The fate of Henry of Navarre : a true account of how he was slain, with a description of the Paris of the time and some of the leading personages

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The Fate of Henry of Navarre

HISTORICAL ROMANCES

BY

THE SAME AUTHOR^

THE SWORD OF GIDEON.
THE LAND OF BONDAGE.
THE HISPANIOLA PLATE.
THE DAY OF ADVERSITY.
DENOUNCED.
THE CLASH OF ARMS.
A GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER.
ACROSS THE SALT SEAS.
SERVANTS OF SIN.
FORTUNE'S MY FOE.
THE SCOURGE OF GOD.
THE YEAR ONE.
THE FATE OF VALSEC.
TRAITOR AND TRUE.
KNIGHTHOOD'S FLOWER.
A WOMAN FROM THE SEA.
THE LAST OF HER RACE.
WITHIN FOUR WALLS (dealing with
La Comans and her Denunciations).
THE KING'S MIGNON.
A FAIR MARTYR.

MEirmT nVo

.-e^'^ene' /.^€m€ceii^/iy

e' Qytfyal". ^^UJ.

The Fate of
Henry of Navarre

A TRUE ACCOUNT OF HOW HE WAS SLAIN

WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE PARIS OF THE TIME

AND SOAE OP THE LEADING PERSONAGES

BY

John Bloundelle-Burton

Tout estoit permis en as tsmpa, hors de bien dire et de bien faire "

—VESrOlLB

London :
EVERETT & CO.,

42, Essex Street, Strand, W.C.

KINaSTONl

I Surrey!

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

Introductory Chapter i

I.— ''The King and his Capital" .... 21

II. — The Queen and her Surroundings ... 80

III. — Sully and the death of Gabrielle d'Estrees 109
IV. — Traitor and Favourite — Le Due d'Epernon

AND Henriette, Marquise de Verneuil . 159

v.— The Crime 193

VI. — The Exposition 283

Conclusion 3^9

Index 34^

256639

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Henri IV. . . . . . . . Frontispiece

The Louvre, after restoration by Francis I. Facing page 21

Map of Paris in 1610 ....

The Tour de Nesle (Period Henri IV.) .

The Church of Les Innocents, showing
the open graveyard called the Cemetery
of Les Innocents .....

La Samaritaine, as it appeared before
the French Revolution ....

Marie de Medici

Sully

Gabrielle d'Estrees (Duchesse de Beaufort)

Queen Elizabeth (Artist unknown. En-
graved by Vertue) ....

Charles I. (by Vandyke) .

Le Due d'Epernon ....

Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues (Mar-
quise de Verneuil) ....

Bassompierre

Ravaillac

Voiture dans laquelle fut assassine
Henri IV. en 1610

Carrosse de 1610 A 1660

The Conciergerie and the Tour d'Hor

LOGE in i8th Century .... ,, „ 3^2

The Dauphin (Louis XIII.) ... „ „ 335

27
40

55

69

80

109

133

148
155
159

186
218
229

243
243

THE
FATE OF HENRY OF NAVARRE

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER !

'T^HE true history of the murder of Henri Quatre
has never been told in the literature of this
country, and only hinted at, though broadly so, in
France. Moreover, outside the shelves of the Biblio-
tMque Nationale, and those of the Libraries of Orleans
and Tours, there is scarcely any account to be found
of the extraordinary fact that, at the moment of the
King's assassination, there were two attempts in
preparation, and that, while the actual deed was being
perpetrated by Ravaillac, other assassins were in
waiting to commit it and, as I hope to show beyond
dispute, were doing so in the immediate neighbourhood
of where it occurred, and in the same street.

That the female sex played a strong part in the
attempts on the most popular King that had ever before,
or has ever since, sat upon the throne of France, is
certain ; and he who, perhaps, had been the lover of

Tfie Fate of Henry of Navarre

more women than any other monarch, was supposed —
though only supposed — to have fallen at last by their
machinations, or, rather, by the machinations of one
of them.

" Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turn'd,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorn' d ; "

and when, to such fury, has to be added the fact that
Henri had, with a jest accompanied by laughter, em-
braced the Romish Church as a necessity for obtain-
ing the crown, and that, in that Church, no one believed
in the sincerity of his apostacy, it may easily be under-
stood in what danger his life always stood. Discarded
mistresses are, probably, the most striking exponents
of Congreve's lines, and there were many of these ladies
in Paris who were bitterly disposed towards the King
at the time of the murder. Among them there was,
however, one whose heart was, perhaps, more deeply
ulcerated by Henri's conduct than that of any other
woman. This person was Henriette d'Entragues, who
had been created Marquise de Verneuil at the time she
was favourite, and who had borne to Henri a son who
became, first, Bishop of Metz shortly after he was
christened, and, afterwards. Due de Verneuil ; and a
daughter who became the wife of the second Due
d'^pernon. She, too, Hke Gabrielle d'Estr^es, of whom

we shall hear, had had her foot on the steps of the

2

Introductory Chapter

throne ; but, unlike Gabrielle, it was not sudden death
— a strongly suspicious death ! — that deprived her of
the great chance, but the necessity for Henri to find
a wife who could bring a large dowry with her. This
compulsion might, in the case of some women, have
been accepted as a pardonable excuse for their lover's
defection, but with her — haughty, of good family, and
deeming herself the equal of any woman in Europe
who was not a king's daughter — it was not so. Instead,
her blood turned to gall, since she considered that Henri
should have been content to remain an impoverished
King rather than fail to accord her the same rights that
he had once been about to confer on her predecessor.
Consequently, from the time that Marie de Medici
arrived in France the Marquise was well acquainted
with, if she did not take an active part in, some of the
later plots laid against the King's life.

They were, indeed, numerous ; the generally accepted
number of the attempts being eighteen, exclusive of
the one which succeeded. They emanated from all
classes ; from the aristocratic leaders of " The League,"
which was still alive though weak, to such base-born
and foul assassins — when they were not fanatics — as
Jean Chatel, who was a draper's shopman ; the Dutch-
man, Arger ; and the Italian, Ridicovi — both Domini-
cans or Jacobins ; the Vicar of St. Nicolas-des-Champs ;

3 I*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

Jean Delisle, who was undoubtedly a lunatic, and
many others, until, finally, Ravaillac, a provincial of
humble origin, accompUshed the deed while unconcerned
with any plot whatever.

But what was, probably, the strangest thing in these
attempts at murder is the fact that the whole of Paris,
if not of France, knew that they were in the air, and
no one knew it better than the intended victim himself
though he was often unaware from what direction the
blow would be struck. Moreover, his hfe had been too
frequently risked in battle day by day — at the period
when he was endeavouring to secure the throne that was
his by right after the assassination of Henri III., and
to which he had been named as the rightful heir of that
king, if he died childless, by Charles IX. and his brother
— for him to pay much heed to such attempts. He
talked about these plots openly ; he regretted that they
should be conceived against him ; he frequently stated
that he would surely die at the hands of an assassin,
but, except at the last, when he sought the shelter of
Sully's official residence — the Arsenal — he took but few
precautions against them.

As for the certainty that Henri would eventually be
assassinated, it permeated the whole of the capital,
and the prognostications on the subject were unceasing.
A species of soothsayer, once a tutor of Sully, called

4

Introductory Chapter

La Brosse gave, it is said — not by the gift of prophecy,
but partly from knowledge of the intended plots which
Ravaillac was to anticipate picked up in the lowest
haunts of the capital, and partly by chance — the actual
day, namely, the fatal 14th of May, on which the
King was to die. Earlier, in 1607, several almanacks
sold at the great fair at Frankfort predicted that Henri
would perish in his fifty-eighth year, namely 1610,
and that he would do so at the hands of his own friends
and courtiers. Specimens of these almanacks are still
in existence. In 1609, the year preceding the actual
year of death, a Spanish Professor of Theology named
Oliva, or Olive, in a book dedicated to the King of
Spain, affirmed that Henri would die within twelve
months ; and a religious enthusiast, a supposed
devineresse, termed La Mere Dasithee, on being consulted
by the upstart Italian adventurer, Concino Concini
(whose future wife, Leonora Galigai, ruled the Queen),
stated in the early months of 1610 that, if Her Majesty
desired so much to be crowned — which ceremony had
been long delayed — as was reported, it would be best
for her to lose no time. The Due de Vendome, Henri's
son by Gabrielle d'Estrees, hearing of the prediction of
La Brosse, instantly informed the King of it — but the
latter made light, or affected to make light, of the
prophecy. Six hours later he was dead.

5

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

In absolute f act,7,everyone knew, or rather felt, that
the King's end was near, though aU imagined that it
would proceed from a well-organized plot, and not from
the determination of a single individual. A soldier,
who had been brought up as a priest, meeting the
widow of his late captain at Charenton, told her to go
no farther into the city. *' There is," he said, " a band
of about a dozen men* employed by Spain to kill the
King, and when that is done there will be terrible scenes
in Paris and as great a danger to the Huguenots as there
was on a certain St. Bartholomew's Eve." Henri him-
self was, before he parted from his wife on the after-
noon of the tragedy, very restless and, calling to one
of the guards in the passage, asked him what the hour
was, to which the man replied, *' Nearly four," while
adding with the familiarity that the King encouraged
between himself and his soldiers : " You had best take
the air. It will refresh you." " You are right, mon
ami," Henri replied ; " order my coach for four
o'clock."

To apply these various forebodings of disaster to an
occult power of divination possessed by those who
promulgated them, would be, in these days, to expose
one's self to well-merited ridicule ; but at least they
testify to an indisputable fact. They show as clearly

♦ Later it will be seen that the band consisted of ten men.

6

Introductory Chapter

as anything can show that a general knowledge existed
that the days of Henri were numbered and that there
were numerous persons in Paris who were well
acquainted with the attempts likely to be made. It
was, in truth, a knowledge that could not be concealed.
The Roman Catholics principally hated Henri because
they had no belief in the sincerity of his conversion,
since, once before, during the massacre of St. Bartholo-
mew, he had embraced the Catholic Faith to save his
life and had then renounced it after returning to
Navarre. The nobles who were members of The
League hated him because he had effectually broken
its power, and, indeed, it is possible that there were
even Huguenots who hated him for having deserted
his original faith. Meanwhile, since hired assassins are
usually drawn from the most humble or the most
desperate classes, there were scores of men sheltering
in the lowest purlieus of Paris and in provincial towns
who, dissatisfied with not having been called on yet
to perform their hideous office, woiild be likely to chatter
about what was eventually to happen ; or, proud of
the interviews they had had with the great ones of the
land, would nod their heads significantly and mutter
that they " could an' they would,'' and, thereby, arouse
suspicions in the minds of [those with whom they
mixed.

7

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

That such creatures as these hired assassins were in
existence is undoubted, as it is equally so that they
must have had many interviews with the most eminent
persons opposed to Henri.

The whole Court of France was at this time con-
tinually seething with plots against some person or
persons. At one time Concino Concini was plotting
against the nobility ; at another the nobility were
plotting to destroy him and his intriguing wife — the
destruction, and that an awful one, finally falling in the
next reign. The Due d'fipemon, a man of the highest
rank, yet one more fitted to be a swashbuckler than
aught else and the person who was in actual fact in
command of the whole of the infantry and, practically,
the whole of the troops, was a traitor to Henri from the
first. In his case, however, he not only conspired
against the King but also against all who opposed
him, thwarted him, interfered with his plans, admired
his mistresses, or obtained the governments of provinces
which he desired to add to the enormous number of
those he already possessed, as well as against those
who did not feel called upon to regard him as their
superior — in some cases not even as their equal — or
to treat him with any deference whatever. That
D'fipemon was likely to be left out of an attempt upon
the King's life, or that he would have permitted himself

8

Introductory Chapter

to be omitted from such tremendous treachery, would
have been to falsify all the tenets of his existence : his
occupation, other than the aggrandisement of himself
and his family, would have been gone. As will be
seen in the subsequent account of his career, and later
on, he was not excluded from the work in hand, and,
indeed, he played one of the greatest, if not the abso-
lutely greatest, part in the terrible drama which was
projected and which only failed because it was antici-
pated by a few moments.

Amidst those characters to be described is one whose
name is ever associated with that of the slaughtered
King, namely, Maximilien de Bethune, Baron de Rosny
and Due de Sully. That he was a great soldier, a bril-
liant ambassador, a splendid financier, an untiring
worker and a true friend to Henri in his political, if
not in his " private," career, has always been acknow-
ledged. Yet a stain rests on his memory which, in
the minds of all historians, and especially in the minds
of all French historians, can never be effaced. It has
always been supposed, principally owing to his own
statements, as will be shown later, that he was aware
of the fact that Gabrielle d'Estrees may have died
of poison, and that, if she did so, he was acquainted with
the intriguers and their plans. The marvel is, however,
that in his own memoirs, the (Economies Royales, and, to

9

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

a considerable extent, out of his own vanity and desire
to show how well-informed he was as to all that was
going on in and around the capital, he should have done
his best to fasten upon himself an indelible blot which,
if believed in, would darken his memory for ever. For,
in his usual careless manner of writing — a careless-
ness of which he could not be unaware — he absolutely
tries to prove that Gabrielle d'Estrees did die of poison,
and that he foresaw, or, rather, knew, that she would
do so and foretold the event before it happened.* As a
matter of fact, the unhappy woman had risen too high,
her hold upon the passions of Henri had become too
strong, to please any of those who surrounded her
lover. Created Duchesse de Beaufort, she was soon
recognized as the one person who would ere long fill
the place of Marguerite de Valois when the divorce
she had agreed to between herself and the King should
be finally pronounced by the Pope. Already Gabrielle
gave audience as a queen and patronized all other
female members of the aristocracy; her robes of mar-
riage and of state were in readiness, the acts for the
legitimization of the children she had borne the King
were in preparation, when the blow fell upon her. Of
how Sully knew that it would fall, of the words he
uttered before it fell with a view to comforting his wife,

* See, later, the article " Sully."
10

Introductory Chapter

who was furious with rage at the condescension of
Gabrielle towards her, he himself undertakes to show;
and, if his own words are to be believed, he stands con-
victed of the knowledge of a dastardly crime which he, in
his great power, could have prevented easily, but which
he took no steps to so prevent. We shall, however, see
that, in all probability, his desire to present himself
before posterity in the light of an astute and per-
spicacious man led him thoughtlessly to make charges
against himself which, if substantiated, would place
him on an even lower level of humanity than that to
which the Due d'Epernon had descended. But this
he never seems to have perceived. Astute as he had
been through his prime and at the height of his power,
he appears, when out of office and in his old age, to
have possessed all the weaknesses of second child-
hood and to have babbled egotistically to even his
own detriment. Yet it is to Sully that we must turn
(and there is no suspicion of his veracity here, whatever
opinion may be formed of his methods of producing
his great memoirs, which will be dealt with later), when
we would discover what the opinion of the King was
on the subject of getting rid of his wife. Marguerite,
and taking to himself a new one, namely, his mistress,
Gabrielle d'Estrees.

It should, however, be previously stated, on the

II

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

authority of the above, which is corroborated by De
Thou and Bassompierre, that Henri early in his career
marked out for himself ten principal objects — he called
them his *' wishes " — the attainment of which was to
be the principal aim of his existence, and which, he
said, he should never cease to pray God to grant him.
They are interesting enough and, one may say, quaint
enough, to justify quotation here.

The first wish was that God should always protect
him in this life and have mercy on him in the next :
a desire which has nothing particular about it since it
has probably been that of ninety-nine people in a
hundred who have ever existed.

The second was that he should never lose his health
but remain always vigorous in mind and body — of
which the same remark may be made as of the first.

The third was that he should continue to struggle
for the preservation of his religion and his party, viz.,
the Huguenot Faith and the Huguenots — a desire which,
considering his twofold conversion, he certainly did not
exhibit much eagerness to obtain.

His fourth — perhaps the most quaint of all — was that
God would deliver him from his wife and that he might
find another equal to his own birth and quality (Mar-
guerite's own birth was, as a matter of fact, immensely
superior to that of Marie de Medici, her family on her

12

Introductory Chapter

father's side being the most illustrious in Europe) ;
that she would love him and that he would love her,
and that she would be of easy and gentle nature and
provide him with children so soon after their marriage
that he would still have many years left to him in which
to make them brave, gallant and accomplished. Of
all this we shall see how much was accorded, and, also,
for how much he was responsible in whatever failure
of realization took place.

The fifth wish was that he should obtain the throne
of France and enjoy a long and happy reign, make the
country splendid and the people happy, and be able to
reward all those to whom he was indebted for their
loyalty and their help toward his success. This, of all
his desires, was the one that came nearest to accomplish-
ment.

The sixth was that he should either recover his king-
dom of Navarre (the greater, or Spanish, portion of it
having been appropriated by Ferdinand the Catholic,
in 1513, and incorporated with Castille), or seize Flan-
ders or Artois (they being then in the hands of Spain)
as compensation, and, consequently, suitable for ex-
change in return for his own country. Practically,
this desire was never obtained. Only a small portion of
Navarre remained to Henri, and that alone was joined to
France when he had secured the throne of that country.

13

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

The seventh was that he might eventually obtain a
great victory over the King of Spain — who was at that
time Philip II. — and also over the Turks, he being the
General of the Christian armies. Neither of these events
took place.

The eighth was that, without attacking the Reformed
Religion, he might considerably suppress the Huguenot
faction and, especially, the Dues de Bouillon and de
la Tremouille, who caused their followers to be more
mutinous and troublesome than necessary ; but at
the same time he hoped to do nothing to cause injury
to France or her glory. There is so much tergiversation
in this wish that it is better to judge Henri by his future
acts and deeds than by what, as a much younger man
than he was when he became King of France, he had
seen fit to imagine it would be well for him to attempt.

The ninth was that, before he died, Henri should
carry out two splendid designs he had in mind with-
out even communicating to anyone what they were,
while at the same time he trusted that, by aid of a
universal peace between all the conflicting elements in
France, these two designs might be brought about.
This leaves us almost as much in the dark as does the
preceding wish, since, excepting that Henri had become
the most powerful monarch in Europe at the time of his
death, and that he was also the most popular one, we

14:

Introductory Chapter

perceive little fulfilment of the desire. It is true that
he had crushed The League, which was one of his
earliest aspirations, and, if Fate had permitted him to
undertake the campaign against Spain and Austria,
as he would have done had he not been assassinated,
it is more than probable he would have achieved a great
triumph. But one can say no more than this.

The tenth and last wish was that Henri should
eventually find his three greatest enemies, the Dues de
Bouillon, d'£pernon and de la Tremouille, at his feet
imploring his grace and pardon for sins of which he
might legitimately complain, and that then, after re-
counting to them all their evil and malicious actions,
he should pardon them freely and thereby win their
loyalty and affection.* This was the noblest wish of
all ; this, the desire to forgive those who had intrigued
against his ever obtaining the throne he was entitled
to by descent ; those who had plotted more than once
to have him slain, and, at the last, were to set on foot
a plot against his life that only failed because their
myrmidons were forestalled by a quicker hand. If,
however, Henri actually believed, when he wrote down

* It seems possible that Corneille had heard of this wish when,
twenty-nine years after Henri's death, he produced " Cinna," and put
into the mouth of Augustus Caesar the noble speech commencing :

" Soyons amis, Cinna

Tu trahis mes bienfaits, je les veux redoubler ;
Je t'en avois combl6, je t'en veux accabler."

15

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

these wishes, that any amount of pardon and clemency
would ever soften the hearts of the above noblemen,
and especially the heart of one of them, he was far,
indeed, from having accurately gauged their characters.
His perspicacity does not appear, however, to have been
entirely at fault, since, as he indites his last wish, he
adds, in speaking of his hopes for their future good
behaviour, " which, nevertheless, I do not expect,
remembering their evil disposition towards me."

These ten principal desires of Henri were copied down
in his own hand and given to Sully (then Rosny) in the
gardens of the Chateau de Gaillon when they were
walking together on the terrace, and it was not imtil
two years later, viz., in 1589, that Henri, after a
first initial conversation that he and Sully had had on
the subject, again referred to them. He did so at
Rennes when they happened to be together, and the
wish to which he then made reference was the fourth
one alluding to his desire to get rid of his wife Marguerite
de Valois and to find another who *' would love him
and whom he could love." His manner of opening
the subject with his faithful henchman was absolutely
characteristic of himself, and, as will be observed, it
dealt with a personage who, had her life not been sud-
denly cut short, would have caused a total alteration

in the history of the Royal Family of France.

16

Introductory Chapter

After remarking that he was at last peacefully and
firmly installed on the throne of France, Henri stated
that this fact, comforting as it was, was still incomplete,
since he had no children by his present wife and was
never likely to have any. He then began a review of
all the princesses to whom he might offer his hand
when he had obtained the divorce from Marguerite
to which that high-born lady was perfectly willing
to agree, provided that his next spouse should be a
woman of whom, as her successor, she need not feel
ashamed ; and he instantly commenced to give the list
of who those ladies, outside and inside France, were.

Speaking of the Infanta of Spain — who would have
been a most important match for Henri — he observed
pleasantly that he could accommodate himself very
well with her in spite of her ugliness if, by doing so, he
could also marry the Netherlands and make them a
portion of France. He next referred to Arabella Stuart,
who was undoubtedly the lawful heiress of the English
throne after King James of Scotland (who might not
be selected by Elizabeth), but said that he could scarcely
espouse her since neither the King of Spain nor Eliza-
beth— it was not often that they were allies ! — were at
all disposed to let Arabella take precedence of James
and become Queen of England. He then remarked

that there were two or three German princesses who had

17 z

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

been suggested to him but stated that the ladies of
that nation did not at all appeal to his tastes, while he
went on to say that he did not care to have " a wine-
tub *' always by his side as companion, and also added
that he might find himself saddled with a second
Isabeau de Baviere. The sisters of Prince Maurice
of Nassau were next passed in review, but as they were
of Henri's original faith, they were not suitable. Speak-
ing of Marie de Medici, who was also in the matrimonial
market, and was eventually to win the great prize,
Henri found no fault with her looks, and, of course,
none with what would undoubtedly be the size of her
dowry if the King of France elected to marry her. But
her family had been merchants and continued to be
so, although the head of it had attained to the rank of
Grand Duke of Tuscany ; while the memory of her
late kinswoman, Catherine de Medici, was hateful to
him. He then referred to the Princesse de Guise
(Princesse de Lorraine), whose position was of the
highest and her good looks indisputable, but she had
the reputation of being un feu volage — although Henri
said he did not believe such to be the case. Enumerat-
ing other ladies who might be fitted to grace his throne,
he spoke of the daughters of his old enemy, the Due de
Mayenne — the head of The League ; but one was, he

said, too black and swarthy, and the other too young,

i8

Introductory Chapter

while the Princesse de Luxembourg was, like the sisters
of Prince Maurice, also a Huguenot ; and, in appearance
and nature, the Princesse de Conti, who was also avail-
able, did not please him at all.

Having computed all the various attractions, as well
as the disabilities, of the above-mentioned princesses,
and asked Sully's opinion on the matter, a considerable
amount of badinage took place, especially on the part
of the latter. Consequently, the King found that,
before he was likely to receive any opinion whatever
from his stubborn though devoted Minister, it would
be necessary for him to name the lady whom he proposed
to put in the place of Marguerite when the divorce had
been procured.

When he did so the information fell like a thunder-
bolt on Sully. The King named Gabrielle d'Estr^es.

At first. Sully was unable to utter a word concerning
the information accorded him, but, recovering himself,
he indulged in some quotations from Scripture which,
though appropriate enough to the lady in question,
might well have been dispensed with altogether. After
which he proved to Henri that, though it would be quite
within his power to make the Due de Vendome — who
had been legitimatized almost at once after his birth
— ^his heir and, eventually. King of France, the pro-
ceeding would cause so much dissension and, possibly,

19 z^

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

even civil war, that the country would eventually
be brought to ruin. Nevertheless, as we shall see,
Henri stood firm and Fate, and Fate alone, prevented
Gabrielle from ascending the French throne as queen,
since, in spite of the determination of Marguerite de
Valois never to accede to a divorce which should leave
Henri free to marry her, the Pope could easily have
been coerced into granting it. He was, indeed, ready
to do so at the moment that Fate stepped in.

With regard to Ravaillac and his crime, it is re-
markable how few historians, no matter of what nation-
ality they may be, have attempted to prove that which
they might easily have proved with ordinary trouble,
namely, the fact that a plot existed which did not nmnber
him amongst the plotters ; or that Ravaillac, if he even
so much as heard of the plot, had no connection with it.
The bald statement is occasionally made, especially by
English writers, that " Ravaillac does not seem to have
been mixed up in the scheme to slay Henri," or other
words to a similar effect. " Seem " is, however, an
unsatisfactory word when it is possible to state de-
finitely that a certain thing is so or is not so. It is
to assert the latter and to attempt to prove it to the
hilt that these pages are written.

J. B-B.

20

•,« » •,• • •••

CHAPTER I

TTENRI IV., King of France and Navarre, was at
the time of his assassination in his fifty-eighth
year. By his first wife, Marguerite de Valois, daughter
of Henri II. and Catherine de Medici, from whom he
was divorced by mutual agreement, he had no children.
By his second, Marie de Medici, he had six. The eldest
of these became Louis XIII. of France ; the second
was a child who only lived four years and a half ; the
other son was Gaston, Duke of Orleans (the most
treacherous and contemptible of all the Bourbons) ; the
daughters were EHsabeth, or " Isabelle," who became
the wife of Philip IV. of Spain ; Christine, who became
the wife of Victor Amadeus, Prince of Piedmont and
Duke of Savoy ; the last was Henriette-Marie, who
became the wife of Charles I. of England.

It has already been said that Henri was the most
popular king who ever sat upon the throne of France,
and the statement may well be made when drawing
comparisons between him and not only those to whom

21

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

he succeeded, but those who succeeded him. Before
Henri IV. it is possible that Francis I. came nearest in
popularity to him, yet Francis lacked the bonhomie
which Henri possessed ; his amours, almost as unfailing
as those of the subject of this sketch, still lacked some-
thing which, though it could not justify, yet softened
the failings of Le Bearnais. Francis was too often
cruel to women who had resigned themselves to him,
while Henri, though he might part from those whom
he had once loved, and replace them far too often, was
never aught but gentle and kind and, as far as was in
his power, good to them in after days.

As regards those monarchs who succeeded Henri,
it is almost impossible that a striking comparison should
be drawn between him and them. The nearest in
resemblance to him, though in a different form of
popularity, was undoubtedly his grandson, Louis XIV.,
yet the people's regard for Le Roi Soleil was com-
pounded more of pride and admiration than any
sentiment nearly approaching to love. He was great,
he was splendid in all that he did — a quality more
calculated, perhaps, than any other to capture the
hearts of the French ; he was almost uniformly suc-
cessful in his wars with neighbouring countries —
with the exception of England — and his manners were

perfect. But, nevertheless, he rarely, if ever, appealed

22,

" The King: and his Capital "

to the emotions of those who admired him. If he
rode past peasant- women working in the fields, or, as
sometimes happened, encountered a female servant in
the corridors, he invariably touched or doffed his hat ;
but, with Henri, it was a gentle slap on the shoulder,
a remark to a girl about her beaux-yeux^ a question
concerning a man's sick child, that was forthcoming.
With Louis it was superb and never-forgotten courtesy
that was accorded ; with Henri, the good-humoured
greeting came from the heart.

In France there existed in his day a custom at some
inns, especially those in the northern provinces, that
the hostess had the right to demand a kiss from any
important personage who had patronized her house ;
and, when Le Bearnais, as his subjects loved to call
him (from the Province of Beam in which he was born,
at Pau), rested at any such inn the tribute was un-
failingly demanded. We know that, with him, the
accolade was not only graciously received, but, especi-
ally where the landlady was young or good-looking,
warmly returned. With Louis XIV. it is doubtful if
any landlady would have had the courage to make
such a request ; or if, had it been so made, it would
have been granted. With Louis XIII., son of the
one and father of the other, the result of such a request

can, when his nervous and austere nature is remembered,

23

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

easily be guessed. He would have turned and fled
the house.* Of other French rulers, none has ever
approached anywhere near to Henri's universal
popularity.

This popularity was, however, far greater with the
bourgeois class than with the aristocrats. The latter
never forgave the manner in which he saw through
their dislike to his obtaining possession of the throne
which was his by direct inheritance, nor the way
in which the ladies of their class intrigued for his
favours, nor the love which the people testified towards
him. They considered, also, that his second change of
religion — which was the only thing that could give

* There are numerous instances on record of this King's misogyny.
Entering a room in which was seated Mdlle. de Hautefort, for whom
he had more than once testified a mawkish, sickly kind of admira-
tion, he surprised her in writing a letter which she instantly folded
and held in her hand. Annoyed at this, Louis XIII. demanded that
she should show it to him ; a request that was at once refused. Irri-
tated at being disobeyed, the King approached to take the letter
from Mdlle. de Hautefort and, on her retreating from him, followed
her round the room. Seeing that, without resorting to absolute
disobedience, she would be forced to yield up the letter, the young
lady thrust it into the lace above her open bodice and exclaimed in
desperation : " So be it I Take it 1 " Louis instantly turned and
left the room, or, as some writers say, picked up the tongs and took
the letter by aid of them. At Dijon, at a banquet given in his honour,
Louis, owing to his prudery, performed an action that was not only
unworthy of a king and a gentleman, but of any man. A lady sitting
opposite him was dressed in an extremely d^colleUe manner, and
after regarding her with considerable horror for a brief moment,
his Majesty filled his mouth with wine and then, with remarkable
precision of aim, squirted the fluid over that which caused him so
much offence.

24

" The King and his Capital "

him thorough possession of his kingdom — was an act
of deceit committed against them, who had, on their
part, committed so many similar acts to prevent him
from obtaining that kingdom. They pretended, also,
to be embittered against him for the wars into which
he had plunged France, while forgetting that, had they
been willing to acknowledge his undoubted right to
the throne after the death of Henri III., the greater
part of those wars would never have taken place.

But against Henri there was a still more powerful
opposition than the aristocracy, though it was, to a
very considerable degree, composed of members of the
higher classes. This force was the Church, which had
always been bitterly hostile to him, and, after the Edict
of Nantes was issued in 1598, loathed him with a loath-
ing that was almost superhuman. From that time,
although twelve years had still to elapse ere he met
his doom, his assassination was assured. To have
escaped death until it should have pleased Nature
to allow him to die calmly in his bed, would have been
to justify, beyond all possibiUty of refutation, the
statement that there are some men who bear charmed
existences. For it was from that time that the long
series of attacks on his life commenced, excluding
those made before he was King and beginning with
the attempt to include him in the Massacre of St.

25

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

Bartholomew.* At the period of this awful event,
and also of Henri's marriage with Marguerite de Valois,
Charles IX. called the former into his presence, and,
showing him a heap of slaughtered Protestants, while,
at the same time, he uttered many menacing threats,
concluded by saying, " Voild, la mort ou la messe."
The compliance of Henri with the King's significant
suggestion was the signal for the first outward attempt
at assassination. While he was performing his ab-
juration of the Protestant Faith before the altar of
St. Denis, a man named Pierre Barriere attempted to
stab him, though, afterwards, at his torture, he con-
fessed that he regretted having taken so sacred a
moment for the attempt.

I^Paris, during the reign of Henri, was a city which
was as well-fitted to afford opportunities to assassins
to carry out their hateful deeds as any in Europe.
It covered a space of not more than an eighth of the
Paris we know now, and the principal part of it stood
on ground which, to the fashionable Parisians of to-

* The statement that Charles IX. fired at Henri the arquebus
with which he was mowing down Protestants in the streets during
the massacre, may be dismissed with contempt. Indeed, it is highly
doubtful if Charles discharged the arquebus at any person, in spite
of the maniacal state to which he had become worked up at the time.
The window from which he is supposed to have fired was not thea
in existence*

26

■l^;^^^^mHl^^rt,-e

~-::.^f'?'%'^' Laurent:

■/■*:' Jfincaui'

Map of Paris in i6io.

^Facing p. 27

" The King and his Capital "

day, or the thousands upon thousands of pleasure-
seekers who visit the Capital annually, is not known
at all. The St. Antoine quarter, which, since the period
of the Revolution, and even before, has been regarded
as the poorest of all Paris quarters, was then the most
fashionable one. "It was for long the place of residence
of the de Montbazons, the Dues de la Force (whose
house afterwards became the Prison de la Force), the
Montmorencies and de Guises, the de Sevignes, and
scores of other illustrious families. The Place Royale
— where the tournaments were held and where Henri II.
was accidentally killed in one by Montgommery —
contained in Henri's reign the Hotels of Sully, of Diane
de Poitiers — which was afterwards that of the Due de
Mayenne, the most powerful member of The League after
the death of his brother, the Due de Guise — and nxmibers
of others, and all the mansions either faced or backed
upon the Rue St. Antoine. Now, the Place Royale is
called the Place des Vosges and, although the houses are
still very handsome and the ground well kept, the former
are divided into flats and inhabited by tradesmen and
clerks, and the latter is used principally by nursemaids
and their charges. The Rue des Francs-Bourgeois (in
which there is yet to be seen the house built for
Gabrielle d'Es trees, as well as the Allee aux Arbaletriers,

in which Louis d' Orleans was murdered by Jean Sans

Z7

\

\

I'

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

Peur, Due de Bourgogne — a shield on a wall, with an
inseription, eommemorating the place and deed — and also
the Hotel d'Angouleme, where dwelt Diane de France,
daughter of Henri II. by an Italian mother, and wife
to Famese, Due de Castro, and, afterwards, to the eldest
son of the Constable Montmorency) is now a horribly
mean street fiUed with low shops and drinking dens.

At this time the principal houses of the afterwards
fashionable Quartier St. Germain had scarcely been
begun ; not far from where now stand the mansions of
almost all who have contributed to the nobility and
glory of France, was a gloomy marsh, in which mur-
derers, footpads, and fugitives from justice lurked ;
in which, at great distances from each other, were to
be perceived solitary manors wherein horrible deeds
were often perpetrated ; to which abducted women —
either rich or beautiful — were sometimes carried, and
in the vaults of which rivals, enemies and false friends
were frequently incarcerated until the terrible damp
and miasmas that arose morning and night put an
end to their inconvenient existences. Indeed, consi-
dering the reputation which London has always " en-
joyed " in the minds of the French for fog and gloom,
it is somewhat remarkable that, with the Marais
(Anglice — Marsh or Morass) on one side of the river, and
the fens and bogs of the place where the fashionable

28

" The King and his Capital **

portion of the Quartier St. Germain afterwards arose on
the other, our neighbours should ever have been struck
with the peculiarities of our own Metropolitan climate.

The city was, consequently — and owing to there
being no suburbs in the true sense of the word — con-
fined in a very small space at this time. The Bastille
was just inside the ramparts on one side, the Bastide
(whence the name) being the outer tower by which
the gate of the town-wall at this spot was defended.
Outside was the Cours la Reine, when constructed by
Marie de Medici on the opposite side of the city ; but
it was close to the wall there. That old, great wall of
Paris, of which the wits said, " Le Mur murant Paris
rend Paris murmur ant," still stood intact. So did the
Tour de Nesle, even then spoken of with horror as a
place of terrible deeds where princesses inveigled their
lovers to sup with them, and later, to avoid exposure,
had them stabbed and flung into the Seine or hurled
down trap-doors into the river. The tales of this ghastly
place, half prison and half nid d' amour, have, however,
lost nothing in the telling from the days of the early
Bourbon romancists to those of Dumas.

The Champs- Elysees were meadows in which cows

and sheep grazed, where rabbits could be snared in

quantities, and where it was dangerous for anyone who

was unprotected to proceed to alone after dark. The

29

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

Bois de Boulogne,* which, for over a century, has been
the most fashionable resort on the Continent, was a
densely-grown wood wherein Henri's first wife had,
in her girlhood, often hunted the wild boars in com-
pany with one or other of her kingly brothers, Francis
II., Charles IX., and Henri III. Even so late as the
Revolution it was still a place in which trembling
*i suspects " hid themselves, and in which the National
Guard hunted for them as Marguerite had hunted
savage beasts. On the banks of the water that it then
possessed, and which is now represented by the lake
on which the aristocratic world skates in the winter
and round which it drives in the season, otters and
badgers had their haunts, and the wildfowl, when they
rose, were captured by hawks principally belonging
to the Royal Family or the members of the great
houses, this being a sport only permitted in those days
to the noblesse.

Fifty-two years had yet to elapse after Henri's death
before the first stones of the present palace of Ver-
sailles should be laid, and about half as many ere
Louis XIII. erected the hunting-lodge which preceded
it, and which St. Simon termed a petit chateau de Cartes.
The Louvre was a vastly different building from that
which we at present behold ; there was a moat round
♦ Then a portion of the ancient Foret de Rouvray.
30

'' The King and his Capital **

it ; a huge space, which is now a narrow one, between
it and the Church of St. Germain I'Auxerrois, and a
street that ran from north to south between it and the
Tuileries. The Church of Montmartre, now a superb
white temple, which, owing to its great elevation, may
be seen by travellers for many miles before they enter
Paris from all quarters, was even then a conspicuous
object though lacking in any particular architectural
beauty, and had been, still earlier, the resort of Ignatius
Loyola and his followers. — ^

Returning to the city proper over which Henri reigned, /
it has to be said that it was gloomy by day and terribly
dark by night. It was also shockingly unhealthy. The
graveyards were not fenced off, so that persons in a
hurry took short cuts across them ; the sewers, so-
called, consisted of open trenches along which the
" drainage " ran when it rained and accumulated when
it was fine. There were roads but no footpaths, and on
wet days the only escape for foot-passengers from being
splashed was in the doorways and ruelles, into which
they leapt whenever horsemen, or horsewomen, or a
man and a woman riding pillion, were seen to be /
approaching. Of coaches or carriages there were
scarcely any, and those called coaches were not what
were termed coaches later. Henri's death is always
Lttributed to his being stabbed to the heart " in his

31

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

coach y' but, in truth, what he sat in on the occasion
was more like a char-a-bancs with a tent-cloth thrown
over it than aught else. Windows in these vehicles did
not exist for the sufficient reason that there were no
sides to the latter in which the frames of the former
could be set. Ordinarily, there were leather blinds
affixed to the roof — ^generally with the arms of the
owner stamped in gold on them, since few public vehicles
for hire had any existence — which were rolled up some-
what in the manner that school-maps are rolled when
not wanted, and they were only let down when the rain
or the sun necessitated their use. They were also of
considerable value at night, or in the daytime, when
danger was apprehended from cut-throats and assassins
generally, as the leather would turn off most blows
that could be dealt. Had Henri gone thus — which he
would never have consented to do in the daylight —
to visit Sully at the Arsenal, his death would not have
taken place in the Rue de la Ferronnerie. It would
only, however, have been postponed.*
/ " The nights in Paris, outside those of fetes and illu-
minations, were difficult things with which to contend.
The nobility, when they were in town, occasionally
had a lanthorn — with their own colours dyed into the
horn so that they might be easily recognized — hung

♦ Histoire des Chars, Carrosses, etc., by D' Ram6e.
32

" The King and his Capital *'

outside their great portes-cocheres. Doctors then, as
now, had red lamps, they being generally slung from
a high window so that they should not be stolen —
it was an age of stealing everything on which hands
could be laid ; the bagnios had the same. But beyond
these there was little to light the city except on the
nights when there was a moon. Sometimes, it is true,
the passing of a noble from one place to another would
cause a momentary light to be distributed around from
the torches carried by his retainers, and, if he chanced
to be an amiable personage, people who happened to
be going the same way as he would attach themselves
to his cortege for light, as well as for protection from
the wretches lurking at the comers of the numerous
ruelles — which were very much like Scotch wynds — that
ran out of all the streets in considerable numbers. In
absolute fact, there was as much danger to persons on
foot from the want of light as from assassins, for he
who should happen to miss his footing in the darkness
of one of the streets of old Paris on a wet night was
as likely to be drowned in the filth of the open sewers .
as he was to be throttled, or run through the body /
by bravos, on a fine one.* Of other lights there might

* Paris was at this time so unhealthy that the King and his Court
vacated the Louvre regularly, so that it should be aired and cleaned
and made wholesome. The better class of citizens did the same with
their houses.

33 3

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

occasionally be encountered that of a lantern slung
across the street by a rope, the convenience being due
to the benevolence of two opposite neighbours : the
Bastille occasionally condescended on foggy nights to
have lighted braziers on the top of its towers and, now
and again, a church-roof would be lit up in a similar
manner. At that of St. Germain I'Auxerrois it was the
custom to illuminate its summit on most nights in the
winter, partly because, it is supposed, it faced the then
principal exit and entrance of the Louvre, and partly
because, as the scornful whispered, it was from the
towers of this superb edifice that the signal had rung
(owing to the clock being put forward an hour by order
of Catherine de Medici) for the Massacre of St. Bar-
tholomew to commence.*

It has, however, to be said, that it mattered very
little in the days of Henri IV. whether the streets were
lighted at night or not ; whether the most poisonous
malaria emanated from the open drains or not, or
whether assassins lurked or did not lurk at every
street comer and beneath every tradesman's bulk. Life
was, in any case, still as insecure as it had ever been
in the days of his predecessors, and, undoubtedly, far
more insecure than it ever was to be in those of his

* In contradistinction to this statement of the old writers, many
modern ones contend that the signal was sounded from La Sainte
Chapelle close by.

34

" The King and his Capital "

successors — excepting always the latter period of
Louis XVI. and that of the Revolution. This was
probably owing to the fact that there was always at
this time a vast number of soldiers in and around the
Capital — indeed, it is hardly too much to say that, ex-
cluding the very young and the very old (those under
fifteen and those over seventy) and also the priests,
every man was a soldier. In many cases even the priests
were fighting men, and active ones. During the Siege
of Amiens by Henri, the Cardinal d'Autriche took the
head of a small army sent against the former ; several
bishops also commanded bodies of troops, and the
monks and priests of Paris took arms against the
Protestants during The League. The internal wars were,
to a great extent, responsible for this insecurity; so,
too, was the large army which SuUy insisted on having
always in a state of readiness ; and so, also, was the
fact that, in Paris, almost every man capable of bear-
ing arms enrolled himself in some company, or guild,
which was vowed to defend the city to its last gasp.
Amongst all these, many were mercenaries fighting
under whatever banner gave promise of most pay and
plunder, and mercenaries when disbanded, or when
at ease, were ever the worst species of individuals that
could be let loose among a general public. To this
fact has to be added another — namely, that the great

35 3*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

captains of the day had each at their back a vast fol-
lowing of spears, or lances, all of whom took their mode
of conduct from that of their masters. Sully had nearly
a thousand of these individuals at his beck and call,
and Sully, whatever his rugged virtues may have been,
was a rough, harsh man ; the Due d'lfipernon had from
seven to eight hundred, and d'Epemon, without any
virtues at all, was a truculent bully ; De Mayenne had,
in actual fact, the whole of The League at his command,
and probably possessed more vices — including the
supreme one of treachery — than almost any other
member of that vast association ; the Due de Mercoeur
rode with about five hundred lances behind him, and
the following anecdote will tend to show what kind of
individual he was.

Accompanied one night by twenty or thirty of his
followers — they were enough for what was to be done !
— the Duke forced his way into the house of Monsieur
Servin, avocat au parlement. On seeing the Duke, the
other saluted him civilly, and wished him good evening.
To this the intruder replied that he had not come to
Monsieur Servin's house to wish anyone good evening or
to have it wished to him, but to cut his host's throat.
The host, naturally surprised at this extravagant form of
answer, remarked on the intemperance of such Isin-
guage and behaviour, especially in the house of a

36

" The King and his Capital "

Minister of the Crown, and continued that, if the
Duke had any grievance against him, he had better
appeal to the King. To this the Duke answered, while
drawing his sword, that M. Servin had stated in the
Chamber of Edicts that he was not a prince, as he
styled himself, and that there were no recognized
princes except those of the blood-royal. He would
then have put his threat into execution had it not
been for one of his accompanying friends who forcibly
prevented him from doing so.

Brutality and insolence were, indeed, the particular
qualities of the nobility in this and the succeeding
reign, though the nobility by no means considered
themselves to be either brutal or insolent. Govern-
ment of their families, their servants and their military
followers, as well as of the lower orders, had neces-
sarily to be by la main-forte since, between the latter
and their rulers, there was a greater line of demarca-
tion fixed than could now exist between a man and his
stable-boy. Indeed, any man who should now ill-
treat a dog as the nobles of this period then ill-treated
human flesh and blood that had offended them would
be prosecuted and punished.

And yet, had those nobles been remonstrated with
by persons whose standing gave them the right, or
power to do so — say, a King, a Queen, or a Confessor —

37

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

they would not only have been extremely astonished
at the remonstrance, but also hurt ; and they would
certainly have offered what they considered a suffi-
ciently good explanation of their behaviour if they
condescended to offer one at all. They would have
pointed to the fact that their own lives were constantly
menaced by assassins — which statement was, indeed,
incontrovertible ; that in most cases their servants
hated them, owing to the still existent laws of Villenage
which actually gave their order the rights of life and
death over those servants, and that, since their own
lives were daily jeopardized in the unceasing wars, it
was not unnatural that, in times of peace and repose,
they themselves should exercise stem justice on those
who owed their very existence to them. But, faulty as
such an argument might easily be proved to be, they
could have adduced a further one which was indis-
putable. They could have stated with absolute truth
that when their soldiers, their domestic servants, their
woodmen and agricultural labourers, as well as the very
priests on their estates, grew old and past work, the
remainder of their lives was well-provided for. They
might have said that they stood in the position of fathers
to all who had served them and their families well ; that
their fortresses became the asylums of their aged fol-
lowers ; that their money provided the Masses for the

38

" The Kingr and his Capital "

repose of their souls and for the ground wherein they
were laid to rest, as well as for the comforts that
cheered their declining years. Nay, more, they could
have declared with equal justice that the daughters of
their servitors were dowered by them ; that their own
wives, haughty dames and chatelaines though they
might be, furnished those daughters with their marriage
outfits, provided them with all they required when
they brought children into the world, and, in many
cases, saw that the children were well looked after by
their successors. Nor was this all. When the wander-
ing minstrels came, or the troop of strolling players, or
jongleurs, and begged to be allowed to perform in the
hall, it was not only those who ruled the great house,
but also those who served them, who witnessed the
entertainment. When winter evenings were in their
full severity ; on Ember Eves when the wassail-bowl
was filled high ; on Christmas nights when the monks
came in to give their representation of " The Birth in
the Manger," the servitors, men-at-arms, and others
formed part of the audience, drank of the spiced wine
that was passed round, received their portions of the
roasted pea-hens and swans, their share of the massepain
and sweetmeats and of the vails and gifts, and were all
one of a great family over which their lord and lady
presided.

39

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

It was no wonder, therefore, if the latter could look
only on those beneath them as creatures whose lives were
theirs to do with as they chose, though, at the same
time, extreme cruelty or absolute death was never
the portion of the lower orders at the hands of their
superiors except for two things, namely, treachery or
insolence.

But to familiarize ourselves with even such a state
of existence as this, a recollection of the period under
discussion must always be preserved in our minds.
Treachery practised by men who, no matter how lowly,
had always by their side some weapon, in a city where
there was more darkness than light, and in which there
were more narrow and tortuous streets and alleys than
there are burrows in a rabbit-warren, could, if the in-
tended stroke failed, be only pimished in one way,
namely by instant death. To give the " serpent an
opportunity to sting twice " was to court the certainty
of sudden death for themselves sooner or later.
Henri III., miserable creature though he might
be, was still a Valois and treated with disdain the
earlier attempts on his life ; and, at last, the
attempt succeeded. Henri IV. treated with equal
disdain the far more numerous attempts to slay
him, while, since he was a fatalist, his indifference

was owing to his belief that if it was to be it

40

The Tour de Nesle (Period Henri I\'.\

IFactng p. 40

" The King and his Capital "

would be, and that if it was not to come it would
not come.*

It is to show the treachery that gradually gathered
round the ill-fated Henri IV. that this book is partly
written, while its principal object is to prove that
though "Treason did his worst" with him, it failed
in its efforts and that more simple and fanatical means
accomplished the deed which treachery had meditated.

Before proceeding farther upon the absolute matter
in hand, it will be as well, however, to give a still more
extended description of Paris as it was in the days
when plot after plot was being laid against the life of
the King, and also a more full description of the life
led within its ramparts.

Omitting more remarks than are absolutely necessary
on the morality of the city, which morality, if the truth
must be told, had scarcely any existence at all at a time
when the whole Capital was more like one vast Agape-
mone than aught else, it may be stated that the two
principal vices were gambling and duelling. As regards
the former of these two, there was no worse sinner in

* It is remarkable that all the Henris of France died by violence.
Henri I. was almost certainly poisoned, Henri II. was killed by the
lance of Montgommery in a tournament in the Place Royale (there
were some who said intentionally), Henri III. was stabbed by the
monk, Jacques Clement, and Henri IV, by Ravaillac,

41

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

Paris than the King himself, while that which made
his fault the greater was the fact that he was never in
possession of sufficient money to permit of his gambling
at all.
I It was the custom in this reign, as in previous and
successive ones, for the whole of the inhabitants to
visit La Foire Saint-Germain annually, and there, at
night-time at least, to indulge in a licence of dissipation
and extravagance which has, probably, never been
equalled ^t any other place or in any other period.
In the day-time, the fair was like a vast cosmopolitan
market to which came, from all parts of Europe,
dealers and merchants who had anything worth sell-
ing. Here could be purchased the skins of bears slain
in the Ural or Carpathian Mountains ; horses from
England or Ireland — then, as now, the countries known
for their pre-eminence in horse-breeding ; armour and
weapons made by the master-hands of Milan or Toledo ;
black boys reported to have been brought by Portu-
guese missionary-monks from mid-Africa, and fair-
haired maidens supposed to have been torn from their
parents in Circassia, though often believed to have
been stolen from no farther off than the coasts of Nor-
mandy or Brittany, or those of Sweden or Norway.
Silks, too, from China, Siam and the Indies were to be

purchased here, and were sold with the undoubtedly

42

" The King and his Capital "

fictitious guarantee that they had been stolen from
the Palace of the Great Mogul, while, at the same time
that the rich nobles were buying these things and occa-
sionally evading, payment of them, trifles so incon-
siderable as to be within the reach of the humblest
peasant were also on sale. Wooden whistles for the
children, made on winter nights in the peasants'
cabins of the Black Forest, as well as clocks, were there ;
so, too, were dolls and toy-horses and dolls'-houses —
differing in scarcely any particular from those sold at
the present day in England ; and daubs on paper of
the Adoration of the Magi, The Sacred Birth, The Last
Supper and The Crucifixion. But there was also a
great trade in books going on at this fair. Almanacks,
such as those of Frankfort previously referred to, found
a ready sale, for, though they were not almanacks
in the modern acceptation of the word, they contained
recipes for healing wounds, colds and coughs, the bites
of vipers and mad dogs and the ailments of maternity
or of old age, as well as recipes for cooking and the
making of preserves of all kinds of things from sloes
and boluses and quinces — the fruits and, for want of
others, also the vegetables of the period — to snails and
slugs. Yet, in these days, not one person out of thirty
of the whole population of France could read with ease,
and not one out of seventy-five could write a letter

43

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

which anyone else could read at all. These almanacks
were, however, accompanied by illustrations — always
the most rude of woodcuts — which no one could fail
to imderstand. They were, indeed, of a terrifying and
repellant nature and, outside those dealing with reli-
gious matters — which, however, were not always
exempt from censure — were often disgusting. Never-
theless, a better class of book was to be procured, a
form of hterature perused by noble ladies in their
tourelles and rush-strewn boudoirs, or behind the silken
hangings of their beds in which they passed so much
time when left alone by their lords, or when it was im-
possible for their vast and draughty mansions to be
properly warmed and heated in the winter. Among
these would be found books of love and adventure, the
" Commentaires " of the Marshal de Montluc, which
Henri IV. called " La Bible des Soldats," and was the
production of one of the most savage and bloodthirsty
soldiers that any country ever produced* ; the " Histoire
de Bayard, Chevalier Sans-Peur et Sans Reproche," and
the " Histoire Generale des Larrons/' published a little
later in the reign of Louis XIII., and, perhaps, the
prime favourite of all. It is now a rare book, the first
edition of which was unknown to Brunet, yet the

* He remarks in his Commentaires : " On pouvait cognoistre par ou
jUtais pass/, car par les arbres on troiivait les enseignes. Un pendu
estonnait plus que cent tuez."

44

" The King and his Capital "

revolting crimes which it narrates must have endeared
it to the highly-sharpened appetites of the ladies and
gentlemen of its time, and have caused it to obtain a
considerable sale.*

It was at night, however, that what, with very little
license, may be described as the " fun of the fair "
commenced ; the gambling set in and darkness lent her
aid to many things that would not bear the light of
day. Cloaked and masked ladies, who were clad as pages
underneath, and who often carried (either as disguises
for themselves or as weapons wherewith to injure their
rivals) colours and badges that were not those of their
own illustrious houses, appeared on the scene ;
scriveners, clerks, and others dressed in the cast-off
garments of their betters were also there, and, with
swords which they little knew how to use, strutted
about until accosted by men of a higher rank, when
they generally took to their heels. The bullies, the
matamores and bretteurs of the day, were likewise much
in evidence, and so, too, were the purse-lifters, the
gentlemen who would cut the cords by which the cloaks
of others were suspended from their shoulders, and

* The author's copy, which he picked up in France for a, few pence,
is beautifully printed and would disgrace the production of many
books of to-day. The pages have, however, undoubtedly been turned
over by the fingers of several generations. It possesses over five
hundred of these pages, every one of which describes something
horrible or disgusting.

45

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

the men who lay in wait to fall upon the successful
gamblers as they left the booths where the tables were
set out.

Of the gamesters of high estate who frequented this
delectable haunt, the King was, as has been said, one ;
and his losses were, for a man of his scanty means and
for his time, often stupendous. One January night he
lost at dicing at this fair twenty-two thousand pistoles
(equal to nearly forty-five thousand pounds of our
money at the present day), and Sully had to find the
sum out of the State Fimds within twenty-four hours.*
This is but one example of great losses which he sus-
tained in the same manner and was also but one of his
various forms of extravagance, of which the following
are instances.

From the time Gabrielle d'Estrees held Henri in her
net and was so near to the throne that she would have
undoubtedly ascended it had she lived longer, and had
not Marguerite de Valois refused to consent to her
divorce from the King, and, thereby, resign her place
to so degraded a woman as the other, Henri squandered
money on her to which he had no right whatever, since
it belonged to the finances of the State ; and, in doing
so, he almost reduced France to bankruptcy. At the
baptism of the son of Gabrielle's aunt, Madame de
* Journal de VEstoile,

46

" The Kingr and his Capital "

Sourdis, the favourite appeared in a black satin robe so
weighted with precious stones that, before the cere-
mony was concluded, she was unable to stand any
longer. A week later, Henri purchased for her — and
had to pay ready money for it, since the jeweller would
not give him credit — a handkerchief which had cost
nineteen hundred crowns.* While he was thus lavish-
ing his money on his mistress he did not stint himself,
his excuse being that he must appear as well-dressed in
State ceremonies as his nobles, and that the money spent
was won at the gaming-table — which was not true,
since he was not only a singularly unlucky player but,
if most accounts are to be believed, was often cheated.
He bought himself at this time a court-sword orna-
mented on the handle and scabbard with diamonds, for
which he paid one hundred thousand crowns, and for
a costume to wear at the baptisms of his various
children he paid fourteen thousand crowns, it being
composed of cloth of gold embroidered with pearls. f

Henri had, however, been so shockingly poor at the
time of his predecessor's death that the aristocratic
rulers of the various provinces, themselves mostly men
of large means, exclaimed that it was impossible to
permit him to become King of France. When he was
informed of the assassination of Henri HI., and hastened

* L'Estoile. t Bassompierre.

47

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

to St. Cloud in the hope of seeing the unhappy victim
before he expired, and, doubtless, in the hope of
obtaining Henri de Valois* last word in his favour as
heir (which word had been uttered before his arrival),
he had no suitable clothes to assume. Indeed, had
Henri HI. not been himself in mourning for his mother
at the time of his death, Henri IV. could not have
assumed any fitting apparel. But the former's doublet
of purple — the royal mourning — was altered to suit
his successor and cut down to his smaller size, and when
he entered the death-chamber everyone present recog-
nized that, and the cloak, as the property of the dying
man. The apparent vulgarity of the above-men-
tioned personages probably did not truly express
their opinions on the difference between rich and poor
men, but, since they were all Leaguers, the circumstance
served to raise one more objection against their hated
antagonist.

Meanwhile, to keep the King in countenance the
whole of Paris followed in his footsteps, though the
nobility surpassed him in at least two things in which
he could not indulge, namely, in duelling and robbing,
as well as murdering, people on the highway. At the
Foire St. Germain fights took place not only between
individuals, but between different bodies of men. A
number of royal pages fought lackeys who had been

48

" The King and his Capital "

insolent to them, and, in one case, when a nobleman's
servant cut off the ears of a student and put them in his
pocket, the other students slew nearly all of the
menial's companions. Soldiers fought indiscriminately
against hired bravos, the lackeys, the pages, and the
unoffending citizens, and were often killed by being
outnumbered, so that, when the officers in command
of them came out of one of the many " Academies de
Jeux," they occasionally found that there was no pro-
tection for them, and that they were in imminent danger
of being murdered themselves.

These nocturnal performances, which, indeed, more
resembled the street-fights of later days than anything
else though they were much more dangerous, stand
far removed from the duels which hourly took place,
or from the highway robberies by which the nobility
and gentry frequently refilled their purses after they
had been emptied in the tripots. The Baron de Sancy,
sent by Henri to recruit soldiers in Basle — Switzerland
being then the great depot of mercenaries, and he the
Captain of the Swiss Guard — heard that twenty-two
travellers, each of whom had over four thousand crowns
sewn up in his saddle, were approaching that ancient
city, which was then, as it still is, one of the chief gates
of Central Eiurope. Seeing in their arrival the oppor-
timity of paying the advance necessary to secure the

49 4

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

services of the mercenaries, he went forward with his
own following to meet the merchants, captured them,
seized their money, and then hanged them aU to the
trees. The Baron de Fontenelle was broken alive on
the Place de Grdve for practising brigandage on land
and piracy at sea, and for being supposed to have
joined in one of the many plots formed against the
King's life. A very young gentleman whose name is
not given, but who was superbly dressed when captured,
was executed in the same place for highway robbery
and other " strange acts,*' and for slaying a creditor who
demanded his money. Monsieur de Lagrange-Santerre
would have been spared by the King if he could have
proved that he had not been accustomed to rob people
on Les grandes routes, but the evidence produced against
him was to the effect that he had been a highwayman
from his boyhood, that his father was in prison on the
same charge at the time he was tried, and that his
grandfather had been executed for similar crimes. A
month later, two of his brothers were also executed
on like charges.

The hst of these exploiteurs is too long to permit of
more than a few solitary instances being quoted, but
it is worth observing that those who possessed good-
looking female relations, or good-looking female friends,
who could in some manner obtain audience of the King,

50

" The King and his Capital "

were hardly ever executed. Henri's ruling passion was
well known and well utilized.

To select any instances of duelling that stood out in
a strong light during this reign would be impossible,
since, from the time of Henri's accession in 1589 to the
year 1607, four thousand gentlemen perished in these
encounters in spite of the edicts against duels. For,
independently of the conflicts which might arise from
the most ordinary causes for such combats, namely,
jealousy, rivalry, revenge, or disputes over gambling,
women or wine, these bloodthirsty affairs frequently
formed part of the " amusements " of the day. Parties
met to breakfast or dine or sup together with the dis-
tinct understanding that the " festivity " of the .occa-
sion should be concluded by a visit to the Pre aux Clercs,
or the Place Royale, or the host's garden, wherein sides
should be made up and an all-round duel fought between
those who, an hour or so before, had been drinking
healths to each other or toasting the charms of their
own and each other's lady-loves. Once the affair was
over the greatest harmony again prevailed — between
those who still survived ! The bodies of the fallen were
despatched to their homes, the wounded were sent to
the hospitals, or to their friends or relatives, and those
still imharmed prepared to continue their carouse or to
commence a fresh one. The horrible duel between the

51 4*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

mignons of Henri III. and Bussy d'Amboise and his
friends was of a similar nature to these. On other
occasions, when even such a general melee was not consi-
dered sufficient excitement, large parties would send
notice to some nobleman or grand seigneur that, on a
certain day, they purposed presenting themselves out-
side his house and would esteem it an honour if he, with
a similar following, would be prepared to meet them
and to indulge in a friendly encounter. The invitation
was scarcely ever refused. Had it been, the person to
whom it was sent would have been ostracized.*

In religious matters it was naturally a stormy time.
The old original religion, the Faith that had been that
of the whole of Europe — which formed in those days
the whole of the world worth counting — until something
imder a century earlier, had everywhere received terrible
shocks. England was gone from out its fold for ever
— the great Queen EHzabeth had made that certain ! —
so, too, were many German and more northern States ;
half of the States of the Swiss Confederacy had em-
braced Protestantism, or were about to do so, and in
France Henri's followers — in spite of his own two-fold
apostacy — were now becoming more and more numerous
since, at this time (namely, the latter half of Henri's

* Bussy Rabutin, writing of a period nearly fifty years later than
Henri's death, narrates an almost similar occasion in which he played
a part.

52

" The King and his Capital "

reign) the Edict of Nantes consolidated their power
and their safety. Nevertheless, in France The League
was, if shorn of much of its strength, still powerful, and
behind The League there stood the great body of the
French people. They, at least, showed no sign of dissent,
while their feelings, based upon the admirable, if homely,
reflection that what had been good enough for their
forerunners to live and die under was good enough for
them, did not undergo, and have never yet undergone,
change. Moreover, there were vast districts, indeed,
whole provinces, in which it is very doubtful if the words
" Reform," or " Reformation," in connection with reli-
gion, had ever been heard. Nor, had these words been
uttered would they have been understood, while, if
such had been the case, the utterance of them might
possibly have been fateful to the utterers. All over
the land the people saw the great cathedrals whose
hoary existence dated from far beyond the time to
which ran the memory of man : at Rheims, for instance,
they worshipped in the vast and solemn fabric in
which their kings had been crowned since the time of
Louis le Debonnaire, and in the original of which fabric
Clovis had embraced Christianity. At Troyes, the
ancient capital of Champagne, the most disastrous
invasion of France had come to an end by the marriage
in the Cathedral of the Enghsh conqueror, Henry V.,

53

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

to the daughter of their own King ; here, too, they knew
that Joan of Arc had ridden in triumphantly and knelt
in thankfulness before the High Altar, and here, also,
their own King, the Bearnais, had forced The League
to open its doors to him.

Throughout all France, from north to south and from
east to west, it was the same ; every massive cathedral
and almost every village church told the story of how,
around and within their walls, the only Faith they knew,
or ever desired to know, had been the comfort of their
forefathers in their lives and their solace in the hour
of death ; that here were the spots in which they had
heard the promises of pardon and salvation on the Day
of Judgment. Nor, in the Capital itself, was there any
lack of that spiritual food which all, no matter whether
ferocious noble, honest bourgeois, or thief and murderer
about to be broken on the wheel or burnt alive, desired
at some hour of their uncertain existences. Upon the
little island in the river the ancient Cathedral stood
as it still stands, the shrine of tranquillity and, in those
days, the sacred domain of sanctuary ; the personification
to the minds of all, whether King or beggar, of a peace
yet to be theirs that should pass all understanding. And
all around that little isle — around the great House
of God, not yet so black as Time and weather have
caused it to become — were churches that could vie with

54

■ » • , • *

» » »c « ,

• • -•.••!

• • • • •

* ••••••

" The King and his Capital "

the mother one in beauty and antiquity, and from
which issued forth daily the promise of eternal hope
for the life to come.

Nevertheless, since religion played so great a part
in the lives of all who dwelt in what were, still,
almost medieval days ; since, from the lips of her
ministers were uttered words of advice — of sometimes
gentle reproof, and of, above all, pardon for sins com-
mitted again and again, it is to be regretted that these
ministers were so little free from the very faults which
they forgave in their penitents, and that their lives did
not match better with their words. The sin of the
Cardinal de Guise with Gabrielle d'Estrees — then
almost a child — will be referred to later ; the Cardinal-
Archbishop also became the lover of Charlotte des
Essajts after she was cast off by the King, and, later,
went through a secret form of marriage with her and
had an acknowledged family by her. It is, indeed,
scarcely too much to say that during this reign there
was hardly a dozen of high church dignitaries whose
lives were not as sinful as the lives of the most dissolute
laymen, nor a priest of humbler orders who was not
too fond of indulging in the most gross pleasures of
the table. Instances, however, stand out on the other
side, and amongst those few whose lives were entirely
pure that of St, Vincent de Paul — who in his earlier

55

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

days was the Confessor of Marguerite de Valois ! — is
one.

Charity played a large part in the lives of the well-
to-do of these times, and acquitted itself nobly of the
credit assigned to it in Holy Writ of covering a multi-
tude of sins. Church dignitaries, however open to
reproach in other matters, gave largely to those in need.
So, too, did the nobility, and so, likewise, did the rich
members of the middle-class. Young women, the
daughters of well-to-do traders and tradesmen, were
as kindly to the poor as are the " Lady Bountifuls "
of our own day in our own land, and as yoimg and
earnest French ladies have now become ; they fed them,
clothed them, and endeavoured to impart some educa-
tion— their own was not considerable ! — to the children,
while, as L'Estoile narrates, there were those who daily
walked about the districts wherein they lived with,
attached to their girdles, a purse full of pieces of silver
which they distributed among all who appeared needy
or suffering. Queen Marguerite de Valois, after she had
consented to her divorce from Henri because of the
fact that she was unable to provide him with an heir,
gave nearly aU her money away in charity, and she,
herself, had at this time very little of that commodity
to spare in spite of her considerable revenues.

As a set-off against many of the errors of Henri during

56

'' The King: and his Capital **

his reign — and one that counts in company with his
unfailing kind-heartedness and his good-humour, as
well as the lack of any spark of cruelty in his disposition
— may be placed his desire to beautify Paris. If he
did not find the Capital as Augustus said of Rome —
" of brick and left it marble " — ^he, at least, found it
a terribly dirty, foul, old place, and improved it vastly.
There were houses of the nobility that, it is true, were
models of ancient architectural beauty, but they were
generally surrounded by horrible slums. Also, there
were, of course, the cathedrals and the old churches,
of which mention has been made ; but there were no
pavements, and, as we have seen, scarcely any lights ;
the bridges were rotten, timible-down things, mostly
of wood, through which heavy waggons, and occasion-
ally horsemen, frequently fell into the river, while the
Pont Neuf was not completed until after Henri's death.
Carriages and cabriolets and carrying-chairs were — as
has been said — things almost unheard of, though there
was a species of general public conveyance known as a
Patache which sometimes ran to and from various out-
skirts of the city, its incoming and outgoing being
principally regulated by the state of the weather.

Henri set himself the task of remedying many of
the above-mentioned discomforts in so far as means
would allow. Nineteen new fountains were erected in

57

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

different parts of Paris, from which flowed water that,
if not actually of the purest, could be imbibed by man
and beast without any fear of certain disaster. For
wholesome water was, of all things in the city, the most
difficult to obtain. Money could buy the most deli-
cious wines of Bordeaux, or Burgundy, or Champagne,*
as well as many other things, but the richest nobles
or merchants could not procure pure water by the aid
of all their wealth unless they paid to have it imported
in skins and barrels from far-off sources. There was,
indeed, no possibility of the case being otherwise. The
Seine was often loaded with the corpses of suicides or
murdered people, and sometimes with the bodies of
those who had been executed ; it was also the usual
tomb of drowned dogs and cats, or of their various
newly-born progenies, and not infrequently of the
bodies of newly-born children. The uneatable refuse
of animals, fish and birds, rejected by the cooks of the
great mansions on the banks, also found its way to the
Seine, and such drains as were in existence emptied
themselves into it. The Bievre — the second river of
Paris and on the south side of the Seine — which cor-
responded somewhat with our old Fleet Ditch, though

* The use of refined sugar as a means to assisting the natural
effervescence of any of the wines of the latter province had not then
been discovered. Consequently they were drunk as " still " wines,
or as almost " still."

58

" The King and hi$ Capital "

it was, and is, much wider, was bordered by the manu-
factories of dyers and of those employed in similar
trades, and the inhabitants who should drink of its water
would encounter almost as sudden and certain a death
as they would have done from the fangs of a snake.
To supply the fountains with more pure water than
was otherwise possible, there was erected a machine
called La Fontaine et Pompe de la Samaritaine, situated
four yards below the second arch of the Pont Neuf,
which brought to Paris the water from the aqueducts
of the Pr6s' St. Gervais and Belleville. The idea was
that of a Fleming named Jean Lintlaer, and it was
strongly opposed by the sheriffs and merchants of
Paris as they considered that its presence would in-
terfere with the navigation of the river. Henri, however,
refused to recognize this opposition on the ground that
the Pont Neuf was being built more out of his revenues
than out of those of the city. He had his way, and
a remarkable machine arose which excited the curiosity
of the Parisians and strangers for two hundred years,
when it was ordered to be removed by Napoleon I. at
the time that he was intent on beautifying Paris. The
name of this construction — which at least fulfilled
a useful and healthy want — ^was derived from two
gilded bronze figures above it representing Christ and
the woman of Samaria at Jacob's Well.

59

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

Consequently the fountains erected by Henri conferred
upon Paris a boon, if a poor one, such as she had never,
heretofore, experienced. But his benefactions did not
cease with these. Many buildings were restored,
added to and beautified. Several quays were built
which replaced, or rather covered, the stony beach
of the Seine, from which the public were as utterly
unprotected as we are in London, at the present
moment, on the towing-path of the south side of the
Thames between Putney and Richmond. These quays
were, and still are — under, in some cases, other names —
those of the Arsenal, I'Horloge, des Augustins, la
Megisserie, de Conti, I'Ecole, and des Orphelins.

The Place Royale was also completed by the addi-
tion of its fourth side, and the Place Dauphine and the
Rue Dauphine came into existence. Meanwhile, the
Louvre was furbished up ; in many cases several small
rooms were turned into one large one and the place
was made more habitable than it had ever been before.

There were, however, other changes taking place
during the reign which, though some only were attri-
butable to Henri, are worthy of remark. He was
himself a wearer of spectacles, since his sight began to
fail him a few years before his death, and it was owing
to him that the one shop in Paris where they could be

procured was established on the Pont Marchand, at his

60

" The King and his Capital "

suggestion. The glasses he wore were very large and
round. Watches, also, began to be carried, and were
for a long time termed montres-horloges. They were
enormous and, in some cases, almost as big as a modem
dessert-plate ; consequently, they were supported by
a chain round the neck and rested on the chests of those
who could afford to possess them. Powder for the
hair came also into fashion in this reign, but its use was
confined to no persons or sex, while the clergy, as well
as women of piety, adopted it largely, perhaps with a
view to add to the dignity of their appearance.
L'Estoile, who did not miss much of what there was
to be seen and recorded all that he saw, says he one
day encountered in the street three religieuses, who had
not only powdered their hair, but curled it.

But that which was, perhaps, the worst of the new
customs was the now almost universal one of women
going masked — as will be easily understood by those who
can recognize the opportunities for deception that it
created. The habit had come into fashion in the pre-
ceding reign, but during that of Henri it increased
enormously and was fruitful of evil. A masked woman,
clad in a habit such as a rival was known to affect,
or with the badge or colours of that rival's family in
her bodice or her hat, or on her shoulder, could, and

did, sometimes cause incredible woe, especially if the

6i

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

rival was suspecte in the eyes of those who had the
power to punish her for her faults. Yet there were
even worse wrongs than these to be perpetrated by the
aid of the mask. Women desirous of injuring others
whom they often imagined had injured them, would
procure another form of mask resembling the featmres
of the detested foe. This, placed over their own face
and surmounted by hair of the same colour, while
arranged in the same fashion as that of their enemy,
and with the ordinary mask, or domino, partly dis-
guising the one beneath, could work unutterable mis-
chief. The stab of the hired bravo, the whispered
insinuations of false friends, the pen of an unsuccessful
rival, were almost harmless in comparison with such
treachery as this.* It is, therefore, little wonder that
at this time the mask was called by the significant name
of le loup. An even more suitable term would have
been la louve.

In this brief sketch of the Paris that, as Henri said,
" was worth a Mass " (it was one of those inconsiderate
jokes which, in all ages, have often brought ruin on
those who uttered them, and, in the case of Henri,
helped eventually to cost him his life), it has been im-
possible to mention more than a few facts connected

♦ Lemontey. The writer says that the number of women injured
by this form of deception at this time, and later, was almost incredible.
He terms these masks, " masques-portraits.'*

62

" The King and his Capital "

with the state in which he found it on obtaining the
throne at last. But if further ideas are desired of what
its existence was, it may be added that the comedians,
such as they were, were ordered to always conclude
their performances at half-past four in the afternoons of
spring, autumn and winter, so that the public could
get home in safety before dark, while respectable
women out after nightfall were always to be accom-
panied by at least one man who was to carry a lamp
and be well-armed.

It was at this time that a census was taken by order
of the King, but it was, naturally, very imperfectly
made. A better calculation was arrived at by a person
whom L'Estoile knew. This individual reckoned the
absolute poor as one in every twenty-seven, and, pro-
viding that, to begin with, he had accurately gauged
the number of paupers in the city, the population of
Paris would stand at something like two himdred
thousand inhabitants. It is possible that this com-
putation was very nearly a correct one. The streets
numbered 413.

Of newspapers there was none, excepting Le Mercure
Frangois, a poor thing dealing mostly with Court
scandal, and of which Richelieu in later days spoke
scathingly as " un recueil de mensonges." But there
were quaint little pamphlets published on particular

63

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

occasions — they were about the size of a quarto sheet
of paper and consisted of one sheet only — when there
was any out-of-the-way news to be circulated of foreign
wars or peacemakings, or descriptions of men of note
being broken on the wheel, or of women being burnt at
the stake, or of houses destroyed by fire, or of a fresh
instance of a nobleman's insolence, or a monstrosity on
exhibition. An elephant in the menagerie of the gardens
of the Tuileries (Coryate of " the Crudities " has, among
others, left us a description of such sights as these)
received the honour of a notice, and so did " a monster "
on show, which was simply a predecessor of the Siamese
twins of our own time, since it consisted of two recently-
born children who were joined together as one single
body. Marie de Medici went to see these as a rare
novelty — as probably they were.

The comedians of the Hotel de Bourgogne also
obtained occasional annoimcements in these printed
sheets of forthcoming performances which the King
and Queen often went to see. Henri, however, fre-
quently fell asleep during the representation, especially
when the Italian players took the boards, though,
since one of the chief of them was eighty-seven years
of age and was supposed to be a sprightly dancer, it is
not perhaps remarkable that his Majesty should do so.

Of other matters pertaining to social life, it may be

64

" The King: and his Capital "

mentioned that it was a terrible time for the use of
perfumes. Everyone, from the King and Queen down,
scented themselves in a manner that would be now
intolerable. Indeed, people were recognized by their
own particular scents (the plot of more than one of the
buffo-comedies of the day revolved on this fact), and
the novelists also used the custom freely as a matter
for ridicule. In Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne's* " Baron
de Fceneste," the author states that " a gentleman
is known by his scent " ; and in Sorel's Histoire
comique de Frangion one character exclaims to a very
flamboyant hero : " How you are scented ! " to which
the other replies : " Scented ! Do you not know that
I am about to appear as the King ? '* As for the Queen,
she scented everything — ^her clothes, her hair and her
linen, and placed sachets of Italian perfumes in the
drawers of every chest and cupboard she possessed.

That Henri used scent was owing to the fact that, as
he passed the greater part of his life in the saddle and
often slept for hours when riding slowly on long journeys
(he was so short that he could hardly ever get on to the
back of a horse without the use of a mounting-block,
a fallen tree, a stone or a helping hand), he considered
he was not always an agreeable neighbour. Indeed, in
his case vanity could not have been the cause of his
♦ Grandfather of Madame de Maintenon.

65 5

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

using scent, since, except at high Court and State
functions, his appearance was little short of slovenly,
though often enough this arose from the fact that in
his errant life before he had gained the throne of France
he could not always find the opportunity for changing
his clothes or removing them for his night's rest, or even
for washing himself or brushing his hair. As regards the
latter addition to his appearance, he had, however,
a strange dislike to having his hair attended to, or
to attending to it for himself. His dress was frequently
torn and ragged, his linen was dirty from the constant
pressure of the lining of his cuirass upon it, and the
dust often remained in his beard and moustache when
he made his appearance among the foppish courtiers
and splendidly apparelled women in the halls of the
Louvre. Yet, notwithstanding all — ^his diminutive
stature, the fact that he stammered somewhat and
never spoke French with a perfect accent, his dis-
hevelled clothes and soiled linen — ^he was the most
valiant man in France, and was treated with the deepest
reverence by all amongst whom he moved, while his
ordinary subjects adored him. His bonhomie was,
indeed, well calculated to endear him to all. It has
been said that his son, Louis XHL, touched his hat
to his people, and that his grandson, Louis XIV., took

his off to them ; but he, when hk subjects saluted him,

66

'* The King and his Capital "

replied pleasantly : " Your servant. Your servant,"
and invariably addressed those nearer his own rank as
" My friend/' or as " Bellegarde," or " Montbazon,"
or " Bassompierre," without any prefix at all. It was
also his habit to interlace his fingers with those of the
persons with whom he shook hands, and to keep them
in that position so long as he talked to the others.

Among other things remarkable about Henri was his
enormous appetite, including his love for melons, which
he devoured to an extraordinary extent ; while, as
regards his vast consumption of food, he seems to have
been faithfully followed in that respect by his
descendants, the four Louis — Louis XIV. 's noble efforts
in this direction having most nearly approached his own.
St. Simon, in his wonderful summing-up of Louis' per-
formances in this particular, as well as of all his other
habits and methods of life, his clothes, manners, and
tastes, states that he invariably ate three times as
much as most ordinary men, and that his digestive
apparatus was found after death to be in about the
same proportion to that of other men.

Henri was not ill-educated for his time, in spite of the
younger Scaliger's statement that he could not read,
which statement was not accurate. He spoke Spanish —
it being almost his native tongue owing to the position
of Navarre on the map — and knew some Latin; he

67 5*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

also spoke Italian, while his French would not have
been bad had his accent been better ; but it was,
indeed, as Pierre Bayle has said, as good as might be
expected. He knew, also, something of classical history,
and he had made himself very well acquainted with
all the principal events of the magnificent reign of
Elizabeth, who only pre-deceased him by seven years.
Voltaire, in his " Henriade,*' indulges in the license of
making Henri visit England to see her, though his
editors apologize for his doing so on the ground that it
was interesting to imagine what the conversation of two
such eminent personages would be if they were brought
together. It is, however, bad history for a good,
though prejudiced historian, to write, even when
clothed in a poetic garb and with all due poetical
license allowed. Henri, it is almost unnecessary to
state, was never in our country.*

His religion, or, perhaps, it had better be said, his
religious beliefs, can scarcely be explained. His joke

* Voltaire was, however, none too particular in his statements.
He invents a will, or declaration, of Ravaillac, which he could not
have seen, for the reason that it never existed. " La Henriade** was
dedicated in English to the Queen of England, where Voltaire lived for
three years, and the book was published here (London) in 1726. But
the Queen at that date was Sophia of Zell, who never came to England,
but was divorced by her husband and kept a prisoner for life at Ahlden.
Yet Voltaire speaks of her as " the protectress of all arts and sciences "
and compares her to Elizabeth in her personal virtues. (See Marmontel's
preface to edition 1785.) There was thus no Queen until 1727, when
George JI. became King.

68

» .«.««!

" The King and his Capital "

about the Mass, which injured him more than anything
else could have done in the eyes of his people — if any-
thing could injure him in the eyes of those who looked
upon him as their earthly saviour — was in a manner
corroborated, though, privately, by his confession to
Marie de Medici that, when he became a Roman Catholic,
he only did so to obtain the throne of France. On the
other hand, the Landgrave of Hesse stated that Henri
had once informed him that he was still devoted to the
reformed religion, and that, before he died, he intended
to make a public confession on the matter. Richelieu
was acquainted with both these statements, and,
Richelieu-like, does not appear to have believed either
of them. As it was, however, his business, in his own
interests — as always ! — to keep Louis XIII. secure
upon the throne during his own lifetime, he probably
never said so openly and only confided his opinions to
the paper on which he wrote his memoirs.

Ten years before the death of Henri there was no
real theatre in Paris, since that of the Hotel de Boiu:-
gogne was little better than a dancing-place in which
women no longer young, and never good-looking, capered
and figiured before an audience principally composed of
the boatmen and fishermen of the Seine. Later, this place
was to become the cradle of the Theatre Frangais, and in
its successors the tragedies of Comeille and the comedies

69

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

of Moliere were to be performed before the most aristo-
cratic of audiences — but that time was still unborn.

Light was, however, about to dawn upon the drama.
In the year of the King's death a writer named Honore
d'Urf6 published the first part of a romance entitled
" Astr^e," which had an enormous success and was read
with enthusiasm over the whole of Europe, while its
popularity served to show that there was a public which,
provided it was supplied vidth beautiful thoughts ex-
pressed in noble language, was willing to become deeply
interested in forms of art that did not rely for their
popularity on obscenity, immorality, and the tricking of
too confiding husbands. The success of this novel may
have been, and doubtless was, inspired by the Stage. For
some years earlier a change had become apparent on the
boards ; passion, it is true, was still the greatest main-
spring of plays, but it was passion that was expressed
in a manner which need shock no modest woman who
had passed her teens, while, at the same time, vice was
always defeated instead of being always successful, as
had hitherto been the case. Consequently, the frowsy
old posturers and worn-out, painted harridans who
had hitherto danced and sung, or attempted to dance
and sing, the characters of young lovers and innocent
maidens, fell farther and farther into the background and

gradually disappeared altogether.

70

" The King and his Capital "

The dramatist who principally availed himself of the
opportimity to do for the Stage that which D'Urf6
was afterwards to do for Literature, was a man of great
gifts, though, until this change was inaugurated, he had
profited but little by them. His name was Alexandre
Hardy (often mis-spelt Hardi or Hardie), and for some
years he had been engaged in writing so-called plays,
interludes, the words of musical pieces, songs to be
acted and sung with vulgar and significant gestures,
and other matter of a similar nature. He also con-
trolled a wandering company, and, it has been said,
thought nothing of writing every morning a new play, or
divertissement, which his troupe learnt in the early after-
noon and immediately afterwards played to its audience.

But he was made of better stuff and for better things
than this.

A new theatre was required, something superior to
that of the Hotel de Bourgogne, and it was founded
in a garden that was in the old Rue du Temple, Hardy
becoming the author who supplied it with plays, as
well as being the proprietor of it in part, if not wholly
so. He provided such plays to the extent of six hundred
in twenty-three years, his fecundity of production not
having been destroyed by the new style of composition
which he had undertaken. Nevertheless, he had
thoroughly changed that style and his methods, and the

71

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

dramas which poured forth from his pen were serious
and well thought out, the various characters were
properly balanced, and, as far as yet could be, they
were pure. The attempt succeeded, the theatre was
open three times a week — a remarkable thing in those
days ! — his actors became comfortable in their circum-
stances and relieved others who were in want, instead
of themselves cringing for alms from the public, or
dying of starvation in the streets.* As Guizot has
truly said on this subject : " When the former actors
died of hunger there were soon no others, and, con-
sequently, no dramatic authors. But Hardy found for
his actors the means of living, and thereby performed
the greatest service to art that could be rendered."

Hardy's last works are Achille et Procris, a tragi-
comedy, and Alphee, or " Love's Jealousy," while there
is another entitled Nicomede which, though it does not
bear his name, is so powerful that it is often attributed
to him, and probably rightly so. Between him and
the splendid dawn of Comeille's genius — which at last
far outshone his own brilliancy — there were no other
dramatists who approached greatness but Racan, Mairet

* Histoire du Th^dtre Franfuis, by Les Fr^res Parfaict, 1745-49.
A full and excellent work. De L'Aulnaye, a critic of a hundred
years ago, censures Hardy for making a Roman figure in a drama laid
in Egypt or Greece. He may have forgotten the Caesars, Pompey,
Mark Antony, and others.

72

" The King and his Capital "

and Theophile,* more poet than dramatist ; the latter
being the best though not the most popular author,
a circumstance not unknown in all forms of art both
before and since his time ! It has also to be mentioned
that in Mariamne Hardy wrote a drama that has been
considered by critics as almost faultless in its style,
and was imitated by Tristan some years after his death
and by Voltaire more than a hundred years after that.
Of poets during this reign one towered high, namely,
Malherbe, but none equalled those of the reigns of the
last of the Valois. There was no Marot and no Ron-
sard now, while even those had fallen far short of such
earlier sweet singers as Bertrand de Ventadour, de
Blosseville and Martin le Franc, whose lines beginning

" J'ay nom sans bruit,

Foeuille sans fruit,

Le jour m'est nuit."

have haunted the ears of many generations.

Henri IV. might himself have come down to us as a
poet if he were to be judged by the effusions he was
in the habit of forwarding to his mistresses, and if,
unfortimately, they had not been the productions of
de Lominee, his secretary, or of Malherbe, who wrote
them for him.

* The author of the celebrated Hne :

" II ne voit que la nuit, n'entend que le silence,"
since appropriated by dozens of French authors (including Delille,
who ought to have known better).

73

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

Painting exhibited much medium talent, but scarcely
any of the names of the artists of Henri's reign have
stamped themselves forcibly on the minds of posterity.
The brothers Dumoutier, Bunel and his wife, Toussaint
Dubreuil, Ambroise Dubois and Martin Fr^minet *
are known to connoisseurs and the custodians of picture
galleries, but it is to be feared that they are scarcely
familiar to the general public. Yet in their time, and
in other lands, Rubens was already founding an im-
perishable name. Guido Reni, the painter of the
*' Aurora " and the head of " Christ crowned with
thorns " (The Ecce Homo), was in the full splendour
of his talents, t and Velasquez was taking his first
lessons from Francesco Herrera.

Historians, as will be seen by the notes to these
pages, flourished abundantly, and most of them were
excellent. Legrain, de Thou, d'Aubigne, Madame Du
Plessis-Mornay, widow of Du Plessis-Mornay — termed
the *' Huguenot's Pope " — ^Matthieu, " historiographer of
France,*' who was commissioned by Henri to write his
life and neither leave out his errors nor insert any good
qualities which he did not possess, were of them. Of

* Bunel and Freminet are the only artists of this list who are
mentioned in Pilkington's well-known " Dictionary of Painters."

I To Guido is attributed the supposed, and much copied, portrait
of Beatrice Cenci. But Beatrice had been executed before Guido
lived in Rome, and he was not the man to copy another artist's work.

74

" The King and his Capital "

memoir writers, there were L'Estoile, Sully — to whose
remarkable efforts we shall come — the Due de Nevers,
the Due d'Angouleme, Bassompierre (although he wrote
his memoirs of this time in the next reign), d'Aubign6,
memoir writer, novelist, poet and dramatist, as well
as historian ; Groulart, de Sancy — noble, soldier and
swashbuckler — de Cherverny, de Villeroy, La Cur^e,
Brantome (accurate but cynical, and far too free in
revealing the peccadilloes of men and women which
would have been much better left untold) who was
now nearing his end and had retired from the Court
and society he loved, and hosts of minor writers.

In consulting these writers it must, however, be borne
in mind that, excellent and useful as aU of them are in
casting a vivid light on a past period which was
probably the most fascinating of all French epochs,
there existed the greatest possible reason for causing
them to be startHngly at variance in their opinions,
if not in their facts. That reason was religion. Several
of them were of the old Faith ; those remaining were
of the new. Sully, d'Aubign6 and Madame Du Plessis-
Momay and some others, were of the latter. And it
has also to be remembered that the Catholic religion is
still the religion of France, and that, consequently, the
more modem writers, essayists and critics generally,
throw doubts on many of the statements made by the

75

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

Protestant authors. Sully unfortunately merits these
doubts — as will be seen ; but the widow of Du Plessis-
Momay comes unimpeached through the ordeal of
mistrust. As for d'Aubigne, his reputation would alone
be saved by the torrent of contradiction, to use a mild
word, which has fallen upon him from the early days
of his lifetime until now. But his statements are easily
to be verified and his maligners confounded. Never-
theless, he was a Huguenot, or, at least, a Protestant
— the terms are not exactly synonymous, though closely
allied — and that was, and always has been, sufficient
in France. The third volume of his " Histoire Univer-
selle," an admirable work, had the distinguished
honour (and advertisement !) of being publicly burnt
by the hangman by order of the Parliament of Paris,
while he, disgusted with the then government, retired
to Geneva where he spent the last years of his life
in peace, surrounded by friends and brother exiles of his
own Faith. Yet it is strange to reflect that his grand-
daughter, Madame de Maintenon, should have become,
principally through self-interest, the most bitter per-
secutor of the Protestants and have driven many of
the best subjects of France to England, Germany,
Switzerland, America and other lands, in all of which
their descendants have become welcome and honoured
subjects ; and that she should, when she herself went

76

'' The King and his Capital "

to her grave, have been spoken of more often than
not as the " Curse of France."*

One final word must be given in this chapter to the
Satirists who played a strong part in these last years
of Henri's reign, and a useful one in enabling us to place
ourselves amidst the brilliant surroundings of the
period. Of all satires, that named Satyre Menippee,
which appeared at intervals (in two parts) a little
earlier than what may be termed " Henri's last years,"
namely, between 1590 and 1600, was the most effective,
since it turned an amoimt of ridicule and contempt upon
The League — the most powerful combination of the
Church and the Catholic nobility against which Henri
had to contend — the Roman Catholics, the States-
General, and the family of de Guise and de Mayenne, the
chiefs of The League. The writers were numerous, and,
although there were no professional authors in those days,
namely, men who made a regular living by their pen, the
satire burnt like vitriol, and did, as satire should,

" like a polish'd razor keen,

Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen."

It achieved its purpose. The Due de Mayenne stood
forth more as a fat, blundering idiot than the ill-tem-
pered, blustering autocrat he was ; the men of the
de Guise family more as frowning, scowling bullies

* See St. Simon's remarks on her in his celebrated M4moires.

77

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

than nobles whose pride was almost meritorious when
their high birth was remembered. Malice did its worst
for one side, and, in doing so, performed the best office
for the other.*

It may be that the service done to Henri's cause by
this remarkable work led the King to be particularly
lenient to many libels perpetrated on him. La liberti
d' impr inter was, in the reign of Henri, complete —
though in that of his son and grandson the reverse
took place — and the Discours, *' Avis," " Avertissements-
Livrets," and other pamphlets which L'Estoile so
frequently bought, teemed with attacks on Henri and
his Court. One, the name of which will not bear men-
tion here, attacked so ferociously the noblemen and
noblewomen of the day for the lives they led, that, when
he was pressed to punish .the writer, Henri called for
the book and read it himself. It did not spare him or
his light existence, yet, while acknowledging that it
was somewhat too plain-spoken — it was, indeed ! — he
refused to have the author punished and said that
" he could not conscientiously proceed against an honest
man for having told the truth." Another brochure,
entitled Le Soldat Frangois, abused de Villeroy,
but Henri laughed at the latter's complaints and

* Butler is thought to have taken his idea of " Hudibras " from
this satire.

78

" The King and his Capital "

practically told him to hold his tongue and swallow
what was said about him.

At the Hotel de Bourgogne the buffoons produced
a play taxing Henri with avarice and the great Jewish
financiers with ruining the country. The latter had
the mountebanks put in prison and the King ordered
them to be released.*

Such, in a few brief pages, is a rapid survey which
might well have occupied a large volume had space
permitted, of the most popular monarch who ever met
his death at the hands of an assassin, and of the city —
as it was in his time — wherein the assassination took
place. But before that crime is recounted there are
other persons to be described who were the nearest to
Henri IV. in either affection or enmity ; and to the
one who shared his throne and was the mother of his
children, even though she never possessed the love that
should have been hers alone, it is now fitting to turn.

* L'Estoile's supplements to his Registres journaux ; and the
Mercure Francois.

Note. — In the foregoing description of Paris and its inhabitants
during Henri's reign, I have followed principally L'Estoile ; Bassom-
pierre ; Henri Sauval ; Germain Brice ; Dom Fehbien ; Lebeuf ; L. S.
Mercier ; Journal de Henri IV. {L'Estoile) ; Sorel ; Dreux de Radier;
Dulaure, and many others. Pierre de L'Estoile kept a diary with
as much regularity as he rose from his bed or went to it, and he is
undoubtedly the best diarist of the reigns of Henri and his pre-
decessor. Bassompierre was of the highest family, a soldier and
a statesman, and, under Louis XIII., a field-marshal. He was con-
sidered to be the handsomest man of his time in France. He had
ample opportunity to compile his memoirs during the twelve years he
spent in the Bastille, to which Richelieu, in his jealousy, consigned him*

79

CHAPTER II

THE QUEEN AND HER SURROUNDINGS

TlfARIE DE MfiDICI, second wife of Henri IV., was
the daughter of Francis II. de Medici, Grand Duke
of Tuscany. This man possessed almost every fault
which can be found in the worst characters of the Latin
races, and especially in those whose families have risen
from a somewhat humble origin to a position of rank
and power. He had succeeded, a year after the birth
of Marie, to his father's throne, and from that time gave
the rein to his passions, which were those of cruelty,
violence, vanity and egotism, while his best qualities,
namely, cultivation and refinement of taste in all things
artistic, were mostly kept in the background altogether.
His unfortunate wife, Jeanne of Austria, a grand-
daughter of the Emperor (then styled Emperor of Ger-
many) died from his continual brutality and persecu-
tion, and no sooner did this occur than he espoused the
famous, and also infamous, Bianca di Capello, with
whom he had for some time maintained a connection

80

> J 1 * >

* a*

» » * »

Marie de Medici.

IFacing p. 80

The Queen and her Surroundings

which had long been the scandal of all civilized Europe.
A few years later a fever removed him from the world
and, some hours after, Bianca di Capello was also gone,
while the suddenness and unanimity of these deaths
gave rise to a suspicion which was probably little
removed from the truth, namely, that both had been
poisoned by the Grand Duke's most mortal enemies —
his own subjects.

To Marie this visitation, or tragedy, whichever it
might be, was really a boon. Her father was succeeded ^
by her uncle, Ferdinand de Medici, who, at the time
of his accession to the throne and to the possession '
of the enormous wealth of the family, was a Cardinal-
Deacon of the Holy Roman Church. This position was,
however, at once resigned, and the ruling power of
Tuscany assumed by the new Grand Duke who married
shortly afterwards the Princess Christine of Lorraine.
She was but sixteen years old and exactly the same
age as Marie.

Ferdinand was a man of a very different type from

his elder brother, he being a jocund and pleasant person,

fond of pomp, ceremony and good cheer, and fond,

too, of his young niece ; the affection for her being

shared by his equally young wife. Consequently, he

lent himself in every way in his power to furthering j

the chances of Marie's future. He caused her to be

8i 6

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

well educated and, recognizing that she was now one
of the most brilliant matches in Europe, set about
discovering what prince there was to whom she could
be most fitly allied. The investigations were, how-
ever, long and varied, owing to different causes. The
catalogue is not uninteresting.

Before his own marriage to the Princess Christine
Ferdinand had thought of the son of the Duke of
Ferrara as a suitable husband for Marie, but more
than one government, especially that of Spain, dis-
approved of the match since Ferrara was opposed
to Spanish interests in Italy. As a set-off to this inter-
ference, the King of Spain suggested Farnese, Prince
of Parma, who was an ally of his own ; but the Prince,
having other matrimonial views, declined the sugges-
tion. A little later, again under the influence of Spain,
the Duke of Braganza was proposed, but a Portuguese
alliance seemed at the moment unlikely to promise much,
and Ferdinand was, on this occasion, the one to refuse.
The Grand Duchess of Tuscany now suggested a
candidate in a member of her own family, namely,
the Prince de Vaudemont, but this time it was Marie's
turn to object to the match though, unless she did not
consider an alliance with the House of Lorraine of
sufficient importance, it is difficult to know wherein lay

the objection.

82

The Queen and^her Surroundings

Ferdinand was not, however, to be baulked, and
the last of these suggestions having been refused by the
person most concerned, he now brought forward one
that was, up to this period, the most important of all.
Marie was offered, with a tremendous dot, to the heir
to the throne of Austria, but, after innumerable negotia-
tions, nothing came of it. Meanwhile, the King of
Spain was still pressing the claims of the Duke of
Braganza, but since this prince was not at the time a
reigning one Ferdinand refused to entertain the idea,
and at this moment there occurred the most extra-
ordinary, as well as superb, offer yet made from any
suitor. The Emperor proposed himself as husband
provided Marie brought with her six hundred thousand
gold crowns, or, failing this, he again suggested his
heir on the understanding that he received four hundred
thousand gold crowns. Marie, however, had no taste
for either of the illustrious suitors, and Ferdinand,
suspecting at the same time that the Emperor was
only making these suggestions with a view to prevent-
ing the Princess from marrying anyone else, broke off
all negotiations in that quarter.

The hour was, however, at hand for Marie to find a
husband at last. It was time she should do so, since
she was by now approaching her twenty-seventh year,
and twenty-seven is late for a princess to be married,

83 6*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

/ while at that period it was considered even later than
it is now. She was, however, well fitted to become
a bride, being fair, tall, well-favoured, and the possessor

\, of excellent health.

( Charles IX. of France had died owing the de Medicis,
who never ceased their banking transactions or any
other of their commercial pursuits, over forty-five
thousand ducats (the obligation having been consider-
ably larger at the beginning of the loan) ; Henri III.
had either not wanted money or had not been able to
obtain it ; * but Henri IV., who never possessed any
money at all until he became King of France, had been
forced to borrow heavily to carry on his attempts to
secure the throne, f and he was still endeavouring to
borrow more, while Ferdinand was continually com-
plaining of the non-payment of the debts already
incurred. It was from this state of affairs that an

[ astute Churchman, the Cardinal Gondi, whom Henri
employed to negotiate a farther loan from Ferdinand,

\ saw his way to cancel not only the debt of the former

* Probably the latter, since at the end of his reign he had a difficulty
in paying his servants and purveyors.

t De Sancy narrates in his memoirs that it took five troops of
cavalry and two hundred infantry soldiers to escort from Florence
to Paris the seventeen waggons containing one of Ferdinand's loans
to Henri. The sum borrowed was a hundred thousand ordinary
crowns, equal in those days to about sixty thousand pounds of our
money in the present day.

84

The Queen and her Surroundingfs

but to place the niece of the latter on the throne of i
France. He informed the King that, to see his niece
become Queen of the most powerful country in Europe
after England, Ferdinand would be willing to part
with a dowry of one hundred thousand gold crowns j
(an enormous sum), and Henri was enchanted with j
the suggestion. Gabrielle d'Estrees was dead and
Henriette d'Entragues had taken her place and, at
this time, held in her possession a written promise
from her lover that she should become his Queen.
But a sheet of paper with a promise of marriage
scrawled on it was a poor opponent of what was
a stupendous sum of money, and Ferdinand being
delighted with the great prospects now looming be-
fore the House of the de Medicis negotiations on
the subject at once took place. These negotiations
were long and tiresome ; too long to be more than
mentioned in a work of these dimensions, but they
were at last brought to a satisfactory termination. The
King did not get the amount spoken of by Gondi, but
what he did receive was a sum of eighty thousand gold
crowns, of which sixty thousand were carried with
Marie to France, while the whole of the debts of that
country, from the time of Charles IX. to the day of
the marriage, were cancelled. The young Grand-
Duchess, who accompanied Marie to Marseilles and

85

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

was in charge of the specie, handed it over there and
was careful to take a receipt for it.
, The dowry was the largest any Queen of France had
ever yet brought to her husband.

That Marie should have attained to the dignity of
Queen of France would have been impossible had it
not been for the fact that Henri required two things,
namely, an heir to the throne he had won with so much
difficulty, and a considerable amount of money to
replenish the impoverished resources of his country,
and that in her was alone to be found the person who
could undoubtedly supply the second want and was
young enough to satisfy the first. From Marie not
only the money, but the successor was forthcoming.
A son who afterwards became Louis XIII. was born,
and the five other children followed regularly.

There were, however, many obstacles to be sur-
mounted ere the daughter of the late Grand Duke
had any chance of becoming the wife of Henri. One,
it is true, was already overcome, namely, the existence
of Gabrielle d'Estr^es (of whose death an account will
be given later), since it is undoubted that, had she
not died, Henri would have married her if he could
have obtained the consent of Marguerite de Valois
(and that of the Pope, which was, however, certain) to

a divorce. Another obstruction, almost equally as great,

86

The Queen and her Surroundins^s

was the contempt in which the King held the compara-
tively modem position of the de Medicis, and, above all,
the hatred in which he held the memory of Catherine
de Medici. That the latter feeling should exist was not
extraordinary. Catherine had never liked the politi-
cally-arranged marriage which had taken place between
Henri and her daughter Marguerite — Henri being at
the moment a Protestant. She had prevented him
from leaving Paris when he was warned to do so before
the outbreak of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and
had, instead, made him a prisoner in the Louvre, and
afterwards in the Chateau de Vincennes. Moreover,
Henri had very good reasons for supposing that his
mother, who preceded him to Paris to be present at
his wedding with Marguerite and died there with great
suddenness, had been murdered through wearing a
poisoned pair of gloves which the Queen-Mother was
supposed to have had prepared for the purpose. The
family of his second wife would be, therefore, as
obnoxious to the King as that of the first had been,
since they were almost identical ; and as it had obtained
the reputation of being the most prolific race of mur-
derers and poisoners that Europe had ever produced,
not even excepting the Borgias, it was not possible
that he should look forward with much pleasure to
being again united to the de Medicis by marriage.

87

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

Th6re was, however, always in his mind the other
fact which was so repugnant to him. Himself the son
of Antoine de Bourbon and the direct descendant, on
one side, of the first Bourbon, and heir of the ancient
Kings of Navarre on the other — ^he succeeding to that
throne through his mother* — as well as being now the
imdisputed King of France, he had but a very poor
opinion of the social position of the family of Florentine
traders from whom his second wife, that was to be, was
sprung. He could not forget that these traders were the
least important of all Christian rulers bearing the rank
of Prince, nor that, not more than eighty years before,
they would have had to stand bareheaded before any
person who bore the title of one.

On the other hand, money was wanted badly. He
put, therefore, his animosity against the family, and
also his contempt for it, in the background, and as
on the death of Gabrielle Marguerite de Valois had

* Daughter and sole heiress of Henri d'Albret, King of Navarre,
and of Marguerite, sister of Francis I., of France. She was called in her
early days La Mignonne des Rots, because her father and her uncle,
Francis, strove to show which could cherish her the most. Her father
extorted a vow from her that she should always force herself to sing
on giving birth to a child so that he or she should become vaHant
and powerful. She took the vow and kept it, and, in the case of
Henri IV., it was justified. She was the principal hope and support
of the Protestants until her death in 1572, aged forty-four. She had
previously been married, as a child, to William, third Duke of Cleves,
but the marriage was never consummated and was dissolved by Pope
Paul III,

88

The Queen and her Surroundinsfs

agreed to a divorce to which she would never consent
while that person, whom she termed sale ct vilaine,
continued to exist, the contract of marriage between
Henri and Marie was signed in the Pitti Palace in
Florence on the 25th of April, 1600, the witnesses being Vi
the Archbishop of Pisa, the Duca di Bracciano, and the \
French Ambassador. Five months later the Due de 1
Bellegarde publicly espoused the Princess on behalf of \
the King, and the Cardinal Aldobrandini, representing ,
the Pope, bestowed the nuptial benediction on the /
union.

Although Marie had been well educated she did not
know a word of French on coming to France ; but
when her marriage with Henri was at last arranged it
was thought well for her to make an attempt to acquire
the language. She was, consequently, given some
French books and a dictionary to study, and the volume
she selected was entitled, Clorinde, ou I'amante tuee
par son amant, probably because the title was not
unlike what it would be in Italian, or because it sug-
gested the style of book which young Italian ladies were
in the habit of freely poring over at the period. Marie,
however, never to the last became proficient in French,
but spoke a mixture of that language and Italian, while
she never wrote in the former if there was the slightest
hope that her correspondent could understand the

89

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

latter. It is a strange coincidence that neither the
King nor the Queen spoke perfectly the tongue of the
country on whose throne they sat, though the same
thing has been known to occur in other lands and at
other times.*.

There are numerous descriptions still in existence of
the triumphant manner in which the new Queen pro-
gressed from Florence to Paris, partly by sea across the
Mediterranean and then by land.f To these is also
added a description of the suite that accompanied her.
Amongst it were two people destined to exercise a
terrible influence over the young Queen and a fatal
one over France, and to meet at last with ends as awful
as any that have ever overwhelmed human beings. The
first and, as regards Marie, the most important of the
two, was Leonora Galiga'i, who travelled in the Queen's
suite, partly as companion and partly as maid of honour.
The second was a subtle, well-favoured Florentine,
named Concino Concini, who also accompanied the
Royal cortige in the capacity of secretary or gentleman-
in-waiting. Both were humbly bom, Leonora being
the daughter of a locksmith, and Concini the son of a

♦ Matthieu, who had seen her often, narrates Marie's ignorance of
French in his Histoire de France, latest editions.

t She was borne from Marseilles in a litter drawn, until she reached
Paris, by Italian footmen. Henri put an end to this cruel practice
and substituted mules for the human beasts of burden. (Matthieu.)

go

The Queen and her Surroundings

notary ; yet at his death he had become the Marquis
d'Ancre and a Marshal of France, and she, who early
became his wife, naturally shared his honours and was
generally spoken of as Madame La Marechale. Concini
was strikingly handsome, Leonora was repulsively
ugly, or, as she has been described, hideous.* Yet
hers was the brain that dominated the heights of their
temporary fortune and, on being tried for her life pre-
viously to being put to death for sorcery, it was she
who, on being asked to state what was her influence
over the Queen, is reported to have first uttered the
oft-quoted remark : " Nothing beyond the power of
a strong mind over a weak one/'f

From the first arrival in Paris of these people in the
suite of the Queen, Henri mistrusted them, as it would

* It is, however, difficult to accept the description of Leonora given
by a contemporary historical writer, and edited by Edouard Tricotel, in
his Variift^s Biographiques. He says of her : " She was blonde hke a jay,
she had the locks of Medusa ; her head shone like pumice-stone (! j ; her
eyes were green like fire, she had the nose of an elephant, teeth
long and pointed, the hands of a harpy, the feet of a lobster, body
spotted like a buffalo and a mouth small like the opening of an oven."
Tricotel is regarded as a serious collector, but his seriousness scarcely
appears here ! It should also be stated that many Italian writers
credit both Leonora and her husband with birth superior to that which
is generally assigned to them. (The italics are the author's.)

t It is doubtful if she used the expression. The Abbe de Livry
(an Italian named de Lizza), who was always in her company, in giving
evidence against her at her trial, stated that " La Marechale possessed
a mind which exercised great power over feeble ones," and this remark
probably led to Leonora being credited with the above phrase. Talle-
mant des Reaux is the only person who attributes it to her, and even
he states that he doubts whether she ever uttered it.

91

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

seem he mistrusted most Florentines, and, as it after-
wards turned out, with great reason.* He saw at once
that the humbly-born dame de compagnie had a strange
influence over her mistress, and he discerned that she
was early beginning to set the Queen against the lady
who had now replaced Gabrielle in his wandering heart,
namely, Henriette d'Entragues. He also recognized
that this was not a task difficult of attainment. Inde-
pendently of any natural jealousy which a newly-
married woman, or, indeed, any woman who was a
wife, might feel at the surroundings amidst which she
found herself, the Queen was of a somewhat dull and
heavy disposition ; she was also very severe on what
the French termed lightly, " le chapitre de la galanterie,"
and her moroseness was not likely to be much brightened
by all the intrigues going on around her, headed by her
own volatile husband. In sober truth, whatever love
affairs might have come to her notice in Florence during
her maidenhood must have sunk into almost insignificance
beside all that surrounded her in the Court of the first
of the Bourbon Kings. Maids-of -honour who forgot

* On the arrival in Paris of Don Jean de Medici (a natural uncle
of the Queen), Henri asked him how he could get rid of these persons,
and Don Jean suggested bluntly that he should have them assassinated,
that being the shortest way. Henri considered this summary method
and talked it over with Sully but afterwards discarded the idea on
the ground that all the vindictive Italians in Paris would be added
to the number of other murderersjawaiting the opportunit / to slay
himi

92

The Queen and her Surroundings

themselves were, therefore, under her rule, dismissed
in a manner that for a long time, if not for ever, pre-
vented them from showing their faces amidst their
own society again ; in many cases courtiers who had
paid these young ladies too much attention stood in
very great danger of losing their heads, and, had it
not been for the King, who, in such cases as these, was
not inclined to be too severe, they would probably have
done so.

It was the business of "La Galigai," as she was then
termed, to foment such matters, to throw out hints
against every woman at Court who was placed too high
for her taste or was likely to be so eventually, and to
clear the way as much as was possible for her own
advancement. Here again, however, Henri stood in
her path, since it was sufficient for Leonora to make a
suggestion to cause him to veto it. Yet even he, the
man whom any handsome woman could twist round
her finger, was at last, by the wiles and artifices of the
woman who was undoubtedly the most ill-favoured of
all at Court, induced to consent to almost everything
she desired.

In spite of the wealth which Marie de Medici brought
to her husband, and the fact that she provided him
with an heir to the throne as well as other children,
her life was far from a happy one, owing principally to

93

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

that husband's admiration for other women, an
admiration that has been described, and, in all like-
lihood, truthfully so, as nothing short of a mania. She
is reported to have said often that his infatuation for
Henriette d'Entragues had poisoned the whole of her
existence since she came into France, but she might
well have coupled the names of many other ladies with
that of the principal favourite. The legitimate pangs
which the wife suffered at the hands of the mistress
were, however, shared by the mistress, not only at the
hands of the wife, but of rivals. Nor could the brusque
good-humour of Henri appease either Marie or Hen-
riette ; so that, in his turn, he, too, enjoyed but little
peace in his house, especially as, with a surprising lack
of delicacy, or even decency, he eventually installed
Henriette under the same roof — that of the Louvre —
which sheltered him and the Queen. It is stated by
Sully that the scenes between the King and her were
interminable, and that never more than eight days
passed without a violent one, while once the latter was
aroused to such fury that she rushed at Henri with
her hand raised to strike him, and was only prevented
from doing so by Sully himself. Always rough, the
latter seized the arm of the Queen so violently (while
exclaiming that Henri had the power to execute her
within half an hour) that she cried out in pain, and,

94

The Queen and her Surroundings

holding her arm, would say nothing more than : " You
have lifted your hand to me. You have lifted your
hand to me."

Henri's partisans have, however, invariably taken
the line that he would have been a better husband
had Marie been a more congenial wife, and it is certain
that, whatever the latter's wrongs may have been, she
talked about them far too much and far too openly.
The Court was kept in a continual state of excitement
as to what scenes might occur next, or what woman of
rank — and beauty — would be the next to be flouted
by the indignant wife. Since it was the self-appointed
function of Leonora to pour into the ears of her mistress
not only the story of the King's actual infidelities but
also stories of infidelities that had never occurred, it
is not surprising that the courtiers had enough gossip
to keep them interested.

Short of his particular failings in the one respect,
added to his love of gambling, Henri was an agreeable
husband, a man of a light, pleasant nature and, in
spite of the roughness of his early life and training, a
very perfect gentleman — un vrai roi. He was also very
considerate for the Queen's dignity and for her future,
which, he never failed to assert, would long outstretch
his own. He always spoke to her as one who was abso-
lutely certain to outlive him, and the counsel he gave

95

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

her as to how she should arrange her existence and
that of their children was excellent and far-seeing. He
also warned her to have more command over her
temper and disposition, and was wont to tell her that
" the end of his life would be the beginning of her
troubles," and that, if she and the Dauphin — whose
nature, he observed, was obstinate, harsh and cold —
did not control themselves, the crown to which he
had succeeded by right and might would probably slip
through their hands. In the Queen's case his forecast
came true ; in that of his son it would also have been
realized had it not suited Richelieu — as yet an unrisen
star — ^to support him for his own ends.

Nothing could, however, alter the Queen's disposition
or subdue her justifiable hatred of Henriette d'Entragues,
and the scenes between the two rivals were always
very forcible. Indeed, the once amiable, if always
heavy, character of Marie seems to have become
thoroughly soured against all who should have been
dear to her. It has frequently been narrated that —
so embittered was she at last — for four years she refused
to kiss the future King Louis. Later on, she subjected
him to occasional chastisement, though afterwards she
would bow reverently before him and address him as
" Sire," and '* Your Majesty," salutations which drew
from the youthful monarch the remark that he would

96

The Queen and her Surroundings

prefer less studied courtesy of greeting and more
regard for his bodily feelings.*

Had Henri not been the offender in all the domestic
embroilments, it would be permissible to say that he
bore the various scenes which occurred with extreme
good humour ; but, as he could easily have prevented
them by altering his own conduct, to him must be
attributed the blame of their frequency. He had,
indeed, some justice on his side when he stated that, so
long as Marie continued to countenance the Concinis
and several other foreigners about the Court, he could
not regard her as either a loving or a dutiful wife. Yet,
on Sully suggesting one of those short measures he
was prone to adopt in critical cases, namely, to send

* Besides Henri's children by Marie de Medici, Gabrielle, and
Henriette, he left by Jacqueline du Breuil, whom he created Comtesse
de Moret, Antoine de Bourbon, Comte de Moret, who was killed at
twenty-five years of age at the battle of Castelnaudary. By Charlotte
des Essarts, Comtesse de Romorentin, he left Jeanne, who became
Abbess of Fontevrault, and Henriette, who became Abbess of Chelles.
All his children — those of Marie and of the other ladies — were treated
well and kindly by him and mixed together more or less on the same
footing ; none was allowed to address him as " Sire," but always
as " Father." Of those who chiefly incurred his displeasure, the
Dauphin was reproved and punished the most, his sour, ungracious
nature and his love of cruelty causing Henri more pain than he ever
suffered through the others. Twice he felt obUged to administer
personal chastisement to this prince, once for begging him to have a
nobleman whom he did not like beheaded, and once for having beaten
in the head of a wounded sparrow with a large stone. He also felt im-
pelled to write to Madame de Montglat, the governess of the royal
children, to tell her that she must be more severe with the Dauphin
and that she must whip him well when he misbehaved, and do so
in such a maone}: th§t he should appreciate the correction^

97 7

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

all the Italians back across the mountains, exile others,
and chase the whole family of the d'Entragues out of
France, Henri simply said that he would ask for nothing
better but did not see how it could be done. It would,
nevertheless, appear that, so far as the Florentine
hangers-on were concerned, it might easily have been
done, since at this very time the Grand Duke was
writing to his niece and telling her that she was laying
up a rod for her own back by the manner in which she
allowed such a creature as Leonora Galigai to influence
her.

The affray in which the Queen attempted to strike
the King seems, however, to have strung him up to
desperation. He announced that he would not tolerate
"this woman" (the Queen) any longer, and that, 'bag
and baggage,' she should be sent back to her own
country. But Sully, who cared nothing for Marie,
and had more than once been treated by her as though
he were no better than an upper-servant,* again poured
oil on the troubled waters by reminding him of the
children and their future. Richelieu, whose pen was

* Sully appears to have been unfortunate in his intercourse with the
various ladies connected with Henri IV. Gabrielle d'Estrees spoke
of him as a " menial," and Henriette d'Entragues treated him as though
he were one. Each had some reason for doing so. He was Gabrielle's
most bitter opponent, while he tore up the first promise of marriage
that Henri gave Henriette — a document of which Henri instantly
wrote out a duplicate.

98

The Queen and her Surroundings

as mordant as his disposition, has a good deal to say
on these matters in his memoirs, while, as regards
Henri's idea of getting rid of Marie, he utters the
philosophical remark that " Rage often makes us say
things that nothing in the world would cause us to
perform."

After these instances of the far from connubial state
in which the royal couple lived, it may come as a sur-
prise to many — though not, perhaps, to those who are
well acquainted with the world and the workings of
human nature — when they learn that, in the depths of
their hearts, Henri and his wife had a considerable
affection for each other. The truth is that Marie was
proud of her husband and his great position, and of
the manner in which he had won it, while, being herself
a pure woman who had never cared for any other man,
the whole strength of a nature willing to love and
desiring to be loved went out to the hero whose wife
she had become before she ever saw him. Also, the
strongest link that can bind man to woman had been
forged between them — he was the father of her children.
On the. other hand, Henri possessed a remarkable
nature. He loved such home-comforts as a King ever
has the opportunity of enjoying — he, too, was not for-
getful that his hearth could only be shared by the
woman he had married, by her with whom his interests

99 7*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

were most identical : the woman who had given him
i the children who also shared that home and played
. about his knees. Yet, caring for her in this manner,
there was in his being the strange, insatiable desire for
the . possession of other women's love, mingled with
the impossibility of his being true to any one of them,
as well as his admiration for all forms of female beauty,
though it has been said that not one of his favourites
WcLS ever actually beautiful. To which weakness must
be added his delight in their wit and mirth — though
they all teased him, abused him, and spoke insultingly
of each of his wives by turn — and his pleasure in always
having some illicit intrigue on hand. In truth, he was
a man well fitted, on one side, for the calm enjoyments
of domesticity, yet with, on the other, so strange a
fibre in his nature that delirious joys in which no spark
of domesticity could find a place were the sweetest
morsels of his tempestuous life. Henriette d'Entragues
once exclaimed that, when aU was said and done, she
was nothing but the King's plaything (though " play-
thing " was not the word she used), and, in saying so,
she spoke truly.

With these feelings in each of their hearts — and if,
at the same time, it had pleased Heaven to remove
Henriette d'Entragues from the earth — there might have
been almost a prospect of something like domestic bliss

100

The Queen and her Surroundings

between Henri and Marie. Yet there was still in exist-
ence, and always would be, a vast obstacle outside
Henri's successive amours which renders necessary the
word " almost." That obstacle was created by the
children of Henri, who were not also those of Marie, yet
all of whom the former was determined to have treated
like the others. Some of them were legitimatized,
and all were educated in the same manner as the Dauphin
and his brothers and sisters. Indeed, the Due de
Vendome, eldest son of Henri and Gabrielle, bore an
almost royal appellation when he was termed " Cesar-
Monsieur," instead of the absolutely royal title of
" Monsieur," which from early days was always that
of the King's, or future King's, nearest brother.
Bassompierre, in those memoirs for the composi-
tion of which he, unhappily, found so much time,
extends himself very considerably on this subject,
and relates many interesting matters in connection
with it. He dilates on the hateful character of the
Duke, while mentioning what may be considered as
an extraordinary fact, namely, that while the children
of Gabrielle — ^who was, except where Sully was con-
cerned, an even-tempered, amiable creature — ^were all
of a detestable character, those of Henriette — who
was bitter, vindictive and quarrelsome — were easy
and pleasant to live with. He tells us, also, as do

iOI

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

countless others, of the grief with which Marie regarded
the close contact of her children with those of the mis-
tresses ; of how she long resisted writing to them as
" their mother," and of how it was not until after the
death of Henri that she would speak of " her nephew,"
de Vendome, or " her niece," de Verneuil.

Meanwhile, Marie was an absolute tool in the hands
of her dame de compagnie. The illegitimate brother of
the late King (Henri HI.), who was Archbishop of Rouen,
dying when Marie had become Queen Regent, one of
that ecclesiastic's offices, the Abbey of Marmoutier,
was given to the brother of her favourite, Leonora.
Before, however, that person could take possession of
the great benefice it was necessary that he, who was an
ignorant man, should acquire the simple arts of reading
and writing — an achievement which he never succeeded
in accomplishing. Nevertheless, he was afterwards
promoted to the Archbishopric of Tours. A little
later, Concini was himself presented with the Governor-
ship of Bourg-en-Bresse, in addition to numerous other
offices he possessed. It was, however, discovered that
the position was not vacant at the moment, since the
actual governor was, though ill, not dead ; and Marie
acceded with a very bad grace to that nobleman's refusal
to resign his post for the benefit of the favourite's
husband.

102

The Queen and her Surroundingps

As, however, these adventurers played no particular
part, so far as is absolutely known, in the terrible tragedy
to which is owing the inception of this book, neither
would have been introduced into it were it not for the
desire of showing of what a weak and plastic nature
the Queen was, and of how, in after years, the people
were willing to believe that she was not totally ignorant
of the Court plot that was aimed against the King's
life and would undoubtedly have succeeded had it
not been anticipated from another quarter. It may,
nevertheless, be said that, in spite of all suspicions which
existed on this subject in the minds of her contempor-
aries, and which have been shared by many persons,
especially historians of later days, there is not the
slightest proof that Marie even knew that the assassina-
tion of the King was seriously contemplated by those
who surrotmded him at the time it took place. The
statement of the Due de Vendome was probably regarded
by her as the idle prattle of a boy of sixteen ; while her
husband had lived so long a charmed life, and had
so fortunately evaded the ill-constructed, and worse
enacted, plots to slay him, that she had doubtless been
soothed into indifference. Consequently, when she be-
sought him not to quit the Louvre on the day when his
murder did at last take place, she was, in all likelihood,
making a request which she had never made before

103

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

and only made at this time in consequence of Henri's
own indecision.

It has, however, been brought against her that her
importunities to Henri to allow her to be consecrated
Queen — which event, on his at last consenting, took
place at St. Denis on the day before the murder — dis-
close, or, at least, hint strongly at, the fact that she
knew his doom was close at hand, and was, therefore,
desirous of making herself seciure — before the fatal
event should happen — of the Regency of the Kingdom
and the control of the infant son who would then be
King. But this is an unsoimd argument. At the time
of Henri's death, Marie de Medici had been his wife for
ten years, and it is not imreasonable to suppose that,
during those years, she had frequently put forward
her undoubted right to receive the final and most im-
portant of all ceremonies connected with her royalty.
Indeed, it is well known that she had often asserted
her claim to this which was her due and, on refusal
upon the score of expense by her husband — who never
counted the cost where his own pleasures and self-
indulgences were concerned ! — had borne her dis-
appointment with bitter resignation. But, at this time,
there was an added reason for the desire — quite outside
any fear, or even knowledge, that the King's death was

close at hand. He was, on the day after that death

104

The Queen and her Surroundings

actually occurred, to have set out on the campaign
against Spain and Austria, and to have taken the lead
in the most important warfare in which he would have
been concerned since he crushed The League at Ivry
and obtained at last the undisputed possession of
the throne of France. Should he, therefore, have fallen
in that campaign, and Marie still have been an un-
crowned Queen, it is undoubted that the Etats-generaux
would not, and, perhaps, could not, have conferred
the Regency on her ; the boy-king, Louis, would not
have been placed in her hands during his minority,
and she would have been but a colourless figure of
royalty in France from the moment of her husband's
death.

Finally, as regards her innocence of any complicity in
whatever schemes were in existence against the King, it
has to be remembered that, with his death, Marie de
Medici lost far more than she could ever again possess,
the position of a Queen-Consort being infinitely higher
and more important than that of a Queen-Regent, while,
since she was not the woman to allow herself to form
any sentimental attachment for another man, even
had she been inwardly prompted to do so, there ceased
with Henri's life the slight experience of domesticity
and companionship that had ever been enjoyed by
her.

105

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

The position of Queen-Regent never became an agree-
able one to Marie. From the first she recognized how
much she was a cipher in the hands of the arrogant
and turbulent nobility who surrounded her, and also
in those of the intriguing Leonora Gahgai. The ruffianly
Due d'^pemon tyrannized over her, though, later, he
assisted her to escape from the Chateau de Blois, to
which her son had consigned her. Concini, the Italian
adventurer, who had now risen to high rank and wealth
and was first Minister, browbeat her while, at the same
time, he did not scruple to forge his wife's name to any
drafts for money from Marie that he might require.
Richelieu — who owed his first advance in life to Leonora,
who, in the height of her power, selected him for the
office of Grand, or High, Almoner — thwarted her,
and de Lu5mes, who, later, planned and carried out
the murder of Concini with the full knowledge of Louis
XIIL, and then succeeded to all his offices and many
of his properties, ignored her orders.
/ It was some time after Henri's death that Marie
began to have considerable doubts of what her future
position might be in France, and, at this time, also,
that she began to put by as much wealth as possible,
with a view to providing for that future, should she
be forced to fly the country. Jewels of all description

were bought by her, diamonds being the principal

io6

The Queen and her Surroundings

purchases ; money was changed into drafts on bankers
in various cities of Italy, Holland, and other countries,
and investments were made almost daily — anywhere
out of France. Yet, as events proved, hardly one
crown-piece and no jewels, except those she had with
her at Blois and carried away with her when she escaped
from the castle, ever benefited her. The Italian in-
vestments were, by the order of France, never repaid
to her, nor, on the other hand, were they until long
afterwards handed over to France itself, since the govern-
ments of the various Italialn States claimed that they had
been sent through the hands of Leonora, among whose
relatives the sums of money would eventually be dis-
tributed as her property. This, some usually well-
informed authors state, eventually occurred, though
little proof, if any, is furnished on the matter.

Fleeing ultimately to Cologne, her health seriously
impaired, her money gone, or, at least, unattainable,
she died on a bed of straw in what has been described
by numerous writers as "a mere garret,'' attended
only by two faithful maidservants. The house in which
this garret was situated was one inherited by Rubens
from his father; Rubens, whom she had once invited'
to Paris as her guest to decorate the Luxembourg
and paint the allegorical subjects on its ceilings, and
whom she was then enabled to load with the highest

107

/

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

honours and vast sums of money ! She ! who had once
been the richest heiress in Europe ; she, who had sat
on the throne of France as the wife of the great King,
and was, at her death, the mother of the then King —
a cold-blooded, heartless creature who allowed her to
perish thus in want and obscurity !

Authorities : — L'Estoile, Journal. Fontenay-Mareuil, M^moires.
De Morgues, Les deux faces de la vie et de la mort de Marie de
M^dicis. Due de St. Simon, ParallHe des trois premiers Bourbons
— a mine of historical wealth, though written by the aristocratic
and scathing author more than a hundred years after the first Bourbon
came to the throne. Sully, (Economies Royales. Halphen,
Lettres in^dites du roi Henri IV» Buonarroti, Descrizione delle
felicissime nozze di Madama Maria Medici. Richelieu, Memoir es.
M^moires du Due de Bellegarde. La Serre. Loiseleur, L'Evasion
d'une reine, 1873. Batifol, L.,La Vie intime d'une Reine de France.
Paris, N. D. Recueil de Lettres de S. A, R. Catherine de Bourbon, sceur
de Henri IV., Bibhotheque Nationale (Unpubhshed). B. Zeller,
Henri IV. et Marie de M4dicis, etc., etc.

108

Sully,

\_Fncing j>. 109

CHAPTER III

SULLY AND THE DEATH OF GABRIELLE d'ESTR^ES

jVyfAXIMILIEN DE BETHUNE, Baron de Rosny,
Due de Sully, Marshal of France and the
favourite Minister of Henri IV., was born on December
13th, 1560, at Rosny. He was descended from an
ancient and honourable family which, by its connections,
was second to none below royalty in France and, by its
antiquity, was the equal of the royal houses of Valois
and Bourbon. The name was distinguished as early
as the Crusades, in which several of the de Bethunes
took part, and, as time went on, alliances were formed
with the princes of France, the Emperors of Constanti-
nople, the Counts of Flanders, the Dukes of Lorraine,
the Kings of England, Scotland, Castille and Jerusalem,
the house of Austria and the family of Courtenai — which
had once possessed the throne of Byzantium — and those
of de Montmorency, de Chatillon, de Melun and de
Horn.*

* Sully claimed to be descended from the Beatons of Scotland,
and sometimes arrogantly stated that this great family was descended

109

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

Born a Protestant, he early attracted the attention
of the future King of Navarre and France, and, from
that time, rose so rapidly that he soon obtained and
held the position of the most prominent subject in the
latter country, and, indeed, of the whole of Europe.

As a child of twelve, it W£is his fate to find himself
in the middle of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and
he owed his salvation to what was, probably, the first
piece of that astute diplomacy which, in after years,
he carried to such successful heights. Being a scholar
at the College de Bourgogne, though not a resident in it,
he was awakened at three o'clock in the morning by the
ringing of the church-bells, the shrieks and cries of those
being murdered, the reflection of flames from some of
the houses that had been set on fire, and the discharge
of muskets. As he was lodging in the house of a
Protestant woman with whom he had been placed by
his father, it at once occurred to him that this would
be no safe shelter, especially as the air resoimded with
cries of *' Tue ! Tue I aux Huguenots," "Guise,"
" Tavannes," etc., and, consequently, putting on his
scholar's gown and carrying ostensibly under his arm a

from his, the de B^thunes. It has been said of him that he had the
" wild British " air and a " cold blue eye," which was also considered
by many on the Continent as typical of our nation. Marbault re-
marked of him, though not in connection with his British appearance,
" that he struck terror everywhere and that his look and his behaviour
frightened everyone."

110

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle dTstrees

large Book of Hours such as the Roman Catholics used,
he set out for the college. On the way, " wading
through blood," he was three times stopped by the
Garde de Corps of Charles IX., and on each occasion
the possession of the sacred book beloved by those of
the Faith to which he and his family were opposed,
saved his life. At the college door the porter refused
to let him in until the Book of Hours again served as
his passport, and, even when he had obtained admission,
he narrowly escaped being slain by two infuriated priests
who were intoning the '* Sicilian Vespers " hymn, and
who cried out that they believed he was a Protestant
and that they would slay even babes at the breast who
were bom of parents of that Faith. The Principal
of the college was, however, a man of a different stamp,
and, aided by the boy's possession of the book, was
enabled to preserve his life.*

From the age of sixteen Sully accompanied Henri
and was present with him in most of the campaigns that
took place, the young man being then an infantry volun-
teer. At the celebrated battle of Ivry, he served as a
cavalry officer and carried the standard of a relative
who commanded a force he had raised. In this re-
nowned and almost decisive affray Sully fought by the

* Sully, De Bury, Anquetil, Thomas. Histories of Henri IV. ; de
Thou, etc.

Ill

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

side of Henri, had two horses killed under him and
received seven wounds, being afterwards left for dead
on the field. His first intimation that The League
was defeated was when he recovered his senses and
observed four of the enemy by his side, who, on seeing
that he was an officer of their conqueror's forces, in-
stantly implored him not to have them made prisoners
or to execute them.

He became from this time the constant companion
of the King, fighting for him and always doing so by
his side : advising him and showing his astuteness in
almost every counsel he gave, although he was careful
to invariably speak of Henri's own voice as his oracle.
Henri, on his part, thoroughly recognized the cleverness
of the astute, if shockingly brusque, man whom he had
attracted to his fortunes, and, had it not been that
Sully hated the two mistresses who, of all the number,
had come so near to attaining the position of Queen,
it is doubtful if an unpleasant word would have ever
been exchanged between them. But this side of Henri's
life — as well as the enormous expense it entailed on
the public funds — was hateful to the Minister whose
own domestic existence was blameless. He was twice
married, and it is owing to the haughty and turbulent
nature of his second wife that the terrible suspicion fell
upon him that Gabrielle d'Estrees met her death with

112

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle;!d'E8tree8

his sanction, partly in punishment for her arrogant
treatment of the future Duchesse de Sully and partly
because of Sully's determination that a woman of the
character of Gabrielle should never sit on the throne
of France.

With regard to this personage, a remarkable and
utterly imnecessary amount of foolish sentimentality
has been attached to her name through numerous
generations, while a sympathy has been accorded to her
supposed romantic career which was not due to it, even
at the time of that worse than ordinarily painful event,
her death. Nor does there appear to have been, as yet,
any inclination on the part of those who practise this
sentimentality, or bestow this mawkish sympathy on
Gabrielle, to make themselves acquainted with the true
history of the unfortunate woman who had once almost
attained the highest position that any of her sex can
hold. It is well, therefore, to give in this chapter
on Sully a sketch of her career and character — as far
as the bounds of propriety will permit — which may
possibly correct the misunderstanding under which many
writers, and far more readers, outside France as well
as in, have laboured long.

Gabrielle d'Estrees was the daughter of Jean Antoine
d'Estrees, Marquis de Coeuvres, and of his wife Fran9oise
Babou de la Bourdaisiere, and was, as her father was

113 S

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

wont to exclaim in anything but a whisper, one of " une
pepinihe des filles mal sages.*' Her mother undoubtedly
contributed little towards helping her to become hien
sage, since, at the age of sixteen, Gabrielle was, by the
aid of the Due d'^pernon, " sold '* by her to Henri III.
for the sum of six thousand crowns, of which two
thousand were stolen by the nobleman (Montigny)
who was sent, to pay it to the Marquise de Cceuvres.
Henry IH. appears to have tired of her very soon and
she to have become disgusted with the peculiar habits
of the last of the Valois kings, whereupon her insatiable
mother again handed her over to a rich Italian financier
in Paris, named Zamet (in whose house she was once
supposed, but erroneously so, to have died eventually),
and, later on, again for a price, to the Cardinal de Guise,

who treated her well for a year and then discarded
her.

The affections of this once much-sympathized-with
heroine were next transferred to the Due de Longue-
viUe, and afterwards to the Due de Bellegarde — the only
man for whom Gabrielle ever felt a spark of love — if
she ever felt one for any person — and he, in his desire
to stand well in the favour of the King, sounded her
praises so loudly that he discovered too late that, except
for occasional secret meetings, he had lost her for
ever.

114

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

Henri was at this time greatly smitten with the
charms of Marie Claudine de Beauvilliers, who managed
to combine with her affection for him the sacred office of
Abbess of Montmartre, but resigned that position at
his request. But whether the King's advancing years,
or his great nose, or his pendulous lip failed to please
Gabrielle when de Bellegarde took Henri to see her,
or whether she was but playing a part such as a young
woman, whose value in gold crowns had already been
estimated more than once, would well know how to
play, Gabrielle herself testified anything but interest
in her latest admirer. If this coldness were really only
acting, she could have chosen no role better calculated
to bring the amorous King to her feet. The colder and
the more indifferent she appeared to be — or as she may
actually have been, since Henri possessed no manly
beauty while the Due de Bellegarde was in the prime of
life and handsome, and, greater than all to Gabrielle,
rich — the more Henri was inflamed. Forgetting the
abbess at once, he endeavoured to see his new love daily ;
a desire difiicult to gratify, since, at this time, Coeuvres
was surrounded by the troops of The League (never
finally subdued until 1593), and for him to have fallen
into their hands would have meant the total failure
of his cause, and, undoubtedly, the final ruin of his
hopes of ever possessing the throne of France. Yet,

115 8*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

even the prospect of the loss of a second crown that
must, on his conversion to Roman Catholicism, be
added to that of the small one of Navarre which he
already possessed, could not daunt him where a new
passion was concerned. The story has been told so
often, and by so many different pens — from that of
Perefixe, Archbishop of Paris (1662-70), to that of
Tallemant des Reaux — the French Horace Walpole of
his time — of how Henri, determined to see Gabrielle,
passed close by the garrisons of The League disguised
as a reaper and with a bimdle of straw on his bent back
until he reached her, that it is impossible to doubt it.

At any rate, his foolhardiness attained no great
success. Henri was still in a very doubtful position as
regarded his future and was possessed of very little
money, which was the thing that concerned GabrieUe
most, while, since de Bellegarde could give her every-
thing she required, she saw no reason for removing her
affections from him.

It was, however, certain that Henri must triumph

over his principal rival, but, in spite of the extravagance

in which he continued to indulge on Gabrielle's account,

he always found that de Bellegarde was lurking in the

background. Meanwhile, it was necessary that Gabrielle

should hold a more recognized position than that of

an unmarried woman as the King was now resolved to

116

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

make her his wife, so great was his infatuation ; and,
consequently, a Monsieur de Liancourt was called upon
to marry her and was rewarded with the title of Marquis
de Monceaux for doing so, as well as with a fixed income
for life. As had been arranged, the newly- wedded
couple parted at the church door and never met again,
and the divorce necessary to set Gabrielle free was soon
pronounced. In this manner a custom was inaugurated
in the House of Bourbon which continued until the end
of the reign of Louis XV., nearly one hundred and eighty
years afterwards, the last maUresse-en-titre to comply
with it being Madame du Barry.

Gabrielle was very soon, however, to cease to be the
Marquise de Monceaux and become better known by
the new title of Duchesse de Beaufort, which was con-
ferred upon her by the King at the birth of the Due
de Vendome. In this prominent position she considered
it her duty to become a power in politics and, although
all her efforts had but one end, namely, her own
aggrandisement, she did, in an indirect way, bring
about peace between The League — as represented by
the Duke de Mayenne — and Henri ; or, perhaps, it may
be better said, to bring about the pardon of the Leaguers
by the latter.

Henri was, however, by no means free as yet of the
troubles of war, and it was at this time that, hearing

117

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

in the presence of Gabrielle of how the Spaniards had
landed on the Norman coast and marched inland to
attack Amiens, he uttered a remark which was, per-
haps, the best and most self-respecting one he ever
made in his life. " I have played the part of King
of France long enough," he exclaimed ; "it is now time
for me to play that of the King of Navarre " — the
exclamation having probably been called forth by a
sudden recollection of the valiant struggle he had main-
tained as the latter, and the life of indulgence he had
been leading of late as the former.

Meanwhile, Gabrielle was becoming more and more
haughty and presumptuous and had, at last, assumed
all the airs and graces of a woman who was about to
become Queen of France, she undoubtedly being led to
do so by the fact that, although Marguerite de Valois had
sworn she would never consent to a divorce from Henri
with a view to putting cette creature in her place, it was
well known that the Pope was almost certain to pro-
nounce the divorce with or without the consent of
Marguerite. A direct heir to the throne was absolutely
needed, and as the legitimation of the Due de Vendome
had already taken place — this being the custom of the
period in similar cases — a form of marriage between his
mother and father was all that was necessary to consti-
tute him heir apparent.

Ii8

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

Nevertheless, there were doubts as to whether even
the Pope with all his power — and he was undoubtedly
the most important personage in Europe in a religious,
legal and general sense — could grant a divorce without
the consent of both the married parties which judges,
jurisconsults, juries and the world in general would
consent to regard as tenable. Moreover, the ancient
nobility and grand seigneurs were up in arms, in a
figurative sense, on the subject, and regarded the pro-
posed marriage — even if Henri had been a single man —
as an insult to their order. Consequently, they wrote
as plainly as even the highest-born dared to write to
the Pope to express their opinion on the matter, and
His Holiness, while, as has been said, " almost certain
to pronounce the divorce,'* still hesitated to do so.

Henri was therefore between cross-fires. His pas-
sion for Gabrielle knew no abatement but, at the
same time, he had no desire to see the whole of his
partly-gained country rise up against him. He had also
to contend against the determination of Marguerite,
should she continue to remain obdurate. There was,
consequently, only one thing for him to do, namely,
to endeavour in every way in his power to force the Pope,
by attacks on those whom His Holiness particularly
favoured, to decide in his favour and ignore the woman
who was at present his wife. If that could be compassed

119

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

he felt himself sufficiently strong to face the anger of
the nobility, and, as he had conquered them before,
and was universally popular with the people, while the
former were exactly the reverse owing to their inso-
lence and oppression, he did not doubt that he could
overmaster them again. Meanwhile, things remained
at the pass to which they had already arrived.
Gabrielle not only assumed the airs and demeanour of
a future queen, but was, to a great extent, treated as a
lady occupying that position. By this time, however,
an unexpected solution of the matter was at hand and,
had it not arisen within the next fifteen days, the woman
who had been sold by her mother as cattle in the market-
place are sold, who had bestowed her favours on more
than one member of the nobility, and had been for some
time the maUresse-en-titre of the King, would have
undoubtedly ascended the ancient throne of France as
Queen.

Her sumptuous garments for the first ceremony —
that of her marriage — were prepared, as were also the
crimson velvet robes which none but the Queens of France
might wear. The ring with which the monarchs of
France espoused the land over which they were called
to rule had already been removed by Henri from his
finger and placed on hers as a sign of engagement ; the
deference with which a future consort of a monarch

120

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

was always treated was shown to her by ail the courtiers.
The Pope's consent was not yet given, but Henri knew
that it soon would be.

Gabrielle was at this time, namely, little more than
fifteen days before her marriage would take place,
staying at Fontainebleau with the object of being
near her future husband. She was, however, anxious to
return to Paris since Easter was at hand, and to attend
there, publicly, the usual religious ceremonies, or, as
the French describe it, to " faire ses Pdques," as a
good Catholic. The reason for this, in her case, some-
what ostentatious ceremony, was that she was desirous
of publicly proving herself to possess religious opinions,
a matter upon which very considerable doubts had of
late been freely expressed. Arrived in Paris, she supped
with Zamet, the Italian financier previously mentioned,
and then went to lodge at the Deanery of St. Germain
TAuxerrois, where her aunt, Madame de Sourdis, was
also installed as a permanent guest of the Chancellor,
an old man with whom the lady — who appears to have
been of a type not very remote from that represented
by Gabrielle's mother — was on extremely friendly terms.
Madame de Sourdis was, however, absent in the country
and, pending her return, which Gabrielle at once com-
manded, the latter had for attendants and companions
Madame and Mademoiselle de Guise — the latter of

121

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

whom was the most aristocratic, as she was one of the
most brilliant, authoresses of her day — and the Duchesse
de Retz and her daughters. On the next morning the
future Queen went to the Church of Le Petit Saint-
Antoine there to hear Les Tendbres — one of the sacred
offices of Holy Week — and entered a side-chapel with
the above ladies. Gabrielle's religious professions do
not, however, appear to have been of a particularly
ardent nature since she spent the time in reading aloud
to Mdlle. de Guise some letters she had received from
Rome, in which she was informed that all she desired
would shortly be granted by the Pope. She also read
to her companion two letters full of love and passion
which she had that day received from the King — so
that, as an earlier writer has well remarked, " Voild le
Saint Office Men entendu ! *'

Following on these devout proceedings she entered
the garden of Zamet when she complained of feeling
ill and, after sinking into a seat, requested that she
might be taken back at once to the Deanery and put
to bed, and that another courier should be immediately
sent off for her aunt.

From this time she gradually became worse and,
although the doctors considered that she had un-
doubtedly been poisoned, it was impossible for them to

administer any remedies or antidotes to her, since she

122

Sully and the Death of Gahrielle d'Estrees

was evidently about to become once more a mother.
What the unfortunate creature experienced at this
period from the practices of the day in surgery and
medicine cannot be related ; it is sufficient to say that
she was bled time after time imtil, at last, she must have
died from exhaustion if she had not expired from other
causes. Her death took place amidst frightful agonies
and in efforts to breathe which were so violent that,
when she was dead, her mouth was reported to be out
of place and her whole face so hideous that it was im-
possible to look upon her. To add additional horror
to this death-bed on which she had suffered the most
terrible convulsions followed by a total loss of the power
to speak, hear, see or move, crowds were admitted to
pass through her room and observe her, some being
so terrified by her appearance that they hurried away
faster than they had come, while others knelt and prayed
God to have mercy on her for her life and her faults in
consideration of the benefit which this sudden death
would be to the future of France.*

* Gabrielle was dressed by her aunt in royal robes — crimson
velvet passemented with gold — after her death. The contreist of
this magnificent attire with the distorted face of the dead woman
caused a thrill to all who passed through the room where she lay —
namely, more than twenty thousand people. Her relatives, including
her four sisters, abstained from demanding an inquiry into the manner
of her death, nor did Henri order one to be made. He wore mourning
for her for three months, and it was observed that, in this case, it
was black and not purple. ,

123

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

Whether this woman who had risen, as a subject,
to the highest rank as a duchess, and would indubitably
have sat by the side of Henri as queen had she lived,
was poisoned or not, has remained a mystery until this
day. An autopsy was made and her liver and one
lung were discovered to be diseased, while a lemon
which she had eaten at Zamet's was supposed to have
done her much harm. There were also those who re-
membered that fruit was often used as a channel by
which poison might be conveyed, while the remark of
her physician on quitting the death chamber, " Hie
est manus Dei," was interpreted in different ways,
some saying that it meant that her death was the act
of God alone, and others that God had inspired some
person, or persons, to remove her ere she should bring
disgrace and shame on France.

The connection of Sully with this matter, to speak of
him by the title which he had not yet acquired but by
which he is best known, has now to be considered.

It has been stated that Gabrielle had deeply irritated
his wife. La Baronne de Rosny, by her haughty and
imperious airs, and by having informed that lady that she
authorized her to attend her lever and coucher in future.*

♦ The royal custom in France of permitting courtiers to attend
the getting up and going to bed of the King, and, in the case of ladies,
that of the Queen, Gabrielle would not be likely to omit the practice.
From the former is derived what we term in English, " the lev6e."

124

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

Furious with rage at this condescension, la Baronne
flew to her husband and, losing all control over
herself, gave full vent to her temper. Sully, whose
frequent task it was to soothe the outbreaks of his
wife, endeavoured to do so on this occasion and, in the
attempt, uttered the words " that she would soon see
something startling " (" beau jeu et bien joue ") " if
the rope does not break." Three days later, receiving at
dawn, at his seat at Rosny, the news that Gabrielle was
dead, he rushed into his wife's room, embraced her and
said, " My child, you will go to neither the lever nor the
coucher, because the rope is broken. Since, however,
she is really dead, may God give her a long, good life *'
(" in Paradise," being, of course, intended).

It is the utterance of these few words composing
Sully's first remark to Madame de Rosny (in connection
with another matter to be dealt with presently) that
has cast upon his memory a stain incapable of erasure,
though not one in which is comprised the darkest hue,
namely, that attached to the crime of murder. Yet
how — considering that the words were uttered on the
day Gabrielle arrived in Paris and when she was per-
fectly well — is he to be acquitted of the knowledge
that she would soon be removed from this earth : how
is he to be set free from the suspicion of being an accom-
plice before the event ? It seems that he must have

125

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

known what was about to happen and, although he stood
outside the actual commission of the crime, he, who
was the most powerful subject in France, took no steps
to prevent it. That he hated Gabrielle has always
been well-known and was well-known at the time ; he
doing so partly because her influence over Henri was
greater than his own, partly because she treated him
with contemptuous scorn, as when she spoke of him
to Henri and before his own face as " wn valet** and
partly, also, because he was anxious to see his master
married to a woman of royal birth who was able at the
same time to bring a great dowry with her. On the
other hand, he owed her family something, and, with
his harsh, autocratic nature, it may have been the case
that it was natural to him to loathe any person, except
his master, from whom he had received benefits. The
position of Surintendant des Finances, which he now
held, had been conferred on Gabrielle's father, but he,
probably for some very good reason connected with his
daughter's future, had elected to transfer that high
office to Sully himself.

One pauses baffled, however, in any attempt to
unravel the skein when it is recalled — on endeavouring
to imderstand Sully's undoubted knowledge of Ga-
brielle's impending fate — that he himself has narrated the

interviews with his wife, as well as the above-quoted

126

Sully and the Death of Gahrielle dTstrees

words, in that most remarkable farrago of distorted
facts and almost unintelligible verbiage which is known
as his (Economies Roy ales* For, with this avowal
staring us in the face, what construction are we to put
on the man's action ? Under his own hand, or those
of his secretaries, he shows us that he must have
known of Gabrielle's nearness to death, yet he appears
not to see that, in doing so, he proves that her death
was decided on and that he was in the secret. Or is it
bravado which induces him to reveal himself thus ?
Or, again, was there no intention at the time of letting
this diary, for such it is, see the light until he himself
was dead ? Or did he think that all who afterwards
read of the knowledge which he possessed, but did
not use to save the doomed woman, would consider
his conduct worthy of approval, and be also willing to
regard him in the light of one who had preserved Henri
from an irreparable error and France from a great
disaster ?

One portion of this mystery, however, still remains
unexplained and, unless the antique jargon in which
Sully and his secretaries indulged — it being more the

* The title given by Sully to his work. It appeared, however, as
M^oires des Sages et Royale (Economies, etc. It has been conjectured
that the secretaries were supposititious, and only introduced by Sully to
prevent him from appearing to be too self -laudatory. This may be so,
but Sully did not suffer from overweening modesty. , . ^

127

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

French of Brantome and his predecessors than that of
a Court surrounded by many cultivated scholars and
well-educated men and women — was at the root of the
mystery, it can never be explained. He himself states
that his expression to his wife, when endeavouring to
calm her, was that she would see " un beau jeu et Men
joue si la corde ne rompait." "Si la corde ne rompait ! "
What does this mean ? To what cord is he referring
which would bring ease to his wife, "if it did not
break," while, on the contrary, it should, judging by
results, have caused her much satisfaction if it did ? To
attempt to find an answer to this question a further
one must be put. Was the " cord " Gabrielle's exist-
ence ? But, if so, and it did not break, where and when
was the beau jeu bien joue to take place, and how ?
Granting that the cord was this existence and that
it did not break, she was in a fortnight's time to have
attained to so high a position that the future Duchesse
de Sully would have sunk to vast insignificance in com-
parison with her, while Gabrielle, gentle as she ordi-
narily was, would never have forgotten the opposition .
of Sully to her marriage with the King, nor his wife's
frequent attempts — in her position, as well as in the
character of an irreproachable matron — to put the mis-
tress in her proper place.

Now, in contradistinction to this is the statement

128

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

that when Gabrielle was dead and Sully burst into his
wife's bedroom to inform her of the fact, the words
he used were " la corde est rompue." Therefore, it
seems that what was hoped for and expected, in his
house at least, was that the rope would break, and
not that the beau jeu which was desired would be well
played if it did not break. Consequently, posterity is
still in the dark as to what Sully knew, or did not
know, of the tragedy that was about to occur, and
as to whether, as has been suggested, he uttered the
first expression only with a view to consoling his irri-
tated spouse and phrased it wrongly, or whether —
which is the poorest, though probably the most accurate
surmise — the extraordinary phraseology of himself and
his assistants led to the remark being written wrongly
and never set right when it was printed. This idea is
the more likely to be an accurate one since the
sentence itself is not properly completed, but should
have been written si la corde ne rompait pas, or, ne
rompe pas, and not ne rompait.

Nevertheless, it appears impossible that any one of
these surmises can be right. Sully had at his command
all the resources of the power possessed by the great
feudal noblesse; he towered above all the heads of the
representatives of the leading houses in France ; he
was the first subject in the kingdom, yet Henri, who

129 9

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

behaved to him more as if he were his brother than a
subject, would not, with all his regard for him, have
tolerated his farther existence for a single hour after
he had discovered — if he ever should discover — that
Sully had been cognisant of the impending murder of
the fondly-loved woman who was to have been his
queen. The risk of merely knowing that such a plot
was in the wind was, therefore, terrible, and even
though Sully did know of such a plot and escaped
detection, is it possible that years afterwards, when
both Henri and Gabrielle had long been in their graves,
he would deliberately have sat down to dictate to his
scribes a circumstance the knowledge of which should
for ever tarnish him in the eyes of all posterity ?

What, therefore, remains for that posterity to imagine
after rising from a perusal of the incident, but one
thing, namely, that Sully used the expression, " si la
corde nerompait " only with a view to calming the trans-
ports of rage into which his wife had lashed herself over
Gabrielle 's offensive patronage, and that, by one of
those extraordinary chances, one of those strange
successes which occasionally take place when it is long
odds against their being achieved, the sinister sug-
gestion had been verified, the guess at hazard had
become true? In this case, a vain-glorious person,

wishing to stand well in the eyes of futurity, might

130

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

be suddenly incited to write down that which, while
doing credit either to his perspicacity or his clear know-
ledge of all that was passing around and beneath him,
was capable of bearing — that must bear — an interpre-
tation which would leave a blot on his memory for
ever.

In any circumstance, the statement was an extremely
hazardous one, since, after all that ever came to light
on the subject of Gabrielle's death, there remained,
and still remains, the doubt whether she was actually
poisoned. Two important portions, at least, of her
body were diseased ; there was also a suspicion that
she was suffering from stone ; the pangs of maternity
were upon her and, consequently, it scarcely required
the aid of poison to put an end to her life. Henri him-
self could hardly have believed that its aid had been
called in since, if it was administered at all, it must
have been given on the night she supped with Zamet,
yet shortly after Gabrielle's death the Italian was
given a high post, namely, the Governorship of Fon-
tainebleau — the country residence par excellence of
Royalty at this period. The King also expressed him-
self satisfied with the truth of the reports made to him
on the subject, and from that time forth the matter
became of little importance to any but historians.

We now come, however, to a circumstance in Sully's

131 9*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

own narrative, the (Economies Royales, in which, foi
some reason connected with the above affair, he has
chosen to give a copy of a letter which was fabricated,
and, undoubtedly, fabricated by him alone.

For some purpose almost, if not entirely, inexplicable
— ^since every one of the persons with whom it deals
had been dead for years — ^it suited him to throw a false
light on all the circumstances connected with the last
moments of Gabrielle. But if he had any purpose at all,
it was to throw suspicion on the memory of Zamet
(who died nineteen years after her and twenty before
the Memoirs were published) ; the man who had
been much liked by Henri and was, consequently, as
much an object of hatred to Sully as was the chief of
all favourites — the mistress and prospective future
Queen. But SuUy never brooked or spared a rival in
the good graces of his master, and the thirty-nine years
which had elapsed since the woman went to her grave
and the twenty which had passed since the man had
gone to his were powerless to heal his rancour.

The letter is to be read by all who care to peruse
the (Economies Royales, and it is, therefore, unneces-
sary to do more than give a brief synopsis of it. It
purports to be written by one La Varenne, who was a
State official (not to be confused with Isaac de Varennes,

a spy, who will be mentioned later), and wais also a

132

, , t, t^ e c

Gabrielle d'Estrees (Duchesse de Beaufort).

\_Facimj p. 1 33

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle dTstrees

confidential courier of Henri. It commences by nar-
rating how he accompanied Gabrielle from Fontaine-
bleau to Zamet's house, where she was lodged. It next
adds that she was treated by the wealthy financier to
a meal consisting of viands of the most recherchS and
delicate nature, which he knew to be particularly to her
taste. Here begins the attack on the memory of the
Italian which refutes itself. In the first place, Gabrielle
was not lodged at Zamet's house, but in the Deanery of
St. Germain-l'Auxerrois, and, in the second, as she
had come to Paris ostensibly pour faire ses Pdques it
is most unlikely that, in the presence of her own
attendants — officers of the garde de corps, and others
whom Henri had sent in her train — to say nothing of
Zamet's household, she would have partaken of any
viande at all. Moreover, indulgence at the table was
never one of the failings attributed to Gabrielle. And,
again, considering the delicate condition in which she
was, it is absolutely improbable that she would, in any
circumstance, have been willing to indulge her tastes,
even supposing that she possessed them.

There is a good deal more of the same kind of inven-
tion introduced into this supposed letter which never
saw the light until La Varenne had been dead two
years less than Zamet, namely, twenty-one years after
Gabrielle ; and the most remarkable thing about all

133

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

the statements is that, where there is not absolute and
trustworthy refutation of them, they refute themselves.
For instance, La Varenne is made to say that he is
sending off this letter hurriedly after writing it at
Gabrielle's bedside, yet he is also made to state that he
is " holding this unfortunate woman in my arms with
a view to stilling her agony," and that he doubts if
she will be alive in another hour, so great are her suffer-
ings. Verily, he must have been a man of iron resolu-
tion if he could write at all in such circumstances, as
well as one gifted with extraordinary facility in the
use of his arms and hands. Messages sent off from the
bedsides of dying persons are generally of a more hurried
nature than this !

We may now leave this remarkable letter, the expla-
nation of which apparently lies in the suggestion already
made, and turn for a moment to the (Economies
Roycdes, since they form one of the most extraordinary
productions in the way of memoir-writing ever given
to an astonished world.

Sully had retired to his estate of Rosny, in the
Province of Artois, shortly after the assassination of
Henri, and it would appear that, in this somewhat
gloomy solitude, he soon afterwards devoted himself
to the preparation of these memoirs, which he dictated
to the four secretaries who accompanied him. He also

134

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle dTstrees

ordered a printer of Angers to bring his presses to the
Chateau de Rosny (printing-presses were small, insig-
nificant things in those days), and to be prepared to
produce impressions of the manuscript as soon as the
sheets were completed. Sully had, however, as adjuncts
to his literary labours, four other individuals of far
greater use to him than any of his secretaries or the
printer and his man. These were no less personages
than four of the most important writers of memoirs of
the time who happened to have published or passed away
before Sully also began to publish, and who could, there-
fore, provide him with " copy " which, with all his
knowledge — and it was enormous — of les affaires, lie
might not have been able to otherwise produce. One,
the most important of all, was none other than Pierre
L'Estoile, whose journal had appeared in 1621 ; another
was d'Aubign^, who wielded a good pen with as much
facility as he had earlier wielded a good sword in the
cause of the Huguenots.* His Histoire Universelle
had appeared in the years 1616-18-20. A third was
Palma Cayet, who had published, in 1605, his book,
entitled Chronologie Septenaire, in which he made the
mistake of saying that Gabrielle was lodged with Zamet ;
and a fourth was Legrain who, in his DScade, followed

* Madame de Maintenon was, in after days, proud of her grand-
father's literary gifts. She, however, preserved strict silence on his
religious faith when she had become a Roman Catholic. ,

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

him ; while, as a matter of fact, d'Aubigne and L'Estoile
had hinted at the same thing. Here, therefore, is to
be perceived the manner in which Sully made one out
of many of his principal errors in the fabricated letter
of La Varenne. In his inexplicable desire to deceive
others he had copied authors who had themselves been
deceived or were mistaken.

The description of the (Economies Royales given
earlier is not an unjust one. The language is archaic
to a degree, as may be witnessed by any person possess-
ing little more than an elementary knowledge of seven-
teenth century French, or by anyone who will take the
trouble to compare a volume of Mdlle. de Guise, or of
d'Aubigne, or of L'Estoile, with the great Minister's own
production. It may be urged, it is true, that Sully was
more a man of business, or a rude soldier, than aught
else, while Mdlle. de Guise was a princess of the illustrious
house of that name, and had undoubtedly received all
the advantages of an education which her family would
take care to provide ; * that d'Aubigne was the son of
a Huguenot gentleman of good estate, and a man who
loved literature ; that L'Estoile was a member of one

* In recent years the novels of Mdlle. de Guise have been attributed
to other persons, notably, to the Due de Bellegarde. Nothing, how-
ever, exists that tends to prove that the attribution is a just one.
Mdlle. de Guise, who married first the Prince de Conti and afterwards,
secretly, Bassompierre, was more likely to be able to write such novels
than was the good-looking and dissolute duke.

136

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

of the best families of the Law and a cultivated man
of easy means ; and that he, himself, had been premier
audiencier of Chancery and was an omnivorous reader
and a copious writer. But the family of Sully was, as
has been shown, superior to any of the families of the
others, if not so powerful as that of the de Guises ;
we know that he had been sent to a good school in
Paris ; he had filled the office of ambassador to the
most renowned Court in Europe, that of England, and
had held the highest positions in his own country.

Yet he adopted, among other forms of writing, one
which can only be called puerile, namely, that of causing
his secretaries to address his own remarks to himself.
Thus he commences every chapter with " You received,"
" You set out for," etc., etc., while the laboured style,
the, even for that period, antique expressions, the
sentences tangled one in another and placed in paren-
theses one after the other, are little short of maddening.
To all of which has to be added the fact that one learns
to regard a very considerable portion of the book as
anything but trustworthy, and as being written only to
gratify the author's desire of justifying himself, or of
withholding praise from others, while, after the perusal .
of the supposed letter of La Varenne, who, if he wrote t
any of it, probably only scratched off a few hasty lines I
as he sat by the side of Gabrielle's death-bed, we lose

137

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

all confidence in any portion of the book not confirmed
from other sources. Fortunately, however, such con-
firmation is frequently found to be the case.

On the appearance of two volumes of the memoirs
about seven years before the author's death, they
were received with an amount of adverse criticism such
as, probably, has never been accorded to any other
work of the same nature, and has certainly never been
accorded to the book of a man whose position had once
been that of the first subject in Europe. The attack
was led off by the secretary of Du Plessis-Mornay
(a Huguenot nobleman of high rank and himself a most
copious writer*), a man named Marbault, who, like
his employer, was also bitterly hostile to Sully. But
Marbault 's attacks, and they are mostly justified, are
now usually printed as an appendix to the memoirs
themselves, and it is, therefore, unnecessary to quote
much from them. An exception may, however, be
made and attention drawn to the fact that the writer
put his finger at once on a proof that La Varenne could
never have written the letter attributed to him. La
Varenne was a gentleman and a courtier, and well
acquainted with all forms and ceremonies, as well as

* He was closely attached to Henri for over twenty-five years
and rendered him faithful service. His master said jokingly of him :
" I can at any moment make a good captain out of that old writing-
desk." Naturally Sully did not like this nobleman.

138

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

ceremonial addresses usual and proper in Court circles,
and also with all matters of etiquette.* Yet he is
made to address Sully in the supposed letter as Mon-
seigneur, a title only due to the highest ecclesiastics
and to some dukes who were also peers {Dues et Pairs de
France). Dukes who had not this right were addressed as
" Monsieur le Due/' while those who did possess it were
addressed, though sometimes wrongly, as " Monseigneur
le Due " ; those who were of the royal blood, legitimate
or legitimatized, were addressed as " Votre altesse,
Monseigneur le Due," or as " Monseigneur."

Now Sully was not a duke at the time of the death of
Gabrielle, nor was he to become one until seven years
after that death, namely, in 1606, when he was created
" Due de Sully, Pair de France, and Captain General
of the Gendarmes of the Queen."

It stands to reason, therefore, that a skilled courtier
would not have made such a mistake, but would also
have been scrupulous not to apply a title to a man
who would doubtlessly resent any attempt to describe
him as what he did not happen to be.

Marbault found, however, many other " wilful "
errors of the same kind and pointed them out. One
was a letter attributed to Marguerite de Valois on the

* By many writers La Varenne was said to have been a scullion,
which was false. He was descended from an ancient family in
NavaiTc. He eventually attained high rank and died a marquis.

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

subject of the then impending marriage of Gabrielle,
in which she is represented as using language about
the favourite which would have disgraced the women
of Les Halles, while the worst expression she ever
did use was when she called Gabrielle ** sale et vilaine."
This alone refutes the possibility of the letter having
been written by the last surviving Valois. What-
ever the faults and failings of Marguerite may have
been in her earlier days coarseness was not one
of them, and she would not have debased herself
by the use of such words as Sully attributes to her
pen.

Marbault had a sufficiency of companions in his attack
on the (Economies Royales. Indeed, there was no
writer of the period who did not contribute his aid
to expose the inaccuracies of the book and the vain
self-glorification which was apparent in even the
enormously lengthy and cumbersome title in which he
speaks of himself as contributing, " Useful services,
suitable obedience and loyal administration," and
as " being one of the trustworthy and useful soldiers
and servitors of the great French Mars."

The manner in which criticism was forthcoming on
any important book, or rather on a book by any person
who was, or had once been, of importance, forms an

interesting subject for consideration, especially as it

140

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

applies not only to the method by which books were
produced, but also to the manner in which criticisms,
generally in the form of special leaflets or pamphlets,
also met the eye of the public. There was still no news-
paper published in France in the early days of Louis
XIII. — outside the production called the Mercure
Frangois* on which Richelieu poured his contempt
later, though three years before the first two volumes of
the (Economies Royales were published the Gazette de
France had sprung into a feeble existence and commenced
its long career. The latter was then, however, a puny
thing, and although under royal patronage (Louis
occasionally favoured it with a few paragraphs on
matters which he considered would be interesting to his
subjects, and often left them at the printer's himself)
gave none too favourable signs that it had a future
before it.

Consequently, there were no " professional *' critics.
But there were many persons who were, nevertheless,
always anxious to perform that office in particular
cases — in the case, say, of an enemy's, and, sometimes,
of a friend's book — as there were also others who re-
quired the services of a clever writer to review a rival's
book. The method of procedure was, therefore, to

* More a book of dates than a journal, and a continuation of

Sept^aire. It existed from 1605 to 1644.

141

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

purchase the work, or if, as in the case of Sully's mag-
nificently produced volumes, that was too expensive
an affair, to obtain a sight of it. Then, when the criti-
cism was finished, a mode of publication had to be
brought into play. This was, however, easy enough,
provided that either the writer, or the man whose
employe he happened to be, was able to pay for the cost
of production.

If there were no newspapers neither were there any
publishers. Indeed, publishers as they are now under-
stood had no existence, and did not begin to have any
in France for more than a century ; and the case was
not very dissimilar in most of the other countries of
Europe. But printers there had been ever since Koster,
Fust, Gutenberg, or Caxton first undertook the trade, and,
though they embarked no money in the productions
which issued from their presses, their business was to
work for those who would do so. And, if those in Paris
were not publishers, the signs of their houses, their
names, and the numbers of the streets in which they
lived, played the part that the name of a publisher of
to-day plays, and the author, or the author's employer,
paid all expenses and afterwards found the means of
distribution. The book had, however, to pass the
Censor, who was generally a Chancellor of the High

Court, ere it could announce that it had received the

142

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

Approbation et Privilege du Roi and before the printer
could put his name and address to it, while, if it did
not pass the Censor and receive that approbation, there
remained still another system. Books, in increasing
numbers as time went on, were published in Holland
and, not having, therefore, obtained approbation and
privilege, were smuggled into France and distributed
more or less surreptitiously in large quantities. These
were mostly works that dealt in libel or scandal, or too
much unpalatable truth ; books that told of the
peccadilloes of women of high rank, of the indiscretions
of maids of honour, of the frauds of highly-placed
officials and the brutal behaviour of members of the
aristocracy, and also of the lives of courtesans, poisoners
and, as often as not, of priests. At the same time, there
remained a third method of evading the Censor which
had the advantage of rendering unnecessary the im-
portation of books from abroad. This was the simple
one of printing them in France, but of placing on the
title-page the supposilitious name of some printer, in
company with the borrowed name of Amsterdam or
the Hague, or elsewhere. In this manner criticisms
and other brochures, as well as books, were distributed
in pamphlet form and either sold in secret places well-
known to buyers of such literature, or, in many cases,
openly in the streets, on the bridgeSi-^^wUich were much

143

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

frequented for meeting and assembly — and sometimes
outside the churches.*

Since Sully may, perhaps, have imagined that he had
survived most of his jealous enemies and envious friends
by the time he published his first two volumes of the
(Economies Royales, it is extraordinary that they should
themselves have borne the name of Amsterdamf as
the place of publication on their first page, and
especially so as he made no secret that he was writing
them. His name, with the boastful address to readers,
was also there — but the printer he employed lived at
Angers ! Such, however, was the case, and since it is
impossible to suppose that the work was boimd and
arranged for publication anywhere else than in France,
it must be presumed that this was one more weakness
in a really great mind which could, nevertheless, stoop
to the self-glorification that Sully frequently indulged
in. Yet considerable reflection is needed on the matter
before we can bring ourselves to suppose, or imagine,
how Sully's vanity could be ministered to by such an
action. When, however, it is recalled that all books
surreptitiously published, or supposed to be published,

* L'Estoile, a great buyer of books and jjamphlets of this nature,
is very full of information on the subject,

t The indication on the title-page is " Amstelerdam chez ' Aleithinos-
graphe.' " If any doubt could exist as to whether the indication is
true or false this folly should decide it.

144

Sully and the Death of Gahrielle d'Estrees

abroad, were books of which prominent people were
often afraid, the reason may be divined at last with-
out much difficulty.

The third and fourth volumes of the (Economies
Royales were published years after the writer's death
at Sully — a large estate which the Duke bought and
from which he took his title — namely, in 1662. These
received but little more notice than is usually accorded
to continuations of memoirs or recollections which,
exciting as their first part may have been, have come
too late to appeal to the public that is at last to read
them. Moreover, a greater even than he — Richelieu —
had held the reins — and the King (Louis XIII.) — in his
hands ; and both Henri and Sully were long since gone.
Sully's work of forty years before, if not his reputation,
had therefore become obsolete and the books fell flat.
Eighty-three years later, in 1745, the Abbe de L'ficluse
produced an edition of this extraordinary achievement,
his object being to put it into proper and readable
French. In this he succeeded, but in some way he
failed to convey to the public to which it appealed all
the interest, as well as useful political history, that —
excluding the above-mentioned " mis-statements," and
some others — it undoubtedly contained.

Sully's literary efforts were not, however, confined
solely to this stupendous undertaking. He produced

145 10

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

some treatises on the art of war, and a book of in-
structions to police and militia ; he perpetrated some
poetry and — marvel of marvels ! — he wrote a novel
entitled Gelastide. This work never got beyond
manuscript form, but it was long cherished by his
descendants and exhibited to those eager to see it.
It must, indeed, have been interesting to regard as a
curiosity, even though the perusal of it might not have
furnished much entertainment. He never attempted
another form of literature, namely, that of dramatic
composition, but he was at one time frequently made
the hero of dramas written round his career. Not
one of them, however, found favour with the public
at any time, or held the boards for more than a night
or so.

Faulty as was Sully in many ways — in his detestation
of all other favourites, male and female, of the King —
and sour, morose, bad-mannered and often brutal, he
possessed severed excellent qualities which counted for
much in making him the principal Minister and subject
of his master. His best characteristics were rugged
fideHty and personal courage equal to that of Henri
himself. He was, indeed, like some savage mastiff
who will never quit his owner yet will rend to pieces
any other person who draws near. This may have

146

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

been the reason for his antagonism to Gabrielle and
afterwards to Henriette d'Entragues, though that
antagonism was more owing to the injury which he
recognized that a marriage with either would entail
on Henri and on France — which latter stood second in
his heart ! — than absolute hatred of the ladies them-
selves, in spite of their scorn of him. Purity could
scarcely have been the motive for this feeling, since,
when Conde was known to be about to flee with his
wife to Brussels, there to escape from Henri's attention
to the latter, Sully said roughly that Henri had better
shut Condd up in the Bastille and leave the princess
to her fate than let the former throw himself into the
arms of the Spaniards. His roughness had, indeed,
become almost a proverb, and he probably never met his
match except in the Due d'Epernon — that meretricious
example of the medieval type of swashbuckler — who
addressed him with such intemperance of language, and
threatened him with such personal violence, that Sully
drew his sword in self-defence.

In the reign of James I. he was sent as a special
ambassador to England for a short time, but his first
visit had been to Dover, in 1601, at a moment when
Elizabeth happened to be there in one of her various
joumeyings and progresses about her kingdom, and
when Henri chanced to be at Calais. The Queen of

147 10*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

England, hearing of this latter fact, wrote a cordial
letter to Henri, in which she addressed him as her " dear
and well-beloved brother," and described herself as
*' his very loyal sister and faithful ally." She also
expressed her regret that they were both forbidden by
certain customs from meeting, although so near,
especially as she had at one time promised herself the
happiness of " kissing him and embracing him with
both arms." She had, she also wrote, something to
tell him which she did not feel disposed to write, or
confide, to either his representatives or her own.

Upon this, Henri, who was extremely pleased with
the cordiality of his great neighbour, sent for Sully
and bade him set out for Dover at once, which he did.
He had, however, resolved to be extremely discreet in
his method of approaching the Queen, and, consequently,
when the Earl of Pembroke and Lord Cavendish en-
countered him he said that he had simply come over
to Dover for a change of air and to walk about the town,
and that neither had he a letter for the Queen nor
desired her to know that he was in her neighbourhood
as, otherwise, she might be offended at his not paying
his respects to her. The two noblemen, however, burst
out laughing at this and, a few moments later, an
officer of the Queen's guards accosted him, told him
jokingly that he was a prisoner, and took him before

148

OUEEN KlIZAHEIH.

(Artist unknown. Engraved by Vertue.)

[Facing p. 148

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

Elizabeth. She, being also in a merry mood, asked him
what he meant by coming into her country without
paying her a visit, and said that, since he had nothing
to say to her she had something to say to him, and
bade him follow her. When alone, she informed him
that what she desired was to form an alliance with the
King of France against Spain and Austria, and they
then and there drew out the basis of the alliance which,
however, was never ratified owing to the death of
Elizabeth not long afterwards.

Sully's hatred of Concini — the most pardonable one
in which he ever indulged — was such that he would
never speak to him if he coiild possibly avoid doing so,
and he generally favoured the Italian upstart with
nothing more than a full view of his back. It is stated
that his reason for quitting the Court after the assassina-
tion of Henri was that he could not tolerate being forced
to come into contact with the man. Nevertheless the
adventurer had his revenge on the day after the King's
murder, when he caused to be painted upon the gates
of Sully's courtyard the words, '* Un valet d louer ici."
This unfortunate word " valet " does indeed seem to
have attached itself considerably to Sully, remembering
Gabrielle and her successor, Henriette d'Entragues.

As a worker he was indefatigable. He rose at four
o'clock in winter and summer ; at six he dressed for

149

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

the day ; at seven he entered the Council Chamber ;
at mid-day he dined alone with his wife and children,
after which he gave audience until seven, when he had
supper and then went to bed. His manner of giving
audience was on a par with his usual rudeness and
brusque behaviour. He rarely rose from his seat to
greet any who presented themselves, and, if he hap-
pened to be writing when a visitor was ushered in, he
did not take the trouble to raise his eyes in acknowledg-
ment of the other's presence. There is a story told
(though on no very good authority, since it appears in
an anonymous collection of anecdotes of La vie et les
habitudes de Monsigneur le feu Due de Sully) of how
this once happened when the English ambassador was
conducted to his audience-room. The ambassador stood
silent for a moment regarding Sully, after which he
said, "It is possible that Monseigneur is not aware
that Queen Elizabeth of England is present in the person
of her representative in France."

As Sully had before this made acquaintance with
Elizabeth during his own mission to her, and as he was
thoroughly cognisant of what power she could exert
in helping the Protestants, his apologies — which were
not often forthcoming — were profuse.

His brutality was, in some cases, savagery of the
worst form. When he was sent to London, one of his

150

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

suite, a young gentleman of good family, was so irritated
at the jeers of the crowd at the Frenchmen that he
became involved in an argument with some of the mob
who were looking on, and, in a moment of heat, struck
one of them. On this coming to Sully's ears he instantly
ordered that his follower should be put to death —
where and how the execution could have taken place
one does not know ! — and he was so determined that
this should be done that it required all the persuasions
of the English Court to make him understand that the
contretemps was of no particular importance. His tongue
was also a very unruly member, though he could scarcely
be blamed for a remark he made to Louis XIII. when
that monarch summoned him from his retreat to give
some advice on a subject which he was well qualified
to elucidate.

Sully appeared, as was his invariable habit, dressed
in the style of forty years before, and the courtiers,
who were not accustomed to witness such a specimen
of the past as he presented, indulged in a good many
sneers and jeers at his antiquated appearance. Upon
which the old man said in a loud tone to the King,
" Sire, when your father did me the honour to consult
me, he first of all turned all the fools and buffoons out
of the room." Louis XIIL had the good grace to
follow his father's custom.

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

At his three seats. Sully, Rosny and Villebon,* he
lived in great state and circumstance surrounded by his
squires, pages, guards and gentlemen-in-waiting, and,
though all were well-paid, lodged and fed, strict economy
was practised and waste severely blamed, if not
punished. This carefulness, combined with free
handedness, is far more entitled to admiration than
contempt, though, as a matter of fact, had Sully been
twice as lavish, and had he exercised little or no care
in his household expenses, his fortune would not have
permitted him to be affected by any careless profusion.

He had, in his long service to his master, grown
enormously rich ; indeed, he had begun to accumulate
wealth from the outset. He had bought many pro-
perties as speculations, all of which he generally managed
to part with at a considerable profit, but Sully and
Villebon were early added to his patrimonial estate of
Rosny. As, gradually, he retired from his various
employments under the State, he disposed of them to
his successors (all public employments being sold in
France at this period, as well as long before and long
after Sully's time, in much the same way as military

♦ The terminal adjective of " bon " for " bonne " is somewhat
strange. It is not, however, exceptional, as such errors in the adjective
exist even to these days. There is now a small paper published in
Paris called " La monde"; and the frontier station, where the train
enters Alsace-Lorraine on the road to Basle, is named Petit Croix.

152

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

commissions of all grades were sold in England within
most persons' recollections) for 760,000 livres, while
three abbeys and many benefices which had been pre-
sented to him by Henri were sold for 240,000 livres.
He also received from Marie de Medici, until she was
exiled, a yearly pension of 48,000 livres.

In accordance with the habits of the time, he like-
wise made large sums out of his military services, and
he acknowledged that, in one of the many expeditions
against the Duke of Savoy which he directed, he gained
200,000 livres.

That all this accumulated wealth should give rise to
much comment is not surprising, especially as Sully
possessed more enemies than friends, while there were
more persons envious of his career than even his enemies
numbered, so that, like those of whom Dean Swift spoke,
he was forced to take his distinction as he took his land,
cum onere. Richelieu states that Henri was at one
time about to remove Sully from the direction of the
finances, since he had doubts as to the " cleanness of
his hands.'' It has to be remembered, however, that
Richelieu was not above a different form of that jealousy
to which Sully was a victim. If the latter hated those
contemporaries who rivalled him in the good graces of
his master, the former was not able to withstand the
chance of depreciating the high position of one who had

153

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

so closely preceded him and to whom he had been
subordinate, and one who probably recognized also
that, in the Bishop of Lugon, he was face to face with a
genius which, in the days to come, would, with oppor-
tunity, far outshine his own.

The opportunity came and the star of Sully was
eclipsed by that of Richelieu, but Richelieu could never
forget that it had once blazed the most conspicuous
of all surrounding it.

The old man died in 1641 when he was nearly eighty-
two (his wife lived to the age of ninety-seven), while, with
what seems to have been almost an irony of Fate, Henri
endeavoured to persuade Sully's son and heir to marry
Henriette de Vendome, aged fourteen, daughter of
Gabrielle d'Estrees — to still call her by her original
name — whom Sully had so much hated and opposed.
At his death the old order had indeed given place to
the new ; a change had occiured in France that, if
Sully had observed it carefully, must have caused him
many conflicting emotions. The boy who was to become
Louis XIV. was born ; Richelieu was dying of a cruel
disease and Louis XIIL's own death was known to
be close at hand. The system of feudalism and villenage
was passing away : territorial regiments, to take the
place of vast bodies of men serving under their respective
lords, were in conception and were soon to become an

154

Charles I. (by Vandyke).

IFacing p. i55

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

established fact. The French Navy, as a consolidated
body, was the finest in the world and was to remain so
until its defeat at La Hogue, by Russell, shattered for
ever its pretensions to that position. Portugal had just
broken away from her annexation by Spain in 1580, and
was a restored kingdom ; Cromwell had made his first
speeches in Parliament and was soon to suggest that
forces should be levied to oppose Charles I., and the Star
Chamber was abolished ; Concini* had been murdered

♦ The terrible deaths of Concini and his wife, and especiallj'' that
of the former, may cause students of French history to remark a
strange similarity between it and the death of the. Princesse de
Lamballe during the French Revolution.

Concini — the order for whose arrest had been issued by Louis XIII.
— ^was about to enter the Louvre when Vitry, the Captain of the
Guard, demanded his sword. Concini made a movement, either to
defend himself or to obey the order, when he was shot three times
by Vitry's men and fell dead. Louis, it has often been stated, was
looking out from a window that gave upon the spot where Vitry was
stationed. The Queen, hearing the reports of the pistols, sent one
of her female attendants to discover what was the meaning of them,
and the woman, seeing the Captain of the Guard calmly standing in
the courtyard, asked him what had occurred. " The Marshal is
killed," Vitry replied indifferently. " By whom ? " " By me,
by order of the King." This incident has always been selected by
historians as the most certain proof that Louis was privy to the
murder, especially as he witnessed it from the window and said
nothing. The body of the Italian was at once pillaged by some of
Vitry's men. One took his great diamond, another his jewel-hilted
sword, a third his cloak, and a fourth his scarf. He was buried that
night in the vaults of St. Germain-l'Auxerrois and disinterred the next
day by the populace, who hated him. The body was then exposed
outside the house of his friend, Barbin, and was subjected to the
most horrible desecration. His features were destroyed, his limbs
were mutilated, his heart was torn out and grilled and a portion
of it eaten by the mob. One part of his remains was then burnt on

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

and his wife executed, while de Lu3nies had been dead
twenty years. Corneille was a man of thirty-five and
had produced The Cid (as well as some comedies),
which revolutionized the theatrical world, and Racine
was two years old. Sully had also lived to see a King
upon the throne whose life had been immaculate in its
purity — whatever other defects it possessed — and a
Court in which the existence of Maitresses-en-titre seemed
to be things that belonged to the manners and morals
of the dark ages. Unfortunately, those who lived a few

the Greve and another on the Pont Neuf, and the ashes were sold at
so much an ounce.

The body of the Princesse de Lamballe was, one hundred and
seventy-five years later, treated in an almost identical manner by the
Revolutionists, even to the grossest outrages, and as a book {La
Galerie de Vancienne Cour) in which the murder and the mutilation
of Concini is fully described was at this time republished, one is
tempted to speculate as to whether that which happened to him was
taken as a model for that which happened to her.

The defenders of the Revolution have often asked if the crimes
and excesses of that terrible period in any way exceeded those of
the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve, perpetrated by Charles IX. ;
or whether the murder of a Princess by the lower orders was any
worse crime than the murder of Concini by an ancestor of that
Princess ? Except that Concini himself was an unscrupulous and
overbearing adventurer, while the Princesse de Lamballe was a harm-
less and inoffensive woman who had never injured anyone, it must be
admitted that the answer is difficult to find.

Concini's wife, La Galigai, Mar^chale d'Ancre, was herself executed
on the Greve, her body burnt and the ashes flung to the winds.

De Luynes died of a fever five years later than the man whom he
had supplanted, and, when he did so, Louis XIIL was no more affected
by his death than he was by that of Concini, or, afterwards, by that
of Richelieu, to whom he owed the fact that he was able to keep his
crown and hand it down to his descendants.

156

Sully and the Death of Gabrielle d'Estrees

years later were to be only too well-acquainted with the
I reappearance of such adjuncts to royalty.

Had Sully survived for seven months more he would
have outlived Marie de Medici.

The Duchesse de Sully caused a superb white marble
statue of her husband to be made in Italy which was
placed in the Chateau de Villebon. It should have stood
elsewhere, namely, in the heart of Paris and, for choice,
near to, or opposite, that of his great master on the
Pont Neuf.

For, with all his faults — and there were many that
Sully possessed — he had, at least, the great merit of
fidelity to the hand that caressed him — a virtue too often
absent from our poor human nature. He was rough,
uncouth, hard, and often insolent, even to his master.
To his credit, however, he endeavoured in every way to
curb that master in his weaknesses and failings, to cause
him to be a better husband to the woman who was a
good and loyal wife to him, if an ungracious one — and
he was true to Henri in word, thought and deed. He
tried, also, to prevent his reckless expenditure and
the attempt was praiseworthy though rudely performed.

So far as one imperfect being can be a god to another,
Henri was Sully's god, and the death of Henri was the
ecHpse of Sully's life. It has been said by cynics that

157

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

he could have worshipped none other who would have
repaid him so well for his adoration, but, in spite of
what has been stated as to his desire for money and
great possessions, the remark may be dismissed as an
unworthy one. He did grow rich in that master's
service, but there were no original prospects of his ever
doing so ; he followed loyally the poor and, once, almost
dethroned Huguenot King of Navarre and served him
as faithfully as he afterwards did when he became the
great King of France.

Of his (Economies Royales something has been said
here, and far more might have been said had space
allowed ; but, in sober fact, they harmed no one and
nothing but himself and his own reputation ; and, even
at their worst, they are a valuable assistance to history.
There is much vanity in them, much traducing of those
who had aroused his jealousy ; but, where no reason
for envy or hatred can be traced, they may be thoroughly
relied upon.

And, to end all, he was a true and faithful husband
to both his wives, and an affectionate and careful father.
In the sum of human qualities his good ones far ex-
ceeded the bad, and to this there has to be added the
long-since recognized fact that he was a great and
truly remarkable man.

158

Le Due d'Epernon.
From a picture by an unknown artist, once in the possession of Madame de S^vigne.

[Facing p. iSg.

CHAPTER IV

TRAITOR AND FAVOURITE — LE DUG d'^PERNON AND
HENRIETTE, MARQUISE DE VERNEUIL

JEAN LOUIS DE NOGARET, DE LA VALETTE,
Due d'^pernon and Pair de France, who, at the
time of the assassination of Henri IV., held the positions
of an admiral of France, first gentleman of the chamber,
colonel of all the infantry, and Governor of Angou-
mois, Saintonge and Aunis, la Rochelle, Limousin, Nor-
mandy, Loches and the district of Messin, was a man
who, perhaps, more nearly represented the bravoes
and bullies whom that eminent dramatist, M. Pix^re-
court (the author of the Forest of Bondy, termed
" Le Chien de Montargis," in France), was in the habit
of providing for the French stage in the early part of
the nineteenth century, or the bravoes and bullies
whom our fathers and grandfathers were accustomed
to see on the boards of the Surrey Theatre, than did
any other person of his time.

In d'^pemon's earlier days he had been one of the

159

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

atrocious mignons who were the inseparable companions
of Henri III. and shared in all his bestial pursuits, and
he had taken part in arranging the savage duel in which
he and his companions had involved Bussy d'Amboise
and his friends. A little later he insulted the miserable
king whose creature he was, and who bore his insolence
without retaliating and while shedding tears ; and,
but a few days afterwards, in the presence of his master,
he threatened to apply to Villeroy, a Secretary of State,
as many kicks with his spurred boots as he would to
a restive horse. Villeroy was, however, a man of a
different type from Henri lU. and d'^^pemon saw fit
to arrange terms of peace with him ere matters went
any farther.

But the Due d'Epemon can scarcely have cared for
any of the occupations of those mignons of whom he
was one, unless it were the outdoor portion of their
existence devoted to insulting other persons, and, as a
corollary, to running them through. He was, indeed,
formed for stronger deeds than dressing himself as a
wanton or singing vulgar and degrading songs to a
worn-out voluptuary.

Bom the son of a simple gentleman — ^some say of

good family, though others state that he was a retired

notary, which was not considered to be the position of

a gentleman in the France of those days — d']£pernon

1 60

Traitor and Favourite

commenced to acquire wealth and rank by his servile
ministering to the ignoble pleasures of Henri III. So
early as his twenty-seventh year he had obtained from
the latter the vast estate known as D'Espernon,* which
Henri created into a Duchy and then conferred upon
his favourite, while ordering that he should take his
place immediately after the princes of the blood-royal.
As years went on d'Epernon's means continued to
increase — his cupidity being equal to his desire for
advancement and power — until at the end of his long
life he was probably the richest subject in France who
did not possess one drop of royal blood — Valois or
Bourbon — in his veins.

The appearance of the man was but little in keeping
with his character of bully or overbearing soldier and
duellist, since he was small and insignificant as well
as full-lipped and inclined to be bald, but his disposi-
tion was in keeping with his temper. He was impa-
tient under contradiction, unsociable, haughty with his
equals and brutal to his inferiors, a civil answer or
remark being only accorded by him to those who, he
very well knew, were able either to extort it or punish
him for not according it freely. On one occasion, how-
ever, at the end of his life, he was so severely humiliated
that the disgrace administered such a shock to his

* The earlier spelling of the flame.

i6l II

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

already worn-out system that it was considered by many
to have brought about his death.

During his tenure of the governorship of Guienne
— from which he drew two million livres a year — he
got into a dispute with the Archbishop of Bordeaux
over some prerogatives, and also some sums of money
to which he considered himself entitled. The Arch-
bishop refusing to accord these, d'Epemon caused
the carriage of the prelate to be stopped by his soldiers,
whereupon the Archbishop descended from it, excom-
municated the men, and retreated into his palace.
D'Epemon at once besieged the palace and, entering
it forcibly, brutally assaulted the Archbishop, struck
him about the body and knocked his hat off with
his cane, when he himself was also excommunicated.
Louis XIII., hearing of this, removed d'Epemon from
all his offices and exiled him to Coutras. The braggart
had then to write to the Archbishop pleading for
pardon, which he did not receive until he had sued
for it and for a removal of the excommunication on his
knees, and had been forced to listen to a reproof of the
most humiHating nature.

Ere, however, this time arrived, he had passed long

years in endeavouring to overthrow the attempts of

Henri IV. to obtain the crown ; in revolting against

him when it was obtained, in cringing for pardon for

162

Traitor and Favourite

each ofEence from the moment it was discovered, and
in immediately putting into action a fresh piece of
treason. Indeed, if, in his black heart, there was one
spot more evil than the others, it must have been that
in which was contained his hatred for Henri IV. He
had fought against him as an open enemy — which was
no crime ! — yet had not the common honesty of an
open enemy and a worthy foe to refrain from plotting
against Henri when peace was made ; nor, indeed, had
he even the loyalty of one conspirator towards another.
When plots were in the air he was of them, yet never
was his name known, or his part in them discovered,
until the time had passed when his treachery could
produce any ill-effects towards him.

When Henri III. was assassinated, many of the lead-
ing nobles of France, recognizing that the wisest act
on their part would be to accept Henri of Navarre as
their King, determined to sign a proclamation acknow-
ledging him. D'Epernon expressed his willingness to
do so — yet, on the time arriving, he invented a sly excuse
for refusing. He had had time for reflection ! He
recalled the fact that Henri would, if he now signed the
proclamation, become his King, and that, consequently,
any act on his part against that King could be adjudged
treachery. Also, he did not forget that he had grown

enormously wealthy and that, as a traitor to his bond

163 II*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

of fidelity, it would be possible for him to be deprived
of that wealth even if his life were spared ; while,
should he be able to keep on good terms with the
man who was now almost certain to become King
of France, his vast fortune might be still more in-
creased. As for treason, he could, in any case,
practise it in private, and at the same time there
would not be the damning evidence against him of his
own signature.

A reason had, however, to be given for his refusal
to sign which should not make him stand out too con-
spicuously as an abstainer from an agreement to which
men of far more illustrious family than his own had
been willing to subscribe. His cunning was not long
in devising a reason for that refusal. Two of the most
important personages in France, the Marshal de Biron
and the Marshal d'Aumont, happened to have already
placed their names upon the proclamation, and
d'Epernon, learning this, at once seized upon the fact
as an excuse for not doing so himself. He stated that
he had been quite willing to sign, but that he could
not consent to prejudice his rank so far as to do so below
the names of any persons not being Dukes and peers of
France, as he was himself ; after which he retired while
still vociferating loudly that, outside the matter of the

signature, he was as willing to welcome the King of

164

Traitor and Favourite

Navarre to the throne of France as any person in the
land could be.

If this were by any possibility the case, the Due
d'Epemon took a strange way of testifying to it.
From the time Henri became King of France, namely,
in 1589, his whole career was spent in preventing him
from enjoying the possession of his kingdom in peace.
The League, under the command of the Due de Mayenne,
was still in watchful activity and could, if necessary,
place in the field an army four times stronger in numbers
than that of Henri. Nevertheless, the latter beat that
army whenever he encountered it, and the siege of
Arques, near Dieppe, and the battle of Ivry testified
to the fact that the time was at hand when the crown
would be secured to him and his descendants. More-
over, at this time there came to his assistance the most
powerful ally that could have been found in Europe,
namely, Elizabeth of England. She was at this period
the true head of the Protestant Faith ; not two years
before Henri's accession she, aided by the subjects who
worshipped her, had crushed the Spanish Armada which
represented the Faith that she had good reason to hate ;
and the desire of her heart was that that Faith should
never again obtain the importance it had once possessed.

Yet Spain still hoped for much, and, though recog-
nizing that England had torn itself free for ever from

165

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

her grasp and her religion, she still anticipated that
the dissensions in France might at least bring that
country into her possession. If traitors on one side
and assassins on the other could have conduced to this
end, Spain would not have failed in her hopes. One
of the latter had been found to slay the Prince of Orange,
another had attempted to slay Elizabeth, a dozen and
more had whetted their knives against Henri. While, for
enemies against the latter, there was banded the greater
part of the old nobility, who were all in favour of
Philip II. 's desires, and, for traitors who would stop at
nothing, there was — M. le Due d'Epernon ! Spain was
pouring forth her gold — ^not by handsful, but by ship-
loads— in the employment of assassins and traitors ;
it was not likely that, with his greed combined with his
hatred for the monarch who knew him for what he was
and despised him, d'Epernon would be out of the way
while the golden showers were falling, and when there
was an opportunity for wreaking his vengeance on a
man whom he loathed.

He had for some years earlier been inclined towards
Spain and her desires, and, even at the period when he
was fighting as an open foe against Henri and disputing
the possession of Provence against him, he was in the
pay of Philip II. He was not, however, very successful

in his efforts, as the young Due de Guise, who was not

i66

Traitor and Favourite

of The League, wrenched Marseilles, and, indeed, the
whole of Provence, away from him. To console him,
and to, if possible, bind him to his cause, Henri after-
wards gave d'Epernon the government of Limousin,
and conferred on him many other substantial benefits.

Become a member of the King's party, d'Epernon
instantly commenced a series of intrigues against him,
and even sought to draw Marie de Medici into compliance
with his schemes ; but if he thought that he was throw-
ing dust in the King's eyes he was never more mistaken.
Henri knew the man's character thoroughly, and he
soon recognized that, though d'Epernon was not above
being bribed, he was far from likely to give any return
for the gifts he received. Gradually, therefore, the
latter's lucrative posts were withdrawn from him ; he
ceased to be colonel-general of the infantry, and, which
was the worst of all blows. Governor of Metz. This
ioss was, indeed, enormous to the intriguer, since Metz
was close to the possessions of Spain and Austria
(Franche-Comte and the Netherlands), with which he
was constantly in communication, while the equally
severe loss of his military command deprived him of
an army which, when he should find it necessary, he
could at any moment have thrown into the scales
against Henri and for Spain. He had often boasted of
'* his Austrian Kingdom," as he termed Metz ; he was

167

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

now an exile from that kingdom and his rage was
terrible, while his desire for vengeance was sharpened
to a deadly degree.

The time for endeavouring to exercise that vengeance
was, however, not yet at hand. The seed was sown, but
it had yet to germinate. Later, we shall see what
fruit its growth produced.

Meanwhile, the Due d'^^pernon was probably the
best hated man in France, not only by the people but
by those of his own rank ; and he, who was always ready
to hurl insults and abuse at others, was, from the death
of Henri III., himself the mark for much well-deserved
obloquy. Brantome narrates in his best manner how,
when the Duke was appointed to the governorship of
Provence, a book was hawked about the streets — in
the usual manner of publishing — entitled, ** The Great
Deeds, Brilliant Acts and Bravery " (** hauts-faits, gestes
et vaillances ") " of M. d'Epernon on his Road to Pro-
vence." It was handsomely bound and the title was
beautifully stamped in gold on the cover, but the
purchasers discovered on opening it that all the pages
were blank and contained — Nothing !

At BrignoUes, in Provence, where he had also made
himself hated by his insolence and cruelties, the in-
habitants undermined his residence with a view to its

falling in and crushing him, and a miracle alone saved

i68

Traitor and Favourite

him. At Angouleme, the Mayor went with some
troops to arrest him for having quitted Loches, to
which he had been exiled from Paris by order of Henri,
and he only saved himself by flying to another room
by a private staircase. As he did so, however, the
whole of the struc.ure gave way beneath him, it having
been prepared for his destruction, which would cer-
tainly have taken place had he not sped over it so
quickly in his flight.*

Enough has now been told of the character of the
worst man of any prominence in France at the time of
the assassination of Henri IV., but before we proceed
to discuss the remarkable series of schemes and plots
by which that unfortunate monarch was surrounded
at the time of his death, it is not inadvisable to narrate
the miseries that righteously fell on d'^^pernon ere he
died at an advanced age (eighty-eight).

He had long outlived the other detestable mignons,
Quelus, Saint-Mesgrin, Maugiron and Joyeuse. He
had seen his children die before him ; he had been
present at the marriage of his second son with the
daughter of Henriette d'Entragues, and had witnessed
that son strike his future wife in the face before all
the Court ere the betrothal was signed, and he was to

* L'Estoile. " Rencontre du Due d'^pernon et Ravaillac aux enfers."
De Bury. M^moires, Sully. M^moires, Marechal de Bouillon.
D'Aubigne.

169

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

learn, four years later, that the ruffian had poisoned

her at last. Truly, if heaven ever exacts an earthly

vengeance, it did so from the wretched father of the

bridegroom and the mother of the bride, both of whom

had, in earlier years, been two of the most evil people

in France, even if they were not two of the principals

in a plot to murder the best King — as a King — that

France ever possessed.

One good act d'Epernon may, or, rather, might be

credited with, if the suspicion did not force itself upon

our minds that, in performing it, he was gratifying more

his spite against Louis XIII. than endeavouring to

help a cruelly-treated woman. He lent his assistance

in aid of the escape of Marie de Medici from the Chateau

de Blois, to which she had been consigned for life by

her son, although at first he tried hard to excuse himself

from doing so. Reflection, however, caused d'Epernon

to recognize the fact that, not only would the escape

of the Queen-mother cause bitter mortification to the

King who had long since discarded him, but, which

would be more gratifying to his own rancour, to the

favourite, de Luynes, who was responsible for the fact

that Marie had ever been sent away from Paris and

incarcerated at Blois. For d'Epernon had himself once

been a favourite, and, naturally, all favourites who

succeeded him were obnoxious. But there were other

170

Traitor and Favourite

grievances to be arranged. Louis had ordered him,
when he came to pay his respects, to appear miaccom-
panied by the eight hundred lances who were his
usual escort, since the King said that they were totally
unnecessary for a ** servitor," and de Luynes had suc-
cessfully used all his influence to prevent d'^pemon's
third son, the Archbishop of Toulouse, from obtaining
the Cardinal's hat.

Nevertheless, the Duke hesitated to help Marie. He
had steeped his hands sufficiently in treachery, and
he was far from considering it wise to be again in-
volved in further treason ; nor would he have consented
to aid Marie — whose name had once been coupled
with his in an unfavourable, though an entirely false,
manner — ^had not two of his sons, the Marquis de la
Valette and the Archbishop of Toulouse, persuaded
him to do so. The prelate was burning with rage at
the refusal of the hat, and the Marquis was a true son
of his father. Yet still he wavered, in spite of a touch-
ing letter which Marie had sent him ; and doubtless
he would have altogether refused to help her, had not
a scheming abbe named Ruccelai, a Florentine and a
creature of Concini, brought a pressure to bear upon
him from which he saw no way of escaping except by
consenting to lend his aid in the evasion of the unhappy

Queen. This man, Ruccelai, was one of those harpies

171

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

who, even in those days, was a disgrace to his calling ;
a terror to women whom he blackmailed and a pander
to those from whom he expected patronage. He had,
however, refined tastes ; his table was of the most
delicate nature ; he squandered the money he knew
how to obtain easily ; he was full of artistic ideas,
and he boasted that even the Queen had looked on
him with favourable eyes. This was undoubtedly a
lie, yet it was to him that Marie first suggested that
assistance should be found to aid her in her escape
from Blois.

The abbe at once embraced the idea. Bassompierre
(who, as popular favourite and ami de femmes received
information from his brother courtiers, and, also, many
strange whispers from his fair friends) says that Ruccelai,
with the view of leaving Paris without causing remark,
denounced himself anonymously to the Court so that
he should be openly driven from it. The ruse suc-
ceeded, and he was ordered to retire to his parish of
Ligny near S6dan, which was the very thing he desired
to do. Remembering, however, that he had once out-
witted d'Epernon in a quarrel with the latter 's nephew,
whose side the Duke had espoused, he sent some of
his Italian friends to confer with the Marquis de la
Valette and the Archbishop of Toulouse. Their father

being resolute to have nothing to do with Ruccelai,

172

Traitor and Favourite

the abbe caused d'^pernon to be informed that he held
in his hands enough proof of some of his later treacheries
to Louis XIII. to send him to the block, and d'Epernon,
who knew that the boast was most probably founded
on fact, at once consented to meet him.

With the successful escape of the Queen from Blois
these pages are not concerned, but as many historians,
including Voltaire, who could twist history to his own
purposes as well as any writer, have claimed much
credit for the Due d'Epernon in this matter, it has
been mentioned here. It may also be remarked that
Ruccelai divided a hundred thousand crowns (twelve
thousand pounds of English money of that day and
nearly fifty thousand pounds of our time) between the
Due de Bouillon and the Due d'Epernon. The sum was
obtained from the sale of much of the Queen's jewellery,
and was taken, at least as regards d'Epemon's share, for
the ostensible reason of providing more troops to protect
Metz against the attacks of the Austrians and Spaniards.
*♦♦♦♦♦

Catherine Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues,* one of

* The name of this family was for over a hundred years spelt in
different ways. In the time of Henri IV. it was almost universally
written as above, and I have preferred to follow the custom of
Henriette's period. It is to be also remarked that neither the
" Catherine " nor the " de Balzac " was used by those who write of
her, or by herself, except in legal documents. As Henriette d'Entragues
she exists for posterity and, as that, I, therefore, speak of her.

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

the persons upon whom has rested for exactly three
centuries the evil reputation of being concerned in a
Court conspiracy to slay Henri IV. — out of revenge for
his having broken his promise to marry her — was the
daughter of Fran9ois de Balzac, Seigneur d'Entragues
and Governor of Orleans, and of Marie Touchet, who
had been both nurse and mistress to Charles IX.
Although Sully states that Gabrielle was not absolutely
beautiful, but could only lay claim to being a pretty
woman, Henriette has been spoken of as inferior to
her in good looks.* She was, however, slight and
well-made, extremely distinguished-looking, and
possessed of a superb figure. Her mouth was small,
but hard and determined ; her glance commanding
and authoritative ; pride and contempt for others being
the characteristics most strongly expressed on her
face. Nor were these traits belied by her nature. Few,
except those of the highest rank, came before her who
were not made to feel that she regarded them as utterly
insignificant, and it was often suggested in connection
with her that, whenever a conceited man or woman
over-estimated any qualities he or she possessed, they

* The remarkable dissimilarity between the portraits in this work
and the description of those whom they are intended to represent,
cannot fail to be noticed. Yet the former are the works of leading
artists of the period, and the descriptions are taken from the best con-
temporary authors.

Traitor and Favourite

should be brought face to face with Henriette d'En-
tragues, after which they would probably retire with
their self-estimation very considerably reduced, if not
shattered.

It was not long after the death of Gabrielle — which
at first he mourned so bitterly ! — that Henri, over-
hearing some of his friends and courtiers (including
Bassompierre, who hints that the conversation was
arranged for his, or, rather, Henriette's benefit) speaking
of the lady's beauty, expressed a desire to see her.
From the moment he did so the usual spark was struck
in his bosom and he laid siege to her, while probably
imagining that it would be the same in his case as it
generally is with kings, " who rarely sue in vain."
In one particular he undoubtedly judged aright. Hen-
riette was as willing to be wooed and won as Henri was
to woo and win, but, ere she was satisfied to accept the
King's love, she was desirous of knowing what the
reward was likely to be for the acceptance of it. She
had not forgotten, as none in all but the most remote
parts of France had forgotten, provided they ever knew,
that nothing but the sudden death of Gabrielle could
have prevented her from becoming Queen, since the
Pope had, at the last moment of her life, announced his
willingness to divorce Henri from Marguerite de Valois,
whether she consented or not, and thus provide France

175

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

with an already existing heir in the shape of the Due
de Vendome. Now, therefore, that Henriette was
likely to take the place of the late favourite, she was
resolved that she would also, at the same time, fall
heir to the splendid position which that favourite would
have obtained had she lived. Consequently, she angled
for the King's capture with all the astuteness of the
most worldly coquette, and the more strongly her lover
carried on the siege the more cleverly did she repulse
him. Whenever Henri proposed a visit to her father's
house she met him, apparently casually, with a dis-
appointed and woebegone air, and stated that her
parents were so opposed to his Majesty's pursuit of
her that it was impossible to accord him even the
shortest of interviews, but, at the same period, since
her business aptitudes were always considerable, she
accepted a gift of a hundred thousand crowns from her
impetuous admirer !

The gift was, however, but a drop in the ocean in
comparison with that which she intended to obtain
eventually, but recognizing that a man of the King's
temperament might not be always disposed to continue
distributing such platonic largesse, she had recourse to
a scheme to ensure her future in which she was aided
by her mother and father, the former of whom had

had considerable experience of a very similar affair.

176

Traitor and Favourite

Consequently, she announced that, short of Henri
giving her a written promise of marriage, which
marriage should take place the moment the Pope
had carried out his promise and divorced him from
Marguerite, her parents would separate her from him
for ever.

It is, perhaps, needless to say that the written promise
already referred to in these pages was given with the
best will in the world. Before, however, it was handed
to the astute young lady, Henri — who rarely did any-
thing of importance without consulting Sully or without
telling him afterwards of what he had already done —
showed him the contract he had written. Sully (who
was at this time Baron de Rosny, his dukedom being yet
to come), read the paper in silence and then returned
it to his master, who naturally remonstrated with him
on his manner. On this, the Minister exclaimed several
times, " You will marry her ! You will marry her ! '*
and, on the King indicating that such was his un-
doubted intention, Sully took the paper back (as has
been told) and tore it into pieces. " You are mad !
You are a fool ! " Henri cried, even his easy nature
being aroused at last, whereupon Sully, with his usual
rough brusquerie, exclaimed, '* It is true, sire, yet I ^
wish to Heaven I were the only one in France." The

finale to his episode (as has also been told) was that

177 12

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

Henri picked up the pieces of paper, retired into his
private room and, putting them together, made a
fresh copy of the promise of marriage, which copy he
shortly afterwards handed to Henriette, whom, a Httle
later, he created Marquise de Verneuil.

From this time forward until his death Henri was,
more or less, in the toils of his astute Favorite dedaree,
and that in spite of the fact that he had married Mariei
de Medici. At the same time he was, however, by no
means averse to indulging in a little diplomacy on his
own part which preserved the peace between them for
a certain time. Henriette having retired to inspect
the property which she had acquired with her title,
was kept in total ignorance that negotiations were in
hand for bringing about his marriage with Marie de
M6dici, but when she did learn how she had been
hoodwinked her rage was terrible. It was, however,
ineffectual. She had gone to Lyons to receive the
banners recently captured by Henri from the troops
of the Duke of Savoy, and, though she was flattered
by this openly expressed homage, she refused to remain
a moment longer in the city after she heard that the
marriage with la grosse banquiire, as she termed the
future queen, was imminent. When, at last, she con-
sented to see the King she treated him to such a torrent

of vituperation that even his easy temper was scarcely

178

Traitor, and Favourite

proof against her fury. Henriette, in addition to the
above appellation, now commenced to use, and to con-
tinue to use, the most offensive terms her vocabulary
could supply. She spoke of herself as the queen — ^by
written promise — and of the Queen in the worst
manner — namely, as what she was herself ; her son was
truly the dauphin, she said, and the Dauphin what her
own son actually was ; and she refused to let that son
be nursed and brought up with the Dauphin on the plea
that the legal one to whom she had given birth could
not associate with the son of the Florentine mistress.

Henri bore it well for a long time, while doubtless
remembering that whatever he had to endure was due
to his own failings ; but at last he retaliated. The
continual questions about his hanquiere — a double shaft
at one of the commercial pursuits of the Medicis as well
as at the money which Marie had brought him — roused
him eventually. To a repeated question of when la
grosse hanquiere would return to the Court from Fontaine-
bleau, he retaliated, " When I have swept all the im-
proper women out of it."

Henriette's first attempt to insult the Queen had been
at the moment when Marie, on arriving in Paris, had
requested that all the ladies of the Court should be
presented to her. Among them was Henriette, who
was introduced by the Duchesse de Nemours. Henri,

179 12*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

however, possibly with a view to avoiding unpleasant

questions and complications in the future, and in a

manner which shows as plainly as anything can show

what the state of society was at that time, exclaimed

to his newly-made wife as the presentation of Henriette

was made, " Celle-ci a etc ma maitresse," a startling

piece of information which Marie received with a chilly

stare at the handsome beauty and Henriette with an air

of utter indifference. A moment later, since it was

necessary that the debutantes should bend low and,

lifting the hem of the Queen's robe, kiss it, Henriette,

scarcely bending at all from her considerable height,

grasped the dress close by the Queen's knee and roughly

lifted it towards her lips. Henri was not, however,

disposed to see this slight put upon his newly-made

wife and, seizing the other's hand, forced it to the hem

^of the robe and compelled his mistress to perform her

part properly.

These incidents created, as was natural enough,

considerable sensation. Almost every writer of the

period has left an account of them on record, and all

the ambassadors mentioned them to their governments

in their next despatches.

As she had begun when Henriette d'Entragues, so

she continued when Marquise de Verneuil. She was,

indeed, the poison of the unfortunate Queen's life,

1 80

Traitor and Favourite

though, in administering the draught, she did not escape
from swallowing some of the drops herself. She
showed the promise of marriage from Henri to everyone
who would take the trouble to look at it until, at last,
she became almost a laughing-stock ; and, had she not
possessed within her a strong power for evil, would
have ended by becoming one. Later, however, when
she finally recognized that, do what she might, the
Queen would always be the Queen and she nothing but
the favourite, she informed the King that she intended
to leave France with her children and take up her abode
in England ; whereupon Henri, tired of the handsome
virago's frequent outbreaks, if not of her charms, con-
sented to her doing so. He also saw in this suggestion
the long desired opportunity for obtaining possession
of the much exhibited promise of marriage, and,
consequently, would only give his permission for
Henriette to depart out of France on condition that she
restored it to him. She, on her part, was equal to the
occasion and, seeing in the transaction a chance of
gratifying her unfailing cupidity, demanded twenty
thousand crowns and the promise of the rank of a
marshal for her father in exchange for the paper. The
money was paid, and the promise given, with an
alacrity that was little flattering to her feelings.

The Marquise had, however, no intention whatever

i8i

Thej^Fate of Henry of Navarre

of exiling herself, and, as she no longer had any tangible

claim on her lover, she next conceived the design of a

treasonable plot to slay the King and the Dauphin

and put her own son on the throne ; and in this

plot she involved her father and her half-brother,

the Comte d'Auvergne — a son of her mother and

Charles IX.

The plot was suggested to England (1) and Spain,

it is said, but James I. — who hated bloodshed where

kings were concerned — instantly exposed it to Henri

with the result that Henriette found herself a prisoner

in her own house under the charge of the Captain of

the Watch, while, always bold and defiant, she rejected

an offer of pardon made by Henri on the ground that

she knew nothing whatever of the scheme, and that,

where there was no sin, a pardon was unnecessary.

She also refused to appear before the Commissioners

appointed to examine her and her brother on the ground

that she had recently been bled (a custom indulged in

with great regularity by the upper classes at this period

and for long afterwards), but, in actual fact, because

she was anxious to know how the Comte d'Auvergne

had comported himself during his examination. The

manner in which he had done so was by betra3dng her

as the head of the conspiracy, and, when the Marquise

heard this, she informed the King that the only demand

182

Traitor and Favourite

she required him to grant was ** A rope for her brother,
a pardon for her father, and justice for herself." The
latter request was by no means acceded to, or, at least,
was much perverted, since she obtained something very
different from what she deserved. After being detained
at the Abbey of Beaumont-les-Tours, where she was
treated with every indulgence, she was fully pardoned
and, a little while afterwards, had again ensnared the
King in her toils. From these he only escaped occa-
sionally by transferring his affections to several other
ladies in succession. Her father and brother were con-
demned to death, but, beyond being detained for some
time, suffered no other punishment.

This was the first attempt at treason on the part of
La Marquise de Verneuil, but we shall see later that,
if it was her last, her powers of intrigue, treachery and
womanly spite have been much overrated.

Henriette was still a young woman at the time of this
conspiracy, and was, indeed, but twenty-seven at the
time of the assassination of Henri. But her tempestuous
passions had aged her before her time and she had
become a self-indulgent woman, fond of the table and
good cheer. She was also a bitterly disappointed one,
since, after Gabrielle had so nearly approached the
throne that nothing but her death prevented her from
ascending it, Henriette had every reason to suppose

183

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

that, with the written promise of marriage in her pocket,
she would undoubtedly do so in her place. For, when
Gabrielle died and Henriette became almost immediately
her successor, Henri was not looking out for a wealthy
bride, and it was in the power of the latter, as it had
been in that of the former, to so enthral him that, in
spite of his necessities and lack of money, he would
never have thought of doing so. That she should,
therefore, have become " yellow and thin " — it was the
victory of the wife over the mistress that the King
should have used these very words about the latter
when writing to the former ! — that she should have
become fat and enormous — la grosse banquiere was at
last avenged ! — and that, finally, she should have
nothing to think of but her meals, which she loved, is,
consequently, not to be wondered at.*

But if the high feeding in which she indulged made
her gross, there was a reason which, earlier, might well
have made her yellow and thin. The grossness came
after the death of Henri, the latter before it. For a
long time she lived under the apprehension that the
Queen intended to have her made away with, a fear
which, remembering how poison was freely administered
to rivals and enemies in those days, and remembering

♦ The latter part of the description of La Marquise de Verneuil
is that of Tallemant des Reaux. He knew much — and he was not
one to curb his pen !

184

Traitor and Favourite

also the reputation borne by the de M^dicis in connection
with the art of poisoning, was not unreasonable.

In any case, there was a strong rumour over all Paris
that Henriette had gone too far and that, though the
Queen might have tolerated a well-concealed affaire
with her husband, she could not endure the other
woman's open insolence. Once Marie had been heard
to cry out that the " creature " had no other aim in
life but to torture her and plunge her into continued
sorrow, and she had concluded by saying that, at the
right time, she would avenge herself. She was also
known to have written to her uncle, the Grand Duke,
in a similar strain, but she received only cold comfort
from him. It was the habit of this astute and ease-
loving personage to invariably endeavour to calm the
distracted feelings of his niece and to reconcile her to
what he was pleased to deem nothing more than small
domestic worries. The manner in which he did so was
a peculiar, as well as a diplomatic, one. He would
write to Marie reminding her that he had made her
Queen of the — at the moment — most powerful country
in Europe, when he might, on the contrary, have con-
signed her to an obscure position in Portugal, or to a
third-rate Italian duchy ; and he generally concluded
his epistles by telling her that he was thoroughly annoyed
with her — to which he occasionally added that he was

185

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

also thoroughly ashamed of her peevish complaints.
The Queen, in consequence, got little sympathy from
her uncle on this occasion, nor was it very probable that
she would ever do so. Such a trifle as a mistress in a
Court over which Marie reigned supreme, after her
husband, would probably appear to him no more worthy
of serious notice than a leaf which had blown across
her face as she took her daily walk in the gardens of
the Tuileries would be.

Nevertheless, as Richelieu states — and he was at
this time watching everything that occurred with a
hawk-like eye ! — the matter was considered to be grave.
The Queen, of whom Henriette spoke as " a woman of
vindictive Florentine blood," was causing the latter to
be shadowed in every movement, while Henriette was
so afraid that she would shortly be openly insulted
by Marie and held up to the contempt of everyone at
Court, that she refrained from attending it.

At the same time, Henri received several anonymous
communications to the effect that the life of his mistress
was in serious danger of being cut short, and — although
Richelieu astutely hints that the information came
from the Queen, who considered this the best method
of frightening her rival out of the city — they at least
struck terror to the hearts of the King and Henriette.
If the intention of the writer had been to drive the

i86

I' ^^'"/^ iii% Icmnkncurlc'id nrnffdiu'c^

Th:.l-Lju.-fc,

iiMOTtt . r'«

Henriette de Balzac d'Entkacue
(Marquise de Verneuil).

\_Facing p. 186

Traitor and Favourite

already terrified woman from Paris it undoubtedly
succeeded admirably. Henri sent her off accompanied
b\/ a considerable body of troops and peace was estab-
lished at the Louvre for some time.

Meanwhile, the appellation by which Henri had been
pleased to introduce Henriette to the Queen never
ceased to belong to her ; instead of saying " celle-ci a
eid," he should have said " celle-ci est.*' She never
utterly lost the position she held towards him at that
time, although she shared the honour with several
other ladies, and although she was concerned in, or, at
least, was well acquainted with, all the plots laid against
his life.*

On the death of Henri, Henriette put forth a claim
to a pension, and, either because Louis XIH. had not
then developed the extreme prudery which was after-
wards so conspicuous in him — a remarkable contrast to
his father, son and great-great-grandson ! f — or because
he had not then developed the somewhat parsimonious
habits which took possession of him in his later days,
she obtained one. His Majesty allowed her a grant
for life of three thousand crowns, so that, with what
she had earlier obtained from Henri, she was well
provided for.

♦ M^moires, Bassompierre, Richelieu, Montglat and Cardinal
Borghese.

I Louis XV., great-grandson of Louis XIV.

187

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

In this and the preceding sketches an attempt has
been made to depict only those who were the leading
persons in Paris at the time of the murder of Henri IV.
— there were not many who towered immensely above
the others — but there are still a number of pawns in
the game who have yet to play their parts. Ravaillac,
who struck the blows that killed the King, has to be
brought before the reader's notice later on ; but
Ravaillac was in no way connected with those who
have been described. A man who was so poor at the
time that, a day or so before he did the deed, he stood
hat in hand outside a church door begging for alms,
and who stole the knife with which he slew the King
either from off a butcher's block or from the miserable
tavern wherein he harboured, would have no part or
parcel with the leading personages of France. Nor
would a woman yet to be mentioned, one who was wild
and wanton and depraved, it is said, and a discarded
lady's maid — yet still one who, hearing of a plot to slay
Henri, nobly sacrificed her freedom for ever and risked
sacrificing her existence — have any more place amongst
them than had the assassin himself. And there were
yet others concerned in the various endeavours to de-
prive the King of his life. Nobles who hated Henri for
having defeated them in the great game of war,

for having obtained a throne from which they had

i88

Traitor and Favourite

striven their utmost to keep him ; women, too, some
of high rank, who had been passed over or flung
aside by Henri when intoxicated with the charms of
Gabrielle d'Estrees or Henriette d'Entragues ; discarded
soldiers and men of broken fortunes, Jesuits, spies
of Spain, Austria, Italy and other countries — and
many more.

But to bring, as carefully as can be, a clear picture

before the eyes of those into whose hands these pages

may chance to fall, it will shortly become necessary

for the subject to cease to be of a biographical nature

and to assume the form of a narrative, while special

care has to be taken to prevent the deed of Ravaillac

.from being blended with a plot conceived in circles to

which he could never have obtained admission. Great

care has, indeed, to be taken to dispel — even if it can

be dispelled ! — the idea which has for long years held

possession of readers and students, namely, that

Ravaillac was but a weapon in the hands of those far

above him, and that, when he struck the King to the

heart, he but did so at the instigation of d'^pernon, the

Marquise de Vemeuil, one or two other cast-off mistresses

of Henri, and — as some have ventured to hint — of the

Queen herself. For Ravaillac, the fanatic, the seer of

visions, the wretched, provincial schoolmaster, had no

more connection with the wealthy and highly-placed

189

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

men and women of Henri's Court than he had with
Phihp II. of Spain, who was hiring murderers right and
left to assassinate all prominent Protestants ; or than
he had with the lurking assassins and cut-throats who
hid in the slums of Paris ready to hire out their daggers
to any who would pay their services with a handful of
silver ; or with the French fugitives who had fled to
Milan or Florence or Naples, but were willing to risk
returning to Paris when the hour they awaited was at
hand and when the wherewithal for the cost of their
journey across the Alps was forthcoming.

In fine, d'lfepernon and his associates knew nothing
of Ravaillac or his diseased mind and hideous determina-
tions, and Ravaillac knew nothing of the fact that an
envious and furious nobleman had banded himself with
some envenomed and embittered women to send the
ruler of France to his tomb. Ravaillac could not see,
or anticipate, that on the day he struck the blow other
assassins were ready and lurking near the King's route
prepared to do the deed themselves ; the Court plotters
could not see, or anticipate, that, ere their intentions
could be carried out, a beggar in the streets would
have done the work they had paid their hirelings to
perform.

D'Epernon lived to find himself utterly discredited
at Court ; ignored by the successor of the King he so '

190

Traitor and Favourite

hated, flouted by the greatest Minister — Richelieu —
that France has ever known, jeered at by the populace
and despised by all. Voltaire quotes a story, often
told before his day, of the manner in which d'Epernon
endeavoured to appear indifferent to the treatment
that was now his portion. Descending the great stair-
case of the Louvre he met Richelieu ascending it, and,
on the Cardinal asking indifferently if there was any-
thing new taking place, d'Epernon replied, *' Nothing,
except that, as you see, I am going down and you are
going up." It is the only witticism ever attributed
to him, and it would have been well if his memory could
have been charged with more of such humorous sallies
and with less crimes and brutalities.* It does not,
indeed, appear that, devoted to treachery as he was, he
was ever a traitor to Henri III. but he had still other
desires which he lost no opportunity of gratifying.
His insatiable greed was never slaked, nor did he in-
tend that it should be. Beside the wealth, possessions
and high offices he obtained from him whom he
served, he induced his first master to persuade the
sister of Queen Louise to become engaged to him, and
he passed his softer hours in endeavouring to win the
affections of any young Spanish ladies of position who
happened to be of the Court circle, so that, when he

♦ La Vie du Due d'Espernon, par Girard, son secrdtairet
191

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

had them in his power, he could force them to divulge
the secret intentions of Spain concerning France under
Henri III., and its future action against the man who
would almost of a certainty become Henri IV.

Finally, he died a miserable old man and, as his sons
left no successors, the name of d'Epernon, as con-
nected with him, became blotted out of the records of
France.

Note. — The Elizabethan dramatist, George Chapman (i 559-1634),
produced in 161 3, a drama founded on the career of d'^^pernon. It
is powerful but inaccurate. Chapman was too close a contemporary
of d'^pernon to have learnt all that there was to be known about
him.

192

CHAPTER V

THE CRIME

TT has already been suggested that, perhaps, no man
who ever lived before or since his time saw more
clearly that his end would be a violent one than did
Henri IV. It is, however, probable that, at first, when
he was struggling to maintain his hold on the remnant
of his own poor little country of Navarre, which Spain,
if not France, was always endeavouring to wrench
away from him and incorporate in her own vast domains,
he did not imagine that the violence of his death would
take place in any other manner than that which no
brave soldier fears to meet, namely, in the field. There
was, at that time, no reason for the assassin to ply his
horrible trade. It is true that Henri was a Protestant,
a person the most detested of all people in the greater
part of Europe, and doubly so when, either as man or
woman, he or she sat upon a throne. Elizabeth was
the greatest monarch in Europe and a Protestant, and
every schoolboy knows to what she was exposed and

193 13

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

from what she escaped, only by her own force of
character, her hon-like bravery and her capacity for
inspiring awe in all beneath her, and especially in those
who sought to harm her.* So, too, was William the
Silent, Prince of Orange, a Protestant, and he fell by
the bullets of Balthazar Gerard, while there were some
rulers of petty German States who had embraced that
Faith but had escaped the destiny that found others
greater than thej^, and the same may be said of James L,
who, as James of Scotland, was the first Protestant King
of that country. With Henri his obscurity, while
only the ruler of a small State, was his security. There
was little need to murder him ; if he escaped bullet
and swordthrust in the many melees in which he
was continually concerned — as it was far from likely

* One of the least known instances of these attempts was that of a
young Scotchwoman whose husband had died of grief on hearing of
the death of Mary, Queen of Scots, and who made her way to Ehza-
beth's Court, determined to assassinate her. In the crowd of courtiers
one of the pistols with which she was armed fell to the floor, and she
was instantly seized upon. Elizabeth, after regarding her coldly for a
moment, said : "■ You considered it your duty to slay me ; what do
you now suppose is my duty towards you ? " " Is it as Queen or judge
that you ask me this ? " the culprit demanded boldly. " As Queen,"
Elizabeth replied. " Then as a woman to a woman you should grant
me grace," the other said. " How shall I know you will not again
attempt my hfe ? " queried EUzabeth. " Madam," the prisoner re-
plied, " a grace accorded with such precaution is no grace. You had
best treat me as though you were a judge," " Go, you are free,"
the Queen said now, while, turning to her courtiers, she exclaimed : " I
have received the best lesson I have ever learnt in the thirty years
that I have reigned."

194

The Crime

he would do — then there were powers who, either
single-handed or combined, could at last deprive him
of his original throne at the time when they con-
sidered he had been long enough an obstacle in their
way.

If, however, Henri had never supposed that a violent
death would be his portion in any other shape or form
than that of a soldier's fate, he was undeceived from
the moment when he, following his mother, Jeanne
d'Albret, Queen of Navarre in her own right,* arrived
in Paris in 1572 to espouse Marguerite de Valois, between
whom and him a marriage had been discussed and
arranged by their relatives from the time he was a boy.
This union was projected for more reasons than one,
the principal being that, thereby, Navarre would
become an appanage of the French crown, if not an
integral portion of France, instead of falling into the
ever-grasping hands of Philip II. of Spain. Yet, in the

* Perefixe, Archbishop of Paris, states, in his Histoire de Henri le
Grand, that Henri had great good fortune in finding the French crown
devolve on him, as there had never been in any hereditary State a
succession more remote, there being, at one time, ten or eleven
degrees of separation between him and his predecessor, Henri IH.
When he was born, the Archbishop also remarks, there were nine
princes of the blood before him, viz., Henri II. and his five sons ;
Henri's own father, Antoine, King of Navarre by marriage with his
mother, and two elder brothers of his own. Every one of them died
before the succession, if not the immediate possession, was open to
him. The two brothers were infants who died before Henri was born,
but it is to be observed that Perefixe is himself uncertain as to whether
the total count was nine, ten or eleven.

195 13*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

heart of the unscrupulous Catherine de Medici, who had
the principal part in bringing^ about the marriage, there
was still another reason, though one that was distaste-
ful to her. Two of her sons, Francois II. and Charles
IX. — who was still living — had sat on the throne, but
to neither of them had a son been vouchsafed.
Frangois II., dying at the age of seventeen, had been
accorded no heir by Mary, Queen of Scots, whose first
husband he was ; and Charles, who had always been
peculiar and early gave signs of the madness which seized
upon him after he had consented to the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew's Eve, was married to Elizabeth,
daughter of the Emperor Maximilian II., but had
no lawful children. To him, therefore, would succeed
Henri III. (at this time Due d'Anjou and shortly to
be elected King of Poland) ; and though he would
doubtless marry — as he eventually did — his habits of
life, his unspeakable depravity and bis miserable frame
scarcely seemed to promise that from him would spring
a successor to the throne of his ancestors. With him
and the Due d'Alengon* gone, there would be none to
assume that throne but Henri de Bourbon, a Pro-
testant and head of the fifth branch of that still more
ancient race, the Capets, from whom both Valois and

* He died 1584. He was the youngest surviving sod of Henry II.
and Catherine de Medici, a fifth having died in infancy.

196

The Crime

Bourbons deduced their royalty and their rights to the
crown of France.

This — ^the disappearance of all those whom Catherine
de Medici, after ten years of childlessness, had provided
as heirs to that crown, coupled with the fact that they
themselves could leave no heirs behind — was gall and
wormwood to her dark and gloomy soul. She loathed
Protestantism — she was the prime instigator of the
impending massacre {i.e., 1572) ; yet here, in Paris,
was the only man who appeared likely ever to sit firmly
on the French throne ; he who was a Protestant, a
Huguenot ! With the above-mentioned views concerning
Navarre she had, therefore, arranged the marriage of
her daughter Marguerite with this Protestant, yet it
is scarcely possible that, later, the fact had escaped her
mind that, with all her sons either dead or childless,
and with Marguerite married to Henri of Navarre, the
young Princess stood a great chance of becoming Queen
of France and bearing a son, who, in time, woidd him-
self become the King. Thus, in one way, the race of
Valois would be perpetuated, and she, who was the
wife of one king and the mother of three kings, would
become also the grandmother of another.* The mar-
riage, a loveless one, a manage de convenance in the

* Marguerite de Valois rivalled, and did, indeed, outstrip her mother
in this particular. For she was the daughter of a king, sister of
three kings and the wife of a fifth.

197

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

strictest sense, took place but two or three days before
the Massacre itself, and since it was decided that every
Protestant in Paris (and France, if possible) should
be slaughtered, it was not intended that Henri de
Navarre should be spared. Yet Marguerite de Valois,
who not only had no love for him — she was at the
moment deeply in love with the Due de Guise ! — ^but,
also, no liking for him, learnt that there was no inten-
tion of sparing her husband and, by keeping him in the
apartments allotted to them in the Louvre, undoubtedly
saved his life. It is also far from likely that she was
unaware of the suspicions directed against Catherine
de M6dici concerning the sudden death of his mother,
and, if such were the case, she would know well enough
that it was not probable that the son would be treated
more mercifully at this time.

This was the first actual attempt, or plot, to assassi-
nate Henri, and, between it and the time when that of
Ravaillac succeeded, seventeen more were to intervene.
It is not, therefore, strange that he should at last come
to regard a violent death in the future as likely to be as
much due to assassination as to the chances of war.

It is, indeed, certain that such was the case, and that,

as the years passed, he apprehended murder far more

than he had ever apprehended death in any other |

form.

198

The Crime

As, however, the days went on and one attempt
after another failed, it is not improbable that the sense
of apprehension became dulled, and there was little
exhibition of its existence until the time drew near for
the last one to succeed. It has been mentioned that
he ignored the reports repeated to him by his son, the
Due de Vendome, and that but a few hours later he was
dead. Yet, indifferent as he might be, he could not
help recognizing that there was abroad in the minds of
all his subjects a feeling of certainty that he was a
doomed man. And his discernment, which was con-
siderable, could not fail to tell him that this feeling
would never have become so general if, amongst all
who possessed it and expressed it, there were not some
who knew only too well what was in the wind. When
Henri cried out to Sully, as he did more than once,
** Pardieu I I shall die in this town ; they will kill
me," he was but uttering words of the truth of which
he had a full conviction.

He uttered, however, still more strange expressions

which go far to justify the suspicions many of his people

then formed, and continued to hold long afterwards,

that his wife was at the head of some conspiracy against

him. She had been most eager that he should let her

be crowned Queen and had complained again and again

that that sacred rite had never taken place ; that since

199

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

he was once more going to take the field (shortly before
his death) it was a duty to her and to the Dauphin that
it should do so at once, since, if he were slain, the Etats-
generaux would never consent to make her Queen-Regent
or guardian to the boy, Louis, without it having been
performed. This latter reason was, undoubtedly, the
true one ; the cause of her desire. No woman in her
position would be willing to see herself suddenly sink
from the rank of Queen-Consort to a cipher ; no mother
would wish to lose all hold upon the direction and bring-
ing-up of a son who was but nine years of age, and still
less so a mother whose son was at that age King of a
great country. Yet more than half, more than three-
quarters, of the French people refused to regard matters
in this light, and they justified their belief by recalling
the fact that the truculent d'l^pernon strode into the
Council Chamber a day after Henri's death, and, laying
his hand upon his sword, threatened the Council with
internal warfare if Marie was not elected Regent and
guardian of Louis.

Yet this action should, in point of fact, have conduced
more to clear Marie de Medici in the eyes of the public
than to render that public suspicious of her. For if
such violence on the part of d'Epernon was necessary,
of what use was the consecration in St. Denis two days
before ; what benefit had it conferred on her that the

200

The Crime

upstart duke would not have obtained for her without
it ? The country was plunged in misery after the long
wars in which it had been engaged at home and abroad,
and by the terrible taxation necessary to support those
wars. Henri's hope that the day would come when
every peasant would have a fowl in his pot-au-feu was
more remote from likelihood than had, perhaps, been
the case for centuries. If, therefore, d'^pernon forced
on another civil war, as he had the power to do, ruin
would fall on France and she would be at the mercy
of her two great enemies, Spain and Austria. Con-
sequently, the Council, knowing all this, had no other
course but to yield and it yielded, though in doing so
it outstepped the Law, which was that, when a Regent
had to be elected, he or she should be so elected by the
Etats-generaux. Where, therefore, was there any proof
that, in demanding her coronation, Marie had, amongst
other things, some sinister ideas of a plot against her
husband's life ; where was there any connection between
d';6pemon's authoritative behaviour and the performance
of a deeply solemn, rehgious ceremony to which every
Queen-Consort was entitled, and to which she was by
right entitled from the moment her marriage had
taken place ? Yet Marie had been married to Henri
for ten years, he being King of France at the time of
that marriage, and the ceremony had never been

201

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

accorded her, nor, if Henri had been able to have his
own way, would it have ever occurred.*

For, in a somewhat similar manner to those three-
fourths of his people, though in still a different one,
he, too, saw something threatening in the consecration.
But the people drew ominous deductions after his
murder from its having taken place ; Henri drew
terrible forebodings from the fact that Marie was
pressing him for its performance, and from his belief
that, once it did take place, the ceremony would bring
evil to him.

" Ce maudit sacre / " he exclaimed, using a strange
combination of words in connection with such a func-
tion, " will be my ruin, my death." " It will bring
me to my end," he said to Sully again and again, while
to Marie he pleaded that the expense would be enormous,
that it was imnecessary, that she had done well enough
without it for ten years — anything, indeed, that he
thought might induce her to forego her desire.

Marie prevailed, however, and, since the murder of
Henri did actually follow swiftly after the ceremony,
it is nothing short of extraordinary that what cannot

* Henri was from the first much against Marie's coronation, saying
that it would bring him ill-luck. Yet he joked with her after-
wards about it — for one day I — calling her " Madame la Regente,"
and pretending to take orders from her, and, as she returned from
St. Denis, flicking drops of water on her from the balcony upon which
he stood.

202

The Crime

be described as aught else but a prescience or premoni-
tion of ill-fortune should have been accorded him. Or —
is it possible that, to him, there had been conveyed a
more tangible, if less superstitious, warning ? Is it pos-
sible that, from among those in Paris who had, beyond
all doubt, become possessed of the knowledge that
harm was intended him, one, if not more, had spoken,
or rather written, plainly, and that Henri (while find-
ing in what was, doubtless, an anonymous letter some-
thing that bore the appearance, if not the certainty,
of truth), recognized that his correspondent was neither
writing with a view to payment nor to terrify or cajole
him ? And did he also, understanding aU this, lock
the secret up in his own breast, or only come near to
revealing it by his exclamations to Sully and by his
reluctance to quit his wife's side and go forth day by
day, not knowing on which the blow would faU ?

As a matter of fact, there was more than one person
in Paris who could have revealed to the doomed man
the certainty that he was marked for death ; yet,
strangely enough, while one of those persons could
have testified that a plot was laid which should engulf
him, there were others, there was, at least, one other,
who, working as stealthily as a mole works, was — all
unknown to whatever conspirators might exist, and

imknown even to himself — to mar that plot.

203

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

It is necessary, therefore, to now proceed to examine
who there was out of the whole population of Paris
who knew, as after events showed, what was in hand,
and, even if no information was given to Henri, was
at least capable of giving it to others nearly connected
with him.

There was in the Capital at this time a woman about
whom — although the facts of her existence and position
were well known, and have been handed down to later
times — exceedingly diverse accounts have been given.
Her name was Jacqueline le Voyer, and she came from
a small village named Orfin, near ^pernon, from which
the Due took his title. She had very early in her life
married a man who had once been a simple soldier in
the King's Guards, but had, later, followed the more
lucrative trade of a spy. His name was Isaac de
Varennes, he being also le Sieur d'Escoman, or Comans.
He and his wife lived unhappily together and soon
separated, and Jacqueline le Voyer proceeded to Paris
with the idea of obtaining a position of maid-of-honour,
companion, or even lady's-maid to some woman of good
position. Thus far all accounts agree, but from this point
they differ widely. Those most against her state that
she was lame and hump-backed — defects which merited
pity ! — and also possessed a bitter tongue and an evil
temper, while they add that she managed to exist by

204

The Crime

making herself useful to many of the grandes dames
of Paris as an intermediary between them and their
admirers. On the other hand, those who speak more
favourably of her state that, in spite of her physical
misfortunes, she was not of unpleasing appearance
and, though somewhat harsh and querulous, was
ordinarily gentle and well-behaved, and also that,
instead of following a contemptible occupation, she
had once been maid-of-honour to Marguerite de Valois
— now growing old and very charitable to the poor —
and had sought to become maid-of-honour to the
Queen.

No matter, however, which account is right or which
is wrong, Jacqueline le Voyer possessed a valiant nature,
as will be soon apparent.

For some months before the death of Henri she had

been spoken of as a woman who was uttering strange

statements and spreading false, or improbable, reports

as to attempts about to be made upon the King's life,

while, in doing so, she had not scrupled to connect with

these attempts the name of the Due d'Epernon — from

whose neighbourhood, it will have been seen, she came —

and that of Henriette d'Entragues, Marquise de Vemeuil,

with whom she was said to have lived as companion

or maid. By some she was described as une folk ; by

others as a woman embittered by her lack of ordinary

205

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

good-looks and, consequently, harsh-tongued and given

to scandal, and also as one who was enraged at not

having been properly rewarded for her ignoble services

to great ladies. There were still some others who

spoke of her as being a cast-off mistress of d'^pernon,

which seems to have been unlikely, considering her

afflictions. L'Estoile, however, says nothing of the

kind beyond hinting that she allowed herself to go too

far and incurred a terrible retribution by doing so.

Bassompierre passes her over in almost contempt,

while the historians confine themselves to recording her

story to the Council ten months after the death of Henri,

and also her sentence.

But the statements of ten months afterwards did not

vary very much from what they had been before the

murder, and both the earlier and the later ones received

strange confirmation from what did occur beyond

all doubt. One of her charges was that the Marquise

de Verneuil was a leading feature in the plot against

the King, and we have seen in the description of that

lady that she, her father and her brother, were absolutely

involved in a plot against him. Another was that

d'Epemon was the second conspirator, and we have

full proof of the fact that, from the time of Henri

obtaining the throne, the man's existence was spent in

plotting against him, of his being suspected of such

206

The Crime

acts, and of his losing most of his great charges and
offices, and of, indeed, his being banished to one of
them — Loches — as a punishment. Moreover, Epernon,
a little, insignificant town near Rambouillet, was the
centre of his estates and the name of his duchy and
close to the birthplace of Jacqueline le Voyer ; while,
as she was in the habit of wandering about and, probably,
of visiting her old home — ^which was, like Rambouillet,
but a short distance from Paris — it is not unlikely that
she may there have picked up scraps of intelligence
which would not have reached her ears in a great
city.

There are, however, some still more extraordinary
corroborations of the fact that, whatever this woman
knew before the murder of the King, or whatever she
told afterwards when confronted with her judges, she
was not alone in her ideas.

Prior to the destruction of the Bastille during the
French Revolution — in which place were preserved not
only its own archives but also many remarkable docu-
ments relating to State affairs,* there was amongst them
a paper entitled " Extrait d'un Manuscrit trotive d la mort
de M. d'Aumale en son cabinet, signe de sa main et cachete
de ses armes," in which this duke says of d' Epernon :

* If anyone would know the manner in which some of those papers
were traced and unearthed in our own days, I would refer them to the
fascinating work of M. F. Ravaisson, entitled Archives de la Bastille,

207

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

'* He is the author of the King's death, he having raised
up many disappointed beggars and outcasts whom he
caused to be looked after (traiter) by many bribed
persons ; but while pursuing their designs and ready
to execute them, God forbade (or prevented) their
evil intentions, and d'lfepernon, seeing that the days
selected and the occasions were discovered which thereby
chilled these poor wretches, he caused them to be
poisoned from fear that, struck to the heart with a
feeling of repentance, they would become denouncers
of the abominable enterprise ; but, nevertheless, he so
much persisted that at last he found the wicked
Ravaillac, who was of Angoul§me, in one of his governor-
ships."

Now, this document, although said to be written by
a man of high rank and royal blood who would be
extremely likely to learn much of all that was going on
before the King's murder, can only be taken as one that
justifies any suspicions which the majority of the popula-
tion of Paris possessed, for the simple reason that, in it,
the Due d'Aumale of those days makes a statement (if
he wrote it) which considerable research indubitably
proves to be wrong. The object of these pages is not
to exonerate d'lfepernon and the Marquise de Verneuil
from being conspirators — as it is almost certain they

were — but to show that they had no connection with

208

The Crime

Ravaillac, who was meditating the deed on his own
account alone, and alone perpetrated it, and that, conse-
quently, he also had no connection with them. If,
therefore, all evidence, sifted carefully and carefully
compared, shows that this was the case, M. d'Aumale
could not be right in his statement concerning Ravaillac.
Such was, however, the popular opinion of the time.
Ravaillac 's name has been coupled through three
centuries with whatever groups, aristocratic or clerical,
were meditating the murder of the King, and nothing
but further time and a skilful turning over of documents
herein referred to will destroy that opinion, which,
amongst careless students, still exists. It is pardon-
able that it should do so, for, from the very first, the
pamphleteers, the writers of brochures, the people who
called themselves critics yet were but wretched hire-
lings ready to prostitute their pens to the order of any
person who would give them a gold crown, or to abuse
their betters and, in fact, to criticize the man instead
of his work — as well as the historians of later and more
enlightened days — have all stated and promulgated the
same opinion. Among the earliest of these broad-
sheets was one published anonymously, and entitled
La chemise sanglante de Henri-le-Grand, in which the
King's ghost is made to appear before Louis XIII.
and to say, speaking of the Dues de Bouillon and

209 14

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

d'lfepernon, " they still hold above France the dagger
with which Ravaillac sent me to the tomb. They were
my assassins and executioners and yet you permit them to
be near your person." Among the latter-day historians
was the late M. Michelet, who held firmly to the supposi-
tion that Ravaillac was the hired tool of d'Epernon —
Ravaillac who begged for alms at the church doors
and had decided to leave Paris the day after the murder
had it not occurred when it did, since he no longer had
money for food or lodging. It is not of such material
as this that murderers hired by wealthy conspirators
are made ! But M. Michelet was, unhappily, a careless
historian though a charming writer.*

To return, however, to Jacqueline le Voyer and to
the suggestion that Henri might well have been warned
of his imminent danger by some person who either knew,
or thought he knew, of what was brewing, is it not
possible that this person was none other than she ?
Later, when she was before her judges, steps were taken
to silence her for ever. As, however, this matter will
presently be dealt with, it is advisable to continue the
attempt to discover if Henri was likely to have had

* To those who would see the amount of errors this historian was
capable of perpetrating, I would suggest that they should read M.
Edmond Bird's Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris pendant la Terreur
(crowned by the Academic Fran9aise), in which this author proves
him inaccurate in a vast number of instances, viz., 19.

210

The . Crime

any direct information accorded him of what was to
be his fate, or whether the common rumours which
must have reached his ears — ^there were enough of
them ! — were the only reasons for the certainty he felt
of his impending tragical end. The Marquise de
Verneuil may, in his imagination, have been harmless,
since, although he had on his marriage informed the
Queen that she ** had been " his mistress, she was in
solemn fact still occupying that position and, except at
the time when their various quarrels and her treachery
took place, never ceased to do so. With regard to
d'Epernon, Henri was well on his guard against him
and he did his best to render the traitor harmless while,
still, for precaution's sake, allowing him to be about his
Court. He could not, however, have been blind to
the numerous other persons and groups of persons to
whom he was abhorrent and who would gladly have
seen him dead.

Amongst such individuals, many writers, especially
those of the more distant past, had much justification
in classing the Queen. No woman can ever have re-
ceived more humiliating infidelity from her husband —
considering that not one of Henri's amours could have
been carried on in secrecy — than she received from hers.
They were unending and they were not even single

intrigues indulged in one after the other, but were often

211 14*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

simultaneously five or six in number.* And, now, when
he was fifty-six years of age, and when — though he, of
course, could only fear it without knowing it — his death
was close at hand, Henri indulged in one last folly (if
it does not merit a more severe name) of which Marie
de Medici was, with the rest of France, fully cognisant.
He suddenly became infatuated with Charlotte de
Montmorency, a girl of sixteen and a member of one
of the most noble families in France below royalty,
and the wife of Henri's own second cousin, the Prince
de Conde. On her part, the young lady appeared
nothing loth to receive his attentions, but, at the same
time, she did not forget the blood that ran in her veins
and all that was due to it. Consequently, she was re-
solved that, if she was to smirch the ancient names of
her own and her husband's house, she would at least
become the bearer of a greater one and the possessor
of a rank which, in France, could have no equal. She,
therefore, informed her royal admirer that, until he
could procure a divorce from Marie and also bring about
one between herself and Conde, she would neither listen
to him nor see him, and that, even then, she could be

• In justice to Henri it should be said that he offered to send
these women away from him if Marie would do the same with Concini
and his wife, and also with the miserable woman who was called
"La mere Dasith6e," and frequently prophesied Henri's death. Marie
refused to do either.

212

The Crime

nothing more to him than a cousin by marriage until
she became Queen of France.

Over Henri II. de Bourbon, Prince de Conde, and,
afterwards, father of the Great Conde, more than one
dark shadow had lowered from the time of his birth.
His mother, Charlotte, a daughter of the great house of
De La Tremouille, had, to put the lightest construc-
tion on her conduct, been far from circumspect and from
comporting herself in a manner suitable to a descendant
of her race or the wife of a Bourbon. A handsome
young page in her service named Belcastel was supposed
to have obtained more favours from her than any
woman, married or single, should have consented to
bestow, and the whole of Paris was agog with gossip
on this subject when an even more terrible suspicion
concerning her arose in the minds of all.

The then Prince de Conde, husband of the Princess,
had, after indulging in violent exercise in tilting at
the ring, supped and retired to bed. In the middle
of the night he was awakened by feeling ill, became
very sick, and remained in bed for twenty-foui
hours ; he then took supper and slept well and, on
the second day, rose, dined in his bedroom and played
at chess with one of his friends. After this he walked
about the room while talking to one and another of
those who had come to obtain news of his health, when,

213

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

suddenly, he exclaimed, *' Bring me a chair ! I am
very weak." The chair was brought, he sank into it
and, a little while afterwards, died without uttering
another word.

I' This is the testimony of no less a personage than
Henri IV. himself, who, having gleaned the most reliable
news on the matter, instantly sat down and wrote it
to his flame of the moment, Diane, Comtesse de Guiche,
better known to posterity by the sobriquet he conferred
on her of ** La Belle Corisande." The letter is at the
present time in the Bibliotheque Nationale, and it con-
cludes with the words, " The marks of poison soon
appeared " (" sortirent soudain ").

Suspicion at once fastened on Belcastel and a valet
named Corbais and was strengthened by the disappear-
ance of both, who were, however, quickly discovered to
have fled on horses supplied to them by the controller
of the household of the Prince. Corbais, being put to
the torture, stated that it was the Princess who had
poisoned her husband, and, the recollection of her
intimacy with Belcastel being fresh in the minds of all,
the statement was generally believed. Henri — ^himself
the best authority of all for us in this matter, by aid
of his letters to Corisande — believed it also, and, in his
second letter, concludes with the almost indisputable
piece of philosophy that, " the most dangerous wild-

214

The Crime

beast is a wicked woman." It may be said that his own
experience had probably taught him so much as this
long before the present affair arose ! The page was
executed and the Princess was confined for seven years
imder very strict watch and ward, during which time
Henri, third Prince de Cond6, was bom, six months after
his father's sudden death. Some considerable doubt
has, however, always existed as to whether either the
page or the Princess was guilty of murder, or whether
the second Prince de Conde was murdered at all. The
Princess may, undoubtedly, have instigated or per-
formed the deed with a view to saving herself from her
husband's vengeance in a certain future case, but, on
the other hand, he was a man detested by The Leaguers,
who, like others in such times, did not hesitate at
much ; and, also, he had long been in a serious state
of health, while the physicians were by no means in agree-
ment over the fact of poison having been administered.
The child's and, afterwards, the young man's,
existence was, however, much darkened by his father's
mysterious death and his mother's undoubted lightness
— if her behaviour was no worse than that ! He stood
near the throne — should Henri de Navarre finally secure
it* — provided that his birth could not be impugned,

* He was born September ist, 1588, a year before Henri became
absolute King of France.

215

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

and, as time went on ; and before Henri was married to
Marie de Medici, he appeared well-inclined to recognize
the young Prince as the future King of France in succes-
sion to himself. In doing so later, the King, by ac-
knowledging the son's position, removed the stigma that
rested on the mother, and he yielded to a petition (as
well as to his own good nature), signed by the noblest-
bom women and men of France. Consequently, Char-
lotte, Princesse de Conde, stood forth a woman free
of any stain on her character, and her son as the recog-
nized heir to the throne short of Henri divorcing
Marguerite and marrying a wife who could pre-
sent him with a son, or of his legitimatizing the
eldest of those sons with whom Gabrielle had already
presented him.

It was unfortunate for the young Prince, that as he
reached manhood, he frequently ran counter to the
wishes of his illustrious relative, though, in doing so, he
was unfortunate through no fault of his own. He was
awkward, nervous and not particularly good-looking,
but he was brave and soldierly — which excused every-
thing in Henri's eyes. He challenged the Due de Nevers
for having let fall some words reflecting on his mother
— words that the Duke never intended should reach his
ears ; and he was bold enough to tell Henri (who was

pressing Charlotte de Montmorency so strongly that he

216

The Crime

ordered Conde not to quit Paris with her) that he was
practising tyranny. It is possible that, at first, Henri
was tempted to slay the young man for his temerity, but,
controlling himself (if such were the case), he refrained
from doing so. He inflicted on him, however, as deep
a wound with his tongue as he could have done with
his sword by remarking that he had never performed
but one act of tyranny in his life, namely, when he had
caused the Prince to be acknowledged and recognized
as that which he was not. He then ordered him to quit
his presence. Nevertheless, the victory was, surely, on
the side of Conde.*

As Mademoiselle de Montmorency, the Princess had
been brought to Court by her aunt and, amongst all
who had admired her for her youth, freshness and
beauty, none had done so more than Henri, who, how-
ever, did not at first testify any greater desire for her
society than that shown by the expression of a wish
that, as he grew older, she might always be near to cheer
and amuse him. At the same time, the brilliant, good-
looking and clever Bassompierre seemed to have won
her affections, and Henri gave his consent to their
marriage while conferring on the intended bridegroom
the office of first gentleman of the bedchamber. This,

* D'Aubigne. L'Estoile. Bassompierre* Les Princes de Cond4,
par M. le Due d'Aumale, Paris, 1864^

217

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

however, did not agree at all with the ideas of the Due
de Bouillon, who was the titular holder of this office
and also the uncle of Mademoiselle de Montmorency,
whereupon he remarked that Bassompierre should have
neither his niece nor his position. Being a resolute, as
well as a very astute, man, he conceived the idea of
suggesting to the King that the most suitable husband
for that niece would be the Prince de Conde, their
families being closely united by friendship while the
bride and bridegroom would be of a suitable age for
marriage. There was, he also stated, but one other
lady fitted by her rank to become the wife of the Prince,
and that was the daughter of the Due de Mayenne,
Henri's old and bitter enemy. Henri fell in with de
Bouillon's scheme, which was proposed by that noble-
man more to gratify his own dislike of Bassompierre,
by robbing him of his bride, than to study the interest
of the King, Conde or the Montmorencys, and the matter
was at once considered and arranged. The only persons
who were not consulted were Mademoiselle de Mont-
morency and Bassompierre — who might have been
considered as the most interested ones — ^so that, when
the latter went to see Henri, who was laid up with one
of his periodical attacks of gout, and learnt that his
Majesty now desired him to become the husband of

Mademoiselle d'Aumale it is not surprising that he ex-

218

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pe/ineoMt <s/culp. «/, ijuanta maxima poteft

BA ^ S OM IM LRRE.
\WX\ W 1 VM.E M ARC HVS
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Bassompierre.

!.t<

The Crime

claimed, '* What ! Am I to marry two women ? " His

Majesty was, however, in spite of his easy nature, in the

habit of being very explicit in concerns that moved him

deeply, and he at once informed Bassompierre that

he had not only fallen in love with Mademoiselle de

Montmorency, but had done so madly. " Therefore,"

he said, *' if you marry her and she loves you, I shall

hate you, and if she learns to love me you will hate

me." After which Henri added — en ami, to use his

own words — ^that he was rapidly approaching old age,

that he only desired that Mademoiselle de Montmorency

should be a consolation and an amusing companion to

him and be able to show him some little affection,

to obtain all of which he had resolved to marry her to

his yoimg cousin — a line of argument which may appear

sufficiently remarkable to latter-day readers. In any

case, Bassompierre accepted the situation and probably

reconciled himself easily enough to it, since his own

affections were generally engaged two or three deep.

This was, as has been said, Henri's last infatuation,

but, true to his old character, he, in spite of having

recently spoken of himself as a " grey-bearded but

victorious King," was still disposed to indulge it in

the usual romantic fashion. One day when the Prince

de Conde was hunting in Picardy while the Princess,

as Mademoiselle had now become, was about to follow

219

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

in a light coach with the Dowager Princess, they ob-
served a falconer with a hawk on his wrist loitering in
the courtyard. Orders were given for the carriage to
set out instantly, but, on the return, a new transforma-
tion had taken place, since the King, who had at first
become a falconer, had now transformed himself into a
huntsman who led a dog in a leash. It is not wonderful
that, after all these untiring attentions to his wife,
Conde thought it wise to put the frontier between himself
and his wife and his august cousin.

The infatuated lover was, however, not to be
thwarted, and he at once set about taking steps to
discover whether the Princess's somewhat startling
demands for the double divorce could in any way be
complied with, and, in the interval, Charlotte had
departed with her husband to Brussels, then, as long
afterwards, a Spanish possession. Meanwhile, as the
whole story leaked out, Henri became the butt of
Europe, one wit remarking that if Spain could not
vanquish the King of France by force of arms
it could at least do so by turning him into an
object of ridicule. And, amongst those who knew
all that was going on, and who inevitably heard all
the gibes and jeers on the subject, was Marie de
Medici !

Madness, indeed, seemed to have seized on the un-

220

The Crime

fortunate monarch at this time. His first act was to
call together his Ministers and discuss with them an
outbreak of war with Spain, which, if it was not solely
entered into on account of the Princesse de Conde, was
shortly to occur. Previously to this he had summoned
the Marquis de Coeuvres, brother of his late love,
Gabrielle d'Estrees, to proceed to Brussels and carry off
the object of his last infatuation and bring her back to
Paris. His next impulse was to commit an act of im-
prudence which, if ordinary propriety and good-breeding
could not prevent him from perpetrating, good sense
should have done. Believing that de Coeuvres had
succeeded in the task upon which he had been sent,
he suddenly exclaimed to his wife, " On such a day
and such an hour you will see the Princesse de
Conde back here again." Verily, Marie de Medici —
the " vindictive Florentine," " the daughter of a race
of poisoners," was subjected to almost enough slights
to justify her in following in the footsteps of her
forerunners.

Henri had not, however, finished with his attempts
to get the girl young enough to be his grand-daughter
into his hands. He ordered his nephew to return to
France — with his wife — under the pain of being declared
a traitor ; and he caused the Constable de Montmorency
to order his daughter to do so. But Conde simply

221

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

removed himself and his wife to Italy, and Spain refused
to allow those who governed Brussels on her behalf
to make any move in the matter. Henri then declared
war on Spain, two of his armies set out for the frontier
and he himself made ready to follow them later and
take command — when the fatal blow fell.

Meanwhile, Marie de MMici was deeply wounded by
not only his last infidelity to her, but also by the fact
that, though she alone could be constituted Regent
during his absence, he gave her as companions a council
of fifteen colleagues, each of whom would have as power-
ful voices in any of the deliberations as she would
herself.

Now, therefore, she recognized that she was in a
terrible position and that, when Henri should return
from the campaign, she would in all probability find
herself in a worse one. She was perfectly cognisant
of the passion that was swaying her husband at the
moment, and she knew that, if he was resolved to divorce
her and disgrace himself in the eyes of the world, there
was nothing that could prevent him from doing so.
He was by far the most powerful King in Europe,
Philip ni. of Spain being but a cipher in comparison
with the late Philip H. ; while as for the Pope, who
alone had the authority to prevent the divorce and
the marriage that would be subsequent to it, he would

222

The Crime

be afraid to offend the King of France since he could
play havoc with all the countries that supported his
Holiness.

It was not, indeed, possible that the first of these
could oppose him, or that the second would wish to do
so. Philip II., in spite of all the wealth that Mexico
and Peru had continued to pour into the coffers of
Spain since the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, left an
inheritance worse than even a barren one to Philip III.
The enormous armies of the former, the stupendous
sums of money paid out as bribes — principally to exter-
minate the Protestants — and the colossal expenses of
the Armada (four million ducats), had plunged the
country into an abyss of debt from which it seemed
impossible that it could ever escape. At the death of
Philip II. his successor discovered that the treasury was
empty and that there was owing, in various shapes and
forms, a sum of twelve hundred and fifty odd millions
of livres, the livre of that day being worth a little more
than the French franc of the present time. But the
franc of the present time will only buy a fifth part of
what the livre of Henri's day would purchase, and,
consequently, the debt was equal to two hundred and
fifty million pounds or more of our own money of
to-day.

As for the Pope, he hoped that Henri would soon

223

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

carry into practice a scheme long since propounded by
Sully, and obtain the annexation of the Kingdom of
Naples to his own dominions. From him, therefore, no
opposition of any kind would be likely to come. But
if it should come from either Spain — which Henri now
proposed to attack — or from the Emperor of Germany,
who had not a single ally but many enemies, all of
whom were thirsting for his death, which was imminent,
and had already arranged between themselves that
the Duke of Bavaria was to take his throne, that oppo-
sition would be in vain. Henri had, at this time,
thirteen different armies ready to take the field ; Sully,
as Master-GenercJ of the Artillery, had caused two
hundred new and great cannon to be added to the
equipment of those armies, and there was a sum of
money put aside by him, in his other capacity of Minister
of Finances, which amounted to a hundred and fifty
millions of livres.*

That Marie should ask her husband what his inten-
tions towards her would be when he returned from the
war, was, therefore, not strange ; while, also, it was only
reasonable on her part to press firmly her determination
to be crowned. As we know, she succeeded in this,
and therein lay her salvation from divorce if Henri
should return safe, since a crowned Queen was far more

• Sismondi. Poirson«
224

The Crime

securely seated on the throne than an uncrowned one
could ever be. And, though she was not aware of it,
the act was also her salvation for many years after
Henri was dead. Ford'^pernon would never have lent
her his aid had she not been crowned. It was not to
his interests to espouse the cause of any person when
that cause was not as secure as it could be before he
undertook to champion it.

Now no charge against Marie de Medici has ever
been urged so strongly as proof of her connivance in a
plot, or the plot — since it undoubtedly existed — as was
this determination on her part to be made safe in every
way possible. As has been shown, however, nothing
tends more to prove her innocence of any such partici-
pation. For, once crowned, she was secure without
the aid of any plot to remove Henri ; safe while he
lived and safe when he was dead. It is true, however,
that Marie was far from feeling sure of this safety even
during her husband's life. Once, on the occasion of one
of their many quarrels, Henri threatened to exile her
to some distant chateau, and, even though she might
have forgotten this sinister suggestion, there were those
about the Court who were not disposed to let the recol-
lection of it fade from her memory. Leonora Galigai
never ceased to remind her of it, while, if she forgot to
do so, Concini, in his turn, spurred her on to the work.

225 15

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

Gradually the unhappy Queen became a prey to fears
which — since she was never strong-minded and, indeed,
possessed only one form of strength, namely, that of
dogged and morose obstinacy — might well have driven
her distracted. Marie knew well that the Princesse de
Conde was too much suffused with her pride of race to
ever yield to Henri on any terms short of occupying the
place that she herself possessed, and she also saw plainly
that, in a case such as this, nothing could turn Henri
from his desires. She, therefore, became the victim of
terrible surmises. She believed that she was about to
be poisoned, while forgetting that all the poisoners in
Paris were of her country and not of her husband's ;
and whenever Henri sent her dishes from the table at
which he sat — it being the custom on ordinary occasions
for the King to take the head of one table and the
Queen of another — she refused them firmly and ate
only of those which Leonora Galigai had prepared
for her at, of course, her own suggestion, or from
dishes which the other had previously tasted ostenta-
tiously.

Marie de Medici should have possessed more wisdom,
more power of reflection. If poisoning was to be
practised, the Italian woman was far more capable of
the deed than her own husband and, had it been to

Leonora Galiga'i's interest to poison the Queen — which

226

The Crime

it was not — she would doubtless have done so unhesi-
tatingly. While, as regards Henri, she should have
known him better. With the exception of his one
terrible failing, his good qualities far outstripped his
bad. He was a brave man, and brave men, even when
they sink to crimes, do not sink to ignoble and cowardly
ones. Henri might, in his frenzy for Charlotte de
Conde, have sent Marie into exile, as their son did
afterwards ; he might have forced the Pope into grant-
ing him a divorce from her ; but he would no more have
poisoned her than he would have beaten a defenceless
woman or struck a cripple.

It is now necessary to separate from each other the
plot which was undoubtedly on foot to slay Henri and
the determination of a religious fanatic and visionary
who felt that it was his duty to assassinate the King
and was determined that, in doing so, he would be
entirely without assistance, allies or employers. And,
indeed, it may be said of Ravaillac with justice that,
had not his madness led him to commit the dreadful
deed he enacted, there was something in him which, in
less erring men, would have been termed greatness. His
religion was so much to him that it had driven him
mad ; yet, withal, he was strong, he was truthful and

he was independent. He would ask alms, but would

227 15*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

not receive pay as a hired assassin ; he would steal the
knife with which he slew the King, yet he had deter-
mined to leave Paris because he could no longer pay
the woman of the house wherein he found a wretched
lodging ; and, above all, he made more than one attempt
to see Henri and implore him not to attack the Pope —
which, as has been shown, Henri had never the least
intention of doing — ere he resorted to murder. Un-
fortunately, he was driven from the door of the Louvre
and, when he endeavoured to make the King listen to
him as he went by in the street, no heed was paid to
him. After that it was but a question of days ere
the King was slain.

Francois Ravaillac was bom of very humble parents
at Angouleme, in the year 1578, and was, consequently,
only thirty-two when he assassinated Henri IV. It
has been said that his mental faculties were very weak,
and, whether this were so or not, there was a strain in
his blood which tended towards murder, he being con-
nected with Poltrot, who assassinated Francois, Due
de Guise, at the Siege of Orleans. As a child, he
appears to have had a mawkish, and — for one so
young — sickly inclination towards religious cere-
monials, and was more often to be found in
church than attending to any duties that his parents
might require him to perform. His tendencies were

228

Ravaillac.

The Crime

entirely towards the priesthood, but the resources
of those parents, who lived almost wholly by the
alms of neighbours better endowed with the world's
goods than they, necessitated his doing something to
aid in their support, and he became for a time a valet
de chambre. Later, he emancipated himself from this
servile state of existence which was not at all in accord
with his desires, and he managed to set up as a petty
provincial solicitor and a conductor of small cases in
local courts, a calling which is termed in France that
of solliciteur de proces. His earnings in this manner
were, however, so meagre that he supplemented
them by teaching the children of his own class
of life how to read and write, but even with this
addition to his means he was scarcely able to procure
bread.

At this time he was thrown into prison by some
creditors, and during this period his mind became more
impregnated with fanaticism than it had hitherto been.
On attaining his release he became a novice of the order
of Les Feuillants, but his extraordinary hallucinations,
his visions and imaginary conversations with the Virgin
and other sacred personages, and the general eccentricity
of his behaviour, caused his probation to be cut short by
summary dismissal from the monastery. Nothing dis-
heartened, he next attempted to become a member of

229

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

the Society of Jesus, but was again rejected and was
forced to fall back upon his original callings of solicitor
and schoolmaster to procure a livelihood, which, if
obtained at all, was but of a very sparse and miserable
nature. In spite, however, of the disordered state of
the man's intellect, his course of life seems to have been
of an utterly irreproachable nature ; he lived honestly
and was a good son to his mother, who worshipped him.
A false charge was, nevertheless, brought against him
of having been concerned in a murder that took place
at this time and, though he was instantly acquitted of
any share in it and discharged with honour, he was
at once thrown back into prison on account of the
debts which he had accumulated in providing for his
defence.

In this place his warped mind seems to have asserted
itself in a manner which clearly pointed to the fact
that, good as his natural qualities might be, there were
within him some strange chords, or idios57ncrasies, which
would eventually go far to pervert, if not to destroy,
all his better faculties and impulses. He commenced,
in his cell, to exhibit poetical leanings — a tendency in
others that, then as now, has often furnished matter
for the derision and scorn of feeble wits — and wrote
madrigals and sonnets, but, more often, pious effusions,

all of which were pronounced by those of his own

230

The Crime

time to have been wretched doggerel.* What, however,
was worse than his verses was a recurrence, in a more
pronounced form, of the visions he had previously ex-
perienced, and from these he was led to think deeply
upon subjects which, on behalf of himself and humanity,
it would have been far better for him to have never
considered. Soon his thoughts and studies and rhap-
sodies in prison brought him to such a state of ecstasy
that he formed the opinion that he was born to become
a great man, and, from this, to the belief that Heaven
had sent him into the world to enact the part of the
Pope's principal champion and protector. From these
opinions and self-gratulations there was but one
step more, namely, to imagine that it would be his duty
to slay any man who should endeavour to outrage or
attack his Holiness.

Ravaillac made these views more or less public to
the priests and to whatever friends he possessed when
he was discharged from prison, and, though most of his
hearers regarded him as either a madman or a fool,
his extraordinary statements about himself caused con-
siderable remark.

* One distich of his composing was :

" Ne souffre pas qu'on fasse, en Ta presence,
Au nom de Dieu aucune irreverence."
In spite of the confusion of referring to the presence of the Deity
while calHng upon His name, it was not Ravaillac's worst poetical
attempt.

231

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

It is with this fact before us that we at once find our-
selves nearing the primal cause of the erroneous asso-
ciation, during a long space of time, of Ravaillac's deed
with the plot of the Due d'Epernon. It will be recalled
that, among the many high offices to which this per-
sonage had attained during his long and despicable
career under Henri III. and Henri IV., one was that
of Governor of Angoumois, of which Angouleme was
then the capital town, as it is now of the Department
of Charente. It will, therefore, astonish no one that,
between the half-witted fanatic who was afterwards
to assassinate Henri and the truculent autocrat who
was known to be Henri's most bitter enemy as well as
the chief plotter against his life, a connection of tool
and employer should have been at once imagined. The
supposition was, however, an erroneous one, as will
be shown later, and, indeed, proved, by demonstrating
that at the moment Ravaillac accomplished his evil
deed, no one was more astonished at discovering who
the man was who had performed it, and no one more
prompt to avail himself of the opportunity that had
arisen of cloaking his own well-arranged but now antici-
pated intentions, than d'^^pernon. But, independently
of this, it is doubtful if d'Epernon had ever heard of
Ravaillac, and almost certain that Ravaillac had hardly
ever seen him, though, in his interrogatories after the

232

The Crimd

crime, he said vaguely that he knew of him. That he
could truthfully declare this — and, with all his sin
and madness, Ravaillac was no liar — is not at all to be
wondered at. The governor of the province, the man
who had resided in the great house, the Citadel, of
Angouleme — though he did not often trouble it with
his presence — would be as much ** known of " there as
the most important personage of any small town in
England, the bishop of any city, or the Member of Par-
liament, is ** known of " by the more humble inhabitants
of the place. But between " knowing of " such person-
ages and ** knowing them " there is a wide difference.

Moreover, what possible need would there be for
d'Epernon to associate himself with such a poor,
demented creature as Ravaillac ; while, if there were
any such need, is it at all likely that he would have
selected a man dwelling in one of the places where he
himself ruled paramount and where, if he should eventu-
ally become seriously implicated in the murder of the
King, the most damning of evidence would be forth-
coming ? But, in truth, there was no such need.
Behind d'Epernon there rode eight hundred spears,
most of them bravoes like himself ; any one of whom
would have been willing to perform his behests, and-
since he would be well paid to hold his tongue, would
do so and remain silent as the grave,

233

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

While acknowledging, therefore, that the coincidence
of Ravaillac being a poor, inferior inhabitant of the
town over which d'Epernon ruled en grand seigneur
was well calculated to set on foot the story that the
former was the paid mercenary of the latter, it may be
dismissed as nothing more than a coincidence. Also,
if further proof were required that such was the case,
it exists in the fact of Ravaillac's continual poverty and
in the certainty that, had he been in d'lfepernon's pay,
he would have been well supplied with money.

At the time when his remarkable statements on the
subject of his recognizing that he was ordained to pro-
tect the Pope and kill those who were opposed to his
Holiness were made, Ravaillac was still far from having
formed any resolutions to slay Henri, and had, indeed,
no murderous inclinations in his heart towards any
particular person. Insanity had, however, touched
him in a mild form, and vanity — so often a forerunner,
or companion, of insanity — ^was strongly developed
in him. He believed that, if he could but obtain the
ear of the King, he might so work upon him by his
prayers and beseechings that he would be able to induce
him to alter all his views of attacking the Pope. Fate
was, however, unpropitious in connection with both
the King and his future assassin. Had Ravaillac
known that which many people more highly placed than

234

The Crime

he could have told him, namely, that Henri was a strong
protector of the Catholics, and especially of the Jesuits,
he would in all probability have considered that no
more than this could be expected of the King, and would
have recognized that his other desire, that the Huguenots
should be strongly oppressed, might be dispensed with.
Or, had those who prevented Ravaillac from seeing the
King, those who repulsed him at the door of the Louvre,
allowed him to speak with Henri, he would probably
have received only the kindly answers which the latter
was in the habit of bestowing upon every suppliant.
Henri might even have told him that his true policy
was to support the Pope (though it is not likely that
he would have also informed him that one of his prin-
cipal reasons for doing so was his infatuation for the
Piincesse de Conde), and Ravaillac would doubtless
have turned away while understanding that the mission
which he imagined himself called upon by God to fulfil
had no longer any existence.

But such was not the case. Three times had he
struggled on foot through the spring rains and mire
from Angouleme to Paris, and twice had he returned
to the former ; and on each of the latter occasions he
[ had gone back disheartened. The Marquis de la Force,
who had command of all the guards around the King
and at the Louvre, had ordered him to be repulsed, and

235

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

Ravaillac recognized at last that his hope of appealing to
the King was vain. Yet, had Ravaillac but been aware
that when the Marquis had asked Henri if he should
not imprison the wretched scarecrow who was so im-
portunate, the latter had replied, " No ! no ! it is no
harm that he does in wishing to see me. Be not severe
with him," how different might all have been, how
altered the history of France !

At last the miserable creature grew desperate. He
besought every person of any importance whom he
encountered to obtain him access to the King, only to
be driven away or treated as an imbecile. But still he
persevered. Knowing that Henri would on one day pass
by '* Les Innocents'' • — and the open cemetery — he
awaited his carriage and cried out loudly when it ap-
peared : " In the name of Our Lord and the Sacred
Virgin let me speak with you ! " But again he was
repulsed, and driven off with jeers and buffets by the
people. Then definitely, finally, he understood that one
part, the best part of his determination, namely, to ad-
dress the King as a subject addressing a ruler, could
never be realized. Nothing remained but to perform
the second part, the worst part, of that determination.
To slay the man who was, he wrongly supposed,
bitterly hostile to all that was sacred to him.

He was, however, at his last resources now. The

236

The Crime

alms he begged scarcely provided enough to keep a rat
in food ; he had no money sufficient for a bed and
again slept in the streets or under church porches. There
was but one thing left to do : to return to Angouleme,
to resume his occupation of teaching the children of the
poor who would confide them to his care, and, in some
way to scrape together enough money to enable him to
live until he should once more be able to revisit Paris
— for the last time. After that, he would require nothing
more !

Whether he saved much or little — it must have been
the latter — ^he appeared again in the Capital, and his
first act was to steal the knife with which he was eventu-
ally to murder the King. But now his visions once more
took hold upon him, though at this time they assumed
a different form. Doubts arose, visited his mind,
during these visions as to whether he was justified in
slaying even a bad King, a monster such as he deemed
Henri to be ; and whether also a better king — or better
counsellors of the boy, Louis — would succeed to Henri.
Oppressed by these doubts, he once more quitted Paris,
and so resolved was he now to make no farther attempt
to slay Henri that, in a fit of frenzy, he struck his knife
against a garden-wall near Etampes and broke off a
couple of inches of the point. A little later he passed a
cross on which was the Sacred Figure, and his doubts

237

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

vanished, his original intentions returned to him. The
impressions which his view of the Saviour on His Cross
and in His Passion occasioned were confirmed by the
news which reached his ears in the ancient city. This
news — utterly false and having no more foundation than
the babble of a number of provincial bourgeois* — was
to the effect that Henri was about to make war on the
Pope and transfer the Holy See to Paris.

Ravaillac instantly sharpened his broken knife on a
stone, and, retracing his steps, arrived in the Capital for
the last time.

Meanwhile, all was prepared for the departure of
Henri to take command of one of his armies which was
about to attack the Spanish forces, or rather those of
the House of Austria, which was practically the same
thing, since Spain and Austria were never disunited
until the first Bourbon king ascended the throne of
Spain on the death of Carlos II. of that country. The
attack was to be a strong one, since, of the thirteen
armies, some were opposed to the Spaniards in Holland,
some in Italy, some in Germany and some in Spain,
while it is interesting to us, if not to those of other
lands, to note that the commanders of these armies
were nearly all to be Protestants. Among them were
Sully and his son, the Marquis de Rosny, and also his
son-in-law, the Due de Rohan, as well as La Force

238

The Crime

and Lesdigui^res, Prince Maurice of Nassau, several
German Protestant princes, the Kings of Sweden
and Denmark, and last, but not least, Prince Henry
Frederick, son of King James I. of England and Prince
of Wales.

Yet, as the time for action approached, there seemed

to creep over Henri a strange lassitude such as probably

he had never experienced before. He, to whom war

had been as much his sport in active life as, in his hours

of ease, love had been, seemed to have grown suddenly

dejected, and, indeed, domesticated, since he stayed

much at home ; his briskness and alacrity, " the fierce

joy that warriors feel," seemed to have left him. This

depression may have arisen from the fact that he knew

how, as the days went on, his life was more and more

aimed at by plotters and assassins ; yet, even though

such were the case, it is strange that at this period

such reflections should have troubled him. He was to set

out upon a great campaign, and, though a noble death

upon the field might be his lot, a death that he had faced

a hundred times, it would at least be the portion of a

soldier and far better than the stab from an assassin

lurking in some dark alley or a shot fired from an ambush

by a hired bravo.

The believers in presentiment may well find a justifi-

239

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

cation for their faith in remembering the King's feehngs
and apprehensions during the time closely preceding
his death. It was observed by all — and Richelieu noted
the fact with his usual astuteness — that he drew nearer
to his wife to the exclusion of all thought of those, and
especially of the one, who had come so much between
them ; that he could not bear to be without her com-
pany or to let her leave him alone even for a day.
Moreover, he took pains to instruct her in all that it
would be necessary for her to do in case he should die
suddenly ; he told her where his most important papers
were to be found, what her actions should be to ensure
her proclamation as Regent, and how she might best
safeguard the rights and succession of the Dauphin.
At the same time, if they were separated for even the
shortest period he wrote letters to her that he should
have thought of inditing long before ; letters containing
phrases suitable for address to the woman who, with
all her failings, had been an honest wife to him, but
utterly unsuitable to the meretricious creatures to whom
such epistles had only too often been despatched. *' My
heart, I kiss you a hundred thousand times " ; " Ma
mie, I send you good night and a thousand kisses " ;
" I love you always, I cannot sleep until I have written
to you," are but a few specimens of his letters at this

time. 0 I si sic omnia !

240

The Crime

It has been said by many that this sudden love for
his wife, and these demonstrations, were principally
owing to the fact that he sought refuge in her society
from the disappointment he felt at the fact that the
last woman to whom he was attracted, Charlotte de
Montmorency, would not listen to him any longer and
had fled with her husband out of France to avoid his
attentions. His behaviour does not, however, justify
the gibe, though his admiration for the young princess
of sixteen is undoubted. That Marie was impressed by
his sincerity is also a proof that he was a changed man,
since she herself began to be nervous and alarmed at the
alteration in him. One night she roused him by scream-
ing that she had had a dream that he was being
murdered, but he calmed her by saying that there never
was a dream which, if it had any result at all, did not
have a contrary one to that which it foretold.

It is doubtful, however, if he believed his own words.
After the various attempts made on his life he was in the
habit of remarking that one must at last succeed ; that
he was doomed ; that he was certain to die a violent
death. He frequently stated that both the Catholics
and the Protestants hated him, the first because his
conversion was an assumed one, and the second because
he was an apostate ; while, when he felt sure that his
time was drawing near, it was his habit to converse

241 16

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

freely with Sully on the matter, and, on one occasion,
he asked the latter if he could have a bed at the Arsenal
(Sully's official residence) for the last nights before
he set out on the Spanish- Austrian campaign. The
great Minister has put it on record that the King would
sit in a low chair before him tapping his fingers on his
spectacle-case, and that, after some time spent in this
way, he would slap his knees with his hands, spring up
suddenly from the chair and cry, " Pardieu / I shall
die in this city, I shall never leave it. They will kill
me ! " After which he would become more calm, would
be seated again and finally console himself by remark-
ing that what God had decided on was inevitable and
that a man must cheerfully bow to his destiny without
attempting to oppose it.

On the morning of his assassination the presentiment
that he was to die was strong upon him. He desired
particularly to see Sully, who was ill, yet he could not
determine to leave the Louvre ; he hesitated much,
said he must go, and then did not do so. He embraced
the Queen so often while bidding her adieu for the time
and so often came back again after he had parted from
her, that, at last, she herself became terribly agitated.
" You must not go," she cried, and, flinging herself
on her knees, implored him to stay at home while saying
that he could see Sully on the morrow. His answer

242

Voilure dans laquelle fut assassine Henri IV en IGIO.

Carrossc de IGIO a 1660

One of the pillars of the first illustration has been forgotten by the artist.
There were eight.

IFacing p. 243

The Crime

was : " I must go ; I must. It is not possible for me to
stay here. I have much to tell Sully ; much that
weighs upon my heart."

The carriage in which Henri set out for the Arsenal
was an open one, with its floor so near the ground that
a moderately stout man could scarcely have crawled
beneath it. Above it, supported by eight slim pillars,
was a kind of roof or canopy which more resembled
the top of an open tent, or summer-house, than aught
else, while what curtains it possessed were thrown out-
side the carriage and almost brushed the earth as it
proceeded on its way. Into this Henri entered, placing
the Due d'Epernon on his left hand. In front of him
by the doors were the Due de Montbazon and the Comte
de Roquelaure ; next came the Marquis de la Force,
with, on the other side, the Marechal de Lavardin
and M. de Liancourt ; the Marquis de Mirebeau* and
the principal squire (in modern language, an attache)
of the King completed the company which filled the
large and roomy vehicle. On entering it Henri flung his
arm over the shoulder of the Due de Montbazon (some
authorities say over the shoulder of d'Epernon), and
thus they progressed until " La Croix du Tiroir " was
reached, when he was asked to what spot he intended

* According to contemporary writers. Modern ones often spell it
Mirabeau. But the title of the family of Mirabeau, the revolutionist,
was Marquis de Riqueti or Riquetti^

243 16*

Tlie Fate of Henry of Navarre

to proceed — a question which, one would imagine,
would be more likely to be asked before the departure
from the Louvre took place. His reply was that they
should pass by the church and cemetery of " Les Inno-
cents " on the way to the Arsenal, as the more direct
road was at the time under repair. Continuing this
route, the carriage arrived at the end of the Rue St.
Honore and turned into that of La Ferronnerie, when an
interruption occurred. A wain loaded with straw had
either broken down or one of the horses had stumbled
in front of a drinking-shop known as the " Salamander,"
and, at the same time, one of the two attendants who
alone walked beside the coach had dropped behind to
tie his garter, which had become undone. Meanwhile,
the Due d'^pemon had drawn from his pocket a letter
from the Comte de Soissons which he handed to Henri
to read, when, as the King did so, the coach, in en-
deavouring to pass by the obstacle in the road, drew
close up to the shops, which were principally occupied
by vendors of old ironmongery who, for the purposes
of their business, had large bulks, or wooden boards,
projecting over the narrow footpaths. In front of one
of these shops which had for its sign a crowned heart
pierced with an arrow, accompanied by a scroll describ-
ing this emblem, was a mounting-block, an article
common enough then in every street in Paris when all

2*44

The Crime

men and many women coming or going any distance
rode on horseback. From off this block there sprang
a man, ragged and unkempt, who hurled himself at the
King, struck at him with a dagger which glanced off his
body between the armpit and the left breast, then struck
again and, this time, buried the knife in the victim's
heart, one of the largest veins leading from it being
severed. Henri fell back in his seat crying, it is said
by some writers, " Je suis frappe,'' and, at the same
time, the Due de Montbazon, taking him in his arms,
said, " Sire, what is it ? '* To which Henri replied
twice in a faint voice, "It is nothing," the repetition
of the words being almost inaudible.

Ravaillac had accomplished his work. Henri IV.
was dead.

It is not strange that the Due de Montbazon should
have asked the question he did, since not one of those
in the carriage ever acknowledged that they had seen
the blows struck, or even the gleam of the knife as it
rose and fell in the hand of the murderer. Yet some
there were in that carriage who were loyal and true
to Henri, no matter what the others might be.
Caumont, Marquis de la Force, loved him ; de Lavardin,
de Roquelaure and Mirebeau did the same. But
d'Epemon, we know, was steeped in treachery to the
lips, and de Montbazon was more than suspected of

245

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

being badly inclined towards Henri. With these,

there may have been a reason for their statement,

though, since numbers in the street had seen the

deed, it is inexplicable. Did they, or, to speak

only of him who was known to be a traitor — did

d'^pemon imagine that, for some purpose, Ravaillac

had been employed, unknown to him, by those

with whom he was in collusion? Or did he see,

in this man's sudden appearance on a scene which

he had more or less arranged to suit his own purpose,

something he had not dared to expect or hope, and

did he decide instantly to pretend to be utterly unable

to even understand the crime or comprehend how it

could have come about ? We shall, however, perceive

immediately how quick he was to grasp one thing,

namely, that in Ravaillac's deed all suspicion would

most probably be averted from him and his confederates

for ever.

The street became a scene of wild confusion the

moment after the murder had taken place. Shivering

by the side of the carriage stood the starved, dishevelled

form of Ravaillac ; a dazed look on the man's face and,

it may well be, a dazed feeling in his brain at what he

had done. La Force had sprung from the vehicle and

was about to run him through with his drawn sword,

after crying out to the Baron de Courtomeyer — who, with

246

The Crime

many others of the Court, had followed the cortege

on horseback from the Louvre — to go on at once to

Sully and inform him of the tragedy that had occurred.

People were running about excitedly, shouting that the

King was slain ; heads were thrust out from every

window ; women had fainted in the street, when, sud-

dently, from the farther end of it there appeared ten

rough, well-armed and ferocious-looking men who

cried, " Death to the murderer ! Slay him at once !

He must die now — on the spot ! '' A moment later,

Courtomeyer rushed at these men while dragging his

sword from its sheath, and they instantly disappeared

down a side street — ^never to be seen again.

They had received an order they dared not disobey.

Erect, the Due d'Epemon had faced them ; in the

tone of command he had been accustomed to use when

he was the mignon of Henri HI., the tone he would

have often used before Henri IV., had he had the courage

to do so, he cried, " Harm him not ! Your lives for it

if you touch him." It was not unnatural that he

should thus behave. Ravaillac was too precious to be

slaughtered on the scene of his crime, too valuable a

witness of the fact that he and d'Epemon had never

had any intercourse together, that he had never spoken

to d'Epemon, had never touched one sou of the bribes

which had gone into the pockets of the ten bravoes

247

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

who had, doubtless, been well paid to do that which
the actual murderer had done for nothing while anticipat-
ing them. The unhappy creature was, indeed, so
precious that, instead of handing him over to the per-
sons proper to take charge of him, the Duke first of
all incarcerated him in the Hotel de Retz which was
in his possession, and then in his own residence, where
he allowed the public to see him, to talk with him, or
talk to him, and to extract any information they could
from him. D'Epemon could have done no wiser thing
— for himself and his colleagues ! Ravaillac had become
a murderer, but a lie was a thing abhorrent to the
religious zealot. He was, therefore, the best witness
d'l^pemon could have obtained to prove that he had no
possible knowledge of Ravaillac's own crime.

On the road back to the Louvre an attempt to revive
the King was made by pouring wine into his mouth,
but it was useless. Once, at the commencement of the
melancholy return journey, an officer of the guard
lifted his head in his arms and the eyes opened for an
instant, probably owing to the movement caused by
the upraising of the corpse. On arriving at the Louvre
the Due de Montbazon and others carried the body to a
bed in Henri's private cabinet, whence it was later
repioved to his own bedroom.

It was to the Duchesse de Montpensier that the

248

The Crime

melancholy task fell of breaking the news to the
widowed Queen. Of the highest rank, both by her
husband's position and her own birth, she had always
been one of Marie's most intimate friends since the
latter first came to France, and, on this occasion,
Madame de Montpensier was sitting chatting with
the Queen, while she, who had been distracted earlier
by the King's manner ere leaving her, was lying on
the couch and was not dressed, nor had her hair been
arranged. Hearing a noise of cries and sudden exclama-
tions by many voices in the corridors, she besought
the Duchess to go to the door between her bedroom
and that of Henri, wherein there was also much excite-
ment, and demand the reason of the tumult. Doing so,
the latter opened the door a little — she, too, was en
deshabille — and, looking out and seeing a number of
excited persons in the passages, closed it sharply again.

A moment later the unfortunate Queen had sprung
from her couch, her suspicions aroused, and, rushing
across the room, she cried, " My child ! He is dead ! "
and then attempted to re-open the door with her own
hands, while the Duchesse de Montpensier could only
ejaculate through white and trembling lips, " No. No.
Your son is not dead." After which, throwing her arms
round the Queen, she endeavoured to prevent her from
entering the adjacent room. In another instant Marie

249

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

had, however, got the door open again, only to stagger
back at seeing before her the Captain of the Guard,
who muttered hoarsely, ** Madame, we are lost." Push-
ing him aside from where he stood blocking her view
of the King's cabinet, she saw her husband's body
stretched out, his face " white as marble," and he, as
she understood in an instant, dead. Directly afterwards
she reeled against the wall and fell into the arms of the
Duchess, who, with a maid, placed her on her bed.*

D'Epemon was the first to be allowed entrance and
came in muttering that, " perhaps the King was not
dead after all ; " and he was followed by de Guise, Le
Grand and Bassompierre, who all knelt and kissed
the Queen's hand and vowed etemd loyalty and fidelity
to her.f

The horror which spread over Paris — and afterwards
over the whole of France — as the news became known,
the lamentations and mourning, probably exceeded
any which have ever been testified in Europe at the

* Bassompierre wrote his description of this scene long afterwards,
when he was still a prisoner in the Bastille. It is the most graphic
of all the accounts of Marie's reception of the fatal tidings. Richelieu,
however, runs him close, though in fewer sentences. Fontenay-
Mareuil and Matthieu are both excellent in their way — as they mostly
are in all they narrate.

t Dean Kitchen says in his History of France (1610-24 period) :
" When they came to tell her {Mary dei MJdici) (sic), she showed
little astonishment, she feigned no sorrow." This is a strange
interpretation of the remarks of all the ambassadors, diarists and
memoir-writers of the day.

250

The Crime

assassination of a Sovereign. All night, and for several
nights following, people refused to go to their beds
and walked the streets in groups, or sat round the
fountains and on the benches, crying and weeping.
Women tore their hair out, it is said ; men, explaining
to their children what had happened, were heard to
exclaim again and again, *' What is to become of you ?
You have lost your father." De Vic, the governor of
Calais, died an hour after learning the news ; a brave
soldier, le Capitaine le Marchant, did the same thing
when his son-in-law, Le Jeay, a President of the Law
Courts, informed him of what had occurred. Sully
sprang from his sick-bed on being told of what had
happened, and exclaimed that it was the end of France.
A moment later he gave orders for his followers to saddle
and mount and escort him to the Louvre. On his way
there he was, however, met by some of his friends who
implored him to turn back since the Queen could not
possibly see him, and because it was rumoured all over
Paris that assassins were waiting to make him the next
victim.

Determined, however, to proceed, he was met by M.
du Jou, a councillor, who said, " Beware for yourself.
This strange blow will have terrible successors." At
the entrance of the Rue Saint-Honore a letter to the
same effect was put into his hand. At last, at the cross-

251

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

ways known as les Quatre Coins, Vitry, Captain of the
Guard, came up to him in tears. " France is finished,"
he exclaimed. " Where are you going ? Either you
will never be allowed to enter the Louvre or, if you
are, you will never be allowed to leave it. There will
be awful results to this crime. Go back to the Arsenal,
there is enough for you to do already." Finally, Sully,
recognizing the wisdom of these warnings, took the
advice given him. Richelieu, always contemptuous of
Sully, terms this conduct ungrateful and pusillanimous.
It undoubtedly seems to be so, yet, at the moment. Sully
was the first man in France ; Henri's son had to be
acknowledged as King and Marie to be installed as
Regent, and the Louvre was filled with powerful noble-
men, every one of whom hated him for his power, his
rugged honesty and his rude boorishness. It was in
truth a case of the live, savage dog being better than
the dead, ferocious lion.

Meanwhile, orders were given for the whole country
to assume mourning for the space of two years. The
Queen shut herself up in her apartments for forty days,
the Royal children were kept equally invisible ; none
except those whose business rendered their presence
necessary in the Louvre was admitted. From every
chmrch the bells tolled intermittently by night and day ;
all Paris, from the Court downwards, was a mass of

252

The Crime

sepulchral gloom, while a laugh in the streets, or even
indoors, was a thing sternly suppressed by the passers-
by or the watch, in one case, and by the master or
mistress of the house in the other. A house of mourn-
ing in France, and, indeed, in England — where many
customs were then strikingly similar to those of our
neighbours — was at this time a terribly sad affair.

All apartments, from the grand saloons to the garrets,
were hung with black if the head of the family died,
and, in a lesser degree, when other members did so.
There was a mourning-bed kept for the state, or principal,
bedroom, which was thus hung and adorned with inky
plumes such as, until recent years in England, were
usually to be seen on hearses and mourning-coaches —
and in this the succeeding head of the family at once
began to sleep for a certain number of days or weeks
or months. When the bereaved family did not possess
this melancholy piece of furniture, it was borrowed
from friends or relatives. The ceilings were covered
with black cloth attached below them, the floors were
hidden under black carpets and every inch of parquet
was carefully disguised, while crape was the only wear
permitted to any person dwelling in the house, no
matter whether ruler or scullion.

This was the custom prevailing among the higher
or the wealthier classes, and even, to a certain extent,

253

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

among those less well to do ; but, with the great noblesse,
or royalty, the period of mourning was a still more
solemn and imposing ordeal. With the latter, as was
the case with Marie de Medici — and all widowed Queens
of France — it was obligatory that the bereaved wife
should not leave her private apartments for forty days,
or put off her mourning for two years (in Spain a
widowed Queen never discarded black), and, although
the funereal drapings of the palaces might be relieved
somewhat by silver lace, or by melancholy-looking birds
or animals of the same metal standing about, no re-
laxation of any kind could be permitted. Nor were any
public f^tes allowed, nor any amusements or music —
the theatres, as we have seen, scarcely existed as yet ;
dancing became a forgotten exercise or was only prac-
tised with the greatest secrecy. The enthralling
romances of Mdlle. de Guise (to speak candidly, they are
well worth reading now), or the lighter works of
d'Aubigne — which are full of valuable information
concerning his time — were hidden away, and any
young lady caught perusing them during the period
of general mourning would have probably received a
form of punishment which girls of later centuries
would not be inclined to credit.*

* A multitude of French works, too numerous to quote, deal with
the customs of mourning in France. In England, the Verney memoirs
are illuminating on this as well as other matters of interest.

The Crime

Meanwhile, special embassies and representatives
from every country arrived, and the body of Henri IV.,
after lying in state for the prescribed length of time,
was solemnly interred in the vaults of St. Denis (from
which it was, in company with those of other monarchs,
torn by the Revolutionists one hundred and eighty-
two years afterwards), and his heart was buried in the
abbey of La Fleche.

Fate had done its worst, and the most beloved King (as
well as the best hated by some) that France has ever
known slept in peace.*

It is, however, to the plot — with all its ramifi-
cations, the occasional truths and the numerous lies
that were told in various quarters, the adventurers
and the adventuresses of all ranks and classes — as dis-
tinguished from the deed of Ravaillac, that we have
now to turn our consideration.

First on the scene comes Jacqueline le Voyer, or
la Comans or I'Escoman, as she now began to be

* In the whole of the description of Henri IV. and of his death,
I have followed only the best contemporary French writers (principally
those named in earlier pages than this), while carefully collating them.
To mention the names of all whom I have consulted would require
too much space. Moreri, in his great Dictionnaire Historique, states
that, up to his time (1643-1680), fifty historians and more than five
hundred panegyrists and poets had written about Henri IV. How
many more have since done so in different countries, and languages,
no man can reckon.

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

termed ; the adventuress, entremetteuse, folle, etc., as
she was spoken of — and brave woman and victim of
others as she afterwards came to be considered.

In the preceding pages attention has been drawn to
her, and it is now important to take up the narrative
concerning her proceedings and revelations.

When she first attempted to obtain an interview
with Marguerite de Valois, which was eight months
after the murder of the King, she had but lately
come out of a prison to which she had been sent
some two years before through the agency of her
husband, who was most anxious to get rid of her.
The man had lived upon the money she earned with
hisj consent, no matter how small it was or in what
manner gained, and, when this source of existence
failed, he had brought a trumpery charge against her
which might have been true or false, but, considering the
scoimdrel's character, was probably the latter. She
was now in a deplorable state, without means and
almost without clothes — both of which facts told against
her later as proving that her last resource was to become
what the French term in the case of men, un diseur de
conies, and in English would mean, in her case, a dis-
coverer of plots; and that she was ready to concoct
any story which would obtain her some reward. But,

whatever might be her intentions, she approached

256

Tie Crime

Marguerite de Valois after the latter had attended
Mass in the Church of St. Victor and implored her to
listen to what she had to say.

Marguerite was a very different woman now froni
what she had been in the days of her youth, when no
man who was fairly good-looking and of decent birth
could fail to win a response to an admiring glance or a
whispered word in praise of her beauty. She had
become, indeed, truly religious and devout, charitable
to the poor and kindly to all, and was a good and firm
friend to the very woman who had taken her place on
the throne.

As she once was, she would have spumed this hapless
adventuress from her as a pariah ; as she now was, she
listened to what the other had to say, the more especially
as "La Comans " mentioned that, if she refused to do
so, awful and irreparable disaster might fall upon all the
Royal family.

What this forlorn creature did tell Marguerite seems,
as we unravel the facts, to dispose entirely of the suppo-
sition that Ravaillac was not a tool of d'Epemon and
Madame de Vemeuil ; yet, as will be seen later, such
supposition is undoubtedly the right one. The follow-
ing is the story as "La Comans " is supposed to have
afterwards dictated it, as it was published, and as it still
remains in the Archives and Trials of France. Before

257 17

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

narrating it, however, it may be well to state that Mar-
guerite summoned Marie and others to hear the recita-
tion offered by " La Comans," and that they did so from
behind a heavy tapestry curtain which entirely shielded
them from the sight of the person to whom they had
come to listen. It is also proper to say that what the
Queen (Marie) heard has been supplemented here by
what, by order of a Court sitting in the Conciergerie
where Jacqueline was soon to be incarcerated, she then
stated; which statement was, later, published. The
narrative opened by the declaration that, before she
was sent to prison by her husband's efforts, she had
found the opportunity of being presented to Henriette,
Marquise de Vemeuil, and, being in want of some posi-
tion, made herself so useful to that lady and her mother
that she had soon become essential to them (incidentally
she asserted that she discovered that Henriette was
utterly false to the King, and that the young Due de
Guise was her favoured lover). This pleasant state of
existence, especially for the narrator, lasted for some
months and up to the Christmas of 1608,* at which
time the Due d'Epernon and the Marquise saw fit to
attend church together, there to hear a sermon preached
by a celebrated Jesuit priest named Gondier, a man

* M. Michelet calls it the year 1606, which is impossible, as vre
shall see directly.

258

The Crime

who frequently reproved his congregation for their
sins and once asked Henri from the pulpit '* if he ever
intended to come and listen to him without bringing
his seraglio as well ? "

It was, however, *' La Comans " suggested, with no
fervent religious promptings, nor with any desire for
spiritual comfort, that either of this illustrious pair
found themselves in the sacred edifice, but, instead, with
the full intention of there and then deciding when the
long-discussed murder of the King should take place.
Jacqueline accompanied the Marquise de Verneuil and
was ordered to take a seat in the church in front of the
two conspirators so that no other persons in their
vicinity could hear what they were saying and, thereby,
conclude that the death of the King was decided on.

Thus runs the narrative, but, at this point, it is a
strangely involved one. The fact of a third person
sitting in front of two others would certainly not pre-
vent the conversation of those others from being over-
heard in a church crowded with people who came to
listen to a fashionable preacher, while, if that third
person was to hide the other two from the sight of a
portion of the congregation, she should have been seated
behind the conspirators and not in front, since those in
that position would scarcely turn round to stare at

those at their back. Moreover, the selection of a much

259 17*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

frequented church for the purpose of discussing their
plans seems a particularly crude performance for a man
of the crafty nature of d'Epemon, or for a woman so
astute as Henriette, to indulge in, and it was especially
so when it is considered that the two could have met in
absolute privacy elsewhere. They moved in the same
circle, they were both members of the Court ; the pas-
sages of the Louvre, or their own salons, would have
afforded them a far better opportunity of discussing their
future actions than a church filled with people who
were more or less of their own rank, and to whom they
were undoubtedly well known. Such, however, is what
the narrative states and as such it has to be accepted.

" La Comans " (this portion belongs to her examina-
tion before the Premier President, Achille de Harlay,
in the Court formed in the Conciergerie) stated next
that, shortly after the Christmas of 1608, she received
a letter brought to her by a valet of Balzac d'Entragues —
who was none other than the father of the Marquise de
Vemeuil — in which a man who accompanied the bearer
was recommended to her S5nnpathy and, if Balzac
d'Entragues did not intend to pay his bill for him, to
her charity also. She was also informed that she must
bring this stranger into contact with MdUe. du Tillet,
who happened to be a mistress of the Due d'^^pemon

(after having desired to fill the same position with

260

The Crime

Henri, to which she did not actually attain), and who is
described as being ugly, wicked and spiteful.

This stranger was Ravaillac, and, when he appeared
before Jacqueline, he was clad in rags. She states that
she fed him and bought him new clothes (she appears,
therefore, to have herself escaped from the want
and poverty which had originally afflicted her) and
found him lodgings ; he being at her charge for
nearly three months. Now, both the rags (mal vetu
is her term) and this matter of " nearly three
months " have to be carefully borne in mind in
reading the interrogatories and answers. The reason
for doing so in connection with the clothes the
man wore will appear shortly ; that in connection
with the period of time during which Ravaillac was
supported by "La Comans " can be dealt with at once.
This reason is, however, only given in the Mercure
Frangois (Richelieu's term for it in after days, Un
recueil de Mensonges, should not be forgotten), which
"news-sheet" has always been regarded as suspect hy
every French writer who has used it for reference.

Marguerite in her interview with " La Comans "

naturally asked the inevitable question : " What was

this man like ? " and the other, looking round at the

late Queen's attendants, indicated one of middle-height

with a dark complexion and a black beard. As a matter

261

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

of fact, however, Ravaillac was a big, well-built man with
dark, reddish-brown hair and a reddish beard. If, there-
fore, the Mercure Frangois — which was always a para-
sitical Court journal (we have seen that Louis XIII.
favoured it with paragraphs written by himself for a
reason of his own wtiich the most simple-minded can
easily penetrate) — was not ordered or paid to insert this
statement as a means of destroying the total credibility
of "La Comans " — in fact, if it was true, her whole story
falls to the ground. But if, in this case as with most
others, it simply gave to the public what it was forced
to insert, it refutes nothing that the denunciator
affirmed.

Continuing her statement, the woman fell into another
error which was, however, a trifling matter. She averred
that, in the following spring, the Court went to Chantilly
(which was then written and pronoimced Gentilly)
after Easter. But, considerable research having been
made by modern writers as to this fact, it has been
discovered that the only time at which the Court was
at Chantilly for a long period was before Easter in the
year 1609, " La Comans " being, therefore, accurate in
all but the difference of a fortnight. Her evidence, how-
ever, shows that the meeting in the church of St. Jean-
en-Greve between d'Epemon and Henriette must have

taken place in 1608 and not 1606 as M. Michelet states.

262

The Crime

After all this, *' La Comans " went on to state that
she was employed by the Marquise de Vemeuil to get into
communication with a dependent of hers who had been
banished by order of Henri as a man supplying in-
formation to his enemies, but who was actually hidden
at Vemeuil, from which place he was in constant touch
with Spain, which country, as "La Comans " stated,
was the principal mover and director of the plot to
murder Henri ; the Duke and the Marquise being in its
pay and Ravaillac in theirs.

On discovering these facts, as she supposed — " sup-
posed " because she was undoubtedly wrong in her
surmise with regard to Ravaillac — she determined to
reveal the whole plot to the King, and, to do so, she
got into contact with a courtier named Chambert and
a Mademoiselle de Goumay, who was an adopted
daughter of no less a* person than the illustrious Mon-
taigne and the one to whose indefatigable zeal is owing
the fact that the world possesses a final and complete
edition of the works of the great essayist. Mdlle. de Gour-
nay was, however, a lady who fully believed that Henri
was held sacred by all as a " wise and enlightened ruler "
— which description he undoubtedly deserved — and the
Comte de Chambert was a skilled courtier. When,
therefore, they saw " La Comans," the first was so

terrified at what she heard that she considered she

263

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

was in the company of a lunatic or a woman endeavour-
ing to make money out of the revelation of a con-
cocted plot, and the Count refused to have anything
whatever to do with their visitor.

Meanwhile, Henriette had heard of what has been
termed the indiscretions, namely, the statements, of
" La Comans,'* and the woman was turned over to the
service of Mdlle. du Tillet, who was quite capable of
keeping a strict watch upon the goings and comings
of the other, though her astuteness appears to have
failed to perceive that, at the same time, " La Comans "
was keeping an equally careful watch upon her. That
this was so is evident, since, later, Mdlle. du Tillet was
denounced as the person in whose house d'Epemon
and Henriette were in the habit of meeting to discuss
their plans, and as the person who was also their go-
between.

It may naturally be said, as it has been said by many
writers since the death of Henri, that, in all this narra-
tive, there is little proof of its truth. Jacqueline le
Voyer, or La Comans or d'Escomans, had led a stormy,
if not an actually wicked life, and one that was cer-
tainly entitled to be called irregular, while she had no
single witness to confirm any statement she advanced.
Moreover, if the Mercure Frangois happened by any
out-of-the-way chance to be telling the truth about

264

The Crime

her failure to recognize Ravaillac, she was undoubtedly
inventing lie after lie to ruin three people if not more,
namely, d'Epemon, Henriette de Vemeuil and Mdlle.
du Tillet. As for Ravaillac, she could scarcely say
anything that would injure him, since he was dead.
But as he had frequently been backwards and forwards
between Angouleme and Paris in his lifetime, and was
known as a fanatic who, in dark quarters and places
where he harboured, often spoke of petitioning the
King to destroy the Huguenots and support the Pope at
the peril of being himself destroyed if he did not do so,
and as he had evidently struck the fatal blows, the very
mention of his name in connection with the others
should have been enough to alarm them.

The actions of the woman at the time were, how-
ever, openly justified by all that she narrated later,
as is plainly to be seen by those who take the trouble
of studying them carefully. On Ascension Day of
the year 1609, on quitting the house of Mdlle. du
Tillet, she came face to face with Ravaillac, the
late object of her bounty, who at once informed
her without any circumlocution whatever that he
had come back to Paris to slay the King. With
this statement of hers there disappears any farther
declaration on her part which is not capable of

corroboration. She goes on to say that immediately

265

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

after she had left Ravaillac she sped to the Louvre,
sought out a friend of hers who was a waiting-woman
to the Queen, and implored her to bring her before her
Majesty, saying that she had terrible news to impart,
while offering to produce proof of how constant inter-
course was taking place between the house where Mdlle.
du Tillet dwelt and Spain. Of this visit to the Louvre,
if not of her capacity to produce evidence of letters
being sent to Spain, ample proof has always existed.
Yet — and here we arrive at one of the points which
for so long coupled the name of Marie de Medici with
the plot of the assassination — the Queen did absolutely
nothing. She was at the moment about to set out for
Chartres and to Chartres she went, while sending word
to "La Comans " that she would receive her on her
return in three days' time. But, when the Queen did
return, her next action was to set out at once for
Fontainebleau, where Henri was ill in bed, and the
woman was left to haimt the waiting-rooms of the Louvre,
not knowing when Marie would return.

" La Comans " was, therefore, in a dangerous posi-
tion. Her determination to reveal aU that she knew
might well lead to her own undoing. D'Epernon and
Henriette would accord her short shrift when once they
knew that she was likely to denounce them. The
former might, she probably thought, be easily tempted

266

The Crime

to slay her so that she should not be able to prevent
him from killing Henri. Taking counsel with herself,
she recognized that her greatest safety lay in confiding
in some person of importance who would listen to and
protect her. Unfortunately for her plan, however, she
sought out and got into communication with a man
who was, after d'Epemon — though in a different way —
the worst person to whom she could have gone. This
was the celebrated Jesuit father, Cotton, a man of
whom history has said both good and bad things.*
L'Estoile, who had no particular religious antipathies
or sympathies, and was, for those days, a large-minded
and tolerant man, says that Cotton went to see Ravaillac
in prison after he had assassinated Henri and told him
to be careful of every word he uttered, and wished to
make him believe that he was a Huguenot, f Directly
afterwards, L'Estoile goes on to say that Ravaillac de-
clared at his examination after the murder that he had

* Henri offered him the Archbishopric of Aries, and offered to
procure also a Cardinal's hat for him, in spite of his being an ardent
converter of Protestants. He refused both, some say out of vain-
glory. A little later he was nearly murdered in his carriage — he
said by enraged Protestants. The real attackers were some lackeys
whom Cotton had dismissed for insolence.

t It will be seen that L'Estoile is not quite so clear here as ordinarily^
The phrase reads as above, though it is capable of being construed
as though Cotton wished to persuade the murderer that he himself
was a Huguenot without recognizing the fact. It is, however, much
more Ukely that L'Estoile meant that Cotton passed himself off as a
Huguenot.

267

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

held conferences with another Jesuit father, le pere
d'Aubigne (who was almost certainly no connection
of d'Aubigne, the Huguenot writer, or, if so, was an un-
recognized one) ; and that he had shown him the knife
with which he intended to do the deed. A little later,
in fact, on the next page, the diarist states that a
quarrel had arisen at the Council between Lomenie
(the devoted secretary of Henri) and Cotton, and that
the former openly charged the latter and other Jesuits
with having instigated the murder of Henri.

It is, however, difficult to believe in the accuracy of this
statement, though quite easy to imagine that not only
Lomenie, but half the people in Paris, believed such to
be the case. The reason for doubting its accuracy is
that Henri had, of late, sought in every way the good-
will of the Jesuits and, amongst them, none had been
more humoured and caressed than Father Cotton, whom
Henri had constituted his confessor.

Moreover, he had aided the Jesuits to increase their
colleges, had ordered all bishops, mayors and syndics
to treat them with gentleness and respect, and to them,
and their college of La Fleche, he bequeathed his heart
after death. If, therefore, they were absolutely con-
cerned in the plot against his life they would only
have been so in obedience to orders they could not
venture to disobey — namely, those of Spain.

268

The Crime

Whether this were so or not, it is the fact that
JacqueHne le Voyer, dite " La Comans " or L'Escomans,
did not make a particularly good choice in endeavouring
to communicate with Cotton. When she arrived at
the convent where he dwelt he was out, or said to be
so, but his second in command told her that she could
see him on the next day. On the next day, however,
he had gone to Fontainebleau — in much the same manner
as the Queen had gone to the same place to see Henri —
and, driven to desperation, the woman told all she had
to reveal to Cotton's deputy and implored him to at
once communicate with the King. This person treated
her, however, with considerable coldness, remarked
that such methods required time for consideration, and
bade her go away and pray for guidance.

Whatever may have been the hour usually selected
by " La Comans " for her prayers, this, at least, did not
appear to her a suitable time for the purpose. Her
always irascible temper was aroused by these continual
evasions and postponements, and she announced to the
priest in a very firm tone that she should at once set
out for Fontainebleau and, when there, find means to
communicate with the King himself. This, however, did
not seem to be an undertaking which at all commended
itself to Father Cotton's representative, and, conse-
quently, he said that he would spare her the trouble of

269

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

doing so, and would, instead, go himself. There is no
proof obtainable that he ever went to Fontainebleau
for the purpose, and quite as much lack of proof that one
word of what " La Comans " could tell ever reached
the ears of the King. Meanwhile, no farther oppor-
tunity was left to her of making public any more of
what she knew, or, as many writers have suggested, of
what she only surmised or invented. A day or so after
she had left the priest on the understanding that he
would at once set out to see the King, she was arrested
and thrown into the Hotel Dieu, then serving as a House
of Correction, from which she managed to escape, only
to be re-arrested and imprisoned in Le Chatelet. An
ignominious charge was brought against her by her
husband, who, it has been hinted, was paid to make
it — ^an action of which he was quite capable — and as
a result of it she was condemned to death. She, how-
ever, struggled valiantly to save herself, appealed against
the sentence, asserted that, before it could be carried out,
she had means of telling far more than she had as yet
divulged, and — which appeared strangely significant in
the eyes of most people — obtained an extraordinary
revision of her sentence. It was now altered to one
which declared that she should be secluded in a con-
vent and that her husband should pay a small sum a

year for her maintenance, or take her back as his wife.

270

The Crime

Neither of these suggestions were agreeable to that
person, and the final result was that, after another
appeal for liberty, she found herself free.

Such was the narrative which this woman told briefly
to Marguerite de Valois, and more extensively to her
judges, after she had been again arrested and, on this
occasion, sent to the Conciergerie — principally on the
demand of d'Epemon. For those who had been
behind the hangings with Marguerite and Marie were
not likely to remain silent and, even had they been
requested to do so, of which there is no suggestion,
did not comply with the request. De Harlay, an
upright and honest judge, justly remarked that what
" La Comans " had advanced was sufficient to bring all
whom she inculpated to their death, and that, conse-
quently, if what she stated was untrue, she merited
the same fate herself.

Indeed, ** La Comans " had gone even farther than

has been set down here, since she insinuated that

d'Epemon and the Marquise de Vemeuil had bribed

her husband to bring his charge against her, so that she

should be imprisoned and deprived of all opportunity

of testifying farther. As an alternative, however, she

stated that, if it was not they who obtained her first

incarceration, then that incarceration was due to Father

Cotton who no sooner heard what she had told his

271

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

men have mostly been distinguished, and although,
in the present case, there is no particular evidence that
this one was entitled to any of these epithets, he was
undoubtedly an adventurer in a certain sense of the
word.

His name was Pierre Dujardin ; his nom de guerre,
M. le Capitaine la Garde. His warlike exploits had been
considerable. Once a soldier under the romantic Biron,
he had wandered far and fought with impartiality in
whatever army possessed the best-filled war-chest.
Now, when he makes his first appearance in connection
with the plots fomented so frequently against Henri,
he is to be seen at Naples, where he has disembarked
from a felucca which has brought him from Turkey.
His sword had but recently been hired by the Turk,
and its owner, having fulfilled the services for which he
was paid, was next about to proceed on another voyage
to Marseilles and to ride thence to Paris. Naples was,
however, in those days — as it still is in a more subdued
manner — one of the most delightful places in Europe.
The Spanish Viceroy was a man of hospitable habits,-
and the same may be said of the Neapolitans ; while
what would be especially dear to the heart of the French
adventurer was the fact that the place was full of his
own countrymen of different shades of politics, means

and habits. Old Leaguers were here who either would

274

The Crime

not or could not live longer under the rule of their con-
queror ; so, too, were many French Roman Catholics,
lay and clerical, and several diplomatic representatives
of other countries.

In this society La Garde instantly found himself at
home, and the more so as he had not been ashore
many hours ere he stumbled across an old friend who
had once been the secretary of his early commander,
Biron. This gentleman made him welcome at a table
reserved for his daily use at an Ordinary, and he was
also the guest of another friend who, when " The
League " was powerful, had been the Lieutenant of the
Chatelet, in Paris. Shortly after La Garde had joined
this company he observed a man enter who was warmly
received and treated with great cordiality by all present,
and he states in his factum (from which much of this
account is derived), that the new-comer was well-dressed
in a " scarlet violet " costume and that his name was
Ravaillac. (This is a considerably different account of
Ravaillac's apparel from that of "La Comans,'' who
states, as we have seen, that the future assassin of the
King of France was mal vetu when she met him.) With-
out any hesitation, the man, according to La Garde,
plainly said in reply to a question from one of the com-
pany that he brought letters from the Due d'fipemon

to the Viceroy, and that, directly after he had received

275 18*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

an answer to them, he intended to return to France and
assassinate the King, which deed he made no doubt of
accomplishing easily.

La Garde makes no mention of observing any surprise
on the part of his friends at this portentous news, so
that, if he had not, ere this, described the company in
which he mixed as one composed of " malcontents," we
might easily gather that such was the case.

Continuing his statement. La Garde goes on to say
that, a few days later, the ex-Lieutenant of the Chatelet
requested him to go in his company to pay a visit to a
Jesuit priest named Le Pere Alagona, a man of good
family who was uncle to the Due de Lerma, lately Prime
Minister of Spain, or, rather, of Philip IIL of Spain.
After some conversation on the subject of La Garde's
means, political feelings and adventures, the soldier was
somewhat startled by the priest suggesting to him that
he should undertake Ravaillac's task of slaying Henri,
since the other would only perform the business like a
footpad, while he would do it like a cavalier. The priest
also stated that, for remuneration. La Garde should be
made a Grandee of Spain and receive a sum of fifty
thousand crowns.

As has been said. La Garde, though more or less of a
mercenary and free-lance (as, at this time, were thou-
sands of men in Europe whose sword was their only

276

The Crim^

fortune), had never had any charge brought against him
of being a cut-throat or murderer, and it is not, there-
fore, surprising that he should have demanded eight
days for reflection — presuming, of course, that his story
is true and that the offer was ever made at all. Mean-
while, he states that he consulted a man known to him,
of the name of Zamet (brother of the Zamet who was
often spoken of as an early lover, as well as, eventu-
ally, the poisoner, of Gabrielle d'Estrees, who, as has
been shown, was probably not poisoned by any one),
but omits to say what advice he received on the subject.
He, however, tells us instead that he at once set out
for Rome where he saw the French ambassador and in-
formed him of the offer, the ambassador instantly send-
ing on the information to de Villeroy, a Secretary of
State in Paris.

Arrived himself in Paris, La Garde says he saw Henri
at Fontainebleau, who told him that the same story
from the French ambassador at Rome, and from Zamet,
had already reached him, but that he had by now so
much reduced his enemies and rendered them powerless
that there was little left for him to fear from their efforts.
Henri did not, however, offer any reward to La Garde
for his services and, war breaking out in Hungary and
Poland, the adventurer, who seems by this time to have

been without means, betook himself to those countries

277

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

and did not revisit the Capital until after the murder of
the King.

Returning again to Paris, he had then another tale
to tell, and, this time, with a credible witness to con-
firm it, namely, the Due de Nevers. He related that, on
passing by Metz (which was again under the governor-
ship of d'fipernon, Louis XIII., or, rather, the Queen
Regent, having restored that office to him), he was
attacked by the soldiers of the garrison, received twenty
wounds in various parts of his body, and was flung into
a ditch where he was left for dead. On recovering con-
sciousness he dragged himself to Mezieres, where he
encountered the Due de Nevers, who brought him in
safety to Paris. That he had received the wounds was
visible to all eyes, and the Duke's testimony corroborated
his own.

After this experience La Garde considered that the

time had come for him to receive some compensation

for his various services — he being again without means —

and he made an appeal to the " Royal Council "for a

grant sufficient to keep him from poverty, which appeal

was at once rejected. Irritated at this, he stated that

he was in possession of several secrets concerning the

death of the late King, and also of the names of all

those who had compassed it, and he now addressed

his request to the Etats-Generaux — which, as it

278

The Crime

happened, were then (1614) about to sit for the last
time for a hundred and seventy-five years, namely, not
until the period of the outbreak of the French Revo-
lution, The result was that he was again refused,
but was afterwards offered the small and not-at-all
lucrative post of controller-general of the beer tax,
which he at once rejected as unworthy of him. The
result of this refusal was that he was thrown into the
Bastnie.

So far La Garde had obtained but a poor recompense
for any of the services which he considered he had per-
formed, both in warning Henri of his danger before his
death, or in attempting to denounce those who had
plotted that death — and it was some considerable time
ere he received any consolation for what he was now
to suffer. He had remained for nine months in the
Bastille, where, he says, no attempt was made to examine
him or in any way to discover, or prove or disprove,
whatever he might have to testify. Following on this
he was removed to the Conciergerie — where " La
Comans " had previously been imprisoned ! — and was
then brought before a Court constituted to inquire into
what he had to state with regard to the parricide com-
mitted on the late King (** parricide " being the legal
term), and, if necessary, to set the law in motion against
those who might be found guilty.

279

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

The trial, or, perhaps, it should be said, the investiga-
tion into the charges made by La Garde was almost
as unfavourable to him as the preceding one had been
to " La Comans/' The Court appears to have acted
with a considerable amount of justice towards the latter
on that occasion, as it did, though in a still more con-
siderable degree, towards the former, it being in both
cases much biased against the Due d'Epernon, who had,
indeed, never behaved towards any of the great repre-
sentatives of Justice in a manner calculated to win their
good opinion. At the moment of all the excitement
attendant on the assassination of Henri, he had forced
his way into the Council Chamber booted and spurred
and with his sword by his side. Then, after informing
the members of it that they were at once to elect Marie
as Regent, he laid his hand upon the hilt of his weapon
and exclaimed, " This blade is still in its sheath, but if
the election is not at once made it, and thousands of
others in France, will instantly be drawn."

Later, at the time when he and the Marquise de
Vemeuil were summoned to appear at the examination
of "La Comans *' with regard to her charges against
them, he approached the President and asked him the
latest news of the affair, to which the plain-spoken old
man replied, " I am not your purveyor of news, but your
judge." On d'fipemon then endeavouring to explain

280

The Crime

that he had merely asked him, as a friend, for informa-
tion, the stout-hearted President rephed, *' I have no
friends " (he probably meaning where duty was con-
cerned). " Be content, you will see that I shall do you
justice/'

Notwithstanding, however, the unpopularity of
d'Epemon, which impopularity extended to the over-
bearing and grasping Henriette, the charges of La Garde
were repudiated and he returned to his cell, there to pass
five more years of misery and, as far as the world in
general was concerned, to be entirely forgotten. Yet
it would seem that, if he were neglected, there were
those still in existence who knew how to make a profit
out of him. Some enterprising printer-publisher had
obtained the full notes of his answers and accusations
when he was before the Court that sat to inquire into
his charges, and his factum was now published in the
usual fashion, the edition of fourteen hundred copies
being at once sold out. It was helped to this success-
ful issue by the assistance of several writers and pamph-
leteers, as well as by critics of more successful authors
than themselves, who, hating all above them, were only
too pleased to be able to attack, or assist in an attack on,
their betters.

The success of this document had, consequently, an

effect on La Garde's circumstances of which he had

281

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

probably not even ventured to dream, no matter what
hopes he may have cherished of its procuring him his
pardon — which, nevertheless, he now obtained. Follow-
ing on this he was informed that, in consideration of his
military exploits — which had rarely been performed on
behalf of France ! — the King had been pleased to accord
him a yearly pension for life of six hundred livres (about
thirty pounds).

After this signal proof of Court favour, and one of so
opposite a nature to the misfortunes he had lately
suffered, La Garde may well have been led to suppose
that there were those in existence who considered it
better to purchase his silence than to punish his out-
spokenness. And, if he did not indulge in some such
reflections as these, he was probably the only person
in Paris to whom similar ones had not presented them-
selves very clearly when they heard of his ultimate
success.

282

CHAPTER VI

THE EXPOSITION

TT is now requisite to attempt, not so much to sift
the evidence of the two informers whose characters
and denunciations have been briefly described, as to
endeavour to weigh carefully what object, if any, the
accused persons would have in entering into a plot to
slay the King ; and to determine whether it was more
to their interest or against their interest that Henri IV.
should cease to exist.

Combined, however, with this attempt another has
to be made, namely, one in which the credibility of
both Jacqueline le Voyer and La Garde must be con-
sidered, and a comparison instituted between the evidence
of the one and the other, and — which, perhaps, is not
very far to seek — the reason discovered that prompted
each of them to either divulge what they knew or to
assert what they pretended to know.

Until now, the stories of these informers have been set
down here as they exist in many accounts of the day,
in the pages of the most eminent historians of the

283

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

moment at which the murder was committed, in col-
lections of papers dealing with the period, which are now
in the Bihliotheque Nationale and in other public libraries,
and in the memoirs of prominent men of the time.
The testimonies of both informers are, indeed, to use
the language in which they are told, hien documentes !
But, when we come to reasons that will justify those
testimonies, we find few French writers, either of the
past or present, who have indulged in much argu-
ment on the matter, while in England, or in the
works of Enghsh writers, it is not too much to say that
we find little mention of the affair, and certainly none
at all worth considering.

In France, the late M. Auguste Poirson has, in his fine
Histoire du Regne de Henri IV., given us some specula-
tions on the subject, but he has been more affirmative,
more denunciatory, than aught else. Indeed, after using
the facts stated by his predecessors as bearing on the
probability of there being any plot against Henri in
which d'Epemon and the Marquise were the principals
and Ravaillac the tool, he dismisses the whole thing as
false and unlikely ; and bases his opinion on the fact
that " La Comans " was a " femme deer He pour ses
desordres et pour ses infamies," As to La Garde, he
describes him as the " son of a plasterer " — which
is certainly not a reason for destroying a man's credi-

284

The Exposition

bility ! — and terms him an adventurer who had usurped
the title of Captain and was desirous of making his
f ortime by seeking it by aid of his sword in all the Courts
of Europe. If, however, such a career as this in the days
of Henri and our own Elizabeth, or of James I., was
sufficient to destroy the possibility of any man's word or
evidence being credible, one hardly knows to whom
one could point as trustworthy among the masses of
men in England, France, and elsewhere who set out to
seek their fortunes in those days. In our own land,
Raleigh, Captain John Smith, Frobisher, Drake, Hawkins
— among the most distinguished — ^had done as much ;
in France there were as many who sought wealth or
renown, or both, in various directions, though principally
in Europe. In Spain, Cervantes had been a soldier and
fought in the great naval battle of Lepanto, where
he lost his arm ; he was captured by a corsair and
became a slave in Algiers for five years, after which
he served again as a soldier and was then a starving
dramatist until he won everlasting fame by his great
work, Don Quixote. Lope de Vega sailed in the
Armada ; Calderon had been a soldier, the manager
of a court theatre and a Canon of the Cathedral of
Toledo before he became the leading dramatist of
Spain and the " poet of the Inquisition."

The disordered life of the female witness and the

285

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

adventurous one of the man need not, therefore, be
considered as true reasons for impugning their credibility
any more than they need be considered as Hkely to
affirm it. There are many women leading the most
reckless lives who are not thieves, and there are many
men who are thieves and outcasts who would refuse to
swear away the lives of others.

When, however, the late eminent historian states
that the woman hoped to build up a fortune by de-
nouncing the Marquise de Verneuil to Marie de Medici,
who, as Regent, would then be able to wreak vengeance
on the mistress who had stood between her and her
husband, he comes nearer the mark, though he does
not necessarily hit it fairly. Also, with regard to the
man, when he states that he was poor and, consequently,
was eager to discover a means whereby he should be
provided for during the rest of his life, he does not fall
far short of the mark. At the same time, a great part of
what La Garde states was, if not the actual truth, that
which all people believed. In France, no one who was
in touch with the events of the day, or was " in the
movement," doubted for one moment that the Due
d'fipernon and the Jesuits were intriguing with Spain
so that the latter should regain her ancient power over
the rest of the Continent ; a power that, since Henri
became King of France, had been most seriously

286

The Exposition

diminished in spite of his early endeavours to secure the
friendship of that country.

Of those persons whose names have been associated
with the plot, and three of whom were accused by *' La
Comans " and La Garde, four stand out prominently,
namely, the Queen, d'fipernon, Henriette, Marquise de
Vemeuil, and Ravaillac. As regards the former, the
charge of complicity in such a plot may be dismissed
in a few words. Nothing she could gain, not even the
Regency, could be of any value in comparison with what
she would lose by her husband's death. Neither could
jealousy have produced any promptings in even the
heart of the " vindictive Florentine " towards the
murder of Henri, since, according to human impulses,
it would have been against the rival and not the object
of the rivalry that vengeance would have been hurled.
The charge that, as has been mentioned, was whispered
against Marie of having entertained ideas of removing
Henriette from her path was believed because it was a
probable one, because it formulated a natural possi-
bility. But to charge her with destroying, or endeavour-
ing to destroy, the man whose existence gave her all
that a woman could desire or obtain in point of splen-
dour, while leaving the hated rival alive, was absurd.

As regards Henriette, reasons have also been produced

to prove that neither would she have taken a part in any

287

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

plot to murder her lover, since she also received bene-
fits and advantages from him of which his death would
deprive her. He lavished large sums of money on her ;
she had an allowance that was actually drawn from the
fimds of the State, and, as the chere amie of the King,
she had great influence, while, strange as it may appear
to us, she was, after the Queen, the most envied woman
in France. Consequently, those who scout the sugges-
tion that she would ever have consented to take a part
in the murder of the King have much logic on their
side, logic that seems at first to be almost unanswerable.
Yet but a little reflection serves to show that an answer
is easily to be found.

Marie de Medici, in spite of her great position, had
never been able to hold her own against the Marquise
in the heart of Henri > the latter had, indeed, in all but
rank and standing, reduced the Queen to a cipher. But,
supposing that this volatile admirer of women should
still remain stable in his latest passion of all, namely,
that for the Princesse de Conde, and that he should
force on a divorce between her and her husband and
between himself and his wife, what then would be Hen-
riette's own position ? Although not yet old — she was,
it will be remembered, but twenty-seven at the death of
Henri — she was old in comparison with the young and

handsome daughter of the great house of de Mont-

288

The Exposition

morency, who, most undoubtedly, would soon make
extremely short work of a mistress who interfered
between her and the King after he had become her
husband. " La grosse banquiere," " the Florentine
woman," who was nearing thirty when she was married
and was nearly forty then, might have been powerless
against the favourite's charms, her insulting demeanour
and violent temper, but was it to be supposed that the
young Princess of sixteen, and a youthful Queen, would
allow herself to be superseded by the mistress who
already suffered to some extent from the worst calamity
that can befall a once-loved woman, the calamity of
having grown stale and wearisome ?

In such a case as this, what would become of her ?
The Court would be closed to her, her allowance would
undoubtedly cease ; there would remain nothing for
her to do but to retire to the estates Henri had bestowed
on her, and, with the money she had extorted from him,
vegetate there until the end of her days.

But, on the other hand — with Henri dead I With

the King gone and Marie de Medici still undivorced and

Regent of France, as she would undoubtedly be if once

crowned ; with Charlotte de Montmorency still no more

than the wife of the poor, plain — though highly-placed —

Conde, could not Henriette still draw large profits from

the position she had once held and to which she had

289 19

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

sold herself for profit alone ? Might she not, as the
ostensible friend of the Queen, whom, in her heart, she
hated and despised — while supported, as she knew she
would be, by the arch-schemer and traitor, d'fipernon —
so guide and rule that Queen as to improve still further
her position, still draw her allowance, still add to the
wealth she already possessed ?

It is not asserted in these pages that this reasoning
actually took place in the mind of the Marquise de
Vemeuil ; it is only suggested — remembering her crafty
nature and her cupidity — that it may well have done
so. She had intrigued and plotted against Henri ;
earlier she had schemed to gain him for her lover; she
had been, if all accounts are true, false to him behind
his back ; she was, at the moment, the friend and ally
of d'fipemon and of his mistress, du Tillet, both of whom
were in constant comnmnication with Spain. It was to
her interest that, sooner than she should be discarded
for a younger and handsomer woman backed up by all
the power of a great family, and by, above all, the rank
of queen and the possession of the hold which a young
girl can so often obtain over a doting man nearing old
age, the man himself should be removed.

For the Due d'Epemon as many reasons can be ad-
vanced for treachery on his part as can be advanced
on the part of the Marquise de Vemeuil. By vice

290

The Exposition

almost incredible he had risen from a humble position
to the post of pander to the most ignoble King (Henri
III.) who had ever ruled France. A mignon of that
King, he had attained to immense fortune and high
rank, and had become engaged to the sister-in-law of his
master at that master's request. He had, indeed — under
the wretched creature enslaved by foul habits and super-
stitious fanaticism which he imagined to be religion, and
interested in cooking and larding filets for his courtiers,
in cutting their hair for them and in turning his bed-
room into a lying-in home for his dogs — been almost
king himself. But, when the blow came, when Henri IH.
fell beneath the knife of Jacques Clement and Henri IV.,
that was to be, appeared triumphant and with the crown
of France as certain to adorn his brows as anything in
the world could be certain, it seemed to d'fipemon that
his occupation would soon be gone. Reflection, how-
ever, undoubtedly brought some comforting thoughts
to his mind. He had fought with the League against
Henri ; he now vowed to fight for and with him ; yet,
still, there remained a deeper, sweeter task to be
attempted. He could also betray him. We have seen
that he did not fail in this resolution : in truth, he never
failed in it. He hated the new-comer, the man who was
not only the successor by inheritance of the now defunct

Valois race, but, ajso, by the nomination of Charles IX.,

2gi 19*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

and even of the miserable Henri III., as well as by his
superb prowess and strategy in the field of battle. He
likewise hated him because he possessed the most ex-
asperating power one person can possess in the eyes of
another who is attempting to deceive him or her. Henri
had the power to see through d'fipemon and mistrust
him, and he did not hesitate to let the latter perceive
that such was the case. Doing so, he removed
d'fipemon's charge of the infantry from him and also
his governorship of Metz — which entirely broke his
power to render any assistance to Spain in case of an
outbreak of war. He ordered him to retire to Loches,
another of his governments, and it was only gradually
that the intriguer was able to creep back into a kind
of subdued and much reduced favour with Henri, and
to be at his side on the day that he was assassinated
— a position which, as has been shown in the descrip-
tion of that assassination, it was almost imperative
that he should occupy.

At the first blush, the statement of Jacqueline le
Voyer seems, when compared with that of La Garde, to
be strongly corroborated by the latter. She averred
that it was at Christmas of 1608 that she was taken
to the Church of Saint- Jean-en-Gr^ve, and, while cover-
ing the Marquise de Vemeuil from the curiosity of the

congregation, overheard the arrangements made for the

292

The Exposition

assassination of Henri when a suitable time occurred.
This statement — putting aside the unlikelihood of a
church being selected as a fitting place for such a scheme
to be broached between the two conspirators who could
at any moment have met in a dozen secret ones — might
well have been true if the characters of the two accused
are remembered.

Later, the witness stated that she received orders to
shelter Ravaillac and to bring him into contact with
Mdlle. du Tillet, the bitter and scheming mistress of the
chief conspirator, d'Epernon — a proceeding which also
fits in well with the main suggestion of a plot.

So far, so good, since La Garde on his part tells a
story of how, a little earlier than the date when the
woman sheltered Ravaillac, namely, at or about Ascen-
sion Day in 1609, he encountered the man at Naples
and heard him openly announce that, after seeing the
Spanish Viceroy, he was about to proceed to Paris to
slay Henri. Here, therefore, the confirmation changes
from one side to the other ; this declaration of La Garde's
being corroborated by that of "La Comans," who had
stated that letters were being sent from Mdlle. du Tillet's
house, and from the house of the Marquise, to Spain,
of which country Naples was a possession.

But, already, when we have only examined these two
statements side by side, we become plimged in a labyrinth

293

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

of doubt and suspicion. At periods near to one another
La Garde sees Ravaillac arrive clad in a " scarlet and
violet " — or a scarlet-violet dress — and take his place at
a table amongst men who, whatever of evil there might
be in their lives, were still of some position. Conse-
quently Ravaillac must have left Naples a little later,
crossed the Alps and reached Paris — a journey that is
not a cheap one in these days, and that, in those days,
was a very expensive one — he being, when in Paris,
to use " La Comans' " own words, mal vetu. Mai vetu !
yet still a man supposed to be employed by one of the
richest peers in France in conjunction with a woman who
had been the King's favourite for ten years, and who was
as grasping as a harpy in the accumulation of wealth.
A man employed by those who represented Spain and
were empowered to offer fifty thousand crowns and
the rank of a grandee to any assassin of the French
King !

The thought has occurred to many, and it arises now
as these lines are penned — did Jacqueline le Voyer ever
see Ravaillac clad in rags, or La Garde ever see him
clad in scarlet and violet, or did either of them ever
lay eyes on him before the deed was done ? If so, it
must have been the woman and not the man who saw
him, for she alone describes the unhappy wretch *' in

his habit as he lived.''

294

The Exposition

But one doubt often leads to another, and from many
doubts there sometimes springs a shrewd suspicion of
what is actual fact.

The woman was in prison, in the first instance, from
the end of July until some months after the murder of
the King, and this has often been advanced as a fact
which precludes her from having seen Ravaillac, who only
reached Paris again a week or so before he assassinated
the King ; and that, consequently, her story of succour-
ing him, of taking him to Mdlle. du Tillet, of seeing him
in rags and of helping him to obtain new clothes, was a
trumped-up one. But this need not be by any means
the case. Ravaillac, as we shall see later, had often
been in Paris, while frequently making the journey on
foot from Angouleme — a tremendous one of two
hundred miles as the crow flies — and generally doing
so with a view to obtaining an interview with the
King and petitioning him to be a true friend and
worthy servant of the Pope and a bitter enemy to
his old co-religionists whom he had abandoned.

But, as regards the story of his being poorly clad, she
could scarcely have failed to describe him thus accur-
ately, even though she should have been in prison from
five years before the crime until five years after it, and
have never laid eyes on the man. All Paris, all France,
indeed, all Europe, were still ringing with the hideous

295

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

deed when she stepped outside the prison doors ; pictures
of Ravaillac were in every shop-window ; numbers had
seen him on the fatal day ; descriptions of him abounded
in the pamphlets and brochures of which frequent men-
tion has been made — at his execution alone was he clad
in the garb of the doomed and was different from what
he had ever been. Had she not been able to obtain a
description of this man before she had been free an hour,
she would have had to be both blind and deaf.

It is, however, also quite possible that La Garde
never saw Ravaillac, and almost certain — indeed, abso-
lutely certain — that he never saw him in Naples, for the
simple reason that the man was never there. His move-
ments for the last year of his life were traced, after the
murder, with unerring exactness ; he had no money
for rich suits of clothes, or for dining at taverns and
ordinaries ; he never had any — for an equally simple
reason; namely, that he was no hired assassin in the
pay of wealthy men and women. The passage across
France, across the Alps, and from the Alps to the southern
portion of Italy, was far beyond the possibilities of the
man who begged outside churches, who was unable
to pay for his room at the most miserable of taverns* for
more than a night or so, and who had to steal the weapon

* It was opposite the church of St. Roch and bore the sign of " Les
trois Pigeons."

296

The Exposition

with which he accompHshed his purpose. Nor, indeed,
was he a man who was likely to have been made welcome
in their midst by the well-to-do exiles and men of rank
at Naples who were opposed to Henri, or even to be
allowed to join them at their table.

Yet La Garde, mixing amongst this company as he
undoubtedly did, was almost certain to have heard
much, if not all, of what was going on in the way of
conspiracy as well as of what plots were being hatched
in Naples. The rest would be easy. He had but to
arrive in Paris himself, which he did soon after he had
heard of these plots, and attempt to reveal them to
Henri, Sully and others, and, when the time came for him
to be interrogated — which did not occur until after the
King's death — to tack on to them the, by then, wide-
spread name of the murderer.

Presuming, too, that La Garde had obtained a very
shrewd knowledge of the fact that d'fipemon was a prime
— indeed, the prime — mover in the conspiracy, what would
be more likely than, on getting away from Metz, the
place where the Duke was again absolute, he should
mention him as the man who had caused him to be
attacked ; or that he should allow the inference to be
drawn, or should artfully foster its being drawn, that
the attack had been made with the purpose of silencing
him for ever ? It is true that La Garde had many

297

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

wounds upon him when discovered by the Due de Nevers
and that he had also dragged himself to Mezieres, but
such things as these have been heard of before and
since. Men have often wounded themselves with the
intention of creating an impression that the wounds
have been inflicted by others, while any man can simu-
late the appearance of being injured and of staggering
along a road in a pitiful condition.

Allowing, however, that this was all part of a system
which the adventurer had imagined with a view to
obtaining money, or employment, as a reward for his
knowledge and the sufferings which that knowledge
had entailed upon him, he had, nevertheless, adopted
the very worst course which he could pursue. For, if
he had really seen Ravaillac, or, at the time of the assault
made on him, had ever heard of him, the very mention
of his name and his determination to slay Henri would
have produced for La Garde as large a reward from
d'Epernon as he could possibly desire. The Duke would
have instantly grasped the fact that there was in
existence a man who, through his morbid fanaticism,
was prepared to perform a deed for which he required
no pay ; a man who would do for him and his com-
panions all that he was being paid large sums by Spain
for the performance thereof, while himself paying smaller
sums to the actual hired performers ; a man who, not

298

The {Exposition

knowing d'fipemon, could never shield himself behind
his powerful presence or inculpate him in the slightest
degree. But, if the attack at Metz was actually made on
La Garde, he had not then, he could not have, this
powerful card in his hand, for, as has been said, the
simple reason that it did not exist. It never existed
until Ravaillac's name was, after the murder was perpe-
trated, the one most widely known in Europe for a
time.

It is scarcely to be doubted that this explanation is
the true one : that La Garde did obtain at Naples the
knowledge of an actual plot being fomented against
Henri, but could not, at the same time, have learnt any
information concerning the future murderer, who did
not play a part in that plot. For corroboration of this,
we have but to suppose that Henri paid no attention to
La Garde's story — if he ever heard it, as La Garde states
— because Ravaillac's name could not, at that period,
have been mentioned in connection with it, and because
the only conspirators of whom La Garde could speak were
in the Spanish dominions and out of the reach of Henri.
The King almost invariably ignored the plots against
him because, probably, he knew that they were always
in existence, and also because he was aware that, sooner
or later, one of them must be successful. But he was

not foolhardy, and, if La Garde could then, at the inter-

299

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

view, have mentioned the name of Ravaillac and have
stated that the man had left Naples for Paris determined
on murdering Henri, he would, undoubtedly, have
caused a hunt to be made which must surely have
unearthed him.

With " La Comans " the same argument may well
apply. The confidante of the Marquise de Vemeuil,
the go-between of her mistress and Mdlle. du Tillet ;
the woman who must have overheard, in true
waiting- woman fashion, the conversations between
d'Epernon and the others — even putting aside as
unveracious the meeting in the church of Saint-
Jean-en-Greve — would have learnt much. In her
case, therefore, as in that of La Garde, she had
but to tack on to her story the name of Ravaillac,
after he had become the actual assassin, to give the
necessary finishing touch of verisimilitude to the narra-
tive. The only difference of any importance in the story
of the two informers is that she was right in her de-
scription of Ravaillac's appearance and La Garde was
wrong. But her opportunities of being accurate were
the greater. She came out of prison soon after the
murder ; La Garde did not go into prison until the
crime had almost sunk into that oblivion which settles
inevitably over the most appalling and exciting

episodes that astound and shock the world for a

300

The Exposition

time. And, if no knowledge had come to the man
(who was in Hungary or Poland at the moment of
the assassination) of the needy circumstances of
Ravaillac, he would probably be led to describe him
as being handsomely clad, since he would naturally
suppose that the tool of high-born and wealthy con-
spirators would hardly be dressed like a scarecrow or
be without money in his pocket.

Such are the doubts which those who read carefully
the factums of Jacqueline le Voyer and La Garde cannot
but feel rising in their minds : there remain, however,
many facts which go far towards causing thoughtful
inquirers to recognize that there is much to be said in
favour of the evidence of both these persons. Let us
again regard the case of the woman. The whole of her
testimony is skilfully dovetailed : save and except the
comparison of Ravaillac with Marguerite's serving-man
whom he did not actually resemble, it is pieced
together almost as closely as a child's wooden map
or box of bricks, while even the mistake of "La
Comans," or rather the reason why and how she
made it, is easy of explanation. She went into the
Conciergerie in June, 1609, and there she remained
until the early summer of 1610, a period of time
embracing the formation of the last, and the almost

successful, plot against Henri as well as the perpetration

301

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

of the crime by one outside that plot. But, during
that period, Ravaillac had also been a prisoner in the
Conciergerie ; it was in it that he was put to the torture
with a view to extorting a confession from him, and it
was from it that he went forth to be torn to pieces by
horses and to have his offending hand chopped off and
burnt before his eyes. In those days, however, and for
many years afterwards, life was extremely lax in French
prisons ; so long as the prisoners were safe within the
walls but little heed was taken of what they did or
where they were ; it was sufficient that they were held
fast. It is, therefore, highly probable that the other
prisoners, with " La Comans " among them, may have
obtained a view of the man, and it is possible that it
was thus that the woman may have seen him " mal
vetu," though this is not altogether certain, since his
clothes were supposed to have been torn off his back
by the crowd when he was arrested the moment after
the assassination. The story of his crime, however,
would have reached their ears, since there was often a
certain amount of good-fellowship between the warders
and the prisoners, even down to the days of the Revolu-
tion ; in some way the news of the murder would have
certainly filtered through the walls and have aroused a
desire in those prisoners, who were often harmless, un-
fortunate people, to see so horrible a culprit. But as

302

06

The Exposition

the Conciergerie was to the end of its use, so it
was in the seventeenth century, and so it had been
from far earlier ages — a gloomy, darksome hole, its
corridors and passages lighted only by rays of
light that stole through the openings in the day-
time, and by miserable Ian thorns at night — when
they were lighted at all.* Consequently, if *' La
Comans " ever saw Ravaillac, she probably did so —
since he would scarcely be allowed to roam about at
large — when he was going to his torture, and then only
saw him indistinctly. Her mistake was, therefore, not
a very serious one, as the serving-man of Marguerite de
Valois, whom " La Comans " indicated as resembling him,
had a dark beard and Ravaillac had a dark red-brown
beard, while the fact that the serving-man was short and
puny and Ravaillac tall and muscular, might, if it were
necessary to do so, be disposed of by considering that
the wretched creature was on his way to or from the
torture-chamber and had already been half-killed by
the infuriated crowd who witnessed his terrible deed ;
neither of which occurrences would be calculated to make
him appear at his full height or strength.

Some of this argument has been broached before

* It is interesting to read what an Englishman and a philanthropist,
John Howard, had to say of the Conciergerie so late as 1776 : " The
dungeons are dark and infected. A new infirmary has been constructed
having beds which now contain only one sick person at a time."

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

by Richelieu's detestation, Le Mercure Frangots, and
we may consequently join hands with the eminent
statesman in believing that it is not, therefore, trust-
worthy. Sometimes, however, the biggest liars drop
into the truth by accident, and, although it is not
to be doubted that this statement was issued by
the "newspaper" with a view to disparaging any
evidence given by " La Comans " that was, in
other respects, only too accurate, we may well accept
this as truthful reasoning. We can the better do
so, since the argument itself is of no particular value.
What the woman knew, she knew from sources that
could not be impugned ; whether Ravaillac had a
black beard or a dark brown one, or whether he was
tall or short, matters not a jot, while the manner in
which she might easily obtain other particulars on leav-
ing her prison has already been suggested. Like La
Garde's story of the attack upon him by d'fipemon's
soldiers near Metz, or his description of Ravaillac's
costume of scarlet and violet, her own was but an added
detail that might well embellish the whole narrative, as
a clever painter embellishes a portrait with a suitable
background, an actor his part with suitable gestures and
glances, or a stage-manager a play with good scenery
and costumes. It is, however, proper that the incident,
itself a detail, should be told here.

304

The Exposition

It is when we come to the punishment of "La
Comans " that we recognize how terrible must have been
the knowledge possessed by the woman, judging by the
sentence passed on her, and also by the pains taken to
prevent her testimony from ever becoming accurately
known. ** Accurately " because, though her factum
was published, as was that of La Garde, it was un-
doubtedly but a mangled account of all that she had
testified, while it is highly probable that much had
been inserted to which she never testified at all. No
one can read the memoirs of the Marquis, afterwards
Due, de la Force, who was colonel of the bodyguard,
and, in that capacity, present at the murder; or the
Methode pour etudier Vhistoire of Langlet-du-Fresnoy,
without believing this to be so, or, if they cannot do
this, without believing the extraordinary actions of the
judges when her fate was decided upon. She was con-
demned to perpetual imprisonment within four walls,*
and all those whom she accused were discharged and de-
clared innocent ! The judges, who were eighteen in
number, debated on her sentence for several days, and,
at the conclusion, there were nine who were strong for
her acquittal and nine for her condemnation. Neverthe-

* It was long believed that she escaped by aid of a lover who dis-
covered her place of incarceration, but that the government of Louis
XIII. {i.e., of Richelieu) thought it best not to make any further stir
in the matter.

305 20

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

less, the above sentence was passed on her ! To all this
has to be added the fact that, a few years later, a fire
broke out in the room where the papers that recorded her
statements, as well as her answers to the questions
put to her, were stored, and it was freely asserted in
Paris that it had been caused by the accomplices in the
plot to murder the King, so that all evidence of her
story should disappear for ever. Meanwhile, ere this,
it was openly stated that not only had the greffier, or
clerk of the Court, written the statement so illegibly
that no person, including himself, could afterwards
read it, but also that the judges had all sworn a solemn
oath on the New Testament never to repeat a word out-
side the Court of what the woman had narrated, and
that they had burnt a number of copies of the evidence
given by her.*

Thus stands the case of Jacqueline le Voyer, styled
variously " La Comans " and " TEscoman," and thus
it may be left while we turn to the ultimate result of
the testimony of La Garde.

It has been told how he rejected the contemptible
offer of Controller of the Beer Tax (a post about equal
to that of an inferior Custom-House officer), and that,
on the rejection, he was incarcerated in the Bastille;
those who had procured him the offer of the post being

♦ L'Estoile, Germain-Brice, P. Lacombe, and many others.
306

The Exposition

probably of the opinion that, since he could not be
bribed, he had better be prevented from speaking out
more plainly. As has been suggested, his story was
not wholly true, but it was partly so. If he was
wrong in the tag which he attached to what he
really knew, he was at least right in the main. He
did undoubtedly come into contact with the self-
exiled Leaguers in Naples, and was acquainted with
their names as well as their intentions : he was
the informant of the French Ambassador at Rome
and of Zamet ; and those in Paris who were in
correspondence with the plotters in Naples had the
best reason for knowing that such was the case and that
there was no invention on the part of La Garde in the
particulars. But, even in those days, and especially
after Louis XIII. had uttered the remark that he would
cause more full inquiries to be made into the manner
in which his father had lost his life, it was impossible to
imprison a man — who, at the best, was doing a service
to the country in exposing the plotters, and, at the worst,
was still doing it, though with a view to his own ad-
vantage— without inquiring into his statements ; with-
out, in fact, trying him. Nevertheless, the trial did
not take place until l^js factum was published, and, as
has been shown, the result was that he was awarded
a pension for life.

307 20*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

It has been said that the acceptance of this pension
nullifies the whole value of his information, but that
is not the light in which that acceptance should be
regarded. He undoubtedly wanted money, he was
worn with the life he had led, but, in endeavouring to
obtain a sum which should save him from starvation in
his old age, he was only doing what ninety-nine men in
a hundred did in those days when they had something
to sell or some claim to advance. Moreover, with the
power he held in his hand, he could have stipulated for
a far larger sum, and would, in all probability, have
got it ; or he might have applied to Spain to pay him
handsomely to hold his tongue, in which case he would
have run no risk whatever of imprisonment. Spain
would, it is obvious, have been willing enough to do
this, since it would have been most unadvisable for her
to perform any act — or be known to perform any act —
which would cause Henri to withdraw his encouragement
of the Jesuits, or drive him to exert his superior military
power against Spain herself. Spain ! — whose armies
were now composed of peasants, full of martial instincts,
it is true, but void of the most elementary rudiments of
military science ; Spain — whose coffers, once bulging
with wealth, were now almost empty !

308

CONCLUSION

TN following Ravaillac's words and actions from the
time when he committed his murderous deed to the
moment when he expiated his crime by a hideous death,
we may look forward confidently to proving that, not
only was he actually independent of any plot what-
ever that d'fipernon had set on foot, but also that — ^not-
withstanding the fact of this traitor having undoubtedly
arranged a plot to slay the King on this very journey —
everything justified the Court of Enquiry, ordered by
Parliament, in acquitting d'fipernon and his friends
owing to the inexactitudes which appeared in the
testimonies of Jacqueline le Voyer and Pierre La Garde.
That, however, the Court of Enquiry was glad to do so
cannot be doubted. The members of it were, indeed —
remembering the power of d'fipemon, the innate wicked-
ness of the Marquise de Verneuil and the bitter tongue
of Mdlle. du Tillet — afraid to do aught else. As for
the former, it is doubtful if any verdict of guilty could
have stood against him, considering his position and in-
fluence, the infancy of the new King, and the grateful

309

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

regard which Marie must have entertained for the man
who had forced Pariiament to constitute her Queen
Regent without loss of time. As to the stories of any
undue intimacy existing between d'Epernon and her,
they have already been disposed of and need not be
referred to again. Next, with regard to the Marquise de
Vemeuil, she, too, was safe — in spite of the Queen's
loathing for her and the probability that the vengeance
Italienne of the " Florentine woman," if it existed, had
never slumbered — from the fact that, if d'Epernon
could not be proceeded against, neither could she.
Du Tillet was also safe under his protection, and was,
in any case, little more than a go-between of the various
plotters.

It has, however, been mentioned that Marie was
regarded by many as having had, if not a share in the
assassination plot of d'fipemon, at least a shrewd sus-
picion that such a plot was brewing ; and, if Le Voyer's
statement that the Queen instantly left Paris on hear-
ing her story and then returned only to leave it again
were true, it would point strongly towards the justifica-
tion of that suspicion. It has been indicated, however,
that both the statements of these denouncers — while
possessing a solid base of what might have been true,
though, as a matter of fact, they might have been
gathered after the event — required to be considerably

310

Conclusion

embellished and draped with an air of veracity, as well
as with a number of incidental circumstances, ere they
could stand the searching examinations to which their
authors would be subjected. But, even had all these
embellishments stood the light of such examinations, or
had there been no embellishments at all, and only sheer,
hard matters of indisputable fact produced, there was
still that in the Queen's own conduct which went far
to surmount the idea of her being involved in the plot
simply because she first left Paris on a visit she had
long been engaged to pay, and then, on her return, again
left the city to join her husband who was ill at Fon-
tainebleau. Moreover, her desire to prevent Henri from
setting out on the visit to Sully is little in accordance
with the action of a wife who would know, if she were
in the plot, that this was the day arranged for the
murder, and that, if she kept the victim at home, she
would mar the schemes of the others and herself.

The greatest reason of all has, however, been already
touched upon, namely, that the drop from Queen
Consort to Queen Regent is one which it is hardly to
be supposed any queen would ever desire to make. Her
revenues suffer by such a change ; her position is enor-
mously depreciated ; in all cases another Queen Con-
sort soon, or at once, appears to take her predecessor's
original place; gradually, as the son of the Queen

311

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

Regent assumes all the power which her late husband
possessed, she retires to the position which is the lot
of all dowagers. Marie was, therefore, scarcely the
woman to take part in the slaying of her husband
only to exchange her great position for one such as
this, even though she had no affection for him. But
that she had affection for him cannot be doubted.
Without it she would scarcely have been jealous of
the Marquise de Vemeuil, she would never have
exclaimed that the other had poisoned the whole of
her life, and she would, undoubtedly, have laughed at
Henri's indecision in setting forth to see Sully instead
of imploring him on her knees to remain at home with
her.

One thing there is, however, in connection with
the evidence given by Jacqueline le Voyer and by La
Garde, which appears at first to be inexplicable. This
is the difference between the treatment of the two
informers ; the second of whom is accorded a pension
for life and the first of whom is sent to prison for life.
In point of fact, the casual student of the circumstances
would be inclined to say that the female witness knew
more, and had more to reveal, than the male witness.
She had been in the secret of the scheme and in the
house of the Marquise de Vemeuil, which was often
visited by d'fipemon ; in the house of Mdlle. du Tillet,

312

Conclusion

from which place the letters for the plotters in Spain
and for the Spanish possessions were usually despatched.
But whatever La Garde knew he had learnt casually,
as "an outsider " only, and from sitting at meals in a
tavern with a few persons with whom he had formerly
had some acquaintance, persons whose information he
had improved upon by a good many of those embellish-
ments of which we have spoken.

Nevertheless, it may be said, after due reflection,
that he was the most dangerous of the two, for the reason
that all which Le Voyer stated could be denied, and
naturally would be, by those witnesses on their own
behalf, d'£pemon, the Marquise and du Tillet — no
matter whether the denials were true or false, while
the statements of La Garde could not be denied by any
of his dinner companions in Naples. His declaration, as
well as that of the woman, was not made until the
murder had taken place ; those companions would
probably be only too willing, as old Leaguers and old
Catholics who hated the Huguenots and all Protestants,
to acknowledge not only the truth of his assertions,
but to glory in them. As for the story about Ravaillac
and his crimson and violet dress — to use what was
probably as much the expression of a Frenchman in those
days as it is to-day — c'etait un dStail, and neither a
particularly bad nor a particularly good one.

313

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

But that which played a still greater part than aught
else in obtaining for La Garde his pension, was the fact
that one of the enterprising printer-publishers had
obtained a copy of his factum, or one resembling it and
written by La Garde himself, and had produced it in
print. The edition was, indeed, bought up at once,
perhaps by those whose safety it most jeopardized ; but
new editions are always easily produced. That had
to be stopped, and there was only one way in which it
could be done. The author obtained his pension, the
printer-publisher was no doubt quite amenable to
reasoning of a solid nature, and d'fipernon and the
ladies of his acquaintance heard no more of the matter.

Turning now to Ravaillac's own statements, given at
a time when he had nought to fear since his doom was
fixed irrevocably, and when they were also given for
the greater part under subjection to one of the most
awful tortures to which human beings can be exposed,
let us examine his own answers to the interrogatories
addressed to him.

In those interrogatories, published by order of the Par-
liament, Ravaillac is reported to have said that he
recognized that the moment for killing the King had
come when he saw the carriage stopped by the broken-
down wain, and observed his Majesty turn and lean
towards d'fipemon to speak to him. Of this answer a

314

Conclusion

great point has been made, as testifying to the fact
that Ravaillac knew d'Epemon, while, as it was not at
all probable that such as he would have been likely
to know one of the principal subjects in France unless
he had been serving him in some special way, it stood
to reason that Ravaillac must have been employed by
the Duke to commit the murder. We have already dis-
cussed the probability of how the most humble inhabi-
tant of a coimtry town is almost certain to know the
most important one by sight, if in no other way, and,
indeed, the thing is so obvious that it scarcely needed
any discussion whatever. The above point stands,
therefore, for nothing.

Ravaillac is also, in the printed statements, made to
assert that La Force, when refusing him admission to the
Louvre, asked him if he was a firm Catholic, and if
he knew the Due d'Epernon ; and Ravaillac replied
that he knew of him and that he was himself a firm
Catholic.

These answers, as printed, would at once seem to
decide the argument as to whether Ravaillac was a
tool of d'fipemon and concerned in his plot, were it not
that, when they were published, those responsible for
the publication seem to have forgotten one small inci-
dent which they would have done well to remember.
If Ravaillac was a tool of d'Epemon, what justification

315

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

had the judges for condemning the former to an awful
death and acquitting the latter of any complicity in
the crime ? It is strange that none in those days seems
to have noticed this extraordinary piece of inconsis-
tency on the part of the tribunal, and that no writer,
so far as is known, remarked upon it.

Later, when the Marquis de la Force had become a
Duke, he, like so many other persons of high rank who
had been concerned in the tragic scene of the 14th of May,
felt an inspiration to write his memoirs. They are not
only deeply interesting but also full of matter con-
nected with the period of Henri IV., while, as La Force
was a brave soldier, a man of honour and a devoted
adherent of the King, they may be relied upon as trust-
worthy. Now he, too, touches upon the subject of
Ravaillac accosting him at the gates of the Louvre, but
he tells the story in a manner vastly different from the
way it is told in the officially published statement of the
murderer, and, indeed, in a manner which was almost
undoubtedly the one in which Ravaillac himself narrated
it. The question he is represented as asking, with regard
to Ravaillac knowing d'Epemon, does not appear, nor,
of course, does RavaiUac's supposed reply ; while La
Force states that he could extract nothing from the man
concerning his business or what he wanted, " either
by words or menaces."

316

Conclusion

So much, therefore, for one portion of this remark-
able examination — as pubhshed ! But it is doubly in-
teresting— and puzzling ! — as it proceeds, especially
when the shadow of doubt begins to be cast upon
it ; while, as we read the official report, we are
almost stupefied with astonishment at noticing the
innumerable traps which the arrangers of it are con-
tinually setting for their own feet. They state that
they threatened the unfortunate wretch with the de-
termination to bring his mother and father to Paris
and execute them before his eyes if he would not
confess who his employers were : yet, when the Due
d'Epemon and the two women who were accused
of being his employers are interrogated, they acquit
them. They tell Ravaillac that his answers are false,
since, being the son of beggars and himself a beggar,
he must have received aid from wealthy employers so
as to be able to make his various journeys and to live :
yet they know those who are denounced as the wealthy
employers, and still they acquit them ! Was a more
extraordinary hotch-potch of legal proceedings ever con-
ducted in any court of law in the world if the statement
of those proceedings is to be relied on ? Was ever an
accomplice in a crime charged with his guilt, while every
effort was made by those who so charged him, and while
having their suspicions directed against his employer,

317

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

to acquit that employer ? And what, indeed, was the
utility of the greater part of these interrogations ? What
was the use of attempting to make the man inculpate
d'fipemon and de Vemeuil when they knew that nothing
was farther from their intentions than to punish either of
them ?* Ravaillac's guilt was undoubted, he could not
deny it, and would not have denied it if he could ; he
thought, imtil he stood before the crowd on the Place
de la Greve and heard their curses and objurgations
hurled at him, that he had done something that was
good in the eyes of God and would make his memory
sweet to the people for ever.

But still the same irritating, the same puerile examina-
tion went on. Ravaillac would tell no lies to inculpate
a man and woman of whom he knew nothing, and the
judges, who had no intention of ever convicting that
man and woman, endeavoured in every way to make
him inculpate them — if the published statement is
true — which, as a matter of fact, it is not. It is, in
solemn truth, only a fabricated document meant to
throw dust in the eyes of the public, and a very badly
fabricated one at that. Yet it has been believed by
historians, and its inaccuracies have passed almost
entirely unperceived. Many things, however, are sup-

♦ L'Estoile says on the subject : " The cowaxdliness of the judges
in discovering (!) the authors and accompHces was so great as to
cause pain to all honest men {gens de bien)."

318

Conclusion

pressed in this remarkable production which have found
their way to the Hght through other channels. For
instance, Ravaillac stated that, if his opportunity to
murder Henri had not come on the 14th of May, it
could never have come at all. He had but three testons
— nearly a shilling — left. He was that night about to
abandon Paris for ever, to give up all hope, to resign his
ideas and seek his living once more in the only place
where he had ever been able to earn enough to put
bread into his mouth. And yet he has been accused
of being a paid assassin of d'fipemon's ! Was there
ever wilder improbability ? D'fipemon, bloated with
ill-gotten wealth and remunerative offices ; the Marquise
well-off by the aid of her greed and immorality ; yet
both refraining from giving the frenzied assassin —
their supposed tool, whose knife was whetted to take
the King's life— enough money to keep him in Paris
until the deed was done !

As another striking instance of the stupidity of this
document — or of its framers — we may study the answer
of Ravaillac to one of the questions put to him on the
subject of his being in the pay of the conspirators. His
reply was that those who were paid to do such a deed
as he had done would scarcely, in consideration of their
desire to earn the pay, come three times to Paris from
a far-off province to obtain an interview with the

319

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

intended victim, and to give him a solemn warning of
what his fate would be if he refused to comply with
what was demanded of him.

At last this remarkably constituted Court of Judg-
ment, which, while endeavouring to make Ravaillac
prove that he was an instrument of the plotters, was
itself endeavouring to prove that the only persons ever
accused of having constructed the plot could not
possibly have been guilty of doing so — proceeded to
further efforts of a different nature. Torture of criminals
was still in use, though that use had sunk very consider-
ably from the high level it had attained in earlier days ;
and it was now resorted to in the case of Ravaillac. It
is painful to read in the memoirs of such a man as
La Force and of others, of what he, being in command
of the application of this torture, was obliged to do.
The prisoner's thumbs were forced in between the
trigger and the trigger-guard of a musket, and the J
weapon twisted round in such a manner that, with it,
the thumbs were also twisted, and one of them finally
reduced to pulp. But Ravaillac remained silent, or
spoke only to assert again that he was entirely alone
in his work and had neither employer nor accomplice.

The law — that strange law — was now stretched to an

extraordinary and unheard-of point. The oldest lawyers

in the kingdom themselves avowed that, since the far-off

320

Conclusion

days of Louis XI., torture had never been administered
to any criminals except those who denied their guilt
even when they had been pronounced guilty, and then
only to those who refused to give up the names of their
accomplices or employers. But Ravaillac was far
from denying his guilt, as, indeed, it would have
been useless to do : he had no accomplices and he
was already condemned. Nevertheless, the torture was
again applied and again his answer was the same. He
had no accomplice and no employer.

Signs were apparent, however, that a very little more
of the sufferings he had already endured would be suffi-
cient to prevent effectually any execution whatever
from taking place before the eyes of the whole city.
The strong, robust fanatic, the man who had frequently
walked a distance of two hundred miles while arriving
at, and then relinquishing, his determination to kill the
King ; the religious maniac who, firm in his belief that
he was doing God's behest, would starve, beg for alms,
and endure untold privations, could, at last, bear little
farther torture. He was, therefore, left in peace until
the morning of his execution, when a final attempt was
made to force a confession from his lips. It was a use-
less one. The particular torture he then endured was
termed " la question pr Salable, " because of its closely
preceding execution, and, since it was the last that could

321 21

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

ever be administered to the most firm or obstinate
criminal, was generally of hideous severity. It has,
however, been advanced — and one may earnestly hope
that the suggestion is true — that this severity was exer-
cised more with the intention of stupefying the wretched
creature than for any other reason, though it is difficult
to believe such to have been the case, since, between
its administration and the last scene of all, much
remained to be done before the execution of Ravaillac.
It is certain that his death was more awful than the
death of any criminal has almost ever been in latter-day
France — if we except that of Damiens, who stabbed
Louis XV. with a harmless penknife which scarcely in-
flicted a wound — ^yet other criminals who were executed
in the ordinary way had also much to undergo ere they
were released from their sufferings.

Ravaillac 's sufferings on this last occasion were
appalling. The horrible torture known as les hrode-
quins, which was similar to the old Scotch torture of
the " boot,*' was administered to him in the following
maimer. A wooden boot was placed on the foot and
leg, and into it were hammered wedges of iron growing
larger and larger until the miserable sufferer either
answered in the manner desired, or was unable to answer
anything at all through his having swooned from the

agony of his crushed leg.

322

Conclusion

Ravaillac grew faint under his sufferings and ap-
peared about to die, but neither then, nor when he set
out for, first, his penance at Notre Dame and for, after-
wards, his shocking death, did he utter any words ex-
cepting those by which he again denied firmly the asser-
tion that he had accomplices or employers.

Excepting only for the words that Ravaillac uttered
on his way to execution, and on the Place de Greve
before the fatal moment arrived, there would be little
use in describing the terrible event ; one that would
have been more suitable to a race of cannibals than
to the people of the great Capital which claimed to be,
not without considerable reason, the leading city of the
world.

In describing it we shall see, however, that Ravaillac

remained unshaken in his statement that he and he

alone conceived the deed which he perpetrated ; we

shall recognize how useless it has ever been to doubt

that, as he had always spoken truthfully, so, at the last,

in his hour of agony, he continued to speak. To him,

religion, or what, in his perverted and distraught mind,

he believed to be religion, was all that he had in the

world ; to him, absolution ere he left the world was the

only thing that he required to make his parting from

existence easy to him. To obtain the latter he swore so

solemn an oath, and gained it under so awful a pledge,

323 21*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

that it would have been impossible for him not to believe
that, even as his soul went forth to meet its God, he
would have damned that soul to all Eternity had he
sworn falsely.

Along the awful route he pursued he must have learnt,
if he had never known before, how foul a crime he had
committed ; to his dark and clouded intellect there came
at last the knowledge of how the evil act, which he had
deemed so good and pure a one, appeared in the eyes of
his countrymen. As he left the door of the Concier-
gerie the howls and yells of a vast mob fell on his ears ;
he saw the brandishments of weapons in the air ; he
saw and felt the stones hurled at him ; he observed
little babes lifted in their mothers' arms to see the
wretch who had slain the King. Where they could
reach him, he felt women tear his face with their nails ;
he heard loud-voiced men curse the mother who had
borne him and murmur against the God who had
breathed the breath of life into him, while, at the same
time, he heard those men thank God in that He had
provided a hell that should receive him at last.*

Seated in the tombereau, or scavenger's cart, between
two priests, whose faces were turned away from him
in disgust and horror — to the religious fanatic this must
have been as bitter as the pangs of death itself ! —

* As stated in the procis-verbal of Ravaillac's execution.

Conclusion

wrapped in the sheet in which he was to do his penance
outside Notre Dame — he went on until, at last, he was
outside the great door of that solemn edifice. Here
the crowd was even larger and more compact than
before : the windows of the houses near and around
the Cathedral were packed with more cursing men
and shrieking women ; here he performed his penance,
and, in the phraseology of the day, made his ** amende
honorable d Dieu." The next step was to the Greve,
the place of execution. It was not far, but on the way
the unhappy wretch had the opportunity of observing
that the Hotel de Villa was packed with all the princes
and members of the aristocracy who were in Paris at
the moment, and that, although many of them might
not actually share in the popular detestation of the
people for the murderer, they at least pretended to do
so. Arrived at the Place de Greve, Ravaillac saw the
signs of readiness for his execution. There was the
cauldron filled with sulphur, resin, wax and oil, and
there another filled with molten lead ; one was to
receive the severed hand which had struck the blow
that killed the King, the other the dismembered remains
of the man after his body had been torn to pieces by
four huge, white horses already standing in the great
place. One of these horses appeared weary or unwell
and, amidst a tremendous roar of approval from the

325

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

multitude, a mounted man descended from his animal
and led it forth to take the place of the other.

Now Ravaillac understood ; at last he recognized
what he had done, and how he had erred in believing
that his deed could find favour in any eyes. " Had I
but thought," he moaned, ** that I should see what I
now see, a people so devoted to its King, I would never
have committed the deed. I thought the public would
have thanked me and they provide the horses that are
to tear me to pieces ! "

He demanded that a Salve Regina might be accorded
him as he died, and the order was given that it should
be chanted by the monks. The people, however, in-
sisted that no such solemn tribute should be paid ;
Judas, they said, was entitled to none of the solemnities
of death.

But, even as his torture commenced, as the hand
which struck Henri to the heart was about to be cut
off by the executioner and flung into the cauldron of
sulphur and oil ; as the hot pincers tore his flesh and
the molten lead was cast upon it ; as the greffier
standing by exhorted him to give up the names of his
accomplices, the man remained firm in his denials. " I
have none," he cried. " I — I alone — conceived the
deed."

A moment later, recognizing that his death was at

326

Conclusion

hand, and that, if he did not expire from the agony he
had already endured, the horses would put an end to
his sufferings, he appealed to the two priests to give him
absolution. But the request was instantly refused, the
refusal being based on the fact that he would not divulge
the names of those whose tool he was. Ravaillac's
answer, even in this supreme moment, was again the
same.

Once more, however, he who did not fear death, he
who was half dead already, cried out for absolution.
For, not fearing death, he still dreaded to go before his
God unabsolved by a minister of that God ; to quit the
world without a promise of eternal pardon and peace.
" On condition then," Ravaillac cried, " on condition that,
if I have lied, the absolution shall be ineffective. On
that condition grant it to me."

At last he obtained his wish, yet the words which
accompanied the compliance with the wretched man's
prayer were awful. On the condition that, if Ravaillac
had lied, his soul passed straight to hell, no rest in
purgatory being accorded to him, he received the desired
pardon. Yet, terrible as were such words, they had
no power to affright the murderer. He had no accom-
plices. He was safe. Eternity no longer held any
terrors for him.

A few moments later he was dead. At the third

327

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

strain of the horses he expired. A httle later still, the

executioner had begun to dismember him and was

about to cast his remains into the second cauldron,

when the vast crowd prevented him from doing so.

They each required a portion of the body of the

King's assassin, and most of them obtained one.

That night many bonfires blazed in and around

Paris, and in their midst were consumed pieces of

Ravaillac's frame : on barn doors in other places

were nailed similar scraps of his body, as hawks and

owls and carrion-crows were nailed as a warning to

others of their breed.

Is it to be doubted any farther that the man who
died like this — the man who had answered the priest's
conditions with the words " I accept them " ; who had
calmly heard that none in France were evermore to
bear the name of Ravaillac ; that the house where he
was bom was to be razed to the ground, and that his
father and mother were to be exiled from France and
executed as he was executed if they ever returned to
it — spoke the truth when he averred again and
again that he, alone and without accomplices or em-
ployers, had conceived and committed the murder ?

Between the time when Ravaillac expiated his crime

328

Conclusion

and the revelations of Jacqueline le Voyer, namely, a
period of eight months, several strange statements began
to be whispered in Paris and the larger provincial cities
that, in spite of the manner in which they were bandied
about, were not referred to in the examination of the
Due d'fipernon and his two female colleagues. This
would appear strange to the minds of any persons of
our time if they had not, ere this, become acquainted
with the strong resolution to suppress many facts which
had been arrived at in the Court circle over which Marie
de Medici now presided, and if it were not remembered
that Ravaillac had gone to his death with his testimony
that he was neither a paid assassin nor an accomplice of
the illustrious accused unshaken.

When, however, the above whispers became louder
and more numerous ; when it began to be hinted that,
though Ravaillac's crime might have been totally
independent of any plot which chanced to have been
projected by others who knew nothing of his existence ;
when the public began to state openly that he had but
anticipated the murder which was to have been com-
mitted on the same day in the same neighbourhood —
namely, on the last day and in the only neighbourhood
available, if Henri was to be slain ere he could set out
for the campaign against Spain and Austria — it is indeed
singular that the Court had no questions to put on the

329

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

subject at the time that d'Epemon and his companions
were brought before it. Yet it is equally, or more,
strange, that, of the fifty historians of whom Moreri
spoke as writing the life and death of Henri, not one of
them should have known or heard of the coincidence of
a double determination to slay him, each of which was
distinct from the other. They might well have done
so. There was ample matter afloat which could not
have been concealed from the ears of either the members
of that Court or of the general public.

At Pithiviers, seventy miles from Paris, the Provost
was playing at bowls with his friends, when, hearing the
clock of a church strike half-past four, he remarked that
at this moment Henri IV. was probably dead or badly
wounded. At the same time the Archbishop of Em-
brun, in the South of France, discoursing on public
affairs with some brother prelates who were visiting
him, observed that it was impossible that evil should
not occur soon to Henri, while adding : " Even now, at
this hour " (the time was half-past four) *' some awful
disaster may have happened to his Majesty.'*

As regards these two people, the Provost was a man
of notoriously bad character, and, in spite of the position
he held, was strongly suspected of being a thief and
housebreaker, and even a highway robber by night — a
combination of callings that was, however, scarcely likely

330

Conclusion

to call for remark in those days of later medieval France.
The Archbishop was not a man of much importance,
and the same may be said of his see, which was
situated in the Upper French Alps, but he happened
to be a brother of the King's principal physician and
was, thus, in the way of obtaining news of what was
going on in Court circles. Of his remark it may be said
that it is possible that he was only repeating what his
brother had written to him, but it is significant that,
if this were the case, the brother should have been in
possession of such information.

But the Provost of Pithiviers was intimate with
the family of the Marquise de Vemeuil — the Balzac
d'Entragues — and their Chateau de Malesherbes was
but a short distance from the above town. He, there-
fore, had probably been confided in as regards coming
events, while, considering the reputation he " enjoyed,"
it is not impossible that he may have been asked to
assist in whatever schemes might be afoot. In any case,
he was arrested on account of the remark he had made,
taken to Paris and thrust into prison to await his trial
on the charge of knowing something in connection with
the murder of the King ; but he escaped from this pro-
ceeding by being found strangled in his cell.*

The above are but two of the many remarkable

* L'Estoile and Nicholas Pasquier both relate these incidents.

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

statements made by various persons, to which may be
added another made by a priest of Douai, who, at the
time of Henri's assassination, exclaimed : ''At this
moment the greatest monarch on earth is being slain.'*
Yet Douai is in the north, and these three places are
all widely apart.

It is almost an insult to ask any person who has
studied all the foregoing facts extracted from the best
contemporary French sources, and from French sources
alone, to say what they prove. We know that Spain and
Austria — one by the same blood of their rulers, and in-
divisible except by the territories that intervened
between them — hated the Protestants and that branch
of Protestantism which was termed the Huguenots,
and hated also the only two really great rulers who
were Protestants by birth, namely, the late Elizabeth of
England and Henri. Against each of them innumerable
open attacks had frequently been made (including the
Armada against Elizabeth and the whole force of The
League against Henri), while, in the form of secret
attacks, the repetition would be wearisome. But, now,
the power of the great house of Charles V. and of
Philip n. was sinking rapidly, as was that of the great
country ruled over by the Emperor Rudolph, while the
fortunes of the house of Bourbon — which was in another
hundred years to become the Royal Family of Spain and

332

Conclusion

to continue so, with trifling intermissions, until this
present day — had already risen. Henri had, since Eliza-
beth's death, become the most powerful monarch in
the world of that period ; he was able to crush all and
every nation on the Continent which dared to contend
against him ; even the Pope, supported as he might be
by his faithful children, could easily be coerced into
doing all that Henri should demand of him. Was it
possible, therefore, that Philip HI., weak, indolent, and
almost beggared by his expulsion from Spain of the
Moors, who were his best and richest subjects, both as
traders and landowners, should not have hated Henri
and all of Henri's following ?

We have seen that Naples, one of Spain's brightest
European possessions, was a nest wherein treason might
be freely hatched ; the Netherlands, which Philip's great
general, Spinola, had crushed beneath his feet, was
another ; so, too, was Lorraine and so Franche-Comte.
And, poor as Spain might be at this time in comparison
with what she had been when possessed of the wealth
which Pizarro had poured into her lap from Peru and
Cortes from Mexico, she was still able to pay handsomely
for services to her ; for services freely rendered in return
for her gold by embittered and greedy men like
d'Epemon, and by jealous, envenomed women like
Henriette, Marquise de Verneuil.

333

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

But if anyone can still doubt that in Spain, in Naples,
in Brussels, in the great superb mansions of the ancient
nobility of The League ; in the houses of Henriette and
of Mdlle. du Tillet — the one a faded, neglected mistress,
the other a woman who, though not yet cast off by
d'fipemon, was still bitter and disappointed that she
had not been selected to fill the same laudable position
to a higher than he, namely, his master — in the garrets
of Paris and in the cellars beneath the houses of Paris,
were sheltering either plotters or assassins a gages ready
to murder the King — there are further proofs that must
be considered almost indisputable. Before the death of
Henri there were portraits of Louis XIII. prepared in
which he was described beneath them as Roi de France ;
portraits that were not hasty daubs, but copperplate
engravings which could not have been made ready
the moment after Henri was dead and sold three days
after that, as was the case since L'Estoile bought one
in the streets. It is, however, true that some who
chanced to hear Ravaillac's frenzied pronouncements
to kill the King, might have been induced to prepare
such things with a view to obtaining a ready and profit-
able sale for them; yet it is to be remembered that his
miserable appearance, and his wandering words and
wild looks, would have been far more likely to deter them
from believing in him than to induce them to go to the

334

The Dauphin (Louis XIII.),

I Fating p. 335

Conclusion

expense of engraving the portrait of a boy who might
not come to the throne for another twenty years, if ever,
and who, if he did so, would then be a boy no longer,
whereby the portrait would have become almost value-
less.

It is time to conclude, to sum up the case between
those interested in a great historical drama, a romance
of real fact, who still believe that Ravaillac was an
assassin paid by d'fipemon to do his, and Spain's, foul
work, and those who, after deep consideration and
much inquiry, believe, as it has been endeavoured to
show, that, although there was a plot, Ravaillac had
nothing to do with it. His name has been handed down
to posterity as one of the most vile assassins who ever
polluted the earth ; yet, murderer though he was, he
was, still, not that. In solemn truth, he was a poor
visionary, a creature with terribly sickly tendencies
towards, or, perhaps, emanating from, religious hysteria
— a form of cerebral weakness more common to the
female than to the male sex. Yet, combined with all
this, he possessed manly virility and the power of
strong endurance, as testified by the manner in which
he supported poverty and misery, and by the determina-
tion with which he made his journeys to and from Paris
over roads imworthy of the name, and in weather that
sometimes chilled him to the bone and sometimes almost

335

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

broiled him. But he was no paid assassin and no
plotter. To him, distracted though he was, d'fipemon
would have appeared beneath contempt. He would
have spumed an offer of payment for the deed he volun-
tarily performed as a pious and holy one, as he would
have spumed d'fipemon had he approached him, and
had he known that the traitor was in the pay of Spain
and was rewarded by either promises of wealth or
Spanish honours ; and as he would have spumed the
Marquise de Vemeuil as a foul wanton who sold her
caresses for money and then plotted to murder the man
who paid the price for them.

One thing has, however, to be said, which may appear
extraordinary to many, as, in truth, it is. The Church,
the old, established Church, which was the bitter enemy
of Henri, had no hand in Ravaillac's terrible resolution.
When he wished to become an active member of it — a
priest — they refused to admit him and drove him forth
with contumely as a man unsuited to be one of its
ministers. It may be, indeed, that they doubted if
the half-crazed suppliant who saw visions and dreamed
dreams, and did not fail to announce that he did so,
was fitted to be a member of a community in which
silence, self-control and caution are three of its most
important requirements ; or if, when all the land was
in a turmoil between their own faith and the growing

336

Conclusion

strength of the Protestants, headed by the King, he
would not be more of a curse to them than a blessing.
But, whether this was so or not, the Church refused to
accept him and, when his shocking deed was perpe-
trated, it was also free of any participation in it. Alone,
friendless, starving and roofless, Ravaillac did that
which he believed the Almighty had sent him on this
earth to do ; alone he did it without patron or associate,
and alone he expiated his crime without any single
person in all France being found who could be charged
with him.

But as concerns the plot which undoubtedly existed,
can there be any doubt as to who was at the head of it ?
Who but d'Epemon ordered the mysterious ruffians who
suddenly appeared on the scene to refrain from touching
Ravaillac, and to retire at once ; who exposed the murderer
publicly to view at the Hotel Retz, and, afterwards, in
his own family house, with the object of his being ques-
tioned as to his accomplices and of his being given the
opportunity to reiterate again and again that he had
none — but d'Epemon ? Who but d'fipemon, after
ordering those unknown, would-be assassins — though
not unknown to him ! — to retire instantly, made himself
master of the situation, directed that the blinds of the
carriage should be let down and the body of the King be
transported to the Louvre, and then, springing on a

337 22

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

horse, rode off to give the order for the city gates to
be closed, and for the Hotel de Ville to be occupied
by soldiers ; forbade communications to be permitted
between the north and south banks of the Seine, and
placed troops in every quarter of the city ? And who,
after d'fipernon, was the person most embittered
against Henri but the mistress who had once possessed
a promise of marriage from him which had never been
redeemed ; the mistress who had been forced to stand
aside and see a lawful wife arrive to take the place she
had once believed would be hers ; the mistress who had
also seen Henri's furious passions so re-awakened that
both she and that wife were to be swept aside together
to make way for the gratification of the new love for a
young and high-bom princess of sixteen ?

In almost every argument, every thesis, every dispute
when fairly conducted, there is much reason on either
side, though one side must finally preponderate over
the other. Those, however, of our way of thinking
believe that, in this matter, their side does preponderate.
Facts tend more to prove the argument against Ravaillac
being even known to the plotters than to prove the
argument that he was known to them ; and no fact is
stronger than that of his own denial combined with his
madness, and, perhaps, above all, that of his poverty.
On the other hand, nothing was more likely than that,

338

Conclusion

since there was undoubtedly a plot — or many plots — to
slay Henri, those who could not help but know of the
last one, as most in Paris knew of it, as Henri himself
knew of it or similar plots, should have associated the
name of the actual murderer with the names of those
who were, and always have been, accused of laying
that plot. Here, therefore, is the origin of the error, an
origin that owes the greater part of its existence to one
of the most dramatic coincidences that has ever arisen in
real life. Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas pere, even
their clever predecessor, Pixerecourt, never devised a
more dramatic denouement than that a gang of hired
murderers should wait to slay a king at one end of a
street, while, at the other end, the one by which the
victim would enter that street, was a solitary man who
not only performed the deed before them, but, in doing
so, did their work and saved them and their employers
from the crime and from, possibly, the punishment of
that crime.

For the crime was in the hearts and minds of em-
ployers and employes ; the intention and the resolute
determination of another who regarded himself, not as a
murderer, but as an executioner of God's wrath, alone
anticipated their foul designs. Chance, that marvellous
factor in all human existences, spared d'fipemon and
his companions the commission of one more sin in their

339 22*

The Fate of Henry of Navarre

wicked lives. Ravaillac, the religious and visionary
enthusiast, had done for them that which nothing else
would have prevented them from doing for themselves —
that which they had made all preparations for doing a
few moments later, at the same hour, on the same day,
in the same street — in gratification of their hate and
spite and greed.

Deeply steeped as their souls were in evil, they were
at least saved from one farther blot by the act of a
maniac who, shocking as his deed was, had, in all other
respects, lived a blameless life ; a fanatic who went to
his dreadful end free of any other crime than that deed
to be charged against him at the Great Account.

THE END

340

INDEX

[References in brackets refer to the footnotes^]

Achille et Procris, 72.

Alagona, Le Pere, 276.

Aldobrandini, Cardinal, 89.

Algiers, 285.

Almanacks, 5.

Almsgiving, 56.

Alphie or Lovers Jealousy, 72.

Alps, Upper French, 331.

Amiens, siege of, 35.

Amsterdam, 143, 144.

Angers, 144.

Angouleme, 75, 169, 295.

Angouleme Due d'. See d'Angoxi-

LEME, Due.
Angoumois, 159.
Angoumois, Governor of, 232.
Anquetil, Thomas, ( 1 1 1 ).
Arger, 3.

Armada, the, 165, 285.
Arques, siege of, 165^
Artois, Province of, 13, 134^
Arsenal, the, 4, 252.
Assassins, 7, 8*
Astr^e, 70.
Aunis, 159.
Aurora, 74.

Austria, campaign against, 105, 329,
Avertissements-Livrets, 78.
Avis, 78.

B

Baron de Foeneste, 65.
Barriere, Pierre, 26.

Basle, 49.

Bcissompierre, 12, 75, (79), 10 1,

172, 175, 217-219.
Bastille, the, 29, 34, (79J.
Bavaria, Duke of, 224.
Baviere, Isabeau de, 18.
Bearnais, the (Henri IV.J, 22, 23,

24. 54.
Beaufort, Duchesse de (Gabrielle

d'EstreesJ, 10.
Beaumont-les-Tours, abbey of,

183.
Belcastel, 213, 214.
Bertrand de Ventadour, 73.
Bethune, Maximilien de. See

Sully.
Bibliotheque Nationale, 284.
Biron, 274, 275.
Blois, Chateau de, 106
Bois de Boulogne, the, 30.
Books, censorship and distribution

of, 142-144.
Bordeaux, Archbishop of, 162.
Borgias, the, 87.
Bouillon, Due de, 14.
Bourbon, Antoine de, 88, (97).
Bourbons, 197.
Bourg-en-Bresse, Governorship of,

102.
Braeciano, Duca di, 89.
Brant6me, 75, 168.
Brice, Germain, (79).
Brigandage, 50^
BrignoUes, 168.

Index

Brussels, 334.

Bunel, 74.

Bussy d'Amboise, duel of, 160.

Butler, (78).

Calais, 147, 251.

Calderon, 273, 285.

Capello, Bianca di, 80, 81.

Capets, the, 196.

Carlos II., 238.

Carpathian Mountains, the, 42.

Carriage in which Henri met his

death, 243.
Castelnaudary, battle of, (97).
Castille, 13.
Catholics, the, 313.
Cavendish, Lord, 148.
Caxton, 142.
Cayet, Palma, 135.
Cenci, Beatrice, portrait of, (74).
Cervantes, 285.
C^sar-Monsieur, loi.
Champs-Elysees, 29.
Chantilly (Gentilly), 262.
Chapman, George, 192.
Charente, the department of, 232.
Charenton, 6.
Charles I. (England), 155.
Charles V. (Spain), 332.
Charles IX., 4, 26, 30, 84, 85, 174,

196 ; Garde de Corps of, iii.
Chartres, 266.
Chateau de Blois, 170.
Chatel, Jean, 3.
ChAtelet. 276.

Chelles, Henriette, Abbess of, (97).
Chemise sanglante de Henri-le-

Grand, La, 209, 210.
Christine, Princess, of Lorraine, 81,

82, 83.
Chronologic Sept^naire, 135.

Church, the, guiltless of Henri's

death, 336.
Citadel, the, of Angouleme, 233.
Clement, Jacques, 291.
Cleves, William, Duke of, (88).
Clorinde, 89.

Coaches, so-called, 31, 32^
College de Bourgogne, no.
Comedians, 63.
Commentaires, Mar6chal de Mont-

luc's, 44.
Conciergerie, the, 258, 279. 301,

303.
Concini, Concino, 5, 8, 90, 91,

106, 149, (155).
Conde, 147.
Corbais, 214.
Cortes, 333.

Coryate, The Crudities of, 64.
Cotton, the Jesuit, 267, 268, 269.
Cours la Reine, 29.
Coutras, 162.
Croix du Tiroir, La, 243.
Cromwell, 155.
Curse of France, the, {77).

D'Albret, Jeanne, 195.
D'Alen^on, Due, 196.
Damiens, 322.
D'Aubigne, Le Fere, 268.
D'Aubigne, Theodore Agrippa, 65,

74; works of, 76, 135, 136, 254.
D'Aumale, Due, paper of the, .

207-208, 209*
D'Aumont, Marshal, 164.
Dauphin, character of the, (97).
D'Autriche, Cardinal, 35.
D'Auvergne, Comte, 182.
De Balzac d'Entragues, Fran9ois,

174.
De Baviere, Isabeau, 18.

342

Index

DeBellegarde, Due, IIS, IS^'

De Biron, Marshal, 164.

De Blosseville, "ji.

De Bouillon, Due, 173, 209 ;

Mareehal de, Mimoiyes, (169).
DeBury, (169).
De Chambert, Comte, 263.
De Cherverny, 75.
De Coeuvres, Marquis, 221.
De Conde, Prineesse, 288.
De Gaillon, Chateau, 16.
De Gournay, Mdlle., 263.
De Guiche, Diane, Comtesse

(" Corisande "), 214.
De Guise, Cardinal, 55.
De Guise, Due, the young, 166, 258.
De Guise, family of, yj.
De Guise, Francois, Due, 228.
De Guise, Mdlle, romanees of, 136,

254-
De Harlay, 260, 271.
De la Bourdaisiere, Fran9oise

Babou, 113.
De la Foree, Marquis, 235, 243, 245,

246, 316.
De la Tremouille, Charlotte, 213 ;

Due, 14.
De Lamballe, Prineesse, (155).
De la Valette, Marquis, 171. See

d'Epernon.
De Lavardin, 243, 245.
De L';6eluse, Abb6, 145.
De Lerma, Due, 276.
De Lianeourt, M., 243.
Delille, (73).
Delisle, Jean, 4.

De Livry (De Lizza), Abbe, (91).
De Lominee, 73.
De Luynes, (156), 170, 171.
De Luxembourg, Prineesse, 19.
De Maintenon, Madame, (6$), 76,

(135).
De Malesherbes, Chateau, 331.

DeMayenne, 36, {jy), 165.

De Mediei, Catherine, 196, 197.

De Mediei, Don Jean, (92),

De Mediei, Ferdinand, 81-83.

De Mediei, Franeis II., 80.

De Mediei, Marie {see also Marie
DE Medici), 157, 167, 170, 224,
225, 226, 227, 242, 250, 252,
254, 286-288, 310.

De Mereoeur, Due, 36.

De Mirabeau, Marquis, 243.

De Montbazon, Due, 27, 243, 245.

De Montglat, Madame, {97).

De Montmoreney, Charlotte, 212,
217-222. See also De Conde,
Princesse.

De Nemours, Duehesse, 179.

Denmark, king of, 239.

De Nevers, Due, 216, 298.

De Nogaret, Jean Louis, 159. See
d'Epernon.

D'Entragues, Balzae, 260, 331.

D'Entragues, Henriette, ereated
Marquise de Verneuil, 178 ;
ehildren of, 2, 85, 149 ; insults
Marie de Mediei, 178-180 ; sells
to Henri his written promise of
marriage, 181; plots with father
and half-brother to kill Henri and
the Dauphin 182 ; high-feeding
of, 184, 258, 271, 286; probable
complieity of in later plot against
Henri's life, 286-288, 290, 292 ;
different spelhngs of name, (173 J.

D']6pernon (Jean Louis de Nogaret,
De la Valette), Due, 15, 36, 117,
147; title of, 159, 161; early
status of, 160 ; eharaeter of, 8,
161 -162 ; reasons for his hatred
against Henri, 167 ; book and
play about, 168, 189, 192 ;
trueulent eonduct of, 200; 243-
248, 250, 258, 264, 265, 266,

343

Index

D';6pernon, Due — continued.

271 ; early history of, 290-291 ;
Henri's distrust of, 292 ; ac-
quitted by Court of Enquiry,
309 ; death of, 192.

De Poitiers, Diane, 27.

De Riqueti, or Riquetti, Marquis,
(243). See MiRABEAU.

De Rohan, Due, 238.

De Romorentin, Comtesse, (97).

De Roquelaure, 243, 245.

De Rosny, Baron, 9, 134 ; Marquis,
238 ; {see also Sully J ; La
Baronne, 124.

De Rosny, Chateau, 135.

De Saney, 75.

De Seudery, Mdlle., 273.

De Soissons, Comte, 244, 245.

De Sourdis, Mdme, 121.

Des Essarts, Charlotte, 55.

Des Reaux, Tallemant, 116, (184).

D'Estrees, Gabrielle, 5 ; death of,
9, 10, II, 19, 27, 85, 121,
122, 131 ; Henri's extravagance
on, 46-47, 1 1 3-1 14; formal
marriage of, 114 ; haughtiness of,
118, 120, 121 ; created Duchesse
de Beaufort, 117 ; lying-in-state
of, 123.

DeThou, 12, (74).

De Valois. See Marguerite de
Valois.

De Varennes, Isaac, 204.

De Vaudemont, Prince, 82.

De Vega, Lope, 273, 285.

De Vend6me, Due, 5, 19, loi, 103,
118.

De Ventadour, 73.

De Vic, 251.

De Villeroy, 277.

Discours, 78.

Doctors, red lamps of, 33.

" Don Quixote," 285.

D'Orl6ans, Louis, 27.

Douai, a priest of, 332.

Drake, 285.

Drama, 69-73.

Dreux de Radier, (79J.

Du Barry, Madame, 117.

Dubois, Ambroise, 74.

Dubreuil, Toussaint, 74.

Du Breuil, Jacqueline, (97).

Duelling, 48, 49, 51, 52,

Dujardin, Pierre, 274, 275,

Du Jou (La Garde), 251.

Dulaure, (79).

Dumoutier, the brothers, 74.

Du Plessis-Mornay, Madame, 74,

75. 76. 138.
Du Tillet, Mdlle., 260, 261, 264,

293. 300, 312, 313, 334.
D'Urfe, Honore, 70.

Ecce Homo, the, 74.

Ecclesiastics, morahty of French,

55 ; as fighting men, 35.
Elizabeth, or " Isabella," wife of

Philip IV., 21.
Elizabeth, Queen, 17, 52, 147,

150, 165, 166, 285 , 333.
Embrun, the Archbishop of, 330,

331.
England, 147-148. 160, 182.
Enquiry, Court of, 309.
Epernon, d'. See d'^^pernon.

Due.
, Estrees, Gabrielle d'. See d'

EsTREES, Gabrielle.
Etampes, 237.
jfitats-Generaux, 105, 200, 201,

279.
Eve, St. Bartholomew's. See St.

Bartholomew's Eve.
Eves, Ember, 39.

344

Index

Farnese, Prince of Parma, 82.
Felibien, Dom, (79).
Ferdinand the Catholic, 13.
Ferrara, Duke of, 82.
FeudaUsm, decay of, 154.
Flanders, 13.
Florence, 190.

Foire St. Germain, La, 42-46.
Fontainebleau, 179, 266, 269, 270.
Fontenay, Mareuil, (250).
Fontenelle, Baron de, 50,
Fontevrault, Jeanne, Abbess of,

(97).
Forest of Bondy, 159.
Fountains erected by Henri, 58-60.
France, state of religion in, 54 :

archives and trials of, 257.
Franche-Comt6, 167, 333.
Francis I., 22, (88).
Francis II., 30, 196.
Frankfort, fair at, 5.
Freminet, Martin, 74.
Frobisher, 285.
Fust, 142.

Gabrielle d'Estrees. See

d'Estrees, Gabrielle.
Gaillon, Chateau de, 16.
Galerie de I'ancienne Cour, (156).
Galigai, Leonora, 5, 90, 91, 225.
Garde de Corps, 133.
Gaston, Duke of Orleans, 21.
Gelastide La (novel by Sully), 146.
Geneva, 76.

Geraxd, Balthazar, 194.
Germany, Emperor of, 224.
Gondi, Cardinal, 84.
Gondier, 258, 259.
Groulart, 75.

Guienne, d'Epernon's governor-
ship of, 162.

Guise, Princesse de. See De
Guise, Princesse.

Guizot, a quotation from, 72.

Gutenberg, 142.

H

Hague, the, 143.

Hardy, Alexandre, 72, (7$).

Hawkins, 285.

Henri. See Henry IV.

Henriade, Voltaire's La, 68.

Henries, the, their tragic deaths,
(41).

Henriette-Marie, wife of Charles I.
of England, 21.

Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales,
239-

Henry II. de Bourbon, Prince de
Conde, 213, 214-215.

Henry III., his assassination, 4, 5,
25. 30, (41), 47 ; attempts on his
life, 40 ; poverty of, (84) ; his
illegitimate brother, 102, 160,
191, 196, 247 ; his degrading
habits, 291.

Henry HI., Prince de Conde, 215,
216.

Henry IV. (Henri), his ten
" wishes," 12-16 ; second change
of religion, 24, 25 ; first attempt
to assassinate him, 26 ; a fatalist,
40, 41 ; his early poverty, 47-
48 ; his benefactions to Paris,
59, 60 ; his slovenly apparel,
66 ; his bonhomie, 66-67 > l^is
reckless gambling, 46 ; his bad
French accent, 66 ; his enormous
appetite 67 ; his education, 67,
68 ; his religion, 68, 69 ; his
claims to be a poet, 73 ; amount

345

Index

Henry IV. — continued.

of his loans, (84) ; his social
qualities. 95 ; his mistresses and
their children, (97) ; his perilous
visit to Gabrielle, 116; fore-
tells his death, 199 ; late-
found affection for his wife,
241 ; and solicitude for her
future, 239-240 ; his assassina-
tion, 134, 245 ; public mourning
for, 250-252, 291 ; his historians,
(74), 76 ; his murder planned
by d';6pernon and Henriette,
337-338.

Henry V. of England, 53.

Herrera, Francesco, 74.

Hisioire de Bayard, 44.

Histoire G^n&ale des Larrons, 44,

45-
Holland, 143.
Holy See, 238.
H6tel de Bourgogne, 7 1 ; comedians

of the, 64.
H6tel de Retz, 248.
H6tel de Ville, 325, 338.
H6tel Dieu, 270.
Howard, John, (303).
Huguenots, the, 12, 14, 135, 313.
Hungary, 277, 301.

Inquisition, the poet of the, 285.

Italy, 296.

Ivry, battle of, 105, 165.

Jacqueline le Voyer. See La
CoMANs and d'Escoman ; her
imprisonment, 256.

James I., 17, 147, 182, 194, 239, 285.

" Jean Sans Peur," Due de Bour-
gogne, 27, 28.

Jeanne of Austria, 80.

Jesuits, the, 189, 268, 308.

Joan of Arc, 54.

Journal de Henri IV., L'Estoile's,

(79).
Joyeuse, mignon, 169.

K

Kitchen, Dean, 250.

La Belle Corisande, 214.

La Brosse, 5.

La Comans {see also d'Escoman
and Jacqueline le Voyer),
204-207, 210, 285-287 ; punish-
ment of, and supposed escape
from prison, 305 ; her statements
burnt, 272, 306.

" La corde est rompue," doubtful
meaning of, 125-134.

La Curee, 75.

La Decade, 135.

La Ferronnerie, rue de, 244.

La Fleche, the abbey of, 238, 255.

La Fontaine et Pompe de la Samari-
taine, 59.

La Force, Marquis of, 238, 316.

La Galigai, (156 J.

La Garde (a/50 Dujardin, Pierre),
statement of, 275-278 ; trial
and imprisonment of, 279, 280 ;
second imprisonment of, 281 ;
pension of, 282 ; origin of, 284,
286, 292, 294, 296, 297. 298,
299.

La grosse banquihe (Marie de Me-
dici), 289.

La Henriade, Voltaire's, (68].

La Hogue, French navy defeated
at, 155.

La mere Dasithee, 5, (212).

346

Index

La Rochelle, 159.

La Varenne. 133. 134, 137, 138, (139).

Lagrange-Santerre, M. de, 50.

Langlot-du-Fresnoy, 305.

Le Chatelet, 270.

Le Chien de Moniargis, 159.

Le Jeay, President, 251.

Le Marchant, Capitaine, 251.

Le Voyer, Jacqueline. See La

COMANS.

League, the, 3, 7, 15, 53, 117, 165,

167. 291, 334.
Leaguers, the old, 274, 313.
Lebeuf, (79).
Legrain, 74. 135-
Lepanto, battle of, 285.
Les Feuillants, 229.
Les Filles rfpenties, prison of, 272.
Les Halles, 140.
Les Innocents, church of, 244.
Les Quatre Coins, 252.
Lesdiguieres, 239.
Les Princes de Cond^, (217).
L'Estoile, 62,, 7S' 79. I3S. 136, 144.

(169), 206, 267, 318, 331.
Lever et coucher, 124.
Ligny, 172.
Limousin, 117, 159.
Lintlaer, Jean, 59.
Loches, 159, 169.
Lomenie, 268.
Lorraine, 333 ; house of, 82 ;

Princesse de, 18, 81.
Louis le D^onnaire, 53.
Louis XL, 321.
Louis XIII. , 21, 30, 69, 79, 145,

151, 154, 155, 162, 262, 307 ;

prudery and misogyny of, 23-24 ;

cognizant of Concini's murder,

{155); engravings of, 334.
Louis XIV., birth of, 154 ; attitude

of towards his people, 66 ; as

gourmand, 67 ; Le Rot Soleil, 22.

Louis XV., 117; stabbing of, 322
Louise, Queen, sister of, 191.
Louvre, the, 30, 31, 34, 242,

247, 252, 266.
Lu9on, Bishop of (Richelieu),
Luxembourg, Princesse de, 19
Lyons, 178.

244,

54.

M

56, 157.

[7. 2\

Mattresses-en-titre, 117,

Malherbe, 73.

Marais, the, 28.

Marbault, (no), 138, 139.

Marguerite de Valois, 13, 16,

118, 119, 140; almsgivings of,
56, 257 ; divorce of, 175, 195,
198, 271.

Marie de Medici, 3, 18 ; children of,
21, 86; visits a monster, 64;
Henri's confession to, 69 ; nego-
tiations for marriage of, 80, 81 ;
dowry, 85 ; her ignorance of
French, 89-90 ;
journey to Paris,
tion of, 91, 92 ;
squabbles, 93-95
Henriette, 96 ; plastic nature of,
103 ; consecration as queen, 104-
105 ; investments abroad, 106,
107 ; imprisonment, 170 ; posi-
tion as Queen- Regent, 311, 312 ;
flight to Cologne, 107 ; left to
perish in want, 108 ; demands
coronation, 195, 199, (202).

Marmoutier, abbey of, 102.

Marseilles, 274.

Martin le Franc, 7$.

Mary, Queen of Scots, 196.

Masks, wearing of, 61, 62.

Matthieu, 74, 90, 273.

Maugiron, 169.

Maurice, Prince, 239 ; sisters of, 18,
19.

triumphant

190 ; disposi-

matrimonial

hostility to

347

Index

Maximilian II., 196.

Mayenne, Due de, daughters of, 18.

Medici, Don Jean de, (92).

Medici, Francis II. de, 80.

Metz, 297, 299 ; Bishop of, 2 ;

Governor of, 117.
Mercure Francois, Le, 63, 261, 262,

264, 304.
Mexico, 333.
Mezieres, 278, 298.
Michelet, M., 210, (258J.
Mignonne des Rots, La, (88).
Mignons, character of the, 160 ;

principal, 169, 247, 291.
Milan, 190.
Mirabeau, 245.
Monglat, Mdme. de, (97).
Mqntaigne, adopted daughter of,

263.
Montbazon, 245.
Montmartre, the church of, 31 ;

abbess of, 115.
Montres-horloges, 61.
Moreri, Grand Dictionnaire His-

torique, 255, 330.
Moret, (97).
Mounting-block, 244.
Mourning customs, 253-254.

293. 297.

N

Naples, 190, 224, 274

300. 307, 313, 334.
Nassau, Prince Maurice of, 239.
Navarre, 7, 13, 193 ; Henri d'Albret

King of, (88).
Navy, the French, 155.
Neapolitans, the 274.
Netherlands, the, 17, 117
Newspapers, French, 63

See also Mercure

Le.
Nobihty, insolence and brutality of

37. 38 ; kindness of, 38, 39.

. 167, 333.
, 64, 141,
FRAN901S,

Normandy, 159.

Norway, 42.

Notre Dame, church of.

325-

(Economies Royales, 9, 132, 136,

140, 141, 144, 145, 158.
Oliva, or Olive, 5.
OrJ&n, 204.
Orleans, Louis d', murder of, 27.

Parfaict, les Freres, (72).

Paris, " worth a Mass, 62 ; in

reign of Henri IV., 26-33 ;

quays of, 60 ; census of, 63 ;

Pre aux Clercs, 51 ; Place de

Gr^ve, 50 ; Place Royale, 27,

59

Place

Paris,

Prince

60 ; Pont Neuf,

Dauphine, 60.
Pasquier, Nicholas, 331.
Patache, 57.
Pembroke, Earl of, 148.
Perefixe, Archbishop of

(195).
Perfumes, abuse of, 65.
Picardy, 219.
Piedmont, Victor Amadeus,

of, 21.
Pigeons, Les Trois, tavern of, (296).
Philip II. (Spain), 14, 166, 195, 332.
Philip III. (Spain), 223, 276, 333.
Philip IV. (Spain), 21.
Pithiviers, the Provost of, 330, 331.
Pitti Palace, 89.
Pix6recourt, M., 159, 339.
Pizarro, 333.
Place de Greve, 325.
Poirson, M. Auguste, his Hisioire

du Rigne de Henri IV., 284.
Poland, 277, 301 ; king of. 196.
Poltrot, 228.

348

Index

Pope, the lo, 20, 118, 119, 222,

23^. 333.
Portugal, 155, 185.
Powder, hair, 61.
Prince of Orange, 166.
Printing, Uberty of, (78 J.
Protestants, 313, 337.
Protestantism, spreaid of, 52.
Provence, 166.

QuARTiER St. Germain. 28, 29.
Quelus {mignon), 169.

Rome, 277 ; French Ambassador at,

307.
Rosny, Baron de. See Sully.
Rosny, Chdteau de, 135.
Rouen, Archbishop of, 102.
Rubens, 74, 170,
Ruccelai, Abbe, 171-173.
Rudolph, the Emperor, 332.
Rue Dauphine, 60.
Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, 27, 28.
Rue St. Honore, 244, 251.
Russell, 155.

Rabutin, Bussy, 52.

Raleigh, 285.

Ramee, D. (32).

Ravaillac, Fran9ois, 4, 5 ; uncon-
nected with plot against Henry
IV., 20, 309 ; his poverty, 188 ;
humble birth of, 227-231 ; long
journeys on foot, 295 ; discre-
pancy in evidence as to dress,
294, 313 ; his pubhshed statement
a fabrication, 318, 319 ; torture
and death, 320-328 ; rumours
after his death, 328 ; character
of, 190, 198, 209, 210, 232-238,
240-247, 255, 260, 263, 265, 266,
276, 287, 293. 298-304, 335, 339,
340, 356.

Ravaison, (207).

Reformation, the, 14, 53.

Regiments, territorial, 154.

Reni, Guido, 74.

Rennes, 16.

Revolution, the, (156), 255.

Rheims, cathedral of, 53.

Richelieu, Cardinal, 63, 79, 96, 106,
141, 14s, 153, 154, 191, 252, 261.

Ridicovi, 3.

Robberies, highway, 49.

St. Bartholomew's Eve, 6, 7, 25,

26. 34, 87, (156), 196.
St. Denis, 26, 104, 255.
St. Germain I'Auxerrois, church of,

31, 34; deanery of, 133.
St. Jean-en-Greve, church of, 262,

292.
St. Mercier, L., (79 J.
Saint-Mesgrin, 169.
St. Nicholas-des-Champs, Vicar of.

3.
St. Roch, church of, (296J.
St. Simon, 30, {77).
St. Victor, church of, 257.
St. Vincent de Paul, 55, 56.
Saintonge, 159.
Salamander, The, 244.
Sancy, Baron de, 49.
Satirists, {77).
Sauval, Henri, (79J.
Savoy, Duke of, 21, 153, 178.
Scaliger, the younger, 67.
Sept^aire, (141^
Servin, Monsieur, 36, $7.
Shakespeare, 273.
Sicilian Vespers, iii.
Sieur d'Escoman, or Comans, 204.
Smith, Captain John, 285.

349

Index

Society of Jesus {see also Jesuits),
230.

Soldat Francois, Le, 78.

Spain incorporates part of Navarre,
13 ; Infanta of, 17 ; employs
assassins, 166, 190 ; war against
declared by Henri, 222, 242,
263, 266, 268, 285, 329 ; ruined
finances of, 223, 334 ; the
Moors of, 333.

Spanish Armada, 166.

Spectacles, worn by Henri, 60.

Spinola, 333.

Star Chamber, 155.

Stuart, Arabella, 17.

Sully, Due de (MaximiUen de Be-
thune. Baron de Rosny, Marshal
of France), official residence of,
4, 9, II, 19; as memoir-writer,
75, 137; descent of, 109-110;
escape from massacre, iio-iii ;
at battle of Ivry, 111-112; sus-
pected of causing Gabrielle's
death, 112, 122-130, 134; estates
of, 145 ; embassy to England,
147 ; dress and conduct of, 150-
151 ; wealth of, 152, 153 ; death
of, 1 54 ; request to from Henri,
242; loyalty of, 157-158; tomb
to, erected by his widow, 157.

Sweden, 42 ; King of, 239.

Swiss Guard, 49.

Touchet, Marie, 174.
Toulouse, Archbishop of, 171.
Tour de Nesle, horrors of, 29.
Tours, Archbishopric of, 102.
Troyes, 53.

Tuileries, menagerie in, 64.
Turkey, 274.
Turks, the 14, 274.
Tuscany, Grand Duke of, 18.

Valois, race of, 196, 292.
Variitis Biographiques, Edouard

Tricotel's, 91.
Velasquez, 74.
Verneuil, Due de, 2.
Verneuil, Marquise de. See D'En-

TRAGUES, HeNRIETTE.

Versailles, 30.

Viceroy, the Spanish, 78, 274, 275.

Villebon, Chateau de, 152, 157.

Villenage, 38, 154.

Villeroy, 78, 160.

Vincent de Paul, Saint, 55.

Vitry, 155, 252.

Voltaire, 68, 173, 191.

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Walpole, Horace, no.
Watches, 61.
William the Silent, 194.-
Wynds, Scotch, 33.

Tallemant des Reaux.

Rbaux, Tallemant.
Toledo, 42, 285.

See des Zamet, 114, 121, 122,

133. 13s. 307.
Zamet's brother, 277.

24, 131, 132,

Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey.

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THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNiA LIBRARY