THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 1
 
 H. DE BALZAC 
 
 THE COMEDIE HUMAINE
 
 "/ AM CHAUDIEU''
 
 H. DE BALZAC 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 CLARA BELL 
 
 WITH A PREFACE BY 
 
 GEORGE SAINTSBURY 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE GEBBIE PUBLISHING Co., Ltd. 
 1899
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI 
 
 INTRODUCTION ' 3 
 
 I. THE CALVINIST MARTYR , . 46 
 
 II. THE RUGGIERIS' SECRET 24$ 
 
 III. THE TWO DREAMS 325 
 
 THE EXILES 344 
 
 THE MESSAGE 380 
 
 704727
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 " I AM CHAUDIEU ! " (p. 55) Frontispiece 
 
 PAGB 
 
 "WE HAVE MADE ONE MISTAKE," REMARKED THE DUKE, PLAY- 
 ING WITH HIS DAGGER . IO6 
 
 'YOU, MADAME, HAVE KILLED YOUR SON ! " SAID MARY STEWART 197 
 
 ' YOU ARE A LOYAL SUBJECT," SAID CATHERINE . . . 243 
 
 ' AM I A KING ? " SAID HE BITTERLY 290 
 
 Drawn by D. Murray-Smith.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS book (as to which it is important to remember the 
 Sur* if injustice is not to be done to the intentions of the 
 author) has plenty of interest of more kinds than one; but it 
 is perhaps more interesting because of the place it holds in 
 Balzac's work than for itself. He had always considerable 
 hankerings after the historical novel : his early and lifelong 
 devotion to Scott would sufficiently account for that. More 
 than one of the (Euvres dc Jcuncssc (youthful works) attempts 
 the form in a more or less conscious way : the " Chouans," the 
 first successful book, definitely attempts it ; but by far the 
 most ambitious attempt is to be found in the book before us. 
 It is most probable that it was of this, if of anything of his 
 own, that Balzac was thinking when, in 1846, he wrote dis- 
 dainfully to Madame Hanska about Dumas, and expressed 
 himself toward " Les Trois Mousquetaires " (which had whiled 
 him through a day of cold and inability to work) nearly as 
 ungratefully as Carlyle did toward Captain Marryat. And 
 though it is, let it be repeated, a mistake, and a rather unfair 
 mistake, to give such a title to the book as might induce 
 readers to regard it as a single and definite novel, of which 
 Catherine is the heroine, though it is made up of three parts 
 written at very different times, it has a unity which the intro- 
 duction shows to some extent, and which a rejected preface 
 given by M. de Lovenjoul shows still better. 
 
 To understand this, we must remember that Balzac, though 
 not exactly an historical scholar, was a considerable student 
 of history ; and that, although rather an amateur politician, he 
 was a constant thinker and writer on political subjects. We 
 must add to these remembrances the fact of his intense interest 
 
 * About. 
 
 (ix)
 
 x PREFACE. 
 
 in all such matters as Alchemy, the Elixir of Life, and so 
 forth, to which the sixteenth century in general, and Cath- 
 erine de' Medici in particular, were known to be devoted. 
 All these interests of his met in the present book, the parts 
 of which appeared in inverse order, and the genesis of which 
 is important enough to make it desirable to incorporate some 
 of the usual bibliographical matter in the substance of this 
 preface. The third and shortest, " Les Deux Reves" (The 
 Two Dreams), a piece partly suggestive of the famous 
 " Prophecy of Cazotte " and other legends of the Revolution 
 (but with more retrospective than prospective view), is dated 
 as early as 1828 (before the turning-point), and was actually 
 published in a periodical in 1830. "La Confidence des Rug- 
 gieri," written in 1836 (and, as I have noted in the general 
 introduction, according to its author, in a single night), fol- 
 lowed, and " Le Martyr Calviniste," which had several titles, 
 and was advertised as in preparation for a long time, did not 
 come till 1841. 
 
 It is unnecessary to say that all are interesting. The per- 
 sonages, both imaginary and historical, appear at times in a 
 manner worthy of Balzac ; many separate scenes are excellent ; 
 and, to those who care to perceive them, the various occupa- 
 tions of the author appear in the most interesting manner. 
 Politically, his object was, at least by his own account, to de- 
 fend the maxim that private and public morality are different ; 
 that the policy of a state cannot be, and ought not to be, gov- 
 erned by the same considerations of duty to its neighbors as 
 those which ought to govern the conduct of an individual. 
 The very best men those least liable to the slightest imputa- 
 tion of corrupt morals and motives have indorsed this prin- 
 ciple ; though it has been screamed at by a few fanatics, a 
 somewhat larger number of persons who found their account 
 in so doing, and a great multitude of hasty, dense, or foolish 
 folk. But it was something of a mark of that amateurishness 
 which spoilt Balzac's dealing with the subject to choose the
 
 PREFACE. xi 
 
 sixteenth century for his text. For every cool-headed student 
 of history and ethics will admit that it was precisely the abuse 
 of this principle at this time, and by persons of whom Cath- 
 erine de' Medici, if not the most blamable, has had the most 
 blame put on her, that brought the principle itself into dis- 
 credit. Between the assertion that the strictest morality of 
 the Sermon on the Mount must obtain between nation and 
 nation, between governor and governed, and the maxim that 
 in politics the end of public safety justifies any means what- 
 ever, there is a perfectly immense gulf fixed. 
 
 If, however, we turn from this somewhat academic point, 
 and do not dwell very much on the occult and magical sides 
 of the matter, interesting as they are, we shall be brought at 
 once face to face with the question, Is the handling of this 
 book the right and proper one for an historical novel ? Can 
 we in virtue of it rank Balzac (this is the test which he would 
 himself, beyond all question, have accepted) a long way above 
 Dumas and near Scott ? 
 
 I must say that I can see no possibility of answer except, 
 "Certainly not." For the historical novel depends almost 
 more than any other division of the kind upon interest of 
 story. Interest of story is not, as has been several times 
 pointed out, at any time Balzac's main appeal, and he has 
 succeeded in it here less than in most other places. He has 
 discussed too much ; he has brought in too many personages 
 without sufficient interest of plot ; but, above all, he exhibits 
 throughout an incapacity to handle his materials in the pecu- 
 liar way required. How long he was before he grasped " the 
 way to do it," even on his own special lines, is the common- 
 place and refrain of all writing about him. Now, to this 
 special kind he gave comparatively little attention, and the 
 result is that he mastered it less than any other. In the best 
 stories of Dumas (and the best number some fifteen or twenty 
 at least) the interest of narrative, of adventure, of what will 
 happen to the personages, takes you by the throat at once, and
 
 xii PREFACE. 
 
 never lets you go till the end. There is little or nothing of 
 this sort here. The three stories are excellently well-informed 
 studies, very curious and interesting in divers ways. The 
 "Ruggieri" is perhaps something more; but it is, as its 
 author no doubt honestly entitled it, much more an " Etude 
 Philosophique"(Philosophical Study) than an historical nov- 
 elette. In short, this was not Balzac's way. We need not 
 be sorry it is very rarely necessary to be that that he tried 
 it ; we may easily forgive him for not recognizing the ease and 
 certainty with which Dumas trod the path. But we should be 
 most of all thankful that he did not himself enter it fre- 
 quently or ever pursue it far. 
 
 The most important part of the bibliography of the book 
 has been given above. The rest is a little complicated, and 
 for its ins and outs reference must be made to the usual au- 
 thority. It should be enough to say that the " Martyr," under 
 the title of "Les Lecamus," first appeared in the "Siecle" 
 during the spring of 1841. Sovverain published it as a book 
 two years later with the other two, as " Catherine de Medicis 
 Expliquee." The second part, entitled, not " La Confi- 
 dence," but "Le Secret des Ruggieri," had appeared much 
 earlier in the " Chronique de Paris" during the winter of 
 l8 3 6 ~37> an d na d been published as a book in the latter year; 
 it was joined to " Catharine de Medicis Expliquee " as above. 
 The third part, after appearing in the " Monde " as early as 
 May, 1830, also appeared in the " Deux Mondes " for Decem- 
 ber of the same year, then became one of the " Romans 
 et Contes Philosophiques " (Philosophical Romances and 
 Stories), then an "Etude Philosophique," and in 1843 
 joined "Catherine de Medicis Expliquee." The whole was 
 inserted in the Comedie in 1846. 
 
 " The Exiles " (Les Proscrits) first appeared in the " Revue 
 de Paris " for May, 1831, and was almost immediately included 
 in the " Romans et Contes Philosophiques." Its fortunes will 
 be more fully given in the preface to "Seraphita."
 
 PREFACE. xiii 
 
 Sensibility claims us in " Le Message," a story which, by the 
 way, was much twisted about in its author's hands, and under- 
 went transformations too long to be summarized here. There 
 is a point of irony in it which commends itself to its author, 
 and which keeps it sweet and prevents it from sharing the 
 mawkishness of the earlier stories. But it is slight. 
 
 G. S.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 To Monsieur le Marquis de Pastoret, 
 Member of the Academic des Beaux- Arts. 
 
 When we consider the amazing number of volumes 
 written to ascertain the spot where Hannibal crossed 
 the Alps, without our knowing to this day whether it 
 was, as Whitaker and Rivaz say, by Lyons, Geneva, 
 the Saint- Bernard, and the Valley of Aosta ; or, as 
 we are told by Letronne, Follard, Saint-Simon, and 
 Portia d' Urban, by the Is ere, Grenoble, Saint- Bon- 
 net, Mont Genevre, Fenestrella, and the Pass of 
 Susa ; or, according to Larauza, by the Mont Cents 
 and Susa; or, as Strabo, Polybius, and de Luc tell 
 us, by the Rhdne, Vienne, Yenne, and the Mont du 
 Chat ; or, as certain clever people opine, by Genoa, la 
 Bochetta, and la Scrivia the view I hold, and which 
 Napoleon had adopted to say nothing of the vinegar 
 with which some learned men have dressed the Alpine 
 rocks, can we wonder, Monsieur le Marquis, to find 
 modern history so much neglected that some most im- 
 portant points remain obscure, and that the most odious 
 calumnies still weigh on names which ought to be 
 revered? And it may be noted incidentally that by 
 dint of explanations it has become problematical 
 whether Hannibal ever crossed the Alps at all. 
 Father Menestrier believes that the Scoras spoken of 
 by Polybius was the Sadne ; Letronne, Larauza, and 
 Schweighauser believe it to be the here ; Cochard, a 
 learned man of Lyons, identifies it with the Drdme. 
 But, to any one who has eyes, are there not striking 
 
 (1)
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 geographical and linguistic affinities between Scoras 
 and Scrivia, to say nothing of the almost certain fact 
 that the Carthaginian fleet lay at la Spezzia or in the 
 Gulf of Genoa ? 
 
 I could understand all this patient research if the 
 battle of Cannae could be doubted ; but since its con- 
 sequences are well known, what is the use of blackening 
 so much paper with theories that are but the Arabesque 
 of hypothesis, so to speak ; while the most important 
 history of later times, that of the Reformation, is so 
 full of obscurities that the name remains unknown of 
 the man * who was making a boat move by steam at 
 Barcelona at the time when Luther and Calvin 
 were inventing the revolt of mind? 
 
 We, I believe, after having made, each in his own 
 way, the same investigations as to the great and noble 
 character of Catherine de' Medici, have come to the 
 same opinion. So I thought that my historical studies 
 on the subject might be suitably dedicated to a writer 
 who has labored so long on the history of the Refor- 
 mation; and that I should thus do public homage, 
 precious perhaps for its rarity, to the character and 
 fidelity of a man true to the Monarchy. 
 
 PARIS, January, 1842. 
 
 * The inventor of this experiment was probably Salomon of Caux, not 
 of Caus. This great man was always unlucky ; after his death even his 
 name was misspelt. Salomon, whose original portrait, at the age of 
 forty-six, was discovered by the author of the " Human Comedy," was 
 born at Caux, in Normandy.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 WHEN men of learning are struck by a historical blunder, 
 and try to correct it, " Paradox! " is generally the cry; but 
 to those who thoroughly examine the history of modern times, 
 it is evident that historians are privileged liars, who lend their 
 pen to popular beliefs, exactly as most of the newspapers of 
 the day express nothing but the opinions of their readers. 
 
 Historical independence of thought has been far less con- 
 spicuous among lay writers than among the priesthood. 
 The purest light thrown on history has come from the Bene- 
 dictines, one of the glories of France so long, that is to say, 
 as the interests of the monastic orders are not in question. 
 Since the middle of the eighteenth century, some great and 
 learned controversialists have arisen who, struck by the need 
 for rectifying certain popular errors to which historians have 
 lent credit, have published some remarkable works. Thus 
 Monsieur Launoy, nicknamed the Evicter of Saints, made 
 ruthless war on certain saints who have sneaked into the 
 Church Calendar. Thus the rivals of the Benedictines, the 
 too little known members of the Academic des Inscriptions 
 et Belles-lettres, began their memoirs, their studious notes, 
 full of patience, erudition, and logic, on certain obscure 
 passages of history. Thus Voltaire, with an unfortunate bias 
 and sadly perverted passions, often brought the light of his 
 intellect to bear on historical prejudices. Diderot, with this 
 end in view, began a book much too long on a period of 
 the history of Imperial Rome. But for the French Revolu- 
 tion, criticism, as applied to history, might perhaps have laid 
 up the materials for a good and true history of France, for 
 which evidence has long been amassed by the great French 
 Benedictines. Louis XVI., a man of clear mind, himself 
 translated the English work, which so much agitated the last 
 
 (3)
 
 4 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 century, in which Walpole tried to explain the career of 
 
 Richard III. 
 
 How is it that persons so famous as kings and queens, so 
 important as generals of great armies, become objects of 
 aversion or derision ? Half the world hesitates between the 
 song on Marlborough and the history of England, as they do 
 between popular tradition and history as concerning King 
 Charles IX. 
 
 At all the periods when great battles are fought between the 
 masses and the authorities, the populace creates an ogresque 
 figure to coin a word for the sake of its exactitude. Thus 
 in our own time, but for the "Memorials of Saint-Helena," 
 and the controversies of Royalists and Bonapartists, there 
 was scarcely a chance but that Napoleon would have been 
 misunderstood. Another Abbe de Pradt or two, a few more 
 newspaper articles, and Napoleon from an Emperor would 
 have become an ogre. 
 
 How is error propagated and accredited ? The mystery is 
 accomplished under our eyes without our discerning the pro- 
 cess. No one suspects how greatly printing has "helped to 
 give body both to the envy which attends persons in high 
 places, and to the popular irony which sums up the converse 
 view of every great historical fact. For instance, every bad 
 horse in France that needs flogging is called after the Prince 
 de Polignac ; and so who knows what opinion the future may 
 hold as to the Prince de Polignac's coup d' Etat? In conse- 
 quence of a caprice of Shakespeare's a stroke of revenge, 
 perhaps, like that of Beaumarchais on Bergasse (Begearss) 
 Falstaff, in England, is a type of the grotesque ; his name 
 raises a laugh, he is the King of Buffoons. Now, instead of 
 being enormously fat, ridiculously amorous, vain, old, drunken, 
 and a corrupter of youth, Falstaff was one of the most im- 
 portant figures of his time, a Knight of the Garter, holding 
 high command. At the date of Henry V.'s accession, Fal- 
 staff was at most four-and-thirty. This general, who distil).
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE Z>' MEDICI. 5 
 
 guished himself at the battle of Agincourt, where he took the 
 Due d'Alencon prisoner, in 1420 took the town of Montereau, 
 which was stoutly defended. Finally, under Henry VI., he 
 beat ten thousand Frenchmen with fifteen hundred men who 
 were dropping with fatigue and hunger. So much for valor ! 
 
 If we turn to literature, Rabelais, among the French, a sober 
 man who drank nothing but water, is thought of as a lover of 
 good-cheer and a persistent sot. Hundreds of absurd stories 
 have been coined concerning the author of one of the finest 
 books in French literature : " Pantagruel." 
 
 Aretino, Titian's friend, and the Voltaire of his day, is now 
 credited with a reputation, in complete antagonism with his 
 works and character, which he acquired by his over-free wit, 
 characteristic of the writings of an age when gross jests were 
 held in honor, and queens and cardinals indited tales which 
 are now considered licentious. Instances might be infinitely 
 multiplied. 
 
 In France, and at the most important period of our history, 
 Catherine de' Medici has suffered more from popular error 
 than any other woman, unless it be Brunehaut or Fredegonde; 
 while Marie de' Medici, whose every action was prejudicial to 
 France, has escaped the disgrace that should cover her name. 
 Marie dissipated the treasure amassed by Henry IV.; she 
 never purged herself of the suspicion that she was cognizant of 
 his murder ; Epernon, who had long known Ravaillac, and 
 who did not parry his blow, was intimate with the Queen ; she 
 compelled her son to banish her from France, where she was 
 fostering the rebellion of her other son, Gaston ; and Riche- 
 lieu's triumph over her on the " Journ6e des Dupes" was due 
 solely to the cardinal's revealing to Louis XIII. certain doc- 
 uments secreted after the death of Henry IV. 
 
 Catherine de' Medici, on the contrary, saved the throne of 
 France, she maintained the Royal authority under circum- 
 stances to which more than one great prince would have suc- 
 cumbed. Face to face with such leaders of the factions and
 
 6 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 ambitions of the houses of Guise and of Bourbon as the two 
 Cardinals de Lorraine and the two "Balafres," the two 
 Princes de Conde, Queen Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV., the 
 Connetable* de Montmorency, Calvin, the Colignys, and The- 
 odore de Beze, she was forced to put forth the rarest fine 
 qualities, the most essential gifts of statesmanship, under the 
 fire of the Calvinist press. These, at any rate, are indisputable 
 facts. And to the student who digs deep into the history of 
 the sixteenth century in France the figure of Catherine de' 
 Medici stands out as that of a great king. 
 
 When once calumnies are undermined by facts laboriously 
 brought to light from under the contradictions of pamphlets 
 and false anecdotes, everything is explained to the glory of 
 this wonderful- woman, who had none of the weaknesses of her 
 sex, who lived chaste in the midst of the gallantries of the most 
 licentious Court in Europe, and who, notwithstanding her 
 lack of money, erected noble buildings, as if to make good the 
 losses caused by the destructive Calvinists, who injured art as 
 deeply as they did the body politic. 
 
 Hemmed in between a race of princes who proclaimed 
 themselves the heirs of Charlemagne, and a factious younger 
 branch that was eager to bury the Connetable de Bourbon's 
 treason under the throne ; obliged, too, to fight down a heresy 
 on the verge of devouring the Monarchy, without friends, and 
 aware of treachery in the chiefs of the Catholic party and of 
 republicanism in the Calvinists, Catherine used the most dan- 
 gerous but the surest of political weapons Craft. She deter- 
 mined to deceive by turns the party that was anxious to secure 
 the downfall of the House of Valois, the Bourbons who aimed 
 at the Crown, and the Reformers the Radicals of that day, 
 who dreamed of an impossible republic, like those of our own 
 day, who, however, have nothing to reform. Indeed, so long 
 as she lived, the Valois sat on the throne. The great de Thou 
 
 * Constable ; at that time the highest military officer.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 7 
 
 understood the worth of this woman when he exclaimed, on 
 hearing of her death 
 
 "It is not a woman, it is Royalty that dies in her ! " 
 
 Catherine had, in fact, the sense of Royalty in the highest 
 degree, and she defended it with admirable courage and per- 
 sistency. The reproaches flung at her by Calvinist writers 
 are indeed her glory ; she earned them solely by her triumphs. 
 And how was she to triumph but by cunning? Here lies the 
 whole question. 
 
 As to violence that method beats on one of the most hotly 
 disputed points of policy, which, in recent days, has been 
 answered here, on the spot where a big stone from Egypt has 
 been placed to wipe out the memory of regicide, and to stand 
 as an emblem of the materialistic policy which now rules us ; 
 it was answered at les Carmes and at the Abbaye; it was 
 answered on the steps of Saint Roch ; it was answered in front 
 of the Louvre in 1830, and again by the people against the 
 King, as it has since been answered once more by la Fayette's 
 "best of all republics" against the republican rebellion, at 
 Saint-Merri and the Rue Transnonnain. 
 
 Every power, whether legitimate or illegitimate, must de- 
 fend itself when it is attacked ; but, strange to say, while the 
 people are heroic when they triumph over the nobility, the au- 
 thorities are murderers when they oppose the people ! And, 
 finally, if after their appeal to force they succumb, they are 
 regarded as effete idiots. The present Government (1840) 
 will try to save itself, by two laws, from the same evil as at- 
 tacked Charles X., and which he tried to scotch by two de- 
 crees. Is not this a bitter mockery? May those in power 
 meet cunning with cunning? Ought they to kill those who 
 try to kill them ? 
 
 The massacres of the Revolution are the reply to the mas- 
 sacre of Saint-Bartholomew. The People, being King, did 
 by the nobility and the King as the King and the nobility 
 did by the rebels in the sixteenth century. And popular
 
 8 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 writers, who know full well that, under similar conditions, the 
 people would do the same again, are inexcusable when they 
 blame Catherine de' Medici and Charles IX. 
 
 "All power is a permanent conspiracy," said Casimir 
 Perier when teaching what power ought to be. We admire 
 the anti-social maxims published by audacious writers ; why, 
 then, are social truths received in France with such disfavor 
 when they are boldly stated ? This question alone sufficiently 
 accounts for historical mistakes. Apply the solution of this 
 problem to the devastating doctrines which flatter popular 
 passion, and to the conservative doctrines which would re- 
 press the ferocious or foolish attempts of the populace, and 
 you will see the reason why certain personages are popular or 
 unpopular. Laubardemont and Laffemas, like some people 
 now living, were devoted to the maintenance of the power 
 they believed in. Soldiers and judges, they obeyed a Royal 
 authority. D'Orthez, in our day, would be discharged from 
 office for misinterpreting orders from the Ministry, but Charles 
 X. left him to govern his province. The power of the masses 
 is accountable to no one ; the power of one is obliged to ac- 
 count to its subjects, great and small alike. 
 
 Catherine, like Philip II. and the Duke of Alva, like the 
 Guises and Cardinal Granvelle, foresaw the future to which 
 the Reformation was dooming Europe. They saw monarchies, 
 religion, and power all overthrown. Catherine, from the 
 Cabinet of the French kings, forthwith issued sentence of 
 death on that inquiring spirit which threatened modern society 
 a sentence which Louis XIV. finally carried out. The 
 revocation of the Edict of Nantes was a measure that proved 
 unfortunate, simply in consequence of the irritation Louis 
 XIV. had aroused in Europe. At any other time England, 
 Holland, and the German Empire would not have encouraged 
 on their territory French exiles and French rebels. 
 
 Why, in these days, refuse to recognize the greatness which 
 the majestic adversary of that most barren heresy derived
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 9 
 
 from the struggle itself? Calvinists have written strongly 
 against Charles IX.'s stratagems; but travel through France : 
 as you see the ruins of so many destroyed fine churches, and 
 consider the vast breaches made by religious fanatics in the 
 social body ; when you learn the revenges they took, while 
 deploring the mischief of individualism the plague of France 
 to-day, of which the germ lay in the questions of liberty of 
 conscience which they stirred up you will ask yourself on 
 which side were the barbarians. There are always, as Cath- 
 erine says in the third part of this Study, "unluckily, in all 
 ages, hypocritical writers ready to bewail two hundred scoun- 
 drels killed in due season." Caesar, who tried to incite the 
 Senate to pity for Catiline's party, would very likely have 
 conquered Cicero if he had had newspapers and an Opposition 
 at his service. 
 
 Another consideration accounts for Catherine's historical 
 and popular disfavor. In France the Opposition has always 
 been Protestant, because its policy has never been anything 
 but negative ; it has inherited the theories of the Lutherans, 
 the Calvinists, and the Protestants on the terrible texts of 
 liberty, tolerance, progress, and philanthropy. The opponents 
 of power spent two centuries in establishing the very doubt- 
 ful doctrine of freewill. Two more centuries were spent 
 in working out the first corollary of freewill liberty of con- 
 science. Our age is striving to prove the second political 
 liberty. 
 
 Standing between the fields already traversed and the fields 
 as yet untrodden, Catherine and the church proclaimed the 
 salutary principle of modern communities : One faith, one 
 Lord ; but asserting their right of life and death over all inno- 
 vators. Even if she had been conquered, succeeding times 
 have shown that Catherine was right. The outcome of free- 
 will, religious liberty, and political liberty (note, this "does 
 not mean civil liberty) is France as we now see it. 
 
 And what is France in 1840? A country exclusively ab-
 
 10 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 sorbed in material interests, devoid of patriotism, devoid of 
 conscience ; where authority is powerless ; where electoral 
 rights, the fruit of freewill and political liberty, raise none 
 but mediocrities ; where brute force is necessary to oppose 
 the violence of the populace ; where discussion, brought to 
 bear on the smallest matter, checks every action of the body 
 politic; and where individualism the odious result of the 
 indefinite subdivision of property, which destroys family cohe- 
 sion will devour everything, even the nation, which sheer 
 selfishness will some day lay open to invasion. Men will 
 say, "Why not the Czar?" as they now say, "Why not the 
 Due d'Orleans?" We do not care for many things even 
 now; fifty years hence we shall care for nothing. 
 
 Therefore, according to Catherine and according to all 
 who wish to see society soundly organized man as a social 
 unit, as a subject, has no freewill, has no right to accept the 
 dogma of liberty of conscience, or to have political liberty. 
 Still, as no community can subsist without some guarantee 
 given to the subject against the sovereign, the subject derives 
 from that certain liberties under restrictions. Liberty no ; 
 but liberties yes ; well-defined and circumscribed liberties. 
 This is in the nature of things. For instance, it is beyond 
 human power to fetter freedom of thought ; and no sovereign 
 may ever tamper with money. 
 
 The great politicians who have failed in this long contest 
 it has gone on for five centuries have allowed their subjects 
 wide liberties ; but they never recognize their liberty to pub- 
 lish anti-social opinions, nor the unlimited freedom of the 
 subject. To them the words subject and free are, politically 
 speaking, a contradiction in terms; and, in the same way, 
 the statement that all citizens are equal is pure nonsense and 
 contradicted by nature every hour. To acknowledge the 
 need for religion, the need for authority, and at the same 
 time to leave all men at liberty to deny religion, to attack its 
 services, to oppose the exercise of authority by the public and
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 11 
 
 published expression of opinion, is an impossibility such as 
 the Catholics of the sixteenth century would have nothing to 
 say to. Alas ! the triumph of Calvinism will cost France 
 more yet than it has ever done ; for the sects of to-day re- 
 ligious, political, "humanitarian, and leveling are the train 
 of Calvinism ; and, when we see the blunders of those in 
 power, their contempt for intelligence, their devotion tb 
 those material interests in which they seek support, and which 
 are the most delusive of all props, unless by the special aid 
 of providence, the genius of destruction must certainly win the 
 day from the genius of conservatism. The attacking forces, 
 who have nothing to lose and everything to win, are thor- 
 oughly in agreement ; whereas their wealthy opponents refuse 
 to make any sacrifice of money or of self-conceit to secure 
 defenders. 
 
 Printing came to the aid of the resistance inaugurated by 
 the Vaudois and the Albigenses. As soon as human thought 
 no longer condensed, as it had necessarily been in order to 
 preserve the most communicable form had assumed a multi- 
 tude of garbs and become the very people, instead of remain- 
 ing in some sense divinely axiomatic, there were two vast 
 armies to contend with that of ideas and that of men. 
 Royal power perished in the struggle, and we, in France, at 
 this day are looking on at its last coalition with elements 
 which make it difficult, not to say impossible. 
 
 Power is action ; the electoral principle is discussion. No 
 political action is possible when discussion is permanently 
 established. So we ought to regard the woman as truly great 
 who foresaw that future, and fought it so bravely. The 
 House of Bourbon was able to succeed to the House of Valois, 
 and owed it to Catherine de' Medici that it found that crown 
 to wear. If the second Balafre had been alive, it is very 
 doubtful that the Bearnais, strong as he was, could have 
 seized the throne, seeing how dearly it was sold by the Due 
 de Mayenne and the remnant of the Guise faction. The nee-
 
 12 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 essary steps taken by Catherine, who had the deaths of Fran- 
 gois II. and Charles IX. on her soul both dying opportunely 
 for her safety are not, it must be noted, what the Calvinist 
 and modern writers blame her for ! Though there was no 
 poisoning, as some serious authors have asserted, there were 
 other not less criminal plots. It is beyond question that she 
 hindered Pare from saving one, and murdered the other mor- 
 ally by inches. 
 
 But the swift death of Francois II. and the skillfully con- 
 trived end of Charles IX. did no injury to Calvinist interests. 
 The causes of these two events concerned only the uppermost 
 sphere, and were never suspected by writers or by the lower 
 orders at the time ; they were guessed only by de Thou, by 
 1'Hopital, by men of the highest talents, or the chiefs of the 
 two parties who coveted and clung to the Crown, and who 
 thought such means indispensable. 
 
 Popular songs, strange to say, fell foul of Catherine's mor- 
 ality. The anecdote is known of a soldier who was roasting 
 a goose in the guardroom of the Chateau de Tours while 
 Catherine and Henry IV. were holding a conference there, 
 and who sang a ballad in which the Queen was insultingly 
 compared to the largest cannon in the hands of the Calvin- 
 ists. Henri IV. drew his sword to go out and kill the man ; 
 Catherine stopped him, and only shouted out 
 
 " It is Catherine who provides the goose ! " 
 
 Though the executions at Atnboise were attributed to Cath- 
 erine, and the Calvinists made that able woman responsible 
 for all the inevitable disasters of the struggle, she must be 
 judged by posterity, like Robespierre, at a future date. 
 
 And Catherine was cruelly punished for her preference for 
 the Due d'Anjou, which made her hold her two elder sons 
 so cheap. Henri III. having ceased, like all spoilt children, 
 to care for his mother, rushed voluntarily into such debauch- 
 ery as made him what the mother had made Charles IX., a 
 childless husband, a king without an heir. Unhappily, Cath-
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 13 
 
 erine's youngest son, the Due d'Alencon, died a natural 
 death. The Queen-mother made every effort to control her 
 son's passions. History preserves the tradition of a supper 
 to nude women given in the banqueting-hall at Chenonceaux 
 on his return from Poland, but it did not cure Henri III. of 
 his bad habits. 
 
 This great Queen's last words summed up her policy, which 
 was indeed so governed by good sense that we see the Cab- 
 inets of every country putting it into practice in similar cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 "Well cut, my son," said she, when Henri III. came to 
 her, on her death-bed, to announce that the enemy of the 
 throne had been put to death. " Now you must sew up 
 again." 
 
 She thus expressed her opinion that the sovereign must 
 make friends with the House of Lorraine, and make it useful, 
 as the only way to hinder the effects of the Guises' hatred, 
 by giving them a hope of circumventing the King. But this 
 indefatigable cunning of the Italian and the woman was in- 
 compatible with Henry III.'s life of debauchery. When once 
 the Great Mother was dead, the Mother of Armies (Mater 
 castrorum), the policy of the Valois died too. 
 
 Before attempting to write this picture of manners in action, 
 the author patiently and minutely studied the principal reigns 
 of French history, the quarrels of the Burgundians and the 
 Armagnacs, and those of the Guises and the Valois, each in 
 the forefront of a century. His purpose was to write a pic- 
 turesque history of France. Isabella of Bavaria, Catherine 
 and Marie de' Medici, each fills a conspicuous place, domi- 
 nating from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and 
 leading up to Louis XIV. 
 
 Of these three queens, Catherine was the most interesting 
 and the most beautiful. Hers was a manly rule, not disgraced 
 by the terrible amours of Isabella, nor those, even more ter-
 
 14 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 rible though less known, of Marie de' Medici. Isabella 
 brought the English into France to oppose her son, was in 
 love with her brother-in-law, the Due d' Orleans, and with 
 Boisbourdon. Marie de' Medici's account is still heavier. 
 Neither of them had any political genius. 
 
 In the course of these studies and comparisons, the author 
 became convinced of Catherine's greatness; by initiating 
 himself into the peculiar difficulties of her position, he dis- 
 cerned how unjust historians, biased by Protestantism, had 
 been to this Queen ; and the outcome was the three sketches 
 here presented, in which some erroneous opinions of her, of 
 those who were about her, and of the aspect of the times, 
 are combated. 
 
 The work is placed among my Philosophical Studies, be- 
 cause it illustrates the spirit of a period, and plainly shows 
 the influence of opinions. 
 
 But, before depicting the political arena in which Cath- 
 erine comes into collision with the two great obstacles in her 
 career, it is necessary to give a short account of her previous 
 life from the point of view of an impartial critic, so that the 
 reader may form a general idea of this large and royal life 
 up to the time when the first part of this narrative opens. 
 
 Never at any period, in any country or in any ruling fam- 
 ily, was there more contempt felt for legitimacy than by the 
 famous race of the Medici (in French commonly written and 
 pronounced Medicis). They held the same opinion of mon- 
 archy as is now professed in Russia : the ruler on whom the 
 crown devolves is the real and legitimate monarch. Mira- 
 beau was justified in saying, " There has been but one mes- 
 alliance in my family that with the Medici;" for, notwith- 
 standing the exertions of well-paid genealogists, it is certain 
 that the Medici, till the time of Averardo de' Medici, gonfa- 
 loniere of Florence in 1314, were no more than Florentine 
 merchants of great wealth. The first personage of the family 
 who filled a conspicuous place in the history of the great
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIC/. 15 
 
 Tuscan Republic was Salvestro de' Medici, gonfaloniere in 
 1378. This Salvestro had two sons Cosmo and Lorenzo de' 
 Medici. 
 
 From Cosmo descended Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Due 
 de Nemours, the Duke of Urbino (Catherine's father), Pope 
 Leo X., Pope Clement VII., and Alessandro, not indeed 
 Duke of Florence, as he is sometimes called, but Duke of the 
 City of Penna, a title created by Pope Clement VII. as a step 
 toward that of Grand Duke of Tuscany. 
 
 Lorenzo's descendants were Lorenzino the Brutus of 
 Florence who killed Duke Alessandro ; Cosmo, the first 
 Grand Duke, and all the rulers of Florence till 1737, when 
 the family became extinct. 
 
 But neither of the two branches that of Cosmo or that 
 of Lorenzo succeeded in a direct line, till the time when 
 Marie de' Medici's father subjugated Tuscany, and the Grand 
 Dukes inherited in regular succession. Thus Alessandro de' 
 Medici, who assumed the title of Duke of the City of Penna, 
 and whom Lorenzino assassinated, was the son of the Duke 
 of Urbino, Catherine's father, by a Moorish slave. Hence 
 Lorenzino, the legitimate son of Lorenzo, had a double right 
 to kill Alessandro, both as a usurper in the family and as an 
 oppressor of the city. Some historians have indeed supposed 
 that Alessandro was the son of Clement VII. The event 
 that led to the recognition of this bastard as head of the 
 Republic was his marriage with Margaret of Austria, the nat- 
 ural daughter of Charles V. 
 
 Francesco de' Medici, the husband of Bianca Capello, rec- 
 ognized as his son a child of low birth bought by that noto- 
 rious Venetian lady ; and, strange to say, Fernando, succeed- 
 ing Francesco, upheld the hypothetical rights of this boy. 
 Indeed, this youth, known as Don Antonio de' Medici, was 
 recognized by the family during four ducal reigns; he won 
 the affection of all, did them important service, and was 
 universally regretted.
 
 16 ABOU7 CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 Almost all the early Medici had natural children, whose 
 lot was in every case splendid. The Cardinal Giulio de' 
 Medici, Pope Clement VII., was the illegitimate son of 
 Giuliano I. Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici was also a bastard, 
 and he was within an ace of being Pope and head of the 
 family. 
 
 Certain inventors of anecdote have a story that the Duke 
 of Urbino, Catherine's father, told her: "A figlia d'inganno 
 non manca mat figliuolanza ' ' (A clever woman can always have 
 children, apropos to some natural defect in Henri, the second 
 son of Francois I., to whom she was betrothed). This Lor- 
 enzo de' Medici, Catherine's father, had married, for the 
 second time, in 1518, Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, and 
 died in 1519, a few days after his wife, who died in giving 
 birth to Catherine. Catherine was thus fatherless and mother- 
 less as soon as she saw the light. Hence the strange events 
 of her childhood, checkered by the violent struggles of the 
 Florentines, in the attempt to recover their liberty, against 
 the Medici who were determined to govern Florence, but 
 who were so circumspect in their policy that Catherine's 
 father took the title of Duke of Urbino. 
 
 At his death, the legitimate head of the House of the 
 Medici was Pope Leo X., who appointed Giuliano's illegiti- 
 mate son, Giulio de' Medici, then cardinal, Governor of 
 Florence. Leo X. was Catherine's grand-uncle, and this 
 Cardinal Giulio, afterward Clement VII., was her left-handed 
 uncle only. This it was which made Brantome so wittily 
 speak of that Pope as an "uncle in Our Lady." 
 
 During the siege by the Medici to regain possession of 
 Florence, the Republican party, not satisfied with having shut 
 up Catherine, then nine years old, in a convent, after strip- 
 ping her of all her possessions, proposed to expose her to the 
 fire of the artillery, between two battlements the suggestion 
 of a certain Battista Cei. Bernardo Castiglione went even 
 further in a council held to determine on some conclusion to
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 17 
 
 the business ; he advised that, rather than surrender Catherine 
 to the Pope who demanded it, she should be handed over to 
 the tender mercies of the soldiers. All revolutions of the 
 populace are alike. Catherine's policy, always in favor of 
 Royal authority, may have been fostered by such scenes, 
 which an Italian girl of nine could not fail to understand. 
 
 Alessandro's promotion, to which Clement VII., himself a 
 bastard, largely contributed, was no doubt owing partly to 
 the fact of his being illegitimate, and to Charles V.'s affec- 
 tion for his famous natural daughter Margaret. Thus the 
 Pope and the Emperor were moved by similar feelings. At 
 this period Venice was mistress of the commerce of the 
 world ; Rome governed its morals ; Italy was still supreme, 
 by the poets, the generals, and the statesmen who were her 
 sons. At no other time has any one country had so curious 
 or so various a multitude of men of genius. There were so 
 many that the smallest princelings were superior men. Italy 
 was overflowing with talent, daring, science, poetry, wealth, 
 and gallantry, though rent by constant internal wars, and at 
 all times the arena in which conquerors met to fight for her 
 fairest provinces. 
 
 When men are so great they are not afraid to confess their 
 weakness; hence, no doubt, this golden age for bastards. 
 And it is but justice to declare that these illegitimate sons of 
 the Medici were ardent for the glory and the advancement of 
 the family, alike in possessions and in power. And as soon 
 as the Duke of the City of Penna, the Moorish slave's son, 
 was established as Tyrant of Florence, he took up the interest 
 shown by Pope Clement VII. for Lorenzo II. 's daughter, now 
 eleven years of age. 
 
 As we study the march of events and of men in that 
 strange sixteenth century, we must never forget that the 
 chief element of political conduct was unremitting craft, 
 destroying in every nature the upright conduct, the squart- 
 ness which imagination looks for in eminent men. In this, 
 2
 
 18 ABOUT CATHERINE D' MEDICI, 
 
 especially, lies Catherine's absolution. This observation, in 
 fact, disposes of all the mean and foolish accusations brought 
 against her by the writers of the reformed faith. It was indeed 
 the golden age of this type of policy, of which Machiavelli 
 and Spinoza formulated the code, and Hobbes and Montes- 
 quieu; for the Dialogue of " Sylla and Eucrates" expresses 
 Montesquieu's real mind, which he could not set forth in any 
 other form in consequence of his connection with the Encylo- 
 psedists. These principles are to this day the unconfessed 
 morality of every Cabinet where schemes of vast dominion are 
 worked out. In France we were severe on Napoleon when 
 he exerted this Italian genius which was in his blood, and its 
 plots did not always succeed; but Charles V., Catherine, 
 Philip II. , Giulio II., would have done just as he did in the 
 affairs of Spain. 
 
 At the time when Catherine was born, history, if related 
 from the point of view of honesty, would seem an impossible 
 romance. Charles V., while forced to uphold the Catholic 
 Church against the attacks of Luther, who by threatening the 
 tiara threatened his throne, allowed Rome to be besieged, and 
 kept Pope Clement VII. in prison. This same Pope, who had 
 no more bitter foe than Charles V., cringed to him that he 
 might place Alessandro de' Medici at Florence, and the 
 Emperor gave his daughter in marriage to the bastard Duke. 
 No sooner was he firmly settled there than Alessandro, in con- 
 cert with the Pope, attempted to injure Charles V. by an 
 alliance, through Catherine de' Medici, with Francis I., and 
 both promised to assist the French King to conquer Italy. 
 
 Lorenzino de' Medici became Alessandro's boon companion, 
 and pandered to him to get an opportunity of killing him ; 
 and Filippo Strozzi, one of the loftiest spirits of that age, re- 
 garded this murder with such high esteem that he vowed that 
 each of his sons should marry one of the assassin's daughters. 
 The sons religiously fulfilled the father's pledge at a time when 
 each of them, under Catherine's protection, could have made
 
 ABOU2- CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 1*> 
 
 a splendid alliance ; for one was Doria's rival, and the other 
 Marshal of France. 
 
 Cosmo de' Medici, Alessandro's successor, avenged the death 
 of the tyrant with great cruelty, and persistently for twelve 
 years, during which his hatred never flagged against the peo- 
 ple who had, after all, placed him in power. He was eighteen 
 years of age when he succeeded to the government ; his first 
 act was to annul the rights of Alessandro's legitimate sons, at 
 the time when he was avenging Alessandro ! Charles V. con- 
 firmed the dispossession of his grandson, and recognized Cosmo 
 instead of Alessandro's son. 
 
 Cosmo, raised to the throne by Cardinal Cibo, at once sent 
 the prelate into exile. Then Cardinal Cibo accused his crea- 
 ture, Cosmo, the first Grand Duke, of having tried to poison 
 Alessandro's son. The Grand Duke, as jealous of his authority 
 as Charles V. was of his, abdicated, like the Emperor, in favor 
 of his son Francesco, after ordering the death of Don Garcias, 
 his other son, in revenge for that of Cardinal Giovanni de' 
 Medici, whom Garcias had assassinated. 
 
 Cosmo I. and his son Francesco, who ought to have been 
 devoted, soul and body, to the Royal House of France, the 
 only power able to lend them support, were the humble ser- 
 vants of Charles V. and Philip II., and consequently the 
 secret, perfidious, and cowardly foes of Catherine de' Medici, 
 one of the glories of their race. 
 
 Such are the more important features contradictory and 
 illogical indeed the dishonest acts, the dark intrigues of the 
 House of the Medici alone. From this sketch some idea may 
 be formed of the other princes of Italy and Europe. Every 
 envoy from Cosmo I. to the Court of France had secret in- 
 structions to poison Strozzi, Queen Catherine's relation, when 
 he should find him there. Charles V. had three ambassadors 
 from Francis I. murdered. 
 
 It was early in October, 1533, that the Duke ddla cittatdl
 
 20 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 Penna (of the City of Penna) left Florence for Leghorn, ac- 
 companied by Catherine de' Medici, sole heiress of Lorenzo 
 II. The Duke and the Princess of Florence, for this was the 
 title borne by the girl, now fourteen years of age, left the city 
 with a large following of servants, officials, and secretaries, 
 preceded by men-at-arms, and escorted by a mounted guard. 
 The young princess as yet knew nothing of her fate, excepting 
 that the Pope and Duke Alessandro were to have an interview 
 at Leghorn ; but her uncle, Filippo Strozzi, soon told her of 
 the future that lay before her. 
 
 Filippo Strozzi had married Clarissa de' Medici, whole 
 sister to Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, Catherine's 
 father ; but this union, arranged quite as much with a view to 
 converting one of the stoutest champions of the popular cause 
 to the support of Medici as to secure the recall of that then 
 exiled family, never shook the tenets of the rough soldier who 
 was persecuted by his party for having consented to it. In 
 spite of some superficial change of conduct, somewhat over- 
 ruled by this alliance, he remained faithful to the popular side, 
 and declared against the Medici as soon as he perceived their 
 scheme of subjugating Florence. This great man even refused 
 the offer of a principality from Pope Leo X. At that time 
 Filippo Strozzi was a victim to the policy of the Medici, so 
 shifty in its means, so unvarying in its aim. 
 
 After sharing the Pope's misfortunes and captivity, when, 
 surprised by Colonna, he took refuge in the castle of Saint- 
 Angelo, he was given up by Clement VII. as a hostage and 
 carried to Naples. As soon as the Pope was free, he fell upon 
 his foes, and Strozzi was then near being killed ; he was 
 forced to pay an enormous bribe to get out of the prison, 
 where he was closely guarded. As soon as he was at liberty, 
 with the natural trustfulness of an honest man, he was simple 
 enough to appear before Clement VII., who, perhaps, had flat- 
 tered himself that he was rid of him. The Pope had so much 
 to be ashamed of that he received Strozzi very ungraciously.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE* MEDICI. 21 
 
 Thus Strozzi had very early begun his apprenticeship to the 
 life of disaster, which is that of a man who is honest in poli- 
 tics, and whose conscience will not lend itself to the caprices 
 of opportunity, whose actions are pleasing only to virtue, 
 which is persecuted by all by the populace, because it with- 
 stands their blind passions ; by authority, because it resists its 
 usurpations. 
 
 The life of these great citizens is a martyrdom, through 
 which they have nothing to support them but the strong voice 
 of conscience, and the sense of social duty, which in all cases 
 dictates their conduct. 
 
 There were many such men in the Republic of Florence, 
 all as great as Strozzi and as masterly as their adversaries on 
 the Medici side, though beaten by Florentine cunning. In 
 the conspiracy of the Pazzi, what can be finer than the atti- 
 tude of the head of that house ? His trade was immense, and 
 he settled all his accounts with Asia, the Levant, and Europe 
 before carrying out that great plot, to the end that his corre- 
 spondents should not be the losers if he should fail. 
 
 And the history of the rise of the Medici family in the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is one of the finest that re- 
 mains unwritten, though men of great genius have attempted 
 it. It is not the history of a republic, or of any particular 
 community or phase of civilization ; it is the history of politi- 
 cal man, and the eternal history of political developments, that 
 of usurpers and conquerors. 
 
 On his return to Florence, Filippo Strozzi restored the 
 ancient form of government, and banished Ippolito de* 
 Medici, another bastard, as well as Alessandro, with whom he 
 was now acting. But he was then afraid of the inconstancy 
 of the populace ; and, as he dreaded Pope Clement's venge- 
 ance, he went to take charge of a large commercial house he 
 had at Lyons in correspondence with his bankers at Venice 
 and Rome, in France, and in Spain. A strange fact ! These 
 men, who bore the burden of public affairs as well as that of
 
 22 ABOUT CATHERINE Z>' MEDICI. 
 
 a perennial struggle with the Medici, to say nothing of their 
 squabbles with their own party, could also endure the cares 
 of commerce and speculation, of banking with all its compli- 
 cations, which the vast multiplicity of coinages and frequent 
 forgeries made far more difficult then than now. The word 
 banker is derived from the bench on which they sat, and 
 which served also to ring the gold and silver pieces on. 
 Strozzi found in his adored wife's death a pretext to offer to the 
 Republican party, whose police is always all the more terrible 
 because everybody is a voluntary spy in the name of Liberty, 
 which justifies all things. 
 
 Filippo's return to Florence happened just at the time when 
 the city was compelled to bow to Alessandro's yoke ; but he 
 had previously been to see Pope Clement, with whom matters 
 were so promising that his feelings toward Strozzi had changed. 
 In the moment of triumph the Medici so badly needed such a 
 man as Strozzi, were it only to lend a grace to Alessandro's 
 assumption of dignity, that Clement persuaded him to sit on 
 the bastard's council, which was about to take oppressive 
 measures, and Filippo had accepted a diploma as senator. 
 But for the last two years and a half like Seneca and Burrhus 
 with Nero he had noted the beginnings of tyranny. He 
 had found himself the object of distrust to the populace, and 
 so little in favor with the Medici, whom he opposed, that he 
 foresaw a catastrophe. And as soon as he heard from Ales- 
 sandro of the negotiations for the marriage of Catherine with 
 a French Prince, which were, perhaps, to be concluded at 
 Leghorn, where the contracting powers had agreed to meet, 
 he resolved to go to France and follow the fortunes of his 
 niece, who would need a guardian. Alessandro, delighted to 
 be quit of a man so difficult to manage in what concerned 
 Florence, applauded this decision, which spared him a murder, 
 and advised Strozzi to place himself at the head of Catherine's 
 household. 
 
 In point of fact, to dazzle the French Court, the Medici
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 23 
 
 had constituted a brilliant suite for the young girl whom they 
 quite incorrectly styled the Princess of Florence, and who was 
 also called the Duchess of Urbino. The procession, at the 
 head of it Duke Alessandro, Catherine, and Strozzi, consisted 
 of more than a thousand persons, exclusive of the escort and 
 serving-men ; and when the last of them were still at the gate 
 of Florence, the foremost had already got beyond the first 
 village outside the town where straw plait for hats is now 
 made. 
 
 It was beginning to be generally known that Catherine was 
 to marry a son of Francis the First, but as yet it was no more 
 than a rumor which found confirmation in the country from 
 this triumphant progress from Florence to Leghorn. From 
 the preparations required, Catherine suspected that her mar- 
 riage was in question, and her uncle revealed to her the abor- 
 tive scheme of her ambitious family, who had aspired to the 
 hand of the Dauphin. Duke Alessandro still hoped that the 
 Duke of Albany might succeed in changing the determination 
 of the French King, who, though anxious-to secure the aid of 
 the Medici in Italy, would only give them the Due d' Orleans. 
 This narrowness lost Italy to France, and did not hinder Cath- 
 erine from being Queen. 
 
 This Duke of Albany, the son of Alexander Stewart, brother 
 of James III.* of Scotland, had married Anne de la Tour de 
 Boulogne, sister to Madeleine, Catherine's mother; he was 
 thus her maternal uncle. It was through her mother that 
 Catherine was so rich and connected with so many families ; 
 for, strangely enough, Diane de Poitiers, her rival, was also 
 her cousin. Jean de Poitiers, Diane's father, was the son 
 of Jeanne de la Tour de Boulogne, the Duchess of Urbino's 
 aunt. Catherine was also related to Mary Stewart, her daugh- 
 ter-in-law. 
 
 Catherine was now informed that her dower in money 
 would amount to a hundred thousand ducats. The ducat was 
 
 * Great-uncle to Mary, Queen of Scots.
 
 24 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 a gold-piece as large as one of our old louis d'or, but only 
 half as thick. Thus a hundred thousand ducats in those days 
 represented, in consequence of the high value of gold, six 
 millions of francs at the present time, the ducat being worth 
 about twelve francs. The importance of the banking-house 
 of Strozzi, at Lyons, may be imagined from this, as it was his 
 factor there who paid over the twelve hundred thousand livres 
 in gold. The counties of Auvergne and Lauraguais also 
 formed part of Catherine's portion, and the Pope, Clement 
 VII., made her a gift of a hundred thousand ducats more in 
 jewels, precious stones, and other wedding gifts, to which 
 Duke Alessandro contributed. 
 
 On reaching Leghorn, Catherine, still so young, must have 
 been flattered by the extraordinary magnificence displayed by 
 Pope Clement VII., her "uncle in Our Lady," then the head 
 of the House of Medici, to crush the Court of France. He 
 had arrived at the port in one of his galleys hung with crimson 
 satin trimmed with gold fringe, and covered with an awning 
 of cloth of gold. This barge, of which the decorations had 
 cost nearly twenty thousand ducats, contained several rooms 
 for the use of Henri de France's future bride, furnished with 
 the choicest curiosities the Medici had been able to collect. 
 The oarsmen, magnificently dressed, and the seamen were 
 under the captaincy of a prior of the order of the Knights of 
 Rhodes. The Pope's household filled three more barges. 
 
 The Duke of Albany's galleys, moored by the side of the 
 Pope's, formed, with these, a considerable flotilla. 
 
 Duke Alessandro presented the officers of Catherine's house- 
 hold to the Pope, with whom he held a secret conference, 
 introducing to him, as seems probable, Count Sebastian Mon- 
 tecuculi, who had just left the Emperor's service rather 
 suddenly, it was said and the two generals, Antonio de 
 Leyva and Fernando Gonzaga. Was there a premeditated 
 plan between these two bastards to make the Due d'Or!6ans 
 the Dauphin ? What was the reward promised to Count Se-
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 25 
 
 bastian Montecuculi, who, before entering the service of 
 Charles V., had studied medicine? History is silent on these 
 points. We shall see, indeed, in what obscurity the subject 
 is wrapped. It is so great that some serious and conscientious 
 historians have recently recognized Montecuculi's innocence. 
 
 Catherine was now officially informed by the Pope himself 
 of the alliance proposed for her. The Duke of Albany had 
 had great difficulty in keeping the King of France to his 
 promise of giving even his second son to Catherine de' 
 Medici ; and Clement's impatience was so great, he was so 
 much afraid of seeing his schemes upset either by some in- 
 trigue on the part of the Emperor or by the haughtiness of 
 France, where the great nobles cast an evil eye on this union, 
 that he embarked forthwith and made for Marseilles. He ar- 
 rived there at the end of October, 1533. 
 
 In spite of this splendor, the House of the Medici was 
 eclipsed by the sovereign of France. To show to what a pitch 
 these great bankers carried their magnificence, the dozen 
 pieces given by the Pope in the bride's wedding purse con- 
 sisted of gold medals of inestimable historical interest, for 
 they were at that time unique. But Francis I., who loved 
 festivity and display, distinguished himself on this occasion. 
 The wedding feasts for Henri de Valois and Catherine went 
 on for thirty-four days. It is useless to repeat here details 
 which may be read in every history of Provence and Mar- 
 seilles as to this famous meeting between the Pope and the 
 King of France, which was the occasion of a jest of the Duke 
 of Albany's as to the duty of fasting ; a retort recorded by 
 Brantome which vastly amused the Court, and shows the tone 
 of manners at that time. 
 
 Though Henri de Valois was but three weeks older than 
 Catherine, the Pope insisted on the immediate consummation 
 of the marriage between these two children, so greatly did he 
 dread the subterfuges of diplomacy and the trickery commonly 
 practiced at that period. Clement, indeed, very anxious for
 
 26 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 proof, remained thirty-four days at Marseilles, in the hope, it 
 is said, of some visible evidence in his young relation, who at 
 fourteen was marriageable. And it was, no doubt, when 
 questioning Catherine before his departure, that he tried to 
 console her by the famous speech ascribed to Catherine's 
 father: "A figlia d'inganno non manca mat la figliuo- 
 fanza." * 
 
 The strangest conjectures have been given to the world as 
 to the causes of Catherine's barrenness during ten years. Few 
 persons nowadays are aware that various medical works con- 
 tain suppositions as to this matter, so grossly indecent that 
 they could not be repeated. f This gives some clue to the 
 strange calumnies which still blacken this Queen, whose every 
 action was distorted to her injury. The reason lay simply 
 with her husband. It is sufficient evidence that, at a time 
 when no prince was shy of having natural children, Diane de 
 Poitiers, far more highly favored than his wife, had no chil- 
 dren ; and nothing is commoner in surgical experience than 
 such a malformation as this Prince's, which gave rise to a 
 jest of the ladies of the Court, who would have made him abbe 
 of Saint-Victor, at a time when the French language was as 
 free as the Latin tongue. After the Prince was operated on, 
 Catherine had ten children. 
 
 The delay was a happy thing for France. If Henri II. had 
 had children by Diane de Poitiers, it would have caused seri- 
 ous political complications. At the time of his treatment, 
 the Duchesse de Valentinois was in the second youth of 
 womanhood. These facts alone show that the history of 
 Catherine de' Medici remains to be entirely re-written ; and 
 that, as Napoleon very shrewdly remarked, the history of 
 France should be in one volume only, or in a thousand. 
 
 When we compare the conduct of Charles V. with that of 
 the King of France during the Pope's stay at Marseilles, it is 
 greatly to the advantage of Francis as indeed in every in- 
 
 * See page 16. -j- See Bayle, Art. Fernel.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 27 
 
 stance. Here is a brief report of this meeting as given by a 
 contemporary : 
 
 " His Holiness the Pope, having been conducted to the 
 Palace prepared for him, as I have said, outside the port, each 
 one withdrew to his chamber until the morrow, when his said 
 Holiness prepared to make his entry. Which was done with 
 great sumptuousness and magnificence, he being set on a 
 throne borne on the shoulders of two men in his pontifical 
 habit, saving only the tiara, while before him went a white 
 palfrey bearing the Holy Sacrament, the said palfrey being 
 led by two men on foot in very fine raiment holding a bridle 
 of white silk. After him came all the cardinals in their habit, 
 riding their pontifical asses, and Madame the Duchess of 
 Urbino in great magnificence, with a goodly company of 
 ladies and gentlemen alike of France and of Italy. And the 
 Pope, with all this company, being come to the place pre- 
 pared where they should lodge, each one withdrew ; and all 
 this was ordered and done without any disorder or tumult. 
 Now, while as the Pope was making his entry, the King 
 crossed the water in his frigate and went to lodge there 
 whence the Pope had come, to the end that on the morrow 
 he might come from thence to pay homage to the Holy 
 Father, as beseemed a most Christian King. 
 
 " The King, being then ready, set forth to go to the Palace 
 where the Pope was, accompanied by the Princes of his blood, 
 Monsieur the Due de Vendosmois (father of the Vidame de 
 Chartres), the Comte de Saint-Pol, Monsieur de Montmor- 
 ency, and Monsieur de la Roche-sur-Yon, the Due de Nem- 
 ours (brother to the Duke of Savoy who died at that place), 
 the Duke of Albany, and many others, counts, barons, and 
 nobles, the Due de Montmorency being at all times about the 
 King's person. The King, being come to the Palace, was 
 received by the Pope and all the College of Cardinals assem- 
 bled in consistory, with much civility (fort humainemenf). 
 This done, each one went to the place appointed to him, and
 
 28 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 the King took with him many cardinals to feast them, and 
 among them Cardinal de' Medici, the Pope's nephew, a very 
 magnificent lord with a fine escort. On the morrow, those 
 deputed by his Holiness and by the King began to treat of 
 those matters whereon they had met to agree. First of all, 
 they treated of the question of faith, and a bull was read for 
 the repression of heresy, and to hinder things from coming to 
 a greater combustion (une plus grande combustion] than they 
 are in already. Then was performed the marriage ceremony 
 between the Due d' Orleans, the King's second son, and 
 Catherine de' Medici, Duchess of Urbino, his Holiness' niece, 
 under conditions the same, or nearly the same, as had been 
 formerly proposed to the Duke of Albany. The said marriage 
 was concluded with great magnificence, and our Holy Father 
 married them.* This marriage being thus concluded, the 
 Holy Father held a consistory, wherein he created four cardi- 
 nals to wait on the King, to wit : Cardinal le Veneur, here- 
 tofore Bishop of Lisieux and High Almoner; Cardinal de 
 Boulogne, of the family of la Chambre, half-brother on his 
 mother's side to the Duke of Albany ; Cardinal de Chatillon, 
 of the family of Coligny, nephew to the Sire de Montmorency ; 
 and Cardinal de Givry." 
 
 When Strozzi paid down the marriage portion in the pres- 
 ence of the Court, he observed some surprise on the part of 
 the French nobles ; they said pretty loudly that it was a small 
 price for such a mesalliance what would they say to-day ? 
 Cardinal Ippolito replied 
 
 "Then you are not informed as to your King's secrets. 
 His holiness consents to bestow on France three pearls of 
 inestimable price Genoa, Milan, and Naples." 
 
 The Pope left Count Sebastian Montecuculi to present him- 
 self at the French Court, where he made an offer of his 
 
 * At that time in French, as in Italian, the words marry and espouse 
 were used in a contrary sense to their present meaning. Marier was the 
 fact of being married, epouser was the priestly function.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MED 1C / 29 
 
 services, complaining of Antonio de Leyva and Fernando 
 Gonzaga, for which reason he was accepted. Montecuculi 
 was not one of Catherine's household, which was composed 
 entirely of French ladies and gentlemen ; for, by a law of 
 the realm which the Pope was rejoiced to see carried out, 
 Catherine was naturalized by letters patent before her mar- 
 riage. Montecuculi was at first attached to the household 
 of the Queen, Charles V.'s sister. Then, not long after, 
 he entered the Dauphin's service in the capacity of cup- 
 bearer. 
 
 The Duchesse d'Orleans found herself entirely swamped at 
 the Court of Francis I. Her young husband was in love with 
 Diane de Poitiers, who was certainly her equal in point of 
 birth, and a far greater lady. The daughter of the Medici 
 took rank below Queen Eleanor, Charles V.'s sister, and the 
 Duchesse d'Etampes, whose marriage to the head of the family 
 of de Brosse had given her one of the most powerful posi- 
 tions and highest titles in France. Her aunt, the Duchess of 
 Albany, the Queen of Navarre, the Duchesse de Guise, the 
 Duchesse de Vendome, the wife of the Connetable, and many 
 other women, by their birth and privileges as well as by their 
 influence in the most sumptuous Court ever held by a French 
 King not excepting Louis XIV. wholly eclipsed the daugh- 
 ter of the Florentine merchants, who was indeed more illus- 
 trious and richer through the Tour de Boulogne family than 
 through her descent from the Medici. 
 
 Filippo Strozzi, a republican at heart, regarded his niece's 
 position as so critical and difficult that he felt himself inca- 
 pable of directing her in the midst of conflicting interests, 
 and deserted her at the end of a year, being indeed recalled 
 to Italy by the death of Clement VII. Catherine's conduct, 
 when we remember that she was but just fifteen, was a marvel 
 of prudence. She very adroitly attached herself to the King, 
 her father-in-law, leaving him as rarely as possible ; she was 
 with him on horseback, in hunting, and in war.
 
 30 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 Her adoration of Francis I. saved the house of Medici from 
 all suspicion when the Dauphin died poisoned. At that time 
 Catherine and the Due d' Orleans were at the King's head- 
 quarters in Provence, for France had already been invaded 
 by Charles V., the King's brother-in-law. The whole Court 
 had remained on the scene of the wedding festivities, now 
 the theatre of the most barbarous war. Just as Charles V., 
 compelled to retreat, had fled, leaving the bones of his army 
 in Provence, the Dauphin was returning to Lyons by the 
 Rhone. Stopping at Tournon for the night, to amuse him- 
 self, he went through some athletic exercises, such as formed 
 almost the sole education he or his brother received, in con- 
 sequence of their long detention as hostages. The Prince 
 being very hot it was in the month of August was so rash 
 as to ask for a glass of water, which was given to him, iced, 
 by Montecuculi. The Dauphin died almost instantaneously. 
 
 The King idolized his son. The Dauphin was indeed, as 
 historians are agreed, a very accomplished Prince. His father, 
 in despair, gave the utmost publicity to the proceedings 
 against Montecuculi, and placed the matter in the hands of 
 the most learned judges of the day. 
 
 After heroically enduring the first tests of torture without 
 confessing anything, the Count made an avowal by which he 
 fully implicated the Emperor and his two generals, Antonio 
 de Leyva and Fernando Gonzago. This, however, did not 
 satisfy Francis I. Never was a case more solemnly thrashed 
 out than this. An eye-witness gives the following account of 
 what the King did : 
 
 " The King called all the Princes of the Blood, and all the 
 Knights of his Order, and many other high personages of the 
 realm, to meet at Lyons ; the Pope's Legate and Nuncio, the 
 cardinals who were of his Court, and the ambassadors of 
 England, Scotland, Portugal, Venice, Ferrara, and others ; 
 together with all the princes and great nobles of foreign 
 countries, both of Italy and of Germany, who were at that
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. p,l 
 
 time residing at his Court, to wit : The Duke of Wittemberg, 
 in Allemaigne j the Dukes of Somma, of Arianna, and of 
 Atria ; the Princes of Melphe [Malfi ?] (who had desired to 
 marry Catherine), and of Stilliano, Neapolitan ; the Marquis 
 di Vigevo, of the House of Trivulzio, Milanese ; the Signor 
 Giovanni Paolo di Ceri, Roman ; the Signor Cesare Fregose, 
 Genoese ; the Signor Annibale Gonzaga, Mantuan, and many 
 more. Who being assembled, he caused to be read in their 
 presence, from the beginning to the end, the trial of that 
 wretched man who had poisoned his late Highness the 
 Dauphin, with all the interrogations, confessions, confront- 
 ings, and other proceedings usual in criminal trials, not choos- 
 ing that the sentence should be carried out until all those 
 present had given their opinion on this monstrous and miser- 
 able matter." 
 
 Count Montecuculi's fidelity and devotion may seem extra- 
 ordinary in our day of universal indiscretion, when every- 
 body, and even ministers, talk over the most trivial incidents 
 in which they have put a finger ; but in those times princes 
 could command devoted servants, or knew how to choose 
 them. There were monarchical Moreys then, because there 
 was faith. Never look for great things from self-interest: 
 interests may change ; but look for anything from feeling, 
 from religious faith, monarchical faith, patriotic faith. These 
 three beliefs alone can produce a Berthereau of Geneva, a 
 Sydney or a Strafford in England, assassins to murder 
 Thomas a Becket, or a Montecuculi ; Jacques Cceur and 
 Jeanne d'Arc, or Richelieu and Danton ; a Bonchamp, a 
 Talmont, a Clement, or a Chabot. 
 
 Charles V. made use of the highest personages to carry 
 out the murder of three ambassadors from Francis I. A year 
 later Lorenzino, Catherine's cousin, assassinated Duke Ales- 
 sandro after three years of dissimulation and in circumstances 
 which gained him the surname of the Florentine Brutus. The 
 rank of the victim was so little a check on such undertakings
 
 32 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 that neither Leo X. nor Clement VII. seems to have died a 
 natural death. Mariana, the historian of Philip II., almost 
 jests in speaking of the death of the Queen of Spain, a 
 Princess of France, saying that " for the greater glory of the 
 Spanish throne God suffered the blindness of the doctors who 
 treated the Queen for dropsy." When King Henri II. 
 allowed himself to utter a scandal which deserved a sword- 
 thrust, he could find la Chataignerie willing to take it. At 
 that time royal personages had their meals served to them in 
 padlocked boxes of which they had the key. Hence the 
 droit de cadenas, the right of the padlock, an honor which 
 ceased to exist in the reign of Louis XIV. 
 
 The Dauphin died of poison, the same perhaps as caused 
 the death of MADAME, under Louis XIV. Pope Clement 
 had been dead two years ; Duke Alessandro, steeped in de- 
 bauchery, seemed to have no interest in the Due d' Orleans' 
 elevation. Catherine, now seventeen years old, was with her 
 father-in-law, whom she devotedly admired ; Charles V. 
 alone seemed to have an interest in the Dauphin's death, 
 because Francis I. intended his son to form an alliance which 
 would have extended the power of France. Thus the Count's 
 confession was very ingeniously based on the passions and 
 policy of the day. Charles V. had fled after seeing his troops 
 overwhelmed in Provence, and with them his good fortune, 
 his reputation, and his hopes of aggrandizement. And note 
 that, even if an innocent man had confessed under torture, 
 the King afterward gave him freedom of speech before an 
 august assembly, and in the presence of men with whom in- 
 nocence had a fair chance of a hearing. The King wanted 
 the truth, and sought it in good faith. 
 
 In spite of her now brilliant prospects, Catherine's position 
 at Court was unchanged by the Dauphin's death ; her child- 
 lessness made a divorce seem probable when her husband 
 should become king. The Dauphin was now enslaved by 
 Diane de Poitiers, who dared to be the rival of Madame
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 33 
 
 d'Etampes. Catherine was therefore doubly attentive and 
 insinuating to her father-in-law, understanding that he was 
 her sole mainstay. 
 
 Thus the first ten years of Catherine's married life were 
 spent in the unceasing regrets caused by repeated disappoint- 
 ments when she hoped to have a child, and the vexations of 
 her rivalry with Diane. Imagine what the life must be of a 
 princess constantly spied on by a jealous mistress who was 
 favored by the Catholic party, and by the strong support the 
 Senechale had acquired through the marriage of her daughters 
 one to Robert de la Mark, Due de Bouillon, Prince de 
 Sedan ; the other to Claude de Lorraine, Due d'Aumale. 
 
 Swamped between the party of the Duchesse d'Etampes 
 and that of the Senechale (the title born by Diane de Poitiers 
 during the reign of Francis I.), who divided the Court and 
 political feeling between the two mortal foes, Catherine tried 
 to be the friend of both the Duchess and Diane de Poitiers. 
 She, who was to become so great a queen, played the part of a 
 subaltern. Thus she served her apprenticeship to the double- 
 faced policy which afterward was the secret clue to her life. 
 At a later date the Queen found herself between the Catholics 
 and the Calvinists, as the woman had been, for ten years, 
 between Madame d'Etampes and Madame de Poitiers. 
 
 She studied the contradictions of French policy. Francis 
 upheld Calvin and the Lutherans to annoy Charles V. Then, 
 after having covertly and patiently fostered the Reformation 
 in Germany, after tolerating Calvin's presence at the Court 
 of Navarre, he turned against it with undisguised severity. So 
 Catherine could see the Court and the women of the Court 
 playing with the fire of heresy ; Diane at the head of the 
 Catholic party with the Guises, only because the Duchesse 
 d'Etampes was on the side of Calvin and the Protestants. 
 
 This was Catherine's political education ; and in the King's 
 private circle she could study the mistakes made by the 
 Medici. The Dauphin was antagonistic to his father on 
 3
 
 34 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 every point ; he was a bad son. He forgot the hardest but 
 the truest axiom of Royalty, namely, that the throne is a 
 responsible entity, and that a son who may oppose his father 
 during his lifetime must carry out his policy on succeeding to 
 the throne. Spinoza, who was as deep a politician as he was 
 a great philosopher, says, in treating of the case of a king 
 who has succeeded to another by a revolution or by treason : 
 "If the new King hopes to secure his throne and protect his 
 life, he must display so much zeal in avenging his predecessor's 
 death that no one shall feel tempted to repeat such a crime. 
 But to avenge him worthily it is not enough that he should 
 shed the blood of his subjects ; he must confirm the maxims 
 of him whose place he fills, and walk in the same ways of 
 government." 
 
 It was the application of this principle which gave the 
 Medici to Florence. Cosmo I., Alessandro's successor, eleven 
 years later, instigated the murder, at Venice, of the Florentine 
 Brutus, and, as has been said, persecuted the Strozzi without 
 mercy. It was the neglect of this principle that overthrew 
 Louis XVI. That King was false to every principle of govern- 
 ment when he reinstated the Parlements suppressed by his 
 grandfather. Louis XV. had been clear-sighted; the Parle- 
 ments, and especially that of Paris, were quite half to blame 
 for the disorders that necessitated the assembling of the States- 
 General. Louis XV. 's mistake was that when he threw down 
 that barrier between the throne and the people, he did not 
 erect a stronger one, that he did not substitute for the Parle- 
 ments a strong constitutional rule in the provinces. There 
 lay the remedy for the evils of the Monarchy, the voting 
 power for taxation and the incidence of the taxes, with con- 
 sent gradually won to the reforms needed in the monarchical 
 rule. 
 
 Henri II. 's first act was to give all his confidence to the 
 Connetable de Montmorency, whom his father had desired
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 35 
 
 him to leave in banishment. The Connetable de Montmo- 
 rency, with Diane de Poitiers, to whom he was closely at- 
 tached, was master of the kingdom. Hence Catherine was 
 even less powerful and happy as Queen of France than she had 
 been as the Dauphiness. 
 
 At first, from the year 1543, she had a child every year for 
 ten years, and was fully taken up by her maternal functions 
 during that time, which included the last years of Francis I.'s 
 reign, and almost the whole of her husband's. It is impos- 
 sible not to detect in this constant child-bearing the malicious 
 influence of a rival who thus kept the legitimate wife out of 
 the way. This feminine and barbarous policy was no doubt 
 one of Catherine's grievances against Diane. Being thus 
 kept out of the tide of affairs, this clever woman spent her time 
 in observing all the interests of the persons at Court, and all 
 the parties formed there. The Italians who had followed her 
 excited violent suspicions. After the execution of Monte- 
 cuculi, the Connetable de Montmorency, Diane, and most of 
 the crafty politicians at Court were racked with doubts of the 
 Medici ; but Francis I. always scouted them. Still the 
 Gondi, the Biraguas, the Strozzi, the Ruggieri, the Sardini, in 
 short, all who were classed as the Italians who had arrived in 
 Catherine's wake, were compelled to exercise every faculty of 
 wit, policy, and courage to enable them to remain at Court 
 under the burden of disfavor that weighed on them. During 
 the supremacy of Diane de Poitiers, Catherine's obligingness 
 went so far that some clever folk have seen in it an evidence 
 of the profound dissimulation to which she was compelled by 
 men and circumstances and by the conduct of Henri II. But 
 it is going too far to say that she never asserted her rights as a 
 wife and a queen. Her ten children (beside one miscarriage) 
 were a sufficient explanation of the King's conduct, who was 
 thus set free to spend his time with Diane de Poitiers. But 
 the King certainly never fell short of what he owed to him- 
 self; he gave the Queen an entry worthy of any that had pre-
 
 36 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 viously taken place, on the occasion of her coronation. The 
 records of the Parlement and of the Exchequer prove that 
 these two important bodies went to meet Catherine outside 
 Paris, as far as Saint-Lazare. Here, indeed, is a passage from 
 du Tillet's narrative : 
 
 "A scaffolding had been erected at Saint-Lazare, whereon 
 was a throne (which du Tillet calls a chair of state, chaire de 
 parcmenf). Catherine seated herself on this, dressed in a sur- 
 coat, or sort of cape of ermine, covered with jewels ; beneath 
 it a bodice, with a court train, and on her head a crown of 
 pearls and diamonds ; she was supported by the Marechale de 
 la Mark, her lady of honor. Around her, standing, were the 
 princes of the Blood and other princes and noblemen richly 
 dressed, with the Chancellor of France in a robe of cloth of 
 gold in a pattern on a ground of red cramoisy.* In front of 
 the Queen and on the same scaffolding were seated, in two 
 rows, twelve duchesses and countesses, dressed in surcoats of 
 ermine, stomachers, trains, and fillets, that is to say, coronets, 
 whether duchesses or countesses. There were the Duchesses 
 d'Estouteville, de Montpensier the elder and the younger 
 the Princesse de la Roche-sur-Yon ; the Duchesses de Guise, 
 de Nivernois, d'Aumale, de Valentinois (Diane de Poitiers) ; 
 Mademoiselle the legitimized bastard ' of France ' (a title 
 given to the King's daughter Diane, who became Duchesse de 
 Castro-Farnese, and afterward Duchesse de Montmorency- 
 Damville), Madame la Connetable, and Mademoiselle de 
 Nemours, not to mention the other ladies who could find no 
 room. The four capped Presidents (a mortier), with some 
 other members of the Court and the chief clerk, du Tillet, 
 went up on to the platform and did their service, and the 
 First President Lizet, kneeling on one knee, addressed the 
 Queen. The Chancellor, likewise on one knee, made re- 
 sponse. She made her entrance into Paris at about three in 
 
 * The old French word cramoisi did not mean merely a crimson red, 
 but denoted a special excellence of the dye. (See Rabelais.)
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 37 
 
 the afternoon, riding in an open litter, Madame Marguerite 
 de France sitting opposite to her, and by the side of the litter 
 carne the Cardinals d'Amboise, de Chatillon, de Boulogne, 
 and de Lenoncourt, in their rochets. She got out at the 
 Church of Notre-Dame, and was received by the clergy. 
 After she had made her prayer, she was carried along the Rue 
 de la Calandre to the Palace, where the royal supper was 
 spread in the great hall. She sat there in the middle at a 
 marble table, under a canopy of velvet powdered with gold 
 fleurs de lys. ' ' 
 
 It will here be fitting to controvert a popular error which 
 some persons have perpetuated, following Sauval in the mis- 
 take. It has been said that Henri II. carried his oblivion of 
 decency so far as to place his mistress' initials even on the 
 buildings which Catherine had advised him to undertake or 
 to carry on at such lavish expense. But the cypher, which is 
 to be seen at the Louvre, amply refutes those who have so 
 little comprehension as to lend credit to such nonsense, a 
 gratuitous slur on the honor of our kings and queens. The 
 H for Henri and the two Cs, face to face, for Catherine seem 
 indeed to make two Ds for Diane ; and this coincidence was 
 no doubt pleasing to the King. But it is not the less certain 
 that the royal cypher was officially constructed of the initials 
 of the King and the Queen. And this is so true that the 
 same cypher is still to be seen on the corn-market in Paris 
 which Catherine herself had built. It may also be found in the 
 crypt of Saint-Denis on Catherine's tomb, which she caused to 
 be constructed during her lifetime by the side of that of Henri 
 II., and on which she is represented from life by the sculptor 
 to whom she sat. 
 
 On a solemn occasion, when he was setting out on an expe- 
 dition to Germany, Henri II. proclaimed Catherine Regent 
 during his absence, as also in the event of his death on 
 March 25, 1552. Catherine's bitterest enemy, the author of 
 the Discours merveilleux sur les deportements de Catherine II.
 
 38 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 (" Strange Discourses on the Conduct of Catherine II."), ad- 
 mits that she acquitted herself of these functions to the general 
 approbation, and that the King was satisfied with her adminis- 
 tration. Henri II. had men and money at the right moment. 
 And after the disastrous day of Saint-Quentin, Catherine ob- 
 tained from the Parisians considerable sums, which she for- 
 warded to Compiegne, whither the King had come. 
 
 In politics Catherine made immense efforts to acquire some 
 little influence. She was clever enough to gain over to her 
 interests the Connetable de Montmorency, who was all-power- 
 ful under Henri II. The King's terrible reply to Montmor- 
 ency's insistency is well known. This answer was the result of 
 the good advice given by Catherine in the rare moments when 
 she was alone with the King, and could explain to him the 
 policy of the Florentines, which was to set the magnates of a 
 kingdom by the ears and build up the sovereign authority on 
 the ruins Louis XL's system, subsequently carried out by 
 Richelieu. Henri II. , who saw only through the eyes of Diane 
 and the Connetable, was quite a feudal King, and on friendly 
 terms with the great Houses of the realm. 
 
 After an ineffectual effort in her favor made by the Connet- 
 able, probably in the year 1556, Catherine paid great court 
 to the Guises, and schemed to detach them from Diane's 
 party so as to set them in opposition to Montmorency. But, 
 unfortunately, Diane and the Connetable were as virulent 
 against the Protestants as the Guises were. Hence their an- 
 tagonism lacked the virus which religious feeling would have 
 given it. Beside, Diane boldly defied the Queen's plans by 
 coquetting with the Guises and giving her daughter to the 
 Due d'Aumale. She went so far that she has been accused 
 by some writers of granting more than smiles to the gallant 
 Cardinal de Lorraine.* 
 
 * Some satirist of the time has left the following lines on Henry II. [in 
 which the pun on the words Sire and Cire (wax) would be lost in transla- 
 tion] :
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 39 
 
 The signs of grief and the ostentatious regret displayed by 
 Catherine on the King's death cannot be regarded as genuine. 
 The fact that Henri II. had been so passionately and faithfully 
 attached to Diane de Poitiers made it incumbent on Catherine 
 that she should play the part of a neglected wife who idolized 
 her husband ; but, like every clever woman, she carried on 
 her dissimulation, and never ceased to speak with tender 
 regret of Henri II. Diane herself, it is well known, wore 
 mourning all her life for her husband, Monsieur de Breze. 
 Her colors were black and white, and the King was wearing 
 them at the tournament where he was fatally wounded. Cath- 
 erine, in imitation no doubt of her rival, wore mourning for 
 the King to the end of her life. 
 
 On the King's death, the Duchesse de Valentintois was 
 shamelessly deserted and dishonored by the Connetable de 
 Montmorency, a man in every respect beneath his reputation. 
 Diane sent to offer her estate and chateau of Chenonceaux to 
 the Queen. Catherine then replied in the presence of wit- 
 nesses, " I can never forget that she was all the joy of my 
 dear Henri; I should be ashamed to accept, I will give her 
 an estate in exchange. I would propose that of Chaumont- 
 on-the-Loire." The deed of exchange was, in fact, signed at 
 Blois in 1559. Diane, whose sons-in-law were the Due d'Au- 
 male and the Due de Bouillon, kept her whole fortune and 
 died peacefully in 1566 at the age of sixty-six. She was thus 
 nineteen years older than Henri II. These dates, copied from 
 the epitaph on her tomb by a historian who studied the 
 question at the end of the last century, clear up many histori- 
 cal difficulties ; for many writers have said she was forty when 
 
 " Sire, si vous laissez, comme Charles desire, 
 Comme Diane veut, par trop vous gouverner, 
 Fondre, pdtrir, mollir, refondre, retourner, 
 Sire, vous n'tes plus, vous n'fites plus que cire." 
 
 Charles was the Cardinal de Lorraine.
 
 40 ABOUT CATHERINE DE? MEDICI. 
 
 her father was sentenced in 1523, while others have said she 
 was but sixteen. She was, in fact, four-and-twenty. 
 
 After reading everything both for and against her conduct 
 with Francis L, at the time when the House of Poitiers was 
 in the greatest danger, we can neither confirm nor deny any- 
 thing. It is a passage of history that still remains obscure. 
 We can see by what happens in ^our own day how history is 
 falsified, as it were, in the making. 
 
 Catherine, who founded great hopes on her rival's age, 
 several times made an attempt to overthrow her. On one oc- 
 casion she was very near the accomplishment of her hopes. 
 In 1554, Madame Diane, being ill, begged the King to go to 
 Saint-Germain pending her recovery. This sovereign co- 
 quette would not be seen in the midst of the paraphernalia of 
 doctors, nor bereft of the adjuncts of dress. To receive the 
 King on his return, Catherine arranged a splendid ballet, in 
 which five or six young ladies were to address him in verse. 
 She selected for the purpose Miss Fleming, related to her 
 uncle, the Duke of Albany, and one of the loveliest girls im- 
 aginable, fair and golden-haired ; then a young connection of 
 her own, Clarissa Strozzi, with magnificent black hair and 
 rarely fine hands ; Miss Lewiston, maid of honor to Mary 
 Stewart ; Mary Stewart herself; Madame Elisabeth de France, 
 the unhappy Queen of Spain ; and Madame Claude. Elisa- 
 beth was nine years old, Claude eight, and Mary Stewart 
 twelve. Obviously, the Queen aimed at showing off Clarissa 
 Strozzi and Miss Fleming without other rivals in the King's 
 eyes. The King succumbed : he fell in love with Miss 
 Fleming, and she bore him a son, Henri de Valois, Comte 
 d'Angoul&me, Grand Prior of France. 
 
 But Diane's influence and position remained unshaken. 
 Like Madame de Pompadour later with Louis XV., the 
 Duchesse de Valentinois was forgiving. But to what sort of 
 love are we to ascribe this scheme on Catherine's part ? Love 
 of power or love of her husband ? Women must decide.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 41 
 
 A great deal is said in these days as to the license of the 
 press ; but it is difficult to imagine to what a pitch it was car- 
 ried when printing was a new thing. Aretino, the Voltaire 
 of his time, as is well known, made monarchs tremble, and 
 foremost of them all Charles V. But few people know, per- 
 haps, how far the audacity of pamphleteers could go. This 
 chateau of Chenonceaux had been given to Diane, nay, she 
 was entreated to accept it, to induce her to overlook one of 
 the most horrible publications ever hurled at a woman, one 
 which shows how violent was the animosity between her and 
 Madame d'Etampes. In 1537, when she was eight-and- 
 thirty, a poet of Champagne, named Jean Voutd, published a 
 collection of Latin verses, and among them three epigrams 
 aimed at her. We must conclude that the poet was under 
 high patronage from the fact that his volume is introduced by 
 an eulogium written by Simon Macrin, the King's First Gentle- 
 man of the Bedchamber. Here is the only passage quotable 
 to-day from these epigrams, which bear the title : In Pic- 
 taviam, anum aulicam. (Against la Poitiers, an old woman 
 of the Court.) 
 
 " Non trahit esca ficta praedam." 
 
 "A painted bait catches no game," says the poet, after 
 telling her that she paints her face and buys her teeth and 
 hair; and he goes on: "Even if you could buy the finest 
 essence that makes a woman, you would not get what you 
 want of your lover, for you would need to be living, and you 
 are dead." 
 
 This volume, printed by Simon de Colines, was dedicated 
 "To a Bishop!" To Francois Bohier, the brother of the 
 man who, to save his credit at Court and atone for his crime, 
 made an offering on the accession of Henri II. of the chateau 
 of Chenonceaux, built by his father, Thomas Bohier, Coun- 
 cilor of State under four Kings: Louis XL, Charles VIII., 
 Louis XII., and Francis I. What were the pamphlets pub-
 
 42 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 lished against Madame de Pompadour and Marie Antoinette 
 in comparison with verses that might have been written by 
 Martial ! Voute must have come to a bad end. Thus the 
 estate and chateau of Chenonceaux cost Diane nothing but 
 the forgiveness of an offense a duty enjoined by the Gospel. 
 Not being assessed by a jury, the penalties inflicted on the 
 press were rather severer then than they are now. 
 
 The widowed Queens of France were required to remain 
 for forty days in the King's bedchamber, seeing no light but 
 that of the tapers ; they might not come out till after the 
 funeral. This inviolable custom annoyed Catherine greatly ; 
 she was afraid of cabals. She found a way to evade it. The 
 Cardinal de Lorraine coming out one morning at such a 
 time ! at such a juncture ! from the house of " the Fair 
 Roman," a famous courtesan of that day, who lived in the 
 Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, was roughly handled by a party 
 of roisterers. "Whereat his holiness was much amazed," 
 says Henri Estienne, " and gave it out that heretics were lying 
 in wait for him." And on this account the Court moved 
 from Paris to Saint-Germain. The Queen would not leave 
 the King her son behind, but took him with her. 
 
 The accession of Francis II., the moment when Catherine 
 proposed to seize the reins of power, was a disappointment 
 that formed a cruel climax to the twenty-six years of endur- 
 ance she had already spent at the French Court. The Guises, 
 with incredible audacity, at once usurped the sovereign 
 power. The Due de Guise was placed in command of the 
 army and the Connetable de Montmorency was shelved. 
 The cardinal took the control of the finances and the clergy. 
 
 Catherine's political career opened with one of those 
 dramas which, though it was less notorious than some others, 
 was not the less horrible, and initiated her no doubt into the 
 agitating shocks of her life. Whether it was that Catherine, 
 after vainly trying the most violent remedies, had thought 
 she might bring the King back to her through jealousy;
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE" MEDICI. 43 
 
 whether on coming to her second youth she had felt it hard 
 never to have known love, she had shown a warm interest in 
 a gentleman of royal blood, Francois de Vendome, son of 
 Louis de Venddme the parent House of the Bourbons the 
 Vidame de Chartres, the name by which he is known to his- 
 tory. Catherine's covert hatred of Diane betrayed itself in 
 many ways, which historians, studying only political devel- 
 opments, have failed to note with due attention. Catherine's 
 attachment to the Vidame arose from an insult offered by the 
 young man to the favorite. Diane looked for the most splen- 
 did matches for her daughters, who were indeed of the best 
 blood in the kingdom. Above all, she was ambitious of an 
 alliance with the Royal family. And her second daughter, 
 who became the Duchesse d'Aumale, was proposed in mar- 
 riage to the Vidame, whom Francis I., with sage policy, kept 
 in poverty. For, in fact, when the Vidame de Chartres and 
 the Prince de Conde first came to Court, Francis I. gave 
 them appointments ! What ? the office of chamberlains in 
 ordinary, with twelve hundred crowns a year, as much as he 
 bestowed on the humblest of his gentlemen. And yet, 
 though Diane offered him immense wealth, some high office 
 under the Crown, and the King's personal favor, the Vidame 
 refused. And then this Bourbon, factious as he was, married 
 Jeanne, daughter of the Baron d'Estissac, by whom he had 
 no children. 
 
 This proud demeanor naturally commended the Vidame to 
 Catherine, who received him with marked favor, and made 
 him her devoted friend. Historians have compared the last 
 Due de Montmorency, who was beheaded at Toulouse, with 
 the Vidame de Chartres for his power of charming, his 
 merits, and his talents. 
 
 Henri II. was not jealous ; he did not apparently think it 
 possible that a Queen of France could fail in her duty, or 
 that a Medici could forget the honor done her by a Valois. 
 When the Queen was said to be flirting with the Vidame de
 
 44 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 Chartres, she had been almost deserted by the King since the 
 birth of her last child. So this attempt came to nothing as 
 the King died wearing the colors of Diane de Poitiers. 
 
 So, at the King's death, Catherine was on terms of gallant 
 familiarity with the Vidame, a state of things in no way out 
 of harmony with the manners of the time, when love was at 
 once so chivalrous and so licentious that the finest actions 
 seemed as natural as the most blamable. But, as usual, 
 historians have blundered by regarding exceptional cases as 
 the rule. 
 
 Henri II. 's four sons nullified every pretension of the 
 Bourbons, who were all miserably poor, and crushed under 
 the scorn brought upon them by the Connetable de Montmor- 
 ency's treason, in spite of the reasons which had led him to 
 quit the country. The Vidame de Chartres, who was to the 
 Prince de Conde what Richelieu was to Mazarin, a father in 
 politics, a model, and yet more a master in gallantry, hid the 
 vast ambition of his family under a semblance of levity. 
 Being unable to contend with the Guises, the Montmorencys, 
 the Princes of Scotland, the cardinals, and the Bouillons, he 
 aimed at distinction by his gracious manners, his elegance, 
 and his wit, which won him the favors of the most charming 
 women, and the hearts of many he never thought about. He 
 was a man privileged by nature, whose fascinations were irre- 
 sistible, and who owed to his love affairs the means of keeping 
 up his rank. The Bourbons would not have taken offense, 
 like Jarnac, at la Chataignerie's scandal ; they were very ready 
 to accept lands and houses from their mistresses witness the 
 Prince de Cond6, who had the estate of Saint-Valery from 
 Madame la Marechale de Saint-Andre. 
 
 During the first twenty days of mourning for Henri II., a 
 sudden change came over the Vidame's prospects. Courted 
 by the Queen-mother, and courting her as a man may court 
 a queen, in the utmost secrecy, he seemed fated to play an 
 important part ; and Catherine, in fact, resolved to make him
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' Af EDICT. 45 
 
 useful. The Prince received letters from her to the Prince 
 de Conde, in which she pointed out the necessity for a coali- 
 tion against the Guises. The Guises, informed of this in- 
 trigue, made their way into the Queen's chamber to compel 
 her to sign an order consigning the Vidame to the Bastille, 
 and Catherine found herself under the cruel necessity of sub- 
 mitting. The Vidame died after a few months' captivity, on 
 the day when he came out of prison, a short time before the 
 Amboise conspiracy. 
 
 This was the end of Catherine de' Medici's first and only 
 love affair. Protestant writers declare that the Queen had 
 had him poisoned to bury the secret of her gallantries in the 
 tomb. 
 
 Such was this woman's apprenticeship to the exercise of 
 royal power.
 
 PART I. 
 
 THE CALVINIST MARTYR. 
 
 Few persons in these days know how artless were the dwell- 
 ings of the citizens of Paris in the sixteenth century, and how 
 simple their lives. This very simplicity of habits and thought, 
 perhaps, was the cause of the greatness of this primitive citizen 
 class for they were certainly great, free, and noble ; more so, 
 perhaps, than the citizens of our time. Their history remains 
 to be written ; it requires and awaits a man of genius. Inspired 
 by an incident which, though little known, forms the basis of 
 this narrative, and is one of the most remarkable in the his- 
 tory of the citizen class, this reflection will no doubt occur to 
 every one who shall read it to the end. Is it the first time in 
 history that the conclusion has come before the facts ? 
 
 In 1560, the houses of the Rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie (old 
 furrieries) lay close to the left bank of the Seine, between the 
 Notre-Dame Bridge and the bridge to the Exchange. The 
 public way and the houses occupied the ground now given up 
 to the single path of the present quay. Each house, rising 
 from the river, had a way down to it by stone or wooden steps, 
 defended by strong iron gates or doors of nail-studded timber. 
 These houses, like those of Venice, had a door to the land and 
 one to the water. At the moment of writing this sketch, only 
 one house remains of this kind as a reminiscence of old Paris, 
 and that is doomed soon to disappear ; it stands at the corner 
 of the Petit-Pont, the little bridge facing the guard-house of the 
 Hotel-Dieu. 
 
 Of old each dwelling presented, on the river-side, the pecu- 
 liar physiognomy stamped on it either by the trade and the 
 habits of its owners, or by the eccentricity of the construc- 
 tions devised by them for utilizing or defiling the Seine. The 
 (46)
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 47 
 
 bridges being built, and almost all choked up by more mills 
 than were convenient for the requirements of navigation, the 
 Seine in Paris was divided into as many pools as there were 
 bridges. Some of these old Paris basins would have afforded 
 delightful studies of color for the painter. What a forest of 
 timbers was built into the cross-beams that supported the mills, 
 with their immense sails and wheels ! What curious effects 
 were to be found in the joists that shored up the houses from 
 the river. Genre painting as yet, unfortunately, was not, and 
 engraving in its infancy ; so we have no record of the curious 
 scenes which may still be found, on a small scale, in some 
 provincial towns where the rivers are fringed with wooden 
 houses, and where, as at Vendome, for instance, the pools, 
 overgrown with tall grasses, are divided by railings to separate 
 the various properties on each bank. 
 
 The name of this street, which has now vanished from the 
 map, sufficiently indicates the kind of business carried on 
 there. At that time the merchants engaged in any particular 
 trade, far from dispersing themselves about the city, gathered 
 together for mutual protection. Being socially bound by the 
 guild which limited their increase, they were also united into a 
 brotherhood by the church. This kept up prices. And then 
 the masters were not at the mercy of their workmen and did 
 not yield, as they do now, to all their vagaries ; on the con- 
 trary, they took charge of them, treated them as their children, 
 and taught them the finer mysteries of their craft. A work- 
 man, to become a master, was required to produce a master- 
 piece always an offering- to the patron saint of the guild. 
 And will you venture to assert that the absence of competition 
 diminished their sense of perfection or hindered beauty of 
 workmanship, when your admiration of the work of the older 
 craftsmen has created the new trade of dealers in bric-a-brac ? 
 
 In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the fur trade was 
 one of the most flourishing industries. The difficulty of 
 obtaining furs, which, coming from the North, necessitated.
 
 48 'ABOUT CATHERINE D> MEDICI. 
 
 long and dangerous voyages, gave a high value to skins and 
 furriers' work. Then, as now, high prices led to demand, 
 for vanity knows no obstacles. 
 
 In France, and in other kingdoms, not only was the use of 
 furs restricted by law to the great nobility, as is proved by 
 the part played by ermine in ancient coats-of-arms ; but 
 certain rare furs, such as vair, which was beyond doubt im- 
 perial sable, might be worn only by kings, dukes, and men 
 of high rank holding certain offices. Vair (a name still used 
 in heraldry, vair and counter vair) was subdivided into grand 
 vair and menu vair. The word has within the last hundred 
 years fallen so completely into disuse, that in hundreds of 
 editions of Perrault's fairy tales, Cinderella's famous slipper, 
 probably of fur, menu vair, has become a glass slipper, 
 pantoufle de verre. Not long since a distinguished French 
 poet was obliged to restore and explain the original spelling 
 of this word, for the edification of his brethren of the press, 
 when giving an account of the " Cenerentola," in which a 
 ring is substituted for the symbolical slipper an unmeaning 
 change. 
 
 The laws against the use of fur were, of course, perpetually 
 transgressed, to the great advantage of the furriers. The 
 high price of textiles and of furs made a garment in those days 
 a durable thing, in keeping with the furniture, armor, and 
 general details of the sturdy life of the time. A nobleman 
 or lady, every rich man as well as every citizen, possessed at 
 most two dresses for each season, and they lasted a lifetime 
 or more. These articles were bequeathed to their children. 
 Indeed, the clauses relating to weapons and raiment in 
 marriage-contracts, in these days unimportant by reason of 
 the small value of clothes that are constantly renewed, were 
 at that period of great interest. High prices had led to 
 durability. 
 
 A lady's outfit represented a vast sum of money; it was 
 included in her fortune, and safely bestowed in those enor-
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 49 
 
 mous chests which endanger the ceilings of modern houses. 
 The full dress of a lady in 1840 would have been the dis- 
 habille of a fine lady of 1540. The discovery of America, 
 the facility of transport, the destruction of social distinctions, 
 which has led to the effacement of visible distinctions, have 
 all contributed to reduce the furrier's craft to the low ebb at 
 which it stands, almost to nothing. The article sold by a 
 furrier at the same price as of old say twenty livres has fallen 
 in value with the money : the livre or franc was then worth 
 twenty of our present money. The citizen's wife or the 
 courtesan who, in our day, trims her cloak with sable, does 
 not know that in 1440 a malignant constable of the watch 
 would have taken her forthwith into custody, and hailed her 
 before the judge at le Chatelet. The English ladies who are 
 so fond of ermine are unconscious of the fact that formerly 
 none but queens, duchesses, and the Chancellor of France 
 were permitted to wear this royal fur. There are at this 
 day various ennobled families bearing the name of Pelletier 
 or Lepelletier, whose forebears were obviously wealthy furriers ; 
 for most of our citizen names were originally surnames of that 
 kind. 
 
 This digression not only explains the long squabbles as to 
 precedence which the Drapers' Guild carried on for two cen- 
 turies with the Mercers and the Furriers, each insisting on 
 marching first, as being the most important, but also accounts 
 for the consequence of one Master Lecamus, a furrier honored 
 with the patronage of the two Queens, Catherine de' Medici 
 and Mary Stewart, as well as that of the legal profession, who 
 for twenty years had been the Syndic of his corporation, and 
 who lived in this street. The house occupied by Lecamus 
 was one of the three forming the three corners of the cross- 
 roads at the end of the bridge to the Exchange, where only 
 the tower now remains that formed the fourth corner. At 
 the angle this house, forming the corner of the bridge and 
 4
 
 50 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 of the quay, now called the Quai aux Fleurs, the architect 
 had placed a niche for a Madonna, before whom tapers con- 
 stantly burned, with posies of real flowers in their season and 
 artificial flowers in the winter. 
 
 On the side toward the Rue du Pont, as well as on that to 
 the Rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie, the house was supported on 
 wooden pillars. All the houses of the trading quarters were 
 thus constructed, with an arcade beneath, where foot passen- 
 gers walked under cover on a floor hardened by the mud they 
 brought in, which made it a rather rough pavement. In all 
 the towns of France these arcades have been called piliers in 
 England rows a general term to which the name of a trade 
 is commonly added, as "Piliers des Halles," "Piliers de la 
 Boucherie." These covered ways, required by the change- 
 able and rainy climate of Paris, gave the town a highly char- 
 acteristic feature, but they have entirely disappeared. Just 
 as there now remains one house only on the river bank, so no 
 more than about a hundred feet are left of the old piliers in 
 the market, the last that have survived until now ; and in a 
 few days this remnant of the gloomy labyrinth of old Paris will 
 also be destroyed. The existence of these relics of the Middle 
 Ages is, no doubt, incompatible with the splendor of modern 
 Paris. And these remarks are not intended as a lament over 
 those fragments of the old city, but as a verification of this 
 picture by the last surviving examples now falling into dust, 
 and to win forgiveness for such descriptions, which will be 
 precious in the future which is following hard on the heels of 
 this age. 
 
 The walls were of timber covered with slates. The spaces 
 between the timbers had been filled up with bricks, in a way 
 that may still be seen in some provincial towns, laid in a 
 zigzag pattern known as Point de Hongrie. The window-sills 
 and lintels, also of wood, were handsomely carved, as were 
 the corner tabernacle above the Madonna, and the pillars in 
 front of the store. Every window, every beam dividing the
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 51 
 
 stories, was graced with arabesques of fantastic figures and 
 animals wreathed in scrolls of foliage. On the street-side, as 
 on the river-side, the house was crowned with a high-pitched 
 roof having a gable to the river and one to the street. This 
 roof, like that of a Swiss chalet, projected far enough to cover 
 a balcony on the third floor with an ornamental balustrade ; 
 here the mistress might walk under shelter and command a 
 view of the street, or of the pool shut in between two bridges 
 and two rows of houses. 
 
 Houses by the river were at that time highly valued. The 
 system of drainage and water-supply was not yet invented ; 
 the only main drain was one around Paris, constructed by 
 Aubriot, the first man of genius and determination who in 
 the time of Charles V. thought of sanitation for Paris. 
 Houses situated like this of the Sieur Lecamus found in the 
 river a necessary water-supply, and a natural outlet for rain- 
 water and waste. The vast works of this kind under the 
 direction of the Trade Provosts are only now disappearing. 
 None but octogenarians can still remember having seen the 
 pits which swallowed up the surface-waters, in the Rue Mont- 
 martre, Rue du Temple, etc. These hideous yawning culverts 
 were in their day of inestimable utility. Their place will 
 probably be for ever marked by the sudden rising of the road- 
 way over what was their open channel another archaeological 
 detail which, in a couple of centuries, the historian will find 
 inexplicable. 
 
 One day, in 1816, a little girl, who had been sent to an 
 actress at the Ambigu with some diamonds for the part of a 
 queen, was caught in a storm, and so irresistibly swept away 
 by the waters to the opening of the drain in the Rue du 
 Temple, that she would have been drowned in it but for 
 the help of a passer-by, who was touched by her cries. But 
 she had dropped the jewels, which were found in a man-hole. 
 This accident made a great commotion and gave weight to 
 the demands for the closing of these gulfs for swallowing
 
 52 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 water and little girls. These curious structures, five feet high, 
 had more or less movable gratings, which led to the flooding 
 of cellars when the stream produced by heavy rain was 
 checked by the grating being choked with rubbish, which the 
 residents often forgot to remove. 
 
 The front of Master Lecamus' store was a large window, 
 but filled in with small panes of leaded glass, which made 
 the place very dark. The furs for wealthy purchasers were 
 carried to them for inspection. To those who came to buy 
 in the store, the goods were displayed outside between the 
 pillars, which, during the day, were always more or less 
 blocked by tables and salesmen sitting on stools, as they 
 could still be seen doing under the arcade of the Halles some 
 fifteen years since. From these outposts the clerks, appren- 
 tices, and sewing girls could chat, question, and answer each 
 other, and hail the passer-by in a way which Walter Scott 
 has depicted in the "Fortunes of Nigel." The signboard, 
 representing an ermine, was hung out as we still see those of 
 village inns, swinging from a handsome arm of pierced and 
 gilt ironwork. Over the ermine were these words : 
 
 LECAMUS 
 
 FURRIER 
 
 To HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN AND THE KING OUR 
 SOVEREIGN LORD 
 
 On one side, and on the other : 
 
 To HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN-MOTHER 
 AND TO THE GENTLEMEN OF THE PARLEMENT. 
 
 The words " To Her Majesty the Queen " had been lately 
 added ; the gilt letters were new. This addition was a conse- 
 quence of the recent changes produced by Henri II. 's sudden
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE D' MEDICI. 53 
 
 and violent death, which overthrew many fortunes at Court 
 and began that of the Guises. 
 
 The back store looked over the river. In this room sat 
 the worthy citizen and his wife, Mademoiselle Lecamus. The 
 wife of a man who was not noble had not at that time any 
 right to the title of Dame, or lady ; but the wives of the cit- 
 izens of Paris were allowed to call themselves Demoiselle (as 
 we might say Mistress), as part of the privileges granted and 
 confirmed to their husbands by many kings to whom they had 
 rendered great services. Between this back room and the 
 front store was a spiral ladder or staircase of wood, a sort of 
 corkscrew leading up to the next story, where the furs were 
 stored, to the old couple's bedroom, and again to the attics, 
 lighted by dormer windows, where their children slept, the 
 maidservant, the clerks, and the apprentices. 
 
 This herding of families, servants, and apprentices, and the 
 small space allotted to each in the dwelling, where the ap- 
 prentices all slept in one large room under the tiles, accounts 
 for the enormous population at that time crowded together in 
 Paris on a tenth of the ground now occupied by the city, and 
 also for the many curious details of mediaeval life, and the 
 cunning love affairs, though these, pace the grave historian, 
 are nowhere recorded but by the story-writers, and without 
 them would have been lost. 
 
 At this time a grand gentleman such as the Admiral de 
 Coligny, for instance had three rooms for himself in Paris, 
 and his people lived in a neighboring hostelry. There were 
 not fifty mansions in all Paris, not fifty palaces, that is to say, 
 belonging to the sovereign princes or great vassals, whose 
 existence was far superior to that of the greatest German 
 rulers, such as the Duke of Bavaria or the Elector of Saxony. 
 
 The kitchen in the Lecamus' house was on the river-side 
 below the back store. It had a glass door opening on to an 
 ironwork balcony, where the cook could stand to draw up 
 water in a pail and to wash the household linen. Thus the
 
 54 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICL 
 
 back store was at once the sitting-room, the dining-room, and 
 the counting-house. It was in this important room always 
 fitted with richly carved wood and adorned by some chest 
 or artistic article of furniture that the merchant spent most 
 of his life ; there he had jolly suppers after his day's work ; 
 there were held secret debates on the political interests of the 
 citizens and the Royal family. The formidable guilds of 
 Paris could at that time arm a hundred thousand men. Their 
 resolutions were stoutly upheld by their serving-men, their 
 clerks, their apprentices, and their workmen. Their provost 
 was their commander-in-chief, and they had, in the Hotel de 
 Ville, a palace where they had a right to assemble. 
 
 In that famous " citizens' parlor " {parlouer aux bourgeois} 
 very solemn decisions were taken. But for the continual sac- 
 rifices which had made war unendurable to the guilds, wearied 
 out with losses and famine, Henri IV., a rebel-made king, 
 might never have entered Paris. 
 
 Every reader may now imagine for himself the characteristic 
 appearance of this corner of Paris where the bridge and the 
 quay now open out, where the trees rise from the Quai aux 
 Fleurs, and where nothing is left of the past but the lofty and 
 famous clock-tower whence the signal was tolled for the mas- 
 sacre of Saint-Bartholomew. Strange coincidence ! One of 
 the houses built round the foot of that tower at that time 
 surrounded by wooden stores the house of the Lecamus, was 
 to be the scene of one of the incidents that led to that night 
 of horrors, which proved, unfortunately, propitious rather than 
 fatal to Calvinism. 
 
 At the moment when this story begins, the audacity of the 
 new religious teaching was setting Paris by the ears. A 
 Scotchman, named Stewart, had just assassinated President 
 Minard, that member of the Parlement to whom public opin- 
 ion attributed a principal share in the execution of Anne du 
 Bourg, a councilor burnt on the Place de Greve after the
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 55 
 
 tailor of the late King, who had been tortured in the presence 
 of Henry II. and Diane de Poitiers. Paris was so closely 
 watched that the archers on guard compelled every passer-by 
 to pray to the Virgin, in order to detect heretics, who yielded 
 unwillingly, or even refused to perform an act opposed to their 
 convictions. 
 
 The two archers on guard at the corner of the Lecamus' 
 house had just gone off duty ; thus Christophe, the furrier's 
 son, strongly suspected of deserting the Catholic faith, had 
 been able to go out without fear of being compelled to adore 
 the Virgin's image. At seven in the evening of an April day, 
 1560, night was falling, and the apprentices, seeing only a 
 few persons walking along the arcades on each side of the 
 street, were carrying in the goods laid out for inspection 
 preparatory to closing the house and the store. Christophe 
 Lecamus, an ardent youth of two-and-twenty, was standing in 
 the door, apparently engaged in looking after the apprentices. 
 
 "Monsieur," said one of these lads to Christophe, pointing 
 out a man who was pacing two and fro under the arcade with 
 a doubtful expression, " that is probably a spy or a thief, but 
 whatever he is, such a lean wretch cannot be an honest man. 
 If he wanted to speak to us on business, he would come up 
 boldly instead of creeping up and down as he is doing. And 
 what a face! " he went on, mimicking the stranger, "with 
 his nose hidden in his cloak ! What a jaundiced eye, and 
 what a starved complexion ! " 
 
 As soon as the stranger thus described saw Christophe stand- 
 ing alone in the doorway, he hastily crossed from the opposite 
 arcade where he was walking, came under the pillars of the 
 Lecamus' house, and, passing along by the store before the 
 apprentices had come out again to close the shutters, he went 
 up to the young man. 
 
 " I am Chaudieu ! " he said in a low voice. 
 
 On hearing the name of one of the most famous ministers, 
 and one of the most heroic actors in the terrible drama called
 
 66 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 the Reformation, Christophe felt such a thrill as a faithful 
 peasant would have felt on recognizing his King under a dis- 
 guise. 
 
 "Would you like to see some furs? " said Christophe, to 
 deceive the apprentices whom he heard behind him. " Though 
 it is almost dark, I can show you some myself." 
 
 He invited the minister to enter, but the man replied that 
 he would rather speak to him out of doors. Christophe fetched 
 his cap and followed the Calvinist. 
 
 Chaudieu, though banished by an edict, as secret plenipo- 
 tentiary of Theodore de Beze and Calvin who directed the 
 Reformation in France from Geneva went and came, defying 
 the risk of the horrible death inflicted by the Parlement, in 
 concert with the church and the monarch, on a leading re- 
 former, the famous Anne du Bourg. This man, whose brother 
 was a captain in the army and one of Admiral Coligny's best 
 warriors, was the arm used by Calvin to stir up France at the 
 beginning of the twenty-two years of religious wars which 
 were on the eve of an outbreak. This preacher of the re- 
 formed faith was one of those secret wheels which may best 
 explain the immense spread of the Reformation. 
 
 Chaudieu led Christophe down to the edge of the water by 
 an underground passage like that of the Arche Marion, filled 
 in some ten years since. This tunnel between the house of 
 Lecamus and that next it ran under the Rue de la Vieille-Pel- 
 leterie, and was known as le Pont aux Fourreurs. It was used by 
 the dyers of the city as a way down to the river to wash their 
 thread, silk, and materials. A little boat lay there, held and 
 rowed by one man. In the bows sat a stranger, a small man, 
 and very simply dressed. In an instant the boat was in the 
 middle of the river, and the boatman steered it under one of 
 the wooden arches of the Pont au Change, where he quickly 
 secured it to an iron ring. No one had said a word. 
 
 " Here we may talk in safety, there are neither spies nor 
 traitors," said Chaudieu to the two others. "Are you filled with
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >> MEDICI. 57 
 
 the spirit of self-sacrifice that should animate a martyr? Are 
 you ready to suffer all things for xsur holy cause ? Do you 
 fear the torments endured by the late King's tailor and the 
 Councilor du Bourg, which of a truth, await us all?" He 
 spoke to Christophe, looking at him with a radiant face. 
 
 "I will testify to the Gospel," replied Christophe simply, 
 looking up at the windows of the back store. 
 
 The familiar lamp standing on a table, where his father was 
 no doubt balancing his books, reminded him by its mild beam 
 of the peaceful life and family joys he was renouncing. It was 
 a brief but complete vision. The young man's fancy took in 
 the homely harmony of the whole scene the places where he 
 had spent his happy childhood, where Babette Lallier lived, 
 his future wife, where everything promised him a calm and 
 busy life; he saw the past, he saw the future, and he sacrificed 
 it all. At any rate, he staked it. 
 
 Such were men in those days. 
 
 "We need say no more," cried the impetuous boatman. 
 " We know him for one of the saints. If the Scotchman had 
 not dealt the blow, he would have killed the infamous 
 Minard." 
 
 "Yes," said Lecamus, "my life is in the hands of the 
 brethren, and I devote it with joy for the success of the 
 Reformation. I have thought of it all seriously. I know 
 what we are doing for the joy of the nations. In two 
 words, the Papacy makes for celibacy, the Reformation makes 
 for the family. It is time to purge France of its monks, to 
 restore their possessions to the Crown, which will sell them 
 sooner or later to the middle-classes. Let us show that we 
 can die for our children and to make our families free and 
 happy ! " 
 
 The young enthusiast's face, with Chaudieu's, the boat- 
 man's, and that of the stranger seated in the bows, formed a 
 picture that deserves to be described, all the more so because 
 such a description entails the whole history of that epoch, if
 
 58 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 it be true that it is given to some men to sum up in themselves 
 the spirit of their age. 
 
 Religious reform, attempted in Germany by Luther, in 
 Scotland by John Knox, and in France by Calvin, found 
 partisans chiefly among those of the lower classes who had 
 begun to think. The great nobles encouraged the movement 
 only to serve other interests quite foreign to the religious 
 question. These parties were joined by adventurers, by gen- 
 tlemen who had lost all, by youngsters to whom every form 
 of excitement was acceptable. But, among the artisans and 
 men employed in trade, faith was genuine and founded on 
 intelligent interests. The poorer nations at once gave their 
 adherence to a religion which brought the property of the 
 church back to the State, which suppressed the convents, and 
 deprived the dignitaries of the church of their enormous rev- 
 enues. Everybody in trade calculated the profits from this 
 religious transaction, and devoted themselves to it body, soul, 
 and purse ; and among the youth of the French citizen class 
 the new preaching met that noble disposition for self-sacrifice 
 of every kind which animates the young to whom egoism is 
 unknown. 
 
 Eminent men, penetrating minds, such as are always to be 
 found among the masses, foresaw the Republic in the Refor- 
 mation, and hoped to establish throughout Europe a form of 
 government like that of the United Netherlands, which at 
 last triumphed over the greatest power of the time Spain, 
 ruled by Philip II., and represented in the Low Countries by 
 the Duke of Alva. Jean Hotoman was at that time planning 
 the famous book in which this scheme is set forth, which dif- 
 fused through France the leaven of these ideas, stirred up 
 once more by the League,* subdued by Richelieu, and after- 
 ward by Louis XIV., to reappear with the Economists and 
 the Encyclopaedists under Louis XV., and burst into life 
 under Louis XVI.; ideas which were always approved by the 
 
 * Headed by Henry, Duke of Guise, 1576.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE" 1 MEDICI. 59 
 
 younger branches, by the House of Orleans in 1789, as by 
 the House of Bourbon in 1589. 
 
 The questioning spirit is the rebellious spirit. A rebellion 
 is always either a cloak to hide a prince or the swaddling 
 wrapper of a new rule. The House of Bourbon, a younger 
 branch than the Valois, was busy at the bottom of the Ref- 
 ormation. At the moment when the little boat lay moored 
 under the arch of the Pont au Change, the question was 
 further complicated by the ambition of the Guises, the rivals 
 of the Bourbons. Indeed, the Crown, as represented by 
 Catherine de' Medici, could, for thirty years, hold its own in 
 the strife by setting these two factions against each other ; 
 whereas later, instead of being clutched at by many hands, 
 the Crown stood face to face with the people without a 
 barrier between ; for Richelieu and Louis XIV. had broken 
 down the nobility, and Louis XV. had overthrown the Parle- 
 ments. Now a king alone face to face with a nation, as Louis 
 XVI. was, must inevitably succumb. 
 
 Christophe Lecamus was very typical of the ardent and 
 devoted sons of the people. His pale complexion had that 
 warm burnt hue which is seen in some fair people ; his hair 
 was of a coppery yellow ; his eyes were bluish-gray and 
 sparkled brightly. In them alone was his noble soul visible, 
 for his clumsy features did not disguise the somewhat trian- 
 gular shape of a plain face by lending it the look of dignity 
 which a man of rank can assume, and his forehead was low 
 and characteristic only of great energy. His vitality seemed 
 to be seated no lower down than his chest, which was some- 
 what hollow. Sinewy, rather than muscular, Christophe was 
 of tough texture, lean but wiry. His sharp nose showed 
 homely cunning and his countenance revealed intelligence of 
 the kind that acts wisely on one point of a circle, but that has 
 not the power of commanding the whole circumference. His 
 eyes, set under brows that projected like a pent-house and 
 faintly outlined with light down, were surrounded with broad
 
 60 ABOUT CATHERINE DE" MEDICI. 
 
 light-blue circles, with a sheeny white patch at the root of the 
 nose, almost always a sign of great excitability. Christophe 
 was of the people the race that fights and allows itself to be 
 deceived ; intelligent enough to understand and to serve an 
 idea, too noble to take advantage of it, too magnanimous to 
 sell himself. 
 
 By the side of old Lecamus' only son, Chaudieu, the ardent 
 minister, lean from watchfulness, with brown hair, a yellow 
 skin, a contumacious brow, an eloquent mouth, fiery hazel 
 eyes, and a short rounded chin, symbolized that Christian 
 zeal which gave the Reformation so many fanatical and earnest 
 preachers, whose spirit and boldness fired whole communities. 
 This aide-de-camp of Calvin and Theodore de Beze contrasted 
 well with the furrier's son. He represented the living cause 
 of which Christophe was the effect. You could not have 
 conceived of the active firebrand of the popular machine 
 under any other aspect. 
 
 The boatman, an impetuous creature, tanned by the open 
 air, the dews of night, and the heats of the day, with firmly 
 set lips, quick motions, a hungry, tawny eye like a vulture's, 
 and crisp black hair, was the characteristic adventurer who 
 risks his all in an undertaking as a gambler stakes his whole 
 fortune on a card. Everything in the man spoke of terrible 
 passions and a daring that would flinch at nothing. His 
 quivering muscles were as able to keep silence as to speak. 
 His look was assertive rather than noble. His nose, upturned 
 but narrow, scented battle. He seemed active and adroit. 
 In any age you would have known him for a party leader. 
 He might have been Pizarro, Hernando Cortez, or Morgan 
 the Destroyer if there had been no Reformation a doer of 
 violent deeds. 
 
 The stranger who sat on a seat, wrapped in his cloak, 
 evidently belonged to the highest social rank. The fineness 
 of his linen, the cut, material, and perfume of his raiment, 
 the make and texture of his gloves, showed a man of the
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DP MEDICI. 61 
 
 Court, as his attitude, his haughtiness, his cool demeanor, and 
 his flashing eye revealed a man of war. His appearance was 
 at first somewhat alarming and inspired respect. We respect 
 a man who respects himself. Though short and hunch- 
 backed, his manner made good all the defects of his figure. 
 The ice once broken, he had the. cheerfulness of decisiveness 
 and an indescribable spirit of energy which made him attrac- 
 tive. He had the blue eyes and the hooked nose of the 
 House of Navarre, and the Spanish look of the marked 
 physiognomy that was characteristic of the Bourbon kings. 
 
 With three words the scene became of the greatest interest. 
 
 "Well, then," said Chaudieu, as Christophe Lecamus 
 made his profession of faith, "this boatman is la Renaudie; 
 and this is Monsiegneur the Prince de Conde," he added 
 turning to the hunchback. 
 
 Thus the four men were representative of the faith of the 
 people, the intellect of eloquence, the arm of the soldier, and 
 Royalty cast into the shade. 
 
 "You will hear what we require of you/' the minister went 
 on, after allowing a pause for the young man's astonishment. 
 " To the end that you may make no mistakes, we are com- 
 pelled to initiate you into the most important secrets of the 
 Reformation." 
 
 The Prince and la Renaudie assented by a gesture, when 
 the minister ceased speaking, to allow the Prince to say some- 
 thing if he should wish it. Like all men of rank engaged in 
 conspiracies, who make it a principle not to appear before 
 some critical moment, the Prince kept silence. Not from 
 cowardice : at such junctures he was the soul of the scheme, 
 shrank from no danger, and risked his head ; but, with a sort 
 of royal dignity, he left the explanation of the enterprise to 
 the preacher, and was content to study the new instrument he 
 was compelled to make use of. 
 
 "My son," said Chaudieu in Huguenot phraseology, "we 
 are about to fight the first battle against the Roman whore.
 
 62 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 In a few days our soldiers must perish at the stake, or the 
 Guises must be dead. So, ere long, the King and the two 
 Queens will be in our power. This is the first appeal to arms 
 by our religion in France, and France will not lay them down 
 until she has conquered it is of the nation that I speak, and 
 not of the kingdom. Most of the nobles of the kingdom see 
 what the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duke his brother are 
 driving at. Under pretense of defending the Catholic faith, 
 the House of Lorraine claims the Crown of France as its in- 
 heritance. It leans on the church, and has made it a formid- 
 able ally ; the monks are its supporters, its acolytes and spies. 
 It asserts itself as a protector of the throne it hopes to usurp, 
 of the Valois whom it hopes to destroy. 
 
 " We have decided to rise up in arms, and it is because the 
 liberties of the people are threatened as well as the interests of 
 the nobility. We must stifle in its infancy a faction as atro- 
 cious as that of the Bourguignons, who of old put Paris and 
 France to fire and sword. A Louis XL was needed to end 
 the quarrel between the Burgundians and the Crown, but now 
 a Prince of Conde will prevent the Lorrains from going too 
 far. This is not a civil war ; it is a duel between the Guises 
 and the Reformation a duel to the death ! We will see their 
 heads laid low, or they shall crush ours ! " 
 
 " Well spoken ! " said the Prince. 
 
 "In these circumstances, Christophe," la Renaudie put in, 
 "we must neglect no means of strengthening our party for 
 there is a party on the side of the Reformation, the party 
 of offended rights, of the nobles who are sacrificed to the 
 Guises, of the old army leaders so shamefully tricked at Fon- 
 tainebleau, whence the cardinal banished them by erecting 
 gibbets to hang those who should ask the King for the price 
 of their outfit and arrears of pay." 
 
 "Yes, my son," said Chaudieu, seeing some signs of terror 
 in Christophe, " that is what requires us to triumph by fight- 
 ing instead of triumphing by conviction and martyrdom.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 63 
 
 The Queen-mother is ready to enter into our views ; not that 
 she is prepared to abjure the Catholic faith she has not got 
 so far as that, but she may perhaps be driven to it by our 
 success. Be that as it may, humiliated and desperate as she 
 is at seeing the power she had hoped to wield at the King's 
 death in the grasp of the Guises and alarmed by the influence 
 exerted by the young Queen Marie, who is their niece and 
 partisan, Queen Catherine will be inclined to lend her sup- 
 port to the princes and nobles who are about to strike a blow 
 for her deliverance. At this moment, though apparently de- 
 voted to the Guises, she hates them, longs for their ruin, and 
 will make use of us to oppose them; but Monseigneur can 
 make use of her to oppose all the others. The Queen-mother 
 will consent to all we propose. We have the Connetable 
 on our side Monseigneur has just seen him at Chantilly, 
 but he will not stir without orders from his superiors. Being 
 Monseigneur's uncle, he will not leave us in the lurch, and 
 our generous Prince will not hesitate to rush into danger to 
 enlist Anne de Montmorency. 
 
 " Everything is ready ; and we have cast our eyes on you 
 to communicate to Queen Catherine our treaty of alliance, 
 our schemes for edicts, and the basis of the new rule. The 
 Court is at Blois. Many of our friends are there ; but those 
 
 are our future chiefs and, like Monseigneur," and he 
 
 bowed to the Prince, " they must never be suspected ; we 
 must sacrifice ourselves for them. The Queen-mother and our 
 friends are under such close espionage that it is impossible to 
 communicate with them through any one who is known or of 
 any consequence. Such a person would be at once suspected, 
 and would never be admitted to speak with Madame Cath- 
 erine. God should indeed give us at this moment the shepherd 
 David with his sling to attack Goliath de Guise. Your 
 father a good Catholic, more's the pity is furrier to the 
 two Queens; he always has some garment or trimming in 
 hand for them ; persuade him to send you to the Court.
 
 64 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 
 
 You will arouse no suspicions and will not compromise 
 Queen Catherine. Any one of our leaders might lose his 
 head for an imprudence which should give rise to a suspicion 
 of the Queen-mother's connivance with us. But where a man 
 of importance, once caught out, gives a clue to suspicions, a 
 nobody like you escapes scot-free. You see ! The Guises 
 have so many spies that nowhere but in the middle of the 
 river can we talk without fear. So you, my son, are like a 
 man on guard, doomed to die at his post. Understand that, 
 if you are taken, you are abandoned by us all. If need be, we 
 shall cast opprobrium and disgrace on you. If we should be 
 forced to it, we should declare that you were a creature of the 
 Guises whom they sent to play a part to implicate us. So 
 what we ask of you is entire self-sacrifice." 
 
 " If you perish," said the Prince de Conde, "I pledge my 
 word as a gentleman that your family shall be a sacred trust 
 to the House of Navarre ; I will bear it in my heart and 
 serve it in every way." 
 
 "That word, my lord, is enough," replied Christophe, 
 forgetting that this leader of faction was a Gascon. "We 
 live in times when every man, prince or citizen, must do his 
 duty." 
 
 " That is a true Huguenot ! If all our men were like 
 him," said la Renaudie, laying his hand on Christophe's 
 shoulder, " we should have won by to-morrow." 
 
 " Young man," said the Prince, " I meant to show you that 
 while Chaudieu preaches and the gentleman bears arms, the 
 prince fights. Thus, in so fierce a game, every stake has its 
 value." 
 
 "Listen," said la Renaudie; "I will not give you the 
 papers till we reach Beaugency, for we must run no risks on 
 the road. You will find me on the quay there ; my face, 
 voice, and clothes will be so different that you may not recog- 
 nize me. But I will say to you, ' Are you a Guepin / ' and you 
 must reply, 'At your service. ' As to the manner of proceed-
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICL 65 
 
 ing, I will tell you. You will find a horse at la Pinte fleurie ; 
 near Saint-Germain 1'Auxerrois. Ask there for Jean le Bre- 
 ton, who will take you to the stable and mount you on a nag 
 of mine known to cover thirty leagues in eight hours. Leave 
 Paris by the Bussy Gate. Breton has a pass for me ; take it 
 for yourself and be off, riding round outside the towns. You 
 should reach Orleans by daybreak." 
 
 "And the horse?" asked Lecamus. 
 
 "He will hold out till you get to Orleans," replied la 
 Renaudie. " Leave him outside the suburb of Bannier, for 
 the gates are well guarded ; we must not arouse suspicion. 
 You, my friend, must play your part well. You must make 
 up any story that may seem to you best to enable you to go 
 to the third house on your left on entering Orleans ; it is that 
 of one Tourillon, a glover. Knock three raps on the door 
 and call out, ' In the service of Messieurs de Guise ! ' The 
 man affects to be a fanatical Guisard ; we four only know that 
 he is on our side. He will find you a bqatman, such another 
 as himself of course, but devoted to our cause. Go down to 
 the river at once, get into a boat painted green with a white 
 border. You ought to be at Beaugency by noonday to- 
 morrow. There I will put you in the way of getting a boat 
 to carry you down to Blois without running any danger. Our 
 enemies the Guises do not command the Loire, only the river- 
 ports. 
 
 "You may thus see the Queen in the course of to-morrow 
 or of the next day." 
 
 "Your words are graven here," said Christophe, touching 
 his forehead. 
 
 Chaudieu embraced his son with religious fervency ; he was 
 proud of him. 
 
 "The Lord protect you ! " he said, pointing to the sunset 
 which crimsoned the old roofs covered with shingles, and shot 
 fiery gleams among the forest of beams round which the waters 
 foamed. 
 5
 
 66 ABOUT CATHERINE DE* MEDICI. 
 
 "You are of the stock of old Jacques Bonhomme," said la 
 Renaudie to Christophe, wringing his hand. 
 
 " We shall meet again, monsieur,'" said the Prince, with a 
 gesture of infinite graciousness, almost of friendliness. 
 
 With a stroke of the oar, la Renaudie carried the young 
 conspirator back to the steps leading up to the house, and the 
 boat vanished at once under the arches of the Pont au Change. 
 
 Christophe shook the iron gate that closed the entrance 
 from the river-side and called out ; Mademoiselle Lecamus 
 heard him, opened one of the windows of the back store, and 
 asked how he came there. Christophe replied that he was 
 half-frozen and that she must first let him in. 
 
 "Young master," said la Bourguignonne, "you went out 
 by the street-door and come in by the river-gate ? Your 
 father will be in a pretty rage." 
 
 Christophe, bewildered by the secret conference which had 
 brought him into contact with the Prince de Conde, la Ren- 
 audie, and Chaudieu, and even more agitated by the expected 
 turmoil of an imminent civil war, made no reply ; he hurried 
 up from the kitchen to the back store. There, on seeing him, 
 his mother, who was a bigoted old Catholic, could not con- 
 tain herself. 
 
 "I will wager," she broke out, "that the three men you 
 were talking to were ref " 
 
 "Silence, wife," said the prudent old man, whose white 
 head was bent over a book. " Now, you lazy oafs," he went 
 on to three boys who had long since finished supper, "what 
 are you waiting for to take you to bed ? It is eight o'clock. 
 You must be up by five in the morning. And first you have 
 the President de Thou's robes and cap to carry home. Go 
 all three together, and carry sticks and rapiers. If you meet 
 any more ne'er-do-weels of your own kidney, at any rate there 
 will be three of you." 
 
 "And are we to carry the ermine surcoat ordered by the 
 young Queen, which is to be delivered at the Hotel de
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 67 
 
 Soissons, from whence there is an express to Blois and to the 
 Queen-mother ? " asked one of the lads. 
 
 "No," said the Syndic; "Queen Catherine's account 
 amounts to three thousand crowns and I must get the money. 
 I think I will go to Blois myself." 
 
 " I should not think of allowing you at your age, father, 
 and in such times as these, to expose yourself on the high- 
 roads. I am two-and-twenty ; you may send me on this 
 errand," said Christophe, with an eye on a box which he had 
 no doubt contained the surcoat. 
 
 " Are you glued to the bench ? " cried the old man to the 
 apprentices, who hastily took up their rapiers and capes and 
 Monsieur de Thou's fur gown. 
 
 This illustrious man was to be received on the morrow by 
 the Parlement as their president ; he had just signed the 
 death-warrant of the Councilor du Bourg, and was fated, be- 
 fore the year was out, to sit in judgment on the Prince de 
 Conde. 
 
 " La Bourguignonne," said the old man, " go and ask my 
 neighbor Lallier if he will sup with us this evening, furnishing 
 the wine ; we will give the meal. And, above all, tell him to 
 bring his daughter." 
 
 The Syndic of the Guild of Furriers was a handsome old 
 man of sixty, with white hair and a broad high forehead. As 
 furrier to the Court for forty years past, he had witnessed all 
 the revolutions in the reign of Francis I., and had retained 
 his royal patent in spite of feminine rivalries. He had seen 
 the arrival at Court of Catherine de' Medici, then but just 
 fifteen ; he had seen her succumb to the Duchesse d'Etampes, 
 her father-in-law's mistress, and to the Duchesse de Valentinois, 
 mistress to the late King, her husband. But through all these 
 changes the furrier had got into no difficulties, though the 
 Court purveyors often fell into disgrace with the ladies they 
 served. His prudence was as great as his wealth. He main-
 
 68 ABOUT CATHERINE DE" MEDICI. 
 
 tained an attitude of excessive humility. Pride had never 
 caught him in its snares. The man was so modest, so meek, 
 so obliging, so poor at Court and in the presence of queens, 
 princesses, and favorites that his servility had saved his store 
 sign. 
 
 Such a line of policy betrayed, of course, a cunning and 
 clear-sighted man. Humble as he was to the outer world, at 
 home he was a despot. He was the unquestioned master in 
 his own house. He was highly respected by his fellow-mer- 
 chants, and derived immense consideration from his long 
 tenure of the first place in business. Indeed, he was gladly 
 helpful to others ; and, among the services he had done, the 
 most important perhaps was the support he had long afforded 
 to the most famous surgeon of the sixteenth century Am- 
 broise Pare, who owed it to Lecamus that he could pursue his 
 studies. In all the disputes that arose between the merchants 
 of the guild, Lecamus was for conciliatory measures. Thus 
 general esteem had confirmed his supremacy among his equals, 
 while his assumed character had preserved him the favor of 
 the Court. 
 
 Having, for political reasons, manoeuvred in his parish for 
 the glory of his trade, he did what was needful to keep him- 
 self in a sufficient odor of sanctity with the priest of the church 
 of Saint-Pierre aux Bceufs, who regarded him as one of the 
 men most devoted in all Paris to the Catholic faith. Conse- 
 quently, when the States-General were convoked, Lecamus 
 was unanimously elected to represent the third estate by the 
 influence of the priests, which was at that time enormous in 
 Paris. 
 
 This old man was one of those deep and silent ambitious 
 men who for fifty years are submissive to everybody in turn, 
 creeping up from place to place, no one knowing how, till 
 they are seen peacefully seated in a position which no one, not 
 even the boldest, would have dared to admit was the goal of 
 his ambition at the beginning of his life so long was the
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 69 
 
 climb, so many gulfs were there to leap, into which he might 
 fall ! Lecamus, who had hidden away a large fortune, would 
 run no risks, and was planning a splendid future for his son. 
 Instead of that personal ambition which often sacrifices the 
 future to the present, he had family ambition, a feeling that 
 seems lost in these days, smothered by the stupid regulation of 
 inheritance by law. Lecamus foresaw himself president of the 
 Paris Parlement in the person of his grandson. 
 
 Christophe, the godson of the great historian, de Thou, had 
 received an excellent education, but it had led him to skep- 
 ticism and inquiry, which indeed were increasing apace 
 among the students and Faculty of the University. Chris- 
 tophe was at present studying for the bar, the first step to a 
 judgeship. The old furrier pretended to be undecided as to 
 his son's career; sometimes he would make Christophe his 
 successor, and sometimes he would have him a pleader ; but in 
 his heart he longed to see this son in the seat of a Councilor 
 of the Parlement. The furrier longed to place the house of 
 Lecamus on a par with the old and honored families of Paris 
 citizens which had produced a Pasquier, a Mole, a Miron, a 
 S6guier, Lamoignon, du Tillet, Lecoigneux, Lescalopier, the 
 Goix, the Arnaulds all the famous sheriffs and high provosts 
 of corporations who had rallied to defend the throne. 
 
 To the end that Christophe might in that day do credit to 
 his rank, he wanted him to marry the daughter of the richest 
 goldsmith in the city, his neighbor Lallier, whose nephew, at 
 a later day, presented the keys of Paris to Henri IV. The 
 most deeply rooted purpose in the good man's heart was to 
 spend half his own fortune and half of Lallier's in the pur- 
 chase of a lordly estate, a long and difficult matter in those 
 days. 
 
 But he was too deep a schemer, and knew the times too 
 well, to overlook the great movements that were being 
 hatched ; he saw plainly, and saw truly, when he looked 
 forward to the division of the kingdom into two camps. The
 
 70 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 useless executions on the Place de 1'Estrapade, that of Henry 
 II. 's tailor, and that, still more recent, of the Councilor 
 Anne du Bourg, beside the connivance of the reigning fa- 
 vorite in the time of Francis I., and of many nobles now, at 
 the progress of reform, all were alarming indications. The 
 furrier was determined, come what might, to remain faithful 
 to the church, the Monarchy, and the Parlement, but he was 
 secretly well content that his son should join the Reformation. 
 He knew that he had wealth enough to ransom Christophe if 
 the lad should ever compromise himself seriously ; and then, 
 if France should turn Calvinist, his son could save the family 
 in any furious outbreaks in the capital such as the citizens 
 could vividly remember, and as would recur again and again 
 through four reigns. 
 
 Like Louis XL, the old furrier never confessed these 
 thoughts even to himself; his cunning completely deceived 
 his wife and his son. For many a day this solemn personage 
 had been the recognized head of the most populous quarter 
 of Paris the heart of the city bearing the title of Quar- 
 tenier, which became notorious fifteen years later. Clothed 
 in cloth, like every prudent citizen who obeyed the sumptu- 
 ary laws, Master Lecamus the Sieur Lecamus, a title he 
 held in virtue of an edict of Charles V. permitting the citi- 
 zens of Paris to purchase Seigneuries, and their wives to 
 assume the fine title of Demoiselle or mistress wore no gold 
 chain, no silk ; only a stout doublet with large buttons of 
 blackened silver, wrinkled hose drawn up above his knees, 
 and leather shoes with buckles. His shirt, of fine linen, was 
 pulled out, in the fashion of the time, into full puffs through 
 his half-buttoned vest and slashed trunks. 
 
 Though the full light of the lamp fell on the old man's 
 broad and handsome head, Christophe had no inkling of 
 the thoughts hidden behind that rich Dutch-looking com- 
 plexion ; still he understood that his old father meant to take 
 some advantage of his affection for pretty Babette Lallier.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE Z>E' MEDICI. 71 
 
 And Christophe, as a man who has laid his own schemes, 
 smiled sadly when he heard the invitation sent to his fair 
 mistress. 
 
 As soon as la Bourguignonne and the apprentices were 
 gone, old Lecamus looked at his wife with an expression 
 that fully showed his firm and resolute temper. 
 
 "You will never rest till you have got the boy hanged 
 with your damned tongue ! " said he in stern tones. 
 
 "I would rather see him hanged, but saved, than alive 
 and a Huguenot," was the gloomy reply. " To think that 
 the child I bore within me for nine months should not be a 
 good Catholic, but hanker after the heresies of Colas that 
 
 he must spend all eternity in hell ! " and she began to 
 
 cry. 
 
 "You old fool ! " said the furrier, " then give him a chance 
 of life, if only to convert him ! Why, you said a thing, be- 
 fore the apprentices, which might set our house on fire and 
 roast us all in it like fleas in straw." 
 
 The mother crossed herself, but said nothing. 
 
 "As for you," said the good man, with a scrutinizing look 
 at his son, "tell me what you were doing out there on the 
 
 water with Come close to me while I speak to you," he 
 
 added, seizing his son by the arm and drawing him close to 
 him while he whispered in the lad's ear " with the Prince de 
 Conde." Christophe started. "Do you suppose that the 
 Court furrier does not know all their faces? And do you 
 fancy that I am not aware of what is going on ? Monseigneur 
 the Grand Master has ordered out troops to Amboise. And 
 when troops are removed from Paris to Amboise while the 
 Court is at Blois, when they are marched by way of Chartres 
 and Vendome instead of by Orleans, the meaning is pretty 
 clear, heh ? Trouble is brewing. 
 
 " If the Queens want their surcoats, they will send for 
 them. The Prince de Cond6 may be intending to kill the 
 Messieurs de Guise, who on their part mean to get rid of him
 
 72 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 perhaps. Of what use can a furrier's son be in such a broil? 
 When you are married, when you are a pleader in the Parle- 
 ment, you will be as cautious as your father. A furrier's son 
 has no business to be of the new religion till all the rest of 
 the world is. I say nothing against the Reformers ; it is no 
 business of mine ; but the Court is Catholic, the two Queens 
 are Catholic, the Parlement is Catholic : we serve them with 
 furs, and we must be Catholic. 
 
 "You do not stir from here, Christophe, or I will place 
 you with your godfather the President de Thou, who will keep 
 you at it, blackening paper night and day, instead of leaving 
 you to blacken your soul in the hell-broth of ihese damned 
 Genevese. ' ' 
 
 "Father," said Christophe, leaning on the back of the old 
 man's chair, "send me off to Blois with Queen Marie's sur- 
 coat and to ask for the money, or I am a lost man. And you 
 love me " 
 
 "Lost ! " echoed his father, without any sign of surprise. 
 " If you stay here, you will not be lost. I shall know where 
 to find you." 
 
 "I shall be killed." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " The most zealous Huguenots have cast their eyes on me 
 to serve them in a certain matter, and if I fail to do what I 
 have just promised they will kill me in the street, in the face 
 of day, here, as Minard was killed. But if you send me to 
 the Court on business of your own, I shall probably be able to 
 justify my action to both parties. Either I shall succeed for 
 them without running any risk, and so gain a good position in 
 the party ; or, if the danger is too great, I can do your busi- 
 ness only." 
 
 The old man started to his feet as if his seat were of red-hot 
 iron. 
 
 "Wife," said he, "leave us, and see that no one intrudes 
 on Christophe and me."
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 73 
 
 When Mistress Lecamus had left the room, the furrier took 
 his son by a button and led him to the corner of the room 
 which formed the angle toward the bridge. 
 
 " Christophe," said he, quite into his son's ear, as he had 
 just now spoken of the Prince de Conde, " be a Huguenot* if 
 that is your pet vice, but with prudence, in your secret heart, 
 and not in such a way as to be pointed at by every one in the 
 neighborhood. What you have just told me shows me what 
 confidence the leaders have in you. What are you to do at 
 the Court?" 
 
 "I cannot tell you," said Christophe; "I do not quite 
 know that myself yet." 
 
 " H'm, h'm," said the old man, looking at the lad, " the 
 young rascal wants to hoodwink his father. He will go far ! 
 Well, well," he went on, in an undertone, "you are not 
 going to Blois to make overtures to the Guises, nor to the 
 little King our Sovereign, nor to little Queen Mary. All 
 these are Catholics ; but I could swear that the Italian Queen 
 owes the Scotchwoman and the Lorrains some grudge : I 
 know her. She has been dying to put a finger in the pie. 
 The late King was so much afraid of her that, like the jewel- 
 ers, he used diamond to cut diamond, one woman against an- 
 other. Hence Queen Catherine's hatred of the poor Duch- 
 esse de Valentinois, from whom she took the fine Chateau 
 of Chenonceaux. But for Monsieur le Connetable, the Duch- 
 ess would have had her neck wrung at least 
 
 " Hands off, my boy ! Do not trust yourself within reach 
 of the Italian woman, whose only passions are in her head ; 
 a bad sort thafc. Ay, the business you are sent to the Court 
 to do will give you a bad headache, I fear," cried the father, 
 seeing that Christophe was about to speak. " My boy, I have 
 two schemes for your future life ; you will not spoil them by 
 being of service to Queen Catherine. But, for God's sake, 
 keep your head on your shoulders ! And the Guises would 
 
 * A term of unknown origin, applied to the Protestants.
 
 74 ABOUT CATHERINE D' MEDICI. 
 
 cut it off as la Bourguignonne cuts off a turnip, for the people 
 who are employing you would throw you over at once." 
 
 " I know that, father," said Christophe. 
 
 " And you are so bold as that ! You know it, and you will 
 risk it?" 
 
 "Yes, father." 
 
 " Why, the devil's in it ! " cried the old man, hugging his 
 son, "we may understand each other; you are your father's 
 son. My boy, you will be a credit to the family, and your 
 old father may be plain with you, I see. But do not be more 
 of a Huguenot than the Messieurs de Coligny ; and do not 
 draw your sword. You are to be a man of the pen ; stick to 
 your part as a sucking lawyer. Well, tell me no more till 
 you have succeeded. If I hear nothing of you for four days 
 after you reach Blois, that silence will tell me that you are in 
 danger. Then the old man will follow to save the young one. 
 I have not sold furs for thirty years without knowing the 
 seamy side of a Court robe. I can readily find means of open- 
 ing doors." 
 
 Christophe stared with amazement at hearing his father 
 speak thus ; but he feared some parental snare, and held his 
 tongue. 
 
 Then he said 
 
 "Very well, make up the account; write a letter to the 
 Queen. I must be off this moment, or dreadful things will 
 happen." 
 
 "Be off? But how?" 
 
 " I will buy a horse. Write, for God's sake ! " 
 
 " Here ! Mother ! Give your boy some money," the 
 furrier called out to his wife. 
 
 She came in, flew to her chest, and gave a purse to Chris- 
 tophe, who excitedly kissed her. 
 
 " The account was ready," said his father ; " here it is. I 
 will write the letter." 
 
 Christophe took the bill and put it in his pocket.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 75 
 
 " But at any rate you will sup with us," said the goodman. 
 " In this extremity you and the Lallier girl must exchange 
 rings." 
 
 "Well, I will go to fetch her," cried Christophe. 
 
 The young man feared some indecision in his father, whose 
 character he did not thoroughly appreciate ; he went up to his 
 room, dressed, took out a small trunk, stole downstairs, and 
 placed it with his cloak and rapier under a counter in the 
 shop. 
 
 " What the devil are you about ? " asked his father, hearing 
 him there. 
 
 " I do not want any one to see my preparations for leaving ; 
 I have put everything under the counter," he whispered in 
 reply. 
 
 "And here is the letter," said his father. 
 
 Christophe took the paper and went out as if to fetch their 
 neighbor. 
 
 A few moments after Christophe had gone out, old Lallier 
 and his daughter came in, preceded by a woman-servant 
 carrying three bottles of old wine. 
 
 "Well, and where is Christophe?" asked the furrier and 
 his wife. 
 
 " Christophe ? " said Babette ; " we have not seen him." 
 
 "A pretty rogue is my son!" cried Lecamus. "He 
 tricks me as if I had no beard. Why, old gossip, what will 
 come to us ? We live in times when the children are all too 
 clever for their fathers ! " 
 
 " But he has long been regarded by all the neighbors as a 
 mad follower of Colas," said Lallier. 
 
 "Defend him stoutly on that score," said the furrier to 
 the goldsmith. "Youth is foolish, and runs after anything 
 new ; but Babette will keep him quiet, she is even newer than 
 Calvin." 
 
 Babette smiled. She truly loved Christophe, was affronted 
 by everything that was ever said against him. She was a girl
 
 76 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 of the good, old middle-class type, brought up under her 
 mother's eye, for she had never left her; her demeanor was 
 as gentle and precise as her features; she was dressed in stuff 
 of harmonious tones of gray ; her ruff, plainly pleated, was a 
 contrast by its whiteness to her sober gown ; on her head was 
 a black velvet cap, like a child's hood in shape, but trimmed, 
 on each side of her face, with frills and ends of tan-colored 
 gauze. Though she was fair-haired, with a white skin, she 
 seemed cunning and crafty, though trying to hide her willing- 
 ness under the expression of a simple and honest girl. 
 
 As long as the two women remained in the room, coming 
 to and fro to lay the cloth, and place the jugs, the large 
 pewter dishes, and the knives and forks, the goldsmith and 
 his daughter, the furrier and his wife, sat in front of the high 
 chimney-place, hung with red serge and black fringes, talking 
 of nothing. It was in vain that Babette asked where Chris- 
 tophe could be ; the young Huguenot's father and mother 
 made ambiguous replies; but as soon as the party had sat 
 down to their meal, and the two maids were in the kitchen, 
 Lecamus said to his future daughter-in-law 
 
 " Christophe is gone to the Court." 
 
 " To Blois ! What a journey to take without saying good- 
 by to me ! " said Babette. 
 
 " He was in a great hurry," said his old mother. 
 
 "Old friend," said the furrier to Lallier, taking up the 
 thread of the conversation, " we are going to see hot work 
 in France ; the Reformers are astir." 
 
 " If they win the day it will only be after long fighting, 
 which will be very bad for trade," said Lallier, incapable of 
 looking higher than the commercial point of view. 
 
 " My father, who had seen the end of the wars between 
 the Bourguignons and the Armagnacs, told me that our family 
 would never have lived through them if one of his grand- 
 fathers his mother's father had not been one of the Goix, 
 the famous butchers at the Halle, who were attached to the
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE Dl? MEDICI. 77 
 
 Bourguignons, while the other, a Lecamus, was on the side 
 of the Armagnacs ; they pretended to be ready to flay each 
 other before the outer world, but at home they were very 
 good friends. So we will try to save Christophe. Perhaps a 
 time may come when he will save us." 
 
 "You are a cunning dog, neighbor," said the goldsmith. 
 
 " No," replied Lecamus. " The citizen class must take care 
 of itself, the populace and the nobility alike owe it a grudge. 
 Everybody is afraid of the middle-class in Paris excepting the 
 King, who knows us to be his friends." 
 
 " You who know so much, and who have seen so much," 
 said Babette timidly, "pray tell me what it is that the Re- 
 formers want." 
 
 "Ay, tell us that, neighbor!" cried the goldsmith. "I 
 knew the late King's tailor, and I always took him to be a 
 simple soul, with no great genius ; he was much such another 
 as you are, they would have given him the host without re- 
 quiring him to confess, and all the time he was up to his eyes 
 in this new religion. He ! a man whose ears were worth many 
 hundred thousand crowns. He must have known some secrets 
 worth hearing for the King and Madame de Valentinois to be 
 present when he was tortured." 
 
 "Ay! and terrible secrets too," said the furrier. "The 
 Reformation, my friends," he went on, in a low voice, " will 
 give the church lands back to the citizen class. When ecclesi- 
 astical privileges are annulled, the Reformers mean to claim 
 equality of taxation for the nobles and the middle-class, and 
 to have only the King above all alike if indeed they have a 
 king at all.". 
 
 "What, do away with the throne?" cried Lallier. 
 
 "Well, neighbor," said Lecamus, "in the Low Countries 
 the citizens govern themselves by provosts over them, who 
 elect a temporary chief." 
 
 " God bless me ! Neighbor, we might do all these fine 
 things and still be Catholics," said the goldsmith.
 
 78 ABOUT CATHERINE >> MEDICI. 
 
 11 We are too old to see the triumph of the middle-class in 
 Paris, but it will triumph, neighbor, all in good time, all in 
 good time ! Why, the King is bound to rely on us to hold 
 his own, and we have always been well paid for our support. 
 And the last time all the citizens were ennobled, and they 
 had leave to buy manors, and take the names of their estates 
 without any special letters patent from the King. You and I, 
 for instance, grandsons of the Goix in the female line, are we 
 not as good as many a nobleman? " 
 
 This speech was so alarming to the goldsmith and the two 
 
 women that it was followed by a long silence. The leaven 
 
 ^of 1789 was already germinating in the blood of Lecamus, 
 
 who was not yet so old but that he lived to see the daring of 
 
 his class under the League. 
 
 "Is business pretty firm in spite of all this turmoil?" 
 Lallier asked the furrier's wife. 
 
 " It always upsets trade a little," said she. 
 
 "Yes, and so I have a great mind to make a lawyer of my 
 son," added Lecamus. "People are always going to law." 
 
 The conversation then dwelt on the commonplace, to the 
 goldsmith's great satisfaction, for he did not like political 
 disturbances or over-boldness of thought. 
 
 The banks of the Loire, from Blois as far as Angers, were 
 always greatly favored by the two last branches of the royal 
 family who occupied the throne before the advent of the 
 Bourbons. This beautiful valley so well deserves the prefer- 
 ence of kings that one of our most elegant writers describes 
 it as follows: "There is a province in France which is never 
 sufficiently admired. As fragrant as Italy, as flowery as the 
 banks of the Guadalquivir, beautiful beside with its own pecu- 
 liar beauty. Wholly French, it has always been French, un- 
 like our Northern provinces, debased by Teutonic influence, 
 or our Southern provinces, which have been the concubines of 
 the Moors, of the Spaniards, of every nation that has coveted
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 79 
 
 them this pure, chaste, brave, and loyal tract is Touraine ! 
 There is the seat of historic France. Auvergne is Auvergne, 
 Languedoc is Languedoc and nothing more ; but Touraine is 
 France, and the truly national river to us is the Loire which 
 waters Touraine. We need not, therefore, be surprised to 
 find such a quantity of monuments in the departments which 
 have taken their names from that of the Loire and its deriva- 
 tions. At every step in that land of enchantment we come 
 upon a picture of which the foreground is the river, or some 
 calm reach, in whose liquid depths are mirrored a chateau, 
 with its turrets, its woods, and its dancing springs. It was 
 only natural that large fortunes should centre around spots 
 where Royalty preferred to live, and where it so long held its 
 Court, and that distinguished birth and merit should crowd 
 thither and build palaces on a par with Royalty itself." 
 
 Is it not strange, indeed, that our sovereigns should never 
 have taken the advice indirectly given them by Louis XL, and 
 have made Tours the capital of the kingdom ? Without any 
 great expenditure, the Loire might have been made navigable 
 so far for trading vessels and light ships of war. There the 
 seat of Government would have been safe from surprise and 
 high-handed invasion. There the strongholds of the north 
 would not have needed such sums for their fortifications, 
 which alone have cost as much money as all the splendors of 
 Versailles. If Louis XIV. had listened to Vauban's advice, 
 and had his palace built at Mont-Louis, between the Loire 
 and the Cher, perhaps the Revolution of 1789 would never 
 have taken place. 
 
 So these fair banks bear, at various spots, clear marks of 
 royal favor. The castles of Chambord, Blois, Amboise, Che- 
 nonceaux, Chaumont, Plessis-les-Tours, all the residences 
 built by kings' mistresses, by financiers, and noblemen, at 
 Veretz, Azay-le-Rideau, Usse, Villandri, Valencay, Chante- 
 loup, and Duretal, some of which have disappeared, though 
 most are still standing, are splendid buildings, full of the
 
 80 ABOUT CATHERINE DE" MEDICI. 
 
 wonders of the period that has been so little appreciated by 
 the literary sect of Medisevalists. 
 
 Of all these castles, that of Blois, where the Court was 
 then residing, is the one on which the magnificence of the 
 Houses of Orleans and of Valois has most splendidly set its 
 stamp ; and it is the most curious to historians, archaeologists, 
 and Catholics. At that time it stood quite alone. The town, 
 inclosed in strong walls with towers, lay below the stronghold, 
 for at that time the castle served both as a citadel and as 
 a country residence. Overlooking the town, of which the 
 houses, then as now, climbed the hill on the right bank of 
 the river, their blue slate roofs in close array, there is a trian- 
 gular plateau, divided by a stream, now unimportant since it 
 runs underground, but in the fifteenth century, as historians 
 tell us, flowing at the bottom of a rather deep ravine, part of 
 which remains as a deep hollow-way, almost a precipice, be- 
 tween the suburb and the castle. 
 
 It was on this plateau, with a slope to the north and south, 
 that the Comtes de Blois built themselves a " castel " in the 
 architecture of the twelfth century, where the notorious Thi- 
 bault le Tricheur, Thibault le Vieux, and many more held a 
 court that became famous. In those days of pure feudal rule, 
 when the King was no more than inter pares primus (the first 
 among equals), as a King of Poland finely expressed it, the 
 Counts of Champagne, of Blois, and of Anjou, the mere 
 Barons of Normandy, and the Dukes of Brittany lived in the 
 style of sovereigns and gave kings to the proudest kingdoms. 
 The Plantagenets of Anjou, the Lusignans of Poitou, the 
 Roberts and Williams of Normandy, by their audacious cour- 
 age mingled their blood with royal races, and sometimes a 
 simple knight, like du Glaicquin (or du Guesclin), refused 
 royal purple and preferred the Constable's sword. 
 
 When the Crown had secured Blois as a royal demesne, 
 Louis XII., who took a fancy to the place, perhaps to get 
 away from Plessis and its sinister associations, built on to the
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 81 
 
 castle, at an angle, so as to face east and west, a wing con- 
 necting the residence of the Counts of Blois with the older 
 structure, of which nothing now remains but the immense hall 
 where the States-General sat under Henri III. Francis I., 
 before he fell in love with Chambord, intended to finish the 
 castle by building on the other two sides of a square ; but he 
 abandoned Blois for Chambord, and erected only one wing, 
 which in his time and in that of his grandsons practically 
 constituted the castle. 
 
 This third building of Francis I.'s is much more extensive 
 and more highly decorated than the Louvre dc Henri II., as 
 it is called. It is one of the most fantastic efforts of the archi- 
 tecture of the Renaissance. Indeed, at a time when a more 
 reserved style of building prevailed, and no one cared for the 
 Middle Ages, a time when literature was not so intimately al- 
 lied with art as it now is, La Fontaine wrote of the Castle of 
 Blois in his characteristically artless language: "Looking at 
 it from outside, the part done by order of Francis I. pleased 
 me more than all the rest ; there are a number of little win- 
 dows, little balconies, little colonnades, little ornaments, not 
 regularly ordered, which make up something great which I 
 found very pleasing." 
 
 Thus the Castle of Blois had the attraction of representing 
 three different kinds of architecture three periods, three 
 systems, three dynasties. And there is not, perhaps, any other 
 royal residence which in this respect can compare with it. 
 The vast building shows, in one inclosure, in one courtyard, a 
 complete picture of that great product of national life and 
 manners which architecture always is. 
 
 At the time when Christophe was bound for the Court, that 
 portion of the precincts on which a fourth palace now stands 
 the wing added seventy years later, during his exile, by 
 Gaston, Louis XIII. 's rebellious brother was laid out in pas- 
 tures and terraced gardens, picturesquely scattered among the 
 foundation stones and unfinished towers begun by Francis I. 
 6
 
 82 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICL 
 
 These gardens were joined by a bold flying bridge which 
 some old inhabitants still alive saw destroyed to a garden on 
 the other side of the castle, which by the slope of the ground 
 lay on the same level. The gentlemen attached to Queen 
 Anne of Brittany, or those who approached her with petitions 
 from her native province, to discuss or to inform her of the 
 state of affairs there, were wont to await her pleasure here, her 
 lever, or the hour of her walking out. Hence history has 
 handed down to us as the name of this pleasaunce La Perchoir 
 aux Bretons (the Bretons' Perch); it is now an orchard be- 
 longing to some private citizen, projecting beyond the Place 
 des Jesuites. That square also was then included in the do- 
 main of this noble residence which had its upper and its lower 
 gardens. At some distance from the Place des Jesuites, a 
 summer-house may still be seen, built by Catherine de' Medici, 
 as local historians tell us, to accommodate her hot-baths. 
 This statement enables us to trace the very irregular arrange- 
 ment of the gardens which went up and down hill, following 
 the undulations of the soil ; the land about the castle is indeed 
 very uneven, a fact which added to its strength, and, as we 
 shall see, caused the difficulties of the Due de Guise. 
 
 The gardens were reached by corridors and terraces ; the 
 chief corridor was known as the Galerie des Cerfs (or stags), 
 on account of its decorations. This passage led to a magnifi- 
 cent staircase, which undoubtedly suggested the famous double 
 staircase at Chambord, and which led to the apartments on 
 each floor. 
 
 Though La Fontaine preferred the chdteau of Francis I. to 
 that of Louis XII., the simplicity of the Pere du Peuple 
 (Father of the People) may perhaps charm the genuine artist, 
 much as he may admire the splendor of the more chivalrous 
 king. The elegance of the two staircases which lie at the two 
 extremities of Louis XII. 's building, the quantity of fine and 
 original carving, of which, though time has damaged them, 
 the remains are still the delight of antiquaries ; everything, to
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 83 
 
 the almost cloister-like arrangement of the rooms, points to 
 very simple habits. As yet the Court was evidently non- 
 existent, or had not attained such development as Francis I. 
 and Catherine de' Medici subsequently gave it, to the great 
 detriment of feudal manners. As we admire the brackets, the 
 capitals of some of the columns, and some little figures of ex- 
 quisite delicacy, it is impossible not to fancy that Michel 
 Colomb, the great sculptor, the Michael Angelo of Brittany, 
 must have passed that way to do his Queen Anne a pleasure 
 before immortalizing her on her father's tomb the last Duke 
 of Brittany. 
 
 Whatever La Fontaine may say, nothing can be more 
 stately than the residence of Francis, the magnificent King. 
 Thanks to I know not what coarse indifference, perhaps to utter 
 forgetfulness, the rooms occupied by Catherine de' Medici and 
 her son Francis II. still remain almost in their original state. 
 The historian may reanimate them with the tragical scenes 
 of the Reformation, of which the struggle of the Guises and 
 the Bourbons against the House of Valois formed a compli- 
 cated drama played out on this spot. 
 
 The buildings of Francis I. quite crush the simpler resi- 
 dence of Louis XII. by sheer mass. From the side of the 
 lower gardens that is to say, from the modern Place des 
 Jesuites the castle is twice as lofty as from the side 
 toward the inner court. The first floor, in which are the 
 famous corridors, is the third floor in the garden-front. Thus 
 the second floor, where Queen Catherine resided, is in fact 
 the fourth, and the royal apartments are on the fifth above the 
 lower garden, which at that time was divided from the foun- 
 dations by a very deep moat. Thus the castle, imposing as it 
 is from the court, seems quite gigantic when seen from the 
 square as La Fontaine saw it, for he owns that he never had 
 been into the court or the rooms. From the Place des Jesuites 
 every detail looks small. The balconies you can walk along, 
 the colonnades of exquisite workmanship, the sculptured
 
 84 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 windows their recesses within, as large as small rooms, and 
 used, in fact, at that time as boudoirs have a general effect 
 resembling the painted fancies of operatic scenery when the 
 artist represents a fairy palace. But, once inside the court, 
 the infinite delicacy of this architectural ornamentation is 
 displayed, to the joy of the amazed spectator, though the 
 stories above the first floor are, even there, as high as the 
 Pavilion de 1'Horloge at the Tuileries. 
 
 This part of the building, where Catherine and Mary 
 Stewart held magnificent court, had in the middle of the 
 facade a hexagonal hollow tower, up which winds a staircase 
 in stone, an arabesque device invented by giants and exe- 
 cuted by dwarfs to , give this front the effect of a dream. 
 The balustrade of the stairs rises in a spiral of rectangular 
 panels composing the five walls of the tower, and forming at 
 regular intervals a transverse cornice, enriched outside and in 
 with florid carvings in stone. This bewildering creation, full 
 of delicate and ingenious details and marvels of workmanship, 
 by which these stones speak to us, can only be compared to 
 the overcharged and deeply cut ivory carvings that come from 
 China, or are made at Dieppe. In short, the stone is like 
 lace. Flowers and figures of men and animals creep down 
 the ribs, multiply at every step, and crown the vault with a 
 pendant, in which the chisels of sixteenth-century sculptors 
 have outdone the artless stone-carvers, who, fifty years before, 
 had made the pendants for two staircases in Louis XII. 's 
 building. Though we may be dazzled as we note these varied 
 forms repeated with infinite prolixity, we nevertheless perceive' 
 that Francis I. lacked money for Blois, just as Louis XIV. did 
 for Versailles. In more than one instance a graceful head 
 looks out from a block of stone almost in the rough. More 
 than one fanciful boss is but sketched with a few strokes of 
 the chisel, and then abandoned to the damp, which has over- 
 grown it with green mold. On the facade, by the side of one 
 window carved like lace, another shows us the massive frame
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE D' MEDICI. 85 
 
 eaten into by time, which has carved it after a manner of its 
 own. 
 
 The least artistic, the least experienced eye finds here a de- 
 lightful contrast between this front, rippling with marvels of 
 design, and the inner front of Louis XII. 's castle, consisting 
 on the first floor of arches of the airiest lightness, upheld by 
 slender columns, resting on elegant balustrades, and two 
 stories above with windows wrought with charming severity. 
 Under the arches runs a gallery, of which the walls were 
 painted in fresco; the vaulting, too, must have been painted, 
 for some traces are still visible of that magnificence, imitated 
 from Italian architecture a reminiscence of our King's jour- 
 neys thither when the Milanese belonged to them. 
 
 Opposite the residence of Francis I. there was at that time 
 the chapel of the Counts of Blois, its facade almost harmon- 
 izing with the architecture of Louis XII. 's building. No 
 figure of speech can give an adequate idea of the solid dignity 
 of these three masses of building. In spite of the varieties 
 of style, a certain imposing royalty, showing the extent of its 
 fear by the magnitude of its defenses, held the three build- 
 ings together, different as they were; two of them flanking 
 the immense hall of the States-General, as vast and lofty as a 
 church. 
 
 And certainly neither the simplicity nor the solidity of 
 those citizen lives which were described at the beginning 
 of this narrative lives in which art was always represented 
 was lacking to this royal residence. Blois was the fertile and 
 brilliant example which found a living response from citizens 
 and nobles, from money and rank, alike in the towns and in 
 the country. You could not have wished that the home of the 
 King who ruled Paris as it was in the sixteenth century should 
 be other than this. The splendid raiment of the upper 
 classes, the luxury of feminine attire, must have seemed singu- 
 larly suited to the elaborate dress of these curiously wrought 
 stones.
 
 86 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 From floor to floor, as he mounted the wonderful stairs of 
 his Castle of Blois, the King of France could see farther and 
 farther over the beautiful Loire, which brought him news of 
 all his realm, which it parts into two confronted and almost 
 rival halves. If, instead of placing Chambord in a dead and 
 gloomy plain two leagues away, Francis I. had built a Cham- 
 bord to complete Blois on the site of the gardens, where 
 Gaston subsequently erected his palace, Versailles would never 
 have existed and Blois would inevitably have become the 
 capital of France. 
 
 Four Valois' and Catherine de' Medici lavished their wealth 
 on the Castle of Blois, but any one can guess how prodigal 
 the sovereigns were only from seeing the thick dividing wall, 
 the spinal column of the building, with deep alcoves cut into 
 its substance, secret stairs and closets contrived within it, 
 surrounding such vast rooms as the council hall, the guard- 
 room, and the royal apartments, in which a company of in- 
 fantry now finds ample quarters. Even if the visitor should 
 fail to understand at a first glance that the marvels of the 
 interior are worthy of those of the exterior, the remains of 
 Catherine de' Medici's room into which Christophe was 
 presently admitted are sufficient evidence of the elegant art 
 which peopled these rooms with lively fancies, with sala- 
 manders sparkling among flowers, with all the most bril- 
 liant hues of the palette of the sixteenth century decora- 
 ting the darkest staircase. In that room the observer may 
 still see the traces of that love of gilding which Catherine had 
 brought from Italy, for the princesses of her country loved (as 
 the author above quoted delightfully expresses it) to -overlay 
 the castles of France with the gold gained in trade by their 
 ancestors, and to stamp the walls of royal rooms with the 
 sign of their wealth. 
 
 The Queen-mother occupied the rooms on the first floor 
 that had formerly been those of Queen Claude de France, 
 Francis I.'s wife ; and the delicate sculpture is still to be seen
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 87 
 
 of double C's, with a device in pure white of swans and 
 lilies, signifying Candidior candidis (the whitest of the white), 
 the badge of that Queen whose name, like Catherine's, began 
 with C, and equally appropriate to Louis XII. 's daughter and 
 to the mother of the Valois ; for notwithstanding the violence 
 of Calvinist slander, no doubt was ever thrown on Catherine 
 de" Medici's enduring fidelity to Henri II. 
 
 The Queen-mother, with two young children still on her 
 hands a boy, afterward the Due d'Alencon, and Marguerite, 
 who became the wife of Henri IV., and whom Charles IX. 
 called Margot needed the whole of this second floor. 
 
 King Francis II. and his Queen, Mary Stewart, had the 
 royal apartments on the third floor that Francis I. had occu- 
 pied, and which were also those of Henri III. The royal 
 apartments and those of the Queen-mother are divided from 
 end to end of the castle into two parts by the famous party 
 wall, four feet thick, which supports the thrust of the im- 
 mensely thick walls of the rooms. Thus on the lower as well 
 as on the upper floors the rooms are in two distinct suites. 
 That half which, facing to the south, is lighted from the 
 court, held the rooms for state receptions and public busi- 
 ness; while, to escape the heat, the private rooms had a north 
 aspect, where there is a splendid frontage with arcades and 
 balconies, and a view over the country of the Vendomois, 
 the Per choir aux Bretons, and the moats of the town the 
 only town mentioned by the great fable writer, the admirable 
 La Fontaine. 
 
 Francis I.'s castle at that time ended at an enormous tower, 
 only begun, but intended to mark the vast angle the palace 
 would have formed in turning a flank ; Gaston subsequently 
 demolished part of its walls to attach his palace to the tower; 
 but he never finished the work, and the tower remains a ruin. 
 This royal keep was used as a prison, or, according to popular 
 tradition, as oubliettes (dungeon cells). What poet could not 
 feel deep regret or weep for France as he wanders now through
 
 88 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 the hall of this magnificent castle, and sees the exquisite 
 arabesques of Catherine de' Medici's room, whitewashed and 
 almost smothered by order of the governor of the barracks 
 at the time of the cholera for this royal residence is now a 
 barrack. 
 
 The paneling of Catherine de' Medici's closet, of which 
 more particular mention will presently be made, is the last 
 relic of the rich furnishing collected by five artistic kings. 
 
 As we make our way through this labyrinth of rooms, halls, 
 staircases, and turrets, we can say with horrible certainty, 
 " Here Mary Stewart cajoled her husband in favor of the 
 Guises. There those Guises insulted Catherine. Later, on 
 this very spot, the younger Balafre * fell under the swords of 
 the avengers of the Crown. A century earlier Louis XII. 
 signaled from that window to invite the advance of his friend 
 the Cardinal d'Amboise. From this balcony, d'Epernon, 
 Ravaillac's accomplice, welcomed Queen Marie de' Medici, 
 who, it is said, knew of the intended regicide and left things 
 to take their course ! ' ' 
 
 In the chapel where Henry IV. and Marguerite de Valois 
 were betrothed the last remnant of the old castle of the 
 Counts of Blois the regimental boots are made. This won- 
 derful structure, where so many styles are combined, where 
 such great events have been accomplished, is in a state of 
 ruin which is a disgrace to France. How grievous it is to 
 those who love the memorial buildings of old France to feel 
 that ere long these eloquent stones will have gone the way of 
 the house at the corner of the Rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie : 
 they will survive, perhaps, only in these pages. 
 
 It is necessary to observe that, in order to keep a keener 
 eye on the Court, the Guises, though they had a mansion in 
 the town, which is still to be seen, had obtained permission 
 to reside above the rooms of Louis XII. in the apartments 
 
 * The gashed or scarred.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 89 
 
 since used by the Duchesse de Nemours, in the upper story 
 on the second floor. 
 
 Francis II. and his young Queen, Mary Stewart, in love 
 like two children of sixteen, as they were, had been suddenly 
 transferred, one cold winter^ day, from Saint-Germain, which 
 the Due de Guise thought too open to surprise, to the strong- 
 hold, as it then was, of Blois, isolated on three sides by pre- 
 cipitous slopes, while its gates were strictly guarded. The 
 Guises, the Queen's uncles, had the strongest reasons for not 
 living in Paris, and for detaining the Court in a place which 
 could be easily guarded and defended. 
 
 A struggle for the throne was being carried on, which was 
 not ended until twenty-eight years later, in 1588, when, in 
 this same Castle of Blois, Henri III., bitterly humiliated by 
 the House of Lorraine, under his mother's very eyes, planned 
 the death of the boldest of the Guises, the second Balafre (or 
 scarred), son of the first Balafre, by whom Catherine de' Medici 
 was tricked, imprisoned, spied on, and threatened. 
 
 Indeed, the fine Castle of Blois was to Catherine the strictest 
 prison. On the death of her husband, who had always kept 
 her in leading-strings, she had hoped to rule ; but, on the con- 
 trary, she found herself a slave to strangers, whose politeness 
 was infinitely more cruel than the brutality of gaolers. She 
 could do nothing that was not known. Those of her ladies 
 who were attached to her either had lovers devoted to the 
 Guises, or Argus eyes watching over them. Indeed, at that 
 time the conflict of passions had the capricious vagaries which 
 they always derive from the powerful antagonism of two hostile 
 interests in the State. Love-making, which served Catherine 
 well, was also an instrument in the hands of the Guises. Thus 
 the Prince de Conde, the leader of the Reformed party, was 
 attached to the Mar6chale de Saint-Andre, whose husband 
 was the Grand Master's tool. The cardinal, who had learned 
 from the affair of the Vidame de Chartres that Catherine was 
 unconquered rather than unconquerable, was paying court to
 
 90 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 
 
 her. Thus the play of passions brought strange complications 
 into that of politics, making a double game of chess, as it 
 were, in which it was necessary to read both the heart and 
 brain of a man, and to judge, on occasion, whether one would 
 not belie the other. 
 
 Though she lived constantly under the eye of the Cardinal 
 de Lorraine or of his brother, the Due Francois de Guise, 
 who both distrusted her, Catherine's most immediate and 
 shrewdest enemy was her daughter-in-law, Queen Mary, a 
 little, fair girl as mischievous as a waiting-maid, as proud as a 
 Stewart might be who wore three crowns, as learned as an 
 ancient scholar, as tricky as a schoolgirl, as much in love 
 with her husband as a courtesan of her lover, devoted to her 
 uncles, whom she admired, and delighted to find that King 
 Francis, by her persuasion, shared her high opinion of them. 
 A mother-in-law is always a person disliked by her daughter- 
 in-law, especially when she has won the crown and would like 
 to keep it as Catherine had imprudently too plainly shown. 
 Her former position, when Diane de Poitiers ruled King 
 Henri II. , had been more endurable ; at least she had enjoyed 
 the homage due to a Queen and the respect of the Court ; 
 whereas, now, the Duke and the cardinal, having none about 
 them but their own creatures, seemed to take pleasure in 
 humiliating her. Catherine, a prisoner among courtiers, was 
 the object, not every day, but every hour, of blows offensive 
 to her dignity ; for the Guises persisted in carrying on the 
 same system as the late King had employed to thwart her. 
 
 The six-and-thirty years of disaster which devastated France 
 may be said to have begun with the scene in which the most 
 perilous part had been allotted to the son of the Queen's 
 furrier a part which makes him the leading figure in this 
 narrative. The danger into which this zealous reformer was 
 falling became evident in the course of the morning when he 
 set out from the river-port of Beaugency, carrying precious 
 documents which compromised the loftiest heads of the
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 91 
 
 nobility, and embarked for Blois in company with a crafty 
 partisan, the indefatigable la Renaudie, who had arrived on 
 the quay before him. 
 
 While the barque conveying Christophe was being wafted 
 down the Loire before a light easterly breeze, the famous 
 Cardinal de Lorraine and the second Due de Guise, one of 
 the greatest war captains of the time, were considering their 
 position, like two eagles on a rocky peak, and looking cau- 
 tiously round before striking the first great blow by which they 
 tried to kill the Reformation in France. This was to be 
 struck at Amboise, and it was repeated in Paris twelve years 
 later, on the 24th August, 1572. 
 
 In the course of the previous night, three gentlemen, who 
 played an important part in the twelve years' drama that arose 
 from this double plot laid by the Guises on one hand and the 
 Reformers on the other, had arrived at the castle at a furious 
 gallop, leaving their horses half-dead at the postern gate, held 
 by captains and men who were wholly devoted to the Due de 
 Guise, the idol of the soldiery. 
 
 A word must be said as to this great man, and first of all 
 a word to explain his present position. 
 
 His mother was Antoinette de Bourbon, great-aunt of Henri 
 IV. But, of what account are alliances ? At this moment he 
 aimed at nothing less than his cousin de Cond6's head. 
 Mary Stewart was his niece. His wife was Anne, daughter 
 of the Duke of Ferrara. The Grand Conn6table Anne de 
 Montmorency addressed the Due de Guise as " Monseigneur," 
 as he wrote to the King, and signed himself " Your very hum- 
 ble servant." Guise, the Grand Master of the King's house- 
 hold, wrote in reply, " Monsieur le Conn6table," and signed, 
 as in writing to the Parlement, " Your faithful friend." 
 
 As for the cardinal, nicknamed the Trans-Alpine Pope, and 
 spoken of by Estienne as " His Holiness," the whole monastic 
 church of France was on his side, and he treated with the 
 Pope as his equal. He was vain of his eloquence, and one
 
 92 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 of the ablest theologians of his time, while he kept watch over 
 France and Italy by the instrumentality of three religious 
 Orders entirely devoted to him, who were on foot for him day 
 and night, serving him as spies and reporters. 
 
 These few words are enough to show to what a height of 
 power the cardinal and the Duke had risen. In spite of their 
 wealth and the revenues of their offices, they were so entirely 
 disinterested, or so much carried away by the tide of poli- 
 tics, and so generous too, that both were in debt no doubt 
 after the manner of Caesar. Hence, when Henri III. had 
 seen his threatening foe murdered, the second Balafre, the 
 House of Guise was inevitably ruined. Their vast outlay for 
 above a century, in hope of seizing the Crown, accounts for 
 the decay of this great House under Louis XIII. and Louis 
 XIV., when the sudden end of MADAME revealed to all Europe 
 how low a Chevalier de Lorraine had fallen. 
 
 So the cardinal and the Duke, proclaiming themselves the 
 heirs of the deposed Carlovingian kings, behaved very inso- 
 lently to Catherine de' Medici, their niece's mother-in-law. 
 The Duchesse de Guise spared Catherine no mortification ; 
 she was an Este, and Catherine de' Medici was the daughter 
 of self-made Florentine merchants, whom the sovereigns of 
 Europe had not yet admitted to their royal fraternity. Francis 
 I. had regarded his son's marriage with a Medici as a mesal- 
 liance, and had only allowed it in the belief that this son 
 would never be the Dauphin. Hence his fury when the 
 Dauphin died, poisoned by the Florentine Montecuculi. 
 
 The Estes refused to recognize the Medici as Italian princes. 
 These time-honored merchants were, in fact, struggling with 
 the impossible problem of maintaining a throne in the midst 
 of republican institutions. The title of Grand Duke was not 
 bestowed on the Medici till much later by Philip II., King of 
 Spain ; and they earned it by treason to France, their bene- 
 factress, and by a servile attachment to the Court of Spain, 
 which was covertly thwarting them in Italy.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 93 
 
 "Flatter none but your enemies!" This great axiom, 
 uttered by Catherine, would seem to have ruled all the policy 
 of this merchant race, which never lacked great men till its 
 destinies had grown great, and which broke down a little too 
 soon under the degeneracy which is always the end of royal 
 dynasties and great families. 
 
 For three generations there was a prelate and a warrior of 
 the House of Lorraine ; but, which is perhaps not less remark- 
 able, the churchman had always shown as did the present 
 cardinal a singular likeness to Cardinal Ximenes, whom the 
 Cardinal de Richelieu also resembled. These five prelates all 
 had faces that were at once mean and terrifying ; while the 
 warrior's face was of that Basque and mountain type which re- 
 appears in the features of Henri IV. In both the father and the 
 son it was seamed by a scar, which did not destroy the grace 
 and affability that bewitched their soldiers as much as their 
 bravery. 
 
 The way and the occasion of the Grand Master's being 
 wounded is not without interest here, for it was healed by the 
 daring of one of the personages of this drama, Ambroise 
 Pare, who was under obligation to the Syndic of the furriers. 
 At the siege of Calais the Duke's head was pierced by a lance 
 which, entering below the right eye, went through to the neck 
 below the left ear ; the end broke off and remained in the 
 wound. The Duke was lying in his tent in the midst of the 
 general woe, and would have died but for the bold promptitude 
 and devotion of Ambroise Par6. 
 
 " The Duke is not dead, gentlemen," said Par6, turning to 
 the bystanders, who were dissolved in tears. "But he soon 
 will be," he added, "unless I treat him as if he were, and I 
 
 will try it at the risk of the worst that can befall me You 
 
 see ! " 
 
 He set his left foot on the Duke's breast, took the stump of 
 the lance with his nails, loosened it by degrees, and at last 
 drew the spear-head out of the wound, as if it had been from
 
 94 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 some senseless object instead of a man's head. Though he 
 cured the Prince he had handled so boldly, he could not hinder 
 him from bearing to his grave the terrible scar from which he 
 had his name. His son also had the same nickname for a 
 similar reason. 
 
 Having gained entire mastery over the King, who was ruled 
 by his wife, as a result of the passionate and mutual affection 
 which the Guises knew how to turn to account, the two great 
 Princes of Lorraine reigned over France, and had not an 
 enemy at Court but Catherine de' Medici. And no great 
 politician ever played a closer game. The respective attitudes 
 of Henry II. 's ambitious widow, and of the no less ambitious 
 House of Lorraine, was symbolized, as it were, by the posi- 
 tions they held on the terrace of the castle on the very morn- 
 ing when Christophe was about to arrive there. The Queen- 
 mother, feigning extreme affection for the Guises, had asked 
 to be informed as to the news brought by the three gentlemen 
 who had arrived from different parts of the kingdom ; but she 
 had been mortified by a polite dismissal from the cardinal. 
 She was walking at the farther end of the pleasaunce above the 
 Loire, where she was having an observatory erected for her 
 astrologer, Ruggieri ; the building may still be seen, and from 
 it a wide view is to be had over the beautiful valley. The two 
 Guises were on the opposite side overlooking the Vendomois, 
 the upper part of the town, the Perchoir aux Bretons, and the 
 postern gate of the castle. 
 
 Catherine had deceived the brothers, tricking them by an 
 assumption of dissatisfaction ; for she was really very glad to 
 be able to speak with one of the gentlemen who had come in 
 hot haste, and who was in her secret confidence ; who boldly 
 played a double game, but who was, to be sure, well paid 
 for it. This gentleman was Chiverni, who affected to be 
 the mere tool of the Cardinal de Lorraine, but who was in 
 reality in Catherine's service. Catherine had two other de- 
 voted allies in the two Gondis, creatures of her own ; but
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 95 
 
 they, as Florentines, were too open to the suspicion of the 
 Guises to be sent into the country ; she kept them at the Court, 
 where their every word and action was closely watched, but 
 where they, on their side, watched the Guises and reported to 
 Catherine. These two Italians kept a third adherent to the 
 Queen-mother's faction, Birague, a clever Piedmontese, who, 
 like Chiverni, pretended to have abandoned Catherine to 
 attach himself to the Guises, and who encouraged them in 
 their undertakings while spying for Catherine. 
 
 Chiverni had arrived from Ecouen and Paris. The last 
 to ride in was Saint-Andre, Marshal of France, who rose to 
 be such an important personage that the Guises adopted him 
 as the third of the triumvirate they formed against Catherine 
 in the following year. But earlier than either of these, Vieil- 
 leville, the builder of the Castle of Duretal, who had also by 
 his devotion to the Guises earned the rank of marshal, had 
 secretly come and more secretly gone, without any one know- 
 ing what the mission might be that the Grand Master had 
 given him. Saint-Andr, it was known, had been instructed 
 to take military measures to entice all the reformers who were 
 under arms to Amboise, as the result of a council held by the 
 Cardinal de Lorraine, the Due cle Guise, Birague, Chiverni, 
 Vieilleville, and Saint-Andre. As the heads of the House of 
 Lorraine thus employed Birague, it is to be supposed that they 
 trusted to their strength, for they knew that he was attached 
 to the Queen-mother ; but it is possible that they kept him 
 about them with a view to discovering their rival's secret de- 
 signs, as she allowed him to attend them. In those strange 
 times the double part played by some political intriguers was 
 known to both the parties who employed ' them ; they were 
 like cards in the hands of players, and the craftiest won the 
 game. 
 
 All through this sitting the brothers had been impenetrably 
 guarded. Catherine's conversation with her friends will, how- 
 ever, fully explain the purpose of this meeting, convened by
 
 96 ABOUT CATHERINE D' MEDICI. 
 
 the Guises in the open air, at break of day, in the terraced 
 garden, as though every one feared to speak within the walls 
 full of ears of the Castle of Blois. 
 
 The Queen-mother, who had been walking about all the 
 morning with the two Gondi, under pretense of examining the 
 observatory that was being built, but, in fact, anxiously watch- 
 ing the hostile party, was presently joined by Chiverni. She 
 was standing at the angle of the terrace opposite the church 
 of Saint-Nicholas, and there feared no listeners. The wall is 
 as high as the church-towers, and the Guises always held 
 council at the other corner of the terrace, below the dungeon 
 then begun, walking to and from the Perchoir des Bretons 
 and the arcade by the bridge which joined the gardens to the 
 Perchoir. There was nobody at the bottom of the ravine. 
 
 Chiverni took the Queen's hand to kiss it, and slipped into 
 her fingers a tiny letter without being seen by the Italians. 
 Catherine quickly turned away, walked to the corner of the 
 parapet, and read as follows : 
 
 "You are powerful enough to keep the balance true be- 
 tween the great ones, and to make them contend as to which 
 shall serve you best ; you have your house full of kings, and need 
 not fear either Lorrains or Bourbons so long as you set them 
 against each other; for both sides aim at snatching the crown 
 from your children. Be your advisers' mistress, and not their 
 slave ; keep up each side by the other ; otherwise the kingdom 
 will go from bad to worse and great wars may ensue. 
 
 "L'HOPITAL." 
 
 The Queen placed this letter in the bosom of her stomacher, 
 reminding herself to burn it as soon as she should be alone. 
 
 " When did you see him? " she asked Chiverni. 
 
 "On returning from seeing the Connetable at Melum ; he 
 was going through with the Duchesse de Berri, whom he was 
 most anxious to convey in safety to Savoy, so as to return
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 97 
 
 here and enlighten the Chancellor Olivier, who is, in fact, 
 the dupe of the Lorrains. Monsieur de 1'Hopital is resolved 
 to adhere to your cause, seeing the aims that the Messieurs de 
 Guise have in view. And he will hasten back as fast as 
 possible to give you his vote in the council." 
 
 "Is he sincere?" said Catherine. "For you know that 
 when the Lorrains admitted him to the council, it was to 
 enable them to rule." 
 
 " L'Hopital is a Frenchman of too good a stock not to be 
 honest," said Chiverni; "beside, that letter is a sufficient 
 pledge." 
 
 "And what answer does the Conn6table send to these 
 gentlemen ? " 
 
 " He says the King is his master, and he awaits his orders. 
 On this reply, the cardinal, to prevent any resistance, will pro- 
 pose to appoint his brother lieutenant-general of the realm." 
 
 " So soon ! " exclaimed Catherine in dismay. " Well, and 
 did Monsieur de 1'Hopital give you any further message for 
 me?" 
 
 " He told me, madame, that you alone can stand between 
 the throne and Messieurs de Guise." 
 
 "But does he suppose that I will use the Huguenots as a 
 means of defense?" 
 
 "Oh, madame," cried Chiverni, surprised by her perspica- 
 city, "we never thought of placing you in such a difficult 
 position." 
 
 "Did he know what a position I am in?" asked the 
 Queen calmly. 
 
 "Pretty nearly. He thinks you made a dupe's bargain 
 when, on the death of the late King, you accepted for your 
 share the fragments saved from the ruin of Madame Diane. 
 The Messieurs de Guise thought they had paid their debt to 
 the Queen by gratifying the woman." 
 
 "Yes," said Catherine, looking at the two Gondis, "I 
 made a great mistake there." 
 7
 
 98 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 "A mistake the gods might make ! " replied Charles de 
 Gondi. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said the Queen, " if I openly take up the 
 cause of the Reformers, I shall be the slave of a party." 
 
 "Madame," said Chiverni eagerly, "I entirely agree with 
 you. You must make use of them, but not let them make use 
 of you." 
 
 "Although, for the moment, your strength lies there," said 
 Charles de Gondi, " we must not deceive ourselves ; success 
 and failure are equally dangerous ! " 
 
 "I know it," said the Queen. " One false move will be a 
 pretext eagerly seized by the Guises to sweep me off the 
 board!" 
 
 "A Pope's niece, the mother of four Valois, the Queen of 
 France, the widow of the most ardent persecutor of the 
 Huguenots, an Italian and a Catholic, the aunt of Leo X. 
 can you form an alliance with the Reformation ? ' ' asked 
 Charles de Gondi. 
 
 "On the other hand," Albert replied, " is not seconding 
 the Guises consenting to usurpation ? You have to deal with 
 a race that looks to the struggle between the church and the 
 Reformation to give them a crown for the taking. You may 
 avail yourself of Huguenot help without abjuring the faith." 
 
 " Remember, madame, that your family, which ought to be 
 wholly devoted to the King of France, is at this moment in 
 the service of the King of Spain," said Chiverni. " And it 
 would go over to the Reformation to-morrow if the Refor- 
 mation could make the Duke of Florence King ! " 
 
 "I am very well inclined to give the Huguenots a helping 
 hand for a time," said Catherine, "were it only to be re- 
 venged on that soldier, that priest, and that woman ! " 
 
 And with an Italian glance, her eye turned on the Duke and 
 the cardinal, and then to the upper rooms of the castle where 
 her son lived and Mary Stewart. " Those three snatched the 
 reins of government from my hands," she went on, " when I
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICL 99 
 
 had waited for them long enough while that old woman held 
 them in my place." 
 
 She jerked her head in the direction of Chenonceaux, the 
 castle she had just exchanged for Chaumont with Diane de 
 Poitiers. "Afa," she said in Italian, "it would seem that 
 these gentry of the Geneva bands have not wit enough to 
 apply to me ! On my honor, I cannot go to meet them ! 
 And not one of you would dare to carry them a message." 
 She stamped her foot. " I hoped you might have met the 
 hunchback at Ecouen," she said to Chiverni. "He has 
 brains." 
 
 " He was there, madame," replied Chiverni, " but he could 
 not induce the Connetable to join him. Monsieur de Mont- 
 morency would be glad enough to overthrow the Guises, 
 who obtained his dismissal ; but he will have nothing to do 
 with heresy." 
 
 " And who, gentlemen, is to crush these private whims 
 that are an offense to royalty ? By heaven ! these nobles 
 must be made to destroy each other as Louis XL made 
 them, the greatest of your kings. In this kingdom there 
 are four or five parties and my son's is the weakest of them 
 all." 
 
 " The Reformation is an idea," remarked Charles de Gondi, 
 " and the parties crushed by Louis XI. were based only on 
 interest." 
 
 "There is always an idea to back up interest," replied 
 Chiverni. "In Louis XL's time the idea was called the 
 Great Fief!" 
 
 "Use heresy as an axe," said Albert de Gondi. "You 
 will not incur the odium of executions." 
 
 "Ha!" said the Queen, "but I know nothing of the 
 strength or the schemes of these folk, and I cannot commu- 
 nicate with them through any safe channel. If I were found 
 out in any such conspiracy, either by the Queen, who watches 
 me as if I were an infant in arms, or by my two gaolers, who
 
 100 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 let no one come into the castle, I should then be banished 
 the country, and taken back to Florence under a formidable 
 escort captained by some ruffianly Guisard ! Thank you, 
 friends ! Oh, daughter-in-law ! I hope you may some day 
 be a prisoner in your own house ; then you will know what 
 you have inflicted on me ! " 
 
 "Their schemes!" exclaimed Chiverni. "The Grand 
 Master and the cardinal know them ; but those two foxes will 
 not tell. If you, madame, can make them tell, I will devote 
 myself to you, and come to an understanding with the Prince 
 de Conde." 
 
 " Which of their plans have they failed to conceal from 
 you?" asked the Queen, glancing toward the brothers de 
 Guise. 
 
 "Monsieur de Vieilleville and Monsieur de Saint-Andre 
 have just had their orders, of which we know nothing; but 
 the Grand Master is concentrating his best troops on the left 
 bank, it would seem. Within a few days you will find your- 
 self at Amboise. The Grand Master came to this terrace to 
 study the position, and he does not think Blois favorable to 
 his private schemes. Well, then, what does he want? " said 
 Chiverni, indicating the steep cliffs that surround the castle. 
 "The Court could nowhere be safer from sudden attack than 
 it is here." 
 
 "Abdicate or govern," said Albert de Gondi in the 
 Queen's ear as she stood thinking. 
 
 A fearful expression of suppressed rage flashed across the 
 Queen's handsome ivory-pale face. She was not yet forty, 
 and she had lived for twenty-six years in the French Court, 
 absolutely powerless, she who, ever since she had come there, 
 had longed to play the leading part. 
 
 " Never so long as this son lives ! His wife has bewitched 
 him ! " 
 
 After a short pause these terrible words broke from her in 
 the language of Dante.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 101 
 
 Catherine's exclamation had its inspiration in a strange 
 prediction, spoken a few days before at the Castle of Chau- 
 mont, on the opposite bank of the Loire, whither she had 
 gone with her astrologer Ruggieri to consult a famous sooth- 
 sayer. This woman was brought to meet her by Nostradamus, 
 the chief of those physicians who in that great sixteenth cen- 
 tury believed in the occult sciences, with Ruggieri, Cardan, 
 Paracelsus, and many more. This fortune-teller, of whose life 
 history has no record, had fixed the reign of Francis II. at 
 one year's duration. 
 
 "And what is your opinion of all this?" Catherine asked 
 Chiverni. 
 
 "There will be fighting," said the cautious gentleman. 
 " The King of Navarre " 
 
 " Oh ! say the Queen ! " Catherine put in. 
 
 "Very true, the Queen," said Chiverni, smiling, "has 
 made the Prince de Conde the chief of the Reformed party; 
 he, as a younger son, may dare much ; and Monsieur le Cardi- 
 nal talks of sending for him to come here." 
 
 " If only he comes ! " cried the Queen, " I am saved ! " 
 
 So it will be seen that the leaders of the great Reforming 
 movement had been right in thinking of Catherine as an ally. 
 
 " This is the jest of it," said the Queen ; " the Bourbons 
 are tricking the Huguenots, and Master Calvin, de Beze, and 
 the rest are cheating the Bourbons ; but shall we be strong 
 enough to take in the Huguenots, the Bourbons, and the 
 Guises? In front of three such foes we are justified in feeling 
 our pulse," said she. 
 
 "They have not the King," replied Albert. "You must 
 always win, having the King on your side." 
 
 " Malediction, Mary ! " said Catherine, between her teeth. 
 
 " The Guises are already thinking of diverting the affec- 
 tions of the middle-class," said Birague. 
 
 The hope of snatching the Crown had not been premedi-
 
 102 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 tated by the two heads of the refractory House of Guise; 
 there was nothing to justify the project or the hope ; circum- 
 stances suggested such audacity. The two cardinals and the 
 two Balafres were, as it happened, four ambitious men, superior 
 in political gifts to any of the men about them. Indeed, the 
 family was only subdued at last by Henri IV., himself a leader 
 of faction, brought up in the great school of which Catherine 
 and the Guises were the teachers and he had profited by 
 their lessons. 
 
 At this time these two brothers were the arbiters of the 
 greatest revolution attempted in Europe since that carried 
 through in England under Henry VIII., which had resulted 
 from the invention of printing. They were the enemies of 
 the Reformation, the power was in their hands, and they 
 meant to stamp out heresy ; but Calvin, their opponent, though 
 less famous than Luther, was a stronger man. Calvin saw 
 government where Luther had only seen dogma. Where the 
 burly, beer-drinking, uxorious German fought with the devil, 
 flinging his inkstand at the fiend, the man of Picardy, frail 
 and unmarried, dreamed of plans of campaign, of directing 
 battles, of arming princes, and of raising whole nations by 
 disseminating republican doctrines in the hearts of the middle- 
 classes, so as to make up, by increased progress in the spirit 
 of nations, for his constant defeats on the battlefield. 
 
 The Cardinal de Lorraine and the Due de Guise knew 
 quite as well as Philip II. and the Duke of Alva where the 
 Monarchy was aimed at, and how close the connection was 
 between Catholicism and sovereignty. Charles V., intoxi- 
 cated with having drunk too deeply of Charlemagne's cup, 
 and trusting too much in the strength of his rule, for he be- 
 lieved that he and Soliman might divide the world between 
 them, was not at first conscious that his front was attacked ; 
 as soon as Cardinal Granvelle showed him the extent of the 
 festering sore, he abdicated. 
 
 The Guises had a startling conception : they would extin-
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI, 103 
 
 guish heresy with a single blow. They tried to strike that 
 blow for the first time at Amboise, and they made a second 
 attempt on Saint-Bartholomew's Day ; this time they were in 
 accord with Catherine de' Medici, enlightened as she was by 
 the flames of twelve years' wars, and yet more by the ominous 
 word ''Republic" spoken and even published at a later date 
 by the writers of the Reformation, whose ideas Lecamus, the 
 typical citizen of Paris, had already understood. The two 
 Princes, on the eve of striking a fatal blow to the heart of the 
 nobility, in order to cut it off from the first from a religious 
 party whose triumph would be its ruin, were now discussing 
 the means of announcing their stroke of policy to the King, 
 while Catherine was conversing with her four counselors. 
 
 " Jeanne d' Albret knew what she was doing when she pro- 
 claimed herself the protectress of the Huguenots ! She has 
 in the Reformation a battering-ram which she makes good 
 play with ! " said the Grand Master, who had measured the 
 depth of the Queen of Navarre's scheming. 
 
 Jeanne d'Albret was, in point of fact, one of the cleverest 
 personages of her time. 
 
 "Theodore de Beze is at' Nerac, having taken Calvin's 
 orders." 
 
 " What men those common folk can lay their hands on ! " 
 cried the Duke. 
 
 " Ay, we have not a man on our side to match that fellow 
 la Renaudie," said the cardinal. " He is a perfect Catiline." 
 
 "Men like him always act on their own account," replied 
 the Duke. "Did not I see la Renaudie's value? I loaded 
 him with favors, I helped him to get away when he was con- 
 demned by the Bourgogne Parlement, I got him back into 
 France by obtaining a revision of his trial, and I intended to 
 do all I could for him, while he was plotting a diabolical con- 
 spiracy against us. The rascal has effected an alliance between 
 the German Protestants and the heretics in France by smooth- 
 ing over the discrepancies of dogma between Luther and
 
 104 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 Calvin. He has won over the disaffected nobles to the cause 
 of the Reformation without asking them to abjure Catholicism. 
 So long ago as last year he had thirty commanders on his side ! 
 He was everywhere at once : at Lyons, in Languedoc, at 
 Nantes. Finally, he drew up the articles settled in Council 
 and, distributed throughout Germany, in which theologians 
 declare that it is justifiable to use force to get the King out of 
 our hands, and this is being disseminated in every town. 
 Look for him where you will, you will nowhere find him ! 
 
 " Hitherto I have shown him nothing but kindness ! We 
 shall have to kill him like a dog, or to make a bridge of gold 
 for him to cross and come into our house." 
 
 " Brittany and Languedoc, the whole kingdom, indeed, is 
 being worked upon to give us a deadly shock," said the car- 
 dinal. "After yesterday's festival, I spent the rest of the 
 night in reading all the information sent me by my priest- 
 hood ; but no one is involved but some impoverished gentle, 
 men and artisans, people who may be either hanged or left 
 alive, it matters not which. The Colignys and the Condes 
 are not yet visible, though they hold the threads of the con- 
 spiracy." 
 
 "Ay," said the Duke ; "and as soon as that lawyer Aven- 
 elles had let the cat out of the bag, I told Braguelonne to 
 give the conspirators their head : they have no suspicions, 
 they think they can surprise us, and then perhaps the leaders 
 will show themselves. My advice would be that we should 
 allow ourselves to be beaten for forty-eight hours " 
 
 "That would be half-an-hour too long," said the cardinal 
 in alarm. 
 
 " How brave you are ! " retorted le Balafr. 
 
 The cardinal went on with calm indifference 
 
 "Whether the Prince de Cond be implicated or not, if 
 we are assured that he is the leader, cut off his head. What 
 we want for that business is judges rather than soldiers, and 
 there will never be any lack of judges ! Victory in the
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 105 
 
 Supreme Court is always more certain than on the field of 
 battle, and costs less." 
 
 "I am quite willing," replied the Duke. "But do you 
 believe that the Prince de Conde is powerful enough to in- 
 spire such audacity in those who are sent on first to attack us ? 
 Is there not ? ' ' 
 
 "The King of Navarre,"* said the cardinal. 
 
 " A gaby who bows low in my presence," replied the Duke. 
 " That Florentine woman's graces must have blinded you, I 
 think " 
 
 "Oh, I have thought of that already," said the prelate. 
 "If I aim at a gallant intimacy with her, is it not that I may 
 read to the bottom of her heart ? " 
 
 "She has no heart," said his brother sharply. "She is 
 even more ambitious than we are." 
 
 "You are a brave commander," said the cardinal; "but, take 
 my word for it, our skirts are very near touching, and I made 
 Mary Stewart watch her narrowly before you even suspected 
 her. Catherine has no more religion in her than my shoe. 
 If she is not the soul of the conspiracy, it is not for lack of 
 good-will ; but we will draw her out and see how far she will 
 support us. Till now I know for certain that she has not 
 held any communication with the heretics." 
 
 "It is time that we should lay everything before the King, 
 and the Queen-mother, who knows nothing," said the Duke, 
 " and that is the only proof of her innocence. La Renaudie 
 will understand from my arrangements that we are warned. 
 Last night Nemours must have been following up the detach- 
 ments of the Reformed party, who were coming in by the 
 cross-roads, and the conspirators will be compelled to attack 
 us at Amboise ; I will let them all in. Here," and he pointed 
 to the three steep slopes of rock on which the Chateau de 
 Blois is built, just as Chiverni had done a moment since, " we 
 should have a fight with no result ; the Huguenots could 
 
 * Husband of Queen Margaret.
 
 106 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 come and go at will. Blois is a hall with four doors, while 
 Amboise is a sack." 
 
 " I will not leave the Florentine Queen," said the cardinal. 
 
 ''We have made one mistake," remarked the Duke, play- 
 ing with his dagger, tossing it in the air, and catching it 
 again by the handle ; " we ought to have behaved to her as 
 to the Reformers, giving her liberty to move, so as to take 
 her in the act." 
 
 The cardinal looked at his brother for a minute, shaking 
 his head. 
 
 " What does Pardaillan want ? " the Duke exclaimed, seeing 
 this young gentleman coming along the terrace. Pardaillan 
 was to become famous for his fight with la Renaudie, in which 
 both were killed. 
 
 " Monseigneur, a youth sent here by the Queen's furrier is 
 at the gate and says that he has a set of ermine to deliver to 
 her majesty. Is he to be admitted ? " 
 
 " To be sure ; an ermine surcoat she spoke of but yester- 
 day," said the cardinal. "Let the store-clerk in. She will 
 need the mantle for her journey by the Loire." 
 
 " Which way did he come, that he was not stopped before 
 reaching the gate?" asked the Grand Master. 
 
 " I do not know," said Pardaillan. 
 
 " I will go to see him in the Queen's room," said le 
 Balafre. " Tell him to await her lever in the guardroom. 
 But, Pardaillan, is he young?" 
 
 " Yes, monseigneur; he says he is Lecamus' son." 
 
 " Lecamus is a good Catholic," said the cardinal, who, like 
 the Duke, was gifted with a memory like Caesar's. "The 
 priest of Saint-Pierre aux Bceufs trusts him, for he is officer 
 of the peace for the Palace." 
 
 " Make this youth chat with the captain of the Scotch 
 Guard, all the same," said the Grand Master, with an 
 emphasis which gave the words a very pointed meaning. 
 " But Ambroise is at the castle ; through him we shall know
 
 'WE HAVE MADE ONE MISTAKE," REMARKED THE DUKE, 
 PLAYING WITH HIS DAGGER.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 107 
 
 at once if he really is the son of Lecamus, who was formerly 
 his very good friend. Ask for Ambroise Pare." 
 
 At this moment the Queen came toward the brothers, who 
 hurried to meet her with marks of respect, in which Catherine 
 never failed to discern deep irony. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said she, "will you condescend to inform 
 me of what is going on ? Is the widow of your late sover- 
 eign of less account in your esteem than Messieurs de Vieille- 
 ville, Birague, and Chiverni?" 
 
 " Madame," said the cardinal, with an air of gallantry, 
 " our first duty as men, before all matters of politics, is not 
 to alarm ladies by false rumors. This morning, indeed, we 
 have had occasion to confer on State affairs. You will pardon 
 my brother for having in the first instance given orders on 
 purely military matters which must be indifferent to you the 
 really important points remain to be discussed. If you ap- 
 prove, we will all attend the lever of the King and Queen ; it 
 is close on the hour." 
 
 "Why, what is happening, Monsieur le Grand Maitre?" 
 asked Catherine, affecting terror. 
 
 " The Reformation, madame, is no longer a mere heresy; 
 it is a party which is about to take up arms and seize the 
 King." 
 
 Catherine, with the cardinal, the Duke, and the gentlemen, 
 made their way toward the staircase by the corridor, which 
 was crowded with courtiers who had not the right of admis- 
 sion, and who ranged themselves against the wall. 
 
 Gondi, who had been studying the Princes of Lorraine 
 while Catherine was conversing with them, said in good Tus- 
 can and in Catherine's ear these two words, which became by- 
 words, and which express one aspect of that royally powerful 
 nature 
 
 "Odiate e aspettate /" (Hate and wait.) 
 
 Pardaillan, who had delivered to the officer on guard at the 
 gatehouse the order to admit the messenger from the Queen's
 
 108 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 furrier, found Christophe standing outside the portico and 
 staring at the facade built by good King Louis XII., whereon 
 there was at that time an even more numerous array of sculp- 
 tured figures of the coarsest buffoonery if we may judge by 
 what has survived. The curious will detect, for instance, a 
 figure of a woman carved on the capital of one of the columns 
 of the gateway holding up her skirts, and saucily exhibit- 
 ing ''what Brunei displayed to Marphise " to a burly monk 
 crouching in the capital of the corresponding column at the 
 other jamb of this gate, above which once stood a statue of 
 Louis XII. Several of the windows of this front, ornamented 
 in this grotesque taste, and now unfortunately destroyed, 
 amused, or seemed to amuse, Christophe, whom the gunners 
 of the Guard were already pelting with their pleasantries. 
 
 " He would like to be lodged there, he would," said the 
 sergeant-at-arms, patting his store of charges for his musket, 
 which hung from his belt in the sugar-loaf-shaped cartridges. 
 
 " Halloo, you from Paris, you never saw so much before ! " 
 said a soldier. 
 
 " He recognizes good King Louis ! " said another. 
 
 Christophe affected not to hear them, and tried to look even 
 more helplessly amazed, so that his look of blank stupidity was 
 an excellent recommendation to Pardaillan. 
 
 "The Queen is not yet risen," said the young officer. 
 "Come and wait in the guardroom." 
 
 Christophe slowly followed Pardaillan. He purposely lin- 
 gered to admire the pretty covered balcony with an arched 
 front, where, in the reign of Louis XII. , the courtiers could 
 wait under cover till the hour of reception if the weather was 
 bad, and where at this moment some of the gentlemen at- 
 tached to the Guises were grouped ; for the staircase, still so 
 well preserved, which led to their apartments is at the end of 
 that gallery, in a tower of which the architecture is greatly 
 admired by the curious. 
 
 " Now, then ! have you come here to study graven images?"
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 109 
 
 cried Pardaillan, seeing Lecamus riveted in front of the ele- 
 gant stonework of the outer parapet which unites or, if you 
 will, separates the columns of each archway. 
 
 Christophe followed the young captain to the grand stair- 
 case, not without glancing at this almost Moorish-looking 
 structure from top to bottom with an expression of ecstasy. 
 On this fine morning the court was full of captains-at-arms and 
 of courtiers chatting in groups ; and their brilliant costumes 
 gave life to the scene, in itself so bright, for the marvels of 
 the noble architecture that decorated the facade were still 
 quite new. 
 
 "Come in here," said Pardaillan to Lecamus, signing to 
 him to follow him through the carved door on the second 
 floor, which was thrown open by a sentry on his recognizing 
 Pardaillan. 
 
 Christophe's amazement may easily be imagined on entering 
 this guardroom, so vast that the military genius of our day 
 has cut it across by a partition to form two rooms. It extends, 
 in fact, both on the third floor, where the King lived, and on 
 the second, occupied by the Queen-mother, for a third of the 
 length of the front toward the court, and is lighted by two 
 windows to the left and two to the right of the famous stair- 
 case. The young captain made his way toward the door 
 leading to the King's room, which opened out of this hall, 
 and desired one of the pages-in-waiting to tell Madame Dayelle, 
 one of the Queen's ladies, that the furrier was in the guard- 
 room with her surcoats. 
 
 At a sign from Pardaillan, Christophe went to stand by the 
 side of an officer seated on a low stool in the corner of a 
 chimney-place as large as his father's shop, at one end of this 
 vast hall opposite another exactly like it at the other end. In 
 talking with this gentleman, Christophe succeeded in interest- 
 ing him by telling him the trivial details of his trade ; and he 
 seemed so completely the craftsman that the officer volun- 
 teered this opinion to the captain of the Scotch Guard, who
 
 112 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 before the end of the year, under the name of Charles IX., 
 at the age of ten was excessively shy. The Due d'Anjou and 
 the Due d'Alencon, his two brothers, and the infant Princess 
 Marguerite, who became the wife of Henri IV., were still too 
 young to appear at Court, and remained in their mother's 
 apartments. The Due d'Orleans, richly dressed in the fashion 
 of the time, in silk trunk hose, a doublet of cloth of gold, 
 brocaded with flowers in black, and a short cloak of em- 
 broidered velvet, all black, for he was still in mourning for 
 the late King his father, bowed to the two elder ladies, and 
 joined the group of his mother's maids of honor. Strongly 
 disliking the Guisards (the adherents of the Guises), he re- 
 plied coldly to the Duchess' greeting, and went to lean his 
 elbow on the back of the Countess Fieschi's tall chair. 
 
 His tutor, Monsieur de Cypierre, one of the finest charac- 
 ters of that age, stood behind him as a shield. Amyot, in a 
 simple abbess gown, also attended the Prince ; he was his 
 instructor as well as being the teacher of the three other royal 
 children, whose favor was afterward so advantageous to him. 
 
 Between this chimney-place "of honor" and that at the 
 farther end of the hall where the Guards stood in groups 
 with their captain, a few courtiers, and Christophe carrying 
 his box the Chancellor Olivier, I'Hopital's patron and pre- 
 decessor, in the costume worn ever since by the chancellors 
 of France, was walking to and fro with Cardinal de Tournon, 
 who had just arrived from Rome, and with whom he exchanged 
 a few phrases in murmurs. On them was centred the general 
 attention of the gentlemen packed against the wall dividing 
 the hall from the King's bedroom, standing like a living tap- 
 estry against the rich figured hangings. In spite of the serious 
 state of affairs, the Court presented the same appearance as 
 every Court must, in every country, at every time, and in the 
 midst of the greatest perils. Courtiers always talk of the most 
 trivial subjects while thinking of the gravest, jesting while 
 watching every physiognomy, andj considering questions of
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 113 
 
 love and marriage with heiresses in the midst of the most 
 sanguinary catastrophes. 
 
 "What did you think of yesterday's f&te?" asked Bour- 
 deilles, the Lord of Brantome, going up to Mademoiselle de 
 Piennes, one of the elder Queen's maids of honor. 
 
 " Monsieur du Ba'if and Monsieur du Bellay had had the 
 most charming ideas," said she, pointing to the two gentle- 
 men who had arranged everything, and who were standing 
 close at hand. "I thought it in atrocious taste," she added 
 in a whisper. 
 
 "You had no part in it?" said Miss Lewiston from the 
 other side. 
 
 " What are you reading, madame? " said Amyot to Madame 
 Fieschi. 
 
 "'Amadis de Gaule,' by the Seigneur des Essarts, purveyor- 
 in-ordinary to the King's Artillery." 
 
 " A delightful work," said the handsome girl, who became 
 famous as la Fosseuse, when she was lady-in-waiting to Queen 
 Margaret of Navarre. 
 
 "The style is quite new," remarked Amyot. "Shall you 
 adopt such barbarisms ? " he asked, turning to Brantome. 
 
 "The ladies like it! What is to be said?" cried Bran- 
 tome, going forward to bow to Madame de Guise, who had in 
 her hand Boccaccio's "Famous Ladies." "There must be 
 some ladies of your House there, madame," said he. "But 
 Master Boccaccio's mistake was that he did not live in these 
 days ; he would have found ample matter to enlarge his 
 volumes." 
 
 " How clever Monsieur de Brantome is ! " said the beauti- 
 ful Mademoiselle de Limeuil to the Countess Fieschi. " He 
 came first to us, but he will stay with the Guises." 
 
 "Hush ! " said Madame Fieschi, looking at the fair Limeuil. 
 "Attend to what concerns you " 
 
 The young lady turned to the door. She was expecting 
 Sardini, an Italian nobleman, who was subsequently made to 
 8
 
 114 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 marry her after a little accident that overtook her in the 
 Queen's dressing-room, and which procured her the honor of 
 having a queen for her midwife. 
 
 " By Saint Alipantin, Mademoiselle Davila seems to grow 
 prettier every morning," said Monsieur de Robertet, Secretary 
 of State, as he bowed to the Queen-mother's ladies. 
 
 The advent of the secretary of State, though he was exactly 
 as important as a Cabinet Minister in these days, made no 
 sensation whatever. 
 
 "If you think that, monsieur, do lend me the epigram 
 against the Messieurs de Guise; I know you have it," said 
 Mademoiselle Davila to Robertet. 
 
 "I have it no longer," replied the secretary, going across 
 to speak to Madame de Guise. 
 
 " I have it," said the Comte de Grammont to Mademoiselle 
 Davila; " but I will lend it you only on one condition." 
 
 " On condition ? For shame ! " said Madame Fieschi. 
 
 "You do not know what I want," replied Grammont. 
 
 "Oh, that is easy to guess," said la Limeuil. 
 
 The Italian custom of calling ladies, as French peasants call 
 their wives, la Such-an-one, was at that time the fashion at 
 the Court of France. 
 
 "You are mistaken," the Count replied eagerly; "what I 
 ask is that a letter should be delivered to Mademoiselle de 
 Matha, one of the maids on the other side a letter from my 
 cousin de Jarnac." 
 
 " Do not compromise my maids ; I will give it to her my- 
 self," said the Countess Fieschi. " Have you heard any news 
 of what is going on in Flanders?" she asked Cardinal de 
 Tournon. " Monsieur d'Egmont is at some new pranks, it 
 would seem." 
 
 "He and the Prince of Orange," said Cypierre, with a 
 highly expressive shrug. 
 
 " The Duke of Alva and Cardinal de Granvelle are going 
 there, are they not, monsieur?" asked Amyot of Cardinal de
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 115 
 
 Tournon, who stood, uneasy and gloomy, between the two 
 groups after his conversation with the chancellor. 
 
 " We, happily, are quiet, and have to defy heresy only on 
 the stage," said the young Duke, alluding to the part he had 
 played the day before, that of a knight subduing a hydra with 
 the word "Reformation " on its brow. 
 
 Catherine de' Medici, agreeing on this point with her 
 daughter-in-law, had allowed a theatre to be constructed in 
 the great hall, which was subsequently used for the meetings 
 of the States at Blois, the hall between the buildings of Louis 
 XII. and those of Francis I. 
 
 The cardinal made no reply, and resumed his walk in the 
 middle of the hall, talking in a low voice to Monsieur de 
 Robertet and the chancellor. Many persons know nothing 
 of the difficulties that secretaryships of State, now transformed 
 into Cabinet Ministries, met with in the course of their estab- 
 lishment, and how hard the Kings of France found it to create 
 them. At that period a secretary like Robertet was merely a 
 clerk, of hardly any account among the princes and magnates 
 who settled the affairs of State. There were at that time no 
 ministerial functionaries but the superintendent of finance, 
 the chancellor, and the keeper of the king's seals. The King 
 granted a seat in the Council, by letters patent, to such of his 
 subjects as might, in his opinion, give useful advice in the 
 conduct of public affairs. A seat in the Council might be 
 given to a president of a law court in the Parlement, to a 
 bishop, to an untitled favorite. Once admitted to the Council, 
 the subject strengthened his position by getting himself ap- 
 pointed to one of the Crown offices to which a salary was 
 attached the government of a province, a constable's sword, 
 a marshal's baton, the command of the Artillery, the post of 
 High Admiral, the colonelcy of some military corps, the cap- 
 taincy of the galleys or often some function at Court, such 
 as that of Grand Master of the household, then held by the 
 Due de Guise.
 
 116 ABOUT CATHERINE Z>' MEDICI. 
 
 " Do you believe that the Due de Nemours will marry 
 Francoise?" asked Madame de Guise of the Due d'Orleans 1 
 instructor. 
 
 "Indeed, madame, I know nothing but Latin," was the 
 reply. 
 
 This made those smile who were near enough to hear it. 
 Just then the seduction of Franchise de Rohan by the Due de 
 Nemours was the theme of every conversation ; but as the Due 
 de Nemours was cousin to the King, and also allied to the 
 House of Valois through his mother, the Guises regarded him 
 as seduced rather than as a seducer. The influence of the 
 House of Rohan was, however, so great, that after Francis 
 II. 's death the Due de Nemours was obliged to quit France in 
 consequence of the lawsuit brought against him by the Rohans, 
 which was compromised by the offices of the Guises. His 
 marriage to the Duchesse de Guise, after Poltrot's assassina- 
 tion, may account for the Duchess' question to Amyot, by 
 explaining some rivalry, no doubt, between her and Made- 
 moiselle de Rohan. 
 
 " Look, pray, at that party of malcontents," said the 
 Comte de Grammont, pointing to Messieurs de Coligny, Car- 
 dinal de Chdtillon, Danville, Thore, Moret, and several other 
 gentlemen suspected of meddling in the Reformation, who 
 were standing all together between two windows at the lower 
 end of the hall. 
 
 "The Huguenots are on the move," said Cypierre. "We 
 know that Theodore de Beze is at Nerac to persuade the 
 Queen of Navarre to declare herself on their side by publicly 
 renouncing the Catholic faith," he added, with a glance at 
 the Bailli d'Orleans, who was chancellor to the Queen of 
 Navarre, and a keen observer of the Court. 
 
 " She will do it," said the Bailli d'Orleans drily. 
 
 This personage, the Jacques Cceur of his day, and one of 
 the richest middle-class men of his time, was named Groslot, 
 and was envoy from Jeanne d'Albret to the French Court.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE y MEDICI. 117 
 
 "Do you think so?" said the Chancellor of France to the 
 Chancellor of Navarre, quite understanding the full import 
 of Groslot's remark. 
 
 "Don't you know," said the rich provincial, "that the 
 Queen of Navarre has nothing of the woman in her but her 
 sex? She is devoted to none but manly things ; her mind is 
 strong in important matters and her heart undaunted by the 
 greatest adversities." 
 
 "Monsieur le Cardinal," said the Chancellor Olivier to 
 Monsieur de Tournon, who had heard Groslot, " what do you 
 think of such boldness ? " 
 
 " The Queen of Navarre does well to choose for her chan- 
 cellor a man from whom the House of Lorraine will need to 
 borrow, and who offers the King his house when there is a talk 
 of moving to Orleans," replied the cardinal. 
 
 The chancellor and the cardinal looked at each other, not 
 daring to speak their thoughts ; but Robertet expressed them, 
 for he thought it necessary to make a greater display of de- 
 votion to the Guises than these great men, since he was so far 
 beneath them. 
 
 "It is most unfortunate that the House of Navarre, instead 
 of abjuring the faith of their fathers, do not abjure the spirit 
 of revenge and rebellion inspired by the Connetable de 
 Bourbon. We shall see a repetition of the wars of the 
 Armagnacs and the Bourguignons." 
 
 " No," said Groslot, " for there is something of Louis XI. 
 in the Cardinal de Lorraine." 
 
 "And in Queen Catherine too," observed Robertet. 
 
 At this moment Madame Dayelle, Mary Stewart's favorite 
 waiting-woman, crossed the room and went to the Queen's 
 chamber. The appearance of the waiting-woman made a 
 little stir. 
 
 " We shall be admitted directly," said Madame Fieschi. 
 
 " I do not think so," said the Duchesse de Guise. " Their 
 majesties will come out, for a State Council is to be held."
 
 118 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 La Dayelle slipped into the royal chamber after scratching 
 at the door, a deferential custom introduced by Catherine de' 
 Medici and adopted by the French Court. 
 
 "What is the weather like, my dear Dayelle?" asked 
 Queen Mary, putting her fair, fresh face out between the 
 curtains. 
 
 "Oh ! madame " 
 
 " What is the matter, Dayelle ? You might have the bow- 
 men at your heels " 
 
 " Oh ! madame is the King still sleeping ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "We are to leave the castle, and Monsieur le Cardinal 
 desired me to tell you so, that you might suggest it to the 
 King." 
 
 " Do you know why, my good Dayelle ? " 
 
 " The Reformers mean to carry you off." 
 
 " Oh, this new religion leaves me no peace ! I dreamed 
 last night that I was in prison I who shall wear the united 
 crowns of the three finest kingdoms in the world." 
 
 " Indeed ! but, madame, it was only a dream." 
 
 " Carried off ! That would be rather amusing. But for 
 the sake of religion, and by heretics horrible ! " 
 
 The Queen sprang out of bed and seated herself in front of 
 the fireplace in a large chair covered with red velvet, after 
 wrapping herself in a loose black velvet gown handed to her 
 by Dayelle, which she tied about the waist with a silken cord. 
 Dayelle lighted the fire, for the early May mornings are cool 
 on the banks of the Loire. 
 
 "Then did my uncles get this news in the course of the 
 night?" the Queen inquired of Dayelle, with whom she was 
 on familiar terms. 
 
 " Early this morning Messieurs de Guise were walking on 
 the terrace to avoid being overheard, and received there some 
 messengers arriving in hot haste from various parts of the 
 kingdom where the Reformers are busy. Her highness the
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 119 
 
 Queen-mother went out with her Italians hoping to be con- 
 sulted, but she was not invited to join the little council." 
 
 ' ' She must be furious. ' ' 
 
 "All the more so because she had a little wrath left over 
 from yesterday," replied Dayelle. "They say she was far 
 from rejoiced by the sight of your majesty in your dress of 
 woven gold and your pretty veil of tan-colored crepe " 
 
 "Leave us now, my good Dayelle; the King is waking. 
 Do not let any one in, not even those who have the entree. 
 There are matters of State in hand and my uncles will not 
 disturb us." 
 
 "Why, my dear Mary, are you out of bed already? Is it 
 daylight ? " said the young King, rousing himself. 
 
 " My dear love, while we were quietly sleeping, malignants 
 have been wide awake, and compel us to leave this pleasant 
 home. ' ' 
 
 " What do you mean by malignants, my sweetheart ? Did 
 we not have the most delightful festival last evening, but for 
 the Latin which those gentlemen insisted on dropping into 
 our good French ? ' ' 
 
 " Oh ! " said Mary, " that is in the best taste, and Rabelais 
 brought Latin into fashion." 
 
 "Ah ! you are so learned, and I am only sorry not to be 
 able to do you honor in verse. If I were not King, I would 
 take back Master Amyot from my brother, who is being made 
 so wise ' ' 
 
 "You have nothing to envy your brother for; he writes 
 verses and shows them to me, begging me to show him mine. 
 Be content, you are by far the best of the four, and will be as 
 good a king as you are a charming lover. Indeed, that per- 
 haps is the reason your mother loves you so little. But be 
 easy; I, dear heart, will love you for all the world." 
 
 " It is no great merit in me to love such a perfect Queen," 
 said the young King. " I do not know what hindered me 
 from embracing you before the whole Court last night, when
 
 120 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 you danced the branle* with tapers. I could see how all the 
 women looked serving-wenches by you, my sweet Marie ! " 
 
 " For plain prose your language is charming, my dear heart : 
 it is love that speaks, to be sure. And you know, my dear, 
 that if you were but a poor little page, I should still love you 
 just as much as I now do, and yet it is a good thing to be 
 able to say, ' My sweetheart is a king ! ' 
 
 " Such a pretty arm ! Why must we get dressed ? I like 
 to push my fingers through your soft hair and tangle your 
 golden curls. Listen, pretty one ; I will not allow you to let 
 your women kiss your fair neck and your pretty shoulders any 
 more ! I am jealous of the Scotch mists for having touched 
 them." 
 
 "Will you not come to see my beloved country? The 
 Scotch would love you, and there would be no rebellions, as 
 there are here." 
 
 "Who rebels in our kingdom?" said Francois de Valois, 
 wrapping himself in his gown, and drawing his wife on to his 
 knee. 
 
 "Yes, this is very pretty play," said she, withdrawing her 
 cheek from his kiss. " But you have to reign, if you please, 
 iny liege." 
 
 " Who talks of reigning ? This morning I want to ' ' 
 
 "Need you say 'I want to,' when you can do what you 
 will ? That is the language of neither king nor lover. How- 
 ever, that is not the matter on hand we have important busi- 
 ness to attend to." 
 
 "Oh ! " said the King, "it is a long time since we have 
 had any business to do. Is it amusing ? " 
 
 " Not at all," said Mary; "we must make a move." 
 
 " I will wager, my pretty one, that you have seen one of 
 
 your uncles, who manage matters so well that, at seventeen, 
 
 I am a king only in name. I really know not why, since the 
 
 first Council, I have ever sat at one; they could do everything 
 
 * A swaying, jerky dance.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE" MEDICI. 121 
 
 quite as well by setting a crown on my chair ; I see everything 
 through their eyes, and settle matters blindfold." 
 
 "Indeed, monsieur," said the Queen, standing up and 
 assuming an air of annoyance, " you had agreed never again 
 to give me the smallest trouble on that score, but to leave my 
 uncles to exercise your royal power for the happiness of your 
 people. A nice people they are ! Why, if you tried to govern 
 them unaided, they would swallow you whole like a straw- 
 berry. They need warriors to rule them a stern master 
 gloved with iron ; while you you are a charmer whom I love 
 just as you are, and should not love if you were different do 
 you hear, my lord?" she added, bending down to kiss the 
 boy, who seemed inclined to rebel against this speech, but 
 who was mollified by the caress. 
 
 "Oh, if only they were not your uncles ! " cried Francis. 
 " I cannot endure that cardinal ; and when he puts on his in- 
 sinuating air and his submissive ways, and says to me with a 
 bow, ' Sire, the honor of the Crown and the faith of your 
 
 fathers are at stake, your majesty will never allow ' and this 
 
 and that I am certain he toils for nothing but his cursed 
 House of Lorraine." 
 
 " How well you mimic him ! " cried the Queen. " But 
 why do you not make these Guises inform you of wha f "; going 
 forward, so as to govern by-and-by on your own account when 
 you are of full age ? I am your wife, and your honor is mine. 
 We will reign, sweetheart never fear ! But all will not be 
 roses for us till we are free to please ourselves. There is 
 nothing so hard for a king as to govern ! 
 
 "Am I the Queen now, I ask you? Do you think that 
 your mother ever fails to repay me in evil for what good my 
 uncles may do for the glory of your throne ? And mark the 
 difference ! My uncles are great princes, descendants of 
 Charlemagne, full of good-will, and ready to die for you ; 
 while this daughter of a leech, or a merchant, Queen of France 
 by a mere chance, is as shrewish as a citizen's wife who is not
 
 122 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 mistress in her house. The Italian woman is provoked that she 
 cannot set every one by the ears, and she is always coming to 
 me with her pale, solemn face, and then with her pinched lips 
 she begins : ' Daughter, you are the Queen ; I am only the 
 second lady in the kingdom ' she is furious, you see, dear 
 h ear t < Du t if I were in your place I would not wear crimson 
 velvet while the Court is in mourning, and I would appear in 
 public with my hair plainly dressed and with no jewels, for 
 what is unseemly in any lady is even more so in a queen. Nor 
 would I dance myself ; I would only see others dance ! ' That 
 is the kind of thing she says to me." 
 
 "Oh, dear heaven!" cried the King, "I can hear her! 
 Mercy, if she only knew " 
 
 "Why, you still quake before her. She wearies you say 
 so ? We will send her away. By my faith, that she should 
 deceive you might be endured, but to be so tedious " 
 
 "In heaven's name, be silent, Marie," said the King, at 
 once alarmed and delighted. "I would not have you lose 
 her favor." 
 
 " Never fear that she will quarrel with me, with the three 
 finest crowns in the world on my head, my little King," said 
 Mary Stewart. "Even though she hates me for a thousand 
 reasons, she flatters me, to win me from my uncles." 
 
 "Hates you?" 
 
 " Yes, my angel ! And if I had not a thousand such proofs 
 as women can give each other, and such as women only can 
 understand, her persistent opposition to our happy lovemaking 
 would be enough. Now, is it my fault if your father could 
 never endure Mademoiselle de' Medici ? In short, she likes 
 me so little that you had to be quite in a rage to prevent our 
 having separate sets of rooms here and at Saint-Germain. 
 She declared that it was customary for the Kings and Queens 
 of France. Customary ! It was your father's custom ; that 
 is quite intelligible. As to your grandfather, Francis, that 
 good man established the practice for the convenience of his
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 123 
 
 love affairs. So be on your guard ; if we are obliged to leave 
 this place, do not let the Grand Master divide us." 
 
 "If we leave? But I do not intend to leave this pretty 
 castle, whence we see the Loire and all the country round a 
 town at our feet, the brightest sky in the world above us, and 
 these lovely gardens. Or if I go, it will be to travel with 
 you in Italy and see Raphael's pictures and Saint-Peter's at 
 Rome." 
 
 " And the orange trees. Ah, sweet little King, if you could 
 know how your Mary longs to walk under orange trees in 
 flower and fruit ! Alas ! I may never see one ! Oh ! to hear 
 an Italian song under those fragrant groves, on the shore of 
 a blue sea, under a cloudless sky, and to clasp each other 
 thus! " 
 
 "Let us be off," said the King. 
 
 "Be off!" cried the Grand Master, coming in. "Yes, 
 Sire, you must be off from Blois. Pardon my boldness, but 
 circumstances overrule etiquette, and I have come to beg you 
 to call a Council." 
 
 Mary and Francis had started apart on being thus taken by 
 surprise, and they both wore the same expression of offended 
 sovereign majesty. 
 
 " You are too much the Grand Master, Monsieur de Guise," 
 said the young King, suppressing his wrath. 
 
 "Devil take lovers ! " muttered the cardinal in Catherine's 
 ear. 
 
 "My son," replied the Queen-mother, appearing behind 
 the cardinal, " the safety of your person is at stake as well as 
 of your kingdom." 
 
 " Heresy was awake while you slept, Sire," said the cardinal. 
 
 "Withdraw into the hall," said the little King ; " we will 
 hold a Council." 
 
 "Madame," said the Duke to the Queen, "your furrier's 
 son has come with some furs which are seasonable for your 
 journey, as we shall probably ride by the Loire. But he also
 
 124 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 wishes to speak with madame," he added, turning to the 
 Queen-mother. "While the King is dressing, would you 
 and her majesty dismiss him forthwith, so that this trifle may 
 no further trouble us?" 
 
 "With pleasure," replied Catherine; adding to herself, 
 " If he thinks to be rid of me by such tricks, he little knows 
 me." 
 
 The cardinal and the Duke retired, leaving the two Queens 
 with the King. As he went through the guardroom to go to 
 the council chamber, the Grand Master desired the usher to 
 bring up the Queen's furrier. 
 
 When Christophe saw this official coming toward him from 
 one end of the room to the other, he took him, from his 
 dress, to be some one of importance, and his heart sank 
 within him ; but this sensation, natural enough at the approach 
 of a critical moment, became sheer terror when the usher, 
 whose advance had the effect of directing the eyes of the 
 whole splendid assembly to Christophe with his bundles and 
 his abject looks, said to him 
 
 " Their highnesses the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Grand 
 Master desire to speak to you in the council-room." 
 
 "Has any one betrayed me?" was the thought of this 
 hapless envoy of the Reformers. 
 
 Christophe followed the usher, his eyes bent on the ground, 
 and never looked up till he found himself in the spacious 
 council-room as large almost as the guardroom. The two 
 Guises were alone, standing in front of the splendid chimney- 
 place that backed against that in the guardroom, where the 
 maids of honor were grouped. 
 
 " You have come from Paris ? Which road did you take ? " 
 the cardinal said to Christophe. 
 
 " I came by water, monseigneur," replied the lad. 
 
 "And how did you get into Blois?" said the Grand 
 Master. 
 
 " By the river-port, monseigneur."
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 125 
 
 "And no one interfered with you?" said the Duke, who 
 was examining the young man closely. 
 
 " No, monseigneur. I told the first soldier, who made as 
 though he would stop me, that I had come on duty to wait on 
 the two Queens, and that my father is furrier to their majes- 
 ties." 
 
 " What is doing in Paris? " asked the cardinal. 
 
 " They are still trying to discover the murderer who killed 
 President Minard." 
 
 " Are you not the son of my surgeon's greatest friend?" 
 asked the Due de Guise, deceived by Christophe's expression 
 of candor, now that his fears were allayed. 
 
 "Yes, monseigneur." 
 
 The Grand Master went out, hastily lifted the curtain 
 which screened the double doors of the council chamber, and 
 showed his face to the crowd, among whom he looked for the 
 King's surgeon-in-chief. Ambroise Pare, standing in a corner, 
 was aware of a glance shot at him by the Duke and went to 
 him. Ambroise, already inclined to the Reformed religion, 
 ended by adopting it ; but the friendship of the Guises and 
 of the French kings preserved him from the various disasters 
 that befell the heretics. The Duke, who felt that he owed his 
 life to Ambroise Pare, had appointed him surgeon-in-chief to 
 the King within a few days past. 
 
 "What is it, monseigneur," said the leech. "Is the King 
 ill? I should not be surprised." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " The Queen is too fascinating," said the surgeon. 
 
 "Ah!" replied the Duke, surprised. " However, that is 
 not the case," he went on after a pause. " Ambroise, I want 
 you to see a friend of yours," and he led him on to the thresh- 
 old of the council-chamber door and pointed to Christophe. 
 
 " Ah, to be sure," cried the surgeon, holding out his hand 
 to the youth. " How is your father, my boy ? " 
 
 " Very well, Master Ambroise," Christophe replied.
 
 126 ABOUT CATHERINE DP MEDICI. 
 
 " And what are you doing at Court ? " Pare went on. " It 
 is not your business to carry parcels ; your father wants to 
 make a lawyer of you. Do you want the protection of these 
 two great Princes to become a pleader ? " 
 
 "Why, yes, indeed," replied Christophe, "but for my 
 father's sake ; and if you can intercede for us, add your en- 
 treaties," he went on, with a piteous air, " to obtain an order 
 from Monseigneur the Grand Master for the payment of the 
 moneys due to my father, for he does not know which way to 
 turn " 
 
 The cardinal and his brother looked at each other, and 
 seemed to be satisfied. 
 
 " Leave us now," said the Grand Master to Ambroise with 
 a nod. "And you, my friend," he added to Christophe, 
 " settle your business quickly, and get back to Paris. My 
 secretary will give you a pass, for, by heaven, the roads will 
 not be pleasant to travel on ! " 
 
 Neither of the brothers had the slightest suspicion of the 
 important interests that lay in Christophe's hands, being now 
 quite assured that he was certainly the son of Lecamus, a good 
 Catholic, purveyor to the Court, and that he had come solely 
 to get his money. 
 
 " Take him around to be near the door of the Queen's 
 chamber; she will ask for him no doubt," said the cardinal 
 to the surgeon. 
 
 While the furrier's son was being thus cross-questioned in 
 the council-room, the King had left his mother and the Queen 
 together, having gone into his dressing-room, which was be- 
 yond a room adjoining the bedroom. 
 
 Catherine, standing in the recess of the deep window, was 
 looking out on the garden, lost in melancholy thought. She 
 foresaw that one of the greatest commanders of the age, in 
 the course of that morning, in the very next hour, would take 
 the place of her son the King, under the terrible title of
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 127 
 
 lieutenant-general of the kingdom. In the face of such peril 
 she was alone, without a plan, without defense. Indeed, as 
 she stood there in her mourning, which she had not ceased 
 to wear since the death of Henri II., she might have been 
 compared to a phantom, so still were her pale features as she 
 stood absorbed in thought. Her black eye seemed to wander 
 in the indecision for which great politicians are so often 
 blamed, which in them is the result of the breadth of sight 
 which enables them to see every difficulty, and to balance one 
 against the other, adding up the sum-total of risk before 
 taking a part. There was a ringing in her ears, a turmoil in 
 her blood ; but she stood there, nevertheless, calm and dig- 
 nified, while gauging the depths of the political abyss beyond 
 the real gulf that lay at her feet. 
 
 Since the day when the Vidame de Chartres had been ar- 
 rested, this was the second of those terrible days of which 
 there were henceforth to be so many in the course of her royal 
 career ; but she never again made a mistake in the school of 
 power. Though the sceptre seemed always to fly from her 
 grasp, she meant to seize it, and, in fact, did seize it, by that 
 sheer force of will which had never given way to the scorn of 
 her father-in-law, Francis I., and his Court by whom, though 
 Dauphiness, she had been so little thought of nor to the con- 
 stant denials of Henri II.,* nor to the unresting antagonism 
 of her rival, Diane de Poitiers. A man would not have un- 
 derstood this Queen in check ; but Mary Stewart, so fair, so 
 crafty, so clever, so girlish, and yet so omniscient, watched 
 her out of the corner of her eye while affecting to warble an 
 Italian air with an indifferent countenance. Without under- 
 standing the tempest of ambition which brought a cold moist- 
 ure to the Florentine Queen's brow, the pretty Scotch girl, 
 with her saucy face, knew that the high position of her uncle 
 the Due de Guise was filling Catherine with suppressed fury. 
 Now, nothing amused her so much as watching her mother- 
 in-law, whom she regarded as an intriguing adventuress, who,
 
 128 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 having been humbled, was always prepared for revenge. The 
 face of the elder was grave and gloomy, a little cadaverous, 
 by reason of the livid complexion of the Italians, which by 
 daylight looks like yellow ivory, though by candlelight it is 
 dazzling ; while the younger face was bright and fresh. At 
 sixteen Mary Stewart had that creamy fairness for which she 
 was so famous. Her bright rosy face, with clearly cut feat- 
 ures, sparkled with childish mischief, very frankly expressed 
 in the regular arch of her brows, the brightness of her eyes, 
 and the pert smile of her pretty mouth. She had then in 
 perfection that kittenish grace which nothing neither cap- 
 tivity nor the sight of the horrible block ever completely 
 quelled. 
 
 Thus these two Queens, one in the morning, the other in 
 the summer of life, were at this time a perfect contrast. 
 Catherine was an imposing sovereign, an impenetrable widow, 
 with no passion but the love of power. Mary was a feather- 
 brained and light-hearted wife, who thought of her crowns as 
 playthings. One looked forward to impending misfortunes ; 
 she even had a glimpse of the murder of the Guises, guessing 
 that this would be the only way to strike down men who were 
 capable of raising themselves above the throne and the Parle- 
 ment ; she saw rivers of blood in a long struggle the other 
 little dreamed that she would herself be murdered by form of 
 law. 
 
 A curious reflection brought a little calm to the Italian 
 Queen. 
 
 "According to the soothsayer and to Ruggieri's forecast, 
 this reign is soon to end. My difficulties will not last," 
 thought she. 
 
 And thus, strange to say, an occult science, now forgotten 
 judicial astrology was a support to Catherine at this junc- 
 ture, as it was throughout her life ; for the belief grew con- 
 stantly from seeing the predictions of those who practiced it 
 realized with the greatest exactitude.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 129 
 
 " You are very serious, madame," said Mary Stewart, taking 
 from Dayelle's hands her little cap, pinched down over the 
 parting of her hair with two frilled wings of handsome lace 
 beyond the puffs of wavy yellow hair that shadowed her 
 temples. 
 
 The painters of the time have so amply perpetuated this 
 cap, that it now belongs essentially to the Queen of Scots, 
 though it was Catherine who invented it when she went into 
 mourning for Henri II.; but she could not wear it with such 
 good effect as her daughter-in-law, to whom it was infinitely 
 more becoming. And this was not the smallest of the griev- 
 ances harbored by the Queen-mother against the young 
 Queen. 
 
 "Does your majesty mean that for a reproof?" said Cath- 
 erine, turning to her daughter-in-law. 
 
 "I owe respect, and should not dare " said the Scotch- 
 woman meaningly, with a glance at Dayelle. 
 
 Between the two Queens the favorite waiting-woman stood 
 like the figure-head on a fire-dog ; an approving smile might 
 cost her her life. 
 
 " How can I be as gay as you after losing the late King, 
 and when I see my son's kingdom on the eve of a conflagra- 
 tion ?" 
 
 "Politics do not much concern women," replied Mary 
 Stewart. "Beside, my uncles are there." 
 
 These two sentences, in the circumstances, were two poisoned 
 arrows. 
 
 "Let us see our furs then," the Italian replied, "and so 
 turn our minds to our own business, while your uncles settle 
 that of the kingdom." 
 
 "Oh, but. we shall attend the Council, madame; we are 
 of more use there than you suppose." 
 
 "We?" said Catherine, with feigned astonishment. "I, 
 for my part, do not know Latin ! " 
 
 "You fancy me so learned?" said Mary Stewart, with a 
 9
 
 130 ABOUT CATHERINE DE? MEDICI. 
 
 laugh. " Nay, madame, I swear to you that at this moment 
 I am studying in the hope of rivaling the Medici and of 
 knowing some day how to heal the wounds of the country." 
 
 This sharp shaft pierced Catherine to the heart, for it was 
 an allusion to the origin of the Medici, who were descended, 
 as some said, from a leech, or, as others had it, from a rich 
 drug merchant. She had no reply ready. Dayelle colored 
 when her mistress looked to her for the applause which every- 
 body, and even queens, expect from their inferiors when they 
 have no better audience. 
 
 "Your witticisms, madame, cannot, unfortunately, heal 
 either the maladies of the State or those of the church," said 
 Catherine, with calm and dignified coldness. " My fore- 
 fathers' knowledge of such matters won them thrones ; while 
 you, if you persist in jesting in the midst of danger, are like 
 enough to lose yours." 
 
 At this juncture Dayelle opened the door to Christophe, 
 shown in by the chief physician himself after scratching at 
 the door. 
 
 The young Reformer wanted to study Catherine's counte- 
 nance, and affected a shyness, which was natural enough on 
 finding himself in this place; but he was surprised by Mary's 
 eagerness. She rushed at the boxes to look at her surcoat. 
 
 "Madame," said Christophe, addressing Catherine. 
 
 He turned his back on the other Queen and Dayelle, 
 promptly taking advantage of the attention the two were 
 devoting to the furs to strike a bold blow. 
 
 "What do you want of me?" asked Catherine, looking 
 keenly at him. 
 
 Christophe had placed the agreement proposed by the 
 Prince de Conde, with the Reformers' plan of action and an 
 account of their forces, over his heart, between his cloth jerkin 
 and his shirt, wrapped inside the furrier's bill of what Queen 
 Catherine owed him. 
 
 "Madame," said he, "my father is in dreadful want of
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 131 
 
 money, and if you would condescend to look through the 
 accounts," he added, unfolding the paper and slipping the 
 agreement under it, " you will see that your majesty owes 
 him six thousand crowns. May your goodness have pity on 
 us ! See, madame." 
 
 And he held out the document. 
 
 " Read it. This dates so far back as the accession of the 
 late King." 
 
 Catherine was bewildered by the preamble to the address, 
 but she did not lose her presence of mind ; she hastily rolled 
 up the paper, admiring the young man's readiness and daring. 
 She saw from these masterly tactics that he would understand 
 her, so she tapped him on the head with the roll of paper, 
 and said: "You are very ill advised, my young friend, in 
 handing the bill in before the furs. Learn some knowledge 
 of women ! You must never ask for your money until we are 
 perfectly satisfied." 
 
 "Is that the tradition?" said the young Queen to her 
 mother-in-law, who made no reply. 
 
 "Ah, mesdames, excuse my father," said Christophe. " If 
 he had not wanted the money, you would not have your furs. 
 The country is up in arms, and there is so much danger on 
 the roads that only our great need induced me to come. No 
 one else would risk his life." 
 
 "This lad is quite fresh," said Mary Stewart, smiling. 
 
 It is not superfluous to the better understanding of this im- 
 portant little scene to remark that a surcoat was, as the name 
 implies, a sort of close-fitting jacket or spencer which ladies 
 wore over their dress, and which wrapped them closely, shaped 
 down to the hips. This garment protected the back, chest, 
 and throat from the cold. Surcoats were lined with fur which 
 turned up over the stuff, forming a more or less wide border. 
 Mary Stewart while trying on her surcoat was looking at her- 
 self in a large Venetian mirror, to see the effect of it at the 
 back; thus she had left her mother-in-law liberty to glance at
 
 132 ABOUT CATHERINE D& MEDICI. 
 
 the packet of papers, of which the volume might otherwise 
 have excited her suspicions. 
 
 " Does a man ever speak to a lady of the dangers he has 
 incurred when he is safe and sound in her presence?" said 
 she, turning around on Christophe. 
 
 "Oh, madame, I have your account too," said he, looking 
 at her with well-acted simplicity. 
 
 The young Queen looked at him from head to foot without 
 taking the paper ; but she observed, without drawing any con- 
 clusions at the moment, that he had taken Queen Catherine's 
 bill out of his breast, and drew hers out of his pocket. Nor 
 did she see in the lad's eyes the admiration that her beauty 
 won her from all the world ; but she was thinking so much of 
 her surcoat that she did not at once wonder what could be 
 the cause of his indifference. 
 
 " Take it, Dayelle," said she to the waiting-woman. " You 
 can give the account to Monsieur de Versailles (Lomenie), 
 and desire him, for me, to pay it." 
 
 " Indeed, madame, but if you do not give me an order 
 signed by the King, or by his highness the Grand Master, 
 who is at hand, your gracious promise will have no effect." 
 
 "You are rather hastier than beseems a subject, my friend," 
 said Mary Stewart. " So you do not believe in royal prom- 
 ises?" 
 
 The King came in dressed in his long silk hose and trunks, 
 the breeches of the time, but wore neither doublet nor cloak ; 
 he had only a rich wrapper of velvet lined throughout with 
 fur ; for wrapper, a word of modern use, can alone describe 
 the neglige of his apparel. 
 
 "Who is the rascal that doubts your word?" said the 
 young King, who, though at a distance, had heard his wife's 
 speech. 
 
 The door of the King's closet was hidden by the bed. 
 This closet was subsequently called the old closet (le Cabinet 
 vieux) to distinguish it from the splendid painted closet con-
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 133 
 
 structed for Henri III. on the other side of the room adjoining 
 the hall of the States-General. Henri III. hid the assassins 
 in the old closet, and sent to desire the Due de Guise to 
 attend him there ; while he, during the murder, remained 
 concealed in the new closet, whence he emerged only to see 
 his overweening subject die a subject for whom there could 
 be no prison, no tribunal, no judges, no laws in the kingdom. 
 But for these dreadful events, the historian could now hardly 
 identify the former uses of these rooms and halls filled with 
 soldiers. A sergeant writes to his sweetheart on the spot 
 where Catherine gravely considered her struggle with parties. 
 
 "Come, my boy," said the Queen-mother; "I will see 
 that you are paid. Trade must flourish, and money is its 
 main sinew." 
 
 "Ay, go, my good youth," said the young Queen, laugh- 
 ing ; " my august mother understands matters of trade better 
 than I do." 
 
 Catherine was about to leave the room without replying 
 to this innuendo ; but it struck her that her indifference might 
 arouse suspicions, and she retorted on her daughter-in-law 
 
 "And you, my dear, trade in love." 
 
 Then she went downstairs. 
 
 " Put all those things away, Dayelle. And come to the 
 council-room, Sire," said the young Queen to the King, en- 
 chanted at having to decide the important question of the 
 lieutenancy of the kingdom in her mother-in-law's absence. 
 
 Mary Stewart took the King's arm. Dayelle went out first, 
 speaking a word to the pages, and one of them young 
 Teligny, fated to perish miserably on the night of Saint-Bar- 
 tholomew shouted out 
 
 "The King!" 
 
 On hearing the cry, the two musketeers carried arms, and 
 the two pages led the way toward the council chamber be- 
 tween the line of courtiers on one side and the line formed 
 by the maids of honor to the two Queens on the other. All
 
 134 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MED 1C L 
 
 the members of the Council then gathered round the door of 
 the hall, which was at no great distance from the staircase. 
 The Grand Master, the cardinal, and the chancellor advanced 
 to meet the two young sovereigns, who smiled to some of the 
 maids or answered the inquiries of some of the Court favorites 
 more intimate than the rest. 
 
 The Queen, however, evidently impatient, dragged Francis 
 II. on toward the vast council-room. As soon as the heavy 
 thud of the arquebusses dropping on the floor again announced 
 that the royal pair had gone in, the pages put on their caps, 
 and the conversations in the various groups took their course 
 again on the immense gravity of the business about to be dis- 
 cussed. 
 
 "Chiverni was sent to fetch the connetable, and he has 
 not come," said one. 
 
 "There is no prince of the blood present," remarked 
 another. 
 
 The chancellor and Monsieur de Tournon looked anxious. 
 
 " The Grand Master has sent word to the keeper of the 
 seals to be sure not to fail to attend this Council ; a good 
 many letters patent will be issued, no doubt." 
 
 " How is it that the Queen-mother remains below, in her 
 own rooms, at such a juncture ? ' ' 
 
 "They are going to make things hot for us," said Groslot 
 to Cardinal de Chatillon. 
 
 In short, every one had something to say. Some were 
 pacing the room from end to end, others were flitting round 
 the maids of honor, as though it could be possible to catch a 
 few words through a wall three feet thick or two doors and 
 the heavy curtains that screened them. 
 
 The King, seated at one end of the long table covered with 
 blue velvet, which stood in the middle of the room, his young 
 Queen in an armchair at his side, was waiting for his mother. 
 Robertet was mending his pens. The two cardinals, the 
 Grand Master, the chancellor, the keeper of the seals in
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 135 
 
 short, the whole assembly looked at the little King, wonder- 
 ing why he did not give the word for them all to be seated. 
 
 " Are we to sit in council in the absence of the Queen- 
 mother?" the chancellor asked, addressing the young King. 
 
 The two Guises ascribed Catherine's absence to some cun- 
 ning trick of their niece's. Then spurred by a significant 
 look, the much-daring cardinal said to the King 
 
 "Is it your majesty's good-will that we should proceed with- 
 out madame your mother ? ' ' 
 
 Francis, not daring to have an opinion of his own, replied 
 
 " Gentlemen, be seated." 
 
 The cardinal briefly pointed out the dangers of the situa- 
 tion. This great politician, who showed astounding skill in 
 this business, broached the question of the lieutenancy amid 
 utter silence. The young King was, no doubt, conscious of 
 an awkwardness, and guessed that his mother had a real sense 
 of the rights of the Crown and a knowledge of the danger 
 that threatened his power, for he replied to a direct question 
 on the cardinal's part 
 
 " We will wait for my mother." 
 
 Enlightened by this inexplicable delay on Queen Catherine's 
 part, Mary Stewart suddenly recalled in a single flash of thought 
 three incidents which were clear in her memory. In the first 
 place, the bulk of the packet presented to her mother-in-law, 
 which she had seen, though so inattentive at the moment (for 
 a woman who seems to see nothing is still a lynx), then the 
 place where Christophe had carried them to separate them 
 from hers. 
 
 "Why?" she said to herself. And then she remembered 
 the boy's cold look, which she at once ascribed to the 
 Reformers' hatred of the Guises' niece. A voice within her 
 cried, " Is he not an envoy from the Huguenots? " 
 
 Acting, as all hasty persons do, on the first impulse, she 
 exclaimed 
 
 "I myself will go and fetch my mother."
 
 136 ABOUT CATHERINE >E> MEDICI. 
 
 She rushed away and down the stairs, to the great amaze- 
 ment of the gentlemen and ladies of the Court. She went 
 down to her mother-in-law's rooms, crossed the guardroom, 
 opened the door of the bedroom as stealthily as a thief, crept 
 noiselessly over the carpet as silently as a shadow, and could 
 see her nowhere. Then she thought she could surprise her in 
 the splendid private room between the bedroom and the 
 oratory. The arrangement of this oratory is perfectly recog- 
 nizable to this day ; the fashion of the time then allowed it to 
 serve all the purposes in private life which are now served by 
 a boudoir. 
 
 By a piece of good fortune, quite unaccountable when we 
 see in how squalid a state the Crown has left this castle, the 
 beautiful paneling of Catherine's closet exists to this day ; in 
 the fine carving the curious may still discern traces of Italian 
 magnificence, and also discover the hiding-places the Queen- 
 mother had contrived there. 
 
 A somewhat exact description of these curiosities is indeed 
 indispensable to a comprehension of the scene that took place 
 there. The woodwork at that time consisted of about a hun- 
 dred and eighty small oblong panels, of which a hundred or 
 so still remain, each carved with a different design, obviously 
 suggested by the most elegant Italian arabesques. The wood 
 is holm-oak ; the red ground which is found under the coat of 
 limewash, applied at the time of the cholera a quite useless 
 precaution shows plainly that these panels were gilt ; and in 
 spots where the whitewash has rubbed off we see that some 
 portions of the design were in color blue, red, or green 
 against a gold background. The number of these panels shows 
 an evident intention to cheat investigation ; but if there could 
 be a doubt, the keeper of the castle, while holding up Cath- 
 erine's memory to the execration of all living men, shows to 
 visitors, at the bottom of the paneling, and on a level with the 
 floor, a somewhat heavy skirting which can be raised, and under 
 which there are a number of ingenious springs. By pressing
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 137 
 
 a knob thus concealed, the Queen could open certain of these 
 panels, known to her alone, behind which lay a hiding-place 
 of the same oblong shape as the panels, but of varying depth. 
 To this day a practiced hand would find it difficult to detect 
 which of these panels would open on its invisible hinges ; and 
 when the eye was diverted by the skillfully combined colors 
 and gilding that covered the cracks, it is easy to imagine that 
 it was impossible to discover one or two panels among nearly 
 two hundred. 
 
 At the moment when Mary Stewart laid her hand on the 
 somewhat elaborate latch of the door to the closet, the Italian 
 Queen, having convinced herself already of the importance of 
 the Prince de Conde's schemes, had just pressed the spring 
 hidden by the skirting, one of the panels had fallen open, and 
 Catherine had turned to the table to take up the papers and 
 hide them, to turn her attention to the safeguard of the de- 
 voted messenger who had brought them to her. When she 
 heard the door open, she at once guessed that no one but 
 Queen Mary would venture to come in unannounced. 
 
 "You are lost," she said to Christophe, seeing that she 
 could neither hide the papers nor close the panel promptly 
 enough to preserve the secret of her hiding-place. 
 
 Christophe's only reply was a sublime look. 
 
 "Poor fellow!" said Catherine, before turning to her 
 daughter-in-law. " Treason, madame ! " she exclaimed. " I 
 have them fast. Send for the cardinal and the Duke. And 
 be sure," she added, pointing to Christophe, "that this fellow 
 does not escape ! " 
 
 Thus, in an instant, this masterful woman saw that it would 
 be necessary to give up the hapless young man ; she could not 
 hide him, it was impossible to help him to escape ; and, be- 
 side, though a week ago he might have been saved, now the 
 Guises had, since that morning, been aware of the conspiracy, 
 and they, too, must have the lists which she held in her hand, 
 and were drawing all the Reformers into a trap. And so,
 
 138 ABOUT CATHERINE JD' MEDICI. 
 
 pleased at finding her adversaries in the mind she had hoped 
 for, now that the plot had become known, policy required her 
 to assume the merit of discovering it. 
 
 These dreadful considerations flashed through her mind in 
 the brief moment while the young Queen was opening the 
 door. Mary Stewart stood silent for an instant. Her expres- 
 sion lost its brightness and assumed that keenness which sus- 
 picion always gives the eye, and which in her was terrible by 
 the sudden contrast. She looked from Christophe to the 
 Queen-mother, and from the Queen-mother to Christophe, 
 with a glance of malignant doubt. Then she snatched up a 
 bell, which brought in one of Catherine's maids of honor. 
 
 "Mademoiselle de Rouet, send in the captain of the 
 Guard," said Mary Stewart, in breach of every law of eti- 
 quette, necessarily set aside in such circumstances. 
 
 While the young Queen gave her order, Catherine stood 
 looking at Christophe as much as to say, " Courage ! " The 
 young Reformer understood, and replied by an expression 
 which conveyed, " Sacrifice me, as they have sacrificed me ! " 
 
 " Put your trust in me," Catherine answered by a gesture. 
 
 Then when her daughter-in-law turned upon her, she was 
 deeply engaged in examining the papers. 
 
 "You are of the Reformed religion? " said Mary Stewart 
 to Christophe. 
 
 "Yes, madame." 
 
 "Then I was not mistaken," she muttered to herself, as 
 she read in the young man's eyes the same expression in which 
 coldness and aversion lurked behind a look of humility. 
 
 Pardaillan appeared at once, sent down by the two Princes 
 of Lorraine and the King. The captain sent for by Mary 
 Stewart followed this young man a most devoted adherent 
 of the Guises. 
 
 " Go from me to the King, beg him, with the cardinal and 
 the Grand Master, to come here at once, and tell them I 
 would not take such a liberty but that something of serious
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 139 
 
 importance has occurred. Go, Pardaillan. And you, Lewis- 
 ton, keep guard over this Reformed traitor," she added to the 
 Scotchman in their native tongue, pointing to the wretched 
 Christophe. 
 
 The two Queens did not speak till the King came. It was 
 a terrible pause. Mary Stewart had shown her mother-in-law 
 the whole extent of the part her uncles made her play ; her 
 unsleeping and habitual distrust stood revealed ; and her 
 youthful conscience felt how disgraceful such a part must be to 
 a great Queen. Catherine, on her side, had betrayed herself 
 in her alarm, and feared that she had been understood ; she 
 was trembling for the future. The two women, one ashamed 
 and furious, the other vicious but calm, withdrew into the 
 window-bay, one leaning on the right side, the other on the 
 left ; but their looks were so expressive that each turned 
 away, and with a common instinct looked out of the window 
 at the sky. These two women, clever as they were, at that 
 moment had no more wit than the commonest. Perhaps it is 
 always so when circumstances overpower men. There is 
 always a moment when even genius is conscious of its small- 
 ness in the presence of a great catastrophe. 
 
 As for Christophe, he felt like a man falling into an abyss. 
 Lewiston, the Scotch captain, listened in the silence, looking 
 at the furrier's son and the two Queens with a soldier's curi- 
 osity. The King's entrance put an end to this painful situ- 
 ation. 
 
 The cardinal went straight up to Queen Catherine. 
 
 " I have in my hand all the threads of the plot hatched by 
 the heretics ; they sent this boy to me carrying this treaty and 
 these documents," said Catherine in an undertone. 
 
 While Catherine was explaining matters to the cardinal, 
 Queen Mary was speaking a few words in the Grand Master's 
 ear. 
 
 " What is this all about ? " asked the young King, standing 
 alone amid this conflict of violent interests.
 
 140 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 " The proofs of what I was telling your majesty are already 
 to hand," said the cardinal, seizing the papers. 
 
 The Due de Guise, unmindful of the fact that he was inter- 
 rupting him, drew his brother aside and said in a whisper 
 
 "This then makes me lieutenant-general without any op- 
 position." 
 
 A keen glance was the cardinal's only reply, by which he 
 conveyed to his brother that he had already appreciated the 
 advantages to be derived from Catherine's false position. 
 
 "Who sent you?" asked the Duke of Christophe. 
 
 " Chaudieu the preacher," he replied. 
 
 "Young man, you lie," said the Duke roughly. " It was 
 the Prince de Conde." 
 
 " The Prince de Conde, monseigneur," replied Christophe, 
 with a look of surprise. " I never saw him. I belong to the 
 Palais. I am working under Monsieur de Thou. I am his 
 clerk, and he does not know that I have joined the religion. 
 I only submitted to the preacher's entreaties." 
 
 "That will do," said the cardinal. "Call Monsieur de 
 Robertet," he added to Lewiston, "for this young villain is 
 craftier than old politicians. He has taken us in, my brother 
 and me, when we should have given him the host without 
 confession." 
 
 "You are no child, by heaven ! " cried the Duke, "and 
 you shall be treated as a man." 
 
 "They hoped to win over your august mother," said the 
 cardinal, turning to the King, and trying to lead him aside to 
 bring him to his way of thinking. 
 
 "Alas!" replied Catherine, speaking to her son with a 
 reproachful air, and stopping him just as the cardinal was 
 taking him into the oratory to subjugate him with dangerous 
 eloquence, "you here see the effect of the position I am 
 placed in. I am supposed to rebel against my lack of influ- 
 ence in public affairs I, the mother of four princes of the 
 House of Valois."
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 141 
 
 The young King prepared to listen. Mary Stewart, seeing 
 his brow knit, led him off into the window recess, where she 
 cajoled him with gentle speeches in a low voice ; much the 
 same, no doubt, as those she had lavished on him when he 
 arose. 
 
 The two brothers meanwhile read the papers handed over 
 to them by the Queen-mother. Finding in them much in- 
 formation of which their spies and Monsieur de Braguelonne, 
 the governor of the chatelet, knew nothing, they were in- 
 clined to believe in Catherine's good faith. Robertet came 
 in and had private instructions with regard to Christophe. 
 The hapless tool of the leaders of the Reformation was led 
 away by four men of the Scotch Guard, who took him down- 
 stairs and handed him over to Monsieur de Montresor, the 
 provost of the castle. This terrible personage himself escorted 
 Christophe with five or six sergeants to the prison situated in 
 the vaulted cellars of the now ruined tower, which the verger 
 of the Castle of Blois shows the visitor, and says that these 
 were the oubliettes (dungeons). 
 
 After such an event the Council could only be an empty 
 form : the King, the young Queen, the Grand Master, and 
 the Cardinal de Lorraine went back to the council-room, 
 taking with them Catherine, quite conquered, who only spoke 
 to approve of the measures demanded by the Guises. In 
 spite of some slight opposition on the part of the Chancellor 
 Olivier, the only person to utter a word suggesting the inde- 
 pendence needful to the exercise of his functions, the Due 
 de Guise was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom. 
 Robertet carried the motions with a promptitude arguing such 
 devotion as might be well called complicity. 
 
 The King, with his mother on his arm, once more crossed 
 the guardroom, and announced to the Court that he proposed 
 to move to Amboise on the following day. This royal resi- 
 dence had been unused since Charles VIII. had very involun- 
 tarily killed himself there by striking his head against the
 
 142 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 pediment of a door that was being carved for him, believing 
 that he could pass under the scaffolding without bending his 
 head. Catherine, to mask the schemes of the Guises, had 
 announced her intention of finishing the Castle of Amboise 
 on behalf of the Crown at the same time as her own Castle 
 of Chenonceaux. But no one was deceived by this pretense, 
 and the Court anticipated strange events. 
 
 After spending about two hours in accustoming himself to 
 the darkness of his dungeon, Christophe found that it was 
 lined with boards, clumsy indeed, but thick enough to make 
 the square box healthy and habitable. The door, like that 
 into a pig-sty, had compelled him to bend double to get into 
 it. On one side of this trap a strong iron grating admitted 
 a little air and light from the passage. This arrangement, 
 exactly like that of the crypts at Venice, showed very plainly 
 that the architect of the Castle of Blois belonged to the Vene- 
 tian school, which gave so many builders to Europe in the 
 Middle Ages. By sounding the wall above the woodwork, 
 Christophe discovered that the two walls which divided this 
 cell from two others, to the right and left, were built of brick; 
 and as he knocked, to estimate the thickness of the wall, he 
 was not a little surprised to hear some one knocking on the 
 other side. 
 
 "Who are you?" asked his neighbor, speaking into the 
 corridor. 
 
 "I am Christophe Lecamus." 
 
 "And I," said the other voice, "am Captain Chaudieu. 
 I was caught this evening at Beaugency ; but, happily, there 
 is nothing against me." 
 
 "Everything is discovered," said Christophe; "so you 
 are saved from the worst of it." 
 
 "We have three thousand men at this present time in the 
 forests of Vendomois, all men determined enough to seize the 
 Queen-mother and the King on their journey. Happily, la
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICL 143 
 
 Renaudie was cleverer than I ; he escaped. You had just set 
 out when the Guisards caught us." 
 
 " But I know nothing of la Renaudie." 
 
 "Pooh! my brother told me everything," replied the 
 captain. 
 
 On hearing this, Christophe went back to his bench and 
 made no further reply to anything the so-called captain could 
 say to him, for he had had enough experience of the law to 
 know how necessary it was to be cautious in prison. 
 
 In the middle of the night he saw the pale gleam of a 
 lantern in the passage, after hearing the unlocking of the pon- 
 derous bolts that closed the iron door of the cellar. The 
 provost himself had come to fetch Christophe. This atten- 
 tion to a man who had been left in the dungeon without food 
 struck Christophe as strange ; but the upset at Court had, no 
 doubt, led to his being forgotten. One of the provost's ser- 
 geants bound his hands with a cord, which he held till they 
 had reached one of the low rooms in Louis XII. 's part of the 
 castle, which evidently was the anteroom to the apartments of 
 some person of importance. The sergeant and the provost 
 bid him be seated on a bench, where the sergeant tied his 
 feet as he had already tied his hands. At a sign from Mon- 
 sieur de Montresor, the sergeant then left them. 
 
 "Now listen to me, my young friend," said the provost to 
 Christophe, and the lad observed that he was in full dress at 
 that hour of the night, for his fingers fidgeted with the collar 
 of his Order. This circumstance made the furrier's son 
 thoughtful; he saw that there was more to come. At this 
 moment, certainly, they could not be going either to try him 
 or to hang him. 
 
 " My young friend, you may spare yourself much suffering 
 by telling me here and now all you know of the communica- 
 tions between Queen Catherine and Monsieur de Conde. 
 Not only will. you not be hurt, but you will be taken into the 
 service of monseigneur, the lieutenant-general of the king-
 
 144 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 dom, who likes intelligent people, and who was favorably im- 
 pressed by your looks. The Queen-mother is to be packed 
 off to Florence, and Monsieur de Conde will no doubt stand 
 his trial. So, take my word for it, small men will do well to 
 attach themselves to the great men in power. Tell me every- 
 thing, and it will be to your advantage." 
 
 "Alas, monsieur," replied Christophe. "I have nothing to 
 say. I have confessed all I know to Messieurs de Guise in the 
 Queen's room. Chaudieu persuaded me to place those papers 
 in the hands of the Queen-mother, by making me believe that 
 the peace of the country was involved." 
 
 " You never saw the Prince de Cond ? " 
 
 "Never," said Christophe. 
 
 Thereupon Monsieur de Montresor left Christophe and went 
 into an adjoining room. 
 
 Christophe was not long left to himself. The door by which 
 he had entered soon opened for several men to pass in, who 
 did not shut it, letting various far from pleasant sounds come 
 in from the courtyard. Blocks of wood and instruments were 
 brought in, evidently intended to torture the Reformers' mes- 
 senger. Christophe's curiosity soon found matter for reflection 
 in the preparations the new-comers were making under his very 
 eyes. Two coarse and poorly-clad varlets obeyed the orders 
 of a powerful and thick -set man, who, on coming in, had a 
 look at Christophe like that of a cannibal at his victim ; he 
 had scrutinized him from head to foot, taking stock of his 
 sinews, of their strength and power of resistance, with the 
 calculating eye of a connoisseur. This man was the Blois 
 executioner. Backward and forward several times, his men 
 brought in a mattress, wooden wedges, planks, and other ob- 
 jects, of which the use seemed neither obvious nor hopeful to 
 the unhappy boy for whom the preparations were being made, 
 and whose blood ran cold in his veins with apprehension, 
 which though vague was appalling. Two other men came in 
 when Monsieur de Montrisor reappeared.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> ME* D 1C I. 145 
 
 "What, is nothing ready yet?" said the chief provost, to 
 whom the two new-comers bowed respectfully. "Do you 
 know," he went on to the big man and his two satellites, 
 " that Monsieur le Cardinal supposes you to be getting on with 
 your work? Doctor," he added, turning to one of the new- 
 comers, "there is your man," and he pointed to Christophe. 
 
 The doctor went up to the prisoner, untied his hands, and 
 sounded his back and chest. Science quite seriously repeated 
 the torturer's investigation. Meanwhile, a servant in the 
 livery of the House of Guise brought in several chairs, a table, 
 and all the materials for writing. 
 
 "Begin your report," said Monsieur de Montresor to the 
 second person who had come in, dressed in black, who was a 
 clerk. 
 
 Then he came back to stand by Christophe, to whom he 
 said very mildly 
 
 " My boy, the chancellor, having learnt that you refuse to 
 give satisfactory replies to my questions, has decided that you 
 must be put to the torture ordinary and extraordinary." 
 
 "Is he in good health, and can he bear it?" the clerk 
 asked of the doctor. 
 
 "Yes," said the man of medicine, a physician attached to 
 the House of Lorraine. 
 
 "Well, then, retire to the adjoining room; we will send 
 for you if it is necessary to consult you." 
 
 The physician left the room. 
 
 His first panic past, Christophe collected all his courage. 
 The hour of his martyrdom was come. He now looked on 
 with cold curiosity at the arrangements made by the execu- 
 tioner and his varlets. After hastily making up a bed, they 
 proceeded to prepare a machine called the boot, consisting of 
 boards, between which each leg of the victim was placed, sur- 
 rounded with pads. The machinery used by bookbinders to 
 press the volumes between two boards, which they tighten with 
 cords, will give a very exact idea of the way in which each 
 10
 
 146 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 leg was encased. It is easy, then, to imagine the effect of a 
 wedge driven home by a mallet between the two cases in 
 which the legs were confined, and which, being tightly bound 
 with rope, could not yield. The wedges were driven in at 
 the knees and ankles, as if to split a log of wood. The choice 
 of these two spots where there is least flesh, and where, in con- 
 sequence, the wedge found room at the expense of the bones, 
 made this form of torture horribly painful. In ordinary tor- 
 ture four wedges were driven in two at the knees and two 
 at the ankles ; in extraordinary torture as many as eight were 
 employed, if the physician pronounced that the victim's powers 
 of endurance were not exhausted. 
 
 At this period the boots were also applied to the hands ; 
 but as time pressed, the cardinal, the lieutenant-general of 
 the kingdom, and the chancellor spared Christophe this. 
 
 The preamble to the examination was written ; the provost 
 himself had dictated a few sentences, walking about the room 
 with a meditative air, and requiring Christophe to tell him 
 his name Christian name age, and profession ; then he 
 asked him from whom he had received the papers he had de- 
 livered to the Queen. 
 
 "From Chaud'2u the minister," said he. 
 
 " Where did he give them to you? " 
 
 "At my own home in Paris." 
 
 "When he handed them to you, he must have told you 
 whether the Queen-mother would receive you well." 
 
 "He told me nothing of the kind," replied Christophe. 
 " He only desired me to give them secretly to Queen Cath- 
 erine." 
 
 " Then have you often seen Chaudieu, that he knew that 
 you were coming here? " 
 
 " It was not from me that he heard that I was to carry the 
 furs to the two Queens, and at the same time to ask in my 
 father's behalf for the money owed him by the Queen-mother; 
 nor had I time to ask him who had told him."
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 147 
 
 "But those papers, given to you without any wrapper or 
 seal, contain a treaty between the rebels and Queen Catherine. 
 You must have known that they exposed you to the risk of 
 suffering the punishment dealt out to those who are implicated 
 in a rebellion." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " The persons who induced you to commit an act of high 
 treason must have promised you some reward and the Queen - 
 mother's patronage." 
 
 "I did it out of attachment to Chaudieu, the only person 
 whom I saw." 
 
 "Then you persist in declaring that you did not see the 
 Prince de Conde?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Did not the Prince de Conde tell you that the Queen- 
 mother was inclined to enter into his views in antagonism to 
 the Guises?" 
 
 "I did not see him." 
 
 "Take care. One of your accomplices, la Renaudie, is 
 arrested. Strong as he is, he could not resist the torture that 
 awaits you, and at last confessed that he, as well as the Prince, 
 had had speech with you. If you wish to escape the anguish 
 of torture, I beg you to tell the simple truth. Then, perhaps, 
 you may win your pardon." 
 
 Christophe replied that he could not tell anything of which 
 he had no knowledge, nor betray accomplices when he had 
 none. On hearing this, the provost nodded to the executioner, 
 and went back into the adjoining room. 
 
 On seeing this, Christophe knit his brows, wrinkling his 
 forehead with a nervous spasm, and preparing to endure. 
 He clenched his fists with such a rigid clutch that the nails 
 ran into the flesh without his feeling it. The three men took 
 him up, carried him to the camp bed, and laid him there, his 
 legs hanging down. While the executioner tied him fast with 
 stout ropes, his two men each fitted a leg into a boot ; the
 
 148 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 cords were tightened by means of a wrench without giving 
 the victim any great pain. When each leg was thus held in a 
 vise, the executioner took up his mallet and his wedges, and 
 looked alternately at the sufferer and the clerk. 
 
 " Do you persist in your denial?" said the clerk. 
 
 " I have told the truth," replied Christophe. 
 
 "Then go on," said the clerk, shutting his eyes. 
 
 The cords were tightened to the utmost, and this moment, 
 perhaps, was the most agonizing of all the torture ; the flesh 
 was so suddenly compressed that the blood was violently 
 thrown back into the trunk. The poor boy could not help 
 screaming terribly; he seemed about to faint. The doctor 
 was called back. He felt Christophe's pulse, and desired the 
 executioner to wait for a quarter of an hour before driving in 
 the wedges, to give time for the blood to recover its circula- 
 tion and sensation to return. 
 
 The clerk charitably told Christophe that if he could not 
 better endure even the beginnings of the suffering he could 
 not escape, he would do better t,o reveal all he knew; but 
 Christophe's only reply was 
 
 " The King's tailor ! the King's tailor ! " 
 
 "What do you mean by saying that ? " asked the clerk. 
 
 "Foreseeing the torments I shall go through," said Chris- 
 tophe, slowly, to gain time and to rest, " I am summoning all 
 my strength, and trying to reinforce it by remembering the 
 martyrdom endured for the sacred cause of the Reformation 
 by the late King's tailor, who was tortured in -the presence 
 of the King and of Madame de Valentinois ; I will try to be 
 worthy of him ! " 
 
 While the physician was advising the hapless man not to 
 drive his torturers to extremities, the cardinal and the Duke, 
 impatient to know the results of this examination, came in and 
 desired Christophe to reveal the truth at once. The furrier's 
 son repeated the only confession he would allow himself to 
 make, implicating nobody but Chaudieu.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 149 
 
 The Princes nodded. On this, the executioner and his 
 foreman seized their mallets, each took a wedge and drove it 
 home between the boots, one standing on the right, and the 
 other on the left. The executioner stood at the knees, the 
 assistant at the ankles, opposite. The eyes of the witnesses 
 of this hideous act were fixed on Christophe's, who, excited 
 no doubt by the presence of these grand personages, flashed 
 such a look at them that his eyes sparkled like flame. 
 
 At the two next wedges a horrible groan escaped him. 
 Then when he saw the men take up the wedges for the severer 
 torture, he remained silent ; but his gaze assumed such dread- 
 ful fixity, and flashed at the two Princes such a piercing mag- 
 netic fluid, that the Duke and the cardinal were both obliged 
 to look down. Philippe le Bel had experienced the same 
 defeat when he presided at the torture by hammer, inflicted 
 in his presence on the Templars. This consisted in hitting 
 the victim on the chest with one'arm of the balanced hammer 
 used to coin money, which was covered with a leather pad. 
 There was one knight whose eyes were so fixed on the King 
 that he was fascinated, and could not take his gaze off the 
 sufferer. At the third blow the King rose and went away, 
 after hearing himself called upon to appear before the judg- 
 ment of God within a year as he did. 
 
 At the fifth wedge, the first of the greater torture, Chris- 
 tophe said to the cardinal 
 
 "Cut my misery short, monseigneur; it is useless." 
 
 The cardinal and the Duke withdrew, and Christophe could 
 hear from the next room these words, spoken by Queen 
 Catherine 
 
 " Go on, go on ; after all, he is only a heretic ! " 
 
 She thought it prudent to appear more severe to her accom- 
 plice than his executioners were. 
 
 The sixth and seventh wedge were driven in, and Chris- 
 tophe complained no more, his face shone with a strange 
 radiance, due, no doubt, to the immense strength he derived
 
 150 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 from fanatical excitement. In what else but in feeling can 
 we hope to find the fulcrum enabling a man to endure such 
 anguish ? At last, when the executioner was about to insert 
 the eighth wedge, Christophe smiled. This dreadful torment 
 had lasted one hour. 
 
 The clerk went to fetch the leech, to know whether the 
 eighth wedge could be driven in without endangering the suf- 
 ferer's life. The Duke meanwhile came in again to see 
 Christophe. 
 
 "By our Lady! you are a fine fellow," said he, leaning 
 down to speak in his ear. " I like a brave man. Enter my 
 service, you shall be happy and rich, my favors will heal your 
 bruised limbs ; I will ask you to do nothing cowardly, like re- 
 joining your own party to betray their plans ; there are always 
 plenty of traitors, and the proof is to be found in the prisons 
 of Blois. Only tell me on what terms are the Queen-mother 
 and the Prince de Conde." 
 
 "I know nothing about it, monseigneur," cried Lecamus. 
 
 The doctor came in, examined the victim, and pronounced 
 that he could bear the eighth wedge. 
 
 " Drive it in," said the cardinal. "After all, as the Queen 
 says, he is only a heretic," he added, with a hideous smile at 
 Christophe. 
 
 Catherine herself slowly came in from the adjoining room, 
 stood in front of Christophe, and gazed at him coldly. She 
 was the object of attentive scrutiny to the two brothers, who 
 looked alternately at the Queen-mother and her accomplice. 
 The whole future life of this ambitious woman depended on 
 this solemn scrutiny; she felt the greatest admiration for 
 Christophe's courage, and she looked at him sternly; she 
 hated the Guises, and she smiled upon them. 
 
 " Come," said she, " young man, confess that you saw the 
 Prince de Cond6 ; you will be well rewarded." 
 
 " Oh, madame, what a part you are playing ! " cried Chris- 
 tophe, in pity for her.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 151 
 
 The Queen started. 
 
 " He is insulting me ! Is he not to be hanged ? " said she 
 to the two brothers, who stood lost in thought. 
 
 "What a woman ! " cried the Grand Master, who was con- 
 sulting his brother in the window recess. 
 
 " I will stay in France and be revenged," thought the 
 Queen. " Proceed, he must confess or let him die ! " she ex- 
 claimed, addressing Monsieur de Montresor. 
 
 The provost turned away, the executioners were busy, 
 Catherine had an opportunity of giving the martyr a look, 
 which no one else saw, and which fell like dew on Christophe. 
 The great Queen's eyes seemed to glisten with moisture; they 
 were, in fact, full of tears, two tears at once repressed and 
 dry. The wedge was driven home, one of the boards between 
 which it was inserted split. Christophe uttered a piercing 
 cry ; then his face became radiant ; he thought he was dying. 
 
 "Let him die," said the cardinal, echoing Queen Cath- 
 erine's words with a sort of irony. " No, no," he added to 
 the provost, " do not let us lose this clue." 
 
 The Duke and the cardinal held a consultation in a low 
 voice. 
 
 "What is to be done with him?" asked the executioner. 
 
 "Send him to prison at Orleans," said the Duke. "And, 
 above all," he said to Monsieur de Montresor, "do not hang 
 him without orders from me." 
 
 The excessive sensitiveness of every internal organ, strung 
 to the highest pitch by the endurance which worked upon 
 every nerve in his frame, no less affected every sense in Chris- 
 tophe. He alone heard these words spoken by the Due de 
 Guise in the cardinal's ear 
 
 "I have not given up all hope of hearing the truth from 
 this little man." 
 
 As soon as the two Princes had left the room, the execu- 
 tioners unpacked the victim's legs, with no attempt at gentle 
 handling.
 
 152 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 "Did you ever see a criminal with such fortitude?" said 
 the head man to his assistants. "The rogue has lived through 
 the infliction of the eighth wedge ; he ought to have died. 
 I am the loser of the price of his body." 
 
 "Untie me without hurting me, my good friends," said 
 poor Christophe. " Some day I will reward you." 
 
 " Come, show some humanity," said the doctor. "Mon- 
 seigneur the Duke esteems the young man, and commended 
 him to my care," cried the leech. 
 
 " I am off to Amboise with my men," said the executioner 
 roughly. "Take care of him yourself. And here is the 
 gaoler." 
 
 The executioner went off, leaving Christophe in the hands 
 of the smooth-spoken doctor, who, with the help of Christo- 
 phe's warder, lifted him on to a bed, gave him some broth, 
 which he made him swallow, sat down by his side, felt his 
 pulse, and tried to comfort him. 
 
 "You are not dying," he said, "and you must feel a com- 
 fort to your mind when you reflect that you have done your 
 duty. The Queen charged me to take good care of you," he 
 added, in a low voice. 
 
 "The Queen is very good," said Christophe, in whom 
 acute anguish had developed wonderful lucidity of mind, and 
 who, after enduring so much, was determined not to spoil the 
 results of his devotion. "But she might have saved me so 
 much suffering by not delivering me to my tormentors, and by 
 telling them herself the secrets, of which I most truly know 
 nothing." 
 
 On hearing this reply, the doctor put on his cap and cloak 
 and left Christophe to his fate, thinking it vain to hope to 
 gain anything from a man of that temper. The gaoler had 
 the poor boy carried on a litter by four men to the town 
 prison, where Christophe fell asleep, in that deep slumber 
 which, it is said, comes upon almost every mother after the 
 dreadful pains of childbirth.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE Z>' MEDICI. 153 
 
 The two Princes of Lorraine, when they transferred the 
 Court to Amboise, had no hope of finding there the leader of 
 the Reformed party, the Prince de Conde, whom they had 
 ordered to appear in the King's name to take him in a snare. 
 As a vassal of the Crown and as a Prince of the Blood, 
 Conde was bound to obey the behest of the King. Not to 
 come to Amboise would be a felony ; but, by coming, he 
 would place himself in the power of the Crown. Now, at 
 this moment, the Crown, the Council, the Court, and every 
 kind of power were in the hands of the Due de Guise and the 
 Cardinal de Lorraine. 
 
 In this difficult dilemma, the Prince de Conde showed the 
 spirit of decisiveness and astuteness, which msde him a worthy 
 representative of Jeanne d'Albret and the brave general of the 
 Reformers' forces. He traveled at the heels of the last con- 
 spirators to Vendome to support them in case of success. 
 But when this first rush to arms ended in the brief skirmish 
 in which the flower of the nobility whom Calvin had misled 
 all perished, the Prince, and a following of fifty gentlemen, 
 arrived at the chateau d' Amboise the very day after this affair, 
 which the Guises, with crafty policy, spoke of as the riots at 
 Amboise. On hearing of the Prince's advance, the Duke 
 sent out the Marechal de Saint-Andre to receive him with an 
 escort of a hundred men-at-arms. When the Bearnais came 
 to the gate of the castle, the marshal in command refused to 
 admit the Prince's suite. 
 
 " You must come in alone, sir," said the Chancellor Olivier, 
 Cardinal de Tournon, and Birague, who awaited him outside 
 the portcullis. 
 
 "And why?" 
 
 " You are suspected of felony," replied the chancellor. 
 
 The Prince, who saw that his party was being cut off by the 
 Due de Nemours, quietly replied 
 
 "If that is the case, I will go into my cousin alone and 
 prove my innocence." 

 
 154 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 He dismounted and conversed with perfect freedom with 
 Birague, Tournon, the Chancellor Olivier, and the Due de 
 Nemours, from whom he asked details of the riot. 
 
 " Monseigneur," said the Due de Nemours, "the rebels 
 had sympathizers inside Amboise. Captain Lanoue had 
 gotten in some men-at-arms, who opened the gate to them 
 through which they got into the town, and of which they had 
 the command " 
 
 "That is to say, you got them into a sack," replied the 
 Prince, looking at Birague. 
 
 " If they had been supported by the attack that was to 
 have been made on the Gate of Bons-Hommes by Captain 
 Chaudieu, the preacher's brother, they would have succeeded," 
 said the Due de Nemours, "but, from the position I had 
 taken up, in obedience to the Due de Guise, Captain Chau- 
 dieu was obliged to make a detour to avoid fighting me. In- 
 stead of arriving at night like the rest, that rebel did not 
 come up till daybreak, just as the King's troops had crushed 
 those who had got into the town." 
 
 " And you had a reserve to recapture the gate that had been 
 given up to them ? ' ' 
 
 " Monsieur le Mar6chal de Saint- Andre was on the spot 
 with five hundred men." 
 
 The Prince warmly praised these military manoeuvres. 
 
 "To have acted thus," said he in conclusion, "the lieu- 
 tenant-general must certainly have known the Reformers' se- 
 crets. They have evidently been betrayed." 
 
 The Prince was treated with greater strictness at each step. 
 After being parted from his followers on entering the castle, 
 the cardinal and the chancellor stood in his way when he 
 turned to the stairs leading to the King's apartments. 
 
 " We are instructed by the King, sir, to conduct you to 
 your own rooms." 
 
 " Am I then a prisoner? " 
 
 " If that were the King's purpose, you would not be at-
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 155 
 
 tended by a prince of the church and by me," replied the 
 chancellor. 
 
 The two functionaries led the Prince to an apartment where 
 a guard of honor so called was allotted to him, and where 
 he remained for several hours without seeing any one. From 
 his window he looked out on the Loire, the rich country 
 which makes such a beautiful valley between Amboise and 
 Tours, and he was meditating on his situation, wonderiug 
 what the Guises might dare to do to his person, when he 
 heard the door of his room open, and saw the King's fool 
 come in, Chicot, who had once been in his service. 
 
 " I heard you were in disgrace," said the Prince. 
 
 " You cannot think how sober the Court has become since 
 the death of Henri II." 
 
 "And yet the King loves to laugh, surely." 
 
 " Which King ? Francis II. or Francis of Lorraine ? " 
 
 " Are you so fearless of the Duke that you speak so? " 
 
 " He will not punish me for that, sir," replied Chicot, 
 smiling. 
 
 " And to what do I owe the honor of this visit? " 
 
 "Was it not due to you after your coming here? I have 
 brought you my cap and bauble." 
 
 " I cannot get out then ? " 
 
 "Try!" 
 
 "And if I do get out?" 
 
 " I will confess that you have won the game by playing 
 against the rules." 
 
 " Chicot, you frighten me. Have you been sent by some 
 one who is interested in my fate?" 
 
 Chicot nodded "Yes." He went nearer to the Prince, 
 and conveyed to him that they were watched and overheard. 
 
 " What have you to say to me ? " asked Monsieur de Cond6. 
 
 " That nothing but daring can get you out of the scrape," 
 said the fool, whispering the words into his ear. "And this 
 is from the Queen-mother."
 
 156 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 "Tell those who have sent you," replied the Prince, "that 
 I should never have come to this castle if I had anything to 
 blame myself for or to fear." 
 
 "I fly to carry your bold reply," said the fool. 
 
 Two hours later, at one in the afternoon, before the King's 
 dinner, the chancellor and Cardinal de Tournon came to 
 fetch the Prince to conduct him to Francis II. in the great 
 hall where the Council had sat. There, before all the Court, 
 the Prince de Conde affected surprise at the cool reception 
 the King had given him, and he asked the reason. 
 
 "You are accused, cousin," said the Queen-mother sternly, 
 " of having meddled with the plots of the Reformers, and you 
 must prove yourself a faithful subject and a good Catholic if 
 you wish to avert the King's anger from your House." 
 
 On hearing this speech, spoken by Catherine in the midst 
 of hushed silence, as she stood with her hand in the King's 
 arm and with the Due d' Orleans on her left hand, the Prince 
 de Conde drew back three steps, and with an impulse of dig- 
 nified pride laid his hand on his sword, looking at the persons 
 present. 
 
 "Those who say so, madame, lie in their throat ! " he ex- 
 claimed in angry tones. 
 
 He flung his glove at the King's feet, saying 
 
 " Let the man who will maintain this calumny stand forth !" 
 
 A shiver ran through the whole Court when the Due de 
 Guise was seen to quit his place ; but instead of picking up 
 the glove as they expected, he went up to the intrepid 
 hunchback. 
 
 " If you need a second, Prince, I beg of you to accept my 
 services," said he. "I will answer for you, and will show 
 the Reformers how greatly they deceive themselves if they 
 hope to have you for their leader." 
 
 The Prince de Conde could not help offering his hand to 
 the lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Chicot picked up 
 the glove and restored it to Monsieur de
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 157 
 
 "Cousin," said the boy-King, "you should never draw 
 your sword but in defense of your country. Come to dinner." 
 
 The Cardinal de Lorraine, puzzled by his brother's action, 
 led him off to their rooms. The Prince de Cond6 having 
 weathered the worst danger, gave his hand to Queen Mary 
 Stewart to lead her to the dining-room ; but, while making 
 flattering speeches to the young Queen, he was trying to dis- 
 cern what snare was at this moment being laid for him by the 
 Balafre's policy. In vain he racked his brain, he could not 
 divine the Guises' scheme ; but Queen Mary betrayed it. 
 
 "It would have been a pity," said she, laughing, " to see 
 so clever a head fall ; you must allow that my uncle is mag- 
 nanimous." 
 
 " Yes, madame, for my head fits no shoulders but my own, 
 although one is larger than the other. But is it magnanimity 
 in your uncle ? Has he not rather gained credit at a cheap 
 rate ? Do you think it such an easy matter to have the law 
 of a Prince of the Blood?" 
 
 " We have not done yet," replied she. " We shall see how 
 you behave at the execution of the gentlemen, your friends, 
 over which the Council has determined to make the greatest 
 display." 
 
 " I shall do as the King does," said Cond6. 
 
 " The King, the Queen-mother, and I shall all be present, 
 with all the Court and the ambassadors " 
 
 "Quite a high day?" said the Prince ironically. 
 
 "Better than that," said the young Queen, "an auto-da-fe* 
 a function of high political purport. The gentlemen of 
 France must be subjugated by the Crown ; they must be cured 
 of their taste for faction and manoeuvring ' 
 
 " You will not cure them of their warlike temper by showing 
 them their danger, madame, and at this game you risk the 
 Crown itself," replied the Prince. 
 
 At the end of this dinner, which was gloomy enough, Queen 
 * Lit. : Act of Faith the ceremony of burning heretics.
 
 158 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 
 
 Mary was so unfortunately daring as to turn the conversation 
 publicly on the trial which the nobles, taken under arms, 
 were at that moment undergoing, and to speak of the neces- 
 sity for giving the utmost solemnity to their execution. 
 
 "But, madame," said Francis II., "is it not enough for 
 the King of France to know that the blood of so many brave 
 gentlemen must be shed? Must it be a cause of triumph? " 
 
 "No, sir, but an example," replied Catherine. 
 
 "Your grandfather and your father were in the habit of 
 seeing heretics burned," said Mary Stewart. 
 
 "The kings who reigned before me went their way," said 
 Francis, " and I mean to go mine." 
 
 "Philip II.," Catherine went on, "who is a great king, 
 lately, when he was in the Netherlands, had an auto-da-fe 
 postponed till he should have returned to Valladolid." 
 
 " What do you think about it, cousin ? " said the King to 
 the Prince de Conde. 
 
 " Sire, you cannot avoid going ; the papal nuncio and the 
 ambassadors must be present. For my part, I am delighted 
 to go if the ladies are to be of the party." 
 
 The Prince, at a glance from Catherine de' Medici, had 
 boldly taken his line. 
 
 While the Prince de Conde was being admitted to the 
 Castle of Amboise, the furrier to the two Queens was also 
 arriving from Paris, brought thither by the uneasiness pro- 
 duced by the reports of the rebellion, not only in himself and 
 his family, but also in the Lalliers. 
 
 At the gate of the castle, when the old man craved admis- 
 sion, the captain of the Guard, at the words " Queen's furrier," 
 answered at once 
 
 " My good man, if you want to be hanged, you have only 
 to set foot in the courtyard." 
 
 On hearing this the unhappy father sat down on a rail a 
 little way off, to wait till some attendant on either of the 
 Queens, or some woman of the Court, should pass him,
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 159 
 
 to ask for some news of his son ; but he remained there the 
 whole day without seeing anybody he knew, and was at last 
 obliged to go down into the town, where he found a lodging, 
 not without difficulty, in an inn on the square where the ex- 
 ecutions were to take place. He was obliged to pay a livre a 
 day (then a very large sum) to secure a room looking out on 
 the square. 
 
 On the following day he was brave enough to look on from 
 his window at the rebels who had been condemned to the 
 wheel, or to be hanged, as men of minor importance ; and the 
 Syndic of the Furriers' Guild was glad enough not to find his 
 son among the sufferers. 
 
 When it was all over, he went to place himself in the 
 clerk's way. Having mentioned his name and pressed a 
 purse full of crown-pieces into the man's hands, he begged him 
 to see whether, in the three former days of execution, the 
 name of Christophe Lecamus had occurred. The registrar, 
 touched by the despairing old father's manners and tone of 
 voice, conducted him to his own house. After carefully com- 
 paring notes, he could assure the old man that the said Chris- 
 tophe was not among those who had hitherto been executed, 
 nor was he named among those who were to die within the 
 next few days. 
 
 " My dear master," said the clerk to the furrier, " the Par- 
 lement is now engaged in trying the lords and gentlemen 
 concerned in the business, and the principal leaders. So, 
 possibly, your son is imprisoned in the castle, and will be one 
 in the magnificent execution for which my lords the Due de 
 Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine are making great prepa- . 
 rations. Twenty-seven barons are to be beheaded, with eleven 
 counts and seven marquises, fifty gentlemen in all, and leaders 
 of the Reformers. As the administration of justice in Tou- 
 raine has no connection with that of the Paris Parlement, if you 
 positively must have some news of your son, go to my lord 
 the Chancellor Olivier, who, by the orders of the lieutenant-
 
 160 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 
 
 general of the kingdom, has the management of the pro- 
 ceedings. ' ' 
 
 Three times did the poor old man go to the chancellor's 
 house and stand in a file of people in the courtyard in com- 
 mon with an immense number of people who had come to 
 pray for their relations' lives ; but as titled folk were admitted 
 before the middle-class, he was obliged to give up all hope of 
 speaking with the chancellor, though he saw him several 
 times coming out of his house to go either to the chateau or to 
 the Commission appointed by the Parlement, along a way 
 cleared for him by soldiers, between two hedges of petition- 
 ers who were thrust aside. 
 
 It was a dreadful scene of misery, for among this crowd 
 were wives, daughters, and mothers, whole families in tears. 
 Old Lecamus gave a great deal of gold to the servants at the 
 castle, enjoining on them that they should deliver certain 
 letters he wrote to la Dayelle, Queen Mary's waiting-woman, 
 or to the Queen-mother's woman ; but the lackeys took the 
 goodman's money, and then, by the cardinal's orders, handed 
 all letters to the provost of the Law Court. As a consequence 
 of their unprecedented cruelty, the Princes of Lorraine had 
 cause to fear revenge : and they never took greater precau- 
 tions than during the stay of the Court at Amboise, so that 
 neither the most effectual bribery, that of gold, nor the most 
 diligent inquiries brought the furrier any light as to his son's 
 fate. He wandered about the little town in a melancholy 
 way, watching the tremendous preparations that the cardinal 
 was making for the shocking spectacle at which the Prince de 
 Cond6 was to be present. 
 
 Public curiosity was being stimulated, by every means in 
 use at the time, from Paris to Nantes. The execution had 
 been announced from the pulpit by every preacher, in a breath 
 with the King's victory over the heretics. 
 
 Three elegant stands, the centre one apparently to be the 
 finest of the three, were being erected against the curtain-wall
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 161 
 
 of the castle, at the foot of which the execution was to take 
 place. All around the open space raised wooden seats were 
 being put up, after the fashion of an amphitheatre, to accom- 
 modate the enormous crowd attracted by the notoriety of this 
 auto-da-fe. About ten thousand persons were camping out in 
 the fields on the day before this hideous spectacle. The roofs 
 were crowded with spectators, and windows were let for as 
 much as ten livres, an enormous sum at that time. 
 
 The unhappy father had, as may be supposed, secured one 
 of the best places for commanding a view of the square where 
 so many men of family were to perish, on a huge scaffold 
 erected in the middle, and covered with black cloth. On 
 the morning of the fatal day, the headsman's block, on which 
 the victim laid his head, kneeling in front of it, was placed 
 on the scaffold, and an armchair, hung with black, for the 
 recorder of the Court, whose duty it was to call the con- 
 demned by name and read their sentence. The inclosure was 
 guarded from early morning by the Scotch soldiers and the 
 men-at-arms of the King's household, to keep the crowd out 
 till the hour of the executions. 
 
 After a solemn mass in the chapel of the castle and in every 
 church in the town, the gentlemen were led forth, the last 
 survivors of all the conspirators. These men, some of whom 
 had been through the torture chamber, were collected round 
 the foot of the scaffold, and exhorted by monks, who strove 
 to persuade them to renounce the doctrines of Calvin. But 
 not one would listen to these preachers, turned on to them by 
 the Cardinal de Lorraine, among whom, no doubt, these 
 gentlemen feared that there might be some spies on behalf of 
 the Guises. 
 
 To escape being persecuted with these exhortations, they 
 began to sing a psalm turned into French verse by Clement 
 Marot. Calvin, as is well known, had decreed that God 
 should be worshiped in the mother-tongue of every country, 
 from motives of commonsense as well as from antagonism to 
 11
 
 162 ABOUT CATHERINE DP MEDICI. 
 
 the Roman Church. It was a pathetic moment for all those 
 among the throng, who felt for these gentlemen, when they 
 heard this verse sung at the moment when the Court appeared 
 on the scene 
 
 " Lord, help us in our need ! 
 Lord, bless us with Thy grace ! 
 
 And on the saints in sore distress 
 Let shine Thy glorious face ! " 
 
 The eyes of the Reformers all centred on the Princ% de 
 Conde, who was intentionally placed between Queen Mary 
 and the Due d'Orleans. Queen Catherine de 1 Medici sat 
 next her son, with the cardinal on her left. The papal nuncio 
 stood behind the two Queens. The lieutenant-general of 
 the kingdom was on horseback, below the royal stand, with 
 two marshals of France and his captains. As soon as the 
 Prince de Conde appeared, all the gentlemen sentenced to 
 death, to whom he was known, bowed to him, and the brave 
 hunchback returned the salutation. 
 
 "It is hard," said he to the Due d'Orleans, "not to be 
 civil to men who are about to die. ' ' 
 
 The two other grand stands were filled by invited guests, 
 by courtiers, and the attendants on their majesties ; in short, 
 the rank and fashion of the castle from Blois, who thus rushed 
 from festivities to executions, just as they afterward rushed 
 from the pleasures of Court life to the perils of war, with a 
 readiness which to foreigners will always be one of the main- 
 springs of their policy in France. The poor Syndic of the 
 Furriers' Guild felt the keenest joy at failing to discern his 
 son among the fifty or so gentlemen condemned to death. 
 
 At a signal from the Due de Guise, the clerk, from the top 
 of the scaffold, called out at once, in a loud voice 
 
 " Jean-Louis- Alberic, Baron de Raunay, guilty of heresy, 
 of the crime of high treason, and of bearing arms against the 
 King's majesty."
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 163 
 
 A tall, handsome man mounted the scaffold with a firm 
 step, bowed to the people and to the Court, and said 
 
 " The indictment is false; I bore arms to deliver the King 
 from his enemies of Lorraine ! " 
 
 He laid his head on the block, and it fell. 
 
 The Reformers sang 
 
 " Thou, Lord, hast proved our faith 
 And searched our soul's desire, 
 
 And purified our froward hearts, 
 As silver proved by fire." 
 
 " Robert -Jean-Rene Briquemaut, Comte de Villemongis, 
 guilty of high treason and rebellion against the King," cried 
 the recorder. 
 
 The Count dipped his hands in the Baron de Raunay's 
 blood, and said 
 
 " May this blood be on the heads of those who are truly 
 guilty!" 
 
 The Reformers sang on 
 
 " Thou, Lord, hast led our feet 
 Where foes had laid their snare ; 
 
 To Thee, O Lord, the glory be, 
 Though we should perish there." 
 
 " Confess, my lord nuncio," said the Prince de Conde, 
 "that if French gentlemen know how to plot, they also know 
 how to die." 
 
 "What hatred you are entailing on the heads of your 
 children, brother," said the Duchesse de Guise to the Cardi- 
 nal de Lorraine. 
 
 " The sight makes me feel sick," said the young King, who 
 had turned pale at the sight of all this bloodshed. 
 
 " Pooh ! Rebels ! " said Catherine de' Medici. 
 
 Still the hymn went on, still the axe was plied. At last the
 
 164 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 sublime spectacle of men who could die singing, and, above 
 all, the impression produced on the crowd by the gradual 
 dwindling of the voices, became stronger than the terror 
 inspired by the Guises. 
 
 " Mercy ! " cried the mob, when they heard at last only 
 the feeble chant of a single victim, reserved till the last, as 
 being the most important. 
 
 He was standing alone at the foot of the steps leading up 
 to the scaffold, and sang 
 
 " Lord, help us in our need ! 
 Lord, bless us with Thy grace ! 
 
 And on the saints in sore distress 
 Let shine Thy glorious face ! " 
 
 "Come, Due de Nemours," said the Prince de Cond6, 
 who was tired of his position ; " you to whom the securing of 
 the victory is due, and who helped to entrap all these people 
 do you not feel that you ought to ask the life of this one ? 
 It is Castelnau, who, as I was told, had your promise for 
 courteous treatment when he surrendered " 
 
 " Did I wait to see him here before trying to save him?" 
 said the Due de Nemours, stung by this bitter reproof. 
 
 The clerk spoke slowly, intentionally, no doubt 
 
 " Michel-Jean-Louis, Baron de Castelnau-Chalosse, accused 
 and convicted of the crime of high treason and of fighting 
 against his majesty the King." 
 
 " No," retorted Castelnau haughtily; " it can be no crime to 
 oppose the tyranny and intended usurpation of the Guises ! " 
 
 The headsman, who was tired, seeing some stir in the royal 
 seats, rested on his axe. 
 
 "Monsieur le Baron," said he, "I should be glad not to 
 hurt you. One minute may perhaps save you." 
 
 And all the people shouted again for mercy. 
 
 "Come," said the King, "a pardon for poor Castelnau, 
 who saved the Due d' Orleans. "
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICT. 165 
 
 The base cardinal intentionally misinterpreted the word 
 "Come." He nodded to the executioner, and Castelnau's 
 head fell at the very moment when the King pronounced his 
 pardon. 
 
 " That one goes to your account, cardinal," said Catherine. 
 
 On the day after this horrible massacre, the Prince de 
 Conde set out for Navarre. 
 
 This affair made a great sensation throughout France and 
 in every foreign Court. The torrents of noble blood then 
 shed caused the Chancellor Olivier such deep grief that this 
 admirable judge, seeing the end at which the Guises were 
 aiming, felt that he was not strong enough to hold his own 
 against them. Although they had made him what he was, 
 he would not sacrifice his duty and the Monarchy to them ; 
 he retired from public life, suggesting that 1'Hopital should 
 be his successor. Catherine, on hearing of Olivier's choice, 
 proposed Birague for the post of chancellor, and urged her 
 request with great pertinacity. The wily cardinal, who knew 
 nothing of the note written to Catherine by I'Hopital, and 
 who believed him still faithful to the House of Lorraine, 
 upheld him as Birague's rival, and the Queen-mother affected 
 to be overridden. 
 
 L'Hopital was no sooner appointed than he took steps to 
 prevent the introduction into France of the holy office 
 (Inquisition), which the Cardinal de Lorraine wished to estab- 
 lish ; and he so effectually opposed the anti-Gallican meas- 
 ures and policy of the Guises, and showed himself so sturdy a 
 Frenchman, that within three months of his appointment he 
 was exiled, to reduce his spirit, to his estate of le Vignay, 
 near Etampes. 
 
 Old Lecamus impatiently waited till the Court should leave 
 Amboise, for he could find no opportunity of speaking to 
 either Queen Mary or Queen Catherine ; but he hoped to be 
 able to place himself in their way at the time when the Court 
 should be moving along the river-bank on the way back to
 
 166 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 Blois. The furrier dressed himself as a poor man, at the risk 
 of being seized as a spy, and, favored by this disguise, he 
 mingled with the beggars who stood by the wayside. 
 
 After the departure of the Prince de Conde, the Duke and 
 the cardinal thought that they had silenced the Reformed 
 party, and they left the Queen-mother a little more liberty. 
 Lecamus knew that Catherine, instead of traveling in a litter, 
 liked to ride on horseback on a planchette, as it was called, a 
 side-saddle with a foot-rest. This sort of stirrup was invented 
 by or for Catherine, who, having hurt her leg, rested both feet 
 on a velvet sling, sitting sideways, and supporting one knee in 
 a hollow cut in the saddle. As the Queen had very fine legs, 
 she was accused of having hit on this device for displaying 
 them. 
 
 Thus the old man was able to place himself in sight of the 
 Queen-mother ; but when she saw him she affected anger. 
 
 " Go away from hence, good man, and let no one see you 
 speaking to me," she said with some anxiety. " Get yourself 
 appointed delegate to the States-General from the corpora- 
 tion of Paris Guilds, and be on my side in the Assembly 
 at Orleans, you will then hear something definite about your 
 son " 
 
 " Is he alive?" said the old man. 
 
 "Alas ! " said the Queen, " I hope it." 
 
 And Lecamus was obliged to return home with this sad 
 reply and the secret as to the convocation of the States-Gen- 
 eral, which the Queen had told him. 
 
 Some days before this, the Cardinal de Lorraine had re- 
 ceived information as to the guilt of the Court of Navarr<. 
 At Lyons, and at Mouvans in Dauphine, the Reformers, com- 
 manded by the most enterprising of the Bourbon princes, had 
 tried to inflame the population. This daring attempt, after 
 the dreadful executions at Amboise, astonished the Guises, 
 who, to put an end to heresy, no doubt, by some means of
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 167 
 
 which they kept the secret, proposed to assemble the States- 
 General at Orleans. Catherine de' Medici, who saw a sup- 
 port for her own policy in the representation of the nation, 
 consented with joy. The cardinal, who aimed at recapturing 
 his prey and overthrowing the House of Bourbon, convoked 
 the States solely to secure the presence of the Prince de Conde 
 and of the King of Navarre, Antoine de Bourbon, father of 
 Henri IV. He then meant to make use of Christophe to 
 convict the Prince of high treason if he were able once more 
 to get him into the King's power. 
 
 After spending two months in the prison of Blois, Chris- 
 tophe one morning was carried out on a litter lying on a 
 mattress, was embarked on a barge, and taken up the river to 
 Orleans before a westerly breeze. He reached that town the 
 same evening, and was taken to the famous tower of Saint- 
 Aignan. Christophe, who knew not what to make of his 
 transfer, had time enough for meditation on his behavior and 
 on his future prospects. There he remained two months 
 more, on his bed, unable to use his legs. His bones were 
 crushed. When he begged to be allowed the help of a sur- 
 geon, the gaoler told him that his orders with regard to his 
 prisoner were so strict that he dared not allow any one else 
 even to bring him his food. This severity, of which the effect 
 was absolutely solitary confinement, surprised Christophe. 
 His idea was that he must either be hanged or released ; he 
 knew nothing whatever of the events happening at Am- 
 boise. 
 
 In spite of the secret warnings to remain at home sent to 
 them by Catherine de' Medici, the two chiefs of the House of 
 Bourbon determined to appear at the meeting of the States- 
 General, since autograph letters from the King were reassur- 
 ing ; and when the Court was settling at Orleans, Groslot, the 
 Chancellor of Navarre, announced their advent, to the surprise 
 of all. 
 
 Francis II. took up his quarters in the house of the Chan-
 
 168 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 cellor of Navarre, who was also the Bailli or Recorder of 
 Orleans. This man Groslot, whose double appointment is 
 one of the odd features of a time when Reformers were in 
 possession of abbeys Groslot, the Jacques Cceur of Orleans, 
 one of the richest citizens of his day, did not leave his name 
 to his house. It came to be known as the Bailliage, having 
 been purchased, no doubt, from his heirs, by the Crown, or 
 by the provincial authorities, to be the seat of that tribunal. 
 This elegant structure, built by the citizens of the sixteenth 
 century, adds a detail to the history of a time when the King, 
 the nobility, and the middle-class vied with each other in 
 wealth, elegance, and splendor; especially in their dwellings 
 as may be seen at Varangeville, Ango's magnificent manor- 
 house, and the Hotel d' Hercules, as it is called, in Paris, 
 which still exists, but in a condition that is the despair of 
 archaeologists and of lovers of mediaeval art. 
 
 Those who have been to Orleans can hardly have failed to 
 observe the Town Hall in the Place de 1'Estape. This town- 
 hall is the Old Bailli's Court, the H6tel Groslot, the most 
 illustrious and most neglected house in Orleans. 
 
 The remains of this building plainly show to the archaeolo- 
 gist's eye how magnificent it must once have been, at a time 
 when citizens built their houses more of wood than of stone, 
 and the upper ranks alone had the right to build manor-houses, 
 a word of special meaning. Since it served as the King's 
 residence at a time when the Court made so much display of 
 pomp and luxury, the Hotel Groslot must then have been the 
 largest and finest house in Orleans. 
 
 It was on the Place de 1'Estape that the Guises and the 
 King held a review of the municipal guard, to which Monsieur 
 de Cypierre was nominated captain during the King's visit. 
 At that time, the cathedral of Sainte-Croix afterward finished 
 by Henry IV., who desired to set the seal to his conversion 
 was being built, and the surrounding ground, strewn with 
 blocks of stone and encumbered with piles of timber, was held
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICL 169 
 
 by the Guises, who lodged in the bishop's palace, now de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 The town was in military occupation, and the measures 
 adopted by the Guises plainly showed how little liberty they 
 intended to give to the States-General, while the delegates 
 flocked into the town and raised the rents of the most wretched 
 lodgings. The Court, the municipal militia, the nobles, and 
 the citizens all alike expected some Coup d } Etat ; and their 
 expectations were fulfilled when the Princes of the Blood 
 arrived. 
 
 As soon as the two Princes entered the King's room, the 
 Court saw with dismay how insolent was the behavior of the 
 Cardinal de Lorraine, who, to assert his audacious pretensions, 
 kept his head covered, while the King of Navarre before him 
 was beheaded. Catherine de' Medici stood with downcast 
 eyes, not to betray her indignation. A solemn explanation 
 then took place between the young King and the two heads of 
 the younger branch. It was brief, for at the first words spoken 
 by the Prince de Conde, Francis II. closed the discussion by 
 saying 
 
 " My lords and cousins, I fancied the incident of Amboise 
 was at an end ; it is not so, and we shall see cause to regret 
 our indulgence ! ' ' 
 
 "It is not the King who speaks thus," said the Prince de 
 Cond, " but Messieurs de Guise." 
 
 "Good-day, monsieur," said the little King, crimson with 
 rage. 
 
 As he went through the great hall, the Prince was stopped 
 by the two captains of the Guards. When the officer of the 
 French Guard stepped forward, the Prince took a letter out of 
 the breast of his doublet and said, in the presence of all the 
 Court 
 
 " Can you read me this, Monsieur de Maill6-Br6z6 ? " 
 
 "With pleasure," said the French captain to the Prince de 
 Cond6.
 
 170 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 " ' Cousin, come in all security ; I give you my royal word 
 that you may. If you need a safe-conduct, these presents will 
 serve you.' ' 
 
 "And signed ? " said the bold and mischievous hunch- 
 back. 
 
 " Signed ' Francois,' " said Maille. 
 
 "Nay, nay," replied the Prince, "it is signed 'Your good 
 cousin and friend, Frangois ! ' Gentlemen," he went on, 
 turning to the Scotch Guard, " I will follow you to the prison 
 whither you are to escort me by the King's orders. There is 
 enough noble spirit, no doubt, in this room to fully under- 
 stand that." 
 
 The utter silence that reigned in the room might have en- 
 lightened the Guises, but silence is the last thing that princes 
 listen to. 
 
 "Monseigneur," said the Cardinal de Tournon, who was 
 following the Prince, "since the day at Amboise you have 
 taken steps in opposition to royal authority at Lyons and 
 at Mouvans in Dauphine things of which the King knew 
 nothing when he addressed you in those terms." 
 
 "Rascals! " cried the Prince, laughing. 
 
 " You made a public declaration against the mass and in 
 favor of heresy " 
 
 "We are masters in Navarre," said the Prince. 
 
 " In Beam, you mean ! But you owe homage to the 
 Crown," replied the President de Thou. 
 
 "Ah, you are here, president ! " exclaimed the Prince ironi- 
 cally. "And is all the Parlement with you?" 
 
 With these words, the Prince flashed a look of contempt at 
 the cardinal and left the room ; he understood that his head 
 was in peril. 
 
 On the following day, when Messieurs de Thou, de Viole, 
 d'Espesse, Bourdin, the public prosecutor, and du Tillet, the 
 chief clerk, came into the prison, he kept them standing, and
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >E' MEDICI. 171 
 
 expressed his regrets at seeing them engaged on a business 
 which did not concern them; then he said to the clerk 
 
 "Write." 
 
 And he dictated as follows : 
 
 "I, Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Conde, peer of the realm, 
 Marquis de Conti, Comte de Soissons, Prince of the Blood of 
 France, formally refuse to recognize any Commission appointed 
 to try me, inasmuch as that by virtue of my rank and the 
 privileges attaching to every member of the royal family, I 
 can only be attainted, heard, and judged by a Parlement of 
 all the peers in their places, the Chambers in full assembly, and 
 the King seated on the bed of justice. You ought to know 
 this better than any one, gentlemen, and this is all you will 
 get of me. For the rest, I trust in God and my Right." 
 
 The magistrates proceeded nevertheless, in spite of the de- 
 termined silence of the Prince. 
 
 The King of Navarre was at liberty, but closely watched; 
 his prison was a wider one than the Prince's, and that was the 
 whole difference between his position and his brother's ; for 
 the heads of the King and the Prince were to be felled at the 
 same time. 
 
 So Christophe was so closely confined by order of the 
 cardinal and the lieutenant-general of the kingdom only to 
 afford proof to the judges of the Prince's guilt. The letters 
 found on the person of La Sagne, the Prince's secretary, in- 
 telligible to a statesman, were not clear enough for the judges. 
 The cardinal had thought of bringing the Prince accidentally 
 face to face with Christophe, who had been placed, not with- 
 out a purpose, in a lower room of the tower of Saint-Aignan, 
 and the window looked out on the yard. Each time he was 
 examined by the magistrates, Christophe intrenched himself 
 in systematic denial, which naturally prolonged the affair till 
 the meeting of the States-General. 
 
 Lecamus, who had made a point of getting himself elected 
 by the citizens of Paris as a deputy for the " Third Estate,"
 
 172 ABOUT CATHERINE D' MEDICI. 
 
 came to Orleans a few days after the Prince's arrest. This 
 event, of which he had news at Etampes, increased his alarms, 
 for he understood he who alone in the world knew of his 
 son's interview with the Prince under the Pont au Change 
 that Christophe's fate was bound up with that of the rashly 
 daring head of the Reformation party. So he determined to 
 study the mysterious interests which had become so entangled 
 at Court since the States had met, so as to hit upon some plan 
 for rescuing his son. It was vain to think of having recourse 
 to Queen Catherine, who refused to receive the furrier. No 
 one of the Court to whom he had access could give him any 
 satisfactory information with regard to Christophe, and he 
 had sunk to such depths of despair that he was about to ad- 
 dress himself to the cardinal, when he heard that Monsieur de 
 Thou had accepted the office of one of the judges of the Prince 
 de Conde a blot on the good fame of that great jurist. The 
 Syndic went to call on his son's patron, and learned that 
 Christophe was alive but a prisoner. 
 
 Tourillon, the glover, to whose house la Renaudie had sent 
 Christophe, had offered a room to the Sieur Lecamus for the 
 whole time during which the States-General should be sitting. 
 He believed the furrier to be, like himself, secretly attached 
 to the Reformed religion ; but he soon perceived that a father 
 who fears for his son's life thinks no more of shades of re- 
 ligious dogma ; he throws himself soul and body on the mercy 
 of God, never thinking of the badge he wears before men. 
 
 The old man, repulsed at every attempt, wandered half- 
 witless about the streets. Against all his expectations, his 
 gold was of no avail ; Monsieur de Thou had warned him that 
 even if he should bribe some servant of the Guise household, 
 he would only be so much out of pocket, for the Duke and 
 the cardinal allowed nothing to be known concerning Chris- 
 tophe. This judge, whose fair fame is somewhat tarnished by 
 the part he played at this juncture, had tried to give the un- 
 happy father some hope ; but he himself trembled for his god-
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 173 
 
 son's life, and his consolations only added to the furrier's 
 alarm. The old man was always prowling round the house ; 
 in three months he grew quite thin. 
 
 His only hope now lay in the warm friendship which had 
 so long bound him to the Hippocrates of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. Ambroise Pare tried to say a word to Queen Mary as 
 he came out of the King's room ; but the instant he men- 
 tioned Christophe, the daughter of the Stewarts, annoyed by 
 the prospect before her in the event of any ill befalling the 
 King, whom she believed to have been poisoned by the Re- 
 formers, as he had been taken suddenly ill, replied 
 
 " If my uncles would take my opinion, such a fanatic would 
 have been hanged before now." 
 
 On the evening when this ominous reply had been repeated 
 to Lecamus by his friend Pare, on the Place de 1'Estape, he 
 went home half-dead, and retired to his room, refusing to eat 
 any supper. 
 
 Tourillon, very uneasy, went upstairs, and found the old 
 man in tears ; and as the poor furrier's feeble eyes showed 
 the reddened and wrinkled linings of the lids, the glover 
 believed that they were tears of blood. 
 
 " Be comforted, father," said the Huguenot, " the citizens 
 of Orleans are enraged at seeing their town treated as if it 
 had been taken by assault, and guarded by Monsieur de 
 Cypierre's soldiery. If the Prince de Conde's life should be 
 in danger, we should very soon demolish the tower of Saint- 
 Aignan, for the whole town is on the Reformers' side, and 
 would rise in rebellion, you may be quite certain." 
 
 " But even if the Guises were seized, would their death 
 give me back my son ? " said the unhappy father. 
 
 At this instant there was a timid rap at the outer door ; 
 Tourillon went down to open it. It was quite dark. In 
 these troubled times the master of every household took elab- 
 orate precautions. Tourillon looked out through the bars of 
 a wicket in the door and saw a stranger, whose accent be-
 
 174 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 trayed him as an Italian. This man, dressed in black, asked 
 to see Lecamus on matters of business, and Tourillon showed 
 him in. At the sight of the stranger the old furrier quaked 
 visibly, but the visitor had time to lay a finger on his lips. 
 Lecamus, understanding the gesture, immediately said 
 
 " You have come to offer furs for sale, I suppose? " 
 
 "Yes," replied the stranger in Italian, with an air of 
 privity. 
 
 This man was, in fact, the famous Ruggieri, the Queen- 
 mother's astrologer. Tourillon went downstairs, perceiving 
 that he was not wanted. 
 
 "Where can we talk without fear of being overheard?" 
 said the astute Florentine. 
 
 "Only in the open fields," replied Lecamus. "But we 
 shall not be allowed out of the town ; you know ho.w strictly 
 the gates are guarded. No one can pass out without an order 
 from Monsieur de Cypierre, not even a member of the Assem- 
 bly like myself. Indeed, at to-morrow's sitting we all intend 
 to complain of this restriction on our liberty." 
 
 " Work like a mole, never let your paws be seen in any 
 kind of business," replied the wily Florentine. " To-morrow 
 will no doubt be a decisive day. From my calculations, to- 
 morrow, or soon after, you will, perhaps, see your son." 
 
 " God grant it ! Though you are said to deal only with 
 the devil ! " 
 
 " Come and see me at home," said the astrologer, smiling. 
 " I watch the stars from the tower belonging to the Sieur 
 Touchet du Beauvais, the lieutenant of the bailiwick, whose 
 daughter has found favor in the eyes of the little Due d' Or- 
 leans. I have cast the girl's horoscope, and it does in fact 
 portend that she will become a great lady and be loved by a 
 king. The lieutenant is a clever fellow, he is interested in 
 science, and the Queen found me lodgings with the good 
 man, who is cunning enough to be a rabid Guisard till Charles 
 IX. comes to the throne."
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 175 
 
 The furrier and the astrologer made their way to the Sieur 
 de Beauvais' house without being seen or interfered with ; 
 and, in the event of Lecamus being discovered, Ruggieri meant 
 to afford him a pretext in his desire to consult the astrologer 
 as to his son's fate. 
 
 When they had climbed to the top of the turret where the 
 astrologer had established himself, Lecamus said 
 
 " Then my son is really alive? " 
 
 " At present," said the Italian. " But we must make haste 
 to save him. Remember, O seller of skins, that I would not 
 give two farthings for yours if in the whole course of your 
 life you breathe one word of what I am about to tell you." 
 
 " The warning is not needed, master. I have been furrier 
 to the Court since the time of the late King Louis XII., and 
 this is the fourth reign I have lived under." 
 
 " And you may soon say the fifth," replied Ruggieri. 
 
 " What do you know of my son ? " 
 
 " Well, he has been through the torture chamber." 
 
 " Poor boy ! " sighed the old man, looking up to heaven. 
 
 "His knees and ankles are a little damaged, but he has 
 gained royal protection, which will be over him as long as he 
 lives," the Florentine added, on seeing the father's horror. 
 "Your little Christophe has done good service to our great 
 Queen Catherine. If we can get your son out of the clutches 
 of the cardinal, you will see him councilor in the Parlement 
 yet. And a man would let his bones be broken three times 
 over to find himself in the good graces of that beloved sover- 
 eign a real genius she, who will triumph over every obstacle. 
 
 " I have cast the horoscope of the Due de Guise ; he will 
 be killed within a year. Come now, Christophe did meet the 
 Prince de Conde " 
 
 "You know the future, do you not know the past?" the 
 furrier put in. 
 
 " I am not questioning you, I am informing you, goodman. 
 Well, your son will be placed to-morrow where the Prince
 
 176 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 will pass by. If he recognizes him, or if the Prince recog- 
 nizes your son, Monsieur de Conde forfeits his head. As to 
 what would become of his accomplice God only knows ! 
 But be eisy. Neither your son nor the Prince is doomed to 
 die ; I have read their destiny ; they will live. But by what 
 means they may escape I know not. Now we will do what we 
 can, apart from . the certainty of my calculations. Monsieur 
 de Conde shall get a prayer-book to-morrow, delivered to him 
 by a safe hand, in which he shall find a warning ! God 
 grant that your son may be secretive, for he can have no 
 warning ! And a mere flash of recognition would cost the 
 Prince his life. Thus, although the Queen-mother has every 
 reason to depend on Christophe's fidelity " 
 
 "He has been put to cruel tests," cried the furrier. 
 
 " Do not speak in that way. Do you suppose that the 
 Queen is dancing for joy ? She is indeed going to take her 
 measures exactly as though the Guises had decided on the 
 Prince's death ; and she is wise, that shrewd and prudent 
 Queen ! Now she counts on you to help her in every way. 
 You have some influence in the ' Third Estate, ' where you are 
 the representative of the Guilds of Paris ; and, even if the 
 Guisards should promise to set your son at liberty, try to 
 deceive them and stir up your class against the Princes of 
 Lorraine. Vote for the Queen-mother as Regent ; the King 
 of Navarre will give his assent to that publicly, to-morrow, in 
 the Assembly." 
 
 " But the King ?" 
 
 "The King will die," said Ruggieri; "I have read it in 
 the stars. What the Queen requires of you in the Assembly 
 is very simple ; but she needs a greater service from you than 
 that. You maintained the great Ambroise Pare while he was 
 a student; you are his friend " 
 
 " Ambroise loves the Due de Guise in these days better than 
 he loves me," said the furrier. "And he is right; he owes 
 his place to him. Still, he is faithful to the King. And,
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 177 
 
 although he has a leaning toward the Reformation, he will do 
 nothing but his duty." 
 
 "A plague on all honest men!" cried the Florentine. 
 " Ambroise boasted this evening that he could pull the little 
 King through. If the King recovers his health, the Guises 
 must triumph, the Princes are dead men, the House of Bourbon 
 is extinct, we go back to Florence, your son is hanged, and 
 the Guises will make short work of the rest of the royal 
 family " 
 
 " Great God ! " cried Lecamus. 
 
 " Do not exclaim in that way ; it is like a citizen who 
 knows nothing of Court manners ; but go forthwith to Am- 
 broise, and find out what he means to do to save the King. 
 If it seems at all certain, come and tell me what the operation 
 is in which he has such faith." 
 
 "But " Lecamus began. 
 
 " Obey me blindly, my good friend, otherwise you will be 
 dazed." 
 
 " He is right," thought the furrier. 
 
 And he went off to the King's surgeon, who lived in an 
 inn in the Place du Martroi. 
 
 At this juncture Catherine de' Medici found herself, politi- 
 cally speaking, in the same extremities as she had been in 
 when Christophe had seen her at Blois. Though she had 
 inured herself to the struggle and had exerted her fine intel- 
 lect in that first defeat, her situation, though precisely the 
 same now as then, was even more critical and dangerous than 
 at the time of the riots at Amboise. Events had grown in 
 magnitude, and the Queen had grown with them. Though 
 she seemed to proceed in agreement with the Princes of 
 Lorraine, Catherine held the threads of a conspiracy skill- 
 fully plotted against her terrible associates, and was only 
 waiting for a favorable moment to drop her mask. 
 
 The cardinal had just found himself deceived by Catherine. 
 12
 
 178 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 The crafty Italian had seen in the younger branch of the 
 royal family an obstacle she could use to check the preten- 
 sions of the Guises ; and, in spite of the counsel of the two 
 Gondis, who advised her to leave the Guises to act with what 
 violence they could against the Bourbons, she had, by warn- 
 ing the Queen of Navarre, brought to naught the plot to 
 seize Beam concerted by the Guises with the King of Spain. 
 As this State secret was known only to themselves and to 
 Catherine, the Princes of Lorraine were assured of her be- 
 trayal, and they wished to send her back to Florence ; but to 
 secure proofs of Catherine's treachery to the State the House 
 of Lorraine was the State the Duke and cardinal had just 
 made her privy to their scheme for making away with the 
 King of Navarre. 
 
 The precautions which were immediately taken by Antoine 
 de Bourbon proved to the brothers that this secret, known 
 but to three people, had been divulged by the Queen-mother. 
 The Cardinal de Lorraine accused Catherine of her breach 
 of faith in the presence of the King, threatening her with 
 banishment if any fresh indiscretions on her part should im- 
 peril the State. Catherine, seeing herself in imminent danger, 
 was compelled to act as a high-handed sovereign. She gave 
 ample proof indeed of her fine abilities, but it must also be 
 confessed that she was well served by the friends she trusted. 
 
 L'Hopital sent her a letter in these terms: 
 
 " Do not allow a Prince of the Blood to be killed by a 
 committee, or you will soon be carried off yourself." 
 
 Catherine sent Birague to le Vignay, desiring the chan- 
 cellor to come to the Assembly of the States-General, although 
 he was in banishment. Birague returned the same evening 
 with I'Hopital, halting within three leagues of Orleans, and 
 the chancellor thus declared himself on the side of the 
 Queen-mother.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >> MEDICI. 179 
 
 Chiverni, whose fidelity was with good reason regarded as 
 doubtful by the Guises, had fled from Orleans, and by a 
 forced march, which was nearly his death, he reached lcouen 
 in ten hours. He there told the Connetable de Montmor- 
 ency of the danger his nephew the Prince de Conde was in, 
 and of the encroachments of the Guises. Anne de Mont- 
 morency, furious at learning that the Prince owed his life 
 merely to the sudden illness of which Francis II. was dying, 
 marched up with fifteen hundred horse and a hundred gentle- 
 men under arms. The more effectually to surprise the Guises, 
 he had avoided Paris, coming from Ecouen to Corbeil, and 
 from Corbeil to Pithiviers by the valley of the Essonne. 
 
 " Man to man, and both to pull, leaves to each but little 
 wool ! " he said, on the occasion of this dashing advance. 
 
 Anne de Montmorency, who had been the preserver of 
 France when Charles V. invaded Provence, and the Due de 
 Guise, who had checked the Emperor's second attempt at 
 Metz, were, in fact, the two greatest French warriors of their 
 time. 
 
 Catherine had waited for the right moment to stir up the 
 hatred of the man whom the Guises had overthrown. The 
 Marquis de Simeuse, in command of the town of Gien, on 
 hearing of the advance of so considerable a force as the 
 connetable brought with him, sprang to horse, hoping to 
 warn the Duke in time. The Queen-mother, meanwhile, cer- 
 tain that the connetable would come to his nephew's rescue 
 and confident of the chancellor's devotion to the royal cause, 
 had fanned the hopes and encouraged the spirit of the Re- 
 formed party. The Colignys and the adherents of the imper- 
 iled House of Bourbon had made common cause with the 
 Queen-mother's partisans ; a coalition between various antag- 
 onistic interests, attacked by a common foe, was silently 
 formed in the Assembly of the States, where the question 
 was boldly broached of making Catherine Regent of France 
 in the event of the young King's death. Catherine herself,
 
 180 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 whose faith in astrology was far greater than her belief in 
 church dogmas, had ventured to extremes against her foes 
 when she saw her son dying at the end of the time fixed as 
 his term of life by the famous soothsayer brought to the cha- 
 teau de Chaumont by Nostradamus. 
 
 A few days before the terrible close of his reign, Francis 
 II. had chosen to go out on the Loire, so as not to be in the 
 town at the hour of the Prince de Conde's intended execu- 
 tion. Having surrendered the Prince's head to the Cardinal 
 de Lorraine, he feared a riot quite as much as he dreaded 
 the supplications of the Princesse de Conde. As he was 
 embarking, a fresh breeze, such as often sweeps the Loire at 
 the approach of winter, gave him so violent an earache that 
 he was forced to return home ; he went to bed, never to leave 
 it alive. 
 
 In spite of the disagreement of the physicians, who, all 
 but Chapelain, were his enemies and opponents, Ambroise 
 Pare maintained that an abscess had formed in the head, and 
 that if no outlet were pierced the chances of the King's 
 death were greater every day. 
 
 In spite of the late hour and the rigorous enforcement of 
 the curfew at that time in Orleans, which was ruled as in a 
 state of siege, Fare's lamp was shining in his window where 
 he was studying. Lecamus called to him from below ; and 
 when he had announced his name, the surgeon gave orders 
 that his old friend should be admitted. 
 
 "You give yourself no rest, Ambroise, and while saving 
 the lives of others you will wear out your own," said the 
 furrier as he went in. 
 
 Indeed, there sat the surgeon, his books open, his instru- 
 ments lying about, and before him a skull not long since 
 buried, dug up from the grave, and perforated. 
 
 " I must save the King." 
 
 "Then you are very sure you can, Ambroise ?" said the 
 old man, shuddering.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 181 
 
 " As sure as I am alive. The King, my good old friend, has 
 some evil humor festering on his brain, which will fill it up, 
 and the danger is pressing ; but by piercing the skull I let 
 the matter out and free his head. I have already performed 
 this operation three times; it was invented by a Piedmon- 
 tese, and I have been so lucky as to improve upon it. 
 The first time it was at the siege of Metz, on Monsieur de 
 Pienne, whom I got out of the scrape, and who has only been 
 all the wiser for it ;-the second time it saved the life of a poor 
 man on whom I wished to test the certainty of this daring 
 operation to which Monsieur de Pienne had submitted ; the 
 third time was on a gentleman in Paris, who is now perfectly 
 well. Trepanning for that is the name given to it is as yet 
 little known. The sufferers object to it on the score of the 
 imperfection of the instrument, but that I have been able to 
 improve. So now I am experimenting on this head, to be 
 sure of not failing to-morrow on the King's." 
 
 " You must be very sure of yourself, for your head will be 
 in danger if you " 
 
 " I will wager my life that he is cured," replied Par, with 
 the confidence of genius. " Oh, my good friend, what is it 
 to make a hole in a skull with due care ? It is what soldiers 
 do every day with no care at all." 
 
 "But do you know, my boy," said the citizen, greatly 
 daring, " that if you save the King, you ruin France? Do you 
 know that your instrument will place the crown of the Valois 
 on the head of a Prince of Lorraine, calling himself the direct 
 heir of Charlemagne ? Do you know that surgery and politics 
 are, at this moment, at daggers drawn ? Yes, the triumph of 
 your genius will be the overthrow of your religion. If the 
 Guises retain the Regency, the blood of the Reformers will 
 flow in streams ! Be a great citizen rather than a great sur- 
 geon, and sleep through to-morrow morning, leaving the 
 King's room free to those leeches who, if they do not save the 
 King, will save France."
 
 182 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 "I!" cried Pare. "I leave a man to die when I can 
 cure him ? Never ! If I am to be hanged for a Calvinist, I 
 will go to the castle, all the same, right early to-morrow. Do 
 you not know that the only favor I mean to ask, when I have 
 savedt he King, is your Christophe's life? That will surely 
 be a moment when Queen Mary can refuse me nothing." 
 
 "Alas, my friend, has not the little King already refused 
 the Princesse de Cond6 any pardon for her husband ? Do not 
 kill your religion by enabling the man to live who ought to 
 die." 
 
 "Are you going to puzzle yourself by trying to find out how 
 God means to dispose of things in the future?" asked Pare. 
 " Honest folk have but one motto ' Do your duty, come what 
 may.' I did this at Calais when I set my foot on the Grand 
 Master ; I risked being cut down by all his friends and at- 
 tendants, and here I am, surgeon to the King ; I am a Re- 
 former, and yet I can call the Guises my friends. I will save 
 the King! " cried the surgeon, with the sacred enthusiasm 
 of conviction that genius knows, "and God will take care of 
 France! " 
 
 There was a knock at the door, and a few minutes later one 
 of Ambroise Park's servants gave a note to Lecamus, who read 
 aloud these ominous words : 
 
 "A scaffold is being erected at the Convent of the Rcol- 
 lets for the beheading of the Prince de Conde to-morrow." 
 
 Ambroise and Lecamus looked at each other, both over- 
 powered with horror. 
 
 " I will go and make sure," said the furrier, bidding Am- 
 broise Pare adieu. 
 
 Out on the square, Ruggieri took Lecamus by the arm, ask- 
 ing what was Fare's secret for saving the King ; but the old 
 man, fearing some treachery, insisted on going to see the 
 scaffold. So the astrologer and the furrier went together
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 183 
 
 to the Recollets, where, in fact, they found carpenters at 
 work by torchlight. 
 
 "Heyday, my friend," said old Lecamus to one of them; 
 "what business is this? " 
 
 "We are preparing to hang some heretics, since the bleed- 
 \ ing at Amboise did not cure them," said a young friar, who 
 was superintending the workmen. 
 
 " Monseigneur the cardinal does well," replied the prudent 
 Ruggieri. " But in my country we do even better." 
 
 "What do you do?" 
 
 "We burn them, brother." 
 
 Lecamus was obliged to lean on the astrologer; his legs 
 refused to carry him, for he thought that his son might next 
 day be swinging on one of those gibbets. The poor old man 
 stood between two sciences astrology and medicine ; each 
 promised to save his son, for whom the scaffold was visibly 
 rising. In this confusion of mind he was as wax in the hands 
 of the Florentine. 
 
 " Well, my most respectable vendor of furs, what h?.ve you 
 to say to these pleasantries of Lorraine?" asked Ruggieri. 
 
 " Woe the day ! You know I would give my own skin to 
 see my boy's safe and sound." 
 
 "That is what I call talking like a skinner," replied the 
 Italian. " But if you will explain to me the operation that 
 Ambroise proposes to perform on the King, I will guarantee 
 your son's life." 
 
 "Truly?" cried the old furrier. 
 
 " What shall I swear by ? " said Ruggieri. 
 
 On this the unhappy old man repeated his conversation 
 with Par6 to the Italian, who was off, leaving the disconsolate 
 father in the road the instant he had heard the great surgeon's 
 secret. 
 
 "Whom the devil does he mean mischief to?" cried Le- 
 camus, as he saw Ruggieri running at his utmost speed toward 
 the Place de 1'Estape.
 
 184 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICL 
 
 Lecamus knew nothing of the terrible scene which was 
 going on by the King's bedside, and which had led to the 
 order being given for the erection of the scaffold for the 
 Prince, who had been sentenced in default, as it were, though 
 his execution was postponed for the moment by the King's 
 illness. 
 
 There was no one in the hall, on the stairs, or in the court- 
 yard of the bailiff's house but those on actual duty. The 
 crowd of courtiers had resorted to the lodgings of the King 
 of Navarre, who, by the law of the land, was Regent. The 
 French nobles, terrified indeed by the insolence of the Guises, 
 felt an impulse to close their ranks around the chief of the 
 younger branch, seeing that the Queen-mother was subservient 
 to the Guises, and not understanding her Italian policy. 
 Antoine de Bourbon, faithful to his secret compact with 
 Catherine, was not to renounce his claim to the Regency in 
 her favor until the States-General should have voted on the 
 question. 
 
 This absolute desertion had struck the Grand Master when, 
 on his return from a walk through the town as a precau- 
 tionary measure he found no one about the King but the 
 friends dependent on his fortunes. The room where Francis 
 II. 's bed had been placed adjoins the great hall of the bailiff's 
 residence, and was at that time lined with oak paneling. The 
 ceiling, formed of narrow boards, skillfully adjusted and 
 painted, showed an arabesque pattern in blue on a gold 
 ground, and a piece of it, pulled down about fifty years ago, 
 has been preserved by a collector of antiquities. This room, 
 hung with tapestry and the floor covered with carpet, was so 
 dark that the burning tapers scarcely gave it light. The 
 enormous bedstead, with four columnar posts and silk cur- 
 tains, looked like a tomb. On one side of the bed, by the 
 King's pillow, were Queen Mary and the Cardinal de Lor- 
 raine ; on the other sat Catherine in an armchair. The 
 physician-in-ordinary, the famous Jean Chapelain, afterward
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 185 
 
 in attendance on Charles IX., was standing by the fireplace. 
 Perfect silence reigned. 
 
 The young King, pale and slight, lost in the sheets, was 
 hardly to be seen, with his small, puckered face on the pillow. 
 The Duchesse de Guise, seated on a stool, was supporting 
 Mary Stewart; and near Catherine, in a window recess, 
 Madame de Fieschi was watching the Queen-mother's looks 
 and gestures, for she fully understood the great peril of her 
 position. 
 
 In the great hall, notwithstanding the late hour, Monsieur 
 de Cypierre, the Due d' Orleans' tutor, appointed to be gov- 
 ernor of the town, occupied a chimney-corner with the two 
 Gondis. Cardinal de Tournon, who at this crisis had taken 
 part with Queen Catherine, on finding himself treated as an 
 inferior by the Cardinal de Lorraine, whose equal he un- 
 doubtedly was in the church, was conversing in a low voice 
 with the brothers Gondi. The Marechal de Vieilleville and 
 Monsieur de Saint-Andre, keeper of the seals, were discussing 
 in whispers the imminent danger of the Guises. 
 
 The Due de Guise crossed the hall, glancing hastily about 
 him, and bowed to the Due d'Orl^ans, whom he recognized. 
 
 " Monseigneur," said he, "this may give you a lesson in 
 the knowledge of men. The Catholic nobility of the king- 
 dom have crowded round a heretic prince, believing that the 
 States assembled will place the Regency in the hands of the 
 heir to the traitor who so long kept your illustrious grand- 
 father a prisoner." 
 
 And after this speech, which was calculated to make a deep 
 impression on a prince's mind, he went into the bedroom 
 where the young King was lying, not so much asleep as heavily 
 drowsy. As a rule, the Due de Guise had the art of over- 
 coming, by his affable expression, the sinister appearance of 
 his scarred features ; but at this moment he could not force a 
 smile, seeing the instrument of power quite broken. The 
 cardinal, whose civic courage was equal to his brother's mili'
 
 186 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 tary valor, came forward a step or two to meet the lieutenant- 
 general. 
 
 " Robertet believes that little Pinard has been bought over 
 by the Queen-mother," he said in his ear, as he led him back 
 into the hall. " He has been made use of to work on the 
 members of the Assembly." 
 
 " Bah ! what matters our being betrayed by a secretary, 
 when there is treason everywhere?" cried the Duke. "The 
 town is for the Reformers, and we are on the eve of a revolt. 
 Yes ! the Guepins are malcontents," he added, giving the 
 people of Orleans their common nickname, "and if Pare can- 
 not save the King, we shall see a desperate outbreak. Before 
 long we shall have to lay siege to Orleans, which is a vermin's 
 nest of Huguenots." 
 
 "In the last minute," said the cardinal, "I have been 
 watching that Italian woman, who sits there without a spark 
 of feeling. She is waiting for her son's death, God forgive 
 her ! I wonder whether it would not be well to arrest her 
 and the King of Navarre too." 
 
 " It is more than enough to have the Prince de Conde in 
 prison," replied the Duke. 
 
 The sound of a horse ridden at top-speed came up from the 
 gate. The two Princes went to the window, and, by the light 
 of the gatekeeper's torch and of the cresset that was always 
 burning under the gateway, the Duke recognized in the rider's 
 hat the famous cross of Lorraine, which the cardinal had made 
 the badge of their partisans. He sent one of the men-at- 
 arms, who stood in the anteroom, to say that the new-comer 
 was to be admitted ; and he went to the head of the stairs to 
 meet him, followed by his brother. 
 
 "What is the news, my dear Simeuse?" asked the Duke, 
 with the charming manner he always had for a soldier, as he 
 recognized the Commandant of Gien. 
 
 " The conn6table is entering Pithiviers ; he left Ecouen 
 with fifteen hundred horse and a hundred gentlemen "
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 187 
 
 " Have they any following? " said the Duke. 
 
 "Yes, monseigneur," replied Simeuse. "There are two 
 thousand six hundred of them in all. Some say that Thore 
 is behind with a troop of infantry. If Montmorency amuses 
 himself with waiting for his son, you have time before you to 
 undo him." 
 
 " And that is all you know? Are his motives for this rush 
 to arms commonly reported?" 
 
 "Anne speaks as little as he writes; do you go and meet 
 him, brother, while I will greet him here with his nephew's 
 head," said the cardinal, ordering an attendant to fetch 
 Robertet. 
 
 " Vieilleville," cried the Duke to the marshal, who came 
 in, " the Connetable de Montmorency has dared to take up 
 arms. If I go out to meet him, will you be responsible for 
 keeping order in the town?" 
 
 "The instant you are out of it, the townsfolk will rise; 
 and who can foresee the issue of a fray between horsemen and 
 citizens in such narrow streets?" replied the marshal. 
 
 "My lord!" said Robertet, flying up the stairs, "the 
 chancellor is at the gates and insists on coming in ; are we 
 to admit him? " 
 
 "Yes, admit him," said the Cardinal de Lorraine. "The 
 constable and the chancellor together would be too danger- 
 ous ; we must keep them apart. We were finely tricked by the 
 Queen-mother when we elected 1'Hopital to that office." 
 
 Robertet nodded to a captain who awaited the reply at the 
 foot of the stairs, and returned quickly to take the cardinal's 
 orders. 
 
 "My lord," said he, making a last effort, "I take the 
 liberty of representing to you that the sentence requires the 
 approval of the King in Council. If you violate the law for 
 a Prince of the Blood, it will not be respected in favor of a 
 cardinal or of a Due de Guise." 
 
 "Pinard has disturbed your mind, Robertet," said the
 
 188 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 cardinal sternly. " Do you not know that the King signed 
 the warrant on the day when he went out, leaving it to us to 
 carry it out? " 
 
 "Though you are almost requiring my head of me when 
 you give me this duty which, however, will be that of the 
 town-provost I obey, my lord." 
 
 The Grand Master heard the debate without wincing ; but 
 he took his brother by the arm and led him to a corner of 
 the hall. 
 
 "Of course," said he, "the direct heirs of Charlemagne 
 have the right to take back the crown which was snatched 
 from their family by Hugues Capet ; but can they ? The 
 pear is not ripe. Our nephew is dying, and all the Court is 
 gone over to the King of Navarre." 
 
 "The King's heart failed him; but for that, the Bearnais 
 would have been stabbed," replied the cardinal, "and we 
 could easily have disposed of the children." 
 
 " We are in a bad position here," said the Duke. "The 
 revolt in the town will be supported by the States-General. 
 L'Hopital, whom we have befriended so well and whose eleva- 
 tion Queen Catherine opposed, is now our foe, and we need 
 the law on our side. The Queen-mother has too many adhe- 
 rents now to allow of our sending her away. And, beside, 
 there are three more boys ! " 
 
 " She is no longer a mother; she is nothing but a queen," 
 said the cardinal. " In my opinion, this is the very moment 
 to be rid of her. Energy, and again energy ! that is what I 
 prescribe." 
 
 Having said this, the cardinal went back into the King's 
 room, and the Duke followed him. The prelate then went 
 straight up to Catherine. 
 
 "The papers found on La Sagne, the Prince de Condi's 
 secretary, have been communicated to you," said he. "You 
 know that the Bourbons mean to dethrone your children?" 
 
 " I know it all," said the Queen.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 189 
 
 "Well, then, will you not have the King of Navarre 
 arrested ? ' ' 
 
 " There is a lieutenant-general of the kingdom," replied she. 
 
 At this moment Francis complained of the most violent 
 pain in his ear, and began to moan lamentably. The physi- 
 cian left the fireplace, where he was warming himself, and 
 came to examine the patient's head. 
 
 "Well, monsieur?" said the Grand Master, addressing 
 him. 
 
 "I dare not apply a compress to draw the evil humors. 
 Master Ambroise has undertaken to save his majesty by an 
 operation, and I should annoy him by doing so." 
 
 "Put it off till to-morrow," said Catherine calmly, "and 
 be present, all of you medical men ; for you know what 
 calumnies the death of a prince gives ground for." 
 
 She kissed her son's hands and withdrew. 
 
 " How coolly that audacious trader's daughter can speak of 
 the Dauphin's death, poisoned as he was by Montecuculi, a 
 Florentine of her suite ! " cried Mary Stewart. 
 
 " Marie," said the little King, " my grandfather never cast 
 a suspicion on her innocence." 
 
 " Can we not hinder that woman from coming here to- 
 morrow?" said the Queen in an undertone to her two uncles. 
 
 "What would become of us if the King should die?" 
 replied the cardinal. " Catherine would hurl us all into his 
 grave. ' ' 
 
 And so that night the question stood plainly stated between 
 Catherine de' Medici and the House of Lorraine. The arrival 
 of the chancellor and the Connetable de Montmorency pointed 
 to rebellion, and the dawn of the morrow would prove de- 
 cisive. 
 
 On the following day the Queen-mother was the first to ap- 
 pear. She found no one in her son's room but Mary Stewart, 
 pale and fatigued from having passed the night in prayer by 
 the bedside. The Duchesse de Guise had kept the Queen
 
 190 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 company, and the maids of honor had relieved each other. 
 The young King was asleep. 
 
 Neither the Duke nor the cardinal had yet appeared. The 
 prelate, more daring than the soldier, had spent this last night, 
 it is said, in vehement argument, without being able to in- 
 duce the Duke to proclaim himself King. With the States- 
 General sitting in the town, and the prospect of a battle to be 
 fought with the constable, the Balafre did not think the op- 
 portunity favorable ; he refused to arrest the Queen-mother, 
 the chancellor, Cardinal de Tournon, the Gondis, Ruggieri, 
 and Birague, in face of the revolt that would inevitably result 
 from such violent measures. He made his brother's schemes 
 dependent on the life of Francis II. 
 
 Perfect silence reigned in the King's bedchamber. Cath- 
 erine, attended by Madame de Fieschi, came to the bedside 
 and gazed at her son with an admirable assumption of grief. 
 She held her handkerchief to her eyes and retreated to the 
 window, where Madame de Fieschi brought her a chair. 
 From thence she could look down into the courtyard. 
 
 It had been agreed between Catherine and the Cardinal de 
 Tournon that if Montmorency got safely into the town, he, 
 the cardinal, would come to her, accompanied by the two 
 Gondis ; in case of disaster, he was to come alone. At nine 
 in the morning the two Princes of Lorraine, accompanied by 
 their suite, who remained in the hall, came to the King's room. 
 The captain on duty had informed them that Ambroise Pare 
 had but just arrived with Chapelain and three other physi- 
 cians, prompted by Catherine de' Medici, and all hating Am- 
 broise Pare. 
 
 In a few minutes the great hall of the bailliage presented 
 precisely the same appearance as the guardroom at Blois on 
 the day when the Due de Guise was appointed lieutenant- 
 general of the kingdom, and when Christophe was tortured ; 
 with only this difference, that then love and glee reigned in 
 the royal rooms, and that the Guises were triumphant;
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 191 
 
 whereas now death and grief prevailed, and the Princes of 
 Lorraine felt the power slipping from their grasp. 
 
 The maids of honor of the two Queens were grouped on 
 opposite sides of the great fireplace, where an immense fire 
 was blazing. The room was full of courtiers. 
 
 The news, repeated no one knows by whom, of a bold plan 
 of Ambroise Fare's for saving the King's life, brought in 
 every gentleman who had any right to appear at Court. The 
 outer steps of the house and the courtyard were thronged with 
 anxious groups. The scaffold erected for the Prince, opposite 
 the convent of the Recollets, astonished all the nobles. People 
 spoke in whispers, and here, as at Blois, the conversation 
 was a medley of serious and frivolous subjects, of grave and 
 trivial talk. They were beginning to feel used to turmoils, 
 to sudden rebellion, to a rush to arms, to revolts, to the great 
 and sudden events which marked the long period during which 
 the House of Valois was dying out, in spite of Queen Cath- 
 erine's efforts. Deep silence was kept for some distance out- 
 side the bedroom door, where two men-at-arms were on guard, 
 with two pages, and the captain of the Scotch company. 
 
 Antoine de Bourbon,* a prisoner in his lodgings, finding 
 himself neglected, understood the hopes of the courtiers ; he 
 was overwhelmed at hearing of the preparations made during 
 the night for his brother's execution. 
 
 In front of the hall fireplace stood one of the finest and 
 grandest figures of his time, the Chancellor de 1'Hopital, in 
 his crimson robes bordered with ermine, and wearing his 
 square cap, in right of his office. This brave man, regarding 
 his benefactors as the leaders of a rebellion, had espoused the 
 cause of his king, as represented by the Queen-mother ; and, 
 at the risk of his head, he had gone to Ecouen to consult the 
 Conndtable de Montmorency. No one dared to disturb the 
 meditations in which he was plunged. Robertet, the secre- 
 tary of state, two marshals of France, Vieilleville and Saint- 
 * Antony, King of Navarre, husband of Jeanne d'Albret.
 
 192 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 Andre, and the keeper of the seals, formed a group in front 
 of the chancellor. 
 
 The men of the Court were not actually laughing, but their 
 tone was sprightly, especially among those who were disaffected 
 to the Guises. 
 
 The cardinal had at last secured Stewart, the Scotchman 
 who had murdered President Minard, and was arranging for 
 his trial at Tours. He had also confined in the Castles of 
 Blois and of Tours a considerable number of gentlemen who 
 had seemed compromised, to inspire a certain degree of terror 
 in the nobles ; they, however, were not terrified, but saw in 
 the Reformation a fulcrum for the love of resistance they de- 
 rived from a feeling of their inborn equality with the King. 
 Now, the prisoners at Blois had contrived to escape, and, by a 
 singular fatality, those who had been shut up at Tours had 
 just followed their example. 
 
 " Madame," said the Cardinal de Chatillon to Madame de 
 Fieschi, " if any one takes an interest in the prisoners from 
 Tours, they are in the greatest danger." 
 
 On hearing this speech, the chancellor looked round at the 
 group of the elder Queen's maids of honor. 
 
 " Yes, for young Desvaux, the Prince de Conde's equerry, 
 who was imprisoned at Tours, added a bitter jest to his 
 escape. He is said to have written a note to Messieurs de 
 Guise to this effect : 
 
 " ' We have heard of the escape of your prisoners at Blois; 
 it has grieved us so much that we are about to run after them ; 
 we will bring them back to you as soon as we have arrested 
 them.' " 
 
 Though he relished this pleasantry, the chancellor looked 
 sternly at Monsieur de Chatillon. 
 
 At this instant louder voices were heard in the King's bed- 
 chamber. The two marshals, with Robertet and the chancellor,
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI 193 
 
 went forward, for it was not merely a question of life and death 
 to the King ; everybody was in the secret of the danger to the 
 chancellor, to Catherine, and to her adherents. The silence 
 that ensued was absolute. 
 
 Ambroise had examined the King; the moment seemed 
 favorable for the operation ; if it were not performed he 
 might die at any moment. As soon as the brothers de Guise 
 came in, he explained to them the causes of the King's suf- 
 ferings, and demonstrated that in such extremities trepanning 
 was absolutely necessary. He only awaited the decision of the 
 physicians. 
 
 " Pierce my son's skull as if it were a board, and with that 
 horrible instrument ! " cried Catherine de' Medici. " Master 
 Ambroise, I will not permit it." 
 
 The doctors were consulting, but Catherine spoke so loud 
 that, as she intended, her words were heard in the outer 
 room. 
 
 "But, madame, if that is the only hope of saving him? " 
 said Mary Stewart, weeping. 
 
 "Ambroise," said Catherine, "remember that you answer 
 for the King with your head." 
 
 " We are opposed to the means proposed by Master Am- 
 broise," said the three physicians. " The King may be saved 
 by injecting a remedy into the ear which will release the 
 humors through that passage." 
 
 The Due de Guise, who was studying Catherine's face, sud- 
 denly went up to her and led her into the window-bay, apart 
 from the throng. 
 
 "You, madame," said he, "wish your son to die; you are 
 in collusion with your enemies, and that since we came from 
 Blois. This morning Councilor Viole told your furrier's 
 son that the Prince de Cond< was to be beheaded. That 
 young man, who, under torture, had denied all knowledge of 
 the Prince de Conde, gave him a farewell greeting as he 
 passed the window of the lad's prison. You looked on at 
 13
 
 194 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 your hapless accomplice's sufferings with royal indifference. 
 Now, you are opposed to your eldest son's life being saved. 
 You will force us to believe that the death of the Dauphin, 
 which placed the crown on the head of the late King, was 
 not natural, but that Montecuculi was your " 
 
 "Monsieur le Chancelier ! " Catherine called out, and at 
 this signal Madame de Fieschi threw open the double doors 
 of the bedchamber. 
 
 The persons assembled in the hall could thus see the whole 
 scene in the King's room : the little King, deadly pale, his 
 features sunk, his eyes dim, but repeating the word " Marie," 
 while he held the hand of the young Queen, who was weep- 
 ing ; the Duchesse de Guise standing, terrified by Catherine's 
 audacity ; the two Princes of Lorraine, not less anxious, but 
 keeping close to the Queen-mother, and resolved to have her 
 arrested by Maille-Breze ; and, finally, the great surgeon 
 Ambroise Pare, with the King's physician. He stood holding 
 his instruments, but not daring to perform the operation, for 
 which perfect quiet was as necessary as the approbation of the 
 medical authorities. 
 
 " Monsieur le Chancelier," said Catherine, " Messieurs de 
 Guise wish to authorize a strange operation on the King's 
 person. Ambroise proposes to perforate his head. I, as his 
 mother, and one of the commission of Regency, protest 
 against what seems to me to be high treason. The three phy- 
 sicians are in favor of an injection which, to me, seems 
 quite as efficacious and less dangerous than the cruel process 
 recommended by Ambroise." 
 
 At these words there was a dull murmur in reply. The 
 cardinal admitted the chancellor, and then shut the bedroom 
 doors. 
 
 "But I am lieutenant-general of the realm," said the Due 
 de Guise, "and you must understand, Monsieur de Chance- 
 lier, that Ambroise, surgeon to his majesty, answers for the 
 King's life."
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 195 
 
 "Well, since this is the state of affairs," said the great 
 Ambroise Pare, " I know what to be doing." 
 
 He put out his arm over the bed. 
 
 "This bed and the King are mine," said he. " I consti- 
 tute myself the sole master, and singly responsible ; I know 
 the duties of my office, and I will operate on the King with- 
 out the physicians' sanction." 
 
 "Save him!" cried the cardinal, "and you shall be the 
 richest man in France." 
 
 "Only go on," said Mary Stewart, pressing Fare's hand. 
 
 "I cannot interfere," said the chancellor, "but I shall 
 record the Queen-mother's protest." 
 
 "Robertet," the Due de Guise called out. 
 
 Robertet came in, and the Duke pointed to the chan- 
 cellor. 
 
 "You are Chancellor of France," he said, "in the place 
 of this felon. Monsieur de Maille, take Monsieur de 1'Ho- 
 pital to prison with the Prince de Conde. As to you, mad- 
 ame," and he turned to Catherine, "your protest will not 
 be recognized, and you would do well to remember that 
 such actions need the support of adequate force. I am 
 acting as a faithful and loyal subject of King Francis II., 
 my sovereign. Proceed, Ambroise," he said to the sur- 
 geon. 
 
 "Monsieur de Guise," said 1'Hopital, " if you use any 
 violence, either on the person of the King or on that of his 
 chancellor, remember that in the hall without there is enough 
 French nobility to arrest all traitors." 
 
 "Gentlemen, gentlemen," said the surgeon, " if you pro- 
 long this debate, you may as well shout ' Vive Charles IX.,' 
 for King Francis is dying." 
 
 Catherine stood unmoved, looking out of the window. 
 
 "Well, then, we will use force to remain masters in the 
 King's bedroom," said the cardinal, trying to keep the door; 
 but he was startled and horrified, for the great hall was quite
 
 196 ABOUT CATHERINE DE? ME77ICL 
 
 deserted. The Court, sure that the King was dying, had 
 gone back to Antoine of Navarre. 
 
 "Come; do it, do it ! " cried Mary Stewart to Ambroise. 
 "I and you, Duchess," she said to Madame de Guise, "will 
 protect you." 
 
 "Nay, madame," said Pare, "my zeal carried me too far; 
 the doctors, with the exception of my friend Chapelain, are 
 in favor of the injection ; I must yield to them. If I were 
 physician and surgeon-in- chief, he could be saved ! Give it 
 to me," he said, taking a small syringe from the hand of the 
 chief physician and filling it. 
 
 "Good God!" cried Mary Stewart; "I command you 
 
 "Alas! madame," replied Pare, "I am subordinate to 
 these gentlemen." 
 
 The young Queen and the Duchesse de Guise stood be- 
 tween the surgeon and the doctors and the other persons 
 present. The chief physician held the King's head, and 
 Ambroise made the injection into the ear. The two Princes 
 of Lorraine were watchful ; Robertet and Monsieur de Maille 
 stood motionless. At a sign from Catherine, Madame de Fi- 
 eschi left the room unnoticed. At the same instant 1'Hopital 
 boldly threw open the door of the King's bedroom. 
 
 "I have arrived in the nick of time," exclaimed a man, 
 whose hasty steps rang through the hall, and who, in another 
 minute, was at the door of the King's room. "What, gen- 
 tlemen ! You thought to cut off my fine nephew, the Prince 
 de Conde' s head ? You have roused the lion from his lair, 
 and here he is ! " added the Connetable de Montmorency. 
 "Ambroise, you are not to stir up my King's brains with 
 your instruments ! The Kings of France do not allow them- 
 selves to be knocked about in that way unless by their ene- 
 mies' sword in fair fight ! The first Prince of the Blood, 
 Antoine de Bourbon, the Prince de Cond6, the Queen- 
 mother, and the chancellor are all opposed to the operation."
 
 you, MADAME, HAVE KILLED YOUR SON / 
 SAID MARY STEWART.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 197 
 
 To Catherine's great satisfaction, the King of Navarre and 
 the Prince de Conde both made their appearance. 
 
 "What is the meaning of this ?" said the Due de Guise, 
 laying his hand on his poniard. 
 
 " As lord high constable, I have dismissed all the sentinels 
 from their posts. Blood and thunder ! we are not in an ene- 
 my's country, I suppose. The King our master is surrounded 
 by his subjects, and the States-General of the realm may de- 
 liberate in perfect liberty. I have just come from the Assem- 
 bly, gentlemen ; I laid before it the protest of my nephew de 
 Conde, who has been rescued by three hundred gentlemen. 
 You meant to let the royal blood and to decimate the nobility 
 of France. Henceforth I shall not trust anything you pro- 
 pose, Messieurs de Lorraine. And if you give the order for 
 the King's head to be opened, by this sword, which saved 
 France from Charles V., I say it shall not be done ! " 
 
 "All the more so," said Ambroise Pare, " because it is too 
 late, suffusion has begun." 
 
 "Your reign is over, gentlemen," said Catherine to the 
 two Guises, seeing from Fare's manner that there was now no 
 hope. 
 
 " You, madame, have killed your son ! " said Mary Stewart, 
 springing like a lioness from the bed to the window, and seiz- 
 ing the Italian Queen by the arm with a vehement clutch. 
 
 "My dear," replied Catherine de' Medici, with a keen, 
 cold look that expressed the hatred she had suppressed for six 
 months past, " you, to whose violent passion this death is due, 
 will now go to reign over your own Scotland and you will go 
 to-morrow. I am now Regent in fact as well as in name." 
 
 The three physicians had made a sign to the Queen-mother. 
 
 "Gentlemen," she went on, addressing the Guises, "it is 
 an understood thing between Monsieur de Bourbon whom I 
 hereby appoint lieutenant-general of the kingdom and my- 
 self that the conduct of affairs is our business. Come, Mon- 
 sieur le Chancellor."
 
 198 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 "The King is dead ! " said the Grand Master, obliged to 
 carry out the functions of his office. 
 
 "God save King Charles IX.! " cried the gentlemen who 
 had come with the King of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, 
 and the constable. 
 
 The ceremonies performed when a King of France dies 
 were carried out in solitude. When the king-at-arms called 
 out three times in the great hall, " The King is dead ! " after 
 the official announcement by the Due de Guise, there were 
 but a few persons present to answer " God save the King ! " 
 
 The Queen-mother, to whom the Countess Fieschi brought 
 the Due d'Orleans, now Charles IX., left the room leading 
 the boy by the hand, and followed by the whole Court. Only 
 the two Guises, the Duchesse de Guise, Mary Stewart, and 
 Dayelle remained in the room where Francis II. had breathed 
 his last, with two guards at the door, the Grand Master's 
 pages and the cardinal's, and their two private secretaries. 
 
 "Vive la France ! " shouted some of the Reformers, a first 
 cry of opposition. 
 
 Robertet, who owed everything to the Duke and the car- 
 dinal, terrified by their schemes and their abortive attempts, 
 secretly attached himself to the Queen-mother, whom the am- 
 bassadors of Spain, England, the German Empire, and Poland 
 met on the stairs, at their head Cardinal Tournon, who had 
 gone to call them after looking up from the courtyard to 
 Catherine de' Medici just as she was protesting against Am- 
 broise Fare's operation. 
 
 "Well, the sons of Louis d'Outre-Mer,* the descendants of 
 Charles de Lorraine, have proved cravens," said the cardinal 
 to the Duke. 
 
 "They would have been packed off to Lorraine," replied 
 his brother. "I declare to you, Charles," he went on, "if 
 the crown were there for the taking, I would not put out my 
 hand for it. That will be my son's task." 
 * From over the sea.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 199 
 
 " Will he ever have the army and the church on his side 
 as you have ? ' ' 
 
 " He will have something better." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "The people." 
 
 "And there is no one to mourn for him but me the poor 
 boy who loved me so well ! " said Mary Stewart, holding the 
 cold hand of her first husband. 
 
 "How can we be reconciled to the Queen?" said the 
 cardinal. 
 
 "Wait till she quarrels with the Huguenots," said the 
 Duchess. 
 
 The clashing interests of the House of Bourbon, of Cath- 
 erine, of the Guises, and of the Reformers produced such con- 
 fusion in Orleans that it was not till three days after that the 
 King's body, quite forgotten where it lay, was placed in a 
 coffin by obscure serving men, and carried to Saint-Denis in 
 a covered vehicle, followed only by the Bishop of Senlis and 
 two gentlemen. When this dismal little procession arrived 
 at the town of Etampes, a follower of the Chancellor de 
 1'Hopital attached to the hearse this bitter inscription, which 
 history has recorded : " Tanneguy du Chastel, where are you ? 
 Yet you, too, were French ! " A stinging innuendo, strik- 
 ing at Catherine, Mary Stewart, and the Guises. For what 
 Frenchman does not know that Tanneguy du Chastel spent 
 thirty thousand crowns (a million of francs in these days) on 
 the obsequies of Charles VII., the founder and benefactor of 
 his family? 
 
 As soon as the tolling bells announced the death of Francis 
 II., and the Connetable de Montmorency had thrown open 
 the gates of the town, Tounllon went up to his hayloft and 
 made his way to a hiding-place. 
 
 " What, can he be dead? " exclaimed the glover. 
 
 On hearing the voice, a man rose and replied, "Pret a
 
 200 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 servtr" ("Ready to serve," or "Ready, aye ready"), the 
 watchword of the Reformers of Calvin's sect. 
 
 This man was Chaudieu, to whom Tourillon related the 
 events of the past week, during which he had left the preacher 
 alone in his hiding-place with a twelve-ounce loaf for his sole 
 sustenance. 
 
 " Be off to the Prince de Conde, brother, ask him for a 
 safe-conduct for me, and find me a horse," cried the preacher. 
 "I must set out this moment." 
 
 " Write him a line, then, that I may be admitted." 
 
 " Here," said Chaudieu, after writing a few lines, " ask for 
 a pass from the King of Navarre, for under existing circum- 
 stances I must hasten to Geneva." 
 
 Within two hours all was ready, and the zealous minister 
 was on his way to Geneva, escorted by one of the King of 
 Navarre's gentlemen, whose secretary Chaudieu was supposed 
 to be, and who was the bearer of instructions to the Reformed 
 party in Dauphine. 
 
 Chaudieu's sudden departure was at once permitted, to 
 further the interests of Queen Catherine, who, to gain time, 
 made a bold suggestion which was kept a profound secret. 
 This startling scheme accounts for the agreement so unex- 
 pectedly arrived at between the Queen and the leaders of the 
 Protestant party. The crafty woman had, as a guarantee of 
 her good faith, expressed a desire to heal the breach between 
 the two churches in an assembly which could be neither a 
 Synod, nor a Council, nor a Convocation, for which indeed 
 a new name was needed, and, above all else, Calvin's consent. 
 It may be said in passing that, when this mystery came out, 
 it led to the alliance of the Guises with the Connetable de 
 Montmorency against Catherine and the King of Navarre a 
 strange coalition, known to history as the Triumvirate, be- 
 cause the Marechal de Saint-Andre was the third person in 
 this purely Catholic combination, to which Catherine's strange 
 proposal for a meeting gave rise. The Guises were then en-
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE D' MEDICI. 201 
 
 abled to judge very shrewdly of Catherine's policy ; they saw 
 that the Queen cared little enough for this assembly, and only 
 wanted to temporize with her allies till Charles IX. should be 
 of age ; indeed, they deceived Montmorency by making him 
 believe in a collusion between Catherine and the Bourbons, 
 while Catherine was taking them all in. The Queen, it will 
 be seen, had in a short time made great strides. 
 
 The spirit of argument and discussion which was then in 
 the air was particularly favorable to this scheme. The Catho- 
 lics and the Huguenots were all to shine in turn in this tour- 
 nament of words. Indeed, that is exactly what happened. 
 Is it not extraordinary that historians should have mistaken 
 the Queen's shrewdest craft for hesitancy? Catherine never 
 went more directly to the end she had in view than when 
 she seemed to have turned her back on it. So the King of 
 Navarre, incapable of fathoming Catherine's motives, dis- 
 patched Chaudieu to Calvin ; Chaudieu having secretly in- 
 tended to watch the course of events at Orleans, where he ran, 
 every hour, the risk of being seized and hanged without trial, 
 like any man who had been condemned to banishment. 
 
 At the rate of traveling then possible Chaudieu could not 
 reach Geneva before the month of February, the negotiations 
 could not be completed until March, and the meeting could 
 not be called until the beginning of May, 1561. Catherine 
 intended to amuse the Court meanwhile, and lull party-feeling 
 by the King's coronation, and by his first bed of justice in 
 the Parlement when L'Hopital and de Thou passed the royal 
 letter, by which Charles IX. intrusted the government of the 
 kingdom to his mother, seconded by Antoine de Navarre as 
 lieutenant-general of the realm the weakest prince of his 
 time. 
 
 Was it not one of the strangest things of that day to see a 
 whole kingdom in suspense for the Yea or Nay of a French 
 citizen, risen from obscurity, and living at Geneva? The 
 Pope of Rome held in check by the new Pope of Geneva?
 
 202 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 The two Princes of Lorraine, once so powerful, paralyzed by 
 a brief concord between the first Prince of the Blood, the 
 Queen-mother, and Calvin ? Is it not one of the most preg- 
 nant lessons that history has preserved to kings, a lesson that 
 should teach them to judge of men, to give genius its due 
 without any hesitation, and to seek it out, as Louis XIV. did, 
 wherever God has hidden it ? 
 
 Calvin, whose real name was not Calvin, but Cauvin, was 
 the son of a cooper at Noyon, in Picardy. Calvin's birth- 
 place accounts to a certain degree for the obstinacy mingled 
 with eccentric irritability which characterized the arbiter of 
 the destinies of France in the sixteenth century. No one is 
 less known than this man, who was the maker of Geneva and 
 of the spirit of its people. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who knew 
 little of history, was utterly ignorant of this man's influence 
 on his Republic. 
 
 At first, indeed, Calvin, dwelling in one of the humblest 
 houses in the upper town, near the Protestant church of Saint- 
 Pierre, over a carpenter's shop one point of resemblance 
 between him and Robespierre had no great authority in 
 Geneva. His influence was for a long time checked by the 
 hatred of the Genevese. 
 
 In the sixteenth century Geneva could boast of Farel, one 
 of those famous citizens who have remained unknown to the 
 world, some of them even to Geneva itself. In the year 1537, 
 or thereabouts, this Farel attached Calvin to Geneva by point- 
 ing out to him that it might become the stronghold of a refor- 
 mation more thorough than that of Luther. Farel and Cauvin 
 looked on Lutheranism as an incomplete achievement, inef- 
 fectual, and with no hold on France. Geneva, lying between 
 France and Italy, speaking the French tongue, was admirably 
 placed for communicating with Germany, Italy, and France. 
 Calvin adopted Geneva as the seat of his spiritual fortunes, 
 and made it the citadel of his dogmas. At Farel's request, 
 the town council of Geneva authorized Calvin to lecture on
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 203 
 
 theology in the month of September, 1538. Calvin left 
 preaching to Farel, his first disciple, and patiently devoted 
 himself to teaching his doctrine. His authority, which in the 
 later years of his life was paramount, took long to establish. 
 The great leader met with serious difficulties ; he was even 
 banished from Geneva for some time in consequence of the 
 austerity of his doctrines. There was a party of very good 
 folk who clung to their old luxury and the customs of their 
 fathers. But, as is always the case, these worthy people dreaded 
 ridicule; they would not admit what was the real object of 
 their struggles, and the battle was fought over details apart 
 from the real question. 
 
 Calvin insisted on leavened bread being used for the sacra- 
 ment, and on there being no holy days but Sunday. These 
 innovations were disapproved of at Berne and at Lausanne. 
 The Genevese were required to conform to the ritual of Swit- 
 zerland. Calvin and Farel resisted ; their political enemies 
 made a pretext of this refractoriness to exile them from Geneva, 
 whence they were banished for some years. At a later period 
 Calvin came back in triumph, invited by his flock. 
 
 Such persecution is always a consecration of moral power 
 when the prophet can wait. And this return was the era of 
 this Mahomet. Executions began, and Calvin organized his 
 religious terror. As soon as this commanding spirit reap- 
 peared, he was admitted to the citizenship of Geneva ; but, 
 after fourteen years' residence there, he was not yet on the 
 Council. At the time when Catherine was dispatching a 
 minister to treat with him, this king in the realm of thought 
 had no title but that of pastor of the church of Geneva. In- 
 deed, Calvin never had more than a hundred and fifty francs 
 a year in money, fifteen hundredweight of grain, and two casks 
 of wine for his whole remuneration. His brother, a tailor, 
 kept a shop a few paces away from the Place Saint-Pierre, in 
 a street where one of Calvin's printing-places may still be 
 seen.
 
 204 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 Such disinterestedness, which in Voltaire and Bacon was 
 lacking, but which is conspicuous in the life of Rabelais, of 
 Campanella, of Luther, of Vico, of Descartes, of Malebranche, 
 of Spinoza, of Loyola, of Kant, and of Jean-Jacques Rous- 
 seau, surely forms a noble setting for these sublime and ardent 
 souls. 
 
 Robespierre's life, so like that of Calvin, can alone, perhaps, 
 enable our contemporaries to understand Calvin's. He, 
 founding his power on a similar basis, was as cruel and as 
 tyrannical as the Arras lawyer. It is strange, too, that Picardy 
 Arras and Noyon should have given to the world these 
 two great instruments of reform. Those who examine into 
 the motives of the executions ordered by Calvin will find, on 
 a different scale, no doubt, all of 1793 at Geneva. Calvin had 
 Jacques Gruet beheaded " for having written impious letters 
 and worldly verse, and labored to overthrow church ordi- 
 nances." Just consider this sentence, and ask yourself if the 
 worst despotism can show in its annals a more absurdly pre- 
 posterous indictment. 
 
 Valentin Gentilis, condemned to death for involuntary 
 heresy, escaped the scaffold only by making more humiliating 
 amends than ever were inflicted by the Catholic church. 
 Seven years before the conference presently to be held in 
 Calvin's house, on the Queen-mother's proposals, Michel 
 Servet (or Servetus), a Frenchman, passing through Geneva, 
 was put in prison, tried, condemned on Calvin's testimony, 
 and burnt alive for having attacked the mystery of the 
 trinity in a work which had not been either composed or 
 printed at Geneva. Compare with this the eloquent defense 
 of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose book, attacking the Catholic 
 religion, written in France and published in Holland, was 
 indeed burnt by the hand of the executioner ; but the writer, 
 a foreigner, was only banished from the kingdom, where he 
 had been trying to strike at the fundamental truths of religion 
 NOTE. Up to 1561 the Lutherans and Calvinists were one.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 205 
 
 and government ; and compare the conduct of the Parlement 
 with that of the Genevese tyrant. 
 
 Bolsee, again, was brought to judgment for having other 
 ideas than Calvin on the subject of predestination. Weigh 
 all this, and say whether Fouquier-Tinville did anything 
 worse. Calvin's fierce religious intolerance was, morally 
 speaking, more intense, more implacable, than the fierce 
 political intolerance of Robespierre. On a wider stage than 
 was offered by Geneva, Calvin would have shed more blood 
 than the terrible apostle of political equality, as compared 
 with Catholic equality. 
 
 Three centuries earlier a monk, also a son of Picardy, had 
 led the whole of Western Europe to invade the East. Peter 
 the Hermit, Calvin, and Robespierre, sons of the same soil, 
 at intervals of three centuries, were, in a political sense, the 
 levers of Archimedes. Each in turn was an embodied idea 
 finding its fulcrum in the interests of man. 
 
 Calvin is, beyond doubt, the almost unrecognized maker 
 of that dismal town of Geneva, where, only ten years since, 
 a man, pointing out a carriage gate the first in the town, for 
 till then there had only been house-doors in Geneva said, 
 "Through that gate luxury drove into Geneva." Calvin, by 
 the severity of his sentences and the austerity of his doctrine, 
 introduced the hypocritical feeling that has been well called 
 Puritanism [the nearest English equivalent perhaps to the 
 French word mdmerie}. Good conduct, according to the 
 mdmiers or puritans, lay in renouncing the arts and the graces 
 of life, in eating well but without luxury, and in silently 
 amassing money without enjoying it otherwise than as Calvin 
 enjoyed his power in fancy. 
 
 Calvin clothed the citizens in the same gloomy livery as he 
 threw over life in general. He formed in the Consistory a 
 perfect Calvinist inquisition, exactly like the revolutionary 
 tribunal instituted by Robespierre. The Consistory handed 
 over the victims to be condemned by the Council, which
 
 206 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 
 
 Calvin ruled through the Consistory just as Robespierre ruled 
 the Convention through the Jacobin Club. Thus an eminent 
 magistrate of Geneva was sentenced to two months' impris- 
 onment, to lose his office, and to be prohibited from ever 
 filling any other, because he led a dissolute life and had made 
 friends among Calvin's foes. In this way Calvin was actually 
 a legislator ; it was he who created the austere manners, sober, 
 respectable, hideously dull, but quite irreproachable, which 
 have remained unchanged in Geneva to this day ; they pre- 
 vailed there indeed before the English habits were formed that 
 are universally known as Puritanism, under the influence of 
 the Cameronians, the followers of Cameron, a Frenchman 
 who trod in Calvin's steps. These manners have been 
 admirably described by Walter Scott. 
 
 The poverty of this man, an absolute sovereign, who treated 
 as a power with other powers, asking for their treasure, de- 
 manding armies, and filling his hands with their money for 
 the poor, proves that the Idea, regarded as the sole means of 
 dominion, begets political misers, men whose only enjoyment 
 is intellectual, and who, like the Jesuits, love power for its 
 own sake. Pitt, Luther, Calvin, and Robespierre, all these 
 Harpagons in greed of dominion, died penniless. History 
 has preserved the inventory made in Calvin's room after his 
 death, and everything, including his books, was valued at 
 fifty crowns. Luther's possessions amounted to as much ; 
 indeed, his widow, the famons Catherine de Bora, was obliged 
 to petition for a pension of fifty crowns bestowed on her by a 
 German Elector. 
 
 Potemkim, Mazarin, and Richelieu, men of thought and 
 action, who all three founded or prepared the foundations of 
 empires, each left three hundred millions of francs ; but these 
 men had a heart, they loved women and the arts, they built and 
 conquered ; while, with the exception of Luther, whose wife 
 was the Helen of this Iliad, none of the others could accuse 
 himself of ever having felt his heart throb for a woman.
 
 ABOU7 CATHERINE >? MEDICI. 207 
 
 This brief history was needed to explain Calvin's position 
 at Geneva. 
 
 One day early in February, 1561, on one of the mild even- 
 ings which occur at that time of year on the shores of Lake 
 Leman, two men on horseback arrived at Pre-1' Eveque, so- 
 called from the ancient residence of the Bishop of Geneva, 
 driven out thirty years before. These two men, acquainted, 
 no doubt, with the laws of Geneva as to the closing of the 
 gates, very necessary then, and absurd enough in these days, 
 rode toward the Porte de Rives ; but they suddenly drew rein 
 at the sight of a man of fifty, walking with the help of a 
 woman-servant's arm, and evidently returning to the town. 
 This personage, rather stout in figure, walked slowly and with 
 difficulty, dragging one foot before the other with evident 
 pain, and wearing broad, laced shoes of black velvet. 
 
 " It is he," said Chaudieu's companion, who dismounted, 
 gave his bridle to the preacher, and went forward open-armed 
 to meet the master. 
 
 The man on foot, who was in fact Jean Calvin, drew back 
 to avoid the embrace, and cast the severest glance at his dis- 
 ciple. At the age of fifty Calvin looked like a man of 
 seventy. Thick-set and fat, he seemed all the shorter because 
 frightful pain from the stone obliged him to walk much bent. 
 These sufferings were complicated with attacks of the worst 
 form of gout. Anybody might have quaked at the aspect of 
 that face, almost as broad as it was long, and bearing no more 
 signs of good-nature, in spite of its roundness, than that of 
 the dreadful King Henry VIII., whom Calvin, in fact, resem- 
 bled. His sufferings, which never gave him a reprieve, were 
 visible in two deep furrows on each side of his nose, follow- 
 ing the line of his mustache, and ending, like it, in a full gray 
 beard. 
 
 This face, though red and inflamed like a drunkard's, 
 showed patches where his complexion was yellow ; still, and 
 in spite of the velvet cap that covered his massive, broad
 
 208 ABOUT CATHERINE D& MEDICI. 
 
 head, it was possible to admire a large and nobly formed fore- 
 head, and beneath it two sparkling brown eyes, which in 
 moments of wrath could flash fire. Whether by reason of his 
 bulk, or because his neck was too thick and short, or, as a 
 consequence of late hours and incessant work, Calvin's head 
 seemed sunk between his broad shoulders, which compelled 
 him to wear a quite shallow, pleated ruff, on which his face 
 rested like John the Baptist's in the charger. Between his 
 mustache and his beard there peeped, like a rose, a sweet and 
 eloquent mouth, small, and fresh, and perfectly formed. This 
 face was divided by a square nose remarkable for its long 
 aquiline outline, resulting in high-lights at the tip, significantly 
 in harmony with the prodigious power expressed in this mag- 
 nificent head. 
 
 Though it was difficult to detect in these features any trace 
 of the constant headaches which tormented Calvin in the in- 
 tervals of a slow fever that was consuming him, pain, con- 
 stantly defied by study and a strong will, gave this apparently 
 florid face a terrible tinge, attributable, no doubt, to the hue 
 of the layer of fat due to the sedentary habits of a hard 
 worker. It bore the marks of the perpetual struggle of a 
 sickly temperament against one of the strongest wills known 
 in the history of mankind. Even the lips, though beautiful, 
 expressed cruelty. A chaste life, indispensable to vast pro- 
 jects, and compulsory in such conditions of sickly health, had 
 set its stamp on the face. There was regret in the serenity of 
 that mighty brow, and suffering in the gaze of the eyes, whose 
 calmness was a terror. 
 
 Calvin's dress gave effect to his head, for he wore the 
 famous black cloth gown, belted with a cloth band and brass 
 buckle, which was adopted as the costume of Calvinist 
 preachers, and which, having nothing to attract the eye, 
 directed all the spectator's attention to the face. 
 
 " I am in too great pain to embrace you, Theodore," said 
 Calvin to the elegant horseman.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 209 
 
 Theodore de Beze, at that time two-and-forty, and, by 
 Calvin's desire, a free citizen of Geneva for two years past, 
 was the most striking contrast to the terrible minister to whom 
 he had given his allegiance. Calvin, like all men of the 
 middle-class who have risen to moral supremacy, like all in- 
 ventors of a social system, was consumed with jealousy. He 
 abhorred his disciples, would suffer no equal, and could not 
 endure the slightest contradiction. However, between him 
 and Theodore de Beze the difference was so great ; this elegant 
 gentleman, gifted with a charming appearance, polished, 
 courteous, and accustomed to Court life/ was, in his eyes, so 
 unlike all his fierce Janissaries, that for him he set aside his 
 usual impulses. He never loved him, for this crabbed law- 
 giver knew absolutely nothing of friendship ; but having no 
 fear of finding his successor in him, he liked to play with 
 Theodore, as Richelieu at a later time played with his cat. 
 He found him pliant and amusing. When he saw that de Beze 
 succeeded to perfection in every mission, he took delight in 
 the polished tool of which he believed himself to be the soul 
 and guide ; so true is it that even those men who seem most 
 surly cannot live without some semblance of affection. 
 
 Theodore was Calvin's spoilt child. The great Reformer 
 never scolded him, overlooked his irregularities, his love 
 affairs, his handsome dress, and his choice language. Pos- 
 sibly Calvin was well content to show that the Reformation 
 could hold its own even among Court circles. Theodore de 
 Beze wanted to introduce a taste for art, letters, and poetry 
 into Geneva, and Calvin would listen to his schemes without 
 knitting his grizzled brows. Thus the contrast of character 
 and person was as complete as the contrast of mind in these 
 two celebrated men. 
 
 Calvin accepted Chaudieu's very humble bow, and replied 
 
 by slightly bending his head. Chaudieu slipped the bridles 
 
 of both horses over his right arm and followed the two great 
 
 Reformers, keeping to the right of Theodore de Beze, who 
 
 14
 
 210 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 was walking on Calvin's right. Calvin's housekeeper ran 
 forward to prevent the gate being shut, by telling the captain 
 of the Guard that the pastor had just had a severe attack of 
 pain. 
 
 Theodore de Beze was a native of the Commune of Vezelay, 
 the first to demand for itself corporate government, of which 
 the curious tale has been told by one of the Thierrys. Thus 
 the spirit of citizenship and resistance which was endemic to 
 Vezelay no doubt contributed an item to the great rising of 
 the Reformers in the person of this man, who is certainly a 
 most singular figure in the history of heresy. 
 
 " So you still suffer great pain? " said Theodore to Calvin. 
 
 "The sufferings of the damned, a Catholic would say," re- 
 plied the Retormer, with the bitterness that colored his least 
 remarks. "Ah ! I am going fast, my son, and what will be- 
 come of you when I am gone ? " 
 
 "We will fight by the light of your writings," said 
 Chaudieu. 
 
 Calvin smiled ; his purple face assumed a more gracious 
 expression, and he looked kindly on Chaudieu. 
 
 "Well, have you brought me any news!" he asked. 
 " Have they killed a great many of us?" he added with a 
 smile, and a sort of mocking glee sparkled in his brown eyes. 
 
 " No," said Chaudieu ; " peace is the order of the day." 
 
 " So much the worse, so much the worse ! " cried Calvin. 
 " Every form of peace would be a misfortune if it were not 
 always, in fact, a snare. Our strength lies in persecution. 
 Where should we be if the church took up the Reformation ? " 
 
 "Indeed," said Theodore, "that is what the Queen- 
 mother seems inclined to do." 
 
 " She is quite capable of it," said Calvin. " I am studying 
 that woman." 
 
 " From hence?" cried Chaudieu. 
 
 " Does distance exist for the spirit? " said Calvin severely, 
 regarding the interruption as irreverent. " Catherine longs
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 211 
 
 for power, and women who aim at that lose all sense of honor 
 and faith. What is in the wind ? ' ' 
 
 " Well, she suggests a sort of Council," said Theodore de 
 Beze. 
 
 "Near Paris?" asked Calvin roughly. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Ah ! that is well ! " said Calvin. 
 
 " And we are to try to come to an understanding, and draw 
 up a public act to consolidate the two churches." 
 
 "Ah! if only she had courage enough to separate the 
 French Church from the Church of Rome, and to create a 
 patriarch in France, as in the Greek Church!"* cried the 
 Reformer, whose eyes glistened at this idea, which would 
 place him on a throne. "But, my son, can a Pope's niece 
 be truthful? She only wants to gain time." 
 
 ' ' And do not we need time to recover from our check at 
 Amboise, and to organize some formidable resistance in vari- 
 ous parts of the kingdom?" 
 
 "She has sent away the Queen of Scotland," said Chau- 
 dieu. 
 
 " That is one less, then," said Calvin, as they passed 
 through the Porte de Rives. "Elizabeth of England will 
 keep her busy. Two neighboring queens will soon be fight- 
 ing ; one is handsome, and the other ugly enough a first 
 cause of irritation ; and then there is the question of legiti- 
 macy " 
 
 He rubbed his hands, and his glee had such a ferocious taint 
 that de Beze shuddered, for he too saw the pool of blood at 
 which his master was gazing. 
 
 "The Guises have provoked the House of Bourbon," said 
 de Beze after a pause ; " they broke the stick between them 
 at Orleans." 
 
 "Ay," said Calvin, "and you, my son, did not believe 
 me when, as you last started for Nerac, I told you that we 
 * He is an absolute ruler; his title, Ecumenical.
 
 212 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 should end by stirring up war to the death between the two 
 branches of the royal family of France. 
 
 "So at last I have a court, a king, a dynasty on my side. 
 My doctrine has had its effect on the masses. The citizen 
 class understand me; henceforth they will call those who 
 go to mass idolaters, those who paint the walls of their place 
 of worship, and put up pictures and statues there. Oh, 
 the populace find it far easier to demolish cathedrals and 
 palaces than to discuss justification by faith or the real pres- 
 ence ! Luther was a wrangler, I am an army ! He was a 
 reasoner, I am a system ! He, my child, was but a tormentor, 
 I am a Tarquin ! 
 
 " Yes, they of the truth will destroy churches, will tear 
 down pictures, will make millstones of the statues to grind 
 the bread of the people. There are bodies in great States, I 
 will have only individuals ; bodies are too resistant, and see 
 clearly when individuals are blind. 
 
 "Now, we must combine this agitating doctrine with polit- 
 ical interests, to consolidate it and to keep up the material of 
 my armies. I have satisfied the logic of thrifty minds and 
 thinking brains by this bare, undecorated worship which lifts 
 religion into the sphere of the ideal. I have made the mob 
 understand the advantages of the suppression of ceremonial. 
 
 " I^DW, it is your part, Theodore, to enlist people's inter- 
 ests. Do not overstep that line. In the way of doctrine 
 everything has been done, everything has been said ; add not 
 one jot ! Why does Cameron, that little pastor in Gascony, 
 meddle with writing?" 
 
 Calvin, Theodore de Beze, and Chaudieu went along the 
 streets of the upper town and through the crowd, without 
 any attention being paid to the men who were unchaining 
 the mob in cities and ravaging France. After this terrifying 
 harangue, they walked on in silence, till they reached the 
 tittle square of Saint-Pierre, and made their way toward the 
 minister's dwelling. Calvin's lodging consisted of three
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 213 
 
 rooms on the third floor of this house, which is hardly known, 
 and of which no one ever tells you in Geneva where, in- 
 deed, there is no statue to Calvin. The rooms were floored 
 and wainscoted with pine, and on one side there were a 
 kitchen and a servant's room. The entrance, as is commonly 
 the case in Genevese houses, was through the kitchen, which 
 opened into a small room with two windows, parlor, dining, 
 and drawing-room in one. Next to this was the study where, 
 for fourteen years, Calvin's mind had carried on the battle 
 with pain, and beyond was his bedroom. Four oak chairs 
 with tapestry seats, placed around a long table, formed all the 
 furniture of the sitting-room. A white earthenware stove in 
 one corner of the room gave out a pleasant warmth ; paneling 
 of unvarnished pine covered the walls, and there was no other 
 decoration. The bareness of the place was quite in keeping 
 with the frugal and simple life led by the Reformer. 
 
 "Well," said de Beze, as he went in, taking advantage of 
 a few minutes when Chaudieu had left them to put up the 
 horses at a neighboring inn, "what am I to do ? Will you 
 agree to this meeting? " 
 
 "Certainly," said Calvin. "You, my son, will bear the 
 brunt of the struggle. Be decisive, absolute. Nobody neither 
 the Queen, nor the Guises, nor I wants pacification as a re- 
 sult ; it would not suit our purpose. I have much confidence 
 in Duplessis-Mornay. Give him the leading part. We are 
 alone " said he, with a suspicious glance into the kitchen, 
 of which the door was open, showing two shirts and some 
 collars hung to dry on a line. " Go and shut all the doors. 
 Well," he went on, when Theodore had done his bidding, 
 " we must compel the King of Navarre to join the Guises and 
 the Conntable de Montmorency, by advising him to desert 
 Queen Catherine de' Medici. Let us take full advantage of 
 his weakness ; he is but a poor creature. If he prove a turn- 
 coat to the Italian woman, she, finding herself bereft of his 
 support, must inevitably join the Prince de Conde and
 
 214 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 Coligny. Such a manoeuvre may possibly compromise her so 
 effectually that she must remain on our side " 
 
 Theodore de Beze raised the hem of Calvin's gown and 
 kissed it. 
 
 " Oh, master," said he, " you are indeed great ! " 
 
 "Unfortunately, I am dying, my dear Theodore. If I 
 should die before seeing you again," he went on, whispering 
 in the ear of his Minister for Foreign Affairs, " remember to 
 strike a great blow by the hand of one of our martyrs." 
 
 " Another Minard to be killed ? " 
 
 " Higher than a lawyer." 
 
 "A king?" 
 
 " Higher still. The man who wants to be king." 
 
 "The Due de Guise ! " cried Theodore, with a gesture of 
 dismay. 
 
 "Well," cried Calvin, fancying that he discerned refusal, 
 or at least an instinct of resistance, and failing to notice the 
 entrance of Chaudieu, " have we not a right to strike as we 
 are struck? Yes, and in darkness and silence! May we 
 not return wound for wound, and death for death ? Do the 
 Catholics hesitate to lay snares for us and kill us ? I trust to 
 you ! Burn their churches. Go on, my sons ! If you have 
 any devoted youths " 
 
 11 1 have," Chaudieu put in. 
 
 "Use them as weapons of war. To triumph, we may use 
 every means. The Balafre, that terrible man of war, is, like 
 me, more than a man ; he is a dynasty, as I am a system ; he 
 is capable of annihilating us ! Death to the Due de Guise 1 " 
 ' "I should prefer a peaceful victory, brought about by time 
 and reason," said de Beze. 
 
 "By time ! " cried Calvin, flinging over his chair. "By 
 reason ? Are you mad ? Conquer by reason ? Do you know 
 nothing of men, you who live among them idiot? What is 
 so fatal to my teaching, thrice-dyed simpleton, is that it is 
 based on reason. By the thunders of Saint Paul, by the sword
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 215 
 
 of the mighty ! Pumpkin as you are, Theodore, cannot you 
 see the power that the catastrophe at Amboise has given to 
 my reforms ? Ideas can never grow till they are watered with 
 blood. The murder of the Due de Guise would give rise to a 
 t fearful persecution, and I hope for it with all my might ! To 
 us reverses are more favorable than success. The Reformation 
 can be beaten and endure, do you hear, oaf? Whereas Cathol- 
 icism is overthrown if we win a single battle. 
 
 " What are these lieutenants of mine ? Wet rags and not 
 men ! Guts on two legs ! Christened baboons ! O God, 
 wilt Thou not grant me another ten years to live ? If I die 
 too soon, the cause of religion is lost in the hands of such 
 rascals ! 
 
 " You are as helpless as Antoine de Navarre ! Begone ! 
 leave me ! I must have a better messenger ! You are an ass, 
 a popinjay, a poet ! Go, write your Catullics, your Tibullics, 
 your acrostics ! Hoo ! " 
 
 The pain he suffered was entirely swamped by the fires of 
 his wrath. Gout vanished before this fearful excitement. 
 Calvin's face was blotched with purple, like the sky before a 
 storm. His broad forehead shone. His eyes flashed fire. 
 He was not like the same man. He let himself give way to 
 this sort of epileptic frenzy, almost madness, which was 
 habitual with him ; but, then, struck by the silence of his two 
 listeners, and observing Chaudieu, who said to de Beze, 
 " The burning bush of Horeb ! " the minister sat down, was 
 dumb, and covered his face with his hands, with their thick- 
 ened joints, and his fingers quivered in spite of their strength. 
 
 A few minutes later, while still trembling from the last 
 shocks of this tempest the result of his austere life he said 
 in a broken voice 
 
 " My vices, which are many, are less hard to subdue than 
 my impatience ! Ah ! wild beast, shall I never conquer you? " 
 he exclaimed, striking his breast. 
 
 " My beloved master," said de Beze in a caressing tone,
 
 216 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 taking his hands and kissing them, "Jove thunders, but he 
 can smile." 
 
 Calvin looked at his disciple with a softened expression. 
 
 "Do not misunderstand me, my friends," he said in a 
 milder tone. 
 
 "I understand that the shepherds of nations have terrible 
 burdens to bear," replied Theodore. "You have a world on 
 your shoulders." 
 
 "I," said Chaudieu, who had become thoughtful under the 
 master's abuse, " have three martyrs on whom we can depend. 
 Stewart, who killed the president, is free " 
 
 " That will not do," said Calvin mildly, and smiling, as a 
 great man can smile when fair weather follows a storm on his 
 face, as if he were ashamed of the tempest. " I know men. 
 He who kills one president will not kill a second." 
 
 "Is it absolutely necessary?" said de Beze. 
 
 "What, again?" cried Calvin, his nostrils expanding. 
 " There, go ; you will put me in a rage again. You have my 
 decision. You, Chaudieu, walk in your own path, and keep 
 the Paris flock together. God be with you. Dinah ! Light 
 my friends out." 
 
 "Will you not allow me to embrace you ? " said de Beze 
 with emotion. " Who can tell what the morrow even will 
 bring forth? We may be imprisoned in spite of safe-con- 
 ducts " 
 
 "And yet you want to spare them ? " said Calvin, embracing 
 de Beze. 
 
 He took Chaudieu's hand, saying 
 
 " Mind you, not Huguenots, not Reformers : be Calvinists. 
 Speak only of Calvinism. Alas ! this is not ambition, for I am 
 a dying man ! Only, everything of Luther's must be de- 
 stroyed, to the very names of Lutheran and Lutheranism." 
 
 "Indeed, divine man, you deserve such honor!" cried 
 Chaudieu. 
 
 " Uphold uniformity of creed. Do not allow ay further
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 217 
 
 examination or reconstruction. If new sects arise from 
 among us, we are lost." 
 
 To anticipate events and dismiss Theodore de Beze, who 
 returned to Paris with Chaudieu, it may be said that Poltrot, 
 who, eighteen months later, fired a pistol at the Due de Guise, 
 confessed, under torture, that he had been urged to the crime 
 by Theodore de Beze ; however, he retracted this statement 
 at a later stage. Indeed, Bossuet, who weighed all the his- 
 torical evidence, did not think that the idea of this attempt 
 was due to Theodore de Beze. Since Bossuet, however, a 
 dissertation of an apparently trivial character, a propos to a 
 famous ballad, enabled a compiler of the eighteenth century to 
 prove that the song sung throughout France by the Huguenots 
 on the death of the Due de Guise was written by Theodore 
 de Beze ; and, moreover, that the well-known ballad or lament 
 on Malbrouck the Duke of Marlborough is plagiarized 
 from Theodore de Beze.* 
 
 On the day when Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu reached 
 Paris, the Court had returned thither from Reims, where 
 Charles IX. had been crowned. This ceremony, to which 
 Catherine gave unusual splendor, making it the occasion of 
 great festivities, enabled her to gather round her the leaders 
 of every faction. 
 
 After studying the various parties and interests, she saw a 
 choice of two alternatives either to enlist them on the side 
 of the throne or to set them against each other. The Con- 
 netable de Montmorency, above all else a Catholic, whose 
 nephew, the Prince de Cond, was the leader of the Refor- 
 mation, and whose children also had a leaning to that creed, 
 blamed the Queen-mother for allying herself with that party. 
 The Guises, on their side, worked hard to gain over Antoine 
 de Bourbon, a Prince of no strength of character, and attach 
 him to their faction, and his wife, the Queen of Navarre, 
 informed by de Beze, allowed this to be done. These diffi- 
 * See note at the end of this volume.
 
 218 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 culties checked Catherine, whose newly acquired authority 
 needed a brief period of tranquillity ; she impatiently awaited 
 Calvin's reply by de Beze and Chaudieu, sent to the great 
 Reformer on behalf of the Prince de Conde, the King of 
 Navarre, Coligny, d'Andelot, and Cardinal de Chatillon. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Queen-mother was true to her promises to 
 the Prince de Conde. The chancellor quashed the trial, in 
 which Christophe was involved, by referring the case to the 
 Paris Parlement, and they annulled the sentence pronounced 
 by the Commission, declaring it incompetent to try a Prince 
 of the Blood. The Parlement reopened the trial by the 
 desire of the Guises and the Queen-mother. La Sagne's 
 papers had been placed in Catherine's hands, and she had 
 burnt them. This sacrifice was the first pledge given, quite 
 vainly, by the Guises to the Queen-mother. The Parlement, 
 not having this decisive evidence, reinstated the Prince in all 
 his rights, possessions, and honors. 
 
 Christophe, thus released when Orleans was in all its excite- 
 ment over the King's accession, was excluded from the case, 
 and, as a compensation for his sufferings, was passed as a 
 pleader by Monsieur de Thou. 
 
 The Triumvirate the coalition of interests which were 
 imperiled by Catherine's first steps in authority was hatch- 
 ing under her very eyes. Just as in chemistry hostile elements 
 fly asunder at the shock that disturbs their compulsory union, 
 so in politics the alliance of antagonistic interests can never 
 last long. Catherine fully understood that, sooner or later, 
 she must fall back on the conndtable and the Guises to fight 
 the Huguenots. The convocation, which served to flatter the 
 vanity of the orators on each side, and, as an excuse for 
 another imposing ceremony after that of the coronation, to 
 clear the blood-stained field for the religious war that had, 
 indeed, already begun, was as futile in the eyes of the Guises 
 as it was in Catherine's. The Catholics could not fail to be 
 the losers ; for the Huguenots, under the pretense of discus-
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 219 
 
 sion, would be able to proclaim their doctrine in the face of 
 all France, under the protection of the King and his mother. 
 The Cardinal de Lorraine, flattered by Catherine into the 
 hope of conquering the heretics by the eloquence of the 
 princes of the church, induced his brother to consent. To the 
 Queen-mother six months of peace meant much. 
 
 A trivial incident was near wrecking the power which Cath- 
 erine was so laboriously building up. This is the scene as 
 recorded by history ; it occurred on the very day when the 
 envoys from Geneva arrived at the Hotel de Coligny in 
 the Rue Bethisy, not far from the Louvre. At the corona- 
 tion, Charles IX., who was much attached to his instructor, 
 Amyot, made him high almoner of France. This affection 
 was fully shared by the Due d'Anjou (Henry III.), who also 
 was Amyot's pupil. 
 
 Catherine heard this from the two Gondis on the way home 
 from Reims to Paris. She had relied on this Crown appoint- 
 ment to gain her a supporter in the church, and a person of 
 importance to set against the Cardinal de Lorraine ; she had 
 intended to bestow it on Cardinal de Tournon, so as to find 
 in him, as in 1'Hopital, a second crutch to use her own 
 words. On arriving at the Louvre, she sent for the preceptor. 
 Her rage at seeing the catastrophe that threatened her policy 
 from the ambition of this self-made man the son of a shoe- 
 maker was such that she addressed him in this strange speech 
 recorded by certain chroniclers 
 
 " What ! I can make the Guises cringe, the Colignys, the 
 Montmorencys, the House of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, 
 and I am to be balked by a priestling like you, who was not 
 content to be Bishop of Auxerre ! " 
 
 Amyot excused himself. He had, in fact, asked for noth- 
 ing ; the King had appointed him of his own free will to this 
 office, of which he, a humble teacher, regarded himself as 
 unworthy. 
 
 "Rest assured, master," for it was by this nanae that the
 
 220 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 Kings Charles IX. and Henri III. addressed this great writer, 
 "that you will not be left standing for twenty-four hours un- 
 less you induce your pupil to change his mind." 
 
 Between death promised him in such an uncompromising 
 way, and the abdication of the highest ecclesiastical office in 
 the kingdom, the shoemaker's son, who had grown covetous, 
 and hoped perhaps for a cardinal's hat, determined to tem- 
 porize. He hid in the abbey of Saint-Germain en Laye. 
 
 At his first dinner, Charles IX., not seeing Amyot, asked 
 for him. Some Guisard, no doubt, told the King what had 
 passed between Amyot and the Queen-mother. 
 
 " What ! " cried he, " has he been made away with because 
 I created him high almoner?" 
 
 He went off to his mother in the violent state of a child 
 when one of his fancies is contravened. 
 
 "Madame," said he, as he entered her room, "did I not 
 comply with your wishes and sign the letter you asked of me 
 for the Parlement, by virtue of which you govern my king- 
 dom ? Did you not promise me, when you laid it before me, 
 that my will should be yours ? and now the only favor I have 
 cared to bestow excites your jealousy. The chancellor talks 
 of making me of age at fourteen, three years from hence, and 
 you treat me as a child ! By God, but I mean to be King, 
 and as much a King as my father and grandfather were kings !" 
 
 The tone and vehemence with which he spoke these words 
 were a revelation to Catherine of her son's true character; it 
 was like a blow from a bludgeon on her heart. 
 
 "And he speaks thus to me," thought she, "to me, who 
 made him King. Monsieur," she said, " the business of 
 being King in such times as these is a difficult one, and you 
 do not yet know the master minds you have to deal with. 
 You will never have any true and trustworthy friend but your 
 mother, or other adherents than those whom she long since 
 attached to her, and but for whom you would perhaps not be 
 alive at this day. The Guises are averse both to your position
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 221 
 
 and your person, I would have you know. If they could sew 
 me up in a sack and throw me into the river," said she, 
 pointing to the Seine, " they would do it to-night. Those 
 Lorrains feel that I am a lioness defending her cubs, and that 
 stays the bold hands they stretch out to clutch the crown. 
 To whom, to what is your preceptor attached ? where are his 
 allies ? what is his authority ? what services can he do you ? 
 what weight will his words have ? Instead of gaining a but- 
 tress to uphold your power, you have undermined it. 
 
 "The Cardinal de Lorraine threatens you; he plays the 
 King, and keeps his hat on his head in the presence of the 
 first Prince of the Blood ; was it not necessary to counter- 
 balance him with another cardinal, invested with authority 
 equal to his own ? Is Amyot, a shoemaker who might tie the 
 bows of his shoes, the man to defy him to his face ? Well, 
 well, you are fond of Amyot. You have appointed him ! 
 Your first decision shall be respected, my lord ! But before 
 deciding any further, have the kindness to consult me. 
 Listen to reasons of State, and your boyish good-sense will 
 perhaps agree with my old woman's experience before decid- 
 ing, when you know all the difficulties." 
 
 "You must bring back my master!" said the King, not 
 listening very carefully to the Queen, on finding her speech 
 full of reproofs. 
 
 "Yes, you shall have him," replied she. "But not he, 
 nor even that rough Cypierre, can teach you to reign." 
 
 "It is you, my dear mother," he exclaimed, mollified by 
 his triumph, and throwing off the threatening and sly expres- 
 sion which nature had stamped on his physiognomy. 
 
 Catherine sent Gondi to find the high almoner. When the 
 Florentine had discovered Amyot's retreat, and the bishop 
 heard that the courtier came from the Queen, he was seized 
 with terror, and would not come out of the abbey. In this 
 extremity Catherine was obliged to write him himself, and in 
 such terms that he came back and obtained the promise of her
 
 222 ABOUT CATHERINE &' MEDICI. 
 
 support, but only on condition of his obeying her blindly in 
 all that concerned the King. 
 
 This little domestic tempest being lulled, Catherine came 
 back to the Louvre. It was more than a year since she had 
 left it, and she now held council with her nearest friends as to 
 how she was to deal with the young King, whom Cypierre 
 had complimented on his firmness. 
 
 " What is to be done? " said she to the two Gondis, Rug- 
 gieri, Birague, and Chiverni, now tutor and chancellor to the 
 Due d'Anjou. 
 
 "First of all," said Birague, "get rid of Cypierre; he 
 is not a courtier, he will never fall in with your views, and 
 will think he is doing his duty by opposing you." 
 
 " Whom can I trust? " cried the Queen. 
 
 " One of us," said Birague. 
 
 " By my faith," said Gondi, " I promise to make the King 
 as pliant as the King of Navarre." 
 
 " You let the late King die to save your other children ; 
 well, then, do as the grand Signers of Constantinople do : 
 crush this one's passions and fancies," said Albert de Gondi. 
 " He likes the arts, poetry, hunting, and a little girl he saw 
 at Orleans ; all this is quite enough to occupy him." 
 
 "Then you would be the King's tutor?" said Catherine, 
 to the more capable of the two Gondis. 
 
 "If you will give me the necessary authority; it might be 
 well to make me a marshal of France and a Duke. Cypierre 
 is too small a man to continue in that office. Henceforth the 
 tutor of a King of France should be a marshal and Duke, or 
 something of the kind " 
 
 " He is right," said Birague. 
 
 "Poetry and hunting," said Catherine, in a dreamy voice. 
 
 " We will hunt and make love ! " cried Gondi. 
 
 "Beside," said Chiverni, "you are sure of Amyot, who 
 will always be afraid of a drugged cup in case of disobedience, 
 and with Gondi you will have the King in leading strings."
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 223 
 
 " You were resigned to the loss of one son to save the three 
 others and the Crown ; now you must have the courage to 
 keep this one occupied to save the kingdom to save yourself 
 perhaps," said Ruggieri. 
 
 "He has just offended me deeply," said Catherine. 
 
 " He does not know how much he owes you ; and if he 
 did, you would not be safe," Birague replied with grave em- 
 phasis. 
 
 "It is settled," said the Queen, on whom this reply had a 
 startling effect; "you are to be the King's governor, Gondi. 
 The King must make me a return in favor of one of my friends 
 for the concession I have made for that cowardly bishop. 
 But the fool has lost the cardinal's hat ; so long as I live I 
 will hinder the Pope from fitting it to his head ! We should 
 have been very strong with Cardinal de Tournon to support 
 us. What a trio they would have made : he, as high almoner, 
 with 1'Hopital and de Thou ! As to the citizens of Paris, I 
 mean to make my son coax them over, and we will lean on 
 them." 
 
 And Gondi was, in fact, made a marshal, created Due de 
 Retz and tutor to the King, within a few days. 
 
 This little council was just over when Cardinal de Tournon 
 came to announce to the Queen the messengers from Calvin. 
 Admiral Coligny escorted them to secure them respectful 
 treatment at the Louvre. The Queen summoned her battalion 
 of maids of honor, and went into the great reception-room 
 built by her husband, which no longer exists in the Louvre 
 of our day. 
 
 At that time the staircase of the Louvre was in the clock- 
 tower. Catherine's rooms were in the older part of the build- 
 ing, part of which survives in the Cour du Mus6e. The pres- 
 ent staircase to the galleries was built where the Salic des 
 ballets (dancing hall) was before it. A ballet at that time 
 meant a sort of dramatic entertainment performed by all the 
 Court.
 
 224 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICL 
 
 Revolutionary prejudice led to the most ridiculous mistake 
 as to Charles IX. a propos to the Louvre. During the Revolu- 
 tion a belief defamatory of this King, whose character has 
 been caricatured, made a monster of him. Chenier's tragedy 
 was written under the provocation of a tablet hung up on the 
 window of the part of the palace that projects toward the 
 quay. On it were these words, " From this window Charles 
 IX. of execrable memory fired on the citizens of Paris." It 
 may be well to point out to future historians and studious 
 persons that the whole of that side of the Louvre, now called 
 the Old Louvre the projecting wing at a right angle to the 
 quay, connecting the galleries with the Louvre by what is 
 called the Galerie d'Apollon, and the Louvre with the Tuil- 
 eries by the picture gallery was not in existence in the time 
 of Charles IX. The principal part of the site of the river- 
 front, where lies the garden known as le Jardin de 1'Infante, 
 was occupied by the Hotel de Bourbon, which belonged, in 
 fact, to the House of Navarre. It would have been physically 
 impossible for Charles IX. to fire from the Louvre of Henri II. 
 on a boat full of Huguenots crossing the Seine, though he 
 could see the river from some windows, which are now built 
 up, in that part of the palace. 
 
 Even if historians and libraries did not possess maps in 
 which the Louvre at the time of Charles IX. is perfectly 
 shown, the building bears in itself the refutation of the error. 
 The several kings who have contributed to this vast structure 
 have never failed to leave their cypher on the work in some 
 form of monogram. The venerable buildings, now all dis- 
 colored, of that part of the Louvre that goes down to the 
 quay bear the initials of Henri II. and of Henri IV.; quite 
 different from those of Henri III., who added to his H Cath- 
 erine's double C in a way that looks like D to superficial 
 observers. It was Henri IV. who was able to add his own 
 palace, the Hotel de Bourbon, with its gardens and domain, 
 on to the Louvre. He first thought of uniting Catherine de'
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE Z>E' MEDICI. 225 
 
 Medici's palace to the Louvre by finishing the galleries, of 
 
 which the exquisite sculpture is too little appreciated. 
 
 But if no plan of Paris under Charles IX. were in existence, 
 nor the monograms of the two Henrys, the difference in the 
 architecture would be enough to give the lie to this calumny. 
 The rusticated bosses of the Hotel de la Force, and of this 
 portion of the Louvre, are precisely characteristic of the 
 transition from the architecture of the Renaissance to the 
 architecture of Henri III., Henri IV., and Louis XIII. 
 
 This archaeological digression, in harmony, to be sure, with 
 the pictures at the beginning of this narrative, enables us to 
 see the aspect of this other part of Paris, of which nothing 
 now remains but that portion of the Louvre, where the beau- 
 tiful bas-reliefs are perishing day by day. 
 
 When the Court was informed that the Queen was about to 
 give audience to Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu, introduced 
 by Admiral Coligny, every one who had a right to go into 
 the throne-room hastened to be present at this interview. It 
 was about six o'clock; Admiral Coligny had supped, and was 
 picking his teeth as he walked upstairs between the two Cal- 
 vinists. This playing with a toothpick was a confirmed habit 
 with the admiral ; he involuntarily picked his teeth in the 
 middle of a battle when meditating a retreat. " Never trust 
 the admiral's toothpick, the constable's ' No,' nor Catherine's 
 'Yes,' " was one of the proverbs of the Court at the time. 
 And after the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew, the mob made 
 horrible mockery of the admiral's body, which hung for three 
 days at Montfaucon, by sticking a grotesque toothpick between 
 his teeth. Chroniclers have recorded this hideous jest. And, 
 indeed, this trivial detail in the midst of a tremendous catas- 
 trophe is just like the Paris mob, which thoroughly deserves 
 this grotesque parody of a line of Boileau's: 
 
 " Le Frangais, n6 malin, cr6a la guillotine." 
 
 Or : The Frenchman, a born wag, invented the guillotine. 
 16
 
 226 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 In all ages, the Parisians have made fun before, during, and 
 after the most terrible revolutions. 
 
 Theodore de Beze was in Court dress, black silk long-hose, 
 slashed shoes, full trunks, a doublet of black silk, also slashed, 
 and a little, black velvet cloak, over which fell a fine white 
 ruff, deeply gauffered. He wore the tuft of beard called a 
 virgule (a comma) and a mustache, his sword hung by his 
 side, and he carried a cane. All who know the pictures at 
 Versailles, or the portraits by Odieuvre, know his round and 
 almost jovial face, with bright eyes, and the remarkably high 
 and broad forehead, which is characteristic of the poets and 
 writers of that time. De Beze had a pleasant face, which 
 did him good service. He formed a striking contrast to 
 Coligny, whose austere features are known to all, and to the 
 bitter and bilious-looking Chaudieu, who wore the preacher's 
 gown and Calvin ist bands. 
 
 The state of affairs in the Chamber of Deputies in our own 
 day, and that, no doubt, in the Convention too, may enable 
 us to understand how at that Court and at that time persons, 
 who six months after would be fighting to the death and 
 waging heinous warfare, would meanwhile meet, address each 
 other with courtesy, and exchange jests. 
 
 When Coligny entered the room, Birague, who would coldly 
 advise the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew, and the Cardinal de 
 Lorraine, who would tell his servant Besme not to miss the ad- 
 miral, came forward to meet him, and the Piedmontese said, 
 with a smile 
 
 " Well, my dear admiral, so you have undertaken to intro- 
 duce these gentlemen from Geneva?" 
 
 "And you will count it to me for a crime perhaps," re- 
 plied the admiral in jest, "while, if you had undertaken it, 
 you would have scored it as a merit." 
 
 "Master Calvin, I hear, is very ill," said the Cardinal de 
 Lorraine to Theodore de Beze. " I hope we shall not be sus- 
 pected of having stirred his broth for him ! "
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 227 
 
 "Nay, monseigneur, you would lose too much by that," 
 said Theodore de Beze shrewdly. 
 
 The Due de Guise, who was examining Chaudieu, stared 
 at his brother and Birague, who were both startled by this 
 speech. 
 
 " By God ! " exclaimed the cardinal, " heretics are of the 
 right faith in keen politics ! " 
 
 To avoid difficulties, the Queen, who was announced at 
 this moment, remained standing. She began by conversing 
 with the connetable, who spoke eagerly of the scandal of her 
 admitting Calvin's envoys to her presence. 
 
 " But, you see, my dear constable, we receive them without 
 ceremony. ' ' 
 
 "Madame," said the admiral, approaching Catherine, 
 " these are the two doctors of the new religion who have come 
 to an understanding with Calvin, and have taken his instruc- 
 tions as to a meeting where the various churches of France 
 may compromise their differences." 
 
 " This is Monsieur Theodore de Beze, my wife's very great 
 favorite," said the King of Navarre, coming forward and 
 taking de Beze by the hand. 
 
 "And here is Chaudieu!" cried the Prince de CondS. 
 " My friend the Due de Guise knows the captain," he added, 
 looking at le Balafr; "perhaps he would like to make ac- 
 quaintance with the minister." 
 
 This sally made everybody laugh, even Catherine. 
 
 "By my troth," said the Due de Guise, "I am delighted 
 to see a man who can so well choose a follower, and make use 
 of him in his degree. One of your men," said he to the 
 preacher, "endured, without dying or confessing anything, 
 the extreme of torture ; I fancy myself brave, but I do not 
 know that I could endure so well ! " 
 
 "Hm!" observed Ambroise Pare, "you said not a word 
 when I pulled the spear out of your face at Calais." 
 
 Catherine, in the middle of the semicircle formed right and
 
 228 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 left of the maids of honor and Court officials, kept silence. 
 While looking at the two famous Reformers, she was trying 
 to penetrate them with her fine, intelligent, black eyes, and 
 study them thoroughly. 
 
 "One might be the sheath and the other the blade," Al- 
 bert de Gondi said in her ear. 
 
 "Well, gentlemen," said Catherine, who could not help 
 smiling, " has your master given you liberty to arrange a pub- 
 lic conference where you may convert to the Word of God 
 those modern fathers of the church who are the glory of our 
 realm?" 
 
 "We have no master but the Lord," said Chaudieu. 
 
 " Well, you acknowledge some authority in the King of 
 France?" said Catherine, smiling, and interrupting the min- 
 ister. 
 
 "And a great deal in the Queen," added de Beze, bowing 
 low. 
 
 "You will see," she went on, " that the heretics will be my 
 most dutiful subjects." 
 
 "Oh, madame," cried Coligny, " what a splendid kingdom 
 we will make for you ! Europe reaps great profit from our 
 divisions. It has seen one-half of France set against the other 
 for fifty years past." 
 
 " Have we come here to hear chants in praise of heretics? " 
 said the constable roughly. 
 
 "No, but to bring them to amendment," answered the 
 Cardinal de Lorraine in a whisper, "and we hope to achieve 
 it by a little gentleness." 
 
 " Do you know what I should have done in the reign of the 
 King's father?" said Anne de Montmorency. "I should 
 have sent for the provost to hang those two rascals high and 
 dry on the Louvre gallows." 
 
 " Well, gentlemen, and who are the learned doctors you 
 will bring into the field ? " asked the Queen, silencing the con- 
 stable with a look.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 229 
 
 " Duplessis-Mornay and Theodore de Beze are our leaders," 
 said Chaudieu. 
 
 " The Court will probably go to the Castle of Saint-Ger- 
 main ; and as it would not be seemly that this colloquy should 
 take place in the same town, it shall be held in the little town 
 of Poissy," replied Catherine. 
 
 "Shall we be safe there, madame?" asked Chaudieu. 
 
 "Oh!" said the Queen, with a sort of simplicity, "you 
 will, no doubt, know what precautions to take. Monsieur the 
 Admiral will make arrangements to that effect with my cousins 
 de Guise and Montmorency. " 
 
 " Fie on it all !" said the constable ; "I will have no part 
 in it." 
 
 The Queen took Chaudieu a little way apart. 
 
 " What do you do to your sectarians to give them such a 
 spirit?" said she. "My furrier's son was really sublime," 
 she added. 
 
 " We have faith," said Chaudieu. 
 
 At this moment the room was filled with eager groups, all 
 discussing the question of this assembly, which, from the 
 Queen's suggestion, was already spoken of as the " Convoca- 
 tion of Poissy." 
 
 Catherine looked at Chaudieu, and felt it safe to say 
 
 "Yes, anew faith." 
 
 "Ah, madame, if you were not blinded by your connection 
 with the Court of Rome, you would see that we are returning 
 to the true doctrine of Jesus Christ, who, while sanctifying 
 the equality of souls, has given all men on earth equal 
 rights." 
 
 "And do you think yourself the equal of Calvin?" said 
 Catherine shrewdly. " Nay, nay, we are equals only in 
 church. What, really? Break all bonds between the people 
 and the throne ? ' ' cried Catherine. ' ' You are not merely here- 
 tics ; you rebel against obedience to the King while avoiding 
 all obedience to the Pope."
 
 230 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 She sharply turned away, and returned to Theodore de 
 Beze. 
 
 "I trust to you, monsieur," she said, "to carry through 
 this conference conscientiously. Take time over it." 
 
 "I fancied," said Chaudieu to the Prince de Conde, the 
 King of Navarre, and Admiral Coligny, " that affairs of State 
 were taken more seriously." 
 
 " Oh, we all know exactly what we mean," said the Prince 
 de Conde, with a significant glance at Theodore de Beze. 
 
 The hunchback took leave of his followers to keep an assig- 
 nation. This great Prince and party leader was one of the 
 most successful gallants of the Court ; the two handsomest 
 women of the day fought for him with such infatuation that 
 the Marechale de Saint-Andre, the wife of one of the coming 
 Triumvirate, gave him her fine estate of Saint-Valery to win 
 him from the Duchesse de Guise, the wife of the man who had 
 wanted to bring his head under the axe ; being unable to wean 
 the Due de Nemours from his flirtations with Mademoiselle de 
 Rohan, she fell in love, meanwhile, with the leader of the Re- 
 formed party. 
 
 "How different from Geneva !" said Chaudieu to Theo- 
 dore de Beze on the little bridge by the Louvre. 
 
 "They are livelier here, and I cannot imagine why they 
 are such traitors," replied de Beze. 
 
 "Meet a traitor with a traitor-and-a-half," said Chaudieu 
 in a whisper. " I have saints in Paris that I can rely on, and 
 I mean to make a prophet of Calvin. Christophe will rid us 
 of the most dangerous of our enemies." 
 
 "The Queen-mother, for whom the poor wretch endured 
 torture, has already had him passed, by high-handed orders, 
 as pleader before the Parlement, and lawyers are more apt to 
 be tell-tales than assassins. Remember Avenelles, who sold 
 the secret of our first attempt to take up arms." 
 
 "But I know Christophe," said Chaudieu, with an air of 
 conviction, as he and the Calvinist ambassador parted.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 231 
 
 Some days after the reception of Calvin's secret envoys by 
 Catherine, and toward the end of that year for the year then 
 began at Easter, and the modern calendar was not adopted 
 until this very reign Christophe, still stretched on an arm- 
 chair, was sitting on that side of the large sombre room where 
 our story began, in such a position as to look out on the river. 
 His feet rested on a stool. Mademoiselle Lecamus and Ba- 
 bette Lallier had just renewed the application of compresses, 
 soaked in a lotion brought by Ambroise, to whose care Cath- 
 erine had commended Christophe. When once he was re- 
 stored to his family, the lad had become the object of the 
 most devoted care. Babette, with her father's permission, 
 came to the house every morning and did not leave until the 
 evening. Christophe, a subject of wonder to the apprentices, 
 gave rise in the neighborhood to endless tales, which involved 
 him in poetic mystery. He had been put to torture, and the 
 famous Ambroise Pare was exerting all his skill to save him. 
 What, then, had he done to be treated so? On this point 
 neither Christophe nor his father breathed a word. Catherine, 
 now all-powerful, had an interest in keeping silence, and so 
 had the Prince de Conde. The visits of Ambroise Pare, the 
 surgeon to the King and to the House of Guise, permitted 
 by the Queen-mother and the Princes of Lorraine to attend a 
 youth accused of heresy, added to the singularity of this busi- 
 ness, which no one could see through. And then the priest 
 of Saint-Pierre aux Bceufs came several times to see his church- 
 warden's son, and these visits made the causes of Christophe's 
 condition even more inexplicable. 
 
 The old furrier, who had a plan of his own, replied evasively 
 when his fellows of the guild, traders, and friends spoke of his 
 son 
 
 " I am very happy, neighbor, to have been able to save 
 him ! You know ! it is well not to put your finger between 
 the wood and the bark. My son put his hand to the stake 
 and took out fire enough to burn my house down ! They im-
 
 232 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 posed on his youth, and we citizens never get anything but 
 scorn and harm by hanging on to the great. This quite de- 
 termines me to make a lawyer of my boy ; the law courts will 
 teach him to weigh his words and deeds. The young Queen, 
 who is now in Scotland, had a great deal to do with it ; but 
 perhaps Christophe was very imprudent too. I went through 
 terrible grief. All this will probably lead to my retiring from 
 business] I will never go to Court any more. My son has 
 had enough of the Reformation now; it has left him with 
 broken arms and legs. But for Ambroise, where should I be? " 
 
 Thanks to these speeches, and to his prudence, a report was 
 spread in the neighborhood that Christophe no longer fol- 
 lowed the creed of Colas. Every one thought it quite natural 
 that the old Syndic should wish to see his son a lawyer in the 
 Parlement, and thus the priest's calls seemed quite a matter 
 of course. In thinking of the old man's woes, no one thought 
 of his ambition, which would have been deemed monstrous. 
 
 The young lawyer, who had spent ninety days on the bed 
 put up for him in the old sitting-room, had only been out of 
 it for a week past, and still needed the help of crutches to 
 enable him to walk. Babette's affection and his mother's 
 tenderness had touched Christophe deeply ; still, having him 
 in bed, the two women lectured him soundly on the subject 
 of religion. President de Thou came to see his godson, and 
 was most paternal. Christophe, as a pleader in the Parle- 
 ment, ought to be a Catholic, he would be pledged to it by 
 his oath ; and the president, who never seemed to doubt the 
 young man's orthodoxy, added these important words 
 
 "You have been cruelly tested, my boy. I myself know 
 nothing of the reasons Messieurs de Guise had for treating 
 you thus ; but now I exhort you to live quietly henceforth 
 and not to interfere in broils, for the favor of the King and 
 Queen will not be shown to such as brew storms. You are 
 not a great enough man to drive a bargain with the King, 
 like the Duke and the cardinal. If you want to be councilor
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICL 233 
 
 in the Parlement some day, you can only attain that high 
 office by serious devotion to the cause of royalty." 
 
 However, neither Monsieur de Thou's visit, nor Babette's 
 charms, nor the entreaties of Madame Lecanms, his mother, 
 had shaken the faith of the Protestant martyr. Christophe 
 clung all the more stoutly to his religion in proportion to 
 what he had suffered for it. 
 
 " My father will never allow me to marry a heretic," said 
 Babette in his ear. 
 
 Christophe replied only with tears, which left the pretty 
 girl speechless and thoughtful. 
 
 Old Lecamus maintained his dignity as a father and a 
 Syndic; watched his son, and said little. The old man, 
 having got back his dear Christophe, was almost vexed with 
 himself, and repentant of having displayed all his affection 
 for his only son ; but secretly he admired him. At no time 
 in his life had the furrier pulled so many wires to gain his 
 ends ; for he could see the ripe harvest of the crop sown with 
 so much toil, and wished to gather it all. 
 
 A few days since he had had a long conversation with 
 Christophe alone, hoping to discover the secret of his son's 
 tenacity. Christophe, who was not devoid of ambition, be- 
 lieved in the Prince de Conde. The Prince's generous speech 
 which was no more than the stock-in-trade of princes was 
 stamped on his heart. He did not know that Condd had 
 wished him at the devil at the moment when he bid him such 
 a touching farewell through the bars of his prison at Orleans. 
 
 "A Gascon would have understood," the Prince had said 
 to himself. 
 
 And in spite of his admiration for the Prince, Christophe 
 cherished the deepest respect for Catherine, the great Queen 
 who had explained to him in a look that she was compelled 
 by necessity to sacrifice him, and then, during his torture, 
 had conveyed to him in another glance an unlimited promise 
 by an almost imperceptible tear.
 
 234 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 During the deep calm of the ninety days and nights he had 
 spent in recovering, the newly made lawyer thought over the 
 events at Blois and at Orleans. He weighed, in spite of him- 
 self, it may be said, the influence of these two patrons; he 
 hesitated between the Queen and the Prince. He had cer- 
 tainly done more for Catherine than for the Reformation ; 
 and the young man's heart and mind, of course, went forth 
 to the Queen, less by reason of this difference than because 
 she was a woman. In such a case a man will always found 
 his hopes on a woman rather than on a man. 
 
 "I immolated myself for her what will she not do for 
 me?" 
 
 This was the question he almost involuntarily asked himself 
 as he recalled the tone in which she had said, ' ' My poor 
 boy ! " 
 
 It is difficult to conceive of the pitch of self-consciousness 
 reached by a man alone and sick in bed. Everything, even 
 the care of which he is the object, tends to make him think 
 of himself alone. By exaggerating the Prince de Conde's 
 obligations to him, Christophe looked forward to obtaining 
 some post at the Court of Navarre. The lad, a novice still 
 in politics, was all the more forgetful of the anxieties which 
 absorb party leaders, and of the swift rush of men and events 
 which overrule them, because he lived almost in solitary 
 imprisonment in that dark parlor. Every party is bound to 
 be ungrateful when it is fighting for dear life ; and when it 
 has won the day, there are so many persons to be rewarded, 
 that it is ungrateful still. The rank and file submit to this 
 oblivion, but the captains turn against the new master who 
 for so long has marched as their equal. 
 
 Christophe, the only person to remember what he had 
 suffered, already reckoned himself as one of the chiefs of the 
 Reformation by considering himself as one of its martyrs. 
 Lecamus, the old wolf of trade, acute and clear-sighted, had 
 guessed his son's secret thoughts ; indeed, all his manoeuvring
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 235 
 
 was based on the very natural hesitancy that possessed the 
 lad. 
 
 "Would it not be fine," he had said the day before to 
 Babette, " to be the wife of a councilor to the Parlement ? you 
 would be addressed as niadame." 
 
 "You are crazy, neighbor," said Lallier. "In the first 
 place, where would you find ten thousand crowns a year in 
 landed estate, which a councilor must show, and from whom 
 could you purchase a connection? The Queen-mother and 
 Regent would have to give all her mind to it to get your son 
 into the Parlement ; and he smells of the stake too strongly 
 to be admitted." 
 
 " What would you give, now, to see your daughter a coun- 
 cilor's wife?" 
 
 " You want to sound the depth of my purse, you old fox ! " 
 exclaimed Lallier. 
 
 Councilor to the Parlement ! The words distracted Chris- 
 tophe's brain. 
 
 Long after the conference was over, one morning when 
 Christophe sat gazing at the river, which reminded him of 
 the scene that was the beginning of all this story, of the 
 Prince de Conde, la Renaudie, and Chaudieu, of his journey 
 to Blois, and of all he hoped for, the Syndic came to sit down 
 by his son with ill-disguised glee under an affectation of 
 solemnity. 
 
 "My boy," said he, "after what took place between you 
 and the heads of the riot at Amboise, they owed you so much 
 that your future might very well be cared for by the House 
 of Navarre." 
 
 "Yes," replied Christophe. 
 
 "Well," his father went on, " I have definitely applied for 
 
 permission for you to purchase a legal business in Beam.* 
 
 Our good friend Pare undertook to transmit the letters I wrote 
 
 in your name to the Prince de Cond6 and Queen Jeanne. 
 
 * Then a province of Navarre-Gascony.
 
 236 ABOU7^ CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 Here, read this reply from Monsieur de Pibrac, Vice-Chan 
 eel lor of Navarre : 
 
 ' ' To Master Lecamus, Syndic of the Guild of Furriers. 
 
 " His Highness the Prince de Conde bids me express to 
 you his regret at being unable to do anything for his fellow- 
 prisoner in the Tour de Saint- Aignan, whom he remembers 
 well, and to whom, for the present, he offers the place of 
 man-at-arms in his own company, where he will have the 
 opportunity of making his way as a man of good heart 
 which he is. 
 
 "The Queen of Navarre hopes for an occasion of rewarding 
 Master Christophe, and will not fail. 
 
 "And with this, Monsieur le Syndic, I pray God have you 
 in His keeping. PIBRAC, 
 
 " Chancellor of Navarre. 
 
 "Nerac." 
 
 " Nerac ! Pibrac ! Crac ! " cried Babette. " There is noth- 
 ing to be gotten out of these Gascons; they think only of 
 themselves." 
 
 Old Lecamus was looking at his son with ironical amuse- 
 ment. 
 
 "And he wants to set a poor boy on horseback whose 
 knees and ankles were pounded up for him!" cried the 
 mother. " What a shameful mockery ! " 
 
 " I do not seem to see you as a councilor in Navarre," said 
 the old furrier. 
 
 " I should like to know what Queen Catherine would do 
 for me if I petitioned her," said Christophe, much crestfallen. 
 
 "She made no promises," said the old merchant, " but I 
 am sure she would not make a fool of you and would remem- 
 ber your sufferings. Still, how could she make a councilor- 
 at-law of a Protestant citizen ? "
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 237 
 
 "But Christophe has never abjured ! " exclaimed Babettte. 
 " He may surely keep his own secret as to his religious 
 opinions." 
 
 "The Prince de Conde would be less scornful of a coun- 
 cilor to the Parlement of Paris," said Lecamus. 
 
 " A councilor, father ! Is it possible ? " 
 
 "Yes, if you do nothing to upset what I am managing for 
 you. My neighbor Lallier here is ready to pay two hundred 
 thousand livres, if I add as much again, for the purchase of a 
 fine estate entailed on the heirs male, which we will hand 
 over to you." 
 
 "And I will add something more for a house in Paris," 
 said Lallier. 
 
 "Well, Christophe?" said Babette. 
 
 "You are talking without the Queen," replied the young 
 lawyer. 
 
 Some days after this bitter mortification, an apprentice 
 brought this brief note to Christophe 
 
 "Chaudieu wishes to see his son." 
 
 "Bring him in," said Christophe. 
 
 " O my saint and martyr ! " cried the preacher, embracing 
 the young man, " have you gotten over your sufferings ? " 
 
 " Yes, thanks to Pare ! " 
 
 " Thanks to God, who gave you strength to endure them ! 
 But what is this I hear ? You have passed as a pleader, you 
 have taken the oath of fidelity, you have confessed the Whore, 
 the Catholic Apostolic, Romish Church?" 
 
 "My father insisted." 
 
 "But are we not to leave father and mother and children 
 and wife for the sacred cause of Calvinism, and -to suffer all 
 things? Oh, Christophe, Calvin, the great Calvin, the whole 
 party, the whole world, the future counts on your courage 
 and your greatness of soul ! We want your life." 
 
 There is this strange feature in the mind of man : the most 
 devoted, even in the act of devoting himself, always builds
 
 238 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 up a romance of hope even in the most perilous crisis. Thus, 
 when on the river under the Pont au Change, the prince, the 
 soldier, and the preacher had required Christophe to carry to 
 Queen Catherine the document which, if discovered, would 
 have cost him his life, the boy had trusted to his wit, to 
 chance, to his perspicacity, and had boldly marched on be- 
 tween the two formidable parties the Guises and the Queen 
 who had so nearly crushed him. While in the torture 
 chamber he still had said to himself, "I shall live through it 
 it is only pain ! " 
 
 But at this brutal command, " Die! " to a man who was 
 still helpless, hardly recovered from the injuries he had suf- 
 fered, and who clung all the more to life for having seen death 
 so near, it was impossible to indulge in any such illusions. 
 
 Christophe calmly asked, " What do you want of me ? " 
 
 " To fire a pistol bravely, as Stewart fired at Minard." 
 
 "At whom?" 
 
 "The Ducde Guise." 
 
 "Assassination ?" 
 
 " Revenge ! Have you forgotten the hundred gentlemen 
 massacred on one scaffold ! A child, little d'Aubigne, said 
 as he saw the butchery, 'They have beheaded all France." " 
 
 "We are to take blows and not return them is the teaching 
 of the Gospel," replied Christophe. " If- we are to imitate the 
 Catholics, of what use is it to reform the church ? " 
 
 "Oh, Christophe, they have made a lawyer of you, and 
 you argue ! " said Chaudieu. 
 
 " No, my friend," the youth replied. " But principles are 
 ungrateful, and you and yours will only be the playthings of 
 the House Of Bourbon." 
 
 " Oh, Christophe, if you had only heard Calvin, you would 
 know that we can turn them like a glove ! The Bourbons are 
 the glove, and we the hand." 
 
 "Read this," said Christophe, handing Pibrac's letter to 
 the minister.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 239 
 
 "Alas, boy! you are ambitious; you can no longer sacri- 
 fice yourself; " and Chaudieu went away. 
 
 Not long after this visit, Christophe, with the families of 
 Lallier and Lecamus, had met to celebrate the plighting of 
 Babette and Christophe in the old parlor, whence Christo- 
 phe's couch was removed, for he could now climb the stairs, 
 and was beginning to drag himself about without crutches. 
 It was nine in the evening, and they waited for Ambroise 
 Pare. The family notary was sitting at a table covered with 
 papers. The furrier was selling his house and business to his 
 head-clerk, who was to pay forty thousand livres down for 
 the house, and to mortgage it as security for the stock-in- 
 trade, beside paying twenty thousand livres on account. 
 
 Lecamus had purchased for his son a magnificent house in 
 the Rue de Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs, built of stone by Philibert 
 de I'Orme, as a wedding gift. The Syndic had also spent 
 two hundred and fifty thousand livres out of his fortune, Lal- 
 lier paying an equal sum, for the acquisition of a fine manor 
 and estate in Picardy, for which five hundred thousand livres 
 were asked. This estate being a dependence of the Crown, 
 letters patent from the King called letters of rescript were 
 necessary, beside the payment of considerable fines and fees. 
 Thus the actual marriage was to be postponed till the royal 
 signature could be obtained. 
 
 Though the citizens of Paris had obtained the right of pur- 
 chasing manors and lands, the prudence of the Privy Council 
 had placed certain restrictions on the transfer of lands belong- 
 ing to the Crown ; and the estate on which Lecamus had had 
 his eye for the last ten years was one of these. Ambroise 
 had undertaken to produce the necessary permission this very 
 evening. Old Lecamus went to and fro between the sitting- 
 room and the front door with an impatience that showed the 
 eagerness of his ambition. 
 
 At last Ambroise appeared.
 
 240 ABOUT CATHERINE Z>' MEDICI. 
 
 " My good friend ! " exclaimed the surgeon in a great fusSj 
 and looking at the supper-table, "what is your napery like? 
 Very good. Now bring waxlights, and make haste, make 
 haste. Bring out the best of everything you have." 
 
 "What is the matter?" asked the priest of Saint-Pierre 
 aux Breufs. 
 
 " The Queen-mother and the King are coming to sup with 
 you," replied the surgeon. "The Queen and King expect 
 to meet here an old councilor, whose business is to be sold to 
 Christophe, and Monsieur de Thou, who has managed the 
 bargain. Do not look as if you expected them ; I stole out 
 of the Louvre." 
 
 In an instant all were astir. Christophe's mother and Ba- 
 bette's aunt trotted about in all the flurry of housewives taken 
 by surprise. In spite of the confusion into which the an- 
 nouncement had thrown the party, preparations were made 
 with miraculous energy. Christophe, amazed, astounded, 
 overpowered by such condescension, stood speechless, looking 
 on at all the bustle. 
 
 " The Queen and the King here ! " said the old mother. 
 
 "The Queen?" echoed Babette ; "but what for, what 
 to do?" 
 
 Within an hour everything was altered ; the old room was 
 smartened up, the table shone. A sound of horses was heard 
 in the street. The gleam of torches carried by the mounted 
 escort brought all the neighbors' noses to the windows. The 
 rush was soon over ; no one was left under the arcade but the 
 Queen-mother and her son, King Charles IX., Charles de 
 Gondi, master of the wardrobe and tutor to the King ; Mon- 
 sieur de Thou, the retiring councilor; Pinard, secretary of 
 state ; and two pages. 
 
 "Good people," said the Queen as she went in, "the 
 King, my son, and I have come to sign the marriage-contract 
 of our furrier's son, but on condition that he remains a Cath- 
 olic, Qnly a Catholic can serve in the Parlement, only a
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >> MEDICI. 241 
 
 Catholic can own lands dependent on the Crown, only a 
 Catholic can sit at table with the King what do you say, 
 Pinard?" 
 
 The secretary of state stepped forward, holding the letters 
 patent. 
 
 "If we are not all Catholics here," said the little King, 
 " Pinard will throw all the papers into the fire ; but we are all 
 Catholics?" he added, looking round proudly enough at the 
 company. 
 
 "Yes, Sire," said Christophe Lecamus, bending the knee, 
 not without difficulty, and kissing the hand the young King 
 held out to him. 
 
 Queen Catherine, who also held out her hand to Chris- 
 tophe, pulled him up rather roughly, and leading him into a 
 corner, said 
 
 "Understand, boy, no subterfuges! We are playing an 
 honest game? " 
 
 "Yes, madame," he said, dazzled by the splendid reward 
 and by the honor the grateful Queen had done him. 
 
 "Well, then, Master Lecamus, the King, my son, and I 
 permit you to purchase the offices and appointments of this 
 good man Groslay, councilor to the Parlement, who is here? " 
 said the Queen. "I hope, young man, that you will follow 
 in the footsteps of your lord president." 
 
 De Thou came forward, and said 
 
 " I will answer for him, madame." 
 
 "Very well, then proceed, notary," said Pinard. 
 
 " Since the King, our master, does us the honor of signing 
 my daughter's marriage-contract," cried Lallier, " I will pay 
 the whole price of the estate." 
 
 "The ladies may be seated," said the young King gra- 
 ciously. "As a wedding gift to the bride, with my mother's 
 permission, I remit my fines and fees." 
 
 Old Lecamus and Lallier fell on their knees and kissed the 
 boy-King's hand. 
 16
 
 242 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 '' By heaven, Sire, what loads of money these citizens 
 have ! " said Gondi in his ear. 
 
 And the young King laughed. 
 
 "Their majesties being so graciously inclined/' said old 
 Lecamus, " will they allow me to present to them my successor 
 in the business, and grant him the royal patent as furrier to 
 their majesties?" 
 
 "Let us see him," said the King, and Lecamus brought 
 forward his successor, who was white with alarm. 
 
 Old Lecamus was shrewd enough to offer the young King a 
 silver cup which he had bought from Benvenuto Cellini* when 
 he was staying in Paris at the Tour de Nesle, at a cost of not 
 less than two thousand crowns. 
 
 "Oh, mother! what a fine piece of work!" cried the 
 youth, lifting the cup by its foot. 
 
 "It is Florentine," said Catherine. 
 
 "Pardon me, madame," said Lecamus; "it was made in 
 France, though by a Florentine. If it had come from Florence, 
 it should have been the Queen's; but being made in France, 
 it is the King's." 
 
 "I accept it, my friend," cried Charles IX., "and hence- 
 forth I drink out of it." 
 
 "It is good enough," the Queen remarked, "to be in- 
 cluded among the Crown treasure." 
 
 "And you, Master Ambroise," she went on in an under- 
 tone, turning to the surgeon, and pointing to Christophe, 
 " have you cured him ! Will he walk? " 
 
 " He will fly," said the surgeon, with a smile. " You have 
 stolen him from us very cleverly ! " 
 
 " The abbey will not starve for lack of one monk ! " replied 
 the Queen, in the frivolous tone for which she has been 
 blamed, but which lay only on the surface. 
 
 The supper was cheerful ; the Queen thought Babette pretty, 
 and, like the great lady she was, she slipped a diamond ring 
 * A noted sculptor, engraver, and goldsmith.
 
 'YOU ARE A LOYAL SUBJECT," SAID CATHERINE.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 243 
 
 on the girl's finger in compensation for the value of the silver 
 cup. 
 
 King Charles IX., who afterward was perhaps rather too 
 fond of thus invading his subjects' homes, supped with a good 
 appetite ; then, on a word from his new tutor, who had been 
 instructed, it is said, to efface the virtuous teaching of Cy- 
 pierre, he incited the president of Parlement, the old retired 
 councilor, the secretary of state, the priest, the notary, and 
 the citizens to drink so deep that Queen Catherine rose to 
 go at the moment when she saw that their high spirits were 
 becoming uproarious. 
 
 As the Queen rose, Christophe, his father, and the two 
 women took up tapers to light her as far as the door of the 
 store. Then Christophe made so bold as to pull the Queen's 
 wide sleeve and give her a meaning look. Catherine stopped, 
 dismissed the old man and the women with a wave of her 
 hand, and said to the young man " What ? " 
 
 "If you can make any use of the information, madame," 
 said he, speaking close to the Queen's ear, "I can tell you 
 that assassins are plotting against the Due de Guise's life." 
 
 "You are a loyal subject," said Catherine with a smile, 
 " and I will never forget you." 
 
 She held out her hand, famous for its beauty, drawing off 
 her glove as a mark of special favor. And Christophe, as he 
 kissed that exquisite hand, was more Royalist than ever. 
 
 " Then I shall be rid of that wretch without my having 
 anything to do with it," was her reflection as she put on her 
 glove. 
 
 She mounted her mule and returned to the Louvre with her 
 two pages. 
 
 Christophe drank, but he was gloomy ; Fare's austere face 
 reproached him for his apostasy ; however, later events justi- 
 fied the old Syndic. Christophe would certainly never have 
 escaped in the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew; his wealth 
 and lands would have attracted the butchers. History has
 
 244 ABOUT CATHERINE DE? MEDICI. 
 
 recorded the cruel fate of the wife of Lallier's successor, a 
 beautiful woman, whose naked body remained hanging by 
 the hair for three days to one of the starlings of the Pont au 
 Change. Babette could shudder then as she reflected that 
 such a fate might have been hers if Christophe had remained 
 a Calvinist, as the Reformers were soon generally called. 
 Calvin's ambition was fulfilled, but not until after his death. 
 
 This was the origin of the famous Lecamus family of law- 
 yers. Tallemant des Reaux was mistaken in saying they had 
 come from Picardy. It was afterward to the interest of the 
 Lecamus family to refer their beginning to the time when they 
 had acquired their principal estate, situated in that province. 
 
 Christophe's son, and his successor under Louis XIII., was 
 father of that rich President Lecamus, who in Louis XIV. 's 
 time built the magnificent mansion which divided with the 
 Hotel Lambert the admiration of Parisians and foreigners, 
 and which is certainly one of the finest buildings in Paris. 
 This house still exists in the Rue de Thorigny, though it was 
 pillaged at the beginning of the Revolution, as belonging to 
 Monsieur de Juigne, archbishop of Paris. All the paintings 
 were then defaced, and the lodgers who have since dwelt there 
 have still further damaged it. This fine residence, earned in 
 the old house in the Rue de la Pelleterie, still shows what 
 splendid results were then the outcome of family spirit. We 
 may be allowed to doubt whether modern individualism, 
 resulting from the repeated equal division of property, will 
 ever raise such edifices.
 
 PART II. 
 
 THE RUGGIERl's SECRET. 
 
 Between eleven o'clock and midnight, toward the end of 
 October, 1573, two Florentines, brothers, Albert de Gondi, 
 marshal of France, and Charles de Gondi la Tour, master of 
 the wardrobe to King Charles IX., were sitting at the top of 
 a house in the Rue Saint-Honore on the edge of the gutter. 
 Such gutters were made of stone ; they ran along below the 
 roof to catch the rain-water, and were pierced here and there 
 with long gargoyles carved in the form of grotesque creatures 
 with gaping jaws. In spite of the zeal of the present genera- 
 tion in the destruction of ancient houses, there were still in 
 Paris many such gutter-spouts when, not long since, the police 
 regulations as to waste-pipes led to their disappearance. A 
 few sculptured gutters are still to be seen in the Saint-Antoine 
 quarter, where the low rents have kept owners from adding 
 rooms in the roof. 
 
 It may seem strange that two persons invested with such 
 important functions should have chosen a perch more befitting 
 cats. But to any one who has hunted through the historical 
 curiosities of that time, and seen how many interests were 
 complicated about the throne, so that the domestic politics of 
 France can only be compared to a tangled skein of thread, 
 these two Florentines are really cats, and quite in their place 
 in a gutter. The devotion to the person of Catherine de 1 
 Medici, who had transplanted them to the French Court, re- 
 quired them to shirk none of the consequences of their in- 
 trusion there. 
 
 But to explain how and why these two courtiers were 
 perched up there, it will be necessary to relate a scene which 
 had just taken place within a stone's throw of this gutter, at 
 
 (246)
 
 246 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 the Louvre, in the fine brown room which is, perhaps, all 
 that remains of Henri II. 's apartments where the Court was 
 in attendance after supper on the two Queens and the King. 
 At that time middle-class folk supped at six o'clock, and 
 men of rank at seven ; but people of exquisite fashion supped 
 between eight and nine ; it was the meal we nowadays call 
 dinner. 
 
 Some people have supposed that etiquette was the invention 
 of Louis XIV.; but this is a mistake; it was introduced into 
 France by Catherine de' Medici, who was so exacting that 
 the Connetable Anne de Montmorency had more difficulty in 
 obtaining leave to ride into the courtyard of the Louvre than 
 in winning his sword, and even then the permission was 
 granted only on the score of his great age. Etiquette was 
 slightly relaxed under the first three Bourbon Kings, but 
 assumed an Oriental character under Louis the Great, for it 
 was derived from the Lower Empire, which borrowed it from 
 Persia. In 1573 not only had very few persons a right to 
 enter the courtyard of the Louvre with their attendants and 
 torches, just as in Louis XIV. 's time only dukes and peers 
 might drive under the porch, but the functions which gave 
 the privilege of attending their majesties after supper could 
 easily be counted. The Marechal de Retz, whom we have 
 just seen keeping watch on the gutter, once offered a thou- 
 sand crowns of that day to the clerk of the closet to get speech 
 of Henry III. at an hour when he had no right of entree. 
 And how a certain venerable historian mocks at a view of the 
 courtyard of the Castle of Blois, into which the draughtsman 
 introduced the figure of a man on horseback ! 
 
 At this hour, then, there were at the Louvre none but the 
 most eminent persons in the kingdom. Queen Elizabeth of 
 Austria and her mother-in-law, Catherine de' Medici, were 
 seated to the left of the fireplace. In the opposite corner the 
 King, sunk in his armchair, affected an apathy excusable on 
 the score of digestion, for he had eaten like a prince returned
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DP MEDICI. 247 
 
 from hunting. Possibly, too, he wished to avoid speech in 
 the presence of so many persons whose interest it was to detect 
 his thoughts. 
 
 The courtiers stood, hat in hand, at the farther end of the 
 room. Some conversed in undertones; others kept an eye on 
 the King, hoping for a glance or a word. One, being ad- 
 dressed by the Queen-mother, conversed with her for a few 
 minutes. Another would be so bold as to speak a word to 
 Charles IX., who replied with a nod or a short answer. A 
 German noble, the Count of Solern, was standing in the 
 chimney-corner by the side of Charles V.'s grand-daughter, 
 with whom he had come to France. Near the young Queen, 
 seated on a stool, was her lady-in-waiting, the Countess 
 Fieschi, a Strozzi, and related to Catherine. The beautiful 
 Madame de Sauves, a descendant of Jacques Cceur, and 
 mistress in succession of the King of Navarre, of the King 
 of Poland, and of the Due d'Alencon, had been invited to 
 supper, but she remained standing, her husband being merely 
 a secretary of state. Behind these two ladies were the 
 Gondis, talking to them. They alone were laughing of all 
 the dull assembly. Gondi, made Due de Retz and Gentle- 
 man of the Bedchamber, since obtaining the marshal's baton 
 though he had never commanded an army, had been sent as 
 the King's proxy to be married to the Queen at Spires. This 
 honor plainly indicated that he, like his brother, was one of 
 the few persons whom the King and Queen admitted to a 
 certain familiarity. 
 
 On the King's side the most conspicuous figure was the 
 Merchal de Tavannes, who was at Court on business ; Neuf- 
 ville de Villeroy, one of the shrewdest negotiators of the 
 time, who laid the foundation of the fortunes of his family ; 
 Messieurs de Birague and de Chiverni, one in attendance on 
 the Queen-mother, the other Chancellor of Anjou and of 
 Poland, who, knowing Catherine's favoritism, had attached 
 himself to Henry III., the brother whom Charles IX. regarded
 
 248 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 as an enemy ; Strozzi, a cousin of Queen Catherine, and a 
 few more gentlemen, among whom were to be noted the old 
 Cardinal de Lorraine and his nephew, the young Due de 
 Guise, both very much kept at a distance by Catherine and 
 by the King. These two chiefs of the Holy Alliance, after- 
 ward known as the League, established some years since with 
 Spain, made a display of the submission of servants who 
 await their opportunity to become the masters ; Catherine and 
 Charles IX. were watching each other with mutual attention. 
 
 At this Court as gloomy as the room in which it had 
 assembled each one had reasons for sadness or absence of 
 mind. The young Queen was enduring all the torments of 
 jealousy, and disguised them ineffectually by attempting to 
 smile at her husband, whom she adored as a pious woman of 
 infinite kindness. Marie Toucher., Charles IX. 's only mis-^ 
 tress, to whom he was chivalrously faithful, had come home a 
 month since from the Castle of Fayet, in Dauphine, whither 
 she had retired for the birth of her child ; and she had 
 brought back with her the only son Charles IX. ever had 
 Charles, at first Comte d'Auvergne and afterward Due d'An- 
 gouleme. 
 
 Beside the grief of seeing her rival the mother of the 
 King's son, while she had only a daughter, the poor Queen 
 was enduring the mortification of complete desertion. Dur- 
 ing his mistress' absence, the King had made it up with his 
 wife with a vehemence which history mentions as one of the 
 causes of his death. Thus Marie Touchet's return made the 
 pious Austrian Princess understand how little her husband's 
 heart had been concerned in his love-making. Nor was this 
 the only disappointment the young Queen had to endure in 
 this matter ; till now Catherine de' Medici had seemed to be 
 her friend ; but, in fact, her mother-in-law, for political ends, 
 had encouraged her son's infidelity, and preferred to support 
 the mistress rather than the wife. And this is the reason why : 
 
 When Charles IX. first confessed his passion for Marie
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 249 
 
 Touchet, Catherine looked with favor on the girl for reasons 
 affecting her own prospects of dominion. Marie Touchet 
 was brought to Court at a very early age, at the time of life 
 when a girl's best feelings are in their bloom ; she loved the 
 King passionately for his own sake. Terrified at the gulf into 
 which ambition had overthrown the Duchesse de Valentinois, 
 better known as Diane de Poitiers, she was afraid too, n 
 doubt, of Queen Catherine, and preferred happiness to splen- 
 dor. She thought, perhaps, that a pair of lovers so young 
 as she and the King were could not hold their own against the 
 Queen-mother. 
 
 And, indeed, Marie, the only child of Jean Touchet, the 
 lord of Beauvais and le Quillard, King's councilor and lieu- 
 tenant of the bailiwick of Orleans, half-way between the citi- 
 zen class and the lowest nobility, was neither altogether a 
 noble nor altogether bourgeoise, and was probably ignorant of 
 the objects of innate ambition aimed at by the Pisseleus and 
 the Saint-Valliers, women of family who were struggling for 
 their families with the secret weapons of love. Marie Touchet, 
 alone and of no rank, spared Catherine de' Medici the annoy- 
 ance of finding in her son's mistress the daughter of some 
 great house who might have set up for her rival. 
 
 Jean Touchet, a wit in his day, to whom some poets dedi- 
 cated their works, wanted nothing of the Court. Marie, a 
 young creature, with no following, as clever and well informed 
 as she was simple and artless, suited the Queen-mother to ad- 
 miration and won her warm affection. 
 
 In point of fact, Catherine persuaded the Parlement to 
 acknowledge the son which Marie Touchet bore to the King 
 in the month of April, and she granted him the title of Comte 
 d'Auvergne, promising the King that she would leave the boy 
 her personal estate, tb/.- Counties of Auvergne and Lauraguais. 
 Afterward, Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, disputed the gift 
 when she became Queen of France, and annulled it ; but later 
 still, Louis XIII., out of respect to the royal blood of the
 
 250 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 Valois, indemnified the Comte d'Auvergne by making him 
 Due d'Angoul&me. 
 
 Catherine had already given Marie Touchet, who asked for 
 nothing, the manor of Belleville, an estate without a title, 
 near Vincennes, whither she came when, after hunting, the 
 King slept at that royal residence. Charles IX. spent the 
 greater part of his later days in that gloomy fortress, and, 
 according to some authors, ended his days there as Louis XII. 
 had ended his. Though it was very natural that a lover so 
 entirely captivated should lavish on the woman he adored 
 fresh proofs of affection when he had to expiate his legitimate 
 infidelities, Catherine, after driving her son back to his wife's 
 arms, certainly pleaded for Marie Touchet as women can, and 
 had won the King back to his mistress again. Whatever could 
 keep Charles IX. employed in anything but politics was 
 pleasing to Catherine ; and the kind intentions she expressed 
 toward this child for the moment deceived Charles IX., who 
 was beginning to regard her as his enemy. 
 
 The motives on which Catherine acted in this business 
 escaped the discernment of the Queen, who, according to 
 Brantome, was one of the gentlest Queens that ever reigned, 
 and who did no harm nor displeasure to any one, even reading 
 her Hours in secret. But this innocent Princess began to 
 perceive what gulfs yawn round a throne, a terrible discovery 
 which might well make her feel giddy ; and some still worse 
 feeling must have inspired her reply to one of her ladies, who, 
 at the King's death, observed to her that if she had had a son 
 she would be Queen-mother and Regent 
 
 " Ah, God be praised that He never gave me a son ! What 
 would have come of it ? The poor child would have been 
 robbed, as they tried to rob the King my husband, and I 
 should have been the cause of it. God has had mercy on the 
 kingdom and has ordered everything for the best." 
 
 This Princess, of whom Brant6me thinks he has given an 
 ample description when he had said that she had a complexion
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE" MEDICI. 251 
 
 of face as fine and delicate as that of the ladies of her Court, 
 and very pleasing, and that she had a beautiful shape though 
 but of middle height, was held of small account at the Court ; 
 and the King's state affording her an excuse for her double 
 grief, her demeanor added to the gloomy hues of a picture to 
 which a young Queen less cruelly stricken than she was might 
 have given some brightness. The pious Elizabeth was at this 
 crisis a proof of the fact that qualities which add lustre to a 
 woman in ordinary life may be fatal in a Queen. A Princess 
 who did not devote her whole night to prayer would have 
 been a valuable ally for Charles IX. , who found no. help either 
 in his wife or in his mistress. 
 
 As to the Queen-mother, she was absorbed in watching the 
 King ; he during supper had made a display of high spirits, 
 which she interpreted as assumed to cloak some plan against 
 herself. Such sudden cheerfulness was in too strong a contrast 
 to the fractious humor he had betrayed by his persistency in 
 hunting, and by a frenzy of toil at his forge, where he wrought 
 iron, for Catherine to be duped by it. Though she could not 
 guess what statesman was lending himself to these schemes 
 and plots for Charles IX. could put his mother's spies off 
 the scent Catherine had no doubt that some plan against 
 her was in the wind. 
 
 The unexpected appearance of Tavannes, arriving at the 
 same time as Strozzi, whom she had summoned, had greatly 
 aroused her suspicions. By her power of organization Cath- 
 erine was superior to the evolution of circumstances; but 
 against sudden violence she was powerless. 
 
 As many persons know nothing of the state of affairs, com- 
 plicated by the multiplicity of parties which then racked 
 France, each leader having his own interests in view, it is 
 needful to devote a few words to describing the dangerous 
 crisis in which the Queen-mother had become entangled. 
 And, as this will show Catherine de' Medici in a new light, it 
 will carry us to the very core of this narrative.
 
 252 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 Two words will fully summarize this strange woman, so^in- 
 teresting to study, whose influence left such deep tracs_oji 
 France. These two words are dominion and astrology. Cath- 
 erine de' Medici was excessively ambitious ; she had no pas- 
 sion but for power. Superstitious and fatalist, as many a man 
 of superior mind has been, her only sincere belief was in the 
 occult sciences. Without this twofold light, she must alwaysr* 
 remain misunderstood ; and by giving the first place to her 
 faith in astrology, a light will be thrown on the two philo- 
 sophical figures of this study. 
 
 There was a man whom Catherine clung to more than to 
 her children ; this man was Cosmo Ruggieri. She gave him 
 rooms in her Hotel de Soissons ; she had made him her chief 
 counselor, instructing him to tell her if the stars ratified the 
 advice and commonsense of her ordinary advisers. 
 
 Certain curious antecedent facts justified the power which 
 Ruggieri exerted over his mistress till her latest breath. One 
 of the most learned men of the sixteenth century was, beyond 
 all doubt, the physician to Catherine's father, Lorenzo de' 
 Medici, Duke of Urbino. This leech was known as Ruggiero 
 the elder (vecchio Ruggier, and in French Roger V Ancien, 
 with authors who have written concerning alchemy), to dis- 
 tinguish him from his two sons, Lorenzo Ruggiero, called the 
 Great by writers on the Cabala, and Cosmo Ruggiero, Cath- 
 erine's astrologer, also known as Roger by-various^JEiench 
 historians. French custom altered their name to Ruggieri, as 
 it did Catherine's from Medici to Medicis. 
 
 The elder Ruggieri, then, was so highly esteemed by the 
 family of the Medici that the two Dukes, Cosmo and Lorenzo, 
 were godfathers to his sons. In his capacity of mathemat]cian7 
 astrologer, and physician to the Ducal House three offices 
 that were often scarcely distinguished he cast the horoscope 
 of Catherine's nativity, in concert with Bazile, the famous 
 mathematician. At that period the occult sciences were culti- 
 vated with an eagerness which may seem surprising to the
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 253 
 
 skeptical spirits of this supremely analytical age, who perhaps 
 may firtd' in this- historical sketch the germ of the positive sci- 
 ences which flourish in the nineteenth century bereft, how- 
 ever, of the poetic grandeur brought to them by the daring 
 speculators of the sixteenth ; for they, instead of applying 
 themselves to industry, exalted art and vivified thought. 
 The protection universally granted to these sciences by the 
 sovereigns of the period was indeed justified by the admirable 
 works of inventors who, starting from the search for the great 
 work,* arrived at astonishing results. 
 
 Never, in fact, were rulers more curious for these mysteries. 
 The Fugger family, in whom every modern Lucullus must 
 recognize his chiefs and every banker his masters, were be- 
 yond a doubt men of business, not to be caught nodding ; 
 well, these practical men, while lending the capitalized wealth 
 of Europe to the sovereigns of the sixteenth century who ran 
 into debt quite as handsomely as those of to-day these illus- 
 trious entertainers of Charles V. furnished funds for the retorts 
 of Paracelsus. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, 
 Ruggieri the elder was the head of that secret college whence 
 came Cardan, Nostradamus, and Agrippa, each in turn physi- 
 cian to the Valois ; and all the astronomers, astrologers, and 
 alchemists who at that period crowded to the Courts of the 
 princes of Christendom, and who found especial welcome and 
 protection in France from Catherine de' Medici. 
 
 In the horoscope cast for Catherine by Bazile and Ruggieri 
 the elder, the principal events of her life were predicted with 
 an accuracy that is enough to drive disbelievers to despair. 
 This forecast announced the disasters which, during the siege 
 of Florence, affected her early life, her marriage with a 
 Prince of France, his unexpected accession to the throne, the 
 birth and the number of her children. Three of her sons 
 were to reign in succession, her two daughters were to become 
 queens ; ail were to die childless. And this was all so exactly 
 * Magnum opus.
 
 264 ABOUT CATHERINE D' MEDICL 
 
 verified that many historians have regarded it as a prophecy 
 after the event. 
 
 It is well known that Nostradamus brought to the Castle of 
 Chaumont, whither Catherine went at the time of la Renau- 
 die's conspiracy, a woman who had the gift of reading the 
 future. Now in the time of Francis II., when the Queen's 
 sons were still children and in good health, before Elizabeth 
 de Valois had married Philip II. of Spain, or Marguerite de 
 Valois had married Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre, 
 Nostradamus and this soothsayer confirmed all the details of 
 the famous horoscope. 
 
 This woman, gifted no doubt with second-sight, and one 
 of the extensive association of indefatigable inquirers for the 
 magnum opus, though her life has evaded the ken of history, 
 foretold that the last of these children to wear the crown 
 would perish assassinated. Having placed the Queen in front 
 of a magical mirror in which a spinning-wheel was reflected, 
 each child's face appearing at the end of a spoke, the sooth- 
 sayer made the wheel turn, and the Queen counted the number 
 of turns. Each turn was a year of a reign. When Henri 
 IV. was placed on the wheel, it went round twenty-two times. 
 The woman some say it was a man told the terrified Queen 
 that Henri de Bourbon would certainly be King of France, 
 and reign so many years. Queen Catherine vowed a mortal 
 hatred of the Bearnais on hearing that he would succeed the 
 last, murdered Valois. 
 
 Curious to know what sort of death she herself would die, 
 she was warned to beware of Saint-Germain. Thenceforth, 
 thinking that she would be imprisoned or violently killed at 
 the Castle of Saint-Germain, she never set foot in it, though, 
 by its nearness to Paris, it was infinitely better situated for her 
 plans than those where she took refuge with the King in 
 troubled times. When she fell ill, a few days after the Due 
 de Guise was assassinated, during the assembly of the States- 
 General at Blois, she asked the name of the prelate who came
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICL 255 
 
 to minister to her. She was told that his name was Saint- 
 Germain. , 
 
 " I am a dead woman ! " she cried. 
 
 She died the next day, having lived just the number of 
 years allotted to her by every reading of her horoscope. 
 
 This scene, known to the Cardinal de Lorraine, who as- 
 cribed it to the Black Art, was being realized ; Francis II. 
 had reigned for two turns only of the wheel, and Charles IX. 
 was achieving his last. When Catherine spoke these strange 
 words to her son Henri as he set out for Poland, "You will 
 soon return ! " they must be ascribed to her faith in the 
 occult sciences, and not to any intention of poisoning 
 Charles IX. Marguerite de France was now Queen of Na- 
 varre; Elizabeth was Queen of Spain; the Due d'Anjou was 
 King of Poland. 
 
 Many other circumstances contributed to confirm Cather- 
 ine's belief in the occult sciences. On the eve of the tour- 
 nament where Henri II. was mortally wounded, Catherine 
 saw the fatal thrust in a dream. Her astrological council, 
 consisting of Nostradamus and the two Ruggieri, had foretold 
 the King's death. History has recorded Catherine's earnest 
 entreaties that he should not enter the lists. The prognostic 
 and the dream begotten of the prognostic were verified. 
 
 The chronicles of the time relate another and not less 
 strange fact. The courier who brought news of the victory 
 of Moncontour arrived at night, having ridden so hard that 
 he had killed three horses. The Queen-mother was roused, 
 and said, "I knew it." 
 
 "In fact," says Brantome, "she had the day before an- 
 nounced her son's success and some details of the fight." 
 
 The astrologer attached to the House of Bourbon foretold 
 that the youngest of the Princes in direct descent from Saint- 
 Louis, the son of Antoine de Bourbon, would be King of 
 France. This prophecy, noted by Sully, was fulfilled pre- 
 cisely as described by the horoscope, which made Henry IV,
 
 256 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 remark that by dint of lies these astrologers hit on the very 
 truth. 
 
 Be this as it may, most of the clever men of the time be- 
 lieved in the far-reaching "science of the Magi," as it was 
 called by the masters of astrology or sorcery, as it was 
 termed by the people and they were justified by the verifi- 
 cation of horoscopes. 
 
 It was for Cosmo Ruggieri, her mathematician and astrolo- 
 ger her wizard, if you will that Catherine erected the pillar 
 against the corn-market in Paris, the only remaining relic of 
 the Hotel de Soissons. Cosmo Ruggieri, like confessors, had 
 a mysterious influence which satisfied him, as it does them. 
 His secret ambition, too, was superior to that of vulgar minds. 
 This man, depicted by romance-writers and playwrights as a 
 mere juggler, held the rich abbey of Saint-Mahe in Lower 
 Brittany, and had refused high ecclesiastical preferment ; the 
 money he derived in abundance from the superstitious mania 
 of the time was sufficient for his private undertakings; and 
 the Queen's hand, extended to protect his head, preserved 
 every hair of it from harm. 
 
 As to Catherine's devouring thirst for dominion, her desire 
 to acquire power was so great that, in order to grasp it, she 
 could ally herself. with the Guises, the enemies of the throne; 
 and to keep the reins of State in her own hands, she adopted 
 every means, sacrificing her friends, and even her children. 
 This woman could not live without the intrigues of rule, as a 
 gambler cannot live without the excitement of play. Though 
 she was an Italian and a daughter of the luxurious Medici, the 
 Calvinists, though they calumniated her plentifully, never 
 accused her of having a lover. 
 
 Appreciating the maxim, "Divide to reign," for twelve 
 years she had been constantly playing off one force against 
 another. As soon as she took the reins of government into 
 her hands, she was compelled to encourage discord to neu- 
 tralize the strength of two rival Houses and save the throne.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DP MEDICI. 257 
 
 This necessary system justified Henri II. 's foresight. Cath- 
 erine was the inventor of the political see-saw, imitated since 
 by every prince who has found himself in a similar position ; 
 she upheld, by turns, the Calvinists against the Guises, and 
 the Guises against the Calvinists. Then, after using the two 
 creeds to check each other in the heart of the people, she set 
 the Due d'Anjou against Charles IX. After using things to 
 counteract each other, she did the same with men, always 
 keeping the clue to their interests in her own hands. 
 
 But in this tremendous game, which requires the head of 
 a Louis XI. or a Louis XVIII., the player inevitably is the 
 object of hatred to all parties, and is condemned to win un- 
 failingly, for one lost battle makes every interest his enemy, 
 until indeed by dint of winning he ends by finding no one to 
 play against him. The greater part of Charles IX. 's reign was 
 the triumph of the domestic policy carried out by this won- 
 derful woman. What extraordinary skill Catherine must have 
 brought into play to get the chief command of the army given 
 to the Due d'Anjou, under a brave young King thirsting for 
 glory, capable and generous and in the face of the Connet- 
 able Anne de Montmorency ! The Due d'Anjou, in the eyes 
 of all Europe, reaped the honors of Saint-Bartholomew's Day, 
 while Charles IX. had all the odium. After instilling into 
 the King's mind a spurious and covert jealousy of his brother, 
 she worked upon this feeling so as to exhaust Charles IX. 's 
 really fine qualities in the intrigues of rivalry with his brother. 
 Cypierre, their first tutor, and Amyot, Charles IX. 's pre- 
 ceptor, had made their royal charge so noble a man, and had 
 laid the foundations of so great a reign, that the mother hated 
 the son from the very first day when she feared to lose her 
 power after having conquered it with so much difficulty. 
 
 These facts have led certain historians to believe that the 
 Queen-mother had a preference for Henri III.; but her be- 
 havior at this juncture proves that her heart was absolutely 
 indifferent toward her children. The Due d'Anjou, when he 
 17
 
 258 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 went to govern Poland, robbed her of the tool she needed 
 to keep Charles IX. 's mind fully occupied by these domestic 
 intrigues, which had hitherto neutralized his energy by giving 
 food to his vehement feelings. Catherine then hatched the 
 conspiracy of la Mole and Coconnas, in which the Due 
 d'Alencon had a hand ; and he, when he became Due d'An- 
 jou on his brother's being made King, lent himself very readily 
 to his mother's views and displayed an ambition which was 
 encouraged by his sister Marguerite, Queen of Navarre. 
 
 This plot, now ripened to the point which Catherine de- 
 sired, aimed at putting the young Duke and his brother-in- 
 law, the King of Navarre, at the head of the Calvinists, at 
 seizing Charles IX., thus making the King, who had no heir, 
 a prisoner, and leaving the throne free for the Duke, who pro- 
 posed to establish Calvinism in France. Only a few days 
 before his death, Calvin had won the reward he hoped for 
 the Reformed creed was called Calvinism in his honor. 
 
 La Mole and Coconnas had been arrested fifty days before 
 the night on which this scene opens, to be beheaded in the 
 following April ; and if le Laboureur and other judicious 
 writers had not amply proved that they were the victims of 
 the Queen-mother, Cosmo Ruggieri's participation in the 
 affair would be enough to show that she secretly directed it. 
 This man, suspected and hated by the King for reasons which 
 will be presently sufficiently explained, was implicated by the 
 inquiries. He admitted that he had furnished la Mole with 
 an image representing the King and stabbed to the heart with 
 two needles. This form of witchcraft was at that time a cap- 
 ital crime. This kind of bedevilment (called in French en- 
 vouter, from the Latin vultus, it is said) represented one of the 
 most infernal conceptions that hatred could imagine, and the 
 word admirably expresses the magnetic and terrible process 
 carried on, in occult science, by constantly active malevolence 
 on the person devoted to death ; its effects being incessantly 
 suggested by the sight of the wax figure. The law at that
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MED2CI. 259 
 
 time considered, and with good reason, that the idea thus 
 embodied constituted high treason. Charles IX. desired the 
 death of the Florentine ; Catherine, more powerful, obtained 
 from the Supreme Court, through the intervention of her 
 Councilor Lecamus, that her astrologer should be condemned 
 only to the galleys. As soon as the King was dead, Ruggieri 
 was pardoned by an edict of Henri III.'s,* who reinstated him 
 in his revenues and received him at Court. 
 
 Catherine had, by this time, struck so many blows on her 
 son's heart, that at this moment he was only anxious to shake 
 off the yoke she had laid on him. Since Marie Touchet's 
 absence, Charles IX., having nothing to occupy him, had 
 taken to observing very keenly all that went on around him. 
 He had set very skillful snares for certain persons whom he 
 had trusted, to test their fidelity^ He had watched his moth- 
 er's proceedings, and had kept her in ignorance of his own, 
 making use of all the faults she had inculcated in order to 
 deceive her. Eager to efface the feeling of horror produced 
 in France by the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew, he took an 
 active interest in public affairs, presided at the council, and 
 tried by well-planned measures to seize the reins of govern- 
 ment. Though the Queen might have attempted to counteract 
 her son's endeavors by using all the influence that maternal 
 authority and her habit of dominion could have over his 
 mind, the downward course of distrust is so rapid that, at the 
 first leap, the son had gone too far to be recalled. 
 
 On the day when his mother's words to the King of Poland 
 were repeated to Charles IX., he already felt so ill that the 
 most hideous notions dawned on his mind ; and when such 
 suspicions take possession of a son and a king nothing can 
 remove them. In fact, on his death-bed his mother was 
 obliged to interrupt him, exclaiming, " Do not say that, 
 monsieur!" when Charles IX., intrusting his wife and 
 
 * In 1573 chosen and crowned King of Poland.
 
 260 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 daughter to the care of Henri IV., was about to put him on 
 his guard against Catherine. 
 
 Though Charles IX. never failed in the superficial respect 
 of which she was so jealous, and she never called the kings, 
 her sons, anything but monsieur, the Queen-mother had, for 
 some months past, detected in Charles' manner the ill-dis- 
 guised irony of revenge held in suspense. But he must be a 
 clever man who could deceive Catherine. She held in her 
 hand this conspiracy of the Due d'Alencon and la Mole, so 
 as to be able to divert Charles' effort at emancipation by this 
 new rivalry of a brother ; but before making use of it, she 
 was anxious to dissipate the want of confidence which might 
 make her reconciliation with the King impossible for how 
 could he leave the power in the hands of a mother who was 
 capable of poisoning him ? 
 
 Indeed, at this juncture she thought herself so far in danger 
 that she had sent for Strozzi, her cousin, a soldier famous for 
 his death. She held secret councils with Birague and the 
 Gondis, and never had she so frequently consulted the oracle 
 of the Hotel de Soissons. 
 
 Though long habits of dissimulation and advancing years 
 had given Catherine that abbess-like countenance, haughty 
 and ascetic, expressionless and yet deep, reserved but scrutiniz- 
 ing, and so remarkable for any student of her portraits, those 
 about her perceived a cloud over this cold, Florentine mirror. 
 No sovereign was ever a more imposing figure than this woman 
 had made herself since the day when she had succeeded in 
 coercing the Guises after the death of Francis II. Her black 
 velvet hood, with a peak over the forehead, for she never 
 went out of mourning for Henri II., was, as it were, a 
 womanly cowl round her cold, imperious features, to which 
 she could, however, on occasion, give insinuating Italian 
 charms. She was so well-made that she introduced the 
 fashion for women to ride on horseback in such a way as to 
 display their legs ; this is enough to prove that hers were of
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 261 
 
 perfect form. Every lady in Europe thenceforth rode on a 
 side-saddle, a la planchettc,* for France had long set the 
 fashions. 
 
 To any one who can picture this impressive figure, the 
 scene in the great room that evening has an imposing aspect. 
 The two Queens, so unlike in spirit, in beauty, and in dress, 
 and almost at daggers drawn, were both much too absent- 
 minded to give the impetus for which the courtiers waited to 
 raise their spirits. 
 
 The dead secret of the drama which, for the past six 
 months, the son and mother had been cautiously playing, was 
 guessed by some of their followers ; the Italians, more especi- 
 ally, had kept an attentive lookout, for if Catherine should 
 lose the game, they would all be the victims. Under these 
 circumstances, at a moment when Catherine and her son were 
 vying with each other in subterfuges, the King was the centre 
 of observation. 
 
 Charles IX., tired by a long day's hunting and by the 
 serious reflections he brooded over in secret, looked forty this 
 evening. He had reached the last stage of the malady which 
 killed him, and which gave rise to grave suspicions of poison. 
 According to de Thou, the Tacitus of the Valois, the surgeon 
 found unaccountable spots in the King's body (ex causa in- 
 cognita reperti livores). His funeral was even more carelessly 
 conducted than that of Francis II. Charles the Ninth was 
 escorted from Saint-Lazare to Saint-Denis by Brantome and a 
 few archers of the Guard commanded by the Comtede Solern. 
 This circumstance, added to the mother's supposed hatred of 
 her son, may confirm the accusations brought against her by 
 de Thou ; at least it gives weight to the opinion here ex- 
 pressed, that she cared little for any of her children, an indif- 
 ference which is accounted for by her faith in the pronounce- 
 ment of astrology. Such a woman could not care for the 
 tools that were to break in her hands. Henri III. was the 
 
 * Lit.: On a shelf.
 
 262 ABOUT CATHERINE Z>' MEDICI. 
 
 last King under whom she could hope to reign ; and that 
 was all. 
 
 In our day it seems allowable to suppose that Charles IX. 
 died a natural death. His excesses, his manner of life, the 
 sudden development of his powers, his last struggles to seize 
 the reins of government, his desire to live, his waste of 
 strength, his last sufferings and his last pleasures, all indicate, 
 to impartial judges, that he died of disease of the lungs, a 
 malady at that time little understood and of which nothing 
 was known ; and its symptoms might lead Charles himself to 
 believe that he was poisoned. 
 
 The real poison given him by his mother lay in the evil 
 counsels of the courtiers with whom she surrounded him, who 
 induced him to waste his intellectual and physical powers, and 
 who thus were the cause of a disease which was purely inci- 
 dental and not congenital. 
 
 Charles the Ninth, at this period of his life more than at 
 any other, bore the stamp of a sombre dignity not unbecoming 
 in a King. The majesty of his secret thoughts was reflected 
 in his face, which was remarkable for the Italian complexion 
 he inherited from his mother. This ivory pallor, so beautiful 
 by artificial light, and so well suited with an expression of 
 melancholy, gave added effect to his deep blue eyes showing 
 narrowly under thick eyelids, and thus acquiring that keen 
 acumen which imagination pictures in the glance of a King, 
 while their color was an aid to dissimulation. Charles' eyes 
 derived an awe-inspiring look from his high, marked eyebrows 
 accentuating a lofty forehead which he could lift or lower 
 with singular facility. His nose was long and broad and thick 
 at the tip a true lion's nose ; he had large ears ; light reddish 
 hair ; lips of the color of blood, the lips of a consumptive 
 man ; the upper lip thin and satirical, the lower full enough to 
 indicate fine qualities of feeling. 
 
 The wrinkles stamped on his brow in early life, when ter- 
 rible anxieties had blighted its freshness, made his face in-
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 263 
 
 tensely interesting ; more than one had been caused by 
 remorse for the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew, a deed which 
 had been craftily foisted on him ; but there were two other 
 lines on his face which would have been eloquent to any stu- 
 dent who at that time could have had a special revelation of 
 the principles of modern physiology. These lines made a 
 deep furrow from the cheek-bones to each corner of the mouth, 
 and betrayed the efforts made by an exhausted organization 
 to respond to mental strain and to violent physical enjoyment. 
 Charles IX. was worn out. The Queen-mother, seeing her 
 work, must have felt some remorse, unless, indeed, politics 
 stifle such a feeling in all who sit under the purple. If Cath- 
 erine could have foreseen the effects of her intrigues on her 
 son, she might perhaps have shrunk from them(?). 
 
 It was a terrible spectacle. The King, by nature so strong, 
 had become weak ; the spirit, so nobly tempered, was racked 
 by doubts ; this man, the centre of authority, felt himself 
 helpless ; the naturally firm temper had lost confidence in its 
 power. The warrior's valor had degenerated into ferocity, 
 reserve had become dissimulation, the refined and tender pas- 
 sion of the Valois was an insatiable thirst for pleasure. This 
 great man, misprized, perverted, with every side of his noble 
 spirit chafed to a sore, a King without power, a loving heart 
 without a friend, torn a thousand ways by conflicting schemes, 
 was, at four-and-twenty, the melancholy image of a man who 
 has found everything wanting, who distrusts every one, who 
 is ready to stake his all, even his life. Only lately had he 
 understood his mission, his power, his resources, and the 
 obstacles placed by his mother in the way of the pacification 
 of the kingdom ; but the light glowed in a broken lamp. 
 
 Two men, for whom the King had so great a regard that 
 he had saved one from the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew, 
 and had dined with the other at a time when his enemies 
 accused him of poisoning the King his chief physician Jean 
 Chapelain, and the great surgeon Ambroise Par had been
 
 264 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 sent for from the country by Catherine, and, obeying the 
 summons in hot haste, arrived at the King's bedtime. They 
 looked anxiously at their sovereign, and some of the courtiers 
 made whispered inquiries, but they answered with due reserve, 
 saying nothing of the sentence each had secretly pronounced. 
 Now and again the King would raise his heavy eyelids and 
 try to conceal from the bystanders the glance he shot at his 
 mother. Suddenly he rose, and went to stand in front of the 
 fireplace. 
 
 "Monsieur de Chiverni," said he, "why do you keep the 
 title of Chancellor of Anjou and Poland ? Are you our ser- 
 vant or our brother's? " 
 
 "I am wholly yours, Sire," replied Chiverni, with a bow. 
 
 "Well, then, come to-morrow; I mean to send you to 
 Spain, for strange things are doing at the Court of Madrid, 
 gentlemen." 
 
 The King looked at his wife and returned to his chair. 
 
 " Strange things are doing everywhere," he added in a 
 whisper to Marshal Tavannes, one of the favorites of his 
 younger days. And he rose to lead the partner of his youth- 
 ful pleasures into the recess of an oriel window, saying to 
 him 
 
 " I want you ; stay till the last. I must know whether you 
 will be with me or against me. Do not look astonished. I 
 am breaking the leading strings. My mother is at the bot- 
 tom of all the mischief here. In three months I shall either 
 be dead or be really King. As you love your life, silence ! 
 You are in my secret with Solern and Villeroy. If the least 
 hint is given, it will come from one of you three. Do not 
 keep too close to me ; go and pay your court to my mother ; 
 tell her that I am dying, and that you cannot regret it, for 
 that I am but a poor creature." 
 
 Charles IX. walked round the room leaning on his old 
 favorite's shoulder, and discussing his sufferings with him, to 
 mislead inquisitive persons ; then, fearing that his coldness
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 265 
 
 might be too marked, he went to talk with the two Queens, 
 calling Birague to his side. 
 
 Just then Pinard glided in at the door and came up to 
 Queen Catherine, slipping in like an eel, close to the wall. 
 He murmured two words in the Queen-mother's ear, and she 
 replied with an affirmative nod. The King did not ask what 
 this meant, but he went back to his chair with a scowl round 
 the room of horrible rage and jealousy. This little incident 
 was of immense importance in the eyes of all the Court. 
 This exertion of authority without any appeal to the King 
 was like the drop of water that makes the glass overflow. 
 The young Queen and Countess Fieschi withdrew without the 
 King's paying her the least attention, but the Queen-mother 
 attended her daughter-in-law to the door. Though the mis- 
 understanding between the mother and son lent enormous 
 interest to the movements, looks, and attitude of Catherine 
 and Charles IX., their cold composure plainly showed the 
 courtiers that they were in the way ; as soon as the Queen 
 had gone they took their leave. At ten o'clock no one re- 
 mained but certain intimate persons the two Gondis, Ta- 
 vannes, the Comte de Solern, Birague, and the Queen-mother. 
 
 The King sat plunged in the deepest melancholy. This 
 silence was fatiguing. Catherine seemed at a loss; she 
 wished to retire, and she wanted the King to attend her to 
 the door, but Charles remained obstinately lost in thought ; 
 she rose to bid him good-night, Charles was obliged to follow 
 her example ; she took his arm, and went a few steps with 
 him to speak in his ear these few words 
 
 "Monsieur, I have matters of importance to discuss with 
 you." 
 
 As she left, the Queen-mother met the eyes of the Gondis 
 reflected in a glass, and gave them a significant glance, which 
 her son could not see all the more so because he himself was 
 exchanging meaning looks with the Comte de Solern and Vil- 
 leroy; Tavannes was absorbed in thought.
 
 266 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 "Sire," said the Marechal de Retz, coming out of his 
 meditations, " you seem right royally bored. Do you never 
 amuse yourself nowadays ? Heaven above us ! where are the 
 times when we went gadding about the streets of nights?" 
 
 "Yes, those were good times," said the King, not without 
 a sigh. 
 
 " Why not be off now?" said Monsieur de Birague, bow- 
 ing himself out, with a wink at the Gondis. 
 
 "I always think of that time with pleasure," cried the 
 Marechal de Retz. 
 
 " I should like to see you on the roofs, Monsieur le Mare- 
 chal," said Tavannes. "Sacrt chat d' Italic (Sacred Italian 
 cat), if you might but break your neck," he added in an 
 undertone to the King. 
 
 " I know not whether you or I should be nimblest at jump- 
 ing across a yard or a street ; but what I do know is, that 
 neither of us is more afraid of death than the other," replied 
 the Due de Retz. 
 
 "Well, Sire, will you come to scour the town as you did 
 when you were young? " said the master of the wardrobe to 
 the King. 
 
 Thus at four-and-twenty the unhappy King was no longer 
 thought young, even by his flatterers. Tavannes and the King 
 recalled, like two schoolfellows, some of the good tricks they 
 had perpetrated in Paris, and the party was soon made up. 
 The two Italians, being dared to jump from roof to roof across 
 the street, pledged themselves to follow where the King should 
 lead. They all went to put on common clothes. 
 
 The Comte de Solern, left alone with the King, looked at 
 him with amazement. The worthy German, though filled 
 with compassion as he understood the position of the King of 
 France, was fidelity and honor itself, but he had not a lively 
 imagination. King Charles, surrounded by enemies, and 
 trusting no one, not even his wife who, not knowing that 
 his mother and all her servants were inimical to him, had
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 267 
 
 committed some little indiscretions was happy to have found 
 in Monsieur de Solern a devotion which justified complete 
 confidence. Tavannes and Villeroy were only partly in the 
 secret. The Comte de Solern alone knew the whole of the 
 King's schemes ; and he was in every way very useful to his 
 master, inasmuch that he had a handful of confidential and 
 attached men at his orders who obeyed him blindly. Mon- 
 sieur de Solern, who held a command in the Archers of the 
 Guard, had for some days been picking from among his men 
 some who were faithful in their adherence to the King, to 
 form a chosen company. The King could think of every- 
 thing. 
 
 " Well, Solern," said Charles IX., " we are needing a pre- 
 text for spending a night out of doors. I had the excuse, of 
 course, of Madame de Belleville; but this is better, for my 
 mother can find out what goes on at Marie's house." 
 
 Monsieur de Solern, as he was to attend the King, asked if 
 he might not go the rounds with some of his Germans, and 
 to this Charles consented. By eleven o'clock the King, in 
 better spirits now, set out with his three companions to ex- 
 plore the neighborhood of the Rue Saint-HonorS. 
 
 "I will take my lady by surprise," said Charles to Tavan- 
 nes as they went along the Rue de 1'Autruche. 
 
 To make this nocturnal play more intelligible to those who 
 may be ignorant of the topography of old Paris, it will be 
 necessary to explain the position of the Rue de 1'Autruche. 
 The part of the Louvre, begun by Henri II., was still being 
 built amid the wreck of houses. Where the wing now stands 
 looking over the Pont des Arts, there was at that time a 
 garden. In the place of the Colonnade there were a moat 
 and a drawbridge on which, somewhat later, a Florentine, the 
 Mardchal d'Ancre, met his death. Beyond this garden rose 
 the turrets of the H6tel de Bourbon, the residence of the 
 princes of that branch till the day when the constable's 
 treason (after he was ruined by the confiscation of his posses-
 
 268 ABOUT CATHERINE DE* MEDICI. 
 
 sions, decreed by Francis L, to avoid having to decide be- 
 tween him and his mother) put an end to the trial that had 
 cost France so dear, by the confiscation of the constable's 
 estates. 
 
 This castle, which looked well from the river, was not de- 
 stroyed till the time of Louis XIV. 
 
 Th Rue de 1'Autruche ran from the Rue Saint-Honore, 
 ending at the Hotel de Bourbon on the quay. This street, 
 named de 1'Autriche on some old plans, and de 1'Austruc on 
 others, has, like many more, disappeared from the map. 
 The Rue des Poulies would seem to have been cut across the 
 ground occupied by the houses nearest to the Rue Saint- 
 Honore. Authors have differed, too, as to the etymology of 
 the name. Some suppose it to be derived from a certain 
 Hotel d'Osteriche {Osterrichen), inhabited in the fourteenth 
 century by a daughter of that house who married a French 
 nobleman. Some assert that this was the site of the royal 
 aviaries, whither, once on a time, all Paris crowded to see a 
 living ostrich. 
 
 Be it as it may, this tortuous street was made notable by 
 the residences of certain Princes of the Blood, who dwelt in 
 the vicinity of the Louvre. Since the sovereign had deserted 
 the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where for several centuries he 
 had lived in the Bastille, and removed to the Louvre, many 
 of the nobility had settled near the palace. The Hotel de 
 Bourbon had its fellow in the old H6tel d'Alencon in the Rue 
 Saint-Honor^. This, the palace of the Counts of that name, 
 always an appanage of the Crown, was at this time owned by 
 Henry II. 's fourth son, who subsequently took the title of 
 Due d'Anjou, and who died in the reign of Henri III., to 
 whom he gave no little trouble. The estate then reverted to 
 the Crown, including the old palace, which was pulled down. 
 In those days a prince's residence was a vast assemblage of 
 buildings; to form some idea of its extent, we have only to 
 go and see the space covered by the Hotel de Soubise, which
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 269 
 
 is still standing in the Marais. Such a palace included all the 
 buildings necessary to these magnificent lives, which may 
 seem almost problematical to many persons who see how poor 
 is the state of a prince in these days. There were immense 
 stables, lodgings for physicians, librarians, chancellor, chap- 
 lains, treasurers, officials, pages, paid servants, and lackeys, 
 attached to the prince's person. 
 
 Not far from the Rue Saint-Honor^, in a garden belonging 
 to the Hotel, stood a pretty little house built in 1520 by com- 
 mand of the celebrated Duchesse d'Alengon, which had since 
 been surrounded with other houses erected by merchants. 
 Here the King had installed Marie Touchet. Although the 
 Due d'Alengon was engaged in a conspiracy against the King 
 at that time, he was incapable of annoying him in such a 
 matter. 
 
 As the King was obliged to pass by his lady's door on his 
 way down the Rue Saint-Honore, where at that time highway 
 robbers had no opportunities within the Barriere des Sergents, 
 he could hardly avoid stopping there. While keeping a look- 
 out for some stroke of luck a belated citizen to be robbed 
 or the watch to be thrashed the King scanned every window, 
 peeping in wherever he saw lights, to see what was going on, 
 or to overhear a conversation. But he found his good city in 
 a provokingly peaceful state. On a sudden, as he' came in 
 front of the house kept by a famous perfumer named Rend, 
 who supplied the Court, the King was seized with one of 
 those swift inspirations which are suggested by antecedent 
 observations, as he saw a bright light shining from the top- 
 most window of the roof. 
 
 This perfumer was strongly suspected of doctoring rich 
 uncles when they complained of illness ; he was credited at 
 Court with the invention of the famous Elixir a successions 
 the Elixir of Inheritance and had been accused of poisoning 
 Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV. 's mother, who was buried with- 
 out her head having been opened, in spite of the express
 
 270 ABOUT CATHERINE Z)E' MEDICI. 
 
 orders of Charles IX., as a contemporary* tells us. For two 
 months past the King had been seeking some stratagem to 
 enable him to spy out the secrets of Rene's laboratory, whither 
 Como Ruggieri frequently resorted. Charles intended, if 
 anything should arouse his suspicions, to take steps himself 
 without the intervention of the police or the law, over whom 
 his mother would exert the influence of fear or of bribery. 
 
 It is beyond all doubt that during the sixteenth century, 
 and the years immediately preceding and following it, poison- 
 ing had been brought to a pitch of perfection which remains 
 unknown to modern chemistry, but which is indisputably 
 proved by history. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was 
 at that time the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many 
 of which are lost. Romancers have made such extravagant 
 use of this fact, that whenever they introduce Italians they 
 make them play the part of assassins and poisoners. 
 
 But though Italy had then the monopoly of those subtle 
 poisons of which historians tell us, we must regard her supre- 
 macy in toxicology merely as part of her preeminence in 
 all branches of knowledge and in the arts, in which she led 
 the way for all Europe. The crimes of the period were 
 not hers alone ; she served the passions of the age, as she 
 built magnificently, commanded armies, painted glorious fres- 
 coes, sang songs, loved Queens, and directed politics. At 
 Florence this hideous art had reached such perfection that a 
 woman dividing a peach with a duke could make use of a 
 knife of which one side only was poisoned, and, eating the 
 untainted half, dealt death with the other. A pair of per- 
 fumed gloves introduced a mortal malady by the pores of the 
 hand ; poison could be concealed in a bunch of fresh roses of 
 which the fragrance, inhaled but once, meant certain death. 
 Don Juan of Austria, it is said, was poisoned by a pair of 
 boots. 
 
 So King Charles had a right to be inquisitive, and it is easy 
 * De Thou : " Historia sui Temporis."
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 271 
 
 to imagine how greatly the dark suspicions which tormented 
 him added to his eagerness to detect Rene in the act. 
 
 The old fountain, since rebuilt, at the corner of the Rue de 
 1'Arbre-Sec, afforded this illustrious crew the necessary access 
 to the roof of a house, which the King pretended that he 
 wished to invade, not far from Rene's. Charles, followed by 
 his companions, began walking along the roofs, to the great 
 terror of the good folk awakened by these marauders, who 
 would call to them, giving them some coarsely grotesque name, 
 listen to family squabbles or love-makings, or do some vexa- 
 tious damage. 
 
 When the two Gondis saw Tavannes and the King clam- 
 bering along the roof adjoining Rene's, the Marechal de 
 Retz sat down, saying he was tired, and his brother remained 
 with him. 
 
 "So much the better," thought the King, glad to be quit 
 of his spies. 
 
 Tavannes made fun of the two Italians, who were then left 
 alone in the midst of perfect silence in a place where they 
 had only the sky above them and the cats for listeners. And 
 the brothers took advantage of this position to speak out 
 thoughts which they never would have uttered elsewhere 
 thoughts suggested by the incidents of the evening. 
 
 "Albert," said the Grand Master to the marshal, "the 
 King will get the upper hand of the Queen ; we are doing 
 bad business so far as our fortunes are concerned by attach- 
 ing ourselves to Catherine's. If we transfer our- services to 
 the King now, when he is seeking some support against his 
 mother, and needs capable men to rely upon, we shall not be 
 turned out like wild beasts when the Queen-mother is ban- 
 ished, imprisoned, or killed." 
 
 "You will not get far, Charles, by that road," the marshal 
 replied. "You will follow your master into the grave, and 
 he has not long to live ; he is wrecked by dissipation ; Cosmq 
 Ruggieri has foretold his death next year."
 
 272 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 " A dying boar has often gored the hunter," said Charles 
 de Gondi. " This plot of the Due d'Alencon with the King 
 of Navarre and the Prince de Conde, of which la Mole and 
 Coconnas are taking the onus, is dangerous rather than useful. 
 In the first place, the King of Navarre, whom the Queen- 
 mother hopes to take in the fact, is too suspicious of her, and 
 will have nothing to do with it. He means to get the benefit 
 of the conspiracy and run none of the risks. And now, the 
 last idea is to place the crown on the head of the Due d'Alen- 
 con, who is to turn Calvinist." 
 
 "Foolery! Dolt that you are, do you not see that this 
 plot enables our Queen to learn what the Huguenots can do 
 with the Due d'Alencon, and what the King means to do with 
 the Huguenots? For the King is temporizing with them. 
 And Catherine, to set the King riding on a wooden horse, 
 will betray the plot which must nullify his schemes." 
 
 "Ay!" said Charles de Gondi, " by dint of taking our 
 advice she can beat us at our own game. That is very 
 good." 
 
 " Good for the Due d'Anjou, who would rather be King 
 of France than King of Poland ; I am going to explain mat- 
 ters to him." 
 
 "You are going, Albert? " 
 
 " To-morrow. Is it not my duty to attend the King of 
 Poland ? I shall join him at Venice, where the ladies have 
 undertaken to amuse him." 
 
 "You are prudence itself." 
 
 "Che bestia ! I assure you solemnly that there is not 
 the slightest danger for either of us at Court. If there 
 were, should I leave? I would stick to our kind mis- 
 tress." 
 
 " Kind ! " said the Grand Master. " She is the woman to 
 drop her tools if she finds them too heavy." 
 
 "O coglionc ! You call yourself a soldier, and are afraid 
 of death ? Every trade has its duties, and our duty is to
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 273 
 
 Fortune. When we attach ourselves to monarchs who are 
 the fount of all temporal power, and who protect and ennoble 
 and enrich our families, we have to give them such love as 
 inflames the soul of the martyr for heaven ; when they sacri- 
 fice us for the throne we may perish, for we die as much for 
 ourselves as for them, but our family does not perish. Ecco ; 
 I have said ! " 
 
 "You are quite right, Albert ; you have got the old duchy 
 of Retz." 
 
 " Listen to me," said the Due de Retz. " The Queen has 
 great hopes of the Ruggieri and their arts to reconcile her to 
 her son. When that artful youth refused to have anything to 
 do with Rene, our Queen easily guessed what her son's suspi- 
 cions were. But who can tell what the King has in his pocket ? 
 Perhaps he is only doubting as to what fate he intends for his 
 mother ; he hates her, you understand ? He said something 
 of his purpose to the Queen, and the Queen talked of it to 
 Madame de Fieschi ; Madame de Fieschi carried it on to the 
 Queen-mother, and since then the King has kept out of his 
 wife's way." 
 
 " It was high time " said Charles de Gondi. 
 
 " What to do ? " asked the marshal. 
 
 "To give the King something to do," replied the Grand 
 Master, who, though he was on less intimate terms with 
 Catherine than his brother, was not less clear-sighted. 
 
 "Charles," said de Retz gravely, "I have started on a 
 splendid road ; but if you want to be a Duke, you must, like 
 me, be our mistress' ready tool. She will remain Queen; she 
 is the strongest. Madame de Sauves is still devoted to her ; 
 and the King of Navarre and the Due d'Alencon are devoted 
 to Madame de Sauves ; Catherine will always have them in 
 leading strings under this King, as she will have them under 
 King Henri III. Heaven send he may not be ungrateful ! " 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " His mother does too much for him." 
 18
 
 274 ABOU7 CATHERINE DE? MEDICI. 
 
 "Hark! There is a noise in the Rue Saint- Honore," 
 cried Charles de Gondi. "Rene's door is being locked. 
 Can you not hear a number of men ? They must have taken 
 the Ruggieri." 
 
 "The devil ! What a piece of prudence ! The King has 
 not shown his usual impetuosity. But where will he imprison 
 them ? Let us see what is going on." 
 
 The brothers reached the corner of the Rue de 1'Autruche 
 at the moment when the King was entering his mistress' 
 house. By the light of the torches held by the gatekeeper 
 they recognized Tavannes and the Ruggieri. 
 
 "Well, Tavannes," the Grand Master called out as he ran 
 after the King's companion, who was making his way back 
 to the Louvre, " what adventures have you had ? " 
 
 "We dropped on a full council of wizards, and arrested 
 two who are friends of yours, and who will explain for the 
 benefit of French noblemen by what means you, who are not 
 Frenchmen, have contrived to clutch two Crown offices," 
 said Tavannes, half in jest. 
 
 "And the King?" asked the Grand Master, who was not 
 much disturbed by Tavannes' hostility. 
 
 " He is staying with his mistress." 
 
 "We have risen to where we stand by the most absolute 
 devotion to our masters, a brilliant and noble career which 
 you too have adopted, my dear Duke," replied the Marechal 
 de Retz. 
 
 The three courtiers walked on in silence. As they bade 
 each other good-night, rejoining their retainers, who escorted 
 them home, two men lightly glided along the Rue de 1'Au- 
 truche in the shadow of the wall. These were the King and 
 the Comte de Solern, who soon reached the river-bank at a 
 spot where a boat and rowers, engaged by the German Count, 
 were awaiting them. In a few minutes they had reached the 
 opposite shore.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 275 
 
 " My mother is not in bed," cried the King, " she will see 
 us; we have not made a good choice of our meeting-place." 
 
 "She will think some duel is in the wind," said Solern. 
 "And how is she to distinguish who we are at this dis- 
 tance?" 
 
 "Well! Even if she sees me!" cried Charles IX. "I 
 have made up my mind now." 
 
 The King and his friend jumped on shore, and hurried off 
 toward the Pre aux Clercs. On arriving there, the Comte de 
 Solern, who went first, parleyed with a man on sentry, with 
 whom he exchanged a few words, and who then withdrew to 
 a group of others. 
 
 Presently two men, who seemed to be princes by the way 
 the outposts saluted them, left the spot where they were in 
 hiding behind some broken fencing, and came to the King, 
 to whom they bent the knee ; but Charles IX. raised them 
 before they could touch the ground, saying 
 
 " No ceremony; here we are all gentlemen together." 
 
 These three were now joined by a venerable old man, who 
 might have been taken for the Chancellor de I'Hopital, but 
 that he had died the year before. Then all four walked on 
 as quickly as possible to reach a spot where their conversation 
 could not be overheard by their retainers, and Solern followed 
 them at a little distance to keep guard over the King. This 
 faithful servant felt some doubts which Charles did not share, 
 for to him, indeed, life was too great a burden. The Count 
 de Solern was the only witness present at the meeting on the 
 King's side. 
 
 It soon became interesting. 
 
 "Sire," said one of the speakers, "the Conn6table de 
 Montmorency, the best friend the King, your father, had, and 
 possessed of all his secrets, agreed with the Marechal de 
 Saint-Andre 1 that Madame Catherine should be sewn up in a 
 sack and thrown into the river. If that had been done, many 
 good men would be alive now."
 
 276 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 "I have executions enough on my conscience, monsieur," 
 replied the King. 
 
 "Well, Sire," said the youngest of the four gentlemen, 
 "from the depths of exile Queen Catherine would still manage 
 to interfere and find men to help her. Have we not every- 
 thing to fear from the Guises, who, nine years since, schemed 
 for a monstrous Catholic alliance, in which your majesty is 
 not included, and which is a danger to the throne ? This alli- 
 ance is a Spanish invention for Spain still cherishes the hope 
 of leveling the Pyrenees. Sire, Calvinism can save France by 
 erecting a moral barrier between this nation and one that 
 aims at the Empire of the world. If the Queen-mother finds 
 herself in banishment, she will throw herself on Spain and the 
 Guises." 
 
 "Gentlemen," said the King, "I will have you to know 
 that, with your help, and with peace established on a basis of 
 confidence, I will undertake to make every soul in the king- 
 dom quake. By God and every sacred relic ! it is time that 
 the royal authority should assert itself. Understand this 
 clearly ; so far, my mother is right, power is slipping from 
 your grasp, as it is from mine. Your estates, your privi- 
 leges are bound to the throne; when you have allowed religion 
 to be overthrown, the hands you are using as tools will turn 
 against the Monarchy and against you. 
 
 " I have had enough of fighting ideas with weapons that 
 cannot touch them. Let us see whether Protestantism can 
 make its way if left to itself; above all, let us see what the 
 spirit of that faction means to attack. The admiral, God be 
 merciful to him, was no enemy of mine. He swore to me 
 that he would restrain the revolt within the limits of spiritual 
 feeling, and in the temporal kingdom secure mastery to the 
 King and submissive subjects. Now, gentlemen, if the thing 
 is still in your power, set an example, and help your sovereign 
 to control the malcontents who are disturbing the peace of 
 both parties alike. War robs us of all our revenue, and ruins
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 277 
 
 the country ; I am weary of this troubled State so much so 
 that, if it should be absolutely necessary, I would sacrifice my 
 mother. I would do more : I would have about me a like 
 number of Catholics and of Protestants, and I would hang 
 Louis XL's axe over their heads to keep them equal. If Mes- 
 sieurs de Guise plot a Holy Alliance which endangers the 
 Crown, the executioner shall begin on them. 
 
 "I understand the griefs of my people, and am quite ready 
 to cut freely at the nobles who bring trouble on our country. 
 I care little for questions of conscience ; I mean henceforth 
 to have submissive subjects who will work, under my rule, at 
 the prosperity of the State. 
 
 "Gentlemen, I give you ten days to treat with your 
 adherents, to break up your plots, and return to me, who will 
 be a father to you. If you are refractory, you will see great 
 changes. I shall make use of smaller men who, at my 
 bidding, will rush upon the great lords. I will follow the 
 example of a king who pacified his realm by striking down 
 greater men than you are who dared to defy him. If Catholic 
 troops are wanting, I can appeal to my brother of Spain to 
 defend a threatened throne ; nay, and if I need a Minister to 
 carry out my will, he will lend me the Duke of Alva." 
 
 " In that event, Sire, we can find Germans to fight your 
 Spaniards," said one of the party. 
 
 11 1 may remind you, cousin," said Charles IX. coldly, " that 
 my wife's name is Elizabeth of Austria ; your allies on that 
 side might fail you. But take my advice ; let us fight this 
 alone without calling in the foreigner. You are the object of 
 my mother's hatred, and you care enough for me to play the 
 part of second in my duel with her well, then, listen. You 
 stand so high in my esteem that I offer you the office of high 
 constable ; you will not betray us as the other has done." 
 
 The Prince thus addressed took the King's hand in a 
 friendly grasp, exclaiming 
 
 " God's 'ounds, brother, that is indeed forgiving evil !
 
 278 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 But, Sire, the head cannot move without the tail, and our 
 tail is hard to drag along. Give us more than ten days. We 
 still need at least a month to make the rest hear reason ; by 
 the end of that time we shall be the masters." 
 
 " A month, so be it ; Villeroy is my only plenipotentiary. 
 Take no word but his, whatever any one may say." 
 
 "One month," said the three other gentlemen ;"that will 
 be enough time." 
 
 "Gentlemen," said the King, "we are but five, all men of 
 mettle. If there is any treachery, we shall know with whom 
 to deal." 
 
 The three gentlemen left the King with every mark of deep 
 respect and kissed his hand. 
 
 As the King recrossed the Seine, four o'clock was striking 
 by the Louvre clock. 
 
 Queen Catherine was still up. 
 
 " My mother is not gone to bed," said Charles to the 
 Comte de Solern. 
 
 " She too has her forge," said the German. 
 
 " My dear Count, what must you think of a king who is 
 reduced to conspiracy ?" said Charles IX. bitterly, after a 
 pause. 
 
 "I think, Sire, that if you would only allow me to throw 
 that woman into the river, as our young friend said, France 
 would soon be at peace." 
 
 "Parricide! and after Saint-Bartholomew's!" said the 
 King. "No, no Exile. Once fallen, my mother would 
 not have an adherent or a partisan." 
 
 " Well, then, Sire," the Count went on, " allow me to take 
 her into custody now, at once, and escort her beyond the 
 frontier ; for by to-morrow she will have won you round again 
 to her views." 
 
 "Well," said the King, "come to my forge; no one can 
 hear us there. Beside, I am anxious that my mother should 
 know nothing of the arrest of the Ruggieri. If she knows I
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE D& MEDICI. 279 
 
 am within, the good lady will suspect nothing, and we will 
 concert the measures for arresting her." 
 
 When the King, attended by Solern, went into the low 
 room which served as his workshop, he smiled as he pointed 
 to his forge and various tools. 
 
 " I do not suppose," said he, " that of all the kings France 
 may ever have, there will be another with a taste for such a 
 craft. But when I am really King, I shall not forge swords ; 
 they shall all be sheathed." 
 
 " Sire," said the Comte de Solern, "the fatigues of tennis, 
 your work at the forge, hunting, and may I say it ? love- 
 making, are chariots lent you by the devil to hasten your 
 journey to Saint-Denis." 
 
 "Ah, Solern!" said the King sadly, "if only you could 
 feel the fire they have set burning in my heart and body. 
 Nothing can slake it. Are you sure of the men who are 
 guarding the Ruggieri ? " 
 
 "As sure as of myself." 
 
 "Well, in the course of this day I shall have made up my 
 mind. Think out the means of acting, and I will give you 
 my final instructions at five this evening, at Madame de Bel- 
 leville's." 
 
 i 
 
 The first gleams of daybreak were struggling with the lights 
 in the King's workshop, where the Comte de Solern had left 
 him alone, when he heard the door open and saw his mother, 
 looking like a ghost in the gloom. Though Charles IX. was 
 highly strung and nervous, he did not start, although under 
 the circumstances this apparition had an ominous and gro- 
 tesque aspect. 
 
 " Monsieur," said she, " you are killing yourself " 
 
 " I am fulfilling my horoscopes," he retorted, with a bitter 
 smile. " But you, madame, are you as ill as I am ? " 
 
 " We have both watched through the night, monsieur, but 
 with very different purpose. When you were setting out to
 
 280 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 confer with your bitterest enemies in the open night, and 
 hiding it from your mother, with the connivance of Tavannes 
 and the Gondis, with whom you pretended to be scouring the 
 town, I was reading dispatches which prove that a terrible 
 conspiracy is hatching, in which your brother the Due d'Al- 
 encon is implicated with your brother-in-law, the King of 
 Navarre, the Prince de Conde, and half the nobility of your 
 kingdom. Their plan is no less than to snatch the Crown 
 from you by taking possession of your person. These gentle- 
 men have already a following of fifty thousand men, all good 
 soldiers." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said the King incredulously. 
 
 "Your brother is becoming a Huguenot," the Queen went 
 on. 
 
 "My brother joining the Huguenots?" cried Charles, 
 brandishing the iron bar he held. 
 
 "Yes. The Due d'Alencon, a Huguenot at heart, is about 
 to declare himself. Your sister, the Queen of Navarre, has 
 scarcely a tinge of affection left for you. She loves Monsieur 
 le Due d'Alencon, she loves Bussy, and she also loves little la 
 Mole." 
 
 " What a large heart ! " said the King. 
 
 "Little la Mole, to grow great," the Queen went on, "can 
 think of no better means than making a King of France to 
 his mind. Then, it is said, he is to be high constable." 
 
 " That damned Margot ! " cried the King. " This is what 
 comes of her marrying a heretic " 
 
 " That would be nothing ; but then there is the head of the 
 younger branch, whom you have placed near the throne 
 against my warnings, and who only wants to see you all kill 
 each other ! The House of Bourbon is the enemy of the 
 House of Valois. Mark this, monsieur, a younger branch 
 must always be kept in abject poverty, for it is born with the 
 spirit of conspiracy, and it is folly to give it weapons when it 
 has none, or to leave them in its possession when it takes
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 281 
 
 them. The younger branches must be impotent for mischief 
 that is the law of sovereignty. The sultans of Asia 
 observe it. 
 
 " The proofs are upstairs in my closet, whither I begged 
 you to follow me when we parted last night, but you had 
 other projects. Within a month, if we do not take a high 
 hand, your fate will be that of Charles the Simple." 
 
 "Within a month!" exclaimed Charles, amazed at the 
 coincidence of this period with the term fixed by the princes 
 that very night. "In a month we shall be the masters," 
 thought he to himself, repeating their words. "You have 
 proofs, madame ? " he asked aloud. 
 
 " They are unimpeachable, monsieur ; they are supplied 
 by my daughter Marguerite. Terrified by the probable out- 
 come of such a coalition, in spite of her weakness for your 
 brother d'Alenc.on, the throne of the Valois lay, for once, 
 nearer to her heart than all her amours. She asks indeed, as 
 the reward of her revelation, that la Mole shall go scot-free ; 
 but that popinjay seems to me to be a rogue we ought to get 
 rid of, as well as the Comte de Co:onnas, your brother 
 d'Alencpon's right-hand man. As to the Prince de C9nd, 
 that boy would agree to anything so long as I may be flung 
 into the river ; I do not know if that is his idea of a handsome 
 return on his wedding-day for the pretty wife I got him. 
 
 " This is a serious matter, monsieur. You spoke of pre- 
 dictions ! I know of one which says that the Bourbons will 
 possess the throne of the Valois ; and if we do not take care, 
 it will be fulfilled. Do not be vexed with your sister, she has 
 acted well in this matter. 
 
 " My son," she went on, after a pause, with an assumption 
 of tenderness in her tone, " many evil-minded persons, in the 
 interest of the Guises, want to sow dissension between you 
 and me, though we are the only two persons in the realm 
 whose interests are identical. Reflect. You blame yourself 
 now, I know, for Saint-Bartholomew's night ; you blame me
 
 282 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 for persuading you to it. But Catholicism, monsieur, ought 
 to be the bond of Spain, France, and Italy, three nations 
 which by a secretly and skillfully worked scheme may, in the 
 course of time, be united under the House of Valois. Do not 
 forfeit your chances by letting the cord slip which includes 
 these three kingdoms in the pale of the same faith. 
 
 "Why should not the Valois and the Medici carry out, to 
 their great glory, the project of Charles V., who lost his 
 head ? Let those descendants, of Jane the Crazy, people the 
 new world at which they are grasping. The Medici, masters 
 of Florence and Rome, will subdue Italy to your rule ; they 
 will secure all its advantages by a treaty of commerce and 
 alliance, and recognize you as their liege lord for the fiefs of 
 Piedmont, the Milanese, and Naples, over which you have 
 rights. These, monsieur, are the reasons for the war to the 
 death we are waging with the Huguenots. Why do you com- 
 pel us to repeat these things ? 
 
 " Charlemagne made a mistake when he pushed northward. 
 France is a body of which the heart is on the Gulf of Lyons, 
 and whose two arms are Spain and Italy. Thus we should 
 command the Mediterranean, which is like a basket into 
 which all the wealth of the East is poured to the benefit of 
 the Venetians now, in the teeth of Philip II. 
 
 "And if the friendship of the Medici and your inherited 
 rights can thus entitle you to hope for Italy, force, or alliance, 
 or perhaps inheritance, may give you Spain. There you must 
 step in before the ambitious House of Austria, to whom the 
 Guelphs would have sold Italy, and who still dream of pos- 
 sessing Spain. Though your wife is a daughter of that line, 
 humble Austria, hug her closely to stifle her ! There lie the 
 enemies of your dominion, since from thence comes aid for 
 the Reformers. Do not listen to men who would profit by our 
 disagreement, and who fill your head with trouble by repre- 
 senting me as your chief enemy at home. Have I hindered 
 you from having an heir ? Is it my fault that your mistress
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 283 
 
 has a son and your wife only a daughter ? Why have you 
 not by this time three sons, who would cut off all this sedition 
 at the root ? Is it my part, monsieur, to reply to these ques- 
 tions ? If you had a son, would Monsieur d" Alencon conspire 
 against you?" 
 
 As she spoke these words, Catherine fixed her eyes on 
 Charles IX. with the fascinating gaze of a bird of prey on 
 its victim. The daughter of the Medici was beautiful in her 
 way ; her real feelings illumined her face, which, like that of 
 a gambler at the green-table, was radiant with ambitious 
 greed. Charles IX. saw her no longer as the mother of one 
 man, but, as she had been called, the mother of armies and 
 empires (mater castroruni). Catherine had spread the pinions 
 of her genius, and was boldly soaring in the realm of high 
 politics of the Medici and the Valois, sketching the vast plans 
 which had frightened Henri II., and which, transmitted by 
 the Medici to Richelieu,* were stored in the cabinet of the 
 House of Bourbon. But Charles IX., seeing his mother take 
 so many precautions, supposed them to be necessary, and 
 wondered to what end she was taking them. He looked 
 down ; he hesitated ; his distrust was not to be dispelled by 
 words. 
 
 Catherine was astonished to see what deeply founded sus- 
 picion lurked in her son's heart. 
 
 "Well, monsieur," she went on, "do you not choose to 
 understand me ? What are we, you and I, compared with the 
 eternity of a royal Crown ? Do you suspect me of any pur- 
 poses but those which must agitate us who dwell in the sphere 
 whence empires are governed? " 
 
 " Madame," said he, " I will follow you to your closet we 
 must act " 
 
 "Act?" cried Catherine. "Let them go their way and 
 take them in the act ; the law will rid you of them. For 
 God's sake, monsieur, let them see us smiling." 
 
 * Reign Louis XIII., son of Henry IV. and Marie de' Medici.
 
 284 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 The Queen withdrew. The King alone remained standing 
 for a minute, for he had sunk into extreme dejection. 
 
 " On which side are the snares? " he said aloud. " Is it 
 she who is deceiving me, or they ? What is the better policy ? 
 Deus ! discerne causam meant," he cried, with tears in his 
 eyes. " Life is a burden to me. Whether natural or compul- 
 sory, I would rather meet death than these contradictory tor- 
 ments," he added, and he struck the hammer on his anvil 
 with such violence that the vaults of the Louvre quaked. 
 "Great God ! " he exclaimed, going out and looking up at 
 the sky, " Thou for whose holy religion I am warring, give 
 me the clearness of Thine eyes to see into my mother's heart 
 by questioning the Ruggieri." 
 
 The little house inhabited by the Lady of Belleville, where 
 Charles had left his prisoners, was the last but one in the Rue 
 de 1'Autruche, near the Rue Saint-Honore. The street-gate, 
 guarded by two little lodges built of brick, looked very plain 
 at a time when gates and all their accessories were so elabo- 
 rately treated. The entrance consisted of two stone pillars, 
 diamond-cut, and the architrave was graced with the reclin- 
 ing figure of a woman holding a cornucopia. The gate, of 
 timber covered with heavy iron scroll-work, had a wicket 
 peephole at the level of the eye for spying any one who de- 
 sired admittance. In each lodge a porter lived, and Charles' 
 caprice insisted that a gatekeeper should be on the watch day 
 and night. 
 
 There was a little courtyard in front of the house paved 
 with Venetian mosaic. At that time, when carriages had not 
 been invented, and ladies rode on horseback or in litters, the 
 courtyard could be splendid with no fear of injury from horses 
 or vehicles. We must constantly bear these facts in mind to 
 understand the narrowness of the streets, the small extent of 
 the forecourts, and various other details of the dwellings of 
 the fifteenth century.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE D' MEDICI. 285 
 
 The house, of one story above the ground floor, had at the 
 top a sculptured frieze, on which rested a roof sloping up from 
 all the four sides to a flat space at the top. The sides were 
 pierced by dormer windows adorned with architraves and 
 side-posts, which some great artist had chiseled into delicate 
 arabesques. All the three windows of the second-floor rooms 
 were equally conspicuous for this embroidery in stone, thrown 
 into relief by the red-brick walls. On the ground floor a 
 double flight of outside steps, elegantly sculptured the bal- 
 cony being remarkable for a true lover's knot led to the 
 house-door, decorated in the Venetian style with stone cut 
 into pointed lozenges, a form of ornament that was repeated 
 on the window-jambs on each side of the door, a fashion then 
 much in vogue. 
 
 A garden laid out in the fashion of the time, and full of 
 rare flowers, occupied a space behind the house of equal 
 extent with the forecourt. A vine hung over the walls. A 
 silver pine stood in the centre of a grass-plot ; the flower 
 borders were divided from the turf by winding paths leading 
 to a little bower of clipped yews at the further end. The 
 garden walls, covered with a coarse mosaic of colored pebbles, 
 pleased the eye by a richness of color that harmonized with 
 the hues of the flowers. The garden-front of the house, like 
 the front to the court, had a pretty balcony from the middle 
 window over the door ; and on both facades alike the archi- 
 tectural treatment of this middle window was carried up to 
 the frieze of the cornice, with a bow that gave it the appear- 
 ance of a lantern. The sills of the other windows were inlaid 
 with fine marbles let into the stone. 
 
 Notwithstanding the perfect taste evident in this building, 
 it had a look of gloom. It was shut out from the open day 
 by neighboring houses and the roofs of the Hotel d'Alencon, 
 which cast their shadow over the courtyard and garden ; 
 then absolute silence prevailed. Still, this silence, this sub- 
 dued light, this solitude, were restful to a soul that could give
 
 286 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 itself up to a single thought, as in a cloister where we may 
 meditate, or in a snug home where we may love. 
 
 Who can fail now to conceive of the interior elegance of 
 this dwelling, the only spot in all his kingdom where the last 
 Valois but one could pour out his heart, confess his sufferings, 
 give play to his taste for the arts, and enjoy the poetry he 
 loved pleasures denied him by the cares of his most ponder- 
 ous royalty. There alone were his lofty soul and superior 
 qualities appreciated ; there alone, for a few brief months, 
 the last of his life, could he know the joys of fatherhood, to 
 which he abandoned himself with the frenzy which his pre- 
 sentiment of an imminent and terrible death lent to all his 
 actions. 
 
 In the afternoon of this day, Marie was finishing her toilet 
 in her oratory the ladies' boudoir of that time. She was 
 arranging the curls of her fine black hair, so as to leave a' few 
 locks to turn over a new velvet coif, and was looking atten- 
 tively at herself in the mirror. 
 
 "It is nearly four o'clock! That interminable Council 
 must be at an end by now," said she to herself. "Jacob is 
 back from the Louvre, where they are greatly disturbed by 
 reason of the number of councilors convened and by the dura- 
 tion of the sitting. What can have happened, some disaster ? 
 Dear heaven ! does he know how the spirit is worn by waiting 
 in vain ? He is gone hunting, perhaps. If he is amused, all 
 is well. If I see him happy, I shall forget my sorrows " 
 
 She pulled down her bodice around her waist, that there 
 might not be a wrinkle in it, and turned to see how her 
 dress fitted in profile ; but then she saw the King reclining 
 on a couch. The carpeted floors deadened the sound of 
 footsteps so effectually that he had come in without being 
 heard. 
 
 "You startled me," she said, with a cry of surprise, which 
 she instantly checked. 
 
 " You were thinking of me, then? " said the King.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 287 
 
 " When am I not thinking of you? " she asked him, sitting 
 down by his side. 
 
 She took off his cap and cloak, and passed her hands 
 through his hair as if to comb it with her fingers. Charles 
 submitted without speaking. Marie knelt down to study her 
 royal master's pale face, and discerned in it the lines of 
 terrible fatigue and of a more devouring melancholy than 
 any she had ever been able to scare away. She checked a 
 tear, and kept silence, not to irritate a grief she as yet knew 
 nothing of by some ill-chosen word. She did what tender 
 wives do in such cases ; she kissed the brow seamed with pre- 
 cocious wrinkles and the hollow cheeks, trying to breathe the 
 freshness of her own spirit into that careworn soul through its 
 infusion into gentle caresses, which, however, had no effect. 
 She raised her head to the level of the King's, embracing 
 him fondly with her slender arms, and then laid her face 
 on his laboring breast, waiting for the opportune moment 
 to question the stricken man. 
 
 " My Chariot, will you not tell your poor anxious friend 
 what are the thoughts that darken your brow and take the 
 color from your dear, red lips? " 
 
 " With the exception of Charlemagne," said he, in a dull, 
 hollow voice, " every King of France of the name of Charles 
 has come to a miserable end." 
 
 " Pooh ! " said she. " What of Charles VIII.? " 
 
 "In the prime of life," replied the King, "the poor 
 man knocked his head against a low doorway in the Castle 
 of Amboise, which he was decorating splendidly, and he 
 died in dreadful pain.* His death gave the Crown to our 
 branch." 
 
 " Charles VII. reconquered his kingdom." 
 
 "Child, he died" and the King lowered his voice 
 "of starvation, in the dread of being poisoned by the Dau- 
 phin, who had already caused the death of his fair Agnes. 
 * April 7, 1498.
 
 288 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 The father dreaded his son. Now, the son dreads his 
 mother! " 
 
 " Why look back on the past?" said she, remembering 
 the terrible existence of Charles VI. 
 
 " Why not , dear heart? Kings need not have recourse to 
 diviners to read the fate that awaits them ; they have only to 
 study history. I am at this time engaged in trying to escape 
 the fate of Charles the Simple, who was bereft of his crown, 
 and died in prison after seven years' captivity." 
 
 " Charles V. drove out the English ! " she cried triumph- 
 antly. 
 
 " Not he, but du Guesclin; for he, poisoned by Charles of 
 Navarre, languished in sickness." 
 
 " But Charles IV. ?" said she. 
 
 " He married three times and had no heir, in spite of the 
 masculine beauty that distinguished the sons of Philip the 
 Handsome. The first Valois dynasty ended in him. The sec- 
 ond Valois will end in the same way. The Queen has only 
 brought me a daughter, and I shall die without leaving any 
 child to come, for a minority would be the greatest misfor- 
 tune that could befall the kingdom. Beside, if I had a son, 
 would he live? Charles is a name of ill-omen, Charlemagne 
 exhausted all the luck attending it. If I could be King of 
 France again, I would not be called Charles X." 
 
 " Who then aims at your crown ? " 
 
 " My brother d' Alencon is plotting against me. I see ene- 
 mies on every side " 
 
 " Monsieur," said Marie, with an irresistible pout. " Tell 
 me some merrier tales." 
 
 " My dearest treasure," said the King vehemently, " never 
 call me monsieur, even in jest. You remind me of my mother, 
 who incessantly offends me with that word. I feel as if she 
 deprived me of my crown. She says ' My son ' to the Due 
 d'Anjou; that is to say, the King of Poland." 
 
 "Sire," said Marie, folding her hands as if in prayer,
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 289 
 
 " there is a realm where you are adored, which your majesty 
 fills entirely with glory and strength ; and there the word mon- 
 sieur means my gentle lord." 
 
 She unclasped her hands, and with a pretty action pointed 
 to her heart. The words were so sweetly musical musiquees, 
 to use an expression of the period, applied to love-songs that 
 Charles took Marie by the waist, raised her with the strength 
 for which he was noted, seated her on his knee, and gently 
 rubbed his forehead against the curls his mistress had arranged 
 with such care. 
 
 Marie thought this a favorable moment ; she ventured on a 
 kiss or two, which Charles allowed rather than accepted; then, 
 between two kisses, she said 
 
 " If my people told the truth, you were scouring Paris all 
 night, as in the days when you played the scapegrace younger 
 son?" 
 
 "Yes," said the King, who sat lost in thought. 
 
 " Did you not thrash the watch and rob certain good citi- 
 zens? And who are the men placed under my guard, and who 
 are such criminals that you have forbidden all communication 
 with them ? No girl was ever barred in with greater severity 
 than these men, who have had neither food nor drink. Solern's 
 Germans have not allowed any one to go near the room where 
 you left them. Is it a joke? Or is it a serious matter? " 
 
 "Yes," said the King, rousing himself from his reverie, 
 " last night I went scampering over the roofs with Tavannes 
 and the Gondis. I wanted to have the company of my old 
 comrades in folly. But our legs are not what they were ; we 
 did not dare jump across the streets. However, we crossed 
 two courtyards by leaping from roof to roof. The last time, 
 however, when we alighted on a gable close by this, as we 
 clung to the bar of a chimney, we decided, Tavannes and I, 
 that we could not do it again. If either of us had been alone, 
 he would not have tried it." 
 
 "You were the first to jump, I will wager." 
 19
 
 290 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 The King smiled. 
 
 " I know why you risk your life so." 
 
 " Hah, fair sorceress ! " 
 
 "You are weary of life." 
 
 " Begone with witchcraft ! I am haunted by it ! " said the 
 King, grave once more. 
 
 " My witchcraft is love," said she, with a smile. "Since 
 the happy day when you first loved me, have I not always 
 guessed your thoughts ? And if you will suffer me to say so, 
 the thoughts that torment you to-day are not worthy of a 
 King." 
 
 "Am I a King? " said he bitterly. 
 
 " Can you not be a King ? What did Charles VII. do, 
 whose name you bear? He listened to his mistress, my lord, 
 and he won back his kingdom, which was invaded by the 
 English then as it is now by the adherents of the New Reli- 
 gion. Your last act of State opened the road you must follow : 
 Exterminate heresy." 
 
 "You used to blame the stratagem," said Charles, "and 
 now ' ' 
 
 " It is accomplished," she put in. " Beside, I am of Madame 
 Catherine's opinion. It was better to do it yourself than to 
 leave it to the Guises." 
 
 " Charles VII. had only men to fight against, but I have to 
 battle with ideas," the King went on. " You may kill men ; 
 you cannot kill words ? The Emperor Charles V. gave up the 
 task ; his son, Don Philip, is spending himself in the attempt. 
 We shall die of it, we kings. On whom can I depend? On 
 my right, with the Catholics, I find the Guises threatening-me; 
 on my left, the Calvinists will never forgive the death of my 
 poor Father Coligny, nor the blood-letting of August; beside, 
 they want to be rid of us altogether. And in front of me, my 
 mother " 
 
 "Arrest her; reign alone," said Marie, whispering in his 
 ear.
 
 AM f A KING?" SAID HE, BITTERLY,
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 291 
 
 " I wanted to do so yesterday but I do not to-day. You 
 speak of it lightly enough." 
 
 "There is no such great distance between the daughter of 
 an apothecary and the daughter of a leech," said Marie 
 Touchet, who would often laugh at the parentage falsely 
 given her. 
 
 The King knit his brows. 
 
 " Marie, take no liberties. Catherine de' Medici is my 
 mother, and you ought to tremble at " 
 
 " But what are you afraid of? " 
 
 " Poison ! " cried the King, beside himself. 
 
 "Poor boy!" said Marie, swallowing her tears, for so 
 much strength united to so much weakness moved her deeply. 
 "Oh!" she went on, "how you make me hate Madame 
 Catherine, who used to seem so kind ; but her kindness seems 
 to be nothing but perfidy. Why does she do me so much 
 good and you so much evil ? While I was away in Dauphin6 
 I heard a great many things about the beginning of your 
 reign which you had concealed from me ; and the Queen 
 your mother seems to have been the cause of all your mis- 
 fortunes." 
 
 " How ? " said the King, with eager interest. 
 
 " Women whose soul and intentions are pure rule the men 
 they love through their virtues ; but women who do not truly 
 wish them well find a motive power in their evil inclinations. 
 Now the Queen has turned many fine qualities in you into 
 vices, and made you believe that your bad ones were virtues. 
 Was that acting a mother's part ? Be a tyrant like Louis XL, 
 make everybody dreadfully afraid of you, imitate Don Philip, 
 banish the Italians, hunt out the Guises, and confiscate the 
 estates of the Calvinists ; you will rise to stand in solitude, 
 and you will save the Crown. The moment is favorable; 
 your brother is in Poland." 
 
 "We are two infants in politics," said Charles bitterly. 
 " We only know how to love. Alas ! dear heart, yesterday I
 
 292 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 could think of all this; I longed to achieve great things. 
 Puff! my mother has blown down my house of cards. From 
 afar difficulties stand out as clearly as mountain peaks. I say 
 to myself, ' I will put an end to Calvinism ; I will bring 
 Messieurs de Guise to their senses ; I will cut adrift from the 
 Court of Rome ; I will rely wholly on the people of the 
 middle-class ; ' in short, at a distance everything looks easy, 
 but, when we try to climb the mountains, the nearer we get 
 the more obstacles we discern. 
 
 " Calvinism in itself is the last thing the party-leaders care 
 about ; and the Guises, those frenzied Catholics, would be in 
 despair if the Calvinists were really exterminated. Every 
 man thinks of his own interests before all else, and religious 
 opinions are but a screen for insatiable ambition. Charles 
 IX. 's party is the weakest of all; those of the King' of 
 Navarre, of the King of Poland, of the Due d'Alencon, of 
 the Condes, of the Guises, of my mother, form coalitions 
 against each other, leaving me alone even in the Council 
 Chamber. In the midst of so many elements of disturbance 
 my mother is the stronger, and she has just shown me that 
 my plans are inane. We are surrounded by men who defy 
 the law. The axe of Louis XI. of which you speak is not in 
 our grasp. The Parlement would never sentence the Guises, 
 nor the King of Navarre, nor the Condes, nor my brothers. 
 It would think it was setting the kingdom in a blaze. What 
 is wanted is the courage to command murder ; the throne 
 must come to that, with these insolent wretches who have 
 nullified justice; but where can I find faithful hands? The 
 Council I held this morning disgusted me with everything 
 treachery on all sides, antagonistic interests everywhere ! 
 
 11 1 am tired of wearing the crown ; all I ask is to die in 
 peace." 
 
 And he sank into gloomy somnolence. 
 
 "Disgusted with everything!" echoed Marie Touchet 
 sadly, but respecting her lover's heavy torpor.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 293 
 
 Charles was, in fact, a prey to utter prostration of mind and 
 body, resulting from over-fatigue of every faculty, and en- 
 hanced by the dejection caused by the vast scale of his mis- 
 fortunes and the evident impossibility of overcoming them in 
 the face of such a multiplicity of difficulties as genius itself 
 takes alarm at. The King's depression was proportionate to 
 the height to which his courage and his ideas had soared 
 during the last few months ; and now a fit of nervous melan- 
 choly, part, in fact, of his malady, had come over him as he 
 left the long sitting of the Council he had held in his closet. 
 Marie saw that he was suffering from a crisis when everything 
 is irritating and importunate even love ; so she remained on 
 her knees, her head in the King's lap, as he sat with his fingers 
 buried in her hair without moving, without speaking, without 
 sighing, and she was equally still. Charles IX. was sunk in 
 the lethargy of helplessness ; and Marie in the dark despair 
 of a loving woman, who can see the border-line ahead where 
 love must end. 
 
 Thus the lovers sat for some little time in perfect silence, in 
 the mood when every thought is a wound, when the clouds 
 of a mental storm hide even the remembrance of past hap- 
 piness. 
 
 Marie believed herself to be in some sort to blame for this 
 terrible dejection. She wondered, not without alarm, whether 
 the King's extravagant joy at welcoming her back, and the 
 vehement passion she could not contend with, were not help- 
 ing to wreck his mind and frame. As she looked up at her 
 lover, her eyes streaming with tears that bathed her face, she 
 saw tears in his eyes too and on his colorless cheeks. This 
 sympathy, uniting them even in sorrow, touched Charles IX. 
 so deeply that he started up like a horse that feels the spur. 
 He put his arm around Marie's waist, and before she knew 
 what he was doing had drawn her down on to the sumptuous 
 couch. 
 
 " I will be King no more ! " he said. " I will be nothing
 
 294 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 but your lover, and forget everything in that joy. I will die 
 happy and not eaten up with the cares of a throne." 
 
 The tone in which he spoke, the fire that blazed in eyes 
 just now so dull, instead of pleasing Marie, gave her a terrible 
 pang ; at that moment she blamed her love for contributing 
 to the illness of which the King was dying. 
 
 " You forget your prisoners," said she, starting up suddenly. 
 
 "What do I care about the men? They have my permis- 
 sion to kill me." 
 
 "What? Assassins ! " said she. 
 
 " Do not be uneasy, we have them safe, dear child. Now, 
 think not of them, but of me. Say, do you not love me ? " 
 he inquired. 
 
 " Sire ! " she cried. 
 
 "Sire!" he repeated, flashing sparks from his eyes, so 
 violent was his first surge of fury at his mistress' ill-timed 
 deference. "You are in collusion with my mother." 
 
 "Great God! " cried Marie, turning to the picture over 
 her praying-chair, and trying to get to it to put up a prayer. 
 " Oh ! make him understand me ! " 
 
 " What ! " said the King sternly. " Have you any sin on 
 your soul ? ' ' 
 
 And still holding her in his arms, he looked deep into her 
 eyes. " I have heard of the mad passion of one d'Entragues 
 for you," he went on, looking wildly at her, "and since 
 their grandfather, Capitaine Balzac, married a Visconti of 
 Milan, those rascals hesitate at nothing." 
 
 Marie gave the King such a look of pride that he was 
 ashamed. Just then the cry was heard of the infant ChaVles 
 de Valois from the adjoining room ; he was just awake, and 
 his nurse was no doubt bringing him to his mother. 
 
 " Come in, la Bourguignonne," said Marie, taking the 
 child from his nurse and bringing him to the King. "You 
 are more of a child than he," said she, half angry, but half 
 appeased.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 295 
 
 " He is a fine boy," said Charles IX., taking his son in his 
 arms. 
 
 " No one but me can know how like you he is," said 
 Marie. " He has your smile and ways already." 
 
 "What, so young?" said the King, smiling. 
 
 "Men will never believe such things," said she; "but 
 look, my Chariot, play with him, look at him now, am I 
 not right?" 
 
 "It is true," said the King, startled by a movement on 
 the infant's part, which struck him as the miniature reproduc- 
 tion of a trick of his own. 
 
 "Pretty flower!" said his mother. "He will never go 
 away from me ; he will never make me unhappy." 
 
 The King played with the child, tossing it, kissing it with 
 entire devotion, speaking to it in those vague and foolish 
 words, the onomatopoeia of mothers and nurses ; his voice 
 was childlike, his brow cleared, joy came back to his sad- 
 dened countenance ; and when Marie saw that her lover had 
 forgotten everything, she laid her head on his shoulder and 
 whispered in his ear 
 
 "Will you not tell me, my Chariot, why you put assassins 
 in my keeping, and who these men are, and what you intend 
 to do with them ? And whither were you going across the 
 roofs ? I hope there was no woman in the case." 
 
 "Then you still love me so well?" said the King, caught 
 by the bright flash of one of those questioning looks which 
 women can give at a critical moment. 
 
 "You could doubt me?" asked she, as the tears gathered 
 under her beautiful girlish eyelids. 
 
 "There are women in my adventure, but they are witches. 
 Where was I?" 
 
 "We were quite near here, on the gable of a house," said 
 Marie. " In what street ? " 
 
 " In the Rue Saint-Honore, my jewel," said the King, who 
 seemed to have recovered himself, and who, as he recalled his
 
 296 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 ideas, wanted to give his mistress some notion of the scene 
 that was about to take place here. "As I crossed it in pur- 
 suit of some sport, my eyes were attracted by a bright light in 
 a top window of the house inhabited by Rene, my mother's 
 perfumer and glover yours too, the whole Court's. I liave 
 strong suspicions as to what goes on in that man's house, and 
 if I am poisoned that is where the poison is prepared." 
 
 " I give him up to-morrow," said Marie. 
 
 "What, you have still dealt with him since I left him?" 
 said the King. " My life was here," he added gloomily, 
 "and here no doubt they have arranged for my death." 
 
 " But, my dear boy, I have just come home from Dauphine 
 with our Dauphin," said she, with a smile, " and I have bought 
 nothing of Rene since the Queen of Navarre died. Well, go 
 on ; you climbed up to Rene's roof ? " 
 
 " Yes," the King went on. " In a moment I, followed by 
 Tavannes, had reached a spot whence, without being seen, I 
 could see into the devil's kitchen, and note certain things 
 which led me to take strong measures. Do you ever happen 
 to have noticed the attics that crown that damned Florentine's 
 house ? All the windows to the street are constantly kept 
 shut excepting the last, from which the Hotel de Soissons can 
 be seen, and the column my mother had erected for her 
 astrologer, Cosmo Ruggieri. There is a room in this top story 
 with a corridor lighted from the inner yard, so that, in order 
 to see what is being done within, a man must get to a perch 
 which no one would ever think of climbing, the coping of a 
 high wall which ends against the roof of Rene's house. The 
 creatures who placed the alembics there to distill death trusted 
 to the faint hearts of the Parisians to escape inspection ; but 
 they counted without their Charles de Valois. I crept along 
 the gutter, and supported myself against the window-jamb with 
 my arm round the neck of a monkey that is sculptured on it." 
 
 " And what did you see, dear heart ? " said Marie, in alarm. 
 
 " A low room where deeds of darkness are plotted," replied
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 297 
 
 the King. " The first thing on which my eyes fell was a tall, 
 old man seated in a chair, with a magnificent beard like old 
 I'Hopital's, and dressed, like him, in black velvet. The con- 
 centrated rays of a brightly burning lamp fell on his high 
 forehead, deeply furrowed by hollow lines, on a crown of 
 white hair and a calm, thoughtful face, pale with vigils and 
 study. His attention was divided between a manuscript on 
 parchment several centuries old and two lighted stoves on 
 which some heretical mixtures were cooking. Neither the 
 floor nor the ceiling was visible ; they were so covered with 
 animals hung up there, ske\etons, dried herbs, minerals, and 
 drugs, with which the place was stuffed ; here some books 
 and retorts, with chests' full of instruments for magic and 
 astrology ; there diagrams for horoscopes, phials, wax-figures, 
 and, perhaps, the poisons he concocts for Rene in payment for 
 the shelter and hospitality bestowed on him by my mother's 
 glover. 
 
 "Tavannes and I were startled, I can tell you, at the sight 
 of this diabolical arsenal ; for merely at the sight of it one 
 feels spellbound, and but that my business is to be King of 
 France, I should have been frightened. ' Tremble for us 
 both,' said I to Tavannes. 
 
 "But Tavannes' eyes were riveted on the most mysterious 
 object. On a couch by the old man's side lay a girl at full 
 length, of the strangest beauty, as long and slender as a snake, 
 as white as an ermine, as pale as death, as motionless as a 
 statue. Perhaps it was a woman just dug out of her grave, for 
 she seemed to be still wrapped in her shroud ; her eyes were 
 fixed, and I could not see her breathe. The old wretch paid 
 no sort of heed to her. I watched him so curiously that his 
 spirit I believe passed into me. By dint of studying him, at 
 last I admired that searching eye, keen and bold, in spite of the 
 chills of age ; that mouth, mobile with thoughts that came from 
 what seemed a single fixed desire, graven in a myriad wrinkles. 
 Everything in the man spoke of a hope which nothing can
 
 298 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 discourage and nothing dismay. His attitude, motionless but 
 full of thrilling life, his features so chiseled, so deeply cut by 
 a passion that has done the work of the sculptor's tool, that 
 mind dead-set on some criminal or scientific purpose, that 
 searching intelligence on the track of nature though con- 
 quered by her, and bent, without having broken, under the 
 burden of an enterprise it will never give sp, threatening cre- 
 ation with fire borrowed from itself I was fascinated for 
 
 a moment. 
 
 " That old man was more a king than I, for his eye saw the 
 whole world and was its master. I am determined to temper 
 no more swords ; I want to float over abysses, as that old man 
 does ; his science seems to me a sovereignty. In short, I be- 
 lieve in these occult sciences." 
 
 "You, the eldest son, and the defender of the Holy Catho- 
 lic, Apostolic, and Roman Church ! " cried Marie. 
 
 if j " 
 
 " Why, what has come over you? Go on ; I will be fright- 
 ened for you, and you shall be brave for me." 
 
 "The old man looked at the clock and rose," the King 
 went on. "He left the room, how I could not see, but I 
 heard him open the window toward the Rue Saint-Honore. 
 Presently a light shone out, and then I saw another light, an- 
 swering to the old man's, by which we could perceive Cosmo 
 Ruggieri on the top of the column. 
 
 "'Oh, ho! They understand each other,' said I to Ta- 
 vannes, who at once thought the whole affair highly suspicious, 
 and was quite of my opinion that we should seize these two 
 men, and at once make a search in their abominable work- 
 shop. But, before proceeding to a raid, we wanted to see 
 what would happen. By the end of a quarter of an hour the 
 door of the laboratory opened, and Cosmo Ruggieri, my 
 mother's adviser the bottomless pit in which all the Court 
 secrets are buried, of whom wives crave help against their 
 husbands and their lovers, and husbands and lovers take
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 299 
 
 counsel against faithless women, who gains money out of the 
 past and the future, taking it from every one, who sells horo- 
 scopes, and is supposed to know everything that half-demon 
 came in, saying to the majestic-looking old man, ' Good- 
 evening, brother.' 
 
 " He had with him a horrible little old woman, toothless, 
 hunchbacked, crooked, and bent like a lady's marmoset, but 
 far more hideous ; she was wrinkled like a withered apple, her 
 skin was of the color of saffron, her chin met her nose, her 
 mouth was a hardly visible slit, her eyes were like the black 
 spots of the deuce on dice, her brow expressed a bitter temper, 
 her hair fell in gray locks from under a dirty coif; she 
 walked with a crutch ; she stank of devilry and the stake ; 
 and she frightened us> for neither Tavannes nor I believed 
 that she was a real woman ; God never made one so horrible 
 as her. 
 
 " She sat down on a stool by the side of the fair white ser- 
 pent with whom Tavannes was falling in love. 
 
 "The two brothers paid no heed to either the old woman 
 or the young one, who, side by side, formed a horrible con- 
 trast. On one hand life in death, on the other death in life." 
 
 " My sweet poet ! " cried Marie, kissing the King. 
 
 " ' Good-evening, Cosmo,' the old alchemist replied. And 
 then both looked at the stove. ' What is the power of the 
 moon to-night ? ' the old man asked Cosmo. ' Why, dear 
 Lorenzo,' my mother's astrologer replied, ' the high tides of 
 September are not yet over ; it is impossible to read anything 
 in the midst of such confusion.' 'And what did the Orient 
 say this evening?' 'He has just discovered,' said Cosmo, 
 ' that there is a creative force in the air which gives back to 
 the earth all it takes from it; he concludes, with us, that 
 everything in this world is the outcome of a slow transfor- 
 mation, but all the various forms are of one and the same 
 matter. ' ' That is what my predecessor thought, ' said Lorenzo. 
 This morning Bernard Palissy was telling me that the metals
 
 300 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 are a result of compression, and that fire, which parts all 
 things, joins all things also; fire has the power of compress- 
 ing as well as that of diffusing. That worthy has a spark of 
 genius in him.' 
 
 " Though I was placed where I could not be seen, Cosmo 
 went up to the dead girl, and, taking her hand, said, ' There 
 is some one near ! Who is it ? ' ' The King,' said she, very 
 promptly. 
 
 " I at once showed myself, knocking on the window-pane; 
 Ruggieri opened the window and I jumped into this wizard's 
 kitchen, followed by Tavannes. 
 
 "'Yes, the King,' said I to the two Florentines, who 
 seemed terror-stricken. ' In spite of your furnaces and books, 
 your witches and your learning, you could not divine my visit. 
 I am delighted to see the famous Lorenzo Ruggieri, of whom 
 the Queen my mother speaks with such mystery,' said I to the 
 old man, who rose and bowed. ' You are in this kingdom 
 without my consent, my good man. Whom are you working 
 for here, you, who from father to son have dwelt in the heart 
 of the House of the Medici ? Listen to me. You have your 
 hand in so many purses that the most covetous would by this 
 have had their fill of gold ; you are far too cunning to plunge 
 unadvisedly into criminal courses, but you ought not either to 
 rush like feather-brains into this kitchen ; you must have some 
 secret schemes, you who are not content with gold or with 
 power ? Whom do you serve, God or the devil ? What are 
 you concocting here? I insist on the whole truth. I am 
 honest man enough to hear and keep the secret of your under- 
 takings, however blamable they may be. So tell me every- 
 thing without concealment. If you deceive me, you will be 
 sternly dealt with. But Pagan or Christian, Calvinist or Mo- 
 hammedan, you have my royal word for it that you may leave 
 the country unpunished, even if you have some peccadilloes to 
 confess. At any rate, I give you the remainder of this night 
 and to-morrow morning to examine your consciences, for you
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 301 
 
 are my prisoners, and you must now follow me to a place 
 where you will be guarded like a treasure.' 
 
 "Before yielding to my authority, the two Florentines 
 glanced at each other with a wily eye, and Lorenzo Ruggieri 
 replied that I might be certain that no torture would wring 
 their secrets from them ; that in spite of their frail appear- 
 ance, neither pain nor human feeling had any hold on them. 
 Confidence alone could win from their lips what their mind 
 had in its keeping. I was not to be surprised if at that mo- 
 ment they treated on an equal footing with a King who 
 acknowledged no one above him but God, for that their ideas 
 also came from God alone. Hence they demanded of me 
 such confidence as they would grant. So, before pledging 
 themselves to answer my questions without reserve, they de- 
 sired me to place my left hand in the young girl's and my 
 right hand in the old woman's. Not choosing to let them 
 suppose that I feared any devilry, I put out my hands. Lo- 
 renzo took the right and Cosmo the left, and each placed one 
 in the hand of a woman, so there I was like Jesus Christ be- 
 tween the two thieves. All the time the two witches were 
 studying my hands, Cosmo held a mirror before me, desiring 
 me to look at myself, while his brother talked to the two 
 women in an unknown tongue. Neither Tavannes nor I 
 could catch the meaning of a single sentence. 
 
 "We set seals on every entrance to this laboratory before 
 bringing away the men, and Tavannes undertook to keep 
 guard till Bernard Palissy and Chapelain, my physician-in- 
 chief, shall go there to make a close examination of all the 
 drugs stored or made there. It was to hinder their knowing 
 anything of the search going on in their kitchen, and to pre- 
 vent their communicating with any one whatever outside for 
 they might have sent some message to my mother that I 
 brought these two demons to be shut up here with Solern's 
 Germans to watch them, who are as good as the stoutest 
 prison-walls. Rene himself is confined to his room under the
 
 302 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 eye of Solern's groom, and the two witches also. And now, 
 sweetheart, as I hold the key of the Cabala, the kings of 
 Thunes, the chiefs of witchcraft, the princes of Bohemia, the 
 masters of the future, the inheritors of all the famous sooth- 
 sayers, I will read and know your heart, and at last we will 
 know what is to become of us." 
 
 " I shall be very glad if they can lay my heart bare," said 
 Marie, without showing the least alarm. 
 
 " I know why necromancers do not frighten you; you cast 
 spells yourself." 
 
 " Will you not have some of these peaches ? " said she, of- 
 fering him some fine fruit on a silver-gilt plate. " Look at 
 these grapes and pears ; I went myself to gather them all at 
 Vincennes." 
 
 " Then I will eat some, for there can be no poison in them 
 but the philters distilled from your fingers." 
 
 " You ought to eat much fruit, Charles ; it would cool your 
 blood, which you scorch by such violent living." 
 
 "And ought I not to love you less, too? " 
 
 "Perhaps " said she. " If what you love is bad for 
 
 you and I have often thought so I should find power in my 
 love to refuse to let you have it. I adore Charles far more 
 than I love the King, and I want the man to live without the 
 troubles that make him sad and anxious." 
 
 " Royalty is destroying me." 
 
 "It is so," replied she. "If you were only a poor prince 
 like your brother-in-law the King of Navarre, that wretched 
 debauchee who has not a sou or a stitch of his own, who has 
 merely a poor little kingdom in Spain where he will never set 
 foot, and Beam in France, which yields him scarcely enough 
 to live on, I should be happy, much happier than if I were 
 really Queen of France." 
 
 "But are you not much more than the Queen? King 
 Charles is hers only for the benefit of the kingdom, for the 
 Queen, after all, is part of our politics."
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 303 
 
 Marie smiled with a pretty little pout, saying 
 
 " We all know that, my liege. And my sonnet is it fin- 
 ished?" 
 
 " Dear child, it is as hard to write verses as to draw up an 
 edict of pacification. I will finish them for you soon. Ah 
 God ! life sits lightly on me here ; would I could never leave 
 you ! But I must, nevertheless, examine the two Florentines. 
 By all the sacred relics, I thought one Ruggieri quite enough 
 in France, and behold there are t\vo ! Listen, my dearest 
 heart, you have good mother-wit, you would make a capital 
 lieutenant of police, for you detect everything " 
 
 " Well, Sire, we women take all we dread for granted, and 
 to us what is probable is certain ; there is all our subtlety in 
 two words." 
 
 "Well, then, help me to fathom these two men. At this 
 moment every determination I may come to depends on this 
 examination. Are they innocent ? Are they guilty? Behind 
 them stands my mother." 
 
 "I hear Jacob on the winding stair," said Marie. 
 
 Jacob was the King's favorite body-servant, who accompa- 
 nied him in all his amusements ; he now came to ask whether 
 his master would wish to speak with the two prisoners. 
 
 At a nod of consent, the mistress of the house gave some 
 orders. 
 
 " Jacob," said she, " make every one in the place leave the 
 house, except the nurse and Monsieur le Dauphin d'Auvergne 
 they may stay. Do you remain in the room downstairs ; 
 but first of all shut the windows, draw the curtains, and light 
 the candles." 
 
 The King's impatience was so great that, while these prepa- 
 rations were being made, he came to take his place on a large 
 settle, and his pretty mistress seated herself by his side in the 
 nook of a wide, white marble chimney-place, where a bright 
 fire blazed on the hearth. In the place of a mirror hung a 
 portrait of the King, in a red velvet frame. Charles rested
 
 304 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 
 
 his elbow on the arm of the seat, to contemplate the two 
 Italians at his ease. 
 
 The shutters closed, and the curtains drawn, Jacob lighted 
 the candles in a sort of candelabrum of chased silver, placing 
 it on a table at which the two Florentines took their stand 
 seeming to recognize the candlestick as the work of their 
 fellow-townsman, Benvenuto Cellini. Then the effect of this 
 rich room, decorated in the King's taste, was really brilliant. 
 The russet tone of the tapestries looked better than by day- 
 light. The furniture, elegantly carved, reflected the light of 
 the candles and of the fire in its shining bosses. The gilding, 
 judiciously introduced, sparkled here and there like eyes, and 
 gave relief to the brown coloring that predominated in this 
 nest for lovers. 
 
 Jacob knocked twice, and at a word brought in the two 
 Florentines. Marie Touchet was immediately struck by the 
 grand presence which distinguished Lorenzo in the sight of 
 great and small alike. This austere and venerable man, whose 
 silver beard was relieved against an overcoat of black velvet, 
 had a forehead like a marble dome. His severe countenance, 
 with two black eyes that darted points of fire, inspired a thrill 
 as of a genius emerged from the deepest solitude, and all the 
 more impressive because its power was not dulled by contact 
 with other men. It was as the steel of a blade that has not 
 yet been used. 
 
 Cosmo Ruggieri wore the Court dress of the period. 
 Marie nodded to the King, to show him that he had not 
 exaggerated the picture, and to thank him for introducing her 
 to this extraordinary man. "I should have liked to see the 
 witches, too," she whispered. 
 
 Charles IX., sunk again in brooding, made no reply; he 
 was anxiously flipping off some crumbs of bread that happened 
 to lie on his doublet and hose. 
 
 "Your science cannot work on the sky, nor compel the 
 sun to shine, Messieurs de Florence," said the King, pointing
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE" MEDICI. 305 
 
 to the curtains which had been drawn to shut out the gray 
 mist of Paris. " There is no daylight." 
 
 " Our science, Sire, enables us to make a sky as we will," 
 said Lorenzo Ruggieri. " The weather is always fair for 
 those who work in a laboratory by the light of a furnace." 
 
 "That is true," said the King. "Well, father," said he, 
 using a word he was accustomed to employ to old men, 
 " explain to us very clearly the object of your studies." 
 
 " Who will guarantee us impunity?" 
 
 "The word of a King! " replied Charles, whose curiosity 
 was greatly excited by this question. 
 
 Lorenzo Ruggieri seemed to hesitate, and Charles ex- 
 claimed 
 
 " What checks you? we are alone." 
 
 " Is the King of France here ? " asked the old man. 
 
 Charles IX. reflected for a moment, then he replied, 
 "No." 
 
 " But will he not come? " Lorenzo urged. 
 
 " No," replied Charles, restraining an impluse of rage. 
 
 The imposing old man took a chair and sat down. Cosmo, 
 amazed at his boldness, dared not imitate his brother. 
 
 Charles IX. said, with severe irony 
 
 " The King is not here, monsieur, but you are in the 
 presence of a lady for whose permission you ought to wait." 
 
 "The man you see before you, madame," said the grand 
 old man, "is as far above kings as kings are above their 
 subjects, and you shall find me courteous, even when you 
 know my power." 
 
 Hearing these bold words, spoken with Italian emphasis, 
 Charles and Marie looked at each other and then at Cosmo, 
 who, with his eyes fixed on his brother, seemed to be asking 
 himself, " How will he get himself out of the awkward 
 position we are in?" 
 
 In fact, one person only could appreciate the dignity and 
 skill of Lorenzo Ruggieri's first move ; not the King, nor his 
 20
 
 306 ABOUT CATHERINE ' MEDICI. 
 
 young mistress, over whom the elder man had cast the spell 
 of his audacity, but his not less wily brother Cosmo. Though 
 he was superior to the cleverest men at Court, and perhaps 
 to his patroness Catherine de' Medici, the astrologer knew 
 Lorenzo to be his master. 
 
 The learned old man, buried in solitude, had gauged the 
 sovereigns of the earth, almost all of them wearied out by 
 the perpetual shifting of politics ; for at that time great crises 
 were so sudden, so far reaching, so fierce, and so unexpected ! 
 He knew their satiety, their lassitude ; he knew with what 
 eagerness they pursued all that was new, strange, or uncommon ; 
 and, above all, how glad they were to rise now and then to 
 intellectual regions so as to escape from the perpetual struggle 
 with men and things. To those who have exhausted politics, 
 nothing remains but abstract thought; this Charles V. had 
 proved by his abdication. 
 
 Charles IX., who made sonnets and swords to recreate him- 
 self after the absorbing business of an age when the Throne 
 was in not less ill-odor than the King, and when royalty had 
 only its cares and none of its pleasures, could not but be 
 strangely startled by Lorenzo's audacious negation of his 
 power. Religious impiety had ceased to be surprising at a 
 time when Catholicism was closely inquired into ; but the 
 subversion of all religion, assumed as a groundwork for the 
 wild speculations of mystical arts, naturally amazed the King 
 and roused him from his gloomy absence of mind. Beside, a 
 victory to be won over mankind was an undertaking which 
 would make every other interest seem trivial in the eyes of the 
 Ruggieri. An important debt to be paid depended on this 
 idea to be suggested to the King ; the brothers could not ask 
 for this, and yet they must obtain it. The first thing was to 
 make Charles IX. forget his suspicions by making him jump 
 at some new idea. 
 
 The two Italians knew full well that in this strange game 
 their lives were at stake ; and the glances deferent but proud
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 307 
 
 that they exchanged with Marie and the King, whose looks 
 were keen and suspicious, were a drama in themselves. 
 
 "Sire," said Lorenzo Ruggieri, "you have asked for the 
 truth. But to show her to you naked, I must bid you sound 
 the well, the pit, from which she will rise. I pray you let the 
 gentleman, the poet, forgive us for saying what the Eldest 
 Son of the Church* may regard as blasphemy I do not be- 
 lieve that God troubles Himself about human affairs." 
 
 Though fully resolved to preserve his sovereign indifference, 
 Charles IX. could not control a gesture of surprise. 
 
 "But for that conviction, I should have no faith in the 
 miraculous work to which I have devoted myself. But, to 
 carry it out, I must believe it ; and if the hand of God rules 
 all things, I am a madman. So, be it known to the King, we 
 aim at winning a victory over the immediate course of human 
 nature. 
 
 " I am an alchemist, Sire ; but do not suppose, with the 
 vulgar, that Lam striving to make gold. The composition of 
 gold is not the end, but only an incident of our researches ; 
 else we should not call our undertaking magnum opus, the 
 great work. The great work is something far more ambi- 
 tious than that. If I, at this day, could recognize the pres- 
 ence of God in matter, the fire of the furnaces that have 
 been burning for centuries would be extinguished to-morrow 
 at my bidding. 
 
 "But make no mistake to deny the direct interference of 
 God is not to deny God. We place the Creator of all things 
 far above the level to which religions reduce Him. Those 
 who hope for immortality are not to be accused of atheism. 
 Following the example of Lucifer, we are jealous of God, and 
 jealousy is a proof of violent love. Though this doctrine lies 
 at the root of our labors, all adepts do not accept it. Cosmo," 
 said the old man, indicating his brother, " Cosmo is devout; 
 he pays for masses for the repose of our father's soul, and he 
 * A title of the Kings of France.
 
 308 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 goes to hear them. Your mother's astrologer believes in the 
 divinity of Christ, in the immaculate conception, and in tran- 
 substantiation ; he believes in the Pope's indulgences, and in 
 hell he believes in an infinite number of things. His hour 
 is not yet come, for I have read his horoscope ; he will live to 
 be nearly a hundred. He will live through two reigns, and 
 see two kings of France assassinated " 
 
 " Who will be ?" asked the King. 
 
 "The last of the Valois and the first of the Bourbons," 
 replied Lorenzo. " But Cosmo will come to my way of 
 thinking. In fact, it is impossible to be an alchemist and 
 a Catholic ; to believe in the dominion of man over matter, 
 and in the supreme power of mind." 
 
 " Cosmo will live to be a hundred?" said the King, knit- 
 ting his brows in the terrible way that was his wont. 
 
 " Yes, Sire," said Lorenzo decisively. " He will die peace- 
 fully in his bed." 
 
 "If it is in your power to predict the moment of your 
 death, how can you be ignorant of the result of your in- 
 quiries?" asked the King. And he smiled triumphantly as 
 he looked at Marie Touchet. 
 
 The brothers exchanged a swift look of satisfaction. 
 
 "He is interested in alchemy," thought they, "so we are 
 safe." 
 
 "Our prognostics are based on the existing relations of 
 man to nature; but the very point we aim at is the complete 
 alteration of those relations," replied Lorenzo. 
 
 The King sat thinking. 
 
 "But if you are sure that you must die, you are assured of 
 defeat," said Charles IX. 
 
 " As our predecessors were," replied Lorenzo, lifting his 
 hand and letting it drop with a solemn and emphatic gesture, 
 as dignified as his thoughts. " But your mind has rushed on 
 to the goal of our attempt, Sire ; we must come back again, 
 Sire ! Unless you know the ground on which our edifice is
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE? MEDICI. 309 
 
 erected, you may persist in saying that it will fall, and judge 
 this science, which has been pursued for centuries by the 
 greatest minds, as the vulgar judge It." 
 
 The King bowed assent. 
 
 "I believe, then, that this earth belongs to man, that he 
 is master of it, and may appropriate all the forces, all the 
 elements thereof. Man is not a creature proceeding directly 
 from the hand of God, but the result of the principle diffused 
 throughout the infinite ether, wherein myriads of beings are 
 produced ; and these have no resemblance to each other be- 
 tween star and star, because the conditions of life are every- 
 where different. Ay, my liege, the motion we call life has its 
 source beyond all visible worlds; creation draws from it as 
 the surrounding conditions may require, and the minutest 
 beings share in it by taking all they are able, at their own 
 risk and peril ; it is their part to defend themselves from 
 death. This is the sum-total of alchemy. 
 
 " If man, the most perfect animal on this globe, had within 
 him a fraction of the Godhead, he could not perish but he 
 does perish. To escape from this dilemma, Socrates and his 
 school invented the soul. I the successor of the great un- 
 known kings who have ruled this science I am for the old 
 theories against the new; I believe in the transmutation of 
 matter which I can see, as against the eternity of a soul which 
 I cannot see. I do not acknowledge the world of souls. If 
 such a world existed, the substances of which the beautiful 
 combination, produces your body and which in madame are 
 so dazzling would not separate and resolve themselves after 
 your death to return each to its own place ; the water to water, 
 the fire to fire, the metal to metal, just as when my charcoal 
 is burnt its elements are restored to their original molecules. 
 
 " Though you say that something lives on, it is not we our- 
 selves; all that constitutes our living self perishes. 
 
 " Now, it is my living self that I desire to perpetuate be- 
 yond the common term of life ; it is the present manifestation
 
 310 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 for which I want to secure longer duration. What ! trees live 
 for centuries, and men shall live but for years, while those are 
 passive and we are active ; while they are motionless and 
 speechless, and we walk and talk ! No creature on earth 
 ought to be superior to us either in power or permanency. 
 We have already expanded our senses ; we can see into the 
 stars. We ought to be able to extend our life. I place life 
 above power. Of what use is power if life slips from us? 
 
 "A rational man ought to have no occupation but that of 
 seeking not whether there is another life but the secret on 
 which our present life is based, so as to be able to prolong it 
 at will ! This is the desire that has silvered my hair. But I 
 walk on boldly in the darkness, leading to battle those intel- 
 lects which share my faith. Life will some day be ours." 
 
 " But how? " cried the King, starting to his feet. 
 
 "The first condition of our faith is the belief that this 
 world is for man ; you must grant me that," said Lorenzo. 
 
 "Well and good, so be it! " said Charles de Valois, im- 
 patient, but already fascinated. 
 
 "Well, then, Sire, if we remove God from this world, what 
 is left but man? Now let us survey our domain. The 
 material world is composed of elements ; those elements have 
 a first principle within them. All these principles resolve 
 themselves into one which is gifted with motion. The num- 
 ber three is the formula of creation : Matter, Motion, Pro- 
 duction ! " 
 
 " Proof, proof? Pause there ! " cried the King. 
 
 "Do you not see the effects?" replied Lorenzo. "We 
 have analyzed in our crucibles the acorn from which an oak 
 would have risen as well as the embryo which would have be- 
 come a man ; from these small masses of matter a pure ele- 
 ment was derived to which some force, some motion would 
 have been added. In the absence of a Creator, must not 
 that first principle be able to assume the external forms which 
 constitute our world ? For the phenomena of life are every-
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICL 311 
 
 where the same. Yes, in metals, as in living beings, in plants 
 as in man, life begins by an imperceptible embryo which de- 
 velops spontaneously. There is a first principle ! We must 
 detect it at the point where it acts on itself, where it is one, 
 where it is a principle before it is a creature, a cause before it 
 is an effect ; then we shall see it absolute formless, but capa- 
 ble of assuming all the forms we see it take. 
 
 "When we are face to face with this particle or atom, and 
 have detected its motion from the starting-point, we shall 
 know its laws ; we are thenceforth its masters and able to 
 impose on it the form we may choose, among all we see ; we 
 shall possess gold, having the world, and can give ourselves 
 centuries of life to enjoy our wealth. That is what we seek, 
 my disciples and I. All our powers, all our thoughts are 
 directed to that search; nothing diverts us from it. One hour 
 .wasted on any other passion would be stolen from our great, 
 ness ! You have never found one of your hunting-dogs 
 neglectful of the game or the death, and I have never known 
 one of my persevering subjects diverted by a woman or a 
 thought of greed. 
 
 "If the adept craves for gold and power, that hunger 
 convs of our necessities ; he clutches at fortune as a thirsty 
 hound snatches a moment from the chase to drink, because 
 his retorts demand a diamond to consume or ingots to be re- 
 duced to powder. Each one has his line of work. This one 
 seeks the secret of vegetable nature, he studies the torpid life 
 of plants, he notes the parity of motion in every species and 
 the parity of nutrition ; in every case he discerns that sun, 
 air, and water are needed for fertility and nourishment. 
 Another investigates the blood of animals. A third studies 
 the laws of motion generally and its relation to the orbits of 
 the stars. Almost all love to struggle with the intractable 
 nature of metals ; for though we find various elements in 
 everything, we always find metals the same throughout, down 
 to their minutest particles.
 
 312 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 
 
 " Hence the common error as to our labors. Do you see 
 all these patient toilers, these indefatigable athletes, always 
 vanquished, and always returning to the assault ? Humanity, 
 Sire, is at our heels, as your huntsman is at the heels of the 
 pack. It cries to us, ' Hurry on ! Overlook nothing ! Sac- 
 rifice everything, even a man you who sacrifice yourselves ! 
 Hurry onward ! Cut off the head and hands of Death, my 
 foe.' 
 
 "Yes, Sire, we are animated by a sentiment on which de- 
 pends the happiness of generations to come. We have buried 
 many men and what men ! who have died in the pursuit. 
 When we set foot on that road it is not to work for ourselves : 
 we may perish without discovering the secret. And what a 
 death is that of a man who does not believe in a future life ! 
 We are glorious martyrs ; we bear the selfishness of the whole 
 race in our hearts ; we live in our successors. On our way 
 we discover secrets which enrich the mechanical and liberal 
 arts. Our furnaces shed gleams of light which help society 
 to possess more perfect forms of industry. Gunpowder was 
 discovered in our retorts ; we shall conquer the thunder yet. 
 Our patient vigils may overthrow politics." 
 
 " Can that be possible? " cried the King, sitting up again 
 on the settle. 
 
 "Why not?" replied the Grand Master of the New Tem- 
 plars. "Tradidit mundum disputationibus ! (God has given 
 us the world.) Listen to this once again ! Man is lord on 
 earth, and matter is his. Every means, every power is at his 
 service. What created us? A motion. What power keeps 
 life in us? A motion. And should not science grasp this 
 motion ? Nothing on earth is lost, nothing flies off from our 
 planet to go elsewhere ; if it were so, the stars would fall on 
 one another. The waters of the Deluge are all here, and not 
 a drop lost. Around us, above, below, are the elements 
 whence have proceeded the innumerable millions of men who 
 have trodden the earth, before and since the Deluge. What
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 313 
 
 is it that remains to be done ? To detect the disintegrating 
 force; on the other hand, to discover the combining force. 
 We are the outcome of a visible toil. When the waters cov- 
 ered our globe, men came forth from them who found the 
 elements of life in the earth's covering, in the atmosphere, 
 and in food. Earth and air, then, contain the first principle 
 of human transformations ; these go on under our eyes, by 
 the agency of what is under our eyes ; hence we can discover 
 the secret by not confining our efforts to the span of one 
 man's life, but making the task endure as long as mankind 
 itself. We have, in fact, attacked matter as a whole ; Mat- 
 ter, in which I believe, and which I, Grand Master of our 
 Order, am bent on penetrating. 
 
 " Christopher Columbus gave a world to the King of Spain ; 
 I am seeking to give the King of France a people that shall 
 never die. I, an outpost on the remotest frontier which cuts 
 us off from the knowledge of things, a patient student of 
 atoms, I destroy forms, I dissolve the bonds of every com- 
 bination, I imitate Death to enable me to imitate Life. In 
 short, I knock incessantly at the door of Creation, and shall 
 still knock till my latest day. When I die, my knocker will 
 pass into other hands not less indefatigable, as unknown giants 
 bequeathed it to me. 
 
 " Fabulous images, never understood, such as those of Pro- 
 metheus, of Ixion, of Adonis, of Pan, etc., which are part of 
 the religious beliefs of every people and in every age, show us 
 that this hope had its birth with the human race. Chaldaea, 
 India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, and the Moors have transmitted 
 Magian lore, the highest of all the occult sciences, the store- 
 house of the results of generations of watchers. Therein lay 
 the bond of the noble and majestic Order of the Temple. 
 When he burned the Templars, a predecessor of yours, Sire, 
 only burned men ; their secrets remain with us. The recon- 
 struction of the Temple is the watchword of an unrecognized 
 people, a race of intrepid seekers, all looking to the Orient
 
 314 ABOUT CATHERINE D' MEDICI. 
 
 of life, all brethren, all inseparable, united by an idea, stamped 
 with the seal of toil. I am the sovereign of this people, their 
 chief by election and not by birth. I guide them all toward 
 the essence of life ! Grand Master, Rosicrucians, compan- 
 ions, adepts, we all pursue the invisible molecule which escapes 
 our crucibles, and still evades our sight ; but we shall make 
 ourselves eyes manifold more powerful than those bestowed 
 on us by nature ; we shall get to the primitive atom, the cor- 
 puscular element so perseveringly sought by all the sages who 
 have preceded us in the sublime pursuit. 
 
 " Sire, when a man stands astride on that abyss, and has at 
 his command divers so intrepid as my brethren, other human 
 interests look very small ; hence, we are not dangerous. Re- 
 ligious disputes and political struggles are far from us ; we are 
 immeasurably beyond them. Those who contend with nature 
 do not condescend to take men by the throat. 
 
 " Moreover, every result in our science is appreciable; we 
 can measure every effect, we can predict it, whereas in the 
 combinations which include men and their interests everything 
 is unstable. We shall submit the diamond to our crucible ; 
 we shall make diamonds ; we shall make gold ! Like one of 
 our craft at Barcelona, we shall make ships move by the help 
 of a little water and fire. We shall dispense with the wind, 
 nay, we shall make the wind, we shall make light and renew 
 the face of empires by new industries. But we will never 
 stoop to mount a throne to be gehennaed by nations." 
 
 Notwithstanding his desire to avoid being entrapped by 
 Florentine cunning, the King, as well as his simple-minded 
 mistress, was by this time caught and carried away in the 
 rhetoric and rhodomontade of this pompous and specious flow 
 of words. The lovers' eyes betrayed how much they were 
 dazzled by the vision of mysterious riches spread out before 
 them ; they saw, as it were, subterranean caverns in long 
 perspective full of toiling gnomes. The impatience of curi- 
 osity dissipated the alarms of suspicion.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 315 
 
 "But, then," exclaimed the King, "you are great politi- 
 cians, and can enlighten us." 
 
 " No, Sire," said Lorenzo simply. 
 
 " Why not ? " asked the King. 
 
 " Sire, it is given to no one to be able to predict what will 
 come of a concourse of some thousands of men ; we may be 
 able to tell what one man will do, how long he will live, and 
 whether he will be lucky or unlucky ; but we cannot tell how 
 several wills thrown together will act, and any calculation of 
 the swing of their interests is even more difficult, for interests 
 are men plus things ; only in solitude can we discern the gen- 
 eral aspect of the future. The Protestantism that is devour- 
 ing you will be devoured in its turn by its practical outcome, 
 which, in its day, will become a theory, too. Europe, so far, 
 has not gone further than religion ; to-morrow it will attack 
 royalty." 
 
 " Then the night of Saint-Bartholomew was a great concep- 
 tion?" 
 
 "Yes, Sire; for when the people triumph, they will have 
 their Saint- Bartholomew. When religion and royalty are 
 swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the 
 great they will fall upon the rich. Finally, when Europe is no 
 more than a dismembered herd of men for lack of leaders, it 
 will be swallowed up by vulgar conquerors. The world has 
 presented a similar spectacle twenty times before, and Europe is 
 beginning again. Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured 
 by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will 
 cure itself perhaps. Science is the soul of mankind, and we 
 are its pontiffs ; and those who study the soul care but little 
 for the body." 
 
 " How far have you gone? " asked the King of this strange 
 and learned man. 
 
 " We move but slowly ; but we never lose what we have 
 once conquered." 
 
 "So you, in fact, are the King of the Wizards," said
 
 316 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 
 
 Charles IX., piqued at finding himself so small a personage in 
 the presence of this man. 
 
 The imposing Grand Master of Adepts flashed a look at 
 him that left him thunder-stricken. 
 
 "You are the King of men," replied he; "I am the King 
 of ideas. Beside, if there were real wizards, you could not 
 have burned them ! " he added, with a touch of irony. " We 
 too have our martyrs." 
 
 "But by what means," the King went on, " do you cast 
 nativities ? How did you know that the man near your win- 
 dow last night was the King of France ? What power enabled 
 one of your race to foretell to my mother the fate of her three 
 sons ? Can you, the Grand Master of the Order that would 
 fain knead the world can you, I say, tell me what the Queen 
 my mother is thinking at this moment?" 
 
 "Yes, Sire." 
 
 The answer was spoken before Cosmo could pull his broth- 
 er's coat to warn him. 
 
 "You know why my brother, the King of Poland, is re- 
 turning home? " 
 
 "Yes, Sire." 
 
 "And why?" 
 
 " To take your place." 
 
 "Our bitterest enemies are our own kith and kin," cried 
 the King, starting up in a fury and striding up and down the 
 room. " Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother ! Co- 
 ligny was right ; my executioners are in the conventicles, 
 they are at the Louvre. You are either impostors or regicides ! 
 Jacob, call in Solern." 
 
 "My lord!" said Marie Touchet, "the Ruggieri have 
 your word of honor. You have chosen to eat of the fruit 
 of the tree of knowledge ; do not complain of its bitter- 
 ness." 
 
 The King smiled with an expression of deep contempt ; 
 his material sovereignty seemed small in his eyes in comparison
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DP MEDICI. 317 
 
 with the supreme intellectual sovereignty of old Lorenzo 
 Ruggieri. Charles IX. could scarcely govern France; the 
 Grand Master of the Rosicrucians commanded an intelligent 
 and submissive people. 
 
 "Be frank; I give you my word as a gentleman that your 
 reply, even if it should contain the avowal of the worst crimes, 
 shall be as though it had never been spoken," the King said. 
 " Do you study poisons? " 
 
 " To know what will secure life, it is needful to know what 
 will cause death." 
 
 " You have the secret of many poisons?" 
 
 "Yes, but in theory only, and not in practice; we know 
 them, but do not use them." 
 
 " Has my mother asked for any?" 
 
 " The Queen-mother, Sire, is far too clever to have recourse 
 to such means. She knows that the sovereign who uses poi- 
 son shall perish by poison ; the Borgias, and Bianca, Grand 
 Duchess of Tuscany, are celebrated examples of the dangers 
 incurred by those who use such odious means. At Court 
 everything is known. You can kill a poor wretch outright ; of 
 what use, then, is it to poison him? But if you attempt the 
 life of conspicuous persons, what chance is there of secrecy ? 
 Nobody could have fired at Coligny but you, or the Queen- 
 mother, or one of the Guises. No one made any mistake 
 about that. Take my word for it, in politics poison cannot 
 be used twice with impunity ; beside, princes always have 
 successors. 
 
 "As to smaller men, if, like Luther, they become sover- 
 eigns by the power of ideas, by killing them you do not kill 
 their doctrine. The Queen is a Florentine; she knows that 
 poison can only be the instrument of private vengeance. My 
 brother, who has never left her since she came to France, 
 knows how deeply Madame Diane aggrieved her ; she never 
 thought of poisoning her, and she could have done so. What 
 would the King your father have said ? No woman would
 
 318 ABOUT CATHERINE DE" MEDICI. 
 
 have been ftiore thoroughly justified or more certain of im- 
 punity. But Madame de Valentinois is alive to this day." 
 
 "And the magic of wax images?" asked the King. 
 
 " Sire," said Cosmo, " those figures are so entirely innocu- 
 ous that we lend ourselves to such magic to satisfy blind 
 passions, like physicians who give bread-pills to persons who 
 fancy themselves sick. A desperate woman imagines that by 
 stabbing the heart of an image she brings disaster on the 
 faithless lover it represents. What can we say ! These are 
 our taxes." 
 
 "The Pope sells indulgences," said Lorenzo Ruggieri, 
 smiling. 
 
 " Does my mother make use of such images? " 
 
 "Of what use would such futile means be to her who can 
 do what she will?" 
 
 "Could Queen Catherine save you at this moment?" 
 asked Charles ominously. 
 
 "We are in no danger, Sire," said Lorenzo calmly. "I 
 knew before I entered this house that I should leave it safe 
 and sound, as surely as I know the ill-feeling that the King 
 will bear my brother a few days hence ; but, even if he should 
 run some risk, he will triumph. Though the King reigns by 
 the sword, he also reigns by justice," he added, in allusion to 
 the famous motto on a medal struck for Charles IX. 
 
 "You know everything; I shall die before long, and that 
 is well," returned the King, hiding his wrath under feverish 
 impatience. " But how will my brother die, who, according 
 to you, is to be Henri III. ? " 
 
 " A violent death." 
 
 " And Monsieur d'Alencon ? " 
 
 " He will never reign." 
 
 " Then Henri de Bourbon will be King?" 
 
 "Yes, Sire." 
 
 " And what death will he die ? " 
 ' "A violent death."
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE J)' MEDICI. 319 
 
 "And when I am dead, what will become of madame?" 
 asked the King, turning to Marie Touchet. 
 
 " Madame de Belleville will marry, Sire." 
 
 "You are impostors! Send them away, my lord," said 
 Marie Touchet. 
 
 "Dear heart, the Ruggieri have my word as a gentleman," 
 said Charles, smiling. " Will Marie have children ? " 
 
 "Yes and madame will live to be more than eighty." 
 
 "Must I have them hanged?" said the King to his mis- 
 tress. "And my son, the Comte d'Auvergne? " said Charles, 
 rising to fetch the child. 
 
 " Why did you tell him that I should marry? " said Marie 
 Touchet to the two brothers during the few moments when 
 they were alone. 
 
 "Madame," replied Lorenzo with dignity, "the King 
 required us to tell the truth, and we told it." 
 
 " Then it is true? " said she. 
 
 " As true as that the Governor of Orleans loves you to 
 distraction." 
 
 " But I do not love him," cried she. 
 
 " That is true, madame," said Lorenzo. " But your horo- 
 scope shows that you are to marry the man who at this present 
 loves you." 
 
 "Could you not tell a little lie for my sake?" said she 
 with a smile. " For if the King should believe your forecast 
 he might " 
 
 "Is it not necessary that he should believe in our inno- 
 cence?" said Cosmo, with a glance full of meaning. " The 
 precautions taken by the King against us have given us reason, 
 during the time we spent in your pretty gaol, to suppose that 
 the occult sciences must have been maligned in his ears." 
 
 "Be quite easy," replied Marie; "I know him, and his 
 doubts are dispelled." 
 
 " We are innocent," said the old man haughtily. 
 
 "So much the better; for at this moment the King is
 
 320 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 having your laboratory searched and your crucibles and phials 
 examined by experts." 
 
 The brothers looked at each other and smiled. 
 
 Marie took this smile for the irony of innocence ; but it 
 meant : " Poor simpletons ! Do you suppose that if we 
 know how to prepare poisons, we do not also know how to 
 conceal them? " 
 
 " Where are the King's people, then ? " asked Cosmo. 
 
 "In Rene's house," replied Marie; and the Ruggieri ex- 
 changed a glance which conveyed from each to each the same 
 thought, "The Hotel de Soissons is inviolable ! " 
 
 The King had so completely thrown off his suspicions, that 
 when he went to fetch his son, and Jacob intercepted him to 
 give him a note written by Chapelain, he opened it in the 
 certainty of finding in it what his physician told him concern- 
 ing his visit to the laboratory, where all that had been discov- 
 ered bore solely on alchemy. 
 
 " Will he live happy ? " asked the King, showing his infant 
 son to the two alchemists. 
 
 " This is Cosmo's concern," said Lorenzo, turning to his 
 brother. 
 
 Cosmo took the child's little hand and studied over it very 
 carefully. 
 
 "Monsieur," said Charles IX. to the elder man, "if you 
 are compelled to deny the existence of the spirit to believe 
 that your enterprise is possible, tell me how it is that you can 
 doubt that which constitutes your power. The mind you de- 
 sire to annihilate is the torch that illumines your search. Ah, 
 ha ! Is not that moving while denying the fact of motion? " 
 cried he, and, pleased at having hit on this argument, he 
 looked triumphantly at his mistress. 
 
 "Mind," said Lorenzo Ruggieri, "is the exercise of an 
 internal sense, just as the faculty of seeing various objects 
 and appreciating their form and color is the exercise of our 
 sight. That has nothing to do with what is assumed as to
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 321 
 
 another life. Mind thought is a faculty which may cease 
 even during life with the forces that produce it." 
 
 "You are logical," said the King with surprise. "But 
 alchemy is an atheistical science." 
 
 "Materialist, Sire, which is quite a different thing. Mate- 
 rialism is the outcome of the Indian doctrines transmitted 
 through the mysteries of Isis to Chaldsea and Egypt, and 
 brought back to Greece by Pythagoras, one of the demi-gods 
 among men ; his doctrine of transmigration is the mathe- 
 matics of materialism, the living law of its phases. Each of 
 the different creations which make up the earthly creation 
 possesses the power of retarding the impulse that drags it into 
 another form." 
 
 "Then alchemy is the science of sciences ! " cried Charles 
 IX., fired with enthusiasm. " I must see you at work." 
 
 " As often as you will, Sire. You cannot be more eager 
 than the Queen your mother." 
 
 "Ah! That is why she is so much attached to you!" 
 cried the King. 
 
 "The House of Medici has secretly encouraged our re- 
 search for almost a century past." 
 
 " Sire," said Cosmo, " this child will live nearly a hundred 
 years; he will meet with some checks, but will be happy and 
 honored, having in his veins the blood of the Valois." 
 
 "I will go to see you," said the King, who had recovered 
 his good humor. "You can go." 
 
 The brothers bowed to Marie and Charles IX. and with- 
 drew. They solemnly descended the stairs, neither looking 
 at each other nor speaking ; they did not even turn to look 
 up at the windows from the courtyard, so sure were they that 
 the King's eye was on them ; and, in fact, as they turned to 
 pass through the gate, they saw Charles IX. at a window. 
 
 As soon as the alchemist and the astrologer were in the Rue 
 de 1'Autruche, they cast a look in front and behind to see 
 that no one was either following them or waiting for them. 
 21
 
 322 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 
 
 and went on as far as the Louvre moat without speaking a 
 word ; but there, finding that they were alone, Lorenzo said 
 to Cosmo in the Florentine Italian of the time 
 
 "Aff<> d 1 Iddio / como le abbiamo infinocchiato / " (By God, 
 we have caught them finely !) 
 
 "Gran merces ! a lui sta di spartojarsi ' ' (Much good may 
 it do him ; he must make what he can of it) said Cosmo. 
 ' ' May the Queen do as much for me ! We have done a good 
 stroke for her." 
 
 Some days after this scene, which had struck Marie Touchet 
 no less than the King, in one of those moments when in the 
 fullness of joy the mind is in some sort released from the body, 
 Marie exclaimed 
 
 " Charles, I understand Lorenzo Ruggieri; but Cosmo said 
 nothing." 
 
 " That is true," said the King, startled by this sudden flash 
 of light, " and there was as much falsehood as truth in what 
 they said. Those Italians are as slippery as the silk they 
 spin." 
 
 This suspicion explains the hatred of Cosmo that the King 
 betrayed on the occasion of the trial on the conspiracy of la 
 Mole and Coconnas. When he found that Cosmo was one 
 of the contrivers of that plot, the King believed himself duped 
 by the two Italians ; for it proved to him that his mother's 
 astrologer did not devote himself exclusively to studying the 
 stars, fulminating powder and final atoms. Lorenzo had then 
 left the country. 
 
 In spite of many persons' incredulity of such things, the 
 events which followed this scene confirmed the prophecies 
 uttered by the Ruggieri. 
 
 The King died three months later. The Comte de Gondi 
 followed Charles IX. to the tomb, as he had been told that he 
 would by his brother, the Marechal de Retz, a friend of the 
 Ruggieri, and a believer in their foresight.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE D' MEDICI. 323 
 
 Marie Touchet married Charles de Balzac, Marquis d'En- 
 tragues, Governor of Orleans, by whom she had two daughters. 
 The more famous of these two, the Comte d'Auv^pgne's half- 
 sister, was Henri IV. 's mistress, and at the time of Biron's 
 conspiracy tried to place her brother on the throne of France 
 and oust the Bourbons. 
 
 The Comte d'Auvergne, made Due d'Angouleme, lived till 
 the reign of Louis XIV. He coined money in his province, 
 altering the superscription ; but Louis XIV. did not interfere, 
 illegal as it was, so great was his respect for the blood of the 
 Valois. 
 
 Cosmo lived till after the accession of Louis XIII. j he saw 
 the fall of the House of Medici in France and the overthrow 
 of the Concini. History has taken care to record that he died 
 an atheist that is to say, a materialist. 
 
 The Marquise d'Entragues was more than eighty when she 
 died. 
 
 Lorenzo and Cosmo had for their disciple the famous 
 Comte de Saint-Germain, who became notorious under Louis 
 XV. The great alchemist was not less than a hundred and 
 thirty years old, the age to which some biographers say 
 Marion Delorme attained. The Count may have heard from 
 the Ruggieri anecdotes of the Massacre of Saint-Bartholomew 
 and of the reigns of the Valois, in which they could at pleas- 
 ure assume a part by speaking in the first person. The Comte 
 de Saint-Germain is the las ^- professor of alchemy who ex- 
 plained the science well, but he left no writings. The doctrine 
 of the Cabala set forth in this volume was derived from that 
 mysterious personage. 
 
 It is a strange thing ! Three men's lives, that of the old 
 man from whom this information was obtained, that of the 
 Comte de Saint-Germain, and that of Cosmo Ruggieri, em- 
 brace European history from the reign of Francis I. to that 
 of Napoleon. Only fifty lives of equal length would cover 
 the time to as far back as the first known epoch of the world.
 
 324 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 "What are fifty generations for studying the mysteries of 
 life?" the Comte de Saint-Germain used to say. 
 
 PARIS, November-December, 1836. 
 
 [NOTE. Charles de Balzac, mentioned on page 323, was not in any 
 way connected with the family of the author. The Comte d'Auvergne, 
 Due d'Angouleme, was, of course, the child of Charles IX. and Marie 
 Touchet.j
 
 PART III. 
 
 THE TWO DREAMS. 
 
 In 1786 Bodard de Saint-James, treasurer to the Navy, was 
 of all the financiers of Paris the one whose luxury gave rise to 
 most remark and gossip. At that time he was building his 
 famous Folly at Neuilly, and his wife bought, to crown the 
 tester of her bed, a plume of feathers of which the price had 
 dismayed the Queen. It was far easier then than now to 
 make one's self the fashion and be talked of by all Paris ; a 
 witticism was often quite enough, or the caprice of a woman. 
 
 Bodard lived in the fine house in the Place Vendome which 
 the farmer-general Dang6 had not long since been compelled 
 to quit. This notorious epicurean was lately dead ; and on 
 the day when he was buried, Monsieur de Bievre, his intimate 
 friend, had found matter for a jest, saying that now one could 
 cross the Place Vendome without danger (or Dange). This 
 allusion to the terrific gambling that went on in the deceased 
 man's house was his funeral oration. The house is that oppo- 
 site to the Chancellerie. 
 
 To complete Bodard's history as briefly as possible, he was 
 a poor creature, he failed for fourteen millions of francs after 
 the Prince de Guemenee. His clumsiness in not anticipating 
 that serene bankruptcy to use an expression of Lebrun-Pin- 
 dare's led to his never even being mentioned. He died in 
 a garret, like Bourvalais, Bouret, and many others. 
 
 Madame de Saint-James indulged an ambition of never re- 
 ceiving any but people of quality a stale absurdity that is ever 
 new. To her the cap of a lawyer in the Parlement was but a 
 small affair ; she wanted to see her rooms filled with persons 
 of title who had at least the minor privileges of entrtc at Ver- 
 sailles. To say that many blue ribbons were to be seen in 
 
 (325>
 
 326 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 the lady's house would be untrue ; but it is quite certain that 
 she had succeeded in winning the civility and attention of 
 some members of the Rohan family, as was proved subse- 
 quently in the too famous case of the Queen's necklace. 
 
 One evening it was, I believe, in August, 1786 I was 
 greatly surprised to see in this millionaire's room, precise as 
 she was in the matter of proofs of rank, two new faces, which 
 struck me as being of decidedly inferior birth. 
 
 She came up to me as I stood in a window recess, where I 
 had intentionally ensconced myself. 
 
 " Do tell me," said I, with a questioning glance at one of 
 these strangers, "who is that specimen? How did he get 
 into your house?" 
 
 " He is a charming man." 
 
 " Do you see him through the prism of love, or am I mis- 
 taken in him?" 
 
 "You are not mistaken," she replied, laughing ; "he is as 
 ugly as a toad ; but he has done me the greatest service a 
 woman can accept from a man." 
 
 As I looked at her with mischievous meaning, she hastened 
 to add " He has entirely cured me of the ugly red patches 
 which spoilt my complexion and made me look like a peasant 
 woman." 
 
 I shrugged my shoulders with disgust. 
 
 " A quack ! " I exclaimed. 
 
 "No," said she, "he is a physician to the Court pages. 
 He is clever and amusing, I assure you ; and he has written 
 books too. He is a very learned physicist." 
 
 "If his literary style is like his face!" said I, smiling. 
 "And the other?" 
 
 "What other?" 
 
 " That little prim man, as neat as a doll, and who looks as 
 if he drank verjuice." 
 
 " He is a man of good family," said she. " He has come 
 from some province I forget which. Ah ! yes, from Artois.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE 1 MEDICI. 327 
 
 He is in Paris to wind up some affair that concerns the car- 
 dinal, and his eminence has just introduced him to Monsieur 
 de Saint-James. They have agreed in choosing Monsieur de 
 Saint-James to be arbitrator. In that the gentleman from the 
 provinces has not shown much wisdom. What are people 
 thinking of when they place a case in that man's hands? He 
 is as gentle as a lamb and as shy as a girl. His eminence is 
 most kind to him." 
 
 " What is it about ? " said I. 
 
 "Three hundred thousand livres," said she. 
 
 "What! a lawyer?" I asked, with a little start of as- 
 tonishment. 
 
 "Yes," replied she. 
 
 And, somewhat disturbed by having to make this humilia- 
 ting confession, Madame Bodard returned to her game of faro. 
 
 Every table was made up. I had nothing to do or to say. 
 I had just lost two thousand crowns to Monsieur de Laval, 
 whom I had met in a courtesan's drawing-room. I went to 
 take a seat in a deep chair near the fire. If ever on this earth 
 there was an astonished man, it certainly was I on discovering 
 that my opposite neighbor was the controller-general. Mon- 
 sieur de Calonne seemed to be drowsy, or else he was absorbed 
 in one of those brown studies which come over a statesman. 
 When I pointed out the Minister to Beaumarchais, who came 
 to speak to me, the creator of " Figaro " explained the mystery 
 without speaking a word. He pointed first to my head and 
 then to Bodard's in an ingeniously significant way, by direct- 
 ing his thumb to one and his little finger to the other, with 
 the rest of the fingers closed. My first impulse was to go and 
 say something sharp to Calonne, but I sat still ; in the first 
 place, because I intended to play the favorite trick, and also 
 because Beaumarchais had somewhat familiarly seized my 
 hand. 
 
 "What is it, monsieur?" said I. 
 
 With a wink he indicated the Minister.
 
 328 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 " Do not wake him," he said in a low tone ; " we may be 
 only too thankful when he sleeps." 
 
 " But even sleeping is a scheme of finance," said I. 
 
 " Certainly it is," replied the statesmen, who had read our 
 words by the mere motion of our lips. " And would to God 
 we could sleep a long time ; there would not be such an 
 awakening as you will see ! ' ' 
 
 " Monseigneur, " said the play -writer, "I owe you some 
 thanks." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 " Monsieur de Mirabeau is gone to Berlin. I do not know 
 whether in this matter of the waters we may not both be 
 drowned." 
 
 "You have too much memory and too little gratitude," 
 replied the Minister drily, vexed at this betrayal of one of 
 his secrets before me. 
 
 "Very possibly," said Beaumarchais, greatly nettled. 
 "But I have certain millions which may square many 
 accounts." 
 
 Calonne affected not to have heard. 
 
 It was half-past twelve before the card-tables broke up. 
 Then we sat down to supper ten of us : Bodard and his wife, 
 the controller-general, Beaumarchais, the two strangers, two 
 pretty women whose names may not be mentioned, and a 
 farmer-general named, I think, Lavoisier. Of thirty persons 
 whom I had found on entering the drawing-room but these 
 ten remained. And the two "specimens" would only stay 
 to supper on the pressing invitation of the lady of the house, 
 who thought she could discharge her debt to one by giving 
 him a meal, and asked the other perhaps to please her husband, 
 to whom she was doing the civil wherefore I know not. 
 Monsieur de Calonne was a power, and if any one had cause 
 to be annoyed it would have been I. 
 
 The supper was at first deadly dull. The two men and the 
 farmer-general weighed on us. I signed to Beaumarchais to
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICL 329 
 
 make the son of Esculapius, by whom he was sitting, drink 
 till he was tipsy, giving him to understand that I would deal 
 with the lawyer. As this was the only kind of amusement 
 open to us, and as it gave promise of some blundering imper- 
 tinence on the part of the two strangers, which amused us by 
 anticipation, Monsieur de Calonne smiled on the scheme. 
 In two seconds the ladies had entered into our Bacchic plot. 
 By significant glances they expressed their readiness to play 
 their part, and the wine of Sillery crowned our glasses again 
 and again with silvery foam. The surgeon was easy enough 
 to deal with ; but as I was about to pour out my neighbor's 
 second glass, he told me with the cold politeness of a money- 
 lender that he would drink no more. 
 
 At this time, by what chance I know not, Madame de 
 Saint-James had turned the conversation on the wonderful 
 suppers to the Comte de Cagliostro, given by the Cardinal de 
 Rohan. My attention was not too keenly alive to what the 
 mistress of the house was saying ; for since her reply I had 
 watched, with invincible curiosity, my neighbor's pinched, thin 
 face, of which the principal feature was a nose at once wide 
 and sharp, which made him at times look very much like a 
 ferret. Suddenly his cheeks flushed as he heard Madame de 
 Saint- James disputing with Monsieur de Calonne. 
 
 " But I assure you, monsieur," said she in a positive tone, 
 " that I have seen Queen Cleopatra." 
 
 "I believe it, madame," said my neighbor. "I have 
 spoken to Catherine de' Medici." 
 
 " Oh ! oh ! " said Monsieur de Calonne. 
 
 The words spoken by the little provincial had an inde- 
 scribably sonorous tone to use a word borrowed from physi- 
 cal science. This sudden clearness of enunciation, from a man 
 who till now had spoken very little and very low, in the best 
 possible taste, surprised us in the highest degree. 
 
 "Why, he is talking!" exclaimed the surgeon, whom 
 Beaumarchais had worked up to a satisfactory condition.
 
 330 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 
 "His neighbor must have touched a spring," replied the 
 satirist. 
 
 Our man colored a little as he heard these words, though 
 they were spoken in a murmur. 
 
 "And what was the late lamented Queen like?" asked 
 Calonne. 
 
 " I will not assert that the person with whom I supped last 
 night was Catherine de' Medici herself; such a miracle must 
 seem as impossible to a Christian as to a philosopher," replied 
 the lawyer, resting his finger-tips lightly on the table, and 
 leaning back in his chair as if preparing to speak at some 
 length. "But, at any rate, I can swear that that woman was 
 as like to Catherine de' Medici as though they had been sis- 
 ters. The lady I saw wore a black velvet dress, absolutely like 
 that which the Queen is wearing in the portrait belonging to 
 the King ; on her head was the characteristic black velvet 
 cap ; her complexion was colorless, and her face the face you 
 know. I could not help expressing my surprise to his emi- 
 nence. The suddenness of the apparition was all the more 
 wonderful because Monsieur le Comte de Cagliostro* could not 
 guess the name of the personage in whose company I wished 
 to be. I was utterly amazed. The magical spectacle of a 
 supper where such illustrious women of the past were the guests 
 robbed me of my presence of mind. When, at about mid- 
 night, I got away from this scene of witchcraft, I almost 
 doubted my own identity. 
 
 " But all these marvels seemed quite natural by comparison 
 with the strange hallucination under which I was presently to 
 fall. I know not what words I can use to describe the condi- 
 tion of my senses. But I can declare, in all sincerity of heart, 
 that I no longer wonder that there should have been, of old, 
 spirits weak enough or strong enough to believe in the 
 mysteries of magic and the power of the devil. For my part, 
 till I have ampler information, I regard the apparitions of 
 * Joseph Balsamo, a sorcerer.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 331 
 
 which Cardan and certain other thaumaturgists have spoken as 
 quite possible." 
 
 These words, pronounced with incredible eloquence of tone, 
 were of a nature to rouse extreme curiosity in those present. 
 Our looks all centred on the orator, and we sat motionless. 
 Our eyes alone showed life as they reflected the bright wax- 
 lights in the candlesticks. By dint of watching the stranger 
 we fancied we could see an emanation from the pores of his 
 face, and especially from those of his brow, of the inner feel- 
 ings that wholly possessed him. This man, apparently so cold 
 and strictly reserved, seemed to have within him a hidden fire, 
 of which the flame came forth to us. 
 
 " I know not," he went on, " whether the figure I had seen 
 called up made itself invisible to follow me ; but as soon as I 
 had laid my head on my pillow, I saw the grand shade of Cath- 
 erine rise before me. I instinctively felt myself in a luminous 
 sphere; for my eyes, attracted to the Queen with painful fixity, 
 saw her alone. Suddenly she bent over me " 
 
 At these words the ladies with one consent betrayed keener 
 curiosity. 
 
 "But," said the lawyer, "I do not know whether I ought 
 to go on ; although I am inclined to think that it was but a 
 dream, what remains to be told is serious." 
 
 " Does it bear on religion ? " asked Beaumarchais. 
 
 ' Or is it in any way indecent ? " asked Calonne. " These 
 ladies will forgive it." 
 
 " It bears on government," replied the lawyer. 
 
 "Go on," said the Minister. "Voltaire, Diderot, and 
 their like have done much to educate our ears." 
 
 The controller-general was all attention, and his neighbor, 
 Madame de Genlis, became absorbed. The stranger still 
 hesitated. Then Beaumarchais exclaimed impetuously 
 
 "Come, proceed, master! Do you not know that when 
 the laws leave folk so little liberty, people revenge themselves 
 by laxity of manners? "
 
 332 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 
 
 So the lawyer went on 
 
 "Whether it was that certain ideas were fermenting in my 
 soul or that I was prompted by some unknown power, I said 
 to her 
 
 " 'Ah, madame, you committed a very great crime.' 
 
 " ' Which ? ' she asked in a deep voice. 
 
 " ' That for which the signal was given by the Palace clock 
 on the 24th of August.' 
 
 " She smiled scornfully, and some deep furrows showed on 
 her pallid cheeks. 
 
 ' ' ' Do you call that a crime ? ' replied she ; ' it was only an 
 accident. The undertaking was badly managed, and the good 
 result we looked for failed for France, for all Europe, and 
 for the Catholic Church. How could we help it ? Our orders 
 were badly carried out. We could not find so many Mont- 
 lues as we needed. Posterity will not give us credit for the 
 defective communications which hindered us from giving our 
 work the unity of impulse which is necessary to any great 
 Coup d* Etat ; that was our misfortune. If by the 25th of 
 August not the shadow of a Huguenot had been left in France, 
 I should have been regarded to the remotest posterity as a 
 noble incarnation of Providence. How often have the clear- 
 seeing spirits of Sixtus V., of Richelieu, of Bossuet, secretly 
 accused me of having failed in my undertaking, after daring 
 to conceive of it ! And how many regrets attended my death ! 
 
 "'The disease was still rife thirty years after that Saint- 
 Bartholomew's night ; and it had caused the shedding of ten 
 times more noble blood in France than was left to be shed on 
 August 26, 1572. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, for 
 which you had medals struck, cost more tears, more blood 
 and money, and killed more prosperity in France than three 
 Saint-Bartholomews. Letellier, with a dip of ink, carried 
 into effect the decree which the Crown had secretly desired 
 since my day; but though on August 25, 1572, this tremen- 
 dous execution was necessary, on August 25, 1685, it was use-
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 333 
 
 less. Under Henri de Valois' second son heresy was scarcely 
 pregnant ; under Henri de Bourbon's second son the teeming 
 mother had cast her spawn over the whole world. 
 
 " ' You accuse me of crime and you raise statues to the son 
 of Anne of Austria ! But he and I aimed at the same end. 
 He succeeded ; I failed ; but Louis XIV. found the Protest- 
 ants disarmed, while in my day they had powerful armies, 
 statesmen, captains, and Germany to back them.' 
 
 " On hearing these words slowly spoken, I felt within me a 
 tremulous thrill. I seemed to scent the blood of I know not 
 what victims. Catherine had grown before me. She stood 
 there like an evil genius, and I felt as if she wanted to get 
 into my conscience to find rest there 
 
 " He must have dreamed that," said Beaumarchais. in a 
 low voice. " He certainly never invented it." 
 
 " ' My reason is confounded,' said I to the Queen. 'You 
 pride yourself on an action which three generations have con- 
 demned and held accursed, and ' 
 
 " 'Add,' said she, ' that writers have been more unjust to 
 me than my contemporaries were. No one undertakes my 
 defense. I am accused of ambition I who was so rich and a 
 Queen. I am taxed with cruelty I who have but two de- 
 capitations on my conscience. And to the most impartial 
 minds I am still, no doubt, a great riddle. Do you really 
 believe that I was governed by feelings of hatred, that I 
 breathed only vengeance and fury?' She smiled scornfully. 
 ' I was as calm and cold as Reason itself. I condemned the 
 Huguenots without pity, but without anger ; they were the 
 rotten orange in my basket. If I had been Queen of England, 
 I should have judged the Catholics in the same way, if they 
 had been seditious. To give our power any vitality at that 
 period, only one God could be allowed in the State, only one 
 faith and one master. Happily for me, I left my excuse 
 recorded in one sentence. When Birague brought me a false 
 report of the loss of the battle of Dreux. " Well and good,"
 
 334 ABOUT CATHERINE D' MEDICI. 
 
 said I, "then we will go to sermon." Hate the leaders of 
 the New Religion ? I esteemed them highly, and I did not 
 know them. If I ever felt an aversion for any political per- 
 sonage, it was for that cowardly Cardinal de Lorraine, and 
 for his brother, a wily and brutal soldier, who had me 
 watched by their spies. They were my children's enemies ; 
 they wanted to snatch the crown from them ; I saw them 
 every day, and they were more than I could bear. If we had 
 not carried out the plan for Saint-Bartholomew's Day, the 
 Guises would have done it with the help of Rome and its 
 monks. The League, which had no power till I had grown 
 old, would have begun in 1573.' 
 
 " 'But, madame,' said I, ' instead of commanding that hor- 
 rible butchery excuse my frankness why did you not employ 
 the vast resources of your political genius in giving the Re- 
 formers the wise institutions which made Henry IV. 's reign 
 so glorious and peaceful ? ' 
 
 " She smiled again, shrugging her shoulders, and her hollow 
 wrinkles gave her pale features an ironical expression full of 
 bitterness. 
 
 " 'After a furious struggle a nation needs repose,' said she. 
 'That is the secret of that reign. But Henri IV. committed 
 two irremediable blunders: He ought neither to have abjured 
 Protestantism nor to have left France Catholic after his own 
 conversion. He alone has ever been in a position to change 
 the face of France without a shock. Either not a single stole 
 or not a single conventicle ! That is what he ought to have 
 seen. To leave two hostile principles at work in a govern- 
 ment with nothing to balance them is a crime in a King ; it 
 is sowing the seed of revolutions. It belongs to God alone 
 to leave good and evil for ever at odds in the work of His 
 hand. But this sentence was, perhaps, inscribed at the founda- 
 tions of Henri IV. 's policy, and, maybe, it was what led to 
 lib death. It is impossible that Sully should not have cast a 
 covetous eye on the immense possessions of the clergy though
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 335 
 
 the clergy were not their sole masters, for the nobles dissipated 
 at least two-thirds of the church revenues. Sully the Re- 
 former owned abbeys nevertheless.' She paused, to think, as 
 it seemed. 
 
 " 'But does it occur to you,' said she, ' that you are asking 
 a Pope's niece her reason for remaining Catholic?' Again 
 she paused. 'And, after all, I would just as soon have been 
 a Calvinist,' she went on, with a gesture of indifference. 
 ' Can the superior men of your age still think that religion 
 had really anything to do with that great trial, the most tre- 
 mendous of those that Europe has been required to decide 
 a vast revolution retarded "by trivial causes, which will not 
 hinder it from overflowing the whole world since I failed to 
 stop it. A revolution,' said she, with a look of deep mean- 
 ing, ' which is still progressing, and which you may achieve. 
 Yes, You, who hear me ! ' 
 
 "I shuddered. 
 
 "'What! Has no one yet understood that old interests 
 on one hand, and on the other new interests, had taken Rome 
 and Luther to be their standards of battle ! What ! When 
 Louis IX., to avoid a somewhat kindred struggle, dragged 
 after him a population a hundred times greater than that I 
 condemned to death, and left them in the sands of Egypt, 
 he earned the title of saint, while I,' she added, ' failed.' 
 
 " She looked down and stood silent for a minute. It was 
 no longer a Queen that I beheld, but rather one of those 
 Druidesses of old who sacrificed men, and could unroll the 
 pages of the future while exhuming the lore of the past. But 
 she presently raised her royal and majestic face. 
 
 " 'By directing the attention of the middle-classes to the 
 abuses of the Roman Church,' said she, ' Luther and Calvin 
 gave birth in Europe to a spirit of investigation which inevit- 
 ably led the nations to examine everything. Examination 
 leads to doubt. Instead of the faith indispensable to social 
 existence, they brought in their train, and long after them, an,
 
 333 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI. 
 
 inquisitive philosophy, armed with hammers, and greedy of 
 destruction. Science, with its false lights, sprang glittering 
 from the womb of heresy. Reform in the church was not so 
 much what was aimed at as the indefinite liberty of man, 
 which is fatal to power. I have seen that. The result of the 
 successes of the Reformers in their contest against the priest- 
 hood even at that time better armed and more formidable 
 than the Crown was the destruction of the monarchical 
 power raised with so much difficulty by Louis XL on the 
 ruins of feudality. Their aim was nothing less than the anni- 
 hilation of religion and royalty, and over their wreck the 
 middle-classes of all lands were to join in a common compact. 
 Thus this contest was war to the death between these new 
 aUies and ancient laws and beliefs. The Catholics were the 
 representative expression of the material interests of the 
 Crown, the nobility, and the priesthood. 
 
 " ' It was a duel to the death between two giants ; the 
 night of Saint-Bartholomew was, unfortunately, only a wound. 
 Remember that, to save a few drops of blood at the right 
 moment, a torrent had to be shed at a later day. There is a 
 misfortune which the intelligence that looks down on a king- 
 dom cannot avert : that, namely, of having no peers by whom 
 to be judged when he succumbs under the burden of events. 
 My peers are few; fools are in the majority ; these two prop- 
 ositions account for everything. If my name is held in exe- 
 cration in France, the inferior minds which constitute the 
 mass of every generation are to blame. 
 
 " ' In such great crises as I have been through, reigning 
 does not mean holding audience, reviewing troops, and sign- 
 ing decrees. I may have made mistakes ; I was but a woman. 
 But why was there no man then living who was superior to 
 the age? The Duke of Alva had a soul of iron, Philip II. 
 was stultified by Catholic dogmas, Henri IV. was a gambler 
 and a libertine, the admiral was systematically pig-headed. 
 Louis XI. had lived too soon ; Richelieu came too late.
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE >' MEDICI. 337 
 
 Whether it were virtuous or criminal, whether the Massacre of 
 Saint-Bartholomew is attributed to me or not, I accept the 
 burden. I shall always stand between those two great men as 
 a visible link in an unrecognized chain. Some day paradox- 
 ical writers will wonder whether nations have not sometimes 
 given the name of executioner to those who, in fact, were 
 victims. Not once only will mankind be ready to immolate 
 a God rather than accuse itself ! You are all ready to shed 
 tears for two hundred louts, when you refuse them for the 
 woes of a generation, of a century, of the whole world ! 
 And you also forget that political liberty, the peace of a 
 nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a 
 heavy tax in blood ! ' 
 
 " ' May the nations never be happy at less cost?' cried I, 
 with tears in my eyes. 
 
 " ' Great Truths leave their wells only to find fresh vigor 
 in baths of blood. Christianity itself, the essence of all 
 truth, since it proceeds from God, was not established with- 
 out martyrs. Has not blood flowed in torrents? Must it not 
 for ever flow ? You will know you who are to be one of the 
 builders of the social edifice founded by the apostles. As 
 long as you use your instruments to level heads, you will be 
 applauded ; then, when you want to take up the trowel, you 
 will be killed.' 
 
 " ' Blood ! blood ! ' the words rang in my brain like the 
 echo of a bell. 
 
 " ' According to you,' said I, ' Protestantism has the same 
 right as you have to argue thus ? ' 
 
 "But Catherine had vanished as though some draught of 
 air had extinguished the supernatural light which enabled my 
 mind to see the figure which had grown to gigantic propor- 
 tions. I had suddenly discerned in myself an element which 
 assimilated the horrible doctrines set forth by the Italian 
 Queen. 
 
 "I awoke in a sweat and in tears; and at the moment 
 22
 
 333 ABOUT CATHERINE DE? MEDICI. 
 
 when reason, triumphing within me, assured me in her mild 
 tones that it was not the function of a King, nor even of a 
 nation, to practice these principles, worthy only of a people 
 of atheists " 
 
 "And how are perishing monarchies to be saved? " asked 
 Beaumarchais. 
 
 "God is above all, monsieur," replied my neighbor. 
 
 "Well, then," said Monsieur de Calonne, with the flip- 
 pancy which characterized him, " we have always the resource 
 of believing ourselves to be instruments in the hand of God, 
 as the gospel according to Bossuet has it." 
 
 As soon as the ladies understood that the whole scene was a 
 conversation between the Queen and the lawyer, they had 
 begun whispering. Indeed, I have spared the reader the 
 exclamations and interruptions with which they broke into 
 the lawyer's narrative. However, such phrases as, " What a 
 deadly bore!" and "My dear, when will he have done?" 
 reached my ear. 
 
 When the stranger ceased speaking, the ladies were silent. 
 Monsieur Bodard was asleep. The surgeon being half-drunk, 
 Lavoisier, Beaumarchais, and I alone had been listening; 
 Monsieur de Calonne was playing with the lady at his side. 
 
 At this moment the silence was almost solemn. The light 
 of the tapers seemed to me to have a magical hue. A com- 
 mon sentiment linked us by mysterious bonds to this man 
 who, to me, suggested the inexplicable effects of fanaticism. 
 It needed nothing less than the deep hollow voice of Beau- 
 marchais' neighbor to rouse us. 
 
 " I too dreamed ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 I then looked more particularly at the surgeon and felt an 
 indescribable sentiment of horror. His earthy complexion, 
 his features, large but vulgar, were the exact expression of 
 what I must be allowed to call la canaille, the rough mob. 
 A few specks of dull blue and black dotted his skin like spots 
 of mud, and his eyes flashed with sinister fires. The face
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE 2)E' MEDICI. 339 
 
 looked more ominous perhaps than it really was, because a 
 powdered wig a la frimas (rimy or like hoar-frost) crowned 
 his head with snow. 
 
 " That man must have buried more than one patient," said 
 I to my neighbor. 
 
 " I would not trust my dog to his care," he replied. 
 
 "I hate him involuntarily," said I. 
 
 " I despise him," replied he. 
 
 " And yet how unjust ! " cried I. 
 
 " Oh ! bless me, by the day after to-morrow he may be as 
 famous as Volange the actor," replied the stranger. 
 
 Monsieur de Calonne pointed to the surgeon with a gesture 
 that seemed to convey, " This fellow might amuse us." 
 
 " And did you too dream of a queen ?" asked Beaumarchais. 
 
 " No, I dreamed of a people," said he with emphasis, mak- 
 ing us laugh. " I was attending a patient whose leg I was to 
 amputate the next day 
 
 "And you found a people in your patient's thigh? " asked 
 Monsieur de Calonne. 
 
 " Exactly so ! " replied the surgeon. 
 
 " Is he not amusing? " cried Madame de Genlis. 
 
 "I was greatly surprised," the speaker went on, never 
 heeding these interruptions, and stuffing his hands into his 
 breeches pockets, " to find some one to talk to in that leg. I 
 had the strange power of entering into my patient. When I 
 first found myself in his skin, I discerned there an amazing 
 number of tiny beings, moving, thinking, and arguing. Some 
 lived in the man's body and some in his mind. His ideas 
 were creatures that were born, grew, and died ; they were 
 sick, gay, healthy, sad and all had personal individuality. 
 They fought or fondled. A few ideas flew forth and went to 
 dwell in the world of intellect. Suddenly I understood that 
 there are two worlds the visible and the invisible universe; 
 that the earth, like man, has a body and a soul. A new light 
 was cast on nature, and I perceived its immensity when I saw
 
 340 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICL 
 
 the ocean of beings everywhere distributed in masses and in 
 species, all of one and the same living matter, from marble 
 rocks up to God. A magnificent sight ! In short, there was 
 a universe in my patient. When I inserted my lancet in his 
 gangrened leg, I destroyed a thousand such beings. You 
 laugh, ladies, at the idea that you are a prey to a thousand 
 creatures ' ' 
 
 "No personalities," said Monsieur de Calonne, "speak for 
 yourself and your patient." 
 
 " My man, horrified at the outcry of his animalcules, wanted 
 to stop the operation ; but I persisted, telling him that malig- 
 nant creatures were already gnawing at his bones. He made 
 a motion to resist me, not understanding that what I was 
 doing was for his good, and my lancet pierced me in the 
 side " 
 
 " He is too stupid," said Lavoisier. 
 
 " No, he is drunk," replied Beaumarchais. 
 
 "But, gentlemen, my dream has a meaning," cried the 
 surgeon. 
 
 " Oh, oh ! " cried Bodard, waking, " my leg is asleep ! " 
 
 "Your animalcules are dead," said his wife. 
 
 "That man has a vocation," put in my neighbor, who 
 had imperturbably stared at the surgeon all the time he was 
 talking. 
 
 " It is to monsieur's vocation what action is to speech or 
 the body to the soul," said the ugly guest. 
 
 But his tongue was heavy, and he got confused ; he could 
 only utter unintelligible words. Happily, the conversation 
 took another turn. By the end of half an hour we had for- 
 gotten the surgeon to the Court pages and he was asleep. 
 
 When we arose from table, the rain was to be seen pouring 
 in torrents. 
 
 "The lawyer is no fool," said I to Beaumarchais. 
 
 " Oh, he is dull and cold. But you see the provinces can 
 still produce good folk who take political theories and the
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 341 
 
 history of France quite seriously. It is a leaven that will 
 spread." 
 
 "Have you a carriage?" Madame de Saint-James asked 
 me. 
 
 " No," said I shortly. " I did not know that I should want 
 it this evening. You thought, perhaps, that I should take 
 home the controller-general ? Did he come to your house en 
 polisson ? ' ' (the fashionable name at the time for a person who 
 drove his own carriage at Marly dressed as a coachman). 
 Madame de Saint- James left me hastily, rang the bell, ordered 
 her husband's carriage, and took the lawyer aside. 
 
 " Monsieur de Robespierre, will you do me the favor of 
 seeing Monsieur Marat home, for he is incapable of standing 
 upright?" said she. 
 
 "With pleasure, madame," replied Monsieur de Robes- 
 pierre with an air of gallantry; " I wish you had ordered me 
 to do something more difficult." 
 
 PARIS, January, 1828.
 
 NOTE. 
 
 This is the song published by the Abb6 de la Place in his collection of 
 interesting fragments, in which may be found the dissertation alluded to. 
 [It will be seen that it goes to the old tune of Malbrouk s'en va-t-en 
 guerre.) 
 
 THE DUG DE GUISE'S BURIAL. 
 Qui veut ouir chanson ? (Sis.) 
 C'est du Grand Due de Guise ; 
 Et bon bon bon bon, 
 Di dan di dan don, 
 C'est du Grand Due de Guise ! 
 
 (This last line was spoken, no doubt, in a comic tone.) 
 Qui est mart et enterre. 
 
 Qui est mort et enterre. (Bis.) 
 Aux quatre coins du poele, 
 
 Et bon bon bon bon, 
 
 Di dan di dan don, 
 Quatre gentilshomni 's y avoit. 
 
 Quatre gentilshomm's y avpit. (Bis.) 
 L'un portoit son grand casque, 
 
 Et bon, etc. 
 Et Fautre ses pistolets. 
 
 Et 1'autre ses pistolets, (Bis) 
 Et 1'autre son 6p6e, 
 
 Et bon, etc. 
 Qui tant a" Hugu 'nots a tuts. 
 
 Qui tant d' Hugu' nots a tu6s. (Bis) 
 Venoit le quatrieme, 
 
 Et bon, etc. 
 Qui etoit le plus dolent. 
 
 Qui etoit le plus dolent; (Bis.) 
 Apres venoient les pages, 
 
 Et bon, etc. 
 Et les -valets de pied. 
 (342)
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE> MEDICI. 343 
 
 Et les valets de pied, (Bis.) 
 \ Avecque de grands crepes, 
 
 Et bon, etc. 
 Et des souliers cires. 
 
 Et des souliers cires, (Bis.) 
 Et des beaux bas d'estame, 
 
 Et bon, etc. 
 Et des culottes de piau. 
 
 Et des culottes de piau. (Bis.) 
 La ceremonie faite, 
 
 Et bon, etc. 
 Chacun s'alla coucher. 
 
 Chacun s'alla coucher : (Bis.) 
 Les uns avec leurs femmes, 
 
 Et bon, etc. 
 Et les autres tout seuls. 
 
 The discovery of these curious verses seems to prove, to a certain ex- 
 tent, the guilt of Theodore de Beze, who tried to mitigate the horror 
 caused by this murder by turning it to ridicule. The principal merit of 
 this song lay, it would appear, in the tune.
 
 THE EXILES. 
 
 ALMAE SORORI. 
 
 In the year 1308 few houses were yet standing on the island 
 formed by the alluvium and sand deposited by the Seine 
 above the city, behind the church of Notre-Dame. The first 
 man who was so bold as to build on this strand, then liable to 
 frequent floods, was a constable of the watch of the City of 
 Paris, who had been able to do some service to their rever- 
 ences the chapter of the cathedral ; and in return the bishop 
 leased to him twenty-five perches of land, with exemption 
 from all feudal dues or taxes on the buildings he might erect. 
 
 Seven years before the beginning of this narrative, Joseph 
 Tirechair, one of the sternest of Paris constables, as his name 
 [Tear Flesh] would indicate, had, thanks to his share of the 
 fines collected by him for delinquencies committed within the 
 precincts of the city, been able to build a house on the bank 
 of the Seine just at the end of the Rue du Port-Sain t-Landry. 
 To protect the merchandise landed on the strand, the muni- 
 cipality had constructed a sort of breakwater of masonry, 
 which may still be seen on some old plans of Paris, and which 
 preserved the piles of the landing-place by meeting the rush 
 of water and ice at the upper end of the island. The con- 
 stable had taken advantage of this for the foundation of his 
 house,. so that there were several steps up to his door. 
 
 Like all the houses of that date, this cottage was crowned 
 by a peaked roof, forming a gable-end to the front, of half a 
 diamond. To the great regret of historians, but two or three 
 examples of such roofs survive in Paris. A round opening 
 gave light to a loft, where the constable's wife dried the linen 
 of the chapter, for she had the honor of washing for the cathe- 
 dral which was certainly not a bad customer. On the second 
 (844)
 
 THE EXILES. 345 
 
 floor were two rooms, let to lodgers at a rent, one year with 
 another, of forty sous Parists* each, an exorbitant sum, that 
 was however justified by the luxury Tirechair had lavished on 
 their adornment. Flanders tapestry hung on the walls, and a 
 large bed with a top valance of green serge, like a peasant's 
 bed, was amply furnished with mattresses, and covered with 
 good sheets of fine linen. Each room had a stove called a 
 chauffe-doux (heat for one) ; the floor, carefully polished by 
 Dame Tirechair's apprentices, shone like the woodwork of a 
 shrine. Instead of stools, the lodgers had deep chairs of 
 carved walnut, the spoils probably of some raided castle. Two 
 chests with pewter mouldings, and tables on twisted legs, com- 
 pleted the fittings, worthy of the most fastidious knights-ban- 
 neret whom business might bring to Paris. 
 
 The windows of those two rooms looked out on the river. 
 From one you could only see the shores of the Seine and the 
 three barren islands, of which two were subsequently joined 
 together to form the He Saint-Louis ; the third was the He de 
 Louviers. From the other could be seen, down a vista of the 
 Port-Saint-Landry, the buildings on the Greve, the bridge of 
 Notre-Dame, with its houses, and the tall towers of the Louvre, 
 but lately built by Philippe-Auguste to overlook the then poor 
 and squalid town of Paris, which suggests so many imaginary 
 marvels to the fancy of modern romancers. 
 
 The first floor of Tirechair's house consisted of a large hall, 
 where his wife's business was carried on, through which the 
 lodgers were obliged to pass on their way to their own rooms 
 up a stairway like a mill-ladder. Behind this were a kitchen 
 and a bedroom, with a view over the Seine. A tiny garden, 
 reclaimed from the waters, displayed at the foot of this modest 
 dwelling its beds of cabbages and onions, and a few rose- 
 bushes, sheltered by palings, forming a sort of hedge. A little 
 structure of lath and mud served as a kennel for a big dog, the 
 indispensable guardian of so lonely a dwelling. Beyond this 
 * A small Paris coin, or token.
 
 346 THE EXILES. 
 
 kennel was a little plot, where the hens cackled whose eggs 
 were sold to the canons. Here and there on this patch of 
 earth, muddy or dry according to the whimsical Parisian 
 weather, a few trees grew, constantly lashed by the wind, and 
 teased and broken by the passer-by willows, reeds, and tall 
 grasses. 
 
 The Eyot, the Seine, the landing-place, the house, were all 
 overshadowed on the west by the huge basilica of Notre- 
 Dame casting its cold gloom over the whole plot as the sun 
 moved. Then, as now, there was not in all Paris a more de- 
 serted spot, a more solemn or more melancholy prospect. The 
 noise of waters, the chanting of priests, or the piping of the 
 wind were the only sounds that disturbed this wilderness, where 
 lovers would sometimes meet to discuss their secrets when the 
 church-folk and clergy were safe in church at the services. 
 
 One evening in April in the year 1308, Tirechair came 
 home in a remarkably bad temper. For three days past 
 everything had been in good order on the King's highway. 
 Now, as an officer of the peace, nothing annoyed him so 
 much as to feel himself useless. He flung down his halbert 
 in a rage, muttered inarticulate words as he pulled off his 
 doublet, half-red and half-blue, and slipped on a shabby 
 camlet jerkin. After helping himself from the bread-box to 
 a hunch of bread, and spreading it with butter, he seated 
 himself on a bench, looked round at his four white-washed 
 walls, counted the beams of the ceiling, made a mental 
 inventory of the household goods hanging from the nails, 
 scowled at the neatness which left him nothing to complain 
 of, and looked at his wife, who said not a word as she ironed 
 the albs and surplices from the sacristy. 
 
 " By my halidom," he said, to open the conversation, "I 
 cannot think, Jacqueline, where you go to catch your appren- 
 ticed maids. Now, here is one," he went on, pointing to a 
 girl who was folding an altar-cloth, clumsily enough, it must
 
 THE EXILES. 347 
 
 be owned, " who looks to me more like a damsel rather free 
 of her person than a sturdy, country wench. Her hands are 
 as white as a fine lady's ! By the mass ! and her hair smells 
 of essences, I verily believe, and her hose are as fine as a 
 queen's. By the two horns of Old Nick, matters please me 
 but ill as I find them here." 
 
 The girl colored, and stole a look at Jacqueline, full of 
 alarm not unmixed with pride. The mistress answered her 
 glance with a smile, laid down her work, and turned to her 
 husband. 
 
 " Come now," said she, in a sharp tone, "you need not 
 harry me. Are you going to accuse me next of some under- 
 hand tricks? Patrol your roads as much as you please, but 
 do not meddle here with anything but what concerns your 
 sleeping in peace, drinking your wine, and eating what I set 
 before you, or else, I warn you, I will have no more to do 
 with keeping you healthy and happy. Let any one find me a 
 happier man in all the town," she went on, with a scolding 
 grimace. " He has silver in his purse, a gable over the Seine, 
 a stout halbert on one hand, an honest wife on the other, a 
 house as clean and smart as a new pin ! And he growls like 
 a pilgrim smarting from Saint Anthony's fire ! " 
 
 "Hey-day!" exclaimed the sergeant of the watch, "do 
 you fancy, Jacqueline, that I have any wish to see my house 
 razed down, my halbert given to another, and my wife stand- 
 ing in the pillory?" 
 
 Jacqueline and the dainty journeywoman turned pale. 
 
 "Just tell me what you are driving at," said the washer- 
 woman sharply, "and make a clean breast of it. For some 
 days, my man, I have observed that you have some maggot 
 twisting in your poor brain. Come up, then, and have it all 
 out. You must be a pretty coward indeed if you fear any 
 harm when you have only to guard the common council 
 and live under the protection of the chapter ! Their rever- 
 ences the canons would lay the whole bishopric under an
 
 348 THE EXILES. 
 
 interdict if Jacqueline brought a complaint of the smallest 
 damage." 
 
 As she spoke, she went straight up to her husband and 
 took him by the arm. 
 
 " Come with me," she added, pulling him up and out on 
 to the steps. 
 
 When they were down by the water in their little garden, 
 Jacqueline looked saucily in her husband's face. 
 
 " I would have you to know, you old gaby, that when my 
 lady fair goes out, a piece of gold comes into our savings-box." 
 
 " Oh, ho ! " said the constable, who stood silent and medi- 
 tative before his wife. But he presently said, "Any way, we 
 are done for. What brings the dame to our house ? " 
 
 "She comes to see the well-favored young clerk who lives 
 overhead," replied Jacqueline, looking up at the window that 
 opened on to the vast landscape of the Seine valley. 
 
 "The devil's in it!" cried the man. "For a few base 
 crowns you have ruined me, Jacqueline. Is that an honest 
 trade for a sergeant's decent wife to ply? And, be she 
 Countess or Baroness, the lady will not be able to get us out 
 of the trap in which we shall find ourselves caught sooner or 
 later. Shall we not have to square accounts with some puis- 
 sant and offended husband? for, by the mass, she is fair to 
 look upon ! " 
 
 " But she is a widow, I tell you, gray gander ! How dare 
 you accuse your wife of foul play and folly ? And the lady 
 has never spoken a word to yon gentle clerk ; she is content 
 to look on him and think of him. Poor lad ! he would be 
 dead of starvation by now but for her, for she is as good as a 
 mother to him. And he, the sweet cherub ! it is as easy to 
 cheat him as to rock a new-born babe. He believes his pence 
 will last for ever, and he has eaten them through twice over 
 in the past six months." 
 
 "Woman," said the sergeant, solemnly pointing to the 
 Place de Greve, "do you remember seeing, even from this
 
 THE EXILES. 349 
 
 spot, the fire in which they burnt the Danish woman the other 
 day?" 
 
 " When then? " said Jacqueline, in a fright. 
 
 "What then?" echoed Tirechair. "Why, the two men 
 who lodge with us smell of scorching, and neither chapter nor 
 Countess nor protector can serve them. Here is Easter come 
 around ; the year is ending ; we must turn our company out 
 of doors, and that at once. Do you think you can teach an 
 old constable how to know a gallows-bird ? Our two lodgers 
 were on terms with la Porette, that heretic jade from Denmark 
 or Norway, whose last cries you heard from here. She was a 
 brave witch ; she never blenched at the stake, which was proof 
 enough of her compact with the devil. I saw her as plain as 
 I see you j she preached to the throng, and declared she was 
 in heaven and could see God. 
 
 \- "And since that, I tell you, I have never slept quietly in 
 my bed. My lord, who lodges over us, is of a surety more of 
 a wizard than a Christian. On my word as an officer, I shiver 
 when that old man passes near me ; he never sleeps of nights ; 
 if I wake, his voice is ringing like a bourdon of bells, and I 
 hear him uttering incantations in the language of hell. Have 
 you ever seen him eat an honest crust of bread or a hearth- 
 cake made by a good Catholic baker ? His brown skin has 
 been scorched and tanned by hell-fires. Marry, and I tell 
 you his eyes hold a spell like those of serpents. Jacqueline, 
 I will have none of those two men under my roof. I see too 
 much of the law not to know that it is well to have nothing 
 to do with it. You must get rid of our two lodgers ; the 
 elder, because I suspect him ; the youngster, because he is too 
 pretty. They neither of them seem to me to keep Christian 
 company. The boy is ever staring at the moon, the stars, 
 and the clouds, like a wizard watching for the hour when he 
 shall mount his broomstick; the other old rogue certainly 
 makes some use of the poor boy for his black art. My house 
 stands too close to the river as it is, and that risk of ruin is
 
 350 THE EXILES. 
 
 bad enough without bringing down fire from heaven, or the 
 love affairs of a countess. I have spoken. Do not rebel." 
 
 In spite of her sway in the house, Jacqueline stood stupe- 
 fied as she listened to the edict fulminated against his lodgers 
 by the sergeant of the watch. She mechanically looked up 
 at the window of the room inhabited by the old man, and 
 shivered with horror as she suddenly caught sight of the 
 gloomy, melancholy face, and the piercing eye that so af- 
 fected her husband, accustomed as he was to dealing with 
 criminals. 
 
 At that period, great and small, priests and laymen, all 
 trembled before the idea of any supernatural power. The 
 word " magic " was as powerful as leprosy to root up feelings, 
 break social ties, and freeze pity in the most generous soul. 
 It suddenly struck the constable's wife that she never, in fact, 
 had seen either of her lodgers exercising any human function. 
 Though the younger man's voice was as sweet and melodious 
 as the tones of a flute, she so rarely heard it that she was 
 tempted to think his silence the result of a spell. As she 
 recalled the strange beauty of that pink-and-white face, and 
 saw in memory the fine fair hair and moist brilliancy of those 
 eyes, she believed they were indeed the artifices of the devil. 
 She remembered that for days at a time she had never heard 
 the slightest sound from either room. Where were the stran- 
 gers during all those hours ? 
 
 Suddenly the most singular circumstances recurred to her 
 mind. She was completely overmastered by fear, and could 
 even discern witchcraft in the rich lady's interest in this 
 young Godefroid, a poor orphan who had come from Flan- 
 ders to study at the University of Paris. She hastily put her 
 hand into one of her pockets, pulled out four livres of Tour- 
 nay in large silver coinage, and looked at the .pieces with an 
 expression of avarice mingled with terror. 
 
 "That, at any rate, is not false coin," said she, showing 
 the silver to her husband. "Beside," she went on, "how
 
 THE EXILES. 35! 
 
 can I turn them out after taking next year's rent paid in ad- 
 vance ? ' ' 
 
 "You had better inquire of the dean of the chapter/' re- 
 plied Tirechair. "Is it not his business to tell us how we 
 should deal with these extraordinary persons?" 
 
 "Ay, truly extraordinary," cried Jacqueline. "To think 
 of their cunning ; coming here under the very shadow of 
 Notre-Dame ! Still," she went on, " or ever I ask the dean, 
 why not warn that fair and noble lady of the risk she 
 runs?" 
 
 As she spoke, Jacqueline went into the house with her 
 husband, who had not missed a mouthful. Tirechair, as a 
 man grown old in the tricks of his trade, affected to believe 
 that the strange lady was in fact a work-girl ; still, this as- 
 sumed indifference could not altogether cloak the timidity of 
 a courtier who respects a royal incognito. At this moment 
 six was striking by the clock of Saint-Denis du Pas, a small 
 church that stood between Notre-Dame and the Port-Saint- 
 Landry the first church erected in Paris, on the very spot 
 where Saint-Denis was laid on the gridiron, as chronicles tell. 
 The hour flew from steeple to tower all over the city. Then 
 suddenly confused shouts were heard on the left bank of the 
 Seine, behind Notre-Dame, in the quarter where the schools 
 of the University harbored their swarms. 
 
 At this signal, Jacqueline's elder lodger began to move 
 about his room. The sergeant, his wife, and the strange lady 
 listened while he opened and shut his door, and the old man's 
 heavy step was heard on the steep stair. The constable's 
 suspicions gave such interest to the advent of this personage 
 that the lady was startled as she observed the strange expres- 
 sion of the two countenances before her. Referring the 
 terrors of this couple to the youth she was protecting as 
 was natural in a lover the young lady awaited, with some 
 uneasiness, the event thus heralded by the fears of her so- 
 called master and mistress.
 
 352 THE EXILES. 
 
 The old man paused for a moment on the threshold to 
 scrutinize the three persons in the room, and seemed to be 
 looking for his young companion. This glance of inquiry, 
 unsuspicious as it was, agitated the three. Indeed, nobody, 
 not even the stoutest man, could deny that nature had be- 
 stowed exceptional powers on this being, who seemed almost 
 supernatural. Though his eyes were somewhat deeply shaded 
 by the wide sockets fringed with long eyebrows, they were 
 set, like a kite's eyes, in eyelids so broad, and bordered by so 
 dark a circle sharply defined on his cheek, that they seemed 
 rather to be prominent. These singular eyes had in them 
 something indescribably domineering and piercing, which 
 took possession of the soul by a grave and thoughtful look, a 
 look as bright and lucid as that of a serpent or a bird, but 
 which held one fascinated and crushed by the swift com- 
 munication of some tremendous sorrow, or of some super- 
 human power. 
 
 Every feature was in harmony with this eye of lead and of 
 fire, at once rigid and flashing, stern and calm. While in 
 this eagle eye earthly emotions seemed in some sort extinct, 
 the lean, parched face also bore traces of unhappy passions 
 and great deeds done. The nose, which was narrow and 
 aquiline, was so long that it seemed to hang on by the nos- 
 trils. The bones of the face were strongly marked by the 
 long, straight wrinkles that furrowed the hollow cheeks. 
 Every line in the countenance looked dark. It would sug- 
 gest the bed of a torrent where the violence of former floods 
 was recorded in the depth of the water-courses, which testified 
 to some terrible, unceasing turmoil. Like the ripples left by 
 the oars of a boat -on the waters, deep lines, starting from each 
 side of his nose, marked his face strongly, and gave an expres- 
 sion of bitter sadness to his mouth, which was firm and straight- 
 lipped. Above the storm thus stamped on his countenance, 
 his calm brow rose with what may be called boldness, and 
 crowned it as with a marble dome.
 
 THE EXILES. 858 
 
 The stranger preserved that intrepid and dignified manner 
 that is frequently habitual with men inured to disaster, and 
 fitted by nature to stand unmoved before a furious mob and 
 to face the greatest dangers. He seemed to move in a sphere 
 apart, where he poised above humanity. His gestures, no less 
 than his look, were full of irresistible power; his lean hands 
 were those of a soldier; and if your own eyes were forced to 
 fall before his piercing gaze, you were no less sure to tremble 
 when by word or action he spoke to your soul. He moved in 
 silent majesty that made him seem a king without his guard, 
 a god without his rays. 
 
 His dress emphasized the ideas suggested by the peculiari- 
 ties of his mien and face. Soul, body, and garb were in har- 
 mony, and calculated to impress the coldest imagination. He 
 wore a sort of sleeveless gown of black cloth, fastened in front, 
 and falling to the calf, leaving the neck bare with no collar. 
 His doublet and boots were likewise black. On his head was 
 a black velvet cap like a priest's, sitting in a close circle above 
 his forehead, and not showing a single hair. It was the 
 strictest mourning, the gloomiest habit a man could wear. 
 But for a long sword that hung by his side from a leather belt 
 which could be seen where his surcoat hung open, a priest 
 would have hailed him as a brother. Though of no more than 
 middle height, he appeared tall ; and, looking him in the face, 
 he seemed a giant. 
 
 "The clock has struck, the boat is waiting ; will you not 
 come?" 
 
 At these words, spoken in bad French, but distinctly 
 audible in the silence, a little noise was heard in the other 
 top room, and the young man came down as lightly as a 
 bird. 
 
 When Godefroid appeared the lady's face turned crimson ; 
 she trembled, started, and covered her face with her white 
 hands. 
 
 Any woman might have shared her agitation at the sight of 
 23
 
 364 THE EXILES. 
 
 this youth of about twenty, of a form and stature so slender 
 that at a first glance he might have been taken for a mere 
 boy, or a young girl in disguise. His black cap like the 
 beret worn by the Basque people showed a brow as white as 
 snow, where grace and innocence shone with an expression of 
 divine sweetness the light of a soul full of faith. A poet's 
 fancy would have seen there the star which, in some old tale, 
 a mother entreats the fairy godmother to set on the forehead 
 of an infant abandoned, like Moses, to the waves. Love 
 lurked in the thousand fair curls that fell over his shoulders. 
 His throat, truly a swan's throat, was white and exquisitely 
 round. His blue eyes, bright and liquid, mirrored the sky. 
 His features and the mould of his brow were refined and deli- 
 cate enough to enchant a painter. The bloom of beauty, 
 which in a woman's face causes men such indescribable de- 
 light, the exquisite purity of outline, the halo of light that 
 bathes the features we love, were here combined with a mas- 
 culine complexion, and with strength as yet but half devel- 
 oped, in the most enchanting contrast. His was one of those 
 melodious countenances which, even when silent, speak and 
 attract us. And yet, on marking it attentively, the incipient 
 blight might have been detected which comes of a great 
 thought or a passion, the faint yellow tinge that made him 
 seem like a young leaf opening to the sun. 
 
 No contrast could be greater or more startling than that 
 seen in the companionship of these two men. It was like 
 seeing a frail and graceful shrub that has grown from the 
 hollow trunk of some gnarled willow, withered by age, blasted 
 by lightning, standing decrepit ; one of those majestic trees 
 that painters love ; the trembling sapling takes shelter there 
 from storms. One was a god, the other was an angel ; one 
 the poet that feels, the other the poet that expresses a prophet 
 in sorrow, a Levite in prayer. 
 
 They went out together without speaking. 
 
 "Did you mark how he called him to him?" cried the
 
 THE EXILES. 365 
 
 sergeant of the watch when the footsteps of the couple were no 
 longer audible on the strand. "Are they not a demon and 
 his familiar? " 
 
 "Phooh!" puffed Jacqueline. "I felt smothered! I 
 never marked our two lodgers so carefully. 'Tis a bad thing 
 for us women that the devil can wear so fair a mien ! " 
 
 "Ay, cast some holy water on him," said Tirechair, "and 
 you will see him turn into a toad. I am off to tell the office 
 all about them." 
 
 On hearing this speech the lady roused herself from the 
 reverie into which she had sunk and looked at the constable, 
 who was donning his red-and-blue jacket. 
 
 " Whither are you off? " she asked. 
 
 "To tell the justices that wizards are lodging in our house 
 very much against our will." 
 
 The lady smiled. 
 
 " I," said she, "am the Comtesse de Mahaut," and she 
 rose with a dignity that took the man's breath away. "Be- 
 ware of bringing the smallest trouble on your guests. Above 
 all, respect the old man ; I have seen him in the company of 
 your lord the King, who entreated him courteously ; you 
 will be ill-advised to trouble him in any way. As to my 
 having been here never breathe a word of it, as you value 
 your life." 
 
 She said no more, but relapsed into thought. 
 
 Presently she looked up, signed to Jacqueline, and together 
 they went up into Godefroid's room. The fair Countess 
 looked at the bed, the carved chairs, the chest, the tapestry, 
 the table, with a joy like that of the exile who sees on his 
 return the crowded roofs of his native town nestling at the 
 foot of a hill. 
 
 "If you have not deceived me," said she to Jacqueline, 
 " I promise you a hundred crowns in gold." 
 
 " Behold,.madame," said the woman, "the poor angel is 
 confiding here is all his treasure."
 
 366 THE EXILES. 
 
 As she spoke, Jacqueline opened a drawer in the table and 
 showed some parchments. 
 
 "God of mercy!" cried the Countess, snatching up a 
 document that caught her eye, on which she read, Gothofredus 
 Comes Gantiacus (Godefroid, Count of Ghent). 
 
 She dropped the parchment, and passed her hand over her 
 brow ; then, feeling, no doubt, that she had compromised 
 herself by showing so much emotion, she recovered her cold 
 demeanor. 
 
 " I am satisfied," said she. 
 
 She went downstairs and out of the house. The constable 
 and his wife stood in their doorway, and saw her take the 
 path to the landing-place. 
 
 A boat was moored hard by. When the rustle of the 
 Countess' approach was audible, a boatman suddenly stood 
 up, helped the fair laundress to take her seat in it, and rowed 
 with such strength as to make the boat fly like a swallow 
 down the stream. 
 
 ' ' You are a sorry fellow, ' ' said Jacqueline, giving the officer's 
 shoulder a familiar slap. " We have earned a hundred gold 
 crowns this morning." 
 
 " I like harboring lords no better than harboring wizards. 
 And I know not, of the two, which is the more like to bring 
 us to the gallows," replied Tirechair, taking up his halbert. 
 " I will go my rounds over by Champfleuri ; God protect us, 
 and send me to meet some pert jade out in her bravery of 
 gold rings to glitter in the shade like a glow-worm ! " 
 
 Jacqueline, alone in the house, hastily went up to the un- 
 known lord's room to discover, if she could, some clue to this 
 mysterious business. Like some learned men who give them- 
 selves infinite pains to complicate the clear and simple laws 
 of nature, she had already invented a chaotic romance to 
 account for the meeting of these three persons under her 
 humble roof. She hunted through the chest, examined every- 
 thing, but could find nothing extraordinary. She saw nothing
 
 THE EXILES. 367 
 
 on the table but a writing-case and some sheets of parchment ; 
 and as she could not read, this discovery told her nothing. 
 A woman's instinct then took her into the young man's room, 
 and from thence she descried her two lodgers crossing the 
 river in the ferry-boat. 
 
 " They stand like two statues," said she to herself. "Ah, 
 ha ! They are landing at the Rue du Fouarre. How nimble 
 he is, the sweet youth ! He jumped out like a bird. By him 
 the old man looks like some stone saint in the cathedral. 
 They are going to the old school of the Four Nations. 
 Presto ! they are out of sight. And this is where he lives, 
 poor cherub ! " she went on, looking about the room. " How 
 smart and winning he is ! Ah ! your fine gentry are made of 
 other stuff than we are." 
 
 And Jacqueline went down again after smoothing the bed- 
 coverlet, dusting the chest, and wondering for the hundredth 
 time in six months 
 
 " What in the world does he do all the blessed day ? He 
 cannot always be staring at the blue sky and the stars that 
 God has hung up there like lanterns. That dear boy has 
 known trouble. But why do he and the old man hardly ever 
 speak to each other ? " 
 
 Then she lost herself in wonderment and in thoughts which, 
 in her addled woman's brain, were tangled like a skein of 
 silken thread. 
 
 The old man and his young companion had gone into one 
 of the schools for which the Rue du Fouarre was at that time 
 famous throughout Europe. At the moment when Jacqueline's 
 two lodgers arrived at the old school des Quatre Nations, the 
 celebrated Sigier, the most noted Doctor of Mystical The- 
 ology of the University of Paris, was mounting his pulpit in 
 a spacious, low room on a level with the street. The cold 
 stones were strewn with clean straw, on which several of his 
 disciples knelt on one knee, writing on the other, to enable 
 them to take notes from the Master's improvised discourse, in
 
 358 THE EXILES. 
 
 the shorthand abbreviations which are the despair of modern 
 decipherers. 
 
 The hall was full, not of students only, but of the most dis- 
 tinguished men belonging to the clergy, the Court, and the 
 legal faculty. There were some learned foreigners, too 
 soldiers and rich citizens. The broad faces were there, with 
 prominent brows and venerable beards, which fill us with a 
 sort of pious respect for our ancestors when we see their por- 
 traits from the Middle Ages. Lean faces, too, with burning, 
 sunken eyes, under bald heads yellow from the labors of futile 
 scholasticism, contrasted with young and eager countenances, 
 grave faces, warlike faces, and the ruddy cheeks of the finan- 
 cial class. 
 
 These lectures, dissertations, theses, sustained by the 
 brightest geniuses of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 
 roused our forefathers to enthusiasm. They were to them 
 their bull-fights, their Italian opera, their tragedy, their dan- 
 cers; in short, all their drama. The performance of Mys- 
 teries* was a later thing than these spiritual disputations, to 
 which, perhaps, we owe the French stage. Inspired eloquence, 
 combining the attractions of the human voice skillfully used, 
 with daring inquisition into the secrets of God, sufficed to 
 satisfy every form of curiosity, appealed to the soul, and con- 
 stituted the fashionable entertainment of the time. Not only 
 did theology include the other sciences, it was science itself, 
 as grammar was science to the ancient Greeks ; and those who 
 distinguished themselves in these duels, in which the orators, 
 like Jacob, wrestled with the Spirit of God, had a promising 
 future before them. Embassies, arbitrations between sov- 
 ereigns, chancellorships, and ecclesiastical dignities were the 
 meed of men whose rhetoric had been schooled in theological 
 controversy. The professor's chair was the tribune of the 
 period. 
 
 This system lasted till the day when Rabelais gibbeted 
 * A rude drama : The passion play, at Ober-Ammergau, is a survival.
 
 THE EXILES. 359 
 
 dialectics by his merciless satire, as Cervantes demolished 
 chivalry by a narrative-comedy. 
 
 To understand this amazing period and the spirit which 
 dictated its voluminous, though now forgotten, masterpieces, 
 to analyze it, even to its barbarisms, we need only examine 
 the constitutions of the University of Paris and the extraor- 
 dinary scheme of instruction that then obtained. Theology 
 was taught under two faculties that of Theology properly so 
 called, and that of Canon Law. The faculty of Theology, 
 again, had three sections Scholastic, Canonical, and Mystic. 
 It would be wearisome to give an account of the attributes of 
 each section of the science, since one only, namely, Mystic, 
 is the subject of this Etude (study). 
 
 Mystical Theology included the whole of Divine Revelation 
 and the elucidation of the Mysteries. And this branch of 
 ancient theology has been secretly preserved with reverence 
 even to our own day ; Jacob Bcehm, Swedenborg, Martinez 
 Pasqualis, Saint-Martin, Molinos, Madame Guyon, Madame 
 Bourignon, and Madame Krudener, the extensive sect of the 
 Ecstatics, and that of the Illuminati, have at different periods 
 duly treasured the doctrines of this science, of which the aim 
 is indeed truly startling and portentous. In Doctor Sigier's 
 day, as in our own, man has striven to gain wings to fly into 
 the sanctuary where God hides from our gaze. 
 
 This digression was necessary to give a clue to the scene 
 at which the old man and the youth from the island under 
 Notre-Dame had come to be audience; it will also protect 
 this narrative from all blame on the score of falsehood and 
 hyperbole, of which certain persons of hasty judgment might 
 perhaps suspect me. 
 
 Doctor Sigier was a tall man in the prime of life. His 
 face, rescued from oblivion by the archives of the University, 
 had singular analogies with that of Mirabeau. It was stamped 
 with the seal of fierce, swift, and terrible eloquence. But the 
 doctor bore on his brow the expression of religious faith that
 
 360 THE EXILES, 
 
 his modern double had not. His voice, too, was of persuasive 
 sweetness, with a clear and pleasing ring in it. 
 
 At this moment the daylight, that was stintingly diffused 
 through the small, heavily-leaded window-panes, tinted the 
 assembly with capricious tones and powerful contrasts from 
 the checkered light and shade. Here, in a dark corner, eyes 
 shone brightly, their dark heads under the sunbeams gleamed 
 light above faces in shadow, and various bald heads, with 
 only a circlet of white hair, were distinguished among the 
 crowd like battlements silvered by moonlight. Every face 
 was turned toward the doctor, mute but impatient. The 
 drowsy voices of other lecturers in the adjoining schools were 
 audible in the silent street like the murmuring of the sea; and 
 the steps of the two strangers, as they now came in, attracted 
 general attention. Doctor Sigier, ready to begin, saw the 
 stately senior standing, looked round for a seat for him, and 
 then finding none, as the place was full, came down from his 
 place, went to the new-comer, and, with great respect, led 
 him to the platform of his professor's chair, and there gave 
 him his stool to sit upon. The assembly hailed this mark of 
 deference with a murmur of approval, recognizing the old man 
 as the orator of a fine thesis admirably argued not long since 
 at the Sorbonne. 
 
 The stranger looked down from his raised position on the 
 crowd below with that deep glance that held a whole poem of 
 sorrow, and those who met his eyes felt an indescribable 
 thrill. The lad, following the old man, sat down on one of 
 the steps, leaning against the pulpit in a graceful and melan- 
 choly attitude. The silence was now profound, and the door- 
 way and even the street were blocked by scholars who had 
 deserted the other classes. 
 
 Doctor Sigier was to-day to recapitulate, in the last of a 
 series of discourses, the views he had set forth in the former 
 lectures on the Resurrection, Heaven, and Hell. His strange 
 doctrine responded to the sympathies of the time, and grati-
 
 THE EXILES. 361 
 
 fied the immoderate love of the marvelous, which haunts the 
 mind of man in every age. This effort of man to clutch the 
 infinite, which for ever slips through his ineffectual grasp, this 
 last tourney of thought against thought was a task worthy of 
 an assembly where the brightest luminaries of the age had 
 met, and where the most stupendous human imagination ever 
 known, perhaps, at that moment shone. 
 
 The doctor began by summing up in a mild and even tone 
 the principal points he had so far established : 
 
 " No intellect was the exact counterpart of another. Had 
 man any right to require an account of his Creator for the 
 inequality of powers bestowed on each ? Without attempting 
 to penetrate rashly into the designs of God, ought we not to 
 recognize the fact that by reason of their general diversity 
 intelligences could be classed in spheres? From the sphere 
 where the least degree of intelligence gleamed, to the most 
 translucent souls who could see the road by which to ascend 
 to God, was there not an ascending scale of spiritual gift ? 
 And did not spirits of the same sphere understand each other 
 like brothers in soul, in flesh, in mind, and in feeling?" 
 
 From this the doctor went on to unfold the most wonderful 
 theories of sympathy. He set forth in Biblical language the 
 phenomena of love, of instinctive repulsion, of strong affini- 
 ties which transcend the laws of space, of the sudden min- 
 gling of souls which seem to recognize each other. With 
 regard to the different degrees of strength of which our affec- 
 tions are capable, he accounted for them by the place, more 
 or less near the centre, occupied by beings in their respective 
 circles. 
 
 He gave mathematical expression to God's grand idea in 
 the coordination of the various human spheres. "Through 
 man," he said, "these spheres constituted a world interme- 
 diate between the intelligence of the brute and the intelli-
 
 362 THE EXILES. 
 
 gence of the angels." As he stated it, the divine Word 
 nourishes the spiritual Word, the spiritual Word nourishes 
 the living Word, the living Word nourishes the animal Word, 
 the animal Word nourishes the vegetable Word, and the vege- 
 table Word is the expression of the life of the barren Word. 
 These successive evolutions, as of a chrysalis, which God thus 
 wrought in our souls, this infusorial life, so to speak, com- 
 municated from each zone to the next, more vivid, more 
 spiritual, more perceptive in its ascent, represented, rather 
 dimly no doubt, but marvelously enough to his inexperienced 
 hearers, the impulse given to nature by the Almighty. Sup- 
 ported by many texts from the Sacred Scriptures, which he 
 used as a commentary on his own statements to express by con- 
 crete images the abstract arguments he felt to be wanting, he 
 flourished the Spirit of God like a torch over the deep secrets 
 of creation, with an eloquence peculiar to himself, and ac- 
 cents that urged conviction on his audience. As he unfolded 
 his mysterious system and all its consequences, he gave a key 
 to every symbol and justified the vocation, the special gifts, 
 the genius, the talent of each human being. 
 
 Then, instinctively becoming physiological, he remarked on 
 the resemblance to certain animals stamped on some human 
 faces, accounting for them by primordial analogies and the 
 upward tendency of all creation. He showed his audience 
 the workings of nature, and assigned a mission and a future 
 to minerals, plants, and animals. Bible in hand, after thus 
 spiritualizing Matter and materializing Spirit, after pointing 
 to the Will of God in all things, and enjoining respect for 
 His smallest works, he suggested the possibility of rising by 
 faith from sphere to sphere. 
 
 This was the first portion of his discourse, and, by adroit 
 digressions, he applied the doctrine of his system to feudalism. 
 The poetry religious and profane and the abrupt eloquence 
 of that period had a grand opening in this vast theory, wherein 
 the doctor had amalgamated all the philosophical systems of
 
 THE EXILES. 363 
 
 the ancients, and from which he brought them out again classi- 
 fied, transfigured, purified. The false dogmas of two adverse 
 principles and of Pantheism were demolished at his word, 
 which proclaimed the Divine Unity, while ascribing to God 
 and His angels the knowledge, the ends to which the means 
 shone resplendent to the eyes of man. Fortified by the dem- 
 onstrations that proved the existence of the world of Matter, 
 Doctor Sigier constructed the scheme of a spiritual world 
 dividing us from God by an ascending scale of spheres, just 
 as the plant is divided from man by an infinite number of 
 grades. He peopled the heavens, the stars, the planets, the 
 sun. 
 
 Quoting Saint Paul, he invested man with a new power; 
 he might rise, from globe to globe, to the very Font of eternal 
 life. Jacob's mystical ladder was both the religious formula 
 and the traditional proof of the fact. He soared through 
 space, carrying with him the passionate souls of his hearers 
 on the wings of his word, making them feel the infinite, and 
 bathing them in the heavenly sea. Then the doctor ac- 
 counted logically for hell by circles placed in inverse order to 
 the shining spheres that lead to God, in which torments and 
 darkness take the place of the Spirit and of light. Pain was 
 as intelligible as rapture. The terms of the comparison were 
 present in the conditions of human life and its various atmos- 
 pheres of suffering and of intellect. Thus the most extra- 
 ordinary traditions of hell and purgatory were quite naturally 
 conceivable. 
 
 He gave the fundamental rationale of virtue with admirable 
 clearness. A pious man, toiling onward in poverty, proud of 
 his good conscience, at peace with himself, and steadfastly 
 true to himself in his heart in spite of the spectacle of exultant 
 vice, was a fallen angel doing penance, who remembered his 
 origin, foresaw his guerdon, accomplished his task, and obeyed 
 his glorious mission. The sublime resignation of Christians 
 was then seen in all its glory. He depicted martyrs at the
 
 364 THE EXILES. 
 
 burning stake, and almost stripped them of their merit by 
 stripping them of their sufferings. He showed their inner 
 angel as dwelling in the heavens, while the outer man was 
 tortured by the executioner's sword. He described angels 
 dwelling among men, and gave tokens by which to recognize 
 them. 
 
 He next strove to drag from the very depths of man's under- 
 standing the real sense of the word fall, which occurs in every 
 language. He appealed to the most widely spread traditions 
 in evidence of this one true origin, explaining, with much 
 lucidity, the passion all men have for rising, mounting an 
 instinctive ambition, the perennial revelation of our destiny. 
 
 He displayed the whole universe at a glance, and described 
 the nature of God Himself circulating in a full tide from the 
 centre to the extremities, and from the extremities to the 
 centre again. Nature was one and homogeneous. In the 
 most seemingly trivial, as in the most stupendous work, 
 everything obeyed that law ; each created object reproduced 
 in little an exact image of that nature the sap in the plant, 
 the blood in man, the orbits of the planets. He piled proof 
 on proof, always completing his idea by a picture musical with 
 poetry. 
 
 And he boldly anticipated every objection. He thundered 
 forth an eloquent challenge to the monumental works of sci- 
 ence and human excrescences of knowledge, such as those 
 which societies use the elements of the earthly globe to pro- 
 duce. He asked whether our wars, our disasters, our de- 
 pravity could hinder the great movement given by God to all 
 the globes ; and he laughed human impotence to scorn by 
 pointing to their efforts everywhere in ruins. He cried upon 
 the names of Tyre, Carthage, and Babylon ; he called upon 
 Babel and Jerusalem to appear ; and sought, without finding 
 them, the transient furrows made by the ploughshare of civili- 
 zation. Humanity floated on the surface of the earth as a ship 
 whose wake is lost on the calm level of ocean.
 
 THE EXILES. 366 
 
 These were the fundamental notions set forth in Doctor 
 Sigier's address, all wrapped in the mystical language and 
 strange school-Latin of the time. He had made a special 
 study of the Scriptures, and they supplied him with the 
 weapons with which he came before his contemporaries to 
 hasten their progress. He hid his boldness under his immense 
 learning, as with a cloak, and his philosophical bent under a 
 saintly life. At this moment, after bringing his hearers face 
 to face with God, after packing the universe into an idea, and 
 almost unveiling the idea of the world, he gazed down on the 
 silent, throbbing mass, and scrutinized the stranger with a 
 look. Then, spurred on, no doubt, by the presence of this 
 remarkable personage, he added these words, from which I 
 have eliminated the corrupt Latinity of the Middle Ages : 
 
 " Where, think you, may a man find these fruitful truths if 
 not in the heart of God Himself? What am I ? The humble 
 interpreter of a single line left to us by the greatest of the 
 Apostles a single line out of thousands all equally full of 
 light. Before us, Saint Paul said, ' fn Deo vivimus movemur 
 et sumus.' In our day less believing and more learned, or 
 better instructed and more skeptical, we should ask the 
 Apostle, ' To what end this perpetual motion ? Whither 
 leads this life divided into zones ? Wherefore an intelligence 
 that begins with the obscure perfection of marble and pro- 
 ceeds from sphere to sphere up to man, up to the angel, up to 
 God? Where is the Font, where is the ocean, if life, attain- 
 ing to God across worlds and stars, through Matter and Spirit, 
 has to come down again to some other goal ? ' 
 
 "You desire to see both aspects of the universe at once. 
 You would adore the Sovereign on condition of being suf- 
 fered to sit for an instant on His throne. Mad fools that we 
 are ! We will not admit that the most intelligent animals 
 are able to understand our ideas and the object of our actions; 
 we are merciless to the creatures of the inferior spheres, and 
 exile them from our own ; we deny them the faculty of divin-
 
 366 THE EXILES. 
 
 ing human thoughts, and yet we ourselves would fain master 
 the highest of all ideas the Idea of the Idea ! 
 
 " Well, go then, start ! Fly by faith up from globe to 
 globe, soar through space ! Thought, love, and faith are its 
 mystical keys. Traverse the circles, reach the throne ! God 
 is more merciful than you are ; He opens His Temple to all 
 His creatures. Only, do not forget the pattern of Moses : 
 put your shoes from off your feet, cast off all filth, leave your 
 body far behind ; otherwise you shall be consumed ; for God 
 God is Light! " 
 
 Just as Doctor Sigier spoke these grand words, his face 
 radiant, his hand uplifted, a sunbeam pierced througli an open 
 window, like a magic jet from a font of splendor, a long 
 triangular shaft of gold that lay like a scarf over the whole 
 assembly. They all clapped their hands, for the audience 
 accepted this effect of the sinking sun as a miracle. There 
 was a universal cry of 
 
 "FHvaf/ Vivat!" (Bravo! Bravo!) 
 
 The very sky seemed to shed approval. Godefroid, struck 
 with reverence, looked from the old man to Doctor Sigier ; 
 they were talking together in an undertone. 
 
 " All honor to the master ! " said the stranger. 
 
 " What is such transient honor? " replied Sigier. 
 
 "I would I could perpetuate my gratitude," said the older 
 man. 
 
 " A line written by you is enough ! " said the doctor " It 
 would give me immortality, humanly speaking." 
 
 " Can I give what I have not? " cried the elder. 
 
 Escorted by the crowd, which followed in their footsteps, 
 like courtiers around a king, at a respectful distance, Gode- 
 froid, with the old man and the doctor, made their way to 
 the oozy shore, where as yet there were no houses, and where 
 the ferryman was waiting for them. The doctor and the 
 stranger were talking together, not in Latin nor in any Gallic 
 tongue, but in an unknown language, and very gravely. They
 
 THE EXILES, 867 
 
 pointed with their hands now to heaven and now to the earth. 
 Sigier, to whom the paths by the river were familiar, guided 
 the venerable stranger with particular care to the narrow 
 planks which here and there bridged the mud ; the following 
 witched them inquisitively; and some of the students envied 
 the privileged boy who might walk with these two great mas- 
 ters of speech. Finally, the doctor took leave of the stranger, 
 and the ferry-boat pushed off. 
 
 At the moment when the boat was afloat on the wide river, 
 communicating its motion to the soul, the sun pierced the 
 clouds like a conflagration blazing up on the horizon, and 
 poured forth a flood of light, coloring slate roof-tops and 
 humbler thatch with a ruddy glow and tawny reflections, 
 fringed Philippe Auguste's towers with fire, flooded the sky, 
 dyed the waters, gilded the plants, and aroused the half- 
 sleeping insects. The immense shaft of light set the clouds 
 on fire. It was like the last verse of the daily hymn. Every 
 heart was thrilled ; nature in such a moment is sublime. 
 
 As he gazed at the spectacle, the stranger's eyes moistened 
 with the tenderest of human tears : Godefroid, too, was weep- 
 ing ; his trembling hand touched that of the elder man, who, 
 looking round, confessed his emotion. But thinking his dig- 
 nity as a man compromised, no doubt, to redeem it, he said in 
 a deep voice 
 
 " I weep for my native land. I am an exile ! Young man, 
 in such an hour as this I left my home. There, at this hour, 
 the fireflies are coming out of their fragile dwellings and 
 clinging like diamond sparks to the leaves of the iris. At 
 this hour the breeze, as sweet as the sweetest poetry, rises up 
 from a valley bathed in light, bearing on its wings the richest 
 fragrance. On the horizon I could see a golden city like the 
 heavenly Jerusalem a city whose name I may not speak. 
 There, too, a river winds. But that city and its buildings, 
 that river of which the lovely vistas, and the pools of blue 
 water, mingled, crossed, and embraced each other, which
 
 368 THE EXILES. 
 
 gladdened my sight and filled me with love where are 
 they? 
 
 "At that hour the waters assumed fantastic hues under the 
 sunset sky, and seemed to be painted pictures ; the stars 
 dropped tender streaks of light, the moon spread its pleasing 
 snares ; it gave another life to the trees, to the color and 
 form of things, and a new aspect to the sparkling water, the 
 silent hills, the eloquent buildings. The city spoke, it glit- 
 tered, it called to me to return ! 
 
 " Columns of smoke rose up by the side of the ancient pil- 
 lars, whose marble sheen gleamed white through the night ; 
 the lines of the horizon were still visible through the mists of 
 evening ; all was harmony and mystery. Nature would not 
 say farewell ; she desired to keep me there. Ah ! It was all 
 in all to me; my mother and my child, my wife and my 
 glory ! The very bells bewailed my condemnation. Oh, 
 land of marvels ! It is as beautiful as heaven. From that 
 hour the wide world has been my dungeon. Beloved land, 
 why hast thou rejected me ? 
 
 " But I shall triumph there yet ! " 'he cried, speaking with 
 an accent of such intense conviction and such a ringing tone, 
 that the boatman started as at a trumpet call. 
 
 The stranger was standing in a prophetic attitude and gaz- 
 ing southward into the blue, pointing to his native home 
 across the skyey regions. The ascetic pallor of his face had 
 given place to a glow of triumph, his eyes flashed, he was as 
 grand as a lion shaking his mane. 
 
 " But you, poor child," he went on, looking at Godefroid, 
 whose cheeks were beaded with glittering tears, " have you, 
 like me, studied life from blood-stained pages? What can 
 you have to weep for, at your age ? ' ' 
 
 "Alas! " said Godefroid, " I regret a land more beautiful 
 than any land on earth a land I never saw and yet remember. 
 Oh, if I could but cleave the air on beating wings, I would 
 fly "
 
 THE EXILES. 369 
 
 "Whither?" asked the exile. 
 
 " Up there," replied the boy. 
 
 On hearing this answer, the stranger seemed surprised ; he 
 looked darkly at the youth, who remained silent. They 
 seemed to communicate by an unspeakable effusion of the 
 spirit, hearing each other's yearnings in the teeming silence, 
 and going forth side by side, like two doves sweeping the air 
 on equal wing, till the boat touching the strand of the island, 
 roused them from their deep reverie. 
 
 Then, each lost in thought, they went together to the ser- 
 geant's house. 
 
 " And so the boy believes that he is an angel exiled from 
 heaven ! " thought the tall stranger. " Which of us all has a 
 right to undeceive him ? Not I I, who am so often lifted 
 by some magic spell so far above the earth ; I who am dedi- 
 cate to God ; I who am a mystery to myself. Have I not 
 already seen the fairest of the angels dwelling in this mire ? 
 Is this child more or less crazed than I am ? Has he taken a 
 bolder step in the way of faith ? He believes, and his belief 
 no doubt will lead him into some path of light like that in 
 which I walk. But though he is as beautiful as an angel, is 
 he not too feeble to stand fast in such a struggle ? " 
 
 Abashed by the presence of his companion, whose voice of 
 thunder expressed to him his own thoughts, as lightning ex- 
 presses the will of heaven, the boy was satisfied to gaze at the 
 ctars with a lover's eyes. Overwhelmed by a luxury of senti- 
 ment, which weighed on his heart, he stood there timid and 
 weak a midge in the sunbeams. Sigier's discourse had 
 proved to them the mysteries of the spiritual world ; the tall, 
 old man was to invest them with glory ; the lad felt them in 
 himself, though he could in no way express them. The 
 three represented in living embodiment Science, Poetry, and 
 Feeling. 
 
 On going into the house, the Exile shut himself into his 
 24
 
 370 THE EXILES. 
 
 room, lighted the inspiring lamp, and gave himself over to 
 the ruthless demon of Work, seeking words of the silence 
 and ideas of the night. Godefroid sat down on his window- 
 sill, by turns gazing at the moon reflected in the water, and 
 studying the mysteries of the sky. Lost in one of the trances 
 that were frequent with him, he traveled from sphere to 
 sphere, from vision to vision, listening for obscure rustlings 
 and the voices of angels, and believing that he heard them ; 
 seeing, or fancying that he saw, a divine radiance in which 
 he lost himself; striving to attain the far-away goal, the 
 source of all light, the font of all harmony. 
 
 Presently the vast clamor of Paris, brought down on the 
 current, was hushed ; lights were extinguished one by one in 
 the houses ; silence spread over all ; and the huge city slept 
 like a tired giant. 
 
 Midnight struck. The least noise, the fall of a leaf, or 
 the flight of a jackdaw changing its perching-place among the 
 pinnacles of Notre-Dame, would have been enough to* bring 
 the stranger's mind to earth again, to have made the youth 
 drop from the celestial heights to which his soul had soared 
 on the wings of rapture. 
 
 And then the old man heard with dismay a groan mingling 
 with the sound of a heavy fall the fall, as his experienced 
 ear assured him, of a dead body. He hastened into Gode- 
 froid's room, and saw him lying in a heap with a long rope 
 tight round his neck, the end meandering over the floor. 
 
 When he had untied it, the poor lad opened his eyes. 
 
 " Where am I? " he asked with a hopeful gleam. 
 
 " In your own room," said the older man, looking with 
 surprise at Godefroid's neck, and at the nail to which the 
 cord had been tied, and which was still in the knot. 
 
 "In heaven?" said the boy, in a voice of music. 
 
 "No; on earth!" 
 
 Godefroid rose and walked along the path of light traced 
 on the floor by the moon through the window, which stood
 
 THE EXILES. 371 
 
 open ; he saw the rippling Seine, the willows and plants on 
 the island. A misty atmosphere hung over the waters like 
 a smoky floor. 
 
 On seeing the view, to him so heartbreaking, he folded 
 his hands over his bosom, and stood in an attitude of despair; 
 the Exile came up to him with astonishment on his face. 
 
 "You meant to kill yourself?" he asked. 
 
 " Yes," replied Godefroid, while the stranger passed his 
 hand about his neck again and again to feel the place where 
 the rope had tightened on it. 
 
 But for some slight bruises, the young man had been but 
 little hurt. His friend supposed that the nail had given way 
 at once under the weight of the body, and the terrible at- 
 tempt had ended in a fall without injury. 
 
 "And why, dear lad, did you try to kill yourself? " 
 
 "Alas!" said Godefroid, no longer restraining the tears 
 that rolled down his cheeks, " I heard the Voice from on 
 high ; it called me by name. It had never named me before, 
 but this time it bade me to heaven ! Oh, how sweet is that 
 voice! As I could not fly to heaven," he added artlessly, 
 "I took the only way we know of going to God." 
 
 " My child ! oh, sublime boy ! " cried the old man, throw- 
 ing his arms round Godefroid, and clasping him to his heart. 
 " You are a poet ; you can boldly ride the whirlwind ! Your 
 poetry does not proceed from your heart ; your living, burn- 
 ing thoughts, your creations, move and grow in your soul. 
 Go, never reveal your ideas to the vulgar ! Be at once the 
 altar, the priest, and the victim ! " 
 
 "You know heaven, do you not? You have seen those 
 myriads of angels, white-winged, and holding golden sistrums, 
 all soaring with equal flight toward the Throne, and you have 
 often seen their pinions moving at the breath of God as the 
 trees of the forest bow with one consent before the storm. 
 Ah, how glorious is unlimited space ! Tell me." 
 
 The stranger clasped Godefroid's hand convulsively, and
 
 372 THE EXILES. 
 
 they both gazed at the firmament, whence the stars seemed to 
 shed gentle poetry which they could hear. 
 
 "Oh, to see God ! " murmured Godefroid. 
 
 "Child ! " said the old man suddenly, in a sterner voice, 
 " have you so soon forgotten the holy teaching of our good 
 master, Doctor Sigier? In order to return you to your 
 heavenly home and I to my native land on earth must we 
 not obey the voice of God ? We must walk on resignedly in 
 the stony paths where His almighty finger points the way. 
 Do not you quail at the thought of the danger to which you 
 exposed yourself? Arriving there without being bidden, and 
 saying, ' Here I am ! ' before your time, would you not have 
 been cast back into a world beneath that where your soul now 
 hovers? Poor outcast cherub ! Should you not rather bless 
 God for having suffered you to live in a sphere where you may 
 hear none but heavenly harmonies? Are you not as pure as 
 a diamond, as lovely as a flower? 
 
 "Think what it is to know, like me, only the City of Sor- 
 rows ! Dwelling there, I have worn out my heart. To search 
 the tombs for their horrible secrets ; to wipe hands steeped in 
 blood, counting them over night after night, seeing them rise 
 up before me imploring forgiveness which I may not grant ; 
 to mark the writhing of the assassin and the last shriek of his 
 victim ; to listen to appalling noises and fearful silence, the 
 silence of a father devouring his dead sons ; to wonder at the 
 laughter of the damned ; to look for some human form among 
 the livid heaps wrung and trampled by crime ; to learn words 
 such as living men may not hear without dying ; to call per- 
 petually on the dead, and always to accuse and condemn ! Is 
 that living?" 
 
 " Cease ! " cried Godefroid ; " I cannot see you or hear you 
 any further ! My reason wanders, my eyes are dim. You 
 light a fire within me which consumes me." 
 
 "And yet I must go on ! " said the senior, waving his hand 
 with a strange gesture that worked on the youth like a spell.
 
 THE EXILES. 373 
 
 For a moment the old man fixed Godefroid with his large, 
 weary, lightless eyes ; then he pointed with one finger to the 
 ground. A gulf seemed to open at his bidding. He re- 
 mained standing in the doubtful light of the moon ; it lent a 
 glory to his brow which reflected an almost solar gleam. 
 Though at first a somewhat disdainful expression lurked in the 
 wrinkles of his face, his look presently assumed the fixity 
 which seems to gaze on an object invisible to the ordinary 
 organs of sight. His eyes, no doubt, were seeing then the 
 remoter images which the grave has in store for us. 
 
 Never, perhaps, had this man presented so grand an aspect. 
 A terrible struggle was going on in his soul, and reacted on 
 his outer frame ; strong man as he seemed to be, he bent as a 
 reed bows under the breeze that comes before a storm. Gode- 
 froid stood motionless, speechless, spellbound ; _some inex- 
 plicable force nailed him to the floor; and, as happens when 
 our attention takes us out of ourselves while watching a fire or 
 a battle, he was wholly unconscious of his body. 
 
 "Shall I tell you the fate to which you were hastening, 
 poor angel of love ? Listen ! It has been given to me to see 
 immeasurable space, bottomless gulfs in which all human crea- 
 tions are swallowed up, the shoreless sea whither flows the vast 
 stream of men and of angels. As I made my way through 
 the realms of eternal torment, I was sheltered under the cloak 
 of an immortal the robe of glory due to genius, and which 
 the ages hand on I, a frail mortal ! When I wandered 
 through the fields of light where the happy souls play, 
 I was borne up by the love of a woman, the wings of 
 an angel; resting on her heart, I could taste the ineffable 
 pleasures whose touch is more perilous to us mortals than are 
 the torments of the worser world. 
 
 "As I achieved my pilgrimage through the dark regions 
 below I had mounted from torture to torture, from crime to 
 crime, from punishment to punishment, from awful silence to 
 heartrending cries, until I reached the uppermost circle of
 
 374 THE EXILES. 
 
 Hell. Already, from afar, I could see the glory of Paradise 
 shining at a vast distance ; I was still in darkness, but on the 
 borders of day. I flew, upheld by my Guide, borne along by 
 a power akin to that which, during our dreams, wafts us to 
 spheres invisible to the eye of the body. The halo that 
 crowned our heads scared away the shades as we passed, like 
 impalpable dust. Far above us the suns of all the worlds 
 shone with scarce so much light as the twinkling fireflies of 
 my native land. I was soaring toward the fields of air where, 
 around about Paradise, the bodies of light are in closer array, 
 where the azure is easy to pass through, where worlds innu- 
 merable spring like flowers in a meadow. 
 
 "There, on the last level of the circles where those phan- 
 toms dwell that I had left behind me, like sorrows one would 
 fain forget, I saw a vast shade. Standing in an attitude of 
 aspiration, that soul looked eagerly into space ; his feet were 
 riveted by the will of God to the topmost point of the margin, 
 and he remained for ever in the painful strain by which we 
 project our purpose when we long to soar, as birds about to 
 take wing. I saw the man ; he neither looked at us nor heard 
 us ; every muscle quivered and throbbed ; at each separate 
 instant he seemed to feel, though he did not move, all the 
 fatigue of traversing the infinite that divided him from Para- 
 dise where, as he gazed steadfastly, he believed he had 
 glimpses of a beloved image. At this last gate of Hell, as at 
 the first, I saw the stamp of despair even in hope. The hap- 
 less creature was so fearfully held by some unseen force that 
 his anguish entered into my bones and froze my blood. I 
 shrank closer to my Guide, whose protection restored me to 
 peace and silence. 
 
 " Suddenly the Shade gave a cry of joy a cry as shrill as 
 that of the mother bird that sees a hawk in the air or suspects 
 its presence. We looked where he was looking, and saw, as 
 it were, a sapphire, floating high up in the abyss of light. 
 The glowing star fell with the swiftness of a sunbeam when it
 
 THE EXILES. 375 
 
 flashes over the horizon in the morning and its first rays shoot 
 across the world. The Splendor became clearer and grew 
 larger ; presently I beheld the cloud of glory in which the 
 angels move a shining vapor that emanates from their divine 
 substance, and that glitters here and there like tongues of 
 flame. A noble face, whose glory none may endure that have 
 not won the mantle, the laurel, and the palm the attribute 
 of the Powers rose above this cloud as white and pure as 
 snow. It was Light within light. His wings as they waved 
 shed dazzling ripples in the spheres through which he de- 
 scended, as the glance of God pierces through the universe. 
 At last I saw the archangel in all his glory. The flower of 
 eternal beauty that belongs to the angels of the Spirit shone 
 in him. In one hand he held a green palm branch, in the 
 other a sword of flame : the palm to bestow on the pardoned 
 soul, the sword to drive back all the hosts of Hell with one 
 sweep. As he approached, the perfumes of Heaven fell upon 
 us as dew. In the region where the archangel paused, the air 
 took the hues of opal, and moved in eddies of which he was 
 the centre. He paused, looked at the Shade, and said 
 
 " 'To-morrow.' 
 
 "Then he turned heavenward once more, spread his wings, 
 and clove through space as a vessel cuts through the waves, 
 hardly showing her white sails to the exiles left on some 
 deserted shore. 
 
 " The Shade uttered appalling cries, to which the damned 
 responded from the lowest circle, the deepest in the immensity 
 of suffering, to the more peaceful zone near the surface on 
 which we were standing. This worst torment of all had 
 appealed to all the rest. The turmoil was swelled by the roar 
 of a sea of fire which formed a bass to the terrific harmony 
 of endless millions of suffering souls. 
 
 " Then suddenly the Shade took flight through the doleful 
 city, and down to its place at the very bottom of Hell ; but 
 as suddenly it came up again, turned, soared through the
 
 376 THE EXILES. 
 
 endless circles in every direction, as a vulture, confined for 
 the first time in a cage, exhausts itself in vain efforts. The 
 Shade was free to do this ; he could wander through the zones 
 of Hell icy, fetid, or scorching without enduring their 
 pangs ; he glided into that vastness as a sunbeam makes its 
 way into the deepest dark. 
 
 " 'God has not condemned him to any torment,' said the 
 Master, ' but not one of the souls you have seen suffering their 
 various punishments would exchange his anguish for the hope 
 that is consuming this soul.' 
 
 "And just then the Shade came back to us, brought thither 
 by an irresistible force which condemned him to parch on the 
 verge of Hell. My divine Guide, guessing my curiosity, 
 touched the unhappy Shade with his palm-branch. He, who 
 was perhaps trying to measure the age of sorrow that divided 
 him from that ever-vanishing 'To-morrow,' started and gave a 
 look full of all the tears he had already shed. 
 
 " * You would know my woe ? ' said he sadly. ' Oh, I 
 love to tell it. I am here, Teresa is above; that is all. On 
 earth we were happy, we were always together. When I 
 saw my loved Teresa Donati for the first time, she was ten 
 years old. We loved each other even then, not knowing what 
 love meant. Our lives were one ; I turned pale if she were 
 pale, I was happy in her joy; we gave ourselves up to the 
 pleasure of thinking and feeling together ; and we learned 
 what love was, each through the other. We were wedded at 
 Cremona; we never saw each other's lips but decked with the 
 pearls of a smile ; our eyes always shone ; our hair, like our 
 desires, flowed together ; our heads were always bent over 
 one book when we read, our feet walked in equal step. Life 
 was one long kiss, our home was a nest. 
 
 " ' One day, for the first time, Teresa turned pale and said, 
 " I am in pain ! " And I was not in pain ! 
 
 " ' She never rose again. I saw her sweet face change, her 
 golden hair fade and I did not die ! She smiled to hide her
 
 THE EXILES. 377 
 
 sufferings, but I could read them in her blue eyes, of which 
 I could interpret the slightest trembling. " Honorino, I love 
 you! " said she, at the very moment when her lips turned 
 white, and she was clasping my hand still in hers when death 
 chilled them. So I killed myself that she might not lie alone 
 in her sepulchral bed, under her marble sheet. Teresa is 
 above, and I arn here. I could not bear to leave her, but God 
 has divided us. Why, then did He unite us on earth ? He 
 is jealous ! Paradise was no doubt so much the fairer on the 
 day when Teresa entered in. 
 
 " ' Do you see her? She is sad in her bliss; she is parted 
 from me ! Paradise must be a desert to her.' 
 
 " ' Master,' said I with tears, for I thought of my love, 
 'when this one shall desire Paradise for God's sake alone, 
 shall he not be delivered ? ' And the Father of Poets mildly 
 bowed his head in sign of assent. 
 
 " We departed, cleaving the air, and making no more noise 
 than the birds that pass overhead sometimes when we lie in 
 the shade of a tree. It would have been vain to try to check 
 the hapless Shade in his blasphemy. It is one of the griefs 
 of the angels of darkness that they can never see the light 
 even when they are surrounded by it. He would not have 
 understood us." 
 
 At this moment the swift approach of many horses rang 
 through the stillness, the dog barked, the constable's deep 
 growl replied ; the horsemen dismounted, knocked at the 
 door ; the noise was so unexpected that it seemed like some 
 sudden explosion. 
 
 The two exiles, the two poets, fell to earth through all the 
 space that divides us from the skies. The painful shock of 
 this fall rushed through their veins like strange blood, hissing 
 as it seemed, and full of scorching sparks. Their pain was 
 like an electric discharge. The loud, heavy step of a man-at- 
 arms sound.ed on the stairs with the iron clank of his sword,
 
 378 THE EXILES. 
 
 his cuirass, and spurs; a soldier presently stood before the 
 astonished stranger. 
 
 "We can return to Florence," said the man, whose bass 
 voice sounded soft as he spoke in Italian. 
 
 " What is that you say ? " asked the old man. 
 
 " The Bianchi are triumphant." 
 
 "Are you not mistaken? " asked the poet. 
 
 "No, dear Dante!" replied the soldier, whose warlike 
 tones rang with the thrill of battle and the exultation of 
 victory. 
 
 " To Florence ! To Florence ! Ah, my Florence ! " cried 
 Dante Alighieri, drawing himself up, and gazing into the 
 distance. In fancy he saw Italy ; he was gigantic. 
 
 "But I when shall I be in heaven?" said Godefroid, 
 kneeling on one knee before the immortal poet, like an angel 
 before the sanctuary. 
 
 "Come to Florence," said Dante in compassionate tones. 
 " Come ! when you see its lovely landscape from the heights 
 of Fiesole you will fancy yourself in Paradise." 
 
 The soldier smiled. For the first time, perhaps for the 
 only time in his life, Dante's gloomy and solemn features 
 wore a look of joy ; his eyes and brow expressed the happiness 
 he has depicted so lavishly in his vision of Paradise. He 
 thought, perhaps, that he heard the voice of Beatrice. 
 
 A light step and the rustle of a woman's gown were 
 audible in the silence. Dawn was now showing its first 
 streaks of light. The fair Comtesse de Mahaut came in and 
 flew to Godefroid. 
 
 " Come, my child, my son ! I may at last acknowledge 
 you. Your birth is recognized, your rights are under the pro- 
 tection of the King of France, and you will find Paradise in 
 your mother's heart." 
 
 "I hear, I know, the voice of heaven ! " cried the youth 
 in rapture. 
 , The exclamation roused Dante, who saw the young man
 
 THE EXILES. 
 
 379 
 
 folded in the Countess' arms. He took leave of them with 
 a look, and left his young companion on his mother's bosom. 
 " Come away ! " he cried in a voice of thunder. " Death 
 to the Guelphs ! " 
 
 PARIS, October, 1831.
 
 THE MESSAGE. 
 
 Translated by ELLEN MARRIAGE. 
 
 To M. le Marquis Damaso Pareto. 
 
 I HAVE always longed to tell a simple and true story, which 
 should strike terror into two young lovers and drive them to 
 take refuge each in the other's heart, as two children cling to- 
 gether at the sight of a snake by a woodside. At the risk of 
 spoiling my story and of being taken for a coxcomb, I state 
 my intention at the outset. 
 
 I myself played a part in this almost commonplace tragedy; 
 so, if it fails to interest you, the failure will be in part my own 
 fault, in part owing to historical veracity. Plenty of things 
 in real life are superlatively uninteresting ; so that it is one- 
 half -of art to select from realities those which contain possi- 
 bilities of poetry. 
 
 In 1819 I was traveling from Paris to Moulins. The state 
 of my finances obliged me to take an outside place. English- 
 men, as you know, regard those airy perches on the top of the 
 coach as the best seats ; and for the first few miles I discovered 
 abundance of excellent reasons for justifying the opinion of our 
 neighbors. A young fellow, apparently in somewhat better 
 circumstances, who came to take the seat beside me from 
 preference, listened to my reasoning with inoffensive smiles. 
 An approximate nearness of age, a similarity in ways of think- 
 ing, a common love of fresh air and of the rich landscape 
 scenery through which the coach was lumbering along these 
 things, together with an indescribable magnetic something, 
 drew us before long into one of those short-lived traveler's in- 
 timacies, in which we unbend with the more complacency be- 
 cause the intercourse is by its very nature transient and makes 
 no implicit demands upon the future, 
 (380)
 
 THE MESSAGE. 381 
 
 We had not come thirty leagues before we were talking of 
 women and of love. Then, with all the circumspection de- 
 manded in such matters, we proceeded naturally to the topic 
 of our lady-loves. Young as we both were, we still admired 
 " the woman of a certain age," that is to say, the woman be- 
 tween thirty-five and forty. Oh ! any poet who should have 
 listened to our talk, for heaven knows how many stages beyond 
 Montargis, would have reaped a harvest of flaming epithet, 
 rapturous description, and very tender confidences. Our 
 bashful fears, our silent interjections, our blushes as we met 
 each other's eyes, were expressive with an eloquence, a boyish 
 charm, which I have ceased to feel. One must remain young, 
 no doubt, to understand youth. 
 
 Well, we understood one another to admiration on all the 
 essential points of passion. We had laid it down as an axiom 
 at the very outset, that in theory and practice there was no 
 such piece of driveling nonsense in this world as a certificate 
 of birth ; that plenty of women were younger at forty than 
 many a girl of twenty; and, to come to the point, that a 
 woman is no older than she looks. 
 
 This theory set no limits to the age of love, so we struck 
 out, in all good faith, into a boundless sea. At length, when 
 we had portrayed our mistresses as young, charming, and de- 
 voted to us, women of rank, women of taste, intellectual and 
 clever; when we had endowed them with little feet, a satin, 
 nay, a delicately fragrant skin, then came the admission on 
 his part that Madame Such-an-one was thirty-eight years old, 
 and on mine, that I worshiped a woman of forty. Where- 
 upon, as if released on either side by some kind of vague fear, 
 our confidences came thick and fast, when we found that we 
 were of the same confraternity of love. It was which of us 
 should overtop the other in sentiment. 
 
 One of us had traveled six hundred miles to see his mistress 
 for an hour. The other, at the risk of being shot for a wolf, 
 had prowled about her park to meet her one night. Out
 
 382 THE MESSAGE. 
 
 came all our follies in fact. If it is pleasant to remember past 
 dangers, is it not at least as pleasant to recall past delights? 
 We live through the joy a second time. We told each other 
 everything, our perils, our great joys, our little pleasures, and 
 even the humors of the situation. My friend's countess had 
 lighted a cigar for him ; mine made chocolate for me, and 
 wrote to me every day when we did not meet ; his lady had 
 come to spend three days with him at the risk of ruin to her 
 reputation ; mine had done even better, or worse, if you will 
 have it so. Our countesses, moreover, were adored by their 
 husbands ; these gentlemen were enslaved by the charm pos- 
 sessed by every woman who loves; and, with even supererog- 
 atory simplicity, afforded us that just sufficient spice of danger 
 which increases pleasure. Ah ! how quickly the wind swept 
 away our talk and our happy laughter ! 
 
 When we reached Pouilly, I scanned my new friend with 
 much interest, and, truly, it was not difficult to imagine him 
 the hero of a very serious love affair. Picture to yourselves a 
 young man of middle height, but very well proportioned, a 
 bright, expressive face, dark hair, blue eyes, moist lips, and 
 white and even teeth. A certain not unbecoming pallor still 
 overspread his delicately cut features, and there were faint, 
 dark circles about his eyes, as if he were recovering from an 
 illness. Add, furthermore, that he had white and shapely 
 hands, of which he was as careful as a pretty woman should 
 be ; add that he seemed to be very well informed and was 
 decidedly clever, and it should not be difficult for you to 
 imagine that my traveling companion was more than worthy 
 of a countess. Indeed, many a girl might have wished for 
 such a husband, for he was a vicomte with an income of 
 twelve or fifteen thousand livres, " to say nothing of expecta- 
 tions." 
 
 About a league out of Pouilly the coach was overturned. 
 My luckless comrade, thinking to save himself, jumped to the 
 edge of a newly ploughed field, instead of following the for-
 
 THE MESSAGE. 388 
 
 tunes of the vehicle and clinging tightly to the roof, as I did. 
 He either miscalculated in some way, or he slipped ; how it 
 happened I do not know, but the coach fell over upon him, 
 and he was crushed under it. 
 
 We carried him into a peasant's cottage, and there, amid 
 the moans wrung from him by horrible sufferings, he con- 
 trived to give me a commission a sacred task, in that it was 
 laid upon me by a dying man's last wish. Poor boy, all 
 through his agony he was torturing himself in his young sim- 
 plicity of heart with the thought of the painful shock to his 
 mistress when she should suddenly read of his death in a 
 newspaper. He begged me to go myself to break the news 
 to her. He bade me look for a key which he wore on a rib- 
 bon about his neck. I found it half-buried in the flesh, but 
 the dying boy did not utter a sound as I extricated it as gen- 
 tly as possible from the wound which it had made. He had 
 scarcely given me the necessary directions I was to go to 
 his home at La Charite-sur-Loire for his mistress' love-letters, 
 which he conjured me to return to her when he grew speech- 
 less in the middle of a sentence ; but, from his last gesture, I 
 understood that the fatal key would be my passport in his 
 mother's house. It troubled him that he was powerless to 
 utter a single word to thank me, for of my wish to serve him 
 he had no doubt. He looked wistfully at me for a moment, 
 then his eyelids drooped in token of farewell, and his head 
 sank, and he died. His death was the only fatal accident 
 caused by the overturn. 
 
 " But it was partly his own fault," the coachman said to 
 me. 
 
 At La Charite, I executed the poor fellow's dying wishes. 
 His mother was away from home, which in a manner was fortu- 
 nate for me. Nevertheless, I had to assuage the grief of an 
 old woman-servant, who staggered back at the tidings of her 
 young master's death, and sank half-dead into a chair when 
 she saw the blood-stained key. But I had another and more
 
 384 THE MESSAGE. 
 
 dreadful sorrow to think of, the sorrow of a woman who had 
 lost her last love ; so I left the old woman to her prosopopeia, 
 and carried off the precious correspondence, carefully sealed 
 by my friend of a day. 
 
 The Countess' castle was some eight leagues beyond Mou- 
 lins, and then there was some distance to walk across country. 
 So it was not exactly an easy matter to deliver my message. 
 For divers reasons into which I need not enter, I had barely 
 sufficient money to take me to Moulins. However, my youth- 
 ful enthusiasm determined to hasten thither on foot as fast as 
 possible. Bad news travels swiftly, and I wished to be first 
 at the castle. I asked for the shortest way, and hurried 
 through the field-paths of the Bourbonnais, bearing, as it 
 were, a dead man on my back. The nearer I came to the 
 Castle of Montpersan, the more aghast I felt at the idea of 
 my strange self-imposed pilgrimage. Vast numbers of romantic 
 fancies ran in my head. I imagined all kinds of situations 
 in which I might find this Comtesse de Montpersan, or, to 
 observe the laws of romance, this " Juliette," so passionately 
 beloved of my traveling companion. I sketched out ingenious 
 answers to the questions which she might be supposed to put 
 to me. At every turn of a wood, in every beaten pathway, 
 I rehearsed a modern version of the scene in which Sosie 
 describes the battle to his lantern. To my shame be it said, 
 I had thought at first of nothing but the part that / was to 
 play, of my own cleverness, of how I should demean myself; 
 but now that I was in the country, an ominous thought flashed 
 through my soul like a thunderbolt tearing its way through a 
 veil of gray cloud. 
 
 What an awful piece of news it was for a woman whose 
 whole thoughts were full of her young lover, who was looking 
 forward hour by hour to a joy which no words can express, a 
 woman who had been at a world of pains to invent plausible 
 pretexts to draw him to her side. Yet, after all, it was a 
 cruel deed of charity to be the messenger of death ! So I
 
 THE MESSAGE. 385 
 
 hurried on, splashing and bemiring myself in the by-ways of 
 
 the Bourbonnais. 
 
 Before very long I reached a great chestnut avenue with a 
 pile of buildings at the farther end the Castle of Montpersan 
 stood out against the sky like a mass of brown cloud, with 
 sharp, fantastic outlines. All the doors of the castle stood 
 open. This in itself disconcerted me, and routed all my 
 plans; but I went in boldly, and in a moment found myself 
 between a couple of dogs, barking as your true country-bred 
 animal can bark. The sound brought out a hurrying servant- 
 maid ; who, when informed that I wished to speak to Mme. 
 la Comtesse, waved a hand toward the masses of trees in the 
 English park which wound about the castle, with " Madame is 
 out there " 
 
 "Many thanks," said I ironically. I might have wandered 
 for a couple of hours in the park with her ''out there" to 
 guide me. 
 
 In the meantime, a pretty little girl, with curling hair, 
 dressed in a white frock, a rose-colored sash, and a broad frill 
 at the throat, had overheard or guessed the question and its 
 answer. She gave me a glance and vanished, calling in shrill, 
 childish tones 
 
 " Mother ! here is a gentleman who wishes to speak to 
 you!" 
 
 And, along the winding alleys, I followed the skipping and 
 dancing white frill, a sort of will-o'-the-wisp, that showed me 
 the way among the trees. 
 
 I must make a full confession. I stopped behind the last 
 shrub in the avenue, pulled up my collar, rubbed my shabby 
 hat and my trousers with the cuffs of my sleeves, dusted my 
 coat with the sleeves themselves, and then gave them a final 
 cleansing rub one against the other. I buttoned my coat care- 
 fully so as to exhibit the inner, always the least worn, side of the 
 cloth, and finally had turned down the bottom of my trousers 
 over my boots, artistically cleaned in the grass. Thanks to 
 25
 
 386 THE MESSAGE. 
 
 this Gascon toilet, I could hope that the lady would not take 
 me for the local tax-collector ; but now, when my thoughts 
 travel back to that episode of my youth, I sometimes laugh at 
 my own expense. 
 
 Suddenly, just as I was composing myself, at a turning in the 
 green walk, among a wilderness of flowers lighted up by a hot 
 ray of sunlight, I saw Juliette Juliette and her husband. The 
 pretty little girl held her mother by the hand, and it was easy 
 to see that the lady had quickened her pace somewhat at the 
 child's ambiguous phrase. Taken aback by the sight of a 
 total stranger, who bowed with a tolerably awkward air, she 
 looked at me with a coolly courteous expression and an ador- 
 able pout, in which I, who knew her secret, could read the 
 full extent of her disappointment. I sought, but sought in 
 vain, to remember any of the elegant phrases so laboriously 
 prepared. 
 
 This momentary hesitation gave the lady's husband time to 
 come forward. Thoughts by the myriad flitted through my 
 brain. To give myself a countenance, I got out a few suffi- 
 ciently feeble inquiries, asking whether the persons present 
 were really M. le Comte and Mme. la Comtesse de Mont- 
 persan. These imbecilities gave me time to form my own 
 conclusions at a glance, and, with a perspicacity rare at that 
 age, to analyze the husband and wife whose solitude was about 
 to be so rudely disturbed. 
 
 The husband seemed to be a specimen of a certain type of 
 nobleman, the fairest ornaments of the provinces of our day. 
 He wore big shoes with stout soles to them. I put the shoes 
 first advisedly, for they made an even deeper impression upon 
 me than a seedy black coat, a pair of threadbare trousers, a 
 flabby cravat, or a crumpled shirt collar. There was a touch 
 of the magistrate in the man, a good deal more of the coun- 
 cilor of the prefecture, all the self-importance of the mayor of 
 the arrondissement, the local autocrat, and the soured temper 
 pf the unsuccessful candidate who has never been returned
 
 THE MESSAGE. 387 
 
 since the year 1816. As to countenance a weazened, wrinkled, 
 sunburned face, and long, sleek locks of scanty gray hair ; as 
 to character an in-credible mixture of homely sense and sheer 
 silliness ; of a rich man's overbearing ways, and a total lack 
 of manners ; just the kind of husband who is almost entirely 
 led by his wife, yet imagines himself to be the master ; apt to 
 domineer in trifles, and to let more important things slip past 
 unheeded there you have the man ! A typical French "-far- 
 mer-gentleman. ' ' 
 
 But the Countess ! Ah, how sharp and startling the con- 
 trast between husband and wife ! The Countess was a little 
 woman, with a flat, graceful figure and enchanting shape ; so 
 fragile, so dainty was she that you would have feared to break 
 some bone if you so much as touched her. She wore a white 
 muslin dress, a rose-colored sash, and rose-colored ribbons in 
 the pretty cap on her head ; her chemisette was moulded so 
 deliciously by her shoulders and the loveliest rounded con- 
 tours, that the sight of her awakened an irresistible desire of 
 possession in the depths of the heart. Her eyes were bright 
 and dark and expressive, her movements graceful, her foot 
 charming. An experienced man of pleasure would not have 
 given her more than thirty years, her forehead was so girlish. 
 She had all the most transient delicate detail of youth in her 
 face. In character she seemed to me to resemble the Comtesse 
 
 de Lignolles and the Marquise de B , two feminine types 
 
 always fresh in the memory of any young man who has read 
 Louvet's romance. 
 
 In a moment I saw how things stood, and took a diplomatic 
 course that would have done credit to an old ambassador. 
 For once, and perhaps for the only time in my life, I used 
 tact, and knew in what the special skill of courtiers and men 
 of the world consists. 
 
 I have had so many battles to fight since those heedless 
 days, that they have left me no time to distill all the least 
 actions of daily life, and to do everything so that it falls in
 
 388 THE MESSAGE. 
 
 with those rules of etiquette and good taste which wither the 
 most generous emotions. 
 
 "Monsieur le Comte," I said with an air of mystery, "I 
 should like a few words with you," and I fell back a pace or 
 two. 
 
 He followed my example. Juliette left us together, going 
 away unconcernedly, like a wife who knew that she can learn 
 her husband's secrets as soon as she chooses to know them. 
 
 I told the Comte briefly of the death of my traveling com- 
 panion. The effect produced by my news convinced me that 
 his affection for his young collaborator was cordial enough, 
 and this emboldened me to make reply as I did. 
 
 "My wife will be in despair," cried he; "I shall be 
 obliged to break the news of this unhappy event with great 
 caution." 
 
 " Monsieur," said I, " I addressed myself to you in the first 
 instance, as in duty bound. I could not, without first in- 
 forming you, deliver a message to Madame la Comtesse, a 
 message intrusted to me by an entire stranger ; but this com- 
 mission is a sort of sacred trust, a secret of which I have no 
 power to dispose. From the high idea of your character 
 which he gave me, I felt sure that you would not oppose me 
 in the fulfillment of a dying request. Madame la Comtesse 
 will be at liberty to break the silence which is imposed upon 
 me." 
 
 At this eulogy, the Count swung his head very amiably, 
 responded with a tolerably involved compliment, and finally 
 left me a free field. We returned to the house. The bell 
 rang, and I was invited to dinner. As we came up to the 
 house, a grave and silent couple, Juliette stole a glance at us. 
 Not a little surprised to find her husband contriving some 
 frivolous excuse for leaving us together, she stopped short, 
 giving me a glance such a glance as women only can give 
 you. In that look of hers there was the pardonable curiosity 
 of the mistress of the house confronted with a guest dropped
 
 THE MESSAGE. 389 
 
 down upon her from the skies, and innumerable doubts, 
 certainly warranted by the state of my clothes, by my youth 
 and my expression, all singularly at variance ; there was all 
 the disdain of the adored mistress, in whose eyes all men save 
 one are as nothing ; there were involuntary tremors and 
 alarms ; and, above all, the thought that it was tiresome to 
 have an unexpected guest just now, when, no doubt, she had 
 been scheming to enjoy full solitude for her love. This mute 
 eloquence I understood in her eyes, and all the pity and com- 
 passion in me made answer in a sad smile. I thought of her, 
 as I had seen her for one moment, in the pride of her beauty; 
 standing in the sunny afternoon in the narrow alley with the 
 flowers on either hand ; and, as that fair wonderful picture 
 rose before my eyes, I could not repress a sigh. 
 
 "Alas! madame, I have just made a very arduous jour- 
 ney , undertaken solely on your account." 
 
 "Sir!" 
 
 " Oh ! it is on behalf of one who calls you Juliette that I 
 am come," I continued. Her face grew white. 
 
 "You will not see him to-day." 
 
 "Is he ill ? " she asked, and her voice sank lower. 
 
 " Yes. But for pity's sake, control yourself He in- 
 trusted me with secrets that concern you, and you may be 
 sure that never messenger could be more discreet nor more 
 devoted than I." 
 
 " What is the matter with him? " 
 
 " How if he loved you no longer ? " 
 
 "Oh! that is impossible!" she cried, and a faint smile, 
 nothing less than frank, broke over her face. Then all at 
 once a kind of shudder ran through her and she reddened, 
 and she gave me a wild, swift glance as she asked 
 
 "Is he alive?" 
 
 Great God ! What a terrible phrase ! I was too young to 
 bear that tone in her voice ; I made no reply, only looked at 
 the unhappy woman in helpless bewilderment.
 
 390 THE MESSAGE. 
 
 " Monsieur, monsieur, give me an answer ! " she cried with 
 vehemence. 
 
 "Yes, madame." 
 
 " Is it true ? Oh ! tell me the truth ; I can hear the truth. 
 Tell me the truth ! Any pain would be less keen than this 
 suspense." 
 
 I answered by two tears wrung from me by that strange tone 
 of hers. She leaned against a tree, with a faint, sharp cry. 
 
 " Madame, here comes your husband ! " 
 
 " Have I a husband? " and with those words she fled away 
 out of sight. 
 
 "Well," cried the Count, "dinner is growing cold. Come, 
 monsieur." 
 
 Thereupon I followed the master of the house into the 
 dining-room. Dinner was served with all the luxury which 
 we have learned to expect in Paris. There were five covers 
 laid, three for the Count and Countess and their little 
 daughter; my own, which should have been his ; and another 
 for the canon of Saint-Denis, who said grace, and then asked 
 
 " Why, where can our dear Countess be ? " 
 
 " Oh ! she will be here directly," said the Count. He had 
 hastily helped us to the soup, and was dispatching an ample 
 plateful with portentous speed. 
 
 "Oh! nephew," exclaimed the canon, "if your wife was 
 here, you would behave more rationally." 
 
 "Papa will make himself ill ! " said the child with a mis- 
 chievous look. 
 
 Just after this extraordinary gastronomical episode, as the 
 Count was eagerly helping himself to a slice of venison, a 
 housemaid came in with, "We cannot find madame anywhere, 
 sir!" 
 
 I sprang up at the words with a dread in my mind, my fears 
 written so plainly in my face that the old canon came out 
 after me into the garden. The Count, for the sake of ap- 
 pearances, came as far as the threshold.
 
 
 THE MESSAGE. 391 
 
 " Don't go, don't go ! " called he. " Don't trouble your- 
 selves in the least," but he did not offer to accompany us. 
 
 We three the canon, the housemaid, and I hurried 
 through the garden-walks and over the bowling-green in the 
 park, shouting, listening for an answer, growing more uneasy 
 every moment. As we hurried along, I told the story of the 
 fatal accident, and discovered how strongly the maid was at- 
 tached to her mistress, for she took my secret dread far more 
 seriously than the canon. We went along by the pools of 
 water ; all over the park we went ; but we neither found the 
 Countess nor any sign that she had passed that way. At last 
 we turned back, and under the walls of some outbuildings I 
 heard a smothered, wailing cry, so stifled that it was scarcely 
 audible. The sound seemed to come from a place that might 
 have been a granary. I went in at all risks, and there we 
 found Juliette. With the instinct of despair, she had buried 
 herself deep in the hay, hiding her face in it to deaden those 
 dreadful cries pudency even stronger than grief. She was 
 sobbing and crying like a child, but there was a more poignant, 
 more piteous sound in the sobs. There was nothing left in 
 the world for her. The maid pulled the hay from her, her 
 mistress submitting with the supine listlessness of a dying 
 animal. The maid could find nothing to say but "There! 
 madame; there, there " 
 
 "What is the matter with her? What is it, niece?" the 
 old canon kept on exclaiming. 
 
 At last, with the girl's help, I carried Juliette to her room, 
 gave orders that she was not to be disturbed, and that every 
 one must be told that the Countess was suffering from a sick 
 headache. Then we came down to the dining-room, the canon 
 and I. 
 
 Some little time had passed since we left the dinner-table ; 
 I had scarcely given a thought to the Count since we left him 
 under the peristyle; his indifference had surprised me, but 
 my amazement increased when we came back and found him
 
 392 THE MESSAGE. 
 
 seated philosophically at table. He had eaten pretty nearly 
 all the dinner, to the huge delight of his little daughter; the 
 child was smiling at her father's flagrant infraction of the 
 Countess' rules. The man's odd indifference was explained 
 to me by a mild altercation which at once arose with the 
 canon. The Count was suffering from some serious complaint. 
 I cannot remember now what it was, but his medical advisers 
 had put him on a very severe regimen, and the ferocious 
 hunger familiar to convalescents, sheer animal appetite, had 
 overpowered all human sensibilities. In that little space I had 
 seen frank and undisguised human nature under two very dif- 
 ferent aspects, in such a sort that there was a certain grotesque 
 element in the very midst of a most terrible tragedy. 
 
 The evening that followed was dreary. I was tired. The 
 canon racked his brains to discover a reason for his niece's 
 tears. The lady's husband silently digested his dinner ; con- 
 tent, apparently, with the Countess' rather vague explanation, 
 sent through the maid, putting forward some feminine ailment 
 as her excuse. We all went early to bed. 
 
 As I passed the door of the Countess' room on the way to 
 my night's lodging, I asked the servant timidly for news of 
 her. She heard my voice, and would have me come in, and 
 tried to talk, but in vain she could not utter a sound. She 
 bent her head, and I withdrew. In spite of the painful agita- 
 tion, which I had felt to the full as youth can feel, I fell asleep, 
 tired out with my forced march. 
 
 It was late in the night when I was awakened by the grating 
 sound of curtain rings drawn sharply over the metal rods. 
 There sat the Countess at the foot of my bed. The light from 
 a lamp set on my table fell full upon her face. 
 
 "Is it really true, monsieur, quite true?" she asked. "I 
 do not know how I can live after that awful blow which struck 
 me down a little while since ; but just now I feel calm. I 
 want to know everything." 
 
 "What calm ! " I said to myself as I saw the ghastly pallor
 
 THE MESSAGE. 393 
 
 of her face contrasting with her brown hair, and heard the 
 guttural tones of her voice. The havoc wrought in her drawn 
 features filled me with dumb amazement. 
 
 Those few hours had bleached her; she had lost a woman's 
 last glow of autumn color. Her eyes were red and swollen, 
 nothing of their beauty remained, nothing looked out of them 
 save her bitter and exceeding grief; it was as if a gray cloud 
 covered the place through which the sun had shone. 
 
 I gave her the story of the accident in a few words, without 
 laying too much stress on some too harrowing details. I told 
 her about our first day's journey, and how it had been filled 
 with recollections of her and of love. And she listened 
 eagerly, without shedding a tear, leaning her face toward me, 
 as some zealous doctor might lean to watch any change in a 
 patient's face. When she seemed to me to have opened her 
 whole heart to pain, to be deliberately plunging herself into 
 misery with the first delirious frenzy of despair, I caught at 
 my opportunity, and told her of the fears that troubled the 
 poor dying man, told her how and why it was that he had 
 given me this fatal message. Then her tears were dried by 
 the fires that burned in the dark depths within her. She 
 grew even paler. When I drew the letters from beneath my 
 pillow and held them out to her, she took them mechanically ; 
 then, trembling from head to foot, she said in a hollow voice 
 
 "And 7 burned all his letters! I have nothing of him 
 left ! Nothing ! nothing ! " 
 
 She struck her hand against her forehead. 
 
 "Madame " I began. 
 
 She glanced at me in the convulsion of grief. 
 
 "I cut this from his head, this lock of his hair." 
 
 And I gave her that last imperishable token that had been 
 a very part of him she loved. Ah ! if you had felt as I felt 
 then, her burning tears falling on your hands, you would 
 know what gratitude is, when it follows so closely upon the 
 benefit. Her eyes shone with a feverish glitter, a faint ray of
 
 394 THE MESSAGE. 
 
 happiness gleamed out of her terrible suffering, as she grasped 
 my hands in hers, and said, in a choking voice and with 
 grievous sobs 
 
 " Ah ! you love ! May you be happy always. May you 
 never lose her whom you love." 
 
 She broke off, and fled away with her treasure. 
 
 Next morning, this night-scene among my dreams seemed 
 like a dream ; to make sure of the piteous truth, I was 
 obliged to look fruitlessly under my pillow for the packet of 
 letters. There is no need to tell you how the next day went. 
 I spent several hours of it with the Juliette whom my poor 
 comrade had so praised to me. In her lightest words, her 
 gestures, in all that she did and said, I saw proofs of the 
 nobleness of soul, the delicacy of feeling which made her 
 what she was, one of those beloved, loving, and self-sacrificing 
 natures so rarely found upon this earth. 
 
 In the evening the Comte de Montpersan came himself as 
 far as Moulins with me. There he spoke with a kind of 
 embarrassment 
 
 " Monsieur, if it is not abusing your good-nature and act- 
 ing very inconsiderately toward a stranger to whom we are al- 
 ready under obligations, would you have the goodness, as you 
 
 are going to Paris, to remit a sum of money to M. de 
 
 (I forget the name), in the Rue du Sentier; I owe him an 
 amount, and he asked me to send it as soon as possible?" 
 
 "Willingly," said I. And in the innocence of my heart I 
 took charge of a rouleau of twenty-five louis d'or, which paid 
 the expenses of my journey back to Paris; and only when, 
 on my arrival, I went to the address indicated to repay the 
 amount to M. de Montpersan's correspondent, did I under- 
 stand the ingenious delicacy with which Julie had obliged 
 me. Was not all the genius of a loving woman revealed in 
 such a way of lending, in her reticence with regard to a 
 poverty easily guessed ?
 
 THE MESSAGE. 
 
 395 
 
 And what rapture to have this adventure to tell to a woman 
 who clung to you more closely in dread, saying, " Oh, my 
 dear, not you ! you must not die ! " 
 
 PARIS, January, 1832.
 
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