About Catherine de Medici (Sur Catherine de Médicis) and, Gambara

If ■ IHw^^^^

till I'. i I '' 'I ' ! 1 h >,i'>''

i

pjlii

!i'i ji'ii tiji •! 1 i:'i 1
II 'im I'l II ii'p 1

il '.i!.'

1 iliiiiijiii; I
'111"

iil!iili;lPiPili-l!ii;'|!i;!'i!ii'iiViiiii''''

^^ illil I II II 'im I'l II ii'p 1

fe;';''::';v3;;.ii,iL..

<! II 111'. ' . il .!>J

iiiiriihjiiHMi-ii.iiii'iiiifii:

11 i

ii:!'

liijiliil

1 liljiilliii'lil I i ' .

'it !', |i ' ' I " 'j, i

1 'i!'li' ' 1 ' "

ry ' : :i I'M' m'

I ' i!i", !'Ji,i'iitl''i!i 'il'l '!'

•1 t'.l !> >'

I III

il i;<!i ill' i! !

WMm
ijjjij|lhiiihl

H.' :,ii|! i!i

IN!!!,

liilll.il'll

, 'i!'ji!ii,;|V,i ,

i,ii,il;,i,jl!t>|i| I

I ii'!l!it i! Iii! ,'

p,', mm' "Hi'it

'lj]i;>l il'i'liiji;

^ >Mi'i]|i!ii II Il'l

I* li

!■'. i 'I
'illljli

', ill

;ii

ijiiiilillliiiliiiilllillii!:';

,m^Bm

il! PI I lij'!

lililjiippililltipiPiilj!'

! V iili!!ii|>iiii'
.1,1)11,1 'i 1 ii

ijiji

ililiili

11

iinwiiiiiii

jl i!'., 1-

liiii!

iiliiP

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

GIFT

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/aboutcatherineOObalziala

THE WORKS or

HONOREDE BALZAC

About Catherine tic Medici

{Sur Catherine de Midkis)

AAA

GAMBARA

///

"Treason, Madame! ... Be sure that this fel-
low does not escape !"

(About Catherine de Medici, page ijf)

TRANSLATED BY CLARA BELL
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY

FRl)

PUBLISHERS ti^m VORK

THE WORKS or

HONOREDEBALZAC

About Catherine de Medici

(Sur Catherine de Medicis)

AND

GAMBARA

///

TRANSLATED BY CLARA BELL
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY

FRED DeFAU & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

This Edition Limited to 1000 Copies

8 jub

No.

Copyrighted 1901

BY

JOHN D. AVIL

/]i! Rights Reserved

CoITego
lAhvary

VQ

CONTENTS

PAOB

INTRODUCTION - - . - ix

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI:

PRBFACK ----- 3

PART I. THE CAI,VINIST MARTYR - 44

'• II. the; ruggieri's secret - 233

" III. THE TWO DREAMS - - 308

GAMBARA - • • . - ja?

1053073

ILLUSTRATIONS

PHOTOGRAVURBS

*' TREASON, MADAME! BE SURE THAT
THIS FEI,I.OW DOES NOT ESCAPE!"
(131) ----- Froniispiece

PAOB

CHRISTOPHE IN PRISON - - - - I63

I^RENZO RUGGIERI .... 290

COUNT ANDREA MARCOSINZ - « - 328

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

AND

GAMBARA

INTRODUCTION

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 per-
haps more interesting because of the place it holds in Bal-
zac'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 de Jeunesse 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 disdainfully to
Madame Hanska about Dumas, and expressed himself to-
wards Les Trois Mousquetaires (which had whiled him
through a day of cold and inability to work) nearly as un-
gratefully as Carlyle did towards Captain Marryat. And
though it is, let it be repeated, a mistake, and a rather un-
fair 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 in-
troduction shows to some extent, and which a rejected preface'
given by M. de Lovenjoul shows still better.

To understand this, we must remember that Balaac,
though not exactly an historical scholar, was a considerable

\

X INTRODUCTION

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 in all such matters as Alchemy, the Elixir
of Life, and so forth, to which the sixteenth century in
general, and Catherine 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, a piece partly suggestive of the famous Prophecy
of Cazotte and other legends of the Eevolution (but with
more retrospective than prospective view), is dated as early
as 1828 (before the turning-point), and was actually pub-
lished in a periodical in 1830. La Confidence des Ruggieri,
written in 1836 (and, as I have noted in the general intro-
duction, according to its author, in a single night) followed,
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 ex-
cellent; and, to those who care to perceive them, the various
occupations of the author appear in the most interesting
manner. Politically, his object was, at least by his own ac-
count, to defend the maxim that private and public morality
are different; that the policy of a state cannot be, and ought
not to be, governed 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

INTRODUCTION xl

slightest imputation of corrupt morals and motives — ^have
endorsed this principle; 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 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 Catherine de' Medici, if not the
most blamable, has had the most blame put on her, that
brought the principle itself into discredit. Between the as-
sertion 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 whatever, there is a perfectly im-
mense 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
itory. 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

xll INTRODUCTION

without sufficient interest of plot; but, above all, he exhibita
throughout an incapacity to handle his materials in the pe-
culiar way required. How long he was before he grasped
"the way to do it," even on his own special lines, is the com-
monplace 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 never lets you go till the end. There is little or nothing
of this sort here. The three stories are excellently well-in-
formed 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 than an historical novelette. 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 frequently, 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. Souverain published it as a book two
years later with the other two, as Catherine de Medicis Ex-
pliquee. The second part, entitled, not La Confidence, but
Le Secret des Ruggieri, had appeared much earlier in the
Ckronique de Paris during the winter of 1836-37, and had

INTRODUCTION xlll

been published as a book in the latter year; it was joined to
Catherine de Medicis Expliquee as above. The third part,
after appearing in the Monde as early as May 1830, also ap-
peared in the Deux Mondes for December of the same year,
then became one of the Romans et Contes Philosophiques,
then an Etude Philosophique, and in 1843 joined Catherine
de Medicis Expliquee. The whole was inserted in the
Comedie in 1846. G. S.

Oamhara exhibits a curious and, it must be admitted, a
somewhat incoherent mixture of two of Balzac's chief out-
side interests — Italy and music. In his helter-skelter ram-
blings, indulged in despite his enormous literary labors, he
took many a peep at Italy ; and it is evident that for him the
country exercised a powerful fascination. In his eyes it was
ideal — ideal in its music, in its painting, and in those who
fanned the fires divine. His affection for Italy was, in fact,
about as ardent and untutored as that for the arts. The
story of Oamhara is an illustration of these two sentiments;
it can best be understood when the author's attitude is
known.

There is a little about the forceful character of Andrea
Marcosini that reminds one of de Marsay. He has an inherent
nobleness unknown to the latter, but unfortunately made sub-
servient to a banality which even the genius of Balzac can-
not efface. This marring clause of the Count and Marianna
is hardly to be excused on the ground of dramatic necessity,
since other themes of this nature are not cloyed by baser
earth. The introductory scene in the restaurant is good, and
stands out brightly contrasted with Gambara's music-ravings
and the faint echo of Giardini's cookery conceits. Each is

xlv INTRODUCTION

but the quest of something unattained — a note more grandly
uttered in La Peau de Chagrin, or La Recherche de VAhsolu,
or the wonderful sketch, Le Chef d'CEuvre Inconnu. But as
a fresh embodiment of this thought, Oamhara may be wel-
comed, for in such themes as these the novelist is most dis-
tinctly in his element.

The first appearance of Oarnbara was in the Revue et Ga-
zette Musicale de Paris during July and August 1837, in four
chapters and a conclusion. In 1839 it was included in a book
with the Cabinet des Ajitiques. Ten years later it was included
as Le Livre des Douleurs with Seraphita, Les Proscrits, and
Massimilla Doni. It took its place in the Comedie in 1846.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

To Monsieur le Marquis de Pastoret,
Member of the Academie des Beav^-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, FoUard, Saint-Simon, and
Fortia d' Urban, by the Is6re, Grenoble, Saint-Bonnet, Mont
Gen6vre, Fenestrella, and the Pass of Susa, or, according to
Larauza, by the Mont Cenis and Susa; or, as Strabo, Poly bins
and de Luc tell us, by the Rh6ne, 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. Mon-
sieur le Marquis, to find modern history so much neglected that
some most important points remain obscure, and that the most
odious calumnies still weigh on names which ought to be re-
vered?— And it may be noted incidentally that by dint of ex-
planations it has become problematical whether Hannibal ever
crossed the Alps at all. Father Menestrier believes that the
Scoras spoken of by Polybius was the Sa5me; Letronne, Larauza,
and Schweighauser believe it to be the Is6re; Gochard, a learned
man of Lyons, identifies it with the DrSme. But to any one who
has eyes, are there not striking geographical and linguistic af-
finities between Scoras and Scrivia, to say nothing of the almost

2 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 consequences 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 un-
known 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 investigation 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 suit-
ably dedicated to a writer who has labored so long on the his-
tory of the Reformation; 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.

Pasis, JanvMry 1842.

*The inventor of this experiment was probably Salomon of Cauz, not of CauB.
This great man was always unlucky ; after his death even his name was misspelt.
Salomon, whose original jwrtrait, at the age of forty-six, was discovered by the
author of the flwman Comedy, was bom at Caux, in Normandy.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

PREFACE

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 modem 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 Benedic-
tines, 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 Mon-
sieur Launoy, nicknamed the Evicter of Saints, made ruth-
less war on certain saints who have sneaked into the Church
Calendar. Thus the rivals of the Benedictines, the two little
known members of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-
lettres, began their memoires, 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 in-
tellect 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 Eevolu-
tion, criticism, as applied to history, might perhaps have
laid up the materials for a good and true history of France,
for which evidence had long been amassed by the great French
Benedictines. Louis XVI., a man of clear mind, himself

4 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

translated the English work, which so much agitated the
last century, in which Walpole tried to explain the career of
Eichard 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
Charles IX.

At all 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 Koyalists and Bonapartists, there
was scarcely a chance but that Napoleon would have been mis-
understood. 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
process. 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'Etatf 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, FalstaflP was one of the
most important figures of his time, a Knight of the Garter,
holding high command. At the date of Henry V.'s accession,
Falstaff was at most four-and-thirty. This General, who dis-
tinguished himself at the battle of Agincourt, where he took

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 5

the Due d'Alengon prisoner, in 1420 took the town of Monte-
reau, 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, Eabelais, 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 ab-
surd 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 his-
tory, Catherine de' Medici has suffered more from popular
error than any other woman, unless it be Brunehaut or Frede-
gonde ; while Marie de' Medici, whose every action was preju-
dicial to France, has escaped the disgrace that should cover
her name. Marie dissipated the treasure amassed by Henri
IV. ; she never purged herself of the suspicion that she was
cognizant of his murder; Epernon, who had long known
Kavaillac, 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, Gas-
ton; and Richelieu's triumph over her on the Journee des
Dupes was due solely to the Cardinal's revealing to Louis
XIII. certain documents secreted after the death of
Henri 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
ambitions of the houses of Guise and of Bourbon as the two

6 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 Theo-
dore de Beze, she was forced to put forth the rarest fine quali-
ties, 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 weakness 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 in-
jured 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 dangerous but the surest of political weapons — Craft. She
determined 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. In-
deed, so long as she lived, the Valois sat on the throne. The
great de Thou 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-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 7

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 bears 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 Koch; 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 Eue Transnonnain.

Every power, whether legitimate or illegitimate, must de-
fend itself when it is attacked; but, strange to say, while
the people is heroic when it triumphs over the nobility, the
authorities 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
attacked Charles X., and which he tried to scotch by two
decrees. 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 massa-
cre 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 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

8 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 repress
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 account 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 mon-
archies, religion, and power all overthrown. Catherine, from
the Cabinet of the French kings, forthwith issued sentence
of death on that inquiring spirit which threatened modem
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. x\t 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
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 fine churches destroyed, 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
Prance to-day, of which the germ lay in the questions of
liberty of conscience which they stirred up — ^you will ask

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 9

yourself on which side were the barbarians. There are al-
ways, as Catherine says in the third part of this Study, "un-
luckily, in all ages, hypocritical writers ready to bewail two
hundred scoundrels 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 oppo-
nents of power spent two centuries in establishing the very
doubtful doctrine of freewill. Two more were spent in work-
ing out the first corollary of freewill — liberty of conscience.
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, Una fides, units
Dominus, but asserting their right of life and death over all
innovators. 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-
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 co-
hesion— will devour everything, even the nation, which sheer
selfishness will some day lay open to invasion. Men will say,
"Why not the Tzar?" as they now say, "Why not the Due

10 ABOUT CarrHERlNE DE' MBDId

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 th«
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 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 to those ma-
terial interests in which they seek support, and which are the
most delusive of all props, unless by the special aid of Provi-
idence 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 thoroughly
in agreement; whereas their wealthy opponents refuse to

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 11

make any sacrifice of money or of self-conceit to secure de-
fenders.

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 multitude of garbs and become the very people, instead of
remaining in some sense divinely axiomatic, there were two
vast armies to contend with — that of ideas and that of men.
Boyal 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 neces-
sary steps taken by Catherine, who had the deaths of Fran-
cois II. and Charles IX. on her soul — both dying opportunely
for her safet}^ — are not, it must be noted, what the Calvinist
and modem 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
morally by inches.

But the swift death of Frangois II. and the skilfully 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
I'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.

12 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

Popular songs, strange to say, fell foul of Catherine's
morality. The anecdote is known of a soldier who was roast-
ing a goose in the guardroom of the Chateau of Tours while
Catherine and Henri 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 Calvinists.
Henri IV. drew his sword to go out and kill the man; Cath-
erine stopped him, and only shouted out:

"It is Catherine who provides the goose!"

Though the executions at Amboise 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,
Catherine's youngest son, the Due d'Alengon, 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 Cabinets
of every country putting it into practice in similar circum-
stances.

'^eU cut, my son," said she, when Henri III. came to her,
on her deathbed, 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 13

incompatible with Henri 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 prin-
cipal reigns of French history, the quarrels of the Burgun-
dians and the Armagnacs, and those of the Guises and the
Valois, each in the forefront of a century. His purpose
was to write a picturesque history of France. Isabella of
Bavaria, Catherine and Marie de' Medici, each fills a con-
spicuous place, dominating from the fourteenth to the seven-
teenth 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 dis-
graced by the terrible amours of Isabella, nor those, even
more terrible though less known, of Marie de' Medici. Isa-
bella 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 on which Catherine
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

14 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 family
was there more contempt felt for legitimacy than by the famous
race of the Medici (in French commonly written and pro-
nounced Medicis), They held the same opinion of monarchy
as is now professed in Eussia : The ruler on whom the crown
devolves is the real and legitimate monarch. Mirabeau was
justified in saying, "There has been but one mesalliance in
my family — that with the Medici;" for, notwithstanding the
exertions of well-paid genealogists, it is certain that the
Medici, till the time of Averardo de' Medici, gonfaloniere 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 Tuscan Ke-
public 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 della
cittd di Penna, a title created by Pope Clement VII. as a
step towards 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 della cittd di 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 16

that Alessandro was the son of Clement VII. The event
that led to the recognition of this bastard as head of the
Eepublic was his marriage with Margaret of Austria, the
natural 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 notori»
ous Venetian lady ; and, strange to say, Fernando, succeeding
Francesco, upheld the hypothetical rights of this boy. In-
deed, this youth, known as Don Antonio de' Medici, was rec-
ognized by the family during four ducal reigns; he won the
affection of all, did them important service, and was uni-
versally regretted.

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 mai figliuolanza" (A clever woman can always
have children, a propos to some natural defect in Henri, the
second son of Frangois I., to whom she was betrothed). This
Lorenzo 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
motherless as soon as she saw the light. Hence the strange
events of her childhood, chequered 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 illegitimate son,
Giulio de' Medici, then Cardinal, Governor of Florence. Ijeo
X, was Catherine's grand-uncle, and this Cardinal Giulio,

18 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

afterwards 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 sug-
gestion of a certain Battista Cei. Bernardo Castiglione went
even further in a council held to determine on some conclu-
sion to 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 af-
fection 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 over-
flowing with talent, daring, science, poetry, wealth, and gal-
lantry, though rent by constant internal, wars, and at all
times the arena on which conquerors met to fight for her fair-
est 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 della cittd di Penna, the Moorish slave's

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIGI 17

son, was established as Tyrant of Florence, he took up the in-
terest shown by Pope Clement VII. for Lorenzo II/s daugh-
ter, 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 ele-
ment of political conduct was unremitting craft, destroying
in every nature the upright conduct, the squareness which
imagination looks for in eminent men. In this, especially,
lies Catherine's absolution. This observation, in fact, dis-
poses 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 Montesquieu;
for the Dialogue of "Sylla and Eucrates" expresses Montes-
quieu's real mind, which he could not set forth in any other
form in consequence of his connection with the Encyclo-
pedists. These principles are to this day the uneonfessed
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., Cath-
erine, 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 Eome 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, i
No sooner was he firmly settled there than Alessandro, in
concert 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,

18 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

and pandered to him to get an opportunity of killing him;
and Filippo Strozzi, one of the loftiest spirits of that age,
regarded 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 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 people 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. confirmed the dispossession of his grandson, and recog-
nized 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
creature, 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 as-
sassinated.

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 Y. 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-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 19

structions to poison Strozzi, Queen Catherine's relation, when
he should find him there. Charies V. had three ambassadors
from Francis I. murdered.

It was early in October 1533 that the Duke della cittct di
Penna left Florence for Leghorn, accompanied 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 sol-
dier who was persecuted by his party for having consented to
it. In spite of some superficial change of conduct, somewhat
overruled 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 Leo X. x\t 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 YII. 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

20 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

simple enough to appear before Clement VII., who perhaps
had flattered himself that he was rid of him. The Pope had
so much to be ashamed of that he received Strozzi very un-
graciously. Thus Strozzi had very early begun his appren-
ticeship to the life of disaster, which is that of a man who
is honest in politics, and whose conscience will not lend
itself to the caprices of opportunity, whose actions are pleas-
ing only to virtue, which is persecuted by all — by the popu-
lace, because it withstands 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 Eepublic 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 Tazzi, what can be finer than the
attitude 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 \he end that
his correspondents 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
remains unwritten, though men of great genius have at-
tempted it. It is not the history of a republic, or of any
particular community or phase of civilization; it is the
history of political 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 then was afraid of the incon-
stancy of the populace; and as he dreaded Pope Clement's
vengeance, he went to take charge of a large commercial house
he had at Lyons in correspondence with his bankers at Venice
and Eome, in France, and in Spain. A strange fact ! These

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDlCl tl

men, who bore the burden of public affairs as well as that
of a perennial struggle with the Medici, to say nothing of
their squabbles with their own party, could also endure the
eares of commerce and speculation, of banking with all its
complications, 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
eat, 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 Eepublican 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 towards 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 be-
ginnings of tyranny. He found himself the object of dis-
trust 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 Alessandro 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 him-
self at the head of Catherine's household.

In point of fact, to dazzle the French Court, the Medici
had constituted a brilliant suite for the young girl whom

-3

SS ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MBDIGI

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 ta
Leghorn. From the preparations required, Catherine sus-
pected that her marriage was in question, and her uncle
revealed to her the abortive scheme of her ambitious family,
who had aspired to the hand of the Dauphin. Duke Ales-
sandro 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 Catherine from being
Queen.

This Duke of Albany, the son of Alexander Stuart,
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
son of Jeanne de la Tour de Boulogne, the Duchess of
Urbino's aunt. Catherine was also related to Mary Stuart,
'her daughter-in-law.

Catherine was now informed that her dower in money
would amount to a hundred thousand ducats. The ducat
was 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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DB' MEDICl aS

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 Ehodes. 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
household to the Pope, with whom he held a secret confer-
ence, introducing to him, as seems probable. Count Sebastian
Montecuculi, 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'Orleans
the Dauphin? What was the reward promised to Count
Sebastian 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 reoognized Montecuculi's innocence.

24 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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
arrived there at the end of October 1533.

In spite of his 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
consisted 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 practised at that period. Clement, indeed, anxious
for proof, remained thirty-four days at Marseilles, in the'
hope, it is said, of some visible evidence in his young rela-
tion, 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 mai la
f,gliuolanza."

ABOm.' GATHimiNE DE' MEDICI 25

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
contain suppositions as to this matter, so grossly indecent
that they could not be repeated.* 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 children ; and nothing is commoner in surgical experi-
ence 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 de Saint- Victor, at a time when the French lan-
guage 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
serious political complications. At the time of his treatment,
the Duchesse de Valentinois was in the second youth of wo-
manhood. These facts alone show that the history of Cath-
erine de' Medici remains to be entirely re-written; and that,
as l^apoleon 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
instance. 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

*aeeBayle. AxU Femd.

26 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

a white palfry bearing the Holy Sacrament, the said palfrey
being led by two men on foot in very tine raiment holding a
bridle of white silk. After him came all the cardinals in
their habit, riding their pontifical mules, and Madame the
Duchesf of Urbino in great magnificence, with a goodly com-
pany of ladies and gentlemen alike of France and of Italy.
And the Pope, with all this company, being come to the place
prepared 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, Monseigneur the Due de Vendosmois (father of the
Vidame de Chartres), the Comte de Saint-Pol, Monsieur de
Montmorency, and Monsieur de la Roche-sur-Yon, the Due
de Nemours (brother to the Duke of Savoy who died at that
place), the Dul^e 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 as-
sembled in consistory, with much civility (fort humaine-
ment). This done, each one went to the place appointed
to him, and 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,
r irst 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 com-
hustion) 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,

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 27

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 cardinals to wait on the King, to wit : Cardi-
nal le Veneur, heretofore Bishop of Lisieux and High Al-
moner; 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 in-
estimable price — Genoa, Milan, and Naples."

The Pope left Count Sebastian Montecuculi to present
himself at the French Court, where he made an offer of his
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 en-
tirely of French ladies and gentlemen; for, by a law of the
realm which the Pope was rejoiced to see carried out, Cath-
erine was naturalized by letters patent before her marriage.
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 cupbearer.

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

*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,
ipouser was the priestly function.

28 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

took rank below Queen Eleanor, Charles V.'s sister, and tlie
Duchesse d'Etampes, whose marriage to the head of the
family of de Brosse had given her one of the most powerful
positions 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 daughter of the Florentine merchants, who was
indeed more illustrious and richer through the Tour de Bou-
logne 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.

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
headquarters in Provence, for France had already been in-
vaded 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 Ehone. Stopping at Tournon for the night, to amuse
himself, he went through some athletic exercises, such as
[formed almost the sole education he or his brother received,
in consequence 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 in-
stantaneously.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 20

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 proceed-
ings 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 Gonzaga. 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 coun-
tries, both of Italy and of Germany, who were at that time
residing at his Court, to-wit: The Duke of Wittemberg, in
Allemaigne ; 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 Gio-
vanni Paolo di Ceri, Eoman; 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 Dau-
phin, with all the interrogations, confessions, eonfrontings,
and other proceedings usual in criminal trials, not choosing
that the sentence should be carried out until all those present
had given their opinion on this monstrous and miserable
matter."

Count Montecuculi's fidelity and devotion may seem ex-
traordinary in our day of universal indiscretion, when every-
body, and even Ministers, talk over the most trivial incidents

30 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

in which they have put a finger; but in those times princes
could ooramand 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 toi
murder Thomas a Becket, or a Montecuculi; Jacques CcBur
and Jeanne d'Arc, or Eichelieu and Danton; a Bonchamp, a
Talmont, or a Clement, 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
Alessandro after three years of dissimulation, and in circum-
stances which gained him the surname of the Florentine
Brutus. The rank of the victim was so little a check on such
undertakings 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 81

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 afterwards gave him freedom of speech
before an august assembly, and in the presence of men with
whom innocence 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 had dared to be the rival of Madame
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 disap-
pointments 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 Eobert de la Mark, Due de Bouillon,
Prince de Sedan; the other to Claude de Lorraine, Due
d'Aumale.

^ Swamped between the party of the Duehesse d'Etampes
and that of the Senechale (the title borne 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 appren-
ticeship to the double-faced policy which afterwards was
the secret clue to her life. At a later date the queen found

82 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 Eeformation
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
every point; he was a bad son. He forgot the hardest but
the tiniest 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 avenpng 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 con-
firm 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 gov-
ernment when he reinstated the Parlements suppressed by
his grandfather. Louis XV. had been clear-sighted; the

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 3S

Parlements, 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 Parlements a strong constitutional rule in the prov-
inces. There lay the remedy for the evils of the Monarchy,
the voting power for taxation and the incidence of the taxes,
with consent 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
him to leave in banishment. The Connetable de Mont-
morency, 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 im-
possible not to detect in this constant child-bearing the ma-
licious 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 exe-
cution of Montecuculi, 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 Rug-
gieri, 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

M ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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
folks have seen in it an evidence of the profound dissimula-
tion to which she was compelled by men and circumstances,
and by the conduct of Henri II, But it is going too far to
eay that she never asserted her rights as a wife and a queen.
Her ten children (besides 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 himself; he
gave the Queen an entry worthy of any that had previously
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, chair e
de parement). Catherine seated herself on this, dressed in
a surcoat, 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 ihe
Marechale de la Mark, her lady of honor. Around her, stand-
ing, 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 scaffold-
ing 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 Duchesse d'Estouteville, de Montpensier — ■
the elder and the younger — ^the Princesse de la Roche-sur-
Yon; the Duchesses de Guise, de Nivemois, d'Aumale, de
Valentinois (Diane de Poitiers) ; Mademoiselle the legiti-

* The old French word cramtiisi did not mean merely a crimson red, but denoted a
^lecial excelleuce of the dye. (See Rabelai&\

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI W

mized bastard *of France' (a title given to the King's daugh-
ter Diane, who became Duchesse de Castro-Farnese, and
afterwards 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 (d mortier), with some other members of the
Court and the chief clerk, du Tillet, went up on to the plat-
form and did their service, and the First President Lizet,
kneeling on one knee, addressed the Queen. The Chancellor,
likewise on one knee, made response. She made her entrance
into Paris at about three in the afternoon, riding in an open
litter, Madame Marguerite de France sitting opposite to her,
and by the side of the litter came 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 cipher, 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 C's, face to face, for Catherine seem
indeed to make two D's for Diane; and this coincidence was
no doubt pleasing to the King. But it is not the less certain
that the royal cipher was officially constructed of the initials
of the King and the Queen. And this is so true, that the
same cipher 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

36 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

caused to be constructed during her lifetime by the side ot
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
expedition to Germany, Henri II. proclaimed Catherine Re-
gent during his absence, as also in the event of his death —
on March 25, 1553. Catherine's bitterest enemy, the author
of the Discours merveilleux sur les deportements de Catherine
•II., admits that she acquitted herself of these functions to
the general approbation, and that the King was satisfied with
her administration. Henri II. had men and money at the
right moment. And after the disastrous day of Saint-Quen-
tin, Catherine obtained from the Parisians considerable sums,
which she forwarded 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-powerful under Henri II. The King's terrible reply to
Montmorency'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 ex-
plain 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, sub-
sequently carried out by Eichelieu. 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 Con-
netable, 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
antagonism lacked the virus which religious feeling would
have given it. Besides, Diane boldly defied the Queen's plans

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 37

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.*

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 incum-
bent on Catherine that she should play the part of a ne-
glected 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 when he was
fatally wounded. Catherine, 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 Valentinois 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
witnesses, "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 Chau-
mont-on-the-Loire." The deed of exchange was, in fact,
signed at Blois in 1559. Diane, whose sons-in-law were the
Due d'Aumale and the Due de Bouillon, kept her whole for-
tune 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 an historian who '

♦ Some satirist of the time has left the following lines on Henri 11. [in which tha
pun on the words Sire and Cire (wax) would be lost in translation] :—

" Sire, si vous laissez, comme Charles dSsire,
Comme Diane veut, par trop vous gouvemer,
Fondre, p6trir, moUir, refoudre, retoumer,
Sire, vous n'fetes plus, vous n'fites plus que cirs."
Charles was the Cardinal de Lorraine.
— 4

38 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

studied the question at the end of the last century, clear up
many historical difficulties; for many writers have said she
was forty when 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 I., at a 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
occasion 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
coquette 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 imaginable, fair and golden-haired; then a young con-
nection of her own, Clarissa Strozzi, with magnificent black
hair and rarely fine hands; Miss Lewiston, maid of honor
to Mary Stuart; Mary Stuart herself; Madame Elizabeth
de France, the unhappy Queen of Spain ; and Madame Claude.
Elizabeth was nine years old, Claude eight, and Mary Stuart
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 Flem-
ing, and she bore him a son, Henri de Valois, Comte d'An-
gouleme, Grand Prior of France. i

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 89

A great deal is said in these days as to the license of the
press; bnt it is difficult to imagine to what a pitch it was
carried when printing was a new thing. Aretino, the Vol-
taire of his time, as is well known, made monarchs tremble,
and foremost of them all Charles V. But few people know
perhaps 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 Voute, 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
Gentleman of the Bed-chamber. Here is the only passage
quotable to-day from these epigrams, which bear the title:
In Pictaviam, anum aulicam. (Against la Poitiers, an old
woman of the Court.)

"Non trahit esea 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 es-
sence 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 Frangois 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, Councillor
of State under four Kings : Louis XL, Charles VIIL, Louis
XII., and Francis I. What were the pamphlets published
against Madame de Pompadour and Marie Antoinette

40 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 offence — 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 bed-chamber, 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 Eue 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 notj
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 ; 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 gen-
tleman of royal blood, Frangois de Vendome, son of Louis

ABOUT CATHEEINE DE' MEDICI «

de Vendome — 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
splendid 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 daugh-
ter, who became the Duchesse d'Aumale, was proposed in
marriage 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 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

42 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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, his-
torians 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 Mont-
morency's treason, in spite of the reasons which had led him
to quit the country. The Vidame de Chartres, who was to
the first Prince de Conde what Eichelieu was to Mazarin,
a father in politics, a model, and yet more a master in gal-
lantry, 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 man-
ners, his elegance, and his wit, which won him the favors
of the most charming women, and the heart of many he
never thought about. He was a man privileged by nature,
whose fascinations were irresistible, and who owed to his love
affairs the means of keeping up his rank. The Bourbons
would not have taken offence, like Jarnac, at la Chataignerie's
scandal; they were very ready to accept lands and houses
from their mistresses — witness the Prince de Conde, 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 useful. The Prince received letters from her to the
Prince de Conde, in which she pointed out the necessity for
a coalition against the Guises, The Guises, informed of this
intrigue, 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 iijider the cruel necessity of

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIO! 43

submitting. 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 declared that the Queen 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.

4i ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

PART I

THE CALVINIST MARTTK

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 primi-
tive 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 re-
markable in the history 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 lay
close to the left bank of the Seine, between the Pont Notre-
Dame and the Pont au Change. 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 dwellina; presented, on the river side, the

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 45

peculiar physiognomy stamped on it either by the trade and
the habits of its owners, or by the eccentricity of the con-
structions devised by them for utilizing or defiling the Seine.
The bridges being built, and almost all choked up by more
mills than were convenient for the requirements of naviga-
tion, 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.
jWhat 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, un-
fortunately, 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 di-
vided 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, gath-
ered 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 contrary, they took charge of them, treated
them as their children, and taught them the finer mysteries
of their craft. A workman, to become a master, was required
to produce a masterpiece — 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 perfec-
tion, or hindered beauty of workmanship, when your admira-
tion of the work of the older craftsmen has created the new
trade of dealers in bric-d-hrac?

4(t ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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
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 sub-divided 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, pan^
toufle 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 furni-
ture, 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 rai-
ment in marriage contracts, in these days unimportant by
reason of the small value of clothes that are constantly re-
newed, 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

ABOUT OATHEEINE DE' MEDICI 47

Included in her fortune, and safely bestowed in those enor-
mous chests which endanger the ceilings of modem houses.
The full dress of a lady in 1840 would have been the
deshabille 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 af
furrier at the same price as of old — say twenty livres — ha^'
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
haled 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 origi-
nally surnames of that kind.

This digression not only explains the long squabbles as
to precedence which the Drapers' Guild carried on for two
centuries with the Mercers and the Furriers, each insisting
on marching first, as being the most important, but also ac-
counts for the consequence of one Master Lecamus, a furrier
honored with the patronage of the two Queens, Catherine
de' Medici and Mary Stuart, 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 oc-'
cupied by Lecamus was one of the three forming the three
corners of the cross-roads at the end of the Pont au Change,
where only the tower now remains that formed the fourth
corner. At the angle of this house, forming the corner of
the bridge and of the quay, now called the Quai aux Fleurs,

48 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

the architect had placed a niche for a Madanna, before whom
tapers constantly burned, with posies of real flowers in their
season, and artificial flowers in the winter.

On the side towards the Eue 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
passengers walked under cover on a floor hardened by the
jmud they brought in, which made it a rather rough pave-
ment. 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 changeable and rainy climate of Paris, gave
the town a highly characteristic feature, but they have en-
tirely 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 till 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, in-
compatible 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 precioiis 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
I were the corner tabernacle above the Madonna, and the pillars
in front of the shop. Every window, every beam dividing
the 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-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 40

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 second floor, with an orna-
mental balustrade ; here the mistress might walk under shel-
ter 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 round 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 disappear-
ing. None but octogenarians can still remember having
seen the pits which swallowed up the surface waters, in the
Eue Montmartre, Eue du Temple, etc. These hideous yawn-
ing culverts were in their day of inestimable utility. Their
place will probably be for ever marked by the sudden rising
of the roadway over what was their open channel — another
archaeological detail which, in a couple of centuries, the his-
torian 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 Eue
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
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.

50 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

The front of Master Lecamus' shop 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 shop, 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, repre-
senting 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 con-
sequence of the recent changes produced by Henri II.'s sudden

-and violent death, which overthrew many fortunes at Court,
and began that of the Guises.

I' The back shop 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 any time any
right to the title of Dame, or lady; but the wives of the
citizens of Paris were allowed to call themselves Demoiselle

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 61

(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 shop was a spiral ladder or staircase of wood,
a sort of corkscrew leading np 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 maid-servant, the clerks, and the apprentices.

This herding of families, servants, and apprentices, and
the small space allotted to each in the dwelling, where the
apprentices all slept in one large room under the tiles, ac-
counts 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 ex-
istence 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 shop. 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 back shop 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 Eoyal family. The formidable guilds
of Paris could at that time arm a hundred thousand men.
Their resolutions were stoutly upheld by their serving-men,

62 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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
sacrifices 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 character-
istic 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 Massacre of Saint-Bartholomew. Strange coinci-
dence ! One of the houses built round the foot of that tower
— at that time surrounded by wooden shops — 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 Stuart, had just assassinated President
Minard, that member of the Parlement to whom public
opinion attributed a principal share in the execution of Anne
du Bourg, a councillor burnt on the Place de Gr^ve after the
tailor of the late King, who had been tortured in the presence
of Henri 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 comer 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.

ABOUT CATHERINE t)E' MEDICI S&

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 shop. Christophe
Lecamus, an ardent youth of two-and-twenty, was standing
in the door, apparently engaged in looking after the appren-
tices.

"Monsieur," said one of these lads to Christophe, pointing,
out a man who was pacing to 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
standing 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 shop 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
the Eeformation, Christophe felt such a thrill as a faithful
peasant would have felt on recognizing his King under a
disguise.

"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 pleni-
potentiary of Theodore de Beze and Calvin — who directed
the Eeformation in France from Geneva — went and came,
-5

84 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

defying the risk of the horrible death inflicted by the Parle-
ment, in concert with the Church and the Monarch, on a
leading reformer, 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 re-
l^ligious wars which were on the eve of an outbreak. This
preacher of the reformed faith was one of those secret wheels
which may best explain the immense spread of the Keforma-
tion.

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-
Pelleterie, and was known as le Pont aux Fourreurs. It was
used by the dyers of the Cite 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 the spirit of self-sacrifice that should animate a martyr?
Are you ready to suffer all things for our holy Cause? Do
you fear the torments endured by the late King's tailor, and
the Councillor 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 shop.

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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 55

where he had spent his happy childhood, where Babette Lal-
lier 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
Eeformation. 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 foi
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 be-
cause such a description entails the whole history of that
epoch, if it be true that it is given to some men to sum up
in themselves the spirit of their age.

Eeligious 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,

86 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

and deprived the dignitaries of the Church of their enormous
revenues. 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 whomi
egoism is unknown. !

Eminent men, penetrating minds, such as are always to
be found among the masses, foresaw the Republic in the
Reformation, 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 Coun-
tries by the Duke of Alva. Jean Hotoman was at that time
planning the famous book in which this scheme is set forth,
which diffused through France the leaven of these ideas,
stirred up once more by the League, subdued by Richelieu,
and afterwards by Louis XIV., to reappear with the Econo-
mists and the Encyclopedists under Louis XV., and burst
into life under Louis XVI.; ideas which were always ap-
proved by the 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
Reformation. 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 Parlements.
Now a king alone face to face with a nation, as Louis XVI.
was, must inevitably succumb. .

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 57

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 tri-
angular 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 somewhat hollow. Sinewy, rather than muscular, Chris-
tophe was of tough texture, lean but wiry. His sharp nose
showed homely cunning, and his countenance revealed in-
telligence of the kind that acts wisely on one point of a circle,
but has not the power of commanding the whole circumfer-
ence. His eyes, set under brows that projected like a pent-
house, and faintly outlined with light down, were surrounded
with broad 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 mag-
nanimous 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 com-
munities. 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.

58 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 Keformation — a doer of
violent deeds.

The stranger who sat on a seat, wrapped in his cloak, evi-
dently 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 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 hunchbacked,
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 attractive.
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 in-
terest.

"Well, then," said Chaudieu, as Christophe Lecamus made
his profession of faith, "this boatman is la Eenaudie ; and this
is Monseigneur the Prince de Conde," he added, turning to
the hunchback.

Thus the four men were representative of the faith of thei
people, the intellect of eloquence, the arm of the soldier, and
Koyalty 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-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE* MEDICI 59

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
something if he should wish it. Like all men of rank en-
gaged 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 th^
scheme, 'shrank from no danger, and risked his head; bu6
with a sort of royal dignity, he left the explanation of tha
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.
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
till 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 pretence 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 for-
midable 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
atrocious 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 Lorraines 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 low, or they shall crush ours V

00 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

**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.
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 support
to the princes and nobles who are about to strike a blow for
her deliverance. At this moment, though apparently devoted
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 Mon-
seigneur'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 sacri-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 61

fice ourselves for them. The Queen-mother and our friends
are under such close espionage, that it is impossible to com-
municate with them through any one who is known, or of any
consequence. Such a person would at once be suspected, and
would never be admitted to speak with Madame Catherine.
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. 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 with-
out fear. So you, my son, are like a man on guard, doomed
to die at his post. Understand, if you are taken, you are
abandoned by us all. If need be, we shall c&st opprobrium
and disgrace on you. If we shall 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, for-
getting 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."

62 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"Listen," said la Kenaudie ; "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 recognize me.
But I will say to you, 'Are you a Guepin T and you must reply,
*At your service.' — As to the manner of proceeding, I will
tell you. You will find a horse at la Pinte fleurie, near Saint-
Germain I'Auxerrois. Ask there for Jean le Breton, 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
Eenaudie. "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 boatman, 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.

'TTou 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 w&6
proud of him.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 63

"The Lord protect you V 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.

"You are of the stock of old Jacques Bonhomme,'' said
la Eenaudie 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 Eenaudie 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-shop, 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
Eenaudie, 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-shop. There, on
seeing him, his mother, who was a bigoted old Catholic, could
not contain 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, my 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/'

64 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"And are we to carry the ermine surcoat ordered by the
young Queen, which is to be delivered at the Hotel de Sois-
sons, from whence there is an express to Blois and to the
Queen- mother ?" asked one of the lads.

"2^0," 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 er-
rand," 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 ap-
prentices, 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 Councillor du Bourg, and was fated,
before 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, furnish-
ing 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 re-
tained 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 diffi-
culties, though the Court purveyors often fell into disgrace
with the ladies they served. His prudence was as great as

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 65

his wealth. He maintained an attitude of excessive hu-
mility. 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 shop-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
merchants 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 Boeufs, who regarded him as one
of the men most devoted in all Paris to the Catholic faith.
Consequently, when the States- General were convoked, Le-
camus was unanimously elected to represent the third estate
by the influence of the priests, which was at that time enor-
mous 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
climb, so many gulfs were there to leap, into which he might
fall ! Lecamus, who had hidden away a large fortune, would

eS ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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
,Oif 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 scepti-
cism and inquiry, which indeed were increasing apace among
the students and Faculties of the University. Christophe
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
Councillor 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 Seguier, Lamoignon, du Tillet, Lecoigneux, Lesca-
lopier, 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 rich-
est goldsmith in the Cite, his neighbor Lallier, whose nephew,
at a later day, presented the keys of Paris to Henry TV. The
most deeply rooted purpose in the good man's heart was to
spend half his own fortune and half of Lallieris 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 for-,
ward to the division of the kingdom into two camps. The
useless executions on the Place de I'Estrapade, that of Henri
II.'s tailor, and that, still more recent, of the Councillor
Azine du Bourg, besides the connivance of the reigning

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 67

favorite 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 Eeformation. 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 Quartenier,
which became notorious fifteen years later. Clothed in cloth,
like every prudent citizen who obeyed the sumptuary laws.
Master Lecamus — the Sieur Lecamus, a title he held in
virtue of an edict of Charles V. permitting the citizens 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 knee, 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 waistcoat 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.
And Christophe, as a man who had 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.

68 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

*^ou will never :est 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,

'TTou old fool !" said the furrier, "then give him a chance
of life, if only to convert him! Why, you said a thing,
oefore 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 Am-
boise 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 Conde may be intending to kill Mes-
sieurs de Guise, who on their part mean to get rid of him
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-
Tient, 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;
iit is no business of mine ; but the Court is Catholic, the two
Queens are Catholics, the Parlement is Catholic; we serve
them with furs, and we must be Catholic.

*^"ou do not stir from here, Christophe, or I will place

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 89

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 these
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 jn the party ; or, if the danger is too great, I
can do your business 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."

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 towards 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 now 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.*'

70 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"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 Scotch woman and the Lorraines 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;
jewelers, he used diamond to cut diamond, one woman
against another. Hence Queen Catherine's hatred of the
poor Duchesse de Valentinois, from whom she took the fine
Chateau of Chenoneeaux. But for Monsieur le Connetable,
the Duchess 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 that. — 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
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 bef
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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIOI 71

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 find means
of opening doors."

Christophe stared with amazement at hearing his father
speak thus ; but he feared some parental snare, and held hia
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.

"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 theif
neighbor.

72 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 trickaj
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
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 wiliness 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 Christophe could be; the young Huguenot's father
and mother made ambiguous replies; but as soon as the

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 73

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-
bye 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 Eeformers 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
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 Ee-
formers want."

"Ay, tell us that, neighbor!" cried the goldsmith. "1
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

74 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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
Eeformation, my friends," he went on, in a low voice, "will
give the Church lands back to the citizen class. When eccle-
siastical 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.

'^ell, 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.

"We are too old to see the triumph of the middle class in
Paris, but it will triumph, neighbor, 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 in-
stance, 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 Ligue.

"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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 75

The banks of the Loire, from Blois as far as Angers, were
always greatly favored by the two last branches of the Koyal
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 besides with its own
peculiar beauty. Wholly French, it has always been French,
unlike our Northern provinces, debased by Teutonic in-
fluence, or our Southern provinces, which have been the con-
cubines of the Moors, of the Spaniards, of every nation that
has coveted 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 de-
partments which have taken their names from that of the
Loire and its derivations. 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 danc-
ing springs. It was only natural that large fortunes should
centre round spots where Eoyalty 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 XI.,
and have made Tours the capital of the kingdom? Without
any very great expenditure, the Loire might have been navi-
gable 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 fortifica-
tionfi, which alone have cost as much money as all the splenr

78 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

dors 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 Eevolution of 1789 would
never have taken place.

So these fair banks bear, at various spots, clear marks of
royal favor. The chateaux of Chambord, Blois, Amboise,
Chenonceaux, Chaumont, Plessis-les-Tours, all the residences
built by kings' mistresses, by financiers, and noblemen, at
Veretz, Azay-le-Kideau, Usse, Villandri, Valengay, Chante-
loup, and Duretal, some of which have disappeared, though
most are still standing, are splendid buildings, full of the
wonders of the period that has been so little appreciated by
the literary sect of Mediaevalists.

Of all these chateaux, 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,
enclosed in strong walls with towers, lay below the strong-
hold, for at that time the chateau served both as a citadel and
as a country residence. Overlooking the town, of which the
houses, then as now, climb the hill on the right bank of the
river, their blue slate roofs in close array, there is a triangular
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 steep ravine, part of
which remains as a deep hollow way, almost a precipice, be-
tween the suburb and the chateau.

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 ex-
pressed it, the Counts of Champagne, of Blois, and of Anjou,
the mere Barons of Normandy, and the Dukes of Brittany

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIGI 77

iived in the style of sovereigns and gave kings to the proudest
kingdoms. The Plantagenets of Anjou, the Lusignans of
Poitou, the Koberts and Williams of Normandy, by their au-
dacious courage mingled their blood with royal races, and
sometimes a simple knight, like du Glaicquin (or du Gues-
clin), 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 chateau, at an angle, so as to face east and west, a wing
connecting 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 chateau 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 prac-
tically constituted the chateau.

This third building of Francis I.'s is much more extensive
and more highly decorated than the Louvre de Henri II., as
it is called. It is one of the most fantastic efforts of the
architecture of the Kenaissance. 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 inti-
mately allied with art as it now is, la Fontaine wrote of the
Chateau 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 windows, little balconies, little colonnades,
little ornaments, not regularly ordered, which make up some-
;fching great which I found very pleasing."

Thus the Chateau of Blois had the attraction of represent-
ing 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 enclosure, in one court-

78 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

yard, 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 pastures and terraced gardens, picturesquely scattered
among the foundation stones and unfinished towers begun byi
Francis I. 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 chateau, which by the slope
of the ground lay on the same level. The gentlemen attached
to Queen Anne de Bretagne, 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 Le Perchoir aux Bretons (the Breton's Perch) ;
it now is an orchard belonging to some private citizen, pro-
jecting beyond the Place des Jesuites. That square also was
then included in the domain 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 accom-
modate her hot baths. This statement enables us to trace
the very irregular arrangement of the gardens which went
up and down hill, following the undulations of the soil; the
land about the chateau is indeed very uneven, a fact which
added to its strength, and, as we shall see, caused the diffi-
culties 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 dou-
ble staircase at Chambord, and which led to the apartments
on each floor.

Though la Fontaine preferred the ehSiteau of Francis I.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 79

to that of Louis XII., the simplicity of the Pere du Peuple
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 extremi-
ties of Louis XII.'s building, the quantity of fine and origi-
nal carving, of which, though time has damiaged them, the
remains are still the delight of antiquaries; everything, to
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 exquisite 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
Btate. The historian may reanimate them with the tragical
scenes of the Eeformation, of which the struggle of the
Guises and the Bourbons against the House of Valois formed
a complicated 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 chateau is twice as lofty as from the side towards
the inner court. The ground floor, in which are the famous
corridors, is the second floor in the garden front. Thus the
first floor, where Queen Catherine resided, is in fact the
third, and the royal apartments are on the fourth above the
lower garden, which at that time was divided from the
foundations by a very deep moat. Thus the chateau, im-

80 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

posing as it is from the court, seems quite gigantic when seen
from the Place 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 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 ground floor are, even there,
as high as the Pavilion de I'Horloge at the Tuileries.

This part of the building, where Catherine and Mary
Stuart held magnificent court, had in the middle of the
fagade a hexagonal hollow tower, up which winds a stair-
case in stone, an arabesque device invented by giants and
executed 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 art-
less stone-carvers who, fifty years before, had made the pend-
ants 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 Ver-
sailles. In more than one instance a graceful head looks
out from a block of stone almost in the rough. More than

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 81

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 mould. On the facade, by the side of
one window carved like lace, another shows us the massive
frame eaten into by time, which has carved it after a manner
of its own.

The least artistic, the least experienced eye finds here a
delightful contrast between this front, rippling with marvels
of design, and the inner front of Louis XII.'s chateau, con-
sisting on the ground 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 mag-
nificence, imitated from Italian architecture — a reminiscence
of our Kings' journeys 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 fagade almost harmo-
nizing 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 defences, held the three
buildings 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 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

82 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

of the upper classes, the luxury of feminine attire, must have
seemed singularly suited to the elaborate dress of the curi-
ously wrought stones.

From floor to floor, as he mounted the wonderful stairs
of his castle of Blois, the King of France could see further
and further 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 leases away, Francis I. had
built a Chambord to complete Blois on the site of the gar-
dens, 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 Chateau 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 infantry 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 re-
mains of Catherine de' Medici's room — into which Chris-
tophe was presently admitted — are sufficient evidence of the
elegant art which peopled these rooms with lively fancies,
with salamanders sparkling among flowers, with all the most
brilliant hues of the palette of the sixteenth century decorat-
ing 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 chateaux 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,

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 83

Francis I/s wife ; and the delicate sculpture is still to be seen
of double C's, with a device in pure white of swans and lilies,
signifying Candidio'^ 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 bc^, afterwards the Due d'Alengon, and Margue-
rite, who became the wife of Henri IV., and whom Charles
IX. called Margot — needed the whole of this first floor.

King Francis II. and his Queen Mary Stuart had the
royal apartments on the second floor that Francis I. had oc-
cupied, 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 chateau 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 floor the rooms are in two distinct suites.
That half which, facing the south, is lighted from the court,
held the rooms for state receptions and public business;
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 county of the Vendomois, the
Perchoir aux Bretons, and the moats of the town — the only
town mentioned by the great fable writer, the admirable la
Fontaine.

Francis I.'s chateau 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. What poet
would not feel deep regret or weep for France as he wanders
now through the hall of this magnificent chateau, and sees

M ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 Stuart 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 thin/»s to take their course !"

In the chapel where Henri IV. and Marguerite dt Valois
were betrothed — the last remnant of the old chateau 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
since used by the Duchesse de Nemours, in the upper story on
the second floor.

Francis II. and his young Queen, Mary Stuart, in lore
like two children of sixteen, as they were, had been suddenly

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 85

transferred, one cold winter's day, from Saint-Germain,
which the Due de Guise thought too open to surprise, to the
stronghold, as it then was, of Blois, isolated on three sides
by precipitous 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 till twenty-eight years later, in 1588, when,
in this same chateau 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 Chateau of Blois was to Catherine the
strictest prison. On the death of her husband, who had al-
ways kept her in leading-strings, she had hoped to rule ; but,
on the contrary, she found herself a slave to strangers, whose
politeness was infinitely more cruel than the brutality of
jailers. 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 Marechale 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 un-
conquerable, was paying court to 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
judg/^. on occasion, whether oae would not belie the other.
—7

86 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIGI

Though she lived constantly under the eye of the Cardinal
de Lorraine or of his brother, the Due Frangois 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 Stuart might be who wore three crowns, as learned as
an ancient scholar, as tricky as a school-girl, 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 Car-
dinal, having none about them but their own creatures,
seemed to take pleasure in humiliating her. Catherine, a
prisoner among courtiers, was the object, not ever}^ 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 re-
former was falling became evident in the course of the morn-
ing when he set out from the river-port of Beaugency,
carrying precious documents which compromised the loftiest
heads of the nobility, and embarked for Blois in company
with a crafty partisan, the indefatigable la Kenaudie, 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 87

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 1573.

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 by the Guises on one hand and the
'Reformers on the other, had arrived at the chateau 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 Condi's
head. Mary Stuart was his niece. His wife was Anne,
daughter of the Duke of Ferrara. The Grand Conn^table
Anne de Montmorency addressed the Due de Guise as ''Mon-
seigneur," as he wrote to the King, and signed himself "Your
very humble servant." Guise, the Grand Master of the
King's household, wrote in reply, "Monsieur le Connetable,'*
and signed, as in writing to the Parlement, "Your faithful
friend."

As for the Cardinal, nicknamed the Transalpine 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 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 officers, they were so

88 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIOI

entirely disinterested, or so much carried away by the tide
of polities, 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 Balafr6,
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
insolently to Catherine de' Medici, their niece's mother-in-
law. The Duchesse de Guise spared Catherine no mortifica-
tion; she was an Este, and Catherine de' Medici was the
daughter of self-made Florentine merchants, whom the sov-
ereigns of Europe had not yet admitted to their royal fra-
ternity. Francis I. had regarded his son's marriage with
a Medici as a mesalliance, 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, strug-
gling 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 benefactress, and by a servile attachment to
the Court of Spain, which was covertly thwarting them in
Italy. ^ ,

"Flatter none but your enemies !" This great axiom, ut-'
tered 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 89

of the House of Lorraine; but, which is perhaps not less re-
markable, 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 reappears 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 sol-
diers 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 fur-
riers. 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 Pare,

"The Duke is not dead, gentlemen," said Pare, 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
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

90 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

not an enemy at Court but Catherine de' Medici. And no
great politician ever played a closer game. The respective
attitudes of Henri II.'s ambitious widow, and of the no
less ambitious House of Lorraine, was symbolized, as it were,
by the positions they held on the terrace of the chateau on
the very morning 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 dis-
missal from the Cardinal. She was walking at the further
end of the pleasaunce above the Loire, where she was having
an observatory erected for her astrologer, Kuggieri; 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 chateau.

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 devoted
allies in the two Gondis, creatures of her own; but they, as
Florentines, were too open to the suspicions of the Guises
to be sent into the countiy ; 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 Cath-
erine. 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 91

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, Vieilleville, the builder of the Chateau 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 knowing what the mission might be<,
that the Grand Master had given him. Saint-Andre, it was»
known, had been instructed to take military measures to en-
tice all the reformers who were under arms to Amboise, as
the result of a council held by the Cardinal de Lorraine, the
Due de Guise, Birague, Chiverni, VieilleviUe, and Saint-
Andre. As the heads of the House of Lorraine thus em-
ployed 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 designs, 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 tha
hands of players, and the craftiest won the game.

All through this sitting the brothers had been impene-
trably guarded. Catherine's conversation with her friends
will, however, fully explain the purpose of this meeting, con-
vened by 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 Chateau of Blois.

The Queen-mother, who had been walking about all the
morning with the two Gondis, under pretence of examining
rho observatory that was- being built, but, in fact, anxiously
watching the hostile party, was presently joined by Chiverni,
She was standing at the angle of the terrace opposite the
Church of Saint-ISTicholas, and there feared no listeners. Tlie
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

92 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIGI

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 sHpped into
her fingers a tiny letter without being seen by the Italians.
Catherine quickly turned away, walked to the comer of the
parapet, and read as follows : —

. "Tou 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 Lorraines 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 stom-
acher, reminding herself to bum it as soon as she should be
alone.

''When did you see him ?" she asked Chiverni.

"On returning from seeing the Connetable at Melun; he
was going though with the Duchesse de Berri, whom he was
most anxious to convey in safety to Savoy, so as to return
here and enlighten the Chancellor Olivier, who is, in fact,
the dupe of the Lorraines. Monsieur de I'Hopital is resolved
to adhere to your cause, seeing the aims that Messieurs de
Guise have in view. And he will hasten back as fast as pos-
sible to give you his vote in the Council."

"Is he sincere?" said Catherine. "For you know that
when the Lorraines 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; "besides, that letter is a sufficient
pledge."

"And what answer does the Connetable send to these gen-
tlemen ?"

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 93

"He says the King is his master, and he awaits his orders.
On this reply, the Cardinal, to prevent any resistance, will
propose to appoint his brother Lieutenant-General of the
realm."

"So soon!" cried Catherine in dismay. "Well, and did
Monsieur ,de I'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 defence?"

"Oh, madame," cried Chiverni, surprised by her per-
spicacity, "we never thought of placing you in such a diffi-
cult 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.
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."

"A mistake the gods might make!" replied Charles de
Gondi.

"Gentlemen," said the Queen, "if I openly take up the
cause of the Eeformers, 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

94 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

France, the widow of the most ardent persecutor of the Hu-
guenots, an Italian and a Catholic, the aunt of Leo X., — can
you form an alliance with the Kef ormation ?" 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 Reforma-
tion 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 chateau
where her son lived and Mary Stuart. "Those three snatched
the reins of government from my hands," she went on, "when
I 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
chateau she had just exchanged for Chaumont with Diane
de Poitiers. "Ma" 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 hunch-
back at ficouen," 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."

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 95

"And who, gentlemen, is to crush these private whims that
are an offence to Eoyalty ? By Heaven ! these nobles must be
made to destroy each other — as Louis XI. 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 Gondii
"and the parties crushed by Louis the Eleventh 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 folks, and I cannot communicate 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 jailers, who let no one
come into the chateau, I should be banished from the coun-
try, 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 in-
flicted on me!"

"Their schemes !" exclaimed Chiverni. "The Grand Mas-
ter 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 towards 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
yourself at Amboise. The Grand Master came to this terrace

96 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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
chateau. "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.

Catherine's exclamation had its inspiration in a strange
prediction, spoken a few days before at the Chateau of Chau-
mont, on the opposite bank of the Loire, whither she had
gone with her astrologer Euggieri to consult a famous sooth-
sayer. This woman was brought to meet her by Nostra-
damus, the chief of those physicians who in that great six-
teenth century believed in the occult sciences, with Euggieri,
Cardan, Paracelsus, and many more. This fortune-teller, of
whose life history has no record, had fixed the reign of Fran-
cis 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, 'Tias made
the Prince de Conde the chief of the reformed party; he, as
a younger son, may dare much; and Monsieur le Cardinal
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 Eefornaing

ABOUT CATHERINE DB' MEDICI »7

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 feel-
ing our pulse," said she.

' "They have not the King," replied Albert. "You must
always win, having the King on your side."

"Maladetta Maria!" 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-
tated by the two heads of the refractory House of Guise;
there was nothing to justify the project or the hope; cir-
cumstances 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 Eeform-ation, 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
.vhe 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 di-
recting battles, of arming princes, and of raising whole na-
tions by disseminating republican doctrines in the hearts of

M ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

the middle classes, so as to make up, by increased progress in
the Spirit of Nations, for his constant defeats on the battle-
field.

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
believed 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-
guish heresy vrith 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 "Eepublic" spoken and even published at a
later date by the writers of the Reformation, whose ideas
Lecamus, the typical citizen of Paris, had already under-
stood. 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 Coup d'Etat
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 Eeformation 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 B^ze is at Nerac, having taken Calvin^s
orders."

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 89

"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
conspiracy against us. The rascal has effected an alliance
between the German Protestants and the heretics in France
by smoothing over the discrepancies of dogma between Luther
and 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 com-
manders on his side ! He v/as 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 dissemi-
nated 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 Condea
are not yet visible, though they hold the threads of the con-
spiracy."

"Ay," said the Duke; "and as soon as that lawyer Ave-
nelles had let the cat out of the bag, I told Braguelonne tc

100 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 la Balaf re.

The Cardinal went on with calm indifference :

"Whether the Prince de Conde be implicated or no, 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
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 be-
lieve that the Prince de Conde is powerful enough to inspire
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 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; 'TDut
take my word for it, our skirts are very near touching, and
I made Mary Stuart watch her narrowly before you ever sus-
pected her. Catherine has no more religion in her than my
(shoe. If she is not the soul of the conspiracy, it is not for
llack of goodwill ; 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,

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI lOl

*'aiid that is the only proof of her innocence. La Eenandie
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
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, playing
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 Eenaudie, 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 yesterday,"
said the Cardinal. "Let the shop-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 "I will go to see him in the Queen's rooms," said la Balafre.
"Tell him to await her lever in the guard-room. But, Par-
daillan, is he young?"

"Yes, Monseigneur; he says he is Lecamus' son."

"Lecamus is a good Catholic," said the Cardinal, who, like

102 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

the Duke, was gifted with a memory like Caesar's. "The
priest of Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs 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, v/ith an em-
phasis which gave the words a very pointed meaning. "But
Ambroise is at the chateau; through him we shall know 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 towards 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 sovereign
of less account in your esteem than Messieurs de Vieilleville,
Birague, and Chivemi?"

"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
approve, 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 towards the staircase by the corridor, which
was crowded with courtiers who had not the right of entree,
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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 108

bywords, and which express one aspect of that royally power-
ful 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 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 sculptured 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 exhibiting "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 pleas-
antries.

"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.

"Hallo, 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
attached to the Guises were grouped; for the staircase, still

104 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

80 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 ?" ,
cried Pardaillan, seeing Lecamus riveted in front of th».
elegant 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 staif'*
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 cos-
tumes gave life to the scene, in itself so bright, for the mar-
vels of architecture that decorated the fagade 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 enter-
ing 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 second floor, where the King
lived, and on the first, occupied by the Queen-mother, for a
third of the length of the front towards the court, and is
lighted by two windows to the left and two to the right of
the famous staircase. The young captain made his way to-
ward 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 fur-t
rier was in the guardroom with her surcoats.
j 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 chim-
ney-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 in-
teresting him ^y telling him the trivial details of his trader

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 105

and he seemed so completely the craftsman, that the oflScer
volunteered this opinion to the captain of the Scotch Guard,
who came in to cross-question the lad while scrutinizing him
closely out of the corner of his eye.

Though Christophe Lecamus had had ample warning, he
still did not understand the cold ferocity of the interested
parties between whom Chaudieu had bid him stand. To an
observer who should have mastered the secrets of the drama,,
as the historian knows them now, it would have seemed
terrible to see this young fellow, the hope of two families,
risking his life between two such powerful and pitiless ma-
chines as Catherine and the Guises. But how few brave
hearts ever know the extent of their danger ! From the way
in which the quays of the city and the chateau were guarded,
Christophe had expected to find snares and spies at every
step, so he determined to conceal the importance of his errand
and the agitation of his mind under the stupid tradesman's
stare, which he had put on before Pardaillan, the officer of
the Guard, and the captain.

The stir which in a royal residence attends the rising of
the King began to be perceptible. The nobles, leaving their
horses with their pages or grooms in the outer court, for no
one but the King and Queen was allowed to enter the inner
court on horseback, were mounting the splendid stairs in twos
and threes and filling the guardroom, a large room with two
fireplaces — where the huge mantels are now bereft of adorn-
ment, where squalid red tiles have taken the place of the
fine mosaic flooring, where royal hangings covered the rough
walls now daubed with whitewash, and where every art of an;
age unique in its splendor was displayed at its best.

Catholics and Protestants poured in as much to hear the
news and study each other's faces as to pay their court to
the King. His passionate affection for Mary Stuart, which
neither the Queen-mother nor the Guises attempted to check,
and Mary's politic submissiveness in yielding to it, deprived
the King of all power ; indeed, though he was now seventeen,
he knew nothing of Eoyalty but its indulgences, and of mar-

106 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

riage nothing but the raptures of first love. In point of fact,
everybody tried to ingratiate himself with Queen Mary and
her uncles, the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Grand Master
of the Household.

All this bustle went on under the eyes of Christophe, who
watched each fresh arrival with very natural excitement. A
magnificent curtain, on each side of it a page and a yeoman
of the Scotch Guard then on duty, showed him the entrance
to that royal chamber, destined to be fatal to the son of the
Grand Master, for the younger Balafre fell dead at the foot
of the bed now occupied by Mary Stuart and Francis II.
The Queen's ladies occupied the chimney-place opposite to
that where Christophe was still chatting with the captain of
the Guard. This fireplace, by its position, was the seat of
honor, for it is built into the thick wall of the council-room,
between the door into the royal chamber and that into the
council-room, so that the ladies and gentlemen who had a
right to sit there were close to where the King and the
Queens must pass. The courtiers were certain to see Cath-
erine; for her maids of honor, in mourning, like the rest of
the Court, came up from her rooms conducted by the Count-
ess Fieschi, and took their place on the side next the council-
room, facing those of the young Queen, who, led by the Duch-
esse de Guise, took the opposite angle next the royal bed-
chamber.

Between the courtiers and the young ladies, all belonging
to the first families in the kingdom, a space was kept of some
few paces, which none but the greatest nobles were permitted
to cross. The Countess Fieschi and the Duchesse de Guise
were allowed by right of office to be seated in the midst of
their noble charges, who all remained standing.

One of the first to mingle with these dangerous bevies
was the Due de Orleans, the King's brother, who came down
from his rooms above, attended by his tutor. Monsieur de
Cypierre. This young Prince, who was destined to reign be-
fore the end of the year, under the name of Charles IX.,
at the age of ten was excessively shy. The Due d'Anjou and

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 107

the Due d'Alengon, 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 char-
acters of that age, stood behind him as a shield. Amyot,
in a simple abbe's gown, also attended the Prince; he was
his instructor as well as being the teacher of the three other
royal children, whose favor was afterwards so advantageous
to him.

Between this chimney-place "of honor" and that at the
further 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 prede-
cessor, in the costume worn ever since by the Chancellors
of France^ was walking to and fro with Cardinal de Tour-
non, who had just arrived from Eome, and with whom he
exchanged a few phrases in murmurs. On them was centered
the general attention of the gentlemen packed against the
wall dividing the hall from the King's bedroom, standing
like a living tapestry 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. Cour-
tiers always talk of the most trivial subjects while thinking
of the gravest, jesting while watching every physiognomy,
and considering questions of love and marriage with heiresses
in the midst of the most sanguinary catastrophes.

"What did you think of yesterday's fete?" asked Bour-

168 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

deilles, the Lord of Brantome, going up to Mademoiselle
de Piennes, one of the elder Queen's maids of honor.

"Monsieur du Baif 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 beautiful
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, whom, subsequently, she made
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, Secre-
tary of State, as he bowed to the Queen-mother's ladies.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 109

The advent of the Secretary of State, though he was ex-
actly as important as a Cabinet Minister in these days, made
no sensation whatever.

"If you think that, monsieur, do lend me the epigram
against Messieurs de Guise ; I know you have it," said Made-
moiselle 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 on only 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 her myself,"
said the Countess Fieschi. "Have you heard any news of
what is going on in Flanders ?" she asked Cardinal de Tour-
non. "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 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

no ABOUT CATHERINE DE* MEDICI

in the great hall, which was subsequently used for the meet-
ings 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
Eobertet and the Chancellor. Many persons know nothing
of the difficulties that Secretaryships of State, now trans-
formed into Cabinet Ministries, met with in the course of
their establishment, and how hard the Kings of France
found it to create them. At that period a Secretary like
Eobertet 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 appointed 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 com-
mand of the Artillery, the post of High Admiral, the colo-
nelcy of some military corps, the captaincy 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.

"Do you believe that the Due de Nemours will marry
Frangoise?" asked Madame de Guise of the Due d'Orleans'
instructor.

'indeed, madame, I know nothing but Latin," was the
reply. i

This made those smile who were near enough to hear it.
Just then the seduction of Frangoise 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 re-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 111

garded him as seduced rather than as a seducer. The in-
fluence 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 Eohans, which was compromised by the offices
of the Guises. His marriage to the Duchesse de Guise,
after Poltrot's assassination, may account for the Duchess'
question to Amyot, by explaining some rivalry, no doubt,,
between her and Mademoiselle de Rohan.

"Look, pray, at that party of malcontents," said the Comte'
de Grammont, pointing to Messieurs de Coligny, Cardinal de
Chatillon, Danville, There, Moret, and several other gentle-
men 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 Coeur 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.

"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-

112 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 Eobertet expressed
them, for he thought it necessary to make a greater display
of devotion 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 Eobertet.

At this moment Madame Dayelle, Mary Stuart's favorite
waiting-woman, crossed the room, and went to the Queen's
chamber. The appearance of the waiting-woman made a
little stir.

*^e 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."

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.

*^hat 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."

• *^e are to leave the castle, and Monsieur le Cardinal de-
sired me to tell you so, that you might suggest it to the
King."

**Do you know why, my good Dayelle?"

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 113

"The Eeformers 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 Eeformers are busy. Her Highness the
Queen-mother went out with her Italians hoping to be con-
sulted, but she was not invited to join the 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 crape "

"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 noti
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 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

114 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

the Latin which those gentlemen insisted on dropping into
our good French ?"

"Oh !" said Mary, "that is in the best taste, and Eabelais
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
80 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
perhaps 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
you danced the hranle 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 Frangois 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 113

cheek from his kiss. "But you have to reign, if you please,
my 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
business 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
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 as-
suming 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 strawberry. They need warriors to rule them — a stem
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
insinuating air and his submissive ways, and says to me with
a bow, 'Sire, the honor of the Crown and the faith of your

fathers is at stake, your Majesty will never allow ' and

this and that — I am certain he toils for nothing but his
cursed House of Lorraine."

"Hovr well you mimic him !" cried the Queen. '•'But why
do you not make these Guises inform you of what is going

116 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 goodwill, 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 mistress in her house. The Italian woman is
provoked that she cannot set ever}' 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 heart — 'but if I were in your place,
I would not wear crimson velvet while the Court is in mourn-
ing, 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 I
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 Stuart. "Even though she hates me for a thousand
reasons, she flatters me, to win me from my uncles."

"Hates you?"

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 117

'TTes, 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 love-
making 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 pre-
vent 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, the good man established the practice for the con-
venience of his love affairs. So be on j'^our 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
chateau, whence we see the Loire and all the country around
— 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
Eome."

"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 cir-
cumstances 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,"
»aid the young King, suppressing his wrath.
—9

118 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"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 Car-
dinal.

"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
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 towards 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 ap-
proach 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 hap-
less 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 119

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."

"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
Majesties."

"What is doing in Paris?" asked the Cardinal.

"They are still trying to discover the murderer who killed
President Minard."

"Are not you 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 Eeformed
religion, ended by adopting it; but the friendship of the
Guises and of the French kings preserved him from the vari-
ous 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.

*^hat is it, monseigneur," said the leech. "Is the King
ill? I should not be surprised."

"Why?"

*^he Queen is too fascinating," said the surgeon.

"Ah !" replied the Duke, surprised. "However, that is not

120 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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.

"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?"

'^hy, yes, indeed," replied Christophe, ^Taut for my
father's saJce; 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, "set-
tle 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 Christophers 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 round to be near the door of the Queen's cham-
ber; she will ask for him no doubt," said the Cardinal t(^
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 beyond a room adjoining the bedroom.

Catherine, standing in the recess of the deep window, was

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 121

looking out on the gardens 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 Lieutenant-General of tne kingdom. In the face of such
peril she was alone, without a plan, without defence. In-
deed, 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 eyes 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 dijfficulty, 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 dignified, 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 wliich 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 constant denials of Henri 11., nor to the unresting
antagonism of her rival, Diane de Poitiers. A man would
not have understood this Queen in check; but Mary Stuart,
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. With-
out understanding the tempest of ambition which brought a
cold moisture 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

122 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

fury. Now, nothing amused her so much as watching her
mother-in-law, whom she regarded as an intriguing adven-
turess, who, 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 candle-light it is dazzling; while the younger face was
bright and fresh. At sixteen Mary Stuart had that creamy
fairness for which she was so famous. Her bright, rosy face,!
with clearly-cut features, 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 captivity 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 Suggieri's forecast,
this reign is soon to end. My diflScuIties will not last/*
thought she. i

And thus, strange to say, an occult science, now forgotten'
— judicial astrology — was a support to Catherine at this
juncture, as it was throughout her life; for the belief grew
constantly from seeing the predictions of those who prac-
tised it realized with the greatest exactitude.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 123

'TTou are very serious, madame/' said Mary Stuart, 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 suchi
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
Stuart. "Besides, my uncles are there."

These two sentences, in the circumstances, were two poi-
soned 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."

'^e ?" said Catherine, with feigned astonishment. '% for
my part, do not know Latin !"

"You fancy me so learned?" said Mary Stuart, with a
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."

124 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 Eeformer 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 de-
voting 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 Eeformer's 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
money, and if you would condescend to look through the ac-
counts," 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."

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 125

And he held out the document.

"Eead 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 till 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 Stuart, smiling.

It is not superfluous to the better understanding of this
important 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 Stuart while trying on her surcoat was
looking at herself 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 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 round on Christophe.

"Oh, madame, I have your account too," said he, looking at
her with well-acted simplicity.

126 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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, from 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 Stuart. "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 modem use, can alone describe
the neglige of this 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-
structed for Henri III. on the other side of the room ad-
joining 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
this 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
vhere Catherine gravely considered her struggle with parties.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 127

"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, laughing ;
"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 Stuart 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-
Bartholomew — shouted out :

"The King."

On hearing the cry, the two musketeers carried arms, and
the two pages led the way towards 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
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 ad-
vanced 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 towards the vast council-room. As soon as the heavy
thud 01 the arquebuses dropping on the floor again an-
nounced 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 gravity of the business about to be
discussed.

128 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"Chivemi was sent to fetch the Connetable, and he has
not come," said one.

"There is no prince of the blood present/' remarked an-
other.

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." I

"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.
Kobertet was mending his pens. The two Cardinals, the
Grand Master, the Chancellor, the Keeper of the Seals — ^in
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 goodwill that we should proceed
without madame your mother?"

Francis, not daring to have an opinion of his own, re
plied :

"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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 129

amid utter silence. The young King was, no doubt, con-
scious 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 Cath-
erine's part, Mary Stuart 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 Re-
formers' 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 ex-
claimed :

"I myself will go and fetch my mother."

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 chateau,
the beautiful paneling of Catherine's closet exists to this day ;
in the fine carving the curious may still discern traces of

130 ABOUT CATHERINE DB' MEDICI

Italian magnificence, and discover the hiding-places the
Queen-mother had contrived there.

A somewhat exact description of these curiosities is in-
deed indispensable to a comprehension of the scene that took
place there. The woodwork at that time consisted of about a
hundred and eighty small oblong panels, of which a hundred
or so still remain, each carved with a different design, ob-
viously 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 ofE
we see that some portions of the design were in color, blue,
red, or green against the gold background. The number of
these panels shows an evident intention to cheat investiga-
tion ; but if there could be a doubt, the keeper of the chateau,
while holding up Catherine's memory to the execration of
all living men, shows to visitors, at the bottom of the panel-
ing, 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 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
practised 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 skilfully combined colors and gilding
that covered the cracks, it is easy to imagine that it was im-
possible to discover one or two panels among nearly two
hundred.

At the moment when Mary Stuart 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 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 131

the devoted 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.

"Povero mio!" said Catherine, before turning to hep
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-
sides, though a week ago he might have been saved, now the
G-uises 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 Eeformers into a trap. And so,
pleased at finding her adversaries in the mind she had hoped
for, now that the plot had become knovra, 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 Stuart 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 du Kouet, send in the captain of the Guard,"
said Mary Stuart, in breach of every law of etiquette, neces-
sarily 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 Keformer understood, and replied by an expression
which conveyed, "Sacrifice me, as they have sacrificed me!"

132 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"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.

"YovL are of the Reformed religion?" said Mary Stuart
to Christophe.

'TTes, madame."

"Then I was not mistaken," she muttered to herself, as she
read in the young man's eyes the same expression in which
icoldness 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
Stuart 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 importance has occurred. — Go, Pardaillan. — And
you, Lewiston, keep guard over this Reformed traitor," she
added to the Scotchman in their native tongue, pointing to
Christophe.

The two Queens did not speak till the King came. It
was a terrible pause. Mary Stuart 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 be-
trayed 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 consciouB of
its smallness in the presence of a great catastrophe.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 133

As for Christophe, he felt like a man falling into an abyss.
Lewiston, the Scotch captain, listened to the silence, looking
at the furrier's son and the two Queens with a soldier's
curiosity. The King's entrance put an end to this painful
situation.

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.

"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 in-
terrupting 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 re-
ligion. I only submitted to the preacher's entreaties."

"That will do," said the Cardinal. — "Call Monsieur de

Hobertet," 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."

— lo

134 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

'TTou are no child, by Heaven !" cried the Duke, "and you
shall be treated as a man."

*"rhey 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 influence in
public affairs — I, the mother of four princes of the House of
Valois."

The young King prepared to listen. Mary Stuart, 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
rose.

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. Eobertet came in
and had private instructions with regard to Christophe. The
hapless tool of the leaders of the Eeformation was led away
by four men of the Scotch Guard, who took him downstairs
and handed him over to Monsieur de Montresor, the Provost
of the chateau. 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 chateau of Blois shows the visitor, and says
that these were the oubliettes.

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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 135

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.
Eobertet 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 invol-
untarily killed himself there by striking his head against the
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 chateau of Amboise
on behalf of the Crown at the same time as her own chateau
of Chenonceaux. But no one was deceived by this pretence,
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, ex-
actly like that of the crypts at Venice, showed very plainly
that the architect of the chateau of Blois belonged to the
Venetian school, which gave so many builders to Europe in
the Middle Ages. By sounding the walls 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 cor-
ridor.

"I am Christophe Lecamus."

138 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"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 Renaudie was cleverer than I ; he escaped. You had just
set out when the Guisards caught us."

"But I know nothing of la Eenaudie."

"Pooh! my brother told me everything," replied the cap-
tain.

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
ponderous 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
sergeants 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 chateau, which evidently was the ante-room 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
Monsieur de Montresor, the sergeant then left them.

"N^ow 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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 137

'^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
kingdom, who likes intelligent people, and who was favorably
impressed 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
everything, 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 be-
lieve that the peace of the country was involved."

"You never saw the Prince de Conde?"

"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 instru-
ments were brought in, evidently intended to torture the
Keformers' messenger. Christophe's curiosity soon found
matter for reflection in the preparations the newcomers 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. Backwards and forwards
several times, his men brought in a mattress, wooden wedges,
planks, and other objects, of which the use seemed neither
obvious nor hopeful to the unhappy boy for whom the prepar

138 ABOUT CATHERINE DE* MEDICI

rations 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 Montresor reappeared,

"What, is nothing ready yet?" said the chief provost, to
whom the two newcomers bowed respectfully. "Do you know,"
he went on to the big man and his two satellites, "that Mon-
sieur le Cardinal supposes you to be getting on with your
work? — Doctor," he added, turning to one of the newcomers,
*Tiere 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 l^Iontresor 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 learned 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 beax 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 ma^ae 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,
surrounded with pads. The machinery itked by bookbinders
to press the volumes between two boards, which they tighten

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 139

with cords, will give a very exact idea of the way in which
each leg was encased. It is easy, then, to imagine the ejffect
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 consequence, the wedge found room at the expense of the
bones, made this form of torture horribly painful. In or-j,
dinary torture 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
delivered to the Queen.

"From Chaudieu 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."

"But those papers, given to you without any wrapper or

140 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 impli-
cated 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
I saw."

"Then you persist in declaring that you did not see the
Prince de Conde?"

'^es."

"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 Eenaudie, 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 execu-
tioner, 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
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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 141

"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 circu-
lation 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 to reveal all he knew; but
Christophe's only reply was :

"The King's tailor ! the King's tailor !"

'HiVhat 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 Eeformation
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 him-
self to make, implicating nobody but Chaudieu.

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

142 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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
dreadful fixity, and flashed at the two Princes such a piercing
magnetic 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, in- ^
flicted 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 flxed
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 judgment 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 ac-
complice than his executioners were.

The sixth and seventh wedges 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
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
sufferer's life. The Duke meanwhile came in again to see
Christophe.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 143

"By our Lady ! you are a fine fellow," said he, leaning down
to speak in Ms 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 rejoining
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 Conde; you will be well rewarded."

"Oh, madame, what a part you are playing !" cried Chris-
tophe, in pity for her.

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, Cath-
erine had an opportunity of giving the martyr a look, which
no one else saw, and which fell like dew on Christophe. The

144 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

great Queen's eyes seemed to glisten with moisture ; thej- 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 tho\ight 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.

"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
jailer."

The executioner went off, leaving Christophe in the hands

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 145

of the smooth-spoken doctor, who, with the help of Chris-
tophe'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.

'^ou 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 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 jailer 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.

The two Princes of Lorraine, when they transferred the
Court to Amboise, had no hope of finding there the leader
of the Eeformed 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 made him a
worthy representative of Jeanne d'Albret and the brave Gen-
eral of the Reformers' forces- He traveled at the heels of the

146 ABOUT CATHERINE DK' MEDICI

last conspirators 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 ad-
vance, 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 chateau, the marshal in
command refused to admit the Prince's suite.

'TTou must come in alone, sir," said the Chancellor Olivier,
Cardinal de Toumon, 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 in to my cousin alone and
prove my innocence."

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 got 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 Porte des Bons-Iiommes 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 Chaudieu was
obliged to make a detour to avoid fighting me., Instead of
arriving at night like the rest, that rebel did not come up till

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 147

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 Marechal 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 have known the Eeformers' secrets.
They have evidently been betrayed."

The Prince was treated with greater strictness at each
step. After being parted from his followers on entering
the chateau, the Cardinal and the Chancellor stood in his
way when he turned to the stairs leading to the King's apart-
ments.

"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-
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,
ai^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 Am-
boise and Tours, and he was meditating on his situation,
wondering 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.

148 ABOUT CATHERINE DEI MEDICI

"And to what do I owe the honor of this visit ?"

"Was it not due to you after your coming here? I hare
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 Conde.

"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."

"Tell those who have sent you," replied the Prince, "that
I should never have come to this chateau 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 Toumon 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 Cond6 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 Eeformers, 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 band on his sword, looking at the person*
present.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEtUCI 149

'*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 his 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 hunch-
back.

"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 Eeformers 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 Conde.

"Cousin," said the boy-King, "you should never draw your
sword but in defence 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 Conde, having
weathered the worst danger, gave his hand to Queen Mary
Stuart to lead her to the dining-room; but, while making
flattering speeches to the young Queen, he was trying to
discern 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 be-
trayed 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 flts 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 have determined to make the greatest
display."

150 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"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 tlieir taste for faction and manoeuvring "

"You will not cure them of their warlike temper by show-
ing 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
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 Stuart.

"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."

*^hat do you think about it, cousin?" said the King to
the Prince de Conde.

"Sir, 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
chateau of Amboise, the furrier to the two Queens was also
arriving from Paris, brought thither by the uneasiness pro-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIOI 151

duced by the reports of the Eebellion, not only in himself and
his family, but also in the Lalliers.

At the gate of the chateau, when the old man craved ad-
mission, 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, 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
executions were to take place. He was obliged to pay a livre
a day 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 hand, 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
Parlement 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 chateau, and will be
one in the magnificent execution for which my lords the Due

162 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine are making great
preparations. Twenty-seven barons are to be beheaded, with
eleven counts and seven marquises, fifty gentlemen in all,
and leaders of the Eeformers. As the administration of jus-
tice in Touraine 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-General of the kingdom, has the manage-
ment of the proceedings."

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 folks were ad-
mitted 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 petitioners 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
chateau, 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
good man'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 precautions
than during the stay of the Count 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 153

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 of the chateau, at the foot of which the execution was
to take place. All round the open space raised wooden seats
were being put up, after the fashion of an amphitheatre, to
accommodate the enormous crowd attracted by the notoriety
of this auto-da-fe. About ten thousand persons were camp-
ing 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 scaf-
fold 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 Eecorder of the Court, whose duty it was to call the
condemned by name and read their sentence. The enclosure
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 chateau and in,
every church in the town, the gentlemen were led forth, the
last survivors of aU. 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

164 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

Marot. Calvin, as is well known, had decreed that God
should be worshiped in the mother-tongue of every country,
from motives of common sense as well as from antagonism
to the Roman Church. It was a pathetic moment for all
those among the throng, who felt for these gentlemen, when
^ey 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 gracel
And on the saints in sore distress
Let shine Thy glorious face!

The eyes of the Reformers all centered on the Prince de

Conde, who was intentionally placed between Queen Mary
and the Due d'Orleans. Queen Catherine de' 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 Eoyal 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 fillec by invited guests,
by courtiers, and the attendants on their Majesties ; in short,
the rank and fashion of the chateau from Blois, who thus
rushed from festivities to executions, just as they afterwards
rushed from the pleasures of Court life to the perils of war,
with a readiness which to foreigners will always be one of
the mainsprings 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-seven 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 ;

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 155

"Jean-Louis-Alberic, Baron de Kaunay, guilty of heresy,
of the crime of high treason, and of bearing arms against the
King's Majesty."

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 head 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 Cond6,
**that if French gentlemen know how to plot, they also know
how to die."

*^hat hatred you are entailing on the heads of your chil-|
dren, brother," said the Duchesse de Guise to the Cardinal
de Lorraine.

"The sight makes me feel sick," said the young King, who
had turned pale at the sight of all this bloodshed.

"Pooh I Rebels!" said Catherine de' Medici.

158 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

Still the hymn went on, still the axe was plied. At last the
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 in-
spired 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 sca£Eold, 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 Conde, 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
not you feel that you ought to ask the life of this one? It
is Castelnau, who, as I was told, had your promise for courte-
ous 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, ac-
cused 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' MEDICI 157

The Cardinal intentionally misinterpreted the word
"Come." He nodded to the executioner, and Castelnau's head
fell at the 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 theu>
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 I'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 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 af-
fected to be overridden.

L'Hopital was no sooner appointed than he took steps to
prevent the introduction into France of the Holy Office, which
the Cardinal de Lorraine wished to establish; and he so
effectually opposed the Anti-Gallican measures 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-banli on the way back to
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

158 ABOUT CATHERINE DB' MEDICI

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 in-
vented 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 corporation
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-
General, 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 Navarre.
At Lyons, and at Mouvans in Dauphine, the Reformers,
commanded by the most enterprising of the Bourbon princes,
had tried to infiame 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 which they kept the secret, proposed to assemble
the States-General at Orleans. Catherine de' Medici, who
saw a support for her own policy in the representations of
the nation, consented with joy. The Cardinal, who aimed at
recapturing his prey, and overthrowing the House of Bour-
bon, convoked the States solely to secure the presence of the

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI ISO

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 mat-
tress, 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 jailer 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 be either hanged or released; he
knew nothing whatever of the events happening at Amboise.

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 reassuring; 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-
cellor of Navarre, who was also the Bailli or Eecorder of
Orleans. This man Groslot, whose double appointment is
one of the odd features of a time when Eeformers 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

160 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 Hotel de Ville in the Place de I'Estape. This
townhall is the Old Bailli's Court, the Hotel Groslot, the
most illustrious and most neglected house in Orleans.

The remains of this hotel plainly show to the archaeologist'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 resi-
dence 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 I'Estape that the Guises and the
King held a review of the municipal guard, to which Mon-
sieur de Cypierre was nominated captain during the King's
visit. At that time, the Cathedral of Sainte-Croix — after-
wards finished by Henri 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 by the Guises, who lodged in the Bishop's
palace, now destroyed.

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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 161

Court saw with dismay how insolent was the behavior of the
Cardinal de Lorraine, who, to assert his audacious preten-
sions, kept his head covered, while the King of Navarre
before him was bareheaded. Catherine de' Medici stood with
downcast eyes, not to betray her indignation. A solemn ex-
planation 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 I"

"It is not the King who speaks thus," said the Prince de
Conde, "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 Maille-Breze ?"

"With pleasure," said the French captain: —

" *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 Tour 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 in this room to understand that."

The utter silence that reigned in the room might have

162 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

enlightened 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 noth-
ing when he addressed you in those terms."

"Eascals !" cried the Prince, laughing.

"You made a public declaration against the Mass, and in
favor of heresy "

*^e 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 iron-
ically. "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
cliief clerk, came into his prison, he kept them standing, and
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 ap-
pointed to try me, inasmuch as that by virtue of my rank and
the privileges attaching to every member of the Eoyal 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
determined silence of the Prince.

ABOUT CA"^ tea

his ; wider Ov waji

the '■ • " r'» ;

for * i at
the '

diiv»

Ki, wt-re i

J ..i:d thougi.

atx? with (":

Each tiim> h« waa tfianimtifl by iiie niagistratt-
entreiich.»d himself in systematic denial, wh'
prolonged the aftair til! the meeting of the Stat

Lecamus, wlchAshJphe^iipiti^nt of gettin ■
by tlje citizens of !', •• >~ a deputy for th»-
cttue to Orleans .^ after the Prin

p^, ..i ./ ...1. . u V .,; li;tampes, inci

'ue in the w
■ under t'r

darn
stud} t ..
at Court
plan for ri.-sc;
recourse io i^'
rier. No ont
him any satislat '
and he had sunk '
to addros'^ himsen
sieur de Thou ha-. .:
of the Prince de Cor
great jurist, 'i'ho S; •
and learned that f^Iiri

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 163

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 Car-
dinal 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,
intelligible 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 without 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
entrenched 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,"
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 Eeformation 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 in vain to think of having
recourse to Queen Catherine, who refused to receive the fur-
rier. 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 address himself to the Cardinal, when he heard that Mon-
sieur de Thou had accepted the office of one of the judges
of the Prince de Conde — a blot on the good fame of tnat
great jurist. The Syndic went to call on his son's patron,
and learned that Christophe was alive but a prisoner.

184 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICt

Tourillon, the glover, to whose house la Eenaudie 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
inen.

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 house-
hold, he would only be so much out of pocket, for the Duke
and the Cardinal allowed nothing to be known concerning
Christophe. This judge, whose fair fame is somewhat tar-
nished by the part he played at this juncture, had tried to
give the unhappy father some hope; but he himself trembled
for his godson'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 Stuarts, 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 TEstape, 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 165

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 Eeformers' 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 elaborate
precautions. Tourillon looked out through the bars of a wicket
in the door, and saw a stranger, whose accent betrayed 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, under-
standing the gesture, immediately said :

"You have come to offer furs for sale, I suppose ?"

"Si" 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 how strictly the;
gates are guarded. No one can pass out without an order
from Monsieur de Cypierre, not even a member of the As-
sembly like myself. Indeed, at to-morrow's sitting we all in-
tend 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 a ftor. vou will perhaps see your son."
— I J

166 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"God grant it ! Though you are said to deal only with the
Devil I"

"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 por-
tend 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."

The furrier and the astrologer made their way to the Sieur
du Beauvais' house without being seen or interfered with;
and in the event of Lecamus being discovered, Euggieri 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. Eemember, 0 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 Euggieri.

'^hat 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 Councillor in the Parlement

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 167

yet. And a man would let his bones be broken three times
over to find himself in the good graces of that beloved sov-
ereign— a real genius she, who will triumph over every ob-
stacle.

"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 not jjsBl know the past ?" the fur-
rier put in.

"I am not questioning you, I am informing you, good man.
Well, your son will be placed to-morrow where the Prince will
pass by. If he recognizes him, or if the Prince recognizes
your son. Monsieur de Conde forfeits his head. As to what
would become of his accomplice — God only knows ! But be
easy. 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 meas-
ures 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 representa-
tive 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 Eegent ; the King of Navarre will give
his assent to that publicly, to-morrow, in the Assembly."

"But the King?"

168 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"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, al-
though he has a leaning towards the Reformation, he will do
nothing but his duty,"

"A plague on all honest men !" cried the Florentine. "Am-
broise 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 Boyal
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 Ambroise,
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
dazzled."

"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, polit-
ically 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 in-
tellect 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 169

in magnitude, and the Queen had grown with them. Though
she seemed to proceed in agreement with the Princes of Lor-
raine, Catherine held the threads of a conspiracy skilfully
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 Cath-
erine. The crafty Italian had seen in the younger branch
of the Eoyal Family an obstacle she could use to cHeck the
pretensions 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
warning the Queen of Navarre, brought to nought the plot to
Beize 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 hex 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 ban-
ishment if any fresh indiscretions on her part should im-
peril the State. Catherine, seeing herself in imminent dan-
ger, 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 shei
trusted.

L'Hopital sent her a letter in these terms :

"Do not allow a Prince of th^ Blood to be killed by a
committee, or you will soon be carried off yourself."

Catherine sent Birague to le Vignay, desiring the Chan-

170 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIOI

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.

Chiverni, whose fidelity was with good reason regarded
as doubtful by the Guises, had fled from Orleans, and by
a forced march, which nearly was his death, he reached
Ecouen in ten hours. He there told the Connetable de Mont-
morency 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 gen-
tlemen under arms. The more effectually to surprise the
Guises, he had avoided Paris, coming from flcouen to Corbeil,
and from Corbeil to Pithiviers by the Valley of the Essonne.

"Man to man, and both to pull, leaves 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 Con-
notable brought with him, sprang to horse, hoping to warn
the Duke in time. The Queen-mother, meanwhile, certain
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 im-
periled House of Bourbon had made common cause with the
Queen-mother's partisans; a coalition between various an-
tagonistic interests, attacked by a common foe, was silently

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 171

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, whose
faith in astrology was far greater than her belief in Church
i 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 chateau 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 execution.
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 embark-
ing, 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, Pare'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.

173 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI

"As sure as I am alive. The King, my good old friend,
has some evil humor festering on his hrain, 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 per-
formed this operation three times ; it was invented by a Pied-
montese, and I have been so luckj' 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 thft
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 opera-
tion 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 Pare,
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 sol-
diers do every day with no care at all."

"But do you know, my boy," said the citizen, greatly dar-
ing, "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 Eegenc}', the blood of the
Reformers will flow in streams ! Be a great citizen rather
than a great surgeon, 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."

"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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 173

go to the chateau, all the same, right early to-morrow. l)o
not you know that the only favor I mean to ask, when I
have saved the King, is your Christophe's life? There 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 Conde any jJardon 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?" said
Pare. "Honest folks have but one motto — 'Do your duty,
come what may.' — I did this at the siege of Calais when I
set my foot on the Grand Master; I risked being cut down
by all his friends and attendants, and here I am, surgeon to
the King; I am a Eeformer, 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
fxod will take care of France !"

There was a knock at the door, and a few minutes later
one of Ambroise Pare's servants gave a note to Lecamus, who
read aloud these ominous words :

"A scaffold is being erected at the Convent of the Eecollets
for the beheading of the Prince de Conde to-morrow."

Ambroise and Lecamus looked at each other, both overpow-
ered with horror.

"I will go and make sure," said the furrier.

Out on the square, Euggieri took Lecamus by the arm,
asking what was Pare'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 to
the Eecollets, where, in fact, they found carpenters at work
by torchlight.

"Hey day, my friend," said Lecamus to one of them; "what
business is this ?"

174 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIOI

"We are preparing to hang some heretics, since the bleeding
at Amboise did not cure them," said a young friar, who was
superintending the workmen.

"Monseigneur the Cardinal does well," said the prudent
Ruggieri. "But in my country we do even better."

"What do you do?"

'^e 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 to 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.

*^ell, my most respectable vendor of vair, what have you
to say to these pleasantries of Lorraine?" said Euggieri.

"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 Euggieri.

On this the unhappy old man repeated his conversation
with Pare to the Italian, who was off, leaving the disconsolate
father in the road the instant he had heard the great sur-
geon's secret.

*^hom the devil does he mean mischief to?" cried Le-
camus, as he saw Euggieri running at his utmost speed
towards the Place de I'Estape.

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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 175

There was no one in the hall, on the stairs, or in the court-
yard of the Bailli'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 Eegent. The
French nobles, terrified indeed by the insolence of the Guises,
felt an impulse to close their ranks round the chief of the
younger branch, seeing that the Queen-mother was sub-
servient 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 re-
gency in her favor till 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 panel-
ing. The ceiling, formed of narrow boards, skilfully ad-
justed 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 a carpet,
was so dark that the burning tapers scarcely gave it light.
The enormous bedstead, with four columnar posts and silk
curtains, 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 phy-
sician-in-ordinary, the famous Jean Chapelain, afterwards in
attendance on Charles IX., was standing by the fireplace.
Perfect silence reigned.

The young King, pale and slight, lost in the sheets, waa
hardly to be seen, with his small, puckered face on the pillow.
The Duchesse de Guise, seated on a stool, was supporting
Mary Stuart; and near Catherine, in a window recess,
Madame de Fieschi was watching the Queen-mother's looks
and gestures, for she understood the perils of her position.

1T8 ABOUT CATHERINE DE* MEDICI

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 dis-
cussing 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'Orleans, whom he recognized.

"Monseigneur," said he, "this may give you a lesson in
the knowledge of men. The Catholic nobility of the kingdom
have crowded round a heretic prince, believing that the States
assembled will place the Eegency in the hands of the heir
to the traitor who so long kept your illustrious grandfather a
prisoner."

And after this speech, which was calculated to make a deep
impression on the 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 overcoming, by his affable expression, the sinister appear-
ance 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 military valor, came forward a step or two to meet
the Lieutenant-General.

'Tlobertet 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 Ouepins are malcontents," he added, giving the
people of Orleans their common nickname, "and if Par6 can-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 177

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 ante-room, to say that the
newcomer 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 Connetable is entering Pithiviers; he left ficouen
with fifteen hundred horse and a hundred gentlemen "

"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 is that 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

178 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

in, "the Connetable de Montmorency has dared to take np
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 Eobertet, flying up the stairs, "the Chan-
cellor is at the gates, and insists on coming in; are we to ad-
mit him ?"

*^es, 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 I'Hopital to that office."

Eobertet 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, Eobertet," said the Car-
dinal 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 comer
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 Beamais

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 179

would have been stabbed," replied the Cardinal, "and we
could easily have disposed of the children."

*^e 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 ele-
vation Queen Catherine opposed, is now our foe, and we need
the law on our side. The Queen-mother has too many ad-
herents now to allow of our sending her away. — And besides,
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 went straight
up to Catherine.

"The papers found on La Sagne, the Prince de Conde'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.

*^ell, then, will you not have the King of Navarre ar-
rested?"

"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 phy-
sician 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 calum-
nies 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

180 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

the Dauphin's death, poisoned as he was by Montccueuli,
a Florentine of her suite !" cried Mary Stuart.

"Marie," said the little King, "my grandfather never cast
a suspicion on her innocence."

"Cannot we hinder that woman from coming here to-
morrow ?" said the Queen in an undertone to her two uncles.

*^Vhat 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 ar-
rival of the Chancellor and the Connetable de Montmorency
pointed to rebellion, and the dawn of the morrow would
prove decisive.

On the following day the Queen-mother was the first to
appear. She found no one in her son's room but Mary Stuart,
pale and fatigued from having passed the night in prayer by
the bedside. The Duchesse de Guise had kept the Queen
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 induce 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 opportunity favorable; he refused to arrest the
Queen-mother, the Chancellor, Cardinal de Toumon, the
Gondis, Euggieri, 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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI l8l

It had been agreed between Catherine and Cardinal de
Toumon 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 Am-
broise Pare had but just arrived with Chapelain and three
other physicians, prompted by Catherine, and all hating Am-
broise.

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;
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 blading. The room was full of courtiers.

The news, repeated no one knows by whom, of a bold plan
of Ambroise Pare'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 Eecollets, 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 Catherine's efforts. Deep silence was kept for some
distance outside the bedroom door, where two men-at-arms
were on guard, with two pages, and the captain of the Scotch
company.

1^ ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDIGI

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 I'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 fieouen to consult the
Connetable de Montmorency. No one dared to disturb the
meditations in which he was plunged. Eobertet, the Secre-
tary of State, two marshals of France, Vieilleville and Saint-
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 Stuart, the Scotchman
who had murdered President Minard, and was arranging
for his trial at Tours. He had also confined in the chateaux
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 derived from a feeling of their inborn equality with
the King. Now, the prisoners at Blois had contrived to es-
cape, 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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 183

He is said to have written a note to Messieurs de Guise to this
e£Eeet :

" 'We have heard of the escape of your prisoners at Blois ;
it has grieved us so much, that Tve are about to run alter
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
bedchamber. The two marshals, with Robertet and the Chan-
cellor, 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 sulEferings, and
demonstrated that in such extremities trepanning was abso-
lutely necessary. He only awaited the decision of the phy-
sicians.

"Pierce my son's skull as if it were a board, and with that
horrible instrument!" cried Catherine de' Medici. "Maitre
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 Stuart, weeping.

"Ambroise," said Catherine, "remember that you answer
for the King with your head."

"We are opposed to the means proposed by Maitre 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."

184 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

The Due de Guise, who was studying Catherine's face, sud-
denly went up to her, and led her into the window-bay,

"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 Councillor Viole told your furrier's
son that the Prince de Conde 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 your hap-
less 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, Ms eyes dim, but repeating the word "Marie,"
while he held the hand of the young Queen, who was weeping ;
the Duehesse de Guise standing, terrified by Catherine's au-
dacity; 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 Am-
broise 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
physicians are in favor of an injection which, to me, seems
quite as efficacious and less dangerous than the cruel process
recommended by Ambroise."

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MBDIGI 185

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 le Chancelier,
that Ambroise, surgeon to his Majesty, answers for the King's
life."

"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 constitute
myself the sole master, and singly responsible; I know the
duties of my office, and I will operate on the King without
the physicians' sanction."

"Save him!" cried the Cardinal, "and you shall be the
richest man in France."

"Only go on !" said Mary Stuart, pressing Fare's hand.

"I cannot interfere," said the Chancellor, 'Haut I shdfll
record the Queen-mother's protest."

"Eobertet," the Due de Guise called out.

Robertet came in, and the Duke pointed to the Chancellor.

"You are Chancellor of France," he said, "in the place of
this felon. Monsieur de Maille, take Monsieur de I'Hopital
to prison with the Prince de Conde. — As to you, madame,"
and he turned to Catherine, "your protest will not be recog-
nized, 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. — Pro-
ceed, Ambroise," he said to the surgeon.

"Monsieur de Guise," said I'Hopital, "if you use any vio-
lence, 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 prolong
this debate, you may as well shout 'Vive Charles IX.,' for
King Francis is dying."

Catherine stood unmoved, looking out of window.

186 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"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
deserted. The Court, sure that the King was dying, had
gone back to Antoine of Navarre.

"Come ; do it, do it," cried Mary Stuart to Ambroise. — "I
and you. Duchess," she said to Madame de Guise, "will pro-
tect 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
me," he said, taking a small syringe from the hand of the
chief physician, and filling it.

"Good God !" cried Mary Stuart ; "I command you "

"Alas ! madame," replied Pare, "I am subordinate to these
gentlemen."

The young Queen and the Duchesse de Guise stood between
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 Lor-
raine were watchful; Kobertet and Monsieur de Maille stood
motionless. At a sign from Catherine, Madame de Fieschi
left the room unnoticed. At the same instant I'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, gentle-
men ! You thought to cut off my fine nephew, the Prince de
Condi's head? — You have roused the lion from his lair, and
here he is !" added the Connetable de Montmorency. — "Am-
broise, you are not to stir up my King's brains with your
instruments ! The Kings of France do not allow themselves
to be knocked about in that way unless by their enemies' sword
in fair fight! The first Prince of the Blood, Antoine de
Bourbon, the Prince de Conde, the Queen-mother, and the
Chancellor are all opposed to the operation."

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 187

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, lay-
ing 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
enemy's country, I suppose. The King our Master is sur-
rounded by his subjects, and the States-General of the realm
may deliberate in perfect liberty. I have just come from the^^
Assembly, 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 deci-
mate the nobility of France. Henceforth I shall not trust
anything you propose. 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, 'Tjecause it is too
late, suffusion has begun."

'TTour 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 Stuart,
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 Eegent 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 Chancelier."

188 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 gentleman 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 Stuart, 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 Kef ormers, a first
cry of opposition.

Eobertet, 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
Ambassadors 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 court-
yard to Catherine de' Medici just as she was protesting
against Ambroise Fare's operation.

'^ell, 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."

"Will he ever have the army and the Church on his side
as you have ?"

"He will have something better."

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 189

"The people/'

"And there is no one to mourn for him but me — the poor
boy who loved me so well!" said Mary Stuart, holding the
cold hand of her first husband.

"How can we be reconciled to the Queen?" said the Car-
dinal.

"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 Eeformers produced such
confusion 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 ar-
rived at the town of Etampes, a follower of the Chancellor de
I'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, striking at
Catherine, Mary Stuart, and the Guises. For what French-
man 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 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, Touriilon 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
servir" ("Ready to serve," or "Ready, aye ready"), the
,watchword of the Reformers of Calvin's sect.

This man was Chaudieu, to whom Touriilon related the
events of the last week, during which he had left the preacher
alone in his hiding-place, with a twelve-ounce loaf for his sole
sustenanca

190 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"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 Re-
formed 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,
because 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 enabled 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 mak-
ing him believe in a collusion between Catherine and the
Bourbons, while Catherine was taking them all in. The
Queen, it wiU be seen, had in a short time made great strides.

The spirit of argument and discussion which was then in

ABOUT GATHERINE DE' MEDIGI 191

the air was particularly favorable to tMs scheme. The
Catholics and the Huguenots were all to shine in turn in
this tournament of words. Indeed, that is exactly what hap-
pened. Is it not extraordinary that historians should have
mistaken the Queen's shrewdest craft for hesitancy? Cath-
erine 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 mo-
tives, despatched Chaudieu to Calvin; Chaudieu having
secretly intended 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 ban-
ishment.

At the rate of traveling then possible Chaudieu could not
reach Geneva before the month of February, the negotiations
could not be completed till March, and the meeting could not
be called till the beginning of May 1561. Catherine in-
tended 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 I'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 Eome held in check by the Pope of Geneva? The
two Princes of Lorraine, once so powerful, paralyzed by the
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-

192 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 Eousseau, 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 resem-
blance 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
pointing out to him that it might become the stronghold of
a reformation more thorough than that of Luther. Farel and
Cauvin looked on Lutheranism as an incomplete achieve-
ment, ineffectual, 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 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 later years of his life was para-
mount, 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 the old
luxury and 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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 193

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
Switzerland. Calvin and Farel resisted; their political ene-
mies 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 despatching a min-
ister to treat with him, this king in the realm of thought had
no title but that of Pastor of the Church of Geneva. Indeed,
Calvin never had more than a hundred and fifty francs a
year in money, fifteen hundred-weight of corn 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.

Such disinterestedness, which in Voltaire and Baker was
lacking, but which is conspicuous in the life of Eabelais, of
Campanella, of Luther, of Vico, of Descartes, of Male-
branche, of Spinoza, of Loyola, of Kant, and of Jean-Jacques
Eousseau, surely forms a noble setting for these sublime and
ardent souls.

Eobespierre's life, so like that of Calvin, can alone per-
haps 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.

Id* ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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
ordinances." Just consider this sentence, and ask yourself
if the worst despotism can show in its annals a more ab*
'surdly preposterous 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 Ser-
vet (or Servetus), a Frenchman, passing through Geneva,
was put in prison, tried, condemned on Calvin's testimony,
and burned 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 defence
of Jean-Jacques Kousseau, whose book, attacking the Catholic
religion, written in France and published in Holland, was
indeed burned 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 re-
ligion 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 in-
tolerance of Eobespierre. On a wider stage than was offered
y Geneva, Calvin would have shed more blood than the terri-
le 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 Eobespierre, 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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 195

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 doc-
trine, introduced the hypocritical feeling that has been well
called Puritanism [the nearest English equivalent perhaps
to the French word momerie']. Good conduct, according to
the momiers 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 Eobespierre. The Consistory handed
over the victims to be condemned by the Council, which
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 irre-
proachable, which have remained unchanged in Geneva to this
day; they prevailed 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
aa a power with other powers, asking for their treasure,
demanding armies, and filling his hanads with their money
for the poor, proves that the Idea, regarded as the sole means
of dominion, begets political misers, men whose only en-

196 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIGI

joyment is intellectual, and who, like the Jesuits, love power
for its own sake. Pitt, Luther, Calvin, and Eobespierre, all
these Harpagons in greed of dominion, died penniless. His-
tory has preserved the inventory made in Calvin's rooms after
his death, and evei7thing, including his books, was valued
at fifty crowns. Luther's possessions amounted to as much;
indeed, his widow, the famous Catherine de Bora, was obliged
to petition for a pension of fifty crowns bestowed on her by
'^ German Elector.

Potemkin, Mazarin, and Eichelieu, 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.

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 Pr6-l';fiveque, so
called from the ancient residence of the Bishop of Geneva,
driven out thirty years before. These two men, acquainted,
no doubt, with the law of Geneva as to the closing of the gates,
very necessary then, and absurd enough in these days, rode
towards the Porte de Eives; 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 evi-
dent 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 east the severest glance at his dis-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 197

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, re-
sembled. His sufferings, which never gave him a reprieve,
were visible in two deep furrows on each side of his nose,
following the line of his moustache, 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
head, it was possible to admire a large and nobly formed
forehead, 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 com-
pelled him to wear a quite shallow, pleated ruff, on which
his face rested like John the Baptist's in the charger. Be-
tween his moustache 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 ex-
pressed in this magnificent head.

Though it was difficult to detect in these features any
trace of the constant headaches which tormented Calvin in
the intervals of a slow fever that was consuming him, pain,
constantly defied by study and a strong will, gave this ap-
parently 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
-14

198 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

known in the history of mankind. Even the lips, though
beautiful, expressed cruelty. A chaste life, indispensable
to vast projects, 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 preach-;
ers, 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.

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 inventors 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, pol-
ished, 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 lawgiver knew absolutely nothing of friendship; but
having no fear of finding his successor in him, he liked to
play with Theodore, as Eichelieu 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 affec-
tion.

Theodore was Calvin's spoilt child. The great Reformer
never scolded him, overlooked his irregularities, his love

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 199

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 on the right of Theodore de Beze, who was
walking on Calvin's right. Calvin's housekeeper ran for-
ward 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 Veze-
lay, 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 were en-
demic at 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,'*
replied the Reformer, with the bitterness that colored his least
remarks. "Ah ! I am going fast, iny son, and what will be-
come of you when I am gone ?"

"We will fight by the light of your writings," said Chau-
dieu.

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.

200 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"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 Kef ormation ?"

"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
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 Court of Home, and to create a patriarch
in France, as in the Greek Church !" cried the Keformer,
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 Chaudieu.

"That is one less, then," said Calvin, as they passed through
thp Porte de Eives. "Elizabeth of England will keep her
busy. Two neighboring queens will soon be fighting; one h
handsome, and the other ugly enough — a first cause of irrita-
tion ; and then there is the question of legitimacy "

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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 201

''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 should
end by stirring up war to the death between the two branches
of the royal family in 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 presence !
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 cere-
monial.

"Now it is your part, Theodore, to enlist people's interests.
Do not overstep that line. In the way of doctrine every-
thing has been done, everything has been said; add not one
jot! Why does Cameron, that little pasteur 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 unchain mg the

202 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

mob in cities and ravaging France. After this terrifying
harangue, they walked on in silence, till they reached the
little square of Saint-Pierre, and made their way towards
the minister's dwelling. Calvin's lodging consisted of three
rooms on the second floor of this house, which is hardly
known, and of which no one ever tells you in Geneva —
where, indeed, 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 com-
monly 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 round a long table, formed
all the furniture of the sitting-room. A white earthenware
stove in one comer 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 Ee-
former.

"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 want pacification
as a result; 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 bid-
ding, "we must compel the King of Navarre to join the
Guises and the Connetable de Montmorency, by advising him
JO desert Queen Catherine de' Medici. Let us take full ad-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 208

Tantage of his weakness; he is but a poor creature. If he
prove a turncoat to the Italian woman, she, finding herself
bereft of his support, must inevitably join the Prince de
Conde and Coligny. Such a manoeuvre may possibly com-
promise her so effectually that she must remain on ouj
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 ! Bum their churches. Go on, my sons ! If you have
any devoted youths "

"I 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 !"

"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

204 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

is 80 fatal to my teaching, thrice-dyed simpleton, is that it
is based on reason. By the thunders of Saint Paul, by the
sword 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 fearful persecution, and I hope for it with all my
might! To us reverses are more favorable than success!
The Eef ormation can be beaten and endure, do you hear, oaf ?
Whereas Catholicism 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 ! 0 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 thickened
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:

; *T^y 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.

'Tily beloved master," said de Beze in a caressing tone,
taking his hands and kissing them, "Jove thunders, but he
can smile."

ABOUT CATHBKINE DE' MEDICI 205

Calvin looked at his disciple with a softened expression.

"Do not misunderstand me, my friends/' he said.

"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.
Stuart, 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 will bring
forth ? We may be imprisoned in spite of safe-conducts "

"And yet you want to spare them !" said Calvin, embracing
de Beze.

He took Chaudieu's hand, saying:

"Mind you, not Huguenots, not Keformers : be Calvinists !
Speak only of Calvinism. — Alas ! this is not ambition, for I
am a dying man ! — Only, everything of Luther's must be
destroyed, to the very names of Lutheran and Lutheranism."

"Indeed, divine man, you deserve such honor !" cried Chau-
dieu.

"Uphold uniformity of creed. Do not allow any further
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

206 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

by Theodore de Beze; however, he retracted his 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 dis-
sertation 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 Hu-
guenots 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 pla-
giarized from Theodore de B^ze.*

On the day when Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu reached
Paris, the Court had returned thither from Eeims, 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 Conde, was the leader of the Reforma-
tion, 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
difficulties checked Catherine, whose newly-acquired authority
needed a brief period of tranquillity ; she impatiently awaited
Calvin's reply by de Beze and Chaudiea, 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,

* See note at the end of this volume.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 2OT

in which Christophe was involved, by referring the case
to the Paris Parlement, and they annulled the sentence pro-
nounced by the Commission, declaring it incompetent to try a
Prince of the Blood. The Parlement re-opened 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 ex-
citement 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 ele-
ments 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 Connetable 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 pretence of discus-
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
Catherine was so laboriously building up. This is the scene
as recorded by history; it occurred on the very day when the

208 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

envoys from Geneva arrived at the Hotel de Coligny in the
Eue Bethisy, not far from the Louvre. At the coronation,
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 (Henri III.), who also was
Amyot's pupil.

Catherine heard this from the two Gondis on the way home
from Eeims 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 I'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
shoemaker — 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 were no^
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.

"Best assured. Master," for it was by this name that the
Kings Charles IX. and Henri III. addressed this great writer,
"that you will not be left standing for twenty-four hours
unless 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 covet-
ous, and hoped perhaps for a Cardinal's hat, determined to
temporize. 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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 209

''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 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
Lorrainers 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-

210 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 deciding, 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 expression
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 to him
herself, and in such terms that he came back and obtained
the promise of her 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 Cy-
pierre had complimented on his firmness.

'^hat is to be done?" said she to the two Gondis, Rug-
gieri, Birague, and Chivemi, 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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 211

"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 Signors 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."
1 "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.

"Besides," 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."

"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 Euggieri.

"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 emphasis.

"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 I'Hopital and de Thou ! As to the citi-

212 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

zens 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
Eetz and tutor to the King, within a few days.

This little council was just over when Cardinal de Tour-
non came to announce to the Queen the messengers from
Calvin. Admiral Coligny escorted them to secure them re-
spectful treatment at the Louvre. The Queen summoned her
battalion of maids of honor, and went into the great recep-
tion-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
building, part of which survives in the Cour du Musee. The
present staircase to the galleries was built where the Salle
des ballets was before it. A ballet at that time meant a sort
of dramatic entertainment performed by all the Court.

Eevolutionary prejudice led to the most ridiculous mistake
as to Charles IX. a propos to the Louvre. During the Kevolu-
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 towards 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, connected the galleries with the Louvre by what is
called the Galerie d'Apollon, and the Louvre with the Tuile-
ries 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 I'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 de Henri
II. on a boat full of Huguenots crossing the Seine, though

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 21*1

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 Charies 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 cipher 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 thb
Quay bear the initials of Henri 11. 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' 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 exist-
ence, 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 Eenaissance 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, intro-
duced 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
Calvinists. This playing with a toothpick was a confirmed
habit with the Admiral; he involuntarily picked his teeth
-15

214 ABOUT CATHERINE DB' MEDIO!

in the middle of a battle when meditating a retreat. "Never
trust the Admiral's toothpick, the Constable's 'No/ or Cath-
erine'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 catastrophe is just like the Paris mob, which
thoroughly deserves this grotesque parody of a line of
Boileau's :

Le Frangais, n6 malin, cr§a la guillotine.

(The Frenchman, a born wag, invented the guillotine.)

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
virguU (a comma) and a moustache. 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 poeta
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 preach-
er's gown and Calvinist bands.

The state of affairs in the Chamber of Deputies in our
own day, and that, no doubt, in the Convention too, may en-
able 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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 215

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 Admiral, 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," replied
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 !"

"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, ^Tieretics 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 ad-
mitting 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 in-
structions 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 Conde. "My
friend the Due de Guise knows the captain," he added, look-

216 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

ing at la Balaf re ; "perhaps he would like to make acquaint-
ance 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 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," Albert
de Gondi said in her ear.

"Well, gentlemen," said Catherine, who could not help
smiling, "has your master given you liberty to arrange a
public 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.

'^ell, you acknowledge some authority in the King of
France?" said Catherine, smiling, and interrupting the
minister.

"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 Connetable roughly.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 217

"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."

'^ell, gentlemen, and who are the learned doctors you will
bring into the field ?" said the Queen, silencing the Constable
with a look.

"Duplessis-Mornay and Theodore de Beze are our leaders,"
said Chaudieu.

"The Court will probably go to the chateau 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 mj;
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."

"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, a new faith."

"Ah, madame, if you were not blinded by your connection
with the Court of Eome, 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."

218 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"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 heretics; you rebel against obedience to the King
while avoiding all obedience to the Pope."

She sharply turned away, and returned to Theodore de
B^ze. ,

"I trust to you, monsieur," she said, "to carry throughj
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 as-
signation. This great Prince and party leader was one of
the most successful gallants of the Court; the two hand-
somest women of the day fought for him with such infatua-
tion, that the Marechale de Saint-Andre, the wife of one
of the coming Triumvirate, gave him her fine estate at 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 flirta-
tions with Mademoiselle de Rohan, she fell in love, mean-
while, with the leader of the Eeformed party.

"How different from Geneva !" said Chaudieu to Theodore
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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 219

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 parted.

Some days after the reception of Calvin's secret envoys
by Catherine, and towards the end of that year — for the year
then began at Easter, and the modem calendar was not
adopted till this very reign — Christophe, still stretched on
an armchair, 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 B^bette Lallier had just renewed the application
of compresses, soaked in a lotion brought by Ambroise, to
whose care Catherine had commended Christophe. When
once he was restored 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 till 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 in-
terest 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 business, which no one could
see through. And then the priest of Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs
came several times to see his churchwarden's son, and these i
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 : —

220 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIOI

"I am Yery 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 bum my house down ! — They imposed
on his youth, and we citizens never get anything but scorn
and harm by hanging on to the great. This quite determines
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 busi-
ness; I will never go to Court any more. My son has had
enough of the Eef ormation 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
followed 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 Parlement, 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIOI 221

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 councillor
in the Parlement some day, you can only attain that high
office by serious devotion to the cause of Koyalty."

However, neither Monsieur de Thou's visit, nor Babette's
charms, nor the entreaties of Mademoiselle Lecamus his
mother, had shaken the faith of the Protestant martyr.
Christophe clung all the more stoutly to his religion in pro-
portion 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, hav-
ing 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 Conde had
wished him at the devil at the moment when he bid him suchi
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.

222 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' 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
himself, it may be said, the influence of these two patrons;
he hesitated between the Queen and the Prince. He had
certainly done more for Catherine than for the Eef orraation ;
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 im-
prisonment 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 suf-
fered, already reckoned himself as one of the chiefs of the
Eeformation 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
was based on the very natural hesitancy that possessed the
lad.

"Would not it be fine," he haxi said the day before to

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 228

Babette, "to be the wife of a Councillor to the Parlement;
you would be addressed as madame."

"You are crazy, neighbor," said Lallier. "In the first
place, where would you find ten thousand crowns a year in
landed estate, which a Councillor must show, and from whom
could you purchase a connection? The Queen-mother and
Eegent would have to give all her mind to it to get your son
into the Parlement; and he smells of the stake too strongly
io be admitted."

"What would you give, now, to see your daughter a Coun-
cillor's wife ?"

"You want to sound the depth of my purse, you old fox !"
exclaimed Lallier.

Councillor 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 Eenaudie, 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 veiy 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 Conde and Queen Jeanne. —
Here, read this reply from Monsieur de Pibrac, Viee-Chan-
cellor of Navarre : —

"To Master Lecamus, Syndic of the GuUd of Furriers.
"His Highness the Prince de Conde bids me express to you
his regret at being unable to do anything for his fellow-

224 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 reward-
ing 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! Pibrac! Crac!" cried Babette. "There is noth-
ing to be got out of these Gascons ; they think only of them-
selves."

Old Lecainus 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 Councillor 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 crest-
fallen.

"She made no promises," said the old merchant, "but I
am sure she would not make a fool of you, and would re-
member your sufferings. Still, how could she make a coun-
cillor-at-law of a Protestant citizen ?"

"But Christophe has never abjured !" exclaimed Babette.
"He may surely keep his own secret as to his religious opin-
ions."

"The Prince de Conde would be less scornful of a Coun-.
cillor to the Parlement of Paris," said Lecamus.

"A Councillor, 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 225

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.

"0 my saint and martyr!" cried the preacher, embrac-
ing the young man, "have you got 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, Eomish 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 I 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 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 Chris-
tophe to carry to Queen Catherine the document which, if
discovered, would have cost him his life, the boy had trusted
ito his wit, to chance, to his perspicacity, and had boldly
marched on between 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 himfielf, "I shdl liv»
through it — it is only gain I"

526 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

But at this brutal command, "Die!" to a man who wag
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 illu-
sions.

Christophe calmly asked, "What do you want of me?"

"To fire a pistol bravely, as Stuart fired at Minard."

"At whom?"

"The Due de Guise.''

"Assassination ?"

"Revenge! — Have you forgotten the hundred gentlemen
massacre 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 to return them, is the teach-
ing 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,

"Alas, boy ! you are ambitious ; you can no longer sacrifice
yourself;" and Chaudieu went away.

Not long after this visit, Christophe, with the families
i;f Lallier and Lecamus, had met to celebrate the plighting
of Babette and Christophe in the old parlor, whence Chris-
tophe's couch was now removed, for he could climb the stairs
now, 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 227

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, besides paying twenty tliousand livres on
account.

Lecamus had purchased for his son a magnificent house
in the Eue de Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs, built of stone by
Phiiibert de I'Orme, as a wedding gift. The Syndic had
also spent two hundred and fifty thousand livres out of his
fortune, Lallier paying an equal sum, for the acquisition
of a fine manor and estate in Picardy, for which five hun-
dred thousand livres were asked. This estate being a de-
pendence of the Crown, letters patent from the King — called
letters of rescript — were necessary, besides 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 Coun-
cil had placed certain restrictions on the transfer of lands
belonging to the Crown; and the estate on which Lecamus
had had his eye for the last ten years was one of these. Am-
broise 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.

"My good friend !" exclaimed the surgeon in a great fuss,
and looking at the supper-table, "what is your napery hke?
— 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
Boeufs.

"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 Councillor, 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."

228 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

In an instant all were astir. Christophe's mother and
Babette's aunt trotted about in all the flurry of housewives
taken by surprise. In spite of the confusion into which the
announcement 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; 'T)ut 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;
Monsieur de Thou, the retiring Councillor; Pinard, Secre-
tary of State, and two pages.

"Good folks," 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 Catholic.
Only a Catholic can serve in the Parlement, only a 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 let-
ters 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,
'jiot 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:

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 22»

'^Understand, boy, no subterfuges! We are playing an
honest game?"

"Yes, madame," he said, dazzled by this splendid reward
and by the honor the grateful Queen had done him.

'^ell, then. Master Lecarnus, the King, my son, and I
permit you to purchase the offices and appointments of this
good man Groslay, Councillor 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."

*^ery 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.

"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 suc-
cessor in the business, and grant him the royal patent aa
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
—16

280 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

France, though by a Florentine. If it had come from Flor-
ence, 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 included
among the Crown treasure."

"And you. Master Ambroise," she went on in an under-
tone, turning to the surgeon, and pointing to Christophe,
*Tiave you cured him ? Will he walk ?"

"He will fly," said the surgeon, with a smile. 'Tou 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 on the girl's finger in compensation for the value of the
silver cup.

King Charles IX., who afterwards 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
Cypierre, he incited the President of Parlement, the old re-
tired councillor, 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
shop. 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."

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 231

'TTou 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 Koyalist 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 re-
corded 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 Keformers were soon generally called.
Calvin's ambition was fulfilled, but not till after his death.

This was the origin of the famous Lecamus family of law-
yers. Tallemant des Eeaux was mistaken in saying they had
come from Picardy. It was afterwards to the interest of the
Lecamus family to refer their beginnings 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 magnificept 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, Archbishog of Paris. All the paintings

282 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 Eue de la Pelleterie, still shows what
splendid results were then the outcome of family spirit. We
may be allowed to doubt whether modern individualism, re-
sulting from the repeated equal division of property, wilJ/
ever raise such edifices.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

PART 11

THE EUGGIERl's SECRET,

Between eleven o'clock and midnight, towards 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 disappear-
ance. 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 be-
fitting cats. But to any one who has hunted through the his-
torical curiosities of that time, and seen how many interests
were complicated about the throne, so that the domestic poli*"
tics of France can only be compared to a tangled skein ofi
thread, these two Florentines are really cats, and quite in
their place in the gutter. Their devotion to the person of
Catherine de' Medici, who had transplanted them to the
French Court, required them to shirk none of the conse-
quences of their intrusion there.

But to explain how and why these two courtiers were
perched up there, it wiU be necessary to relate a scene which

234 • ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

had just taken place within a stone's throw of this gutter, at
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 inven-
tion 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 diffi-
culty in obtaining leave to ride into the courtyard of the
Louvre than in winning his sword, and even then the permis-
sion was granted only on the score of his great age. Eti-
quette 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 bor-
rowed it from Persia. In 1573 not only had very few per-
sons 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 func-
tions which gave the privilege of attending their Majesties
after supper could easily be counted. The Marechal de Ketz,
whom we have just seen keeping watch on the gutter, once
offered a thousand crowns of that day to the clerk of the
closet to get speech of Henri 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 chateau 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 re-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 235

tnmed from hunting. Possibly, too, lie 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 further end of the
room. Some conversed in undertones; others kept an eyr
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 chim-
ney 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 Coeur, and mis-
tress in succession of the King of Navarre, of the King of
Poland, and of the Due d'Alengon, had been invited to sup-
per, but she remained standing, her husband being merely a
Secretary of State. Behind these two ladies were the two
Gondis, talking to them. They alone were laughing of all
the dull assembly. Gondi, made Due de Eetz 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
Marechal 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. re-
garded as an enemy; Strozzi, a cousin of Queen Catherine's,
and a few more gentlemen, among whom were to be noted

a« ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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,
afterwards 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 at-
tention.

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 Touchet, Charles IX.'s only mis-
tress, to whom he was chivalrously faithful, had come home
a month since from the chateau 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 afterwards Due
d'Angouleme.

Besides 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
Touchet, Catherine looked with favor on the girl for rea-
sons affecting her own prospects of dominion. Marie

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 237

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, no doubt, of Queen Catherine, and preferred
happiness to splendor. 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 Councillor, and
Lieutenant of the Bailiwick of Orleans, half-way between the
citizen 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 annoyance 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-in-
formed as she was simple and artless, suited the Queen-
mother to admiration, 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, the Comtes of Auvergne and Lauraguais.
Afterwards, Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, disputed the
gift when she became Queen of France, and annulled it ; but
later still, Louis XIIL, out of respect to the Royal blood of
the Valois, indemnified the Comte d'Auvergne by making
him Due d'Angouleme.

Catherine had already given Marie Touchet, who asked for
nothing, the manor of Belleville, an estate without a title,

288 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

near Vincennes, whither she came when, after hunting, the
King slept at that Eoyal 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 legiti-
mate 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 towards 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 read-
ing her Hours in secret. But this innocent Princess began
to perceive what gulfs yawn round a throne, a terrible dis-
covery 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 Eegent :

"Ah, God be praised that He never gave me a son ! What
would have come of it? Tlie 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 Brantome thinks he has given an
ample description when he had said that she had a com-
plexion 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 ac-
count 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 239

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 per-
sistency 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 oflE 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
Catherine 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.

Two words will fully summarize this strange woman, so
interesting to study, whose influence left such deep traces on
France. These two words are dominion and astrology
Catherine de' Medici was excessively ambitious; she had no
passion but for power. Superstitious and a 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
always remain misunderstood; and by giving the first place

240 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

to her faith in astrology, a light will be thrown on the two
philosophical 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 common-sense of her ordinary advisers.

Certain curious antecedent facts justified the power which
Euggieri exerted over his mistress till her latest breath. One
of the most learned men of the sixteenth century was be-
yond doubt the physician to Catherine's father, Lorenzo de'
Medici, Duke of TJrbino. This leech was known as Ruggiero
the elder (vecchio Ruggier, and in French Roger VAncien,
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, Cather-
ine's astrologer, also known as Roger by various French his-
torians. 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
mathematician, 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 oc-
cult sciences were cultivated with an eagerness which may
seem surprising to the sceptical spirits of this supremely
analytical age, who perhaps may find in this historical sketch
the germ of the positive sciences which flourish in the nine-
teenth century — bereft, however, 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 magnum opus, arrived at astonishing
results.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 241

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
illustrious entertainers of Charies V. furnished funds for thci
retorts of Paracelsus. At the beginning of the sixteenth cen-'
tury, Ruggieri the elder was the head of that secret college
whence came Cardan, Nostradamus, and Agrippa, each in
turn physician to the Valois; and all the astronomers, as-
trologers, 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 Rug-
gieri the elder, the principal events of her life were predicted
with an accuracy that is enough to drive disbelievers to de-
spair. 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 ; all were to die childless. And this was all
so exactly verified, that many historians have regarded it as
a prophecy after the event.

It is well known that Nostradamus brought to the chateau
of Chaumont, whither Catherine went at the time of la
Renaudie'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 Mar-
guerite 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

242 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 soothsayer 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 cer-
tainly 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 chateau 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
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
ascribed 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 N"a-
varre; Elizabeth was Queen of Spain; the Due d'Anjou was
King of Poland.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 243

Many other circumstances contributed to confirm Cather-
ine's belief in the occult sciences. On the eve of the tourna-
ment where Henri II. was mortally wounded, Catherine saw
the fatal thrust in a dream. Her astrological council, con-
sisting of Nostradamus and the two Euggieri, 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 Henri IV,
remark that by dint of lies these astrologers hit on the 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 waa
called by the masters of astrology — or sorcery, as it waa
termed by the people — and they were justified by the verifica-
tion of horoscopes.

It was for Cosmo Euggieri, her mathematician and as-
trologer— 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 Euggieri, like con-
fessors, had a mysterious influence which satisfied him, as it
does them. His secret ambition, too, was superior to that of
Tulgar 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 priva{;«

244 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 de-
sire 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 ofi
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 plenti-
fully, 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 neutralize the
strength of two rival Houses and save the throne. This
necessary system justified Henri II.'s foresight. Catherine
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
wonderful 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 thirst-
ing for glory, capable and .generous — and in the face of the

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 245

Conn^table Anne de Montmorency! The Due d'Anjou, in
the eyes of all Europe, reaped the honors of Saint-Bartholo-
mew's Day, while Charles IX. had all the odium. After in-
stilling 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 preceptor, 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 towards her children. The Due d'Anjou, when
he 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'Alengon had a hand ; and he, when he became Due d'Anjou
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 rinened 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
proposed 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
t— 17

246 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

the Queen-mother, Cosmo Ruggieri's participation in the af-
fair would be enough to show that she secretly directed it.
This man, suspected and hated by the King for reasons which
will be pi*esently 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
capital crime. This kind of bedevilment (called in French
envouier, 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 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, ob-
tained from the Supreme Court, through the intervention of
her Councillor Lecamus, that her astrologer should be con-
demned only to the galleys. As soon as the King was dead,
Ruggieri was pardoned by an edict of Henri III.'s, who re-
instated 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 ab-
sence, Charles IX., having nothing to occupy him, had taken
to observing very keenly all that went on around him. He had
set very skilful snares for certain persons whom he had trust-
ed, to test their fidelity. He had watched his mother's proceed-
ings, and had kept her in ignorance of his own, making use
of all the faults she had inculcated in order t© 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 government. Though
the Queen might have attempted to counteract her son's en-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 247

deavors 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 bon 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 deathbed his mother was
obliged to interrupt him, exclaiming, "Do not say that, mon-
sieur V when Charles IX., intrusting his wife and 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'Alengon and la Mole, so
as to be able to divert Charles' efforts at emancipation by his
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 waa
capable of poisoning him ?

Indeed, at this juncture she thought herself so far in dan-
ger 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 scru-
tinizing, 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

248 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

this woman had made herself since the day when she had
succeeded in coercing the Guises after the death of Fran-
cis 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 charm. 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 perfect form. Every lady in Europe thenceforth rode
on a side-saddle, a la planchette, 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 es-
pecially, 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 care-
lessly 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 Comte
de Solern. This circumstance, added to the mother's sup-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 249

posed hatred of her son, may confirm the accusation brought
against her by de Thou ; at least it gives weight to the opinion
here expressed, that she cared little for any of her children,
an indifference which is accounted for by her faith in the
pronouncement of astrology. Such a woman could not care
for tools that were to break in her hands. Henri III. was the
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 dc'-'elopment of his powers, his last struggles to seiza
the reins of government, his desire to live, his waste o|
strength, his last sufferings and his last pleasures, all indit
cate, to impartial judges, that he died of disease of the lungs,
a malady at that time little understood, and of which nothi
ing was known ; and its symptoms might lead Charles himsell
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 in-
cidental 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 eye-
brows— 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; ho had large ears;
light reddish hair ; lips of the color of blood, the lips of a con-

250 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

sumptive 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-
tensely interesting — more than one had been caused by re-
morse 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'
student 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 or-
ganization 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 Catherine 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
passion 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 re-'
sources, and the obstacles placed by his mother in the way
of the pacification of the kingdom; and 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,

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 251

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 Pare — had been
sent for from the country by Catherine, and, obeying tlie
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 re-
serve, saying nothing of the sentence each had secretly pro
nounced. Now and again the King would raise his heavj^^
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 youthful
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 bottom
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

252 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 in-
,cident 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,
Tavannes, 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 ex-
ample; 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 Grondis
reflected in a glass, and gave them a significant glance,
which her son could not see — all the more so because he him-
self was exchanging meaning looks with the Comte de Solem
and Villeroy; Tavannes was absorbed in thought.

"Sire," said the Marechal de Eetz, coming out of his medi-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 253

tations, "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, bowing
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. "Sacre chat dfltalie, 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
jumping 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, sir, 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 school-fellows, 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 Solem, 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
hiB mother and all her servants were inimical to him, had
committed some little indiscretions — was happy to have found
in Monsieur de Solem a devotion which justified complete
confidence. Tavannes and Villeroy were only partly in the

264 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

secret. The Comte de Solem alone knew the whole of the
King's schemes; and he was in every way very useful to his
master, inasmuch as that he had a handful of confidential
and attached men at his orders who obeyed him blindly.
Monsieur de Solem, 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
Jof everything.

"Well, Solern," said Charles IX., "we were 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
explore the neighborhood of the Kue Saint-Honore.

"I will take my lady by surprise," said Charles to Tavannes
as they went along the Rue de I'Autruche.

To make this nocturnal ploy 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 I'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 Marechal d'Ancre, met his death. Beyond this garden
rose the turrets of the Hotel 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 pos-
sessions, decreed by Francis I., to avoid having to decide
between 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 chateau, which looked well from the river, was not
destroyed till the time of Louis XIV.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 255

The Rue de I'Autruche ran from the Rue Saint-Honore,
ending at the Hotel de Bourbon on the quay. This street,
named de I'Autriche on some old plans, and de I'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 de-
serted the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where for several cen-
turies 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 Hotel d'Alengon in the
Rue Saint-Honore. This; the palace of the Counts of that
name, always an appanage of the Crown, was at this time
owned by Henri 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 assem-
blage 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 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 to see how
poor is the state of a prince in these days. There were im-
mense stables, lodgings for physicians, librarians, chancellor,
chaplains, treasurers, officials, pages, paid servants, and
lackeys, attached to the Prince's person.

Not far from the Rue Saint-Honore, in a garden belonging

256 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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'AlenQon 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 Ser-
gents, he could hardly avoid stopping there. While keeping
a lookout 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
Rene, who supplied the Court, the King was seized with one
of those swift inspirations which are suggested by antecedent
observation, 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 without
her head having been opened, in spite of the express 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 Cosmo
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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 267

unknovm 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. Eomancers 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
supremacy in toxicology merely as part of her pre-eminence
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
frescoes, 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 to imagine how greatly the dark suspicions which tor-
mented him added to his eagerness to detect Eene in the act.

The old fountain, since rebuilt, at the comer of the Kue
de I'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 Eene's. Charles, followed
by his companions, began walking along the roofs, to the
great terror of the good folks 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
vexatious damage.

When the two Gondis saw Tavannes and the King clam-
bering along the roof adjoining Rene's, the Marechal de Eetz

258 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 busi-
ness so far as our fortunes are concerned by attaching our-
selves 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 banished, im-
prisoned, 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; Cosmo
Euggieri has foretold his death next year."

"A dying boar has often gored the hunter," said Charles
de Gondi. "This plot of the Due d'Alengon with the King of
Navarre and the Prince de Conde, of which la Mole and
Coconnas are taking the onus, is dangerous rather than use-
ful. 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'Alengon, who is to turn Calvinist."

"Budelonef Dolt that you are, do not you see that this
plot enables our Queen to learn what the Huguenots can
do vidth the Due d'Alengon, 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."

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 259

"Ay I" said Charles de Gondi, "by dint of taking oui 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 matters
to him."

"You are going, Albert ?"
f "To-morrow. Is it not my duty to attend the King of
Poland ? I shall join him at Venice, where the Signori have
undertaken to amuse him."

"You are prudence itself."

"Che hestia! 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 mistress."

"Kind !" said the Grand Master. "She is the woman to
drop her tools if she finds them too heavy."

"0 coglione! You call yourself a soldier, and are afraid
of death? Every trade has its duties, and our duty is to
Fortune. When we attach ourselves to monarchs who are
the fount of all temporal power, and who protect and en-
noble and enrich our families, we have to give them such love
as inflames the soul of the martyr for heaven; when they
sacrifice 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 Eetz."

"Listen to me," said the Due de Eetz. "The Queen has
great hopes of the Euggieri and their arts to reconcile her to
her son. When that artful youth refused to have anything to
do with Eene, our Queen easily guessed what her son's sus-
picions were. But who can tell what the King has in his
pocket ? Perhaps he is only doubting as to what fate he in-
tends 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,"

260 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

'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 Eetz gravely, "I have started on a splen-
did 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'Alengon are devoted to
Madame de Sauves; Catherine will always have them in lead-
ing 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.*'

"Hark ! There is a noise in the Hue Saint-Honore," cried
Charles de Gondi. "Eene's door is being locked. Cannot
you hear a number of men? They must have taken the
Euggieri."

"The deviir 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 Eue de I'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 Euggieri.

"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 French-
men, have contrived to clutch two Crown offices," said Ta-
vannes, half in jest.

"And the King?" asked the Grand Master, who was not
much disturbed by Tavannes' hostility.

"He is staying with his mistress."

ABOUT CATHBRINE DE' MEDICI 261

''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 Betz.

The three courtiers walked on in silence. As they bid
each other good-night, rejoining their retainers, who escorted
them home, two men lightly glided along the Eue de I'Au-
truche in the shadow of the wall. These were the King and
the Comte de Solem, 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.

"My mothen 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 Solem.
"And how is she to distinguish who we are at this distance ?"

**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 towards the Pre aux Clercs. On arriving there, the Comte
de Solem, 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
ihem at a little distance to keep guard over the King. This
faithful servant felt some doubts which Charles did not share.

262 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

for to him indeed life was too great a burden. The Count
was the only witness to the meeting on the King's side.

It soon became interesting.

"Sire," said one of the speakers, "the Connetable de Mont^
morency, the best friend the King, your father, had, and
possessed of all his secrets, agreed with the Marechal de Saint-
Andre 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."

"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
alliance 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
kingdom quake. By God and every sacred relic ! it is time
that the Eoyal 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 priv-
ileges are bound to the throne; when you have allowed re-
ligion 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 363

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
Eang 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
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
Messieurs 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
read)"- 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 ad-
herents, 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 bid-
ding, will rush upon the great lords. I will follow the ex-
ample 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.

"I may remind you, coiisin," 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 m}'^ mother's hatred, and you care enough for me to play
the part of second in my duel with her — well, then, listen.

384 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIOI

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 ! 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 Solem.

"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, FrancCji
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."

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 265

*Well," said the King, "come to my forge ; no one can hear
us there. Besides, I am anxious that my mother should know
nothing of the arrest of the Euggieri. If she knows I am
"within, the good lady will suspect nothing, and we will con-
cert 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 Euggieri?"

"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
Belleville's.*'

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 grotesque aspect. !

"Monsieur," said she, "you are killing yourself "

"I am fulfilling my horoscopes," he retorted, with a bitter
Bmile. "But you, madame, are you as ill as I am?"

"We have both watched through the night, monsieur, but

266 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

with very different purpose. When you were setting out
to 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'Alengon 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, bran-
dishing the iron bar he held.

"Yes. The Due d'Alengon, 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 Monsieui
le Due d'Alengon, she loves Bussy, and she also loves littlG
la Mole."

'^hat 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 them. The younger branches must be impotent for

ABOUT CATHERINE DE* MBDIOI 267

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 I" 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'Alengon, 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 Coconnas, your brother
d'Alengon's right-hand man. As to the Prince de Conde,
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 hand-
some return on his wedding-day for the pretty wife I got
him.

"This is a serious matter, monsieur. You spoke of predic-
tions ! 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. Eeflect. You blame yourself
now, I know, for Saint-Bartholomew's night; you blame me
for persuading you to it. But Catholicism, monsieur, ought
to be the bond of Spain, France, and Italy, three nations

268 ABOUT CATHERINE DE* MEDICI

which by a secretly and skilfully 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 which they are grasping at. The Medici, masters of
Florence and Eome, 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 compel us to repeat
these things ?

"Charlemagne made a mistake when he pushed northwards.
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-
eenting me as your chief enemy at home. Have I hindered
you from having an heir ? Is it my fault that your mistress
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*Alen§on conspire
against you ?"

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 269

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 castrorum). Catherine had spread the
I 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, trans-
mitted 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 un-
derstand 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."

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 meam" he cried, with tears in his
eyes. "Life is a burden to me. Whether natural or com-
pulsory, I would rather meet death than these contradictory
torments," he added, and he struck the hammer on his anvil

270 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 Kuggieri."

The little house inhabited by the Lady of Belleville, where
Charles had left his prisoners, was the last but one in the
Eue de I'Autruche, near the Eue 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
elaborately treated. The entrance consisted of two stone
pillars, diamond-cut, and the architrave was graced with the
reclining 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
courtyards 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.

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 deli-
cate arabesques. All the three windows of the first-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
balcony being remarkable for a true lovers' knot — led to the

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 271

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 garden laid out in the fashion of the time, and full of
rare flowers, occupied a space behind the house of equal ex-
tent with the forecourt, A vine hung over the walls. A
silver pine stood in the centre of a grass plot ; the flower bor-
ders 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 fagades alike the architectural
treatment of this middle window was carried up to the frieze
of the cornice, with a bow that gave it the appearance 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'Alengon,
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
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 suf-
ferings, give play to his taste for the arts, and enjoy the
poetry he loved — pleasures denied him by the cares of his
most ponderous 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 presentiment of an imminent and terrible death
lent to all his actions.

272 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

In the afternoon of this day, Marie was finishing her toilet
in her oratory — the ladies' houdoir 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 at-
tentively 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 councillors convened, and by the
duration of the sitting. What can have happened, some dis-
aster ? 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 round 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.

"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 throigh
its infusion into gentle caresses, which, however, had no ef-
fect. She raised her head to the level of the King's, embrac-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 273

ing 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 chateau d'Am-
boise, 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 Dauphin,
who had already caused the death of his fair Agnes. 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
second Valois will end in the same way. The Queen
has only brought me a daughter, and I shall die without leav-
ing any child to come, for a minority would be the greatest

274 ABOUT CATHERINE DE* MEDICI

misfortune that could befall the kingdom. Besides, if I had
a son, would he live ? — Charles is a name of ill-omen, Charle-
magne 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'Alengon 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,
"there is a realm where you are adored, which your Majesty
fills entirely with glory and strength; and there the word
Monsieur 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 ar-
ranged 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 not you 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 communi-
cation with them? No girl was ever barred in with greater
severity than these men, who have had neither food nor drink.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 275

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."

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 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 Eeligion. Your
last act of State opened the road you must follow: Exter-
minate heresy."

'*You used to blame the stratagem," said Charles, "and
now "

"It is accomplished," she put in. "Besides, I am of Mad-
ame Catherine's opinion. It was better to do it yourself than
to leave it to the Guises."

276 ABOUT CATHERINE DE* MEDICI

"Charles VII. had only men to fight against, and 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 at-
tempt. We shall die of it, we kings. On whom can I de-
pend? 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 ; besides, 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. »

"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, 'Tiow you make me hate Madame Cath-
erine, 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 Dauphine 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 misfortunes."

"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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 277

vices, and made you believe that your bad ones were virtues.
Was that acting a mother's part ? — Be a tyrant like Louis XI.,
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 1
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 Guiye to their senses ; I will cut adrift from the
Court of Kome ; 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 Na-
varre, of the King of Poland, of the Due d'Alengon, 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 XL 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
—19

2T8 about CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

morning disgusted rae with everything — treachery on all
sides, antagonistic interests everywhere !

"I 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.

Charles was, in fact, a prey to utter prostration of mind
'and body, resulting from over-fatigue of every faculty, and
enhanced 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 it-
self 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
l6ft 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, with-
ous 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 happi-
ness.

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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 279

BO deeply, that he started up like a horse that feels the spur.
He put his arm round Marie's waist, and before she knew
what he was doing had drawn her down on the couch.

"I will be King no more!" he said. "I will be nothing
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 sud-
denly.

"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 ?"

"Sire !" she cried.

"Sire !" he repeated, flashing sparks from his eyes, so vio-
lent was his first surge of fury at his mistress' ill-timed defer-
ence. "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 !"

*^hat!" 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 Charles
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. *^ou are

280 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIOI

more of a child than he," she said, half angry, but hall
pleased.

"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 ; 'T)ut 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 reproduction
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 saddened
countenance; and when Marie saw that her lover had for-
gotten everything, she laid her head on his shoulder and
whispered in his ear:

'^ill not you 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.

"^'ou could doubt me," replied 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 ?"

'T!n the Rue Saint-Honore, my jewel," said the King, who
Beemed to have recovered himself, and who, as he recalled his

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 281

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 Kene, my mother's
perfumer and glover — ^yours too, the whole Court's. I have
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 but just come home from Dau-
phine 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 Floren-
tine's house? All the windows to the street are constantly
kept shut excepting the last, from which the Hotel de Sois-
sons 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 distil death,
trusted to the faint hearts of the Parisians to escape inspec-
tion; 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
the King. "The first thing on which my eyes fell was a tall

282 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 parch-
ment 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, skeletons, dried herbs, minerals, and drugs,
with which the place was stuffed; here some books and re-
torts, with chests full of instruments for magic and astrology ;
there diagrams for horoscopes, phials, wax figures, and per-
haps the poisons he concocts for Eene 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
snaJce, as white as an ermine, as pale as death, as motion-
less 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 cu-
riously 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 discourage and nothing
dismay. His attitude, motionless but full of thrilling life,
his features so chiseled, so deeply cut by a passion that has

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 283

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 conquered by her, and bent,
without having broken, under the burden of an enterprise
it will never give up, threatening creation 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 tem-
per no more swords ; I want to float over abysses, as that old
man does; his science seems to me a sovereignty. In short,
I believe in these occult sciences."

"You, the eldest son, and the defender of the Holy Cath-
olic, Apostolic, and Koman Church!" cried ^arie.

"I." \

"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 towards the Rue Saint-Honore. Pres-
ently a light shone out, and then I saw another light, answer-
ing to the old man's, by which we could perceive Cosmo Rug-
gieri .on the top of the column.

" 'Oh, ho ! They understand each other,' said I to
Tavannes, who at once thought the whole affair highly sus-
picious, and was quite of my opinion that we should seize
these two men, and at once make a search in their abominable
workshop. 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 coun-
sel against faithless women, who gains money out of the
past and the future, taking it from every one, who sells
horoscopes, and is supposed to know everything, — that half-
demon came in saying to the old man, 'Good-evening,
brother.'

284 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"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 she.

"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 men looked at the stove. — 'What is the power of the
moon to-night?' the old man asked Cosmo. — 'Why, caro Lo-
renzo,' my mother's astrologer replied, 'the high tides of Sep-
tember 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 transforma-
tion, but all the various forms are of one and the same mat-
ter.'— 'That is what my predecessor thought,' replied Lorenzo.
'This morning Bernard Palissy was telling me that the metals
are a result of compression, and that fire, which parts all
things, joins all things also ; fire has the power of compressing
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, he said,
'There is some one near! Who is it?' — 'The King,' said she.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 285

'1 at once showed myself, knocking on the window-pane;
Euggieri 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 Euggieri,
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 cun-
ning 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 undertakings, however blamable they may
be. So tell me everything without concealment. If you de-
ceive me, you will be sternly dealt with. But Pagan or Chris-
tian, Calvinist or Mohammedan, you have my Eoyal 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 ex-
amine your consciences, for you 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 Euggieri
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-

286 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

ment they treated on an equal footing with a King who ac-
knowledged 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 ehoosing to let them
suppose that I feared any devilry, I put out my hands.
Lorenzo took the right and Cosmo the left, and each placed
one in the hand of a woman, so there I was like Jesus Christ
between 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 wo-
men in an unknown tongue. Neither Tavannes nor I could
catch the meaning of a single sentence.

'^e 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
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 you 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, offer-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 287

ing him some fine fruit on a silver-gilt plate. "Look at these
grapes and pears; I went myself to gather them all at Vin-
cennes."

"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 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 trou-
bles that make him sad and anxious."

"Koyalty 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."

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 Euggieri quite enough
in France, and behold there are two! Listen, my dearest
heart, you have a good mother-wit, you would make a capital
lieutenant of police, for you detect everything "

*^ell. 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."

288 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

''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 accom-
panied him in all his amusements; he now came to ask
whether his Master would wish to speak to 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, excepting 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 cur-
tains, 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 in 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 por-
trait of the King, in a red velvet frame. Charles rested his
elbow on the arm of the seat, to contemplate the two Italians
at his ease.

The shutters shut, 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE* MEDICI 289

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 counte-
nance, 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 Euggieri 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 ex-
traordinary 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
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 Euggieri. "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 Euggieri 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 impulse of rage.

290 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 pres-
ence of a lady whose permission you ought to wait for."

"The man you see before you, madame," said the grand
old man, "is as far above kings as kings are above their sub-
jects, 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 posi-
tion 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
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 imex-
pected! 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
himself 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

ir-*.

t^-'\e~-^

JL

• ABOCT CATHRUrim Mr miDfoi

Ti ug old man ' t down. Coaatt,

'. boldnc^-. ' ^Totlior

, said, w ;

ill thfc pr»'T^
ut for.'*
"live mail 'W' «aid tlie gotr

he u
to ii.

Lorenzo Ruggieri

■ ui^iunl all that ■■>
0 all, how glad tii
^'ctual regions so as U<
■ -n and thing?. ' .
-3: reraain.s !>
liiit* !i by his

himself .

Throne v.m i; j-< i

H-n'alty bad ov.'x it* ■

%i-pi but be strungtly stariied it}

-ly^rvEMzc •Kuc-c-isrv*'^

•u^

ABOtJT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 291

of his power. Eeligious 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.
Besides, a victory to be won over mankind was an undertaking
which would make every other interest seem trivial in the
eyes of the Euggieri. 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 — that they exchanged with Marie and the King, whose
looks were keen and suspicious, were a drama in themselves.

"Sire," said Lorenzo Euggieri, "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 believe that God troubles himself about human affairs."

Though fully resolved to preserve his sovereign indiffer-
ence, 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 I am 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 am-
bitious than that. If I, at this day, could recognize the
presence of God in matter, the fire of the furnaces that have

292 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 .eligions 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 ac-
cept 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 goes to hear them. Your mother's
astrologer believes in the Divinity of Christ, in the Immacu-
late Conception, and in Transubstantiation ; 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 "

*^ho wiU be ?" asked the King.

"The last of the Valois and the first of the Bourbons," re-
plied Lorenzo. "But Cosmo will come to my way of think-
ing. 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, knitting
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 aa
he looked at Marie Touchet.

The brothers exchanged a swift look of satisfaction

"He is interested in alchemy," thought th^, "so we are
safe."

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 283

"Our prognostics are based on the existing relations of man
to nature ; but the very point we aim at is the complete altera-
tion 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 attempts, Sire; we must come back
again. Sire ! Unless you know the ground on which our
edifice is 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 dif-
fused throughout the infinite Ether, wherein myriads of be-
ings are produced; and these have no resemblance to each
other between star and star, because the conditions of life
are everywhere 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 them-
selves 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
Itheories 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

294 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

beautiful combination produces your body — and whicli 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 manifesta-
tion 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 crea-
ture 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 pro-
long it at will ! — This is the desire that has silvered my hair.
But I walk on boldly in the darkness, leading to battle
those intellects which share my faith. Life will some day
be ours."

'^ut 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, impa-
tient, 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 ma-]
terial 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, Produc-
tion!"

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 29S

'Troof, proof ? Pause there I" 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 become a
man; from these small masses of matter a pure element was
derived to which some force, some motion would have been
added. In the absence of a Creator, must not that first prin-
ciple be able to assume the external forms which constitute
our world? For the phenomena of life are everjrwhere the
same. Yes, in metals as in living beings, in plants as in man,
life begins by an imperceptible embryo which develops spon-
taneously. 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 capable
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 onr
greatness ! 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
comes 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 ignots to be
reduced 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.

296 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

air, and water are needed for fertility and nourishment. An-
other 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.

"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!'

'Tes, Sire, we are animated by a sentiment on which the
happiness depends 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 ser-
vice. What created us ? A motion. What power keeps life
in us? A motion. And should not science grasp this mo-
tion? Nothing on earth is lost, nothing flies off from eur

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 20?

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 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 covered 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, theo, 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; Matter, 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
U8 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,

296 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIOI

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
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 towards the essence of life ! Grand Master, Eosicrucians^
companions, 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 primi-
tive atom, the corpuscular 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 danger-
ous. Eeligious 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, ev^ry 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 every-
thing is unstable. We shall submit the diamond to our cru-
cible ; 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 na-
tions."

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 per-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 2M

epective full of toiling gnomes. The impatience of curiosity
dissipated the alarms of suspicion,

"But, then/' exclaimed the King, "you are great politicians,
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 inter-
ests are men plus things ; only in solitude can we discern the
general aspect of the future. The Protestantism that is de-
vouring you will be devoured in its turn by its practical out-
come, which, in its day, will become a theory too. Europe,
so far, has not gone further than religion; to-morrow it will
attack Koyalty."

"Then the night of Saint-Bartholomew was a great con-
ception ?"

"Yes, Sire; for when the people triumph, they will have
their Saint-Bartholomew. When Eeligion and Eoyalty 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 Eu-
rope 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 man-
kind, 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.

"We move but slowly ; but we never lose what we have once
conquered."

"So yon, in fact, are the King of the Wizards," said
Charles IX., piqued at finding himself so small a personage
in the presence of this man.

300 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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. Besides, 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
brother'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!
Coligny was right; my executioners are in the conventicles,
they are at the Louvre. You are either impostors or regicides !
— Jacob, call in Solern."

"Mj Lord," said Marie Touchet, "the Euggieri have your
■word of honor. You have chosen to eat of the fruit of the
tree of knowledge; do not complain of its bitterness."

The King smiled with an expression of deep contempt ; his
material sovereignty seemed small in his eyes in comparison
with the supreme intellectual sovereignty of old Lorenzo Eug-
gieri. Charles IX. could scarcely govern France; the Grand
Master of the Eosicrucians commanded an intelligent and
submissive people.

"Be frank; I give you my word as a gentleman that yonr

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIOI -301

reply, even if it should contain the avowal of the worst crimes,
shall be as though it had never been spoken," the Eling 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."
I "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 da^igers
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 se-
crecy? Nobody could have fired at Coligny but you, or the
Queen-mother, or one of the Guises. No one made any mis-
take about that. Take my word for it, in politics poison can-
not be used twice with impunity; princes always have suc-
cessors.

"As to smaller men, if, like Luther, they becoine sovereigns
by the power of ideas, by killing them you do not kill their
doctrine. — The Queen is a Florentine; she knows that poi-
son 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
have been more 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, "these figures are se entirely innocuous
that we lend ourselves to such magic to satisfy blind pas-
sions, like physicians who give bread pills to persons who
fancy themselves sick. A desperate woman imagines that

302 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 Euggieri, smil-
ing.

"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.

'Tou 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'Alengon?"

"He will never reign."

"Then Henri de Bourbon will be King?**

'Tes, Sire."

"And what death will he die?"

"A violent death."

"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," saidi
Marie Touchet.

"Dear heart, the Euggieri have my word as a gentleman,"
said Charles, smiling. "Will Marie have children ?"

'Tes — and madame will live to be more than eighty."

"Must I have them hanged?" said the King to his mis-

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 303

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
Touehet to the two brothers during the few moments when
they were alone.

"Madame/' replied Lorenzo with dignity, "the King re-
quired 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 dis-
traction."

"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 pres-
ent 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 '*

"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 rea-
son, during the time we spent in your pretty jail, 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."

*^e are innocent," said the old man haughtily.

"So much the better; for at this moment the King is hav-
ing 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
mehnt : "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 Euggieri 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

304 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

when he went to fetch his son, and Jacob intercepted him to
give him a note written by Chapelain, he opened it in the cer-
tainty of finding in it what his physician told him concern-
ing his visit to the laboratory, where all that had been dis-
covered 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 hia
jbrother.

Cosmo took the child's little hand and studied it 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 desire 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 argu-
ment, he looked triumphantly at his mistress.

"Mind," said Lorenzo Euggieri, "is the exercise of an in-
ternal 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 another
life. Mind — ^thought — is a faculty which may cease even dur-
ing life with the forces that produce it."

'TTou are logical," said the King with surprise. "But
alchemy is an atheistical science."

"Materialist, Sire, which is quite a different thing. Ma-
terialism 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."

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 305

"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 I'Autruche, they cast a look in front and behind to
see that no one was either following them or waiting for
them, and went on as far as the Louvre moat without speak-
ing a word; but there, finding that they were alone, Lorenzo
said to Cosmo in the Florentine Italian of the time:

"Ajfe d'Iddio! como le abbiamo infinoccJiiato !" (By God,
we have caught them finely!)

"Oran 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 fulness of joy the mind is in some sort released from
the body, Marie exclaimed :

"Charles, I understand Lorenzo Euggieri; but Cosmo said
nothing."

"That is true," said the King, startled by this sudden flash

306 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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. Lo-
renzo 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 Eetz, a friend of
the Euggieri, and a believer in their foresight.

Marie Touchet married Charles de Balzac, Marquis d'En-
tragues. Governor of Orleans, by whom she had two daugh-
ters. The more famous of these two, the Comte d'Auvergne'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 inter-
fere, so great was his respect for the blood of the Valois.

Cosmo lived till after the accession of Louis XIIL; he
saw the fall of the House of Medici in France, and the over-
throw of the Concini. History has taken care to record that
he died an atheist — that is to say, a materialist.
I 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI SJOt

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 last professor of alchemy who ex-
plained the science well, but he left no writings. The doc-
Itrine 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. — •
'^hat are fifty generations for studying the mysteries of
life ?" the Comte de Saint-Germain used to say.

Pabis, November-December 1886.

ABOUT CATHERINE T>E' IMEDIOI

PART III

THE TWO DREAMS

In 1786 Bodard de Saint- James, treasurer to the Navy, w&s
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 oneself 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 Dange 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 Dang6). This
allusion to the terrific gambling that went on in the de-
ceased man's house was his funeral oration. The house is
that opposite 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 antici-'
pating that Serene bankruptcy — to use an expression of
Lebrun-Pindare'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
receiving 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 309

persons of title who had at least the minor privileges of
entree at Versailles. To say that many blue ribbons were to
be seen in 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 Eohan family, as was
proved subsequently 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 spoiled my complexion and made me look like a peas-
ant 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

310 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

from some province — I forget which. — Ah ! yes, from Artois,
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 peo-
ple 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 Emi-
nence is most kind to him.''

'^hat is it about ?" said I.

"Three hundred thousand livres," said she.

**What ! a lawyer ?" I asked, with a little start of astonish-
ment.

'Tes/' replied she.

And, somewhat disturbed by having to make this humiliat-
ing confession, Madame Bodard returned to her game of f aro-

Every table was made up. I had nothing to do or to
say. I had just lost two thousand crowns to Monsieur de
LavaJ, 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. Monsieur 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 Bean-
marchais, 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 sig-
nificant way, by directing 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 a trick, and also because Beaumarchais had some-
what familiarly seized my hand.

"What is it, monsieoir?" said I.

With a wink he indicated the Minister.

'T)o not wake him," he said in a low tone; "we may be
only too thankful when he sleeps."

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 311

"But even sleeping is a scheme of finance," said I.

"Certainly it is," replied the statesman, 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.

"Yery 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 hus-
band, 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 Beaumar-
chais to 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 amuse-
ment open to us, and as it gave promise of some blundering
impertinence on the part of the two strangers, which amused

312 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 polite-
ness 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 like a ferret. Suddenly
his cheeks flushed as he heard Madame de Saint-James dis-
puting 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
physical 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 Beau-
marchais had worked up to a satisfactory condition.

"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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI S13

night was Catherine de' Medici herself; such a miracle must
seem as impossible to a Christian as to a philosopher/' re-
plied 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 belong-
ing to the King; on her head was the characteristic black vel-
vet cap; her complexion was colorless, and her face the face
you know. I could not help expressing my surprise to His
Eminence. 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 spec-
tacle of a supper where such illustrious women of the past
were the guests robbed me of my presence of mind. When, at
about midnight, 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 con-
dition 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 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 centered 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

814 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 Catherine 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, '1 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 hesi-
tated. Then Beaumarchais exclaimed impetuously :

"Come, proceed, Maitre ! Do not you know that when the
laws leave folks so little liberty, people revenge themselves by
laxity of manners?"

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 ^u call that a crime ?' replied she ; 'it was only an

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI SIS

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 Montlucs
as we needed. Posterity will not give us credit for the defec-
tive communications which hindered us from giving our work
the unity of impulse which is necessary to any great Coup
d'^taf; 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 Eichelieu, 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
useless. 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 Protestants
disarmed, while in my day they had powerful armies, states-
men, 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 "

316 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

*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. TTou
pride yourself on an action which three generations have
condemned and held accursed, and '

" *Add/ said she, 'that writers have heen more unjust to me
than my contemporaries were. N'o one undertakes my de-
fence. 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 Keason 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,"
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 person-
age, 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 Eome and its monks. The
Ligue, 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 em-
ploy the vast resources of your political genius in giving the

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 817

Eeformers the wise institutions which made Henri 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 perhaps it was what led to
his death. It is impossible that Sully should not have cast
a covetous eye on the immense possessions of the clergy —
though the clergy were not their sole masters, for the nobles
dissipated at least two-thirds of the Church revenues. Sully
the Keformer 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 tremen-
dous of those that Europe has been required to decide — a
vast revolution retarded by trivial causes, which will not hin-
der it from overflowing the whole world, since I failed to stop
it. — A revolution,' said she, with a look of deep meaning,
'which is still progressing, and which you may achieve. — Yes,
sVou, who hear me !'

"I shuddered.

318 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

"^hat! Has no one yet understood that old interests
on one hand, and on the other new interests, had taken Eome
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 ! — But 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 Eoman Church,' said she, 'Luther and Calvin
gave birth in Europe to a spirit of investigation which in-
evitably 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 inquisitive philosophy, armed with hammers, and greedy
of destruction. Science, with its false lights, sprang glittering
from the womb of heresy. Eeform 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 Eeformers in their contest against the
priesthood — even at that time better armed and more for-
midable than the Crown — was the destruction of the mon-
archical power raised with so much difficulty by Louis XI.
on the ruins of feudality. Their aim was nothing less than
the annihilation of Eeligion and Eoyalty, 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 allies 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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 31Q

Eemember that, to save a few drops of blood at the right mo-
ment, a torrent had to be shed at a later day. There is a mis-
fortune which the Intelligence that looks down on a kingdom
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 propo-
sitions 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; Eichelieu came too late.
Whether it were virtuous or criminal, whether the Massacre
of Saint-Bartholomew is attributed to me or no, 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 without mar-
tyrs. Has not blood flowed in torrents? Must it not for
ever flow? — You will know — you who are to be one of the

820 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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
£ur had extinguished the supernatural light which enabled
my mind to see the figure which had grown to gigantic pro-
portions. I had suddenly discerned in myself an element
which assimilated the horrible doctrines set forth by the
Italian Queen,

"I woke in a sweat, and in tears ; and at the inoment 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 practise 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 flippancy
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.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 321

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
looked more ominous perhaps than it really was, because
a powdered wig a la frimas 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, making
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 not he amusing ?" cried Madame de Genlis.

"I was greatly surprised," the speaker went on, never heed-
ing 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

322 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

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 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 Colonne, "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 ma-
lignant 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.

"N'o, he is drunk," replied Beaumarchais.

"But, gentlemen, my dream has a meaning," cried the
surgeon.

"Oh, oh !" cried Bodard, waking, "my leg is asleep !"

'TTour animalcules are dead," said his wife.

"That man has a vocation," said 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

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI S23

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 rose from table, the rain was pouring in tor-
rents.

"The lawyer is no fool," said I to Beaumarchais.

"Oh ! he is dull and cold. But you see the provinces can
still produce good folks who take political theories and the
history of France quite seriously. It is a leaven that will
spread."

"Have you a carriage ?" Madame de Saint- James asked me.

"ISTo," 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 polissonf" (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 see-
ing Monsieur Marat home, for he is incapable of standing
upright?" said she.

"With pleasure, madame," replied Monsieur de Eobespierre
with an air of gallantry ; "I wish you had ordered me to do
something more difficult."

Pa£I8, JaniMry 1828.

324 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIOI

NOTE.

This is the song published by the Abb6 de la Place in his collec-
tion of interesting fragments, in which may be found the disserta-
tion 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 vent ouir chanson? (Bis.)
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 spolien, no doubt, in a comic tone.)
Qui est mort et enterri.

Qui est mort et enterr§. {Bis.)
Aux quatre coins du poSle,

Et bon bon bon bon,

Di dan di dan don.
Quatre gentilshomm^s y avoit.

Quatre gentilshomm's y avoit {Bis.)
L'un portoit son grand casque,

Et bon, etc.
Et Vautre ses pistolets.

Bt I'autre ses pistolets. {Bis.) '

Et I'autre son §pge,

Et bon, etc.
Qui tant d'Hugu'nots a tuis.

Qui tant d'Hugu'nots a tu6s. {Bis.)
Venoit le quatriSme,

Et bon, etc.
Qui itoit le plus dolent.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 325

Qui etoit le plus dolent; (Bis.)
Aprfes venoient les pages,

Et bon, etc.
Et les valets de pied.

Et les valets de pied, (Bis.)
Avecque de grands crgpes,

Et bon, etc.
Et des souliers ciris.

Et des souliers cir6s. (Bis.)
Et des beaux bas d'estame,

Et bon, etc.
Et des culottes de piau.

Et des culottes de piau. (Bi8.)
La c6remonie 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 cer-
tain extent, 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.

GAMBARA

CorYEIQHT, 1898,

Bt J. M. DENT & COMPANY

GAMBARA

To Monsieur le Marquis de Belloy

It was sitting by the fire, in a mysterious and magnincent retreat,
— now a thing of the past but surviving in our memory, — whence
our eyes commanded a view of Paris from the heights of Bellevue
to those of Belleville, from Montmartre to the triumphal Arc de
rfJtoile, that one morning, refreshed by tea, amid the myriad sug-
gestions that shoot up and die like rockets from your sparkling flow
of talk , lavish of ideas, you tossed to my pen a figure worthy of
Hofi'mann, — ^that casket of unrecognized gems, that pilgrim seated at
the gate of Paradise with ears to hear the songs of the angels but no
longer a tongue to repeat them, playing on the ivory keys with fingers
crippled by the stress of divine inspiration, believing that he is ex-
pressing celestial music to his bewildered listeners.

It was you who created Gambaka ; I have only clothed him. Let
me render unto Csesar the things that are Caesar's, regretting only
that you do not yourself take up the pen at a time when gentlemen
ought to wield it as well as the sword, if they are to save their
country. You may neglect yourself, but you owe your talents to us.

New Year's Day of 1831 was pouring out its packets of
sugared almonds, four o'clock was striking, there was a mob
in the Palais-Koyal, and the eating-houses were beginning to
fill. At this moment a coupe drew up at the 'perron and a
young man stepped out; a man of haughty appearance, and.
no doubt a foreigner; otherwise he would not have displayed
the aristocratic chasseur who attended him in a plumed hat,
nor the coat of arms which the heroes of July still attacked.
This gentleman went into the Palais-Royal, and followed

(327)

828 GAMBARA

the crowd round the galleries, unamazed at the slowness to
which the throng of loungers reduced his pace; he seemed
accustomed to the stately step which is ironically nicknamed
the ambassador's strut; still, his dignity had a touch of the
theatrical. Though his features were handsome and impos-
ing, his hat, from beneath which thick black curls stood out,
was perhaps tilted a little too much over the right ear, and
belied his gravity by a too rakish effect. His eyes, inatten-
tive and half closed, looked down disdainfully on the crowd.

"There goes a remarkably good-looking young man," said
a girl in a low voice, as she made way for him to pass.

"And who is only too well aware of it !" replied her com-
panion aloud — who was very plain.

After walking all round the arcades, the young man
looked by turns at the sky and at his watch, and with a
shrug of impatience went into a tobacconist's shop, lighted
a cigar, and placed himself in front of a looking-glass to
glance at his costume, which was rather more ornate than
the rules of French taste allow. He pulled down his collar
and his black velvet waistcoat, over which hung many fes-
toons of the thick gold chain that is made at Venice; then,
having arranged the folds of his cloak by a single jerk of
his left shoulder, draping it gracefully so as to show the
velvet lining, he started again on parade, indifferent to the
glances of the vulgar.

As soon as the shops were lighted up and the dusk seemed
to him black enough, he went out into the square in front
of the Palais-Eoyal, but as a man anxious not to be recog-
nized ; for he kept close under the houses as far as the foun-
tain, screened by the hackney-cab stand, till he reached the
Kue Froid-Manteau, a dirty, poky, disreputable street — a
sort of sewer tolerated by the police close to the purified
purlieus of the Palais-Eoyal, as an Italian major-domo
allows a careless servant to leave the sweepings of the rooms
in a corner of the staircase.

The young man hesitated. He might have been a bedizened
citizen's wife craning her neck over a gutter swollen by the

iA

■..::. t'

OAVR^ *' »

and the ^-- '
ong of '
. the stai

'■u> slownees to
; he seemed

y nicknamed
c touch of the

. Thou,

>Lne and impos-
rls stood out,

iht ear, and

ves, inatten-

,1 the crowd.

i^ man/' said
ler coin-

nan

h a

.*..r<

Count Andrea Marcosini

>!, , j{ many fes-

: a i ee; then,

-hk , - - i^^^ ^^

fully i*> **^ to show the
.T^^ ; ,.];fTtrpnt to the

. ,M r

• v.h: ausk seemed
." scjuare in front
1..UH not to be recog
<,jv i.,,i^e«« as far as the foun-
anh stand, till he reached the
. poky, diisreputablo
/;e police close to 'm
il, as an Italian
-ave the ? .--■■-

GAMBARA 329

Jrain. But the hour was not unpropitious for the indulgence
of some discreditable whim. Earlier, he might have been de-
tected; later, he might find himself cut out. Tempted by a
glance which is encouraging without being inviting, to have
followed a young and pretty woman for an hour, or perhaps
for a day, thinking of her as a divinity and excusing her light
conduct by a thousand reasons to her advantage; to have
allowed oneself to believe in a sudden and irresistible affinity ;
to have pictured, under the promptings of transient excite-
ment, a love-adventure in an age when romances are written
precisely because they never happen; to have dreamed of
balconies, guitars, stratagems, and bolts, enwrapped in Alma-
viva's cloak; and, after inditing a poem in fanc}^, to stop at
the door of a house of ill-fame, and, crowning all, to discern
in Eosina's bashfulness a reticence imposed by the police —
is not all this, I say, an experience familiar to many a man
who would not own it?

The most natural feelings are those we are least willing to
confess, and among them is fatuity. When the lesson is
carried no further, the Parisian profits by it, or forgets it,
and no great harm is done. But this would hardly be the
case with this foreigner, who was beginning to think he might
pay too dearly for his Paris education.

This personage was a Milanese of good family, exiled
from his native country, where some "liberal" pranks had
made him an object of suspicion to the Austrian Government.
Count Andrea Marcosini had been welcomed in Paris with
the cordiality, essentially French, that a man always finds
there, when he has a pleasant wit, a sounding name, two hun-
dred thousand francs a year, and a prepossessing person. To
such a man banishment could but be a pleasvire tour; his
property was simply sequestrated, and his friends let him
know that after an absence of two years he might return to
his native land without danger.

After rhyming crudeli affanni with i miei tiranni in a dozen
or so of sonnets, and maintaining as many hapless Italian
refugees out of his own purse, Count Andrea, who was so

330 GAMBARA

unlucky as to be a poet, thought himself released from pa-
triotic obligations. So, ever since his arrival, he had given
himself up recklessly to the pleasures of every kind which
Paris offers gratis to those who can pay for them. His
talents and his handsome person won him success among
women, whom he adored collectively as beseemed his years,
but among whom he had not as yet distinguished a chosen
one. And indeed this taste was, in him, subordinate to those
for music and poetry which he had cultivated from his child-
hood; and he thought success in these both more difficult
and more glorious to achieve than in affairs of gallantry, since
nature had not inflicted on him the obstacles men take most
pride in defying.

A man, like many another, of complex nature, he was easily
fascinated by the comfort of luxury, without which he could
hardly have lived; and, in the same way, he clung to the
social distinctions which his principles contemned. Thus his
theories as an artist, a thinker, and a poet were in frequent
antagonism with his tastes, his feelings, and his habits as a
man of rank and wealth; but he comforted himself for his
inconsistencies by recognizing them in many Parisians, like
himself liberal by policy and aristocrats by nature.

Hence it was not without some uneasiness that he found
himself, on December 31, 1830, under a Paris thaw, following
at the heels of a woman whose dress betrayed the most abject,
inveterate, and long-accustomed poverty, who was no hand-
somer than a hundred others to be seen any evening at the
play, at the opera, in the world of fashion, and who was cer-
tainly not so young as Madame de Manerville, from whom he
had obtained an assignation for that very day, and who was
perhaps waiting for him at that very hour.

But in the glance at once tender and wild, swift and deep,
which that woman's black eyes had shot at him by stealth,
there was such a world of buried sorrows and promised joys !
And she had colored so fiercely when, on coming out of a
shop where she had lingered a quarter of an hour, her
look frankly met the Count's, who had been waiting for her

GAMBARA 831

hard by! In fact, there were so many huts and ifs, that,
possessed by one of those mad temptations for which there is
no word in any language, not even in that of the orgy, he had
set out in pursuit of this woman, hunting her down like a
hardened Parisian.

On the way, whether he kept behind or ahead of this damsel,
he studied every detail of her person and her dress, hoping
to dislodge the insane and ridiculous fancy that had taken up
an abode in his brain ; but he presently found in his examina-
tion a keener pleasure than he had felt only the day before
in gazing at the perfect shape of a woman he loved, as she
took her bath. Now and again, the unknown fair, bending
her head, gave him a look like that of a kid tethered with its
head to the ground, and finding herself still the object of his
pursuit, she hurried on as if to fly. Nevertheless, each time
that a block of carriages, or any other delay, brought Andrea
to her side, he saw her turn away from his gaze without any
signs of annoyance. These signals of restrained feelings
spurred the frenzied dreams that had run away with him,
and he gave them the rein as far as the Kue Froid-Manteau,
down which, after many windings, the damsel vanished,
thinking she had thus spoilt the scent of her pursuer, who
was, in fact, startled by this move.

It was now quite dark. Two women, tattooed with rouge,
who were drinking black-currant liqueur at a grocer's
counter, saw the young woman and called her. She paused
at the door of the shop, replied in a few soft words to the
cordial greeting offered her, and went on her way. Andrea,
who was behind her, saw her turn into one of the darkest
yards out of this street, of which he did not know the name.
The repulsive appearance of the house where the heroine of
his romance had been swallowed up made him feel sick. He
drew back a step to study the neighborhood, and finding an
ill-looking man at his elbow, he asked him for information.
The man, who held a knotted stick in his right hand, placed
the left on his hip and replied in a single word:

"Scoundrel !"

882 GAMBARA

But on looking at the Italian, who stood in the light of a
street-lamp, he assumed a servile expression.

"I beg your pardon, sir," said he, suddenly changing his
tone. "There is a restaurant near this, a sort of table-d'hote,
where the cooking is pretty bad and they serve cheese in the
soup. Monsieur is in search of the place, perhaps, for it is
easy to see that he is an Italian — Italians are fond of velvet
and of cheese. But if monsieur would like to know of a better
eating-house, an aunt of mine, who lives a few steps off, is
very fond of foreigners."

Andrea raised his cloak as high as his moustache, and
fled from the street, spurred by the disgust he felt at this foul
person, whose clothes and manner were in harmony with the
squalid house into which the fair unknown had vanished.
He returned with rapture to the thousand luxuries of his own
rooms, and spent the evening at the Marquise d'Espard's to
cleanse himself, if possible, of the smirch left by the fancy
that had driven him so relentlessly during the day.

And yet, when he was in bed, the vision came back to him,
but clearer and brighter than the reality. The girl was
walking in front of him ; now and again as she stepped across
a ^tter her skirts revealed a round calf; her shapely hips
swayed as she walked. Again Andrea longed to speak to her
— and he dared not, he, Marcosini, a Milanese nobleman!
Then he saw her turn into the dark passage where she had
eluded him, and blamed himself for not having followed her.

"For, after all," said he to himself, "if she really wished
to avoid me and put me off her track, it is because she loves
me. With women of that stamp, coyness is a proof of love.
Well, if I had carried the adventure any further, it would,
perhaps, have ended in disgust. I will sleep in peace."

The Count was in the habit of analyzing his keenest sensa-
tions, as men do involuntarily when they have as much brains
as heart, and he was surprised when he saw the strange
damsel of the Kue Froid-Manteau once more, not in the
pictured splendor of his dream but in the bare reality of
dreary fact. And, in spite of it all, if fancy had stripped

GaMBARA 833

the woman of her livery of misery, it would have spoilt her
for him ; for he wanted her, he longed for her, he loved her —
with her muddy stockings, her slipshod feet, her straw bon-
net ! He wanted her in the very house where he had seen her
go in.

"Am I bewitched by vice, then?" he asked himself in dis-
may. "Nay, I have not yet reached that point. I am but
three-and-twenty, and there is nothing of the senile fop about
me."

The very vehemence of the whim that held possession of
him to some extent reassured him. This strange struggle,
these reflections, and this love in pursuit may perhaps puzzle
some persons who are accustomed to the ways of Paris life;
but they may be reminded that Count Andrea Marcosini was
not a Frenchman.

Brought up by two abbes, who, in obedience to a very pious
father, had rarely let him out of their sight, Andrea had not
fallen in love with a cousin at the age of eleven, or seduced
his mother's maid by the time he was twelve; he had not
studied at school, where a lad does not learn only, or best,
the subjects prescribed by the State; he had lived in Paris
but a few years, and he was still open to those sudden but
deep impressions against which French education and man-
ners are so strong a protection. In southern lands a great
passion is often born of a glance. A gentleman of Gascony
who had tempered strong feelings by much reflection had
fortified himself by many little recipes against sudden apo-
plexies of taste and heart, and he advised the Count to in-
dulge at least once a month in a wild orgy to avert those
storms of the soul which, but for such precautions, are apt to
break out at inappropriate moments. Andrea now remem-
bered this advice.

"Well," thought he, "I will begin to-morrow, January 1st."

This explains why Count Andrea Marcosini hovered so
shyly before turning down the Eue Froid-Manteau. The
man of fashion hampered the lover, and he hesitated for some

834 GAMBARA

time ; but after a final appeal to his courage he went on with
a firm step as far as the house, which he recognized without
difficulty.

There he stopped once more. Was the woman really what
he fancied her ? Was he not on the verge of som^ false move ?

At this juncture he remembered the Italian table-d'hote,
and at once jumped at a middle course, which would serve
the ends alike of his curiosity and of his reputation. He
went in to dine, and made his way down the passage; at the
bottom, after feeling about for some time, he found a stair-
case with damp, slippery steps, such as to an Italian noble-
man could only seem a ladder.

Invited to the first floor by the glimmer of a lamp and a
strong smell of cooking, he pushed a door which stood ajar
and saw a room dingy with dirt and smoke, where a wench
was busy laying a table for about twenty customers. None of
the guests had yet arrived.

After looking round the dimly lighted room where the
paper was dropping in rags from the walls, the gentleman
seated himself by a stove which was roaring and smoking in
the corner.

Attracted by the noise the Count made in coming in and
disposing of his cloak, the major-domo presently appeared.
Picture to yourself a lean, dried-up cook, very tall, with a
nose of extravagant dimensions, casting about him from time
to time, with feverish keenness, a glance that he meant to be
cautious. On seeing Andrea, whose attire bespoke consid-
erable affluence, Signor Giardini bowed respectfully.

The Count expressed his intention of taking his meals as
a rule in the society of some of his fellow-countrymen; he
paid in advance for a certain number of tickets, and ingenu-
ously gave the conversation a familiar bent to enable him to
achieve his purpose quickly.

Hardly had he mentioned the woman he was seeking when
Signor Giardini, with a grotesque shrug, looked knowingly
at his customer, a bland smile on his lips.

"Basta!" he exclaimed. "Capisco. Your Excellency has

GAMBABA 885

come spurred by two appetites. La Signora Gambara will
not have wasted her time if she has gained the interest of a
gentleman so generous as you appear to be. I can tell you
in a few words all we know of the woman, who is really to be
pitied.

"The husband is, I believe, a native of Cremona and has
just come here from Germany. He was hoping to get the
Tedeschi to try some new music and some new instruments^
Isn't it pitiable?" said Giardini, shrugging his shoulders.
"Signor Gambara, who thinks himself a great composer, does
not seem to me very clever in other ways. An excellent fel-
low with sense and wit, and sometimes very agreeable, espe-
cially when he has had a few glasses of wine — ^which does not
often happen, for he is desperately poor; night and day he
toils at imaginary symphonies and operas instead of trying
to earn an honest living. His poor wife is reduced to working
for all sorts of people — the women on the streets ! What is to
be said ? She loves her husband like a father, and takes care
of him like a child.

"Many a young man has dined here to pay his court to
madame; but not one has succeeded," said he, emphasizing
the word. "La Signora Marianna is an honest woman, mon-
sieur, much too honest, worse luck for her ! Men give nothing
for nothing nowadays. So the poor soul will die in harness.

"And do you suppose that her husband rewards her for her
devotion? Pooh, my lord never gives her a smile! And
all their cooking is done at the baker's ; for not only does the
wretched man never earn a sou; he spends all his wife can
make on instruments which he carves, and lengthens, and
shortens, and sets up and takes to pieces again till they pro-
duce sounds that would scare a cat; then he is happy. And
yet you will find him the mildest, the gentlest of men. And,
he is not idle ; he is always at it. What is to be said ? He is
crazy and does not know his business. I have seen him, mon-
sieur, filing and forging his instruments and eating black
bread with an appetite that I envied him — I, who have the
best table in Paris.

8M QAMBARA

"Yes, Excellenza, in a quarter of an hour you shall know
the man I am. I have introduced certain refinements into
Italian cookery that will amaze you ! Excellenza, I am a
Neapolitan — that is to say, a born cook. But of what use is
instinct without knowledge? Knowledge! I have spent
thirty years in acquiring it, and you see where it has left me.
My history is that of every man of talent. My attempts, my
experiments, have ruined three restaurants in succession at
Naples, Parma, and Kome. To this day, when I am reduced
to make a trade of my art, I more often than not give way
to my ruling passion. I give these poor refugees some of my
choicest dishes. I ruin myself! Folly! you will say? I
know it; but how can I help it? Genius carries me away,
and I cannot resist concocting a dish which smiles on my
fancy.

"And they always know it, the rascals! They know, I
can promise you, whether I or my wife has stood over the
fire. And what is the consequence ? Of sixty-odd customers
whom I used to see at my table every day when I first started
in this wretched place, I now see twenty on an average, and
give them credit for the most part. The Piedmontese, the
Savoyards, have deserted, but the connoisseurs, the true
Italians, remain. And there is no sacrifice that I would not
make for them. I often give them a dinner for five and
twenty sous which has cost me double."

Signor Giardini's speech had such a full flavor of Nea-
politan cunning that the Count was delighted, and could have
fancied himself at Gerolamo's.

"Since that is the case, my good friend," said he familiarly
to the cook, "and since chance and your confidence have let
me into the secret of your daily sacrifices, allow me to pay
double.'*

As he spoke Andrea spun a forty-franc piece on the stove,
out of which Giardini solemnly gave him two francs and fifty
centimes in change, not without a certain ceremonious mys-
tery that amused him hugely.

"In a few minutes now," the man added, "you will see you?

GAMBARA 887

donnina. I will seat you next the husband, and if you wish to
stand in his good graces, talk about music. I have invited
every one for this evening, poor things. Being New Year's
Day, I am treating the company to a dish in which I believe I
have surpassed myself." i

Signor Giardini's voice was drowned by the noisy greetings
of the guests, who streamed in two and two, or one at a time,
after the manner of tables-d'hote. Giardini stayed by the
Count, playing the showman by telling him who the company
were. He tried by his witticisms to bring a smile to the lips of
a man who, as his Neapolitan instinct told him, might be a
wealthy patron to turn to good account.

"This one," said he, "is a poor composer who would like
to rise from song-writing to opera, and cannot. He blames
the managers, music-sellers, — everybody, in fact, but him-
self, and he has no worse enemy. You can see — what a florid
complexion, what self-conceit, how little firmness in his fea-
tures ! he is made to write ballads. The man who is with him,
and looks like a match-hawker, is a great musical celebrity —
Gigelmi, the greatest Italian conductor known; but he has
gone deaf, and is ending his days in penury, deprived of all
that made it tolerable. Ah ! here comes our great Ottoboni,
the most guileless old fellow on earth ; but he is suspected of
being the most vindictive of all who are plotting for the re-
generation of Italy. I cannot think how they can bear to
banish such a good old man."

And here Giardini looked narrowly at the Count, who,
feeling himself under inquisition as to his politics, entrenched
himself in Italian impassibility.

"A man whose business it is to cook for all comers can have
no political opinions, Excellenza," Giardini went on. "But
to see that worthy man, who looks more like a lamb than a
lion, everybody would say what I say, were it before the
Austrian ambassador himself. Besides, in these times liberty
is no longer proscribed; it is going its rounds again. At
least, so these good people think," said he, leaning over to
speak in the Count's ear, "and why should I thwart their

388 6AMBABA

hopes ? I, for my part, do not hate an absolute government.
Excellenza, every man of talent is for despotism !

"Well, though full of genius, Ottoboni takes no end of
pains to educate Italy; he writes little books to enlighten
the intelligence of the children and the common people, and
he smuggles them very cleverly into Italy. He takes im-
.mense trouble to reform the moral sense of our luckless coun-
try, which, after all, prefers pleasure to freedom, — and per-
haps it is right."

The Count preserved such an impenetrable attitude that
the cook could discover nothing of his political views.

"Ottoboni," he ran on, "is a saint; very kind-hearted; all
the refugees are fond of him ; for, Excellenza, a liberal may
have his virtues. Oho ! Here comes a journalist," said
Giardini, as a man came in dressed in the absurd way which
used to be attributed to a poet in a garret ; his coat was thread-
bare, his boots split, his hat shiny, and his overcoat de-
plorably ancient. "Excellenza, that poor man is full of
talent, and incorruptibly honest. He was born into the
wrong times, for he tells the truth to everybody ; no one can
endure him. He writes theatrical articles for two small
papers, though he is clever enough to work for the great
dailies. Poor fellow !

"The rest are not worth mentioning, and Your Excellency
will find them out," he concluded, seeing that on the entrance
of the musician's wife the Count had ceased to listen to him.

On seeing Andrea here, Signora Marianna started visibly
and a bright flush tinged her cheeks.

"Here he is!" said Giardini, in an undertone, clutching
the Count's arm and nodding to a tall man. "How pale
and grave he is, poor man ! His hobby has not trotted to his
mind to-day, I fancy."

Andrea's prepossession for Marianna was crossed by the
captivating charm which Gambara could not fail to exert over
every genuine artist. The composer was now forty; but al-
though his high brow was bald and lined with a few parallel.

GAMBARA S3S

but not deep, wrinkles; in spite, too, of hollow temples
where the blue veins showed through the smooth, transparent
skin, and of the deep sockets in which his black eyes were
sunk, with their large lids and light lashes, the lower part
of his face made him still look young, so calm was its outline,
so soft the modeling. It could be seen at a glance that in this
man passion had been curbed to the advantage of the intel-
lect; that the brain alone had grown old in some great
struggle.

Andrea shot a swift look at Marianna, who was watching
him. And he noted the beautiful Italian head, the exquisite
proportion and rich coloring that revealed one of those or-
ganizations in which every human power is harmoniously
balanced, he sounded the gulf that divided this couple,
brought together by fate. Well content with the promise he
inferred from this dissimilarity between the husband and
wife, he made no attempt to control a liking which ought to
have raised a barrier between the fair Marianna and himself.
He was already conscious of feeling a sort of respectful pity
for this man, whose only joy she was, as he understood the
dignified and serene acceptance of ill fortune that was ex^
pressed in Gambara's mild and melancholy gaze.

After expecting to see one of the grotesque figures so often
set before us by German novelists and writers of libretti,
he beheld a simple, unpretentious man, whose manners and
demeanor were in nothing strange and did not lack dignity.
Without the faintest trace of luxury, his dress was more
decent than might have been expected from his extreme pov-
erty, and his linen bore witness to the tender care which
watched over every detail of his existence. Andrea looked at
Marianna with moistened eyes; and she did not color, but
half smiled, in a way that betrayed, perhaps, some pride at
this speechless homage. The Count, too thoroughly fascinated
to miss the smallest indication of complaisance, fancied that
she must love him, since she understood him so well.

From this moment he set himself to conquer the husband
rather than the wife, turning all his batteries against the poor

340 GAMBARA

Gambara, who quite guilelessly went on eating Signer Giar-
dini's hocconi, without thinking of their flavor.

The Count opened the conversation on some trivial subject^
but at the first words he perceived that this brain, supposed to
be infatuated on one point, was remarkably clear on all others,
and saw that it would be far more important to enter into
this very clever man's ideas than to flatter his conceits.

The rest of the company, a hungry crew whose brain only
responded to the sight of a more or less good meal, showed
much animosity to the luckless Gambara, and waited only till
the end of the flrst course, to give free vent to their satire.
A refugee, whose frequent leer betrayed ambitious schemes
on Marianna, and who fancied he could establish himself
in her good graces by trying to make her husband ridiculous,
opened fire to show the newcomer how the land lay at the
table-d'hote.

"It is a very long time since we have heard anything about
the opera on 'Mahomet' !" cried he, with a smile at Marianna.
"Can it be that Paolo Gambara, wholly given up to domestic
cares, absorbed by the charms of the chimney-corner, is ne-
glecting his superhuman genius, leaving his talents to get
cold and his imagination to go flat?"

Gambara knew all the company; he dwelt in a sphere so
far above them all that he no longer cared to repel an attack.
He made no reply.

"It is not given to everybody," said the journalist, "to have
an intellect that can understand Monsieur Gambara's musical
efforts, and that, no doubt, is why our divine maestro hesi-
tates to come before the worthy Parisian public."

"And yet," said the ballad-monger, who had not opened his
mouth but to swallow everything that came within his reach,
"I know some men of talent who think highly of the judg-
ments of Parisian critics. I myself have a pretty reputation
as a musician," he went on, with an air of diffidence. "I owe
it solely to my little songs in vaudevilles, and the success of
my dance music in drawing-rooms; but I propose ere long
to bring out a mass composed for the anniversary of Bee-

GAMBARA 341

thoven's death, and I expect to be better appreciated in Paris
than anywhere else. You will perhaps do me the honor of
hearing it ?" he said, turning to Andrea.

"Thank you/' said the Count. "But I do not conceive
that I am gifted with the organs needful for the appreciation
of French music. If you were dead, monsieur, and Beethoven
had composed the mass, I would not have failed to attend
the performance."

This retort put an end to the tactics of those who wanted
to set Gambara off on his high horse to amuse the new guest.
Andrea was already conscious of an unwillingness to expose
so noble and pathetic a mania as a spectacle for so much
vulgar shrewdness. It was with no base reservation that he
kept up a desultory conversation, in the course of which
Signor Giardini's nose not infrequently interposed between
two remarks. Whenever Gambara uttered some elegant
repartee or some paradoxical aphorism, the cook put his head
forward, to glance with pity at the musician and with mean-
ing at the Count, muttering in his ear, "E matto !"

Then came a moment when the chef interrupted the flow
of his judicial observations to devote himself to the second
course, which he considered highly important. During his
absence, which was brief, Gambara leaned across to address
Andrea.

"Our worthy host," said he, in an undertone, "threatens to
regale us to-day with a dish of his own concocting, which I
recommend you to avoid, though his wife has had an eye on
him. The good man has a mania for innovations. He ruined
himself by experiments, the last of which compelled him to
fly from Eome 'wdthout a passport — a circumstance he does
not talk about. After purchasing the good-will of a popular
restaurant he was trusted to prepare a banquet given by a
lately made Cardinal, whose household was not yet complete.
Giardini fancied he had an opportunity for distinguishing
himself — and he succeeded ! for that same evening he was
accused of trying to poison the whole conclave, and was
obliged to leave Rome and Italy without waiting to pack up.

S42 GAMBABA

This disaster was the last straw. Now," and Gambara put
his finger to his forehead and shook his head.

"He is a good fellow, all the same," he added. "My wife
will tell 3'ou that we owe him many a good turn."

Giardini now came in carefully bearing a dish which he
set in the middle of the table, and he then modestly resumed
his seat next to Andrea, whom he served first. As soon as he
had tasted the mess, the Count felt that an impassable gulf
divided the second mouthful from the first. He was much
embarrassed, and very anxious not to annoy the cook, who
was watching him narrowly. Though a French restaurateur
may care little about seeing a dish scorned if he is sure of
being paid for it, it is not so with an Italian, who is not often
satiated with praises.

To gain time, Andrea complimented Giardini enthusiastic-
ally, but he leaned over to whisper in his ear, and slipping
a gold piece into his hand under the table, begged him to go
out and buy a few bottles of champagne, leaving him free to
take all the credit of the treat.

When the Italian returned, every plate was cleared, and the
room rang with praises of the master-cook. The champagne
soon mounted these southern brains, and the conversation,
till now subdued in the stranger's presence, overleaped the
limits of suspicious reserve to wander far over the wide fields
of political and artistic opinions.

Andrea, to whom no form of intoxication was known but
those of love and poetry, had soon gained the attention of
the company and skilfully led it to a discussion of matters
musical.

"Will you tell me, monsieur," said he to the composer of
dance-music, "how it is that the Napoleon of these tunes
can condescend to usurp the place of Palestrina, Pergolesi,
and Mozart, — poor creatures who must pack and vanish at
the advent of that tremendous Mass for the Dead ?"

"Well, monsieur," replied the composer, "a musician al-
ways finds it difficult to reply when the answer needs the co-
operation of a hundred skilled executants. Mozart, Haydn,

GAMBARA 843

and Beethoven, without an orchestra, would be of no great
account."

"Of no great account!" said Marcosini. "Why, all the
world knows that the immortal author of Don Oiovanni and
the Requiem was named Mozart ; and I am so unhappy as not
to know the name of the inexhaustible writer of quadrilles
which are so popular in our drawing-rooms "

"Music exists independently of execution," said the re-
tired conductor, who, in spite of his deafness, had caught a
few words of the conversation. "As he looks through the
C-minor symphony by Beethoven, a musician is transported
to the world of fancy on the golden wings of the subject in
G-natural repeated by the horns in E. He sees a whole
realm, by turns glorious in dazzling shafts of light, gloomy
under clouds of melancholy, and cheered by heavenly strains."

"The new school has left Beethoven far behind," said the
ballad-writer, scornfully.

"Beethoven is not yet understood," said the Count. *TEow
can he be excelled?"

Gambara drank a large glass of champagne, accompanying
the draught by a covert smile of approval.

"Beethoven," the Count went on, "extended the limits of
instrumental music, and no one has followed in his track."

Gambara assented with a nod.

"His work is especially noteworthy for simplicity of con-
struction cind for the w-c\y the sclicmc is worked out," the
Count went on. "Most composers make use of the orchestral
parts in a vague, incoherent way, combining them for a
merely temporary effect; they do not persistently contribute
to the whole mass of the movement by their steady and regu-
lar progress. Beethoven assigns its part to each tone-quality
from the first. Like the various companies which, by their dis-
ciplined movements, contribute to winning a battle, the or-
chestral parts of a symphony by Beethoven obey the plan
ordered for the interest of all, and are subordinate to an
admirably conceived scheme.

"In this he may be compared to a genius of a different

344 GAMBARA

type. In Walter Scott's splendid historical novels, some
personage, who seems to have least to do with the action of
the story, intervenes at a given moment and leads up to the
climax by some thread woven into the plot."

"E vero!" remarked Gambara, to whom common sense
seemed to return in inverse proportion to sobriety.

Andrea, eager to carry the test further, for a moment for-
got all his predilections ; he proceeded to attack the European'
fame of Rossini, disputing the position which the Italian
school has taken by storm, night after night for more than
thirty years, on a hundred stages in Europe. He had under-
taken a hard task. The first words he spoke raised a strong
murmur of disapproval; but neither repeated interruptions,
nor exclamations, nor frowns, nor contemptuous looks, could
check this determined advocate of Beethoven.

"Compare," said he, "that sublime composer's works with
what by common consent is called Italian music. What
feebleness of ideas, what limpness of style ! That monotony
of form, those commonplace cadenzas, those endless bravura
passages introduced at haphazard irrespective of the dra-
matic situation, that recurrent crescendo that Rossini brought
into vogue, are now an integral part of every composition ;
those vocal fireworks result in a sort of babbling, chattering,
vaporous music, of which the sole merit depends on the
greater or less fluency of the singer and his rapidity of
vocalization.

"The Italian school has lost sight of the high mission of
art. Instead of elevating the crowd, it has condescended to
the crowd; it has won its success only by accepting the suf-
frages of all comers, and appealing to the vulgar minds which
constitute the majority. Such a success is mere street jug-
gling. _ . . '!

"In short, the compositions of Rossini, in whom this music-
is personified, with those of the writers who are more or less
of his school, to me seem worthy at best to collect a crowd in
the street round a grinding organ, as an accompaniment to
the capers of a puppet show. I even prefer French music,

GAMBARA 845

and I can say no more. Long live German music l" cried he,
*'when it is tuneful/' he added in a low voice.

This sally was the upshot of a long preliminary discussion,
in which, for more than a quarter of an hour, Andrea had
divagated in the upper sphere of metaphysics, with the ease
of a somnambulist walking over the roofs.

Gambara, keenly interested in all this transcendentalism,
had not lost a word; he took up his parable as soon as An-
drea seemed to have ended, and a little stir of revived atten-
tion was evident among the guests, of whom several had been
about to leave.

"You attack the Italian school with much vigor," said Gam-
bara, somewhat warmed to his work by the champagne, "and,
for my part, you are very welcome. I, thank God, stand out-
side this more or less melodic frippery. Still, as a man of
the world, you are too ungrateful to the classic land whence
Germany and France derived their first teaching. While the
compositions of Carissimi, Cavalli, Scarlatti, and Rossi were
being played throughout Italy, the violin players of the
Paris opera house enjoyed the singular privilege of being al-
lowed to play in gloves. Lulli, who extended the realm of
harmony, and was the first to classify discords, on arriving in
France found but two men — a cook and a mason — whose
voice and intelligence were equal to performing his music;
he made a tenor of the former, and transformed the latter
into a bass. At that time Germany had no musician except-
ing Sebastian Bach. — But you, monsieur, though you are so
young," Gambara added, in the humble tone of a man who
expects to find his remarks received with scorn or ill-nature,
"must have given much time to the study of these high mat-
ters of art ; you could not otherwise explain them so clearly."

This word made many of the hearers smile, for they had
understood nothing of the fine distinctions drawn by Andrea.
Giardini, indeed, convinced tbat the Count had been talking
mere rhodomontade, nudged him with a laugh in his sleeve, as
at a good joke in which he flattered himself that he was a
partner.

346 GAMBARA

'There is a great deal that strikes me as very true in all
you have said," Gambara went on; 'Taut be careful. Your
argiiment, while reflecting on Italian sensuality, seems to me
to lean towards German idealism, which is a no less fatal
heresy. If men of imagination and good sense, like you,
desert one camp only to join the other; if they cannot keep
to the happy medium between two forms of extravagance, we
shall always be exposed to the satire of the sophists, who deny
all progress, who compare the genius of man to this table-'
cloth, which, being too short to cover the whole of Signor
Giardini's table, decks one end at the expense of the other."

Giardini bounded in his seat as if he had been stung by a
horse-fly, but swift reflection restored him to his dignity as a
host; he looked up to heaven and again nudged the Count,
who was beginning to think the cook more crazy than Gam-
bara.

This serious and pious way of speaking of art interested the
Milanese extremely. Seated between these two distracted
brains, one so noble and the other so common, and making
game of each other to the great entertainment of the crowd,
there was a moment when the Count found himself wavering
between the sublime and its parody, the farcical extremes
of human life. Ignoring the chain of incredible events
which had brought them to this smoky den, he believed him-
self to be the plaything of some strange hallucination, and
thought of Gambara and Giardini as two abstractions.

Meanwhile, after a last piece of buffoonery from the deaf
conductor in reply to Gambara, the company had broken up
laughing loudly. Giardini went off to make coffee, which he
begged the select few to acce})t. and his wife cleared the
table. The Count, sitting near the stove between Marianna
and Gambara, was in the very position which the mad mu-
sician thought most desirable, with sensuousness on one side
and idealism on the other. Gambara finding himself for the
first time in the society of a man who did not laugh at him
to his face, soon diverged from generalities to talk of himself,
of his life, his work, and the musical regeneration of which he
believed himself to be the Messiah.

GAMBARA 847

"Listen," said he, "you who so far have not insulted me.
I will tell you the story of my life ; not to make a boast of my
perseverance, which is no virtue of mine, but to the greater
glory of Him who has given me His strength. You seem
kind and pious ; if you do not believe in me at least you will
pity me. Pity is human ; faith comes from God."

Andrea turned and drew back under his chair the foot thJit
had been seeking that of the fair Marianna, fixing his eyes
on her while listening to Gambara.

"I was born at Cremona, the son of an instrument maker,
a fairly good performer and an even better composer," the
musician began. *'Thus at an early age I had mastered the
laws of musical construction in its twofold aspects, the ma-
terial and the spiritual ; and as an inquisitive child I observed
many things which subsequently recurred to the mind of the
full-grown man.

"The French turned us out of our own home — my father
and me, "We were ruined by the war. Thus, at the age of
ten I entered on the wandering life to which most men have
been condemned whose brains were busy with innovations,
whether in art, science, or politics. Fate, or the instincts of
their mind which cannot fit into the compartments Avhere
the trading class sit, providentially guides them to the spots
where they may find teaching. Led by my passion for music
I wandered throughout Italy from theatre to theatre, living
on very little, as men can live there. Sometimes I played the
bass in an orchestra, sometimes I was on the boards in the
chorus, sometimes under them with the carpenters. Thus
I learned every kind of musical effect, studying the tones of
instruments and of the human voice, wherein they differed
and how they harmonized, listening to the score and applying
the rules taught me by my father.

"It was hungry work, in a land where the sun always
shines, where art is all pervading, but where there is no pay
for the artist, since Eome is but nominally the Sovereign of
the Christian world. Sometimes made welcome, sometimes

348 GAMBARA

scouted for my poverty, I never lost courage. I heard a
voice within me promising me fame.

"Music seemed to me in its infancy, and I think so still.
All that is left to us of musical effort before the seventeenth
century, proves to me that early musicians knew melody only ;
they were ignorant of harmony and its immense resources.
M"usic is at once a science and an art. It is rooted in physics
and mathematics, hence it is a science; inspiration makes it
an art, unconsciously utilizing the theorems of science. It
is founded in physics by the very nature of the matter it
works on. Sound is air in motion. The air is formed of
constituents which, in us, no doubt, meet with analogous
elements that respond to them, sympathize, and magnify
them by the power of the mind. Thus the air must include
a vast variety of molecules of various degrees of elasticity,
and capable of vibrating in as many different periods as there
are tones from all kinds of sonorous bodies ; and these mole->
cules, set in motion by the musician and falling on our ear,
answer to our ideas, according to each man's temperament. I
myself believe that sound is identical in its nature with light.
Sound is light, perceived under another form; each acts
through vibrations to which man is sensitive and which he
transforms, in the nervous centres, into ideas.

"Music, like painting, makes use of materials which have
the property of liberating this or that property from the
surrounding medium and so suggesting an image. The in-
struments in music perform this part, as color does in paint-
ing. And whereas each sound produced by a sonorous body
is invariably allied with its major third and fifth, whereas it
acts on grains of fine sand lying on stretched parchment so as
to distribute them in geometrical figures that are always the
same, according to the pitch, — quite regular when the com-
bination is a true chord, and indefinite when the sounds are
dissonant, — I say that music is an art conceived in the very
bowels of nature.

"Music is subject to physical and mathematical laws.
Physical laws are but little known, mathematics are well un-

GAMBARA 349

derstood; and it is since their relations have been studied,
that the harmony has been created to which we owe the works
of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Kossini, grand geniuses,
whose music is undoubtedly nearer to perfection than that
of their precursors, though their genius, too, is unquestion-
able. The old masters could sing, but they had not art and
science at their command, — a noble alliance which enables
us to merge into one the finest melody and the power of har-
mony.

"Now, if a knowledge of mathematical laws gave us these
four great musicians, what may we not attain to if we can
discover the physical laws in virtue of which — grasp this
clearly — we may collect, in larger or smaller quantities, ac-
cording to the proportions we may require, an ethereal sub-
stance diffused in the atmosphere which is the medium alike
of music and of light, of the phenomena of vegetation and of
animal life ! Do you follow me ? Those new laws would arm
the composer with new powers by supplying him with instru-
ments superior to those now in use, and perhaps with
a potency of harmony immense as compared with that now
at his command. If every modified shade of sound answers
to a force, that must be known to enable us to combine all
these forces in accordance with their true laws.

"Composers work with substances of which they know
nothing. Why should a brass and a wooden instrument — a
bassoon and horn — have so little identity of tone, when they
act on the same matter, the constituent gases of the air?
Their differences proceed from some displacement of those
constituents, from the way they act on the elements which are
their affinity and which they return, modified by some occult
and unknown process. If we knew what the process was,
science and art would both be the gainers. Whatever ex-
tends science enhances art.

"Well, these are the discoveries I have guessed and made.
Yes," said Gambara, with increasing vehemence, "hitherto
men have noted effects rather than causes. If they could but
master the causes, music would be the greatest of the arts.

350 GAMBABA

Is it not the one which strikes deepest to the soul ? You see
in painting no more than it shows you; in poetry you have
only what the poet says ; music goes far beyond this. Does it
not form your taste, and rouse dormant memories? In a
concert-room there may be a thousand souls ; a strain is flung
out from Pasta's throat, the execution worthily answering to
the ideas that flashed through Kossini's mind as he wrote the
air. That phrase of Kossini's, transmitted to those attentive
, souls, is worked out in so many different poems. To one it
presents a woman long dreamed of; to another, some distant
shore where he wandered long ago. It rises up before him
with its drooping willows, its clear waters, and the hopes that
then played under its leafy arbors. One woman is reminded
of the myriad feelings that tortured her during an hour of
jealous}', while another thinks of the unsatisfied cravings
of her heart, and paints in the glowing hues of a dream an
ideal lover, to whom she abandons herself with the rapture
of the woman in the Eoman mosaic who embraces a chimera ;
yet a third is thinking that this very evening some hoped-
for joy is to be hers, and rushes by anticipation into the tide
of happiness, its dashing waves breaking against her burning
bosom. Music alone has this power of throwing us back on
ourselves; the other arts give us infinite pleasure. But I
am digressing.

"These were my first ideas, vague indeed; for an inventor
at the beginning only catches glimpses of the dawn, as it were.
So I kept these glorious ideas at the bottom of my knapsack,
and they gave me spirit to eat the dry crust I often dipped in
the water of a spring. I worked, I composed airs, and, after
playing them on any instrument that came to hand, I went off
again on foot across Italy. Finally, at the age of two-and-
twenty, I settled in Venice, where for the first time I en-
joyed rest and found myself in a decent position. I there
made the acquaintance of a Venetian nobleman who liked my
ideas, who encouraged me in my investigations, and who got
me employment at the Venice theatre.

"Living was cheap, lodging inexpensive. I had a room in

GAMBABA 351

that Capello palace from which the famous Bianca came
forth one evening to become a Grand Duchess of Tuscany.
And I would dream that my unrecognized fame would also
emerge from thence one day to be crowned.

''I spent my evenings at the theatre and my days in work.
Then came disaster. The performance of an opera in which
I had experimented, trying my music, was a failure. No one
understood my score for the Martiri. Set Beethoven before
the Italians and they are out of their depth. No one had
patience enough to wait for the effect to be produced by the
different motives given out by each instrument, which were
all at last to combine in a grand ensemble.

"I had built some hopes on the success of the Martiri, for
we votaries of the blue divinity Hope always discount results.
When a man believes himself destined to do great things, it
is hard not to fancy them achieved; the bushel always has
some cracks through which the light shines.

"My wife's family lodged in the same house, and the hope
of winning Marianna, who often smiled at me from her win-
dow, had done much to encourage my efforts. I now fell into
the deepest melancholy as I sounded the depths of the gulf
I had dropped into; for I foresaw plainly a life of poverty,
a perpetual struggle in which love must die. Marianna acted
as genius does; she jumped across every obstacle, both feet
at once. I will not speak of the little happiness which shed
its gilding on the beginning of my misfortunes. Dismayed
at my failure, I decided that Italy was not intelligent enough,
and too much sunk in the dull round of routine to accept the
innovations I conceived of ; so I thought of going to Germany.

"I traveled thither by way of Hungary, listening to the
myriad voices of nature, and trying to reproduce that sublime
harmony by the help of instruments which I constructed or
altered for the purpose. These experiments involved me in
vast expenses which had soon exhausted my savings. And
yet those were our golden days. In Germany I was appre-
ciated. There has been nothing in my life more glorious than
that time. I can think of nothing to compare with the vehe-

352 GAMBARA

ment joys I found by the side of Marianna, whose beauty was
then of really heavenly radiance and splendor. In short, I
was happy.

"During that period of weakness I more than once expressed
my passion in the language of earthly harmony. I even wrote
some of those airs, just like geometrical patterns, which are
so much admired in the world of fashion that you move in.
But as soon as I made a little way I met with insuperable
obstacles raised by my rivals, all hypercritical or unapprecia-
tive.

"I had heard of France as being a country where novelties
were favorably received, and I wanted to get there; my wife
had a little money and we came to Paris. Till then no one
had actually laughed in my face ; but in this dreadful city I
had to endure that new form of torture, to which abject pov-
erty ere long added its bitter sufferings. Eeduced to lodging
in this mephitic quarter, for many months we have lived ex-
clusively on Marianna's sewing, she having found employ-
ment for her needle in working for the unhappy prostitutes
who make this street their hunting ground. Marianna as-
sures me that among those poor creatures she has met with
such consideration and generosity as I, for my part, ascribe
to the ascendency of virtue so pure that even vice is com-
pelled to respect it."

"Hope on," said Andrea. "Perhaps you have reached the
end of your trials. And while waiting for the time when my
endeavor, seconding yours, shall set your labors in a true
light, allow me, as a fellow-countryman and an artist like
yourself, to offer you some little advance on the undoubted
success of your score."

"All that has to do with matters of material existence I
leave to my wife," replied Gambara. "She will decide as to
what we may accept without a blush from so thorough a
gentleman as you seem to be. For my part, — and it is long
since T have allowed myself to indulge such full confidences,
— I must now ask you to allow me to leave you. I see a
melody beckoning to me, dancing and floating before me,

GAMBARA 353

bare and quivering, like a girl entreating her lover for her
clothes which he has hidden. Good-night. I must go and
dress my mistress. My wife I leave with you."

He hurried away, as a man who blames himself for the loss
of valuable time; and Marianna, somewhat embarrassed,
prepared to follow him.

Andrea dared not detain her.

Giardini came to the rescue.

"But you heard, signora," said he. "Your husband has
left you to settle some little matters with the Signor Conte."

Marianna sat down again, but without raising her eyes to
Andrea, who hesitated before speaking.

"And will not Signor Gambara's confidence entitle me to
his wife's?" he said in agitated tones. "Can the fair Mari-
anna refuse to tell me the story of her life ?"

"My life !" said Marianna. "It is the life of the ivy. If
you wish to know the story of my heart, you must suppose me
equally destitute of pride and of modesty if you can ask me
to tell it after what you have just heard."

"Of whom, then, can I ask it ?" cried the Count, in whom
passion was blinding his wits.

"Of yourself," replied Marianna. "Either you understand
me by this time, or you never will. Try to ask yourself."

"I will, but you must listen. And this hand, which I am
holding, is to lie in mine as long as my narrative is truthful."

"I am listening," said Marianna.

"A woman's life begins with her first passion," said An-
drea. "And my dear Marianna began to live only on the day
when she first saw Paolo Gambara. She needed some deep
passion to feed upon, and, above all, some interesting weak-
ness to shelter and uphold. The beautiful woman's nature
with which she is endowed is perhaps not so truly passion as
maternal love.

"You sigh, Marianna? I have touched one of the aching
wounds in your heart. It was a noble part for you to play,
so young as you were, — that of protectress to a noble but
wandering intellect. You said to yourself : 'Paolo will be my

354 GAMBABA

genius ; I shall be his common sense ; between ns we shall be
that almost divine being called an angel, — the sublime
creature that enjoys and understands, reason never stifling
love.'

"And then, in the first impetus of youth, you heard the
thousand voices of nature which the poet longed to reproduce.
Enthusiasm clutched you when Paolo spread before you the
treasures of poetry, while seeking to embody them in the
sublime but restricted language of music; you admired him
when delirious rapture carried him up and away from you,
for you liked to believe that all this devious energy would at
last come down and alight as love. But you knew not the
tyrannous and jealous despotism of the ideal over the minds
that fall in love with it. Gambara, before meeting you, had
given himself over to the haughty and overbearing mistress,
with whom you have struggled for him to this day.

"Once, for an instant, you had a vision of happiness.
Paolo, tumbling from the lofty sphere where his spirit was
constantly soaring, was amazed to find reality so sweet; you
fancied that his madness would be lulled in the arms of love.
But before long Music again clutched her prey. The daz-
zling mirage which had cheated you into the joys of reciprocal
love made the lonely path on which you had started look more
desolate and barren.

"In the tale your husband has just told me, I could read,
as plainly as in the contrast between your looks and his, all the
painful secrets of that ill-assorted union, in which you have
accepted the sufferer's part. Though your conduct has been
unfailingly heroical, though your firmness has never once
given way in the exercise of your painful duties, perhaps,
in the silence of lonely nights, the heart that at this moment
is beating so wildly in your breast, may, from time to time,
have rebelled. Your husband's superiority was in itself your
worst torment. If he had been less noble, less single-minded,'
you might have deserted him; but his virtues upheld yours;
you wondered, perhaps, whether his heroism or your own
would be the first to give way.

QAMBABA 355

'Ton clung to your really magnanimous task as Paolo
clung to his chimera. If you had had nothing but a devotion
to duty to guide and sustain you, triumph might have seemed
easier; you would only have had to crush your heart, and
transfer your life into the world of abstractions; religion
would have absorbed all else, and you would have lived for
an idea, like those saintly women who kill all the instincts of
nature at the foot of the altar. But the all-pervading charm:
of Paolo, the loftiness of his mind, his rare and touching^
proofs of tenderness, constantly drag you down from that ideal
realm where virtue would fain maintain you ; they perennially
revive in you the energies you have exhausted in contending
with the phantom of love. You never suspected this ! The
faintest glimmer of hope led you on in pursuit of the sweet
vision.

"At last the disappointments of many years have under-
mined your patience, — an angel would have lost it long
since, — and now the apparition so long pursued is no more
than a shade without substance. Madness that is so nearly
allied to genius can know no cure in this world. When this
thought first struck you, you looked back on your past youth,
sacrificed, if not wasted; you then bitterly discerned the
blunder of nature that had given you a father when you
looked for a husband. You asked yourself whether you had
not gone beyond the duty of a wife in keeping yourself
wholly for a man who was bound up in his science. Mari-
anna, leave your hand in mine ; all I have said is true. And
you looked about you — but now you were in Paris, not in
Italy, where men know how to love "

"Oh ! Let me finish the tale," cried Marianna. "I would
rather say things myself. I will be honest ; I feel that I am
speaking to my truest friend. Yes, I was in Paris when all
you have expressed so clearly took place in my mind; but
when I saw you I was saved, for I had never met with the
love I had dreamed of from my childhood. My poor dress
and my dwelling-place had hidden me from the eyes of
men of your class. A few young men, whose position did

356 GAMBARA

not allow of their insulting me, were all the more intolerable
for the levity with which they treated me. Some made game
of my husband, as if he were merely a ridiculous old man;
others basely tried to win his good graces to betray me; one
and all talked of getting me away from him, and none under-
stood the devotion I feel for a soul that is so far away from
us only because it is so near heaven, for that friend, that
brother, whose handmaid I will always be.

"You alone understood, did you not ? the tie that binds me
to him. Tell me that you feel a sincere and disinterested re-
gard for my Paolo "

"I gladly accept your praises," Andrea interrupted; **but
go no further; do not compel me to contradict you. I love
you, Marianna, as we love in the beautiful country where we
both were born. I love you with all my soul and with all my
strength; but before offering you that love, I will be worthy
of yours. I will make a last attempt to give back to you the
man you have loved so long and will love forever. Till suc-
cess or defeat is certain, accept without any shame the modest
ease I can give you both. We will go to-morrow and choose
a place where he may live.

"Have you such regard for me as will allow you to make
me the partner in your guardianship?"

Marianna, surprised at such magnanimity, held out her
hand to the Count, who went away, trying to evade the civili-
ties of Giardini and his wife.

On the following day Giardini took the Count up to the
room where the Gambaras lodged. Though Marianna fully
knew her lover's noble soul, — -for there are natures which
quickly enter into each other's spirit, — Marianna was too
good a housewife not to betray her annoyance at receiving
such a fine gentleman in so humble a room. Everything was
exquisitely clean. She had spent the morning in dusting her
motley furniture, the handiwork of Signor Giardini, who had
put it together, at odd moments of leisure, out of the frag-
ments of the instruments rejected by Gambara.

GAMBARA S57

Andrea had never seen an3rthing quite so crazy. To keep a
decent countenance he turned away from a grotesque bed,
contrived by the ingenious cook in the case of an old harpsi-
chord, and looked at Marianna's narrow couch, of which the
single mattress was covered with a white muslin counterpane,
a circumstance that gave rise in his mind to some sad but
sweet thoughts.

He wished to speak of his plans and of his morning's work ;
but Gambara, in his enthusiasm, believing that he had at last
met with a willing listener, took possession of him, and com-
pelled him to listen to the opera he had written for Paris.

"In the first place, monsieur," said the composer, "allow
me to explain the subject in a few words. Here, the hearers
receiving a musical impression do not work it out in them-
selves, as religion bids us work out the texts of Scripture in
prayer. Hence it is very difficult to make them understand
that there is in nature an eternal melody, exquisitely sweet, a
perfect harmony, disturbed only by revolutions independent
of the divine will, as passions are uncontrolled by the will of
men.

"I, therefore, had to seek a vast framework in which effect
and cause might both be included; for the aim of my music
is to give a picture of the life of nations from the loftiest
point of view. My opera, for which I myself wrote the
libretto, for a poet would never have fully developed the
subject, is the life of Mahomet, — a figure in whom the magic
of Sabaeanism combined with the Oriental poetry of the He-
brew Scriptures to result in one of the greatest human epics,
the Arab dominion. Mahomet certainly derived from the
Hebrews the idea of a despotic government, and from the
religion of the shepherd tribes or Sabaeans the spirit of ex-
pansion which created the splendid empire of the Khalifs.
His destiny was stamped on him in his birth, for his father
was a heathen and his mother a Jewess. Ah ! my dear Count,
to be a great musician a man must be very learned. Without
knowledge he can get no local color and put no ideas into his
music. The composer who sings for singing's sake is an arti-
san, not an artist.

858 GAMBARA

"This magnificent opera is the continuation of the great
work I projected. My first opera was called The Martyrs,
and I intend to write a third on Jerusalem delivered. You
perceive the beauty of this trilogy and what a variety of
motives it offers, — the Martyrs, Mahomet, the Deliverance of
Jerusalem : the God of the West, the God of the Bast, and the
struggle of their worshipers over a tomb. But we will not
dwell on my fame, now for ever lost.

"This is the argument of my opera." He paused. "The
first act," he went on, "shows Mahomet as a porter to Kadijah,
a rich widow with whom his uncle placed him. He is in love
and ambitious. Driven from Mecca, he escapes to Medina,
and dates his era from his flight, the Hegira. In the second
act he is a Prophet, founding a militant religion. In the
third, disgusted with all things, having exhausted life, Ma-
homet conceals the manner of his death in the hope of being
regarded as a god, — last effort of human pride.

"Now you shall judge of my way of expressing in sound
a great idea, for which poetry could find no adequate expres-
sion in words."

Gambara sat down to the piano with an absorbed gaze, and
his wife brought him the mass of papers forming his score;
but he did not open them.

"The whole opera," said he, "is founded on a bass, as on a
fruitful soil. Mahomet was to have a majestic bass voice,
and his wife necessarily had a contralto. Kadijah was quite
old — ^twenty! Attention! This is the overture. It begins
with an andante in C major, triple time. Do you hear the
sadness of the ambitious man who is not satisfied with love?
Then, through his lamentation, by a transition to the key of
E flat, allegro, common time, we hear the cries of the epileptic
lover, his fury and certain warlike phrases, for the mighty,
scimitar of the Khalifs begins to gleam before him. The
charms of the one and only woman give him the impulse
to multiplied loves which strikes us in Don Giovanni. Now,
as you hear these themes, do you not catch a glimpse of
Mahomet's Paradise?

GAMBARA 359

"And next we have a cantahile (A flat major, six-eight
time), that might expand the soul that is least susceptible to
music. Kadi j ah has understood Mahomet ! Then Kadi j ah
announces to the populace the Prophet's interviews with the
Angel Gabriel {maestoso sostenuto in F major). The mag-
istrates and priests, power and religion, feeling themselves
attacked by the innovator, as Christ and Socrates also at-
tacked effete or worn-out powers and religions, persecute
Mahomet and drive him out of Mecca {stretto in C major).
Then comes my beautiful dominant (G major, common
time). Arabia now harkens to the Prophet; horsemen arrive
(G major, E flat, B flat, G minor, and still common time).
The mass of men gathers like an avalanche ; the false Prophet
has begun on a tribe the work he will achieve over a world
(G major),

"He promises the Arabs universal dominion, and they be-
lieve him because he is inspired. The crescendo beings (still
in the dominant). Here come some flourishes (in C major)
from the brass, founded on the harmony, but strongly marked,
and asserting themselves as an expression of the first
triumphs. Medina has gone over to the Prophet, and the
whole army marches on Mecca (an explosion of sound in C
major). The whole power of the orchestra is worked up like
a conflagration ; every instrument is employed ; it is a torrent
of harmony.

"Suddenly the tutti is interrupted by a flowing air (on
the minor third). You hear the last strain of devoted love.
The woman who had upheld the great man dies concealing
her despair, dies at the moment of triumph for him in whom
love has become too overbearing to be content with one woman ;
and she worships him enough to sacrifice herself to the
greatness of the man who is killing her. What a blaze of
love!

"Then the Desert rises to overrun the world (back to C
major) . The whole strength of the orchestra comes in again,
collected in a tremendous quintet grounded on the funda-
mental bass, — and he is dying! Mahomet is world-weary;

360 GAMBARA

he has exhausted everything. Now he craves to die a god.
Arabia, in fact, worships and prays to him, and we return
to the first melancholy strain (C minor) to which the curtain
rose.

"N'ow, do you not discern," said Gambara, ceasing to play,
and turning to the Count, "in this picturesque and vivid
music — abrupt, grotesque, or melancholy, but always grand
— the complete expression of the life of an epileptic, mad
for enjoyment, unable to read or write, using all his defects
as stepping-stones, turning every blunder and disaster into a
triumph ? Did not you feel a sense of his fascination exerted
over a greedy and lustful race, in this overture, which is an
epitome of the opera ?"

At first calm and stern, the maestro's face, in which Andrea
had been trying to read the ideas he was uttering in inspired
tones, though the chaotic flood of notes afforded no clue to
them, had by degrees glowed with fire and assumed an im-
passioned force that infected Marianna and the cook.
Marianna, too, deeply affected by certain passages in which
she recognized a picture of her own position, could not con-
ceal the expression of her eyes from Andrea.

Gambara wiped his brow, and shot a glance at the ceiling
of such fierce energy that he seemed to pierce it and soar to
the very skies.

"You have seen the vestibule," said he ; "we will now enter
the palace. The opera begins: —

"Act I. Mahomet, alone on the stage, begins with an air
(F natural, common time), interrupted by a chorus of camel-
drivers gathered round a well at the back of the stage (they
sing in contrary time — twelve-eight). What majestic woe!
It will appeal to the most frivolous women, piercing to their
inmost nerves if they have no heart. Is not this the very ex-
pression of crushed genius?"

To Andrea's great astonishment, — for Marianna was ac-
customed to it, — Gambara contracted his larynx to such a
pitch that the only sound was a stifled cry not unlike the bark
of a watch-dog that has lost its voice. A slight foam came to
the composer's lips and made Andrea shudder.

GAMBARA 861

'Tlis wife appears (A minor). Such a magnificent duet!
In this number I have shown that Mahomet has the will and
his wife the brains. Kadi j ah announces that she is about
to devote herself to an enterprise that will rob her of her
young husband's love. Mahomet means to conquer the world ;
this his wife has guessed, and she supports him by persuading
the people of Mecca that her husband's attacks of epilepsy are
the effect of his intercourse with the angels (chorus of the
first followers of Mahomet, who come to promise him their
aid, C sharp minor, sotto voce). Mahomet goes off to seek
the Angel Gabriel (recitative in F major). His wife en-
courages the disciples (aria, interrupted by the chorus;
gusts of chanting support Kadijah's broad and majestic air,
A major).

"Abdallah, the father of Ayesha, — ^the only maiden Ma-
homet had found really innocent, wherefore he changed the
name of Abdallah to Abubekir (the father of the virgin), —
comes forward with Ayesha and sings against the chorus,
in strains which rise above the other voices and supplement
the air sung by Kadi j ah in contrapuntal treatment. Omar,
the father of another maiden who is to be Mahomet's con-
cubine, follows Abubekir's example; he and his daughter
join in to form a quintette. The girl Ayesha is first soprano,
Hafsa second soprano; Abubekir is a bass, Omar a baritone.

"Mahomet returns, inspired. He sings his first bravura
air, the beginning of the finale (E major), promising the
empire of the world to those who believe in him. The
Prophet, seeing the two damsels, then, by a gentle transi-
tion (from B major to G major), addresses them in amorous
tones. Ali, Mahomet's cousin, and Khaled, his greatest gen-
eral, both tenors, now arrive and announce the persecution;
the magistrates, the military, and the authorities have all
proscribed the Prophet (recitative). Mahomet declares in
an invocation (in C) that the Angel Gabriel is on his side,
and points to a pigeon that is seen flying away. The chorus
of believers responds in accents of devotion (on a modulation
to B major). The soldiers, magistrates, and officials then

862 GAMBAKA

come on (tempo di mar da, common time, B major). A
chorus in two divisions {streito in E major), Mahomet
yields to the storm (in a descending phrase of diminished
eevenths) and makes his escape. The fierce and gloomy tone
of this finale is relieved by the phrases given to the three wo-
men who foretell Mahomet's triumph, and these motives are
further developed in the third act in the scene where Ma-
homet is enjoying his splendor."

1 The tears rose to Gambara's eyes, and it was only upon con-
trolling his emotion that he went on.

"Act II. The religion is now established. The Arabs are
guarding the Prophet's tent while he speaks with God (chorus
in A minor). Mahomet appears (a prayer in F). What a
majestic and noble strain is this that forms the bass of the
voices, in which I have perhaps enlarged the borders of
melody. It was needful to express the wonderful energy of
this great human movement which created an architecture,
a music, a poetry of its own, a costume and manners. As
you listen, you are walking under the arcades of the Gen-
eralife, the carved vaults of the Alhambra. The runs and
trills depict that delicate mauresque decoration, and the
gallant and valorous religion which was destined to wage
war against the gallant and valorous chivalry of Christen-
dom. A few brass instruments awake in the orchestra, an-
nouncing the Prophet's first triumph (in a broken cadenza).
The Arabs adore the Prophet (E flat major), and Khaled,
Amru, and Ali arrive (tempo di marcia). The armies of
the faithful have taken many towns and subjugated the three
Arabias. Such a grand recitative ! — Mahomet rewards his
generals by presenting them with maidens.

"And here," said Gambara, sadly, "there is one of those
wretched ballets, which interrupt the thread of the finest
musical tragedies ! But Mahomet elevates it once more by
'his great prophetic scene, which poor Monsieur Voltaire be-
gins with these words :

"Arabia's time at last haa come!

GAMBARA S63

"He is interrupted by a, chorus of triumphant Arabs
(twelve-eight time, accelerando). The tribes arrive in
crowds ; the horns and brass reappear in the orchestra. Gen-
eral rejoicings ensue, all the voices joining in by degrees, and
Mahomet announces polygamy. In the midst of all this
triumph, the woman who has been of such faithful service to
Mahomet sings a magnificent air (in B major). 'And I,'
Bays she, 'am I no longer loved?' 'We must part. Thou art
"but a woman, and I am a Prophet ; I may still have slaves but
no equal.' Just listen to this duet (Gr sharp minor). What
anguish ! The woman understands the greatness her hands
have built up; she loves Mahomet well enough to sacrifice
herself to his glory; she worships him as a god, without
criticising him, — without murmuring. Poor woman ! His
first dupe and his first victim !

"What a subject for the finale (in B major) is her grief,
brought out in such sombre hues against the acclamations of •
the chorus, and mingling with Mahomet's tones as he throws
his wife aside as a tool of no further use, still showing her
that he can never forget her ! What fireworks of triumph !
what a rush of glad and rippling song go up from the two
young voices (first and second soprano) of Ayesha and Hafsa,
supported by Ali and his wife, by Omar and Abubekir!
Weep ! — rejoice ! — Triumph and tears ! Such is life."

Marianna could not control her tears, and Andrea was so
deeply moved that his eyes were moist. The !N"eapolitan cook
was startled by the magnetic influence of the ideas expressed
by Gambara's convulsive accents.

The composer looked round, saw the group, and smiled.

"At last you understand me !" said he.

No conqueror, led in pomp to the Capitol under the purple
beams of glory, as the crown was placed on his head amid
the acclamations of a nation, ever wore such an expression.
The composer's face was radiant, like that of a holy martyr.
No one dispelled the error. A terrible smile parted
Marianna's lips. The Count was appalled by the guileless-
ness of this mania.

364 GAMBABA

"Act III," said the enchanted musician, reseating him-
self at the piano. "{Andantino, solo.) Mahomet in his
seraglio, surrounded by women, but not happy. Quartette
of Houris (A major). What pompous harmony, what trills
as of ecstatic nightingales! Modulation (into F sharp
minor). The theme is stated (on the dominant E and re-
peated in F major). Here every delight is grouped and ex-
pressed to give effect to the contrast of the gloomy finale of
the first act. After the dancing, Mahomet rises and sings a
grand bravura air (in F minor), repelling the perfect and
devoted love of his first wife, but confessing himself con-
quered by polygamy. Never has a musician had so fine a
subject ! The orchestra and the chorus of female voices ex-
press the joys of the Houris, while Mahomet reverts to the
melancholy strain of the opening. Where is Beethoven,'*
cried Gambara, "to appreciate this prodigious reaction of my
opera on itself ? How completely it all rests on the bass.

"It is thus that Beethoven composed his E minor sym-
phony. But his heroic work is purely instrumental, whereas
here, my heroic phrase is worked out on a sextette of the
finest human voices, and a chorus of the faithful on guard
at the door of the sacred dwelling. I have every resource
of melody and harmony at my command, an orchestra and
voices. Listen to the utterance of all these phases of human
life, rich and poor ; — battle, triumph, and exhaustion !

"Ali arrives, the Koran prevails in every province (duet
in D minor). Mahomet places himself in the hands of his
two fathers-in-law; he will abdicate his rule and die in re-
tirement to consolidate his work. A magnificent sextette (B
flat major). He takes leave of all (solo in F natural). His
two fathers-in-law, constituted his vicars or Khalifs, appeal
to the people. A great triumphal march, and a prayer by
all the Arabs kneeling before the sacred house, the Kasbah,
from which a pigeon is seen to fly away (the same key).
This prayer, sung by sixty voices and led by the women (in
B flat), crowns the stupendous work expressive of the life of

GAMBARA 885

nations and of man. Here you have every emotion, human
and divine."

Andrea gazed at Gambara in blank amazement. Though
at first he had been struck by the terrible irony of the situa-
tion,— this man expressing the feelings of Mahomet's wife
without discovering them in Marianna, — the husband's
hallucination was as nothing compared with the composer's.
There was no hint even of a poetical or musical idea in the
hideous cacophony with which he had deluged their ears ; the
first principles of harmony, the most elementary rules of com-
position, were absolutely alien to this chaotic structure. In-
stead of the scientifically compacted music which Gambara
described, his fingers produced sequences of fifths, sevenths,
and octaves, of major thirds, progressions of fourths with no
supporting bass, — a medley of discordant sounds struck out
haphazard in such a way as to be excruciating to the least
sensitive ear. It is difficult to give any idea of the grotesque
performance. New words would be needed to describe this
impossible music.

Andrea, painfully affected by this worthy man's madness,
colored, and stole a glance at Marianna; while she, turning
pale and looking down, could not restrain her tears. In the
midst of this chaos of notes, Gambara had every now and
then given vent to his rapture in exclamations of delight.
He had closed his eyes in ecstasy; had smiled at his piano;
had looked at it with a frown ; put out his tongue at it after
the fashion of the inspired performer, — in short, was quite
intoxicated with the poetry that filled his brain, and that he
had vainly striven to utter. The strange discords that clashed
under his fingers had obviously sounded in his ears like
celestial harmonies.

A deaf man, seeing the inspired gaze of his blue eyes
open on another world, the rosy glow that tinged his cheeks,
and, above all, the heavenly serenity which ecstasy stamped
on his proud and noble countenance, would have supposed
that he was looking on at the improvisation of a really great
artist. The illusion would have been all the more natural

866 GAMBARA

because the performance of this mad music required immerw*.
executive skill to achieve such fingering. Gambara must have
worked at it for years.

Nor were his hands alone employed; his feet were con-
stantly at work with complicated pedaling; his body swayed
to and fro; the perspiration poured down his face while he
toiled to produce a great crescendo with the feeble means
the thankless instrument placed at his command. He
stamped, puffed, shouted; his fingers were as swift as the
serpent's double tongue; and finally, at the last crash on
the keys, he fell back in his chair, resting his head on the top
of it.

"Per Bacco! I am quite stunned," said the Count as he
left the house. "A child dancing on the keyboard would
make better music."

"Certainly mere chance could not more successfully avoid
hitting two notes in concord than that possessed creature
has done during the past hour," said Giardini.

"How is it that the regular beauty of Marianna's features is
not spoiled by incessantly hearing such a hideous medley?",
said the Count to himself. "Marianna will certainly grow
ugly."

"Signor, she must be saved from that," cried Giardini.

"Yes," said Andrea. "I have thought of that. Still, to
be sure that my plans are not based on error, I must con-
firm my doubts by another experiment. I will return and
examine the instruments he has invented. To-morrow, after
dinner, we will have a little supper. I will send in some
wine and little dishes."

The cook bowed.

Andrea spent the following day in superintending the ar-
rangement of the rooms where he meant to install the artist
in a humble home.

In the evening the Count made his appearance, and found
the wine, according to his instructions, set out with some
care by Marianna and Giardini. . Gambara proudly exhibited
the little drums, on which lay the powder by means of which

GAMBARA 867

he made his observations on the pitch and quality of the
sounds emitted by his instruments.

"You see," said he, "by what simple means I can prove the
most important propositions. Acoustics thus can show me
the analogous effects of sound on every object of its impact.
All harmonies start from a common centre and preserve the
closest relations among themselves; or rather, harmony, like
light, is decomposable by our art as a ray is by a prism."

He then displayed the instruments constructed in accord-
ance with his laws, explaining the changes he had introduced
into their constitution. And finally he announced that to
conclude this preliminary inspection, which could only satisfy
a superficial curiosity, he would perform on an instrument
that contained all the elements of a complete orchestra, and
which he called a Panharmonicon.

"If it is the machine in that huge case, which brings
down on us the' complaints of the neighborhood whenever you
work at it, you will not play on it long," said Giardini. "The
police will interfere. Eemember that !"

"If that poor idiot stays in the room," said Gambara in a
whisper to the Count, "I cannot possibly play."

Andrea dismissed the cook, promising a handsome reward
if he would keep watch outside and hinder the neighbors or the
police from interfering. Giardini, who had not stinted him-
self while helping Gambara to wine, was quite willing.

Gambara, without being drunk, was in the condition when
every power of the brain is over-wrought; when the walls
of the room are transparent; when the garret has no roof,
and the soul soars in the empyrean of spirits.

Marianna, with some little difficulty, removed the covers
from an instrument as large as a grand piano, but with an
upper case added. This strange-looking instrument, besides
this second body and its keyboard, supported the openings or
bells of various wind instruments and the closed funnels of
a few organ pipes.

"Will you play me the prayer you say is so fine at the end
of your opera?" said the Count.

868 6AMBARA

To the great surprise of both Marianna and the Count,
Gambara began with a succession of chords that proclaimed
him a master; and their astonishment gave way first to
amazed admiration and then to perfect rapture, effacing all
thought of the place and the performer. The effects of a
real orchestra ^could not have been finer than the voices of
the wind instruments, which were like those of an organ and
combined wonderfully with the harmonies of the strings.
But the unfinished condition of the machine set limits to
the composer's execution, and his idea seemed all the greater ;
for, often, the very perfection of a work of art limits its sug-
gestiveness to the recipient soul. Is not this proved by the
preference accorded to a sketch rather than a finished picture
when on their trial before those who interpret a work in their
own mind rather than accept it rounded off and complete?

The purest and serenest music that Andrea had ever
listened to rose up from under Gambara's fingers like the
vapor of incense from an altar. The composer's voice grew
young again, and, far from marring the noble melody, it
elucidated it, supported it, guided it, — just as the feeble and
quavering voice of an accomplished reader, such as Andrieux,
for instance, can expand the meaning of some great scene by
Corneille or Eacine by lending personal and poetical feeling.

This really angelic strain showed what treasures lay hidden
in that stupendous opera, which, however, would never find
comprehension so long as the musician persisted in tr}dng to
explain it in his present demented state. His wife and thp
Count were equally divided between the music and their sur-
prise at this hundred-voiced instrument, inside which a
stranger might have fancied an invisible chorus of girls were
hidden, so closely did some of the tones resemble the human
voice; and they dared not express their ideas by a look or a
word. Marianna's face was lighted up by a radiant beam
of hope which revived the glories of her youth. This
renascence of beauty, co-existent with the luminous glow of
her husband's genius, cast a shade of regret on the Count's
exquisite pleasure in this mysterious hour.

GAMBARA 869

'TTou are our good genius!" whispered Marianna. "I
am tempted to believe that you actually inspire him; for I,
wVio never am away from him, have never heard anything
like this."

"And Kadijah's farewell !" cried Gambara, who sang the
cavatina which he had described the day before as sublime,
and which now brought tears to the eyes of the lovers, so per-
fectly did it express the loftiest devotion of love.

"Who can have taught you such strains ?" cried the Count.

"The Spirit," said Gambara. "When he appears, all is
fire. I see the melodies there before me; lovely, fresh in
vivid hues like flowers. They beam on me, they ring out, —
and I listen. But it takes a long, long time to reproduce
them."

"Some more !" said Marianna.

Gambara, who could not tire, played on without effort or
antics. He performed his overture with such skill, bringing
out such rich and original musical effects, that the Count
was quite dazzled, and at last believed in some magic like
that commanded by Paganini and Liszt, — a style of execution
which changes every aspect of music as an art, by giving it
a poetic quality far above musical inventions.

"Well, Excellenza, and can you cure him ?" asked Giardini,
as Andrea came out.

"I shall soon find out," replied the Count. "This man's
intellect has two windows; one is closed to the world, the
other is open to the heavens. The first is music, the second
is poetry. Till now he has insisted on sitting in front of
the shuttered window; he must be got to the other. It was
you, Giardini, who first started me in the right track, by tell-
ing me that your client's mind was clearer after drinking a
few glasses of wine."

"Yes," cried the cook, "and I can see what your plan is."

"If it is not too late to make the thunder of poetry audi-
ble to his ears, in the midst of the harmonies of some noble
music, we mast put him into a condition to receive it and ap-

370 GAMBARA

predate it. Will you help me to intoxicate Gambara, my
good fellow ? Will you be none the worse for it ?"

''What do you mean, Excellenza?"

Andrea went off without answering him, laughing at the
acumen still left to this cracked wit.

On the following day he called for Marianna, who had
spent the morning in arranging her dress, — a simple but
decent outfit, on which she had spent all her little savings.
The transformation would have destroyed the illusions of a
mere dangler; but Andrea's caprice had become a passion.
Marianna, diverted of her picturesque poverty, and looking
like any ordinary woman of modest rank, inspired dreams of
wedded life.

He handed her into a hackney coach, and told her of the
plans he had in his head; and she approved of everything,
happy in finding her admirer more lofty, more generous,
more disinterested than she had dared to hope. He took her
to a little apartment, where he had allowed himself to remind
her of his good offices by some of the elegant trifles which
have a charm for the most virtuous women.

"I will never speak to you of love till you give up all hope
of your Paolo," said the Count to Marianna, as he bid her
good-bye at the Eue Froid-Manteau. "You will be witness
to the sincerity of my attempts. If they succeed, I may
find myself unequal to keeping up my part as a friend ; but in
that case I shall go far away, Marianna. Though I have
firmness enough to work for your happiness, I shall not have
so much as will enable me to look on at it."

"Do not say such things. Generosity, too, has its dan-
gers," said she, swallowing down her tears. "But are you
going now?"
, "Yes," said Andrea; "be happy, without any drawbacks."

If Giardini might be believed, the new treatment was
beneficial to both husband and wife. Every evening after
his wine, Gambara seemed less self-centered, talked more,
and with great lucidity ; he even spoke at last of reading the

GAMBARA 371

papers. Andrea could not help quaking at his unexpectedly
rapid success ; but though his distress made him aware of the
strength of his passion, it did not make him waver in his
virtuous resolve.

One day he called to note the progress of this singular
cure. Though the state of the patient at first gave him sat-
isfaction, his joy was dashed by Marianna's beauty, for an
easy life had restored its brilliancy. He called now every
evening to enjoy calm and serious conversation, to which he
contributed lucid and well considered arguments controvert-
ing Gambara's singular theories. He took advantage of the
remarkable acumen of the composer's mind as to every point
not too directly bearing on his manias, to obtain his assent
to principles in various branches of art, and apply them sub-
sequently to music. All was well so long as the patient's
brain was heated with the fumes of wine; but as soon as he
had recovered — or, rather, lost — ^his reason, he was a mono-
maniac once more.

However, Paolo was already more easily diverted by the
impression of outside things; his mind was more capable of
addressing itself to several points at a time.

Andrea, who took an artistic interest in his semi-medical
treatment, thought at last that the time had come for a great
experiment. He would give a dinner at his own house, to
which he would invite Giardini for the sake of keeping the
tragedy and the parody side by side, and afterwards take the
party to the first performance of Rohert le Diahle. He had
seen it in rehearsal, and he judged it well fitted to open his
patient's eyes.

By the end of the second course, Gambara was already
tipsy, laughing at himself with a very good grace; while
Giardini confessed that his own culinary innovations were
not worth a rush. Andrea had neglected nothing that could
contribute to this twofold miracle. The wines of Orvieto
and of Montefiascone, conveyed with the peculiar care needed
in moving them, Lachrymachristi and Giro, — all the heady
liqueurs of la cara Patria, — ^went to their brains with the

872 GAMBARA

intoxication alike of the grape and of fond memory. At
dessert the musician and the cook both abjured every heresy;
one was humming a cavatina by Kossini, and the other piling
delicacies on his plate and washing them down with
Maraschino from Zara, to the prosperity of the French cuisine.

The Count took advantage of this happy frame of mind,
and Gambara allowed himself to be taken to the opera like
a lamb.

At the first introductory notes Gambara's intoxication
appeared to clear away and make way for the feverish excite-
ment which sometimes brought his judgment and his imagina-
tion into perfect harmony ; for it was their habitual disagree-
ment, no doubt, that caused his madness. The ruling idea
of that great musical drama appeared to him, no doubt, in
its noble simplicity, like a lightning flash, illuminating the
utter darkness in which he lived. To his unsealed eyes this
music revealed the immense horizons of a world in which
he found himself for the first time, though recognizing it
as that he had seen in his dreams. He fancied himself trans-
ported into the scenery of his native land, where that beautiful
Italian landscape begins at what Napoleon so cleverly de-
scribed as the glacis of the Alps. Carried back by memor}'
to the time when his young and eager brain was as yet un
troubled by the ecstasy of his too exuberant imagination,
he listened with religious awe and would not utter a single
word. The Count respected the internal travail of his soul.
Till half-past twelve Gambara sat so perfectly motionless
that the frequenters of the opera house took him, no doubt,
for what he was — a man drunk.

On their return, Andrea began to attack Meyerbeer's work,
in order to wake up Gambara, who sat sunk in the half -torpid
state common in drunkards.

*^hat is there in that incoherent score to reduce you to
a condition of somnambulism?" asked Andrea, when they
got out at his house. "The story of Robert le Diable, to be
sure, is not devoid of interest, and Holtei has worked it out
with great skill in a drama that is very well written and full

GAMBARA 878

of strong and pathetic situations; but the French librettist
has contrived to extract from it the most ridiculous farrago
of nonsense. The absurdities of the libretti of Vesari and
Schikander are not to compare with those of the words of
Robert le Diable ; it is a dramatic nightmare, which oppresses
the hearer without deeply moving him.

"And Meyerbeer has given the devil a too prominent part.
Bertram and Alice represent the contest between right and
wrong, the spirits of good and evil. This antagonism of-
fered a splendid opportunity to the composer. The sweetest
melodies, in juxtaposition with harsh and crude strains, was
the natural outcome of the form of the story; but in the
German composer's score the demons sing better than the
saints. The heavenly airs belie their origin, and when the
composer abandons the infernal motives he returns to them
as soon as possible, fatigued with the effort of keeping aloof
from them. Melody, the golden thread that ought never to
be lost throughout so vast a plan, often vanishes from Meyer-
beer's work. Feeling counts for nothing, the heart has no
part in it. Hence we never come upon those happy inven-
tions, those artless scenes, which captivate all our sympathies
and leave a blissful impression on the soul.

"Harmony reigns supreme, instead of being the foundation
from which the melodic groups of the musical picture stand
forth. These discordant combinations, far from moving
the listener, arouse in him a feeling analogous to that which
he would experience on seeing a rope-dancer hanging to a
thread and swaying between life and death. Never does a
soothing strain come in to mitigate the fatiguing suspense.
It really is as though the composer had had no other object
in view than to produce a baroque effect without troubling
himself about musical truth or unit}'^, or about the capabilities
of human voices which are swamped by this flood of instru-
mental noise."

"Silence, my friend !" cried Gambara. "I am still under
the spell of that glorious chorus of hell, made still more ter-
rible by the long trumpets, — a, new method of instruraenta-

S74 OAMBARA

tion. The broken cadenzas which give such force to Robert's
scene, the cavatina in the fourth act, the finale of the first,
all hold me in the grip of a supernatural power. N"o, not
even Gluck's declamation ever produced so prodigious an
ejffect, and I am amazed by such skill and learning.'^

"Signor Maestro," said Andrea, smiling, "allow me to con-
tradict you. Gluck, before he wrote, reflected long; he cal-
culated the chances, and he decided on a plan which might
,be subsequently modified by his inspirations as to detail, but
hindered him from ever losing his way. Hence his power
of emphasis, his declamatory style thrilling with life and
truth. I quite agree with you that Meyerbeer's learning is
transcendent; but science is a defect when it evicts inspira-
tion, and it seems to me that we have in this opera the pain-
ful toil of a refined craftsman who in his music has but
picked up thousands of phrases out of other operas, damned
or forgotten, and appropriated them, while extending, modify-
ing, or condensing them. But he has fallen into the error
of all selectors of centos, — an abuse of good things. This
clever harvester of notes is lavish of discords, which, when
too often introduced, fatigue the ear till those great effects
pall upon it which a composer should husband vrith care
to make the more effective use of them when the situation
requires it. These enharmonic passages recur to satiety, and
the abuse of the plagal cadence deprives it of its religious
solemnity.

"I know, of course, that every musician has certain forms
to which he drifts back in spite of himself ; he should watch
himself so as to avoid that blunder. A picture in which
there were no colors but blue and red would be untrue to
nature, and fatigue the eye. And thus the constantly re-
curring rhythm in the score of Robert le Diahle makes the
work, as a whole, appear monotonous. As to the effect of the
long trumpets, of which you speak, it has long been known
in Germany ; and what Meyerbeer offers us as a novelty was
constantly used by Mozart, who gives just such a chorus to
the devils in Don Oiovanni"

OAMBABA 375

By plying Gambara, meanwhile, with fresh libations,
'Andrea thus strove, by his contradietoriness, to bring the mu-
sician back to a true sense of music, by proving to him that
his so-called mission was not to try to regenerate an art be-
yond his powers, but to seek to express himself in another
form ; namely, that of poetry.

"But, my dear Count, you have understood nothing of
that stupendous musical drama," said Gambara, airily, as
standing in front of Andrea's piano he struck the keys,
listened to the tone, and then seated himself, meditating for
a few minutes as if to collect his ideas.

"To begin with, you must know," said he, "that an ear
as practised as mine at once detected that labor of choice
and setting of which you spoke. Yes, the music has been
selected, lovingly, from the storehouse of a rich and fertile
imagination wherein learning has squeezed every idea to
extract the very essence of music. I will illustrate the pro-
cess."

He rose to carry the candles into the adjoining room,
and before sitting down again he drank a full glass of Giro,
a Sardinian wine, as full of fire as the old wines of Tokay
can inspire.

"Now, you see," said Gambara, '*this music is not written
for misbelievers, nor for those who know not love. If you
have never suffered from the virulent attacks of an evil
spirit who shifts your object just as you are taking aim,
who puts a fatal end to your highest hopes, — ^in one word,
if you have never felt the deviFs tail whisking over the world,
the opera of Robert le Diahle must be to you, what the
Apocalypse is to those who believe that all things will end
with them. But if, persecuted and wretched, you understand
that Spirit of Evil, — ^the monstrous ape who is perpetually
employed in destroying the work of God, — if you can con-
ceive of him as having, not indeed loved, but ravished, an al-
most divine woman, and achieved through her the joy of
patei-nity ; as so loving his son that he would rather have him
eternally miserable with himself than think of him as eter-

376 6AMBABA

nally happy with God; if, finally, you can imagine the mother's
soul for ever hovering over the child's head to snatch it from
the atrocious temptations offered by its father, — even then
you will have but a faint idea of this stupendous drama,
which needs but little to make it worthy of comparison with
Mozart's Don Giovanni. Don Giovanni is in its perfection
the greater, I grant; Rohert le Diahle expresses ideas, Don
Giovanni arouses sensations. Don Giovanni is as yet the
only musical work in which harmony and melody are com-
bined in exactly the right proportions. In this lies its only
superiority, for Robert is the richer work. But how vain
are such comparisons since each is so beautiful in its own
way!

"To me, suffering as I do from the demon's repeated
shocks, Eobert spoke with greater power than to you ; it struck
me as being at the same time vast and concentrated.

"Thanks to you, I have been transported to the glorious
land of dreams where our senses expand, and the world works
on a scale which is gigantic as compared with man."

He was silent for a space.

"I am trembling still," said the ill-starred artist, "from the
four bars of cymbals which pierced to my marrow as they
open that short, abrupt introduction with its solo for trom-
bone, its flutes, oboes, and clarionet, all suggesting the most
fantastic effects of color. The andante in C minor is a
foretaste of the subject of the evocation of the ghosts in the
abbey, and gives grandeur to the scene by anticipating the
spiritual struggle. I shivered."

Gambara pressed the keys with a firm hand and expanded
Meyerbeer's theme in a masterly fantasia, a sort of outpour-
ing of his soul after the manner of Liszt. It was no longer
the piano, it was a whole orchestra that they heard ; the very
genius of music rose before them.

"That is worthy of Mozart !" he exclaimed. "See how
that German can handle his chords, and through what mas-
terly modulations he raises the image of terror to come to
the dominant C. I can hear all hell in it 1

GAMBARA 377

*'The curtain rises. "What do I see? The only scene to
which we gave the epithet infernal: an orgy of knights in
Sicily. In that chorus in F every human passion is unchained
in a bacchanalian allegro. Every thread by which the devil
holds us is pulled. Yes, that is the sort of glee that comes
over men when they dance on the edge of a precipice; they
make themselves giddy. What go there is in that chorus !

"Against that chorus — the reality of life — the simple life
of every-day virtue stands out in the air, in G minor, sung by
Eaimbaut. For a moment it refreshed my spirit to hear
the simple fellow, representative of verdurous and fruitful
Normandy, which he brings to Eobert's mind in the midst
of his drunkenness. The sweet influence of his beloved na-
tive land lends a touch of tender color to this gloomy open-
ing.

"Then comes the wonderful air in C major, supported
by the chorus in C minor, so expressive of the subject. 'Je
suis Robert!' he immediately breaks out. The wrath of the
prince, insulted by his vassal, is already more than natural
anger; but it will die away, for memories of his childhood
come to him, with Alice, in the bright and graceful allegro
in A major.

"Can you not hear the cries of the innocent dragged
into this infernal drama, — a persecuted creature? 'Non,
non/ '' sang Gambara, who made the consumptive piano sing.
"His native land and tender emotions have come back to him ;
his childhood and its memories have blossomed anew in
Eobert's heart. And now his mother's shade rises up, bring-
ing with it soothing religious thoughts. It is religion that
lives in that beautiful song in E major, with its wonderful
harmonic and melodic progression in the words :

' ' Car dans les cieux, coinine sur la terre,
Sa mfere va prier pour lui.

"Here the struggle begins between the unseen powers and
the only human being who has the fire of hell in his veins
to enable him to resist them; and to make this quite clear,

878 6AMBARA

as Bertram comes on, the great musician has given the or-
chestra a passage introducing a reminiscence of Eaimbaut's
ballad. What a stroke of art! What cohesion of all the
parts! What solidity of structure!

"The devil is there, in hiding, but restless. The conflict
of the antagonistic powers opens with Alice's terror; she
recognizes the devil of the image of Saint ^lichael in her
village. The musical subject is worked out through an end-
less variety of phases. The antithesis indispensable in opera
is emphatically presented in a noble recitative, such as a Gluck
might have composed, between Bertram and Eobert:

" Tu ne sauraa jamais k quel excfes je t'aime.

"In that diabolical C minor, Bertram, with his terrible bass,
begins his work of undermining which will overthrow every
effort of the vehement, passionate man.

"Here, everything is appalling. Will the crime get pos-
session of the criminal ? Will the executioner seize his victim ?
Will sorrow consume the artist's genius? Will the disease
kill the patient? or, will the guardian angel save the Chris-
tian?

"Then comes the finale, the gambling scene in which
Bertram tortures his son by rousing him to tremendous
emotions. Eobert, beggared, frenzied, searching every-
thing, eager for blood, fire, and sword, is his own son; in
this mood he is exactly like his father. What hideous glee
we hear in Bertram's words : 'Je ris de tes coups !' And how
perfectly the Venetian barcarole comes in here. Through
what wondrous transitions the diabolical parent is brought on
to the stage once more to make Eobert throw the dice.

"This first act is overwhelming to any one capable of work-
ing out the subjects in his very heart, and lending them the
breadth of development which the composer intended them to
call forth.

"Nothing but love could now be contrasted with this noble
symphony of song, in which you will detect no monotony,

GAMBARA 379

no repetition of means and effects. It is one, but many;
the characteristic of all that is truly great and natural.

"I breathe more freely; I find myself in the elegant circle
of a gallant court ; I hear Isabella's charming phrases, fresh,
but almost melancholy, and the female chorus in two divi-
sions, and in imitation, with a suggestion of the Moorish color-
ing of Spain. Here the terrifying music is softened to gen-
tler hues, like a storm dying away, and ends in the florid
prettiness of a duet wholly unlike anything that has come
before it. After the turmoil of a camp full of errant heroes,
we have a picture of love. Poet ! I thank thee ! My heart
could not have borne much more. If I could not here and
there pluck the daisies of a French light opera, if I could
not hear the gentle wit of a woman able to love and to charm,
1 could not endure the terrible deep note on which Bertram
comes in, saying to his son: 'Si je le permetsT when Robert
has promised the princess he adores that he will conquer with
the arms she has bestowed on him.

"The hopes of the gambler cured by love, the love of a
most beautiful woman, — did you observe that magnificent
Sicilian, with her hawk's eye secure of her prey? (What
interpreters that composer has found !) the hopes of the man
are mocked at by the hopes of hell in the tremendous cry:
'A toi, Robert de Normandie!^

"And are not you struck by the gloom and horror of those
iong-held notes, to which the words are set: 'Dans la foret
prochaine'f We find here all the sinister spells of Jerusa-
lem Delivered, just as we find all chivalry in the chorus with
the Spanish lilt, and in the march tune. How original is
the allegro with the modulations of the four cymbals (tuned
to C, D, C, G,) ! How elegant is the call to the lists! The
whole movement of the heroic life of the period is there;
the mind enters into it; I read in it a romance, a poem of
chivalry. The exposition is now finished; the resources of
music would seem to be exhausted; you have never heard
anything like it before; and yet it is homogeneous. You
have had life set before you, and its one and only crux: 'Shall

880 GAMBARA

I be happy or unhappy?' is the philosopher's query. 'Shall
I be saved or damned?' asks the Christian."

With these words Gambara struck the last chord of the
chorus, dwelt on it with a melancholy modulation, and then
rose to drink another large glass of Giro. This half -African
vintage gave his face a deeper flush, for his passionate and
wonderful sketch of Meyerbeer's opera had made him turn
a little pale.

"That nothing may be lacking to this composition," he
went on, "the great artist has generously added the only
buffo duet permissible for a devil: that in which he tempts
the unhappy troubadour. The composer has set jocosity
side by side with horror — a jocosity in which he mocks at
the only realism he had allowed himself amid the sublime
imaginings of his work — the pure calm love of Alice and
Eaimbaut; and their life is overshadowed by the forecast of
evil.

"None but a lofty soul can feel the noble style of these
buffo airs; they have neither the superabundant frivolity of
Italian music nor the vulgar accent of French commonplace ;
rather have they the majesty of Olympus. There is the
bitter laughter of a divine being mocking the surprise of a
troubadour Don-Juanizing himself. But for this dignity
we should be too suddenly brought down to the general tone
of the opera, here stamped on that terrible fury of diminished
sevenths which resolves itself into an infernal waltz, and
finally brings us face to face with the demons.

"How emphatically Bertram's couplet stands out in B
minor against that diabolical chorus, depicting his paternity,
but mingling in fearful despair with these demoniacal strains.

"Then comes the delightful transition of Alice's reappear-
ance, with the ritornel in B flat. I can still hear that air of
angelical simplicity — the nightingale after a storm. Thus
the grand leading idea of the whole is worked out in the de-
tails; for what could be more perfectly in contrast with the
tumult of devils tossing in the pit than that wonderful air
given to Alice ? 'Quand j'ai quitte la Normandie/

GAMBARA 381

"The golden thread of melody flows on, side by side with
the mighty harmony, like a heavenly hope ; it is embroidered
on it, and with what marvelous skill ! Genius never lets
go of the science that guides it. Here Alice's song is in B
flat leading into F sharp, the key of the demon's chorus. Do
you hear the tremolo in the orchestra? The host of devils
clamor for Eobert.

"Bertram now reappears, and this is the culminating point
of musical interest; after a recitative, worthy of comparison
with the finest work of the great masters, comes the fierce
conflict in E flat between two tremendous forces — one on the
words 'Oui, tu me connais!' on a diminished seventh; the
other, on that sublime F, 'Le del est avec moi.' Hell and
the Crucifix have met for battle. Next we have Bertram
threatening Alice, the most violent pathos ever heard — the
Spirit of Evil expatiating complacently, and, as usual, ap-
pealing to personal interest. Robert's arrival gives us the
magnificent unaccompanied trio in A flat, the first skirmish
between the two rival forces and the man. And note how
clearly that is expressed," said Gambara, epitomizing the
scene with such passion of expression as startled Andrea.

"All this avalanche of music, from the clash of cymbals
in common time, has been gathering up to this contest of three
voices. The magic of evil triumphs ! Alice flies, and you
have the duet in D between Bertram and Robert. The devil
sets his talons in the man's heart; he tears it to make it his
own; he works on every feeling. Honor, hope, eternal and
infinite pleasures — he displays them all. He places him,
as he did Jesus, on the pinnacle of the Temple, and shows
him all the treasures of the earth, the storehouse of sin. He
nettles him to flaunt his courage ; and the man's nobler mind
is expressed in his exclamation:

•'Des chevaliers de ma patrie
L'honneur toujours fut le soutien!

"And finally, to crown the work, the theme comes in whicK

882 6AMBARA

sounded the note of fatality at the beginning. Thus, the
leading strain, the magnificent call to the dead :

"Nonnes qui reposez sous cette froide pierre,
M'entendez-voua ?

"The career of the music, gloriously worked out, is
gloriously finished by the allegro vivace of the bacchanalian
chorus in D minor. This, indeed, is the triumph of hell!
Roll on, harmony, and wrap us in a thousand folds! Roll
on, bewitch us ! The powers of darkness have clutched their
prey; they hold him while they dance. The great genius,
bom to conquer and to reign, is lost ! The devils rejoice,
misery stifles genius, passion will wreck the knight !"

And here Gambara improvised a fantasia of his own on
the bacchanalian chorus, with ingenious variations, and hum-
ming the air in a melancholy drone as if to express the secret
sufferings he had known.

"Do you hear the heavenly lamentations of neglected love ?"
he said. "Isabella calls to Robert above the grand chorus
of knights riding forth to the tournament, in which the motifs
of the second act reappear to make it clear that the third
act has all taken place in a supernatural sphere. This is
real life again. This chorus dies away at the approach of the
hellish enchantment brought by Robert with the talisman.
The deviltry of the third act is to be carried on. Here we
have the duet with the viol ; the rhythm is highly expressive
of the brutal desires of a man who is omnipotent, and the
Princess, by plaintive phrases, tries to win her lover back to
moderation. The musician has here placed himself in a
situation of great difficulty, and has surmounted it in the
loveliest number of the whole opera. How charming is the
melody of the cavatina 'Grace pour toil' All the women
present understood it well; each saw herself seized and
snatched away on the stage. That part alone would suffice to
make the fortune of the opera. Every woman felt herself en~
gaged in a struggle with some violent lover. Never was mu-
sic so passionate and so dramatic.

GAMBABA 388

"The whole world now rises in arms against the reprobate.
This finale may be criticised for its resemblance to that of
Don Oiovanni; but there is this immense difference: in Isa-
bella we have the expression of the noblest faith, a true
love that will save Robert, for he scornfully rejects the in-
fernal powers bestowed on him, while Don Giovanni persists
in his unbelief. Moreover, that particular fault is common
to every composer who has written a finale since Mozart.
The finale to Don Oiovanni is one of those classic forms that
are invented once for all.

"At last religion wins the day, uplifting the voice that
governs worlds, that invites all sorrow to come for consola-
tion, all repentance to be forgiven and helped.

"The whole house was stirred by the chorus:

' ' Malheureux ou coupables,
Hatez-vous d'accourir!

"In the terrific tumult of raving passions, the holy Voice
would have been unheard; but at this critical moment it
sounds like thunder; the divine Catholic Church rises glo-
rious in light. And here I was amazed to find that after
such lavish use of harmonic treasure, the composer had come
upon a new vein with the splendid chorus: 'Qloire a la
Providence' in the manner of Handel.

"Robert rushes on with his heartrending cry : 'Si je pouvais
prierT and Bertram, driven by the infernal decree, pursues
his son, and makes a last effort. Alice has called up the
vision of the Mother, and now comes the grand trio to which
the whole opera has led up: the triumph of the soul over
matter, of the Spirit of Good over the Spirit of Evil. The
strains of piety prevail over the chorus of hell, and happiness
appears glorious; but here the music is weaker. I only saw
a cathedral instead of hearing a concert of angels in bliss,
and a divine prayer consecrating the union of Robert and Isa-
bella. We ought not to have been left oppressed by the
spells of hell ; we ought to emerge with hope in our heart.

"I, as musician and a Catholic, wanted another prayer like

384 GAMBARA

that in Mose. I should have liked to see how Germany would
contend with Italy, what Meyerbeer could do in rivalry with
Kossini.

"However, in spite of this trifling blemish, the writer can-
not say that after five hours of such solid music, a Parisian
prefers a bit of ribbon to a musical masterpiece. You heard
how the work was applauded; it will go through five hun-
dred performances! If the French really understand that
music "

"It is because it expresses ideas," the Count put in.

"No ; it is because it sets forth in a definite shape a picture
of the struggle in which so many perish, and because every
individual life is implicated in it through memory. Ah !
I, hapless wretch, should have been too happy to hear the
sound of those heavenly voices I have so often dreamed of."

Hereupon Gambara fell into a musical day-dream, im-
provising the most lovely melodious and harmonious cava-
tina that Andrea would ever hear on earth ; a divine strain
divinely performed on a theme as exquisite as that of 0 filii
et f,U(B, but graced with additions such as none but the loftiest
musical genius could devise.

The Count sat lost in keen admiration; the clouds cleared
away, the blue sky opened, figures of angels appeared lifting
the veil that hid the sanctuary, and the light of heaven
poured down.

There was a sudden silence.

The Count, surprised at the cessation of the music, looked
at Gambara, who, with fixed gaze, in the attitude of a vision-
ary, murmured the word : "God !"

Andrea waited till the composer had descended from the
enchanted realm to which he had soared on the many-hued
wings of inspiration, intending to show him the truth by
the light he himself would bring do^\Ti with him.

"Well," said he, pouring him out another bumper of wine
and clinking glasses with him, "this German has, you see,
written a sublime opera without troubling himself with
theories, while those musicians who write grammars of
harmony may, like literary critics, be atrocious composers."

GAMBARA 886

"Then you do not like my music ?"

"I do not say so. But if, instead of carrying musical
principles to an extreme — which takes you too far — ^you
would simply try to arouse our feelings, you would be better
understood, unless indeed you have mistaken your vocation.
You are a great poet."

"What," cried Gambara, "are twenty-five years of stud}'
all in vain? Am I to learn the imperfect language of men
when I have the key to the heavenly tongue? Oh, if you
are right, — I should die."

"No, no. You are great and strong; you would begin life
again, and I would support you. We would show the world
the noble and rare alliance of a rich man and an artist in
perfect sympathy and understanding."

"Do you mean it?" asked Gambara, struck with amaze-
ment.

"As I have told you, you are a poet more than a musician."

"A poet, a poet! It is better than nothing. But tell
me truly, which do you esteem most highly, Mozart or
Homer?"

"I admire them equally."

"On your honor?"

"On my honor."

"H'm! Once more. What do you think of Meyerbeer
and Byron?"

"You have measured them by naming them together."

The Count's carriage was in waiting. The composer and
his noble physician ran down-stairs, and in a few minutes
they were with Marianna.

As they went in, Gambara threw himself into his wife's
arms, but she drew back a step and turned away her head;

t'+he husband also drew back and beamed on the Count.
"Oh, monsieur !" said Gambara in a husky voice, "you
ight have left me my illusions." He hung his head, and
then fell.

"What have you done to him ? He is dead drunk !" cried

886 6AMBABA

Marianna, looking down at her husband with a mingled ex-
pression of pity and disgust.

The Count, with the help of his servant, picked up Gam-
bara and laid him on his bed.

Then Andrea left, his heart exultant with horrible glad-
ness.

The Count let the usual hour for calling slip past next
day, for he began to fear lest he had duped himself and had
made this humble couple pay too dear for their improved
circumstances and added wisdom, since their peace was de-
stroyed for ever.

At last Giardini came to him with a note from Marianna.

"Come," she wrote, "the mischief is not so great as you so
cruelly meant it to be."

"Excellenza," said the cook, while Andrea was making
ready, "you treated us splendidly last evening. But apart
from the wine, which was excellent, your steward did not
put anything on the table that was worthy to set before a
true epicure. You will not deny, I suppose, that the dish I
sent up to you on the day when you did me the honor to sit
down at my board, contained the quintessence of all those
that disgraced your magnificent service of plate ? And when
I awoke this morning I remembered the promise you once
made me of a place as chef. Henceforth I consider myself
as a member of your household."

"I thought of the same thing a few days ago," replied
Andrea, "I mentioned you to the secretary of the Austrian
Embassy, and you have permission to recross the Alps as
soon as you please, I have a castle in Croatia which I rarely
visit. There you may combine the offices of gate-keeper,
butler, and steward, with two hundred crowns a year. Your,
wife will have as much for doing all the rest of the work.
You may make all the experiments you please in anima vili,
that is to say on the stomach of my vassals. Here is a cheque
for your traveling expenses."

Giardini kissed the Count's hand after the Neapolitan
fashion.

GAMBARA 387

"Excellenza," said he, "I accept the cheque, but beg to
decline the place. It would dishonor me to give up my art
by losing the opinion of the most perfect epicures, who are
certainly to be found in Paris."

When Andrea arrived at Gambara's lodgings, the musi-
cian rose to welcome him.

"My generous friend," said he, with the utmost frank-
ness, "you either took advantage, last evening, of the weak-
ness of my brain to make a fool of me, or else your brain
is no more capable of standing the test of the heady liquors
of our native Latium, than mine is. I will assume this latter
hypothesis; I would rather doubt your digestion than your
heart. Be this as it may, henceforth I drink no more wine
— for ever. The abuse of good liquor last evening led me
into much guilty folly. When I remember that I very

nearly " He gave a glance of terror at Marianna. "As

to the wretched opera you took me to hear, I have thought
it over, and it is, after all, music written on ordinary lines,
a mountain of piled-up notes, verha et voces. It is but the
dregs of the nectar I can drink in deep draughts as I repro-
duce the heavenly music that I hear ! It is a patchwork
of airs of which I could trace the origin. The passage,
'Gloire a la Providence' is too much like a bit of Handel;
the chorus of knights is closely related to the Scotch air in
La Dame Blanche; in short, if this opera is a success, it is
because the music is borrowed from everybody's — so it ought
to be popular.

"I will say good-bye to you, my dear friend. I have had
some ideas seething in my brain since the morning that only
wait to soar up to God on the wings of song, but I wished to
see you. Good-bye; I must ask forgiveness of the Muse.
We shall meet at dinner to-night — but no wine ; at any rate^
none for me. I am firmly resolved "

"I give him up !" cried Andrea, flushing red.

"And you restore my sense of conscience," said Marianna.
"I dared not appeal to it ! My friend, my friend, it is no
fault of ours; he does not want to be cured.'*

888 CAMBARA

Six years after this, in January 1837, such artists as
were so unlucky as to damage their wind or stringed instru-
ments, generally took them to the Eue Froid-Manteau, to a
squalid and horrible house, where, on the fifth floor, dwelt an
old Italian named Gambara.

For five years past he had been left to himself, deserted by
his wife; he had gone through many misfortunes. An in-
strument on Miiich he had relied to make his fortune, and
which he called a Panliarmonicon, had been sold by order
of the Court on the public square. Place du Chatelet, together
with a cartload of music paper scrawled with notes. The
day after the sale, these scores had served in the market
to wrap up butter, fish, and fruit.

Thus the three grand operas of which the poor man would
boast, but which an old Neapolitan cook, who was now but
a patcher up of broken meats, declared to be a heap of non-
sense, were scattered throughout Paris on the trucks of coster-
mongers. But at any rate, the landlord had got his rent and
the bailiffs their expenses.

According to the ISTeapolitan cook — who warmed up for
the street-walkers of the Eue Froid-Manteau the fragments
left from the most sumptuous dinners in Paris — Signora
Gambara had gone off to Italy with a Milanese nobleman,
and no one knew what had become of her. Worn out with
fifteen years of misery, she was very likely ruining the Count
by her extravagant luxury, for they were so devotedly ador-
ing that, in all his life, Giardini could recall no instance of
such a passion.

Towards the end of that very January, one evening when
Giardini was chatting with a girl who had come to buy her
supper, about the divine Marianna — so poor, so beautiful,
so heroically devoted, and who had, nevertheless, "gone the
way of them all," the cook, his wife, and the street-girl saw
coming towards them a woman fearfully thin, with a sun-
burned, dusty face; a nervous walking skeleton, looking at
the numbers, and trying to recognize a house.

"Ecco la Marianna!" exclaimed the cook.

GAMBARA 389

Marianna recognized Giardini, the erewhile cook, in the
poor fellow she saw, without wondering by what series of
disasters he had sunk to keep a miserable shop for second-
hand food. She went in and sat down, for she had come
from Fontainebleau. She had walked fourteen leagues that
day, after begging her bread from Turin to Paris.

She frightened that terrible trio ! Of all her wondrous
beauty nothing remained but her fine eyes, dimmed and
sunken. The only thing faithful to her was misfortune.

She was welcomed by the skilled old instrument mender,
who greeted her with unspeakable joy.

'^hy, here you are, my poor ]\Tarianna !" said he, warmly.
"During your absence they sold up my instrument and my
operas."

It would have been difficult to kill the fatted calf for the
return of the Samaritan, but Giardini contributed the fag
end of a salmon, the trull paid for wine, Gambara
produced some bread, Signora Giardini lent a cloth, and the
unfortunates all supped together in the musician's garret.

When questioned as to her adventures, Marianna would
make no reply; she only raised her beautiful eyes to heaven
and whispered to Giardini:

"He married a dancer!"

"And how do you mean to live?" said the girl. "The
journey has ruined you, and "

"And made me an old woman," said Marianna. "No,
that is not the result of fatigue or hardship, but of grief."

"And why did you never send your man here any money?"
asked the girl.

Marianna's only answer was a look, but it went to the wo-
man's heart.

"She is proud with a vengeance !" she exclaimed. "And
much good it has done her !" she added, in Giardini's ear.

All that year musicians took especial care of their instru-
ments, and repairs did not bring in enough to enable the
poor couple to pay their way; the wife, too, did not earn
much by her needle, and they were compelled to turn their

390 GAMBARA

talents to account in the lowest form of employment. They
would go out together in the dark to the Champs Elysees
and sing duets, which Gambara, poor fellow, accompanied
on a wretched guitar. On the way, Marianna, who on these
expeditions covered her head with a sort of veil of coarse
muslin, would take her husband to a grocer's shop in the
Faubourg Saint-Honore and give him two or three thimble-
fuls of brandy to make him tipsy; otherwise he could not
play. Then they would stand up together in front of the
smart people sitting on the chairs, and one of the greatest
geniuses of the time, the unrecognized Orpheus of Modem
Music, would perform passages from his operas — ^pieces so
remarkable that they could extract a few half-pence from
Parisian supineness. When some dilettante of comic operas
happened to be sitting there and did not recognize from what
work they were taken, he would question the woman dressed
like a Greek priestess, who held out a bottle-stand of stamped
metal in which she collected charity.

"I say, my dear, what is that music out of?"

"The opera of Mahomet" Marianna would reply.

As Eossini composed an opera called Mahomet II., the
amateur would say to his wife, sitting at his side:

''What a pity it is that they will never give us at the
Italiens any operas by Eossini but those we know. That is
really very fine music !"

And Gambara would smile.

Only a few days since, this unhappy couple had to pay
the trifling sum of thirty-six francs as arrears of rent for
the cock-loft in which they lived resigned. The grocer would
not give them credit for the brandy with which Marianna
plied her husband to enable him to play. Gambara was^
consequently, so unendurably bad that the ears of th»
wealthy were irresponsive, and the tin bottle-stand remained
empty.

It was nine o'clock in the evening. A handsome Italian,
the Principessa Massimilla Di Varese, took pity on the poor

GAMBARA 391

creatures; she gave them forty francs and questioned them,
discerning from the woman's thanks that she was a Venetian.
Prince Emilio would know the history of their woes, and
Marianna told it, making no complaints of God or men.

"Madame," said Gambara, as she ended, for he was sober,
"we are the victims of our own superiority. My music is
good. But as soon as music transcends feeling and becomes
an idea, only persons of genius should be the' hearers, for they
alone are capable of responding to it ! It is my misfortune
that I have heard the chorus of angels, and believed that men
could understand those strains. The same thing happens to
women when their love assumes a divine aspect: men cannot
understand them."

This speech was well worth the forty francs bestowed by
Massimilla; she took out a second gold piece, and told Mari-
anna she would write to Andrea Marcosini.

"Do not write to him, madame !" exclaimed Marianna.
"And God grant you to be always beautiful !"

"Let us provide for them," said the Princess to her hus-
band ; "for this man has remained faithful to the Ideal which
we have killed."

As he saw the gold pieces, Gambara shed tears; and then
a vague reminiscence of old scientific experiments crossed
his mind, and the hapless composer, as he wiped his eyes,
spoke these words, which the circumstances made pathetic:

"Water is a product of burning."

Pabis, Jxme ISN.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES

COLLEGE LIBRARY

This book is due on the last date stamped below.

Oct 5 6 4

APR 2 1973

1 2 DEC 1980 14 DA^'

Book Slip-25m-9,'60(32<936s4)4280

UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

A 001 136 586 3

UCLA-College Library

PQ 2173 S96E5b 1901

College
Library

PQ

2173
S96e^
1901

L 005 656 398 4

' ,1",! i|!

1 'i

tan.i.triti:

:ri«