his father.
+
+Christophe took the paper and went out as if to fetch his young
+neighbor.
+
+A few moments after his departure the goodman Lallier and his daughter
+arrived, preceded by a servant-woman, bearing three bottles of old
+wine.
+
+"Well, where is Christophe?" said old Lecamus.
+
+"Christophe!" exclaimed Babette. "We have not seen him."
+
+"Ha! ha! my son is a bold scamp! He tricks me as if I had no beard. My
+dear crony, what think you he will turn out to be? We live in days
+when the children have more sense than their fathers."
+
+"Why, the quarter has long been saying he is in some mischief," said
+Lallier.
+
+"Excuse him on that point, crony," said the furrier. "Youth is
+foolish; it runs after new things; but Babette will keep him quiet;
+she is newer than Calvin."
+
+Babette smiled; she loved Christophe, and was angry when anything was
+said against him. She was one of those daughters of the old
+bourgeoisie brought up under the eyes of a mother who never left her.
+Her bearing was gentle and correct as her face; she always wore
+woollen stuffs of gray, harmonious in tone; her chemisette, simply
+pleated, contrasted its whiteness against the gown. Her cap of brown
+velvet was like an infant's coif, but it was trimmed with a ruche and
+lappets of tanned gauze, that is, of a tan color, which came down on
+each side of her face. Though fair and white as a true blonde, she
+seemed to be shrewd and roguish, all the while trying to hide her
+roguishness under the air and manner of a well-trained girl. While the
+two servant-women went and came, laying the cloth and placing the
+jugs, the great pewter dishes, and the knives and forks, the jeweller
+and his daughter, the furrier and his wife, sat before the tall
+chimney-piece draped with lambrequins of red serge and black fringes,
+and were talking of trifles. Babette asked once or twice where
+Christophe could be, and the father and mother of the young Huguenot
+gave evasive answers; but when the two families were seated at table,
+and the two servants had retired to the kitchen, Lecamus said to his
+future daughter-in-law:--
+
+"Christophe has gone to court."
+
+"To Blois! Such a journey as that without bidding me good-bye!" she
+said.
+
+"The matter was pressing," said the old mother.
+
+"Crony," said the furrier, resuming a suspended conversation. "We are
+going to have troublous times in France. The Reformers are bestirring
+themselves."
+
+"If they triumph, it will only be after a long war, during which
+business will be at a standstill," said Lallier, incapable of rising
+higher than the commercial sphere.
+
+"My father, who saw the wars between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs
+told me that our family would never have come out safely if one of his
+grandfathers--his mother's father--had not been a Goix, one of those
+famous butchers in the Market who stood by the Burgundians; whereas
+the other, the Lecamus, was for the Armagnacs; they seemed ready to
+flay each other alive before the world, but they were excellent
+friends in the family. So, let us both try to save Christophe; perhaps
+the time may come when he will save us."
+
+"You are a shrewd one," said the jeweller.
+
+"No," replied Lecamus. "The burghers ought to think of themselves; the
+populace and the nobility are both against them. The Parisian
+bourgeoisie alarms everybody except the king, who knows it is his
+friend."
+
+"You who are so wise and have seen so many things," said Babette,
+timidly, "explain to me what the Reformers really want."
+
+"Yes, tell us that, crony," cried the jeweller. "I knew the late
+king's tailor, and I held him to be a man of simple life, without
+great talent; he was something like you; a man to whom they'd give the
+sacrament without confession; and behold! he plunged to the depths of
+this new religion,--he! a man whose two ears were worth all of a
+hundred thousand crowns apiece. He must have had secrets to reveal to
+induce the king and the Duchesse de Valentinois to be present at his
+torture."
+
+"And terrible secrets, too!" said the furrier. "The Reformation, my
+friends," he continued in a low voice, "will give back to the
+bourgeoisie the estates of the Church. When the ecclesiastical
+privileges are suppressed the Reformers intend to ask that the
+/vilain/ shall be imposed on nobles as well as on burghers, and they
+mean to insist that the king alone shall be above others--if indeed,
+they allow the State to have a king."
+
+"Suppress the Throne!" ejaculated Lallier.
+
+"Hey! crony," said Lecamus, "in the Low Countries the burghers govern
+themselves with burgomasters of their own, who elect their own
+temporary head."
+
+"God bless me, crony; we ought to do these fine things and yet stay
+Catholics," cried the jeweller.
+
+"We are too old, you and I, to see the triumph of the Parisian
+bourgeoisie, but it will triumph, I tell you, in times to come as it
+did of yore. Ha! the king must rest upon it in order to resist, and we
+have always sold him our help dear. The last time, all the burghers
+were ennobled, and he gave them permission to buy seignorial estates
+and take titles from the land without special letters from the king.
+You and I, grandsons of the Goix through our mothers, are not we as
+good as any lord?"
+
+These words were so alarming to the jeweller and the two women that
+they were followed by a dead silence. The ferments of 1789 were
+already tingling in the veins of Lecamus, who was not yet so old but
+what he could live to see the bold burghers of the Ligue.
+
+"Are you selling well in spite of these troubles?" said Lallier to
+Mademoiselle Lecamus.
+
+"Troubles always do harm," she replied.
+
+"That's one reason why I am so set on making my son a lawyer," said
+Lecamus; "for squabbles and law go on forever."
+
+The conversation then turned to commonplace topics, to the great
+satisfaction of the jeweller, who was not fond of either political
+troubles or audacity of thought.
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE CHATEAU DE BLOIS
+
+The banks of the Loire, from Blois to Angers, were the favorite resort
+of the last two branches of the royal race which occupied the throne
+before the house of Bourbon. That beautiful valley plain so well
+deserves the honor bestowed upon it by kings that we must here repeat
+what was said of it by one of our most eloquent writers:--
+
+  "There is one province in France which is never sufficiently
+  admired. Fragrant as Italy, flowery as the banks of the
+  Guadalquivir, beautiful especially in its own characteristics,
+  wholly French, having always been French,--unlike in that respect
+  to our northern provinces, which have degenerated by contact with
+  Germany, and to our southern provinces, which have lived in
+  concubinage with Moors, Spaniards, and all other nationalities
+  that adjoined them. This pure, chaste, brave, and loyal province
+  is Touraine. Historic France is there! Auvergne is Auvergne,
+  Languedoc is only Languedoc; but Touraine is France; the most
+  national river for Frenchmen is the Loire, which waters Touraine.
+  For this reason we ought not to be surprised at the great number
+  of historically noble buildings possessed by those departments
+  which have taken the name, or derivations of the name, of the
+  Loire. At every step we take in this land of enchantment we
+  discover a new picture, bordered, it may be, by a river, or a
+  tranquil lake reflecting in its liquid depths a castle with
+  towers, and woods and sparkling waterfalls. It is quite natural
+  that in a region chosen by Royalty for its sojourn, where the
+  court was long established, great families and fortunes and
+  distinguished men should have settled and built palaces as grand
+  as themselves."
+
+But is it not incomprehensible that Royalty did not follow the advice
+indirectly given by Louis XI. to place the capital of the kingdom at
+Tours? There, without great expense, the Loire might have been made
+accessible for the merchant service, and also for vessels-of-war of
+light draught. There, too, the seat of government would have been safe
+from the dangers of invasion. Had this been done, the northern cities
+would not have required such vast sums of money spent to fortify them,
+--sums as vast as were those expended on the sumptuous glories of
+Versailles. If Louis XIV. had listened to Vauban, who wished to build
+his great palace at Mont Louis, between the Loire and the Cher,
+perhaps the revolution of 1789 might never have taken place.
+
+These beautiful shores still bear the marks of royal tenderness. The
+chateaus of Chambord, Amboise, Blois, Chenonceaux, Chaumont, Plessis-
+les-Tours, all those which the mistresses of kings, financiers, and
+nobles built at Veretz, Azay-le-Rideau, Usse, Villandri, Valencay,
+Chanteloup, Duretal, some of which have disappeared, though most of
+them still remain, are admirable relics which remind us of the marvels
+of a period that is little understood by the literary sect of the
+Middle-agists.
+
+Among all these chateaus, that of Blois, where the court was then
+staying, is one on which the magnificence of the houses of Orleans and
+of Valois has placed its brilliant sign-manual,--making it the most
+interesting of all for historians, archaeologists, and Catholics. It
+was at the time of which we write completely isolated. The town,
+enclosed by massive walls supported by towers, lay below the
+fortress,--for the chateau served, in fact, as fort and
+pleasure-house. Above the town, with its blue-tiled, crowded roofs
+extending then, as now, from the river to the crest of the hill which
+commands the right bank, lies a triangular plateau, bounded to the
+west by a streamlet, which in these days is of no importance, for it
+flows beneath the town; but in the fifteenth century, so say
+historians, it formed quite a deep ravine, of which there still
+remains a sunken road, almost an abyss, between the suburbs of the
+town and the chateau.
+
+It was on this plateau, with a double exposure to the north and south,
+that the counts of Blois built, in the architecture of the twelfth
+century, a castle where the famous Thibault de Tircheur, Thibault le
+Vieux, and others held a celebrated court. In those days of pure
+fuedality, in which the king was merely /primus inter pares/ (to use
+the fine expression of a king of Poland), the counts of Champagne, the
+counts of Blois, those of Anjou, the simple barons of Normandie, the
+dukes of Bretagne, lived with the splendor of sovereign princes and
+gave kings to the proudest kingdoms. The Plantagenets of Anjou, the
+Lusignans of Poitou, the Roberts of Normandie, maintained with a bold
+hand the royal races, and sometimes simple knights like du Glaicquin
+refused the purple, preferring the sword of a connetable.
+
+When the Crown annexed the county of Blois to its domain, Louis XII.,
+who had a liking for this residence (perhaps to escape Plessis of
+sinister memory), built at the back of the first building another
+building, facing east and west, which connected the chateau of the
+counts of Blois with the rest of the old structures, of which nothing
+now remains but the vast hall in which the States-general were held
+under Henri III.
+
+Before he became enamoured of Chambord, Francois I. wished to complete
+the chateau of Blois by adding two other wings, which would have made
+the structure a perfect square. But Chambord weaned him from Blois,
+where he built only one wing, which in his time and that of his
+grandchildren was the only inhabited part of the chateau. This third
+building erected by Francois I. is more vast and far more decorated
+than the Louvre, the chateau of Henri II. It is in the style of
+architecture now called Renaissance, and presents the most fantastic
+features of that style. Therefore, at a period when a strict and
+jealous architecture ruled construction, when the Middle Ages were not
+even considered, at a time when literature was not as clearly welded
+to art as it is now, La Fontaine said of the chateau de Blois, in his
+hearty, good-humored way: "The part that Francois I. built, if looked
+at from the outside, pleased me better than all the rest; there I saw
+numbers of little galleries, little windows, little balconies, little
+ornamentations without order or regularity, and they make up a grand
+whole which I like."
+
+The chateau of Blois had, therefore, the merit of representing three
+orders of architecture, three epochs, three systems, three dominions.
+Perhaps there is no other royal residence that can compare with it in
+that respect. This immense structure presents to the eye in one
+enclosure, round one courtyard, a complete and perfect image of that
+grand presentation of the manners and customs and life of nations
+which is called Architecture. At the moment when Christophe was to
+visit the court, that part of the adjacent land which in our day is
+covered by a fourth palace, built seventy years later (by Gaston, the
+rebellious brother of Louis XIII., then exiled to Blois), was an open
+space containing pleasure-grounds and hanging gardens, picturesquely
+placed among the battlements and unfinished turrets of Francois I.'s
+chateau.
+
+These gardens communicated, by a bridge of a fine, bold construction
+(which the old men of Blois may still remember to have seen
+demolished) with a pleasure-ground on the other side of the chateau,
+which, by the lay of the land, was on the same level. The nobles
+attached to the Court of Anne de Bretagne, or those of that province
+who came to solicit favors, or to confer with the queen as to the fate
+and condition of Brittany, awaited in this pleasure-ground the
+opportunity for an audience, either at the queen's rising, or at her
+coming out to walk. Consequently, history has given the name of
+"Perchoir aux Bretons" to this piece of ground, which, in our day, is
+the fruit-garden of a worthy bourgeois, and forms a projection into
+the place des Jesuites. The latter place was included in the gardens
+of this beautiful royal residence, which had, as we have said, its
+upper and its lower gardens. Not far from the place des Jesuites may
+still be seen a pavilion built by Catherine de' Medici, where,
+according to the historians of Blois, warm mineral baths were placed
+for her to use. This detail enables us to trace the very irregular
+disposition of the gardens, which went up or down according to the
+undulations of the ground, becoming extremely intricate around the
+chateau,--a fact which helped to give it strength, and caused, as we
+shall see, the discomfiture of the Duc de Guise.
+
+The gardens were reached from the chateau through external and
+internal galleries, the most important of which was called the
+"Galerie des Cerfs" on account of its decoration. This gallery led to
+the magnificent staircase which, no doubt, inspired the famous double
+staircase of Chambord. It led, from floor to floor, to all the
+apartments of the castle.
+
+Though La Fontaine preferred the chateau of Francois I. to that of
+Louis XII., perhaps the naivete of that of the good king will give
+true artists more pleasure, while at the same time they admire the
+magnificent structure of the knightly king. The elegance of the two
+staircases which are placed at each end of the chateau of Louis XII.,
+the delicate carving and sculpture, so original in design, which
+abound everywhere, the remains of which, though time has done its
+worst, still charm the antiquary, all, even to the semi-cloistral
+distribution of the apartments, reveals a great simplicity of manners.
+Evidently, the /court/ did not yet exist; it had not developed, as it
+did under Francois I. and Catherine de' Medici, to the great detriment
+of feudal customs. As we admire the galleries, or most of them, the
+capitals of the columns, and certain figurines of exquisite delicacy,
+it is impossible not to imagine that Michel Columb, that great
+sculptor, the Michel-Angelo of Brittany, passed that way for the
+pleasure of Queen Anne, whom he afterwards immortalized on the tomb of
+her father, the last duke of Brittany.
+
+Whatever La Fontaine may choose to say about the "little galleries"
+and the "little ornamentations," nothing can be more grandiose than
+the dwelling of the splendid Francois. Thanks to I know not what
+indifference, to forgetfulness perhaps, the apartments occupied by
+Catherine de' Medici and her son Francois II. present to us to-day the
+leading features of that time. The historian can there restore the
+tragic scenes of the drama of the Reformation,--a drama in which the
+dual struggle of the Guises and of the Bourbons against the Valois was
+a series of most complicated acts, the plot of which was here
+unravelled.
+
+The chateau of Francois I. completely crushes the artless habitation
+of Louis XII. by its imposing masses. On the side of the gardens, that
+is, toward the modern place des Jesuites, the castle presents an
+elevation nearly double that which it shows on the side of the
+courtyard. The ground-floor on this side forms the second floor on the
+side of the gardens, where are placed the celebrated galleries. Thus
+the first floor above the ground-floor toward the courtyard (where
+Queen Catherine was lodged) is the third floor on the garden side, and
+the king's apartments were four storeys above the garden, which at the
+time of which we write was separated from the base of the castle by a
+deep moat. The chateau, already colossal as viewed from the courtyard,
+appears gigantic when seen from below, as La Fontaine saw it. He
+mentions particularly that he did not enter either the courtyard or
+the apartments, and it is to be remarked that from the place des
+Jesuites all the details seem small. The balconies on which the
+courtiers promenaded; the galleries, marvellously executed; the
+sculptured windows, whose embrasures are so deep as to form boudoirs--
+for which indeed they served--resemble at that great height the
+fantastic decorations which scene-painters give to a fairy palace at
+the opera.
+
+But in the courtyard, although the three storeys above the ground-
+floor rise as high as the clock-tower of the Tuileries, the infinite
+delicacy of the architecture reveals itself to the rapture of our
+astonished eyes. This wing of the great building, in which the two
+queens, Catherine de' Medici and Mary Stuart, held their sumptuous
+court, is divided in the centre by a hexagon tower, in the empty well
+of which winds up a spiral staircase,--a Moorish caprice, designed by
+giants, made by dwarfs, which gives to this wonderful facade the
+effect of a dream. The baluster of this staircase forms a spiral
+connecting itself by a square landing to five of the six sides of the
+tower, requiring at each landing transversal corbels which are
+decorated with arabesque carvings without and within. This bewildering
+creation of ingenious and delicate details, of marvels which give
+speech to stones, can be compared only to the deeply worked and
+crowded carving of the Chinese ivories. Stone is made to look like
+lace-work. The flowers, the figures of men and animals clinging to the
+structure of the stairway, are multiplied, step by step, until they
+crown the tower with a key-stone on which the chisels of the art of
+the sixteenth century have contended against the naive cutters of
+images who fifty years earlier had carved the key-stones of Louis
+XII.'s two stairways.
+
+However dazzled we may be by these recurring forms of indefatigable
+labor, we cannot fail to see that money was lacking to Francois I. for
+Blois, as it was to Louis XIV. for Versailles. More than one figurine
+lifts its delicate head from a block of rough stone behind it; more
+than one fantastic flower is merely indicated by chiselled touches on
+the abandoned stone, though dampness has since laid its blossoms of
+mouldy greenery upon it. On the facade, side by side with the tracery
+of one window, another window presents its masses of jagged stone
+carved only by the hand of time. Here, to the least artistic and the
+least trained eye, is a ravishing contrast between this frontage,
+where marvels throng, and the interior frontage of the chateau of
+Louis XII., which is composed of a ground-floor of arcades of fairy
+lightness supported by tiny columns resting at their base on a
+graceful platform, and of two storeys above it, the windows of which
+are carved with delightful sobriety. Beneath the arcade is a gallery,
+the walls of which are painted in fresco, the ceiling also being
+painted; traces can still be found of this magnificence, derived from
+Italy, and testifying to the expeditions of our kings, to which the
+principality of Milan then belonged.
+
+Opposite to Francois I.'s wing was the chapel of the counts of Blois,
+the facade of which is almost in harmony with the architecture of the
+later dwelling of Louis XII. No words can picture the majestic
+solidity of these three distinct masses of building. In spite of their
+nonconformity of style, Royalty, powerful and firm, demonstrating its
+dangers by the greatness of its precautions, was a bond, uniting these
+three edifices, so different in character, two of which rested against
+the vast hall of the States-general, towering high like a church.
+
+Certainly, neither the simplicity nor the strength of the burgher
+existence (which were depicted at the beginning of this history) in
+which Art was always represented, were lacking to this royal
+habitation. Blois was the fruitful and brilliant example to which the
+Bourgeoisie and Feudality, Wealth and Nobility, gave such splendid
+replies in the towns and in the rural regions. Imagination could not
+desire any other sort of dwelling for the prince who reigned over
+France in the sixteenth century. The richness of seignorial garments,
+the luxury of female adornment, must have harmonized delightfully with
+the lace-work of these stones so wonderfully manipulated. From floor
+to floor, as the king of France went up the marvellous staircase of
+his chateau of Blois, he could see the broad expanse of the beautiful
+Loire, which brought him news of all his kingdom as it lay on either
+side of the great river, two halves of a State facing each other, and
+semi-rivals. If, instead of building Chambord in a barren, gloomy
+plain two leagues away, Francois I. had placed it where, seventy years
+later, Gaston built his palace, Versailles would never have existed,
+and Blois would have become, necessarily, the capital of France.
+
+Four Valois and Catherine de' Medici lavished their wealth on the wing
+built by Francois I. at Blois. Who can look at those massive
+partition-walls, the spinal column of the castle, in which are sunken
+deep alcoves, secret staircases, cabinets, while they themselves
+enclose halls as vast as that great council-room, the guardroom, and
+the royal chambers, in which, in our day, a regiment of infantry is
+comfortably lodged--who can look at all this and not be aware of the
+prodigalities of Crown and court? Even if a visitor does not at once
+understand how the splendor within must have corresponded with the
+splendor without, the remaining vestiges of Catherine de' Medici's
+cabinet, where Christophe was about to be introduced, would bear
+sufficient testimony to the elegances of Art which peopled these
+apartments with animated designs in which salamanders sparkled among
+the wreaths, and the palette of the sixteenth century illumined the
+darkest corners with its brilliant coloring. In this cabinet an
+observer will still find traces of that taste for gilding which
+Catherine brought with her from Italy; for the princesses of her house
+loved, in the words of the author already quoted, to veneer the
+castles of France with the gold earned by their ancestors in commerce,
+and to hang out their wealth on the walls of their apartments.
+
+The queen-mother occupied on the first upper floor of the apartments
+of Queen Claude of France, wife of Francois I., in which may still be
+seen, delicately carved, the double C accompanied by figures, purely
+white, of swans and lilies, signifying /candidior candidis/--more
+white than the whitest--the motto of the queen whose name began, like
+that of Catherine, with a C, and which applied as well to the daughter
+of Louis XII. as to the mother of the last Valois; for no suspicion,
+in spite of the violence of Calvinist calumny, has tarnished the
+fidelity of Catherine de' Medici to Henri II.
+
+The queen-mother, still charged with the care of two young children
+(him who was afterward Duc d'Alencon, and Marguerite, the wife of
+Henri IV., the sister whom Charles IX. called Margot), had need of the
+whole of the first upper floor.
+
+The king, Francois II., and the queen, Mary Stuart, occupied, on the
+second floor, the royal apartments which had formerly been those of
+Francois I. and were, subsequently, those of Henri III. This floor,
+like that taken by the queen-mother, is divided in two parts
+throughout its whole length by the famous partition-wall, which is
+more than four feet thick, against which rests the enormous walls
+which separate the rooms from each other. Thus, on both floors, the
+apartments are in two distinct halves. One half, to the south, looking
+to the courtyard, served for public receptions and for the transaction
+of business; whereas the private apartments were placed, partly to
+escape the heat, to the north, overlooking the gardens, on which side
+is the splendid facade with its balconies and galleries looking out
+upon the open country of the Vendomois, and down upon the "Perchoir
+des Bretons" and the moat, the only side of which La Fontaine speaks.
+
+The chateau of Francois I. was, in those days, terminated by an
+enormous unfinished tower which was intended to mark the colossal
+angle of the building when the succeeding wing was built. Later,
+Gaston took down one side of it, in order to build his palace on to
+it; but he never finished the work, and the tower remained in ruins.
+This royal stronghold served as a prison or dungeon, according to
+popular tradition.
+
+As we wander to-day through the halls of this matchless chateau, so
+precious to art and to history, what poet would not be haunted by
+regrets, and grieved for France, at seeing the arabesques of
+Catherine's boudoir /whitewashed/ and almost obliterated, by order of
+the quartermaster of the barracks (this royal residence is now a
+barrack) at the time of an outbreak of cholera. The panels of
+Catherine's boudoir, a room of which we are about to speak, is the
+last remaining relic of the rich decorations accumulated by five
+artistic kings. Making our way through the labyrinth of chambers,
+halls, stairways, towers, we may say to ourselves with solemn
+certitude: "Here Mary Stuart cajoled her husband on behalf of the
+Guises." "There, the Guises insulted Catherine." "Later, at that very
+spot the second Balafre fell beneath the daggers of the avengers of
+the Crown." "A century earlier, from this very window, Louis XII. made
+signs to his friend Cardinal d'Amboise to come to him." "Here, on this
+balcony, d'Epernon, the accomplice of Ravaillac, met Marie de' Medici,
+who knew, it was said, of the proposed regicide, and allowed it to be
+committed."
+
+In the chapel, where the marriage of Henri IV. and Marguerite de
+Valois took place, the sole remaining fragment of the chateau of the
+counts of Blois, a regiment now makes it shoes. This wonderful
+structure, in which so many styles may still be seen, so many great
+deeds have been performed, is in a state of dilapidation which
+disgraces France. What grief for those who love the great historic
+monuments of our country to know that soon those eloquent stones will
+be lost to sight and knowledge, like others at the corner of the rue
+de la Vieille-Pelleterie; possibly, they will exist nowhere but in
+these pages.
+
+It is necessary to remark that, in order to watch the royal court more
+closely, the Guises, although they had a house of their own in the
+town, which still exists, had obtained permission to occupy the upper
+floor above the apartments of Louis XII., the same lodgings afterwards
+occupied by the Duchesse de Nemours under the roof.
+
+The young king, Francois II., and his bride Mary Stuart, in love with
+each other like the girl and boy of sixteen which they were, had been
+abruptly transferred, in the depth of winter, from the chateau de
+Saint-Germain, which the Duc de Guise thought liable to attack, to the
+fortress which the chateau of Blois then was, being isolated and
+protected on three sides by precipices, and admirably defended as to
+its entrance. The Guises, uncles of Mary Stuart, had powerful reasons
+for not residing in Paris and for keeping the king and court in a
+castle the whole exterior surroundings of which could easily be
+watched and defended. A struggle was now beginning around the throne,
+between the house of Lorraine and the house of Valois, which was
+destined to end in this very chateau, twenty-eight years later, namely
+in 1588, when Henri III., under the very eyes of his mother, at that
+moment deeply humiliated by the Lorrains, heard fall upon the floor of
+his own cabinet, the head of the boldest of all the Guises, the second
+Balafre, son of that first Balafre by whom Catherine de' Medici was
+now being tricked, watched, threatened, and virtually imprisoned.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE QUEEN-MOTHER
+
+This noble chateau of Blois was to Catherine de' Medici the narrowest
+of prisons. On the death of her husband, who had always held her in
+subjection, she expected to reign; but, on the contrary, she found
+herself crushed under the thraldom of strangers, whose polished
+manners were really far more brutal than those of jailers. No action
+of hers could be done secretly. The women who attended her either had
+lovers among the Guises or were watched by Argus eyes. These were
+times when passions notably exhibited the strange effects produced in
+all ages by the strong antagonism of two powerful conflicting
+interests in the State. Gallantry, which served Catherine so well, was
+also an auxiliary of the Guises. The Prince de Conde, the first leader
+of the Reformation, was a lover of the Marechale de Saint-Andre, whose
+husband was the tool of the Grand Master. The cardinal, convinced by
+the affair of the Vidame de Chartres, that Catherine was more
+unconquered than invulnerable as to love, was paying court to her. The
+play of all these passions strangely complicated those of politics,--
+making, as it were, a double game of chess, in which both parties had
+to watch the head and heart of their opponent, in order to know, when
+a crisis came, whether the one would betray the other.
+
+Though she was constantly in presence of the Cardinal de Lorraine or
+of Duc Francois de Guise, who both distrusted her, the closest and
+ablest enemy of Catherine de' Medici was her daughter-in-law, Queen
+Mary, a fair little creature, malicious as a waiting-maid, proud as a
+Stuart wearing three crowns, learned as an old pedant, giddy as a
+school-girl, as much in love with her husband as a courtesan is with
+her lover, devoted to her uncles whom she admired, and delighted to
+see the king share (at her instigation) the regard she had for them. A
+mother-in-law is always a person whom the daughter-in-law is inclined
+not to like; especially when she wears the crown and wishes to retain
+it, which Catherine had imprudently made but too well known. Her
+former position, when Diane de Poitiers had ruled Henri II., was more
+tolerable than this; then at least she received the external honors
+that were due to a queen, and the homage of the court. But now the
+duke and the cardinal, who had none but their own minions about them,
+seemed to take pleasure in abasing her. Catherine, hemmed in on all
+sides by their courtiers, received, not only day by day but from hour
+to hour, terrible blows to her pride and her self-love; for the Guises
+were determined to treat her on the same system of repression which
+the late king, her husband, had so long pursued.
+
+The thirty-six years of anguish which were now about to desolate
+France may, perhaps, be said to have begun by the scene in which the
+son of the furrier of the two queens was sent on the perilous errand
+which makes him the chief figure of our present Study. The danger into
+which this zealous Reformer was about to fall became imminent the very
+morning on which he started from the port of Beaugency for the chateau
+de Blois, bearing precious documents which compromised the highest
+heads of the nobility, placed in his hands by that wily partisan, the
+indefatigable La Renaudie, who met him, as agreed upon, at Beaugency,
+having reached that port before him.
+
+While the tow-boat, in which Christophe now embarked floated, impelled
+by a light east wind, down the river Loire the famous Cardinal de
+Lorraine, and his brother the second Duc de Guise, one of the greatest
+warriors of those days, were contemplating, like eagles perched on a
+rocky summit, their present situation, and looking prudently about
+them before striking the great blow by which they intended to kill the
+Reform in France at Amboise,--an attempt renewed twelve years later in
+Paris, August 24, 1572, on the feast of Saint-Bartholomew.
+
+During the night three /seigneurs/, who each played a great part in
+the twelve years' drama which followed this double plot now laid by
+the Guises and also by the Reformers, had arrived at Blois from
+different directions, each riding at full speed, and leaving their
+horses half-dead at the postern-gate of the chateau, which was guarded
+by captains and soldiers absolutely devoted to the Duc de Guise, the
+idol of all warriors.
+
+One word about that great man,--a word that must tell, in the first
+instance, whence his fortunes took their rise.
+
+His mother was Antoinette de Bourbon, great-aunt of Henri IV. Of what
+avail is consanguinity? He was, at this moment, aiming at the head of
+his cousin the Prince de Conde. His niece was Mary Stuart. His wife
+was Anne, daughter of the Duke of Ferrara. The Grand Connetable de
+Montmorency called the Duc de Guise "Monseigneur" as he would the
+king,--ending his letter with "Your very humble servant." Guise, Grand
+Master of the king's household, replied "Monsieur le connetable," and
+signed, as he did for the Parliament, "Your very good friend."
+
+As for the cardinal, called the transalpine pope, and his Holiness, by
+Estienne, he had the whole monastic Church of France on his side, and
+treated the Holy Father as an equal. Vain of his eloquence, and one of
+the greatest theologians of his time, he kept incessant watch over
+France and Italy by means of three religious orders who were
+absolutely devoted to him, toiling day and night in his service and
+serving him as spies and counsellors.
+
+These few words will explain to what heights of power the duke and the
+cardinal had attained. In spite of their wealth and the enormous
+revenues of their several offices, they were so personally
+disinterested, so eagerly carried away on the current of their
+statesmanship, and so generous at heart, that they were always in
+debt, doubtless after the manner of Caesar. When Henri III. caused the
+death of the second Balafre, whose life was a menace to him, the house
+of Guise was necessarily ruined. The costs of endeavoring to seize the
+crown during a whole century will explain the lowered position of this
+great house during the reigns of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., when the
+sudden death of MADAME told all Europe the infamous part which a
+Chevalier de Lorraine had debased himself to play.
+
+Calling themselves the heirs of the dispossessed Carolovingians, the
+duke and cardinal acted with the utmost insolence towards Catherine
+de' Medici, the mother-in-law of their niece. The Duchesse de Guise
+spared her no mortification. This duchesse was a d'Este, and Catherine
+was a Medici, the daughter of upstart Florentine merchants, whom the
+sovereigns of Europe had never yet admitted into their royal
+fraternity. Francois I. himself has always considered his son's
+marriage with a Medici as a mesalliance, and only consented to it
+under the expectation that his second son would never be dauphin.
+Hence his fury when his eldest son was poisoned by the Florentine
+Montecuculi. The d'Estes refused to recognize the Medici as Italian
+princes. Those former merchants were in fact trying to solve the
+impossible problem of maintaining a throne in the midst of republican
+institutions. The title of grand-duke was only granted very tardily by
+Philip the Second, king of Spain, to reward those Medici who bought it
+by betraying France their benefactress, and servilely attaching
+themselves to the court of Spain, which was at the very time covertly
+counteracting them in Italy.
+
+"Flatter none but your enemies," the famous saying of Catherine de'
+Medici, seems to have been the political rule of life with that family
+of merchant princes, in which great men were never lacking until their
+destinies became great, when they fell, before their time, into that
+degeneracy in which royal races and noble families are wont to end.
+
+For three generations there had been a great Lorrain warrior and a
+great Lorrain churchman; and, what is more singular, the churchmen all
+bore a strong resemblance in the face to Ximenes, as did Cardinal
+Richelieu in after days. These five great cardinals all had sly, mean,
+and yet terrible faces; while the warriors, on the other hand, were of
+that type of Basque mountaineer which we see in Henri IV. The two
+Balafres, father and son, wounded and scarred in the same manner, lost
+something of this type, but not the grace and affability by which, as
+much as by their bravery, they won the hearts of the soldiery.
+
+It is not useless to relate how the present Grand Master received his
+wound; for it was healed by the heroic measures of a personage of our
+drama,--by Ambroise Pare, the man we have already mentioned as under
+obligations to Lecamus, syndic of the guild of furriers. At the siege
+of Calais the duke had his face pierced through and through by a
+lance, the point of which, after entering the cheek just below the
+right eye, went through to the neck, below the left eye, and remained,
+broken off, in the face. The duke lay dying in his tent in the midst
+of universal distress, and he would have died had it not been for the
+devotion and prompt courage of Ambroise Pare. "The duke is not dead,
+gentlemen," he said to the weeping attendants, "but he soon will die
+if I dare not treat him as I would a dead man; and I shall risk doing
+so, no matter what it may cost me in the end. See!" And with that he
+put his left foot on the duke's breast, took the broken wooden end of
+the lance in his fingers, shook and loosened it by degrees in the
+wound, and finally succeeded in drawing out the iron head, as if he
+were handling a thing and not a man. Though he saved the prince by
+this heroic treatment, he could not prevent the horrible scar which
+gave the great soldier his nickname,--Le Balafre, the Scarred. This
+name descended to the son, and for a similar reason.
+
+Absolutely masters of Francois II., whom his wife ruled through their
+mutual and excessive passion, these two great Lorrain princes, the
+duke and the cardinal, were masters of France, and had no other enemy
+at court than Catherine de' Medici. No great statesmen ever played a
+closer or more watchful game.
+
+The mutual position of the ambitious widow of Henri II. and the
+ambitious house of Lorraine was pictured, as it were, to the eye by a
+scene which took place on the terrace of the chateau de Blois very
+early in the morning of the day on which Christophe Lecamus was
+destined to arrive there. The queen-mother, who feigned an extreme
+attachment to the Guises, had asked to be informed of the news brought
+by the three /seigneurs/ coming from three different parts of the
+kingdom; but she had the mortification of being courteously dismissed
+by the cardinal. She then walked to the parterres which overhung the
+Loire, where she was building, under the superintendence of her
+astrologer, Ruggieri, an observatory, which is still standing, and
+from which the eye may range over the whole landscape of that
+delightful valley. The two Lorrain princes were at the other end of
+the terrace, facing the Vendomois, which overlooks the upper part of
+the town, the perch of the Bretons, and the postern gate of the
+chateau.
+
+Catherine had deceived the two brothers by pretending to a slight
+displeasure; for she was in reality very well pleased to have an
+opportunity to speak to one of the three young men who had arrived in
+such haste. This was a young nobleman named Chiverni, apparently a
+tool of the cardinal, in reality a devoted servant of Catherine.
+Catherine also counted among her devoted servants two Florentine
+nobles, the Gondi; but they were so suspected by the Guises that she
+dared not send them on any errand away from the court, where she kept
+them, watched, it is true, in all their words and actions, but where
+at least they were able to watch and study the Guises and counsel
+Catherine. These two Florentines maintained in the interests of the
+queen-mother another Italian, Birago,--a clever Piedmontese, who
+pretended, with Chiverni, to have abandoned their mistress, and gone
+over to the Guises, who encouraged their enterprises and employed them
+to watch Catherine.
+
+Chiverni had come from Paris and Ecouen. The last to arrive was Saint-
+Andre, who was marshal of France and became so important that the
+Guises, whose creature he was, made him the third person in the
+triumvirate they formed the following year against Catherine. The
+other /seigneur/ who had arrived during the night was Vieilleville,
+also a creature of the Guises and a marshal of France, who was
+returning from a secret mission known only to the Grand Master, who
+had entrusted it to him. As for Saint-Andre, he was in charge of
+military measures taken with the object of driving all Reformers under
+arms into Amboise; a scheme which now formed the subject of a council
+held by the duke and cardinal, Birago, Chiverni, Vieilleville, and
+Saint-Andre. As the two Lorrains employed Birago, it is to be supposed
+that they relied upon their own powers; for they knew of his
+attachment to the queen-mother. At this singular epoch the double part
+played by many of the political men of the day was well known to both
+parties; they were like cards in the hands of gamblers,--the cleverest
+player won the game. During this council the two brothers maintained
+the most impenetrable reserve. A conversation which now took place
+between Catherine and certain of her friends will explain the object
+of this council, held by the Guises in the open air, in the hanging
+gardens, at break of day, as if they feared to speak within the walls
+of the chateau de Blois.
+
+The queen-mother, under pretence of examining the observatory then in
+process of construction, walked in that direction accompanied by the
+two Gondis, glancing with a suspicious and inquisitive eye at the
+group of enemies who were still standing at the farther end of the
+terrace, and from whom Chiverni now detached himself to join the
+queen-mother. She was then at the corner of the terrace which looks
+down upon the Church of Saint-Nicholas; there, at least, there could
+be no danger of the slightest overhearing. The wall of the terrace is
+on a level with the towers of the church, and the Guises invariably
+held their council at the farther corner of the same terrace at the
+base of the great unfinished keep or dungeon,--going and returning
+between the Perchoir des Bretons and the gallery by the bridge which
+joined them to the gardens. No one was within sight. Chiverni raised
+the hand of the queen-mother to kiss it, and as he did so he slipped a
+little note from his hand to hers, without being observed by the two
+Italians. Catherine turned to the angle of the parapet and read as
+follows:--
+
+  You are powerful enough to hold the balance between the leaders
+  and to force them into a struggle as to who shall serve you; your
+  house is full of kings, and you have nothing to fear from the
+  Lorrains or the Bourbons provided you pit them one against the
+  other, for both are striving to snatch the crown from your
+  children. Be the mistress and not the servant of your counsellors;
+  support them, in turn, one against the other, or the kingdom will
+  go from bad to worse, and mighty wars may come of it.
+
+L'Hopital.
+
+
+The queen put the letter in the hollow of her corset, resolving to
+burn it as soon as she was alone.
+
+"When did you see him?" she asked Chiverni.
+
+"On my way back from visiting the Connetable, at Melun, where I met
+him with the Duchesse de Berry, whom he was most impatient to convey
+to Savoie, that he might return here and open the eyes of the
+chancellor Olivier, who is now completely duped by the Lorrains. As
+soon as Monsieur l'Hopital saw the true object of the Guises he
+determined to support your interests. That is why he is so anxious to
+get here and give you his vote at the councils."
+
+"Is he sincere?" asked Catherine. "You know very well that if the
+Lorrains have put him in the council it is that he may help them to
+reign."
+
+"L'Hopital is a Frenchman who comes of too good a stock not to be
+honest and sincere," said Chiverni; "Besides, his note is a
+sufficiently strong pledge."
+
+"What answer did the Connetable send to the Guises?"
+
+"He replied that he was the servant of the king and would await his
+orders. On receiving that answer the cardinal, to suppress all
+resistance, determined to propose the appointment of his brother as
+lieutenant-general of the kingdom."
+
+"Have they got as far as that?" exclaimed Catherine, alarmed. "Well,
+did Monsieur l'Hopital send me no other message?"
+
+"He told me to say to you, madame, that you alone could stand between
+the Crown and the Guises."
+
+"Does he think that I ought to use the Huguenots as a weapon?"
+
+"Ah! madame," cried Chiverni, surprised at such astuteness, "we never
+dreamed of casting you into such difficulties."
+
+"Does he know the position I am in?" asked the queen, calmly.
+
+"Very nearly. He thinks you were duped after the death of the king
+into accepting that castle on Madame Diane's overthrow. The Guises
+consider themselves released toward the queen by having satisfied the
+woman."
+
+"Yes," said the queen, looking at the two Gondi, "I made a blunder."
+
+"A blunder of the gods," replied Charles de Gondi.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Catherine, "if I go over openly to the Reformers I
+shall become the slave of a party."
+
+"Madame," said Chiverni, eagerly, "I approve entirely of your meaning.
+You must use them, but not serve them."
+
+"Though your support does, undoubtedly, for the time being lie there,"
+said Charles de Gondi, "we must not conceal from ourselves that
+success and defeat are both equally perilous."
+
+"I know it," said the queen; "a single false step would be a pretext
+on which the Guises would seize at once to get rid of me."
+
+"The niece of a Pope, the mother of four Valois, a queen of France,
+the widow of the most ardent persecutor of the Huguenots, an Italian
+Catholic, the aunt of Leo X.,--can /she/ ally herself with the
+Reformation?" asked Charles de Gondi.
+
+"But," said his brother Albert, "if she seconds the Guises does she
+not play into the hands of a usurpation? We have to do with men who
+see a crown to seize in the coming struggle between Catholicism and
+Reform. It is possible to support the Reformers without abjuring."
+
+"Reflect, madame, that your family, which ought to have been wholly
+devoted to the king of France, is at this moment the servant of the
+king of Spain; and to-morrow it will be that of the Reformation if the
+Reformation could make a king of the Duke of Florence."
+
+"I am certainly disposed to lend a hand, for a time, to the
+Huguenots," said Catherine, "if only to revenge myself on that soldier
+and that priest and that woman!" As she spoke, she called attention
+with her subtile Italian glance to the duke and cardinal, and then to
+the second floor of the chateau on which were the apartments of her
+son and Mary Stuart. "That trio has taken from my hands the reins of
+State, for which I waited long while the old woman filled my place,"
+she said gloomily, glancing toward Chenonceaux, the chateau she had
+lately exchanged with Diane de Poitiers against that of Chaumont.
+"/Ma/," she added in Italian, "it seems that these reforming gentry in
+Geneva have not the wit to address themselves to me; and, on my
+conscience, I cannot go to them. Not one of you would dare to risk
+carrying them a message!" She stamped her foot. "I did hope you would
+have met the cripple at Ecouen--/he/ has sense," she said to Chiverni.
+
+"The Prince de Conde was there, madame," said Chiverni, "but he could
+not persuade the Connetable to join him. Monsieur de Montmorency wants
+to overthrow the Guises, who have sent him into exile, but he will not
+encourage heresy."
+
+"What will ever break these individual wills which are forever
+thwarting royalty? God's truth!" exclaimed the queen, "the great
+nobles must be made to destroy each other, as Louis XI., the greatest
+of your kings, did with those of his time. There are four or five
+parties now in this kingdom, and the weakest of them is that of my
+children."
+
+"The Reformation is an /idea/," said Charles de Gondi; "the parties
+that Louis XI. crushed were moved by self-interests only."
+
+"Ideas are behind selfish interests," replied Chiverni. "Under Louis
+XI. the idea was the great Fiefs--"
+
+"Make heresy an axe," said Albert de Gondi, "and you will escape the
+odium of executions."
+
+"Ah!" cried the queen, "but I am ignorant of the strength and also of
+the plans of the Reformers; and I have no safe way of communicating
+with them. If I were detected in any manoeuvre of that kind, either by
+the queen, who watches me like an infant in a cradle, or by those two
+jailers over there, I should be banished from France and sent back to
+Florence with a terrible escort, commanded by Guise minions. Thank
+you, no, my daughter-in-law!--but I wish /you/ the fate of being a
+prisoner in your own home, that you may know what you have made me
+suffer."
+
+"Their plans!" exclaimed Chiverni; "the duke and the cardinal know
+what they are, but those two foxes will not divulge them. If you could
+induce them to do so, madame, I would sacrifice myself for your sake
+and come to an understanding with the Prince de Conde."
+
+"How much of the Guises' own plans have they been forced to reveal to
+you?" asked the queen, with a glance at the two brothers.
+
+"Monsieur de Vieilleville and Monsieur de Saint-Andre have just
+received fresh orders, the nature of which is concealed from us; but I
+think the duke is intending to concentrate his best troops on the left
+bank. Within a few days you will all be moved to Amboise. The duke has
+been studying the position from this terrace and decides that Blois is
+not a propitious spot for his secret schemes. What can he want
+better?" added Chiverni, pointing to the precipices which surrounded
+the chateau. "There is no place in the world where the court is more
+secure from attack than it is here."
+
+"Abdicate or reign," said Albert in a low voice to the queen, who
+stood motionless and thoughtful.
+
+A terrible expression of inward rage passed over the fine ivory face
+of Catherine de' Medici, who was not yet forty years old, though she
+had lived for twenty-six years at the court of France,--without power,
+she, who from the moment of her arrival intended to play a leading
+part! Then, in her native language, the language of Dante, these
+terrible words came slowly from her lips:--
+
+"Nothing so long as that son lives!--His little wife bewitches him,"
+she added after a pause.
+
+Catherine's exclamation was inspired by a prophecy which had been made
+to her a few days earlier at the chateau de Chaumont on the opposite
+bank of the river; where she had been taken by Ruggieri, her
+astrologer, to obtain information as to the lives of her four children
+from a celebrated female seer, secretly brought there by Nostradamus
+(chief among the physicians of that great sixteenth century) who
+practised, like the Ruggieri, the Cardans, Paracelsus, and others, the
+occult sciences. This woman, whose name and life have eluded history,
+foretold one year as the length of Francois's reign.
+
+"Give me your opinion on all this," said Catherine to Chiverni.
+
+"We shall have a battle," replied the prudent courtier. "The king of
+Navarre--"
+
+"Oh! say the queen," interrupted Catherine.
+
+"True, the queen," said Chiverni, smiling, "the queen has given the
+Prince de Conde as leader to the Reformers, and he, in his position of
+younger son, can venture all; consequently the cardinal talks of
+ordering him here."
+
+"If he comes," cried the queen, "I am saved!"
+
+Thus the leaders of the great movement of the Reformation in France
+were justified in hoping for an ally in Catherine de' Medici.
+
+"There is one thing to be considered," said the queen. "The Bourbons
+may fool the Huguenots and the Sieurs Calvin and de Beze may fool the
+Bourbons, but are we strong enough to fool Huguenots, Bourbons, and
+Guises? In presence of three such enemies it is allowable to feel
+one's pulse."
+
+"But they have not the king," said Albert de Gondi. "You will always
+triumph, having the king on your side."
+
+"/Maladetta Maria/!" muttered Catherine between her teeth.
+
+"The Lorrains are, even now, endeavoring to turn the burghers against
+you," remarked Birago.
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE COURT
+
+The hope of gaining the crown was not the result of a premeditated
+plan in the minds of the restless Guises. Nothing warranted such a
+hope or such a plan. Circumstances alone inspired their audacity. The
+two cardinals and the two Balafres were four ambitious minds, superior
+in talents to all the other politicians who surrounded them. This
+family was never really brought low except by Henri IV.; a factionist
+himself, trained in the great school of which Catherine and the Guises
+were masters,--by whose lessons he had profited but too well.
+
+At this moment the two brothers, the duke and cardinal, were the
+arbiters of the greatest revolution attempted in Europe since that of
+Henry VIII. in England, which was the direct consequence of the
+invention of printing. Adversaries to the Reformation, they meant to
+stifle it, power being in their hands. But their opponent, Calvin,
+though less famous than Luther, was far the stronger of the two.
+Calvin saw government where Luther saw dogma only. While the stout
+beer-drinker and amorous German fought with the devil and flung an
+inkbottle at his head, the man from Picardy, a sickly celibate, made
+plans of campaign, directed battles, armed princes, and roused whole
+peoples by sowing republican doctrines in the hearts of the burghers--
+recouping his continual defeats in the field by fresh progress in the
+mind of the nations.
+
+The Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duc de Guise, like Philip the Second
+and the Duke of Alba, knew where and when the monarchy was threatened,
+and how close the alliance ought to be between Catholicism and
+Royalty. Charles the Fifth, drunk with the wine of Charlemagne's cup,
+believing too blindly in the strength of his monarchy, and confident
+of sharing the world with Suleiman, did not at first feel the blow at
+his head; but no sooner had Cardinal Granvelle made him aware of the
+extent of the wound than he abdicated. The Guises had but one scheme,
+--that of annihilating heresy at a single blow. This blow they were
+now to attempt, for the first time, to strike at Amboise; failing
+there they tried it again, twelve years later, at the Saint-
+Bartholomew,--on the latter occasion in conjunction with Catherine de'
+Medici, enlightened by that time by the flames of a twelve years' war,
+enlightened above all by the significant word "republic," uttered
+later and printed by the writers of the Reformation, but already
+foreseen (as we have said before) by Lecamus, that type of the
+Parisian bourgeoisie.
+
+The two Guises, now on the point of striking a murderous blow at the
+heart of the French nobility, in order to separate it once for all
+from a religious party whose triumph would be its ruin, still stood
+together on the terrace, concerting as to the best means of revealing
+their coup-d'Etat to the king, while Catherine was talking with her
+counsellors.
+
+"Jeanne d'Albret knew what she was about when she declared herself
+protectress of the Huguenots! She has a battering-ram in the
+Reformation, and she knows how to use it," said the duke, who fathomed
+the deep designs of the Queen of Navarre, one of the great minds of
+the century.
+
+"Theodore de Beze is now at Nerac," remarked the cardinal, "after
+first going to Geneva to take Calvin's orders."
+
+"What men these burghers know how to find!" exclaimed the duke.
+
+"Ah! we have none on our side of the quality of La Renaudie!" cried
+the cardinal. "He is a true Catiline."
+
+"Such men always act for their own interests," replied the duke.
+"Didn't I fathom La Renaudie? I loaded him with favors; I helped him
+to escape when he was condemned by the parliament of Bourgogne; I
+brought him back from exile by obtaining a revision of his sentence; I
+intended to do far more for him; and all the while he was plotting a
+diabolical conspiracy against us! That rascal has united the
+Protestants of Germany with the heretics of France by reconciling the
+differences that grew up between the dogmas of Luther and those of
+Calvin. He has brought the discontented great seigneurs into the party
+of the Reformation without obliging them to abjure Catholicism openly.
+For the last year he has had thirty captains under him! He is
+everywhere at once,--at Lyon, in Languedoc, at Nantes! It was he who
+drew up those minutes of a consultation which were hawked about all
+Germany, in which the theologians declared that force might be
+resorted to in order to withdraw the king from our rule and tutelage;
+the paper is now being circulated from town to town. Wherever we look
+for him we never find him! And yet I have never done him anything but
+good! It comes to this, that we must now either thrash him like a dog,
+or try to throw him a golden bridge by which he will cross into our
+camp."
+
+"Bretagne, Languedoc, in fact the whole kingdom is in league to deal
+us a mortal blow," said the cardinal. "After the fete was over
+yesterday I spent the rest of the night in reading the reports sent me
+by the monks; in which I found that the only persons who have
+compromised themselves are poor gentlemen, artisans, as to whom it
+doesn't signify whether you hang them or let them live. The Colignys
+and Condes do not show their hand as yet, though they hold the threads
+of the whole conspiracy."
+
+"Yes," replied the duke, "and, therefore, as soon as that lawyer
+Avenelles sold the secret of the plot, I told Braguelonne to let the
+conspirators carry it out. They have no suspicion that we know it;
+they are so sure of surprising us that the leaders may possibly show
+themselves then. My advice is to allow ourselves to be beaten for
+forty-eight hours."
+
+"Half an hour would be too much," cried the cardinal, alarmed.
+
+"So this is your courage, is it?" retorted the Balafre.
+
+The cardinal, quite unmoved, replied: "Whether the Prince de Conde is
+compromised or not, if we are certain that he is the leader, we should
+strike him down at once and secure tranquillity. We need judges rather
+than soldiers for this business--and judges are never lacking. Victory
+is always more certain in the parliament than on the field, and it
+costs less."
+
+"I consent, willingly," said the duke; "but do you think the Prince de
+Conde is powerful enough to inspire, himself alone, the audacity of
+those who are making this first attack upon us? Isn't there, behind
+him--"
+
+"The king of Navarre," said the cardinal.
+
+"Pooh! a fool who speaks to me cap in hand!" replied the duke. "The
+coquetries of that Florentine woman seem to blind your eyes--"
+
+"Oh! as for that," exclaimed the priest, "if I do play the gallant
+with her it is only that I may read to the bottom of her heart."
+
+"She has no heart," said the duke, sharply; "she is even more
+ambitious than you and I."
+
+"You are a brave soldier," said the cardinal; "but, believe me, I
+distance you in this matter. I have had Catherine watched by Mary
+Stuart long before you even suspected her. She has no more religion
+than my shoe; if she is not the soul of this plot it is not for want
+of will. But we shall now be able to test her on the scene itself, and
+find out then how she stands by us. Up to this time, however, I am
+certain she has held no communication whatever with the heretics."
+
+"Well, it is time now to reveal the whole plot to the king, and to the
+queen-mother, who, you say, knows nothing of it,--that is the sole
+proof of her innocence; perhaps the conspirators have waited till the
+last moment, expecting to dazzle her with the probabilities of
+success. La Renaudie must soon discover by my arrangements that we are
+warned. Last night Nemours was to follow detachments of the Reformers
+who are pouring in along the cross-roads, and the conspirators will be
+forced to attack us at Amboise, which place I intend to let them
+enter. Here," added the duke, pointing to three sides of the rock on
+which the chateau de Blois is built; "we should have an assault
+without any result; the Huguenots could come and go at will. Blois is
+an open hall with four entrances; whereas Amboise is a sack with a
+single mouth."
+
+"I shall not leave Catherine's side," said the cardinal.
+
+"We have made a blunder," remarked the duke, who was playing with his
+dagger, tossing it into the air and catching it by the hilt. "We ought
+to have treated her as we did the Reformers,--given her complete
+freedom of action and caught her in the act."
+
+The cardinal looked at his brother for an instant and shook his head.
+
+"What does Pardaillan want?" said the duke, observing the approach of
+the young nobleman who was later to become celebrated by his encounter
+with La Renaudie, in which they both lost their lives.
+
+"Monseigneur, a man sent by the queen's furrier is at the gate, and
+says he has an ermine suit to convey to her. Am I to let him enter?"
+
+"Ah! yes,--the ermine coat she spoke of yesterday," returned the
+cardinal; "let the shop-fellow pass; she will want the garment for the
+voyage down the Loire."
+
+"How did he get here without being stopped until he reached the gate?"
+asked the duke.
+
+"I do not know," replied Pardaillan.
+
+"I'll ask to see him when he is with the queen," thought the Balafre.
+"Let him wait in the /salle des gardes/," he said aloud. "Is he young,
+Pardaillan?"
+
+"Yes, monseigneur; he says he is a son of Lecamus the furrier."
+
+"Lecamus is a good Catholic," remarked the cardinal, who, like his
+brother the duke, was endowed with Caesar's memory. "The rector of
+Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs relies upon him; he is the provost of that
+quarter."
+
+"Nevertheless," said the duke, "make the son talk with the captain of
+the Scotch guard," laying an emphasis on the verb which was readily
+understood. "Ambroise is in the chateau; he can tell us whether the
+fellow is really the son of Lecamus, for the old man did him good
+service in times past. Send for Ambroise Pare."
+
+It was at this moment that Queen Catherine went, unattended, toward
+the two brothers, who hastened to meet her with their accustomed show
+of respect, in which the Italian princess detected constant irony.
+
+"Messieurs," she said, "will you deign to inform me of what is about
+to take place? Is the widow of your former master of less importance
+in your esteem than the Sieurs Vieilleville, Birago, and Chiverni?"
+
+"Madame," replied the cardinal, in a tone of gallantry, "our duty as
+men, taking precedence of that of statecraft, forbids us to alarm the
+fair sex by false reports. But this morning there is indeed good
+reason to confer with you on the affairs of the country. You must
+excuse my brother for having already given orders to the gentlemen you
+mention,--orders which were purely military, and therefore did not
+concern you; the matters of real importance are still to be decided.
+If you are willing, we will now go the /lever/ of the king and queen;
+it is nearly time."
+
+"But what is all this, Monsieur le duc?" cried Catherine, pretending
+alarm. "Is anything the matter?"
+
+"The Reformation, madame, is no longer a mere heresy; it is a party,
+which has taken arms and is coming here to snatch the king away from
+you."
+
+Catherine, the cardinal, the duke, and the three gentlemen made their
+way to the staircase through the gallery, which was crowded with
+courtiers who, being off duty, no longer had the right of entrance to
+the royal apartments, and stood in two hedges on either side. Gondi,
+who watched them while the queen-mother talked with the Lorraine
+princes, whispered in her ear, in good Tuscan, two words which
+afterwards became proverbs,--words which are the keynote to one aspect
+of her regal character: "Odiate e aspettate"--"Hate and wait."
+
+Pardaillan, who had gone to order the officer of the guard at the gate
+of the chateau to let the clerk of the queen's furrier enter, found
+Christophe open-mouthed before the portal, staring at the facade built
+by the good king Louis XII., on which there was at that time a much
+greater number of grotesque carvings than we see there to-day,--
+grotesque, that is to say, if we may judge by those that remain to us.
+For instance, persons curious in such matters may remark the figurine
+of a woman carved on the capital of one of the portal columns, with
+her robe caught up to show to a stout monk crouching in the capital of
+the corresponding column "that which Brunelle showed to Marphise";
+while above this portal stood, at the time of which we write, the
+statue of Louis XII. Several of the window-casings of this facade,
+carved in the same style, and now, unfortunately, destroyed, amused,
+or seemed to amuse Christophe, on whom the arquebusiers of the guard
+were raining jests.
+
+"He would like to live there," said the sub-corporal, playing with the
+cartridges of his weapon, which were prepared for use in the shape of
+little sugar-loaves, and slung to the baldricks of the men.
+
+"Hey, Parisian!" said another; "you never saw the like of that, did
+you?"
+
+"He recognizes the good King Louis XII.," said a third.
+
+Christophe pretended not to hear, and tried to exaggerate his
+amazement, the result being that his silly attitude and his behavior
+before the guard proved an excellent passport to the eyes of
+Pardaillan.
+
+"The queen has not yet risen," said the young captain; "come and wait
+for her in the /salle des gardes/."
+
+Christophe followed Pardaillan rather slowly. On the way he stopped to
+admire the pretty gallery in the form of an arcade, where the
+courtiers of Louis XII. awaited the reception-hour when it rained, and
+where, at the present moment, were several seigneurs attached to the
+Guises; for the staircase (so well preserved to the present day) which
+led to their apartments is at the end of this gallery in a tower, the
+architecture of which commends itself to the admiration of intelligent
+beholders.
+
+"Well, well! did you come here to study the carving of images?" cried
+Pardaillan, as Christophe stopped before the charming sculptures of
+the balustrade which unites, or, if you prefer it, separates the
+columns of each arcade.
+
+Christophe followed the young officer to the grand staircase, not
+without a glance of ecstasy at the semi-Moorish tower. The weather was
+fine, and the court was crowded with staff-officers and seigneurs,
+talking together in little groups,--their dazzling uniforms and court-
+dresses brightening a spot which the marvels of architecture, then
+fresh and new, had already made so brilliant.
+
+"Come in here," said Pardaillan, making Lecamus a sign to follow him
+through a carved wooden door leading to the second floor, which the
+door-keeper opened on recognizing the young officer.
+
+It is easy to imagine Christophe's amazement as he entered the great
+/salle des gardes/, then so vast that military necessity has since
+divided it by a partition into two chambers. It occupied on the second
+floor (that of the king), as did the corresponding hall on the first
+floor (that of the queen-mother), one third of the whole front of the
+chateau facing the courtyard; and it was lighted by two windows to
+right and two to left of the tower in which the famous staircase winds
+up. The young captain went to the door of the royal chamber, which
+opened upon this vast hall, and told one of the two pages on duty to
+inform Madame Dayelles, the queen's bedchamber woman, that the furrier
+was in the hall with her surcoat.
+
+On a sign from Pardaillan Christophe placed himself near an officer,
+who was seated on a stool at the corner of a fireplace as large as his
+father's whole shop, which was at the end of the great hall, opposite
+to a precisely similar fireplace at the other end. While talking to
+this officer, a lieutenant, he contrived to interest him with an
+account of the stagnation of trade. Christophe seemed so thoroughly a
+shopkeeper that the officer imparted that conviction to the captain of
+the Scotch guard, who came in from the courtyard to question Lecamus,
+all the while watching him covertly and narrowly.
+
+However much Christophe Lecamus had been warned, it was impossible for
+him to really apprehend the cold ferocity of the interests between
+which Chaudieu had slipped him. To an observer of this scene, who had
+known the secrets of it as the historian understands it in the light
+of to-day, there was indeed cause to tremble for this young man,--the
+hope of two families,--thrust between those powerful and pitiless
+machines, Catherine and the Guises. But do courageous beings, as a
+rule, measure the full extent of their dangers? By the way in which
+the port of Blois, the chateau, and the town were guarded, Christophe
+was prepared to find spies and traps everywhere; and he therefore
+resolved to conceal the importance of his mission and the tension of
+his mind under the empty-headed and shopkeeping appearance with which
+he presented himself to the eyes of young Pardaillan, the officer of
+the guard, and the Scottish captain.
+
+The agitation which, in a royal castle, always attends the hour of the
+king's rising, was beginning to show itself. The great lords, whose
+horses, pages, or grooms remained in the outer courtyard,--for no one,
+except the king and the queens, had the right to enter the inner
+courtyard on horseback,--were mounting by groups the magnificent
+staircase, and filling by degrees the vast hall, the beams of which
+are now stripped of the decorations that then adorned them. Miserable
+little red tiles have replaced the ingenious mosaics of the floors;
+and the thick walls, then draped with the crown tapestries and glowing
+with all the arts of that unique period of the splendors of humanity,
+are now denuded and whitewashed! Reformers and Catholics were pressing
+in to hear the news and to watch faces, quite as much as to pay their
+duty to the king. Francois II.'s excessive love for Mary Stuart, to
+which neither the queen-mother nor the Guises made any opposition, and
+the politic compliance of Mary Stuart herself, deprived the king of
+all regal power. At seventeen years of age he knew nothing of royalty
+but its pleasures, or of marriage beyond the indulgence of first
+passion. As a matter of fact, all present paid their court to Queen
+Mary and to her uncles, the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duc de Guise,
+rather than to the king.
+
+This stir took place before Christophe, who watched the arrival of
+each new personage with natural eagerness. A magnificent portiere, on
+either side of which stood two pages and two soldiers of the Scotch
+guard, then on duty, showed him the entrance to the royal chamber,--
+the chamber so fatal to the son of the present Duc de Guise, the
+second Balafre, who fell at the foot of the bed now occupied by Mary
+Stuart and Francois II. The queen's maids of honor surrounded the
+fireplace opposite to that where Christophe was being "talked with" by
+the captain of the guard. This second fireplace was considered the
+/chimney of honor/. It was built in the thick wall of the Salle de
+Conseil, between the door of the royal chamber and that of the
+council-hall, so that the maids of honor and the lords in waiting who
+had the right to be there were on the direct passage of the king and
+queen. The courtiers were certain on this occasion of seeing
+Catherine, for her maids of honor, dressed like the rest of the court
+ladies, in black, came up the staircase from the queen-mother's
+apartment, and took their places, marshalled by the Comtesse de
+Fiesque, on the side toward the council-hall and opposite to the maids
+of honor of the young queen, led by the Duchesse de Guise, who
+occupied the other side of the fireplace on the side of the royal
+bedroom. The courtiers left an open space between the ranks of these
+young ladies (who all belonged to the first families of the kingdom),
+which none but the greatest lords had the right to enter. The Comtesse
+de Fiesque and the Duchesse de Guise were, in virtue of their office,
+seated in the midst of these noble maids, who were all standing.
+
+The first gentleman who approached the dangerous ranks was the Duc
+d'Orleans, the king's brother, who had come down from his apartment on
+the third floor, accompanied by Monsieur de Cypierre, his governor.
+This young prince, destined before the end of the year to reign under
+the title of Charles IX., was only ten years old and extremely timid.
+The Duc d'Anjou and the Duc d'Alencon, his younger brothers, also the
+Princesse Marguerite, afterwards the wife of Henri IV. (la Reine
+Margot), were too young to come to court, and were therefore kept by
+their mother in her own apartments. The Duc d'Orleans, richly dressed
+after the fashion of the times, in silken trunk-hose, a close-fitting
+jacket of cloth of gold embroidered with black flowers, and a little
+mantle of embroidered velvet, all black, for he still wore mourning
+for his father, bowed to the two ladies of honor and took his place
+beside his mother's maids. Already full of antipathy for the adherents
+of the house of Guise, he replied coldly to the remarks of the duchess
+and leaned his arm on the back of the chair of the Comtesse de
+Fiesque. His governor, Monsieur de Cypierre, one of the noblest
+characters of that day, stood beside him like a shield. Amyot
+(afterwards Bishop of Auxerre and translator of Plutarch), in the
+simple soutane of an abbe, also accompanied the young prince, being
+his tutor, as he was of the two other princes, whose affection became
+so profitable to him.
+
+Between the "chimney of honor" and the other chimney at the end of the
+hall, around which were grouped the guards, their captain, a few
+courtiers, and Christophe carrying his box of furs, the Chancellor
+Olivier, protector and predecessor of l'Hopital, in the robes which
+the chancellors of France have always worn, was walking up and down
+with the Cardinal de Tournon, who had recently returned from Rome. The
+pair were exchanging a few whispered sentences in the midst of great
+attention from the lords of the court, massed against the wall which
+separated the /salle des gardes/ from the royal bedroom, like a living
+tapestry backed by the rich tapestry of art crowded by a thousand
+personages. In spite of the present grave events, the court presented
+the appearance of all courts in all lands, at all epochs, and in the
+midst of the greatest dangers. The courtiers talked of trivial
+matters, thinking of serious ones; they jested as they studied faces,
+and apparently concerned themselves about love and the marriage of
+rich heiresses amid the bloodiest catastrophes.
+
+"What did you think of yesterday's fete?" asked Bourdeilles, seigneur
+of Brantome, approaching Mademoiselle de Piennes, one of the queen-
+mother's maids of honor.
+
+"Messieurs du Baif et du Bellay were inspired with delightful ideas,"
+she replied, indicating the organizers of the fete, who were standing
+near. "I thought it all in the worst taste," she added in a low voice.
+
+"You had no part to play in it, I think?" remarked Mademoiselle de
+Lewiston from the opposite ranks of Queen Mary's maids.
+
+"What are you reading there, madame?" asked Amyot of the Comtesse de
+Fiesque.
+
+"'Amadis de Gaule,' by the Seigneur des Essarts, commissary in
+ordinary to the king's artillery," she replied.
+
+"A charming work," remarked the beautiful girl who was afterwards so
+celebrated under the name of Fosseuse when she was lady of honor to
+Queen Marguerite of Navarre.
+
+"The style is a novelty in form," said Amyot. "Do you accept such
+barbarisms?" he added, addressing Brantome.
+
+"They please the ladies, you know," said Brantome, crossing over to
+the Duchesse de Guise, who held the "Decamerone" in her hand. "Some of
+the women of your house must appear in the book, madame," he said. "It
+is a pity that the Sieur Boccaccio did not live in our day; he would
+have known plenty of ladies to swell his volume--"
+
+"How shrewd that Monsieur de Brantome is," said the beautiful
+Mademoiselle de Limueil to the Comtesse de Fiesque; "he came to us
+first, but he means to remain in the Guise quarters."
+
+"Hush!" said Madame de Fiesque glancing at the beautiful Limueil.
+"Attend to what concerns yourself."
+
+The young girl turned her eyes to the door. She was expecting Sardini,
+a noble Italian, with whom the queen-mother, her relative, married her
+after an "accident" which happened in the dressing-room of Catherine
+de' Medici herself; but which the young lady won the honor of having a
+queen as midwife.
+
+"By the holy Alipantin! Mademoiselle Davila seems to me prettier and
+prettier every morning," said Monsieur de Robertet, secretary of
+State, bowing to the ladies of the queen-mother.
+
+The arrival of the secretary of State made no commotion whatever,
+though his office was precisely what that of a minister is in these
+days.
+
+"If you really think so, monsieur," said the beauty, "lend me the
+squib which was written against the Messieurs de Guise; I know it was
+lent to you."
+
+"It is no longer in my possession," replied the secretary, turning
+round to bow to the Duchesse de Guise.
+
+"I have it," said the Comte de Grammont to Mademoiselle Davila, "but I
+will give it you on one condition only."
+
+"Condition! fie!" exclaimed Madame de Fiesque.
+
+"You don't know what it is," replied Grammont.
+
+"Oh! it is easy to guess," remarked la Limueil.
+
+The Italian custom of calling ladies, as peasants call their wives,
+"/la/ Such-a-one" was then the fashion at the court of France.
+
+"You are mistaken," said the count, hastily, "the matter is simply to
+give a letter from my cousin de Jarnac to one of the maids on the
+other side, Mademoiselle de Matha."
+
+"You must not compromise my young ladies," said the Comtesse de
+Fiesque. "I will deliver the letter myself.--Do you know what is
+happening in Flanders?" she continued, turning to the Cardinal de
+Tournon. "It seems that Monsieur d'Egmont is given to surprises."
+
+"He and the Prince of Orange," remarked Cypierre, with a significant
+shrug of his shoulders.
+
+"The Duke of Alba and Cardinal Granvelle are going there, are they
+not, monsieur?" said Amyot to the Cardinal de Tournon, who remained
+standing, gloomy and anxious between the opposing groups after his
+conversation with the chancellor.
+
+"Happily we are at peace; we need only conquer heresy on the stage,"
+remarked the young Duc d'Orleans, alluding to a part he had played the
+night before,--that of a knight subduing a hydra which bore upon its
+foreheads the word "Reformation."
+
+Catherine de' Medici, agreeing in this with her daughter-in-law, had
+allowed a theatre to be made of the great hall (afterwards arranged
+for the Parliament of Blois), which, as we have already said,
+connected the chateau of Francois I. with that of Louis XII.
+
+The cardinal made no answer to Amyot's question, but resumed his walk
+through the centre of the hall, talking in low tones with Monsieur de
+Robertet and the chancellor. Many persons are ignorant of the
+difficulties which secretaries of State (subsequently called
+ministers) met with at the first establishment of their office, and
+how much trouble the kings of France had in creating it. At this epoch
+a secretary of State like Robertet was purely and simply a writer; he
+counted for almost nothing among the princes and grandees who decided
+the affairs of State. His functions were little more than those of the
+superintendent of finances, the chancellor, and the keeper of the
+seals. The kings granted seats at the council by letters-patent to
+those of their subjects whose advice seemed to them useful in the
+management of public affairs. Entrance to the council was given in
+this way to a president of the Chamber of Parliament, to a bishop, or
+to an untitled favorite. Once admitted to the council, the subject
+strengthened his position there by obtaining various crown offices on
+which devolved such prerogatives as the sword of a Constable, the
+government of provinces, the grand-mastership of artillery, the baton
+of a marshal, a leading rank in the army, or the admiralty, or a
+captaincy of the galleys, often some office at court, like that of
+grand-master of the household, now held, as we have already said, by
+the Duc de Guise.
+
+"Do you think that the Duc de Nemours will marry Francoise?" said
+Madame de Guise to the tutor of the Duc d'Orleans.
+
+"Ah, madame," he replied, "I know nothing but Latin."
+
+This answer made all who were within hearing of it smile. The
+seduction of Francoise de Rohan by the Duc de Nemours was the topic of
+all conversations; but, as the duke was cousin to Francois II., and
+doubly allied to the house of Valois through his mother, the Guises
+regarded him more as the seduced than the seducer. Nevertheless, the
+power of the house of Rohan was such that the Duc de Nemours was
+obliged, after the death of Francois II., to leave France on
+consequence of suits brought against him by the Rohans; which suits
+the Guises settled. The duke's marriage with the Duchesse de Guise
+after Poltrot's assassination of her husband in 1563, may explain the
+question which she put to Amyot, by revealing the rivalry which must
+have existed between Mademoiselle de Rohan and the duchess.
+
+"Do see that group of the discontented over there?" said the Comte de
+Grammont, motioning toward the Messieurs de Coligny, the Cardinal de
+Chatillon, Danville, Thore, Moret, and several other seigneurs
+suspected of tampering with the Reformation, who were standing between
+two windows on the other side of the fireplace.
+
+"The Huguenots are bestirring themselves," said Cypierre. "We know
+that Theodore de Beze has gone to Nerac to induce the Queen of Navarre
+to declare for the Reformers--by abjuring publicly," he added, looking
+at the /bailli/ of Orleans, who held the office of chancellor to the
+Queen of Navarre, and was watching the court attentively.
+
+"She will do it!" said the /bailli/, dryly.
+
+This personage, the Orleans Jacques Coeur, one of the richest burghers
+of the day, was named Groslot, and had charge of Jeanne d'Albret's
+business with the court of France.
+
+"Do you really think so?" said the chancellor of France, appreciating
+the full importance of Groslot's declaration.
+
+"Are you not aware," said the burgher, "that the Queen of Navarre has
+nothing of the woman in her except sex? She is wholly for things
+virile; her powerful mind turns to the great affairs of State; her
+heart is invincible under adversity."
+
+"Monsieur le cardinal," whispered the Chancellor Olivier to Monsieur
+de Tournon, who had overheard Groslot, "what do you think of that
+audacity?"
+
+"The Queen of Navarre did well in choosing for her chancellor a man
+from whom the house of Lorraine borrows money, and who offers his
+house to the king, if his Majesty visits Orleans," replied the
+cardinal.
+
+The chancellor and the cardinal looked at each other, without
+venturing to further communicate their thoughts; but Robertet
+expressed them, for he thought it necessary to show more devotion to
+the Guises than these great personages, inasmuch as he was smaller
+than they.
+
+"It is a great misfortune that the house of Navarre, instead of
+abjuring the religion of its fathers, does not abjure the spirit of
+vengeance and rebellion which the Connetable de Bourbon breathed into
+it," he said aloud. "We shall see the quarrels of the Armagnacs and
+the Bourguignons revive in our day."
+
+"No," said Groslot, "there's another Louis XI. in the Cardinal de
+Lorraine."
+
+"And also in Queen Catherine," replied Robertet.
+
+At this moment Madame Dayelle, the favorite bedchamber woman of Queen
+Mary Stuart, crossed the hall, and went toward the royal chamber. Her
+passage caused a general commotion.
+
+"We shall soon enter," said Madame de Fisque.
+
+"I don't think so," replied the Duchesse de Guise. "Their Majesties
+will come out; a grand council is to be held."
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE LITTLE LEVER OF FRANCOIS II.
+
+Madame Dayelle glided into the royal chamber after scratching on the
+door,--a respectful custom, invented by Catherine de' Medici and
+adopted by the court of France.
+
+"How is the weather, my dear Dayelle?" said Queen Mary, showing her
+fresh young face out of the bed, and shaking the curtains.
+
+"Ah! madame--"
+
+"What's the matter, my Dayelle? You look as if the archers of the
+guard were after you."
+
+"Oh! madame, is the king still asleep?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We are to leave the chateau; Monsieur le cardinal requests me to tell
+you so, and to ask you to make the king agree to it.
+
+"Do you know why, my good Dayelle?"
+
+"The Reformers want to seize you and carry you off."
+
+"Ah! that new religion does not leave me a minute's peace! I dreamed
+last night that I was in prison,--I, who will some day unite the
+crowns of the three noblest kingdoms in the world!"
+
+"Therefore it could only be a dream, madame."
+
+"Carry me off! well, 'twould be rather pleasant; but on account of
+religion, and by heretics--oh, that would be horrid."
+
+The queen sprang from the bed and placed herself in a large arm-chair
+of red velvet before the fireplace, after Dayelle had given her a
+dressing-gown of black velvet, which she fastened loosely round her
+waist by a silken cord. Dayelle lit the fire, for the mornings are
+cool on the banks of the Loire in the month of May.
+
+"My uncles must have received some news during the night?" said the
+queen, inquiringly to Dayelle, whom she treated with great
+familiarity.
+
+"Messieurs de Guise have been walking together from early morning on
+the terrace, so as not to be overheard by any one; and there they
+received messengers, who came in hot haste from all the different
+points of the kingdom where the Reformers are stirring. Madame la
+reine mere was there too, with her Italians, hoping she would be
+consulted; but no, she was not admitted to the council."
+
+"She must have been furious."
+
+"All the more because she was so angry yesterday," replied Dayelle.
+"They say that when she saw your Majesty appear in that beautiful
+dress of woven gold, with the charming veil of tan-colored crape, she
+was none too pleased--"
+
+"Leave us, my good Dayelle, the king is waking up. Let no one, even
+those who have the little /entrees/, disturb us; an affair of State is
+in hand, and my uncles will not disturb us."
+
+"Why! my dear Mary, already out of bed? Is it daylight?" said the
+young king, waking up.
+
+"My dear darling, while we were asleep the wicked waked, and now they
+are forcing us to leave this delightful place."
+
+"What makes you think of wicked people, my treasure? I am sure we
+enjoyed the prettiest fete in the world last night--if it were not for
+the Latin words those gentlemen will put into our French."
+
+"Ah!" said Mary, "your language is really in very good taste, and
+Rabelais exhibits it finely."
+
+"You are such a learned woman! I am so vexed that I can't sing your
+praises in verse. If I were not the king, I would take my brother's
+tutor, Amyot, and let him make me as accomplished as Charles."
+
+"You need not envy your brother, who writes verses and shows them to
+me, asking for mine in return. You are the best of the four, and will
+make as good a king as you are the dearest of lovers. Perhaps that is
+why your mother does not like you! But never mind! I, dear heart, will
+love you for all the world."
+
+"I have no great merit in loving such a perfect queen," said the
+little king. "I don't know what prevented me from kissing you before
+the whole court when you danced the /branle/ with the torches last
+night! I saw plainly that all the other women were mere servants
+compared to you, my beautiful Mary."
+
+"It may be only prose you speak, but it is ravishing speech, dear
+darling, for it is love that says those words. And you--you know well,
+my beloved, that were you only a poor little page, I should love you
+as much as I do now. And yet, there is nothing so sweet as to whisper
+to one's self: 'My lover is king!'"
+
+"Oh! the pretty arm! Why must we dress ourselves? I love to pass my
+fingers through your silky hair and tangle its blond curls. Ah ca!
+sweet one, don't let your women kiss that pretty throat and those
+white shoulders any more; don't allow it, I say. It is too much that
+the fogs of Scotland ever touched them!"
+
+"Won't you come with me to see my dear country? The Scotch love you;
+there are no rebellions /there/!"
+
+"Who rebels in this our kingdom?" said Francois, crossing his
+dressing-gown and taking Mary Stuart on his knee.
+
+"Oh! 'tis all very charming, I know that," she said, withdrawing her
+cheek from the king; "but it is your business to reign, if you please,
+my sweet sire."
+
+"Why talk of reigning? This morning I wish--"
+
+"Why say /wish/ when you have only to will all? That's not the speech
+of a king, nor that of a lover.--But no more of love just now; let us
+drop it! We have business more important to speak of."
+
+"Oh!" cried the king, "it is long since we have had any business. Is
+it amusing?"
+
+"No," said Mary, "not at all; we are to move from Blois."
+
+"I'll wager, darling, you have seen your uncles, who manage so well
+that I, at seventeen years of age, am no better than a /roi faineant/.
+In fact, I don't know why I have attended any of the councils since
+the first. They could manage matters just as well by putting the crown
+in my chair; I see only through their eyes, and am forced to consent
+to things blindly."
+
+"Oh! monsieur," said the queen, rising from the king's knee with a
+little air of indignation, "you said you would never worry me again on
+this subject, and that my uncles used the royal power only for the
+good of your people. Your people!--they are so nice! They would gobble
+you up like a strawberry if you tried to rule them yourself. You want
+a warrior, a rough master with mailed hands; whereas you--you are a
+darling whom I love as you are; whom I should never love otherwise,--
+do you hear me, monsieur?" she added, kissing the forehead of the lad,
+who seemed inclined to rebel at her speech, but softened at her
+kisses.
+
+"Oh! how I wish they were not your uncles!" cried Francois II. "I
+particularly dislike the cardinal; and when he puts on his wheedling
+air and his submissive manner and says to me, bowing: 'Sire, the honor
+of the crown and the faith of your fathers forbid your Majesty to--
+this and that,' I am sure he is working only for his cursed house of
+Lorraine."
+
+"Oh, how well you mimicked him!" cried the queen. "But why don't you
+make the Guises inform you of what is going on, so that when you
+attain your grand majority you may know how to reign yourself? I am
+your wife, and your honor is mine. Trust me! we will reign together,
+my darling; but it won't be a bed of roses for us until the day comes
+when we have our own wills. There is nothing so difficult for a king
+as to reign. Am I a queen, for example? Don't you know that your
+mother returns me evil for all the good my uncles do to raise the
+splendor of your throne? Hey! what difference between them! My uncles
+are great princes, nephews of Charlemagne, filled with ardor and ready
+to die for you; whereas this daughter of a doctor or a shopkeeper,
+queen of France by accident, scolds like a burgher-woman who can't
+manage her own household. She is discontented because she can't set
+every one by the ears; and then she looks at me with a sour, pale
+face, and says from her pinched lips: 'My daughter, you are a queen; I
+am only the second woman in the kingdom' (she is really furious, you
+know, my darling), 'but if I were in your place I should not wear
+crimson velvet while all the court is in mourning; neither should I
+appear in public with my own hair and no jewels, because what is not
+becoming in a simple lady is still less becoming in a queen. Also I
+should not dance myself, I should content myself with seeing others
+dance.'--that is what she says to me--"
+
+"Heavens!" cried the king, "I think I hear her coming. If she were to
+know--"
+
+"Oh, how you tremble before her. She worries you. Only say so, and we
+will send her away. Faith, she's Florentine and we can't help her
+tricking you, but when it comes to worrying--"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Mary, hold your tongue!" said Francois, frightened
+and also pleased; "I don't want you to lose her good-will."
+
+"Don't be afraid that she will ever break with /me/, who will some day
+wear the three noblest crowns in the world, my dearest little king,"
+cried Mary Stuart. "Though she hates me for a thousand reasons she is
+always caressing me in the hope of turning me against my uncles."
+
+"Hates you!"
+
+"Yes, my angel; and if I had not proofs of that feeling such as women
+only understand, for they alone know its malignity, I would forgive
+her perpetual opposition to our dear love, my darling. Is it my fault
+that your father could not endure Mademoiselle Medici or that his son
+loves me? The truth is, she hates me so much that if you had not put
+yourself into a rage, we should each have had our separate chamber at
+Saint-Germain, and also here. She pretended it was the custom of the
+kings and queens of France. Custom, indeed! it was your father's
+custom, and that is easily understood. As for your grandfather,
+Francois, the good man set up the custom for the convenience of his
+loves. Therefore, I say, take care. And if we have to leave this
+place, be sure that we are not separated."
+
+"Leave Blois! Mary, what do you mean? I don't wish to leave this
+beautiful chateau, where we can see the Loire and the country all
+round us, with a town at our feet and all these pretty gardens. If I
+go away it will be to Italy with you, to see St. Peter's, and
+Raffaelle's pictures."
+
+"And the orange-trees? Oh! my darling king, if you knew the longing
+your Mary has to ramble among the orange-groves in fruit and flower!"
+
+"Let us go, then!" cried the king.
+
+"Go!" exclaimed the grand-master as he entered the room. "Yes, sire,
+you must leave Blois. Pardon my boldness in entering your chamber; but
+circumstances are stronger than etiquette, and I come to entreat you
+to hold a council."
+
+Finding themselves thus surprised, Mary and Francois hastily
+separated, and on their faces was the same expression of offended
+royal majesty.
+
+"You are too much of a grand-master, Monsieur de Guise," said the
+king, though controlling his anger.
+
+"The devil take lovers," murmured the cardinal in Catherine's ear.
+
+"My son," said the queen-mother, appearing behind the cardinal; "it is
+a matter concerning your safety and that of your kingdom."
+
+"Heresy wakes while you have slept, sire," said the cardinal.
+
+"Withdraw into the hall," cried the little king, "and then we will
+hold a council."
+
+"Madame," said the grand-master to the young queen; "the son of your
+furrier has brought some furs, which was just in time for the journey,
+for it is probable we shall sail down the Loire. But," he added,
+turning to the queen-mother, "he also wishes to speak to you, madame.
+While the king dresses, you and Madame la reine had better see and
+dismiss him, so that we may not be delayed and harassed by this
+trifle."
+
+"Certainly," said Catherine, thinking to herself, "If he expects to
+get rid of me by any such trick he little knows me."
+
+The cardinal and the duke withdrew, leaving the two queens and the
+king alone together. As they crossed the /salle des gardes/ to enter
+the council-chamber, the grand-master told the usher to bring the
+queen's furrier to him. When Christophe saw the usher approaching from
+the farther end of the great hall, he took him, on account of his
+uniform, for some great personage, and his heart sank within him. But
+that sensation, natural as it was at the approach of the critical
+moment, grew terrible when the usher, whose movement had attracted the
+eyes of all that brilliant assembly upon Christophe, his homely face
+and his bundles, said to him:--
+
+"Messeigneurs the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Grand-master wish to
+speak to you in the council chamber."
+
+"Can I have been betrayed?" thought the helpless ambassador of the
+Reformers.
+
+Christophe followed the usher with lowered eyes, which he did not
+raise till he stood in the great council-chamber, the size of which is
+almost equal to that of the /salle des gardes/. The two Lorrain
+princes were there alone, standing before the magnificent fireplace,
+which backs against that in the /salle des gardes/ around which the
+ladies of the two queens were grouped.
+
+"You have come from Paris; which route did you take?" said the
+cardinal.
+
+"I came by water, monseigneur," replied the reformer.
+
+"How did you enter Blois?" asked the grand-master.
+
+"By the docks, monseigneur."
+
+"Did no one question you?" exclaimed the duke, who was watching the
+young man closely.
+
+"No, monseigneur. To the first soldier who looked as if he meant to
+stop me I said I came on duty to the two queens, to whom my father was
+furrier."
+
+"What is happening in Paris?" asked the cardinal.
+
+"They are still looking for the murderer of the President Minard."
+
+"Are you not the son of my surgeon's greatest friend?" said the Duc de
+Guise, misled by the candor of Christophe's expression after his first
+alarm had passed away.
+
+"Yes, monseigneur."
+
+The Grand-master turned aside, abruptly raised the portiere which
+concealed the double door of the council-chamber, and showed his face
+to the whole assembly, among whom he was searching for the king's
+surgeon. Ambroise Pare, standing in a corner, caught a glance which
+the duke cast upon him, and immediately advanced. Ambroise, who at
+this time was inclined to the reformed religion, eventually adopted
+it; but the friendship of the Guises and that of the kings of France
+guaranteed him against the evils which overtook his co-religionists.
+The duke, who considered himself under obligations for life to
+Ambroise Pare, had lately caused him to be appointed chief-surgeon to
+the king.
+
+"What is it, monseigneur?" said Ambroise. "Is the king ill? I think it
+likely."
+
+"Likely? Why?"
+
+"The queen is too pretty," replied the surgeon.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed the duke in astonishment. "However, that is not the
+matter now," he added after a pause. "Ambroise, I want you to see a
+friend of yours." So saying he drew him to the door of the council-
+room, and showed him Christophe.
+
+"Ha! true, monseigneur," cried the surgeon, extending his hand to the
+young furrier. "How is your father, my lad?"
+
+"Very well, Maitre Ambroise," replied Christophe.
+
+"What are you doing at court?" asked the surgeon. "It is not your
+business to carry parcels; your father intends you for the law. Do you
+want the protection of these two great princes to make you a
+solicitor?"
+
+"Indeed I do!" said Christophe; "but I am here only in the interests
+of my father; and if you could intercede for us, please do so," he
+added in a piteous tone; "and ask the Grand Master for an order to pay
+certain sums that are due to my father, for he is at his wit's end
+just now for money."
+
+The cardinal and the duke glanced at each other and seemed satisfied.
+
+"Now leave us," said the duke to the surgeon, making him a sign. "And
+you my friend," turning to Christophe; "do your errand quickly and
+return to Paris. My secretary will give you a pass, for it is not
+safe, /mordieu/, to be travelling on the high-roads!"
+
+Neither of the brothers formed the slightest suspicion of the grave
+importance of Christophe's errand, convinced, as they now were, that
+he was really the son of the good Catholic Lecamus, the court furrier,
+sent to collect payment for their wares.
+
+"Take him close to the door of the queen's chamber; she will probably
+ask for him soon," said the cardinal to the surgeon, motioning to
+Christophe.
+
+While the son of the furrier was undergoing this brief examination in
+the council-chamber, the king, leaving the queen in company with her
+mother-in-law, had passed into his dressing-room, which was entered
+through another small room next to the chamber.
+
+Standing in the wide recess of an immense window, Catherine looked at
+the gardens, her mind a prey to painful thoughts. She saw that in all
+probability one of the greatest captains of the age would be foisted
+that very day into the place and power of her son, the king of France,
+under the formidable title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom.
+Before this peril she stood alone, without power of action, without
+defence. She might have been likened to a phantom, as she stood there
+in her mourning garments (which she had not quitted since the death of
+Henri II.) so motionless was her pallid face in the grasp of her
+bitter reflections. Her black eyes floated in that species of
+indecision for which great statesmen are so often blamed, though it
+comes from the vast extent of the glance with which they embrace all
+difficulties,--setting one against the other, and adding up, as it
+were, all chances before deciding on a course. Her ears rang, her
+blood tingled, and yet she stood there calm and dignified, all the
+while measuring in her soul the depths of the political abyss which
+lay before her, like the natural depths which rolled away at her feet.
+This day was the second of those terrible days (that of the arrest of
+the Vidame of Chartres being the first) which she was destined to meet
+in so great numbers throughout her regal life; it also witnessed her
+last blunder in the school of power. Though the sceptre seemed
+escaping from her hands, she wished to seize it; and she did seize it
+by a flash of that power of will which was never relaxed by either the
+disdain of her father-in-law, Francois I., and his court,--where, in
+spite of her rank of dauphiness, she had been of no account,--or the
+constant repulses of her husband, Henri II., and the terrible
+opposition of her rival, Diane de Poitiers. A man would never have
+fathomed this thwarted queen; but the fair-haired Mary--so subtle, so
+clever, so girlish, and already so well-trained--examined her out of
+the corners of her eyes as she hummed an Italian air and assumed a
+careless countenance. Without being able to guess the storms of
+repressed ambition which sent the dew of a cold sweat to the forehead
+of the Florentine, the pretty Scotch girl, with her wilful, piquant
+face, knew very well that the advancement of her uncle the Duc de
+Guise to the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom was filling the
+queen-mother with inward rage. Nothing amused her more than to watch
+her mother-in-law, in whom she saw only an intriguing woman of low
+birth, always ready to avenge herself. The face of the one was grave
+and gloomy, and somewhat terrible, by reason of the livid tones which
+transform the skin of Italian women to yellow ivory by daylight,
+though it recovers its dazzling brilliancy under candlelight; the face
+of the other was fair and fresh and gay. At sixteen, Mary Stuart's
+skin had that exquisite blond whiteness which made her beauty so
+celebrated. Her fresh and piquant face, with its pure lines, shone
+with the roguish mischief of childhood, expressed in the regular
+eyebrows, the vivacious eyes, and the archness of the pretty mouth.
+Already she displayed those feline graces which nothing, not even
+captivity nor the sight of her dreadful scaffold, could lessen. The
+two queens--one at the dawn, the other in the midsummer of life--
+presented at this moment the utmost contrast. Catherine was an
+imposing queen, an impenetrable widow, without other passion than that
+of power. Mary was a light-hearted, careless bride, making playthings
+of her triple crowns. One foreboded great evils,--foreseeing the
+assassination of the Guises as the only means of suppressing enemies
+who were resolved to rise above the Throne and the Parliament;
+foreseeing also the bloodshed of a long and bitter struggle; while
+the other little anticipated her own judicial murder. A sudden and
+strange reflection calmed the mind of the Italian.
+
+"That sorceress and Ruggiero both declare this reign is coming to an
+end; my difficulties will not last long," she thought.
+
+And so, strangely enough, an occult science forgotten in our day--that
+of astrology--supported Catherine at this moment, as it did, in fact,
+throughout her life; for, as she witnessed the minute fulfilment of
+the prophecies of those who practised the art, her belief in it
+steadily increased.
+
+"You are very gloomy, madame," said Mary Stuart, taking from the hands
+of her waiting-woman, Dayelle, a little cap and placing the point of
+it on the parting of her hair, while two wings of rich lace surrounded
+the tufts of blond curls which clustered on her temples.
+
+The pencil of many painters have so frequently represented this head-
+dress that it is thought to have belonged exclusively to Mary Queen of
+Scots; whereas it was really invented by Catherine de' Medici, when
+she put on mourning for Henri II. But she never knew how to wear it
+with the grace of her daughter-in-law, to whom it was becoming. This
+annoyance was not the least among the many which the queen-mother
+cherished against the young queen.
+
+"Is the queen reproving me?" said Catherine, turning to Mary.
+
+"I owe you all respect, and should not dare to do so," said the
+Scottish queen, maliciously, glancing at Dayelle.
+
+Placed between the rival queens, the favorite waiting-woman stood
+rigid as an andiron; a smile of comprehension might have cost her her
+life.
+
+"Can I be as gay as you, after losing the late king, and now beholding
+my son's kingdom about to burst into flames?"
+
+"Public affairs do not concern women," said Mary Stuart. "Besides, my
+uncles are there."
+
+These words were, under the circumstances, like so many poisoned
+arrows.
+
+"Let us look at our furs, madame," replied the Italian, sarcastically;
+"that will employ us on our legitimate female affairs while your
+uncles decide those of the kingdom."
+
+"Oh! but we will go the Council, madame; we shall be more useful than
+you think."
+
+"We!" said Catherine, with an air of astonishment. "But I do not
+understand Latin, myself."
+
+"You think me very learned," cried Mary Stuart, laughing, "but I
+assure you, madame, I study only to reach the level of the Medici, and
+learn how to /cure/ the wounds of the kingdom."
+
+Catherine was silenced by this sharp thrust, which referred to the
+origin of the Medici, who were descended, some said, from a doctor of
+medicine, others from a rich druggist. She made no direct answer.
+Dayelle colored as her mistress looked at her, asking for the applause
+that even queens demand from their inferiors if there are no other
+spectators.
+
+"Your charming speeches, madame, will unfortunately cure the wounds of
+neither Church nor State," said Catherine at last, with her calm and
+cold dignity. "The science of my fathers in that direction gave them
+thrones; whereas if you continue to trifle in the midst of danger you
+are liable to lose yours."
+
+It was at this moment that Ambroise Pare, the chief surgeon, scratched
+softly on the door, and Madame Dayelle, opening it, admitted
+Christophe.
+
+
+
+VII
+
+A DRAMA IN A SURCOAT
+
+The young reformer intended to study Catherine's face, all the while
+affecting a natural embarrassment at finding himself in such a place;
+but his proceedings were much hastened by the eagerness with which the
+younger queen darted to the cartons to see her surcoat.
+
+"Madame," said Christophe, addressing Catherine.
+
+He turned his back on the other queen and on Dayelle, instantly
+profiting by the attention the two women were eager to bestow upon the
+furs to play a bold stroke.
+
+"What do you want of me?" said Catherine giving him a searching look.
+
+Christophe had put the treaty proposed by the Prince de Conde, the
+plan of the Reformers, and the detail of their forces in his bosom
+between his shirt and his cloth jacket, folding them, however, within
+the bill which Catherine owed to the furrier.
+
+"Madame," he said, "my father is in horrible need of money, and if you
+will deign to cast your eyes over your bill," here he unfolded the
+paper and put the treaty on the top of it, "you will see that your
+Majesty owes him six thousand crowns. Have the goodness to take pity
+on us. See, madame!" and he held the treaty out to her. "Read it; the
+account dates from the time the late king came to the throne."
+
+Catherine was bewildered by the preamble of the treaty which met her
+eye, but she did not lose her head. She folded the paper quickly,
+admiring the audacity and presence of mind of the youth, and feeling
+sure that after performing such a masterly stroke he would not fail to
+understand her. She therefore tapped him on the head with the folded
+paper, saying:--
+
+"It is very clumsy of you, my little friend, to present your bill
+before the furs. Learn to know women. You must never ask us to pay
+until the moment when we are satisfied."
+
+"Is that traditional?" said the young queen, turning to her mother-in-
+law, who made no reply.
+
+"Ah, mesdames, pray excuse my father," said Christophe. "If he had not
+had such need of money you would not have had your furs at all. The
+country is in arms, and there are so many dangers to run in getting
+here that nothing but our great distress would have brought me. No one
+but me was willing to risk them."
+
+"The lad is new to his business," said Mary Stuart, smiling.
+
+It may not be useless, for the understanding of this trifling, but
+very important scene, to remark that a surcoat was, as the name
+implies (/sur cotte/), a species of close-fitting spencer which women
+wore over their bodies and down to their thighs, defining the figure.
+This garment protected the back, chest, and throat from cold. These
+surcoats were lined with fur, a band of which, wide or narrow as the
+case might be, bordered the outer material. Mary Stuart, as she tried
+the garment on, looked at herself in a large Venetian mirror to see
+the effect behind, thus leaving her mother-in-law an opportunity to
+examine the papers, the bulk of which might have excited the young
+queen's suspicions had she noticed it.
+
+"Never tell women of the dangers you have run when you have come out
+of them safe and sound," she said, turning to show herself to
+Christophe.
+
+"Ah! madame, I have your bill, too," he said, looking at her with
+well-played simplicity.
+
+The young queen eyed him, but did not take the paper; and she noticed,
+though without at the moment drawing any conclusions, that he had
+taken her bill from his pocket, whereas he had carried Queen
+Catherine's in his bosom. Neither did she find in the lad's eyes that
+glance of admiration which her presence invariably excited in all
+beholders. But she was so engrossed by her surcoat that, for the
+moment, she did not ask herself the meaning of such indifference.
+
+"Take the bill, Dayelle," she said to her waiting-woman; "give it to
+Monsieur de Versailles (Lomenie) and tell him from me to pay it."
+
+"Oh! madame," said Christophe, "if you do not ask the king or
+monseigneur the grand-master to sign me an order your gracious word
+will have no effect."
+
+"You are rather more eager than becomes a subject, my friend," said
+Mary Stuart. "Do you not believe my royal word?"
+
+The king now appeared, in silk stockings and trunk-hose (the breeches
+of that period), but without his doublet and mantle; he had, however,
+a rich loose coat of velvet edged with minever.
+
+"Who is the wretch who dares to doubt your word?" he said,
+overhearing, in spite of his distance, his wife's last words.
+
+The door of the dressing-room was hidden by the royal bed. This room
+was afterwards called "the old cabinet," to distinguish it from the
+fine cabinet of pictures which Henri III. constructed at the farther
+end of the same suite of rooms, next to the hall of the States-
+general. It was in the old cabinet that Henri III. hid the murderers
+when he sent for the Duc de Guise, while he himself remained hidden in
+the new cabinet during the murder, only emerging in time to see the
+overbearing subject for whom there were no longer prisons, tribunals,
+judges, nor even laws, draw his last breath. Were it not for these
+terrible circumstances the historian of to-day could hardly trace the
+former occupation of these cabinets, now filled with soldiers. A
+quartermaster writes to his mistress on the very spot where the
+pensive Catherine once decided on her course between the parties.
+
+"Come with me, my friend," said the queen-mother, "and I will see that
+you are paid. Commerce must live, and money is its backbone."
+
+"Go, my lad," cried the young queen, laughing; "my august mother knows
+more than I do about commerce."
+
+Catherine was about to leave the room without replying to this last
+taunt; but she remembered that her indifference to it might provoke
+suspicion, and she answered hastily:--
+
+"But you, my dear, understand the business of love."
+
+Then she descended to her own apartments.
+
+"Put away these furs, Dayelle, and let us go to the Council,
+monsieur," said Mary to the young king, enchanted with the opportunity
+of deciding in the absence of the queen-mother so important a question
+as the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom.
+
+Mary Stuart took the king's arm. Dayelle went out before them,
+whispering to the pages; one of whom (it was young Teligny, who
+afterwards perished so miserably during the Saint-Bartholomew) cried
+out:--
+
+"The king!"
+
+Hearing the words, the two soldiers of the guard presented arms, and
+the two pages went forward to the door of the Council-room through the
+lane of courtiers and that of the maids of honor of the two queens.
+All the members of the Council then grouped themselves about the door
+of their chamber, which was not very far from the door to the
+staircase. The grand-master, the cardinal, and the chancellor advanced
+to meet the young sovereign, who smiled to several of the maids of
+honor and replied to the remarks of a few courtiers more privileged
+than the rest. But the queen, evidently impatient, drew Francois II.
+as quickly as possible toward the Council-chamber. When the sound of
+arquebuses, dropping heavily on the floor, had announced the entrance
+of the couple, the pages replaced their caps upon their heads, and the
+private talk among the courtiers on the gravity of the matters now
+about to be discussed began again.
+
+"They sent Chiverni to fetch the Connetable, but he has not come,"
+said one.
+
+"There is not a single prince of the blood present," said another.
+
+"The chancellor and Monsieur de Tournon looked anxious," remarked a
+third.
+
+"The grand-master sent word to the keeper of the seals to be sure not
+to miss this Council; therefore you may be certain they will issue
+letters-patent."
+
+"Why does the queen-mother stay in her own apartments at such a time?"
+
+"They'll cut out plenty of work for us," remarked Groslot to Cardinal
+de Chatillon.
+
+In short, everybody had a word to say. Some went and came, in and out
+of the great hall; others hovered about the maids of honor of both
+queens, as if it might be possible to catch a few words through a wall
+three feet thick or through the double doors draped on each side with
+heavy curtains.
+
+Seated at the upper end of a long table covered with blue velvet,
+which stood in the middle of the room, the king, near to whom the
+young queen was seated in an arm-chair, waited for his mother.
+Robertet, the secretary, was mending pens. The two cardinals, the
+grand-master, the chancellor, the keeper of the seals, and all the
+rest of the council looked at the little king, wondering why he did
+not give them the usual order to sit down.
+
+The two Lorrain princes attributed the queen-mother's absence to some
+trick of their niece. Incited presently by a significant glance, the
+audacious cardinal said to his Majesty:--
+
+"Is it the king's good pleasure to begin the council without waiting
+for Madame la reine-mere?"
+
+Francois II., without daring to answer directly, said: "Messieurs, be
+seated."
+
+The cardinal then explained succinctly the dangers of the situation.
+This great political character, who showed extraordinary ability under
+these pressing circumstances, led up to the question of the
+lieutenancy of the kingdom in the midst of the deepest silence. The
+young king doubtless felt the tyranny that was being exercised over
+him; he knew that his mother had a deep sense of the rights of the
+Crown and was fully aware of the danger that threatened his power; he
+therefore replied to a positive question addressed to him by the
+cardinal by saying:--
+
+"We will wait for the queen, my mother."
+
+Suddenly enlightened by the queen-mother's delay, Mary Stuart
+recalled, in a flash of thought, three circumstances which now struck
+her vividly; first, the bulk of the papers presented to her mother-in-
+law, which she had noticed, absorbed as she was,--for a woman who
+seems to see nothing is often a lynx; next, the place where Christophe
+had carried them to keep them separate from hers: "Why so?" she
+thought to herself; and thirdly, she remembered the cold, indifferent
+glance of the young man, which she suddenly attributed to the hatred
+of the Reformers to a niece of the Guises. A voice cried to her, "He
+may have been an emissary of the Huguenots!" Obeying, like all
+excitable natures, her first impulse, she exclaimed:--
+
+"I will go and fetch my mother myself!"
+
+Then she left the room hurriedly, ran down the staircase, to the
+amazement of the courtiers and the ladies of honor, entered her
+mother-in-law's apartments, crossed the guard-room, opened the door of
+the chamber with the caution of a thief, glided like a shadow over the
+carpet, saw no one, and bethought her that she should surely surprise
+the queen-mother in that magnificent dressing-room which comes between
+the bedroom and the oratory. The arrangement of this oratory, to which
+the manners of that period gave a role in private life like that of
+the boudoirs of our day, can still be traced.
+
+By an almost inexplicable chance, when we consider the state of
+dilapidation into which the Crown has allowed the chateau of Blois to
+fall, the admirable woodwork of Catherine's cabinet still exists; and
+in those delicately carved panels, persons interested in such things
+may still see traces of Italian splendor, and discover the secret
+hiding-places employed by the queen-mother. An exact description of
+these curious arrangements is necessary in order to give a clear
+understanding of what was now to happen. The woodwork of the oratory
+then consisted of about a hundred and eighty oblong panels, one
+hundred of which still exist, all presenting arabesques of different
+designs, evidently suggested by the most beautiful arabesques of
+Italy. The wood is live-oak. The red tones, seen through the layer of
+whitewash put on to avert cholera (useless precaution!), shows very
+plainly that the ground of the panels was formerly gilt. Certain
+portions of the design, visible where the wash has fallen away, seem
+to show that they once detached themselves from the gilded ground in
+colors, either blue, or red, or green. The multitude of these panels
+shows an evident intention to foil a search; but even if this could be
+doubted, the concierge of the chateau, while devoting the memory of
+Catherine to the execration of the humanity of our day, shows at the
+base of these panels and close to the floor a rather heavy foot-board,
+which can be lifted, and beneath which still remain the ingenious
+springs which move the panels. By pressing a knob thus hidden, the
+queen was able to open certain panels known to her alone, behind
+which, sunk in the wall, were hiding-places, oblong like the panels,
+and more or less deep. It is difficult, even in these days of
+dilapidation, for the best-trained eye to detect which of those panels
+is thus hinged; but when the eye was distracted by colors and gilding,
+cleverly used to conceal the joints, we can readily conceive that to
+find one or two such panels among two hundred was almost an impossible
+thing.
+
+At the moment when Mary Stuart laid her hand on the somewhat
+complicated lock of the door of this oratory, the queen-mother, who
+had just become convinced of the greatness of the Prince de Conde's
+plans, had touched the spring hidden beneath the foot-board, and one
+of the mysterious panels had turned over on its hinges. Catherine was
+in the act of lifting the papers from the table to hide them,
+intending after that to secure the safety of the devoted messenger who
+had brought them to her, when, hearing the sudden opening of the door,
+she at once knew that none but Queen Mary herself would dare thus to
+enter without announcement.
+
+"You are lost!" she said to Christophe, perceiving that she could no
+longer put away the papers, nor close with sufficient rapidity the
+open panel, the secret of which was now betrayed.
+
+Christophe answered her with a glance that was sublime.
+
+"/Povero mio/!" said Catherine, before she looked at her daughter-in-
+law. "Treason, madame! I hold the traitors at last," she cried. "Send
+for the duke and the cardinal; and see that that man," pointing to
+Christophe, "does not escape."
+
+In an instant the able woman had seen the necessity of sacrificing the
+poor youth. She could not hide him; it was impossible to save him.
+Eight days earlier it might have been done; but the Guises now knew of
+the plot; they must already possess the lists she held in her hand,
+and were evidently drawing the Reformers into a trap. Thus, rejoiced
+to find in these adversaries the very spirit she desired them to have,
+her policy now led her to make a merit of the discovery of their plot.
+These horrible calculations were made during the rapid moment while
+the young queen was opening the door. Mary Stuart stood dumb for an
+instant; the gay look left her eyes, which took on the acuteness that
+suspicion gives to the eyes of all, and which, in hers, became
+terrible from the suddenness of the change. She glanced from
+Christophe to the queen-mother and from the queen-mother back to
+Christophe,--her face expressing malignant doubt. Then she seized a
+bell, at the sound of which one of the queen-mother's maids of honor
+came running in.
+
+"Mademoiselle du Rouet, send for the captain of the guard," said Mary
+Stuart to the maid of honor, contrary to all etiquette, which was
+necessarily violated under the circumstances.
+
+While the young queen gave this order, Catherine looked intently at
+Christophe, as if saying to him, "Courage!"
+
+The Reformer understood, and replied by another glance, which seemed
+to say, "Sacrifice me, as /they/ have sacrificed me!"
+
+"Rely on me," said Catherine by a gesture. Then she absorbed herself
+in the documents as her daughter-in-law turned to him.
+
+"You belong to the Reformed religion?" inquired Mary Stuart of
+Christophe.
+
+"Yes, madame," he answered.
+
+"I was not mistaken," she murmured as she again noticed in the eyes of
+the young Reformer the same cold glance in which dislike was hidden
+beneath an expression of humility.
+
+Pardaillan suddenly appeared, sent by the two Lorrain princes and by
+the king to escort the queens. The captain of the guard called for by
+Mary Stuart followed the young officer, who was devoted to the Guises.
+
+"Go and tell the king and the grand-master and the cardinal, from me,
+to come here at once, and say that I should not take the liberty of
+sending for them if something of the utmost importance had not
+occurred. Go, Pardaillan.--As for you, Lewiston, keep guard over that
+traitor of a Reformer," she said to the Scotchman in his mother-
+tongue, pointing to Christophe.
+
+The young queen and queen-mother maintained a total silence until the
+arrival of the king and princes. The moments that elapsed were
+terrible.
+
+Mary Stuart had betrayed to her mother-in-law, in its fullest extent,
+the part her uncles were inducing her to play; her constant and
+habitual distrust and espionage were now revealed, and her young
+conscience told her how dishonoring to a great queen was the work that
+she was doing. Catherine, on the other hand, had yielded out of fear;
+she was still afraid of being rightly understood, and she trembled for
+her future. Both women, one ashamed and angry, the other filled with
+hatred and yet calm, went to the embrasure of the window and leaned
+against the casing, one to right, the other to left, silent; but their
+feelings were expressed in such speaking glances that they averted
+their eyes and, with mutual artfulness, gazed through the window at
+the sky. These two great and superior women had, at this crisis, no
+greater art of behavior than the vulgarest of their sex. Perhaps it is
+always thus when circumstances arise which overwhelm the human being.
+There is, inevitably, a moment when genius itself feels its littleness
+in presence of great catastrophes.
+
+As for Christophe, he was like a man in the act of rolling down a
+precipice. Lewiston, the Scotch captain, listened to this silence,
+watching the son of the furrier and the two queens with soldierly
+curiosity. The entrance of the king and Mary Stuart's two uncles put
+an end to the painful situation.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+MARTYRDOM
+
+The cardinal went straight to the queen-mother.
+
+"I hold the threads of the conspiracy of the heretics," said
+Catherine. "They have sent me this treaty and these documents by the
+hands of that child," she added.
+
+During the time that Catherine was explaining matters to the cardinal,
+Queen Mary whispered a few words to the grand-master.
+
+"What is all this about?" asked the young king, who was left alone in
+the midst of the violent clash of interests.
+
+"The proofs of what I was telling to your Majesty have not been long
+in reaching us," said the cardinal, who had grasped the papers.
+
+The Duc de Guise drew his brother aside without caring that he
+interrupted him, and said in his ear, "This makes me lieutenant-
+general without opposition."
+
+A shrewd glance was the cardinal's only answer; showing his brother
+that he fully understood the advantages to be gained from Catherine's
+false position.
+
+"Who sent you here?" said the duke to Christophe.
+
+"Chaudieu, the minister," he replied.
+
+"Young man, you lie!" said the soldier, sharply; "it was the Prince de
+Conde."
+
+"The Prince de Conde, monseigneur!" replied Christophe, with a puzzled
+look. "I never met him. I am studying law with Monsieur de Thou; I am
+his secretary, and he does not know that I belong to the Reformed
+religion. I yielded only to the entreaties of the minister."
+
+"Enough!" exclaimed the cardinal. "Call Monsieur de Robertet," he said
+to Lewiston, "for this young scamp is slyer than an old statesman; he
+has managed to deceive my brother, and me too; an hour ago I would
+have given him the sacrament without confession."
+
+"You are not a child, /morbleu/!" cried the duke, "and we'll treat you
+as a man."
+
+"The heretics have attempted to beguile your august mother," said the
+cardinal, addressing the king, and trying to draw him apart to win him
+over to their ends.
+
+"Alas!" said the queen-mother to her son, assuming a reproachful look
+and stopping the king at the moment when the cardinal was leading him
+into the oratory to subject him to his dangerous eloquence, "you see
+the result of the situation in which I am; they think me irritated by
+the little influence that I have in public affairs,--I, the mother of
+four princes of the house of Valois!"
+
+The young king listened attentively. Mary Stuart, seeing the frown
+upon his brow, took his arm and led him away into the recess of the
+window, where she cajoled him with sweet speeches in a low voice, no
+doubt like those she had used that morning in their chamber. The two
+Guises read the documents given up to them by Catherine. Finding that
+they contained information which their spies, and Monsieur
+Braguelonne, the lieutenant of the Chatelet, had not obtained, they
+were inclined to believe in the sincerity of Catherine de' Medici.
+Robertet came and received certain secret orders relative to
+Christophe. The youthful instrument of the leaders of the Reformation
+was then led away by four soldiers of the Scottish guard, who took him
+down the stairs and delivered him to Monsieur de Montresor, provost of
+the chateau. That terrible personage himself, accompanied by six of
+his men, conducted Christophe to the prison in the vaulted cellar of
+the tower, now in ruins, which the concierge of the chateau de Blois
+shows you with the information that these were the dungeons.
+
+After such an event the Council could be only a formality. The king,
+the young queen, the Grand-master, and the cardinal returned to it,
+taking with them the vanquished Catherine, who said no word except to
+approve the measures proposed by the Guises. In spite of a slight
+opposition from the Chancelier Olivier (the only person present who
+said one word that expressed the independence to which his office
+bound him), the Duc de Guise was appointed lieutenant-general of the
+kingdom. Robertet brought the required documents, showing a devotion
+which might be called collusion. The king, giving his arm to his
+mother, recrossed the /salle des gardes/, announcing to the court as
+he passed along that on the following day he should leave Blois for
+the chateau of Amboise. The latter residence had been abandoned since
+the time when Charles VIII. accidentally killed himself by striking
+his head against the casing of a door on which he had ordered
+carvings, supposing that he could enter without stooping below the
+scaffolding. Catherine, to mask the plans of the Guises, remarked
+aloud that they intended to complete the chateau of Amboise for the
+Crown at the same time that her own chateau of Chemonceaux was
+finished. But no one was the dupe of that pretext, and all present
+awaited great events.
+
+After spending about two hours endeavoring to see where he was in the
+obscurity of the dungeon, Christophe ended by discovering that the
+place was sheathed in rough woodwork, thick enough to make the square
+hole into which he was put both healthy and habitable. The door, like
+that of a pig-pen, was so low that he stooped almost double on
+entering it. Beside this door was a heavy iron grating, opening upon a
+sort of corridor, which gave a little light and a little air. This
+arrangement, in all respects like that of the dungeons of Venice,
+showed plainly that the architecture of the chateau of Blois belonged
+to the Venetian school, which during the Middle Ages, sent so many
+builders into all parts of Europe. By tapping this species of pit
+above the woodwork Christophe discovered that the walls which
+separated his cell to right and left from the adjoining ones were made
+of brick. Striking one of them to get an idea of its thickness, he was
+somewhat surprised to hear return blows given on the other side.
+
+"Who are you?" said his neighbor, speaking to him through the
+corridor.
+
+"I am Christophe Lecamus."
+
+"I," replied the voice, "am Captain Chaudieu, brother of the minister.
+I was taken prisoner to-night at Beaugency; but, luckily, there is
+nothing against me."
+
+"All is discovered," said Christophe; "you are fortunate to be saved
+from the fray."
+
+"We have three thousand men at this moment in the forests of the
+Vendomois, all determined men, who mean to abduct the king and the
+queen-mother during their journey. Happily La Renaudie was cleverer
+than I; he managed to escape. You had only just left us when the Guise
+men surprised us--"
+
+"But I don't know La Renaudie."
+
+"Pooh! my brother has told me all about it," said the captain.
+
+Hearing that, Christophe sat down upon his bench and made no further
+answer to the pretended captain, for he knew enough of the police to
+be aware how necessary it was to act with prudence in a prison. In the
+middle of the night he saw the pale light of a lantern in the
+corridor, after hearing the ponderous locks of the iron door which
+closed the cellar groan as they were turned. The provost himself had
+come to fetch Christophe. This attention to a prisoner who had been
+left in his dark dungeon for hours without food, struck the poor lad
+as singular. One of the provost's men bound his hands with a rope and
+held him by the end of it until they reached one of the lower halls of
+the chateau of Louis XII., which was evidently the antechamber to the
+apartments of some important personage. The provost and his men bade
+him sit upon a bench, and the man then bound his feet as he had before
+bound his hands. On a sign from Monsieur de Montresor the man left the
+room.
+
+"Now listen to me, my friend," said the provost-marshal, toying with
+the collar of the Order; for, late as the hour was, he was in full
+uniform.
+
+This little circumstance gave the young man several thoughts; he saw
+that all was not over; on the contrary, it was evidently neither to
+hang nor yet to condemn him that he was brought here.
+
+"My friend, you may spare yourself cruel torture by telling me all you
+know of the understanding between Monsieur le Prince de Conde and
+Queen Catherine. Not only will no harm be done to you, but you shall
+enter the service of Monseigneur the lieutenant-general of the
+kingdom, who likes intelligent men and on whom your honest face has
+produced a good impression. The queen-mother is about to be sent back
+to Florence, and Monsieur de Conde will no doubt be brought to trial.
+Therefore, believe me, humble folks ought to attach themselves to the
+great men who are in power. Tell me all; and you will find your profit
+in it."
+
+"Alas, monsieur," replied Christophe; "I have nothing to tell. I told
+all I know to Messieurs de Guise in the queen's chamber. Chaudieu
+persuaded me to put those papers under the eyes of the queen-mother;
+assuring me that they concerned the peace of the kingdom."
+
+"You have never seen the Prince de Conde?"
+
+"Never."
+
+Thereupon Monsieur de Montresor left Christophe and went into the
+adjoining room; but the youth was not left long alone. The door
+through which he had been brought opened and gave entrance to several
+men, who did not close it. Sounds that were far from reassuring were
+heard from the courtyard; men were bringing wood and machinery,
+evidently intended for the punishment of the Reformer's messenger.
+Christophe's anxiety soon had matter for reflection in the
+preparations which were made in the hall before his eyes.
+
+Two coarse and ill-dressed serving-men obeyed the orders of a stout,
+squat, vigorous man, who cast upon Christophe, as he entered, the
+glance of a cannibal upon his victim; he looked him over and
+/estimated/ him,--measuring, like a connoisseur, the strength of his
+nerves, their power and their endurance. The man was the executioner
+of Blois. Coming and going, his assistants brought in a mattress,
+several mallets and wooden wedges, also planks and other articles, the
+use of which was not plain, nor their look comforting to the poor boy
+concerned in these preparations, whose blood now curdled in his veins
+from a vague but most terrible apprehension. Two personages entered
+the hall at the moment when Monsieur de Montresor reappeared.
+
+"Hey, nothing ready!" cried the provost-marshal, to whom the new-
+comers bowed with great respect. "Don't you know," he said, addressing
+the stout man and his two assistants, "that Monseigneur the cardinal
+thinks you already at work? Doctor," added the provost, turning to one
+of the new-comers, "this is the man"; and he pointed to Christophe.
+
+The doctor went straight to the prisoner, unbound his hands, and
+struck him on the breast and back. Science now continued, in a serious
+manner, the truculent examination of the executioner's eye. During
+this time a servant in the livery of the house of Guise brought in
+several arm-chairs, a table, and writing-materials.
+
+"Begin the /proces verbal/," said Monsieur de Montresor, motioning to
+the table the second personage, who was dressed in black, and was
+evidently a clerk. Then the provost went up to Christophe, and said to
+him in a very gentle way: "My friend, the chancellor, having learned
+that you refuse to answer me in a satisfactory manner, decrees that
+you be put to the question, ordinary and extraordinary."
+
+"Is he in good health, and can he bear it?" said the clerk to the
+doctor.
+
+"Yes," replied the latter, who was one of the physicians of the house
+of Lorraine.
+
+"In that case, retire to the next room; we will send for you whenever
+we require your advice."
+
+The physician left the hall.
+
+His first terror having passed, Christophe rallied his courage; the
+hour of his martyrdom had come. Thenceforth he looked with cold
+curiosity at the arrangements that were made by the executioner and
+his men. After hastily preparing a bed, the two assistants got ready
+certain appliances called /boots/; which consisted of several planks,
+between which each leg of the victim was placed. The legs thus placed
+were brought close together. The apparatus used by binders to press
+their volumes between two boards, which they fasten by cords, will
+give an exact idea of the manner in which each leg of the prisoner was
+bound. We can imagine the effect produced by the insertion of wooden
+wedges, driven in by hammers between the planks of the two bound legs,
+--the two sets of planks of course not yielding, being themselves
+bound together by ropes. These wedges were driven in on a line with
+the knees and the ankles. The choice of these places where there is
+little flesh, and where, consequently, the wedge could only be forced
+in by crushing the bones, made this form of torture, called the
+"question," horribly painful. In the "ordinary question" four wedges
+were driven in,--two at the knees, two at the ankles; but in the
+"extraordinary question" the number was increased to eight, provided
+the doctor certified that the prisoner's vitality was not exhausted.
+At the time of which we write the "boots" were also applied in the
+same manner to the hands and wrists; but, being pressed for time, the
+cardinal, the lieutenant-general, and the chancellor spared Christophe
+that additional suffering.
+
+The /proces verbal/ was begun; the provost dictated a few sentences as
+he walked up and down with a meditative air, asking Christophe his
+name, baptismal name, age, and profession; then he inquired the name
+of the person from whom he had received the papers he had given to the
+queen.
+
+"From the minister Chaudieu," answered Christophe.
+
+"Where did he give them to you?"
+
+"In Paris."
+
+"In giving them to you he must have told you whether the queen-mother
+would receive you with pleasure?"
+
+"He told me nothing of that kind," said Christophe. "He merely asked
+me to give them to Queen Catherine secretly."
+
+"You must have seen Chaudieu frequently, or he would not have known
+that you were going to Blois."
+
+"The minister did not know from me that in carrying furs to the queen
+I was also to ask on my father's behalf for the money the queen-mother
+owes him; and I did not have time to ask the minister who had told him
+of it."
+
+"But these papers, which were given to you without being sealed or
+enveloped, contained a treaty between the rebels and Queen Catherine.
+You must have seen that they exposed you to the punishment of all
+those who assist in a rebellion."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The persons who persuaded you to this act of high treason must have
+promised you rewards and the protection of the queen-mother."
+
+"I did it out of attachment to Chaudieu, the only person whom I saw in
+the matter."
+
+"Do you persist in saying you did not see the Prince de Conde?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The Prince de Conde did not tell you that the queen-mother was
+inclined to enter into his views against the Messieurs de Guise?"
+
+"I did not see him."
+
+"Take care! one of your accomplices, La Renaudie, has been arrested.
+Strong as he is, he was not able to bear the 'question,' which will
+now be put to you; he confessed at last that both he and the Prince de
+Conde had an interview with you. If you wish to escape the torture of
+the question, I exhort you to tell me the simple truth. Perhaps you
+will thus obtain your full pardon."
+
+Christophe answered that he could not state a thing of which he had no
+knowledge, or give himself accomplices when he had none. Hearing these
+words, the provost-marshal signed to the executioner and retired
+himself to the inner room. At that fatal sign Christophe's brows
+contracted, his forehead worked with nervous convulsion, as he
+prepared himself to suffer. His hands closed with such violence that
+the nails entered the flesh without his feeling them. Three men seized
+him, took him to the camp bed and laid him there, letting his legs
+hang down. While the executioner fastened him to the rough bedstead
+with strong cords, the assistants bound his legs into the "boots."
+Presently the cords were tightened, by means of a wrench, without the
+pressure causing much pain to the young Reformer. When each leg was
+thus held as it were in a vice, the executioner grasped his hammer and
+picked up the wedges, looking alternately at the victim and at the
+clerk.
+
+"Do you persist in your denial?" asked the clerk.
+
+"I have told the truth," replied Christophe.
+
+"Very well. Go on," said the clerk, closing his eyes.
+
+The cords were tightened with great force. This was perhaps the most
+painful moment of the torture; the flesh being suddenly compressed,
+the blood rushed violently toward the breast. The poor boy could not
+restrain a dreadful cry and seemed about to faint. The doctor was
+called in. After feeling Christophe's pulse, he told the executioner
+to wait a quarter of an hour before driving the first wedge in, to let
+the action of the blood subside and allow the victim to recover his
+full sensitiveness. The clerk suggested, kindly, that if he could not
+bear this beginning of sufferings which he could not escape, it would
+be better to reveal all at once; but Christophe made no reply except
+to say, "The king's tailor! the king's tailor!"
+
+"What do you mean by those words?" asked the clerk.
+
+"Seeing what torture I must bear," said Christophe, slowly, hoping to
+gain time to rest, "I call up all my strength, and try to increase it
+by thinking of the martyrdom borne by the king's tailor for the holy
+cause of the Reformation, when the question was applied to him in
+presence of Madame la Duchesse de Valentinois and the king. I shall
+try to be worthy of him."
+
+While the physician exhorted the unfortunate lad not to force them to
+have recourse to more violent measures, the cardinal and the duke,
+impatient to know the result of the interrogations, entered the hall
+and themselves asked Christophe to speak the truth, immediately. The
+young man repeated the only confession he had allowed himself to make,
+which implicated no one but Chaudieu. The princes made a sign, on
+which the executioner and his assistant seized their hammers, taking
+each a wedge, which then they drove in between the joints, standing
+one to right, the other to left of their victim; the executioner's
+wedge was driven in at the knees, his assistant's at the ankles.
+
+The eyes of all present fastened on those of Christophe, and he, no
+doubt excited by the presence of those great personages, shot forth
+such burning glances that they appeared to have all the brilliancy of
+flame. As the third and fourth wedges were driven in, a dreadful groan
+escaped him. When he saw the executioner take up the wedges for the
+"extraordinary question" he said no word and made no sound, but his
+eyes took on so terrible a fixity, and he cast upon the two great
+princes who were watching him a glance so penetrating, that the duke
+and cardinal were forced to drop their eyes. Philippe le Bel met with
+the same resistance when the torture of the pendulum was applied in
+his presence to the Templars. That punishment consisted in striking
+the victim on the breast with one arm of the balance pole with which
+money is coined, its end being covered with a pad of leather. One of
+the knights thus tortured, looked so intently at the king that
+Philippe could not detach his eyes from him. At the third blow the
+king left the chamber on hearing the knight summon him to appear
+within a year before the judgment-seat of God,--as, in fact, he did.
+At the fifth blow, the first of the "extraordinary question,"
+Christophe said to the cardinal: "Monseigneur, put an end to my
+torture; it is useless."
+
+The cardinal and the duke re-entered the adjoining hall, and
+Christophe distinctly heard the following words said by Queen
+Catherine: "Go on; after all, he is only a heretic."
+
+She judged it prudent to be more stern to her accomplice than the
+executioners themselves.
+
+The sixth and seventh wedges were driven in without a word of
+complaint from Christophe. His face shone with extraordinary
+brilliancy, due, no doubt, to the excess of strength which his fanatic
+devotion gave him. Where else but in the feelings of the soul can we
+find the power necessary to bear such sufferings? Finally, he smiled
+when he saw the executioner lifting the eighth and last wedge. This
+horrible torture had lasted by this time over an hour.
+
+The clerk now went to call the physician that he might decide whether
+the eighth wedge could be driven in without endangering the life of the
+victim. During this delay the duke returned to look at Christophe.
+
+"/Ventre-de-biche/! you are a fine fellow," he said to him, bending
+down to whisper the words. "I love brave men. Enter my service, and
+you shall be rich and happy; my favors shall heal those wounded limbs.
+I do not propose to you any baseness; I will not ask you to return to
+your party and betray its plans,--there are always traitors enough for
+that, and the proof is in the prisons of Blois; tell me only on what
+terms are the queen-mother and the Prince de Conde?"
+
+"I know nothing about it, monseigneur," replied Christophe Lecamus.
+
+The physician came, examined the victim, and said that he could bear
+the eighth wedge.
+
+"Then insert it," said the cardinal. "After all, as the queen says, he
+is only a heretic," he added, looking at Christophe with a dreadful
+smile.
+
+At this moment Catherine came with slow steps from the adjoining
+apartment and stood before Christophe, coldly observing him. Instantly
+she was the object of the closest attention on the part of the two
+brothers, who watched alternately the queen and her accomplice. On
+this solemn test the whole future of that ambitious woman depended;
+she felt the keenest admiration for Christophe, yet she gazed sternly
+at him; she hated the Guises, and she smiled upon them!
+
+"Young man," said the queen, "confess that you have seen the Prince de
+Conde, and you will be richly rewarded."
+
+"Ah! what a business this is for you, madame!" cried Christophe,
+pitying her.
+
+The queen quivered.
+
+"He insults me!" she exclaimed. "Why do you not hang him?" she cried,
+turning to the two brothers, who stood thoughtful.
+
+"What a woman!" said the duke in a glance at his brother, consulting
+him by his eye, and leading him to the window.
+
+"I shall stay in France and be revenged upon them," thought the queen.
+"Come, make him confess, or let him die!" she said aloud, addressing
+Montresor.
+
+The provost-marshal turned away his eyes, the executioners were busy
+with the wedges; Catherine was free to cast one glance upon the
+martyr, unseen by others, which fell on Christophe like the dew. The
+eyes of the great queen seemed to him moist; two tears were in them,
+but they did not fall. The wedges were driven; a plank was broken by
+the blow. Christophe gave one dreadful cry, after which he was silent;
+his face shone,--he believed he was dying.
+
+"Let him die?" said the cardinal, echoing the queen's last words with
+a sort of irony; "no, no! don't break that thread," he said to the
+provost.
+
+The duke and the cardinal consulted together in a low voice.
+
+"What is to be done with him?" asked the executioner.
+
+"Send him to the prison at Orleans," said the duke, addressing
+Monsieur de Montresor; "and don't hang him without my order."
+
+The extreme sensitiveness to which Christophe's internal organism had
+been brought, increased by a resistance which called into play every
+power of the human body, existed to the same degree, in his senses. He
+alone heard the following words whispered by the Duc de Guise in the
+ear of his brother the cardinal:
+
+"I don't give up all hope of getting the truth out of that little
+fellow yet."
+
+When the princes had left the hall the executioners unbound the legs
+of their victim roughly and without compassion.
+
+"Did any one ever see a criminal with such strength?" said the chief
+executioner to his aids. "The rascal bore that last wedge when he
+ought to have died; I've lost the price of his body."
+
+"Unbind me gently; don't make me suffer, friends," said poor
+Christophe. "Some day I will reward you--"
+
+"Come, come, show some humanity," said the physician. "Monseigneur
+esteems the young man, and told me to look after him."
+
+"I am going to Amboise with my assistants,--take care of him
+yourself," said the executioner, brutally. "Besides, here comes the
+jailer."
+
+The executioner departed, leaving Christophe in the hands of the soft-
+spoken doctor, who by the aid of Christophe's future jailer, carried
+the poor boy to a bed, brought him some broth, helped him to swallow
+it, sat down beside him, felt his pulse, and tried to comfort him.
+
+"You won't die of this," he said. "You ought to feel great inward
+comfort, knowing that you have done your duty.--The queen-mother bids
+me take care of you," he added in a whisper.
+
+"The queen is very good," said Christophe, whose terrible sufferings
+had developed an extraordinary lucidity in his mind, and who, after
+enduring such unspeakable sufferings, was determined not to compromise
+the results of his devotion. "But she might have spared me much agony
+be telling my persecutors herself the secrets that I know nothing
+about, instead of urging them on."
+
+Hearing that reply, the doctor took his cap and cloak and left
+Christophe, rightly judging that he could worm nothing out of a man of
+that stamp. The jailer of Blois now ordered the poor lad to be carried
+away on a stretcher by four men, who took him to the prison in the
+town, where Christophe immediately fell into the deep sleep which,
+they say, comes to most mothers after the terrible pangs of
+childbirth.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE TUMULT AT AMBOISE
+
+By moving the court to the chateau of Amboise, the two Lorrain princes
+intended to set a trap for the leader of the party of the Reformation,
+the Prince de Conde, whom they had made the king summon to his
+presence. As vassal of the Crown and prince of the blood, Conde was
+bound to obey the summons of his sovereign. Not to come to Amboise
+would constitute the crime of treason; but if he came, he put himself
+in the power of the Crown. Now, at this moment, as we have seen, the
+Crown, the council, the court, and all their powers were solely in the
+hands of the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine. The Prince de
+Conde showed, at this delicate crisis, a presence of mind and a
+decision and willingness which made him the worthy exponent of Jeanne
+d'Albret and the valorous general of the Reformers. He travelled at
+the rear of the conspirators as far as Vendome, intending to support
+them in case of their success. When the first uprising ended by a
+brief skirmish, in which the flower of the nobility beguiled by Calvin
+perished, the prince arrived, with fifty noblemen, at the chateau of
+Amboise on the very day after that fight, which the politic Guises
+termed "the Tumult of Amboise." As soon as the duke and cardinal heard
+of his coming they sent the Marechal de Saint-Andre with an escort of
+a hundred men to meet him. When the prince and his own escort reached
+the gates of the chateau the marechal refused entrance to the latter.
+
+"You must enter alone, monseigneur," said the Chancellor Olivier, the
+Cardinal de Tournon, and Birago, who were stationed outside of the
+portcullis.
+
+"And why?"
+
+"You are suspected of treason," replied the chancellor.
+
+The prince, who saw that his suite were already surrounded by the
+troop of the Duc de Nemours, replied tranquilly: "If that is so, I
+will go alone to my cousin, and prove to him my innocence."
+
+He dismounted, talked with perfect freedom of mind to Birago, the
+Cardinal de Tournon, the chancellor, and the Duc de Nemours, from whom
+he asked for particulars of the "tumult."
+
+"Monseigneur," replied the duke, "the rebels had confederates in
+Amboise. A captain, named Lanoue, had introduced armed men, who opened
+the gate to them, through which they entered and made themselves
+masters of the town--"
+
+"That is to say, you opened the mouth of a sack, and they ran into
+it," replied the prince, looking at Birago.
+
+"If they had been supported by the attack which Captain Chaudieu, the
+preacher's brother, was expected to make before the gate of the Bon-
+Hommes, they would have been completely successful," replied the Duc
+de Nemours. "But in consequence of the position which the Duc de Guise
+ordered me to take up, Captain Chaudieu was obliged to turn my flank
+to avoid a fight. So instead of arriving by night, like the rest, this
+rebel and his men got there at daybreak, by which time the king's
+troops had crushed the invaders of the town."
+
+"And you had a reserve force to recover the gate which had been opened
+to them?" said the prince.
+
+"Monsieur le Marechal de Saint-Andre was there with five hundred men-
+at-arms."
+
+The prince gave the highest praise to these military arrangements.
+
+"The lieutenant-general must have been fully aware of the plans of the
+Reformers, to have acted as he did," he said in conclusion. "They were
+no doubt betrayed."
+
+The prince was treated with increasing harshness. After separating him
+from his escort at the gates, the cardinal and the chancellor barred
+his way when he reached the staircase which led to the apartments of
+the king.
+
+"We are directed by his Majesty, monseigneur, to take you to your own
+apartments," they said.
+
+"Am I, then, a prisoner?"
+
+"If that were the king's intention you would not be accompanied by a
+prince of the Church, nor by me," replied the chancellor.
+
+These two personages escorted the prince to an apartment, where guards
+of honor--so-called--were given him. There he remained, without seeing
+any one, for some hours. From his window he looked down upon the Loire
+and the meadows of the beautiful valley stretching from Amboise to
+Tours. He was reflecting on the situation, and asking himself whether
+the Guises would really dare anything against his person, when the
+door of his chamber opened and Chicot, the king's fool, formerly a
+dependent of his own, entered the room.
+
+"They told me you were in disgrace," said the prince.
+
+"You'd never believe how virtuous the court has become since the death
+of Henri II."
+
+"But the king loves a laugh."
+
+"Which king,--Francois II., or Francois de Lorraine?"
+
+"You are not afraid of the duke, if you talk in that way!"
+
+"He wouldn't punish me for it, monseigneur," replied Chicot, laughing.
+
+"To what do I owe the honor of this visit?"
+
+"Hey! Isn't it due to you on your return? I bring you my cap and
+bells."
+
+"Can I go out?"
+
+"Try."
+
+"Suppose I do go out, what then?"
+
+"I should say that you had won the game by playing against the rules."
+
+"Chicot, you alarm me. Are you sent here by some one who takes an
+interest in me?"
+
+"Yes," said Chicot, nodding. He came nearer to the prince, and made
+him understand that they were being watched and overheard.
+
+"What have you to say to me?" asked the Prince de Conde, in a low
+voice.
+
+"Boldness alone can pull you out of this scrape; the message comes
+from the queen-mother," replied the fool, slipping his words into the
+ear of the prince.
+
+"Tell those who sent you," replied Conde, "that I should not have
+entered this chateau if I had anything to reproach myself with, or to
+fear."
+
+"I rush to report that lofty answer!" cried the fool.
+
+Two hours later, that is, about one o'clock in the afternoon, before
+the king's dinner, the chancellor and Cardinal de Tournon came to
+fetch the prince and present him to Francois II. in the great gallery
+of the chateau of Amboise, where the councils were held. There, before
+the whole court, Conde pretended surprise at the coldness with which
+the little king received him, and asked the reason of it.
+
+"You are accused, cousin," said the queen-mother, sternly, "of taking
+part in the conspiracy of the Reformers; and you must prove yourself a
+faithful subject and a good Catholic, if you do not desire to draw
+down upon your house the anger of the king."
+
+Hearing these words said, in the midst of the most profound silence,
+by Catherine de' Medici, on whose right arm the king was leaning, the
+Duc d'Orleans being on her left side, the Prince de Conde recoiled
+three steps, laid his hand on his sword with a proud motion, and
+looked at all the persons who surrounded him.
+
+"Those who said that, madame," he cried in an angry voice, "lied in
+their throats!"
+
+Then he flung his glove at the king's feet, saying: "Let him who
+believes that calumny come forward!"
+
+The whole court trembled as the Duc de Guise was seen to leave his
+place; but instead of picking up the glove, he advanced to the
+intrepid hunchback.
+
+"If you desire a second in that duel, monseigneur, do me the honor to
+accept my services," he said. "I will answer for you; I know that you
+will show the Reformers how mistaken they are if they think to have
+you for their leader."
+
+The prince was forced to take the hand of the lieutenant-general of
+the kingdom. Chicot picked up the glove and returned it to Monsieur de
+Conde.
+
+"Cousin," said the little king, "you must draw your sword only for the
+defence of the kingdom. Come and dine."
+
+The Cardinal de Lorraine, surprised at his brother's action, drew him
+away to his own apartments. The Prince de Conde, having escaped his
+apparent danger, offered his hand to Mary Stuart to lead her to the
+dining hall; but all the while that he made her flattering speeches he
+pondered in his mind what trap the astute Balafre was setting for him.
+In vain he worked his brains, for it was not until Queen Mary herself
+betrayed it that he guessed the intention of the Guises.
+
+"'Twould have been a great pity," she said laughing, "if so clever a
+head had fallen; you must admit that my uncle has been generous."
+
+"Yes, madame; for my head is only useful on my shoulders, though one
+of them is notoriously higher than the other. But is this really your
+uncle's generosity? Is he not getting the credit of it rather cheaply?
+Do you think it would be so easy to take off the head of a prince of
+the blood?"
+
+"All is not over yet," she said. "We shall see what your conduct will
+be at the execution of the noblemen, your friends, at which the
+Council has decided to make a great public display of severity."
+
+"I shall do," said the prince, "whatever the king does."
+
+"The king, the queen-mother, and myself will be present at the
+execution, together with the whole court and the ambassadors--"
+
+"A fete!" said the prince, sarcastically.
+
+"Better than that," said the young queen, "an /act of faith/, an act
+of the highest policy. 'Tis a question of forcing the noblemen of
+France to submit themselves to the Crown, and compelling them to give
+up their tastes for plots and factions--"
+
+"You will not break their belligerent tempers by the show of danger,
+madame; you will risk the Crown itself in the attempt," replied the
+prince.
+
+At the end of the dinner, which was gloomy enough, Queen Mary had the
+cruel boldness to turn the conversation openly upon the trial of the
+noblemen on the charge of being seized with arms in their hands, and
+to speak of the necessity of making a great public show of their
+execution.
+
+"Madame," said Francois II., "is it not enough for the king of France
+to know that so much brave blood is to flow? Must he make a triumph of
+it?"
+
+"No, sire; but an example," replied Catherine.
+
+"It was the custom of your father and your grandfather to be present
+at the burning of heretics," said Mary Stuart.
+
+"The kings who reigned before me did as they thought best, and I
+choose to do as I please," said the little king.
+
+"Philip the Second," remarked Catherine, "who is certainly a great
+king, lately postponed an /auto da fe/ until he could return from the
+Low Countries to Valladolid."
+
+"What do you think, cousin?" said the king to Prince de Conde.
+
+"Sire, you cannot avoid it, and the papal nuncio and all the
+ambassadors should be present. I shall go willingly, as these ladies
+take part in the fete."
+
+Thus the Prince de Conde, at a glance from Catherine de' Medici,
+bravely chose his course.
+
+*****
+
+At the moment when the Prince de Conde was entering the chateau
+d'Amboise, Lecamus, the furrier of the two queens, was also arriving
+from Paris, brought to Amboise by the anxiety into which the news of
+the tumult had thrown both his family and that of Lallier. When the
+old man presented himself at the gate of the chateau, the captain of
+the guard, on hearing that he was the queens' furrier, said:--
+
+"My good man, if you want to be hanged you have only to set foot in
+this courtyard."
+
+Hearing these words, the father, in despair, sat down on a stone at a
+little distance and waited until some retainer of the two queens or
+some servant-woman might pass who would give him news of his son. But
+he sat there all day without seeing any one whom he knew, and was
+forced at last to go down into the town, where he found, not without
+some difficulty, a lodging in a hostelry on the public square where
+the executions took place. He was obliged to pay a pound a day to
+obtain a room with a window looking on the square. The next day he had
+the courage to watch, from his window, the execution of all the
+abettors of the rebellion who were condemned to be broken on the wheel
+or hanged, as persons of little importance. He was happy indeed not to
+see his own son among the victims.
+
+When the execution was over he went into the square and put himself in
+the way of the clerk of the court. After giving his name, and slipping
+a purse full of crowns into the man's hand, he begged him to look on
+the records and see if the name of Christophe Lecamus appeared in
+either of the three preceding executions. The clerk, touched by the
+manner and the tones of the despairing father, took him to his own
+house. After a careful search he was able to give the old man an
+absolute assurance that Christophe was not among the persons thus far
+executed, nor among those who were to be put to death within a few
+days.
+
+"My dear man," said the clerk, "Parliament has taken charge of the
+trial of the great lords implicated in the affair, and also that of
+the principal leaders. Perhaps your son is detained in the prisons of
+the chateau, and he may be brought forth for the magnificent execution
+which their Excellencies the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine
+are now preparing. The heads of twenty-seven barons, eleven counts,
+and seven marquises,--in all, fifty noblemen or leaders of the
+Reformers,--are to be cut off. As the justiciary of the county of
+Tourine is quite distinct from that of the parliament of Paris, if you
+are determined to know about your son, I advise you to go and see the
+Chancelier Olivier, who has the management of this great trial under
+orders from the lieutenant-general of the kingdom."
+
+The poor old man, acting on this advice, went three times to see the
+chancellor, standing in a long queue of persons waiting to ask mercy
+for their friends. But as the titled men were made to pass before the
+burghers, he was obliged to give up the hope of speaking to the
+chancellor, though he saw him several times leave the house to go
+either to the chateau or to the committee appointed by the Parliament,
+--passing each time between a double hedge of petitioners who were
+kept back by the guards to allow him free passage. It was a horrible
+scene of anguish and desolation; for among these petitioners were many
+women, wives, mothers, daughters, whole families in distress. Old
+Lecamus gave much gold to the footmen of the chateau, entreating them
+to put certain letters which he wrote into the hand either of Dayelle,
+Queen Mary's woman, or into that of the queen-mother; but the footmen
+took the poor man's money and carried the letters, according to the
+general order of the cardinal, to the provost-marshal. By displaying
+such unheard-of cruelty the Guises knew that they incurred great
+dangers from revenge, and never did they take such precautions for
+their safety as they did while the court was at Amboise; consequently,
+neither the greatest of all corrupters, gold, nor the incessant and
+active search which the old furrier instituted gave him the slightest
+gleam of light on the fate of his son. He went about the little town
+with a mournful air, watching the great preparations made by order of
+the cardinal for the dreadful show at which the Prince de Conde had
+agreed to be present.
+
+Public curiosity was stimulated from Paris to Nantes by the means
+adopted on this occasion. The execution was announced from all pulpits
+by the rectors of the churches, while at the same time they gave
+thanks for the victory of the king over the heretics. Three handsome
+balconies, the middle one more sumptuous than the other two, were
+built against the terrace of the chateau of Amboise, at the foot of
+which the executions were appointed to take place. Around the open
+square, stagings were erected, and these were filled with an immense
+crowd of people attracted by the wide-spread notoriety given to this
+"act of faith." Ten thousand persons camped in the adjoining fields
+the night before the day on which the horrible spectacle was appointed
+to take place. The roofs on the houses were crowded with spectators,
+and windows were let at ten pounds apiece,--an enormous sum in those
+days. The poor old father had engaged, as we may well believe, one of
+the best places from which the eye could take in the whole of the
+terrible scene, where so many men of noble blood were to perish on a
+vast scaffold covered with black cloth, erected in the middle of the
+open square. Thither, on the morning of the fatal day, they brought
+the /chouquet/,--a name given to the block on which the condemned man
+laid his head as he knelt before it. After this they brought an arm-
+chair draped with black, for the clerk of the Parliament, whose
+business it was to call up the condemned noblemen to their death and
+read their sentences. The whole square was guarded from early morning
+by the Scottish guard and the gendarmes of the king's household, in
+order to keep back the crowd which threatened to fill it before the
+hour of the execution.
+
+After a solemn mass said at the chateau and in the churches of the
+town, the condemned lords, the last of the conspirators who were left
+alive, were led out. These gentlemen, some of whom had been put to the
+torture, were grouped at the foot of the scaffold and surrounded by
+monks, who endeavored to make them abjure the doctrines of Calvin. But
+not a single man listened to the words of the priests who had been
+appointed for this duty by the Cardinal of Lorraine; among whom the
+gentlemen no doubt feared to find spies of the Guises. In order to
+avoid the importunity of these antagonists they chanted a psalm, put
+into French verse by Clement Marot. Calvin, as we all know, had
+ordained that prayers to God should be in the language of each
+country, as much from a principle of common sense as in opposition to
+the Roman worship. To those in the crowd who pitied these unfortunate
+gentlemen it was a moving incident to hear them chant the following
+verse at the very moment when the king and court arrived and took
+their places:--
+
+  "God be merciful unto us,
+    And bless us!
+  And show us the light of his countenance,
+    And be merciful unto us."
+
+The eyes of all the Reformers turned to their leader, the Prince de
+Conde, who was placed intentionally between Queen Mary and the young
+Duc d'Orleans. Catherine de' Medici was beside the king, and the rest
+of the court were on her left. The papal nuncio stood behind Queen
+Mary; the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, the Duc de Guise, was on
+horseback below the balcony, with two of the marshals of France and
+his staff captains. When the Prince de Conde appeared all the
+condemned noblemen who knew him bowed to him, and the brave hunchback
+returned their salutation.
+
+"It would be hard," he remarked to the Duc d'Orleans, "not to be civil
+to those about to die."
+
+The two other balconies were filled by invited guests, courtiers, and
+persons on duty about the court. In short, the whole company of the
+chateau de Blois had come to Amboise to assist at this festival of
+death, precisely as it passed, a little later, from the pleasures of a
+court to the perils of war, with an easy facility, which will always
+seem to foreigners one of the main supports of their policy toward
+France.
+
+The poor syndic of the furriers of Paris was filled with the keenest
+joy at not seeing his son among the fifty-seven gentlemen who were
+condemned to die.
+
+At a sign from the Duc de Guise, the clerk seated on the scaffold
+cried in a loud voice:--
+
+"Jean-Louis-Alberic, Baron de Raunay, guilty of heresy, of the crime
+of /lese-majeste/, and assault with armed hand against the person of
+the king."
+
+A tall handsome man mounted the scaffold with a firm step, bowed to
+the people and the court, and said:
+
+"That sentence lies. I took arms to deliver the king from his enemies,
+the Guises."
+
+He placed his head on the block, and it fell. The Reformers chanted:--
+
+  "Thou, O God! hast proved us;
+    Thou hast tried us;
+  As silver is tried in the fire,
+    So hast thou purified us."
+
+"Robert-Jean-Rene Briquemart, Comte de Villemongis, guilty of the
+crime of /lese-majeste/, and of attempts against the person of the
+king!" called the clerk.
+
+The count dipped his hands in the blood of the Baron de Raunay, and
+said:--
+
+"May this blood recoil upon those who are really guilty of those
+crimes."
+
+The Reformers chanted:--
+
+  "Thou broughtest us into the snare;
+    Thou laidest afflictions upon our loins;
+  Thou hast suffered our enemies
+    To ride over us."
+
+"You must admit, monseigneur," said the Prince de Conde to the papal
+nuncio, "that if these French gentlemen know how to conspire, they
+also know how to die."
+
+"What hatreds, brother!" whispered the Duchesse de Guise to the
+Cardinal de Lorraine, "you are drawing down upon the heads of our
+children!"
+
+"The sight makes me sick," said the young king, turning pale at the
+flow of blood.
+
+"Pooh! only rebels!" replied Catherine de' Medici.
+
+The chants went on; the axe still fell. The sublime spectacle of men
+singing as they died, and, above all, the impression produced upon the
+crowd by the progressive diminution of the chanting voices, superseded
+the fear inspired by the Guises.
+
+"Mercy!" cried the people with one voice, when they heard the solitary
+chant of the last and most important of the great lords, who was saved
+to be the final victim. He alone remained at the foot of the steps by
+which the others had mounted the scaffold, and he chanted:--
+
+  "Thou, O God, be merciful unto us,
+    And bless us,
+  And cause thy face to shine upon us.
+    Amen!"
+
+"Come, Duc de Nemours," said the Prince de Conde, weary of the part he
+was playing; "you who have the credit of the skirmish, and who helped
+to make these men prisoners, do you not feel under an obligation to
+ask mercy for this one? It is Castelnau, who, they say, received your
+word of honor that he should be courteously treated if he
+surrendered."
+
+"Do you think I waited till he was here before trying to save him?"
+said the Duc de Nemours, stung by the stern reproach.
+
+The clerk called slowly--no doubt he was intentionally slow:--
+
+"Michel-Jean-Louis, Baron de Castelnau-Chalosse, accused and convicted
+of the crime of /lese-majeste/, and of attempts against the person of
+the king."
+
+"No," said Castelnau, proudly, "it cannot be a crime to oppose the
+tyranny and the projected usurpation of the Guises."
+
+The executioner, sick of his task, saw a movement in the king's
+gallery, and fumbled with his axe.
+
+"Monsieur le baron," he said, "I do not want to execute you; a
+moment's delay may save you."
+
+All the people again cried, "Mercy!"
+
+"Come!" said the king, "mercy for that poor Castelnau, who saved the
+life of the Duc d'Orleans."
+
+The cardinal intentionally misunderstood the king's speech.
+
+"Go on," he motioned to the executioner, and the head of Castelnau
+fell at the very moment when the king had pronounced his pardon.
+
+"That head, cardinal, goes to your account," said Catherine de'
+Medici.
+
+The day after this dreadful execution the Prince de Conde returned to
+Navarre.
+
+The affair produced a great sensation in France and at all the foreign
+courts. The torrents of noble blood then shed caused such anguish to
+the chancellor Olivier that his honorable mind, perceiving at last the
+real end and aim of the Guises disguised under a pretext of defending
+religion and the monarchy, felt itself no longer able to make head
+against them. Though he was their creature, he was not willing to
+sacrifice his duty and the Throne to their ambition; and he withdrew
+from his post, suggesting l'Hopital as his rightful successor.
+Catherine, hearing of Olivier's suggestion, immediately proposed
+Birago, and put much warmth into her request. The cardinal, knowing
+nothing of the letter written by l'Hopital to the queen-mother, and
+supposing him faithful to the house of Lorraine, pressed his
+appointment in opposition to that of Birago, and Catherine allowed
+herself to seem vanquished. From the moment that l'Hopital entered
+upon his duties he took measures against the Inquisition, which the
+Cardinal de Lorraine was desirous of introducing into France; and he
+thwarted so successfully all the anti-gallican policy of the Guises,
+and proved himself so true a Frenchmen, that in order to subdue him he
+was exiled, within three months of his appointment, to his country-
+seat of Vignay, near Etampes.
+
+The worthy old Lecamus waited impatiently till the court left Amboise,
+being unable to find an opportunity to speak to either of the queens,
+and hoping to put himself in their way as the court advanced along the
+river-bank on its return to Blois. He disguised himself as a pauper,
+at the risk of being taken for a spy, and by means of this travesty,
+he mingled with the crowd of beggars which lined the roadway. After
+the departure of the Prince de Conde, and the execution of the
+leaders, the duke and cardinal thought they had sufficiently silenced
+the Reformers to allow the queen-mother a little more freedom. Lecamus
+knew that, instead of travelling in a litter, Catherine intended to go
+on horseback, /a la planchette/,--such was the name given to a sort of
+stirrup invented for or by the queen-mother, who, having hurt her leg
+on some occasion, ordered a velvet-covered saddle with a plank on
+which she could place both feet by sitting sideways on the horse and
+passing one leg through a depression in the saddle. As the queen-
+mother had very handsome legs, she was accused of inventing this
+method of riding, in order to show them. The old furrier fortunately
+found a moment when he could present himself to her sight; but the
+instant that the queen recognized him she gave signs of displeasure.
+
+"Go away, my good man, and let no one see you speak to me," she said
+with anxiety. "Get yourself elected deputy to the States-general, by
+the guild of your trade, and act for me when the Assembly convenes at
+Orleans; you shall know whom to trust in the matter of your son."
+
+"Is he living?" asked the old man.
+
+"Alas!" said the queen, "I hope so."
+
+Lecamus was obliged to return to Paris with nothing better than those
+doubtful words and the secret of the approaching convocation of the
+States-general, thus confided to him by the queen-mother.
+
+
+
+X
+
+COSMO RUGGIERO
+
+The Cardinal de Lorraine obtained, within a few days of the events
+just related, certain revelations as to the culpability of the court
+of Navarre. At Lyon, and at Mouvans in Dauphine, a body of Reformers,
+under command of the most enterprising prince of the house of Bourbon
+had endeavored to incite the populace to rise. Such audacity, after
+the bloody executions at Amboise, astonished the Guises, who (no doubt
+to put an end to heresy by means known only to themselves) proposed
+the convocation of the States-general at Orleans. Catherine de'
+Medici, seeing a chance of support to her policy in a national
+representation, joyfully agreed to it. The cardinal, bent on
+recovering his prey and degrading the house of Bourbon, convoked the
+States for the sole purpose of bringing the Prince de Conde and the
+king of Navarre (Antoine de Bourbon, father of Henri IV.) to Orleans,
+--intending to make use of Christophe to convict the prince of high
+treason if he succeeded in again getting him within the power of the
+Crown.
+
+After two months had passed in the prison at Blois, Christophe was
+removed on a litter to a tow-boat, which sailed up the Loire to
+Orleans, helped by a westerly wind. He arrived there in the evening
+and was taken at once to the celebrated tower of Saint-Aignan. The
+poor lad, who did not know what to think of his removal, had plenty of
+time to reflect on his conduct and on his future. He remained there
+two months, lying on his pallet, unable to move his legs. The bones of
+his joints were broken. When he asked for the help of a surgeon of the
+town, the jailer replied that the orders were so strict about him that
+he dared not allow any one but himself even to bring him food. This
+severity, which placed him virtually in solitary confinement, amazed
+Christophe. To his mind, he ought either to be hanged or released; for
+he was, of course, entirely ignorant of the events at Amboise.
+
+In spite of certain secret advice sent to them by Catherine de'
+Medici, the two chiefs of the house of Bourbon resolved to be present
+at the States-general, so completely did the autograph letters they
+received from the king reassure them; and no sooner had the court
+established itself at Orleans than it learned, not without amazement,
+from Groslot, chancellor of Navarre, that the Bourbon princes had
+arrived.
+
+Francois II. established himself in the house of the chancellor of
+Navarre, who was also /bailli/, in other words, chief justice of the
+law courts, at Orleans. This Groslot, whose dual position was one of
+the singularities of this period--when Reformers themselves owned
+abbeys--Groslot, the Jacques Coeur of Orleans, one of the richest
+burghers of the day, did not bequeath his name to the house, for in
+after years it was called Le Bailliage, having been, undoubtedly,
+purchased either by the heirs of the Crown or by the provinces as the
+proper place in which to hold the legal courts. This charming
+structure, built by the bourgeoisie of the sixteenth century, which
+completes so admirably the history of a period in which king, nobles,
+and burghers rivalled each other in the grace, elegance, and richness
+of their dwellings (witness Varangeville, the splendid manor-house of
+Ango, and the mansion, called that of Hercules, in Paris), exists to
+this day, though in a state to fill archaeologists and lovers of the
+Middle Ages with despair. It would be difficult, however, to go to
+Orleans and not take notice of the Hotel-de-Ville which stands on the
+place de l'Estape. This hotel-de-ville, or town-hall, is the former
+Bailliage, the mansion of Groslot, the most illustrious house in
+Orleans, and the most neglected.
+
+The remains of this old building will still show, to the eyes of an
+archaeologist, how magnificent it was at a period when the houses of
+the burghers were commonly built of wood rather than stone, a period
+when noblemen alone had the right to build /manors/,--a significant
+word. Having served as the dwelling of the king at a period when the
+court displayed much pomp and luxury, the hotel Groslot must have been
+the most splendid house in Orleans. It was here, on the place de
+l'Estape, that the Guises and the king reviewed the burgher guard, of
+which Monsieur de Cypierre was made the commander during the sojourn
+of the king. At this period the cathedral of Sainte-Croix, afterward
+completed by Henri IV.,--who chose to give that proof of the sincerity
+of his conversion,--was in process of erection, and its neighborhood,
+heaped with stones and cumbered with piles of wood, was occupied by
+the Guises and their retainers, who were quartered in the bishop's
+palace, now destroyed.
+
+The town was under military discipline, and the measures taken by the
+Guises proved how little liberty they intended to leave to the States-
+general, the members of which flocked into the town, raising the rents
+of the poorest lodgings. The court, the burgher militia, the nobility,
+and the burghers themselves were all in a state of expectation,
+awaiting some /coup-d'Etat/; and they found themselves not mistaken
+when the princes of the blood arrived. As the Bourbon princes entered
+the king's chamber, the court saw with terror the insolent bearing of
+Cardinal de Lorraine. Determined to show his intentions openly, he
+remained covered, while the king of Navarre stood before him bare-
+headed. Catherine de' Medici lowered her eyes, not to show the
+indignation that she felt. Then followed a solemn explanation between
+the young king and the two chiefs of the younger branch. It was short,
+for that the first words of the Prince de Conde Francois II.
+interrupted him, with threatening looks:
+
+"Messieurs, my cousins, I had supposed the affair of Amboise over; I
+find it is not so, and you are compelling us to regret the indulgence
+which we showed."
+
+"It is not the king so much as the Messieurs de Guise who now address
+us," replied the Prince de Conde.
+
+"Adieu, monsieur," cried the little king, crimson with anger. When he
+left the king's presence the prince found his way barred in the great
+hall by two officers of the Scottish guard. As the captain of the
+French guard advanced, the prince drew a letter from his doublet, and
+said to him in presence of the whole court:--
+
+"Can you read that paper aloud to me, Monsieur de Maille-Breze?"
+
+"Willingly," said the French captain:--
+
+  "'My cousin, come in all security; I give you my royal word that
+  you can do so. If you have need of a safe conduct, this letter
+  will serve as one.'"
+
+"Signed?" said the shrewd and courageous hunchback.
+
+"Signed 'Francois,'" said Maille.
+
+"No, no!" exclaimed the prince, "it is signed: 'Your good cousin and
+friend, Francois,'--Messieurs," he said to the Scotch guard, "I follow
+you to the prison to which you are ordered, on behalf of the king, to
+conduct me. There is enough nobility in this hall to understand the
+matter!"
+
+The profound silence which followed these words ought to have
+enlightened the Guises, but silence is that to which all princes
+listen least.
+
+"Monseigneur," said the Cardinal de Tournon, who was following the
+prince, "you know well that since the affair at Amboise you have made
+certain attempts both at Lyon and at Mouvans in Dauphine against the
+royal authority, of which the king had no knowledge when he wrote to
+you in those terms."
+
+"Tricksters!" cried the prince, laughing.
+
+"You have made a public declaration against the Mass and in favor of
+heresy."
+
+"We are masters in Navarre," said the prince.
+
+"You mean to say in Bearn. But you owe homage to the Crown," replied
+President de Thou.
+
+"Ha! you here, president?" cried the prince, sarcastically. "Is the
+whole Parliament with you?"
+
+So saying, he cast a look of contempt upon the cardinal and left the
+hall. He saw plainly enough that they meant to have his head. The next
+day, when Messieurs de Thou, de Viole, d'Espesse, the procureur-
+general Bourdin, and the chief clerk of the court du Tillet, entered
+his presence, he kept them standing, and expressed his regrets to see
+them charged with a duty which did not belong to them. Then he said to
+the clerk, "Write down what I say," and dictated as follows:--
+
+  "I, Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Conde, peer of the kingdom,
+  Marquis de Conti, Comte de Soissons, prince of the blood of
+  France, do declare that I formally refuse to recognize any
+  commission appointed to try me, because, in my quality and in
+  virtue of the privilege appertaining to all members of the royal
+  house, I can only be accused, tried, and judged by the Parliament
+  of peers, both Chambers assembled, the king being seated on his
+  bed of justice."
+
+"You ought to know that, gentlemen, better than others," he added;
+"and this reply is all that you will get from me. For the rest, I
+trust in God and my right."
+
+The magistrates continued to address him notwithstanding his obstinate
+silence. The king of Navarre was left at liberty, but closely watched;
+his prison was larger than that of the prince, and this was the only
+real difference in the position of the two brothers,--the intention
+being that their heads should fall together.
+
+Christophe was therefore kept in the strictest solitary confinement by
+order of the cardinal and the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, for
+no other purpose than to give the judges proof of the culpability of
+the Prince de Conde. The letters seized on Lasagne, the prince's
+secretary, though intelligible to statesmen, where not sufficiently
+plain proof for judges. The cardinal intended to confront the prince
+and Christophe by accident; and it was not without intention that the
+young Reformer was placed in one of the lower rooms in the tower of
+Saint-Aignan, with a window looking on the prison yard. Each time that
+Christophe was brought before the magistrates, and subjected to a
+close examination, he sheltered himself behind a total and complete
+denial, which prolonged his trial until after the opening of the
+States-general.
+
+Old Lecamus, who by that time had got himself elected deputy of the
+/tiers-etat/ by the burghers of Paris, arrived at Orleans a few days
+after the arrest of the Prince de Conde. This news, which reached him
+at Etampes, redoubled his anxiety; for he fully understood--he, who
+alone knew of Christophe's interview with the prince under the bridge
+near his own house--that his son's fate was closely bound up with that
+of the leader of the Reformed party. He therefore determined to study
+the dark tangle of interests which were struggling together at court
+in order to discover some means of rescuing his son. It was useless to
+think of Queen Catherine, who refused to see her furrier. No one about
+the court whom he was able to address could give him any satisfactory
+information about Christophe; and he fell at last into a state of such
+utter despair that he was on the verge of appealing to the cardinal
+himself, when he learned that Monsieur de Thou (and this was the great
+stain upon that good man's life) had consented to be one of the judges
+of the Prince de Conde. The old furrier went at once to see him, and
+learned at last that Christophe was still living, though a prisoner.
+
+Tourillon, the glover (to whom La Renaudie sent Christophe on his way
+to Blois), had offered a room in his house to the Sieur Lecamus for
+the whole time of his stay in Orleans during the sittings of the
+States-general. The glover believed the furrier to be, like himself,
+secretly attached to the Reformed religion; but he soon saw that a
+father who fears for the life of his child pays no heed to shades of
+religious opinion, but flings himself prone upon the bosom of God
+without caring what insignia men give to Him. The poor old man,
+repulsed in all his efforts, wandered like one bewildered through the
+streets. Contrary to his expectations, his money availed him nothing;
+Monsieur de Thou had warned him that if he bribed any servant of the
+house of Guise he would merely lose his money, for the duke and
+cardinal allowed nothing that related to Christophe to transpire. De
+Thou, whose fame is somewhat tarnished by the part he played at this
+crisis, endeavored to give some hope to the poor father; but he
+trembled so much himself for the fate of his godson that his attempts
+at consolation only alarmed the old man still more. Lecamus roamed the
+streets; in three months he had shrunk visibly. His only hope now lay
+in the warm friendship which for so many years had bound him to the
+Hippocrates of the sixteenth century. Ambroise Pare tried to say a
+word to Queen Mary on leaving the chamber of the king, who was then
+indisposed; but no sooner had he named Christophe than the daughter of
+the Stuarts, nervous at the prospect of her fate should any evil
+happen to the king, and believing that the Reformers were attempting
+to poison him, cried out:--
+
+"If my uncles had only listened to me, that fanatic would have been
+hanged already."
+
+The evening on which this fatal answer was repeated to old Lecamus, by
+his friend Pare on the place de l'Estape, he returned home half dead
+to his own chamber, refusing to eat any supper. Tourillon, uneasy
+about him, went up to his room and found him in tears; the aged eyes
+showed the inflamed red lining of their lids, so that the glover
+fancied for a moment that he was weeping tears of blood.
+
+"Comfort yourself, father," said the Reformer; "the burghers of
+Orleans are furious to see their city treated as though it were taken
+by assault, and guarded by the soldiers of Monsieur de Cypierre. If
+the life of the Prince de Conde is in any real danger we will soon
+demolish the tower of Saint-Aignan; the whole town is on the side of
+the Reformers, and it will rise in rebellion; you may be sure of
+that!"
+
+"But, even if they hang the Guises, it will not give me back my son,"
+said the wretched father.
+
+At that instant some one rapped cautiously on Tourillon's outer door,
+and the glover went downstairs to open it himself. The night was dark.
+In these troublous times the masters of all households took minute
+precautions. Tourillon looked through the peep-holes cut in the door,
+and saw a stranger, whose accent indicated an Italian. The man, who
+was dressed in black, asked to speak with Lecamus on matters of
+business, and Tourillon admitted him. When the furrier caught sight of
+his visitor he shuddered violently; but the stranger managed, unseen
+by Tourillon, to lay his fingers on his lips. Lecamus, understanding
+the gesture, said immediately:--
+
+"You have come, I suppose, to offer furs?"
+
+"/Si/," said the Italian, discreetly.
+
+This personage was no other than the famous Ruggiero, astrologer to
+the queen-mother. Tourillon went below to his own apartment, feeling
+convinced that he was one too many in that of his guest.
+
+"Where can we talk without danger of being overheard?" said the
+cautious Florentine.
+
+"We ought to be in the open fields for that," replied Lecamus. "But we
+are not allowed to leave the town; you know the severity with which
+the gates are guarded. No one can leave Orleans without a pass from
+Monsieur de Cypierre," he added,--"not even I, who am a member of the
+States-general. Complaint is to be made at to-morrow's session of this
+restriction of liberty."
+
+"Work like a mole, but don't let your paws be seen in anything, no
+matter what," said the wary Italian. "To-morrow will, no doubt, prove
+a decisive day. Judging by my observations, you may, perhaps, recover
+your son to-morrow, or the day after."
+
+"May God hear you--you who are thought to traffic with the devil!"
+
+"Come to my place," said the astrologer, smiling. "I live in the tower
+of Sieur Touchet de Beauvais, the lieutenant of the Bailliage, whose
+daughter the little Duc d'Orleans has taken such a fancy to; it is
+there that I observe the planets. I have drawn the girl's horoscope,
+and it says that she will become a great lady and be beloved by a
+king. The lieutenant, her father, is a clever man; he loves science,
+and the queen sent me to lodge with him. He has had the sense to be a
+rabid Guisist while awaiting the reign of Charles IX."
+
+The furrier and the astrologer reached the house of the Sieur de
+Beauvais without being met or even seen; but, in case Lecamus' visit
+should be discovered, the Florentine intended to give a pretext of an
+astrological consultation on his son's fate. When they were safely at
+the top of the tower, where the astrologer did his work, Lecamus said
+to him:--
+
+"Is my son really living?"
+
+"Yes, he still lives," replied Ruggiero; "and the question now is how
+to save him. Remember this, seller of skins, I would not give two
+farthings for yours if ever in all your life a single syllable should
+escape you of what I am about to say."
+
+"That is a useless caution, my friend; I have been furrier to the
+court since the time of the late Louis XII.; this is the fourth reign
+that I have seen."
+
+"And you may soon see the fifth," remarked Ruggiero.
+
+"What do you know about my son?"
+
+"He has been put to the question."
+
+"Poor boy!" said the old man, raising his eyes to heaven.
+
+"His knees and ankles were a bit injured, but he has won a royal
+protection which will extend over his whole life," said the Florentine
+hastily, seeing the terror of the poor father. "Your little Christophe
+has done a service to our great queen, Catherine. If we manage to pull
+him out of the claws of the Guises you will see him some day
+councillor to the Parliament. Any man would gladly have his bones
+cracked three times over to stand so high in the good graces of this
+dear sovereign,--a grand and noble genius, who will triumph in the end
+over all obstacles. I have drawn the horoscope of the Duc de Guise; he
+will be killed within a year. Well, so Christophe saw the Prince de
+Conde--"
+
+"You who read the future ought to know the past," said the furrier.
+
+"My good man, I am not questioning you, I am telling you a fact. Now,
+if your son, who will to-morrow be placed in the prince's way as he
+passes, should recognize him, or if the prince should recognize your
+son, the head of Monsieur de Conde will fall. God knows what will
+become of his accomplice! However, don't be alarmed. Neither your son
+nor the prince will die; I have drawn their horoscope,--they will
+live; but I do not know in what way they will get out of this affair.
+Without distrusting the certainty of my calculations, we must do
+something to bring about results. To-morrow the prince will receive,
+from sure hands, a prayer-book in which we convey the information to
+him. God grant that your son be cautious, for him we cannot warn. A
+single glance of recognition will cost the prince's life. Therefore,
+although the queen-mother has every reason to trust in Christophe's
+faithfulness--"
+
+"They've put it to a cruel test!" cried the furrier.
+
+"Don't speak so! Do you think the queen-mother is on a bed of roses?
+She is taking measures as if the Guises had already decided on the
+death of the prince, and right she is, the wise and prudent queen! Now
+listen to me; she counts on you to help her in all things. You have
+some influence with the /tiers-etat/, where you represent the body of
+the guilds of Paris, and though the Guisards may promise you to set
+your son at liberty, try to fool them and maintain the independence of
+the guilds. Demand the queen-mother as regent; the king of Navarre
+will publicly accept the proposal at the session of the States-
+general."
+
+"But the king?"
+
+"The king will die," replied Ruggiero; "I have read his horoscope.
+What the queen-mother requires you to do for her at the States-general
+is a very simple thing; but there is a far greater service which she
+asks of you. You helped Ambroise Pare in his studies, you are his
+friend--"
+
+"Ambroise now loves the Duc de Guise more than he loves me; and he is
+right, for he owes his place to him. Besides, he is faithful to the
+king. Though he inclines to the Reformed religion, he will never do
+anything against his duty."
+
+"Curse these honest men!" cried the Florentine. "Ambroise boasted this
+evening that he could bring the little king safely through his present
+illness (for he is really ill). If the king recovers his health, the
+Guises triumph, the princes die, the house of Bourbon becomes extinct,
+we shall return to Florence, your son will be hanged, and the Lorrains
+will easily get the better of the other sons of France--"
+
+"Great God!" exclaimed Lecamus.
+
+"Don't cry out in that way,--it is like a burgher who knows nothing of
+the court,--but go at once to Ambroise and find out from him what he
+intends to do to save the king's life. If there is anything decided
+on, come back to me at once, and tell me the treatment in which he has
+such faith."
+
+"But--" said Lecamus.
+
+"Obey blindly, my dear friend; otherwise you will get your mind
+bewildered."
+
+"He is right," thought the furrier. "I had better not know more"; and
+he went at once in search of the king's surgeon, who lived at a
+hostelry in the place du Martroi.
+
+Catherine de' Medici was at this moment in a political extremity very
+much like that in which poor Christophe had seen her at Blois. Though
+she had been in a way trained by the struggle, though she had
+exercised her lofty intellect by the lessons of that first defeat, her
+present situation, while nearly the same, had become more critical,
+more perilous than it was at Amboise. Events, like the woman herself,
+had magnified. Though she seemed to be in full accordance with the
+Guises, Catherine held in her hand the threads of a wisely planned
+conspiracy against her terrible associates, and was only awaiting a
+propitious moment to throw off the mask. The cardinal had just
+obtained the positive certainty that Catherine was deceiving him. Her
+subtle Italian spirit felt that the Younger branch was the best
+hindrance she could offer to the ambition of the duke and the
+cardinal; and (in spite of the advice of the two Gondis, who urged her
+to let the Guises wreak their vengeance on the Bourbons) she defeated
+the scheme concocted by them with Spain to seize the province of
+Bearn, by warning Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre, of that
+threatened danger. As this state secret was known only to them and to
+the queen-mother, the Guises knew of course who had betrayed it, and
+resolved to send her back to Florence. But in order to make themselves
+perfectly sure of what they called her treason against the State (the
+State being the house of Lorraine), the duke and cardinal confided to
+her their intention of getting rid of the king of Navarre. The
+precautions instantly taken by Antoine proved conclusively to the two
+brothers that the secrets known only to them and the queen-mother had
+been divulged by the latter. The cardinal instantly taxed her with
+treachery, in presence of Francois II.,--threatening her with an edict
+of banishment in case of future indiscretion, which might, as they
+said, put the kingdom in danger.
+
+Catherine, who then felt herself in the utmost peril, acted in the
+spirit of a great king, giving proof of her high capacity. It must be
+added, however, that she was ably seconded by her friends. L'Hopital
+managed to send her a note, written in the following terms:--
+
+  "Do not allow a prince of the blood to be put to death by a
+  committee; or you will yourself be carried off in some way."
+
+Catherine sent Birago to Vignay to tell the chancellor (l'Hopital) to
+come to Orleans at once, in spite of his being in disgrace. Birago
+returned the very night of which we are writing, and was now a few
+miles from Orleans with l'Hopital, who heartily avowed himself for the
+queen-mother. Chiverni, whose fidelity was very justly suspected by
+the Guises, had escaped from Orleans and reached Ecouen in ten hours,
+by a forced march which almost cost him his life. There he told the
+Connetable de Montmorency of the peril of his nephew, the Prince de
+Conde, and the audacious hopes of the Guises. The Connetable, furious
+at the thought that the prince's life hung upon that of Francois II.,
+started for Orleans at once with a hundred noblemen and fifteen
+hundred cavalry. In order to take the Messieurs de Guise by surprise
+he avoided Paris, and came direct from Ecouen to Corbeil, and from
+Corbeil to Pithiviers by the valley of the Essonne.
+
+"Soldier against soldier, we must leave no chances," he said on the
+occasion of this bold march.
+
+Anne de Montmorency, who had saved France at the time of the invasion
+of Provence by Charles V., and the Duc de Guise, who had stopped the
+second invasion by the emperor at Metz, were, in truth, the two great
+warriors of France at this period. Catherine had awaited this precise
+moment to rouse the inextinguishable hatred of the Connetable, whose
+disgrace and banishment were the work of the Guises. The Marquis de
+Simeuse, however, who commanded at Gien, being made aware of the large
+force approaching under command of the Connetable, jumped on his horse
+hoping to reach Orleans in time to warn the duke and cardinal.
+
+Sure that the Connetable would come to the rescue of his nephew, and
+full of confidence in the Chancelier l'Hopital's devotion to the royal
+cause, the queen-mother revived the hopes and the boldness of the
+Reformed party. The Colignys and the friends of the house of Bourbon,
+aware of their danger, now made common cause with the adherents of the
+queen-mother. A coalition between these opposing interests, attacked
+by a common enemy, formed itself silently in the States-general, where
+it soon became a question of appointing Catherine as regent in case
+the king should die. Catherine, whose faith in astrology was much
+greater than her faith in the Church, now dared all against her
+oppressors, seeing that her son was ill and apparently dying at the
+expiration of the time assigned to his life by the famous sorceress,
+whom Nostradamus had brought to her at the chateau of Chaumont.
+
+
+
+XI
+
+AMBROISE PARE
+
+Some days before the terrible end of the reign of Francois II., the
+king insisted on sailing down the Loire, wishing not to be in the town
+of Orleans on the day when the Prince de Conde was executed. Having
+yielded the head of the prince to the Cardinal de Lorraine, he was
+equally in dread of a rebellion among the townspeople and of the
+prayers and supplications of the Princesse de Conde. At the moment of
+embarkation, one of the cold winds which sweep along the Loire at the
+beginning of winter gave him so sharp an ear-ache that he was obliged
+to return to his apartments; there he took to his bed, not leaving it
+again until he died. In contradiction of the doctors, who, with the
+exception of Chapelain, were his enemies, Ambroise Pare insisted that
+an abscess was formed in the king's head, and that unless an issue
+were given to it, the danger of death would increase daily.
+Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, and the curfew law, which
+was sternly enforced in Orleans, at this time practically in a state
+of siege, Pare's lamp shone from his window, and he was deep in study,
+when Lecamus called to him from below. Recognizing the voice of his
+old friend, Pare ordered that he should be admitted.
+
+"You take no rest, Ambroise; while saving the lives of others you are
+wasting your own," said the furrier as he entered, looking at the
+surgeon, who sat, with opened books and scattered instruments, before
+the head of a dead man, lately buried and now disinterred, in which he
+had cut an opening.
+
+"It is a matter of saving the king's life."
+
+"Are you sure of doing it, Ambroise?" cried the old man, trembling.
+
+"As sure as I am of my own existence. The king, my old friend, has a
+morbid ulcer pressing on his brain, which will presently suffice it if
+no vent is given to it, and the danger is imminent. But by boring the
+skull I expect to release the pus and clear the head. I have already
+performed this operation three times. It was invented by a
+Piedmontese; but I have had the honor to perfect it. The first
+operation I performed was at the siege of Metz, on Monsieur de Pienne,
+whom I cured, who was afterwards all the more intelligent in
+consequence. His was an abscess caused by the blow of an arquebuse.
+The second was on the head of a pauper, on whom I wanted to prove the
+value of the audacious operation Monsieur de Pienne had allowed me to
+perform. The third I did in Paris on a gentleman who is now entirely
+recovered. Trepanning--that is the name given to the operation--is
+very little known. Patients refuse it, partly because of the
+imperfection of the instruments; but I have at last improved them. I
+am practising now on this skull, that I may be sure of not failing
+to-morrow, when I operate on the head of the king."
+
+"You ought indeed to be very sure you are right, for your own head
+would be in danger in case--"
+
+"I'd wager my life I can cure him," replied Ambroise, with the
+conviction of a man of genius. "Ah! my old friend, where's the danger
+of boring into a skull with proper precautions? That is what soldiers
+do in battle every day of their lives, without taking any
+precautions."
+
+"My son," said the burgher, boldly, "do you know that to save the king
+is to ruin France? Do you know that this instrument of yours will
+place the crown of the Valois on the head of the Lorrain who calls
+himself the heir of Charlemagne? Do you know that surgery and policy
+are at this moment sternly opposed to each other? Yes, the triumph of
+your genius will be the death of your religion. If the Guises gain the
+regency, the blood of the Reformers will flow like water. Be a greater
+citizen than you are a surgeon; oversleep yourself to-morrow morning
+and leave a free field to the other doctors who if they cannot cure
+the king will cure France."
+
+"I!" exclaimed Pare. "I leave a man to die when I can cure him? No,
+no! were I to hang as an abettor of Calvin I shall go early to court.
+Do you not feel that the first and only reward I shall ask will be the
+life of your Christophe? Surely at such a moment Queen Mary can deny
+me nothing."
+
+"Alas! my friend," returned Lecamus, "the little king has refused the
+pardon of the Prince de Conde to the princess. Do not kill your
+religion by saving the life of a man who ought to die."
+
+"Do not you meddle with God's ordering of the future!" cried Pare.
+"Honest men can have but one motto: /Fais ce que dois, advienne que
+pourra/!--do thy duty, come what will. That is what I did at the siege
+of Calais when I put my foot on the face of the Duc de Guise,--I ran
+the risk of being strangled by his friends and his servants; but
+to-day I am surgeon to the king; moreover I am of the Reformed
+religion; and yet the Guises are my friends. I shall save the king,"
+cried the surgeon, with the sacred enthusiasm of a conviction bestowed
+by genius, "and God will save France!"
+
+A knock was heard on the street door and presently one of Pare's
+servants gave a paper to Lecamus, who read aloud these terrifying
+words:--
+
+  "A scaffold is being erected at the convent of the Recollets: the
+  Prince de Conde will be beheaded there to-morrow."
+
+Ambroise and Lecamus looked at each other with an expression of the
+deepest horror.
+
+"I will go and see it for myself," said the furrier.
+
+No sooner was he in the open street than Ruggiero took his arm and
+asked by what means Ambroise Pare proposed to save the king. Fearing
+some trickery, the old man, instead of answering, replied that he
+wished to go and see the scaffold. The astrologer accompanied him to
+the place des Recollets, and there, truly enough, they found the
+carpenters putting up the horrible framework by torchlight.
+
+"Hey, my friend," said Lecamus to one of the men, "what are you doing
+here at this time of night?"
+
+"We are preparing for the hanging of heretics, as the blood-letting at
+Amboise didn't cure them," said a young Recollet who was
+superintending the work.
+
+"Monseigneur the cardinal is very right," said Ruggiero, prudently;
+"but in my country we do better."
+
+"What do you do?" said the young priest.
+
+"We burn them."
+
+Lecamus was forced to lean on the astrologer's arm, for his legs gave
+way beneath him; he thought it probable that on the morrow his son
+would hang from one of those gibbets. The poor old man was thrust
+between two sciences, astrology and surgery, both of which promised
+him the life of his son, for whom in all probability that scaffold was
+now erecting. In the trouble and distress of his mind, the Florentine
+was able to knead him like dough.
+
+"Well, my worthy dealer in minever, what do you say now to the
+Lorraine jokes?" whispered Ruggiero.
+
+"Alas! you know I would give my skin if that of my son were safe and
+sound."
+
+"That is talking like your trade," said the Italian; "but explain to
+me the operation which Ambroise means to perform upon the king, and in
+return I will promise you the life of your son."
+
+"Faithfully?" exclaimed the old furrier.
+
+"Shall I swear it to you?" said Ruggiero.
+
+Thereupon the poor old man repeated his conversation with Ambroise
+Pare to the astrologer, who, the moment that the secret of the great
+surgeon was divulged to him, left the poor father abruptly in the
+street in utter despair.
+
+"What the devil does he mean, that miscreant?" cried Lecamus, as he
+watched Ruggiero hurrying with rapid steps to the place de l'Estape.
+
+Lecamus was ignorant of the terrible scene that was taking place
+around the royal bed, where the imminent danger of the king's death
+and the consequent loss of power to the Guises had caused the hasty
+erection of the scaffold for the Prince de Conde, whose sentence had
+been pronounced, as it were by default,--the execution of it being
+delayed by the king's illness.
+
+Absolutely no one but the persons on duty were in the halls,
+staircases, and courtyard of the royal residence, Le Bailliage. The
+crowd of courtiers were flocking to the house of the king of Navarre,
+on whom the regency would devolve on the death of the king, according
+to the laws of the kingdom. The French nobility, alarmed by the
+audacity of the Guises, felt the need of rallying around the chief of
+the younger branch, when, ignorant of the queen-mother's Italian
+policy, they saw her the apparent slave of the duke and cardinal.
+Antoine de Bourbon, faithful to his secret agreement with Catherine,
+was bound not to renounce the regency in her favor until the States-
+general had declared for it.
+
+The solitude in which the king's house was left had a powerful effect
+on the mind of the Duc de Guise when, on his return from an
+inspection, made by way of precaution through the city, he found no
+one there but the friends who were attached exclusively to his own
+fortunes. The chamber in which was the king's bed adjoined the great
+hall of the Bailliage. It was at that period panelled in oak. The
+ceiling, composed of long, narrow boards carefully joined and painted,
+was covered with blue arabesques on a gold ground, a part of which
+being torn down about fifty years ago was instantly purchased by a
+lover of antiquities. This room, hung with tapestry, the floor being
+covered with a carpet, was so dark and gloomy that the torches threw
+scarcely any light. The vast four-post bedstead with its silken
+curtains was like a tomb. Beside her husband, close to his pillow, sat
+Mary Stuart, and near her the Cardinal de Lorraine. Catherine was
+seated in a chair at a little distance. The famous Jean Chapelain, the
+physician on duty (who was afterwards chief physician to Charles IX.)
+was standing before the fireplace. The deepest silence reigned. The
+young king, pale and shrunken, lay as if buried in his sheets, his
+pinched little face scarcely showing on the pillow. The Duchesse de
+Guise, sitting on a stool, attended Queen Mary, while on the other
+side, near Catherine, in the recess of a window, Madame de Fiesque
+stood watching the gestures and looks of the queen-mother; for she
+knew the dangers of her position.
+
+In the hall, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, Monsieur de
+Cypierre, governor of the Duc d'Orleans and now appointed governor of
+the town, occupied one corner of the fireplace with the two Gondis.
+Cardinal de Tournon, who in this crisis espoused the interests of the
+queen-mother on finding himself treated as an inferior by the Cardinal
+de Lorraine, of whom he was certainly the ecclesiastical equal, talked
+in a low voice to the Gondis. The marshals de Vieilleville and Saint-
+Andre and the keeper of the seals, who presided at the States-general,
+were talking together in a whisper of the dangers to which the Guises
+were exposed.
+
+The lieutenant-general of the kingdom crossed the room on his
+entrance, casting a rapid glance about him, and bowed to the Duc
+d'Orleans whom he saw there.
+
+"Monseigneur," he said, "this will teach you to know men. The Catholic
+nobility of the kingdom have gone to pay court to a heretic prince,
+believing that the States-general will give the regency to the heirs
+of a traitor who long detained in prison your illustrious
+grandfather."
+
+Then having said these words, which were destined to plough a furrow
+in the heart of the young prince, he passed into the bedroom, where
+the king was not so much asleep as plunged in a heavy torpor. The Duc
+de Guise was usually able to correct the sinister aspect of his
+scarred face by an affable and pleasing manner, but on this occasion,
+when he saw the instrument of his power breaking in his very hands, he
+was unable to force a smile. The cardinal, whose civil courage was
+equal to his brother's military daring, advanced a few steps to meet
+him.
+
+"Robertet thinks that little Pinard is sold to the queen-mother," he
+whispered, leading the duke into the hall; "they are using him to work
+upon the members of the States-general."
+
+"Well, what does it signify if we are betrayed by a secretary when all
+else betrays us?" cried the lieutenant-general. "The town is for the
+Reformation, and we are on the eve of a revolt. Yes! the /Wasps/ are
+discontented"; he continued, giving the Orleans people their nickname;
+"and if Pare does not save the king we shall have a terrible uprising.
+Before long we shall be forced to besiege Orleans, which is nothing
+but a bog of Huguenots."
+
+"I have been watching that Italian woman," said the cardinal, "as she
+sits there with absolute insensibility. She is watching and waiting,
+God forgive her! for the death of her son; and I ask myself whether we
+should not do a wise thing to arrest her at once, and also the king of
+Navarre."
+
+"It is already more than we want upon our hands to have the Prince de
+Conde in prison," replied the duke.
+
+The sound of a horseman riding in haste to the gate of the Bailliage
+echoed through the hall. The duke and cardinal went to the window, and
+by the light of the torches which were in the portico the duke
+recognized on the rider's hat the famous Lorraine cross, which the
+cardinal had lately ordered his partisans to wear. He sent an officer
+of the guard, who was stationed in the antechamber, to give entrance
+to the new-comer; and went himself, followed by his brother, to meet
+him on the landing.
+
+"What is it, my dear Simeuse?" asked the duke, with that charm of
+manner which he always displayed to military men, as soon as he
+recognized the governor of Gien.
+
+"The Connetable has reached Pithiviers; he left Ecouen with two
+thousand cavalry and one hundred nobles."
+
+"With their suites?"
+
+"Yes, monseigneur," replied Simeuse; "in all, two thousand six hundred
+men. Some say that Thore is behind them with a body of infantry. If
+the Connetable delays awhile, expecting his son, you still have time
+to repulse him."
+
+"Is that all you know? Are the reasons of this sudden call to arms
+made known?"
+
+"Montmorency talks as little as he writes; go you and meet him,
+brother, while I prepare to welcome him with the head of his nephew,"
+said the cardinal, giving orders that Robertet be sent to him at once.
+
+"Vieilleville!" cried the duke to the marechal, who came immediately.
+"The Connetable has the audacity to come here under arms; if I go to
+meet him will you be responsible to hold the town?"
+
+"As soon as you leave it the burghers will fly to arms; and who can
+answer for the result of an affair between cavalry and citizens in
+these narrow streets?" replied the marechal.
+
+"Monseigneur," said Robertet, rushing hastily up the stairs, "the
+Chancelier de l'Hopital is at the gate and asks to enter; are we to
+let him in?"
+
+"Yes, open the gate," answered the cardinal. "Connetable and
+chancelier together would be dangerous; we must separate them. We have
+been boldly tricked by the queen-mother into choosing l'Hopital as
+chancellor."
+
+Robertet nodded to a captain of the guard, who awaited an answer at
+the foot of the staircase; then he turned round quickly to receive the
+orders of the cardinal.
+
+"Monseigneur, I take the liberty," he said, making one last effort,
+"to point out that the sentence should be approved by /the king in
+council/. If you violate the law on a prince of the blood, it will not
+be respected for either a cardinal or a Duc de Guise."
+
+"Pinard has upset your mind, Robertet," said the cardinal, sternly.
+"Do you not know that the king signed the order of execution the day
+he was about to leave Orleans, in order that the sentence might be
+carried out in his absence?"
+
+The lieutenant-general listened to this discussion without a word, but
+he took his brother by the arm and led him into a corner of the hall.
+
+"Undoubtedly," he said, "the heirs of Charlemagne have the right to
+recover the crown which was usurped from their house by Hugh Capet;
+but can they do it? The pear is not yet ripe. Our nephew is dying, and
+the whole court has gone over to the king of Navarre."
+
+"The king's heart failed him, or the Bearnais would have been stabbed
+before now," said the cardinal; "and we could easily have disposed of
+the Valois children."
+
+"We are very ill-placed here," said the duke; "the rebellion of the
+town will be supported by the States-general. L'Hopital, whom we
+protected while the queen-mother opposed his appointment, is to-day
+against us, and yet it is all-important that we should have the
+justiciary with us. Catherine has too many supporters at the present
+time; we cannot send her back to Italy. Besides, there are still three
+Valois princes--"
+
+"She is no longer a mother, she is all queen," said the cardinal. "In
+my opinion, this is the moment to make an end of her. Vigor, and more
+and more vigor! that's my prescription!" he cried.
+
+So saying, the cardinal returned to the king's chamber, followed by
+the duke. The priest went straight to the queen-mother.
+
+"The papers of Lasagne, the secretary of the Prince de Conde, have
+been communicated to you, and you now know that the Bourbons are
+endeavoring to dethrone your son."
+
+"I know all that," said Catherine.
+
+"Well, then, will you give orders to arrest the king of Navarre?"
+
+"There is," she said with dignity, "a lieutenant-general of the
+kingdom."
+
+At this instant Francois II. groaned piteously, complaining aloud of
+the terrible pains in his ear. The physician left the fireplace where
+he was warming himself, and went to the bedside to examine the king's
+head.
+
+"Well, monsieur?" said the Duc de Guise, interrogatively.
+
+"I dare not take upon myself to apply a blister to draw the abscess.
+Maitre Ambroise has promised to save the king's life by an operation,
+and I might thwart it."
+
+"Let us postpone the treatment till to-morrow morning," said
+Catherine, coldly, "and order all the physicians to be present; for we
+all know the calumnies to which the death of kings gives rise."
+
+She went to her son and kissed his hand; then she withdrew to her own
+apartments.
+
+"With what composure that audacious daughter of a shop-keeper alluded
+to the death of the dauphin, poisoned by Montecuculi, one of her own
+Italian followers!" said Mary Stuart.
+
+"Mary!" cried the little king, "my grandfather never doubted her
+innocence."
+
+"Can we prevent that woman from coming here to-morrow?" said the queen
+to her uncles in a low voice.
+
+"What will become of us if the king dies?" returned the cardinal, in a
+whisper. "Catherine will shovel us all into his grave."
+
+Thus the question was plainly put between Catherine de' Medici and the
+house of Lorraine during that fatal night. The arrival of the
+Connetable de Montmorency and the Chancelier de l'Hopital were
+distinct indications of rebellion; the morning of the next day would
+therefore be decisive.
+
+
+
+XII
+
+DEATH OF FRANCOIS II
+
+On the morrow the queen-mother was the first to enter the king's
+chamber. She found no one there but Mary Stuart, pale and weary, who
+had passed the night in prayer beside the bed. The Duchesse de Guise
+had kept her mistress company, and the maids of honor had taken turns
+in relieving one another. The young king slept. Neither the duke nor
+the cardinal had yet appeared. The priest, who was bolder than the
+soldier, had, it was afterward said, put forth his utmost energy
+during the night to induce his brother to make himself king. But, in
+face of the assembled States-general, and threatened by a battle with
+Montmorency, the Balafre declared the circumstances unfavorable; he
+refused, against his brother's utmost urgency, to arrest the king of
+Navarre, the queen-mother, l'Hopital, the Cardinal de Tournon, the
+Gondis, Ruggiero, and Birago, objecting that such violent measures
+would bring on a general rebellion. He postponed the cardinal's scheme
+until the fate of Francois II. should be determined.
+
+The deepest silence reigned in the king's chamber. Catherine,
+accompanied by Madame de Fiesque, went to the bedside and gazed at her
+son with a semblance of grief that was admirably simulated. She put
+her handkerchief to her eyes and walked to the window where Madame de
+Fiesque brought her a seat. Thence she could see into the courtyard.
+
+It had been agreed between Catherine and the Cardinal de Tournon that
+if the Connetable should successfully enter the town the cardinal
+would come to the king's house with the two Gondis; if otherwise, he
+would come alone. At nine in the morning the duke and cardinal,
+followed by their gentlemen, who remained in the hall, entered the
+king's bedroom,--the captain on duty having informed them that
+Ambroise Pare had arrived, together with Chapelain and three other
+physicians, who hated Pare and were all in the queen-mother's
+interests.
+
+A few moments later and the great hall of the Bailliage presented much
+the same aspect as that of the Salle des gardes at Blois on the day
+when Christophe was put to the torture and the Duc de Guise was
+proclaimed lieutenant-governor of the kingdom,--with the single
+exception that whereas love and joy overflowed the royal chamber and
+the Guises triumphed, death and mourning now reigned within that
+darkened room, and the Guises felt that power was slipping through
+their fingers. The maids of honor of the two queens were again in
+their separate camps on either side of the fireplace, in which glowed
+a monstrous fire. The hall was filled with courtiers. The news--spread
+about, no one knew how--of some daring operation contemplated by
+Ambroise Pare to save the king's life, had brought back the lords and
+gentlemen who had deserted the house the day before. The outer
+staircase and courtyard were filled by an anxious crowd. The scaffold
+erected during the night for the Prince de Conde opposite to the
+convent of the Recollets, had amazed and startled the whole nobility.
+All present spoke in a low voice and the talk was the same mixture as
+at Blois, of frivolous and serious, light and earnest matters. The
+habit of expecting troubles, sudden revolutions, calls to arms,
+rebellions, and great events, which marked the long period during
+which the house of Valois was slowly being extinguished in spite of
+Catherine de' Medici's great efforts to preserve it, took its rise at
+this time.
+
+A deep silence prevailed for a certain distance beyond the door of the
+king's chamber, which was guarded by two halberdiers, two pages, and
+by the captain of the Scotch guard. Antoine de Bourbon, king of
+Navarre, held a prisoner in his own house, learned by his present
+desertion the hopes of the courtiers who had flocked to him the day
+before, and was horrified by the news of the preparations made during
+the night for the execution of his brother.
+
+Standing before the fireplace in the great hall of the Bailliage was
+one of the greatest and noblest figures of that day,--the Chancelier
+de l'Hopital, wearing his crimson robe lined and edged with ermine,
+and his cap on his head according to the privilege of his office. This
+courageous man, seeing that his benefactors were traitorous and self-
+seeking, held firmly to the cause of the kings, represented by the
+queen-mother; at the risk of losing his head, he had gone to Rouen to
+consult with the Connetable de Montmorency. No one ventured to draw
+him from the reverie in which he was plunged. Robertet, the secretary
+of State, two marshals of France, Vieilleville, and Saint-Andre, and
+the keeper of the seals, were collected in a group before the
+chancellor. The courtiers present were not precisely jesting; but
+their talk was malicious, especially among those who were not for the
+Guises.
+
+Presently voices were heard to rise in the king's chamber. The two
+marshals, Robertet, and the chancellor went nearer to the door; for
+not only was the life of the king in question, but, as the whole court
+knew well, the chancellor, the queen-mother, and her adherents were in
+the utmost danger. A deep silence fell on the whole assembly.
+
+Ambroise Pare had by this time examined the king's head; he thought
+the moment propitious for his operation; if it was not performed
+suffusion would take place, and Francois II. might die at any moment.
+As soon as the duke and cardinal entered the chamber he explained to
+all present that in so urgent a case it was necessary to trepan the
+head, and he now waited till the king's physician ordered him to
+perform the operation.
+
+"Cut the head of my son as though it were a plank!--with that horrible
+instrument!" cried Catherine de' Medici. "Maitre Ambroise, I will not
+permit it."
+
+The physicians were consulting together; but Catherine spoke in so
+loud a voice that her words reached, as she intended they should,
+beyond the door.
+
+"But, madame, if there is no other way to save him?" said Mary Stuart,
+weeping.
+
+"Ambroise," cried Catherine; "remember that your head will answer for
+the king's life."
+
+"We are opposed to the treatment suggested by Maitre Ambroise," said
+the three physicians. "The king can be saved by injecting through the
+ear a remedy which will draw the contents of the abscess through that
+passage."
+
+The Duc de Guise, who was watching Catherine's face, suddenly went up
+to her and drew her into the recess of the window.
+
+"Madame," he said, "you wish the death of your son; you are in league
+with our enemies, and have been since Blois. This morning the
+Counsellor Viole told the son of your furrier that the Prince de
+Conde's head was about to be cut off. That young man, who, when the
+question was applied, persisted in denying all relations with the
+prince, made a sign of farewell to him as he passed before the window
+of his dungeon. You saw your unhappy accomplice tortured with royal
+insensibility. You are now endeavoring to prevent the recovery of your
+eldest son. Your conduct forces us to believe that the death of the
+dauphin, which placed the crown on your husband's head was not a
+natural one, and that Montecuculi was your--"
+
+"Monsieur le chancilier!" cried Catherine, at a sign from whom Madame
+de Fiesque opened both sides of the bedroom door.
+
+The company in the hall then saw the scene that was taking place in
+the royal chamber: the livid little king, his face half dead, his eyes
+sightless, his lips stammering the word "Mary," as he held the hand of
+the weeping queen; the Duchesse de Guise motionless, frightened by
+Catherine's daring act; the duke and cardinal, also alarmed, keeping
+close to the queen-mother and resolving to have her arrested on the
+spot by Maille-Breze; lastly, the tall Ambroise Pare, assisted by the
+king's physician, holding his instrument in his hand but not daring to
+begin the operation, for which composure and total silence were as
+necessary as the consent of the other surgeons.
+
+"Monsieur le chancelier," said Catherine, "the Messieurs de Guise wish
+to authorize a strange operation upon the person of the king; Ambroise
+Pare is preparing to cut open his head. I, as the king's mother and a
+member of the council of the regency,--I protest against what appears
+to me a crime of /lese-majeste/. The king's physicians advise an
+injection through the ear, which seems to me as efficacious and less
+dangerous than the brutal operation proposed by Pare."
+
+When the company in the hall heard these words a smothered murmur rose
+from their midst; the cardinal allowed the chancellor to enter the
+bedroom and then he closed the door.
+
+"I am lieutenant-general of the kingdom," said the Duc de Guise; "and
+I would have you know, Monsieur le chancelier, that Ambroise, the
+king's surgeon, answers for his life."
+
+"Ah! if this be the turn that things are taking!" exclaimed Ambroise
+Pare. "I know my rights and how I should proceed." He stretched his
+arm over the bed. "This bed and the king are mine. I claim to be sole
+master of this case and solely responsible. I know the duties of my
+office; I shall operate upon the king without the sanction of the
+physicians."
+
+"Save him!" said the cardinal, "and you shall be the richest man in
+France."
+
+"Go on!" cried Mary Stuart, pressing the surgeon's hand.
+
+"I cannot prevent it," said the chancellor; "but I shall record the
+protest of the queen-mother."
+
+"Robertet!" called the Duc de Guise.
+
+When Robertet entered, the lieutenant-general pointed to the
+chancellor.
+
+"I appoint you chancellor of France in the place of that traitor," he
+said. "Monsieur de Maille, take Monsieur de l'Hopital and put him in
+the prison of the Prince de Conde. As for you, madame," he added,
+turning to Catherine; "your protest will not be received; you ought to
+be aware that any such protest must be supported by sufficient force.
+I act as the faithful subject and loyal servant of king Francois II.,
+my master. Go on, Antoine," he added, looking at the surgeon.
+
+"Monsieur de Guise," said l'Hopital; "if you employ violence either
+upon the king or upon the chancellor of France, remember that enough
+of the nobility of France are in that hall to rise and arrest you as a
+traitor."
+
+"Oh! my lords," cried the great surgeon; "if you continue these
+arguments you will soon proclaim Charles IX!--for king Francois is
+about to die."
+
+Catherine de' Medici, absolutely impassive, gazed from the window.
+
+"Well, then, we shall employ force to make ourselves masters of this
+room," said the cardinal, advancing to the door.
+
+But when he opened it even he was terrified; the whole house was
+deserted! The courtiers, certain now of the death of the king, had
+gone in a body to the king of Navarre.
+
+"Well, go on, perform your duty," cried Mary Stuart, vehemently, to
+Ambroise. "I--and you, duchess," she said to Madame de Guise,--"will
+protect you."
+
+"Madame," said Ambroise; "my zeal was carrying me away. The doctors,
+with the exception of my friend Chapelain, prefer an injection, and it
+is my duty to submit to their wishes. If I had been chief surgeon and
+chief physician, which I am not, the king's life would probably have
+been saved. Give that to me, gentlemen," he said, stretching out his
+hand for the syringe, which he proceeded to fill.
+
+"Good God!" cried Mary Start, "but I order you to--"
+
+"Alas! madame," said Ambroise, "I am under the direction of these
+gentlemen."
+
+The young queen placed herself between the surgeon, the doctors, and
+the other persons present. The chief physician held the king's head,
+and Ambroise made the injection into the ear. The duke and the
+cardinal watched the proceeding attentively. Robertet and Monsieur de
+Maille stood motionless. Madame de Fiesque, at a sign from Catherine,
+glided unperceived from the room. A moment later l'Hopital boldly
+opened the door of the king's chamber.
+
+"I arrive in good time," said the voice of a man whose hasty steps
+echoed through the great hall, and who stood the next moment on the
+threshold of the open door. "Ah, messieurs, so you meant to take off
+the head of my good nephew, the Prince de Conde? Instead of that, you
+have forced the lion from his lair and--here I am!" added the
+Connetable de Montmorency. "Ambroise, you shall not plunge your knife
+into the head of my king. The first prince of the blood, Antoine de
+Bourbon, the Prince de Conde, the queen-mother, the Connetable, and
+the chancellor forbid the operation."
+
+To Catherine's great satisfaction, the king of Navarre and the Prince
+de Conde now entered the room.
+
+"What does this mean?" said the Duc de Guise, laying his hand on his
+dagger.
+
+"It means that in my capacity as Connetable, I have dismissed the
+sentinels of all your posts. /Tete Dieu/! you are not in an enemy's
+country, methinks. The king, our master, is in the midst of his loyal
+subjects, and the States-general must be suffered to deliberate at
+liberty. I come, messieurs, from the States-general. I carried the
+protest of my nephew de Conde before that assembly, and three hundred
+of those gentlemen have released him. You wish to shed royal blood and
+to decimate the nobility of the kingdom, do you? Ha! in future, I defy
+you, and all your schemes, Messieurs de Lorraine. If you order the
+king's head opened, by this sword which saved France from Charles V.,
+I say it shall not be done--"
+
+"All the more," said Ambroise Pare; "because it is now too late; the
+suffusion has begun."
+
+"Your reign is over, messieurs," said Catherine to the Guises, seeing
+from Pare's face that there was no longer any hope.
+
+"Ah! madame, you have killed your own son," cried Mary Stuart as she
+bounded like a lioness from the bed to the window and seized the
+queen-mother by the arm, gripping it violently.
+
+"My dear," replied Catherine, giving her daughter-in-law a cold, keen
+glance in which she allowed her hatred, repressed for the last six
+months, to overflow; "you, to whose inordinate love we owe this death,
+you will now go to reign in your Scotland, and you will start
+to-morrow. I am regent /de facto/." The three physicians having made
+her a sign, "Messieurs," she added, addressing the Guises, "it is
+agreed between Monsieur de Bourbon, appointed lieutenant-general of
+the kingdom by the States-general, and me that the conduct of the
+affairs of the State is our business solely. Come, monsieur le
+chancelier."
+
+"The king is dead!" said the Duc de Guise, compelled to perform his
+duties as Grand-master.
+
+"Long live King Charles IX.!" cried all the noblemen who had come with
+the king of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, and the Connetable.
+
+The ceremonies which follow the death of a king of France were
+performed in almost total solitude. When the king-at-arms proclaimed
+aloud three times in the hall, "The king is dead!" there were very few
+persons present to reply, "Vive le roi!"
+
+The queen-mother, to whom the Comtesse de Fiesque had brought the Duc
+d'Orleans, now Charles IX., left the chamber, leading her son by the
+hand, and all the remaining courtiers followed her. No one was left in
+the house where Francois II. had drawn his last breath, but the duke
+and the cardinal, the Duchesse de Guise, Mary Stuart, and Dayelle,
+together with the sentries at the door, the pages of the Grand-master,
+those of the cardinal, and their private secretaries.
+
+"Vive la France!" cried several Reformers in the street, sounding the
+first cry of the opposition.
+
+Robertet, who owed all he was to the duke and cardinal, terrified by
+their scheme and its present failure, went over secretly to the queen-
+mother, whom the ambassadors of Spain, England, the Empire, and
+Poland, hastened to meet on the staircase, brought thither by Cardinal
+de Tournon, who had gone to notify them as soon as he had made Queen
+Catherine a sign from the courtyard at the moment when she protested
+against the operation of Ambroise Pare.
+
+"Well!" said the cardinal to the duke, "so the sons of Louis d'Outre-
+mer, the heirs of Charles de Lorraine flinched and lacked courage."
+
+"We should have been exiled to Lorraine," replied the duke. "I declare
+to you, Charles, that if the crown lay there before me I would not
+stretch out my hand to pick it up. That's for my son to do."
+
+"Will he have, as you have had, the army and Church on his side?"
+
+"He will have something better."
+
+"What?"
+
+"The people!"
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Mary Stuart, clasping the stiffened hand of her first
+husband, now dead, "there is none but me to weep for this poor boy who
+loved me so!"
+
+"How can we patch up matters with the queen-mother?" said the
+cardinal.
+
+"Wait till she quarrels with the Huguenots," replied the duchess.
+
+The conflicting interests of the house of Bourbon, of Catherine, of
+the Guises, and of the Reformed party produced such confusion in the
+town of Orleans that, three days after the king's death, his body,
+completely forgotten in the Bailliage and put into a coffin by the
+menials of the house, was taken to Saint-Denis in a covered waggon,
+accompanied only by the Bishop of Senlis and two gentlemen. When the
+pitiable procession reached the little town of Etampes, a servant of
+the Chancelier l'Hopital fastened to the waggon this severe
+inscription, which history has preserved: "Tanneguy de Chastel, where
+art thou? and yet thou wert a Frenchman!"--a stern reproach, which
+fell with equal force on Catherine de' Medici, Mary Stuart, and the
+Guises. What Frenchman does not know that Tanneguy de Chastel spent
+thirty thousand crowns of the coinage of that day (one million of our
+francs) at the funeral of Charles VII., the benefactor of his house?
+
+No sooner did the tolling of the bells announce to the town of Orleans
+that Francois II. was dead, and the rumor spread that the Connetable
+de Montmorency had ordered the flinging open of the gates of the town,
+than Tourillon, the glover, rushed up into the garret of his house and
+went to a secret hiding-place.
+
+"Good heavens! can he be dead?" he cried.
+
+Hearing the words, a man rose to his feet and answered, "Ready to
+serve!"--the password of the Reformers who belonged to Calvin.
+
+This man was Chaudieu, to whom Tourillon now related the events of the
+last eight days, during which time he had prudently left the minister
+alone in his hiding-place with a twelve-pound loaf of bread for his
+sole nourishment.
+
+"Go instantly to the Prince de Conde, brother: ask him to give me a
+safe-conduct; and find me a horse," cried the minister. "I must start
+at once."
+
+"Write me a line, or he will not receive me."
+
+"Here," said Chaudieu, after writing a few words, "ask for a pass from
+the king of Navarre, for I must go to Geneva without a moment's loss
+of time."
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+CALVIN
+
+Two hours later all was ready, and the ardent minister was on his way
+to Switzerland, accompanied by a nobleman in the service of the king
+of Navarre (of whom Chaudieu pretended to be the secretary), carrying
+with him despatches from the Reformers in the Dauphine. This sudden
+departure was chiefly in the interests of Catherine de' Medici, who,
+in order to gain time to establish her power, had made a bold
+proposition to the Reformers which was kept a profound secret. This
+strange proceeding explains the understanding so suddenly apparent
+between herself and the leaders of the Reform. The wily woman gave, as
+a pledge of her good faith, an intimation of her desire to heal all
+differences between the two churches by calling an assembly, which
+should be neither a council, nor a conclave, nor a synod, but should
+be known by some new and distinctive name, if Calvin consented to the
+project. When this secret was afterwards divulged (be it remarked in
+passing) it led to an alliance between the Duc de Guise and the
+Connetable de Montmorency against Catherine and the king of Navarre,--
+a strange alliance! known in history as the Triumvirate, the Marechal
+de Saint-Andre being the third personage in the purely Catholic
+coalition to which this singular proposition for a "colloquy" gave
+rise. The secret of Catherine's wily policy was rightly understood by
+the Guises; they felt certain that the queen cared nothing for this
+mysterious assembly, and was only temporizing with her new allies in
+order to secure a period of peace until the majority of Charles IX.;
+but none the less did they deceive the Connetable into fearing a
+collusion of real interests between the queen and the Bourbons,--
+whereas, in reality, Catherine was playing them all one against
+another.
+
+The queen had become, as the reader will perceive, extremely powerful
+in a very short time. The spirit of discussion and controversy which
+now sprang up was singularly favorable to her position. The Catholics
+and the Reformers were equally pleased to exhibit their brilliancy one
+after another in this tournament of words; for that is what it
+actually was, and no more. It is extraordinary that historians have
+mistaken one of the wiliest schemes of the great queen for uncertainty
+and hesitation! Catherine never went more directly to her own ends
+than in just such schemes which appeared to thwart them. The king of
+Navarre, quite incapable of understanding her motives, fell into her
+plan in all sincerity, and despatched Chaudieu to Calvin, as we have
+seen. The minister had risked his life to be secretly in Orleans and
+watch events; for he was, while there, in hourly peril of being
+discovered and hung as a man under sentence of banishment.
+
+According to the then fashion of travelling, Chaudieu could not reach
+Geneva before the month of February, and the negotiations were not
+likely to be concluded before the end of March; consequently the
+assembly could certainly not take place before the month of May, 1561.
+Catherine, meantime, intended to amuse the court and the various
+conflicting interests by the coronation of the king, and the
+ceremonies of his first "lit de justice," at which l'Hopital and de
+Thou recorded the letters-patent by which Charles IX. confided the
+administration to his mother in common with the present lieutenant-
+general of the kingdom, Antoine de Navarre, the weakest prince of
+those days.
+
+Is it not a strange spectacle this of the great kingdom of France
+waiting in suspense for the "yes" or "no" of a French burgher,
+hitherto an obscure man, living for many years past in Geneva? The
+transalpine pope held in check by the pontiff of Geneva! The two
+Lorrain princes, lately all-powerful, now paralyzed by the momentary
+coalition of the queen-mother and the first prince of the blood with
+Calvin! Is not this, I say, one of the most instructive lessons ever
+given to kings by history,--a lesson which should teach them to study
+men, to seek out genius, and employ it, as did Louis XIV., wherever
+God has placed it?
+
+Calvin, whose name was not Calvin but Cauvin, was the son of a cooper
+at Noyon in Picardy. The region of his birth explains in some degree
+the obstinacy combined with capricious eagerness which distinguished
+this arbiter of the destinies of France in the sixteenth century.
+Nothing is less known than the nature of this man, who gave birth to
+Geneva and to the spirit that emanated from that city. Jean-Jacques
+Rousseau, who had very little historical knowledge, has completely
+ignored the influence of Calvin on his republic. At first the embryo
+Reformer, who lived in one of the humblest houses in the upper town,
+near the church of Saint-Pierre, over a carpenter's shop (first
+resemblance between him and Robespierre), had no great authority in
+Geneva. In fact for a long time his power was malevolently checked by
+the Genevese. The town was the residence in those days of a citizen
+whose fame, like that of several others, remained unknown to the world
+at large and for a time to Geneva itself. This man, Farel, about the
+year 1537, detained Calvin in Geneva, pointing out to him that the
+place could be made the safe centre of a reformation more active and
+thorough than that of Luther. Farel and Calvin regarded Lutheranism as
+an incomplete work,--insufficient in itself and without any real grip
+upon France. Geneva, midway between France and Italy, and speaking the
+French language, was admirably situated for ready communication with
+Germany, France, and Italy. Calvin thereupon adopted Geneva as the
+site of his moral fortunes; he made it thenceforth the citadel of his
+ideas.
+
+The Council of Geneva, at Farel's entreaty, authorized Calvin in
+September, 1538, to give lectures on theology. Calvin left the duties
+of the ministry to Farel, his first disciple, and gave himself up
+patiently to the work of teaching his doctrine. His authority, which
+became so absolute in the last years of his life, was obtained with
+difficulty and very slowly. The great agitator met with such serious
+obstacles that he was banished for a time from Geneva on account of
+the severity of his reform. A party of honest citizens still clung to
+their old luxury and their old customs. But, as usually happens, these
+good people, fearing ridicule, would not admit the real object of
+their efforts, and kept up their warfare against the new doctrines on
+points altogether foreign to the real question. Calvin insisted that
+/leavened bread/ should be used for the communion, and that all feasts
+should be abolished except Sundays. These innovations were disapproved
+of at Berne and at Lausanne. Notice was served on the Genevese to
+conform to the ritual of Switzerland. Calvin and Farel resisted; their
+political opponents used this disobedience to drive them from Geneva,
+whence they were, in fact, banished for several years. Later Calvin
+returned triumphantly at the demand of his flock. Such persecutions
+always become in the end the consecration of a moral power; and, in
+this case, Calvin's return was the beginning of his era as prophet. He
+then organized his religious Terror, and the executions began. On his
+reappearance in the city he was admitted into the ranks of the
+Genevese burghers; but even then, after fourteen years' residence, he
+was not made a member of the Council. At the time of which we write,
+when Catherine sent her envoy to him, this king of ideas had no other
+title than that of "pastor of the Church of Geneva." Moreover, Calvin
+never in his life received a salary of more than one hundred and fifty
+francs in money yearly, fifteen hundred-weight of wheat, and two
+barrels of wine. His brother, a tailor, kept a shop close to the place
+Saint-Pierre, in a street now occupied by one of the large printing
+establishments of Geneva. Such personal disinterestedness, which was
+lacking in Voltaire, Newton, and Bacon, but eminent in the lives of
+Rabelais, Spinosa, Loyola, Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is indeed
+a magnificent frame to those ardent and sublime figures.
+
+The career of Robespierre can alone picture to the minds of the
+present day that of Calvin, who, founding his power on the same bases,
+was as despotic and as cruel as the lawyer of Arras. It is a
+noticeable fact that Picardy (Arras and Noyon) furnished both these
+instruments of reformation! Persons who wish to study the motives of
+the executions ordered by Calvin will find, all relations considered,
+another 1793 in Geneva. Calvin cut off the head of Jacques Gruet "for
+having written impious letters, libertine verses, and for working to
+overthrow ecclesiastical ordinances." Reflect upon that sentence, and
+ask yourselves if the worst tyrants in their saturnalias ever gave
+more horribly burlesque reasons for their cruelties. Valentin
+Gentilis, condemned to death for "involuntary heresy," escaped
+execution only by making a submission far more ignominious than was
+ever imposed by the Catholic Church. Seven years before the conference
+which was now to take place in Calvin's house on the proposals of the
+queen-mother, Michel Servet, /a Frenchman/, travelling through
+Switzerland, was arrested at Geneva, tried, condemned, and burned
+alive, on Calvin's accusation, for having "attacked the mystery of the
+Trinity," in a book which was neither written nor published in Geneva.
+Remember the eloquent remonstrance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose
+book, overthrowing the Catholic religion, written in France and
+published in Holland, was burned by the hangman, while the author, a
+foreigner, was merely banished from the kingdom where he had
+endeavored to destroy the fundamental proofs of religion and of
+authority. Compare the conduct of our Parliament with that of the
+Genevese tyrant. Again: Bolsee was brought to trial for "having other
+ideas than those of Calvin on predestination." Consider these things,
+and ask yourselves if Fourquier-Tinville did worse. The savage
+religious intolerance of Calvin was, morally speaking, more implacable
+than the savage political intolerance of Robespierre. On a larger
+stage than that of Geneva, Calvin would have shed more blood than did
+the terrible apostle of political equality as opposed to Catholic
+equality. Three centuries earlier a monk of Picardy drove the whole
+West upon the East. Peter the Hermit, Calvin, and Robespierre, each at
+an interval of three hundred years and all three from the same region,
+were, politically speaking, the Archimedean screws of their age,--at
+each epoch a Thought which found its fulcrum in the self-interest of
+mankind.
+
+Calvin was undoubtedly the maker of that melancholy town called
+Geneva, where, only ten years ago, a man said, pointing to a porte-
+cochere in the upper town, the first ever built there: "By that door
+luxury has invaded Geneva." Calvin gave birth, by the sternness of his
+doctrines and his executions, to that form of hypocritical sentiment
+called "cant."[*] According to those who practice it, good morals
+consist in renouncing the arts and the charms of life, in eating
+richly but without luxury, in silently amassing money without enjoying
+it otherwise than as Calvin enjoyed power--by thought. Calvin imposed
+on all the citizens of his adopted town the same gloomy pall which he
+spread over his own life. He created in the Consistory a Calvinistic
+inquisition, absolutely similar to the revolutionary tribunal of
+Robespierre. The Consistory denounced the persons to be condemned to
+the Council, and Calvin ruled the Council through the Consistory, just
+as Robespierre ruled the Convention through the Club of the Jacobins.
+In this way an eminent magistrate of Geneva was condemned to two
+months' imprisonment, the loss of all his offices, and the right of
+ever obtaining others "because he led a disorderly life and was
+intimate with Calvin's enemies." Calvin thus became a legislator. He
+created the austere, sober, commonplace, and hideously sad, but
+irreproachable manners and customs which characterize Geneva to the
+present day,--customs preceding those of England called Puritanism,
+which were due to the Cameronians, disciples of Cameron (a Frenchman
+deriving his doctrine from Calvin), whom Sir Walter Scott depicts so
+admirably. The poverty of a man, a sovereign master, who negotiated,
+power to power, with kings, demanding armies and subsidies, and
+plunging both hands into their savings laid aside for the unfortunate,
+proves that thought, used solely as a means of domination, gives birth
+to political misers,--men who enjoy by their brains only, and, like
+the Jesuits, want power for power's sake. Pitt, Luther, Calvin,
+Robespierre, all those Harpagons of power, died without a penny. The
+inventory taken in Calvin's house after his death, which comprised all
+his property, even his books, amounted in value, as history records,
+to two hundred and fifty francs. That of Luther came to about the same
+sum; his widow, the famous Catherine de Bora, was forced to petition
+for a pension of five hundred francs, which as granted to her by an
+Elector of Germany. Potemkin, Richelieu, Mazarin, those men of thought
+and action, all three of whom made or laid the foundation of empires,
+each left over three hundred millions behind them. They had hearts;
+they loved women and the arts; they built, they conquered; whereas
+with the exception of the wife of Luther, the Helen of that Iliad, all
+the others had no tenderness, no beating of the heart for any woman
+with which to reproach themselves.
+
+[*] /Momerie/.
+
+This brief digression was necessary in order to explain Calvin's
+position in Geneva.
+
+During the first days of the month of February in the year 1561, on a
+soft, warm evening such as we may sometimes find at that season on
+Lake Leman, two horsemen arrived at the Pre-l'Eveque,--thus called
+because it was the former country-place of the Bishop of Geneva,
+driven from Switzerland about thirty years earlier. These horsemen,
+who no doubt knew the laws of Geneva about the closing of the gates
+(then a necessity and now very ridiculous) rode in the direction of
+the Porte de Rive; but they stopped their horses suddenly on catching
+sight of a man, about fifty years of age, leaning on the arm of a
+servant-woman, and walking slowly toward the town. This man, who was
+rather stout, walked with difficulty, putting one foot after the other
+with pain apparently, for he wore round shoes of black velvet, laced
+in front.
+
+"It is he!" said Chaudieu to the other horseman, who immediately
+dismounted, threw the reins to his companion, and went forward,
+opening wide his arms to the man on foot.
+
+The man, who was Jean Calvin, drew back to avoid the embrace, casting
+a stern look at his disciple. At fifty years of age Calvin looked as
+though he were sixty. Stout and stocky in figure, he seemed shorter
+still because the horrible sufferings of stone in the bladder obliged
+him to bend almost double as he walked. These pains were complicated
+by attacks of gout of the worst kind. Every one trembled before that
+face, almost as broad as it was long, on which, in spite of its
+roundness, there was as little human-kindness as on that of Henry the
+Eighth, whom Calvin greatly resembled. Sufferings which gave him no
+respite were manifest in the deep-cut lines starting from each side of
+the nose and following the curve of the moustache till they were lost
+in the thick gray beard. This face, though red and inflamed like that
+of a heavy drinker, showed spots where the skin was yellow. In spite
+of the velvet cap, which covered the huge square head, a vast forehead
+of noble shape could be seen and admired; beneath it shone two dark
+eyes, which must have flashed forth flame in moments of anger. Whether
+by reason of his obesity, or because of his thick, short neck, or in
+consequence of his vigils and his constant labors, Calvin's head was
+sunk between his broad shoulders, which obliged him to wear a fluted
+ruff of very small dimensions, on which his face seemed to lie like
+the head of John the Baptist on a charger. Between his moustache and
+his beard could be seen, like a rose, his small and fresh and eloquent
+little mouth, shaped in perfection. The face was divided by a square
+nose, remarkable for the flexibility of its entire length, the tip of
+which was significantly flat, seeming the more in harmony with the
+prodigious power expressed by the form of that imperial head. Though
+it might have been difficult to discover on his features any trace of
+the weekly headaches which tormented Calvin in the intervals of the
+slow fever that consumed him, suffering, ceaselessly resisted by study
+and by will, gave to that mask, superficially so florid, a certain
+something that was terrible. Perhaps this impression was explainable
+by the color of a sort of greasy layer on the skin, due to the
+sedentary habits of the toiler, showing evidence of the perpetual
+struggle which went on between that valetudinarian temperament and one
+of the strongest wills ever known in the history of the human mind.
+The mouth, though charming, had an expression of cruelty. Chastity,
+necessitated by vast designs, exacted by so many sickly conditions,
+was written upon that face. Regrets were there, notwithstanding the
+serenity of that all-powerful brow, together with pain in the glance
+of those eyes, the calmness of which was terrifying.
+
+Calvin's costume brought into full relief this powerful head. He wore
+the well-known cassock of black cloth, fastened round his waist by a
+black cloth belt with a brass buckle, which became thenceforth the
+distinctive dress of all Calvinist ministers, and was so uninteresting
+to the eye that it forced the spectator's attention upon the wearer's
+face.
+
+"I suffer too much, Theodore, to embrace you," said Calvin to the
+elegant cavalier.
+
+Theodore de Beze, then forty-two years of age and lately admitted, at
+Calvin's request, as a Genevese burgher, formed a violent contrast to
+the terrible pastor whom he had chosen as his sovereign guide and
+ruler. Calvin, like all burghers raised to moral sovereignty, and all
+inventors of social systems, was eaten up with jealousy. He abhorred
+his disciples; he wanted no equals; he could not bear the slightest
+contradiction. Yet there was between him and this graceful cavalier so
+marked a difference, Theodore de Beze was gifted with so charming a
+personality enhanced by a politeness trained by court life, and Calvin
+felt him to be so unlike his other surly janissaries, that the stern
+reformer departed in de Beze's case from his usual habits. He never
+loved him, for this harsh legislator totally ignored all friendship,
+but, not fearing him in the light of a successor, he liked to play
+with Theodore as Richelieu played with his cat; he found him supple
+and agile. Seeing how admirably de Beze succeeded in all his missions,
+he took a fancy to the polished instrument of which he knew himself
+the mainspring and the manipulator; so true is it that the sternest of
+men cannot do without some semblance of affection. Theodore was
+Calvin's spoilt child; the harsh reformer never scolded him; he
+forgave him his dissipations, his amours, his fine clothes and his
+elegance of language. Perhaps Calvin was not unwilling to show that
+the Reformation had a few men of the world to compare with the men of
+the court. Theodore de Beze was anxious to introduce a taste for the
+arts, for literature, and for poesy into Geneva, and Calvin listened
+to his plans without knitting his thick gray eyebrows. Thus the
+contrast of character and person between these two celebrated men was
+as complete and marked as the difference in their minds.
+
+Calvin acknowledged Chaudieu's very humble salutation by a slight
+inclination of the head. Chaudieu slipped the bridles of both horses
+through his arms and followed the two great men of the Reformation,
+walking to the left, behind de Beze, who was on Calvin's right. The
+servant-woman hastened on in advance to prevent the closing of the
+Porte de Rive, by informing the captain of the guard that Calvin had
+been seized with sudden acute pains.
+
+Theodore de Beze was a native of the canton of Vezelay, which was the
+first to enter the Confederation, the curious history of which
+transaction has been written by one of the Thierrys. The burgher
+spirit of resistance, endemic at Vezelay, no doubt, played its part in
+the person of this man, in the great revolt of the Reformers; for de
+Beze was undoubtedly one of the most singular personalities of the
+Heresy.
+
+"You suffer still?" said Theodore to Calvin.
+
+"A Catholic would say, 'like a lost soul,'" replied the Reformer, with
+the bitterness he gave to his slightest remarks. "Ah! I shall not be
+here long, my son. What will become of you without me?"
+
+"We shall fight by the light of your books," said Chaudieu.
+
+Calvin smiled; his red face changed to a pleased expression, and he
+looked favorably at Chaudieu.
+
+"Well, have you brought me news? Have they massacred many of our
+people?" he said smiling, and letting a sarcastic joy shine in his
+brown eyes.
+
+"No," said Chaudieu, "all is peaceful."
+
+"So much the worse," cried Calvin; "so much the worse! All
+pacification is an evil, if indeed it is not a trap. Our strength lies
+in persecution. Where should we be if the Church accepted Reform?"
+
+"But," said Theodore, "that is precisely what the queen-mother appears
+to wish."
+
+"She is capable of it," remarked Calvin. "I study that woman--"
+
+"What, at this distance?" cried Chaudieu.
+
+"Is there any distance for the mind?" replied Calvin, sternly, for he
+thought the interruption irreverent. "Catherine seeks power, and women
+with that in their eye have neither honor nor faith. But what is she
+doing now?"
+
+"I bring you a proposal from her to call a species of council,"
+replied Theodore de Beze.
+
+"Near Paris?" asked Calvin, hastily.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ha! so much the better!" exclaimed the Reformer.
+
+"We are to try to understand each other and draw up some public
+agreement which shall unite the two churches."
+
+"Ah! if she would only have the courage to separate the French Church
+from the court of Rome, and create a patriarch for France as they did
+in the Greek Church!" cried Calvin, his eyes glistening at the idea
+thus presented to his mind of a possible throne. "But, my son, can the
+niece of a Pope be sincere? She is only trying to gain time."
+
+"She has sent away the Queen of Scots," said Chaudieu.
+
+"One less!" remarked Calvin, as they passed through the Porte de Rive.
+"Elizabeth of England will restrain that one for us. Two neighboring
+queens will soon be at war with each other. One is handsome, the other
+ugly,--a first cause for irritation; besides, there's the question of
+illegitimacy--"
+
+He rubbed his hands, and the character of his joy was so evidently
+ferocious that de Beze shuddered: he saw the sea of blood his master
+was contemplating.
+
+"The Guises have irritated the house of Bourbon," said Theodore after
+a pause. "They came to an open rupture at Orleans."
+
+"Ah!" said Calvin, "you would not believe me, my son, when I told you
+the last time you started for Nerac that we should end by stirring up
+war to the death between the two branches of the house of France? I
+have, at least, one court, one king and royal family on my side. My
+doctrine is producing its effect upon the masses. The burghers, too,
+understand me; they regard as idolators all who go to Mass, who paint
+the walls of their churches, and put pictures and statues within them.
+Ha! it is far more easy for a people to demolish churches and palaces
+than to argue the question of justification by faith, or the real
+presence. Luther was an argufier, but I,--I am an army! He was a
+reasoner, I am a system. In short, my sons, he was merely a
+skirmisher, but I am Tarquin! Yes, /my/ faithful shall destroy
+pictures and pull down churches; they shall make mill-stones of
+statues to grind the flour of the peoples. There are guilds and
+corporations in the States-general--I will have nothing there but
+individuals. Corporations resist; they see clear where the masses are
+blind. We must join to our doctrine political interests which will
+consolidate it, and keep together the /materiel/ of my armies. I have
+satisfied the logic of cautious souls and the minds of thinkers by
+this bared and naked worship which carries religion into the world of
+ideas; I have made the peoples understand the advantages of
+suppressing ceremony. It is for you, Theodore, to enlist their
+interests; hold to that; go not beyond it. All is said in the way of
+doctrine; let no one add one iota. Why does Cameron, that little
+Gascon pastor, presume to write of it?"
+
+Calvin, de Beze, and Chaudieu were mounting the steep steps of the
+upper town in the midst of a crowd, but the crowd paid not the
+slightest attention to the men who were unchaining the mobs of other
+cities and preparing them to ravage France.
+
+After this terrible tirade, the three marched on in silence till they
+entered the little place Saint-Pierre and turned toward the pastor's
+house. On the second story of that house (never noted, and of which in
+these days no one is ever told in Geneva, where, it may be remarked,
+Calvin has no statue) his lodging consisted of three chambers with
+common pine floors and wainscots, at the end of which were the kitchen
+and the bedroom of his woman-servant. The entrance, as usually
+happened in most of the burgher households of Geneva, was through the
+kitchen, which opened into a little room with two windows, serving as
+parlor, salon, and dining-room. Calvin's study, where his thought had
+wrestled with suffering for the last fourteen years, came next, with
+the bedroom beyond it. Four oaken chairs covered with tapestry and
+placed around a square table were the sole furniture of the parlor. A
+stove of white porcelain, standing in one corner of the room, cast out
+a gentle heat. Panels and a wainscot of pine wood left in its natural
+state without decoration covered the walls. Thus the nakedness of the
+place was in keeping with the sober and simple life of the Reformer.
+
+"Well?" said de Beze as they entered, profiting by a few moments when
+Chaudieu left them to put up the horse at a neighboring inn, "what am
+I to do? Will you agree to the colloquy?"
+
+"Of course," replied Calvin. "And it is you, my son, who will fight
+for us there. Be peremptory, be arbitrary. No one, neither the queen
+nor the Guises nor I, wants a pacification; it would not suit us at
+all. I have confidence in Duplessis-Mornay; let him play the leading
+part. Are we alone?" he added, with a glance of distrust into the
+kitchen, where two shirts and a few collars were stretched on a line
+to dry. "Go and shut all the doors. Well," he continued when Theodore
+had returned, "we must drive the king of Navarre to join the Guises
+and the Connetable by advising him to break with Queen Catherine de'
+Medici. Let us all get the benefit of that poor creature's weakness.
+If he turns against the Italian she will, when she sees herself
+deprived of that support, necessarily unite with the Prince de Conde
+and Coligny. Perhaps this manoeuvre will so compromise her that she
+will be forced to remain on our side."
+
+Theodore de Beze caught the hem of Calvin's cassock and kissed it.
+
+"Oh! my master," he exclaimed, "how great you are!"
+
+"Unfortunately, my dear Theodore, I am dying. If I die without seeing
+you again," he added, sinking his voice and speaking in the ear of his
+minister of foreign affairs, "remember to strike a great blow by the
+hand of some one of our martyrs."
+
+"Another Minard to be killed?"
+
+"Something better than a mere lawyer."
+
+"A king?"
+
+"Still better!--a man who wants to be a king."
+
+"The Duc de Guise!" exclaimed Theodore, with an involuntary gesture.
+
+"Well?" cried Calvin, who thought he saw disappointment or resistance
+in the gesture, and did not see at the same moment the entrance of
+Chaudieu. "Have we not the right to strike as we are struck?--yes, to
+strike in silence and in darkness. May we not return them wound for
+wound, and death for death? Would the Catholics hesitate to lay traps
+for us and massacre us? Assuredly not. Let us burn their churches!
+Forward, my children! And if you have devoted youths--"
+
+"I have," said Chaudieu.
+
+"Use them as engines of war! our cause justifies all means. Le
+Balafre, that horrible soldier, is, like me, more than a man; he is a
+dynasty, just as I am a system. He is able to annihilate us;
+therefore, I say, Death to the Guise!"
+
+"I would rather have a peaceful victory, won by time and reason," said
+de Beze.
+
+"Time!" exclaimed Calvin, dashing his chair to the ground, "reason!
+Are you mad? Can reason achieve conquests? You know nothing of men,
+you who deal with them, idiot! The thing that injures my doctrine, you
+triple fool! is the reason that is in it. By the lightning of Saul, by
+the sword of Vengeance, thou pumpkin-head, do you not see the vigor
+given to my Reform by the massacre at Amboise? Ideas never grow till
+they are watered with blood. The slaying of the Duc de Guise will lead
+to a horrible persecution, and I pray for it with all my might. Our
+reverses are preferable to success. The Reformation has an object to
+gain in being attacked; do you hear me, dolt? It cannot hurt us to be
+defeated, whereas Catholicism is at an end if we should win but a
+single battle. Ha! what are my lieutenants?--rags, wet rags instead of
+men! white-haired cravens! baptized apes! O God, grant me ten years
+more of life! If I die too soon the cause of true religion is lost in
+the hands of such boobies! You are as great a fool as Antoine de
+Navarre! Out of my sight! Leave me; I want a better negotiator than
+you! You are an ass, a popinjay, a poet! Go and make your elegies and
+your acrostics, you trifler! Hence!"
+
+The pains of his body were absolutely overcome by the fire of his
+anger; even the gout subsided under this horrible excitement of his
+mind. Calvin's face flushed purple, like the sky before a storm. His
+vast brow shone. His eyes flamed. He was no longer himself. He gave
+way utterly to the species of epileptic motion, full of passion, which
+was common with him. But in the very midst of it he was struck by the
+attitude of the two witnesses; then, as he caught the words of
+Chaudieu saying to de Beze, "The Burning Bush!" he sat down, was
+silent, and covered his face with his two hands, the knotted veins of
+which were throbbing in spite of their coarse texture.
+
+Some minutes later, still shaken by this storm raised within him by
+the continence of his life, he said in a voice of emotion:--
+
+"My sins, which are many, cost me less trouble to subdue, than my
+impatience. Oh, savage beast! shall I never vanquish you?" he cried,
+beating his breast.
+
+"My dear master," said de Beze, in a tender voice, taking Calvin's
+hand and kissing it, "Jupiter thunders, but he knows how to smile."
+
+Calvin looked at his disciple with a softened eye and said:--
+
+"Understand me, my friends."
+
+"I understand that the pastors of peoples bear great burdens," replied
+Theodore. "You have a world upon your shoulders."
+
+"I have three martyrs," said Chaudieu, whom the master's outburst had
+rendered thoughtful, "on whom we can rely. Stuart, who killed Minard,
+is at liberty--"
+
+"You are mistaken," said Calvin, gently, smiling after the manner of
+great men who bring fair weather into their faces as though they were
+ashamed of the previous storm. "I know human nature; a man may kill
+one president, but not two."
+
+"Is it absolutely necessary?" asked de Beze.
+
+"Again!" exclaimed Calvin, his nostrils swelling. "Come, leave me, you
+will drive me to fury. Take my decision to the queen. You, Chaudieu,
+go your way, and hold your flock together in Paris. God guide you!
+Dinah, light my friends to the door."
+
+"Will you not permit me to embrace you?" said Theodore, much moved.
+"Who knows what may happen to us on the morrow? We may be seized in
+spite of our safe-conduct."
+
+"And yet you want to spare them!" cried Calvin, embracing de Beze.
+Then he took Chaudieu's hand and said: "Above all, no Huguenots, no
+Reformers, but /Calvinists/! Use no term but Calvinism. Alas! this is
+not ambition, for I am dying,--but it is necessary to destroy the
+whole of Luther, even to the name of Lutheran and Lutheranism."
+
+"Ah! man divine," cried Chaudieu, "you well deserve such honors."
+
+"Maintain the uniformity of the doctrine; let no one henceforth change
+or remark it. We are lost if new sects issue from our bosom."
+
+We will here anticipate the events on which this Study is based, and
+close the history of Theodore de Beze, who went to Paris with
+Chaudieu. It is to be remarked that Poltrot, who fired at the Duc de
+Guise fifteen months later, confessed under torture that he had been
+urged to the crime by Theodore de Beze; though he retracted that
+avowal during subsequent tortures; so that Bossuet, after weighing all
+historical considerations, felt obliged to acquit Beze of instigating
+the crime. Since Bossuet's time, however, an apparently futile
+dissertation, apropos of a celebrated song, has led a compiler of the
+eighteenth century to prove that the verses on the death of the Duc de
+Guise, sung by the Huguenots from one end of France to the other, was
+the work of Theodore de Beze; and it is also proved that the famous
+song on the burial of Marlborough was a plagiarism on it.[*]
+
+[*] One of the most remarkable instances of the transmission of songs
+is that of Marlborough. Written in the first instance by a
+Huguenot on the death of the Duc de Guise in 1563, it was
+preserved in the French army, and appears to have been sung with
+variations, suppressions, and additions at the death of all
+generals of importance. When the intestine wars were over the song
+followed the soldiers into civil life. It was never forgotten
+(though the habit of singing it may have lessened), and in 1781,
+sixty years after the death of Marlborough, the wet-nurse of the
+Dauphin was heard to sing it as she suckled her nursling. When and
+why the name of the Duke of Marlborough was substituted for that
+of the Duc de Guise has never been ascertained. See "Chansons
+Populaires," par Charles Nisard: Paris, Dentu, 1867.--Tr.
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+CATHERINE IN POWER
+
+The day on which Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu arrived in Paris, the
+court returned from Rheims, where Charles IX. was crowned. This
+ceremony, which Catherine made magnificent with splendid fetes,
+enabled her to gather about her the leaders of the various parties.
+Having studied all interests and all factions, she found herself with
+two alternatives from which to choose; either to rally them all to the
+throne, or to pit them one against the other. The Connetable de
+Montmorency, supremely Catholic, whose nephew, the Prince de Conde,
+was leader of the Reformers, and whose sons were inclined to the new
+religion, blamed the alliance of the queen-mother with the
+Reformation. The Guises, on their side, were endeavoring to gain over
+Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, a weak prince; a manoeuvre which
+his wife, Jeanne d'Albret, instructed by de Beze, allowed to succeed.
+The difficulties were plain to Catherine, whose dawning power needed a
+period of tranquillity. She therefore impatiently awaited Calvin's
+reply to the message which the Prince de Conde, the king of Navarre,
+Coligny, d'Andelot, and the Cardinal de Chatillon had sent him through
+de Beze and Chaudieu. Meantime, however, she was faithful to her
+promises as to the Prince de Conde. The chancellor put an end to the
+proceedings in which Christophe was involved by referring the affair
+to the Parliament of Paris, which at once set aside the judgment of
+the committee, declaring it without power to try a prince of the
+blood. The Parliament then reopened the trial, at the request of the
+Guises and the queen-mother. Lasagne's papers had already been given
+to Catherine, who burned them. The giving up of these papers was a
+first pledge, uselessly made by the Guises to the queen-mother. The
+Parliament, no longer able to take cognizance of those decisive
+proofs, reinstated the prince in all his rights, property, and honors.
+Christophe, released during the tumult at Orleans on the death of the
+king, was acquitted in the first instance, and appointed, in
+compensation for his sufferings, solicitor to the Parliament, at the
+request of his godfather Monsieur de Thou.
+
+The Triumvirate, that coming coalition of self-interests threatened by
+Catherine's first acts, was now forming itself under her very eyes.
+Just as in chemistry antagonistic substances separate at the first
+shock which jars their enforced union, so in politics the alliance of
+opposing interests never lasts. Catherine thoroughly understood that
+sooner or later she should return to the Guises and combine with them
+and the Connetable to do battle against the Huguenots. The proposed
+"colloquy" which tempted the vanity of the orators of all parties, and
+offered an imposing spectacle to succeed that of the coronation and
+enliven the bloody ground of a religious war which, in point of fact,
+had already begun, was as futile in the eyes of the Duc de Guise as in
+those of Catherine. The Catholics would, in one sense be worsted; for
+the Huguenots, under pretext of conferring, would be able to proclaim
+their doctrine, with the sanction of the king and his mother, to the
+ears of all France. The Cardinal de Lorraine, flattered by Catherine
+into the idea of destroying the heresy by the eloquence of the Church,
+persuaded his brother to consent; and thus the queen obtained what was
+all-essential to her, six months of peace.
+
+A slight event, occurring at this time, came near compromising the
+power which Catherine had so painfully built up. The following scene,
+preserved in history, took place, on the very day the envoys returned
+from Geneva, in the hotel de Coligny near the Louvre. At his
+coronation, Charles IX., who was greatly attached to his tutor Amyot,
+appointed him grand-almoner of France. This affection was shared by
+his brother the Duc d'Anjou, afterwards Henri III., another of Anjou's
+pupils. Catherine heard the news of this appointment from the two
+Gondis during the journey from Rheims to Paris. She had counted on
+that office in the gift of the Crown to gain a supporter in the Church
+with whom to oppose the Cardinal de Lorraine. Her choice had fallen on
+the Cardinal de Tournon, in whom she expected to find, as in
+l'Hopital, another /crutch/--the word is her own. As soon as she
+reached the Louvre she sent for the tutor, and her anger was such, on
+seeing the disaster to her policy caused by the ambition of this son
+of a shoemaker, that she was betrayed into using the following
+extraordinary language, which several memoirs of the day have handed
+down to us:--
+
+"What!" she cried, "am I, who compel the Guises, the Colignys, the
+Connetables, the house of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, to serve my
+ends, am I to be opposed by a priestling like you who are not
+satisfied to be bishop of Auxerre?"
+
+Amyot excused himself. He assured the queen that he had asked nothing;
+the king of his own will had given him the office of which he, the son
+of a poor tailor, felt himself quite unworthy.
+
+"Be assured, /maitre/," replied Catherine (that being the name which
+the two kings, Charles IX. and Henri III., gave to the great writer)
+"that you will not stand on your feet twenty-four hours hence, unless
+you make your pupil change his mind."
+
+Between the death thus threatened and the resignation of the highest
+ecclesiastical office in the gift of the crown, the son of the
+shoemaker, who had lately become extremely eager after honors, and may
+even have coveted a cardinal's hat, thought it prudent to temporize.
+He left the court and hid himself in the abbey of Saint-Germain. When
+Charles IX. did not see him at his first dinner, he asked where he
+was. Some Guisard doubtless told him of what had occurred between
+Amyot and the queen-mother.
+
+"Has he been forced to disappear because I made him grand-almoner?"
+cried the king.
+
+He thereupon rushed to his mother in the violent wrath of angry
+children when their caprices are opposed.
+
+"Madame," he said on entering, "did I not kindly sign the letter you
+asked me to send to Parliament, by means of which you govern my
+kingdom? Did you not promise that if I did so my will should be yours?
+And here, the first favor that I wish to bestow excites your jealousy!
+The chancellor talks of declaring my majority at fourteen, three years
+from now, and you wish to treat me as a child. By God, I will be king,
+and a king as my father and grandfather were kings!"
+
+The tone and manner in which these words were said gave Catherine a
+revelation of her son's true character; it was like a blow in the
+breast.
+
+"He speaks to me thus, he whom I made a king!" she thought.
+"Monsieur," she said aloud, "the office of a king, in times like
+these, is a very difficult one; you do not yet know the shrewd men
+with whom you have to deal. You will never have a safer and more
+sincere friend than your mother, or better servants than those who
+have been so long attached to her person, without whose services you
+might perhaps not even exist to-day. The Guises want both your life
+and your throne, be sure of that. If they could sew me into a sack and
+fling me into the river," she said, pointing to the Seine, "it would
+be done to-night. They know that I am a lioness defending her young,
+and that I alone prevent their daring hands from seizing your crown.
+To whom--to whose party does your tutor belong? Who are his allies?
+What authority has he? What services can he do you? What weight do his
+words carry? Instead of finding a prop to sustain your power, you have
+cut the ground from under it. The Cardinal de Lorraine is a living
+threat to you; he plays the king; he keeps his hat on his head before
+the princes of the blood; it was urgently necessary to invest another
+cardinal with powers greater than his own. But what have you done? Is
+Amyot, that shoemaker, fit only to tie the ribbons of his shoes, is he
+capable of making head against the Guise ambition? However, you love
+Amyot, you have appointed him; your will must now be done, monsieur.
+But before you make such gifts again, I pray you to consult me in
+affectionate good faith. Listen to reasons of state; and your own good
+sense as a child may perhaps agree with my old experience, when you
+really understand the difficulties that lie before you."
+
+"Then I can have my master back again?" cried the king, not listening
+to his mother's words, which he considered to be mere reproaches.
+
+"Yes, you shall have him," she replied. "But it is not here, nor that
+brutal Cypierre who will teach you how to reign."
+
+"It is for you to do so, my dear mother," said the boy, mollified by
+his victory and relaxing the surly and threatening look stamped by
+nature upon his countenance.
+
+Catherine sent Gondi to recall the new grand-almoner. When the Italian
+discovered the place of Amyot's retreat, and the bishop heard that the
+courtier was sent by the queen, he was seized with terror and refused
+to leave the abbey. In this extremity Catherine was obliged to write
+to him herself, in such terms that he returned to Paris and received
+from her own lips the assurance of her protection,--on condition,
+however, that he would blindly promote her wishes with Charles IX.
+
+This little domestic tempest over, the queen, now re-established in
+the Louvre after an absence of more than a year, held council with her
+closest friends as to the proper conduct to pursue with the young king
+whom Cypierre had complimented on his firmness.
+
+"What is best to be done?" she said to the two Gondis, Ruggiero,
+Birago, and Chiverni who had lately become governor and chancellor to
+the Duc d'Anjou.
+
+"Before all else," replied Birago, "get rid of Cypierre. He is not a
+courtier; he will never accommodate himself to your ideas, and will
+think he does his duty in thwarting you."
+
+"Whom can I trust?" cried the queen.
+
+"One of us," said Birago.
+
+"On my honor!" exclaimed Gondi, "I'll promise you to make the king as
+docile as the king of Navarre."
+
+"You allowed the late king to perish to save your other children,"
+said Albert de Gondi. "Do, then, as the great signors of
+Constantinople do,--divert the anger and amuse the caprices of the
+present king. He loves art and poetry and hunting, also a little girl
+he saw at Orleans; /there's/ occupation enough for him."
+
+"Will you really be the king's governor?" said Catherine to the ablest
+of the Gondis.
+
+"Yes, if you will give me the necessary authority; you may even be
+obliged to make me marshal of France and a duke. Cypierre is
+altogether too small a man to hold the office. In future, the governor
+of a king of France should be of some great dignity, like that of duke
+and marshal."
+
+"He is right," said Birago.
+
+"Poet and huntsman," said Catherine in a dreamy tone.
+
+"We will hunt and make love!" cried Gondi.
+
+"Moreover," remarked Chiverni, "you are sure of Amyot, who will always
+fear poison in case of disobedience; so that you and he and Gondi can
+hold the king in leading-strings."
+
+"Amyot has deeply offended me," said Catherine.
+
+"He does not know what he owes to you; if he did know, you would be in
+danger," replied Birago, gravely, emphasizing his words.
+
+"Then, it is agreed," exclaimed Catherine, on whom Birago's reply made
+a powerful impression, "that you, Gondi, are to be the king's
+governor. My son must consent to do for one of my friends a favor
+equal to the one I have just permitted for his knave of a bishop. That
+fool has lost the hat; for never, as long as I live, will I consent
+that the Pope shall give it to him! How strong we might have been with
+Cardinal de Tournon! What a trio with Tournon for grand-almoner, and
+l'Hopital, and de Thou! As for the burghers of Paris, I intend to make
+my son cajole them; we will get a support there."
+
+Accordingly, Albert de Gondi became a marshal of France and was
+created Duc de Retz and governor of the king a few days later.
+
+At the moment when this little private council ended, Cardinal de
+Tournon announced to the queen the arrival of the emissaries sent to
+Calvin. Admiral Coligny accompanied the party in order that his
+presence might ensure them due respect at the Louvre. The queen
+gathered the formidable phalanx of her maids of honor about her, and
+passed into the reception hall, built by her husband, which no longer
+exists in the Louvre of to-day.
+
+At the period of which we write the staircase of the Louvre occupied
+the clock tower. Catherine's apartments were in the old buildings
+which still exist in the court of the Musee. The present staircase of
+the museum was built in what was formerly the /salle des ballets/. The
+ballet of those days was a sort of dramatic entertainment performed by
+the whole court.
+
+Revolutionary passions gave rise to a most laughable error about
+Charles IX., in connection with the Louvre. During the Revolution
+hostile opinions as to this king, whose real character was masked,
+made a monster of him. Joseph Cheniers tragedy was written under the
+influence of certain words scratched on the window of the projecting
+wing of the Louvre, looking toward the quay. The words were as
+follows: "It was from this window that Charles IX., of execrable
+memory, fired upon French citizens." It is well to inform future
+historians and all sensible persons that this portion of the Louvre--
+called to-day the old Louvre--which projects upon the quay and is
+connected with the Louvre by the room called the Apollo gallery (while
+the great halls of the Museum connect the Louvre with the Tuileries)
+did not exist in the time of Charles IX. The greater part of the space
+where the frontage on the quay now stands, and where the Garden of the
+Infanta is laid out, was then occupied by the hotel de Bourbon, which
+belonged to and was the residence of the house of Navarre. It was
+absolutely impossible, therefore, for Charles IX. to fire from the
+Louvre of Henri II. upon a boat full of Huguenots crossing the river,
+although /at the present time/ the Seine can be seen from its windows.
+Even if learned men and libraries did not possess maps of the Louvre
+made in the time of Charles IX., on which its then position is clearly
+indicated, the building itself refutes the error. All the kings who
+co-operated in the work of erecting this enormous mass of buildings
+never failed to put their initials or some special monogram on the
+parts they had severally built. Now the part we speak of, the
+venerable and now blackened wing of the Louvre, projecting on the quay
+and overlooking the garden of the Infanta, bears the monograms of
+Henri III. and Henri IV., which are totally different from that of
+Henri II., who invariably joined his H to the two C's of Catherine,
+forming a D,--which, by the bye, has constantly deceived superficial
+persons into fancying that the king put the initial of his mistress,
+Diane, on great public buildings. Henri IV. united the Louvre with his
+own hotel de Bourbon, its garden and dependencies. He was the first to
+think of connecting Catherine de' Medici's palace of the Tuileries
+with the Louvre by his unfinished galleries, the precious sculptures
+of which have been so cruelly neglected. Even if the map of Paris, and
+the monograms of Henri III. and Henri IV. did not exist, the
+difference of architecture is refutation enough to the calumny. The
+vermiculated stone copings of the hotel de la Force mark the
+transition between what is called the architecture of the Renaissance
+and that of Henri III., Henri IV., and Louis XIII. This archaeological
+digression (continuing the sketches of old Paris with which we began
+this history) enables us to picture to our minds the then appearance
+of this other corner of the old city, of which nothing now remains but
+Henri IV.'s addition to the Louvre, with its admirable bas-reliefs,
+now being rapidly annihilated.
+
+When the court heard that the queen was about to give an audience to
+Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu, presented by Admiral Coligny, all the
+courtiers who had the right of entrance to the reception hall,
+hastened thither to witness the interview. It was about six o'clock in
+the evening; Coligny had just supped, and was using a toothpick as he
+came up the staircase of the Louvre between the two Reformers. The
+practice of using a toothpick was so inveterate a habit with the
+admiral that he was seen to do it on the battle-field while planning a
+retreat. "Distrust the admiral's toothpick, the /No/ of the
+Connetable, and Catherine's /Yes/," was a court proverb of that day.
+After the Saint-Bartholomew the populace made a horrible jest on the
+body of Coligny, which hung for three days at Montfaucon, by putting a
+grotesque toothpick into his mouth. History has recorded this
+atrocious levity. So petty an act done in the midst of that great
+catastrophe pictures the Parisian populace, which deserves the
+sarcastic jibe of Boileau: "Frenchmen, born /malin/, created the
+guillotine." The Parisian of all time cracks jokes and makes lampoons
+before, during, and after the most horrible revolutions.
+
+Theodore de Beze wore the dress of a courtier, black silk stockings,
+low shoes with straps across the instep, tight breeches, a black silk
+doublet with slashed sleeves, and a small black velvet mantle, over
+which lay an elegant white fluted ruff. His beard was trimmed to a
+moustache and /virgule/ (now called imperial) and he carried a sword
+at his side and a cane in his hand. Whosoever knows the galleries of
+Versailles or the collections of Odieuvre, knows also his round,
+almost jovial face and lively eyes, surmounted by the broad forehead
+which characterized the writers and poets of that day. De Beze had,
+what served him admirably, an agreeable air and manner. In this he was
+a great contrast to Coligny, of austere countenance, and to the sour,
+bilious Chaudieu, who chose to wear on this occasion the robe and
+bands of a Calvinist minister.
+
+The scenes that happen in our day in the Chamber of Deputies, and
+which, no doubt, happened in the Convention, will give an idea of how,
+at this court, at this epoch, these men, who six months later were to
+fight to the death in a war without quarter, could meet and talk to
+each other with courtesy and even laughter. Birago, who was coldly to
+advise the Saint-Bartholomew, and Cardinal de Lorraine, who charged
+his servant Besme "not to miss the admiral," now advanced to meet
+Coligny; Birago saying, with a smile:--
+
+"Well, my dear admiral, so you have really taken upon yourself to
+present these gentlemen from Geneva?"
+
+"Perhaps you will call it a crime in /me/," replied the admiral,
+jesting, "whereas if you had done it yourself you would make a merit
+of it."
+
+"They say that the Sieur Calvin is very ill," remarked the Cardinal de
+Lorraine to Theodore de Beze. "I hope no one suspects us of giving him
+his broth."
+
+"Ah! monseigneur; it would be too great a risk," replied de Beze,
+maliciously.
+
+The Duc de Guise, who was watching Chaudieu, looked fixedly at his
+brother and at Birago, who were both taken aback by de Beze's answer.
+
+"Good God!" remarked the cardinal, "heretics are not diplomatic!"
+
+To avoid embarrassment, the queen, who was announced at this moment,
+had arranged to remain standing during the audience. She began by
+speaking to the Connetable, who had previously remonstrated with her
+vehemently on the scandal of receiving messengers from Calvin.
+
+"You see, my dear Connetable," she said, "that I receive them without
+ceremony."
+
+"Madame," said the admiral, approaching the queen, "these are two
+teachers of the new religion, who have come to an understanding with
+Calvin, and who have his instructions as to a conference in which the
+churches of France may be able to settle their differences."
+
+"This is Monsieur de Beze, to whom my wife is much attached," said the
+king of Navarre, coming forward and taking de Beze by the hand.
+
+"And this is Chaudieu," said the Prince de Conde. "/My friend/ the Duc
+de Guise knows the soldier," he added, looking at Le Balafre, "perhaps
+he will now like to know the minister."
+
+This gasconade made the whole court laugh, even Catherine.
+
+"Faith!" replied the Duc de Guise, "I am enchanted to see a /gars/ who
+knows so well how to choose his men and to employ them in their right
+sphere. One of your agents," he said to Chaudieu, "actually endured
+the extraordinary question without dying and without confessing a
+single thing. I call myself brave; but I don't know that I could have
+endured it as he did."
+
+"Hum!" muttered Ambroise, "you did not say a word when I pulled the
+javelin out of your face at Calais."
+
+Catherine, standing at the centre of a semicircle of the courtiers and
+maids of honor, kept silence. She was observing the two Reformers,
+trying to penetrate their minds as, with the shrewd, intelligent
+glance of her black eyes, she studied them.
+
+"One seems to be the scabbard, the other the blade," whispered Albert
+de Gondi in her ear.
+
+"Well, gentlemen," said Catherine at last, unable to restrain a smile,
+"has your master given you permission to unite in a public conference,
+at which you will be converted by the arguments of the Fathers of the
+Church who are the glory of our State?"
+
+"We have no master but the Lord," said Chaudieu.
+
+"But surely you will allow some little authority to the king of
+France?" said Catherine, smiling.
+
+"And much to the queen," said de Beze, bowing low.
+
+"You will find," continued the queen, "that our most submissive
+subjects are heretics."
+
+"Ah, madame!" cried Coligny, "we will indeed endeavor to make you a
+noble and peaceful kingdom! Europe has profited, alas! by our internal
+divisions. For the last fifty years she has had the advantage of one-
+half of the French people being against the other half."
+
+"Are we here to sing anthems to the glory of heretics," said the
+Connetable, brutally.
+
+"No, but to bring them to repentance," whispered the Cardinal de
+Lorraine in his ear; "we want to coax them by a little sugar."
+
+"Do you know what I should have done under the late king?" said the
+Connetable, angrily. "I'd have called in the provost and hung those
+two knaves, then and there, on the gallows of the Louvre."
+
+"Well, gentlemen, who are the learned men whom you have selected as
+our opponents?" inquired the queen, imposing silence on the Connetable
+by a look.
+
+"Duplessis-Mornay and Theodore de Beze will speak on our side,"
+replied Chaudieu.
+
+"The court will doubtless go to Saint-Germain, and as it would be
+improper that this /colloquy/ should take place in a royal residence,
+we will have it in the little town of Poissy," said Catherine.
+
+"Shall we be safe there, madame?" asked Chaudieu.
+
+"Ah!" replied the queen, with a sort of naivete, "you will surely know
+how to take precautions. The Admiral will arrange all that with my
+cousins the Guises and de Montmorency."
+
+"The devil take them!" cried the Connetable, "I'll have nothing to do
+with it."
+
+"How do you contrive to give such strength of character to your
+converts?" said the queen, leading Chaudieu apart. "The son of my
+furrier was actually sublime."
+
+"We have faith," replied Chaudieu.
+
+At this moment the hall presented a scene of animated groups, all
+discussing the question of the proposed assembly, to which the few
+words said by the queen had already given the name of the "Colloquy of
+Poissy." Catherine glanced at Chaudieu and was able to say to him
+unheard:--
+
+"Yes, a new faith!"
+
+"Ah, madame, if you were not blinded by your alliance with the court
+of Rome, you would see that we are returning to the true doctrines of
+Jesus Christ, who, recognizing the equality of souls, bestows upon all
+men equal rights on earth."
+
+"Do you think yourself the equal of Calvin?" asked the queen,
+shrewdly. "No, no; we are equals only in church. What! would you
+unbind the tie of the people to the throne?" she cried. "Then you are
+not only heretics, you are revolutionists,--rebels against obedience
+to the king as you are against that to the Pope!" So saying, she left
+Chaudieu abruptly and returned to Theodore de Beze. "I count on you,
+monsieur," she said, "to conduct this colloquy in good faith. Take all
+the time you need."
+
+"I had supposed," said Chaudieu to the Prince de Conde, the King of
+Navarre, and Admiral Coligny, as they left the hall, "that a great
+State matter would be treated more seriously."
+
+"Oh! we know very well what you want," exclaimed the Prince de Conde,
+exchanging a sly look with Theodore de Beze.
+
+The prince now left his adherents to attend a rendezvous. This great
+leader of a party was also one of the most favored gallants of the
+court. The two choice beauties of that day were even then striving
+with such desperate eagerness for his affections that one of them, the
+Marechale de Saint-Andre, the wife of the future triumvir, gave him
+her beautiful estate of Saint-Valery, hoping to win him away from the
+Duchesse de Guise, the wife of the man who had tried to take his head
+on the scaffold. The duchess, not being able to detach the Duc de
+Nemours from Mademoiselle de Rohan, fell in love, /en attendant/, with
+the leader of the Reformers.
+
+"What a contrast to Geneva!" said Chaudieu to Theodore de Beze, as
+they crossed the little bridge of the Louvre.
+
+"The people here are certainly gayer than the Genevese. I don't see
+why they should be so treacherous," replied de Beze.
+
+"To treachery oppose treachery," replied Chaudieu, whispering the
+words in his companion's ear. "I have /saints/ in Paris on whom I can
+rely, and I intend to make Calvin a prophet. Christophe Lecamus shall
+deliver us from our most dangerous enemy."
+
+"The queen-mother, for whom the poor devil endured his torture, has
+already, with a high hand, caused him to be appointed solicitor to the
+Parliament; and solicitors make better prosecutors than murderers.
+Don't you remember how Avenelles betrayed the secrets of our first
+uprising?"
+
+"I know Christophe," said Chaudieu, in a positive tone, as he turned
+to leave the envoy from Geneva.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+COMPENSATION
+
+A few days after the reception of Calvin's emissaries by the queen,
+that is to say, toward the close of the year (for the year then began
+at Easter and the present calendar was not adopted until later in the
+reign of Charles IX.), Christophe reclined in an easy chair beside the
+fire in the large brown hall, dedicated to family life, that
+overlooked the river in his father's house, where the present drama
+was begun. His feet rested on a stool; his mother and Babette Lallier
+had just renewed the compresses, saturated with a solution brought by
+Ambroise Pare, who was charged by Catherine de' Medici to take care of
+the young man. Once restored to his family, Christophe became the
+object of the most devoted care. Babette, authorized by her father,
+came very morning and only left the Lecamus household at night.
+Christophe, the admiration of the apprentices, gave rise throughout
+the quarter to various tales, which invested him with mysterious
+poesy. He had borne the worst torture; the celebrated Ambroise Pare
+was employing all his skill to cure him. What great deed had he done
+to be thus treated? Neither Christophe nor his father said a word on
+the subject. Catherine, then all-powerful, was concerned in their
+silence as well as the Prince de Conde. The constant visits of Pare,
+now chief surgeon of both the king and the house of Guise, whom the
+queen-mother and the Lorrains allowed to treat a youth accused of
+heresy, strangely complicated an affair through which no one saw
+clearly. Moreover, the rector of Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs came several
+times to visit the son of his church-warden, and these visits made the
+causes of Christophe's present condition still more unintelligible to
+his neighbors.
+
+The old syndic, who had his plan, gave evasive answers to his brother-
+furriers, the merchants of the neighborhood, and to all friends who
+spoke to him of his son: "Yes, I am very thankful to have saved him."
+--"Well, you know, it won't do to put your finger between the bark and
+the tree."--"My son touched fire and came near burning up my house."--
+"They took advantage of his youth; we burghers get nothing but shame
+and evil by frequenting the grandees."--"This affair decides me to
+make a lawyer of Christophe; the practice of law will teach him to
+weigh his words and his acts."--"The young queen, who is now in
+Scotland, had a great deal to do with it; but then, to be sure, my son
+may have been imprudent."--"I have had cruel anxieties."--"All this
+may decide me to give up my business; I do not wish ever to go to
+court again."--"My son has had enough of the Reformation; it has
+cracked all his joints. If it had not been for Ambroise, I don't know
+what would have become of me."
+
+Thanks to these ambiguous remarks and to the great discretion of such
+conduct, it was generally averred in the neighborhood that Christophe
+had seen the error of his ways; everybody thought it natural that the
+old syndic should wish to get his son appointed to the Parliament, and
+the rector's visits no longer seemed extraordinary. As the neighbors
+reflected on the old man's anxieties they no longer thought, as they
+would otherwise have done, that his ambition was inordinate. The young
+lawyer, who had lain helpless for months on the bed which his family
+made up for him in the old hall, was now, for the last week, able to
+rise and move about by the aid of crutches. Babette's love and his
+mother's tenderness had deeply touched his heart; and they, while they
+had him helpless in their hands, lectured him severely on religion.
+President de Thou paid his godson a visit during which he showed
+himself most fatherly. Christophe, being now a solicitor of the
+Parliament, must of course, he said, be Catholic; his oath would bind
+him to that; and the president, who assumed not to doubt of his
+godson's orthodoxy, ended his remarks by saying with great
+earnestness:
+
+"My son, you have been cruelly tried. I am myself ignorant of the
+reasons which made the Messieurs de Guise treat you thus; but I advise
+you in future to live peacefully, without entering into the troubles
+of the times; for the favor of the king and queen will not be shown to
+the makers of revolt. You are not important enough to play fast and
+loose with the king as the Guises do. If you wish to be some day
+counsellor to the Parliament remember that you cannot obtain that
+noble office unless by a real and serious attachment to the royal
+cause."
+
+Nevertheless, neither President de Thou's visit, nor the seductions of
+Babette, nor the urgency of his mother, were sufficient to shake the
+constancy of the martyr of the Reformation. Christophe held to his
+religion all the more because he had suffered for it.
+
+"My father will never let me marry a heretic," whispered Babette in
+his ear.
+
+Christophe answered only by tears, which made the young girl silent
+and thoughtful.
+
+Old Lecamus maintained his paternal and magisterial dignity; he
+observed his son and said little. The stern old man, after recovering
+his dear Christophe, was dissatisfied with himself; he repented the
+tenderness he had shown for this only son; but he admired him
+secretly. At no period of his life did the syndic pull more wires to
+reach his ends, for he saw the field ripe for the harvest so painfully
+sown, and he wanted to gather the whole of it. Some days before the
+morning of which we write, he had had, being alone with Christophe, a
+long conversation with him in which he endeavored to discover the
+secret reason of the young man's resistance. Christophe, who was not
+without ambition, betrayed his faith in the Prince de Conde. The
+generous promise of the prince, who, of course, was only exercising
+his profession of prince, remained graven on his heart; little did he
+think that Conde had sent him, mentally, to the devil in Orleans,
+muttering, "A Gascon would have understood me better," when Christophe
+called out a touching farewell as the prince passed the window of his
+dungeon.
+
+But besides this sentiment of admiration for the prince, Christophe
+had also conceived a profound reverence for the great queen, who had
+explained to him by a single look the necessity which compelled her to
+sacrifice him; and who during his agony had given him an illimitable
+promise in a single tear. During the silent months of his weakness, as
+he lay there waiting for recovery, he thought over each event at Blois
+and at Orleans. He weighed, one might almost say in spite of himself,
+the relative worth of these two protections. He floated between the
+queen and the prince. He had certainly served Catherine more than he
+had served the Reformation, and in a young man both heart and mind
+would naturally incline toward the queen; less because she was a queen
+than because she was a woman. Under such circumstances a man will
+always hope more from a woman than from a man.
+
+"I sacrificed myself for her; what will she do for me?"
+
+This question Christophe put to himself almost involuntarily as he
+remembered the tone in which she had said the words, /Povero mio/! It
+is difficult to believe how egotistical a man can become when he lies
+on a bed of sickness. Everything, even the exclusive devotion of which
+he is the object, drives him to think only of himself. By exaggerating
+in his own mind the obligation which the Prince de Conde was under to
+him he had come to expect that some office would be given to him at
+the court of Navarre. Still new to the world of political life, he
+forgot its contending interests and the rapid march of events which
+control and force the hand of all leaders of parties; he forgot it the
+more because he was practically a prisoner in solitary confinement on
+his bed in that old brown room. Each party is, necessarily, ungrateful
+while the struggle lasts; when it triumphs it has too many persons to
+reward not to be ungrateful still. Soldiers submit to this
+ingratitude; but their leaders turn against the new master at whose
+side they have acted and suffered like equals for so long. Christophe,
+who alone remembered his sufferings, felt himself already among the
+leaders of the Reformation by the fact of his martyrdom. His father,
+that old fox of commerce, so shrewd, so perspicacious, ended by
+divining the secret thought of his son; consequently, all his
+manoeuvres were now based on the natural expectancy to which Christophe
+had yielded himself.
+
+"Wouldn't it be a fine thing," he had said to Babette, in presence of
+the family a few days before his interview with his son, "to be the
+wife of a counsellor of the Parliament? You would be called /madame/!"
+
+"You are crazy, /compere/," said Lallier. "Where would you get ten
+thousand crowns' income from landed property, which a counsellor must
+have, according to law; and from whom could you buy the office? No one
+but the queen-mother and regent could help your son into Parliament,
+and I'm afraid he's too tainted with the new opinions for that."
+
+"What would you pay to see your daughter the wife of a counsellor?"
+
+"Ah! you want to look into my purse, shrewd-head!" said Lallier.
+
+Counsellor to the Parliament! The words worked powerfully in
+Christophe's brain.
+
+Sometime after this conversation, one morning when Christophe was
+gazing at the river and thinking of the scene which began this
+history, of the Prince de Conde, Chaudieu, La Renaudie, of his journey
+to Blois,--in short, the whole story of his hopes,--his father came
+and sat down beside him, scarcely concealing a joyful thought beneath
+a serious manner.
+
+"My son," he said, "after what passed between you and the leaders of
+the Tumult of Amboise, they owe you enough to make the care of your
+future incumbent on the house of Navarre."
+
+"Yes," replied Christophe.
+
+"Well," continued his father, "I have asked their permission to buy a
+legal practice for you in the province of Bearn. Our good friend Pare
+undertook to present the letters which I wrote on your behalf to the
+Prince de Conde and the queen of Navarre. Here, read the answer of
+Monsieur de Pibrac, vice-chancellor of Navarre:--
+
+  To the Sieur Lecamus, /syndic of the guild of furriers/:
+
+  Monseigneur le Prince de Conde desires me to express his regret 
+  that he cannot do what you ask for his late companion in the tower
+  of Saint-Aignan, whom he perfectly remembers, and to whom,
+  meanwhile, he offers the place of gendarme in his company; which
+  will put your son in the way of making his mark as a man of
+  courage, which he is.
+
+  The queen of Navarre awaits an opportunity to reward the Sieur
+  Christophe, and will not fail to take advantage of it.
+
+  Upon which, Monsieur le syndic, we pray God to have you in His
+  keeping.
+
+Pibrac,
+
+At Nerac.
+Chancellor of Navarre.
+
+
+"Nerac, Pibrac, crack!" cried Babette. "There's no confidence to be
+placed in Gascons; they think only of themselves."
+
+Old Lecamus looked at his son, smiling scornfully.
+
+"They propose to put on horseback a poor boy whose knees and ankles
+were shattered for their sakes!" cried the mother. "What a wicked
+jest!"
+
+"I shall never see you a counsellor of Navarre," said his father.
+
+"I wish I knew what Queen Catherine would do for me, if I made a claim
+upon her," said Christophe, cast down by the prince's answer.
+
+"She made you no promise," said the old man, "but I am certain that
+/she/ will never mock you like these others; she will remember your
+sufferings. Still, how can the queen make a counsellor of the
+Parliament out of a protestant burgher?"
+
+"But Christophe has not abjured!" cried Babette. "He can very well
+keep his private opinions secret."
+
+"The Prince de Conde would be less disdainful of a counsellor of the
+Parliament," said Lallier.
+
+"Well, what say you, Christophe?" urged Babette.
+
+"You are counting without the queen," replied the young lawyer.
+
+A few days after this rather bitter disillusion, an apprentice brought
+Christophe the following laconic little missive:--
+
+  Chaudieu wishes to see his son.
+
+"Let him come in!" cried Christophe.
+
+"Oh! my sacred martyr!" said the minister, embracing him; "have you
+recovered from your sufferings?"
+
+"Yes, thanks to Pare."
+
+"Thanks rather to God, who gave you the strength to endure the
+torture. But what is this I hear? Have you allowed them to make you a
+solicitor? Have you taken the oath of fidelity? Surely you will not
+recognize that prostitute, the Roman, Catholic, and apostolic Church?"
+
+"My father wished it."
+
+"But ought we not to leave fathers and mothers and wives and children,
+all, all, for the sacred cause of Calvinism; nay, must we not suffer
+all things? Ah! Christophe, Calvin, the great Calvin, the whole party,
+the whole world, the Future counts upon your courage and the grandeur
+of your soul. We want your life."
+
+It is a remarkable fact in the mind of man that the most devoted
+spirits, even while devoting themselves, build romantic hopes upon
+their perilous enterprises. When the prince, the soldier, and the
+minister had asked Christophe, under the bridge, to convey to
+Catherine the treaty which, if discovered, would in all probability
+cost him his life, the lad had relied on his nerve, upon chance, upon
+the powers of his mind, and confident in such hopes he bravely, nay,
+audaciously put himself between those terrible adversaries, the Guises
+and Catherine. During the torture he still kept saying to himself: "I
+shall come out of it! it is only pain!" But when this second and
+brutal demand, "Die, we want your life," was made upon a boy who was
+still almost helpless, scarcely recovered from his late torture, and
+clinging all the more to life because he had just seen death so near,
+it was impossible for him to launch into further illusions.
+
+Christophe answered quietly:--
+
+"What is it now?"
+
+"To fire a pistol courageously, as Stuart did on Minard."
+
+"On whom?"
+
+"The Duc de Guise."
+
+"A murder?"
+
+"A vengeance. Have you forgotten the hundred gentlemen massacred on
+the scaffold at Amboise? A child who saw that butchery, the little
+d'Aubigne cried out, 'They have slaughtered France!'"
+
+"You should receive the blows of others and give none; that is the
+religion of the gospel," said Christophe. "If you imitate the
+Catholics in their cruelty, of what good is it to reform the Church?"
+
+"Oh! Christophe, they have made you a lawyer, and now you argue!" said
+Chaudieu.
+
+"No, my friend," replied the young man, "but parties are ungrateful;
+and you will be, both you and yours, nothing more than puppets of the
+Bourbons."
+
+"Christophe, if you could hear Calvin, you would know how we wear them
+like gloves! The Bourbons are the gloves, we are the hand."
+
+"Read that," said Christophe, giving Chaudieu Pibrac's letter
+containing the answer of the Prince de Conde.
+
+"Oh! my son; you are ambitious, you can no longer make the sacrifice
+of yourself!--I pity you!"
+
+With those fine words Chaudieu turned and left him.
+
+Some days after that scene, the Lallier family and the Lecamus family
+were gathered together in honor of the formal betrothal of Christophe
+and Babette, in the old brown hall, from which Christophe's bed had
+been removed; for he was now able to drag himself about and even mount
+the stairs without his crutches. It was nine o'clock in the evening
+and the company were awaiting Ambroise Pare. The family notary sat
+before a table on which lay various contracts. The furrier was selling
+his house and business to his head-clerk, who was to pay down forty
+thousand francs for the house and then mortgage it as security for the
+payment of the goods, for which, however, he paid twenty thousand
+francs on account.
+
+Lecamus was also buying for his son a magnificent stone house, built
+by Philibert de l'Orme in the rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs, which he
+gave to Christophe as a marriage portion. He also took two hundred
+thousand francs from his own fortune, and Lallier gave as much more,
+for the purchase of a fine seignorial manor in Picardy, the price of
+which was five hundred thousand francs. As this manor was a tenure
+from the Crown it was necessary to obtain letters-patent (called
+/rescriptions/) granted by the king, and also to make payment to the
+Crown of considerable feudal dues. The marriage had been postponed
+until this royal favor was obtained. Though the burghers of Paris had
+lately acquired the right to purchase manors, the wisdom of the privy
+council had been exercised in putting certain restrictions on the sale
+of those estates which were dependencies of the Crown; and the one
+which old Lecamus had had in his eye for the last dozen years was
+among them. Ambroise was pledged to bring the royal ordinance that
+evening; and the old furrier went and came from the hall to the door
+in a state of impatience which showed how great his long-repressed
+ambition had been. Ambroise at last appeared.
+
+"My old friend!" cried the surgeon, in an agitated manner, with a
+glance at the supper table, "let me see your linen. Good. Oh! you must
+have wax candles. Quick, quick! get out your best things!"
+
+"Why? what is it all about?" asked the rector of Saint-Pierre-aux-
+Boeufs.
+
+"The queen-mother and the young king are coming to sup with you,"
+replied the surgeon. "They are only waiting for an old counsellor who
+agreed to sell his place to Christophe, and with whom Monsieur de Thou
+has concluded a bargain. Don't appear to know anything; I have escaped
+from the Louvre to warn you."
+
+In a second the whole family were astir; Christophe's mother and
+Babette's aunt bustled about with the celerity of housekeepers
+suddenly surprised. But in spite of the apparent confusion into which
+the news had thrown the entire family, the precautions were promptly
+made, with an activity that was nothing short of marvellous.
+Christophe, amazed and confounded by such a favor, was speechless,
+gazing mechanically at what went on.
+
+"The queen and king here in our house!" said the old mother.
+
+"The queen!" repeated Babette. "What must we say and do?"
+
+In less than an hour all was changed; the hall was decorated; the
+supper-table sparkled. Presently the noise of horses sounded in the
+street. The light of torches carried by the horsemen of the escort
+brought all the burghers of the neighborhood to their windows. The
+noise soon subsided and the escort rode away, leaving the queen-mother
+and her son, King Charles IX., Charles de Gondi, now Grand-master of
+the wardrobe and governor of the king, Monsieur de Thou, Pinard,
+secretary of State, the old counsellor, and two pages, under the
+arcade before the door.
+
+"My worthy people," said the queen as she entered, "the king, my son,
+and I have come to sign the marriage-contract of the son of my
+furrier,--but only on condition that he remains a Catholic. A man must
+be a Catholic to enter Parliament; he must be a Catholic to own land
+which derives from the Crown; he must be a Catholic if he would sit at
+the king's table. That is so, is it not, Pinard?"
+
+The secretary of State entered and showed the letters-patent.
+
+"If we are not all Catholics," said the little king, "Pinard will
+throw those papers into the fire. But we are all Catholics here, I
+think," he continued, casting his somewhat haughty eyes over the
+company.
+
+"Yes, sire," replied Christophe, bending his injured knees with
+difficulty, and kissing the hand which the king held out to him.
+
+Queen Catherine stretched out her hand to Christophe and, raising him
+hastily, drew him aside into a corner, saying in a low voice:--
+
+"Ah ca! my lad, no evasions here. Are you playing above-board now?"
+
+"Yes, madame," he answered, won by the dazzling reward and the honor
+done him by the grateful queen.
+
+"Very good. Monsieur Lecamus, the king, my son, and I permit you to
+purchase the office of the goodman Groslay, counsellor of the
+Parliament, here present. Young man, you will follow, I hope, in the
+steps of your predecessor."
+
+De Thou advanced and said: "I will answer for him, madame."
+
+"Very well; draw up the deed, notary," said Pinard.
+
+"Inasmuch as the king our master does us the favor to sign my
+daughter's marriage contract," cried Lallier, "I will pay the whole
+price of the manor."
+
+"The ladies may sit down," said the young king, graciously: "As a
+wedding present to the bride I remit, with my mother's consent, all my
+dues and rights in the manor."
+
+Old Lecamus and Lallier fell on their knees and kissed the king's
+hand.
+
+"/Mordieu/! sire, what quantities of money these burghers have!"
+whispered de Gondi in his ear.
+
+The young king laughed.
+
+"As their Highnesses are so kind," said old Lecamus, "will they permit
+me to present to them my successor, and ask them to continue to him
+the royal patent of furrier to their Majesties?"
+
+"Let us see him," said the king.
+
+Lecamus led forward his successor, who was livid with fear.
+
+"If my mother consents, we will now sit down to table," said the
+little king.
+
+Old Lecamus had bethought himself of presenting to the king a silver
+goblet which he had bought of Benvenuto Cellini when the latter stayed
+in Paris at the hotel de Nesle. This treasure of art had cost the
+furrier no less than two thousand crowns.
+
+"Oh! my dear mother, see this beautiful work!" cried the young king,
+lifting the goblet by its stem.
+
+"It was made in Florence," replied Catherine.
+
+"Pardon me, madame," said Lecamus, "it was made in Paris by a
+Florentine. All that is made in Florence would belong to your Majesty;
+that which is made in France is the king's."
+
+"I accept it, my good man," cried Charles IX.; "and it shall
+henceforth be my particular drinking cup."
+
+"It is beautiful enough," said the queen, examining the masterpiece,
+"to be included among the crown-jewels. Well, Maitre Ambroise," she
+whispered in the surgeon's ear, with a glance at Christophe, "have you
+taken good care of him? Will he walk again?"
+
+"He will run," replied the surgeon, smiling. "Ah! you have cleverly
+made him a renegade."
+
+"Ha!" said the queen, with the levity for which she has been blamed,
+though it was only on the surface, "the Church won't stand still for
+want of one monk!"
+
+The supper was gay; the queen thought Babette pretty, and, in the
+regal manner which was natural to her, she slipped upon the girl's
+finger a diamond ring which compensated in value for the goblet
+bestowed upon the king. Charles IX., who afterwards became rather too
+fond of these invasions of burgher homes, supped with a good appetite.
+Then, at a word from his new governor (who, it is said, was instructed
+to make him forget the virtuous teachings of Cypierre), he obliged all
+the men present to drink so deeply that the queen, observing that the
+gaiety was about to become too noisy, rose to leave the room. As she
+rose, Christophe, his father, and the two women took torches and
+accompanied her to the shop-door. There Christophe ventured to touch
+the queen's wide sleeve and to make her a sign that he had something
+to say. Catherine stopped, made a gesture to the father and the two
+women to leave her, and said, turning to Christophe:
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It may serve you to know, madame," replied Christophe, whispering in
+her ear, "that the Duc de Guise is being followed by assassins."
+
+"You are a loyal subject," said Catherine, smiling, "and I shall never
+forget you."
+
+She held out to him her hand, so celebrated for its beauty, first
+ungloving it, which was indeed a mark of favor,--so much so that
+Christophe, then and there, became altogether royalist as he kissed
+that adorable hand.
+
+"So they mean to rid me of that bully without my having a finger in
+it," thought she as she replaced her glove.
+
+Then she mounted her mule and returned to the Louvre, attended by her
+two pages.
+
+Christophe went back to the supper-table, but was thoughtful and
+gloomy even while he drank; the fine, austere face of Ambroise Pare
+seemed to reproach him for his apostasy. But subsequent events
+justified the manoeuvres of the old syndic. Christophe would certainly
+not have escaped the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew; his wealth and his
+landed estates would have made him a mark for the murderers. History
+has recorded the cruel fate of the wife of Lallier's successor, a
+beautiful woman, whose naked body hung by the hair for three days from
+one of the buttresses of the Pont au Change. Babette trembled as she
+thought that she, too, might have endured the same treatment if
+Christophe had continued a Calvinist,--for such became the name of the
+Reformers. Calvin's personal ambition was thus gratified, though not
+until after his death.
+
+Such was the origin of the celebrated parliamentary house of Lecamus.
+Tallemant des Reaux is in error when he states that they came
+originally from Picardy. It is only true that the Lecamus family found
+it for their interest in after days to date from the time the old
+furrier bought their principal estate, which, as we have said, was
+situated in Picardy. Christophe's son, who succeeded him under Louis
+XIII., was the father of the rich president Lecamus who built, in the
+reign of Louis XIV., that magnificent mansion which shares with the
+hotel Lambert the admiration of Parisians and foreigners, and was
+assuredly one of the finest buildings in Paris. It may still be seen
+in the rue Thorigny, though at the beginning of the Revolution it was
+pillaged as having belonged to Monsieur de Juigne, the archbishop of
+Paris. All the decorations were then destroyed; and the tenants who
+lodge there have greatly damaged it; nevertheless this palace, which
+is reached through the old house in the rue de la Pelleterie, still
+shows the noble results obtained in former days by the spirit of
+family. It may be doubted whether modern individualism, brought about
+by the equal division of inheritances, will ever raise such noble
+buildings.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+THE SECRETS OF THE RUGGIERI
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE COURT UNDER CHARLES IX.
+
+Between eleven o'clock and midnight toward the end of October, 1573,
+two Italians, Florentines and brothers, Albert de Gondi, Duc de Retz
+and marshal of France, and Charles de Gondi la Tour, Grand-master of
+the robes of Charles IX., were sitting on the roof of a house in the
+rue Saint-Honore, at the edge of a gutter. This gutter was one of
+those stone channels which in former days were constructed below the
+roofs of houses to receive the rain-water, discharging it at regular
+intervals through those long gargoyles carved in the shape of
+fantastic animals with gaping mouths. In spite of the zeal with which
+our present general pulls down and demolishes venerable buildings,
+there still existed many of these projecting gutters until, quite
+recently, an ordinance of the police as to water-conduits compelled
+them to disappear. But even so, a few of these carved gargoyles still
+remain, chiefly in the /quartier/ Saint-Antoine, where low rents and
+values hinder the building of new storeys under the eaves of the
+roofs.
+
+It certainly seems strange that two personages invested with such
+important offices should be playing the part of cats. But whosoever
+will burrow into the historic treasures of those days, when personal
+interests jostled and thwarted each other around the throne till the
+whole political centre of France was like a skein of tangled thread,
+will readily understand that the two Florentines were cats indeed, and
+very much in their places in a gutter. Their devotion to the person of
+the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici--who had brought them to the
+court of France and foisted them into their high offices--compelled
+them not to recoil before any of the consequences of their intrusion.
+But to explain how and why these courtiers were thus perched, it is
+necessary to relate a scene which had taken place an hour earlier not
+far from this very gutter, in that beautiful brown room of the Louvre,
+all that now remains to us of the apartments of Henri II., in which
+after supper the courtiers had been paying court to the two queens,
+Catherine de' Medici and Elizabeth of Austria, and to their son and
+husband King Charles IX.
+
+In those days the majority of the burghers and great lords supped at
+six, or at seven o'clock, but the more refined and elegant supped at
+eight or even nine. This repast was the dinner of to-day. Many persons
+erroneously believe that etiquette was invented by Louis XIV.; on the
+contrary it was introduced into France by Catherine de' Medici, who
+made it so severe that the Connetable de Montmorency had more
+difficulty in obtaining permission to enter the court of the Louvre on
+horseback than in winning his sword; moreover, that unheard-of
+distinction was granted to him only on account of his great age.
+Etiquette, which was, it is true, slightly relaxed under the first two
+Bourbon kings, took an Oriental form under the Great Monarch, for it
+was introduced from the Eastern Empire, which derived it from Persia.
+In 1573 few persons had the right to enter the courtyard of the Louvre
+with their servants and torches (under Louis XIV. the coaches of none
+but dukes and peers were allowed to pass under the peristyle);
+moreover, the cost of obtaining entrance after supper to the royal
+apartments was very heavy. The Marechal de Retz, whom we have just
+seen, perched on a gutter, offered on one occasion a thousand crowns
+of that day, six thousand francs of our present money, to the usher of
+the king's cabinet to be allowed to speak to Henri III. on a day when
+he was not on duty. To an historian who knows the truth, it is
+laughable to see the well-known picture of the courtyard at Blois, in
+which the artist has introduced a courtier on horseback!
+
+On the present occasion, therefore, none but the most eminent
+personages in the kingdom were in the royal apartments. The queen,
+Elizabeth of Austria, and her mother-in-law, Catherine de' Medici,
+were seated together on the left of the fireplace. On the other side
+sat the king, buried in an armchair, affecting a lethargy consequent
+on digestion,--for he had just supped like a prince returned from
+hunting; possibly he was seeking to avoid conversation in presence of
+so many persons who were spies upon his thoughts. The courtiers stood
+erect and uncovered at the end of the room. Some talked in a low
+voice; others watched the king, awaiting the bestowal of a look or a
+word. Occasionally one was called up by the queen-mother, who talked
+with him for a few moments; another risked saying a word to the king,
+who replied with either a nod or a brief sentence. A German nobleman,
+the Comte de Solern, stood at the corner of the fireplace behind the
+young queen, the granddaughter of Charles V., whom he had accompanied
+into France. Near to her on a stool sat her lady of honor, the
+Comtesse de Fiesque, a Strozzi, and a relation of Catherine de'
+Medici. The beautiful Madame de Sauves, a descendant of Jacques Coeur,
+mistress of the king of Navarre, then of the king of Poland, and
+lastly of the Duc d'Alencon, had been invited to supper; but she stood
+like the rest of the court, her husband's rank (that of secretary of
+State) giving her no right to be seated. Behind these two ladies stood
+the two Gondis, talking to them. They alone of this dismal assembly
+were smiling. Albert Gondi, now Duc de Retz, marshal of France, and
+gentleman of the bed-chamber, had been deputed to marry the queen by
+proxy at Spire. In the first line of courtiers nearest to the king
+stood the Marechal de Tavannes, who was present on court business;
+Neufville de Villeroy, one of the ablest bankers of the period, who
+laid the foundation of the great house of that name; Birago and
+Chiverni, gentlemen of the queen-mother, who, knowing her preference
+for her son Henri (the brother whom Charles IX. regarded as an enemy),
+attached themselves especially to him; then Strozzi, Catherine's
+cousin; and finally, a number of great lords, among them the old
+Cardinal de Lorraine and his nephew, the young Duc de Guise, who were
+held at a distance by the king and his mother. These two leaders of
+the Holy Alliance, and later of the League (founded in conjunction
+with Spain a few years earlier), affected the submission of servants
+who are only waiting an opportunity to make themselves masters.
+Catherine and Charles IX. watched each other with close attention.
+
+At this gloomy court, as gloomy as the room in which it was held, each
+individual had his or her own reasons for being sad or thoughtful. The
+young queen, Elizabeth, was a prey to the tortures of jealousy, and
+could ill-disguise them, though she smiled upon her husband, whom she
+passionately adored, good and pious woman that she was! Marie Touchet,
+the only mistress Charles IX. ever had and to whom he was loyally
+faithful, had lately returned from the chateau de Fayet in Dauphine,
+whither she had gone to give birth to a child. She brought back to
+Charles IX. a son, his only son, Charles de Valois, first Comte
+d'Auvergne, and afterward Duc d'Angouleme. The poor queen, in addition
+to the mortification of her abandonment, now endured the pang of
+knowing that her rival had borne a son to her husband while she had
+brought him only a daughter. And these were not her only troubles and
+disillusions, for Catherine de' Medici, who had seemed her friend in
+the first instance, now, out of policy, favored her betrayal,
+preferring to serve the mistress rather than the wife of the king,--
+for the following reason.
+
+When Charles IX. openly avowed his passion for Marie Touchet,
+Catherine showed favor to the girl in the interests of her own desire
+for domination. Marie Touchet, who was very young when brought to
+court, came at an age when all the noblest sentiments are predominant.
+She loved the king for himself alone. Frightened at the fate to which
+ambition had led the Duchesse de Valentinois (better known as Diane de
+Poitiers), she dreaded the queen-mother, and greatly preferred her
+simple happiness to grandeur. Perhaps she thought that lovers as young
+as the king and herself could never struggle successfully against the
+queen-mother. As the daughter of Jean Touchet, Sieur de Beauvais and
+Quillard, she was born between the burgher class and the lower
+nobility; she had none of the inborn ambitions of the Pisseleus and
+Saint-Valliers, girls of rank, who battled for their families with the
+hidden weapons of love. Marie Touchet, without family or friends,
+spared Catherine de' Medici all antagonism with her son's mistress;
+the daughter of a great house would have been her rival. Jean Touchet,
+the father, one of the finest wits of the time, a man to whom poets
+dedicated their works, wanted nothing at court. Marie, a young girl
+without connections, intelligent and well-educated, and also simple
+and artless, whose desires would probably never be aggressive to the
+royal power, suited the queen-mother admirably. In short, she made the
+parliament recognize the son to whom Marie Touchet had just given
+birth in the month of April, and she allowed him to take the title of
+Comte d'Auvergne, assuring Charles IX. that she would leave the boy
+her personal property, the counties of Auvergne and Laraguais. At a
+later period, Marguerite de Valois, queen of Navarre, contested this
+legacy after she was queen of France, and the parliament annulled it.
+But later still, Louis XIII., out of respect for the Valois blood,
+indemnified the Comte d'Auvergne by the gift of the duchy of
+Angouleme.
+
+Catherine had already given Marie Touchet, who asked nothing, the
+manor of Belleville, an estate close to Vincennes which carried no
+title; and thither she went whenever the king hunted and spent the
+night at the castle. It was in this gloomy fortress that Charles IX.
+passed the greater part of his last years, ending his life there,
+according to some historians, as Louis XII. had ended his.
+
+The queen-mother kept close watch upon her son. All the occupations of
+his personal life, outside of politics, were reported to her. The king
+had begun to look upon his mother as an enemy, but the kind intentions
+she expressed toward his son diverted his suspicions for a time.
+Catherine's motives in this matter were never understood by Queen
+Elizabeth, who, according to Brantome, was one of the gentlest queens
+that ever reigned, who never did harm or even gave pain to any one,
+"and was careful to read her prayer-book secretly." But this single-
+minded princess began at last to see the precipices yawning around the
+throne,--a dreadful discovery, which might indeed have made her quail;
+it was some such remembrance, no doubt, that led her to say to one of
+her ladies, after the death of the king, in reply to a condolence that
+she had no son, and could not, therefore, be regent and queen-mother:
+
+"Ah! I thank God that I have no son. I know well what would have
+happened. My poor son would have been despoiled and wronged like the
+king, my husband, and I should have been the cause of it. God had
+mercy on the State; he has done all for the best."
+
+This princess, whose portrait Brantome thinks he draws by saying that
+her complexion was as beautiful and delicate as the ladies of her
+suite were charming and agreeable, and that her figure was fine though
+rather short, was of little account at her own court. Suffering from a
+double grief, her saddened attitude added another gloomy tone to a
+scene which most young queens, less cruelly injured, might have
+enlivened. The pious Elizabeth proved at this crisis that the
+qualities which are the shining glory of women in the ordinary ways of
+life can be fatal to a sovereign. A princess able to occupy herself
+with other things besides her prayer-book might have been a useful
+helper to Charles IX., who found no prop to lean on, either in his
+wife or in his mistress.
+
+The queen-mother, as she sat there in that brown room, was closely
+observing the king, who, during supper, had exhibited a boisterous
+good-humor which she felt to be assumed in order to mask some
+intention against her. This sudden gaiety contrasted too vividly with
+the struggle of mind he endeavored to conceal by his eagerness in
+hunting, and by an almost maniacal toil at his forge, where he spent
+many hours in hammering iron; and Catherine was not deceived by it.
+Without being able even to guess which of the statesmen about the king
+was employed to prepare or negotiate it (for Charles IX. contrived to
+mislead his mother's spies), Catherine felt no doubt whatever that
+some scheme for her overthrow was being planned. The unlooked-for
+presence of Tavannes, who arrived at the same time as Strozzi, whom
+she herself had summoned, gave her food for thought. Strong in the
+strength of her political combination, Catherine was above the reach
+of circumstances; but she was powerless against some hidden violence.
+As many persons are ignorant of the actual state of public affairs
+then so complicated by the various parties that distracted France, the
+leaders of which had each their private interests to carry out, it is
+necessary to describe, in a few words, the perilous game in which the
+queen-mother was now engaged. To show Catherine de' Medici in a new
+light is, in fact, the root and stock of our present history.
+
+Two words explain this woman, so curiously interesting to study, a
+woman whose influence has left such deep impressions upon France.
+Those words are: Power and Astrology. Exclusively ambitious, Catherine
+de' Medici had no other passion than that of power. Superstitious and
+fatalistic, like so many superior men, she had no sincere belief
+except in occult sciences. Unless this double mainspring is known, the
+conduct of Catherine de' Medici will remain forever misunderstood. As
+we picture her faith in judicial astrology, the light will fall upon
+two personages, who are, in fact, the philosophical subjects of this
+Study.
+
+There lived a man for whom Catherine cared more than for any of her
+children; his name was Cosmo Ruggiero. He lived in a house belonging
+to her, the hotel de Soissons; she made him her supreme adviser. It
+was his duty to tell her whether the stars ratified the advice and
+judgment of her ordinary counsellors. Certain remarkable antecedents
+warranted the power which Cosmo Ruggiero retained over his mistress to
+her last hour. One of the most learned men of the sixteenth century
+was physician to Lorenzo de' Medici, Duc d'Urbino, Catherine's father.
+This physician was called Ruggiero the Elder (Vecchio Ruggier and
+Roger l'Ancien in the French authors who have written on alchemy), to
+distinguish him from his two sons, Lorenzo Ruggiero, called the Great
+by cabalistic writers, and Cosmo Ruggiero, Catherine's astrologer,
+also called Roger by several French historians. In France it was the
+custom to pronounce the name in general as Ruggieri. Ruggiero the
+elder was so highly valued by the Medici that the two dukes, Cosmo and
+Lorenzo, stood godfathers to his two sons. He cast, in concert with
+the famous mathematician, Basilio, the horoscope of Catherine's
+nativity, in his official capacity as mathematicion, astrologer, and
+physician to the house of Medici; three offices which are often
+confounded.
+
+At the period of which we write the occult sciences were studied with
+an ardor that may surprise the incredulous minds of our own age, which
+is supremely analytical. Perhaps such minds may find in this
+historical sketch the dawn, or rather the germ, of the positive
+sciences which have flowered in the nineteenth century, though without
+the poetic grandeur given to them by the audacious Seekers of the
+sixteenth, who, instead of using them solely for mechanical
+industries, magnified Art and fertilized Thought by their means. The
+protection universally given to occult science by the sovereigns of
+those days was justified by the noble creations of many inventors,
+who, starting in quest of the Great Work (the so-called philosophers'
+stone), attained to astonishing results. At no period were the
+sovereigns of the world more eager for the study of these mysteries.
+The Fuggers of Augsburg, in whom all modern Luculluses will recognize
+their princes, and all bankers their masters, were gifted with powers
+of calculation it would be difficult to surpass. Well, those practical
+men, who loaned the funds of all Europe to the sovereigns of the
+sixteenth century (as deeply in debt as the kings of the present day),
+those illustrious guests of Charles V. were sleeping partners in the
+crucibles of Paracelsus. At the beginning of the sixteenth century,
+Ruggiero the elder was the head of that secret university from which
+issued the Cardans, the Nostradamuses, and the Agrippas (all in their
+turn physicians of the house of Valois); also the astronomers,
+astrologers, and alchemists who surrounded the princes of Christendom
+and were more especially welcomed and protected in France by Catherine
+de' Medici. In the nativity drawn by Basilio and Ruggiero the elder,
+the principal events of Catherine's life were foretold with a
+correctness which is quite disheartening for those who deny the power
+of occult science. This horoscope predicted the misfortunes which
+during the siege of Florence imperilled the beginning of her life;
+also her marriage with a son of the king of France, the unexpected
+succession of that son to his father's throne, the birth of her
+children, their number, and the fact that three of her sons would be
+kings in succession, that two of her daughters would be queens, and
+that all of them were destined to die without posterity. This
+prediction was so fully realized that many historians have assumed
+that it was written after the events.
+
+It is well known that Nostradamus took to the chateau de Chaumont,
+whither Catherine went after the conspiracy of La Renaudie, a woman
+who possessed the faculty of reading the future. Now, during the reign
+of Francois II., while the queen had with her her four sons, all young
+and in good health, and before the marriage of her daughter Elizabeth
+with Philip II., king of Spain, or that of her daughter Marguerite
+with Henri de Bourbon, king of Navarre (afterward Henri IV.),
+Nostradamus and this woman reiterated the circumstances formerly
+predicted in the famous nativity. This woman, who was no doubt gifted
+with second sight, and who belonged to the great school of Seekers of
+the Great Work, though the particulars of her life and name are lost
+to history, stated that the last crowned child would be assassinated.
+Having placed the queen-mother in front of a magic mirror, in which
+was reflected a wheel on the several spokes of which were the faces of
+her children, the sorceress set the wheel revolving, and Catherine
+counted the number of revolutions which it made. Each revolution was
+for each son one year of his reign. Henri IV. was also put upon the
+wheel, which then made twenty-four rounds, and the woman (some
+historians have said it was a man) told the frightened queen that
+Henri de Bourbon would be king of France and reign that number of
+years. From that time forth Catherine de' Medici vowed a mortal hatred
+to the man whom she knew would succeed the last of her Valois sons,
+who was to die assassinated. Anxious to know what her own death would
+be, she was warned to beware of Saint-Germain. Supposing, therefore,
+that she would be either put to death or imprisoned in the chateau de
+Saint-Germain, she would never so much as put her foot there, although
+that residence was far more convenient for her political plans, owing
+to its proximity to Paris, than the other castles to which she
+retreated with the king during the troubles. When she was taken
+suddenly ill, a few days after the murder of the Duc de Guise at
+Blois, she asked the name of the bishop who came to assist her. Being
+told it was Saint-Germain, she cried out, "I am dead!" and did
+actually die on the morrow,--having, moreover, lived the exact number
+of years given to her by all her horoscopes.
+
+These predictions, which were known to the Cardinal de Lorraine, who
+regarded them as witchcraft, were now in process of realization.
+Francois II. had reigned his two revolutions of the wheel, and Charles
+IX. was now making his last turn. If Catherine said the strange words
+which history has attributed to her when her son Henri started for
+Poland,--"You will soon return,"--they must be set down to her faith
+in occult science and not to the intention of poisoning Charles IX.
+
+Many other circumstances corroborated Catherine's faith in the occult
+sciences. The night before the tournament at which Henri II. was
+killed, Catherine saw the fatal blow in a dream. Her astrological
+council, then composed of Nostradamus and the two Ruggieri, had
+already predicted to her the death of the king. History has recorded
+the efforts made by Catherine to persuade her husband not to enter the
+lists. The prognostic, and the dream produced by the prognostic, were
+verified. The memoirs of the day relate another fact that was no less
+singular. The courier who announced the victory of Moncontour arrived
+in the night, after riding with such speed that he killed three
+horses. The queen-mother was awakened to receive the news, to which
+she replied, "I knew it already." In fact, as Brantome relates, she
+had told of her son's triumph the evening before, and narrated several
+circumstances of the battle. The astrologer of the house of Bourbon
+predicted that the youngest of all the princes descended from Saint-
+Louis (the son of Antoine de Bourbon) would ascend the throne of
+France. This prediction, related by Sully, was accomplished in the
+precise terms of the horoscope; which led Henri IV. to say that by
+dint of lying these people sometimes hit the truth. However that may
+be, if most of the great minds of that epoch believed in this vast
+science,--called Magic by the masters of judicial astrology, and
+Sorcery by the public,--they were justified in doing so by the
+fulfilment of horoscopes.
+
+It was for the use of Cosmo Ruggiero, her mathematician, astronomer,
+and astrologer, that Catherine de' Medici erected the tower behind the
+Halle aux Bles,--all that now remains of the hotel de Soissons. Cosmo
+Ruggiero possessed, like confessors, a mysterious influence, the
+possession of which, like them again, sufficed him. He cherished an
+ambitious thought superior to all vulgar ambitions. This man, whom
+dramatists and romance-writers depict as a juggler, owned the rich
+abbey of Saint-Mahe in Lower Brittany, and refused many high
+ecclesiastical dignities; the gold which the superstitious passions of
+the age poured into his coffers sufficed for his secret enterprise;
+and the queen's hand, stretched above his head, preserved every hair
+of it from danger.
+
+
+
+II
+
+SCHEMES AGAINST SCHEMES
+
+The thirst for power which consumed the queen-mother, her desire for
+dominion, was so great that in order to retain it she had, as we have
+seen, allied herself to the Guises, those enemies of the throne; to
+keep the reins of power, now obtained, within her hands, she was using
+every means, even to the sacrifice of her friends and that of her
+children. This woman, of whom one of her enemies said at her death,
+"It is more than a queen, it is monarchy itself that has died,"--this
+woman could not exist without the intrigues of government, as a
+gambler can live only by the emotions of play. Although she was an
+Italian of the voluptuous race of the Medici, the Calvinists who
+calumniated her never accused her of having a lover. A great admirer
+of the maxim, "Divide to reign," she had learned the art of
+perpetually pitting one force against another. No sooner had she
+grasped the reins of power than she was forced to keep up dissensions
+in order to neutralize the strength of two rival houses, and thus save
+the Crown. Catherine invented the game of political see-saw (since
+imitated by all princes who find themselves in a like situation), by
+instigating, first the Calvinists against the Guises, and then the
+Guises against the Calvinists. Next, after pitting the two religions
+against each other in the heart of the nation, Catherine instigated
+the Duc d'Anjou against his brother Charles IX. After neutralizing
+events by opposing them to one another, she neutralized men, by
+holding the thread of all their interests in her hands. But so fearful
+a game, which needs the head of a Louis XI. to play it, draws down
+inevitably the hatred of all parties upon the player, who condemns
+himself forever to the necessity of conquering; for one lost game will
+turn every selfish interest into an enemy.
+
+The greater part of the reign of Charles IX. witnessed the triumph of
+the domestic policy of this astonishing woman. What adroit persuasion
+must Catherine have employed to have obtained the command of the
+armies for the Duc d'Anjou under a young and brave king, thirsting for
+glory, capable of military achievement, generous, and in presence,
+too, of the Connetable de Montmorency. In the eyes of the statesmen of
+Europe the Duc d'Anjou had all the honors of the Saint-Bartholomew,
+and Charles IX. all the odium. After inspiring the king with a false
+and secret jealousy of his brother, she used that passion to wear out
+by the intrigues of fraternal jealousy the really noble qualities of
+Charles IX. Cypierre, the king's first governor, and Amyot, his first
+tutor, had made him so great a man, they had paved the way for so
+noble a reign, that the queen-mother began to hate her son as soon as
+she found reason to fear the loss of the power she had so slowly and
+so painfully obtained. On these general grounds most historians have
+believed that Catherine de' Medici felt a preference for Henri III.;
+but her conduct at the period of which we are now writing, proves the
+absolute indifference of her heart toward all her children.
+
+When the Duc d'Anjou went to reign in Poland Catherine was deprived of
+the instrument by which she had worked to keep the king's passions
+occupied in domestic intrigues, which neutralized his energy in other
+directions. She then set up the conspiracy of La Mole and Coconnas, in
+which her youngest son, the Duc d'Alencon (afterwards Duc d'Anjou, on
+the accession of Henri III.) took part, lending himself very willingly
+to his mother's wishes, and displaying an ambition much encouraged by
+his sister Marguerite, then queen of Navarre. This secret conspiracy
+had now reached the point to which Catherine sought to bring it. Its
+object was to put the young duke and his brother-in-law, the king of
+Navarre, at the head of the Calvinists, to seize the person of Charles
+IX., and imprison that king without an heir,--leaving the throne to
+the Duc d'Alencon, whose intention it was to establish Calvinism as
+the religion of France. Calvin, as we have already said, had obtained,
+a few days before his death, the reward he had so deeply coveted,--the
+Reformation was now called Calvinism in his honor.
+
+If Le Laboureur and other sensible writers had not already proved that
+La Mole and Coconnas,--arrested fifty nights after the day on which
+our present history begins, and beheaded the following April,--even,
+we say, if it had not been made historically clear that these men were
+the victims of the queen-mother's policy, the part which Cosmo
+Ruggiero took in this affair would go far to show that she secretly
+directed their enterprise. Ruggiero, against whom the king had
+suspicions, and for whom he cherished a hatred the motives of which we
+are about to explain, was included in the prosecution. He admitted
+having given to La Mole a wax figure representing the king, which was
+pierced through the heart by two needles. This method of casting
+spells constituted a crime, which, in those days, was punished by
+death. It presents one of the most startling and infernal images of
+hatred that humanity could invent; it pictures admirably the magnetic
+and terrible working in the occult world of a constant malevolent
+desire surrounding the person doomed to death; the effects of which on
+the person are exhibited by the figure of wax. The law in those days
+thought, and thought justly, that a desire to which an actual form was
+given should be regarded as a crime of /lese majeste/. Charles IX.
+demanded the death of Ruggiero; Catherine, more powerful than her son,
+obtained from the Parliament, through the young counsellor, Lecamus, a
+commutation of the sentence, and Cosmo was sent to the galleys. The
+following year, on the death of the king, he was pardoned by a decree
+of Henri III., who restored his pension, and received him at court.
+
+But, to return now to the moment of which we are writing, Catherine
+had, by this time, struck so many blows on the heart of her son that
+he was eagerly desirous of casting off her yoke. During the absence of
+Marie Touchet, Charles IX., deprived of his usual occupation, had
+taken to observing everything about him. He cleverly set traps for the
+persons in whom he trusted most, in order to test their fidelity. He
+spied on his mother's actions, concealing from her all knowledge of
+his own, employing for this deception the evil qualities she had
+fostered in him. Consumed by a desire to blot out the horror excited
+in France by the Saint-Bartholomew, he busied himself actively in
+public affairs; he presided at the Council, and tried to seize the
+reins of government by well-laid schemes. Though the queen-mother
+endeavored to check these attempts of her son by employing all the
+means of influence over his mind which her maternal authority and a
+long habit of domineering gave her, his rush into distrust was so
+vehement that he went too far at the first bound ever to return from
+it. The day on which his mother's speech to the king of Poland was
+reported to him, Charles IX., conscious of his failing health,
+conceived the most horrible suspicions, and when such thoughts take
+possession of the mind of a son and a king nothing can remove them. In
+fact, on his deathbed, at the moment when he confided his wife and
+daughter to Henri IV., he began to put the latter on his guard against
+Catherine, so that she cried out passionately, endeavoring to silence
+him, "Do not say that, monsieur!"
+
+Though Charles IX. never ceased to show her the outward respect of
+which she was so tenacious that she would never call the kings her
+sons anything but "Monsieur," the queen-mother had detected in her
+son's manner during the last few months an ill-disguised purpose of
+vengeance. But clever indeed must be the man who counted on taking
+Catherine unawares. She held ready in her hand at this moment the
+conspiracy of the Duke d'Alencon and La Mole, in order to counteract,
+by another fraternal struggle, the efforts Charles IX. was making
+toward emancipation. But, before employing this means, she wanted to
+remove his distrust of her, which would render impossible their future
+reconciliation; for was he likely to restore power to the hands of a
+mother whom he thought capable of poisoning him? She felt herself at
+this moment in such serious danger that she had sent for Strozzi, her
+relation and a soldier noted for his promptitude of action. She took
+counsel in secret with Birago and the two Gondis, and never did she so
+frequently consult her oracle, Cosmo Ruggiero, as at the present
+crisis.
+
+Though the habit of dissimulation, together with advancing age, had
+given the queen-mother that well-known abbess face, with its haughty
+and macerated mask, expressionless yet full of depth, inscrutable yet
+vigilant, remarked by all who have studied her portrait, the courtiers
+now observed some clouds on her icy countenance. No sovereign was ever
+so imposing as this woman from the day when she succeeded in
+restraining the Guises after the death of Francois II. Her black
+velvet cap, made with a point upon the forehead (for she never
+relinquished her widow's mourning) seemed a species of feminine cowl
+around the cold, imperious face, to which, however, she knew how to
+give, at the right moment, a seductive Italian charm. Catherine de'
+Medici was so well made that she was accused of inventing side-saddles
+to show the shape of her legs, which were absolutely perfect. Women
+followed her example in this respect throughout Europe, which even
+then took its fashions from France. Those who desire to bring this
+grand figure before their minds will find that the scene now taking
+place in the brown hall of the Louvre presents it in a striking
+aspect.
+
+The two queens, different in spirit, in beauty, in dress, and now
+estranged,--one naive and thoughtful, the other thoughtful and gravely
+abstracted,--were far too preoccupied to think of giving the order
+awaited by the courtiers for the amusements of the evening. The
+carefully concealed drama, played for the last six months by the
+mother and son was more than suspected by many of the courtiers; but
+the Italians were watching it with special anxiety, for Catherine's
+failure involved their ruin.
+
+During this evening Charles IX., weary with the day's hunting, looked
+to be forty years old. He had reached the last stages of the malady of
+which he died, the symptoms of which were such that many reflecting
+persons were justified in thinking that he was poisoned. According to
+de Thou (the Tacitus of the Valois) the surgeons found suspicious
+spots--/ex causa incognita reperti livores/--on his body. Moreover,
+his funeral was even more neglected than that of Francois II. The body
+was conducted from Saint-Lazare to Saint-Denis by Brantome and a few
+archers of the guard under command of the Comte de Solern. This
+circumstances, coupled with the supposed hatred of the mother to the
+son, may or may not give color to de Thou's supposition, but it proves
+how little affection Catherine felt for any of her children,--a want
+of feeling which may be explained by her implicit faith in the
+predictions of judicial astrology. This woman was unable to feel
+affection for the instruments which were destined to fail her. Henri
+III. was the last king under whom her reign of power was to last; that
+was the sole consideration of her heart and mind.
+
+In these days, however, we can readily believe that Charles IX. died a
+natural death. His excesses, his manner of life, the sudden
+development of his faculties, his last spasmodic attempt to recover
+the reins of power, his desire to live, the abuse of his vital
+strength, his final sufferings and last pleasures, all prove to an
+impartial mind that he died of consumption, a disease scarcely studied
+at that time, and very little understood, the symptoms of which might,
+not unnaturally, lead Charles IX. to believe himself poisoned. The
+real poison which his mother gave him was in the fatal counsels of the
+courtiers whom she placed about him,--men who led him to waste his
+intellectual as well as his physical vigor, thus bringing on a malady
+which was purely fortuitous and not constitutional. Under these
+harrowing circumstances, Charles IX. displayed a gloomy majesty of
+demeanor which was not unbecoming to a king. The solemnity of his
+secret thoughts was reflected on his face, the olive tones of which he
+inherited from his mother. This ivory pallor, so fine by candlelight,
+so suited to the expression of melancholy thought, brought out
+vigorously the fire of the blue-black eyes, which gazed from their
+thick and heavy lids with the keen perception our fancy lends to
+kings, their color being a cloak for dissimulation. Those eyes were
+terrible,--especially from the movement of their brows, which he could
+raise or lower at will on his bald, high forehead. His nose was broad
+and long, thick at the end,--the nose of a lion; his ears were large,
+his hair sandy, his lips blood-red, like those of all consumptives,
+the upper lip thin and sarcastic, the lower one firm, and full enough
+to give an impression of the noblest qualities of the heart. The
+wrinkles of his brow, the youth of which was killed by dreadful cares,
+inspired the strongest interest; remorse, caused by the uselessness of
+the Saint-Bartholomew, accounted for some, but there were two others
+on that face which would have been eloquent indeed to any student
+whose premature genius had led him to divine the principles of modern
+physiology. These wrinkles made a deeply indented furrow going from
+each cheek-bone to each corner of the mouth, revealing the inward
+efforts of an organization wearied by the toil of thought and the
+violent excitements of the body. Charles IX. was worn-out. If policy
+did not stifle remorse in the breasts of those who sit beneath the
+purple, the queen-mother, looking at her own work, would surely have
+felt it. Had Catherine foreseen the effect of her intrigues upon her
+son, would she have recoiled from them? What a fearful spectacle was
+this! A king born vigorous, and now so feeble; a mind powerfully
+tempered, shaken by distrust; a man clothed with authority, conscious
+of no support; a firm mind brought to the pass of having lost all
+confidence in itself! His warlike valor had changed by degrees to
+ferocity; his discretion to deceit; the refined and delicate love of a
+Valois was now a mere quenchless thirst for pleasure. This perverted
+and misjudged great man, with all the many facets of a noble soul
+worn-out,--a king without power, a generous heart without a friend,
+dragged hither and thither by a thousand conflicting intrigues,--
+presented the melancholy spectacle of a youth, only twenty-four years
+old, disillusioned of life, distrusting everybody and everything, now
+resolving to risk all, even his life, on a last effort. For some time
+past he had fully understood his royal mission, his power, his
+resources, and the obstacles which his mother opposed to the
+pacification of the kingdom; but alas! this light now burned in a
+shattered lantern.
+
+Two men, whom Charles IX. loved sufficiently to protect under
+circumstances of great danger,--Jean Chapelain, his physician, whom he
+saved from the Saint-Bartholomew, and Ambroise Pare, with whom he went
+to dine when Pare's enemies were accusing him of intending to poison
+the king,--had arrived this evening in haste from the provinces,
+recalled by the queen-mother. Both were watching their master
+anxiously. A few courtiers spoke to them in a low voice; but the men
+of science made guarded answers, carefully concealing the fatal
+verdict which was in their minds. Every now and then the king would
+raise his heavy eyelids and give his mother a furtive look which he
+tried to conceal from those about him. Suddenly he sprang up and stood
+before the fireplace.
+
+"Monsieur de Chiverni," he said abruptly, "why do you keep the title
+of chancellor of Anjou and Poland? Are you in our service, or in that
+of our brother?"
+
+"I am all yours, sire," replied Chiverni, bowing low.
+
+"Then come to me to-morrow; I intend to send you to Spain. Very
+strange things are happening at the court of Madrid, gentlemen."
+
+The king looked at his wife and flung himself back into his chair.
+
+"Strange things are happening everywhere," said the Marechal de
+Tavannes, one of the friends of the king's youth, in a low voice.
+
+The king rose again and led this companion of his youthful pleasures
+apart into the embrasure of the window at the corner of the room,
+saying, when they were out of hearing:--
+
+"I want you. Remain here when the others go. I shall know to-night
+whether you are for me or against me. Don't look astonished. I am
+about to burst my bonds. My mother is the cause of all the evil about
+me. Three months hence I shall be king indeed, or dead. Silence, if
+you value your life! You will have my secret, you and Solern and
+Villeroy only. If it is betrayed, it will be by one of you three.
+Don't keep near me; go and pay your court to my mother. Tell her I am
+dying, and that you don't regret it, for I am only a poor creature."
+
+The king was leaning on the shoulder of his old favorite, and
+pretending to tell him of his ailments, in order to mislead the
+inquisitive eyes about him; then, not wishing to make his aversion too
+visible, he went up to his wife and mother and talked with them,
+calling Birago to their side.
+
+Just then Pinard, one of the secretaries of State, glided like an eel
+through the door and along the wall until he reached the queen-mother,
+in whose ear he said a few words, to which she replied by an
+affirmative sign. The king did not ask his mother the meaning of this
+conference, but he returned to his seat and kept silence, darting
+terrible looks of anger and suspicion all about him.
+
+This little circumstance seemed of enormous consequence in the eyes of
+the courtiers; and, in truth, so marked an exercise of power by the
+queen-mother, without reference to the king, was like a drop of water
+overflowing the cup. Queen Elizabeth and the Comtesse de Fiesque now
+retired, but the king paid no attention to their movements, though the
+queen-mother rose and attended her daughter-in-law to the door; after
+which the courtiers, understanding that their presence was unwelcome,
+took their leave. By ten o'clock no one remained in the hall but a few
+intimates,--the two Gondis, Tavannes, Solern, Birago, the king, and
+the queen-mother.
+
+The king sat plunged in the blackest melancholy. The silence was
+oppressive. Catherine seemed embarrassed. She wished to leave the
+room, and waited for the king to escort her to the door; but he still
+continued obstinately lost in thought. At last she rose to bid him
+good-night, and Charles IX. was forced to do likewise. As she took his
+arm and made a few steps toward the door, she bent to his ear and
+whispered:--
+
+"Monsieur, I have important things to say to you."
+
+Passing a mirror on her way, she glanced into it and made a sign with
+her eyes to the two Gondis, which escaped the king's notice, for he
+was at the moment exchanging looks of intelligence with the Comte de
+Solern and Villeroy. Tavannes was thoughtful.
+
+"Sire," said the latter, coming out of his reverie, "I think you are
+royally ennuyed; don't you ever amuse yourself now? /Vive Dieu/! have
+you forgotten the times when we used to vagabondize about the streets
+at night?"
+
+"Ah! those were the good old times!" said the king, with a sigh.
+
+"Why not bring them back?" said Birago, glancing significantly at the
+Gondis as he took his leave.
+
+"Yes, I always think of those days with pleasure," said Albert de
+Gondi, Duc de Retz.
+
+"I'd like to see you on the roofs once more, monsieur le duc,"
+remarked Tavannes. "Damned Italian cat! I wish he might break his
+neck!" he added in a whisper to the king.
+
+"I don't know which of us two could climb the quickest in these days,"
+replied de Gondi; "but one thing I do know, that neither of us fears
+to die."
+
+"Well, sire, will you start upon a frolic in the streets to-night, as
+you did in the days of your youth?" said the other Gondi, master of
+the Wardrobe.
+
+The days of his youth! so at twenty-four years of age the wretched
+king seemed no longer young to any one, not even to his flatterers!
+
+Tavannes and his master now reminded each other, like two school-boys,
+of certain pranks they had played in Paris, and the evening's
+amusement was soon arranged. The two Italians, challenged to climb
+roofs, and jump from one to another across alleys and streets, wagered
+that they would follow the king wherever he went. They and Tavannes
+went off to change their clothes. The Comte de Solern, left alone with
+the king, looked at him in amazement. Though the worthy German, filled
+with compassion for the hapless position of the king of France, was
+honor and fidelity itself, he was certainly not quick of perception.
+Charles IX., surrounded by hostile persons, unable to trust any one,
+not even his wife (who had been guilty of some indiscretions, unaware
+as she was that his mother and his servants were his enemies), had
+been fortunate enough to find in Monsieur de Solern a faithful friend
+in whom he could place entire confidence. Tavannes and Villeroy were
+trusted with only a part of the king's secrets. The Comte de Solern
+alone knew the whole of the plan which he was now about to carry out.
+This devoted friend was also useful to his master, in possessing a
+body of discreet and affectionate followers, who blindly obeyed his
+orders. He commanded a detachment of the archers of the guards, and
+for the last few days he had been sifting out the men who were
+faithfully attached to the king, in order to make a company of tried
+men when the need came. The king took thought of everything.
+
+"Why are you surprised, Solern?" he said. "You know very well I need a
+pretext to be out to-night. It is true, I have Madame de Belleville,
+but this is better; for who knows whether my mother does not hear of
+all that goes on at Marie's?"
+
+Monsieur de Solern, who was to follow the king, asked if he might not
+take a few of his Germans to patrol the streets, and Charles
+consented. About eleven o'clock the king, who was now very gay, set
+forth with his three courtiers,--namely, Tavannes and the two Gondis.
+
+"I'll go and take my little Marie by surprise," said Charles IX. to
+Tavannes, "as we pass through the rue de l'Autruche." That street
+being on the way to the rue Saint-Honore, it would have been strange
+indeed for the king to pass the house of his love without stopping.
+
+Looking out for a chance of mischief,--a belated burgher to frighten,
+or a watchman to thrash--the king went along with his nose in the air,
+watching all the lighted windows to see what was happening, and
+striving to hear the conversations. But alas! he found his good city
+of Paris in a state of deplorable tranquillity. Suddenly, as he passed
+the house of a perfumer named Rene, who supplied the court, the king,
+noticing a strong light from a window in the roof, was seized by one
+of those apparently hasty inspirations which, to some minds, suggest a
+previous intention.
+
+This perfumer was strongly suspected of curing rich uncles who thought
+themselves ill. The court laid at his door the famous "Elixir of
+Inheritance," and even accused him of poisoning Jeanne d'Albret,
+mother of Henri of Navarre, who was buried (in spite of Charles IX.'s
+positive order) without her head being opened. For the last two months
+the king had sought some way of sending a spy into Rene's laboratory,
+where, as he was well aware, Cosmo Ruggiero spent much time. The king
+intended, if anything suspicious were discovered, to proceed in the
+matter alone, without the assistance of the police or law, with whom,
+as he well knew, his mother would counteract him by means of either
+corruption or fear.
+
+It is certain that during the sixteenth century, and the years that
+preceded and followed it, poisoning was brought to a perfection
+unknown to modern chemistry, as history itself will prove. Italy, the
+cradle of modern science, was, at this period, the inventor and
+mistress of these secrets, many of which are now lost. Hence the
+reputation for that crime which weighed for the two following
+centuries on Italy. Romance-writers have so greatly abused it that
+wherever they have introduced Italians into their tales they have
+almost always made them play the part of assassins and poisoners.[*]
+If Italy then had the traffic in subtle poisons which some historians
+attribute to her, we should remember her supremacy in the art of
+toxicology, as we do her pre-eminence in all other human knowledge and
+art in which she took the lead in Europe. The crimes of that period
+were not her crimes specially. She served the passions of the age,
+just as she built magnificent edifices, commanded armies, painted
+noble frescos, sang romances, loved queens, delighted kings, devised
+ballets and fetes, and ruled all policies. The horrible art of
+poisoning reached to such a pitch in Florence that a woman, dividing a
+peach with a duke, using a golden fruit-knife with one side of its
+blade poisoned, ate one half of the peach herself and killed the duke
+with the other half. A pair of perfumed gloves were known to have
+infiltrated mortal illness through the pores of the skin. Poison was
+instilled into bunches of natural roses, and the fragrance, when
+inhaled, gave death. Don John of Austria was poisoned, it was said, by
+a pair of boots.
+
+[*] Written sixty-six years ago.--Tr.
+
+Charles IX. had good reason to be curious in the matter; we know
+already the dark suspicions and beliefs which now prompted him to
+surprise the perfumer Rene at his work.
+
+The old fountain at the corner of the rue de l'Arbre-See, which has
+since been rebuilt, offered every facility for the royal vagabonds to
+climb upon the roof of a house not far from that of Rene, which the
+king wished to visit. Charles, followed by his companions, began to
+ramble over the roofs, to the great terror of the burghers awakened by
+the tramp of these false thieves, who called to them in saucy
+language, listened to their talk, and even pretended to force an
+entrance. When the Italians saw the king and Tavannes threading their
+way among the roofs of the house next to that of Rene, Albert de Gondi
+sat down, declaring that he was tired, and his brother followed his
+example.
+
+"So much the better," thought the king, glad to leave his spies behind
+him.
+
+Tavannes began to laugh at the two Florentines, left sitting alone in
+the midst of deep silence, in a place where they had nought but the
+skies above them, and the cats for auditors. But the brothers made use
+of their position to exchange thoughts they would not dare to utter on
+any other spot in the world,--thoughts inspired by the events of the
+evening.
+
+"Albert," said the Grand-master to the marechal, "the king will get
+the better of the queen-mother; we are doing a foolish thing for our
+own interests to stay by those of Catherine. If we go over to the king
+now, when he is searching everywhere for support against her and for
+able men to serve him, we shall not be driven away like wild beasts
+when the queen-mother is banished, imprisoned, or killed."
+
+"You wouldn't get far with such ideas, Charles," replied the marechal,
+gravely. "You'd follow the king into the grave, and he won't live
+long; he is ruined by excesses. Cosmo Ruggiero predicts his death
+within a year."
+
+"The dying boar has often killed the huntsman," said Charles de Gondi.
+"This conspiracy of the Duc d'Alencon, the king of Navarre, and the
+Prince de Conde, with whom La Mole and Coconnas are negotiating, is
+more dangerous than useful. In the first place, the king of Navarre,
+whom the queen-mother hoped to catch in the very act, distrusts her,
+and declines to run his head into the noose. He means to profit by the
+conspiracy without taking any of its risks. Besides, the notion now is
+to put the crown on the head of the Duc d'Alencon, who has turned
+Calvinist."
+
+"/Budelone/! but don't you see that this conspiracy enables the queen-
+mother to find out what the Huguenots can do with the Duc d'Alencon,
+and what the king can do with the Huguenots?--for the king is even now
+negotiating with them; but he'll be finely pilloried to-morrow, when
+Catherine reveals to him the counter-conspiracy which will neutralize
+all his projects."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Charles de Gondi, "by dint of profiting by our advice
+she's clever and stronger than we! Well, that's all right."
+
+"All right for the Duc d'Anjou, who prefers to be king of France
+rather than king of Poland; I am going now to explain the matter to
+him."
+
+"When do you start, Albert?"
+
+"To-morrow. I am ordered to accompany the king of Poland; and I expect
+to join him in Venice, where the patricians have taken upon themselves
+to amuse and delay him."
+
+"You are prudence itself!"
+
+"/Che bestia/! I swear to you there is not the slightest danger for
+either of us in remaining at court. If there were, do you think I
+would go away? I should stay by the side of our kind mistress."
+
+"Kind!" exclaimed the Grand-master; "she is a woman to drop all her
+instruments the moment she finds them heavy."
+
+"/O coglione/! you pretend to be a soldier, and you fear death! Every
+business has its duties, and we have ours in making our fortune. By
+attaching ourselves to kings, the source of all temporal power which
+protects, elevates, and enriches families, we are forced to give them
+as devoted a love as that which burns in the hearts of martyrs toward
+heaven. We must suffer in their cause; when they sacrifice us to the
+interests of their throne we may perish, for we die as much for
+ourselves as for them, but our name and our families perish not.
+/Ecco/!"
+
+"You are right as to yourself, Albert; for they have given you the
+ancient title and duchy of de Retz."
+
+"Now listen to me," replied his brother. "The queen hopes much from
+the cleverness of the Ruggieri; she expects them to bring the king
+once more under her control. When Charles refused to use Rene's
+perfumes any longer the wary woman knew at once on whom his suspicions
+really rested. But who can tell the schemes that are in his mind?
+Perhaps he is only hesitating as to what fate he shall give his
+mother; he hates her, you know. He said a few words about it to his
+wife; she repeated them to Madame de Fiesque, and Madame de Fiesque
+told the queen-mother. Since then the king has kept away from his
+wife."
+
+"The time has come," said Charles de Gondi.
+
+"To do what?" asked the marechal.
+
+"To lay hold of the king's mind," replied the Grand-master, who, if he
+was not so much in the queen's confidence as his brother, was by no
+means less clear-sighted.
+
+"Charles, I have opened a great career to you," said his brother
+gravely. "If you wish to be a duke also, be, as I am, the accomplice
+and cat's-paw of our mistress; she is the strongest here, and she will
+continue in power. Madame de Sauves is on her side, and the king of
+Navarre and the Duc d'Alencon are still for Madame de Sauves.
+Catherine holds the pair in a leash under Charles IX., and she will
+hold them in future under Henri III. God grant that Henri may not
+prove ungrateful."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"His mother is doing too much for him."
+
+"Hush! what noise is that I hear in the rue Saint-Honore?" cried the
+Grand-master. "Listen! there is some one at Rene's door! Don't you
+hear the footsteps of many men. Can they have arrested the Ruggieri?"
+
+"Ah, /diavolo/! this is prudence indeed. The king has not shown his
+usual impetuosity. But where will they imprison them? Let us go down
+into the street and see."
+
+The two brothers reached the corner of the rue de l'Autruche just as
+the king was entering the house of his mistress, Marie Touchet. By the
+light of the torches which the concierge carried, they distinguished
+Tavannes and the two Ruggieri.
+
+"Hey, Tavannes!" cried the grand-master, running after the king's
+companion, who had turned and was making his way back to the Louvre,
+"What happened to you?"
+
+"We fell into a nest of sorcerers and arrested two, compatriots of
+yours, who may perhaps be able to explain to the minds of French
+gentlemen how you, who are not Frenchmen, have managed to lay hands on
+two of the chief offices of the Crown," replied Tavannes, half
+jesting, half in earnest.
+
+"But the king?" inquired the Grand-master, who cared little for
+Tavanne's enmity.
+
+"He stays with his mistress."
+
+"We reached our present distinction through an absolute devotion to
+our masters,--a noble course, my dear Tavannes, which I see that you
+also have adopted," replied Albert de Gondi.
+
+The three courtiers walked on in silence. At the moment when they
+parted, on meeting their servants who then escorted them, two men
+glided swiftly along the walls of the rue de l'Autruche. These men
+were the king and the Comte de Solern, who soon reached the banks of
+the Seine, at a point where a boat and two rowers, carefully selected
+by de Solern, awaited them. In a very few moments they reached the
+other shore.
+
+"My mother has not gone to bed," cried the king. "She will see us; we
+chose a bad place for the interview."
+
+"She will think it a duel," replied Solern; "and she cannot possibly
+distinguish who we are at this distance."
+
+"Well, let her see me!" exclaimed Charles IX. "I am resolved now!"
+
+The king and his confidant sprang ashore and walked quickly in the
+direction of the Pre-aux-Clercs. When they reached it the Comte de
+Solern, preceding the king, met a man who was evidently on the watch,
+and with whom he exchanged a few words; the man then retired to a
+distance. Presently two other men, who seemed to be princes by the
+marks of respect which the first man paid to them, left the place
+where they were evidently hiding behind the broken fence of a field,
+and approached the king, to whom they bent the knee. But Charles IX.
+raised them before they touched the ground, saying:--
+
+"No ceremony, we are all gentlemen here."
+
+A venerable old man, who might have been taken for the Chancelier de
+l'Hopital, had the latter not died in the preceding year, now joined
+the three gentlemen, all four walking rapidly so as to reach a spot
+where their conference could not be overheard by their attendants. The
+Comte de Solern followed at a slight distance to keep watch over the
+king. That faithful servant was filled with a distrust not shared by
+Charles IX., a man to whom life was now a burden. He was the only
+person on the king's side who witnessed this mysterious conference,
+which presently became animated.
+
+"Sire," said one of the new-comers, "the Connetable de Montmorency,
+the closest friend of the king your father, agreed with the Marechal
+de Saint-Andre in declaring that Madame Catherine ought to be sewn up
+in a sack and flung into the river. If that had been done then, many
+worthy persons would still be alive."
+
+"I have enough executions on my conscience, monsieur," replied the
+king.
+
+"But, sire," said the youngest of the four personages, "if you merely
+banish her, from the depths of her exile Queen Catherine will continue
+to stir up strife, and to find auxiliaries. We have everything to fear
+from the Guises, who, for the last nine years, have schemed for a vast
+Catholic alliance, in the secret of which your Majesty is not
+included; and it threatens your throne. This alliance was invented by
+Spain, which will never renounce its project of destroying the
+boundary of the Pyrenees. Sire, Calvinism will save France by setting
+up a moral barrier between her and a nation which covets the empire of
+the world. If the queen-mother is exiled, she will turn for help to
+Spain and to the Guises."
+
+"Gentlemen," said the king, "know this, if by your help peace without
+distrust is once established, I will take upon myself the duty of
+making all subjects tremble. /Tete-Dieu/! it is time indeed for
+royalty to assert itself. My mother is right in that, at any rate. You
+ought to know that it is to your interest was well as mine, for your
+hands, your fortunes depend upon our throne. If religion is
+overthrown, the hands you allow to do it will be laid next upon the
+throne and then upon you. I no longer care to fight ideas with weapons
+that cannot touch them. Let us see now if Protestantism will make
+progress when left to itself; above all, I would like to see with whom
+and what the spirit of that faction will wrestle. The admiral, God
+rest his soul! was not my enemy; he swore to me to restrain the revolt
+within spiritual limits, and to leave the ruling of the kingdom to the
+monarch, his master, with submissive subjects. Gentlemen, if the
+matter be still within your power, set that example now; help your
+sovereign to put down a spirit of rebellion which takes tranquillity
+from each and all of us. War is depriving us of revenue; it is ruining
+the kingdom. I am weary of these constant troubles; so weary, that if
+it is absolutely necessary I will sacrifice my mother. Nay, I will go
+farther; I will keep an equal number of Protestants and Catholics
+about me, and I will hold the axe of Louis XI. above their heads to
+force them to be on good terms. If the Messieurs de Guise plot a Holy
+Alliance to attack our crown, the executioner shall begin with their
+heads. I see the miseries of my people, and I will make short work of
+the great lords who care little for consciences,--let them hold what
+opinions they like; what I want in future is submissive subjects, who
+will work, according to my will, for the prosperity of the State.
+Gentlemen, I give you ten days to negotiate with your friends, to
+break off your plots, and to return to me who will be your father. if
+you refuse you will see great changes. I shall use the mass of the
+people, who will rise at my voice against the lords. I will make
+myself a king who pacificates his kingdom by striking down those who
+are more powerful even than you, and who dare defy him. If the troops
+fail me, I have my brother of Spain, on whom I shall call to defend
+our menaced thrones, and if I lack a minister to carry out my will, he
+can lend me the Duke of Alba."
+
+"But in that case, sire, we should have Germans to oppose to your
+Spaniards," said one of his hearers.
+
+"Cousin," replied Charles IX., coldly, "my wife's name is Elizabeth of
+Austria; support might fail you on the German side. But, for Heaven's
+sake, let us fight, if fight we must, alone, without the help of
+foreigners. You are the object of my mother's hatred, and you stand
+near enough to me to be my second in the duel I am about to fight with
+her; well then, listen to what I now say. You seem to me so worthy of
+confidence that I offer you the post of /connetable/; /you/ will not
+betray me like the other."
+
+The prince to whom Charles IX. had addressed himself, struck his hand
+into that of the king, exclaiming:
+
+"/Ventre-saint-gris/! brother; this is enough to make me forget many
+wrongs. But, sire, the head cannot march without the tail, and ours is
+a long tail to drag. Give me more than ten days; we want at least a
+month to make our friends hear reason. At the end of that time we
+shall be masters."
+
+"A month, so be it! My only negotiator will be Villeroy; trust no one
+else, no matter what is said to you."
+
+"One month," echoed the other seigneurs, "that is sufficient."
+
+"Gentlemen, we are five," said the king,--"five men of honor. If any
+betrayal takes place, we shall know on whom to avenge it."
+
+The three strangers kissed the hand of Charles IX. and took leave of
+him with every mark of the utmost respect. As the king recrossed the
+Seine, four o'clock was ringing from the clock-tower of the Louvre.
+Lights were on in the queen-mother's room; she had not yet gone to
+bed.
+
+"My mother is still on the watch," said Charles to the Comte de
+Solern.
+
+"She has her forge as you have yours," remarked the German.
+
+"Dear count, what do you think of a king who is reduced to become a
+conspirator?" said Charles IX., bitterly, after a pause.
+
+"I think, sire, that if you would allow me to fling that woman into
+the river, as your young cousin said, France would soon be at peace."
+
+"What! a parricide in addition to the Saint-Bartholomew, count?" cried
+the king. "No, no! I will exile her. Once fallen, my mother will no
+longer have either servants or partisans."
+
+"Well, then, sire," replied the Comte de Solern, "give me the order to
+arrest her at once and take her out of the kingdom; for to-morrow she
+will have forced you to change your mind."
+
+"Come to my forge," said the king, "no one can overhear us there;
+besides, I don't want my mother to suspect the capture of the
+Ruggieri. If she knows I am in my work-shop she'll suppose nothing,
+and we can consult about the proper measures for her arrest."
+
+As the king entered a lower room of the palace, which he used for a
+workshop, he called his companion's attention to the forge and his
+implements with a laugh.
+
+"I don't believe," he said, "among all the kings that France will ever
+have, there'll be another to take pleasure in such work as that. But
+when I am really king, I'll forge no swords; they shall all go back
+into their scabbards."
+
+"Sire," said the Comte de Solern, "the fatigues of tennis and hunting,
+your toil at this forge, and--if I may say it--love, are chariots
+which the devil is offering you to get the faster to Saint-Denis."
+
+"Solern," said the king, in a piteous tone, "if you knew the fire they
+have put into my soul and body! nothing can quench it. Are you sure of
+the men who are guarding the Ruggieri?"
+
+"As sure as of myself."
+
+"Very good; then, during this coming day I shall take my own course.
+Think of the proper means of making the arrest, and I will give you my
+final orders by five o'clock at Madame de Belleville's."
+
+As the first rays of dawn were struggling with the lights of the
+workshop, Charles IX., left alone by the departure of the Comte de
+Solern, heard the door of the apartment turn on its hinges, and saw
+his mother standing within it in the dim light like a phantom. Though
+very nervous and impressible, the king did not quiver, albeit, under
+the circumstances in which he then stood, this apparition had a
+certain air of mystery and horror.
+
+"Monsieur," she said, "you are killing yourself."
+
+"I am fulfilling my horoscope," he replied with a bitter smile. "But
+you, madame, you appear to be as early as I."
+
+"We have both been up all night, monsieur; but with very different
+intentions. While you have been conferring with your worst enemies in
+the open fields, concealing your acts from your mother, assisted by
+Tavannes and the Gondis, with whom you have been scouring the town, I
+have been reading despatches which contained the proofs of a terrible
+conspiracy in which your brother, the Duc d'Alencon, your brother-in-
+law, the king of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, and half the nobles of
+your kingdom are taking part. Their purpose is nothing less than to
+take the crown from your head and seize your person. Those gentlemen
+have already fifty thousand good troops behind them."
+
+"Bah!" exclaimed the king, incredulously.
+
+"Your brother has turned Huguenot," she continued.
+
+"My brother! gone over to the Huguenots!" cried Charles, brandishing
+the piece of iron which he held in his hand.
+
+"Yes; the Duc d'Alencon, Huguenot at heart, will soon be one before
+the eyes of the world. Your sister, the queen of Navarre, has almost
+ceased to love you; she cares more for the Duc d'Alencon; she cares of
+Bussy; and she loves that little La Mole."
+
+"What a heart!" exclaimed the king.
+
+"That little La Mole," went on the queen, "wishes to make himself a
+great man by giving France a king of his own stripe. He is promised,
+they say, the place of connetable."
+
+"Curse that Margot!" cried the king. "This is what comes of her
+marriage with a heretic."
+
+"Heretic or not is of no consequence; the trouble is that, in spite of
+my advice, you have brought the head of the younger branch too near
+the throne by that marriage, and Henri's purpose is now to embroil you
+with the rest and make you kill one another. The house of Bourbon is
+the enemy of the house of Valois; remember that, monsieur. All younger
+branches should be kept in a state of poverty, for they are born
+conspirators. It is sheer folly to give them arms when they have none,
+or to leave them in possession of arms when they seize them. Let every
+younger son be made incapable of doing harm; that is the law of
+Crowns; the Sultans of Asia follow it. The proofs of this conspiracy
+are in my room upstairs, where I asked you to follow me last evening,
+when you bade me good-night; but instead of doing so, it seems you had
+other plans. I therefore waited for you. If we do not take the proper
+measures immediately you will meet the fate of Charles the Simple
+within a month."
+
+"A month!" exclaimed the king, thunderstruck at the coincidence of
+that period with the delay asked for by the princes themselves. "'In a
+month we shall be masters,'" he added to himself, quoting their words.
+"Madame," he said aloud, "what are your proofs?"
+
+"They are unanswerable, monsieur; they come from my daughter
+Marguerite. Alarmed herself at the possibilities of such a
+combination, her love for the throne of the Valois has proved
+stronger, this time, than all her other loves. She asks, as the price
+of her revelations that nothing shall be done to La Mole; but the
+scoundrel seems to me a dangerous villain whom we had better be rid
+of, as well as the Comte de Coconnas, your brother d'Alencon's right
+hand. As for the Prince de Conde, he consents to everything, provided
+I am thrown into the sea; perhaps that is the wedding present he gives
+me in return for the pretty wife I gave him! All this is a serious
+matter, monsieur. You talk of horoscopes! I know of the prediction
+which gives the throne of the Valois to the Bourbons, and if we do not
+take care it will be fulfilled. Do not be angry with your sister; she
+has behaved well in this affair. My son," continued the queen, after a
+pause, giving a tone of tenderness to her words, "evil persons on the
+side of the Guises are trying to sow dissensions between you and me;
+and yet we are the only ones in the kingdom whose interests are
+absolutely identical. You blame me, I know, for the Saint-Bartholomew;
+you accuse me of having forced you into it. Catholicism, monsieur,
+must be the bond between France, Spain, and Italy, three countries
+which can, by skilful management, secretly planned, be united in
+course of time, under the house of Valois. Do not deprive yourself of
+such chances by loosing the cord which binds the three kingdoms in the
+bonds of a common faith. Why should not the Valois and the Medici
+carry out for their own glory the scheme of Charles the Fifth, whose
+head failed him? Let us fling off that race of Jeanne la Folle. The
+Medici, masters of Florence and of Rome, will force Italy to support
+your interests; they will guarantee you advantages by treaties of
+commerce and alliance which shall recognize your fiefs in Piedmont,
+the Milanais, and Naples, where you have rights. These, monsieur, are
+the reasons of the war to the death which we make against the
+Huguenots. Why do you force me to repeat these things? Charlemagne was
+wrong in advancing toward the north. France is a body whose heart is
+on the Gulf of Lyons, and its two arms over Spain and Italy.
+Therefore, she must rule the Mediterranean, that basket into which are
+poured all the riches of the Orient, now turned to the profit of those
+seigneurs of Venice, in the very teeth of Philip II. If the friendship
+of the Medici and your rights justify you in hoping for Italy, force,
+alliances, or a possible inheritance may give you Spain. Warn the
+house of Austria as to this,--that ambitious house to which the
+Guelphs sold Italy, and which is even now hankering after Spain.
+Though your wife is of that house, humble it! Clasp it so closely that
+you will smother it! /There/ are the enemies of your kingdom; thence
+comes help to the Reformers. Do not listen to those who find their
+profit in causing us to disagree, and who torment your life by making
+you believe I am your secret enemy. Have /I/ prevented you from having
+heirs? Why has your mistress given you a son, and your wife a
+daughter? Why have you not to-day three legitimate heirs to root out
+the hopes of these seditious persons? Is it I, monsieur, who am
+responsible for such failures? If you had an heir, would the Duc
+d'Alencon be now conspiring?"
+
+As she ended these words, Catherine fixed upon her son the magnetic
+glance of a bird of prey upon its victim. The daughter of the Medici
+became magnificent; her real self shone upon her face, which, like
+that of a gambler over the green table, glittered with vast
+cupidities. Charles IX. saw no longer the mother of one man, but (as
+was said of her) the mother of armies and of empires,--/mater
+castrorum/. Catherine had now spread wide the wings of her genius, and
+boldly flown to the heights of the Medici and Valois policy, tracing
+once more the mighty plans which terrified in earlier days her husband
+Henri II., and which, transmitted by the genius of the Medici to
+Richelieu, remain in writing among the papers of the house of Bourbon.
+But Charles IX., hearing the unusual persuasions his mother was using,
+thought that there must be some necessity for them, and he began to
+ask himself what could be her motive. He dropped his eyes; he
+hesitated; his distrust was not lessened by her studied phrases.
+Catherine was amazed at the depths of suspicion she now beheld in her
+son's heart.
+
+"Well, monsieur," she said, "do you not understand me? What are we,
+you and I, in comparison with the eternity of royal crowns? Do you
+suppose me to have other designs than those that ought to actuate all
+royal persons who inhabit the sphere where empires are ruled?"
+
+"Madame, I will follow you to your cabinet; we must act--"
+
+"Act!" cried Catherine; "let our enemies alone; let /them/ act; take
+them red-handed, and law and justice will deliver you from their
+assaults. For God's sake, monsieur, show them good-will."
+
+The queen withdrew; the king remained alone for a few moments, for he
+was utterly overwhelmed.
+
+"On which side is the trap?" thought he. "Which of the two--she or
+they--deceive me? What is my best policy? /Deus, discerne causam
+meam/!" he muttered with tears in his eyes. "Life is a burden to me! I
+prefer death, natural or violent, to these perpetual torments!" he
+cried presently, bringing down his hammer upon the anvil with such
+force that the vaults of the palace trembled.
+
+"My God!" he said, as he went outside and looked up at the sky, "thou
+for whose holy religion I struggle, give me the light of thy
+countenance that I may penetrate the secrets of my mother's heart
+while I question the Ruggieri."
+
+
+
+III
+
+MARIE TOUCHET
+
+The little house of Madame de Belleville, where Charles IX. had
+deposited his prisoners, was the last but one in the rue de l'Autruche
+on the side of the rue Saint-Honore. The street gate, flanked by two
+little brick pavilions, seemed very simple in those days, when gates
+and their accessories were so elaborately treated. It had two
+pilasters of stone cut in facets, and the coping represented a
+reclining woman holding a cornucopia. The gate itself, closed by
+enormous locks, had a wicket through which to examine those who asked
+admittance. In each pavilion lived a porter; for the king's extremely
+capricious pleasure required a porter by day and by night. The house
+had a little courtyard, paved like those of Venice. At this period,
+before carriages were invented, ladies went about on horseback, or in
+litters, so that courtyards could be made magnificent without fear of
+injury from horses or carriages. This fact is always to be remembered
+as an explanation of the narrowness of streets, the small size of
+courtyards, and certain other details of the private dwellings of the
+fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
+
+The house, of one story only above the ground-floor, was capped by a
+sculptured frieze, above which rose a roof with four sides, the peak
+being flattened to form a platform. Dormer windows were cut in this
+roof, with casings and pediments which the chisel of some great artist
+had covered with arabesques and dentils; each of the three windows on
+the main floor were equally beautiful in stone embroidery, which the
+brick of the walls showed off to great advantage. On the ground-floor,
+a double portico, very delicately decorated, led to the entrance door,
+which was covered with bosses cut with facets in the Venetian manner,
+--a style of decoration which was further carried on round the windows
+placed to right and left of the door.
+
+A garden, carefully laid out in the fashion of the times and filled
+with choice flowers, occupied a space behind the house equal to that
+of the courtyard in front. A grape-vine draped its walls. In the
+centre of a grass plot rose a silver fir-tree. The flower-borders were
+separated from the grass by meandering paths which led to an arbor of
+clipped yews at the farther end of the little garden. The walls were
+covered with a mosaic of variously colored pebbles, coarse in design,
+it is true, but pleasing to the eye from the harmony of its tints with
+those of the flower-beds. The house had a carved balcony on the garden
+side, above the door, and also on the front toward the courtyard, and
+around the middle windows. On both sides of the house the
+ornamentation of the principal window, which projected some feet from
+the wall, rose to the frieze; so that it formed a little pavilion,
+hung there like a lantern. The casings of the other windows were
+inlaid on the stone with precious marbles.
+
+In spite of the exquisite taste displayed in the little house, there
+was an air of melancholy about it. It was darkened by the buildings
+that surrounded it and by the roofs of the hotel d'Alencon which threw
+a heavy shadow over both court and garden; moreover, a deep silence
+reigned there. But this silence, these half-lights, this solitude,
+soothed a royal soul, which could there surrender itself to a single
+emotion, as in a cloister where men pray, or in some sheltered home
+wherein they love.
+
+It is easy now to imagine the interior charm and choiceness of this
+haven, the sole spot in his kingdom where this dying Valois could pour
+out his soul, reveal his sufferings, exercise his taste for art, and
+give himself up to the poesy he loved,--pleasures denied him by the
+cares of a cruel royalty. Here, alone, were his great soul and his
+high intrinsic worth appreciated; here he could give himself up, for a
+few brief months, the last of his life, to the joys of fatherhood,--
+pleasures into which he flung himself with the frenzy that a sense of
+his coming and dreadful death impressed on all his actions.
+
+In the afternoon of the day succeeding the night-scene we have just
+described, Marie Touchet was finishing her toilet in the oratory,
+which was the boudoir of those days. She was arranging the long curls
+of her beautiful black hair, blending them with the velvet of a new
+coif, and gazing intently into her mirror.
+
+"It is nearly four o'clock; that interminable council must surely be
+over," she thought to herself. "Jacob has returned from the Louvre; he
+says that everybody he saw was excited about the number of the
+councillors summoned and the length of the session. What can have
+happened? Is it some misfortune? Good God! surely /he/ knows how
+suspense wears out the soul! Perhaps he has gone a-hunting? If he is
+happy and amused, it is all right. When I see him gay, I forget all I
+have suffered."
+
+She drew her hands round her slender waist as if to smooth some
+trifling wrinkle in her gown, turning sideways to see if its folds
+fell properly, and as she did so, she caught sight of the king on the
+couch behind her. The carpet had so muffled the sound of his steps
+that he had slipped in softly without being heard.
+
+"You frightened me!" she said, with a cry of surprise, which was
+quickly repressed.
+
+"Were you thinking of me?" said the king.
+
+"When do I not think of you?" she answered, sitting down beside him.
+
+She took off his cap and cloak, passing her hands through his hair as
+though she combed it with her fingers. Charles let her do as she
+pleased, but made no answer. Surprised at this, Marie knelt down to
+study the pale face of her royal master, and then saw the signs of a
+dreadful weariness and a more consummate melancholy than any she had
+yet consoled. She repressed her tears and kept silence, that she might
+not irritate by mistaken words the sorrow which, as yet, she did not
+understand. In this she did as tender women do under like
+circumstances. She kissed that forehead, seamed with untimely
+wrinkles, and those livid cheeks, trying to convey to the worn-out
+soul the freshness of hers,--pouring her spirit into the sweet
+caresses which met with no response. Presently she raised her head to
+the level of the king's, clasping him softly in her arms; then she lay
+still, her face hidden on that suffering breast, watching for the
+opportune moment to question his dejected mind.
+
+"My Charlot," she said at last, "will you not tell your poor,
+distressed Marie the troubles that cloud that precious brow, and
+whiten those beautiful red lips?"
+
+"Except Charlemagne," he said in a hollow voice, "all the kings of
+France named Charles have ended miserably."
+
+"Pooh!" she said, "look at Charles VIII."
+
+"That poor prince!" exclaimed the king. "In the flower of his age he
+struck his head against a low door at the chateau of Amboise, which he
+was having decorated, and died in horrible agony. It was his death
+which gave the crown to our family."
+
+"Charles VII. reconquered his kingdom."
+
+"Darling, he died" (the king lowered his voice) "of hunger; for he
+feared being poisoned by the dauphin, who had already caused the death
+of his beautiful Agnes. The father feared his son; to-day the son
+dreads his mother!"
+
+"Why drag up the past?" she said hastily, remembering the dreadful
+life of Charles VI.
+
+"Ah! sweetest, kings have no need to go to sorcerers to discover their
+coming fate; they need only turn to history. I am at this moment
+endeavoring to escape the fate of Charles the Simple, who was robbed
+of his crown, and died in prison after seven years' captivity."
+
+"Charles V. conquered the English," she cried triumphantly.
+
+"No, not he, but du Guesclin. He himself, poisoned by Charles de
+Navarre, dragged out a wretched existence."
+
+"Well, Charles IV., then?"
+
+"He married three times to obtain an heir, in spite of the masculine
+beauty of the children of Philippe le Bel. The first house of Valois
+ended with him, and the second is about to end in the same way. The
+queen has given me only a daughter, and I shall die without leaving
+her pregnant; for a long minority would be the greatest curse I could
+bequeath to the kingdom. Besides, if I had a son, would he live? The
+name of Charles is fatal; Charlemagne exhausted the luck of it. If I
+left a son I would tremble at the thought that he would be Charles X."
+
+"Who is it that wants to seize your crown?"
+
+"My brother d'Alencon conspires against it. Enemies are all about me."
+
+"Monsieur," said Marie, with a charming little pout, "do tell me
+something gayer."
+
+"Ah! my little jewel, my treasure, don't call me 'monsieur,' even in
+jest; you remind me of my mother, who stabs me incessantly with that
+title, by which she seems to snatch away my crown. She says 'my son'
+to the Duc d'Anjou--I mean the king of Poland."
+
+"Sire," exclaimed Marie, clasping her hands as though she were
+praying, "there is a kingdom where you are worshipped. Your Majesty
+fills it with his glory, his power; and there the word 'monsieur,'
+means 'my beloved lord.'"
+
+She unclasped her hands, and with a pretty gesture pointed to her
+heart. The words were so /musiques/ (to use a word of the times which
+depicted the melodies of love) that Charles IX. caught her round the
+waist with the nervous force that characterized him, and seated her on
+his knee, rubbing his forehead gently against the pretty curls so
+coquettishly arranged. Marie thought the moment favorable; she
+ventured a few kisses, which Charles allowed rather than accepted,
+then she said softly:--
+
+"If my servants were not mistaken you were out all night in the
+streets, as in the days when you played the pranks of a younger son."
+
+"Yes," replied the king, still lost in his own thoughts.
+
+"Did you fight the watchman and frighten some of the burghers? Who are
+the men you brought here and locked up? They must be very criminal, as
+you won't allow any communication with them. No girl was ever locked
+in as carefully, and they have not had a mouthful to eat since they
+came. The Germans whom Solern left to guard them won't let any one go
+near the room. Is it a joke you are playing; or is it something
+serious?"
+
+"Yes, you are right," said the king, coming out of his reverie, "last
+night I did scour the roofs with Tavannes and the Gondis. I wanted to
+try my old follies with the old companions; but my legs were not what
+they once were; I did not dare leap the streets; though we did jump
+two alleys from one roof to the next. At the second, however, Tavannes
+and I, holding on to a chimney, agreed that we couldn't do it again.
+If either of us had been alone we couldn't have done it then."
+
+"I'll wager that you sprang first." The king smiled. "I know why you
+risk your life in that way."
+
+"And why, you little witch?"
+
+"You are tired of life."
+
+"Ah, sorceress! But I am being hunted down by sorcery," said the king,
+resuming his anxious look.
+
+"My sorcery is love," she replied, smiling. "Since the happy day when
+you first loved me, have I not always divined your thoughts? And--if
+you will let me speak the truth--the thoughts which torture you to-day
+are not worthy of a king."
+
+"Am I a king?" he said bitterly.
+
+"Cannot you be one? What did Charles VII. do? He listened to his
+mistress, monseigneur, and he reconquered his kingdom, invaded by the
+English as yours is now by the enemies of our religion. Your last
+/coup d'Etat/ showed you the course you have to follow. Exterminate
+heresy."
+
+"You blamed the Saint-Bartholomew," said Charles, "and now you--"
+
+"That is over," she said; "besides, I agree with Madame Catherine that
+it was better to do it yourselves than let the Guises do it."
+
+"Charles VII. had only men to fight; I am face to face with ideas,"
+resumed the king. "We can kill men, but we can't kill words! The
+Emperor Charles V. gave up the attempt; his son Philip has spent his
+strength upon it; we shall all perish, we kings, in that struggle. On
+whom can I rely? To right, among the Catholics, I find the Guises, who
+are my enemies; to left, the Calvinists, who will never forgive me the
+death of my poor old Coligny, nor that bloody day in August; besides,
+they want to suppress the throne; and in front of me what have I?--my
+mother!"
+
+"Arrest her; reign alone," said Marie in a low voice, whispering in
+his ear.
+
+"I meant to do so yesterday; to-day I no longer intend it. You speak
+of it rather coolly."
+
+"Between the daughter of an apothecary and that of a doctor there is
+no great difference," replied Touchet, always ready to laugh at the
+false origin attributed to her.
+
+The king frowned.
+
+"Marie, don't take such liberties. Catherine de' Medici is my mother,
+and you ought to tremble lest--"
+
+"What is it you fear?"
+
+"Poison!" cried the king, beside himself.
+
+"Poor child!" cried Marie, restraining her tears; for the sight of
+such strength united to such weakness touched her deeply. "Ah!" she
+continued, "you make me hate Madame Catherine, who has been so good to
+me; her kindness now seems perfidy. Why is she so kind to me, and bad
+to you? During my stay in Dauphine I heard many things about the
+beginning of your reign which you concealed from me; it seems to me
+that the queen, your mother, is the real cause of all your troubles."
+
+"In what way?" cried the king, deeply interested.
+
+"Women whose souls and whose intentions are pure use virtue wherewith
+to rule the men they love; but women who do not seek good rule men
+through their evil instincts. Now, the queen made vices out of certain
+of your noblest qualities, and she taught you to believe that your
+worst inclinations were virtues. Was that the part of a mother? Be a
+tyrant like Louis XI.; inspire terror; imitate Philip II.; banish the
+Italians; drive out the Guises; confiscate the lands of the
+Calvinists. Out of this solitude you will rise a king; you will save
+the throne. The moment is propitious; your brother is in Poland."
+
+"We are two children at statecraft," said Charles, bitterly; "we know
+nothing except how to love. Alas! my treasure, yesterday I, too,
+thought all these things; I dreamed of accomplishing great deeds--bah!
+my mother blew down my house of cards! From a distance we see great
+questions outlined like the summits of mountains, and it is easy to
+say: 'I'll make an end of Calvinism; I'll bring those Guises to task;
+I'll separate from the Court of Rome; I'll rely upon my people, upon
+the burghers--' ah! yes, from afar it all seems simple enough! but try
+to climb those mountains and the higher you go the more the
+difficulties appear. Calvinism, in itself, is the last thing the
+leaders of that party care for; and the Guises, those rabid Catholics,
+would be sorry indeed to see the Calvinists put down. Each side
+considers its own interests exclusively, and religious opinions are
+but a cloak for insatiable ambition. The party of Charles IX. is the
+feeblest of all. That of the king of Navarre, that of the king of
+Poland, that of the Duc d'Alencon, that of the Condes, that of the
+Guises, that of my mother, are all intriguing one against another, but
+they take no account of me, not even in my own council. My mother, in
+the midst of so many contending elements, is, nevertheless, the
+strongest among them; she has just proved to me the inanity of my
+plans. We are surrounded by rebellious subjects who defy the law. The
+axe of Louis XI. of which you speak, is lacking to us. Parliament
+would not condemn the Guises, nor the king of Navarre, nor the Condes,
+nor my brother. No! the courage to assassinate is needed; the throne
+will be forced to strike down those insolent men who suppress both law
+and justice; but where can we find the faithful arm? The council I
+held this morning has disgusted me with everything; treason
+everywhere; contending interests all about me. I am tired with the
+burden of my crown. I only want to die in peace."
+
+He dropped into a sort of gloomy somnolence.
+
+"Disgusted with everything!" repeated Marie Touchet, sadly; but she
+did not disturb the black torpor of her lover.
+
+Charles was the victim of a complete prostration of mind and body,
+produced by three things,--the exhaustion of all his faculties,
+aggravated by the disheartenment of realizing the extent of an evil;
+the recognized impossibility of surmounting his weakness; and the
+aspect of difficulties so great that genius itself would dread them.
+The king's depression was in proportion to the courage and the
+loftiness of ideas to which he had risen during the last few months.
+In addition to this, an attack of nervous melancholy, caused by his
+malady, had seized him as he left the protracted council which had
+taken place in his private cabinet. Marie saw that he was in one of
+those crises when the least word, even of love, would be importunate
+and painful; so she remained kneeling quietly beside him, her head on
+his knee, the king's hand buried in her hair, and he himself
+motionless, without a word, without a sigh, as still as Marie herself,
+--Charles IX. in the lethargy of impotence, Marie in the stupor of
+despair which comes to a loving woman when she perceives the
+boundaries at which love ends.
+
+The lovers thus remained, in the deepest silence, during one of those
+terrible hours when all reflection wounds, when the clouds of an
+inward tempest veil even the memory of happiness. Marie believed that
+she herself was partly the cause of this frightful dejection. She
+asked herself, not without horror, if the excessive joys and the
+violent love which she had never yet found strength to resist, did not
+contribute to weaken the mind and body of the king. As she raised her
+eyes, bathed in tears, toward her lover, she saw the slow tears
+rolling down his pallid cheeks. This mark of the sympathy that united
+them so moved the king that he rushed from his depression like a
+spurred horse. He took Marie in his arms and placed her on the sofa.
+
+"I will no longer be a king," he cried. "I will be your lover, your
+lover only, wholly given up to that happiness. I will die happy, and
+not consumed by the cares and miseries of a throne."
+
+The tone of these words, the fire that shone in the half-extinct eyes
+of the king, gave Marie a terrible shock instead of happiness; she
+blamed her love as an accomplice in the malady of which the king was
+dying.
+
+"Meanwhile you forget your prisoners," she said, rising abruptly.
+
+"Hey! what care I for them? I give them leave to kill me."
+
+"What! are they murderers?"
+
+"Oh, don't be frightened, little one; we hold them fast. Don't think
+of them, but of me. Do you love me?"
+
+"Sire!" she cried.
+
+"Sire!" he repeated, sparks darting from his eyes, so violent was the
+rush of his anger at the untimely respect of his mistress. "You are in
+league with my mother."
+
+"O God!" cried Marie, looking at the picture above her /prie-dieu/ and
+turning toward it to say her prayer, "grant that he comprehend me!"
+
+"Ah!" said the king suspiciously, "you have some wrong to me upon your
+conscience!" Then looking at her from between his arms, he plunged his
+eyes into hers. "I have heard some talk of the mad passion of a
+certain Entragues," he went on wildly. "Ever since their grandfather,
+the soldier Balzac, married a viscontessa at Milan that family hold
+their heads too high."
+
+Marie looked at the king with so proud an air that he was ashamed. At
+that instant the cries of little Charles de Valois, who had just
+awakened, were heard in the next room. Marie ran to the door.
+
+"Come in, Bourguignonne!" she said, taking the child from its nurse
+and carrying it to the king. "You are more of a child than he," she
+cried, half angry, half appeased.
+
+"He is beautiful!" said Charles IX., taking his son in his arms.
+
+"I alone know how like he is to you," said Marie; "already he has your
+smile and your gestures."
+
+"So tiny as that!" said the king, laughing at her.
+
+"Oh, I know men don't believe such things; but watch him, my Charlot,
+play with him. Look there! See! Am I not right?"
+
+"True!" exclaimed the king, astonished by a motion of the child which
+seemed the very miniature of a gesture of his own.
+
+"Ah, the pretty flower!" cried the mother. "Never shall he leave us!
+/He/ will never cause me grief."
+
+The king frolicked with his son; he tossed him in his arms, and kissed
+him passionately, talking the foolish, unmeaning talk, the pretty,
+baby language invented by nurses and mothers. His voice grew child-
+like. At last his forehead cleared, joy returned to his saddened face,
+and then, as Marie saw that he had forgotten his troubles, she laid
+her head upon his shoulder and whispered in his ear:--
+
+"Won't you tell me, Charlot, why you have made me keep murderers in my
+house? Who are these men, and what do you mean to do with them? In
+short, I want to know what you were doing on the roofs. I hope there
+was no woman in the business?"
+
+"Then you love me as much as ever!" cried the king, meeting the clear,
+interrogatory glance that women know so well how to cast upon
+occasion.
+
+"You doubted /me/," she replied, as a tear shone on her beautiful
+eyelashes.
+
+"There are women in my adventure," said the king; "but they are
+sorceresses. How far had I told you?"
+
+"You were on the roofs near by--what street was it?"
+
+"Rue Saint-Honore, sweetest," said the king, who seemed to have
+recovered himself. Collecting this thoughts, he began to explain to
+his mistress what had happened, as if to prepare her for a scene that
+was presently to take place in her presence.
+
+"As I was passing through the street last night on a frolic," he said,
+"I chanced to see a bright light from the dormer window of the house
+occupied by Rene, my mother's glover and perfumer, and once yours. I
+have strong doubts about that man and what goes on in his house. If I
+am poisoned, the drug will come from there."
+
+"I shall dismiss him to-morrow."
+
+"Ah! so you kept him after I had given him up?" cried the king. "I
+thought my life was safe with you," he added gloomily; "but no doubt
+death is following me even here."
+
+"But, my dearest, I have only just returned from Dauphine with our
+dauphin," she said, smiling, "and Rene has supplied me with nothing
+since the death of the Queen of Navarre. Go on; you climbed to the
+roof of Rene's house?"
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE KING'S TALE
+
+"Yes," returned the king. "In a second I was there, followed by
+Tavannes, and then we clambered to a spot where I could see without
+being seen the interior of that devil's kitchen, in which I beheld
+extraordinary things which inspired me to take certain measures. Did
+you ever notice the end of the roof of that cursed perfumer? The
+windows toward the street are always closed and dark, except the last,
+from which can be seen the hotel de Soissons and the observatory which
+my mother built for that astrologer, Cosmo Ruggiero. Under the roof
+are lodging-rooms and a gallery which have no windows except on the
+courtyard, so that in order to see what was going on within, it was
+necessary to go where no man before ever dreamed of climbing,--along
+the coping of a high wall which adjoins the roof of Rene's house. The
+men who set up in that house the furnaces by which they distil death,
+reckoned on the cowardice of Parisians to save them from being
+overlooked; but they little thought of Charles de Valois! I crept
+along the coping until I came to a window, against the casing of which
+I was able to stand up straight with my arm round a carved monkey
+which ornamented it."
+
+"What did you see, dear heart?" said Marie, trembling.
+
+"A den, where works of darkness were being done," replied the king.
+"The first object on which my eyes lighted was a tall old man seated
+in a chair, with a magnificent white beard, like that of old
+l'Hopital, and dressed like him in a black velvet robe. On his broad
+forehead furrowed deep with wrinkles, on his crown of white hair, on
+his calm, attentive face, pale with toil and vigils, fell the
+concentrated rays of a lamp from which shone a vivid light. His
+attention was divided between an old manuscript, the parchment of
+which must have been centuries old, and two lighted furnaces on which
+heretical compounds were cooking. Neither the floor nor the ceiling of
+the laboratory could be seen, because of the myriads of hanging
+skeletons, bodies of animals, dried plants, minerals, and articles of
+all kinds that masked the walls; while on the floor were books,
+instruments for distilling, chests filled with utensils for magic and
+astrology; in one place I saw horoscopes and nativities, phials, wax-
+figures under spells, and possibly poisons. Tavannes and I were
+fascinated, I do assure you, by the sight of this devil's-arsenal.
+Only to see it puts one under a spell, and if I had not been King of
+France, I might have been awed by it. 'You can tremble for both of
+us,' I whispered to Tavannes. But Tavannes' eyes were already caught
+by the most mysterious feature of the scene. On a couch, near the old
+man, lay a girl of strangest beauty,--slender and long like a snake,
+white as ermine, livid as death, motionless as a statue. Perhaps it
+was a woman just taken from her grave, on whom they were trying
+experiments, for she seemed to wear a shroud; her eyes were fixed, and
+I could not see that she breathed. The old fellow paid no attention to
+her. I looked at him so intently that, after a while, his soul seemed
+to pass into mine. By dint of studying him, I ended by admiring the
+glance of his eye,--so keen, so profound, so bold, in spite of the
+chilling power of age. I admired his mouth, mobile with thoughts
+emanating from a desire which seemed to be the solitary desire of his
+soul, and was stamped upon every line of the face. All things in that
+man expressed a hope which nothing discouraged, and nothing could
+check. His attitude,--a quivering immovability,--those outlines so
+free, carved by a single passion as by the chisel of a sculptor, that
+IDEA concentrated on some experiment criminal or scientific, that
+seeking Mind in quest of Nature, thwarted by her, bending but never
+broken under the weight of its own audacity, which it would not
+renounce, threatening creation with the fire it derived from it,--ah!
+all that held me in a spell for the time being. I saw before me an old
+man who was more of a king than I, for his glance embraced the world
+and mastered it. I will forge swords no longer; I will soar above the
+abysses of existence, like that man; for his science, methinks, is
+true royalty! Yes, I believe in occult science."
+
+"You, the eldest son, the defender of the Holy Catholic, Apostolic,
+and Roman Church?" said Marie.
+
+"I."
+
+"What happened to you? Go on, go on; I will fear for you, and you will
+have courage for me."
+
+"Looking at a clock, the old man rose," continued the king. "He went
+out, I don't know where; but I heard the window on the side toward the
+rue Saint-Honore open. Soon a brilliant light gleamed out upon the
+darkness; then I saw in the observatory of the hotel de Soissons
+another light replying to that of the old man, and by it I beheld the
+figure of Cosmo Ruggiero on the tower. 'See, they communicate!' I said
+to Tavannes, who from that moment thought the matter frightfully
+suspicious, and agreed with me that we ought to seize the two men and
+search, incontinently, their accursed workshop. But before proceeding
+to do so, we wanted to see what was going to happen. After about
+fifteen minutes the door opened, and Cosmo Ruggiero, my mother's
+counsellor,--the bottomless pit which holds the secrets of the court,
+he from whom all women ask help against their husbands and lovers, and
+all the men ask help against their unfaithful wives and mistresses, he
+who traffics on the future as on the past, receiving pay with both
+hands, who sells horoscopes and is supposed to know all things,--that
+semi-devil came in, saying to the old man, 'Good-day to you, brother.'
+With him he brought a hideous old woman,--toothless, humpbacked,
+twisted, bent, like a Chinese image, only worse. She was wrinkled as a
+withered apple; her skin was saffron-colored; her chin bit her nose;
+her mouth was a mere line scarcely visible; her eyes were like the
+black spots on a dice; her forehead emitted bitterness; her hair
+escaped in straggling gray locks from a dirty coif; she walked with a
+crutch; she smelt of heresy and witchcraft. The sight of her actually
+frightened us, Tavannes and me! We didn't think her a natural woman.
+God never made a woman so fearful as that. She sat down on a stool
+near the pretty snake with whom Tavannes was in love. The two brothers
+paid no attention to the old woman nor to the young woman, who
+together made a horrible couple,--on the one side life in death, on
+the other death in life--"
+
+"Ah! my sweet poet!" cried Marie, kissing the king.
+
+"'Good-day, Cosmo,' replied the old alchemist. And they both looked
+into the furnace. 'What strength has the moon to-day?' asked the
+elder. 'But, /caro Lorenzo/,' replied my mother's astrologer, 'the
+September tides are not yet over; we can learn nothing while that
+disorder lasts.' 'What says the East to-night?' 'It discloses in the
+air a creative force which returns to earth all that earth takes from
+it. The conclusion is that all things here below are the product of a
+slow transformation, but that all diversities are the forms of one and
+the same substance.' 'That is what my predecessor thought,' replied
+Lorenzo. 'This morning Bernard Palissy told me that metals were the
+result of compression, and that fire, which divides all, also unites
+all; fire has the power to compress as well as to separate. That man
+has genius.' Though I was placed where it was impossible for them to
+see me, Cosmo said, lifting the hand of the dead girl: 'Some one is
+near us! Who is it' 'The king,' she answered. I at once showed myself
+and rapped on the window. Ruggiero opened it, and I sprang into that
+hellish kitchen, followed by Tavannes. 'Yes, the king,' I said to the
+two Florentines, who seemed terrified. 'In spite of your furnaces and
+your books, your sciences and your sorceries, you did not foresee my
+visit. I am very glad to meet the famous Lorenzo Ruggiero, of whom my
+mother speaks mysteriously,' I said, addressing the old man, who rose
+and bowed. 'You are in this kingdom without my consent, my good man.
+For whom are you working here, you whose ancestors from father to son
+have been devoted in heart to the house of Medici? Listen to me! You
+dive into so many purses that by this time, if you are grasping men,
+you have piled up gold. You are too shrewd and cautious to cast
+yourselves imprudently into criminal actions; but, nevertheless, you
+are not here in this kitchen without a purpose. Yes, you have some
+secret scheme, you who are satisfied neither by gold nor power. Whom
+do you serve,--God or the devil? What are you concocting here? I
+choose to know the whole truth; I am a man who can hear it and keep
+silence about your enterprise, however blamable it maybe. Therefore
+you will tell me all, without reserve. If you deceive me you will be
+treated severely. Pagans or Christians, Calvinists or Mohammedans, you
+have my royal word that you shall leave the kingdom in safety if you
+have any misdemeanors to relate. I shall leave you for the rest of the
+night and the forenoon of to-morrow to examine your thoughts; for you
+are now my prisoners, and you will at once follow me to a place where
+you will be guarded carefully.' Before obeying me the two Italians
+consulted each other by a subtle glance; then Lorenzo Ruggiero said I
+might be assured that no torture could wring their secrets from them;
+that in spite of their apparent feebleness neither pain nor human
+feelings had any power of them; confidence alone could make their
+mouth say what their mind contained. I must not, he said, be surprised
+if they treated as equals with a king who recognized God only as above
+him, for their thoughts came from God alone. They therefore claimed
+from me as much confidence and trust as they should give to me. But
+before engaging themselves to answer me without reserve they must
+request me to put my left hand into that of the young girl lying
+there, and my right into that of the old woman. Not wishing them to
+think I was afraid of their sorcery, I held out my hands; Lorenzo took
+the right, Cosmo the left, and each placed a hand in that of each
+woman, so that I was like Jesus Christ between the two thieves. During
+the time that the two witches were examining my hands Cosmo held a
+mirror before me and asked me to look into it; his brother, meanwhile,
+was talking with the two women in a language unknown to me. Neither
+Tavannes nor I could catch the meaning of a single sentence. Before
+bringing the men here we put seals on all the outlets of the
+laboratory, which Tavannes undertook to guard until such time as, by
+my express orders, Bernard Palissy, and Chapelain, my physician, could
+be brought there to examine thoroughly the drugs the place contained
+and which were evidently made there. In order to keep the Ruggieri
+ignorant of this search, and to prevent them from communicating with a
+single soul outside, I put the two devils in your lower rooms in
+charge of Solern's Germans, who are better than the walls of a jail.
+Rene, the perfumer, is kept under guard in his own house by Solern's
+equerry, and so are the two witches. Now, my sweetest, inasmuch as I
+hold the keys of the whole cabal,--the kings of Thune, the chiefs of
+sorcery, the gypsy fortune-tellers, the masters of the future, the
+heirs of all past soothsayers,--I intend by their means to read /you/,
+to know your heart; and, together, we will find out what is to happen
+to us."
+
+"I shall be glad if they can lay my heart bare before you," said
+Marie, without the slightest fear.
+
+"I know why sorcerers don't frighten you,--because you are a witch
+yourself."
+
+"Will you have a peach?" she said, offering him some delicious fruit
+on a gold plate. "See these grapes, these pears; I went to Vincennes
+myself and gathered them for you."
+
+"Yes, I'll eat them; there is no poison there except a philter from
+your hands."
+
+"You ought to eat a great deal of fruit, Charles; it would cool your
+blood, which you heat by such excitements."
+
+"Must I love you less?"
+
+"Perhaps so," she said. "If the things you love injure you--and I have
+feared it--I shall find strength in my heart to refuse them. I adore
+Charles more than I love the king; I want the man to live, released
+from the tortures that make him grieve."
+
+"Royalty has ruined me."
+
+"Yes," she replied. "If you were only a poor prince, like your
+brother-in-law of Navarre, without a penny, possessing only a
+miserable little kingdom in Spain where he never sets his foot, and
+Bearn in France which doesn't give him revenue enough to feed him, I
+should be happy, much happier than if I were really Queen of France."
+
+"But you are more than the Queen of France. She has King Charles for
+the sake of the kingdom only; royal marriages are only politics."
+
+Marie smiled and made a pretty little grimace as she said: "Yes, yes,
+I know that, sire. And my sonnet, have you written it?"
+
+"Dearest, verses are as difficult to write as treaties of peace; but
+you shall have them soon. Ah, me! life is so easy here, I wish I might
+never leave you. However, we must send for those Italians and question
+them. /Tete-Dieu/! I thought one Ruggiero in the kingdom was one too
+many, but it seems there are two. Now listen, my precious; you don't
+lack sense, you would make an excellent lieutenant of police, for you
+can penetrate things--"
+
+"But, sire, we women suppose all we fear, and we turn what is probable
+into truths; that is the whole of our art in a nutshell."
+
+"Well, help me to sound these men. Just now all my plans depend on the
+result of their examination. Are they innocent? Are they guilty? My
+mother is behind them."
+
+"I hear Jacob's voice in the next room," said Marie.
+
+Jacob was the favorite valet of the king, and the one who accompanied
+him on all his private excursions. He now came to ask if it was the
+king's good pleasure to speak to the two prisoners. The king made a
+sign in the affirmative, and the mistress of the house gave her
+orders.
+
+"Jacob," she said, "clear the house of everybody, except the nurse and
+Monsieur le Dauphin d'Auvergne, who may remain. As for you, stay in
+the lower hall; but first, close the windows, draw the curtains of the
+salon, and light the candles."
+
+The king's impatience was so great that while these preparations were
+being made he sat down upon a raised seat at the corner of a lofty
+fireplace of white marble in which a bright fire was blazing, placing
+his pretty mistress by his side. His portrait, framed in velvet, was
+over the mantle in place of a mirror. Charles IX. rested his elbow on
+the arm of the seat as if to watch the two Florentines the better
+under cover of his hand.
+
+The shutters closed, and the curtains drawn, Jacob lighted the wax
+tapers in a tall candelabrum of chiselled silver, which he placed on
+the table where the Florentines were to stand,--an object, by the bye,
+which they would readily recognize as the work of their compatriot,
+Benvenuto Cellini. The richness of the room, decorated in the taste of
+Charles IX., now shone forth. The red-brown of the tapestries showed
+to better advantage than by daylight. The various articles of
+furniture, delicately made or carved, reflected in their ebony panels
+the glow of the fire and the sparkle of the lights. Gilding, soberly
+applied, shone here and there like eyes, brightening the brown color
+which prevailed in this nest of love.
+
+Jacob presently gave two knocks, and, receiving permission, ushered in
+the Italians. Marie Touchet was instantly affected by the grandeur of
+Lorenzo's presence, which struck all those who met him, great and
+small alike. The silvery whiteness of the old man's beard was
+heightened by a robe of black velvet; his brow was like a marble dome.
+His austere face, illumined by two black eyes which cast a pointed
+flame, conveyed an impression of genius issuing from solitude, and all
+the more effective because its power had not been dulled by contact
+with men. It was like the steel of a blade that had never been
+fleshed.
+
+As for Cosmo Ruggiero, he wore the dress of a courtier of the time.
+Marie made a sign to the king to assure him that he had not
+exaggerated his description, and to thank him for having shown her
+these extraordinary men.
+
+"I would like to have seen the sorceresses, too," she whispered in his
+ear.
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE ALCHEMISTS
+
+Again absorbed in thought, Charles IX. made her no answer; he was idly
+flicking crumbs of bread from his doublet and breeches.
+
+"Your science cannot change the heavens or make the sun to shine,
+messieurs," he said at last, pointing to the curtains which the gray
+atmosphere of Paris darkened.
+
+"Our science can make the skies what we like, sire," replied Lorenzo
+Ruggiero. "The weather is always fine for those who work in a
+laboratory by the light of a furnace."
+
+"That is true," said the king. "Well, father," he added, using an
+expression familiar to him when addressing old men, "explain to us
+clearly the object of your studies."
+
+"What will guarantee our safety?"
+
+"The word of a king," replied Charles IX., whose curiosity was keenly
+excited by the question.
+
+Lorenzo Ruggiero seemed to hesitate, and Charles IX. cried out: "What
+hinders you? We are here alone."
+
+"But is the King of France here?" asked Lorenzo.
+
+Charles reflected an instant, and then answered, "No."
+
+The imposing old man then took a chair, and seated himself. Cosmo,
+astonished at this boldness, dared not imitate it.
+
+Charles IX. remarked, with cutting sarcasm: "The king is not here,
+monsieur, but a lady is, whose permission it was your duty to await."
+
+"He whom you see before you, madame," said the old man, "is as far
+above kings as kings are above their subjects; you will think me
+courteous when you know my powers."
+
+Hearing these audacious words, with Italian emphasis, Charles and
+Marie looked at each other, and also at Cosmo, who, with his eyes
+fixed on his brother, seemed to be asking himself: "How does he intend
+to get us out of the danger in which we are?"
+
+In fact, there was but one person present who could understand the
+boldness and the art of Lorenzo Ruggiero's first step; and that person
+was neither the king nor his young mistress, on whom that great seer
+had already flung the spell of his audacity,--it was Cosmo Ruggiero,
+his wily brother. Though superior himself to the ablest men at court,
+perhaps even to Catherine de' Medici herself, the astrologer always
+recognized his brother Lorenzo as his master.
+
+Buried in studious solitude, the old savant weighed and estimated
+sovereigns, most of whom were worn out by the perpetual turmoil of
+politics, the crises of which at this period came so suddenly and were
+so keen, so intense, so unexpected. He knew their ennui, their
+lassitude, their disgust with things about them; he knew the ardor
+with which they sought what seemed to them new or strange or
+fantastic; above all, how they loved to enter some unknown
+intellectual region to escape their endless struggle with men and
+events. To those who have exhausted statecraft, nothing remains but
+the realm of pure thought. Charles the Fifth proved this by his
+abdication. Charles IX., who wrote sonnets and forged blades to escape
+the exhausting cares of an age in which both throne and king were
+threatened, to whom royalty had brought only cares and never
+pleasures, was likely to be roused to a high pitch of interest by the
+bold denial of his power thus uttered by Lorenzo. Religious doubt was
+not surprising in an age when Catholicism was so violently arraigned;
+but the upsetting of all religion, given as the basis of a strange,
+mysterious art, would surely strike the king's mind, and drag it from
+its present preoccupations. The essential thing for the two brothers
+was to make the king forget his suspicions by turning his mind to new
+ideas.
+
+The Ruggieri were well aware that their stake in this game was their
+own life, and the glances, so humble, and yet so proud, which they
+exchanged with the searching, suspicious eyes of Marie and the king,
+were a scene in themselves.
+
+"Sire," said Lorenzo Ruggiero, "you have asked me for the truth; but,
+to show the truth in all her nakedness, I must also show you and make
+you sound the depths of the well from which she comes. I appeal to the
+gentleman and the poet to pardon words which the eldest son of the
+Church might take for blasphemy,--I believe that God does not concern
+himself with human affairs."
+
+Though determined to maintain a kingly composure, Charles IX. could
+not repress a motion of surprise.
+
+"Without that conviction I should have no faith whatever in the
+miraculous work to which my life is devoted. To do that work I must
+have this belief; and if the finger of God guides all things, then--I
+am a madman. Therefore, let the king understand, once for all, that
+this work means a victory to be won over the present course of Nature.
+I am an alchemist, sire. But do not think, as the common-minded do,
+that I seek to make gold. The making of gold is not the object but an
+incident of our researches; otherwise our toil could not be called the
+GREAT WORK. The Great Work is something far loftier than that. If,
+therefore, I were forced to admit the presence of God in matter, my
+voice must logically command the extinction of furnaces kept burning
+throughout the ages. But to deny the direct action of God in the world
+is not to deny God; do not make that mistake. We place the Creator of
+all things far higher than the sphere to which religions have degraded
+Him. Do not accuse of atheism those who look for immortality. Like
+Lucifer, we are jealous of our God; and jealousy means love. Though
+the doctrine of which I speak is the basis of our work, all our
+disciples are not imbued with it. Cosmo," said the old man, pointing
+to his brother, "Cosmo is devout; he pays for masses for the repose of
+our father's soul, and he goes to hear them. Your mother's astrologer
+believes in the divinity of Christ, in the Immaculate Conception, in
+Transubstantiation; he believes also in the Pope's indulgences and in
+hell, and in a multitude of such things. His hour has not yet come. I
+have drawn his horoscope; he will live to be almost a centenarian; he
+will live through two more reigns, and he will see two kings of France
+assassinated."
+
+"Who are they?" asked the king.
+
+"The last of the Valois and the first of the Bourbons," replied
+Lorenzo. "But Cosmo shares my opinion. It is impossible to be an
+alchemist and a Catholic, to have faith in the despotism of man over
+matter, and also in the sovereignty of the divine."
+
+"Cosmo to die a centenarian!" exclaimed the king, with his terrible
+frown of the eyebrows.
+
+"Yes, sire," replied Lorenzo, with authority; "and he will die
+peaceably in his bed."
+
+"If you have power to foresee the moment of your death, why are you
+ignorant of the outcome of your researches?" asked the king.
+
+Charles IX. smiled as he said this, looking triumphantly at Marie
+Touchet. The brothers exchanged a rapid glance of satisfaction.
+
+"He begins to be interested," thought they. "We are saved!"
+
+"Our prognostics depend on the immediate relations which exist at the
+time between man and Nature; but our purpose itself is to change those
+relations entirely," replied Lorenzo.
+
+The king was thoughtful.
+
+"But, if you are certain of dying you are certain of defeat," he said,
+at last.
+
+"Like our predecessors," replied Lorenzo, raising his hand and letting
+it fall again with an emphatic and solemn gesture, which presented
+visibly the grandeur of his thought. "But your mind has bounded to the
+confines of the matter, sire; we must return upon our steps. If you do
+not know the ground on which our edifice is built, you may well think
+it doomed to crumble with our lives, and so judge the Science
+cultivated from century to century by the greatest among men, as the
+common herd judge of it."
+
+The king made a sign of assent.
+
+"I think," continued Lorenzo, "that this earth belongs to man; he is
+the master of it, and he can appropriate to his use all forces and all
+substances. Man is not a creation issuing directly from the hand of
+God; but the development of a principle sown broadcast into the
+infinite of ether, from which millions of creatures are produced,--
+differing beings in different worlds, because the conditions
+surrounding life are varied. Yes, sire, the subtle element which we
+call /life/ takes its rise beyond the visible worlds; creation divides
+that principle according to the centres into which it flows; and all
+beings, even the lowest, share it, taking so much as they can take of
+it at their own risk and peril. It is for them to protect themselves
+from death,--the whole purpose of alchemy lies there, sire. If man,
+the most perfect animal on this globe, bore within himself a portion
+of the divine, he would not die; but he does die. To solve this
+difficulty, Socrates and his school invented the Soul. I, the
+successor of so many great and unknown kings, the rulers of this
+science, I stand for the ancient theories, not the new. I believe in
+the transformations of matter which I see, and not in the possible
+eternity of a soul which I do not see. I do not recognize that world
+of the soul. If such a world existed, the substances whose magnificent
+conjunction produced your body, and are so dazzling in that of Madame,
+would not resolve themselves after your death each into its own
+element, water to water, fire to fire, metal to metal, just as the
+elements of my coal, when burned, return to their primitive molecules.
+If you believe that a certain part of us survives, /we/ do not
+survive; for all that makes our actual being perishes. Now, it is this
+actual being that I am striving to continue beyond the limit assigned
+to life; it is our present transformation to which I wish to give a
+greater duration. Why! the trees live for centuries, but man lives
+only years, though the former are passive, the others active; the
+first motionless and speechless, the others gifted with language and
+motion. No created thing should be superior in this world to man,
+either in power or in duration. Already we are widening our
+perceptions, for we look into the stars; therefore we ought to be able
+to lengthen the duration of our lives. I place life before power. What
+good is power if life escapes us? A wise man should have no other
+purpose than to seek, not whether he has some other life within him,
+but the secret springs of his actual form, in order that he may
+prolong its existence at his will. That is the desire which has
+whitened my hair; but I walk boldly in the darkness, marshalling to
+the search all those great intellects that share my faith. Life will
+some day be ours,--ours to control."
+
+"Ah! but how?" cried the king, rising hastily.
+
+"The first condition of our faith being that the earth belongs to man,
+you must grant me that point," said Lorenzo.
+
+"So be it!" said Charles de Valois, already under the spell.
+
+"Then, sire, if we take God out of this world, what remains? Man. Let
+us therefore examine our domain. The material world is composed of
+elements; these elements are themselves principles; these principles
+resolve themselves into an ultimate principle, endowed with motion.
+The number THREE is the formula of creation: Matter, Motion, Product."
+
+"Stop!" cried the king, "what proof is there of this?"
+
+"Do you not see the effects?" replied Lorenzo. "We have tried in our
+crucibles the acorn which produces the oak, and the embryo from which
+grows a man; from this tiny substance results a single principle, to
+which some force, some movement must be given. Since there is no
+overruling creator, this principle must give to itself the outward
+forms which constitute our world--for this phenomenon of life is the
+same everywhere. Yes, for metals as for human beings, for plants as
+for men, life begins in an imperceptible embryo which develops itself.
+A primitive principle exists; let us seize it at the point where it
+begins to act upon itself, where it is a unit, where it is a principle
+before taking definite form, a cause before being an effect; we must
+see it single, without form, susceptible of clothing itself with all
+the outward forms we shall see it take. When we are face to face with
+this atomic particle, when we shall have caught its movement at the
+very instant of motion, /then/ we shall know the law; thenceforth we
+are the masters of life, masters who can impose upon that principle
+the form we choose,--with gold to win the world, and the power to make
+for ourselves centuries of life in which to enjoy it! That is what my
+people and I are seeking. All our strength, all our thoughts are
+strained in that direction; nothing distracts us from it. One hour
+wasted on any other passion is a theft committed against our true
+grandeur. Just as you have never found your hounds relinquishing the
+hunted animal or failing to be in at the death, so I have never seen
+one of my patient disciples diverted from this great quest by the love
+of woman or a selfish thought. If an adept seeks power and wealth, the
+desire is instigated by our needs; he grasps treasure as a thirsty dog
+laps water while he swims a stream, because his crucibles are in need
+of a diamond to melt or an ingot of gold to reduce to powder. To each
+his own work. One seeks the secret of vegetable nature; he watches the
+slow life of plants; he notes the parity of motion among all the
+species, and the parity of their nutrition; he finds everywhere the
+need of sun and air and water, to fecundate and nourish them. Another
+scrutinizes the blood of animals. A third studies the laws of
+universal motion and its connection with celestial revolutions. Nearly
+all are eager to struggle with the intractable nature of metal, for
+while we find many principles in other things, we find all metals like
+unto themselves in every particular. Hence a common error as to our
+work. Behold these patient, indefatigable athletes, ever vanquished,
+yet ever returning to the combat! Humanity, sire, is behind us, as the
+huntsman is behind your hounds. She cries to us: 'Make haste! neglect
+nothing! sacrifice all, even a man, ye who sacrifice yourselves!
+Hasten! hasten! Beat down the arms of DEATH, mine enemy!' Yes, sire,
+we are inspired by a hope which involves the happiness of all coming
+generations. We have buried many men--and what men!--dying of this
+Search. Setting foot in this career we cannot work for ourselves; we
+may die without discovering the Secret; and our death is that of those
+who do not believe in another life; it is this life that we have
+sought, and failed to perpetuate. We are glorious martyrs; we have the
+welfare of the race at heart; we have failed but we live again in our
+successors. As we go through this existence we discover secrets with
+which we endow the liberal and the mechanical arts. From our furnaces
+gleam lights which illumine industrial enterprises, and perfect them.
+Gunpowder issued from our alembics; nay, we have mastered the
+lightning. In our persistent vigils lie political revolutions."
+
+"Can this be true?" cried the king, springing once more from his
+chair.
+
+"Why not?" said the grand-master of the new Templars. "/Tradidit
+mundum disputationibus/! God has given us the earth. Hear this once
+more: man is master here below; matter is his; all forces, all means
+are at his disposal. Who created us? Motion. What power maintains life
+in us? Motion. Why cannot science seize the secret of that motion?
+Nothing is lost here below; nothing escapes from our planet to go
+elsewhere,--otherwise the stars would stumble over each other; the
+waters of the deluge are still with us in their principle, and not a
+drop is lost. Around us, above us, beneath us, are to be found the
+elements from which have come innumerable hosts of men who have
+crowded the earth before and since the deluge. What is the secret of
+our struggle? To discover the force that disunites, and then, /then/
+we shall discover that which binds. We are the product of a visible
+manufacture. When the waters covered the globe men issued from them
+who found the elements of their life in the crust of the earth, in the
+air, and in the nourishment derived from them. Earth and air possess,
+therefore, the principle of human transformations; those
+transformations take place under our eyes, by means of that which is
+also under our eyes. We are able, therefore, to discover that secret,
+--not limiting the effort of the search to one man or to one age, but
+devoting humanity in its duration to it. We are engaged, hand to hand,
+in a struggle with Matter, into whose secret, I, the grand-master of
+our order, seek to penetrate. Christophe Columbus gave a world to the
+King of Spain; I seek an ever-living people for the King of France.
+Standing on the confines which separate us from a knowledge of
+material things, a patient observer of atoms, I destroy forms, I
+dissolve the bonds of combinations; I imitate death that I may learn
+how to imitate life. I strike incessantly at the door of creation, and
+I shall continue so to strike until the day of my death. When I am
+dead the knocker will pass into other hands equally persistent with
+those of the mighty men who handed it to me. Fabulous and
+uncomprehended beings, like Prometheus, Ixion, Adonis, Pan, and
+others, who have entered into the religious beliefs of all countries
+and all ages, prove to the world that the hopes we now embody were
+born with the human races. Chaldea, India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, the
+Moors, have transmitted from one to another Magic, the highest of all
+the occult sciences, which holds within it, as a precious deposit the
+fruits of the studies of each generation. In it lay the tie that bound
+the grand and majestic institution of the Templars. Sire, when one of
+your predecessors burned the Templars, he burned men only,--their
+Secret lived. The reconstruction of the Temple is a vow of an unknown
+nation, a race of daring seekers, whose faces are turned to the Orient
+of /life/,--all brothers, all inseparable, all united by one idea, and
+stamped with the mark of toil. I am the sovereign leader of that
+people, sovereign by election, not by birth. I guide them onward to a
+knowledge of the essence of life. Grand-master, Red-Cross-bearers,
+companions, adepts, we forever follow the imperceptible molecule which
+still escapes our eyes. But soon we shall make ourselves eyes more
+powerful than those which Nature has given us; we shall attain to a
+sight of the primitive atom, the corpuscular element so persistently
+sought by the wise and learned of all ages who have preceded us in the
+glorious search. Sire, when a man is astride of that abyss, when he
+commands bold divers like my disciples, all other human interests are
+as nothing. Therefore we are not dangerous. Religious disputes and
+political struggles are far away from us; we have passed beyond and
+above them. No man takes others by the throat when his whole strength
+is given to a struggle with Nature. Besides, in our science results
+are perceivable; we can measure effects and predict them; whereas all
+things are uncertain and vacillating in the struggles of men and their
+selfish interests. We decompose the diamond in our crucibles, and we
+shall make diamonds, we shall make gold! We shall impel vessels (as
+they have at Barcelona) with fire and a little water! We test the
+wind, and we shall make wind; we shall make light; we shall renew the
+face of empires with new industries! But we shall never debase
+ourselves to mount a throne to be crucified by the peoples!"
+
+In spite of his strong determination not to be taken in by Italian
+wiles, the king, together with his gentle mistress, was already caught
+and snared by the ambiguous phrases and doublings of this pompous and
+humbugging loquacity. The eyes of the two lovers showed how their
+minds were dazzled by the mysterious riches of power thus displayed;
+they saw, as it were, a series of subterranean caverns filled with
+gnomes at their toil. The impatience of their curiosity put to flight
+all suspicion.
+
+"But," cried the king, "if this be so, you are great statesmen who can
+enlighten us."
+
+"No, sire," said Lorenzo, naively.
+
+"Why not?" asked the king.
+
+"Sire, it is not given to any man to foresee what will happen when
+thousands of men are gathered together. We can tell what one man will
+do, how long he will live, whether he will be happy or unhappy; but we
+cannot tell what a collection of wills may do; and to calculate the
+oscillations of their selfish interests is more difficult still, for
+interests are men /plus/ things. We can, in solitude, see the future
+as a whole, and that is all. The Protestantism that now torments you
+will be destroyed in turn by its material consequences, which will
+turn to theories in due time. Europe is at the present moment getting
+the better of religion; to-morrow it will attack royalty."
+
+"Then the Saint-Bartholomew was a great conception?"
+
+"Yes, sire; for if the people triumph it will have a Saint-Bartholomew
+of its own. When religion and royalty are destroyed the people will
+attack the nobles; after the nobles, the rich. When Europe has become
+a mere troop of men without consistence or stability, because without
+leaders, it will fall a prey to brutal conquerors. Twenty times
+already has the world seen that sight, and Europe is now preparing to
+renew it. Ideas consume the ages as passions consume men. When man is
+cured, humanity may possibly cure itself. Science is the essence of
+humanity, and we are its pontiffs; whoso concerns himself about the
+essence cares little about the individual life."
+
+"To what have you attained, so far?" asked the king.
+
+"We advance slowly; but we lose nothing that we have won."
+
+"Then you are the king of sorcerers?" retorted the king, piqued at
+being of no account in the presence of this man.
+
+The majestic grand-master of the Rosicrucians cast a look on Charles
+IX. which withered him.
+
+"You are the king of men," he said; "I am the king of ideas. If we
+were sorcerers, you would already have burned us. We have had our
+martyrs."
+
+"But by what means are you able to cast nativities?" persisted the
+king. "How did you know that the man who came to your window last
+night was King of France? What power authorized one of you to tell my
+mother the fate of her three sons? Can you, grand-master of an art
+which claims to mould the world, can you tell me what my mother is
+planning at this moment?"
+
+"Yes, sire."
+
+This answer was given before Cosmo could pull his brother's robe to
+enjoin silence.
+
+"Do you know why my brother, the King of Poland, has returned?"
+
+"Yes, sire."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"To take your place."
+
+"Our most cruel enemies are our nearest in blood!" exclaimed the king,
+violently, rising and walking about the room with hasty steps. "Kings
+have neither brothers, nor sons, nor mothers. Coligny was right; my
+murderers are not among the Huguenots, but in the Louvre. You are
+either imposters or regicides!--Jacob, call Solern."
+
+"Sire," said Marie Touchet, "the Ruggieri have your word as a
+gentleman. You wanted to taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge;
+do not complain of its bitterness."
+
+The king smiled, with an expression of bitter self-contempt; he
+thought his material royalty petty in presence of the august
+intellectual royalty of Lorenzo Ruggiero. Charles IX. knew that he
+could scarcely govern France, but this grand-master of Rosicrucians
+ruled a submissive and intelligent world.
+
+"Answer me truthfully; I pledge my word as a gentleman that your
+answer, in case it confesses dreadful crimes, shall be as if it were
+never uttered," resumed the king. "Do you deal with poisons?"
+
+"To discover that which gives life, we must also have full knowledge
+of that which kills."
+
+"Do you possess the secret of many poisons?"
+
+"Yes, sire,--in theory, but not in practice. We understand all
+poisons, but do not use them."
+
+"Has my mother asked you for any?" said the king, breathlessly.
+
+"Sire," replied Lorenzo, "Queen Catherine is too able a woman to
+employ such means. She knows that the sovereign who poisons dies by
+poison. The Borgias, also Bianca Capello, Grand Duchess of Tuscany,
+are noted examples of the dangers of that miserable resource. All
+things are known at courts; there can be no concealment. It may be
+possible to kill a poor devil--and what is the good of that?--but to
+aim at great men cannot be done secretly. Who shot Coligny? It could
+only be you, or the queen-mother, or the Guises. Not a soul is
+doubtful of that. Believe me, poison cannot be twice used with
+impunity in statecraft. Princes have successors. As for other men, if,
+like Luther, they are sovereigns through the power of ideas, their
+doctrines are not killed by killing them. The queen is from Florence;
+she knows that poison should never be used except as a weapon of
+personal revenge. My brother, who has not been parted from her since
+her arrival in France, knows the grief that Madame Diane caused your
+mother. But she never thought of poisoning her, though she might
+easily have done so. What could your father have said? Never had a
+woman a better right to do it; and she could have done it with
+impunity; but Madame de Valentinois still lives."
+
+"But what of those waxen images?" asked the king.
+
+"Sire," said Cosmo, "these things are so absolutely harmless that we
+lend ourselves to the practice to satisfy blind passions, just as
+physicians give bread pills to imaginary invalids. A disappointed
+woman fancies that by stabbing the heart of a wax-figure she has
+brought misfortunes upon the head of the man who has been unfaithful
+to her. What harm in that? Besides, it is our revenue."
+
+"The Pope sells indulgences," said Lorenzo Ruggiero, smiling.
+
+"Has my mother practised these spells with waxen images?"
+
+"What good would such harmless means be to one who has the actual
+power to do all things?"
+
+"Has Queen Catherine the power to save you at this moment?" inquired
+the king, in a threatening manner.
+
+"Sire, we are not in any danger," replied Lorenzo, tranquilly. "I knew
+before I came into this house that I should leave it safely, just as I
+know that the king will be evilly disposed to my brother Cosmo a few
+weeks hence. My brother may run some danger then, but he will escape
+it. If the king reigns by the sword, he also reigns by justice," added
+the old man, alluding to the famous motto on a medal struck for
+Charles IX.
+
+"You know all, and you know that I shall die soon, which is very
+well," said the king, hiding his anger under nervous impatience; "but
+how will my brother die,--he whom you say is to be Henri III.?"
+
+"By a violent death."
+
+"And the Duc d'Alencon?"
+
+"He will not reign."
+
+"Then Henri de Bourbon will be king of France?"
+
+"Yes, sire."
+
+"How will he die?"
+
+"By a violent death."
+
+"When I am dead what will become of madame?" asked the king, motioning
+to Marie Touchet.
+
+"Madame de Belleville will marry, sire."
+
+"You are imposters!" cried Marie Touchet. "Send them away, sire."
+
+"Dearest, the Ruggieri have my word as a gentleman," replied the king,
+smiling. "Will madame have children?" he continued.
+
+"Yes, sire; and madame will live to be more than eighty years old."
+
+"Shall I order them to be hanged?" said the king to his mistress. "But
+about my son, the Comte d'Auvergne?" he continued, going into the next
+room to fetch the child.
+
+"Why did you tell him I should marry?" said Marie to the two brothers,
+the moment they were alone.
+
+"Madame," replied Lorenzo, with dignity, "the king bound us to tell
+the truth, and we have told it."
+
+"/Is/ that true?" she exclaimed.
+
+"As true as it is that the governor of the city of Orleans is madly in
+love with you."
+
+"But I do not love him," she cried.
+
+"That is true, madame," replied Lorenzo; "but your horoscope declares
+that you will marry the man who is in love with you at the present
+time."
+
+"Can you not lie a little for my sake?" she said smiling; "for if the
+king believes your predictions--"
+
+"Is it not also necessary that he should believe our innocence?"
+interrupted Cosmo, with a wily glance at the young favorite. "The
+precautions taken against us by the king have made us think during the
+time we have spent in your charming jail that the occult sciences have
+been traduced to him."
+
+"Do not feel uneasy," replied Marie. "I know him; his suspicions are
+at an end."
+
+"We are innocent," said the grand-master of the Rosicrucians, proudly.
+
+"So much the better for you," said Marie, "for your laboratory, and
+your retorts and phials are now being searched by order of the king."
+
+The brothers looked at each other smiling. Marie Touchet took that
+smile for one of innocence, though it really signified: "Poor fools!
+can they suppose that if we brew poisons, we do not hide them?"
+
+"Where are the king's searchers?"
+
+"In Rene's laboratory," replied Marie.
+
+Again the brothers glanced at each other with a look which said: "The
+hotel de Soissons is inviolable."
+
+The king had so completely forgotten his suspicions that when, as he
+took his boy in his arms, Jacob gave him a note from Chapelain, he
+opened it with the certainty of finding in his physician's report that
+nothing had been discovered in the laboratory but what related
+exclusively to alchemy.
+
+"Will he live a happy man?" asked the king, presenting his son to the
+two alchemists.
+
+"That is a question which concerns Cosmo," replied Lorenzo, signing
+his brother.
+
+Cosmo took the tiny hand of the child, and examined it carefully.
+
+"Monsieur," said Charles IX. to the old man, "if you find it necessary
+to deny the existence of the soul in order to believe in the
+possibility of your enterprise, will you explain to my why you should
+doubt what your power does? Thought, which you seek to nullify, is the
+certainty, the torch which lights your researches. Ha! ha! is not that
+the motion of a spirit within you, while you deny such motion?" cried
+the king, pleased with his argument, and looking triumphantly at his
+mistress.
+
+"Thought," replied Lorenzo Ruggiero, "is the exercise of an inward
+sense; just as the faculty of seeing several objects and noticing
+their size and color is an effect of sight. It has no connection with
+what people choose to call another life. Thought is a faculty which
+ceases, with the forces which produced it, when we cease to breathe."
+
+"You are logical," said the king, surprised. "But alchemy must
+therefore be an atheistical science.'
+
+"A materialist science, sire, which is a very different thing.
+Materialism is the outcome of Indian doctrines, transmitted through
+the mysteries of Isis to Chaldea and Egypt, and brought to Greece by
+Pythagoras, one of the demigods of humanity. His doctrine of
+re-incarnation is the mathematics of materialism, the vital law of its
+phases. To each of the different creations which form the terrestrial
+creation belongs the power of retarding the movement which sweeps on
+the rest."
+
+"Alchemy is the science of sciences!" cried Charles IX.,
+enthusiastically. "I want to see you at work."
+
+"Whenever it pleases you, sire; you cannot be more interested than
+Madame the Queen-mother."
+
+"Ah! so this is why she cares for you?" exclaimed the king.
+
+"The house of Medici has secretly protected our Search for more than a
+century."
+
+"Sire," said Cosmo, "this child will live nearly a hundred years; he
+will have trials; nevertheless, he will be happy and honored, because
+he has in his veins the blood of the Valois."
+
+"I will go and see you in your laboratory, messieurs," said the king,
+his good-humor quite restored. "You may now go."
+
+The brothers bowed to Marie and to the king and then withdrew. They
+went down the steps of the portico gravely, without looking or
+speaking to each other; neither did they turn their faces to the
+windows as they crossed the courtyard, feeling sure that the king's
+eye watched them. But as they passed sideways out of the gate into the
+street they looked back and saw Charles IX. gazing after them from a
+window. When the alchemist and the astrologer were safely in the rue
+de l'Autruche, they cast their eyes before and behind them, to see if
+they were followed or overheard; then they continued their way to the
+moat of the Louvre without uttering a word. Once there, however,
+feeling themselves securely alone, Lorenzo said to Cosmo, in the
+Tuscan Italian of that day:--
+
+"Affe d'Iddio! how we have fooled him!"
+
+"Much good may it do him; let him make what he can of it!" said Cosmo.
+"We have given him a helping hand,--whether the queen pays it back to
+us or not."
+
+Some days after this scene, which struck the king's mistress as
+forcibly as it did the king, Marie suddenly exclaimed, in one of those
+moments when the soul seems, as it were, disengaged from the body in
+the plenitude of happiness:--
+
+"Charles, I understand Lorenzo Ruggiero; but did you observe that
+Cosmo said nothing?"
+
+"True," said the king, struck by that sudden light. "After all, there
+was as much falsehood as truth in what they said. Those Italians are
+as supple as the silk they weave."
+
+This suspicion explains the rancor which the king showed against Cosmo
+when the trial of La Mole and Coconnas took place a few weeks later.
+Finding him one of the agents of that conspiracy, he thought the
+Italians had tricked him; for it was proved that his mother's
+astrologer was not exclusively concerned with stars, the powder of
+projection, and the primitive atom. Lorenzo had by that time left the
+kingdom.
+
+In spite of the incredulity which most persons show in these matters,
+the events which followed the scene we have narrated confirmed the
+predictions of the Ruggieri.
+
+The king died within three months.
+
+Charles de Gondi followed Charles IX. to the grave, as had been
+foretold to him jestingly by his brother the Marechal de Retz, a
+friend of the Ruggieri, who believed in their predictions.
+
+Marie Touchet married Charles de Balzac, Marquis d'Entragues, the
+governor of Orleans, by whom she had two daughters. The most
+celebrated of these daughters, the half-sister of the Comte
+d'Auvergne, was the mistress of Henri IV., and it was she who
+endeavored, at the time of Biron's conspiracy, to put her brother on
+the throne of France by driving out the Bourbons.
+
+The Comte d'Auvergne, who became the Duc d'Angouleme, lived into the
+reign of Louis XIV. He coined money on his estates and altered the
+inscriptions; but Louis XIV. let him do as he pleased, out of respect
+for the blood of the Valois.
+
+Cosmo Ruggiero lived till the middle of the reign of Louis XIII.; he
+witnessed the fall of the house of the Medici in France, also that of
+the Concini. History has taken pains to record that he died an
+atheist, that is, a materialist.
+
+The Marquise d'Entragues was over eighty when she died.
+
+The famous Comte de Saint-Germain, who made so much noise under Louis
+XIV., was a pupil of Lorenzo and Cosmo Ruggiero. This celebrated
+alchemist lived to be one hundred and thirty years old,--an age which
+some biographers give to Marion de Lorme. He must have heard from the
+Ruggieri the various incidents of the Saint-Bartholomew and of the
+reigns of the Valois kings, which he afterwards recounted in the first
+person singular, as though he had played a part in them. The Comte de
+Saint-Germain was the last of the alchemists who knew how to clearly
+explain their science; but he left no writings. The cabalistic
+doctrine presented in this Study is that taught by this mysterious
+personage.
+
+And here, behold a strange thing! Three lives, that of the old man
+from whom I have obtained these facts, that of the Comte de Saint-
+Germain, and that of Cosmo Ruggiero, suffice to cover the whole of
+European history from Francois I. to Napoleon! Only fifty such lives
+are needed to reach back to the first known period of the world. "What
+are fifty generations for the study of the mysteries of life?" said
+the Comte de Saint-Germain.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+I
+
+TWO DREAMS
+
+In 1786 Bodard de Saint-James, treasurer of the navy, excited more
+attention and gossip as to his luxury than any other financier in
+Paris. At this period he was building his famous "Folie" at Neuilly,
+and his wife had just bought a set of feathers to crown the tester of
+her bed, the price of which had been too great for even the queen to
+pay.
+
+Bodard owned the magnificent mansion in the place Vendome, which the
+/fermier-general/, Dange, had lately been forced to leave. That
+celebrated epicurean was now dead, and on the day of his interment his
+intimate friend, Monsieur de Bievre, raised a laugh by saying that he
+"could now pass through the place Vendome without /danger/." This
+allusion to the hellish gambling which went on in the dead man's
+house, was his only funeral oration. The house is opposite to the
+Chancellerie.
+
+To end in a few words the history of Bodard,--he became a poor man,
+having failed for fourteen millions after the bankruptcy of the Prince
+de Guemenee. The stupidity he showed in not anticipating that
+"serenissime disaster," to use the expression of Lebrun Pindare, was
+the reason why no notice was taken of his misfortunes. He died, like
+Bourvalais, Bouret, and so many others, in a garret.
+
+Madame Bodard de Saint-James was ambitious, and professed to receive
+none but persons of quality at her house,--an old absurdity which is
+ever new. To her thinking, even the parliamentary judges were of small
+account; she wished for titled persons in her salons, or at all
+events, those who had the right of entrance at court. To say that many
+/cordons bleus/ were seen at her house would be false; but it is quite
+certain that she managed to obtain the good-will and civilities of
+several members of the house of Rohan, as was proved later in the
+affair of the too celebrated diamond necklace.
+
+One evening--it was, I think, in August, 1786--I was much surprised to
+meet in the salons of this lady, so exacting in the matter of
+gentility, two new faces which struck me as belonging to men of
+inferior social position. She came to me presently in the embrasure of
+a window where I had ensconced myself.
+
+"Tell me," I said to her, with a glance toward one of the new-comers,
+"who and what is that queer species? Why do you have that kind of
+thing here?"
+
+"He is charming."
+
+"Do you see him through a prism of love, or am I blind?"
+
+"You are not blind," she said, laughing. "The man is as ugly as a
+caterpillar; but he has done me the most immense service a woman can
+receive from a man."
+
+As I looked at her rather maliciously she hastened to add: "He's a
+physician, and he has completely cured me of those odious red blotches
+which spoiled my complexion and made me look like a peasant woman."
+
+I shrugged my shoulders with disgust.
+
+"He is a charlatan."
+
+"No," she said, "he is the surgeon of the court pages. He has a fine
+intellect, I assure you; in fact, he is a writer, and a very learned
+man."
+
+"Heavens! if his style resembles his face!" I said scoffingly. "But
+who is the other?"
+
+"What other?"
+
+"That spruce, affected little popinjay over there, who looks as if he
+had been drinking verjuice."
+
+"He is a rather well-born man," she replied; "just arrived from some
+province, I forget which--oh! from Artois. He is sent here to conclude
+an affair in which the Cardinal de Rohan is interested, and his
+Eminence in person had just presented him to Monsieur de Saint-James.
+It seems they have both chosen my husband as arbitrator. The
+provincial didn't show his wisdom in that; but fancy what simpletons
+the people who sent him here must be to trust a case to a man of his
+sort! He is as meek as a sheep and as timid as a girl. His Eminence is
+very kind to him."
+
+"What is the nature of the affair?"
+
+"Oh! a question of three hundred thousand francs."
+
+"Then the man is a lawyer?" I said, with a slight shrug.
+
+"Yes," she replied.
+
+Somewhat confused by this humiliating avowal, Madame Bodard returned
+to her place at a faro-table.
+
+All the tables were full. I had nothing to do, no one to speak to, and
+I had just lost two thousand crowns to Monsieur de Laval. I flung
+myself on a sofa near the fireplace. Presently, if there was ever a
+man on earth most utterly astonished it was I, when, on looking up, I
+saw, seated on another sofa on the opposite side of the fireplace,
+Monsieur de Calonne, the comptroller-general. He seemed to be dozing,
+or else he was buried in one of those deep meditations which overtake
+statesmen. When I pointed out the famous minister to Beaumarchais, who
+happened to come near me at that moment, the father of Figaro
+explained the mystery of his presence in that house without uttering a
+word. He pointed first at my head, then at Bodard's with a malicious
+gesture which consisted in turning to each of us two fingers of his
+hand while he kept the others doubled up. My first impulse was to rise
+and say something rousing to Calonne; then I paused, first, because I
+thought of a trick I could play the statesman, and secondly, because
+Beaumarchais caught me familiarly by the hand.
+
+"Why do you do that, monsieur?" I said.
+
+He winked at the comptroller.
+
+"Don't wake him," he said in a low voice. "A man is happy when
+asleep."
+
+"Pray, is sleep a financial scheme?" I whispered.
+
+"Indeed, yes!" said Calonne, who had guessed our words from the mere
+motion of our lips. "Would to God we could sleep long, and then the
+awakening you are about to see would never happen."
+
+"Monseigneur," said the dramatist, "I must thank you--"
+
+"For what?"
+
+"Monsieur de Mirabeau has started for Berlin. I don't know whether we
+might not both have drowned ourselves in that affair of 'les Eaux.'"
+
+"You have too much memory, and too little gratitude," replied the
+minister, annoyed at having one of his secrets divulged in my
+presence.
+
+"Possibly," said Beaumarchais, cut to the quick; "but I have millions
+that can balance many a score."
+
+Calonne pretended not to hear.
+
+It was long past midnight when the play ceased. Supper was announced.
+There were ten of us at table: Bodard and his wife, Calonne,
+Beaumarchais, the two strange men, two pretty women, whose names I
+will not give here, a /fermier-general/, Lavoisier, and myself. Out of
+thirty guests who were in the salon when I entered it, only these ten
+remained. The two /queer species/ did not consent to stay until they
+were urged to do so by Madame Bodard, who probably thought she was
+paying her obligations to the surgeon by giving him something to eat,
+and pleasing her husband (with whom she appeared, I don't precisely
+know why, to be coquetting) by inviting the lawyer.
+
+The supper began by being frightfully dull. The two strangers and the
+/fermier-general/ oppressed us. I made a sign to Beaumarchais to
+intoxicate the son of Esculapius, who sat on his right, giving him to
+understand that I would do the same by the lawyer, who was next to me.
+As there seemed no other way to amuse ourselves, and it offered a
+chance to draw out the two men, who were already sufficiently
+singular, Monsieur de Calonne smiled at our project. The ladies
+present also shared in the bacchanal conspiracy, and the wine of
+Sillery crowned our glasses again and again with its silvery foam. The
+surgeon was easily managed; but at the second glass which I offered to
+my neighbor the lawyer, he told me with the frigid politeness of a
+usurer that he should drink no more.
+
+At this instant Madame de Saint-James chanced to introduce, I scarcely
+know how, the topic of the marvellous suppers to the Comte de
+Cagliostro, given by the Cardinal de Rohan. My mind was not very
+attentive to what the mistress of the house was saying, because I was
+watching with extreme curiosity the pinched and livid face of my
+little neighbor, whose principal feature was a turned-up and at the
+same time pointed nose, which made him, at times, look very like a
+weasel. Suddenly his cheeks flushed as he caught the words of a
+dispute between Madame de Saint-James and Monsieur de Calonne.
+
+"But I assure you, monsieur," she was saying, with an imperious air,
+"that I /saw/ Cleopatra, the queen."
+
+"I can believe it, madame," said my neighbor, "for I myself have
+spoken to Catherine de' Medici."
+
+"Oh! oh!" exclaimed Monsieur de Calonne.
+
+The words uttered by the little provincial were said in a voice of
+strange sonorousness, if I may be permitted to borrow that expression
+from the science of physics. This sudden clearness of intonation,
+coming from a man who had hitherto scarcely spoken, and then in a low
+and modulated tone, surprised all present exceedingly.
+
+"Why, he is talking!" said the surgeon, who was now in a satisfactory
+state of drunkenness, addressing Beaumarchais.
+
+"His neighbor must have pulled his wires," replied the satirist.
+
+My man flushed again as he overheard the words, though they were said
+in a low voice.
+
+"And pray, how was the late queen?" asked Calonne, jestingly.
+
+"I will not swear that the person with whom I supped last night at the
+house of the Cardinal de Rohan was Catherine de' Medici in person.
+That miracle would justly seem impossible to Christians as well as to
+philosophers," said the little lawyer, resting the tips of his fingers
+on the table, and leaning back in his chair as if preparing to make a
+speech. "Nevertheless, I do assert that the woman I saw resembled
+Catherine de' Medici as closely as though they were twin-sisters. She
+was dressed in a black velvet gown, precisely like that of the queen
+in the well-known portrait which belongs to the king; on her head was
+the pointed velvet coif, which is characteristic of her; and she had
+the wan complexion, and the features we all know well. I could not
+help betraying my surprise to his Eminence. The suddenness of the
+evocation seemed to me all the more amazing because Monsieur de
+Cagliostro had been unable to divine the name of the person with whom
+I wished to communicate. I was confounded. The magical spectacle of a
+supper, where one of the illustrious women of past times presented
+herself, took from me my presence of mind. I listened without daring
+to question. When I roused myself about midnight from the spell of
+that magic, I was inclined to doubt my senses. But even this great
+marvel seemed natural in comparison with the singular hallucination to
+which I was presently subjected. I don't know in what words I can
+describe to you the state of my senses. But I declare, in the
+sincerity of my heart, I no longer wonder that souls have been found
+weak enough, or strong enough, to believe in the mysteries of magic
+and in the power of demons. For myself, until I am better informed, I
+regard as possible the apparitions which Cardan and other
+thaumaturgists describe."
+
+These words, said with indescribable eloquence of tone, were of a
+nature to rouse the curiosity of all present. We looked at the speaker
+and kept silence; our eyes alone betrayed our interest, their pupils
+reflecting the light of the wax-candles in the sconces. By dint of
+observing this unknown little man, I fancied I could see the pores of
+his skin, especially those of his forehead, emitting an inward
+sentiment with which he was saturated. This man, apparently so cold
+and formal, seemed to contain within him a burning altar, the flames
+of which beat down upon us.
+
+"I do not know," he continued, "if the Figure evoked followed me
+invisibly, but no sooner had my head touched the pillow in my own
+chamber than I saw once more that grand Shade of Catherine rise before
+me. I felt myself, instinctively, in a luminous sphere, and my eyes,
+fastened upon the queen with intolerable fixity, saw naught but her.
+Suddenly, she bent toward me."
+
+At these words the ladies present made a unanimous movement of
+curiosity.
+
+"But," continued the lawyer, "I am not sure that I ought to relate
+what happened, for though I am inclined to believe it was all a dream,
+it concerns grave matters.
+
+"Of religion?" asked Beaumarchais.
+
+"If there is any impropriety," remarked Calonne, "these ladies will
+excuse it."
+
+"It relates to the government," replied the lawyer.
+
+"Go on, then," said the minister; "Voltaire, Diderot, and their
+fellows have already begun to tutor us on that subject."
+
+Calonne became very attentive, and his neighbor, Madame de Genlis,
+rather anxious. The little provincial still hesitated, and
+Beaumarchais said to him somewhat roughly:--
+
+"Go on, /maitre/, go on! Don't you know that when the laws allow but
+little liberty the people seek their freedom in their morals?"
+
+Thus adjured, the small man told his tale:--
+
+"Whether it was that certain ideas were fermenting in my brain, or
+that some strange power impelled me, I said to her: 'Ah! madame, you
+committed a very great crime.' 'What crime?' she asked in a grave
+voice. 'The crime for which the signal was given from the clock of the
+palace on the 24th of August,' I answered. She smiled disdainfully,
+and a few deep wrinkles appeared on her pallid cheeks. 'You call that
+a crime which was only a misfortune,' she said. 'The enterprise, being
+ill-managed, failed; the benefit we expected for France, for Europe,
+for the Catholic Church was lost. Impossible to foresee that. Our
+orders were ill executed; we did not find as many Montlucs as we
+needed. Posterity will not hold us responsible for the failure of
+communications, which deprived our work of the unity of movement which
+is essential to all great strokes of policy; that was our misfortune!
+If on the 25th of August not the shadow of a Huguenot had been left in
+France, I should go down to the uttermost posterity as a noble image
+of Providence. How many, many times have the clear-sighted souls of
+Sixtus the Fifth, Richelieu, Bossuet, reproached me secretly for
+having failed in that enterprise after having the boldness to conceive
+it! How many and deep regrets for that failure attended my deathbed!
+Thirty years after the Saint-Bartholomew the evil it might have cured
+was still in existence. That failure caused ten times more blood to
+flow in France than if the massacre of August 24th had been completed
+on the 26th. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in honor of which
+you have struck medals, has cost more tears, more blood, more money,
+and killed the prosperity of France far more than three Saint-
+Bartholomews. Letellier with his pen gave effect to a decree which the
+throne had secretly promulgated since my time; but, though the vast
+execution was necessary of the 25th of August, 1572, on the 25th of
+August, 1685, it was useless. Under the second son of Henri de Valois
+heresy had scarcely conceived an offspring; under the second son of
+Henri de Bourbon that teeming mother had cast her spawn over the whole
+universe. You accuse me of a crime, and you put up statues to the son
+of Anne of Austria! Nevertheless, he and I attempted the same thing;
+he succeeded, I failed; but Louis XIV. found the Protestants without
+arms, whereas in my reign they had powerful armies, statesmen,
+warriors, and all Germany on their side.' At these words, slowly
+uttered, I felt an inward shudder pass through me. I fancied I
+breathed the fumes of blood from I know not what great mass of
+victims. Catherine was magnified. She stood before me like an evil
+genius; she sought, it seemed to me, to enter my consciousness and
+abide there."
+
+"He dreamed all that," whispered Beaumarchais; "he certainly never
+invented it."
+
+"'My reason is bewildered,' I said to the queen. 'You praise yourself
+for an act which three generations of men have condemned, stigmatized,
+and--' 'Add,' she rejoined, 'that historians have been more unjust
+toward me than my contemporaries. None have defended me. I, rich and
+all-powerful, am accused of ambition! I am taxed with cruelty,--I who
+have but two deaths upon my conscience. Even to impartial minds I am
+still a problem. Do you believe that I was actuated by hatred, that
+vengeance and fury were the breath of my nostrils?' She smiled with
+pity. 'No,' she continued, 'I was cold and calm as reason itself. I
+condemned the Huguenots without pity, but without passion; they were
+the rotten fruit in my basket and I cast them out. Had I been Queen of
+England, I should have treated seditious Catholics in the same way.
+The life of our power in those days depended on their being but one
+God, one Faith, one Master in the State. Happily for me, I uttered my
+justification in one sentence which history is transmitting. When
+Birago falsely announced to me the loss of the battle of Dreux, I
+answered: "Well then; we will go to the Protestant churches." Did I
+hate the reformers? No, I esteemed them much, and I knew them little.
+If I felt any aversion to the politicians of my time, it was to that
+base Cardinal de Lorraine, and to his brother the shrewd and brutal
+soldier who spied upon my every act. They were the real enemies of my
+children; they sought to snatch the crown; I saw them daily at work
+and they wore me out. If /we/ had not ordered the Saint-Bartholomew,
+the Guises would have done the same thing by the help of Rome and the
+monks. The League, which was powerful only in consequence of my old
+age, would have begun in 1573.' 'But, madame, instead of ordering that
+horrible murder (pardon my plainness) why not have employed the vast
+resources of your political power in giving to the Reformers those
+wise institutions which made the reign of Henri IV. so glorious and so
+peaceful?' She smiled again and shrugged her shoulders, the hollow
+wrinkles of her pallid face giving her an expression of the bitterest
+sarcasm. 'The peoples,' she said, 'need periods of rest after savage
+feuds; there lies the secret of that reign. But Henri IV. committed
+two irreparable blunders. He ought neither to have abjured
+Protestantism, nor, after becoming a Catholic himself, should he have
+left France Catholic. He, alone, was in a position to have changed the
+whole of France without a jar. Either not a stole, or not a
+conventicle--that should have been his motto. To leave two bitter
+enemies, two antagonistic principles in a government with nothing to
+balance them, that is the crime of kings; it is thus that they sow
+revolutions. To God alone belongs the right to keep good and evil
+perpetually together in his work. But it may be,' she said
+reflectively, 'that that sentence was inscribed on the foundation of
+Henri IV.'s policy, and it may have caused his death. It is impossible
+that Sully did not cast covetous eyes on the vast wealth of the
+clergy,--which the clergy did not possess in peace, for the nobles
+robbed them of at least two-thirds of their revenue. Sully, the
+Reformer, himself owned abbeys.' She paused, and appeared to reflect.
+'But,' she resumed, 'remember you are asking the niece of a Pope to
+justify her Catholicism.' She stopped again. 'And yet, after all,' she
+added with a gesture of some levity, 'I should have made a good
+Calvinist! Do the wise men of your century still think that religion
+had anything to do with that struggle, the greatest which Europe has
+ever seen?--a vast revolution, retarded by little causes which,
+however, will not be prevented from overwhelming the world because I
+failed to smother it; a revolution,' she said, giving me a solemn
+look, 'which is still advancing, and which you might consummate. Yes,
+/you/, who hear me!' I shuddered. 'What! has no one yet understood
+that the old interests and the new interests seized Rome and Luther as
+mere banners? What! do they not know Louis IX., to escape just such a
+struggle, dragged a population a hundredfold more in number than I
+destroyed from their homes and left their bones on the sands of Egypt,
+for which he was made a saint? while I--But I,' she added, '/failed/.'
+She bowed her head and was silent for some moments. I no longer beheld
+a queen, but rather one of those ancient druidesses to whom human
+lives are sacrificed; who unroll the pages of the future and exhume
+the teachings of the past. But soon she uplifted her regal and
+majestic form. 'Luther and Calvin,' she said, 'by calling the
+attention of the burghers to the abuses of the Roman Church, gave
+birth in Europe to a spirit of investigation which was certain to lead
+the peoples to examine all things. Examination leads to doubt. Instead
+of faith, which is necessary to all societies, those two men drew
+after them, in the far distance, a strange philosophy, armed with
+hammers, hungry for destruction. Science sprang, sparkling with her
+specious lights, from the bosom of heresy. It was far less a question
+of reforming a Church than of winning indefinite liberty for man--
+which is the death of power. I saw that. The consequence of the
+successes won by the religionists in their struggle against the
+priesthood (already better armed and more formidable than the Crown)
+was the destruction of the monarchical power raised by Louis IX. at
+such vast cost upon the ruins of feudality. It involved, in fact,
+nothing less than the annihilation of religion and royalty, on the
+ruins of which the whole burgher class of Europe meant to stand. The
+struggle was therefore war without quarter between the new ideas and
+the law,--that is, the old beliefs. The Catholics were the emblem of
+the material interests of royalty, of the great lords, and of the
+clergy. It was a duel to the death between two giants; unfortunately,
+the Saint-Bartholomew proved to be only a wound. Remember this:
+because a few drops of blood were spared at that opportune moment,
+torrents were compelled to flow at a later period. The intellect which
+soars above a nation cannot escape a great misfortune; I mean the
+misfortune of finding no equals capable of judging it when it succumbs
+beneath the weight of untoward events. My equals are few; fools are in
+the majority: that statement explains it all. If my name is execrated
+in France, the fault lies with the commonplace minds who form the mass
+of all generations. In the great crises through which I passed, the
+duty of reigning was not the mere giving of audiences, reviewing of
+troops, signing of decrees. I may have committed mistakes, for I was
+but a woman. But why was there then no man who rose above his age? The
+Duke of Alba had a soul of iron; Philip II. was stupefied by Catholic
+belief; Henri IV. was a gambling soldier and a libertine; the Admiral,
+a stubborn mule. Louis XI. lived too soon, Richelieu too late.
+Virtuous or criminal, guilty or not in the Saint-Bartholomew, I accept
+the onus of it; I stand between those two great men,--the visible link
+of an unseen chain. The day will come when some paradoxical writer
+will ask if the peoples have not bestowed the title of executioner
+among their victims. It will not be the first time that humanity has
+preferred to immolate a god rather than admit its own guilt. You are
+shedding upon two hundred clowns, sacrificed for a purpose, the tears
+you refuse to a generation, a century, a world! You forget that
+political liberty, the tranquillity of a nation, nay, knowledge
+itself, are gifts on which destiny has laid a tax of blood!' 'But,' I
+exclaimed, with tears in my eyes, 'will the nations never be happy at
+less cost?' 'Truth never leaves her well but to bathe in the blood
+which refreshes her,' she replied. 'Christianity, itself the essence
+of all truth, since it comes from God, was fed by the blood of
+martyrs, which flowed in torrents; and shall it not ever flow? You
+will learn this, you who are destined to be one of the builders of the
+social edifice founded by the Apostles. So long as you level heads you
+will be applauded, but take your trowel in hand, begin to reconstruct,
+and your fellows will kill you.' Blood! blood! the word sounded in my
+ears like a knell. 'According to you,' I cried, 'Protestantism has the
+right to reason as you do!' But Catherine had disappeared, as if some
+puff of air had suddenly extinguished the supernatural light which
+enabled my mind to see that Figure whose proportions had gradually
+become gigantic. And then, without warning, I found within me a
+portion of myself which adopted the monstrous doctrine delivered by
+the Italian. I woke, weeping, bathed in sweat, at the moment when my
+reason told me firmly, in a gentle voice, that neither kings nor
+nations had the right to apply such principles, fit only for a world
+of atheists."
+
+"How would you save a falling monarchy?" asked Beaumarchais.
+
+"God is present," replied the little lawyer.
+
+"Therefore," remarked Monsieur de Calonne, with the inconceivable
+levity which characterized him, "we have the agreeable resource of
+believing ourselves the instruments of God, according to the Gospel of
+Bossuet."
+
+As soon as the ladies discovered that the tale related only to a
+conversation between the queen and the lawyer, they had begun to
+whisper and to show signs of impatience,--interjecting, now and then,
+little phrases through his speech. "How wearisome he is!" "My dear,
+when will he finish?" were among those which reached my ear.
+
+When the strange little man had ceased speaking the ladies too were
+silent; Monsieur Bodard was sound asleep; the surgeon, half drunk;
+Monsieur de Calonne was smiling at the lady next him. Lavoisier,
+Beaumarchais, and I alone had listened to the lawyer's dream. The
+silence at this moment had something solemn about it. The gleam of the
+candles seemed to me magical. A sentiment bound all three of us by
+some mysterious tie to that singular little man, who made me, strange
+to say, conceive, suddenly, the inexplicable influences of fanaticism.
+Nothing less than the hollow, cavernous voice of Beaumarchais's
+neighbor, the surgeon, could, I think, have roused me.
+
+"I, too, have dreamed," he said.
+
+I looked at him more attentively, and a feeling of some strange horror
+came over me. His livid skin, his features, huge and yet ignoble, gave
+an exact idea of what you must allow me to call the /scum/ of the
+earth. A few bluish-black spots were scattered over his face, like
+bits of mud, and his eyes shot forth an evil gleam. The face seemed,
+perhaps, darker, more lowering than it was, because of the white hair
+piled like hoarfrost on his head.
+
+"That man must have buried many a patient," I whispered to my neighbor
+the lawyer.
+
+"I wouldn't trust him with my dog," he answered.
+
+"I hate him involuntarily."
+
+"For my part, I despise him."
+
+"Perhaps we are unjust," I remarked.
+
+"Ha! to-morrow he may be as famous as Volange the actor."
+
+Monsieur de Calonne here motioned us to look at the surgeon, with a
+gesture that seemed to say: "I think he'll be very amusing."
+
+"Did you dream of a queen?" asked Beaumarchais.
+
+"No, I dreamed of a People," replied the surgeon, with an emphasis
+which made us laugh. "I was then in charge of a patient whose leg I
+was to amputate the next day--"
+
+"Did you find the People in the leg of your patient?" asked Monsieur
+de Calonne.
+
+"Precisely," replied the surgeon.
+
+"How amusing!" cried Madame de Genlis.
+
+"I was somewhat surprised," went on the speaker, without noticing the
+interruption, and sticking his hands into the gussets of his breeches,
+"to hear something talking to me within that leg. I then found I had
+the singular faculty of entering the being of my patient. Once within
+his skin I saw a marvellous number of little creatures which moved,
+and thought, and reasoned. Some of them lived in the body of the man,
+others lived in his mind. His ideas were things which were born, and
+grew, and died; they were sick and well, and gay, and sad; they all
+had special countenances; they fought with each other, or they
+embraced each other. Some ideas sprang forth and went to live in the
+world of intellect. I began to see that there were two worlds, two
+universes,--the visible universe, and the invisible universe; that the
+earth had, like man, a body and a soul. Nature illumined herself for
+me; I felt her immensity when I saw the oceans of beings who, in
+masses and in species, spread everywhere, making one sole and uniform
+animated Matter, from the stone of the earth to God. Magnificent
+vision! In short, I found a universe within my patient. When I
+inserted my knife into his gangrened leg I cut into a million of those
+little beings. Oh! you laugh, madame; let me tell you that you are
+eaten up by such creatures--"
+
+"No personalities!" interposed Monsieur de Calonne. "Speak for
+yourself and for your patient."
+
+"My patient, frightened by the cries of his animalcules, wanted to
+stop the operation; but I went on regardless of his remonstrances;
+telling him that those evil animals were already gnawing at his bones.
+He made a sudden movement of resistance, not understanding that what I
+did was for his good, and my knife slipped aside, entered my own body,
+and--"
+
+"He is stupid," said Lavoisier.
+
+"No, he is drunk," replied Beaumarchais.
+
+"But, gentlemen, my dream has a meaning," cried the surgeon.
+
+"Oh! oh!" exclaimed Bodard, waking up; "my leg is asleep!"
+
+"Your animalcules must be dead," said his wife.
+
+"That man has a vocation," announced my little neighbor, who had
+stared imperturbably at the surgeon while he was speaking.
+
+"It is to yours," said the ugly man, "what the action is to the word,
+the body to the soul."
+
+But his tongue grew thick, his words were indistinct, and he said no
+more. Fortunately for us the conversation took another turn. At the
+end of half an hour we had forgotten the surgeon of the king's pages,
+who was fast asleep. Rain was falling in torrents as we left the
+supper-table.
+
+"The lawyer is no fool," I said to Beaumarchais.
+
+"True, but he is cold and dull. You see, however, that the provinces
+are still sending us worthy men who take a serious view of political
+theories and the history of France. It is a leaven which will rise."
+
+"Is your carriage here?" asked Madame de Saint-James, addressing me.
+
+"No," I replied, "I did not think that I should need it to-night."
+
+Madame de Saint-James then rang the bell, ordered her own carriage to
+be brought round, and said to the little lawyer in a low voice:--
+
+"Monsieur de Robespierre, will you do me the kindness to drop Monsieur
+Marat at his own door?--for he is not in a state to go alone."
+
+"With pleasure, madame," replied Monsieur de Robespierre, with his
+finical gallantry. "I only wish you had requested me to do something
+more difficult."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Catherine de Medici, by Honore de Balzac
+
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