Catherine De Medici

“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.’”