.r Rook
THE HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
SECOND SERIES
Historical
Entertainment
BY
RAFAEL SABATINI
SECOND SERIES
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
{Cfje fciberstoe rej# Cambridge
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
TO
DAVID WHITELAW
My DEAR DAVID,
Since the narratives collected here, as well as in the preceding volume
under the title of "The Historical Nights' Entertainment" narratives
originally published in The Premier Magazine^ which you so ably edit
owe their being to your suggestion, it is fitting that some acknowledg-
ment of the fact should be made. To what is hardly less than a duty
allow me to add the pleasure of dedicating to you, in earnest of my
friendship and esteem, not merely this volume, but the work of which
this volume is the second.
Sincerely yours
RAFAEL SABATINI
LONDON, June, 1919
NOTE
To this edition of the Second Series of The Histori-
cal Nights' Entertainment are added three stories from
the volume originally published under the title of
The Justice of the Duke.
PREFACE
THE kindly reception accorded to the first volume of
"The Historical Nights' Entertainment," issued in
December of 1917, has encouraged me to prepare the
second series here assembled.
As in the case of the narratives that made up the
first volume, I set out again with the same ambitious
aim of adhering scrupulously in every instance to ac-
tual, recorded facts; and once again I find it desirable
at the outset to reveal how far the achievement may
have fallen short of the admitted aim.
On the whole, I have to confess to having allowed
myself perhaps a wider latitude, and to having taken
greater liberties than was the case with the essays con-
stituting the previous collection. This, however, ap-
plies, where applicable, to the parts rather than to the
whole.
The only entirely apocryphal narrative here in-
cluded is the first "The Absolution." This is one
of those stories which, if resting upon no sufficient
authority to compel its acceptance, will, nevertheless,
resist all attempts at final refutation, having its roots
at least in the soil of fact. It is given in the rather
discredited Portuguese chronicles of Acenheiro, and
finds place, more or less as related here, in Duarte
Galvao's "Chronicle of Affonso Henriques," whence
it was taken by the Portuguese historical writer,
Alexandre Herculano, to be included in his "Lendas e
Narrativas." If it is to be relegated to the limbo of
x PREFACE
the ben trovato, at least I esteem it to afford us a
precious glimpse of the na'ive spirit of the age in which
it is set, and find in that my justification for including
it.
The next to require apology is "His Insolence of
Buckingham," but only in so far as the incident of the
diamond studs is concerned. The remainder of the
narrative, the character of Buckingham, the details of
his embassy to Paris, and the particulars of his auda-
cious courtship of Anne of Austria, rest upon unassail-
able evidence. I would have omitted the very apocry-
phal incident of the studs but that I considered it of
peculiar interest as revealing the source of the main
theme of one of the most famous historical romances
ever written "The Three Musketeers/' I give the
story as related by La Rochefoucauld in his "Mem-
oirs," whence Alexandre Dumas culled it that he
might turn it to such excellent romantic account. In
La Rochefoucauld's narrative it is the painter Gerbier
who, in a far less heroic manner, plays the part as-
signed by Dumas to d'Artagnan, and it is the Count-
ess of Carlisle who carries out the political theft which
Dumas attributes to Milady. For the rest, I do not
invite you to attach undue credit to it, which is not,
however, to say that I account it wholly false.
In the case of "The Hermosa Fembra," I confess to
having blended together into one single narrative two
historical episodes closely connected in time and
place. Susan's daughter was, in fact, herself the be-
trayer of her father, and it was in penitence for that
unnatural act that she desired her skull to be exhib-
ited as I describe. Into the story of Susan's daughter
I have woven that of another New-Christian girl,
PREFACE xi
who, like the Hermosa Fembra, had taken a Castilian
lover in this case a youth of the house of Guzman.
This youth was driven into concealment in circum-
stances more or less as I describe them. He overheard
the Judaizing of several New-Christians there as-
sembled, and bore word of it at once to Ojeda. The
two episodes were separated in fact by an interval of
three years, and the first afforded Ojeda a strong ar-
gument for the institution of the Holy Office in Se-
ville. Between the two there are many points of con-
tact, and each supplies what the other lacks to make
an interesting narrative having for background the in-
troduction of the Inquisition to Castile. The denoue-
ment I supply is entirely fictitious and the introduc-
tion of Torquemada is quite arbitrary. Ojeda was the
inquisitor who dealt with both cases. But if there I
stray into fiction, at least I claim to have sketched a
faithful portrait of the Grand Inquisitor as I know
him from fairly exhaustive researches into his life and
times.
The story of the False Demetrius is here related
from the point of view of my adopted solution of what
is generally regarded as an historical mystery. The
mystery lies, of course, in the man's identity. He has
been held by some to have been the unfrocked monk,
Grishka Otropiev, by others to have been a son of
Stephen Bathory, King of Poland. I am not aware
that the theory that he was both at one and the same
time has ever been put forward, and whilst admitting
that it is speculative, yet I claim that no other would
appear so aptly to fit all the known facts of his career
or to shed light upon its mysteries.
Undoubtedly I have allowed myself a good deal of
xii PREFACE
licence and speculation in treating certain unwit-
nessed scenes in "The Barren Wooing." But the the-
ory that I develop in it to account for the miscarriage
of the matrimonial plans of Queen Elizabeth and
Robert Dudley seems to me to be not only very fully
warranted by de Quadra's correspondence, but the
only theory that will convincingly explain the events.
Elizabeth, as I show, was widely believed to be an ac-
cessory to the murder of Amy Robsart. But in care-
fully following her words and actions at that critical
time, as reported by de Quadra, my reading of the
transaction is as given here. The most damning fact
against Elizabeth was held to be her own statement to
de Quadra on the eve of Lady Robert Dudley's mur-
der to the effect that Lady Robert was " already dead,
or very nearly so." This foreknowledge of the fate of
that unfortunate lady has been accepted as positive
evidence that the Queen was a party to the crime at
Cumnor, which was to set her lover free to marry
again. Far from that, however, I account it positive
proof of Elizabeth's innocence of any such part in the
deed. Elizabeth was far too crafty and clear-sighted
not to realize how her words must incriminate her
afterwards if she knew that the murder of Lady
Robert was projected. She must have been merely re-
peating what Dudley himself had told her; and what
he must have told her and she believed was that
his wife was at the point of a natural death. Simi-
larly, Dudley would not have told her this, unless his
aim had been to procure his wife's removal by means
which would admit of a natural interpretation. Diffi-
culties encountered, much as I relate them and for
which there is abundant evidence drove his too-
PREFACE xiii
zealous agents to rather desperate lengths, and thus
brought suspicion, not only upon the guilty Dudley,
but also upon the innocent Queen. The manner of
Amy's murder is pure conjecture; but it should not be
far from what actually took place. The possibility of
an accident extraordinarily and suspiciously op-
portune for Dudley as it would have been could
not be altogether ruled out but for the further circum-
stance that Lady Robert had removed everybody
from Cumnor on that day. To what can this point
unless we accept an altogether incredible chain of
coincidence but to some such plotting as I here
suggest?
In the remaining six essays in this volume the liber-
ties taken with the absolute facts are so slight as to
require no apology or comment.
R.S.
LONDON, June, 1919
CONTENTS
I. THE ABSOLUTION 3
Affonso Henriques, First King of Portugal
II. THE FALSE DEMETRIUS 25
Boris Godunov and the Pretended Son of Ivan the
Terrible
III. THE HERMOSA FEMBRA 45
An Episode of the Inquisition in Seville
IV. THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL 71
The Story of the False Sebastian of Portugal
V. THE END OF THE "VERT GALANT " 101
The Assassination of Henry IV
VI. THE BARREN WOOING 128
The Murder of Amy Robsart
VII. SIR JUDAS 156
The Betrayal of Sir Walter Ralegh s
VIII. His INSOLENCE OF BUCKINGHAM 181
George Villiers' Courtship of Anne of Austria
IX. THE PATH OF EXILE 203
The Fall of Lord Clarendon
X. THE TRAGEDY OF HERRENHAUSEN 227
Count Philip Konigsmark and the Princess Sophia^
Dorothea
XL THE TYRANNICIDE 249
Charlotte Corday and Jean Paul Marat
xvi CONTENTS
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 273
THE LUST OF CONQUEST 315
THE PASQUINADE 381
THE HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
SECOND SERIES
THE HISTORICAL NIGHTS'
ENTERTAINMENT
SECOND SERIES
I
THE ABSOLUTION
AFFONSO HENRIQUES, FIRST KING OF PORTUGAL
IN 1093 the Moors of the Almora vide dynasty, under
the Caliph Yusuf, swept irresistibly upwards into
the Iberian Peninsula, recapturing Lisbon and San-
tarem in the west, and pushing their conquest as far
as the river Mondego.
To meet this revival of Mohammedan power,
Alfonso VI of Castile summoned the chivalry of
Christendom to his aid. Among the knights who
answered the call was Count Henry of Burgundy
(grandson of Robert, first Duke of Burgundy), to
whom Alfonso gave his natural daughter Theresa in
marriage, together with the Counties of Oporto and
Coimbra, with the title of Count of Portugal.
That is the first chapter of the history of Portugal.
Count Henry fought hard to defend his southern
frontiers from the incursion of the Moors until his
death in 1114. Thereafter his widow Theresa became
Regent of Portugal during the minority of their son,
Affonso Henriques. A woman of great energy, re-
source, and ambition, she successfully waged war
4 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
against the Moors, and in other ways laid the founda-
tions upon which her son was to build the Kingdom
of Portugal. But her passionate infatuation for one of
her knights Don Fernando Peres de Trava and
the excessive honours she bestowed upon him, made
enemies for her in the new state, and estranged her
from her son.
In 1127 Alfonso VII of Castile invaded Portugal,
compelling Theresa to recognize him as her suzerain.
But Affonso Henriques, now aged seventeen and
declared by the citizens of the capital to be of age
and competent to reign incontinently refused to
recognize the submission made by his mother, and in
the following year assembled an army for the purpose
of expelling her and her lover from the country. The
warlike Theresa resisted until defeated in the battle
of San Mamede and taken prisoner.
He was little more than a boy, although four years
were sped already since, as a mere lad of fourteen, he
had kept vigil throughout the night over his arms in
the Cathedral of Zamora, preparatory to receiving
the honour of knighthood at the hands of his cousin,
Alfonso VII of Castile. Yet already he was looked
upon as the very pattern of what a Christian knight
should be, worthy son of the father who had devoted
his life to doing battle against the Infidel, whereso-
ever he might be found. He was well-grown and tall,
and of a bodily strength that is almost a byword to
this day in that Portugal of which he was the real
founder and first king. He was skilled beyond the
common wont in all knightly exercises of arms and
horsemanship, and equipped with far more learning
THE ABSOLUTION 5
though much of it was ill-digested, as this story will
serve to show than the twelfth century considered
useful or even proper in a knight. And he was at
least true to his time in that he combined a fervid
piety with a weakness of the flesh and an impetuous
arrogance that was to bring him under the ban of
greater excommunication at the very outset of his
reign.
It happened that his imprisonment of his mother
was not at all pleasing in the sight of Rome. Dona
Theresa had powerful friends, who so used their in-
fluence at the Vatican on her behalf that the Holy
Father conveniently ignoring the provocation she
had given and the scandalous, unmotherly conduct
of which she had been guilty came to consider the
behaviour of the Infante of Portugal as reprehensibly
unfilial, and commanded him to deliver Dona The-
resa at once from duress.
This papal order, backed by a threat of excommu-
nication in the event of disobedience, was brought to
the young prince by the Bishop of Coimbra, whom
he counted among his friends.
Affonso Henriques, ever impetuous and quick to
anger, flushed scarlet when he heard that uncom-
promising message. His dark eyes smouldered as they
considered the aged prelate.
" You come here to bid me let loose again upon this
land of Portugal that author of strife, to deliver over
the people once more to the oppression of the Lord of
Trava?" he asked. "And you tell me that, unless by
obeying this command I am false to the duty I owe
this country, you will launch the curse of Rome
against me? You tell me this?"
6 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
The Bishop, deeply stirred, torn between his duty
to the Holy See and his affection for his Prince, bowed
his head and wrung his hands. "What choice have
I ? " he asked, on a quavering note.
"I raised you from the dust." Thunder was rum-
bling in the Prince's voice. " Myself I placed the epis-
copal ring upon your finger."
"My lord, my lord! Could I forget? All that I
have I owe to you save only my soul, which I owe
to God; my faith, which I owe to Christ; and my
obedience, which I owe to our Holy Father the Pope."
The Prince considered him in silence, mastering his
passionate, impetuous nature. "Go," he growled at
last.
The prelate bowed his head, his eyes not daring to
meet his Prince's.
"God keep you, lord," he almost sobbed, and so
went out.
But though stirred by his affection for the Prince
to whom he owed so much, though knowing in his
inmost heart that Affonso Henriques was in the right,
the Bishop of Coimbra did not swerve from his duty
to Rome, which was as plain as it was unpalatable.
Betimes next morning word was brought to Affonso
Henriques in the Alcazar of Coimbra that a parch-
ment was nailed to the door of the Cathedral, setting
forth his excommunication, and that the Bishop
either out of fear or out of sorrow had left the city,
journeying northward towards Oporto.
Affonso Henriques passed swiftly from incredulity
to anger; then almost as swiftly came to a resolve,
which was as mad and harebrained as could have been
expected from a lad in his eighteenth year who held
THE ABSOLUTION 7
the reins of power. Yet by its very directness and its
superb ignoring of all obstacles, legal and canonical,
it was invested with a certain wild sanity.
In full armour, a white cloak simply embroidered
in gold at the edge and knotted at the shoulder, he
rode to the Cathedral, attended by his half-brother,
Pedro Affonso, and two of his knights, Emigio Moniz
and Sancho Nunes. There on the great iron-studded
doors he found, as he had been warned, the Roman
parchment pronouncing him accursed, its sonorous
Latin periods set forth in a fine round clerkly hand.
He swung down from his great horse and clanked
up the Cathedral steps, his attendants following. He
had for witnesses no more than a few loiterers, who
had paused at sight of their Prince.
The interdict had so far attracted no attention, for
in the twelfth century the art of letters was a mystery
to which there were few initiates.
Affonso Henriques tore the sheepskin from its
nails, and crumpled it in his hand; then he passed
into the Cathedral, and thence came out presently
into the cloisters. Overhead a bell was clanging by
his orders, summoning the chapter.
To the Infante, waiting there in the sun-drenched
close, came presently the canons, austere, aloof, ma-
jestic in their unhurried progress through the fretted
cloisters, with flowing garments and hands tucked
into their wide sleeves before them. In a semicircle
they arrayed themselves before him, and waited
impassively to learn his will. Overhead the bell had
ceased.
Affonso Henriques wasted no words.
"I have summoned you," he announced, "to com-
8 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
ittand that you proceed to the election of a bishop."
A rustle stirred through the priestly throng. The
canons looked askance at the Prince and at one an-
other. Then one of them spoke.
"Habemus episcopum," he said gravely, and
several instantly made chorus: "We have a bishop."
The eyes of the young sovereign kindled. "You
are wrong/' he told them. "You had a bishop, but
he is here no longer. He has deserted his see, after
publishing this shameful thing." And he held aloft
the crumpled interdict. "As I am a God-fearing,
Christian knight, I will not live under this ban.
Since the bishop who excommunicated me is gone,
you will at once elect another in his place who shall
absolve me."
They stood before him, silent and impassive, in
their priestly dignity, and in their assurance that the
law was on their side.
"Well?" the boy growled at them.
"Habemus episcopum," droned a voice again.
"Amen," boomed in chorus through the cloisters.
"I tell you that your bishop is gone," he insisted,
his voice quivering now with anger, "and I tell you
that he shall not return, that he shall never set foot
again within my city of Coimbra. Proceed you,
therefore, at once to the election of his successor."
"Lord," he was answered coldly by one of them,
"no such election is possible or lawful."
"Do you dare stand before my face, and tell me
this?" he roared, infuriated by their cold resistance.
He flung out an arm in a gesture of terrible dismissal.
"Out of my sight, you proud and evil men! Back
to your cells, to await my pleasure. Since in your
THE ABSOLUTION 9
arrogant, stiff-necked pride you refuse to do my will,
you shall receive the bishop I shall myself select."
He was so terrific in his rage that they dared not
tell him that he had no power. Prince though he
might be, to make such an election. They bowed to
him, ever impassively, and with their hands still
folded, unhurried as they had come, they now turned
and filed past him in departure.
He watched them with scowling brows and tight-
ened lips, Moniz and Nunes silent behind him.
Suddenly those dark, watchful eyes of his were held
by the last figure of all in that austere procession a
tall, gaunt young man, whose copper-coloured skin
and hawk-featured face proclaimed his Moorish
blood. Instantly, maliciously, it flashed through the
Prince's boyish mind how he might make of this man
an instrument to humble the pride of that insolent
clergy. He raised his hand, and beckoned the cleric
to him.
"What is your name?" he asked him.
"I am called Zuleyman, Lord," he was answered,
and the name confirmed where, indeed, no con-
firmation was necessary the fellow's Moorish ori-
gin.
ArTonso Henriques laughed. It would be an ex-
cellent jest to thrust upon these arrogant priests, who
refused to appoint a bishop of their choice, a bishop
who was little better than a blackamoor.
"Don Zuleyman," said the Prince, "I name you
Bishop of Coimbra in the room of the rebel who has
fled. You will prepare to celebrate High Mass this
morning, and to pronounce my absolution."
The Christianized Moor fell back a step, his face
io HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
paling under its copper skin to a sickly grey. In the
background, the hindmost members of the retreating
clerical procession turned and stood at gaze, angered
and scandalized by what they heard, which was indeed
a thing beyond belief.
"Ah, no, my lord! Ah, no!" Don Zuleyman was
faltering. "Not that!"
The prospect terrified him, and in his agitation he
had recourse to Latin. "Domine, non sum dignus,"
he cried, and beat his breast.
But the uncompromising Affonso Henriques gave
him back Latin for Latin.
"Dixi I have spoken!" he answered sternly.
"Do not fail me in obedience, on your life." And on
that he clanked out again with his attendants, well-
pleased with his morning's work.
As he had disposed with boyish, almost irrespon-
sible rashness, and in flagrant contravention of all
canon law, so it fell out. Don Zuleyman, wearing the
bishop's robes and the bishop's mitre, intoned the
"Kyrie Eleison" before noon that day in the Cathe-
dral of Coimbra, and pronounced the absolution of
the Infante of Portugal, who knelt so submissively
and devoutly before him.
Affonso Henriques was very pleased with himself.
He made a jest of the affair, and invited his intimates
to laugh with him. But Emigio Moniz and the elder
members of his Council refused to laugh. They looked
with awe upon a deed that went perilously near to
sacrilege, and implored him to take their own sober
view of the thing he had done.
"By the bones of Saint James!" he cried. "A
prince is not to be brow-beaten by a priest."
THE ABSOLUTION 11
Such a view in the twelfth century was little short
of revolutionary. The chapter of the Cathedral of
Coimbra held the converse opinion that priests were
not to be brow-beaten by a prince, and set themselves
to make Affonso Henriques realize this to his bitter
cost. They dispatched to Rome an account of his un-
conscionable, high-handed, incredible sacrilege, and
invited Rome to administer condign spiritual flagella-
tion upon this errant child of Mother Church. Rome
made haste to vindicate her authority, and dispatched
a legate to the recalcitrant, audacious boy who ruled
in Portugal. But the distance being considerable, and
means of travel inadequate and slow, it was not until
Don Zuleyman had presided in the See of Coimbra
for a full two months that the papal legate made his
appearance in Affonso Henriques's capital.
A very splendid Prince of the Church was Cardinal
Corrado, the envoy dispatched by Pope Honorius II,
full armed with apostolic weapons to reduce the re-
bellious Infante of Portugal into proper subjection.
His approach was heralded by the voice of rumour.
Affonso Henriques heard of it without perturbation.
His conscience at ease in the absolution which he had
wrung from Mother Church after his own fashion, he
was entirely absorbed in preparations for a campaign
against the Moors which was to widen his dominions.
Therefore, when at length the thunderbolt descended,
it fell so far as he was concerned from a sky
entirely clear.
It was towards dusk of a summer evening when the
legate, in a litter slung in line between two mules,
entered Coimbra. He was attended by two nephews,
Giannino and Pierluigi da Corrado, both patricians of
12 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
Rome, and a little knot of servants. Empanoplied
in his sacred office, the Cardinal had no need of the
protection of men-at-arms upon a journey through
God-fearing lands.
He was borne straight to the old Moorish palace
where the Infante resided, and came upon him there
amid a numerous company in the great pillared hall.
Against a background of battle trophies, livid weap-
ons, implements of war, and suits of mail both Saracen
and Christian, with which the bare walls were hung,
moved a gaily clad, courtly gathering of nobles and
their women-folk, when the great Cardinal, clad from
head to foot in scarlet, entered unannounced.
Laughter rippled into silence. A hush descended
upon the company, which stood now at gaze, con-
sidering the imposing and unbidden guest. Slowly
the legate, followed by the two Roman youths, ad-
vanced down the hall, the soft pad of his slippered
feet and the rustle of his silken robes being at first
the only sound. On he came, until he stood before
the shallow dais, where in a massively carved chair
sat the Infante of Portugal, mistrustfully observing
him. Affonso Henriques scented here an enemy, an
ally of his mother's, the bearer of a fresh declaration
of hostilities. Therefore, of deliberate purpose he
kept his seat, as if to stress the fact that here he was
the master.
"Lord Cardinal," he greeted the legate, "be wel-
come to my land of Portugal."
The Cardinal bowed stiffly, resentful of this recep-
tion. In his long journey across the Spains, princes
and nobles had flocked to kiss his hand, and bend the
knee before him, seeking his blessing. Yet this mere
THE ABSOLUTION 13
boy, beardless save for a silky down about his firm
young cheeks, retained his seat and greeted him with
no more submissiveness than if he had been the envoy
of some temporal prince.
"I am the representative of our Holy Father," he
announced, in a voice of stern reproof. "I am from
Rome, with these my well-beloved nephews."
"From Rome?" quoth Affonso Henriques. For all
his length of limb and massive thews he could be
impish upon occasion. He was impish now. "Al-
though no good has ever yet come to me from Rome,
you make me hopeful. His Holiness will have heard
of the preparations I am making for a war against the
Infidel that shall carry the Cross where now stands
the Crescent, and sends me, perhaps, a gift of gold to
assist me in this holy work."
The mockery of it stung the legate sharply. His
sallow, ascetic face empurpled.
"It is not gold I bring you," he answered, "but a
lesson in the Faith which you would seem to have
forgotten. I am come to teach you your Christian
duty, and to require of you immediate reparation of
the sacrilegious wrongs you have done. The Holy
Father demands of you the instant reinstatement of
the Bishop of Coimbra, whom you have driven out
with threats of violence, and the degradation of the
cleric you blasphemously appointed bishop in his
stead."
"And is that all?" quoth the boy, in a voice danger-
ously quiet.
"No." Fearless in his sense of right, the legate
towered before him. "It is demanded of you further
that you instantly release the lady, your mother, from
the unjust confinement in which you hold her."
i 4 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
"That confinement is not unjust, as all here can
witness/' the Infante answered. "Rome may believe
it, because lies have been carried to Rome. Dona
Theresa's life was a scandal, her regency an injustice
to my people. She and the infamous Lord of Trava
lighted the torch of civil war in these dominions.
Learn here the truth, and carry it to Rome. Thus
shall you do worthy service."
But the prelate was obstinate and proud.
"That is not the answer that our Holy Father
awaits."
"It is the answer that I send."
"Rash, rebellious youth, beware!" The Cardinal's
anger flamed up, and his voice swelled. "I come
armed with spiritual weapons of destruction. Do not
abuse the patience of Mother Church, or you shall
feel the full weight of her wrath released against
you."
Exasperated, Affonso Henriques bounded to his
feet, his face livid now with passion, his eyes ablaze.
"Out! Away!" he cried. "Go, my lord, and go
quickly, or as God watches us I will add here and
now yet another sacrilege to those of which you ac-
cuse me."
The prelate gathered his ample robes about him.
If pale, he was entirely calm once more. With stern
dignity, he bowed to the angry youth, and so de-
parted, but with such outward impassivity that it
would have been difficult to say with whom lay the
victory. If Affonso Henriques thought that night that
he had conquered, morning was to shatter the illusion.
He was awakened early by a chamberlain at the
urgent instances of Emigio Moniz, who was demand-
THE ABSOLUTION 15
ing immediate audience. Affonso Henriques sat up
in bed, and bade him to be admitted.
The elderly knight and faithful counsellor came in,
treading heavily. His swarthy face was overcast,
his mouth set in stern lines under its grizzled beard.
"God keep you, lord," was his greeting, so lugubri-
ously delivered as to sound like a pious, but rather
hopeless, wish.
"And you, Emigio," answered him the Infante.
"You are early astir. What is the cause?"
"Ill tidings, lord." He crossed the room, unlatched
and flung wide a window. "Listen," he bade the
Prince.
On the still morning air arose a sound like the
drone of some gigantic hive, or of the sea when the
tide is making. Affonso Henriques recognized it for
the murmur of the multitude.
"What does it mean?" he asked, and thrust a sin-
ewy leg from the bed.
"It means that the papal legate has done all that
he threatened, and something more. He has placed
your city of Coimbra under a ban of excommunica-
tion. The churches are closed, and until the ban is
lifted no priest will be found to baptize, marry, shrive,
or perform any other sacrament of Holy Church.
The people are stricken with terror, knowing that they
share the curse with you. They are massing below
at the gates of the alcazar, demanding to see you that
they may implore you to lift from them the horror of
this excommunication."
Affonso Henriques had come to his feet by now,
and he stood there staring at the old knight, his face
blenched, his stout heart clutched by fear of these
16 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
impalpable, blasting weapons that were being used
against him.
"My God!" he groaned, and asked: "What must
I do?'^
Moniz was preternaturally grave. "It is of the
first importance that the people should be pacified."
"But how?"
"There is one way only by a promise that you
will submit to the will of the Holy Father, and by
penance seek absolution for yourself and your city."
A red flush swept into the young cheeks that had
been so pale.
"What?" he "cried, his voice a roar. "Release
my mother, depose Zuleyman, recall that fugitive
recreant who cursed me, and humble myself to seek
pardon at the hands of this insolent Italian cleric?
May my bones rot, may I roast forever in hell-fire if
I show myself such a craven ! And do you counsel it,
Emigio do you really counsel that?" He was in a
towering rage.
"Listen to that voice," Emigio answered him, and
waved a hand to the open window. "How else will
you silence it?"
Affonso Henriques sat down on the edge of the bed,
and took his head in his hands. He was checkmated
and yet . . .
He rose and beat his hands together, summoning
chamberlain and pages to help him dress and arm.
"Where is the legate lodged?" he asked Moniz.
"He is gone," the knight answered him. "He left
at cock-crow, taking the road to Spain along the
Mondego so I learnt from the watch at the River
Gate."
THE ABSOLUTION 17
"How came they to open for him?"
"His office, lord, is a key that opens all doors at
any hour of day or night. They dared not detain or
delay him."
"Ha!" grunted the Infante. "We will go after him,
then." And he made haste to complete his dressing.
Then he buckled on his great sword, and they de-
parted.
In the courtyard of the alcazar, he summoned
Sancho Nunes and a half-dozen men-at-arms to
attend him, mounted a charger, and, with Emigio
Moniz at his side and the others following, he rode
out across the drawbridge into the open space that
was thronged with the clamant inhabitants of the
stricken city.
A great cry went up when he showed himself a
mighty appeal to him for mercy and the remission
of the curse. Then silence fell, a silence that invited
him to answer and give comfort.
He reined in his horse, and, standing in his stirrups
very tall and virile, he addressed them.
"People of Coimbra," he announced, "I go to
obtain this city's absolution from the ban that has
been laid upon it. I shall return before sunset. Till
then do you keep the peace."
The voice of the multitude was raised again, this
time to hail him as the father and protector of the
Portuguese, and to invoke the blessing of Heaven
upon his handsome head.
Riding between Moniz and Nunes, and followed by
his glittering men-at-arms, he crossed the city and
took the road along the river by which it was known
that the legate had departed. All that morning they
i8 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
rode briskly amain, the Infante fasting, as he had
risen, yet unconscious of hunger and of all else but
the purpose that was consuming him. He rode in ut-
ter silence, his face set, his brows stern; and Moniz
watching him furtively the while, wondered what
thoughts were stirring in that rash, impetuous young
brain, and was afraid.
Towards noon at last they overtook the legate's
party. They espied his mule-litter at the door of an
inn in a little village some ten miles beyond the foot-
hills of the Bussaco range. The Infante reined up
sharply, a hoarse, fierce cry escaping him, akin to
that of some creature of the wild when it espies its
prey.
Moniz put forth a hand to seize his arm.
"My lord, my lord/' he cried, fearfully, "what is
your purpose ?"
The Prince looked him between the eyes, and his
lips curled in a smile that was not altogether sweet.
"I am going to beg Cardinal Corrado to have com-
passion on me," he answered, subtly mocking, and
on that he swung down from his horse, and tossed the
reins to a man-at-arms.
Into the inn he clanked, Moniz and Nunes follow-
ing closely. He thrust aside the vintner who, not
knowing him, would have hindered him, great lord
though he seemed, from disturbing the holy guest who
was honouring the house. He strode on, and into
the room where the Cardinal with his noble nephews
sat at dinner.
At sight of him, fearing violence, Giannino and
Pierluigi came instantly to their feet, their hands
upon their daggers. But Cardinal da Corrado sat un-
THE ABSOLUTION 19
moved. He looked up, a smile of ineffable gentleness
upon his ascetic face.
"I had hoped that you would come after me, my
son," he said. "If you come a penitent, then has my
prayer been heard."
"A penitent!" cried Affonso Henriques. He
laughed wickedly, and plucked his dagger from its
sheath.
Sancho Nunes, in terror, set a detaining hand upon
his Prince's arm.
"My lord," he cried in a voice that shook, "you
will not strike the Lord's anointed that were to de-
stroy yourself forever."
"A curse," said Affonso Henriques, "perishes with
him that uttered it." He could reason loosely, you
see, this hot-blooded, impetuous young cutter of Gor-
dian knots. "And it imports above all else that the
curse should be lifted from my city of Coimbra."
"It shall be, my son, as soon as you show penitence
and a Christian submission to the Holy Father's will s "
said the undaunted Cardinal.
"God give me patience with you," Affonso Hen-
riques answered him. "Listen to me now, Lord Car-
dinal." And he leaned forward on his dagger, burying
the point of it some inches into the deal table. "That
you should punish me with the weapons of the Faith
for the sins that you allege against me I can under-
stand and suffer. There is reason in that, perhaps.
But will you tell me what reasons there can be in pun-
ishing a whole city for an offence which, if it exists at
all, is mine alone? and in punishing it by a curse so
terrible that all the consolations of religion are denied
those true children of Mother Church, that no priestly
20 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
office may be performed within the city, that men and
women may not approach the altars of the Faith, that
they must die unshriven with their sins upon them,
and so be damned through all eternity? Where is the
reason that urges this?"
The Cardinal's smile had changed from one of be-
nignity to one of guile.
"Why, I will answer you. Out of their terror they
will be moved to revolt against you, unless you relieve
them of the ban. Thus, Lord Prince, I hold you in
check. You make submission or else you are de-
stroyed."
Affonso Henriques considered him a moment.
"You answer me, indeed," said he, and then his voice
swelled up in denunciation. "But this is statecraft,
not religion. And when a prince has no statecraft to
match that which is opposed to him, do you know
what follows? He has recourse to force, Lord Car-
dinal. You compel me to it; upon your own head the
consequences."
The legate almost sneered. "What is the force of
your poor lethal weapons compared with the spiritual
power I wield ? Do you threaten me with death ? Do
you think I fear it?" He rose in a surge of sudden
wrath, and tore open his scarlet robe. "Strike here
with your poniard. I wear no mail. Strike if you dare,
and by the sacrilegious blow destroy yourself in this
world and the next."
The Infante considered him. Slowly he sheathed
his dagger, smiling a little. Then he beat his hands
together. His men-at-arms came in. -
"Seize me those two Roman whelps," he com-
manded, and pointed to Giannino and Pierluigi.
"Seize them, and make them fast. About it!"
THE ABSOLUTION 21
"Lord Prince!" cried the legate in a voice of ap-
peal, wherein fear and anger trembled.
It was the note of fear that heartened Affonso Hen-
riques. "About it ! " he cried again, though needlessly,
for already his men-at-arms were at grips with the
Cardinal's nephews. In a trice the kicking, biting,
swearing pair were overpowered, deprived of arms,
and pinioned. The men looked to their Prince for fur-
ther orders. In the background Moniz and Nunes
witnessed all with troubled countenances, whilst the
Cardinal, beyond the table, white to the lips, de-
manded in a quavering voice to know what violence
was intended, implored the Infante to consider, and in
the same breath threatened him with dread conse-
quences of this affront.
Affonso Henriques, unmoved, pointed through the
window to a stalwart oak that stood before the
inn.
"Take them out there, and hang them unshriven,"
he commanded.
The Cardinal swayed, and almost fell forward. He
clutched the table, speechless with terror for those
lads who were as the very apple of his eye, he who so
fearlessly had bared his own breast to the steel.
The two comely Italian youths were dragged out
writhing in their captors' hands.
At last the half-swooning legate found his voice.
"Lord Prince," he gasped, "Lord Prince . . . you can-
not do this infamy! You cannot! I warn you that . . .
that . . ." The threat perished unuttered, slain by
mounting terror. "Mercy! Have mercy, lord! as you
hope for mercy!"
"What mercy do you practise, you who preach a
22 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
gospel of mercy in the world, and cry for mercy
now?" the Infante asked him.
"But this is an infamy! What harm have those
poor children done? What concern is it of theirs that
I have offended you in performing my sacred duty?"
Swift into that opening flashed the home-thrust of
the Infante's answer.
"What harm have my people of Coimbra done?
What concern is it of theirs that I have offended
you? Yet to master me you did not hesitate to strike
at them with the spiritual weapons that are yours. To
master you I do not hesitate to strike at your nephews
with the lethal weapons that are mine. When you
shall have" seen them hang, you will understand the
things that argument could not make clear to you.
In the vileness of my act you will see a reflection of
the vileness of your own, and perhaps your heart will
be touched, your monstrous pride abated."
Outside, under the tree, the figures of the men-at-
arms were moving. Expeditiously, and with indiffer-
ence, they went about the preparations for the task
entrusted to them.
The Cardinal writhed, and fought for breath.
"Lord Prince, this must not be!" He stretched forth
supplicating hands. "Lord Prince, you must release
my nephews."
"Lord Cardinal, you must absolve my people."
" If ... if you will first make submission. My duty
. . . to the Holy See . . . O God! Will nothing move
you?"
"When they have been hanged you will under-
stand, and out of your own affliction learn compas-
sion." The Infante's voice was so cold, his mien so
THE ABSOLUTION 23
resolute, that the legate despaired of conquering his
purpose. Abruptly he capitulated, even as the halters
went about the necks of his two cherished lads.
"Stop!" he screamed. "Bid them stop! The curse
shall be lifted."
Affonso Henriques opened the window with a leL
sureliness which to the legate seemed to belong to the
realm of nightmare.
"Wait yet a moment/' the Infante called to those
outside, about whom by now a little knot of awe-
stricken villagers had gathered. Then he turned
again to Cardinal Corrado, who had sunk to his chair
like a man exhausted, and sat now panting, his elbows
on the table, his head in his hands. "Here," said the
Prince, "are the terms upon which you may have
their lives: Complete absolution, and Aposrolic bene-
diction for my people and myself this very night, I on
my side making submission to the Holy Father's will
to the extent of releasing my mother from duress,
with the condition that she leaves Portugal at once
and does not return. As for the banished bishop and
his successor, matters must remain as they are; but
you can satisfy your conscience on that score by your-
self confirming the appointment of Don Zuleyman.
Come, my lord, I am being generous, I think. In the
enlargement of my mother I afford you the means of
satisfying Rome. If you have learnt your lesson from
what I here proposed, your conscience should satisfy
you of the rest."
" Be it so," the Cardinal answered hoarsely. " I will
return with you to Coimbra and do your will."
Thereupon, without any tinge of mockery, but in
completest sincerity in token that the feud between
24 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
them was now completely healed, Affonso Henriques
went down upon his knees, like the true and humble
son of Holy Church he accounted himself, to ask a
blessing at the Cardinal's hands.
II
THE FALSE DEMETRIUS
BORIS GODUNOV AND THE PRETENDED SON OF
IVAN THE TERRIBLE
THE news of it first reached him whilst he sat
at supper in the great hall of his palace in the
Kremlin. It came at a time when already there was
enough to distract his mind; for although the table be-
fore him was spread and equipped as became an em-
peror's, the gaunt spectre of famine stalked outside in
the streets of Moscow, and men and women were so
reduced by it that cannibalism was alleged to be
breaking out amongst them.
Alone, save for the ministering pages, sat Boris
Godunov under the iron lamps that made of the table,
with its white napery and vessels of gold and silver
plate, an island of light in the gloom of that vast
apartment. The air was fragrant with the scent of
burning pine, for although the time of year was May,
the nights were chill, and a great log-fire was blazing
on the distant hearth. To him, as he sat there, came
his trusted Basmanov with those tidings which
startled him at first, seeming to herald that at last the
sword of Nemesis was swung above his sinful head.
Basmanov, a flush tinting the prominent cheek-
bones of his sallow face, an excited glitter in his long
eyes, began by ordering the pages out of earshot, then
leaning forward quickly muttered forth his news.
26 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
At the first words of it, the Tsar's knife clashed into
his golden platter, and his short, powerful hands
clutched the carved arms of his great gilded chair.
Quickly he controlled himself, and then as he contin-
ued to listen he was moved to scorn, and a faint smile
began to stir under his grizzled beard.
A man had appeared in Poland such was the
burden of Basmanov's story coming none knew ex-
actly whence, who claimed to be Demetrius, the son
of Ivan Vassielivitch, and lawful Tsar of Russia
Demetrius, who was believed to have died at Uglich
ten years ago, and whose remains lay buried in Mos-
cow, in the Church of Saint Michael. This man had
found shelter in Lithuania, in the house of Prince
Wisniowiecki, and thither the nobles of Poland were
now flocking to do him homage, acknowledging him
the son of Ivan the Terrible. He was said to be the
living image of the dead Tsar, save that he was
swarthy and black-haired, like the dowager Tsarina,
and there were two warts on his face, such as it was
remembered had disfigured the countenance of the
boy Demetrius.
Thus Basmanov, adding that he had dispatched a
messenger into Lithuania to obtain more precise con-
firmation of the story. That messenger chosen in
consequence of something else that Basmanov had
been told was Smirnoy Otrepiev.
The Tsar Boris sat back in his chair, his eyes on the
gem-encrusted goblet, the stem of which his fingers
were mechanically turning. There was now no ves-
tige of the smile on his round white face. It had
grown set and thoughtful.
"Find Prince Shuiski," he said presently, "and
send him to me here."
THE FALSE DEMETRIUS 27
Upon the tale the boyar had brought him he offered
now no comment.
"We will talk of this again, Basmanov," was all he
said in acknowledgment that he had heard, and in dis-
missal.
But when the boyar had gone, Boris Godunov
heaved himself to his feet, and strode over to the fire,
his great head sunk between his massive shoulders.
He was a short, thick-set bow-legged man, inclining
to corpulence. He set a foot, shod in red leather re-
versed with ermine, upon an andiron, and, leaning an
elbow on the carved overmantel, rested his brow
against his hand. His eyes stared into the very heart
of the fire, as if they beheld there the pageant of the
past, upon which his mind was bent.
Nineteen years were sped since Ivan the Terrible
had passed away, leaving two sons, Feodor Ivano-
vitch, who had succeeded him, and the infant Deme-
trius. Feodor, a weakling who was almost imbecile,
had married Irene, the daughter of Boris Godunov,
whereby it had fallen out that Boris became the real
ruler of Russia, the power behind the throne. But his
insatiable ambition coveted still more. He must wear
the crown as well as wield the sceptre; and this
could not be until the Ruric dynasty which had ruled
Russia for nearly seven centuries should be stamped
out. Between himself and the throne stood his
daughter's husband and their child, and the boy De-
metrius, who had been dispatched with his mother,
the dowager Tsarina, to Uglich. The three must be
removed.
Boris began with the last, and sought at first to
drive him out of the succession without bloodshed.
28 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
He attempted to have him pronounced illegitimate,
on the ground that he was the son of Ivan's seventh
wife (the Orthodox Church recognizing no wife as
legitimate beyond the third). But in this he failed.
The memory of the terrible Tsar, the fear of him, was
still alive in superstitious Russia, and none dared to
dishonour his son. So Boris had recourse to other and
surer means. He dispatched his agents to Uglich, and
presently there came thence a story that the boy,
whilst playing with a knife, had been taken with a fit
of epilepsy, and had fallen, running the blade into his
j throat. But it was not a story that could carry con-
; viction to the Muscovites, since with it came the news
that the town of Uglich had risen against the emissa-
ries of Boris, charging them with the murder of the
boy, and killing them out of hand.
Terrible had been the vengeance which Boris had
exacted. Of the luckless inhabitants of the town two
hundred were put to death by his orders, and the rest
sent into banishment beyond the Ural Mountains,
whilst the Tsarina Maria, Demetrius J s mother, for
having said that her boy was murdered at the instiga-
tion of Boris, was packed off to a convent, and had re-
mained there ever since in close confinement.
That had been in 1591. The next to go was Feo-
I dor's infant son, and lastly in 1598 Feodor him-
; self, succumbing to a mysterious illness, and leaving
Boris a clear path to the throne. But he ascended it
under the burden of his daughter's curse. Feeder's
widow had boldly faced her father, boldly accused
him of poisoning her husband to gratify his remorse-
less ambitions, and on a passionate appeal to God to
let it be done by him as he had done by others she had
THE FALSE DEMETRIUS 29
departed to a convent, swearing never to set eyes
upon him again.
The thought of her was with him now, as he stood
there looking into the heart of the fire; and perhaps it
was the memory of her curse that turned his stout
heart to water, and made him afraid where there
could surely be no cause for fear. For five years now
had he been Tsar of Russia, and in these five years he
had taken such a grip of power as was not lightly to
be loosened.
Long he stood there, and there he was found by the
magnificent Prince Shuiski, whom he had bidden Bas-
manov to summon.
"You went to Uglich when the Tsarevitch Deme-
trius was slain," said Boris. His voice and mien were
calm and normal. " Yourself you saw the body. There
is no possibility that you could have been mistaken in
it?"
"Mistaken?" The boyar was taken aback by the
question. He was a tall man, considerably younger
than Boris, who was in his fiftieth year. His face was
lean and saturnine, and there was something sinister
in the dark, close-set eyes under a single heavy line of
eyebrow.
Boris explained his question, telling him what he
had learnt from Basmanov. Basil Shuiski laughed.
The story was an absurd one. Demetrius was dead.
Himself he had held the body in his arms, and no mis-
take was possible.
Despite himself, a sigh of relief fluttered from the
lips of Boris. Shuiski was right. It was an absurd
story, this. There was nothing to fear. He had been a
fool to have trembled for a moment.
30 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
Nevertheless, in the weeks that followed, he
brooded more and more over all that Basmanov had
said. It was in the thought that the nobility of Po-
land was flocking to the house of Wisniowiecki to do
honour to this false son of Ivan the Terrible, that
Boris found the chief cause of uneasiness. There was
famine in Moscow, and empty bellies do not make for
loyalty. Then, too, the Muscovite nobles did not love
him. He had ruled too sternly, and had curbed their
power. There were men like Basil Shuiski who knew
too much greedy, ambitious men, who might turn
their knowledge to evil account. The moment might
be propitious to the pretender, however false his
claim. Therefore Boris dispatched a messenger to
Wisniowiecki with the offer of a heavy bribe if he
would yield up the person of this false Demetrius.
But that messenger returned empty-handed. He
had reached Bragin too late. The pretender had al-
ready left the place, and was safely lodged in the castle
of George Mniszek, the Palatine of Sandomir, to
whose daughter Maryna he was betrothed. If these
were ill tidings for Boris, there were worse to follow
soon. Within a few months he learned from Sandomir
that Demetrius had removed to Cracow, and that
there he had been publicly acknowledged by Sigis-
mund III of Poland as the son of Ivan Vassielivitch,
the rightful heir to the crown of Russia. He heard,
too, the story upon which this belief was founded.
Demetrius had declared that one of the agents em-
ployed by Boris Godunov to procure his murder at
Uglich had bribed his physician Simon to perform the
deed. Simon had pretended to agree as the only means
of saving him. He had dressed the son of a serf, who
THE FALSE DEMETRIUS 31
slightly resembled Demetrius, in garments similar to
those worn by the young Prince, and thereafter cut
the lad's throat, leaving those who had found the
body to presume it to be the Prince's. Meanwhile,
Demetrius himself had been concealed by the physi-
cian, and very shortly thereafter carried away from
Uglich, to be placed in safety in a monastery, where
he had been educated.
Such, in brief, was the story with which Demetrius
convinced the Court of Poland, and not a few who
had known the boy at Uglich came forward now to
identify with him the grown man, who carried in his
face so strong a resemblance to Ivan the Terrible.
That story which Boris now heard was soon heard by
all Russia, and Boris realized that something must be
done to refute it.
But something more than assurances his own as-
surances were necessary if the Muscovites were to
believe him. And so at last Boris bethought him of
the Tsarina Maria, the mother of the murdered boy.
He had her fetched to Moscow from her convent, and
told her of this pretender who was setting up a claim
to the throne of Russia, supported by the King of
Poland.
She listened impassively, standing before him in the
black robes and conventual coif which his tyranny
had imposed upon her. When he had done, a faint
smile swept over the face that had grown so hard in
these last twelve years since that day when her boy
had been slain almost under her very eyes.
"It is a circumstantial tale," she said. "It is per-
haps true. It is probably true."
"True!" He bounded from his seat. "True?
32 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
What are you saying, woman ? Yourself you saw the
boy dead."
"I did, and I know who killed him."
" But you saw him. You recognized him for your
own, since you set the people on to kill those whom
you believed had slain him."
"Yes," she answered. And added the question:
"What do you want of me now?"
"What do I want?" He was amazed that she
should ask, exasperated. Had the conventual confine-
ment turned her head? "I want your testimony. I
want you to denounce this fellow for the impostor
that he is. The people will believe you."
" You think they will ? " Interest had kindled in her
glance.
" What else ? Are you not the mother of Demetrius,
and shall not a mother know her own son?"
"You forget. He was ten years of age then a
child. Now he is a grown man of three-and- twenty.
How can I be sure? How can I be sure of anything?"
He swore a full round oath at her. "Because you
saw him dead."
"Yet I may have been mistaken. I thought I knew
the agents of yours who killed him. Yet you made me
swear as the price of my brothers' lives that I
was mistaken. Perhaps I was more mistaken than we
thought. Perhaps my little Demetrius was not slain
at all. Perhaps this man's tale is true."
"Perhaps.. . ." He broke off to stare at her, mis-
trustfully, searchingly. "What do you mean?" he
asked her sharply.
Again that wan smile crossed the hard, sharp-
featured face that once had been so lovely. "I mean
THE FALSE DEMETRIUS 33
that if the devil came out of hell and called himself
my son, I should acknowledge him to your undoing."
Thus the pent-up hate and bitterness of years of
brooding upon her wrongs broke forth. Taken aback,
he quailed before it. His jaw dropped foolishly, and
he stared at her with wide, unblinking eyes.
"The people will believe me, you say they will
believe that a mother should know her own son.
Then are your hours of usurpation numbered."
If for a moment it appalled him, yet in the end,
forewarned, he was forearmed. It was foolish of her to
let him look upon the weapon with which she could
destroy him. The result of it was that she went back
to her convent under close guard, and was thereafter
confined with greater rigour than hitherto.
Desperately Boris heard how the belief in Deme-
trius was gaining ground in Russia with the people.
The nobles might still be sceptical, but Boris knew
that he could not trust them, since they had no cause
to love him. He began, perhaps, to realize that it is
not good to rule by fear.
And then at last came Smirnoy Otrepiev back from
Cracow, where he had been sent by Basmanov to ob-
tain with his own eyes confirmation of the rumour
which had reached the boyar on the score of the pre-
tender's real identity.
The rumour, he declared, was right. The false
Demetrius was none other than his own nephew,
Grishka Otrepiev, who had once been a monk, but,
unfrocked, had embraced the Roman heresy, and had
abandoned himself to licentious ways. You realize
now why Smirnoy had been chosen by Basmanov for
this particular mission.
34 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
The news heartened Boris. At last he could de-
nounce the impostor, in proper terms, and denounce
him he did. He sent an envoy to Sigismund III to
proclaim the fellow's true identity, and to demand his
expulsion from the Kingdom of Poland; and his de-
nunciation was supported by a solemn excommunica-
tion pronounced by the Patriarch of Moscow against
the unfrocked monk, Grishka Otrepiev, who now
falsely called himself Demetrius Ivanovitch.
But the denunciation did not carry the conviction
that Boris expected. It was reported that the Tsare-
vitch was a courtly, accomplished man, speaking Po-
lish and Latin, as well as Russian, skilled in horseman-
ship and in the use of arms, and it was asked how an
unfrocked monk had come by these accomplishments.
Moreover, although Boris, forewarned, had prevented
the Tsarina Maria from supporting the pretender
out of motives of revenge, he had forgotten her two
brothers; he had not foreseen that, actuated by the
same motives, they might do that which he had pre-
vented her from doing. This was what occurred. The
brothers Nagoy repaired to Cracow publicly to ac-
knowledge Demetrius their nephew, and to enrol
themselves under his banner.
Against this Boris realized that mere words were
useless. The sword of Nemesis was drawn, indeed.
His sins had found him out. Nothing remained him
but to arm and go forth to meet the impostor, who
was advancing upon Moscow with a great host of
Poles and Cossacks.
He appraised the support of the Nagoys at its right
value. They, too, had been at Uglich, and had seen
the dead boy, almost seen him slain. Vengeance upon
THE FALSE DEMETRIUS 35
himself was their sole motive. But was it possible
that Sigismund of Poland was really deceived, as
well as the Palatine of Sandomir, whose daughter was
betrothed to the adventurer, Prince Adam Wisnio-
wiecki, in whose house the false Demetrius had first
made his appearance, and all those Polish nobles who
flocked to his banner? Or were they, too, moved by
some ulterior motive which he could not fathom ?
That was the riddle that plagued Boris Godunov
what time in the winter of 1604 he sent his ar-
mies to meet the invader. He sent them because,
crippled now by gout, even the satisfaction of leading
them was denied him. He was forced to stay at home
in the gloomy apartments of the Kremlin, fretted by
care, with the ghosts of his evil past to keep him com-
pany, and assure him that the hour of judgment was
at hand.
With deepening rage he heard how town after town
capitulated to the adventurer, and mistrusting Bas-
manov, who was in command, he sent Shuiski to re-
place him. In January of 1605 the armies met at
Dobrinichi, and Demetrius suffered a severe defeat,
which compelled him to fall back on Putioli. He lost
all his infantry, and every Russian taken in arms on
the pretender's side was remorselessly hanged as Boris
had directed.
Hope began to revive in the heart of Boris; but as
months passed and no decision came, those hopes
faded again, and the canker of the past gnawed at his
vitals and sapped his strength. And then there was
ever present to his mind the nightmare riddle of the
pretender's identity. At last, one evening in April, he
sent for Smirnoy Otrepiev to question him again con-
36 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
cerning that nephew of his. Otrepiev came in fear
this time. It is not good to be the uncle of a man who
is giving so much trouble to a great prince.
Boris glared at him from blood-injected eyes. His
round, white face was haggard, his cheeks sagged, and
his fleshly body had lost all its erstwhile firm vigour.
"I have sent for you to question you again," he
said, "touching this lewd nephew of yours, this
Grishka Otrepiev, this unfrocked monk, who claims
to be Tsar of Muscovy. Are you sure, man, that you
have made no mistake are you sure?"
Otrepiev was shaken by the Tsar's manner, by the
ferocity of his mien. But he made answer: "Alas,
Highness! I could not be mistaken. I am sure."
Boris grunted, and moved his body irritably in his
chair. His terrible eyes watched Otrepiev mistrust-
fully. He had reached the mental stage in which he
mistrusted everything and everybody.
"You lie, you dog," he snarled savagely.'
| "Highness, I swear . . ."
' "Lies!" Boris roared him down. "And here's the
proof. Would Sigismund of Poland have acknowl-
edged him had he been what you say? When I de-
nounced him the unfrocked monk Grishka Otrepiev,
would not Sigismund have verified the statement had
it been true?"
"The brothers Nagoy, the uncles of the dead De-
metrius . . ." Otrepiev was beginning, when again
Boris interrupted him.
"Their acknowledgment of him came after Sigis-
mund's, after long after my denunciation." He
broke into oaths. " I say you lie. Will you stand there
and palter with me, man? Will you wait until the
THE FALSE DEMETRIUS 37
rack pulls you joint from joint before you speak the
truth ?"
"Highness!" cried Otrepiev, "I have served you
faithfully these years."
"The truth, man; as you hope for life/' thundered
the Tsar, "the whole truth of this foul nephew of
yours, if so be he is your nephew."
And Otrepiev spoke the whole truth at last in his
great dread. "He is not my nephew."
"Not?" It was a roar of rage. "You dared lie to
me?"
Otrepiev's knees were loosened by terror, and he
went down upon them before the irate Tsar.
"I did not lie not altogether. I told you a half-
truth, Highness. His name is Grishka Otrepiev; it is
the name by which he always has been known, and he
is an unfrocked monk, all as I said, and the son of my
brother's wife."
"Then . . . then . . ." Boris was bewildered. Sud-
denly he understood. "And his father?"
"Was Stephen Bathory, King of Poland. Grishka
Otrepiev is King Stephen's natural son."
Boris seemed to fight for breath for a moment.
"This is true?" he asked, and himself answered the
question. "Of course it is true. It is the light at last
... at last. You may go."
Otrepiev stumbled out, thankful, surprised to es-
cape so lightly. He could not know of how little ac-
count to Boris was the deception he had practised in
comparison with the truth he had now revealed, a
truth that shed a fearful, dazzling light upon the dark
mystery of the false Demetrius. The problem that so
long had plagued the Tsar was solved at last.
38 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
This pretended Demetrius, this unfrocked monk,
was a natural son of Stephen Bathory, and a Roman
Catholic. Such men as Sigismund of Poland and the
Voyvode of Sandomir were not deceived on the score
of his identity. They, and no doubt other of the lead-
ing nobles of Poland, knew the man for what he was,
and because of it supported him, using the fiction of
his being Demetrius Ivanovitch to impose upon the
masses and facilitate the pretender's occupation of the
throne of Russia. And the object of it was to set up
in Muscovy a ruler who should be a Pole and a Ro-
man Catholic. Boris knew the bigotry of Sigismund,
who already had sacrificed a throne that of Sweden
to his devout conscience, and he saw clearly to the
heart of this intrigue. Had he not heard that a papal
nuncio had been at Cracow, and that this nuncio
had been a stout supporter of the pretender's claim ?
What could be the Pope's concern in the Muscovite
succession ? Why should a Roman priest support the
claim of a prince to the throne of a country devoted
to the Greek Faith?
At last all was clear indeed to Boris. Rome was at
the bottom of this business, whose true aim was the
Romanization of Russia; and Sigismund had fetched
Rome into it, had set Rome on. Himself an elected
King of Poland, Sigismund may have seen in the am-
bitious son of Stephen Bathory one who might per-
haps supplant him on the Polish throne. To divert
his ambition into another channel he had fathered
if he had not invented this fiction that the pre-
tender was the dead Demetrius.
Had that fool Smirnoy Otrepiev but dealt frankly
with him from the first, what months of annoyance
THE FALSE DEMETRIUS 39
might he not have been spared; how easy it might
have been to prick this bubble of imposture. But bet-
ter late than never. To-morrow he would publish the
true facts, and all the world should know the truth;
and it was a truth that must give pause to those fools
in this superstitious Russia, so devoted to the Or-
thodox Greek Church, who favoured the pretender.
They should see the trap that was being baited for
them.
There was a banquet in the Kremlin that night to
certain foreign envoys, and Boris came to table in
better spirits than he had been for many a day. He
was heartened by the thought of what was now to do,
by the conviction that he held the false Demetrius in
the hollow of his hand. There to those envoys he
would announce to-night what to-morrow he would
announce to all Russia tell them of the discovery
he had made, and reveal to his subjects the peril in
which they stood. Towards the close of the banquet
he rose to address his guests, announcing that he had
an important communication for them. In silence
they waited for him to speak. And then, abruptly,
with no word yet spoken, he sank back into his chair,
fighting for breath, clawing the air, his face empur-
pling until suddenly the blood gushed copiously from
his mouth and nostrils.
He was vouchsafed time in which to strip off his
splendid apparel and wrap himself in a monk's robe,
thus symbolizing the putting aside of earthly vanities,
and then he expired.
It has been now and then suggested that he was
poisoned. His death was certainly most opportune to
Demetrius. But there is nothing in the manner of it
40 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
to justify the opinion that it resulted from anything
other than an apoplexy.
His death brought the sinister opportunist Shuiski
back to Moscow to place Boris's son Feodor on the
throne. But the reign of this lad of sixteen was very
brief. Basmanov, who had gone back to the army,
being now inspired by jealousy and fear of the ambi-
tious Shuiski, went over at once to the pretender, and
proclaimed him Tsar of Russia. Thereafter events
moved swiftly. Basmanov marched on Moscow, en-
tered it in triumph, and again proclaimed Demetrius,
whereupon the people rose in revolt against the son
of the usurper Boris, stormed the Kremlin, and
strangled the boy and his mother.
Basil Shuiski would have shared their fate had he
not bought his life at the price of betrayal. Publicly
he declared to the Muscovites that the boy whose
body he had seen at Uglich was not that of Demetrius,
but of a peasant's son, who had been murdered in his
stead.
That statement cleared the last obstacle from the
pretender's path, and he advanced now to take pos-
session of his throne. Yet before he occupied it, he
showed the real principles that actuated him, proved
how true had been Boris's conclusion. He ordered the
arrest and degradation of the Patriarch who had de-
nounced and excommunicated him, and in his place
appointed Ignatius, Bishop of Riazan, a man sus-
pected of belonging to the Roman communion.
On the 30th of June of that year 1605, Demetrius
made his triumphal entry into Moscow. He went to
prostrate himself before the tomb of Ivan the Ter-
rible, and then to visit the Tsarina Maria, who, after
THE FALSE DEMETRIUS 41
a brief communion with him in private, came forth
publicly to acknowledge him as her son.
Just as Shuiski had purchased his life by a false-
hood, so did she purchase her enlargement from that
convent where so long she had been a prisoner, and
restoration to the rank that was her proper due. After
all, she had cause for gratitude to Demetrius, who, in
addition to restoring her these things, had avenged
her upon the hated Boris Godunov.
His coronation followed in due season, and at last
this amazing adventurer found himself firmly seated
upon the throne of Russia, with Basmanov at his right
hand, to help and guide him. And at first all went well,
and the young Tsar earned a certain measure of popu-
larity. If his swarthy face was coarse-featured, yet his
bearing was so courtly and gracious that he won his
way quickly to the hearts of his people. For the rest
he was of a tall, graceful figure, a fine horseman, and of
a knightly address at arms.
But he soon found himself in the impossible position
of having to serve two masters. On the one hand there
was Russia, and the Orthodox Russians whose tsar he
was, and on the other there were the Poles, who had
made him so at a price, and who now demanded pay-
ment. Because he saw that this payment would be
difficult and fraught with peril to himself, he would
after the common wont of princes who had attained
their objects have repudiated the debt. And so he
was disposed to ignore, or at least to evade, the per-
sistent reminders that reached him from the papal
nuncio, to whom he had promised the introduction
into Russia of the Roman faith.
" But presently came a letter from Sigismund
42 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
couched in different terms. The King of Poland wrote
to Demetrius that word had reached him that Boris
Godunov was still alive, and that he had taken refuge
in England, adding that he might be tempted to re-
store the fugitive to the throne of Muscovy.
The threat contained in that bitter piece of sarcasm
aroused Demetrius to a sense of the responsibilities he
had undertaken, which were precisely as Boris Godu-
nov had surmised. As a beginning he granted the
Jesuits permission to build a church within the sacred
walls of the Kremlin, whereby he gave great scandal.
Soon followed other signs that he was not a true son of
the Orthodox Greek Church; he gave offence by his
indifference to public worship, by his neglect of
Russian customs, and by surrounding himself with
Roman Catholic Poles, upon whom he conferred high
offices and dignities.
And there were those at hand ready to stir up pub-
lic feeling against him, resentful boyars quick to sus-
pect that perhaps they had been swindled. Foremost
among these was the sinister turncoat Shuiski, who
had not derived from his perjury all the profit he ex-
pected, who resented, above all, to see Basmanov
who had ever been his rival invested with a power
second only to that of the Tsar himself. Shuiski,
skilled in intrigue, went to work in his underground,
burrowing fashion. He wrought upon the clergy, who
in their turn wrought upon the populace, and pres-
ently all was seething disaffection under a surface ap-
parently calm.
The eruption came in the following May, when
Maryna, the daughter of the Palatine of Sandomir,
made her splendid entry into Moscow, the bride-elect
THE FALSE DEMETRIUS 43
of the young Tsar. The dazzling procession and the
feasting that followed found little favour in the eyes
of the Muscovites, who now beheld their city aswarm
with heretic Poles.
The marriage was magnificently solemnized on the
1 8th of May, 1606. And now Shuiski applied a match
to the train he had so skilfully laid. Demetrius had
caused a timber fort to be built before the walls of
Moscow for a martial spectacle which he had planned
for the entertainment of his bride. Shuiski put it
abroad that the fort was intended to serve as an en-
gine of destruction, and that the martial spectacle was
a pretence, the real object being that from the fort the
Poles were to cast firebrands into the city, and then
proceed to the slaughter of the inhabitants.
No more was necessary to infuriate an already
exasperated populace. They flew to arms, and on the
night of the 29th of May they stormed the Kremlin,
led on by the arch-traitor Shuiski himself, to the cry
of "Death to the heretic! Death to the impostor!"
They broke into the palace, and swarmed up the
stairs into the Tsar's bedchamber, slaying the faithful
Basmanov, who stood sword in hand to bar the way
and give his master time to escape. The Tsar leapt
from a balcony thirty feet to the ground, broke his
leg, and lay there helpless, to be dispatched by his
enemies, who presently discovered him.
He died firmly and fearlessly protesting that he was
Demetrius Ivanovitch. Nevertheless, he was Grishka
Otrepiev, the unfrocked monk.
It has been said that he was no more than an instru-
ment in the hands of'priestcraft, and that because he
played his part badly he met his doom. But some-
44 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
thing more he was. He was an instrument, indeed,
not of priestcraft, but of Fate, to bring home to Boris
Godunov the hideous sins that stained his soul, and to
avenge his victims by personating one of them. In
that personation he had haunted Boris as effectively
as if he had been the very ghost of the boy murdered
at Uglich, haunted and tortured, and finally broken
him so that he died.
That was the part assigned him by Fate in the mys-
terious scheme of human things. And that part being
played, the rest mattered little. In the nature of him
and of his position it was impossible that his impos-
ture should be other than ephemeral.
Ill
THE HERMOSA FEMBRA
AN EPISODE OF THE INQUISITION IN SEVILLE
APPREHENSION hung like a thundercloud over
J^jL tne city f Seville in those early days of the year
1481. It had been growing since the previous Octo-
ber, when the Cardinal of Spain and Frey Tomas de
Torquemada, acting jointly on behalf of the sover-
eigns Ferdinand and Isabella had appointed the
first inquisitors for Castile, ordering them to set up a
Tribunal of the Faith in Seville, to deal with the apos-
tatizing said to be rampant among the New-Chris-
tians, or baptized Jews, who made up so large a pro-
portion of the population.
Among the many oppressive Spanish enactments
against the children of Israel, it was prescribed that
all should wear the distinguishing circlet of red cloth
on the shoulder of their gabardines; that they should
reside within the walled confines of their ghettos and
never be found beyond them after nightfall, and that
they should not practise as doctors, surgeons, apothe-
caries, or innkeepers. The desire to emancipate them-
selves from these and other restrictions upon their
commerce with Christians, and from the generally in-
tolerable conditions of bondage and ignominy im-
posed upon them, had driven many to accept baptism
and embrace Christianity. But even such New-
Christians as were sincere in their professions of faith
46 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
failed to find in this baptism the peace they sought.
Bitter racial hostility, though sometimes tempered,
was never extinguished by their conversion.
Hence the alarm with which they viewed the
gloomy, funereal, sinister pageant the white-robed,
black-mantled, and hooded inquisitors, with their at-
tendant familiars and barefoot friars headed by a
Dominican bearing the white Cross, which invaded
the city of Seville one day towards the end of Decem-
ber, and took its way to the Convent of Saint Paul,
there to establish the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
The fear of the New-Christians that they were to be
the object of the attentions of this dread tribunal had
sufficed to drive some thousands of them out of the
city, to seek refuge in such feudal lordships as those
of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the Marquis of Cadiz,
and the Count of Arcos.
This exodus had led to the publication by the newly
appointed inquisitors of the edict of 2d January, in
which they set forth that, inasmuch as it had come to
their knowledge that many persons had departed out
of Seville in fear of prosecution upon grounds of heret-
ical pravity, they commanded the nobles of the
Kingdom of Castile that within fifteen days they
should make an exact return of the persons of both
sexes who had sought refuge in their lordships or juris-
dictions; that they arrest all these and lodge them in
the prison of the Inquisition in Seville, confiscating
their property, and holding it at the disposal of the in-
quisitors; that none should shelter any fugitive under
pain of greater excommunication and of other penal-
ties by law established against abettors of heretics.
The harsh injustice that lay in this call to arrest
THE HERMOSA FEMBRA 47
men and women, merely because they had departed
from Seville before departure was in any way forbid-
den, revealed the severity with which the inquisitors
intended to proceed. It completed the consternation
of the New-Christians who had remained behind, and
how numerous these were may be gathered from the
fact that in the district of Seville alone they numbered
a hundred thousand, many of them occupying, thanks
to the industry and talent characteristic of their race,
positions of great eminence. It even disquieted the
well favoured young Don Rodrigo de Cardona, who in
all his vain, empty, pampered, and rather vicious life
had never yet known perturbation. Not that he was a
New-Christian. He was of a lineage that went back to
the Visigoths, of purest red Castilian blood, untainted
by any strain of that dark-hued, unclean fluid al-
leged to flow in Hebrew veins. But it happened that
he was in love with the daughter of the millionaire
Diego de Susan, a girl whose beauty was so extraor-
dinary that she was known throughout Seville and for
many a mile around as "la Hermosa Fembra"; and
he knew that such commerce licit or illicitly con-
ducted was disapproved by the holy fathers. His
relations with the girl had been perforce clandestine,
because the disapproval of the holy fathers was
matched in thoroughness by that of Diego de Susan.
It had been vexatious enough on that account not to
be able to boast himself the favoured of the beautiful
and opulent Isabella de Susan; it was exasperating to
discover now a new and more imperative reason for
this odious secrecy.
Never sped a lover to his mistress in a frame of
rnind more aggrieved than that which afflicted Don
48 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
Rodrigo as, tight-wrapped in his black cloak, he
gained the Calle de Ataud on that January night.
Anon, however, when by way of a garden gate and
an easily escaladed balcony he found himself in the
presence of Isabella, the delight of her effaced all
other considerations. Her father was from home, as
she had told him in the note that summoned him; he
was away at Palacios on some merchant's errand, and
would not return until the morrow. The servants
were all abed, and so Don Rodrigo might put off his
cloak and hat, and lounge at his ease upon the low
Moorish divan, what time she waited upon him with
a Saracen goblet filled with sweet wine of Malaga.
The room in which she received him was one set apart
for her own use, her bower, a long, low-ceilinged
chamber, furnished with luxury and taste. The walls
were hung with tapestries, the floor spread with costly
Eastern rugs; on an inlaid Moorish table a tall,
three-beaked lamp of beaten copper charged with aro-
matic oil shed light and perfume through the apart-
ment.
Don Rodrigo sipped his wine, and his dark, hungry
eyes followed her as she moved about him with
vaguely voluptuous, almost feline grace. The wine,
the heavy perfume of the lamp, and the beauty of her
played havoc among them with his senses, so that he
forgot for the moment his Castilian lineage and clean
Christian blood, forgot that she derived from the ac-
cursed race of the Crucifiers. All that he remembered
was that she was the loveliest woman in Seville,
daughter to the wealthiest man, and in that hour of
weakness he decided to convert into reality that which
had hitherto been no more than an infamous pretence.
THE HERMOSA FEMBRA 49
He would loyally fulfil the false, disloyal promises he
had made. He would take her to wife. It was a sacri-
fice which her beauty and her wealth should make
worth while. Upon that impulse he spoke now,
abruptly:
"Isabella, when will you marry me?"
She stood before him, looking down into his weak,
handsome face, her fingers interlacing his own. She
merely smiled. The question did not greatly move
her. Not knowing him for the scoundrel that he was,
guessing nothing of the present perturbation of his
senses, she found it very natural that he should ask
her to appoint the day.
"It is a question you must ask my father," she an-
swered him.
"I will," said he, "to-morrow, on his return."
And he drew her down beside him.
But that father was nearer than either of them
dreamed. At that very moment the soft thud of the
closing house-door sounded through the house. It
brought her sharply to her feet, and loosed from his
coiling arms, with quickened breath and blanching
face. A moment she hung there, tense, then sped to
the door of the room, set it ajar and listened.
Up the stairs came the sound of footsteps and of
muttering voices. It was her father, and others with
him.
With ever-mounting fear she turned to Don Ro-
drigo, and breathed the question: "If they should
come here?"
The Castilian stood where he had risen by the
divan, his face paler now than its pale, aristocratic
wont, his eyes reflecting the fear that glittered in her
50 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
own. He had no delusion as to what action Diego de
Susan would take upon discovering him. These Jew-
ish dogs were quickly stirred to passion, and as jealous
as their betters of the honour of their womenfolk. Al-
ready Don Rodrigo in imagination saw his clean red
Christian blood bespattering that Hebrew floor, for
he had no weapon save the heavy Toledo dagger at his
girdle, and Diego de Susan was not alone.
It was, he felt, a ridiculous position for a Hidalgo of
Spain. But his dignity was to suffer still greater dam-
age. In another moment she had bundled him into an
alcove behind the arras at the chamber's end, a tiny
closet that was no better than a cupboard contrived
for the storing of household linen. She had moved
with a swift precision which at another time might
have provoked his admiration, snatching up his cloak
and hat, and other evidences of his presence, quench-
ing the lamp, and dragging him to that place of
cramped concealment, which she remained to share
with him.
Came presently movements in the room beyond,
and the voice of her father:
"We shall be securest from intrusion here. It is my
daughter's room. If you will give me leave, I will go
down again to admit our other friends."
Those other friends, as Don Rodrigo gathered, con-
tinued to arrive for the next half-hour, until in the end
there must have been some twenty of them assembled
in that chamber. The mutter of voices had steadily
increased, but so confused that no more than odd
words, affording no clue to the reason of this gather-
ing, had reached the hidden couple.
And then quite suddenly a silence fell, and on that
THE HERMOSA FEMBRA 51
silence beat the sharp, clear voice of Diego de Susan
addressing them.
"My friends," he said, "I have called you hither
that we may concert measures for the protection of
ourselves and all New-Christians in Seville from the
fresh peril by which we are menaced. The edict of the
inquisitors reveals how much we have to fear. You
may gather from it that the court of the Holy Office is
hardly likely to deal in justice, and that the most in-
nocent may find himself at any moment exposed to its
cruel mercies. Therefore it is for us now to consider
how to protect ourselves and our property from the
unscrupulous activities of this tribunal. You are the
principal New-Christian citizens of Seville; you are
wealthy, not only in property, but also in the good-
will of the people, who trust and respect, and at need
will follow, you. If nothing less will serve, we must
have recourse to arms; and so that we are resolute and
united, my friends, we shall prevail against the inquis-
itors."
Within the alcove, Don Rodrigo felt his skin rough-
ening with horror at this speech, which breathed sedi-
tion not only against the sovereigns, but against the
very Church. And with his horror was blent a certain
increase of fear. If his situation had been perilous be-
fore, it was tenfold more dangerous now. Discovery,
since he had overheard this treason, must mean his
certain death. And Isabella, realizing the same to the
exclusion of all else, clutched his arm and cowered
against him in the dark.
There was worse to follow. Susan's address was re-
ceived with a murmur of applause, and then others
spoke, and several were named, and their presence
52 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
thus disclosed. There was the influential Manuel
Sauli, who next to Susan was the wealthiest man in
Seville; there was Torralba, the Governor of Triana;
Juan Abolafio, the farmer of the royal customs, and
his brother Fernandez, the licentiate; and there were
others all of them men of substance, some even
holding office under the Crown. Not one was there
who dissented from anything that Susan had said;
rather did each contribute some spur to the general
resolve. In the end it was concerted that each of those
present should engage himself to raise a proportion of
the men, arms, and money that would be needed for
their enterprise. And upon that the meeting was dis-
solved, and they departed. Susan himself went with
them. He had work to do in the common cause, he
announced, and he would do it that very night in
which it was supposed that he was absent at Palacios.
At last, when all had gone, and the house was still
again, Isabella and her lover crept forth from their
concealment, and in the light of the lamp which Susan
had left burning each looked into the other's white,
startled face. So shaken was Don Rodrigo with hor-
ror of what he had overheard, and with the terror of
discovery, that it was with difficulty he kept his teeth
from chattering.
"Heaven protect us!" he gasped. "What Judaiz-
ing was this?"
" Judaizing!" she echoed. It was the term applied
to apostasy, to the relapse of New-Christians to Juda-
ism, an offence to be expiated at the stake. "Here
was no Judaizing. Are you mad, Rodrigo ? You heard
no single word that sinned against the Faith."
"Did I not? I heard treason enough to . . ."
THE HERMOSA FEMBRA 53
"No, nor treason either. You heard honourable,
upright men considering measures of defence against
oppression, injustice, and evil acquisitiveness mas-
querading in the holy garments of religion."
He stared askance at her for a moment, then his full
lips curled into a sneer. "Of course you would seek to
justify them," he said. "You are of that foul brood
yourself. But you cannot think to cozen me, who am
of clean Old-Christian blood and a true son of Mother
Church. These men plot evil against the Holy In-
quisition. Is that not Judaizing when it is done by
Jews?"
She was white to the lips, and a new horror stared
at him from her great dark eyes; her lovely bosom rose
and fell in tumult. Yet still she sought to reason with
him.
"They are not Jews not one of them. Why,
Perez is himself in holy orders. All of them are Chris-
tians, and . . ."
"Newly baptized!" he broke in, sneering viciously.
"A defilement of that holy sacrament to gain them
worldly advantages. That is revealed by what passed
here just now. Jews they were born, the sons of
Jews, and Jews they remain under their cloak of mock
Christianity, to be damned as Jews in the end." He
was panting now with fiery indignation; a holy zeal
inflamed this profligate defiler. "God forgive me that
ever I entered here. Yet I do believe that it was His
will that I should come to overhear what is being
plotted. Let me depart from hence."
With a passionate gesture of abhorrence he swung
towards the door. Her clutch upon his arm arrested
him.
54 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
"Whither do you go?" she asked him sharply. He
looked now into her eyes, and of all that they con-
tained he saw only fear; he saw nothing of the hatred
into which her love had been transmuted in that mo-
ment by his unsparing insults to herself, her race, and
her home, by the purpose which she clearly read in
him.
"Whither?" he echoed, and sought to shake her off.
"Whither my Christian duty bids me."
It was enough for her. Before he could prevent or
suspect her purpose, she had snatched the heavy To-
ledo blade from his girdle, and armed with it stood
between the door and him.
"A moment, Don Rodrigo. Do not attempt to ad-
vance, or, as Heaven watches us, I strike, and it may
be that I shall kill you. We must talk awhile be-
fore you go."
Amazed, chapfallen, half-palsied, he stood before
her, his fine religious zeal wiped out by fear of that
knife in her weak woman's hand. Rapidly to-night
was she coming into real knowledge of this Castilian
gentleman, whom with pride she had taken for her
lover. It was a knowledge that was to sear her pres-
ently with self-loathing and self-contempt. But for
the moment her only consideration was that, as a di-
rect result of her own wantonness, her father stood in
mortal peril. If he should perish through the delation
of this creature, she would account herself his slayer.
"You have not considered that the delation you in-
tend will destroy my father," she said quietly.
"There is my Christian duty to consider," an-
swered he, but without boldness now.
"Perhaps. But there is something you must set
THE HERMOSA FEMBRA 55
against it. Have you no duty as a lover no duty to
me?"
"No earthly duty can weigh against a spiritual ob-
ligation . . ."
"Ah, wait! Have patience. You have not well con-
sidered, that is plain. In coming here in secret you
wronged my father. You will not trouble to deny it.
Jointly we wronged him, you and I. Will you then take
advantage of something learnt whilst you were hiding
there like a thief from the consequences of what you
did, and so do him yet this further wrong?"
"Must I wrong my conscience?" he asked her sul-
lenly.
" Indeed, I fear you must."
"Imperil my immortal soul?" He almost laughed.
"You talk in vain."
"But I have something more than words for you."
With her left hand she drew upon the fine gold chain
about her neck, and brought forth a tiny jewelled
cross. Passing the chain over her head, she held it
out.
"Take this," she bade him. "Take it, I say. Now,
with that sacred symbol in your hand, make solemn
oath to divulge no word of what you have learnt here
to-night, or else resign yourself to an unshriven death.
For either you take that oath, or I rouse the servants
and have you dealt with as one who has intruded here
unbidden for an evil end." She backed away from
him as she spoke, and threw wide the door. Then,
confronting him from the threshold, she admonished
him again, her voice no louder than a whisper. " Quick
now! Resolve yourself. Will you die here with all
your sins upon you, and so destroy for all eternity the
56 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
immortal soul that urges you to this betrayal, or will
you take the oath that I require?"
Fie began an argument that was like a sermon of
the Faith. But she cut him short. "For the last
time!" she bade him. "Will you decide?"
He chose the coward's part, of course, and did vio-
lence to his fine conscience. With the cross in his hand
he repeated after her the words of the formidable oath
that she administered, an oath which it must damn
his immortal soul to break. Because of that, because
she imagined that she had taken the measure of his
faith, she returned him his dagger, and let him go at
last. She imagined that she had bound him fast in ir-
refragable spiritual bonds.
And even on the morrow, when her father and all
those who had been present at that meeting at Susan's
house were arrested by order of the Holy Office of the
Inquisition, she still clung to that belief. Yet pres-
ently a doubt crept in, a doubt that she must at all
costs resolve. And so presently she called for her lit-
ter, and had herself carried to the Convent of Saint
Paul, where she asked to see Frey Alfonso de Ojeda,
the Prior of the Dominicans of Seville.
She was left to wait in a square, cheerless, dimly
lighted room pervaded by a musty smell, that had for
only furniture a couple of chairs and a praying-stool,
and for only ornament a great, gaunt crucifix hanging
upon one of its whitewashed walls.
Thither came presently two Dominican friars. One
of these was a harsh-featured man of middle height
and square build, the uncompromising zealot Ojeda.
The other was tall and lean, stooping slightly at the
shoulders, haggard and pale of countenance, with
THE HERMOSA FEMBRA 57
deep-set, luminous dark eyes, and a tender, wistful
mouth. This was the Queen's confessor, Frey Tomas
de Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor of Castile. He ap-
proached her, leaving Ojeda in the background, and
stood a moment regarding her with eyes of infinite
kindliness and compassion.
"You are the daughter of that misguided man^
Diego de Susan," he said, in a gentle voice. "God
help and strengthen you, my child, against the trials
that may be in store for you. What do you seek at
our poor hands? Speak, child, without fear."
"Father," she faltered, "I come to implore your
pity."
"No need to implore it, child. Should I withhold
pity who stand myself in need of pity, being a sinner
as are we all."
" It is for my father that I come to beg your mercy."
"So I supposed." A shade crossed the gentle, wist-
ful face; the tender melancholy deepened in the eyes
that regarded her. " If your father is innocent of what
has been alleged against him, the benign tribunal of
the Holy Office will bring his innocence to light, and
rejoice therein; if he is guilty, if he has strayed as
we may all stray unless fortified by heavenly grace
he shall be given the means of expiation, that his sal-
vation may be assured him."
She shivered at the words. She knew the mercy in
which the inquisitors dealt, a mercy so spiritual that it
took no account of the temporal agonies inflicted to
ensure it.
"My father is innocent of any sin against the
Faith," said she.
"Are you so sure?" croaked the harsh voice of
58 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
Ojeda, breaking in. "Consider well. Remember that
your duty as a Christian is above your duty as a
daughter."
Almost had she bluntly demanded the name of her
father's accuser, that thus she might reach the object
of her visit. Betimes she checked the rash impulse,
perceiving that subtlety was here required; that a di-
rect question would close the door to all information.
Skilfully, then, she chose her line of attack.
"I am sure," she exclaimed, " that he is a more fer-
vent and pious Christian New-Christian though he
be than his accuser."
The wistfulness faded from Torquemada's eyes.
They grew keen, as became the eyes of an inquisitor,
the eyes of a sleuth, quick to fasten on a spoor. But
he shook his head.
Ojeda advanced. "That I cannot believe," said he.
"The delation was made from a sense of duty so pure
that the delator did not hesitate to confess the sin of
his own commission through which he had discovered
the treachery of Don Diego and his associates."
She could have cried out in anguish at this answer
to her unspoken question. Yet she controlled herself,
and that no single doubt should linger, she thrust
boldly home.
"He confessed it?" she cried, seemingly aghast.
The friar slowly nodded. "Don Rodrigo confessed?"
she insisted, as will the incredulous.
Abruptly the friar nodded again; and as abruptly
checked, recollecting himself.
"Don Rodrigo?" he echoed, and asked: "Who
mentioned Don Rodrigo?"
But it was too late. His assenting nod had betrayed
THE HERMOSA FEMBRA 59
the truth, had confirmed her worst fear. She swayed
a little; the room swam round her, she felt as she
would swoon. Then blind indignation against that
forsworn betrayer surged to revive her. If it was
through her weakness and undutifulness that her
father had been destroyed, through her strength
should he be avenged, though in doing so she pulled
down and destroyed herself.
"And he confessed to his own sin?" she was repeat-
ing slowly, ever on that musing, incredulous note.
"He dared confess himself a Judaizer?"
"A Judaizer!" Sheer horror now overspread the
friar's grim countenance. "A Judaizer! Don Ro-
drigo? Oh, impossible!"
"But I thought you said he had confessed."
"Why, yes, but . . . but not to that."
Her pale lips smiled, sadly contemptuous. "I see.
He set limits of prudence upon his confession. He left
out his Judaizing practices. He did not tell you^ for
instance, that this delation was an act of revenge
against me who refused to marry him, having discov-
ered his unfaith, and fearing its consequences in this
world and the next."
Ojeda stared at her in sheer, incredulous amaze-
ment.
And then Torquemada spoke: "Do you say that
Don Rodrigo de Cardona is a Judaizer? Oh, it is un-
believable."
"Yet I could give you evidence that should con-
vince you."
"Then so you shall. It is your sacred duty, lest you
become an abettor of heresy, and yourself liable to the
extreme penalty."
60 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
It would be a half-hour later, perhaps, when she
quitted the Convent of Saint Paul to return home,
with hell in her heart, knowing in life no purpose but
that of avenging the parent her folly had destroyed.
As she was being carried past the Alcazar, she espied
across the open space a tall, slim figure in black, in
whom she recognized her lover, and straightway she
sent the page who paced beside her litter to call him
to her side. The summons surprised him after what
had passed between them; moreover, considering her
father's present condition, he was reluctant to be seen
in attendance upon the beautiful, wealthy Isabella de
Susan. Nevertheless, urged on by curiosity, he went.
Her greeting increased his surprise.
"I am in deep distress, Rodrigo, as you may
judge/* she told him sadly. "You will have heard
what has befallen my father?"
He looked at her sharply, yet saw nothing but love-
liness rendered more appealing by sorrow. Clearly
she did not suspect him of betrayal; did not realize
that an oath extorted by violence and an oath,
moreover, to be false to a sacred duty could not be
accounted binding.
" I ... I heard of it an hour ago," he lied a thought
unsteadily. "I ... I commiserate you deeply."
"I deserve commiseration," answered she, "and
so does my poor father, and those others. It is plain
that amongst those he trusted there was a traitor, a
spy, who went straight from that meeting to inform
against them. If I but had a list it were easy to dis-
cover the betrayer. One need but ascertain who is the
one of all who were present whose arrest has been
omitted." Her lovely, sorrowful eyes turned full upon
THE HERMOSA FEMBRA 61
him. "What is to become of me now, alone in the
world?" she asked him. "My father was my only
friend."
The subtle appeal of her did its work swiftly. Be-
sides, he saw here a noble opportunity worth surely
some little risk.
"Your only friend?" he asked her thickly. "Was
there no one else? Is there no one else, Isabella?"
"There was," she said, and sighed heavily. "But
after what befell last night, when . . . You know
what is in my mind. I was distraught then, mad with
fear for this poor father of mine, so that I could not
even consider his sin in its full heinousness, nor see
how righteous was your intent to inform against him.
Yet I am thankful that it was not by your delation
that he was taken. The thought of that is to-day my
only consolation."
They had reached her house by now. Don Rodrigo
put forth his arm to assist her to alight from her litter,
and begged leave to accompany her within. But she
denied him.
"Not now though I am grateful to you, Rodrigo.
Soon, if you will come and comfort me, you may. I
will send you word when I am more able to receive
you that is, if I am forgiven for . . ."
"Not another word," he begged her. "I honour
you for what you did. It is I who should sue to you
for forgiveness."
"You are very noble and generous, Don Rodrigo.
God keep you!" And so she left him.
She had found him had she but known it a
dejected, miserable man in the act of reckoning up all
that he had lost. In betraying Susan he had acted
62 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
upon an impulse that sprang partly from rage, and
partly from a sense of religious duty. In counting
later the cost to himself, he cursed the folly of his
rage, and began to wonder if such strict observance
of religious duty was really worth while to a man who
had his way to make in the world. In short, he was
in the throes of reaction. But now, in her unsuspicion,
he found his hopes revive. She need never know.
The Holy Office preserved inviolate secrecy on the
score of delations since to do otherwise might be
to discourage delators and there were no confronta-
tions of accuser and accused, such as took place in
temporal courts. Don Rodrigo left the Calle de
Ataud better pleased with the world than he had
been since morning.
On the morrow he went openly to visit her; but
he was denied, a servant announcing her indisposed.
This fretted him, damped his hopes, and thereby
increased his longing. But on the next day he received
from her a letter which made him the most ample
amends :
RODRIGO, There is a matter on which we must come
early to an understanding. Should my poor father be con-
victed of heresy and sentenced, it follows that his property
will be confiscated, since as the daughter of a convicted
heretic I may not inherit. For myself I care little; but I am
concerned for you, Rodrigo, since if in spite of what has
happened you would still wish to make me your wife, as
you declared on Monday, it would be my wish to come to
you well dowered. Now the inheritance which would be
confiscated by the Holy Office from the daughter of a here-
tic might not be so confiscated from the wife of a gentleman
of Castile. I say no more. Consider this well, and decide as
THE HERMOSA FEMBRA 63
your heart dictates. I shall receive you to-morrow if you
come to me.
ISABELLA
She bade him consider well. But the matter really
needed little consideration. Diego de Susan was sure
to go to the fire. His fortune was estimated at ten
million maravedis. That fortune, it seemed, Rodrigo
was given the chance to make his own by marrying
the beautiful Isabella at once, before sentence came
to be passed upon her father. The Holy Office might
impose a fine, but would not go further where the in-
heritance of a Castilian nobleman of clean lineage
was concerned. He was swayed between admiration
of her shrewdness and amazement at his own good
fortune. Also vanity was immensely flattered.
He sent her three lines to protest his undying love,
and his resolve to marry her upon the morrow, and
went next day in person, as she had bidden him, to
carry out the resolve.
She received him in the mansion's best room, a
noble chamber furnished with a richness such as no
other house in Seville could have boasted. She had
arrayed herself for the interview with an almost
wanton cunning that should enhance her natural
endowments. Her high-waisted gown, low-cut and
close-fitting in the bodice, was of cloth of gold, edged
with miniver at skirt and cuffs and neck. On her
white bosom hung a priceless carcanet of limpid
diamonds, and through the heavy tresses of her
bronze-coloured hair was coiled a string of lustrous
pearls.
Never had Don Rodrigo found her more desirable;
never had he felt so secure and glad in his possession
64 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
of her. The quickening blood flushing now his olive
face, he gathered her slim shapeliness into his arms,
kissing her cheek, her lips, her neck.
"My pearl, my beautiful, my wife!" he mur-
mured, rapturously. Then added the impatient
question: "The priest? Where is the priest that shall
make us one?"
Deep, unfathomable eyes looked up to meet his
burning glance. Languorously she lay against his
breast, and her red lips parted in a smile that mad-
dened him.
"You love me, Rodrigo in spite of all?"
"Love you!" It was a throbbing, strangled cry,
an almost inarticulate ejaculation. "Better than life
better than salvation."
She fetched a sign, as of deep content, and nestled
closer. "Oh, I am glad so glad that your love
for me is truly strong. I am about to put it to the
test, perhaps."
He held her very close. "What is this test, be-
loved?"
"It is that I want this marriage knot so tied that
it shall be indissoluble save by death."
"Why, so do I," quoth he, who had so much to
gain.
"And, therefore, because after all, though I profess
Christianity, there is Jewish blood in my veins, I
would have a marriage that must satisfy even my
father when he regains his freedom, as I believe he
will for, after all, he is not charged with any sin
against the Faith."
She paused, and he was conscious of a premonitory
chill upon his ardour.
THE HERMOSA FEMBRA 65
"What do you mean?" he asked her, and his voice
was strained.
" I mean you'll not be angry with me ? I mean
that I would have us married not only by a Christian
priest, and in the Christian manner, but also and first
of all by a rabbi, and in accordance with the Jewish
rites."
Upon the words, she felt his encircling arms turn
limp, and relax their grip upon her, whereupon she
clung to him the more tightly.
"Rodrigo! Rodrigo! If you truly love me, if you
truly want me, you'll not deny me this condition, for
I swear to you that once I am your wife you shall
never hear anything again to remind you that I am
of Jewish blood."
His face turned ghastly pale, his lips writhed and
twitched, and beads of sweat stood out upon his
brow.
"My God!" he groaned. "What do you ask? I ...
I can't. It were a desecration, a defilement."
She thrust him from her in a passion. "You regard
it so? You protest love, and in the very hour when I
propose to sacrifice all to you, you will not make this
little sacrifice for my sake, you even insult the faith
that was my forbears', if it is not wholly mine. I
misjudged you, else I had not bidden you here to-day.
I think you had better leave me."
Trembling, appalled, a prey to an ineffable tangle of
emotion, he sought to plead, to extenuate his attitude,
to move her from her own. He ranted torrentially,
but in vain. She stood as cold and aloof as earlier
she had been warm and clinging. He had proved the
measure of his love. He could go his ways.
66 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
The thing she proposed was to him, as he had
truly said, a desecration, a defilement. Yet to have
dreamed yourself master of ten million maravedis,
and a matchless woman, is a dream not easily re-
linquished. There was enough cupidity in his nature,
enough neediness in his condition, to make the realiza-
tion of that dream worth the defilement of the abom-
inable marriage rites upon which she insisted. But
fear remained where Christian scruples were already
half-effaced.
"You do not realize," he cried. "If it were known
that I so much as contemplated this, the Holy Office
would account it clear proof of apostasy, and send
me to the fire."
"If that were your only objection, it were easily
overcome," she informed him coldly. "For who
should ever inform against you? The rabbi who is
waiting above-stairs dare not for his own life's sake
betray us, and who else will ever know?"
"You can be sure of that?"
He was conquered. But she played him yet awhile,
compelling him in his turn to conquer the reluctance
which his earlier hesitation had begotten in her, until
it was he who pleaded insistently for this Jewish
marriage that filled him with such repugnance.
And so at last she yielded, and led him up to that
bower of hers in which the conspirators had met.
"Where is the rabbi?" he asked impatiently,
looking round that empty room.
"I will summon him if you are quite sure that you
desire him."
"Sure? Have I not protested enough? Can you
still doubt me?"
THE HERMOSA FEMBRA 67
"No," she said. She stood apart, conning him
steadily. "Yet I would not have it supposed that
you were in any way coerced to this." They were odd
words; but he heeded not their oddness. He was
hardly master of the wits which in themselves were
never of the brightest. " I require you to declare that
it is your own desire that our marriage should be
solemnized in accordance with the Jewish rites and
the law of Moses."
And he, fretted now by impatience, anxious to
have this thing done and ended, made answer hastily:
"Why to be sure I do declare it to be my wish that
we should be so married in the Jewish manner,
and in accordance with the law of Moses. And now,
where is the rabbi?" He caught a sound and saw a
quiver in the tapestries that masked the door of the
alcove. "Ah! He is here, I suppose ..."
He checked abruptly, and recoiled as from a blow,
throwing up his hands in a convulsive gesture. The
tapestry had been swept aside, and forth stepped not
the rabbi he expected, but a tall, gaunt man, stooping
slightly at the shoulders, dressed in the white habit
and black cloak of the order of Saint Dominic, his
face lost in the shadows of a black cowl. Behind him
stood two lay brothers of the order, two armed
familiars of the Holy Office, displaying the white
cross on their sable doublets.
Terrified by that apparition, evoked, as it seemed,
by those terribly damning words he had pronounced,
Don Rodrigo stood blankly at gaze a moment, not
even seeking to understand how this dread thing had
come to pass.
The friar pushed back his cowl, as he advanced,
68 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
and displayed the tender, compassionate, infinitely
wistful countenance of Frey Tomas de Torquemada.
And infinitely compassionate and wistful came the
voice of that deeply sincere and saintly man.
"My son, I was told this of you that you were a
Judaizer yet before I could bring myself to believe
so incredible a thing in one of your lineage, I required
the evidence of my own senses. Oh, my poor child,
by what wicked counsels have you been led so far
astray ?" The sweet, tender eyes of the inquisitor
were luminous with unshed tears. Sorrowing pity
shook his gentle voice.
And then Don Rodrigo's terror changed to wrath,
and this exploded. He flung out an arm towards
Isabella in passionate denunciation.
"It was that woman who bewitched and fooled
and seduced me into this. It was a trap she baited for
my undoing."
"It was, indeed. She had my consent to do so, to
test the faith which I was told you lacked. Had your
heart been free of heretical pravity the trap had
never caught you; had your faith been strong, my
son, you could not been have seduced from loyalty
to your Redeemer."
"Father! Hear me, I implore you!" He flung
down upon his knees, and held out shaking, supplicat-
ing hands.
"You shall be heard, my son. The Holy Office
does not condemn any man unheard. But what hope
can you put in protestations? I had been told that
your life was disorderly and vain, and I grieved that
it should be so, trembled for you when I heard how
wide you opened the gates of your soul to evil. But
THE HERMOSA FEMBRA 69
remembering that age and reason will often make
good and penitent amends for the follies of early life,
I hoped and prayed for you. Yet that you should
Judaize that you should be bound in wedlock by
the unclean ties of Judaism Oh!" The melan-
choly voice broke off upon a sob, and Torquemada
covered his pale face with his hands long, white,
emaciated, almost transparent hands. "Pray now,
my child, for grace and strength," he exhorted.
"Offer up the little temporal suffering that may yet
be yours in atonement for your error, and so that your
heart be truly contrite and penitent, you shall deserve
salvation from that Divine Mercy which is boundless.
You shall have my prayers, my son. I can do no
more. Take him hence."
On the 6th of February of that year 1481, Seville
witnessed the first auto-de-fe, the sufferers being Di-
ego de Susan, his fellow-conspirators, and Don Rodrigo
de Cardona. The function presented but little of the
ghastly pomp that was soon to distinguish these pro-
ceedings. But the essentials were already present.
In a procession headed by a Dominican bearing
aloft the green Cross of the Inquisition, swathed in a
veil of crepe, behind whom walked two by two the
members of the Confraternity of Saint Peter the
Martyr, the familiars of the Holy Office, came the
condemned, candle in hand, barefoot, in the igno-
minious yellow penitential sack. Hemmed about by
halberdiers, they were paraded through the streets
to the Cathedral, where Mass was said and a sermon
of the Faith preached to them by the stern Ojeda.
Thereafter they were conveyed beyond the city to
yo HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
the meadows of Tablada, where the stake and faggots
awaited them.
Thus the perjured accuser perished in the same
holocaust with the accused. Thus was Isabella de
Susan, known as "la Hermosa Fembra," avenged
by falseness upon the worthless lover who made her
by falseness the instrument of her father's ruin.
For herself, when all was over, she sought the
refuge of a convent. But she quitted it without pro-
fessing. The past gave her no peace, and she returned
to the world to seek in excesses an oblivion which the
cloister denied her and only death could give. In her
will she disposed that her skull should be placed over
the doorway of the house in the Calle de Ataud, as a
measure of posthumous atonement for her sins. And
there the fleshless, grinning skull of that once lovely
head abode for close upon four hundred years. It
was still to be seen there when Bonaparte's legions
demolished the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
IV
THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL
THE STORY OF THE FALSE SEBASTIAN OF
PORTUGAL
1 1 AHERE is not in all that bitter tragi-comic
X record of human frailty which we call History
a sadder story than this of the Princess Anne, the
natural daughter of the splendid Don John of Austria,
natural son of the Emperor Charles V, and, so, half-
brother to the bowelless King Philip II of Spain.
Never was woman born to royal or semi-royal state
who was more utterly the victim of the circumstances
of her birth.
Of the natural sons of princes something could be
made, as witness the dazzling career of Anne's own
father; but for natural daughters and especially
for one who, like herself, bore a double load of ca-
dency there was little use or hope. Their royal
blood set them in a class apart; their bastardy denied
them the worldly advantages of that spurious emi-
nence. Their royal blood prescribed that they must
mate with princes; their bastardy raised obstacles to
their doing so. Therefore, since the world would seem
to hold no worthy place for them, it was expedien"
to withdraw them from the world before its vanities
beglamoured them, and to immure them in convents,
where they might aspire with confidence to the sterile
dignity of abbesshood.
72 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
Thus it befell with Anne. At the early age of six
she had been sent to the Benedictine convent at
Burgos, and in adolescence removed thence to the
Monastery of Santa Maria la Real at Madrigal,
where it was foreordained that she should take the
/eil. She went unwillingly. She had youth, and
youth's hunger of life, and not even the repressive con-
ditions in which she had been reared had succeeded
in extinguishing her high spirit or in concealing from
her the fact that she was beautiful. On the thresh-
old of that convent which by her dread uncle's will
was to be her living tomb, above whose gates her
spirit may have beheld the inscription, "Lasciate
ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate!" she made her protest,
called upon the bishop who accompanied her to bear
witness that she did not go of her own free will.
But what she willed was a matter of no account.
King Philip's was, under God's, the only will in
Spain. Still, less, perhaps, to soften the sacrifice
imposed upon her than because of what he accounted
due to one of his own blood, His Catholic Majesty
accorded her certain privileges unusual to members
of religious communities: he granted her a little civil
list two ladies-in-waiting and two grooms and
conferred upon her the title of Excellency, which she
still retained even when after her hurried novitiate
of a single year she had taken the veil. She sub-
mitted where to have striven would have been to have
spent herself in vain; but her resignation was only of
the body, and this dejected body moved mechanically
through the tasks and recreations that go to make
up the grey monotone of conventual existence; in
which one day is as another day, one hour as another
THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL 73
hour; in which the seasons of the year lose their
significance; in which time has no purpose save for
its subdivision into periods devoted to sleeping and
waking, to eating and fasting, to praying and con-
templating, until life loses all purpose and object,
and sterilizes itself into preparation for death.
Though they might command and compel her
body, her spirit remained unfettered in rebellion.
Anon the claustral apathy might encompass her; in
time and by slow degrees she might become absorbed
into the grey spirit of the place. But that time was
not yet. For the present she must nourish her caged
and starving soul with memories of glimpses caught
in passing of the bright, active, stirring world with-
out; and where memory stopped she had now beside
her a companion to regale her with tales of high ad-
venture and romantic deeds and knightly feats, which
served but to feed and swell her yearnings.
This companion, Frey Miguel de Souza, was a
Portuguese friar of the order of Saint Augustine, a
learned, courtly man who had moved in the great
world and spoke with the authority of an eye-witness.
And above all he loved to talk of that last romantic
King of Portugal, with whom he had been intimate,
that high-spirited, headstrong, gallant, fair-haired
lad Sebastian, who at the age of four-and- twenty
had led the disastrous overseas expedition against
the Infidel which had been shattered on the field of
Alcacer-el-Kebir some fifteen years ago.
He loved to paint for her in words the dazzling
knightly pageants he had seen along the quays at
Lisbon, when that expedition was embarking with
crusader ardour, the files of Portuguese knights and
74 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
men-at-arms, the array of German and Italian mer-
cenaries, the young king in his bright armour, bare of
head an incarnation of Saint Michael moving
forward exultantly amid flowers and acclamations to
take ship for Africa. And she would listen with
parted lips and glistening eyes, her slim body bending
forward in her eagerness to miss no word of this great
epic. Anon, when he came to tell of that disastrous
day of Alcacer-el-Kebir, her dark, eager eyes would
fill with tears. His tale of it was hardly truthful. He
did not say that military incompetence and a pre-
sumptuous vanity which would listen to no counsels
had been the cause of a ruin that had engulfed the
chivalry of Portugal, and finally the very kingdom
itself. He represented the defeat as due to the over-
whelming numbers of the Infidel, and dwelt at length
upon the closing scene, told her in fullest detail how
Sebastian had scornfully rejected the counsels of
those who urged him to fly when all was lost, how
the young king, who had fought with a lion-hearted
courage, unwilling to survive the day's defeat, had
turned and ridden back alone into the Saracen host
to fight his last fight and find a knightly death.
Thereafter he was seen no more.
It was a tale she never tired of hearing, and it
moved her more and more deeply each time she
listened to it. She would ply him with questions
touching this Sebastian, who had been her cousin,
concerning his ways of life, his boyhood, and his
enactments when he came to the crown of Portugal.
And all that Frey Miguel de Souza told her served
but to engrave more deeply upon her virgin mind the
adorable image of the knightly king. Ever present
THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL 75
in the daily thoughts of this ardent girl, his em-
panoplied figure haunted now her sleep, so real and
vivid that her waking senses would dwell fondly upon
the dream-figure as upon the memory of some one
seen in actual life; likewise she treasured up the mem-
ory of the dream-words he had uttered, words it
would seem begotten of the longings of her starved
and empty heart, words of a kind not calculated to
bring peace to the soul of a nun professed. She was
enamoured, deeply, fervently, and passionately
enamoured of a myth, a mental image of a man who
had been dust these fifteen years. She mourned him
with a fond widow's mourning; prayed daily and
nightly for the repose of his soul, and in her exalta-
tion waited now almost impatiently for death that
should unite her with him. Taking joy in the thought
that she should go to him a maid, she ceased at last to
resent the maidenhood that had been imposed upon
her.
One day a sudden, wild thought filled her with a
strange excitement.
"Is it so certain that he is dead?" she asked.
"When all is said, none actually saw him die, and
you tell me that the body surrendered by Mulai-
Ahmed-ben-Mahomet was disfigured beyond recogni-
tion. Is it not possible that he may have survived?"
The lean, swarthy face of Frey Miguel grew
pensive. He did not impatiently scorn the suggestion
as she had half-feared he would.
"In Portugal," he answered slowly, "it is firmly
believed that he lives, and that one day he will come,
like another Redeemer, to deliver his country from
the thrall of Spain."
76 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
"Then... then..."
Wistfully, he smiled. "A people will always be-
lieve what it wishes to believe."
" But you, yourself? " she pressed him.
He did not answer her at once. The cloud of
thought deepened on his ascetic face. He half-turned
from her they were standing in the shadow of the
fretted cloisters and his pensive eyes roamed over
the wide quadrangle that was at once the convent
garden and burial ground. Out there in the sunshine
amid the hum of invisible but ubiquitously pulsat-
ing life, three nuns, young and vigorous, their arms
bared to the elbows, the skirts of their black habits
shortened by a cincture of rope, revealing feet roughly
shod in wood, were at work with spade and mattock,
digging their own graves in memento mori. Amid
the shadows of the cloisters, within sight but beyond
earshot, hovered Dona Maria de Grado and Dona
Luiza Nieto, the two nobly born nuns appointed by
King Philip to an office as nearly akin to that of
ladies-in-waiting as claustral conditions would per-
mit.
At length Frey Miguel seemed to resolve himself.
"Since you ask me, why should I not tell you?
When I was on my way to preach the funeral oration
in the Cathedral at Lisbon, as befitted one who had
been Don Sebastian's preacher, I was warned by a
person of eminence to have a care of what I said of
Don Sebastian, for not only was he alive, but he
would be secretly present at the Requiem."
He met her dilating glance, noted the quivering of
her parted lips.
"But that," he added, "was fifteen years ago, and
THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL 77
since then I have had no sign. At first I thought it
possible . . . there was a story afloat that might have
been true ... But fifteen years!" He sighed, and
shook his head.
"What . . . what was the story?" She was trem-
bling from head to foot.
"On the night after the battle three horsemen rode
up to the gates of the fortified coast-town of Arzilla.
When the timid guard refused to open to them, they
announced that one of them was King Sebastian,
and so won admittance. One of the three was
wrapped in a cloak, his face concealed, and his two
companions were observed to show him the def-
erence due to royalty."
"Why, then ..." she was beginning.
"Ah, but afterwards," he interrupted her
"afterwards, when all Portugal was thrown into
commotion by that tale, it was denied that King
Sebastian had been among these horsemen. It was
affirmed to have been no more than a ruse of those
men's to gain the shelter of the city."
She questioned and cross-questioned him upon
that, seeking to draw from him the admission that it
was possible denial and explanation obeyed the wishes
of the hidden prince.
"Yes, it is possible," he admitted at length, "and
it is believed by many to be the fact. Don Sebastian
was as sensitive as high-spirited. The shame of his
defeat may have hung so heavily upon him that he
preferred to remain in hiding, and to sacrifice a
throne of which he now felt himself unworthy. Half
Portugal believes it so, and waits and hopes."
When Frey Miguel parted from her that day, he
78 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
took with him the clear conviction that not in all
Portugal was there a soul who hoped more fervently
than she that Don Sebastian lived, or yearned more
passionately to acclaim him should he show himself.
And that was much to think, for the yearning of
Portugal was as the yearning of the slave for freedom.
Sebastian's mother was King Philip's sister,
whereby King Philip had claimed the succession,
and taken possession of the throne of Portugal.
Portugal writhed under the oppressive heel of that
foreign rule, and Frey Miguel de Souza himself, a
deeply, passionately patriotic man, had been fore-
most among those who had sought to liberate her.
When Don Antonio, the sometime Prior of Crato,
Sebastian's natural cousin, and a bold, ambitious,
enterprising man, had raised the standard of revolt,
the friar had been the most active of all his coadjutors.
In those days Frey Miguel, who was the Provincial
of his order, a man widely renowned for his learning
and experience of affairs, who had been preacher to
Don Sebastian and confessor to Don Antonio, had
wielded a vast influence in Portugal. That influence
he had unstintingly exerted on behalf of the pre-
tender, to whom he was profoundly devoted. After
Don Antonio's army had been defeated on land by
the Duke of Alba, and his fleet shattered in the
Azores in 1582 by the Marquis of Santa Cruz, Frey
Miguel found himself deeply compromised by his
active share in the rebellion. He was arrested and
suffered a long imprisonment in Spain. In the end,
because he expressed repentance, and because Philip
II, aware of the man's gifts and worth, desired to
attach him to himself by gratitude, he was enlarged,
THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL 79
and appointed Vicar of Santa Maria la Real, where
he was now become confessor, counsellor, and con-
fidant of the Princess Anne of Austria.
But his gratitude to King Philip was not of a kind
to change his nature, to extinguish his devotion to the
pretender, Don Antonio who, restlessly ambitious,
continued ceaselessly to plot abroad or yet to
abate the fervour of his patriotism. The dream of his
life was ever the independence of Portugal, with a
native prince upon the throne. And because of Anne's
fervent hope, a hope that grew almost daily into
conviction, that Sebastian had survived and would
return one day to claim his kingdom, those two at
Madrigal, in that quiet eddy of the great stream of
life, were drawn more closely to each other.
But as the years passed, and Anne's prayers re-
mained unanswered and the deliverer did not come,
her hopes began to fade again. Gradually she reverted
to her earlier frame of mind in which all hopes were
set upon a reunion with the unknown beloved in the
world to come.
One evening in the spring of 1 594 four years
after the name of Sebastian had first passed between
the priest and the Princess Frey Miguel was walk-
ing down the main street of Madrigal, a village whose
every inhabitant was known to him, when he came
suddenly face to face with a stranger. A stranger
would in any case have drawn his attention, but there
was about this man something familiar to the friar,
something that stirred in him vague memories of
things long forgotten. His garb of shabby black was
that of a common townsman, but there was something
in his air and glance, his soldierly carriage, and the
8o HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
tilt of his bearded chin, that belied his garb. He bore
upon his person the stamp of intrepidity and assur-
ance.
Both halted, each staring at the other, a faint
smile on the lips of the stranger who, in the fading
light, might have been of any age from thirty to fifty
a puzzled frown upon the brow of the friar. Then
the man swept off his broad-brimmed hat.
"God save your paternity," was his greeting.
"God save you, my son," replied Frey Miguel,
still pondering him. "I seem to know you. Do I?"
The stranger laughed. "Though all the world for-
get, your paternity should remember me."
And then Frey Miguel sucked in his breath
sharply. "My God!" he cried, and set a hand upon
the fellow's shoulder, looking deeply into those bold,
grey eyes. "What make you here?"
"I am a pastry-cook."
"A pastry-cook? You?"
"One must live, and it is a more honest trade than
most. I was in Valladolid, when I heard that your
paternity was the Vicar of the convent here, and
so for the sake of old times of happier times I
bethought me that I might claim your paternity's
support." He spoke with a careless arrogance, half-
tinged with mockery.
"Assuredly..." began the priest, and then he
checked. " Where is your shop ?"
"Just down the street. Will your paternity honour
me?"
Frey Miguel bowed, and together they departed.
For three days thereafter the convent saw the
friar only in the celebration of the Mass. But on the
THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL 81
morning of the fourth, he went straight from the
sacristy to the parlour, and, despite the early hour,
desired to see her excellency.
"Lady," he told her, "I have great news; news
that will rejoice your heart." She looked at him, and
saw the feverish glitter in his sunken eyes, the hectic
flush on his prominent cheek-bones. "Don Sebastian
lives. I have seen him."
A moment she stared at him as if she did not under-
stand. Then she paled until her face became as
white as the nun's coif upon her brow; her breath
came in a faint moan, she stiffened, and swayed upon
her feet, and caught at the back of a prie-dieu to
steady and save herself from falling. He saw that he
had blundered by his abruptness, that he had failed
to gauge the full depth of her feelings for the Hidden
Prince, and for a moment feared that she would
swoon under the shock of the news he had so reck-
lessly delivered.
"What do you say? Oh, what do you say?" she
moaned, her eyes half-closed.
He repeated the news in more measured, careful
terms, exerting all the magnetism of his will to sus-
tain her reeling senses. Gradually she quelled the
storm of her emotions.
"And you say that you have seen him? Oh!"
Once more the colour suffused her cheeks, and her
eyes glowed, her expression became radiant. "Where
is he?"
"Here. Here in Madrigal."
"In Madrigal?" She was all amazement. "But
why in Madrigal?"
"He was in Valladolid, and there heard that I
82 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
his sometime preacher and counsellor was Vicar
here at Santa Maria la Real. He came to seek me.
He comes disguised, under the false name of Gabriel
de Espinosa, and setting up as a pastry-cook until
his term of penance shall be completed, and he shall
be free to disclose himself once more to his impatiently
awaiting people."
It was bewildering, intoxicating news to her. It set
her mind in turmoil, made of her soul a battle-
ground for mad hope and dreadful fear. This dream-
prince, who for four years had been the constant
companion of her thoughts, whom her exalted, ardent,
imaginative, starved soul had come to love with a con-
suming passion, was a living reality near at hand, to
be seen in the flesh by the eyes of her body. It was a
thought that set her in an ecstasy of terror, so that
she dared not ask Frey Miguel to bring Don Sebas-
tian to her. But she plied him with questions, and so
elicited from him a very circumstantial story.
Sebastian, after his defeat and escape, had made a
vow upon the Holy Sepulchre to lay aside the royal
dignity of which he deemed that he had proved him-
self unworthy, and to do penance for the pride that
had brought him down, by roaming the world in
humble guise, earning his bread by the labour of his
hands and the sweat of his brow like any common
hind, until he should have purged his offence and
rendered himself worthy once more to resume the
estate to which he had been born.
It was a tale that moved her pity to the point of
tears. It exalted her hero even beyond the eminence
he had already held in her fond dreams, particularly
when to that general outline were added in the days
THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL 83
that followed details of the wanderings and sufferings
of the Hidden Prince. At last, some few weeks after
that first startling announcement of his presence, in
the early days of August of that year 1594, Frey
Miguel proposed to her the thing she most desired, yet
dared not beg.
"I have told His Majesty of your attachment to
his memory in all these years in which we thought
him dead, and he is deeply touched. He desires your
leave to come and prostrate himself at your feet/'
She crimsoned from brow to chin, then paled again ;
her bosom heaved in tumult. Between dread and
yearning she spoke a faint consent.
Next day he came, brought by Frey Miguel to the
convent parlour, where her excellency waited, her
two attendant nuns discreetly in the background.
Her eager, frightened eyes beheld a man of middle
height, dignified of mien and carriage, dressed with
extreme simplicity, yet without the shabbiness in
which Frey Miguel had first discovered him.
His hair was of a light brown the colour to which
the golden locks of the boy who had sailed for Africa
some fifteen years ago might well have faded his
beard of an auburn tint, and his eyes were grey. His
face was handsome, and save for the colour of his eyes
and the high arch of his nose presented none of the
distinguishing and marring features peculiar to the
House of Austria, from which Don Sebastian derived
through his mother.
Hat in hand, he came forward, and went down on
one knee before her.
" I am here to receive your excellency's commands,"
he said.
84 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
She steadied her shuddering knees and trembling
lips.
"Are you Gabriel de Espinosa, who has come to
Madrigal to set up as a pastry-cook?" she asked him.
"To serve your excellency."
"Then be welcome, though I am sure that the
trade you least understand is that of a pastry-cook."
The kneeling man bowed his handsome head, and
fetched a deep sigh.
"If in the past I had better understood another
trade, I should not now be reduced to following this
one."
She urged him now to rise, whereafter the enter-
tainment between them was very brief on that first
occasion. He departed upon a promise to come soon
again, and the undertaking on her side to procure for
his shop the patronage of the convent.
Thereafter it became his custom to attend the
morning Mass celebrated by Frey Miguel in the
convent chapel which was open to the public
and afterwards to seek the friar in the sacristy and
accompany him thence to the convent parlour, where
the Princess waited, usually with one or another of her
attendant nuns. These daily interviews were brief at
first, but gradually they lengthened until they came
to consume the hours to dinner-time, and presently
even that did not suffice, and Sebastian must come
again later in the day.
And as the interviews increased and lengthened,
so they grew also in intimacy between the royal pair,
and plans for Sebastian's future came to be discussed.
She urged him to proclaim himself. His penance had
been overlong already for what was really no fault
THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL 85
at all, since it is the heart rather than the deed that
Heaven judges, and his heart had been pure, his in-
tention in making war upon the Infidel loftily pious.
Diffidently he admitted that it might be so, but both
he and Frey Miguel were of opinion that it would
he wiser now to await the death of Philip II, which,
considering his years and infirmities, could not be
long delayed. Out of jealousy for his possessions,
King Philip might oppose Sebastian's claims.
Meanwhile these daily visits of Espinosa's, and the
long hours he spent in Anne's company gave, as was
inevitable, rise to scandal, within and without the
convent. She was a nun professed, interdicted from
seeing any man but her confessor other than through
the parlour grating, and even then not at such length
or with such constancy as this. The intimacy between
them fostered and furthered by Frey Miguel
had so ripened in a few weeks that Anne was justified
in looking upon him as her saviour from the living
tomb to which she had been condemned, in hoping
that he would restore her to the life and liberty for
which she had ever yearned by taking her to Queen
when his time came to claim his own. What if she
was a nun professed? Her profession had been
against her will, preceded by only one year of novi-
tiate, and she was still within the five probationary
years prescribed. Therefore, in her view, her vows
were revocable.
But this was a matter beyond the general consider-
ation or knowledge, and so the scandal grew. Within
the convent there was none bold enough, considering
Anne's royal rank, to offer remonstrance or advice,
particularly, too, considering that her behaviour
86 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
had the sanction of Frey Miguel, the convent's
spiritual adviser. But from without, from the Pro-
vincial of the Order of Saint Augustine, came at last
a letter to Anne, respectfully stern in tone, to inform
her that the numerous visits she received from a
pastry-cook were giving rise to talk, for which it
would be wise to cease to give occasion. That rec-
ommendation scorched her proud, sensitive soul with
shame. She sent her servant Roderos at once to fetch
Frey Miguel, and placed the letter in his hands.
The friar's dark eyes scanned it, and grew troubled.
"It was to have been feared," he said, and sighed.
"There is but one remedy, lest worse follow and all
be ruined. Don Sebastian must go."
" Go ? " Fear robbed her of breath. " Go where ? "
"Away from Madrigal anywhere and at once;
to-morrow at latest." And then, seeing the look
of horror in her face, "What else, what else?" he
added, impatiently. "This meddlesome Provincial
may be stirring up trouble already."
She fought down her emotion. "I ... I shall see
him before he goes?" she begged.
"I don't know. It may not be wise. I must con-
sider." He flung away in deepest perturbation, leav-
ing her with a sense that life was slipping from
her.
That late September evening, as she sat stricken
in her room, hoping against hope for at least another
glimpse of him, Dona Maria de Grado brought word
that Espinosa was even then in the convent in Frey
Miguel's cell. Fearful lest he should be smuggled
thence without her seeing him, and careless of the im-
propriety of the hour it was already eight o'clock
THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL 87
and dusk was falling she at once dispatched Rode-
ros to the friar, bidding him bring Espinosa to her in
the parlour.
The friar obeyed, and the lovers they were no
less by now came face to face in anguish.
"My lord, my lord," she cried, casting all prudence
to the winds, "what is decided?"
"That I leave in the morning," he answered.
"To go where?" She was distraught.
"Where?" He shrugged. "To Valladolid at first,
and then . . . where God pleases."
"And when shall I see you again?"
"When . . . when God pleases."
"Oh, I am terrified ... if I should lose you ... if I
should never see you more!" She was panting, dis-
traught.
"Nay, lady, nay," he answered. "I shall come for
you when the time is ripe. I shall return by All
Saints', or by Christmas at the latest, and I shall
bring with me one who will avouch me."
"What need any to avouch you to me?" she pro-
tested, on a note of fierceness. "We belong to each
other, you and I. But you are free to roam the
world, and I am caged here and helpless . . ."
"Ah, but I shall free you soon, and we'll go hence
together. See." He stepped to the table. There was
an ink-horn, a box of pounce, some quills, and a
sheaf of paper there. He took up a quill, and wrote
with labour, for princes are notoriously poor scholars :
I, Don Sebastian, by the Grace of God King of Portugal,
take to wife the most serene Dona Ana of Austria, daughter
of the most serene Prince, Don John of Austria, by virtue
of the dispensation which I hold from two pontiffs.
'88 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
And he signed it after the manner of the Kings
of Portugal in all ages "El Rey" the King.
"Will that content you, lady?" he pleaded, hand-
ing it to her.
"How shall this scrawl content me?"
"It is a bond I shall redeem as soon as Heaven will
permit."
Thereafter she fell to weeping, and he to protesting,
until Frey Miguel urged him to depart, as it grew
late. And then she forgot her own grief, and became
all solicitude for him, until naught would content her
but she must empty into his hands her little store of
treasure a hundred ducats and such jewels as she
possessed, including a gold watch set with diamonds
and a ring bearing a cameo portrait of King Philip,
and last of all a portrait of herself, of the size of a
playing-card.
At last, as ten was striking, he was hurried away,
Frey Miguel had gone on his knees to him, and kissed
his hand, what time he had passionately urged him
not to linger; and then Sebastian had done the same
by the Princess, both weeping now. At last he was
gone, and on the arm of Dona Maria de Grado the
forlorn Anne staggered back to her cell to weep and
pray.
In the days that followed she moved, pale and
listless, oppressed by her sense of loss and desolation,
a desolation which at last she sought to mitigate by
writing to him to Valladolid, whither he had repaired.
Of all those letters only two survive.
My king and lord [she wrote in one of these], alas ! How
we suffer by absence! I am so filled with the pain of it that
if I did not seek the relief of writing to Your Majesty and
THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL 89
thus spend some moments in communion with you, there
would be an end to me. What I feel to-day is what I feel
every day when I recall the happy moments so deliciously
spent, which are no more. This privation is for me so se-
vere a punishment of Heaven that I should call it unjust
for without cause I find myself deprived of the happines:
missed by me for so many years and purchased at the price
of suffering and tears. Ah, my lord, how willingly, never-
theless, would I not suffer all over again the misfortunes
that have crushed me if thus I might spare Your Majesty
the least of them. May He who rules the world grant my
prayers and set a term to so great an unhappiness, and to
the intolerable torment I suffer through being deprived of
the presence of Your Majesty. It were impossible for long
to suffer so much pain and live.
I belong to you, my lord; you know it already. The
troth I plighted to you I shall keep in life and in death, for
death itself could not tear it from my soul, and this im-
mortal soul will harbour it through eternity. . . .
Thus and much more in the same manner wrote
the niece of King Philip of Spain to Gabriel Espinosa,
the pastry-cook, in his Valladolid retreat. How he
filled his days we do not know, beyond the fact that
he moved freely abroad. For it was in the streets of
that town that meddlesome Fate brought him face
to face one day with Gregorio Gonzales, under whom
Espinosa had been a scullion once in the service of
the Count of Nyeba.
Gregorio hailed him, staring round-eyed; for al-
though Espinosa's garments were not in their first
freshness they were far from being those of a plebeian.
"In whose service may you be now?" quoth the
intrigued Gregorio, so soon as greetings had passed
between them.
90 HISTORICAL NIGHTS 1 ENTERTAINMENT
Espinosa shook off his momentary embarrassment,
and took the hand of his sometime comrade. "Times
are changed, friend Gregorio. I am not in anybody's
service, rather do I require servants myself."
"Why, what is your present situation?"
Loftily Espinosa put him off. "No matter for
that," he answered, with a dignity that forbade
further questions. He gathered his cloak about him
to proceed upon his way. "If there is anything you
wish for, I shall be happy, for old times' sake, to
oblige you."
But Gregorio was by no means disposed to part
from him. We do not readily part from an old friend
whom we rediscover in an unsuspected state of afflu-
ence. Espinosa must home with Gregorio. Gregorio's
wife would be charmed to renew his acquaintance,
and to hear from his own lips of his improved and
prosperous state. Gregorio would take no refusal,
and in the end Espinosa, yielding to his insistence,
went with him to the sordid quarter where Gregorio
had his dwelling.
About an unclean table of pine, in a squalid room,
sat the three Espinosa, Gregorio, and Gregorio's
wife; but the latter displayed none of the signs of
satisfaction at Espinosa's prosperity which Gregorio
had promised. Perhaps Espinosa observed her evil
envy, and it may have been to nourish it which
is the surest way to punish envy that he made
Gregorio a magnificent offer of employment.
"Enter my service," said he, "and I will pay you
fifty ducats down and four ducats a month."
Obviously they were incredulous of his affluence.
To convince them he displayed a gold watch most
THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL 91
rare possession set with diamonds, a ring of price,
and other costly jewels. The couple stared now with
dazzled eyes.
"But didn't you tell me when we were in Madrid
together that you had been a pastry-cook at Ocafia?"
burst from Gregorio.
Espinosa smiled. "How many kings and princes
have been compelled to conceal themselves under
disguises?" he asked oracularly. And seeing them
stricken, he must play upon them further. Nothing,
it seems, was sacred to him not even the portrait
of that lovely, desolate royal lady in her convent at
Madrigal. Forth he plucked it, and thrust it to them
across the stains of wine and oil that befouled their
table.
"Look at this beautiful lady, the most beautiful in
Spain," he bade them. "A prince could not have a
lovelier bride."
"But she is dressed as a nun," the woman pro-
tested. "How, then, can she marry?"
"For kings there are no laws," he told her with
finality.
At last he departed, but bidding Gregorio to think
of the offer he had made him. He would come again
for the cook's reply, leaving word meanwhile of
where he was lodged.
They deemed him mad, and were disposed to be
derisive. Yet the woman's disbelief was quickened
into malevolence by the jealous fear that what he had
told them of himself might, after all, be true. Upon
that malevolence she acted forthwith, lodging an in-
formation with Don Rodrigo de Santillan, the Alcalde
ofValladolid.
92 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
Very late that night Espinosa was roused from his
sleep to find his room invaded by alguaziles the
police of the Alcalde. He was arrested and dragged
before Don Rodrigo to give an account of himself and
of certain objects of value found in his possession
more particularly of a ring, on the cameo of which
was carved a portrait of King Philip.
"I am Gabriel de Espinosa," he answered firmly,
"a pastry-cook of Madrigal."
"Then how come you by these jewels?"
"They were given me by Dona Ana of Austria to
sell for her account. That is the business that has
brought me to Valladolid."
"Is this Dona Ana's portrait?"
"It is."
"And this lock of hair? Is that also Dona Ana's?
And do you, then, pretend that these were also given
you to sell?"
"Why else should they be given me?"
Don Rodrigo wondered. They were useless things
to steal, and as for the lock of hair, where should the
fellow find a buyer for that ? The Alcalde conned his
man more closely, and noted that dignity of bear-
ing, that calm assurance which usually is found upon
birth and worth. He sent him to wait in prison, what
time he went to ransack the fellow's house in Ma-
drigal.
Don Rodrigo was prompt in acting; yet even so his
prisoner mysteriously found means to send a warning
that enabled Frey Miguel to forestall the Alcalde.
Before Don Rodrigo's arrival, the friar had abstracted
from Fspinosa's house a box of papers which he re-
duced to ashes. Unfortunately Espinosa had been
THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL 93
careless. Four letters not confided to the box were
discovered by the alguaziles. Two of them were from
Anne one of which supplies the extract I have
given; the other two from Frey Miguel himself.
Those letters startled Don Rodrigo de Santillan.
He was a shrewd reasoner and well-informed. He
knew how the justice of Castile was kept on the alert
by the persistent plottings of the Portuguese pre-
tender, Don Antonio, sometime Prior of Crato. He
was intimate with the past life of Frey Miguel, knew
his self-sacrificing patriotism and passionate devotion
to the cause of Don Antonio, remembered the firm
dignity of his prisoner, and leapt at a justifiable con-
clusion. The man in his hands the man whom the
Princess Anne addressed in such passionate terms
by the title of Majesty was the Prior of Crato. He
conceived that he had stumbled here upon something
grave and dangerous. He ordered the arrest of Frey
Miguel, and then proceeded to visit Dona Ana at the
convent. His methods were crafty, and depended
upon the effect of surprise. He opened the interview
by holding up before her one of the letters he had
found, asking her if she acknowledged it for her own.
She stared a moment panic-stricken; then snatched
it from his hands, tore it across, and would have torn
again, but that he caught her wrists in a grip of iron
to prevent her, with little regard in that moment for
the blood royal in her veins. King Philip was a stern
master, pitiless to blunderers, and Don Rodrigo knew
he never would be forgiven did he suffer that precious
letter to be destroyed.
Overpowered in body and in spirit, she surrendered
the fragments and confessed the letter her own.
94 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
"What is the real name of this man, who calls
himself a pastry-cook, and to whom you write in such
terms as these?" quoth the magistrate.
"He is Don Sebastian, King of Portugal." And to
that declaration she added briefly the story of his es-
cape from Alcacer-el-Kebir and subsequent peniten-
tial wanderings.
Don Rodrigo departed, not knowing what to think
or believe, but convinced that it was time he laid the
whole matter before King Philip. His Catholic Maj-
esty was deeply perturbed. He at once dispatched
Don Juan de Llano, the Apostolic Commissary of the
Holy Office, to Madrigal to sift the matter, and or-
dered that Anne should be solitarily confined in her
cell, and her nuns-in-waiting and servants placed un-
der arrest.
Espinosa, for greater security, was sent from Valla-
dolid to the prison of Medina del Campo. He was
taken thither in a coach with an escort of arquebu-
siers.
"Why convey a poor pastry-cook with so much
honour?" he asked his guards, half-mockingly.
Within the coach he was accompanied by a soldier
named Cervatos, a travelled man, who fell into talk
with him, and discovered that he spoke both French
and German fluently. But when Cervatos addressed
him in Portuguese the prisoner seemed confused, and
replied that, although he had been in Portugal, he
could not speak the language.
Thereafter, throughout that winter, examinations
of the three chief prisoners Espinosa, Frey Miguel,
and the Princess Anne succeeded one another with
a wearisome monotony of results. The Apostolic
THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL 95
Commissary interrogated the Princess and Frey Mi-
guel; Don Rodrigo conducted the examinations of
Espinosa. But nothing was elicited that took the mat-
ter forward or tended to dispel its mystery.
The Princess replied with a candour that became
more and more tinged with indignation under the per-
sistent and at times insulting interrogatories. She in-
sisted that the prisoner was Don Sebastian, and wrote
passionate letters to Espinosa, begging him for her
honour's sake to proclaim himself what he really was,
declaring to him that the time had come to cast off all
disguise.
Yet the prisoner, unmoved by these appeals, per-
sisted that he was Gabriel de Espinosa, a pastry-cook.
But the man's bearing, and the air of mystery cloak-
ing him, seemed in themselves to belie that assevera-
tion. That he could not be the Prior of Crato, Don
Rodrigo had now assured himself. He fenced skilfully
under examination, ever evading the magistrate's
practised point when it sought to pin him, and he was
no less careful to say nothing that should incriminate
either of the other two prisoners. He denied that he
had ever given himself out to be Don Sebastian,
though he admitted that Frey Miguel and the Prin-
cess had persuaded themselves that he was that lost
prince.
He pleaded ignorance when asked who were his par-
ents, stating that he had never known either of them
an answer this which would have fitted the case of
Don Sebastian, who was born after his father's death,
and quitted in early infancy by his mother.
As for Frey Miguel, he stated boldly under exami-
nation the conviction that Don Sebastian had sur-
96 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
vived the African expedition, and the belief that Es-
pinosa might well be the missing monarch. He pro-
tested that he had acted in good faith throughout, and
without any thought of disloyalty to the King of
Spain.
Late one night, after he had been some three
months in prison, Espinosa was roused from sleep by
an unexpected visit from the Alcalde. At once he
would have risen and dressed.
"Nay," said Don Rodrigo, restraining him, "that
is not necessary for what is intended."
It was a dark phrase which the prisoner, sitting up
in bed with tousled hair, and blinking in the light of
the torches, instantly interpreted into a threat of tor-
ture. His face grew white.
"It is impossible," he protested. "The King can-
not have ordered what you suggest. His Majesty will
take into account that I am a man of honour. He may
require my death, but in an honourable manner, and
not upon the rack. And as for its being used to make
me speak, I have nothing to add to what I have said
already."
The stern, dark face of the Alcalde was overspread
by a grim smile.
"I would have you remark that you fall into con-
tradictions. Sometimes you pretend to be of humble
and lowly origin, and sometimes a person of honour-
able degree. To hear you at this moment one might
suppose that to submit you to torture would be to
outrage your dignity. What then ..."
Don Rodrigo broke off suddenly to stare, then
snatched a torch from the hand of his alguaziles and
held it close to the face of the prisoner, who cowered
THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL 9 >
now, knowing full well what it was the Alcalde had
detected. In that strong light Don Rodrigo saw that
the prisoner's hair and beard had turned grey at the
roots, and so received the last proof that he had to do
with the basest of impostures. The fellow had been
using dyes, the supply of which had been cut short by
his imprisonment. Don Rodrigo departed well satis-
fied with the results of that surprise visit.
Thereafter Espinosa immediately shaved himself.
But it was too late, and even so, before many weeks
were past his hair had faded to its natural grey, and
he presented the appearance of what in fact he was
a man of sixty, or thereabouts.
Yet the torture to which he was presently submitted
drew nothing from him that could explain all that
yet remained obscure. It was from Frey Miguel,
after a thousand prevarications and tergiversations,
that the full truth known to himself alone was
extracted by the rack.
He confessed that, inspired by the love of country
and the ardent desire to liberate Portugal from the
Spanish yoke, he had never abandoned the hope of
achieving this, and of placing Don Antonio, the Prior
of Crato, on the throne of his ancestors. He had de-
vised a plan, primarily inspired by the ardent nature
of the Princess Anne and her impatience of the con-
ventual life. It was while casting about for the chief
instrument that he fortuitously met Espinosa in the
streets of Madrigal. Espinosa had been a soldier, and
had seen the world. During the war between Spain
and Portugal he had served in the armies of King
Philip, had befriended Frey Miguel when the friar's
convent was on the point of being invaded by soldiery,
98 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
and had rescued him from the peril of it. Thus they
had become acquainted, and Frey Miguel had had an
instance of the man's resource and courage. Further,
he was of the height of Don Sebastian and of the build
to which the King might have grown in the years that
were sped, and he presented other superficial resem-
blances to the late king. The colour of his hair and
beard could be corrected; and he might be made to
play the part of the Hidden Prince for whose return
Portugal was waiting so passionately and confidently.
There had been other impostors aforetime, but they
had lacked the endowments of Espinosa, and their
origins could be traced without difficulty. In addition
to these natural endowments, Espinosa should be
avouched by Frey Miguel than whom nobody in
the world was better qualified in such a matter and
by the niece of King Philip, to whom he would be
married when he raised his standard. It was arranged
that the three should go to Paris so soon as the
arrangements were complete, where the pretender
would be accredited by the exiled friends of Don An-
tonio residing there the Prior of Crato being a
party to the plot. From France Frey Miguel would
have worked in Portugal through his agents, and
presently would have gone there himself to stir up a
national movement in favour of a pretender so fully
accredited. Thus he had every hope of restoring Por-
tugal to her independence. Once this should have
been accomplished, Don Antonio would appear in
Lisbon, unmask the impostor, and himself assume the
crown of the kingdom which had been forcibly and
definitely wrenched from Spain.
That was the crafty plan which the priest had laid
THE PASTRY-COOK OF MADRIGAL 99
with a singleness of aim and a detachment from minor
considerations that never hesitated to sacrifice the
Princess, together with the chief instrument of the in-
trigue. Was the liberation of a kingdom, the deliver-
ance of a nation from servitude, the happiness of &
whole people, to weigh in the balance against the fates
of a natural daughter of Don John of Austria and a
soldier of fortune turned pastry-cook? Frey Miguel
thought not, and his plot might well have succeeded
but for the base strain in Espinosa and the man's
overweening vanity, which had urged him to dazzle
the Gonzales at Valladolid. That vanity sustained
him to the end, which he suffered in October of 1 595,
a full year after his arrest. To the last he avoided ad-
missions that should throw light upon his obscure
identity and origin.
"If it were known who I am . . ." he would say, and
there break off.
He was hanged, drawn, and quartered, and he en-
dured his fate with calm fortitude. Frey Miguel suf-
fered in the same way with the like dignity, after hav-
ing undergone degradation from his priestly dignity.
As for the unfortunate Princess Anne, crushed un-
der a load of shame and humiliation, she had gone to
her punishment in the previous July. The Apostolic
Commissary notified her of the sentence which King
Philip had confirmed. She was to be transferred to
another convent, there to undergo a term of four
years' solitary confinement in her cell, and to fast on
bread and water every Friday. She was pronounced
incapable of ever holding any office, and was to be
treated on the expiry of her term as an ordinary nun,
her civil list abolished, her title of Excellency to be ex-
loo HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
tinguished, together with all other honours and privi-
leges conferred upon her by King Philip.
The piteous letters of supplication that she ad-
dressed to the King, her uncle, still exist. But they
left the cold, implacable Philip of Spain unmoved.
Her only sin was that, yielding to the hunger of her
starved heart, and chafing Bunder the ascetic life im-
posed upon her, she had allowed herself to be fasci-
nated by the prospect of becoming the protectress of
one whom she believed to be an unfortunate and ro-
mantic prince, and of exchanging her convent for a
throne.
Her punishment poor soul endured for close
upon forty years, but the most terrible part of it was
not that which lay within the prescription of King
Philip, but that which arose from her own broken and
humiliated spirit. She had been uplifted a moment by
a glorious hope, to be cast down again in the blackest
despair, to which a shame unspeakable and a tortured
pride were added.
Than hers, as I have said, there is in history no sad-
der story.
THE END OF THE "VERT GALANT"
THE ASSASSINATION OF HENRY IV
IN the year 1609 died the last Duke of Cleves, and
King Henry IV of France and Navarre fell in love
with Charlotte de Montmorency.
In their conjunction these two events were to influ-
ence the destinies of Europe. In themselves they
were trivial enough, since it was as much a common-
place that an old gentleman should die as that Henry
of Beam should fall in love. Love had been the main
relaxation of his otherwise strenuous life, and neither
the advancing years he was fifty-six at this date
nor the recriminations of Maria de' Medici, his long-
suffering Florentine wife, sufficed to curb his zest.
Possibly there may have been a husband more un-
faithful than King Henry; probably there was not.
His gallantries were outrageous, his taste in women
catholic, and his illegitimate progeny outnumbered
that of his grandson, the English sultan Charles II.
He differs, however, from the latter in that he was not
quite as Oriental in the manner of his self-indulgence.
Charles, by comparison, was a mere dullard who
turned Whitehall into a seraglio. Henry preferred the
romantic manner, the high adventure, and knew how
to be gallant in two senses.
This gallantry of his is not, perhaps, seen to best
advantage in the affair of Charlotte de Montmorency.
102 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
To begin with, he was, as I have said, in his fifty-sixth
year, an age at which it is difficult, without being ridi-
culous, to unbridle a passion for a girl of twenty. Un-
fortunately for him, Charlotte does not appear to
have found him so. On the contrary, her lovely,
empty head was so turned by the flattery of his ad-
dresses that she came to reciprocate the passion she
inspired.
Her family had proposed to marry her to the gay
and witty Marshal de Bassompierre; and although his
heart was not at all engaged, the marshal found the
match extremely suitable, and was willing enough, un-
til the King declared himself. Henry used the most
impudent frankness.
"Bassompierre, I will speak to you as a friend/'
said he. "I am in love, and desperately in love, with
Mademoiselle de Montmorency. If you should marry
her, I should hate you. If she should love me, you
would hate me. A breach of our friendship would
desolate me, for I love you with sincere affection."
That was enough for Bassompierre. He had no
mind to go further with a marriage of convenience
which in the sequel would most probably give him to
choose between assuming the ridiculous role of a com-
placent husband and being involved in a feud with his
^Prince. He said as much, and thanked the King for
his frankness, whereupon Henry, liking him more
than ever for his good sense, further opened his mind
to him.
"I am thinking of marrying her to my nephew.
Conde. Thus I shall have her in my family to be the
comfort of my old age, which is coming on. Conde,
who thinks of nothing but hunting, shall have a hun-
THE END OF THE VERT GALANT 103
dred thousand livres a year with which to amuse him-
self."
Bassompierre understood perfectly the kind of bar-
gain that was in Henry's mind. As for the Prince de
Conde, he appears to have been less acute, no doubt
because his vision was dazzled by the prospect of a
hundred thousand livres a year. So desperately poor
was he that for half that sum he would have taken
Lucifer's own daughter to wife, without stopping to
consider the disadvantages it might entail.
The marriage was quietly celebrated at Chantilly
in February of 1609. Trouble followed fast. Not only
did Conde perceive at last precisely what was ex-
pected of him, and indignantly rebel against it, but
the Queen, too, was carefully instructed in the matter
by Concino Concini and his wife Leonora Galigai, the
ambitious adventurers who had come from Florence
in her train, and who saw in the King's weakness their
own opportunity.
The scandal that ensued was appalling. Never be-
fore had the relations between Henry and his Queen
been strained so nearly to breaking-point. And then,
whilst the trouble of Henry's own making was grow-
ing about him until it threatened to overwhelm him,
he received a letter from Vaucelas, his ambassador at
Madrid, containing revelations that changed his an-
noyance into stark apprehension.
When the last Duke of Cleves died a few months
before, "leaving all the world his heirs" to use
Henry's own phrase the Emperor had stepped in,
and overriding the rights of certain German princes
had bestowed the fief upon his own nephew, the Arch-
duke Leopold. Now this was an arrangement that did
io 4 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
not suit Henry's policy at all, and being then as the
result of a wise husbanding of resources the most
powerful prince in Europe, Henry was not likely to
submit tamely to arrangements that did not suit him.
His instructions to Vaucelas were to keep open the dif-
ference between France and the House of Austria aris-
ing out of this matter of Cleves. All Europe knew that
Henry desired to marry the Dauphin to the heiress of
Lorraine, so that this State might one day be united
with France; and it was partly to support this claim
that he was now disposed to attach the German
princes to his interests.
Yet what Vaucelas told him in that letter was that
certain agents at the Court of Spain, chief among
whom was the Florentine ambassador, acting upon
instructions from certain members of the household of
the Queen of France, and from others whom Vaucelas
said he dared not mention, were intriguing to blast
Henry's designs against the House of Austria, and to
bring him willy-nilly into a union with Spain. These
agents had gone so far in their utter disregard of
Henry's own intentions as to propose to the Council
of Madrid that the alliance should be cemented by a
marriage between the Dauphin and the Infanta.
That letter sent Henry early one morning hot-foot
to the Arsenal, where Sully, his Minister of State, had
his residence. Maximilien de Bethune, Duke of Sully,
was not merely the King's servant, he was his clos-
est friend, the very keeper of his soul; and the King
leaned upon him and sought his guidance not only in
State affairs, but in the most intimate and domestic
matters. Often already had it fallen to Sully to patch
up the differences created between husband and wife
by Henry's persistent infidelities.
THE END OF THE VERT GALANT 105
The King, arriving like the whirlwind, turned
everybody out of the closet in which the Duke but
newly risen received him in bed-gown and night-
cap. Alone with his minister, Henry came abruptly to
the matter.
"You have heard what is being said of rne?" he
burst out. He stood with his back to the window, a
sturdy, erect, soldierly figure, a little above the mid-
dle height, dressed like a captain of fortune in jer-
kin and long boots of grey leather, and a grey hat
with a wine-coloured ostrich plume. His counte-
nance matched his raiment. Keen-eyed, broad of brow,
with a high-bridged, pendulous nose, red lips, a tuft
of beard and a pair of grizzled, bristling mostachos,
he looked half-hero, half-satyr; half-captain, half-
Polichinelle.
Sully, tall and broad, the incarnation of respecta-
bility and dignity, despite bed-gown and slippers and
the nightcap covering his high, bald crown, made no
pretence of misunderstanding him.
"Of you and the Princesse de Conde, you mean,
Sire?" quoth he, and gravely he shook his head. "It
is a matter that has filled me with apprehension, for I
foresee from it far greater trouble than from any for-
mer attachment of yours."
"So they have convinced you, too, Grand Master!"
Henry's tone was almost sorrowful. " Yet I swear that
all is greatly exaggerated. It is the work of that
dog Concini. Ventre Saint Gris! If he has no respect
for me, at least he might consider how he slanders a
child of such grace and wit and beauty, a lady of her
high birth and noble lineage."
There was a dangerous quiver of emotion in his
io6 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
voice that was not missed by the keen ears of Sully.
Henry moved from the window, and flung into a chair.
"Concini works to enrage the Queen against me,
and to drive her to take violent resolutions which
might give colour to their pernicious designs."
"Sire!" It was a cry of protest from Sully.
Henry laughed grimly at his minister's incredulity,
and plucked forth the letter from Vaucelas.
"Read that/'
Sully read, and, aghast at what the letter told him,
ejaculated: "They must be mad!"
"Oh, no," said the King. "They are not mad.
They are most wickedly sane, which is why their de-
signs fill me with apprehension. What do you infer,
Grand Master, from such deliberate plots against
resolutions from which they know that nothing can
turn me while I have life?"
"What can I infer?" quoth Sully, aghast.
"In acting thus in daring to act thus," the King
expounded, " they proceed as if they knew that I can
have but a short time to live."
"Sire!"
"What else? They plan events which cannot take
place until I am dead."
Sully stared at his master for a long moment, in
stupefied silence, his loyal Huguenot soul refusing to
discount by flattery the truth that he perceived.
"Sire," he said at last, bowing his fine head, "you
must take your measures."
"Aye, but against whom? Who are these that
Vaucelas says he dare not name? Can you suggest an-
other than . . ." He paused, shrinking in horror from
completing the utterance of his thought. Then, with
THE END OF THE VERT GALANT 107
an abrupt gesture, he went on, "... than the Queen
herself?"
Sully quietly placed the letter on the table, and sat
down. He took his chin in his hand, and looked
squarely across at Henry.
"Sire, you have brought this upon yourself. You
have exasperated Her Majesty; you have driven her
in despair to seek and act upon the councils of this
scoundrel Concini. There never was an attachment
of yours that did not beget trouble with the Queen,
but never such trouble as I have been foreseeing from
your attachment to the Princess of Conde. Sire, will
you not consider where you stand?"
"They are lies, I tell you," Henry stormed. But
Sully the uncompromising gravely shook his head.
"At least," Henry amended, "they are gross exagger-
ations. Oh, I confess to you, my friend, that I am
sick with love of her. Day and night I see nothing but
her gracious image. I sigh and fret and fume like any
callow lad of twenty. I suffer the tortures of the
damned. And yet . . . and yet, I swear to you, Sully,
that I will curb this passion, though it kill me. I will
stifle these fires, though they consume my soul to
ashes. No harm shall come to her from me. No harm
has come yet. I swear it. These stories that are put
about are the inventions of Concini to set my wife
against me. Do you know how far he and his wife
have dared to go ? They have persuaded the Queen to
eat nothing that is not prepared in the kitchen they
have set up for her in their own apartments. What
can you conclude from that but that they suggest that
I desire to poison her?"
" Why suffer it, Sire ? " quoth Sully gravely. " Send
io8 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
the pair packing back to Florence, and so be rid of
them."
Henry rose in agitation. "I have a mind to. Ven-
tre Saint Gris! I have a mind to. Yes, it is the only
thing. You can manage it, Sully. Disabuse her mind
of her suspicions regarding the Princess of Conde;
make my peace with her; convince her of my sincer-
ity, of my firm intention to have done with gallantry,
so that she on her side will make me the sacrifice of
banishing the Concinis. You will do this, my friend ? "
It was no less than Sully had been expecting from
past experience, and the task was one in which he was
by now well practised; but the situation had never be-
fore been quite so difficult. He rose.
"Why, surely, Sire," said he. "But Her Majesty
on her side may require something more to reconcile
her to the sacrifice. She may reopen the question of
her coronation so long and in her view so un-
reasonably postponed."
Henry's face grew overcast, his brows knit. "I
have always had an instinct against it, as you know,
Grand Master," said he, " and this instinct is strength-
ened by what that letter has taught me. If she will
dare so much, having so little real power, what might
she not do if . . ." He broke off, and fell to musing.
"If she demands it, we must yield, I suppose," he
said at length. " But give her to understand that if I
discover any more of her designs with Spain I shall be
provoked to the last degree against her. And as an
antidote to these machinations at Madrid you may
publish my intention to uphold the claims of the
German princes in the matter of Cleves, and let all
the world know that we are arming to that end."
THE END OF THE VERT GALANT 109
He may have thought as was long afterwards al-
leged that the threat itself should be sufficient, for
there was at that time no power in Europe that could
have stood against his armies in the field.
On that they parted, with a final injunction from
Sully that Henry should see the Princesse de Conde
no more.
" I swear to you, Grand Master, that I will use re-
straint and respect the sacred tie I formed between
my nephew and Charlotte solely so that I might im-
pose silence upon my own passion."
And the good Sully writes in comment upon this:
"I should have relied absolutely upon these assur-
ances had I not known how easy it is for a heart ten-
der and passionate as was his to deceive itself"
which is the most amiable conceivable way of saying
that he attached not the slightest faith to the King's
promise.
Nevertheless, he went about the task of making the
peace between the royal couple with all the skill and
tact that experience had taught him; and he might
have driven a good bargain on his master's behalf but
for his master's own weakness in supporting him.
Maria de' Medici would not hear of the banishment of
the Concinis, to whom she was so deeply attached.
She insisted with perfect justice that she was a bit-
terly injured woman, and refused to entertain any
idea of reconciliation save with the condition that ar-
rangements for her coronation as Queen of France
which was no more than her due should be made at
once, and that the King should give an undertaking
not to make himself ridiculous any longer by his pur-
suit of the Princess of Conde. Of the matters con-
i io HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
tained in the letter of Vaucelas she denied all knowl-
edge, nor would suffer any further inquisition.
From Henry's point of view this was anything but
satisfactory. But he yielded. Conscience made a cow-
ard of him. He had wronged her so much in one
way that he must make some compensating conces-
sions to her in another. This weakness was part of his
mental attitude towards her, which swung constantly
between confidence and diffidence, esteem and indif-
ference, affection and coldness; at times he inclined to
put her from him entirely; at others he opined that no
one on his Council was more capable of the adminis-
tration of affairs. Even in the indignation aroused
by the proof he held of her disloyalty, he was too just
not to admit the provocation he had given her. So he
submitted to a reconciliation on her own terms, and
pledged himself to renounce Charlotte. We have no
right to assume from the sequel that he was not sin-
cere in the intention.
By the following May events proved the accuracy
of Sully's judgment. The Court was at Fontainebleau
when the last bulwark of Henry's prudence was bat-
tered down by the vanity of that lovely fool, Char-
lotte, who must be encouraging her royal lover to re-
sume his flattering homage. But both appear to have
reckoned without the lady's husband.
Henry presented Charlotte with jewels to the value
of eighteen thousand livres, purchased from Messier,
the jeweller of the Pont au Change; and you conceive
what the charitable ladies of the Court had to say
about it. At the first hint of scandal, Monsieur de
Conde put himself into a fine heat, and said things
which pained and annoyed the King exceedingly.
THE END OF THE VERT GALANT in
Henry had amassed a considerable and varied experi-
ence of jealous husbands in his time; but he had never
met one quite so intolerable as this nephew of his. He
complained of it in a letter to Sully:
MY FRIEND, Monsieur the Prince is here, but he acts
like a man possessed. You will be angry and ashamed at
the things he says of me. I shall end by losing all patience
with him. In the mean while I am obliged to talk to him
with severity.
More severe than any talk was Henry's instruction
to Sully to withhold payment of the last quarter of the
Prince's allowance, and to give refusals to his credit-
ors and purveyors. Thus he intended also, no doubt,
to make it clear to Conde that he did not receive a
pension of a hundred thousand livres a year for
nothing.
"If this does not keep him in bounds," Henry con-
cluded, "we must think of some other method, for he
says the most injurious things of me."
So little did it keep the Prince in bounds as
Henry understood the phrase that he immediately
packed his belongings, and carried his wife off to his
country house. It was quite in vain that Henry wrote
to him representing that this conduct was dishonour-
ing to them both, and that the only place for a prince
of the blood was the Court of his sovereign.
The end of it all was that the reckless and romantic
Henry took to night-prowling about the grounds of
Conde's chateau. In the disguise of a peasant you see
His Majesty of France and Navarre, whose will was
law in Europe, shivering behind damp hedges, ankle-
deep in wet grass, spending long hours in love-lorn,
ii2 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
ecstatic contemplation of her lighted window, and all
so far as we can gather for no other result than
the aggravation of certain rheumatic troubles which
should have reminded him that he was no longer of an
age to pursue these amorous pernoctations.
But where his stiffening joints failed, the Queen suc-
ceeded. Henry had been spied upon, of course, as he
always was when he strayed from the path of matri-
monial rectitude. The Concinis saw to that. And
when they judged the season ripe, they put Her Maj-
esty in possession of the facts. So inflamed was she
by this fresh breach of trust that war was declared
anew between the royal couple, and the best that
Sully 's wit and labours could now accomplish was a
sort of armed truce.
And then at last in the following November the
Prince de Conde took the desperate resolve of quitting
France with his wife, without troubling as was his
duty to obtain the King's consent. On the last
night of that month, as Henry was at cards in the
Louvre, the Chevalier du Guet brought him the news
of the Prince's flight.
"I never in my life," says Bassompierre, who was
present, "saw a man so distracted or in so violent a
passion."
He flung down his cards, and rose, sending his chair
crashing over behind him. "I am undone!" was his
cry. "Undone! This madman has carried off his wife
perhaps to kill her." White and shaking, he turned
to Bassompierre. "Take care of my money," he bade
him, "and go on with the game."
He lurched out of the room, and dispatched a mes-
senger to the Arsenal to fetch Monsieur de Sully.
THE END OF THE VERT GALANT 113
Sully obeyed the summons and came at once, but in
an extremely bad temper, for it was late at night, and
he was overburdened with work.
He found the King in the Queen's chamber, walk-
ing backward and forward, his head sunk upon his
breast, his hands clenched behind him. The Queen,
a squarely built, square-faced woman, sat apart, at-
tended by a few of her ladies and one or two gentle-
men of her train. Her countenance was set and in-
scrutable, and her brooding eyes were fixed upon the
King.
"Ha, Grand Master!" was Henry's greeting, his
voice harsh and strained. "What do you say to this?
What is to be done now?"
"Nothing at all, Sire," says Sully, as calm as his
master was excited.
"Nothing! What sort of advice is that?"
"The best advice that you can follow, Sire. This
affair should be talked of as little as possible, nor
should it appear to be of any consequence to you, or
capable of giving you the least uneasiness."
The Queen cleared her throat huskily. "Good
advice, Monsieur le Due," she approved him. "He
will be wise to follow it" her voice strained, almost
threatening. "But in this matter I doubt wisdom
and he have long since become strangers."
That put him in a passion, and in a passion he left
her to do the maddest thing he had ever done. In the
garb of a courier, and with a patch over one eye to
complete his disguise, he set out in pursuit of the
fugitives. He had learnt that they had taken the road
to Landrecy, which was enough for him. Stage by
stage he followed them in that flight to Flanders,
1 1 4 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
picking up the trail as he went, and never pausing
until he had reached the frontier without overtaking
them.
It was all most romantic, and the lady, when she
learnt of it, shed tears of mingled joy and rage, and
wrote him impassioned letters in which she addressed
him as her knight, and implored him, as he loved her,
to come and deliver her from the detestable tyrant
who held her in thrall. Those perfervid appeals com-
pleted his undoing, drove him mad, and blinded him
to everything even to the fact that his wife, too,
was shedding tears, and that these were of rage un-
diluted by any more tender emotion.
He began by sending Praslin to require the Arch-
duke to order the Prince of Conde to leave his do-
minions. And when the Archduke declined with
dignity to be guilty of any such breach of the law of
nations, Henry dispatched Cceuvres secretly to
Brussels to carry off thence the Princess. But Maria
de* Medici was on the alert, and frustrated the design
by sending a warning of what was intended to the
Marquis Spinola, as a result of which the Prince de
Conde and his wife were housed for greater security
in the Archduke's own palace.
Checkmated at all points, yet goaded further by
the letters which he continued to receive from that
most foolish of princesses, Henry took the wild de-
cision that to obtain her he would invade the Low
Countries as the first step in the execution of that
design of a war with Spain which hitherto had been
little more than a pretence. The matter of the Duchy
of Cleves was a pretext ready to his hand. To obtain
the woman he desired he would set Europe in a blaze.
THE END OF THE VERT GALANT 115
He took that monstrous resolve at the very be-
ginning of the new year, and in the months that fol-
lowed France rang with preparations. It rang, too,
with other things which should have given him pause.
It rang with the voice of preachers giving expression
to the popular view that Cleves was not worth fight-
ing for, that the war was unrighteous a war under-
taken by Catholic France to defend Protestant
interests against the very champions of Catholicism
in Europe. And soon it began to ring, too, with
prophecies of the King's approaching end.
These prognostics rained upon him from every
quarter. Thomassin, and the astrologer La Brosse,
warned him of a message from the stars that May
would be fraught with danger for him. From Rome
from the very Pope himself came notice of a con-
spiracy against him in which he was told that the
very highest in the land were engaged. From Embrun,
Bayonne, and Douai came messages of like purport,
and early in May a note was found one morning on
the altar of the church of Montargis announcing the
King's approaching death.
But that is to anticipate. Meanwhile, Henry had
pursued his preparations undeterred by either warn-
ings or prognostications. There had been so many
conspiracies against his life already that he was be-
come careless and indifferent in such matters. Yet
surely there never had been one that was so abun-
dantly heralded from every quarter, or ever one that
was hatched under conditions so propitious as those
which he had himself created now. In his soul he was
not at ease, and the source of his uneasiness was the
coronation of the Queen, for which the preparations
were now going forward.
n6 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
He must have known that if danger of assassination
threatened him from any quarter, it was most to be
feared from those whose influence with the Queen
was almost such as to give them a control over her
the Concinis and their un avowed but obvious ally the
Duke of Epernon. If he were dead, and the Queen so
left that she could be made absolute regent during
the Dauphin's minority, it was those adventurers who
would become through her the true rulers of France,
and so enrich themselves and gratify to the full their
covetous ambitions. He saw clearly that his safety lay
in opposing this coronation already fixed for the
ijth May which Maria de' Medici was so insistent
should take place before his departure for the wars.
The matter so preyed upon his mind that at last he
unburdened himself to Sully one day at the Arsenal.
"Oh, my friend," he cried, "this coronation does
not please me. My heart tells me that some fatality
will follow."
He sat down, grasping the case of his reading-glass,
whilst Sully could only stare at him amazed by this
outburst. Thus he remained awhile in deep thought.
Then he started up again.
"Pardieu!" he cried. "I shall be murdered in this
city. It is their only resource. I see it plainly. This
cursed coronation will be the cause of my death."
"What a thought, Sire!"
" You think that I have been reading the almanach
or paying heed to the prophets, eh ? But listen to me
now, Grand Master." And wrinkles deepened about
the bold, piercing eyes. "It is four months and more
since we announced our intention of going to war, and
France has resounded with our preparations. We
THE END OF THE VERT GALANT 117
have made no secret of it. Yet in Spain not a finger
has been lifted in preparation to resist us, not a sword
has been sharpened. Upon what does Spain build?
Whence her confidence that in despite of my firm
resolve and my abundant preparations, despite the
fact announced that I am to march on the ijth of
this month, despite the fact that my troops are
already in Champagne with a train of artillery so
complete and well-furnished that France has never
seen the like of it, and perhaps never will again
whence the confidence that despite all this there is no
need to prepare defences? Upon what do they build,
I say, when they assume, as assume they must, that
there will be no war? Resolve me that, Grand
Master."*
But Sully, overwhelmed, could only gasp and
ejaculate.
"You had not thought of it, eh? Yet it is clear
enough. Spain builds on my death. And who are
the friends of Spain here in France? Who was it
intrigued with Spain in such a way and to such ends
as in my lifetime could never have been carried to an
issue? Ha! You see."
"I cannot, Sire. It is too horrible. It is im-
possible!" cried that loyal, honest gentleman. "And
yet if you are convinced of it, you should break off
this coronation, your journey, and your war. If you
wish it so, it is not difficult to satisy you."
"Aye, that is it." He came to his feet, and gripped
the Duke's shoulder in his strong, nervous hand.
" Break off this coronation, and never let me hear of
it again. That will suffice. Thus I can rid my mind of
apprehensions, and leave Paris with nothing to fear."
ii8' HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
"Very well. I will send at once to Notn> Dame
and to Saint Denis, to stop the preparations and dis-
miss the workmen."
"Ah, wait." The eyes, that for a moment had
sparkled with new hope, grew dull again; the lines of
care descended between the brows. "Oh, what to
decide! What to decide! It is what I wish, my
friend. But how will my wife take it?"
"Let her take it as she will. I cannot believe that
she will continue obstinate when she knows what
apprehensions you have of disaster."
"Perhaps not, perhaps not," he answered. But
his tone was not sanguine. "Try to persuade her,
Sully. Without her consent I cannot do this thing.
But you will know how to persuade her. Go to her."
Sully suspended the preparations for the corona-
tion, and sought the Queen. For three days, he tells
us, he used prayers, entreaties, and arguments with
which to endeavour to move her. But all was labour
lost. Maria de' Medici was not to be moved. To all
Sully 's argument she opposed an argument that was
unanswerable.
Unless she were crowned Queen of France, as was
her absolute right, she would be a person of no ac-
count and subject to the Council of Regency during
the King's absence, a position unworthy and intoler-
able to her, the mother of the Dauphin.
And so it was Henry's part to yield. His hands
were tied by the wrongs that he had done, and the
culminating wrong that he was doing her by this very
war, as he had himself openly acknowledged. He had
chanced one day to ask the papal nuncio what Rome
thought of this war.
THE END OF THE VERT GALANT 119
"Those who have the best information," the nuncio
answered boldly, "are of opinion that the principal
object of the war is the Princess of Conde whom
Your Majesty wishes to bring back to France."
Angered by this priestly insolence, Henry's answer
had been an impudently defiant acknowledgment of
the truth of that allegation.
"Yes, by God!" he cried. "Yes most certainly
I want to have her back, and I will have her back; no
one shall hinder me, not even God's vicegerent on
earth."
Having uttered those words, which he knew to
have been carried to the Queen, and to have wounded
her perhaps more deeply than anything that had yet
happened in this affair, his conscience left him, de-
spite his fears, powerless now to thwart her even to
the extent of removing those pernicious familiars
of hers of whose plottings he had all but positive
evidence.
And so the coronation was at last performed with
proper pomp and magnificence at Saint Denis on
Thursday, the I3th May. It had been concerted that
the festivities should last four days and conclude on
the Sunday with the Queen's public entry into Paris.
On the Monday the King was to set out to take com-
mand of his armies, which were already marching
upon the frontiers.
Thus Henry proposed, but the Queen convinced
by his own admission of the real aim and object of the
war, and driven by outraged pride to hate the man
who offered her this crowning insult, and determined
that at all costs it must be thwarted had lent an
ear to Concini's purpose to avenge her, and was ready
120 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
to repay infidelity with infidelity. Concini and his
fellow-conspirators had gone to work so confidently
that a week before the coronation a courier had ap-
peared in Liege, announcing that he was going with
news of Henry's assassination to the Princes of Ger-
many, whilst at the same time accounts of the King's
death were being published in France and Italy.
Meanwhile, whatever inward misgivings Henry
may have entertained, outwardly at least he appeared
serene and good-humoured at his wife's coronation,
gaily greeting her at the end of the ceremony by the
title of "Madam Regent."
The little incident may have touched her, arousing
her conscience. For that night she disturbed his
slumbers by sudden screams, and when he sprang up
in solicitous alarm she falteringly told him of a dream
in which she had seen him slain, and fell to imploring
him with a tenderness such as had been utterly foreign
to her of late to take great care of himself in the days
to come. In the morning she renewed those entreaties,
beseeching him not to leave the Louvre that day,
urging that she had a premonition it would be fatal
to him.
He laughed for answer. "You have heard of the
predictions of La Brosse, "said he. " Bah! You should
not attach credit to such nonsense."
Anon came the Duke of Vendome, his natural son
by the Marquise de Verneuil, with a like warning and
a like entreaty, only to receive a like answer.
Being dull and indisposed as a consequence of last
night's broken rest, Henry lay down after dinner.
But finding sleep denied him, he rose, pensive and
gloomy, and wandered aimlessly down, and out into
THE END OF THE VERT GALANT 121
the courtyard. There an exempt of the guard, of
whom he casually asked the time, observing the
King's pallor and listlessness, took the liberty of sug-
gesting that His Majesty might benefit if he took the
air.
That chance remark decided Henry's fate. His eyes
quickened responsively. "You advise well," said he.
"Order my coach. I will go to the Arsenal to see the
Due de Sully, who is indisposed."
On the stones beyond the gates, where lackeys were
wont to await their masters, sat a lean fellow of some
thirty years of age, in a dingy, clerkly attire, so repul-
sively evil of countenance that he had once been ar-
rested on no better grounds than because it was
deemed impossible that a man with such a face could
be other than a villain.
Whilst the coach was being got ready, Henry ree'n-
tered the Louvre, and startled the Queen by an-
nouncing his intention. With fearful insistence she
besought him to countermand the order, and not to
leave the palace.
"I will but go there and back," he said, laughing at
her fears. "I shall have returned before you realize
that I have gone." And so he went, never to return
alive.
He sat at the back of the coach, and the weather be-
ing fine all the curtains were drawn up so that he
might view the decorations of the city against the
Queen's public entry on Sunday. The Due d'Epernon
was on his right, the Due de Montbazon and the Mar-
quis de la Force on his left. Lavordin and Roquelaure
were in the right boot, whilst near the left boot, op-
posite to Henry, sat Mirebeau and du Plessis Lian-
122 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
court. He was attended only by a small number of
gentlemen on horseback, and some footmen.
The coach turned from the Rue Saint Honore into
the narrow Rue de la Ferronerie, and there was
brought to a halt by a block occasioned by the meet-
ing of two carts, one laden with hay, the other with
wine. The footmen went ahead with the exception of
two. Of these, one advanced to clear a way for the
royal vehicle, whilst the other took the opportunity to
fasten his garter.
At that moment, gliding like a shadow between the
coach and the shops, came that shabby, hideous fel-
low who had been sitting on the stones outside the
Louvre an hour ago. Raising himself by deliberately
standing upon one of the spokes of the stationary
wheel, he leaned over the Due d'Epernon, and, whip-
ping a long, stout knife from his sleeve, stabbed
Henry in the breast. The King, who was in the act of
reading a letter, cried out, and threw up his arms in
an instinctive warding movement, thereby exposing
his heart. The assassin stabbed again, and this time
the blade went deep.
With a little gasping cough, Henry sank together,
and blood gushed from his mouth.
The predictions were fulfilled; the tale borne by the
courier riding through Liege a week ago was made
true, as were the stories of his death already at that
very hour circulating in Antwerp, Malines, Brussels,
and elsewhere.
The murderer aimed yet a third blow, but this at
last was parried by Epernon, whereupon the fellow
stepped back from the coach, and stood there, making
no attempt to escape, or even to rid himself of the in-
THE END OF THE VERT GALANT 113
criminating knife. Saint Michel, one of the King's
gen tlemen-in-wai ting, who had followed the coach,
whipped out his sword and would have slain him on
the spot had he not been restrained by Epernon. The
footmen seized the fellow, and delivered him over to
the captain of the guard. He proved to be a school-
master of Angouleme which was Epernon's coun-
try. His name was Ravaillac.
The curtains of the coach were drawn, the vehicle
was put about, and driven back to the Louvre, whilst
to avoid all disturbance it was announced to the peo-
ple that the King was merely wounded.
But Saint Michel went on to the Arsenal, taking
with him the knife that had stabbed his master, to
bear the sinister tidings to Henry's loyal and devoted
friend. Sully knew enough to gauge exactly whence
the blow had proceeded. With anger and grief in his
heart he got to horse, ill as he was, and, calling to-
gether his people, set out presently for the Louvre,
with a train one hundred strong, which was presently
increased to twice that number by many of the King's
faithful servants who joined his company as he ad-
vanced. In the Rue de la Pourpointiere a man in
passing slipped a note into his hand. It was a brief
scrawl:
Monsieur, where are you going? It is done. I have seen
him dead. If you enter the Louvre, you will not escape any
more than he did.
Nearing Saint Innocent, the warning was repeated,
this time by a gentleman named du Jon, who stopped
to mutter:
"Monsieur le Due, our evil is without remedy.
i2 4 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
Look to yourself, for this strange blow will have fear-
ful consequences."
Again in the Rue Saint Honore another note was
thrown him, whose contents were akin to those of the
first. Yet with misgivings mounting swiftly to cer-
tainty, Sully rode amain towards the Louvre, his train
by now amounting to some three hundred horse. But
at the end of the street he was stopped by Monsieur
de Vitry, who drew rein as they met.
"Ah, monsieur," Vitry greeted him, "where are
you going with such a following? They will never suf-
fer you to enter the Louvre with more than two or
three attendants, which I would not advise you to do.
For this plot does not end here. I have seen some per-
sons so little sensible of the loss they have sustained
that they cannot even simulate the grief they should
feel. Go back, monsieur. There is enough for you to
do without going to the Louvre."
Persuaded by Vitry's solemnity, and by what he
knew in his heart, Sully faced about and set out to re-
trace his steps. But presently he was overtaken by a
messenger from the Queen, begging him to come at
once to her at the Louvre, and to bring as few persons
as possible with him. "This proposal," he writes, " to
go alone and deliver myself into the hands of my ene-
mies, who filled the Louvre, was not calculated to al-
lay my suspicions."
Moreover, he received word at that moment that
an exempt of the guards and a force of soldiers were
already at the gates of the Arsenal, that others had
been sent to the Temple where the powder was stored,
and others again to the treasurer of the Exchequer to
stop all the money there.
THE END OF THE VERT GALANT 125
"Convey to the Queen my duty and service," he
bade the messenger, " and assure her that until she ac-
quaints me with her orders I shall continue assidu-
ously to attend the affairs of my office." And with
that he went to shut himself up in the Bastille,
whither he was presently followed by a stream of
Her Majesty's envoys, all bidding him to the Louvre.
But Sully, ill as he was, and now utterly prostrated
by all that he had endured, put himself to bed and
made of his indisposition a sufficient excuse.
Yet on the morrow he allowed himself to be per-
suaded to obey her summons, receiving certain assur-
ances that he had no ground for any apprehensions.
Moreover, he may by now have felt a certain security
in the esteem in which the Parisians held him. An
attempt against him in the Louvre itself would prove
that the blow that had killed his master was not the
independent act of a fanatic, as it was being repre-
sented; and vengeance would follow swiftly upon the
heads of those who would thus betray themselves of
having made of that poor wretch's fanaticism an in-
strument to their evils ends.
In that assurance he went, and he has left on record
the burning indignation aroused in him at the signs of
satisfaction, complacency, and even mirth that he dis-
covered in that house of death. The Queen herself,
however, overwrought by the events, and perhaps
conscience-stricken by the tragedy which in the elev-
enth hour she had sought to avert, burst into tears at
sight of Sully, and brought in the Dauphin, who flung
himself upon the Duke's neck.
"My son," the Queen addressed him, "this is Mon-
sieur de Sully. You must love him well, for he was
126 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
one of the best and most faithful servants of the King
your father, and I entreat him to continue to serve
you in the same manner."
Words so fair might have convinced a man less
astute that all his suspicions were unworthy. But,
even then, the sequel would very quickly have unde-
ceived him. For very soon thereafter his fall was
brought about by the Concinis and their creatures, so
that no obstacle should remain between themselves
and the full gratification of their fell ambitions.
At once he saw the whole policy of the dead King
subversed; he saw the renouncing of all ancient alli-
ances, and the union of the crowns of France and
Spain ; the repealing of all acts of pacification ; the de-
struction of the Protestants; the dissipation of the
treasures amassed by Henry; the disgrace of those
who would not receive the yoke of the new favourites.
All this Sully witnessed in his declining years, and he
witnessed, too, the rapid rise to the greatest power
and dignity in the State of that Florentine adven-
turer, Concino Concini now bearing the title of
Marshal d'Ancre who had so cunningly known
how to profit by a Queen's jealousy and a King's in-
discretions.
As for the miserable Ravaillac, it is pretended that
he maintained under torture and to the very hour of
his death that he had no accomplices; that what he
had done he had done to prevent an unrighteous war
against Catholicism and the Pope which was, no
doubt, the falsehood with which those who used him
played upon his fanaticism and whetted him to their
service. I say "pretended" because, after all, com-
plete records of his examinations are not discoverable,
THE END OF THE VERT GALANT 127
and there is a story that when at the point of death,
seeing himself abandoned by those in whom perhaps
he had trusted, he signified a desire to confess, and did
so confess; but the notary Voisin, who took his de-
positions in articulo mortis, set them down in a hand
so slovenly as to be afterwards undecipherable.
That may or may not be true. But the statement,
that when the President du Harlay sought to pursue
inquiries into certain allegations by a woman named
d'Escaman, which incriminated the Due d'Epernon,
he received a royal order to desist, rests upon sound
authority.
That is the story of the assassination of Henry IV
retold in the light of certain records which appear to
me to have been insufficiently studied. They should
suggest a train of speculation leading to inferences
which, whilst obvious, I hesitate to define absolutely.
"If it be asked," says Perefixe, "who were the
friends that suggested to Ravaillac so damnable a de-
sign, history replies that it is ignorant and that upon
an action of such consequences it is not permissible
to give suspicions and conjectures for certain truths.
The judges themselves who interrogated him dared
not open their mouths, and never mentioned the mat-
ter but with gestures of horror and amazement."
VI
THE BARREN WOOING
THE MURDER OF AMY ROBSART
had been a banquet, followed by a
J^ masque, and this again by a dance in which the
young Queen had paired off with Lord Robert Dud-
ley, who in repute was the handsomest man in Eu-
rope, just as in fact he was the vainest, shallowest, and
most unscrupulous. There had been homage and
flattery lavishly expressed, and there was a hint of
masked hostility from certain quarters to spice the
adventure, and to thrill her bold young spirit. Never
yet in all the months of her reign since her coronation
in January of last year had she felt so much a queen,
and so conscious of the power of her high estate;
never so much a woman, and so conscious of the
weakness of her sex. The interaction of those conflict-
ing senses wrought upon her like a heady wine. She
leaned more heavily upon the silken arm of her hand-
some Master of the Horse, and careless in her intoxi-
cation of what might be thought or said, she who
by the intimate favour shown him had already loosed
the tongue of Scandal and set it chattering in every
court in Europe drew him forth from that thronged
and glittering chamber of the Palace of Whitehall into
the outer solitude and friendly gloom.
And he, nothing loath to obey the suasion of that
white hand upon his arm, exultant, indeed, to parade
THE BARREN WOOING 129
before them all the power he had with her, went will-
ingly enough. Let Norfolk and Sussex scowl, let Ar-
undel bite his lip until it bled, and sober Cecil stare
cold disapproval. They should mend their counte-
nances soon, and weigh their words or be forever si-
lenced, when he was master in England. And that he
would soon be master he was assured to-night by
every glance of her blue eyes, by the pressure of that
fair hand upon his arm, by the languishing abandon-
ment with which that warm young body swayed to-
wards him, as they passed out from the blaze of lights
and the strains of music into the gloom and silence of
the gallery leading to the terrace.
"Out let us go out, Robin. Let me have air,"
she almost panted, as she drew him on.
Assuredly he would be master soon. Indeed, he
might have been master already but for that wife of
his, that stumbling-block to his ambition, who prac-
tised the housewifely virtues at Cumnor Place, and
clung so tenaciously and so inconsiderately to life in
spite of all his plans to relieve her of the burden of it.
For a year and more his name had been coupled
with the Queen's in a tale that hurt her honour as a
woman and imperilled her dignity as a sovereign. Al-
ready, in October of 1559, Alvarez de Quadra, the
Spanish ambassador, had written home: "I have
learnt certain things as to the terms on which the
Queen and Lord Robert stand towards each other
which I could not have believed."
That was at a time when de Quadra was one of a
dozen ambassadors who were competing for her hand,
and Lord Robert had, himself, appeared to be an ally
of de Quadra and an advocate of the Spanish mar-
i 3 o HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
riage with the Archduke Charles. But it was a pretence
which nowise deceived the astute Spaniard, who em-
ployed a legion of spies to keep him well informed.
"All the dallying with us," he wrote, " all the dally-
ing with the Swede, all the dallying there will be with
the rest, one after another, is merely to keep Lord
Robert's enemies in play until his villainy about his
wife can be executed."
What that particular villainy was, the ambassador
had already stated earlier in his letter. " I have learnt
from a person who usually gives me true information
that Lord Robert has sent to have his wife poisoned."
What had actually happened was that Sir Richard
Verney a trusted retainer of Lord Robert's had
reported to Dr. Bayley, of New College, Oxford, that
Lady Robert Dudley was "sad and ailing," and had
asked him for a potion. But the doctor was learned in
more matters than physic. He had caught an echo of
the tale of Lord Robert's ambition, he had heard a
whisper that whatever suitors might come from over-
seas for Elizabeth, she would marry none but "my
lord" as Lord Robert was now commonly styled.
More, he had aforetime heard rumours of the indis-
positions of Lady Robert, yet had never found those
rumours verified by the fact. Some months ago, it
had been reported that her ladyship was suffering
from cancer of the breast and likely soon to die of it.
Yet Dr. Bayley had reason to know that a healthier
woman did not live in Berkshire.
The good doctor was a capable deductive reasoner,
and the conclusion to which he came was that if they
poisoned her under cover of his potion she standing
in no need of physic he might afterwards be hanged
THE BARREN WOOING 131
as a cover for their crime. So he refused to prescribe
as he was invited, nor troubled to make a secret of in-
vitation and refusal.
For a while, then, Lord Robert had prudently held
his hand; moreover, the urgency there had been a
year ago, when that host of foreign suitors laid siege
to Elizabeth of England, had passed, and his lordship
could afford to wait. But now of a sudden the ur-
gency was returned. Under the pressure brought to
bear upon her to choose a husband, 'Elizabeth had
half-committed herself to marry the Archduke
Charles, promising the Spanish ambassador a definite
answer within a few days.
Lord Robert had felt the earth to be quaking under
him; he had seen the ruin of his high ambitions; he
had watched with rage the expanding mockery upon
the countenances of Norfolk, Sussex, and those others
who hated and despised him; and he had cursed that
wife of his who knew not when to die. But for that
obstinacy with which she clung to life he had been the
Queen's husband these many months, so making an
end to suspense and to the danger that lies in delay.
To-night the wantonness with which the Queen
flaunted before the eyes of all her Court the predilec-
tion in which she held him, came not merely to lull his
recent doubts and fears, to feed his egregious vanity,
and to assure him that in her heart he need fear no
rival; it came also to set his soul aquiver with impo-
tent rage. He had but to put forth his hands to pos-
sess himself of this splendid prize. Yet those hands of
his were bound while that woman lived at Cumnor.
Conceive his feelings as they stole away together like
any pair of lovers.
132 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
Arm in arm they came by a stone gallery, where a
stalwart scarlet sentinel, a yeoman of the guard, with
a Tudor rose embroidered in gold upon his back,
stood under a lamp set in the wall, with grounded
pike and body stiffly erect.
The tall young Queen was in crimson satin with
cunningly wrought silver embroideries, trimmed with
tufted silver fringe, her stomacher stiff with silver bul-
lion studded with gold rosettes and Roman pearls, her
bodice cut low to display her splendid neck, decked
by a carcanet of pearls and rubies, and surmounted by
a fan-like ruff of guipure, high behind and sloping to-
wards the bust. Thus she appeared to the sentinel as
the rays of the single lamp behind him struck fire
from her red-gold hair. As if by her very gait to ex-
press the wantonness of her mood, she pointed her
toes and walked with head thrown back, smiling up
into the gipsy face of her companion, who was ar-
rayed from head to foot in shimmering ivory satin,
with an elegance no man in England could have
matched.
They came by that stone gallery to a little terrace
above the Privy Steps. A crescent moon hung low
over the Lambeth marshes across the river. From a
barge that floated gay with lights in mid-stream came
a tinkle of lutes, and the sweet voice of a singing boy.
A moment the lovers stood at gaze, entranced by the
beauty of the soft, tepid September night, so subtly
adapted to their mood. Then she fetched a sigh, and
hung more heavily upon his arm, leaned nearer to his
tall, vigorous, graceful figure.
"Robin, Robin!'' was all she said, but in her voice
throbbed a world of passionate Jonging, an exquisite
blend of delight and pain.
THE BARREN WOOING 133
^
Judging the season ripe, his arm flashed round her,
and drew her fiercely close. For a moment she was
content to yield, her head against his stalwart
shoulder, a very woman nestling to the mate of her
choice, surrendering to her master. Then the queen in
her awoke and strangled nature. Roughly she disen-
gaged herself from his arm, and stood away, her
breathing quickened.
"God's death, Robin!" There was a harsh note in
the voice that lately had cooed so softly. "You are
strangely free, I think."
But he, impudence incarnate, nothing abashed, ac-
customed to her gusty moods, to her alternations be-
tween the two natures she had inherited from over-
bearing father and wanton mother was determined
at all costs to take the fullest advantage of the hour,
to make an end of suspense.
"I am not free, but enslaved by love and wor-
ship of you. Would you deny me? Would you?"
"Not I, but Fate," she answered heavily, and he
knew that the woman at Cumnor was in her mind.
"Fate will soon mend the wrong that Fate has done
very soon now." He took her hand, and, melted
again from her dignity, she let it lie in his. "When that
is done, sweet, than will I claim you for my own."
"When that is done, Robin?" she questioned al-
most fearfully, as if a sudden dread suspicion broke
upon her mind. "When what is done?"
He paused a moment to choose his words, what
time she stared intently into the face that gleamed
white in the surrounding gloom.
"When that poor ailing spirit is at rest." And he
added: "It will be soon."
134 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
"Thou hast said the same aforetime, Robin. Yet it
has not so fallen out."
" She has clung to life beyond what could have been
believed of her condition," he explained, unconscious
of any sinister ambiguity. "But the end, I know, is
very near a matter but of days."
"Of days!" she shivered, and moved forward to the
edge of the terrace, he keeping step beside her. Then
she stood awhile in silence, looking down at the dark
oily surge of water. "You loved her once, Robin?"
she asked, in a queer, unnatural voice.
"I never loved but once," answered that perfect
courtier.
" Yet you married her men say it was a love mar-
riage. It was a marriage, anyway, and you can speak
so calmly of her death?" Her tone was brooding.
She sought understanding that should silence her own
lingering doubt of him.
"Where lies the blame? Who made me what I
am?" Again his bold arm encompassed her. Side by
side they peered down through the gloom at the rush-
ing waters, and he seized an image from them. "Our
love is like that seething tide," he said. "To resist it
is to labour in agony awhile, and then to perish."
"And to yield is to be swept away."
"To happiness," he cried, and reverted to his ear-
lier prayer. "Say that when . . . that afterwards, I
may claim you for my own. Be true to yourself, obey
the voice of instinct, and so win to happiness."
She looked up at him, seeking to scan the handsome
face in that dim light that baffled her, and he observed
the tumultuous heave of her white breast.
"Can I trust thee, Robin? Can I trust thee? An-
THE BARREN WOOING 135
swer me true!" she implored him, adorably weak, en-
tirely woman now.
"What does your own heart answer you?" quoth
he, leaning close above her.
"I think I can, Robin. And, anyway, I must. I
cannot help myself. I am but a woman, after all," she
murmured, and sighed. " Be it as thou wilt. Come to
me again when thou art free."
He bent lower, murmuring incoherently, and she
put up a hand to pat his swarthy bearded cheek.
"I shall make thee greater than any man in Eng-
land, so thou make me happier than any woman."
He caught the hand in his and kissed it passion-
ately, his soul singing a triumph song within him.
Norfolk and Sussex and those other scowling ones
should soon be whistled to the master's heel.
As they turned arm in arm into the gallery to re^
trace their steps, they came suddenly face to face with
a slim, sleek gentleman, who bowed profoundly, a
smile upon his crafty, shaven, priestly face. In a
smooth voice and an accent markedly foreign, he ex-
plained that he, too, sought the cool of the terrace,
not thinking to intrude; and upon that, bowing again,
he passed on and effaced himself. It was Alvarez de
Quadra, Bishop of Aquila, the Argus-eyed ambassador
of Spain.
The young face of the Queen hardened.
"I would I were as well served abroad as the King
of Spain is here," she said aloud, that the retreating
ambassador might hear the dubious compliment; and
for my lord's ear alone she added under her breath:
"The spy! Philip of Spain will hear of this."
"So that he hears something more, what shall it
signify?" quoth my lord, and laughed.
136 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
They paced the length of the gallery in silence, past
the yeoman of the guard, who kept his watch, and
into the first ante-chamber. Perhaps it was that
meeting with de Quadra and my lord's answer to her
comment that prompted what now she asked: "What
is it ails her, Robin?"
"A wasting sickness," he answered, never doubting
to whom the question alluded.
"You said, I think, that . . . that the end is very
near."
He caught her meaning instantly. " Indeed, if she
is not dead already, she is very nearly so."
He lied, for never had Amy Dudley been in better
health. And yet he spoke the truth, for in so much
as her life depended upon his will, it was as good as
spent. This was, he knew, a decisive moment of his
career. The hour was big with fate. If now he were
weak or hesitant, the chance might slip away and be
forever lost to him. Elizabeth's moods were as uncer-
tain as were certain the hostile activities of my lord's
enemies. He must strike quickly whilst she was in her
present frame of mind, and bring her to wedlock, be it
in public or in private. But first he must shake off the
paralyzing encumbrance of that housewife down at
Cumnor.
I believe from evidence that I account abun-
dant that he considered it with the cold remorse-
lessness of the monstrous egotist he was. An upstart,
great-grandson to a carpenter, noble only in two de-
scents, and in both of them stained by the block, he
found a queen the victim of a physical passion
that took no account of the worthlessness underlying
his splendid exterior reaching out a hand to raise
THE BARREN WOOING 137
him to a throne. Being what he was, he weighed his
young wife's life at naught in the evil scales of his am-
bition. And yet he had loved her once, more truly
perhaps than he could now pretend to love the Queen.
It was some ten years since, as a lad of eighteen,
he had taken Sir John Robsart's nineteen-year-old
daughter to wife. She had brought him considerable
wealth and still more devotion. Because of this devo-
tion she was content to spend her days at Cumnor,
whilst he ruffled it at Court; content to take such
crumbs of attention as he could spare her upon occa-
sion. And during the past year, whilst he had been
plotting her death, she had been diligently caring for
his interests and fostering the prosperity of the Berk-
shire estate. If he thought of this at all, he allowed
no weakly sentiment to turn him from his purpose.
There was too much at stake for that a throne, no
less.
And so, on the morning after that half-surrender of
Elizabeth's, we find my lord closeted with his hench-
man, Sir Richard Verney. Sir Richard like his
master was a greedy, unscrupulous, ambitious
scoundrel, prepared to go to any lengths for the sake
of such worldly advancement as it lay in my lord's
power to give him. My lord perforce used perfect
frankness with this perfect servant.
"Thou'lt rise or fall with me, Dick," quoth he.
"Help me up, then, and so mount with me. When I
am King, as soon now I shall be, look to me. Now to
the thing that is to do. Thou'lt have guessed it."
To Sir Richard it was an easy guess, considering
how much already he had been about this business.
He signified as much.
138 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
My lord shifted in his elbow-chair, and drew his em-
broidered bedgown of yellow satin closer about his
shapely limbs.
"Hast failed me twice before, Richard," said he.
"God's death, man, fail me not again, or the last
chance may go the way of the others. There's a magic
in the number three. See that I profit by it, or I am
undone, and thou with me."
"I'd not have failed before but for that suspicious
dotard Bayley," grumbled Verney. "Your lordship
bade me see that all was covered." . , v ,. -
"Aye, aye. And I bid thee so again. On thy life,
leave no footprints by which we may be tracked.
Bayley is not the only physician in Oxford. About it,
then, and swiftly. Time is the very soul of fortune in
this business, with the Spaniard straining at the
leash, and Cecil and the rest pleading his case with
her. Succeed, and thy fortune's made; fail, and
trouble not to seek me again."
Sir Richard bowed, and took his leave. As he
reached the door, his lordship stayed him. "If thou
bungle, do not look to me. The Court goes to Wind-
sor to-morrow. Bring me word there within the
week." He rose, magnificently tall and stately, in his
bedgown of embroidered yellow satin, his handsome
head thrown back, and went after his retainer.
"Thou'lt not fail me, Dick," said he, a hand upon the
lesser scoundrel's shoulder. "There is much at issue
for me, and for thee with me."
"I will not fail you, my lord," Sir Richard rashly
promised, and on that they parted.
Sir Richard did not mean to fail. He knew the im-
portance of succeeding, and he appreciated the ur-
THE BARREN WOOING
gency of the business as much as did my lord himself.
But between his cold, remorseless will to succeed and
success itself there lay a gulf which it needed all his
resource to bridge. He paid a short visit to Lady
Robert at Cumnor, and professed deepest concern to
find in her a pallor and an ailing air which no one else
had yet observed. He expressed himself on the sub-
ject to Mrs. Buttelar and the other members of her
ladyship's household, reproaching them with their
lack of care of their mistress. Mrs. Buttelar became
indignant under his reproaches.
"Nay, now, Sir Richard, do you wonder that my
lady is sad and downcast with such tales as are going
of my lord's doings at Court, and of what there is
'twixt the Queen and him? Her ladyship may be too
proud to complain, but she suffers the more for that,
poor lamb. There was talk of a divorce awhile ago
that got to her ears."
"Old wives' tales," snorted Sir Richard.
"Likely," agreed Mrs. Buttelar. "Yet when my
lord neither comes to Cumnor, nor requires her lady-
ship to go to him, what is she to think, poor soul?"
Sir Richard made light of all, and went off to Ox-
ford to find a physician more accommodating than
Dr. Bayley. But Dr. Bayley had talked too much,
and it was in vain that Sir Richard pleaded with each
of the two physicians he sought that her ladyship was
ailing "sad and heavy" and that he must have
a potion for her.
Each in turn shook his head. They had no medi-
cine for sorrow was their discreet answer. From his
description of her condition, said each, it was plain
that her ladyship's sickness was of the mind, and, con-
140 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
sidering the tales that were afloat, neither was sur-
prised.
Sir Richard went back to his Oxford lodging with
the feeling of a man checkmated. For two whole days
of that precious time he lay there considering what to
do. He thought of going to seek a physician in Abing-
don. But fearing no better success in that quarter,
fearing, indeed, that in view of the rumours abroad he
would merely be multiplying what my lord called
"footprints," he decided to take some other way to
his master's ends. He was a resourceful, inventive
scoundrel, and soon he had devised a plan.
On Friday he wrote from Oxford to Lady Robert,
stating that he had a communication for her on the
subject of his lordship as secret as it was urgent.
That he desired to come to her at Cumnor again, but
dared not do so openly. He would come if she would
contrive that her servants should be absent, and he
exhorted her to let no one of them know that he was
coming, else he might be ruined, out of his desire to
serve her.
That letter he dispatched by the hand of his serv-
ant Nun week, desiring him to bring an answer. It
was a communication that had upon her ladyship's
troubled mind precisely the effect that the rascal con-
ceived. There was about Sir Richard's personality
nothing that could suggest the villain. He was a
smiling, blue-eyed, florid gentleman, of a kindly man-
ner that led folk to trust him. And on the occasion of
his late visit to Cumnor he had displayed such tender
solicitude that her ladyship starved of affection as
she was had been deeply touched.
His letter so cunningly couched filled her with
THE BARREN WOOING 141
vague alarm and with anxiety. She had heard so
many and such afflicting rumours, and had received
in my lord's cruel neglect of her such circumstantial
confirmation of them, that she fastened avidly upon
what she deemed the chance of learning at last the
truth. Sir Richard Verney had my lord's confidence,
and was much about the Court in his attendance
upon my lord. He would know the truth, and what
could this letter mean but that he was disposed to
tell it.
So she sent him back a line in answer, bidding him
come on Sunday afternoon. She would contrive to be
alone in the house, so that he need not fear being seen
by any.
As she promised, so she performed, and on the Sun-
day packed off her household to the fair that was be-
ing held at Abingdon that day, using insistence with
the reluctant, and particularly with one of her women,
a Mrs. Oddingsell, who expressed herself strongly
against leaving her ladyship alone in that lonely
house. At length, however, the last of them was got
off, and my lady was left impatiently to await her
secret visitor. It was late afternoon when he arrived,
accompanied by Nunweek, whom he left to hold the
horses under the chestnuts in the avenue. Himself he
reached the house across the garden, where the blight-
ing hand of autumn was already at work.
Within the porch he found her waiting, fretted by
her impatience.
" It is very good in you to have come, Sir Richard,"
was her gracious greeting.
"I am your ladyship's devoted servant," was his
sufficient answer, and he doffed his plumed bonnet,]
i 4 2 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
and bowed low before her. "We shall be private in
your bower above stairs," he added.
"Why, we are private anywhere. I am all alone, as
you desired."
"That is very wise most wise," said he. "Will
your ladyship lead the way?"
So they went up that steep, spiral staircase, which
had loomed so prominently in the plans the ingenious
scoundrel had evolved. Across the gallery on the first
floor they entered a little room whose windows over-
looked the garden. This was her bower an inti-
mate cosy room, reflecting on every hand the gentle,
industrious personality of the owner. On an oak table
near the window were spread some papers and ac-
count-books concerned with the estate with which
she had sought to beguile the time of waiting. She
led the way towards this, and, sinking into the high-
backed chair that stood before it, she looked up at
him expectantly. She was pale, there were dark
stains under her eyes, and wistful lines had crept into
the sweet face of that neglected wife.
Contemplating his poor victim now, Sir Richard
may have compared her with the woman by whom
my lord desired so impatiently to supplant her. She
was tall and beautifully shaped, despite an almost
maidenly slenderness. Her countenance was gentle
and adorable, with its soft grey eyes and light brown
hair, and tender, wistful mouth.
It was not difficult to believe that Lord Robert had
as ardently desired her to wife five years ago as he now
desired to be rid of her. Then he obeyed the insistent
spur of passion; now he obeyed the remorseless spur of
ambition. In reality, then as now, his beacon-light
was love of self.
THE BARREN WOOING 143
Seeing her so frail and trusting, trembling in her
anxious impatience to hear the news of her lord which
he had promised her, Sir Richard may have felt some
pang of pity. But, like my lord, he was of those whose
love of self suffers the rivalry of no weak emotion.
"Your news, Sir Richard," she besought him, her
dove-like glance upon his florid face less florid now
than was its wont.
He leaned against the table, his back to the win-
dow. "Why, it is briefly this," said he. " My lord. . ."
And then he checked, and fell into a listening atti-
tude. "What was that? Did you hear anything, my
lady?"
"No. What is it?" Her face betrayed alarm, her
anxiety mounting under so much mystery.
"Sh! Stay you here," he enjoined. "If we are
spied upon . . ." He left the sentence there. Already
he was moving quickly, stealthily, towards the door.
He paused before opening it. "Stay where you are,
my lady," he enjoined again, so gravely that she could
have no thought of disobeying him. "I will return at
once."
He stepped out, closed the door, and crossed to the
stairs. There he stooped. From his pouch he had
drawn a fine length of whipcord, attached at one end
to a tiny bodkin of needle sharpness. That bodkin he
drove into the edge of one of the panels of the wain-
scot, in line with the topmost step; drawing the cord
taut at a height of a foot or so above this step, he
made fast its other end to the newel-post at the stair-
head. He had so rehearsed the thing in his mind that
the performance of it occupied but a few seconds.
Such dim light of that autumn afternoon as reached
the spot would leave that fine cord invisible.
i 4 4 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
Sir Richard went back to her ladyship. She had not
moved in his absence, so brief as scarcely to have left
her time in which to resolve upon disobeying his in-
junction.
"We move in secret like conspirators," said he,
" and so we are easily affrighted. I should have known
it could be none but my lord himself . . ."
"My lord!" she interrupted, coming excitedly to
her feet. "Lord Robert?"
"To be sure, my lady. It was he had need to visit
you in secret for did the Queen have knowledge of
his coming here, it would mean the Tower for him.
You cannot think what, out of love for you, his lord-
ship suffers. The Queen ..."
"But do you say that he is here, man . . . here?"
her voice shrilled up in excitement.
"He is below, my lady. Such is his peril that he
dared not set foot in Cumnor until he was certain be-
yond doubt that you are here alone."
"He is below!" she cried, and a flush dyed her pale
cheeks, a light of gladness quickened her sad eyes. Al-
ready she had gathered from his cunning words a new
and comforting explanation of the things reported
to her. "He is below!" she repeated. "Oh!" She
turned from him, and in an instant was speeding to-
wards the door.
He stood rooted there, his nether lip between his
teeth, his face a ghastly white, whilst she ran on.
"My lord! Robin! Robin!" he heard her calling,
as she crossed the corridor. Then came a piercing
scream that echoed through the silent house; a pause;
a crashing thud below; and silence.
Sir Richard remained by the table, immovable.
THE BARREN WOOING 145
Blood was trickling down his chin. He had sunk his
teeth through his lip when that scream rang out. A
long moment thus, as if entranced, awe-stricken.
Then he braced himself, and went forward, reeling at
first like a drunken man. But by the time he had
reached the stairs he was master of himself again.
Swiftly, for all his trembling fingers, he unfastened
the cord's end from the newel-post. The wrench upon
it had already pulled the bodkin from the wainscot.
He went down that abrupt spiral staircase at a moder-
ate pace, mechanically coiling the length of whipcord,
and bestowing it with the bodkin in his pouch again,
and all the while his eyes were fixed upon the grey
bundle that lay so still at the stairs' foot.
He came to it at last, and, pausing, looked more
closely. He was thankful that there was not the need
to touch it. The position of the brown-haired head
was such as to leave no doubt of the complete success
of his design. Her neck was broken. Lord Robert
Dudley was free to marry the Queen.
Deliberately Sir Richard stepped over the huddled
body of that poor victim of a knave's ambition,
crossed the hall, and passed out, closing the door. An
excellent day's work, thought he, most excellently ac-
complished. The servants, returning from Abingdon
Fair on that Sunday evening, would find her there
They would publish the fact that in their absence he/
ladyship had fallen downstairs and broken her neck,
and that was the end of the matter.
But that was not the end at all. Fate, the ironic in-
terloper, had taken a hand in this evil game.
The Court had moved a few days earlier to Wind-
146 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
sor, and thither on the Friday the 6th of Septem-
ber came Alvarez de Quadra to seek the definite
answer which the Queen had promised him on the sub-
ject of the Spanish marriage. What he had seen
that night at Whitehall, coupled with his mistrust of
her promises and experience of her fickleness, had ren-
dered him uneasy. Either she was trifling with him,
or else she was behaving in a manner utterly unbe-
coming the future wife of the Archduke. In either
case some explanation was necessary. De Quadra
must know where he stood. Having failed to obtain
an audience before the Court left London, he had fol-
lowed it to Windsor, cursing all women and contem-
plating the advantages of the Salic law.
He found at Windsor an atmosphere of constraint,
and it was not until the morrow that he obtained an
audience with the Queen. Even then this was due to
chance rather than to design on the part of Elizabeth.
For they met on the terrace as she was returning from
hunting. She dismissed those about her, including the
stalwart Robert Dudley, and, alone with de Quadra,
invited him to speak.
"Madame," he said, "I am writing to my master,
and I desire to know whether Your Majesty would
wish me to add anything to what you have announced
already as your intention regarding the Archduke."
She knit her brows. The wily Spaniard fenced so
closely that there was no alternative but to come to
grips.
"Why, sir," she answered dryly, "you may tell His
Majesty that I have come to an absolute decision
which is that I will not marry the Archduke."
The colour mounted to the Spaniard's sallow
THE BARREN WOOING 147
cheeks. Iron self-control alone saved him from utter-
ing unpardonable words. Even so he spoke sternly:
"This, Madame, is not what you have led me to be-
lieve when last we talked upon the subject."
At another time Elizabeth might have turned upon
him and rent him for that speech. But it happened
that she was in high good-humour that afternoon, and
disposed to indulgence. She laughed, surveying her-
self in the small steel mirror that dangled from her
waist.
"You are ungallant to remind me, my lord," said
she. "My sex, you may have heard, is privileged to
change of mind."
"Then, Madame, I pray that you may change it
yet again." His tone was bitter.
"Your prayer will not be heard. This time I am re-
solved."
De Quadra bowed. "The King, my master, will not
be pleased, I fear."
She looked him straightly in the face, her dark eyes
kindling.
"God's death!" said she, "I marry to please my-
self, and not the King your master."
"You are resolved on marriage, then?" flashed
he.
"An it please you," she mocked him archly, her
mood of joyousness already conquering her momen-
tary indignation.
"What pleases you must please me also, Madame,"
he answered, in a tone so cold that it belied his words.
"That it please you is reason enough why you should
marry . . . Whom did Your Majesty say?"
"Nay. I named no names. Yet one so astute
i 4 8 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
might hazard a shrewd guess." Half-challenging,
half-coy, she eyed him over her fan.
"A guess? Nay, Madame. I might affront Your
Majesty."
"How so?"
"If I were deluded by appearances. If I named a
subject who signally enjoys your royal favour."
"You mean Lord Robert Dudley." She paled a
little, and her bosom's heave was quickened. "Why
should the guess affront me?"
"Because a queen a wise queen, Madame -
does not mate with a subject particularly with one
who has a wife already."
He had stung her. He had wounded at once the
pride of the woman and the dignity of the queen, yet
in a way that made it difficult for her to take direct of-
fence. She bit her lip and mastered her surge of anger.
Then she laughed, a thought sneeringly.
"Why, as to my Lord Robert's wife, it seems you
are less well-informed than usual, sir. Lady Robert
Dudley is dead, or very nearly so."
And as blank amazement overspread his face, she
passed upon her way and left him.
But anon, considering, she grew vaguely uneasy,
and that very night expressed her afflicting doubt to
my lord, reporting to him de Quadra's words. His
lordship, who was mentally near-sighted, laughed.
"He'll change his tone before long," said he.
She set her hands upon his shoulders, and looked up
adoringly into his handsome gipsy face. Never had
he known her so fond as in these last days since her
surrender to him that night upon the terrace at
Whitehall, never had she been more the woman and
less the queen in her bearing towards him.
THE BARREN WOOING 149
"You are sure, Robin? You are quite sure?" she
pleaded.
He drew her close, she yielding herself to his em-
brace. "With so much at stake could I be less than
sure, sweet?" said he, and so convinced her the
more easily since he afforded her the conviction she
desired.
That was on the night of Saturday, and early on
Monday came the news which justified him of his as-
surances. It was brought him to Windsor by one of
Amy's Cumnor servants, a fellow named Bowes, who,
with the others, had been away at Abingdon Fair yes-
terday afternoon, and had returned to find his mis-
tress dead at the stairs' foot the result of an acci-
dent, as all believed.
It was not quite the news that my lord had been ex-
pecting. It staggered him a little that an accident so
very opportune should have come to resolve his diffi-
culties, obviating the need for recourse to those more
dangerous measures with which he had charged Sir
Richard Verney. He perceived how suspicion might
now fall upon himself, how his enemies would direct
it, and on the instant made provision. There and
then he seized a pen, and wrote to his kinsman, Sir
Thomas Blount, who even then was on his way to
Cumnor. He stated in the letter what he had learnt
from Bowes, bade Blount engage the coroner to make
the strictest investigation, and send for Amy's na-
tural brother, Appleyard. "Have no respect to any
living person," was the final injunction of that letter
which he sent Blount by the hand of Bowes.
And, then, before he could carry to the Queen the
news of this accident which had broken his matri-
150 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
monial shackles, Sir Richard Verney arrived with the
true account. He had expected praise and thanks
from his master. Instead, he met first dismay, and
then anger and fierce reproaches.
"My lord, this is unjust," the faithful retainer pro-
tested. " Knowing the urgency, I took the only way
contrived the accident."
"Pray God," said Dudley, "that the jury find it to
have been an accident; for if the truth should come to
be discovered, I leave you to the consequences. I
warned you of that before you engaged in this.
Look for no help from me."
"I look for none," said Sir Richard, stung to hot
contempt by the meanness and cowardice so charac-
teristic of the miserable egotist he served. "Nor will
there be the need, for I have left no footprints."
"I hope that may be so, for I tell you, man, that I
have ordered a strict inquiry, bidding them have no re-
spect to any living person, and to that I shall adhere."
"And if, in spite of that, I am not hanged?" quoth
Sir Richard, a sneer upon his white face.
"Come to me again when the affair is closed, and
we wiH talk of it."
Sir Richard went out, rage and disgust in his heart,
leaving my lord with rage and fear in his.
Grown calmer now, my lord dressed himself with
care and sought the Queen to tell her of the accident
that had removed the obstacle to their marriage. And
that same night Her Majesty coldly informed de Qua-
dra that Lady Robert Dudley had fallen down a flight
of stairs and broken her neck.
The Spaniard received the information with a
countenance that was inscrutable.
THE BARREN WOOING 151
"Your Majesty's gift of prophecy is not so widely
known as it deserves to be/' was his cryptic comment.
She stared at him blankly a moment. Then a sud-
den uneasy memory awakened by his words, she drew
him forward to a window embrasure apart from those
who had stood about her, and for the greater security
addressed him, as he tells us, in Italian.
"I do not think I understand you, sir. Will you
be plain with me?" She stood erect and stiff, and
frowned upon him after the manner of her bullying
father. But de Quadra held the trumps, and was not
easily intimidated.
"About the prophecy?" said he. "Why, did not
Your Majesty foretell the poor lady's death a full day
before it came to pass ? Did you not say that she was
already dead, or nearly so?"
He saw her blench; saw fear stare from those dark
eyes that could be so very bold. Then her ever-ready
anger followed swiftly.
"'Sblood, man! What do you imply?" she cried,
and went on without waiting for his answer. "The
poor woman was sick and ill, and must soon have suc-
cumbed; it will no doubt be found that the accident
which anticipated nature was due to her condition."
Gently he shook his head, relishing her discomfi-
ture, taking satisfaction in torturing her who had
flouted him and his master, in punishing her whom he
had every reason to believe guilty.
"Your Majesty, I fear, has been ill-informed on
' that score. The poor lady was in excellent health
and like to have lived for many years at least, so I
gather from Sir William Cecil, whose information is
usually exact."
152 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
She clutched his arm. "You told him what I had
said?"
"It was indiscreet, perhaps. Yet, how was I to
know . . .?" He left his sentence there. "I but ex-
pressed my chagrin at your decision on the score of
the Archduke hardly a wise decision, if I may be so
bold," he added slyly.
She caught the suggestion of a bargain, and became
instantly suspicious.
"You transcend the duties of your office, my lord/'
she rebuked him, and turned away.
But soon that night she was closeted with Dudley,
and closely questioning him about the affair. My lord
was mightily vehement.
"I take Heaven to be my witness," quoth he, when
she all but taxed him with having procured his lady's
death, " that I am innocent of any part in it. My in-
junctions to Blount, who has gone to Cumnor, are
that the matter be sifted without respect to any per-
son, and if it can be shown that this is other than the
accident I deem it, the murderer shall hang."
She flung her arms about his neck, and laid her
head on his shoulder. "Oh, Robin, Robin, I am full of
fears," she wailed, and was nearer to tears than he
had ever seen her.
But, anon, as the days passed their fears dimin-
ished, and finally the jury at Cumnor delayed in
their finding, and spurred by my lord to exhaustive
inquiries returned a verdict of "found dead,"
which in all the circumstances left his lordship who
was known, moreover, to have been at Windsor when
his lady died fully acquitted. Both he and the
Queen took courage from that finding, and made
THE BARREN WOOING 153
no secret of it now that they would very soon be
wed.
But there were many whom that finding did not
convince, who read my lord too well, and would never
suffer him to reap the fruits of his evil deed. Promi-
nent among these were Arundel who himself had
aimed at the Queen's hand Norfolk and Pembroke,
and behind them was a great mass of the people.
Indignation against Lord Robert was blazing out,
fanned by such screaming preachers as Lever, who,
from the London pulpits, denounced the projected
marriage, hinting darkly at the truth of Amy Dud-
ley's death.
What was hinted at home was openly expressed
abroad, and in Paris Mary Stuart ventured a cruel
witticism that Elizabeth was to conserve in her mem-
ory: "The Queen of England," she said, "is about to
marry her horsekeeper, who has killed his wife to
make a place for her."
Yet Elizabeth persisted in her intent to marry Dud-
ley, until the sober Cecil conveyed to her towards the
end of that month of September some notion of the
rebellion that was smouldering.
She flared out at him, of course. But he stood his
ground.
"There is," he reminded her, "this unfortunate
matter of a prophecy, as the Bishop of Aquila persists
in calling it."
"God's Body! Is the rogue blabbing?"
"What else did Your Majesty expect from a man
smarting under a sense of injury? He has published it
broadcast that on the day before Lady Robert broke
her neck 3 you told him that she was dead or nearly so.
154 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
And he argues from it a guilty foreknowledge on Your
Majesty's part of what was planned."
"A guilty foreknowledge!" She almost choked in
rage, and then fell to swearing as furiously in that mo-
ment as old King Harry at his worst.
"Madame!" he cried, shaken by her vehemence.
"I but report the phrase he uses. It is not mine."
"Do you believe it?"
"I do not, Madame. If I did I should not be here
at present."
"Does any subject of mine believe it?"
"They suspend their judgment. They wait to learn
the truth from the sequel."
"You mean?"
"That if your motive prove to be such as de Qua-
dra and others allege, they will be in danger of be-
lieving."
"Be plain, man, in God's name. What exactly is
alleged?"
He obeyed her very fully.
"That my lord contrived the killing of his wife so
that he might have liberty to marry Your Majesty,
and that Your Majesty was privy to the deed." He
spoke out boldly, and hurried on before she could let
loose her wrath. "It is still in your power, Madame,
to save your honour, which is now in peril. But there
is only one way in which you can accomplish it. If
you put from you all thought of marrying Lord Rob-
ert, England will believe that de Quadra and those
others lied. If you persist and carry out your inten-
tion, you proclaim the truth of his report; and you see
what must inevitably follow."
She saw, indeed, and, seeing, was afraid.
THE BARREN WOOING 155
Within a few hours of that interview she delivered
her answer to Cecil, which was that she had no inten-
tion of marrying Dudley.
Because of her fear she saved her honour by sacri-
ficing her heart, by renouncing marriage with the only
man she could have taken for her mate of all who had
wooed her. Yet the wound of that renunciation was
slow to heal. She trifled with the notion of other mar-
riages, but ever and anon, in her despair, perhaps, we
see her turning longing eyes towards the handsome
Lord Robert, later made Earl of Leicester. Once, in-
deed, some six years after Amy's death, there was
again some talk of her marrying him, which was
quickly quelled by a reopening of the question of how
Amy died. Between these two, between the fulfilment
of her desire and his ambition, stood the irreconcilable
ghost of his poor murdered wife.
Perhaps it was some thought of this that found ex-
pression in her passionate outburst when she learnt of
the birth of Mary Stuart's child: "The Queen of
Scots is lighter of a fair $on; and I am but a barren
stock."
VII
SIR JUDAS
THE BETRAYAL OF SIR WALTER RALEGH
SIR WALTER was met on landing at Plymouth
from his ill-starred voyage to El Dorado by Sir
Lewis Stukeley, which was but natural, seeing that
Sir Lewis was not only Vice-Admiral of Devon, but
also Sir Walter's very good friend and kinsman.
If Sir Walter doubted whether it was in his quality
as kinsman or as Vice-Admiral that Sir Lewis met
him, the cordiality of the latter's embrace and the
noble entertainment following at the house of Sir
Christopher Hare, near the port, whither Sir Lewis
conducted him, set this doubt at rest and relighted
the lamp of hope in the despairing soul of our adven-
turer. In Sir Lewis he saw only his kinsman his
very good friend and kinsman, to insist upon Stuke-
ley 's own description of himself at a time when of
all others in his crowded life he needed the support of
a kinsman and the guidance of a friend.
You know the story of this Sir Walter, who had
been one of the brightest ornaments of the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, and might have added lustre to that
of King James, had not his Sowship to employ the
title bestowed upon that prince by his own queen
been too mean of soul to appreciate the man's great
worth. Courtier, philosopher, soldier, man of letters
and man of action alike, Ralegh was at once the
SIR JUDAS 157
greatest prose- writer, and one of the greatest captains
of his age, the last survivor of that glorious company
whose other members were Drake and Frobisher
and Hawkins that had given England supremacy
upon the seas, that had broken the power and lowered
the pride of Spain.
His was a name that had resounded, to the honour
and glory of England, throughout the world, a name
that, like Drake's, was a thing of hate and terror to
King Philip and his Spaniards; yet the King of Scots,
unclean of body and of mind, who had succeeded to
the throne of Elizabeth, must affect ignorance of that
great name which shall never die while England lives.
When the splendid courtier stood before him
for at fifty Sir Walter was still handsome of person
and magnificent of apparel James looked him over
and inquired who he might be. When they had told
him:
" I've rawly heard of thee," quoth the royal punster,
who sought by such atrocities of speech to be ac-
claimed a wit.
It was ominous of what must follow, and soon
thereafter you see this great and gallant gentleman
arrested on a trumped-up charge of high treason,
bullied, vituperated, and insulted by venal, peddling
lawyers, and, finally, although his wit and sincerity
had shattered every fragment of evidence brought
against him, sentenced to death. Thus far James
went; but he hesitated to go further, hesitated to
carry out the sentence. Sir Walter had too many
friends in England then; the memory of his glorious
deeds was still too fresh in the public mind, and ex-
ecution might have been attended by serious con-
158 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
sequences for King James. Besides, one at least of
the main objects was achieved. Sir Walter's broad
acres were confiscate by virtue of that sentence, and
King James wanted the land filched thus from
one who was England's pride to bestow it upon
one of those golden calves of his who were England's
shame.
"I maun hae the land for Carr. I maun hae it,"
was his brazen and peevish answer to an appeal
against the confiscation.
For thirteen years Sir Walter lay in the Tower,
under that sentence of death passed in 1603, enjoying
after a season a certain liberty, visited there by his
dear lady and his friends, among whom was Henry,
Prince of Wales, who did not hesitate to publish that
no man but his father whom he detested would
keep such a bird in a cage. He beguiled the time in
literary and scientific pursuits, distilling his essences
and writing that stupendous work of his, "The
History of the World/' Thus old age crept upon him;
but far from quenching the fires of enterprise within
his adventurer's soul, it brought a restlessness that
urged him at last to make a bid for liberty. Despair-
ing of winning it from the clemency of James, he
applied his wits to extracting it from the King's
cupidity.
Throughout his life, since the day when first he had
brought himself to the notice of a queen by making of
his cloak a carpet for her feet, he had retained, side
by side with the dignity of the sage and the greatness
of the hero, the craft and opportunism of the ad-
venturer. His opportunity now was the straitened
condition of the royal treasury, a hint of which had
SIR JUDAS 159
been let fall by Winwood, the Secretary of State. He
announced at once that he knew of a gold mine in
Guiana, the El Dorado of the Spaniards.
On his return from a voyage to Guiana in 1595, he
had written of it thus:
There the common soldier shall fight for gold instead of
pence, pay himself with plates half a foot broad, whereas
he breaks his bones in other wars for provant and penury.
Those commanders and chieftains that shoot at honour
and abundance shall find here more rich and beautiful
cities, more temples adorned with golden images, more
sepulchres filled with treasure than either Cortez found in
Mexico or Pizarro in Peru.
Winwood now reminded him that as a consequence
many expeditions had gone out, but failed to dis-
cover any of these things.
"That," said Ralegh, "is because those adventur-
ers were ignorant alike of the country and of the art
of conciliating its inhabitants. Were I permitted to
go, I would make Guiana to England what Peru has
been to Spain."
That statement, reported to James in his need, was
enough to fire his cupidity, and when Ralegh had
further added that he would guarantee to the Crown
one-fifth of the treasure without asking any contribu-
tion towards the adventure either in money or in
ships, he was permitted to come forth and prepare
for the expedition.
His friends came to his assistance, and in March of
1617 he set sail for El Dorado with a well-manned
and well-equipped fleet of fourteen ships, the Earls of
Arundel and Pembroke standing sureties for his
return.
i6o HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
From the outset the fates were unpropitious. Dis-
aster closed the adventure. Gondomar, the Am-
bassador of Spain at Whitehall, too well-informed of
what was afoot, had warned his master. Spanish
ships waited to frustrate Sir Walter, who was under
pledge to avoid all conflict with the forces of King
Philip. But conflict there was, and bloodshed in
plenty, about the city of Manoa, which the Spaniards
.held as the key to the country into which the English
adventurers sought to penetrate. Among the slain
were the Governor of Manoa, who was Gondomar's
own brother, and Sir Walter's eldest son.
To Ralegh, waiting at the mouth of the Orinoco,
came his beaten forces in retreat, with the terrible
news of a happening that meant his ruin. Half-
maddened, his anguish increased by the loss of his
boy, he upbraided them so fiercely that Keymis, who
had been in charge of the expedition, shut himself up
in his cabin and shot himself with a pocket-pistol.
Mutiny followed, and Whitney most trusted of
Sir Walter's captains set sail for England, being
followed by six other ships of that fleet, which mean-
while had been reduced to twelve. With the remain-
ing five the stricken Sir Walter had followed more at
leisure. What need to hurry? Disgrace, and perhaps
death, awaited him in England. He knew the power
of Spain with James, who was so set upon a Spanish
marriage for his heir, knew Spain's hatred of himself,
and what eloquence it would gather in the mouth of
Gondomar, intent upon avenging his brother's death.
He feared the worst, and so was glad upon landing
to have by him a kinsman upon whom he could lean
for counsel and guidance in this the darkest hour of
SIR JUDAS 161
all his life. Sitting late that night in the library of
Sir Christopher Hare's house, Sir Walter told his
cousin in detail the story of his misadventure, and
confessed to his misgivings.
" My brains are broken," was his cry.
Stukeley combed his beard in thought. He had
little comfort to offer.
"It was not expected," said he, "that you would
return."
"Not expected?" Sir Walter's bowed white head
was suddenly flung back. Indignation blazed in the
eyes that age had left undimmed. "What act in
all my life justified the belief I should be false to
honour? My danger here was made quite plain, and
Captain King would have had me steer a course for
France, where I had found a welcome and a harbour.
But to consent I must have been false to my Lords of
Arundel and Pembroke, who were sureties to the
King for my return. Life is still sweet to me, despite
my threescore years and more, but honour is sweeter
still."
And then, because life was sweet, he bluntly asked
his cousin: "What is the King's intent by me?"
"Nay, now," said Stukeley, "who shall know what
passes in the King's mind? From the signs, I judge
your case to be none so desperate. You have good
friends in plenty, among whom, although the poorest,
count myself the first. Anon, when you are rested,
we'll to London by easy stages, baiting at the houses
of your friends, and enlisting their good offices on your
behalf."
Ralegh took counsel on the matter with Captain
King, a bluff, tawny-bearded seaman, who was de-
voted to him body and soul.
i6 2 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
"Sir Lewis proposes it, eh?" quoth the hardy sea-
man. "And Sir Lewis is Vice-Admiral of Devon ? He
is not by chance bidden to escort you to London?"
The captain, clearly, had escaped the spell of
Stukeley's affability. Sir Walter was indignant. He
had never held his kinsman in great esteem, and had
never been on the best of terms with him in the past.
Nevertheless, he was very far from suspecting him of
what King implied. To convince him that he did Sir
Lewis an injustice, Ralegh put the blunt question to
his kinsman in King's presence.
"Nay," said Sir Lewis, "I am not yet bidden to
escort you. But as Vice-Admiral of Devon I may at
any moment be so bidden. It were wiser, I hold, not
to await such an order. Though even if it come," he
made haste to add, "you may still count upon my
friendship. I am your kinsman first, and Vice-
Admiral after."
With a smile that irradiated his handsome, virile
countenance, Sir Walter held out his hand to clasp
his cousin's in token of appreciation. Captain King
expressed no opinion save what might be conveyed
in a grunt and a shrug.
Guided now unreservedly by his cousin's counsel,
Sir Walter set out with him upon that journey to
London. Captain King went with them, as well as
Sir Walter's body-servant, Cotterell, and a French-
man named Manourie, who had made his first ap-
pearance in the Plymouth household on the previous
day. Stukeley explained the fellow as a gifted man of
medicine, whom he had sent for to cure him of a trivial
but inconvenient ailment by which he was afflicted.
Journeying by slow stages, as Sir Lewis had
SIR JUDAS 163
directed, they came at last to Brentford. Sir Walter,
had he followed his own bent, would have journeyed
more slowly still, for in a measure, as he neared
London, apprehensions of what might await him
there grew ever darker. He spoke of them to King,
and the blunt captain said nothing to dispel them.
"You are being led like a sheep to the shambles/'
he declared, "and you go like a sheep. You should
have landed in France, where you have friends.
Even now it is not too late. A ship could be pro-
cured..."
"And my honour could be sunk at sea," Sir Walter
harshly concluded, in reproof of such counsel.
But at the inn at Brentford he was sought out
by a visitor, who brought him the like advice in rather
different terms. This was De Chesne, the secretary
of the French envoy, Le Clerc. Cordially welcomed
by Ralegh, the Frenchman expressed his deep concern
to see Sir Walter under arrest.
"You conclude too hastily," laughed Sir Walter.
"Monsieur, I do not conclude. I speak of what I
am inform'."
"Misinformed, sir. I am not a prisoner at least,
not yet," he added, with a sigh. "I travel of my own
free will to London with my good friend and kinsman
Stukeley, to lay the account of my voyage before the
King."
"Of your own free will? You travel of your own
free will? And you are not a prisoner? Ha!" There
was bitter mockery in De Chesne's short laugh.
"C'est bien dr6le!" And he explained: "Milord the
Duke of Buckingham, he has write in his master's
name to the ambassador Gondomar that you are
i6 4 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
taken and held at the disposal of the King of Spain.
Gondomar is to inform him whether King Philip wish
that you be sent to Spain to essay the justice of His
Catholic Majesty, or that you suffer here. Mean-
while your quarters are being made ready in the
Tower. Yet you tell me you are not prisoner! You
go of your own free will to London. Sir Walter, do not
be deceive*. If you reach London, you are lost."
Now here was news to shatter Sir Walter's last
illusion. Yet desperately he clung to the fragments of
it. The envoy's secretary must be at fault.
1 'Tis yourself are at fault, Sir Walter, in that you
trust those about you," the Frenchman insisted.
Sir Walter stared at him, frowning. " D'ye mean
Stukeley?" quoth he, half-indignant already at the
mere suggestion.
"Sir Lewis, he is your kinsman." De Chesne
shrugged. " You should know your family better than
I. But who is this Manourie who accompanies you?
Where is he come from? What you know of him?"
Sir Walter confessed that he knew nothing.
" But I know much. He is a fellow of evil reputa-
tion. A spy who does not scruple to sell his own
people. And I know that letters of commission from
the Privy Council for your arrest were give' to him
in London ten days ago. Whether those letters were
to himself, or he was just the messenger to another,
imports nothing. The fact is everything. The warrant
against you exists, and it is in the hands of one or
another of those that accompany you. I say no more.
As I have tol' you, you should know your own family.
But of this be sure, they mean that you go to the
Tower, and so to your death. And now, Sir Walter, if
SIR JUDAS , 165
I show you the disease I also bring the remedy. I am
command' by my master to offer you a French barque
which is in the Thames, and a safe conduct to the
Governor of Calais. In France you will find safety
and honour, as your worth deserve'."
Up sprang Sir Walter from his chair, and flung off
the cloak of thought in which he had been mantled.
"Impossible!" he said. "Impossible! There is my
plighted word to return, and there are my Lords of
Arundel and Pembroke, who are sureties for me. I
cannot leave them to suffer by my default."
"They will not suffer at all," De Chesne assured
him. He was very well informed. "King James has
yielded to Spain partly because he fears, partly be-
cause he will have a Spanish marriage for Prince
Charles, and will do nothing to trouble his good
relations with King Philip. But, after all, you have
friends, whom His Majesty also fears. If you escape'
you would resolve all his perplexities. I do not be-
lieve that any obstacle will be offer' to your escape
else why they permit you to travel thus without any
guard, and to retain your sword?"
Half distracted as he was by what he had learnt,
yet Sir Walter clung stoutly and obstinately to what
he believed to be the only course for a man of honour.
And so he dismissed De Chesne with messages of
gratitude but refusal to his master, and sent for
Captain King. Together they considered all that the
secretary had stated, and King agreed with De
Chesne's implied opinion that it was Sir Lewis himself
who held the warrant.
They sent for him at once, and Ralegh straightly
taxed him with it. Sir Lewis as straightly admitted it ?
166 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
and when King thereupon charged him with deceit
he showed no anger, but only the profoundest grief.
He sank into a chair, and took his head in his hands.
"What could I do? What could I do?" he cried.
"The warrant came in the very moment we were
setting out. At first I thought of telling you; andr
then I bethought me that to do so would be but to
trouble your mind, without being able to offer you
help."
Sir Walter understood what was implied. " Did you
not say," he asked, " that you were my kinsman first
and Vice-Admiral of Devon after?"
"Aye and so I am. Though I must lose my
office of Vice-Admiral, which has cost me six hundred
pounds, if I suffer you to escape, I'd never hesitate if
it were not for Manourie, who watches me as closely
as he watches you, and would baulk us at the last.
And that is why I have held my peace on the score of
this warrant. What can it help that I should trouble
you with the matter until at the same time I can offer
you some way out?"
"The Frenchman has a throat, and throats can be
slit," said the downright King.
"So they can; and men can be hanged for slitting
them," returned Sir Lewis and thereafter resumed
and elaborated his first argument, using now such
forceful logic and obvious sincerity that Sir Walter
was convinced. He was no less convinced, too, of the
peril in which he stood. He plied those wits of his,
which had rarely failed him in an extremity. Man-
ourie was the difficulty. But in his time he had known
many of these agents who, without sentimental in-
terest and purely for the sake of gold, were ready to
SIR JUDAS 167
play such parts; and never yet had he known one who
was not to be corrupted. So that evening he desired
Manourie's company in the room above stairs that
had been set apart for Sir Walter's use. Facing him
across the table at which both were seated, Sir
Walter thrust his clenched fist upon the board, and,
suddenly opening it, dazzled the Frenchman's beady
eyes with the jewel sparkling in his palm.
"Tell me, Manourie, are you paid as much as that
to betray me?"
Manourie paled a little under his tan. He was a
swarthy, sharp-featured fellow, slight and wiry. He
looked into Sir Walter's grimly smiling eyes, then
again at the white diamond, from which the candle-
light was striking every colour of the rainbow. He
made a shrewd estimate of its price, and shook his
black head. He had quite recovered from the shock
of Sir Walter's question.
"Not half as much," he confessed, with impudence.
"Then you might find it more remunerative to
serve me," said the knight. "This jewel is to be
earned."
The agent's eyes flickered; he passed his tongue
over his lips. "As how?" quoth he.
"Briefly thus: I have but learnt of the trammel in
which I am taken. I must have time to concert my
measures of escape, and time is almost at an end.
You are skilled in drugs, so my kinsman tells me.
Can you so drug me as to deceive physicians that I
am in extremis?"
Manourie considered awhile.
"I ... I think I could," he answered presently.
"And keep faith with me in this, at the price of,
say two such stones?"
168 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
The venal knave gasped in amazement. This was
not generosity; it was prodigality. He recovered
again, and swore himself Sir Walter's.
"About it, then." Sir Walter rolled the gem across
the board into the clutch of the spy, which pounced
to meet it. "Keep that in earnest. The other will
follow when we have cozened them."
Next morning Sir Walter could not resume the
journey. When Cotterell went to dress him he found
his master taken with vomits, and reeling like a drunk-
ard. The valet ran to fetch Sir Lewis, and when they
returned together they found Sir Walter on all fours
gnawing the rushes of the floor, his face livid and
horribly distorted, his brow glistening with sweat.
Stukeley, in alarm, ordered Cotterell to get his
master back to bed and to foment him, which was
done. But on the next day there was no improve-
ment, and on the third things were in far more serious
case. The skin of his brow and arms and breast was
inflamed, and covered with horrible purple blotches
the result of an otherwise harmless ointment with
which the French empiric had supplied him.
When Stukeley beheld him thus disfigured, and
lying apparently inert and but half-conscious upon
his bed, he backed away in terror. The Vice-Ad-
miral had seen aforetime the horrible manifestations
of the plague, and could not be mistaken here. He
fled from the infected air of his kinsman's chamber,
and summoned what physicians were available to
pronounce and prescribe. The physicians came
three in number but manifested no eagerness to
approach the patient closely. The mere sight of him
was enough to lead them to the decision that he was
SIR JUDAS 169
afflicted with the plague in a singularly virulent form.
Presently one of them plucked up courage so far as
to feel the pulse of the apparently delirious patient.
Its feebleness confirmed his diagnosis; moreover, the
hand he held was cold and turgid. He was not to
know that Sir Walter had tightly wrapped about his
upper arm the ribbon from his poniard, and so he was
entirely deceived.
The physicians withdrew, and delivered their ver-
dict, whereupon Sir Lewis at once sent word of it to
the Privy Council.
That afternoon the faithful Captain King, sorely
afflicted by the news, came to visit his master, and
was introduced to Sir Walter's chamber by Man-
xirie, who was in attendance upon him. To the sea-
man's amazement he found Sir Walter sitting up in
bed, surveying in a hand-mirror a face that was
horrible beyond description with the complacent
smile of one who takes satisfaction in his appearance.
Yet there was no fevered madness in the smiling
eyes. They were alive with intelligence, amounting,
indeed, to craft.
"Ah, King!" was the glad welcome. "The prophet
David did make himself a fool, and suffered spittle to
fall upon his beard, to escape from the hands of his
enemies. And there was Brutus, aye, and others as
memorable who have descended to such artifice."
Though he laughed, it is clear that he was seeking to
excuse an unworthiness of which he was conscious.
"Artifice ? " quoth King, aghast. " Is this artifice ? "
" Aye a hedge against my enemies, who will be
afraid to approach me."
King sat himself down by his master's bed. "A
iyo HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
better hedge against your enemies. Sir Walter, would
have been the strip of sea 'twixt here and France.
Would to Heaven you had done as I advised ere you
set foot in this ungrateful land."
"The omission may be repaired," said Sir Walter.
Before the imminence of his peril, as now disclosed
to him, Sir Walter had been reconsidering De Chesne's
assurance touching my Lords of Arundel and Pem-
broke, and he had come to conclude the more
readily, perhaps, because it was as he would have it
that De Chesne was right; that to break faith with
them were no such great matter after all, nor one for
which they would be called upon to suffer. And so,
now, when it was all but too late, he yielded to the
insistence of Captain King, and consented to save
himself by flight to France. King was to go about
the business of procuring a ship without loss of time.
Yet there was no need of desperate haste, as was
shown when presently orders came to Brentford for
the disposal of the prisoner. The King, who was at
Salisbury, desired that Sir Walter should be con-
veyed to his own house in London. Stukeley reported
this to him, proclaiming it a sign of royal favour. Sir
Walter was not deceived. He knew the reason to be
fear lest he should infect the Tower with the plague
by which he was reported stricken.
So the journey was resumed, and Sir Walter was
brought to London, and safely bestowed in his own
house, but ever in the care of his loving friend and
kinsman. Manourie's part being fulfilled and the aim
accomplished, Sir Walter completed the promised
payment by bestowing upon him the second diamond
a form of eminently portable currency with which
SIR JUDAS 171
the knight was well supplied. On the morrow Man-
ourie was gone, dismissed as a consequence of the
part he had played.
It was Stukeley who told Sir Walter this a very
well-informed and injured Stukeley, who asked to
know what he had done to forfeit the knight's con-
fidence that behind his back Sir Walter secretly con-
certed means of escape. Had his cousin ceased to
trust him?
Sir Walter wondered. Looking into that lean,
crafty face, he considered King's unquenchable mis-
trust of the man, bethought him of his kinsman's
general neediness, remembered past events that shed
light upon his ways and nature, and began now at last
to have a sense of the man's hypocrisy and double-
dealing. Yet he reasoned in regard to him precisely
as he had reasoned in regard to Manourie. The
fellow was acquisitive, and therefore corruptible.
If, indeed, he was so base that he had been bought to
betray Sir Walter, then he could be bought again to
betray those who had so bought him.
"Nay, nay," said Sir Walter easily. "It is not
lack of trust in you, my good friend. But you are the
holder of an office, and knowing as I do the upright
honesty of your character, I feared to embarrass you
with things whose very knowledge must give you the
parlous choice of being false to that office or false to
me."
Stukeley broke forth into imprecations. He was,
he vowed, the most accursed and miserable of men
that such a task as this should have fallen to his
lot. And he was a poor man, too, he would have his
cousin remember. It was unthinkable that he should
172 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
use the knowledge he had gained to attempt to frus-
trate Sir Walter's plans of escape to France. And this
notwithstanding that if Sir Walter escaped, it is
certain he would lose his office of Vice-Admiral and
the six hundred pounds he had paid for it.
"As to that, you shall be at no loss," Sir Walter
assured him. "I could not suffer it. I pledge you my
honour, Lewis, that you shall have a thousand
pounds from my wife on the day that I am safely
landed in France or Holland. Meanwhile, in earnest
of what is to come, here is a toy of value for you."
And he presented Sir Lewis with a jewel of price, a
great ruby encrusted in diamonds.
Thus reassured that he would be immune from
pecuniary loss, Sir Lewis was ready to throw himself
whole-heartedly into Sir Walter's plans, and to render
him all possible assistance. True, this assistance was
a costly matter; there was this person to be bought
and that one; there were expenses here and expenses
there, incurred by Sir Lewis on his kinsman's behalf;
and there were odd presents, too, which Stukeley
seemed to expect and which Sir Walter could not deny
him. He had no illusions now that King had been
right; that here he was dealing with a rogue who
would exact the uttermost farthing for his services,
but he was gratified at the shrewdness with which he
had taken his cousin's measure, and did not grudge
the bribes by which he was to escape the scaffold.
De Chesne came again to the house in London, to
renew his master's offer of a ship to carry Sir Walter
overseas, and such other assistance as Sir Walter
might require. But by now the knight's arrange-
ments were complete. His servant Cotterell had come
SIR JUDAS 173
to inform him that his own boatswain, now in London,
was the owner of a ketch, at present lying at Tilbury,
admirably suited for the enterprise and entirely at
Sir Walter's disposal. It had been decided, then, with
the agreement of Captain King, that they should
avail themselves of this; and accordingly Cotterell
was bidden desire the boatswain to have the craft
made ready for sea at once. In view of this, and
anxious to avoid unnecessarily compromising the
French envoy, Sir Walter gratefully declined the
latter's offer.
And so we come at last to that July evening ap-
pointed for the flight. Ralegh, who, having for some
time discarded the use of Manourie's ointment, had
practically recovered his normal appearance, covering
his long white hair under a Spanish hat, and muffling
the half of his face in the folds of a cloak, came to
Wapping Stairs that ill-omened place of execution
of pirates and sea-rovers accompanied by Cotterell,
who carried the knight's cloak-bag, and by Sir Lewis
and Sir Lewis's son. Out of solicitude for their dear
friend and kinsman, the Stukeleys could not part
from him until he was safely launched upon his voy-
age. At the head of the stairs they were met by
Captain King; at the foot of them a boat was waiting,
as concerted, the boatswain at the tiller.
King greeted them with an air of obvious relief.
"You feared perhaps we should not come," said
Stukeley, with a sneer at the captain's avowed mis-
trust of him.- "Yet now, I trust, you'll do me the jus-
tice to admit that I have shown myself an honest man."
The uncompromising King looked at him and
frowned, misliking the words.
174 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
"I hope that you'll continue so," he answered
stiffly.
They went down the slippery steps to the boat,
and then the shore glided slowly past them as they
pushed off into the stream of the ebbing tide.
A moment later. King, whose suspicious eyes kept
a sharp lookout, observed another boat put off some
two hundred yards higher up the river. At first
he saw it breast the stream as if proceeding towards
London Bridge, then abruptly swing about and follow
them. Instantly he drew the attention of Sir Walter
to that pursuing wherry.
"What's this?" quoth Sir Walter harshly. "Are
we betrayed?"
The watermen, taking fright at the words, hung
now upon their oars.
"Put back," Sir Walter bade them. "I'll not
betray my friends to no purpose. Put back, and let us
home again."
"Nay, now," said Stukeley gravely, himself
watching the wherry. "We are more than a match
for them in oars, even if their purpose be such as you
suspect for which suspicion, when all is said, there
is no ground. On then!" He addressed himself to
the watermen, whipping out a pistol, and growing
truculent in mien and voice. "To your oars! Row,
you dogs, or I'll pistol you where you sit."
The men bent their backs forthwith, and the boat
swept on. But Sir Walter was still full of apprehen-
sions, still questioning the wisdom of keeping to their
down-stream course if they were being followed.
"But are we followed?" cried the impatient Sir
Lewis. " 'Sdeath, cousin, is not the river a highway
SIR JUDAS 175
for all the world to use, and must every wherry that
chances to go our way be in pursuit of us? If you
are to halt at every shadow, faith, you'll never ac-
complish anything. I vow I am unfortunate in hav-
ing a friend whom I would save so full of doubts and
fears."
Sir Walter gave him reason, and even King came
to conclude that he had suspected him unjustly,
whilst the rowers, under Stukeley's suasion, now
threw themselves heartily into their task, and on-
ward sped the boat through the deepening night,
taking but little account of that other wherry that
hung ever in their wake. In this wise they came at
length to Greenwich on the last of the ebb. But here
finding the water beginning to grow against them,
and wearied by the exertion into which Stukeley's
enthusiasm had flogged them, the watermen paused
again, declaring that they could not reach Gravesend
before morning.
Followed a brief discussion, at the end of which Sir
Walter bade them put him ashore at Purfleet.
"And that's the soundest counsel," quoth the
boatswain. "For at Purfleet we can get horses on
to Tilbury."
Stukeley was of the same opinion; but not so the
more practical Captain King.
" Tis useless," he declared to them. "At this hour
how shall you get horses to go by land?"
And now, Sir Walter, looking over his shoulder,
saw the other wherry bearing down upon them
through the faintly opalescent mists of dawn. A hail
came to them across the water.
"Oh, 'Sdeath! We are betrayed!" cried Ralegh
176 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
bitterly, and Stukeley swore more fiercely still. Sir
Walter turned to him. "Put ashore," he said shortly,
"and let us home."
"Aye, perhaps 'twere best. For to-night there's an
end to the enterprise, and if I am taken in your com-
pany now, what shall be said to me for this active as-
sistance in your escape?" His voice was gloomy, his
face drawn and white.
" Could you not plead that you had but pretended
to go with me to seize on my private papers?" sug-
gested the ingenious mind of Ralegh.
"I could. But shall I be believed? Shall I?" His
gloom was deepening to despair.
Ralegh was stricken almost with remorse on his
cousin's account. His generous heart was now more
concerned with the harm to his friends than with his
own doom. He desired to make amends to Stukeley,
but had no means save such as lay in the power of
that currency he used. Having naught else to give, he
must give that. He plunged his hand into an inner
pocket, and brought forth a handful of jewels, which
he thrust upon his kinsman.
" Courage," he urged him. "Up, now, and we may
yet win out and home, so that all will be well with you
at least, and you shall not suffer for your friendship to
me."
Stukeley embraced him then, protesting his love
and desire to serve him.
They came to land at last, just below Greenwich
bridge, and almost at the same moment the other
wherry grounded immediately above them. Men
sprang from her, with the obvious intent of cutting off,
their retreat.
SIR JUDAS 177
"Too late!" said Ralegh, and sighed, entirely with-
out passion now that the dice had fallen and showed
that the game was lost. "You must act on my sug-
gestion to explain your presence, Lewis."
"Indeed, there is no other course," Sir Lewis
agreed. "And you are in the same case, Captain
King. You must confess that you joined with me but
to betray Sir Walter. I'll bear you out. Thus, each
supporting the other ..."
"I'll roast in hell before I brand myself a traitor,"
roared the captain furiously. "And were you an hon-
est man, Sir Lewis, you'ld understand my meaning."
"So, so?" said Stukeley, in a quiet, wicked voice.
And it was observed that his son and one or two of the
watermen had taken their stand beside him as if in
readiness for action. "Why, then, since you will have
it so, Captain, I arrest you, in the King's name, on a
charge of abetting treason."
The captain fell back a step, stricken a moment by
sheer amazement. Then he groped for a pistol'to do
at last what he realized he should have done long
since. Instantly he was overpowered. It was only
then that Sir Walter understood the thing that had
happened, and with understanding came fury. The
old adventurer flung back his cloak, and snatched at
his rapier to put it through the vitals of his dear
friend and kinsman. But he was too late. Hands
seized upon him, and he found himself held by the
men from the wherry, confronted by a Mr. William
Herbert, whom he knew for Stukeley's cousin, and he
heard Mr. Herbert formally asking him for the sur-
render of his sword.
Instantly he governed himself, repressed his fury.
178 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
He looked coldly at his kinsman, whose face showed
white and evil in the growing light of the early sum-
mer dawn. " Sir Lewis/' was all he said, " these actions
will not turn out to your credit."
He had no illusion left. His understanding was now
a very full one. His dear friend and kinsman had
played him false throughout, intending first to drain
him of his resources before finally flinging the empty
husk to the executioner. Manourie had been in the
plot; he had run with the hare and hunted with the
hounds; and Sir Walter's own servant Cotterell had
done no less. Amongst them they had "cozened the
great cozener" to use Stukeley's own cynical ex-
pression. Even so, it was only on his trial that Sir
Walter plumbed the full depth of Stukeley's baseness;
for it was only then he learnt that his kinsman had
been armed by a warrant of immunity to assist his
projects of escape, so that he might the more effec-
tively incriminate and betray 'him; and Sir Walter
discovered also that the ship in which he had landed,
and other matters, were to provide additional Judas
fees to this acquisitive betrayer.
If to escape his enemies Sir Walter had had re-
course to artifices unworthy the great hero that he
was, now that all hope was lost he conducted himself
with a dignity and cheerfulness beyond equal. So
calm and self-possessed and masterly was his defence
from the charge of piracy preferred at the request of
Spain, and so shrewd in its inflaming appeal to public
opinion, that his judges were constrained to abandon
that line of prosecution, and could discover no way of
giving his head to King James save by falling back
upon the thirteen-year-old sentence of death against
him. Of this they now ordered execution.
SIR JUDAS 179
Never a man who loved his life as dearly as Sir
Walter loved it met death as blithely. He dressed
himself for the scaffold with that elegance and rich-
ness which all his life he had observed. He wore a ruff
band and black velvet wrought nightgown over a
doublet of hair-coloured satin, a black wrought waist-
coat, black cut taffety breeches and ash-coloured silk
stockings. Under his plumed hat he covered his white
locks with a wrought nightcap. This last he bestowed
on his way to the scaffold upon a bald-headed old man
who had come to take a last look of him, with the ob-
servation that he was more in need of it than himself.
When he had removed it, it was observed that his hair
was not curled as usual. This was a matter that had
fretted his barber Peter in the prison of the Gatehouse
at Westminster that morning. But Sir Walter had
put him off with a laugh and a jest.
"Let them comb it that shall have it," he had said
of his own head.
Having taken his leave of the friends who had
flocked about him with the observation that he had a
long journey before him, he called for the axe, and,
when presented to him, ran his fingers along the edge,
and smiled.
" Sharp medicine," quoth he, "but a sound cure for
all diseases."
When presently the executioner bade him turn his
head to the east: "It is no great matter which way a
man's head stands, so that his heart lies right," he said.
Thus passed one of England's greatest heroes, in-
deed, one of the very makers of this England, and
than his death there is no more shameful blot upon
the shameful reign of that pusillanimous James, un-
i8o HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
clean of body and of soul, who sacrificed him to the
King of Spain.
A spectator of his death, who suffered for his words
as men must ever suffer for the regardless utter-
ance of Truth declared that England had not such
another head to cut off.
As for Stukeley, the acquisitiveness which had
made a Judas of him was destined, by a poetic justice,
ever desired but rarely forthcoming for knaves, soon
to be his ruin. He was caught diminishing the gold
coin of the realm by the operation known to-day as
"clipping/' and with him was taken his creature
Manourie, who, to save himself, turned chief witness
against Stukeley. Sir Lewis was sentenced to death,
but saved himself by purchasing his pardon at the
cost of every ill-gotten shilling he possessed, - and he
lived thereafter as bankrupt of means as he was of
honour.
Yet before all this happened, Sir Lewis had for his
part in Sir Walter Ralegh's death come to be an ob-
ject of execration throughout the land, and to be com-
monly known as "Sir Judas." At Whitehall he suf-
fered rebuffs and insults that found a climax in the
words addressed to him by the Lord Admiral, to
whom he went to give an account of his office.
"Base fellow, darest thou who art the contempt
and scorn of men offer thyself in my presence?"
For a man of honour there was but one course. Sir
Judas was not a man of honour. He carried his griev-
ance to the King.
James leered at him. "What wouldst thou have me
do ? Wouldst thou have me hang him ? On my soul, if
I should hang all that speak ill of thee, all the trees of
the country wouid not suffice, so great is the number."
VIII
HIS INSOLENCE OF BUCKINGHAM
GEORGE VILLIERS' COURTSHIP OF ANNE OF
AUSTRIA
HE was Insolence incarnate.
Since the day when, a mere country lad, his
singular good looks had attracted the attention of
King James notoriously partial to good-looking
lads and had earned him the office of cup-bearer to
His Majesty, the career of George Villiers is to be read
in a series of acts of violent and ever-increasing arro-
gance, expressing the vanity and levity inherent in
his nature. Scarcely was he established in the royal
favour than he distinguished himself by striking an
offending gentleman in the very presence of his sover-
eign an act of such gross disrespect to royalty that
his hand would have paid forfeit, as by law de-
manded, had not the maudlin king deemed him too
lovely a fellow to be so cruelly maimed.
Over the mind and will of King Charles his ascend-
ancy became even greater than it had been over that
of King James; and it were easy to show that the acts
of George Villiers's life supplied the main planks of
that scaffold in Whitehall whereupon Charles Stuart
came to lose his head. Charles was indeed a martyr; a
martyr chiefly to the reckless, insolent, irresponsible
vanity of this Villiers, who, from a simple country
squire with nothing but personal beauty to recommend
182 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
him,, had risen to be, as Duke of Buckingham, the
first gentleman in England.
The heady wine of power had gone to his brain, and
so addled it that, as John Chamberlain tells us, there
was presently a touch of craziness in him of the
variety, no doubt, known to modern psychologists as
megalomania. He lost the sense of proportion, and
was without respect for anybody or anything. The
Commons of England and the immensely dignified
Court of Spain during that disgraceful, pseudo-
romantic adventure at Madrid were alike the butts
of this parvenu's unmeasured arrogance. But the
crowning insolence of his career was that tragi-com-
edy the second act of which was played on a June
evening in an Amiens garden on the banks of the
river Somme.
Three weeks ago on the I4th May, 1625, to be
precise Buckingham had arrived in Paris as am-
bassador extraordinary, charged with the task of con-
ducting to England the King of France's sister, Hen-
rietta Maria, who three days earlier had been married
by proxy to King Charles.
The occasion enabled Buckingham to fling the reins
on to the neck of his mad vanity, to indulge to the
very fullest his crazy passion for ostentation and mag-
nificence. Because the Court of France was proverbi-
ally renowned for splendour and luxury, Buckingham
felt it due to himself to extinguish its brilliance by his
own. On his first coming to the Louvre he literally
blazed. He wore a suit of white satin velvet with a
short cloak in the Spanish fashion, the whole powdered
over with diamonds to the value of some ten thousand
pounds. An enormous diamond clasped the heron's
HIS INSOLENCE OF BUCKINGHAM 183
plume in his hat; diamonds flashed in the hilt of his
sword; diamonds studded his very spurs, which were
of beaten gold; the highest orders of England, Spain,
and France flamed on his breast. On the occasion of
his second visit he wore a suit of purple satin, of in-
tent so lightly sewn with pearls that as he moved he
shook them off like raindrops, and left them to lie
where they fell, as largesse for pages and the lesser fry
of the Court.
His equipages and retinue were of a kind to match
his personal effulgence. His coaches were lined with
velvet and covered with cloth of gold, and some seven
hundred people made up his train. There were musi-
cians, watermen, grooms of the chamber, thirty chief
yeomen, a score of cooks, as many grooms, a dozen
pages, two dozen footmen, six outriders, and twenty
gentlemen, each with his own attendants, all arrayed
as became the satellites of a star of such great magni-
tude.
Buckingham succeeded in his ambition. Paris, that
hitherto had set the fashion to the world, stared
mouth-agape, dazzled by the splendour of this superb
and scintillating ambassador.
Another, by betraying consciousness of the figure
that he cut, might have made himself ridiculous. But
Buckingham's insolent assurance was proof against
that peril. Supremely self-satisfied, he was conscious
only that what he did could not be better done, and
he ruffled it with an air of easy insouciance, as if in all
this costly display there was nothing that was not
normal. He treated with princes, and even with the
gloomy Louis XIII, as with equals; and, becoming
more and more intoxicated with his very obvious sue-
i8 4 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
cess, he condescended to observe approvingly the
fresh beauty of the young Queen.
Anne of Austria, then in her twenty-fourth year,
was said to be one of the most beautiful women in
Europe. She was of a good height and carriage, slight,
and very gracefully built, of a ravishing fairness of
skin and hair, whilst a look of wistfulness had come to
invest with an indefinable tenderness her splendid
eyes. Her childless marriage to the young King of
France, which had endured now for ten years, had
hardly been successful. Gloomy, taciturn, easily
moved to suspicion, and difficult to convince of error,
Louis XIII held his wife aloof, throwing up between
himself and her a wall of coldness, almost of dis-
like.
There is a story and Tallemant des Reaux gives
credit to it that, in the early days of her reign as
Queen of France, Richelieu had fallen deeply in love
with her, and that she, with the mischief of an irre-
sponsible young girl, had encouraged him, merely to
betray him to a ridicule which his proud spirit had
never been able to forgive. Be that or another the
reason, the fact that Richelieu hated her, and sub-
jected her to his vindictive persecution, is beyond dis-
pute. And it was he who by a hundred suggestions
poisoned against her the King's mind, and thus kept
ever open the gulf between the two.
' The eyes of that neglected young wife dilated a lit-
tle, and admiration kindled in them, when they rested
upon the dazzling figure of my Lord of Buckingham.
He must have seemed to her a figure of romance, a
prince out of a fairy-tale.
That betraying glance he caught, and it inflamed at
HIS INSOLENCE OF BUCKINGHAM 185
once his monstrous arrogance. To the scalps already
adorning the belt of his vanity he would add that of
the love of a beautiful young queen. Perhaps he was
thrilled in his madness by the thought of the peril
that would spice such an adventure. Into that adven-
ture he plunged forthwith. He wooed her during the
eight days that he abode in Paris, flagrantly, openly,
contemptuous of courtiers and of the very King him-
self. At the Louvre, at the Hotel de Chevreuse, at the
Luxembourg, where the Queen-Mother held her
Court, at the Hotel de Guise, and elsewhere he was
ever at the Queen's side.
Richelieu, whose hard pride and self-love had been
wounded by the Duke's cavalier behaviour, who de-
spised the fellow for an upstart, and may even have
resented that so shallow a man should have been sent
to treat with a statesman of his own calibre for
other business besides the marriage had brought
Buckingham to Paris suggested to the King that
the Duke's manner in approaching the Queen lacked
a proper deference, and the Queen's manner of re-
ceiving him a proper circumspection. Therefore the
King's long face became longer, his gloomy eyes
gloomier, as he looked on. Far, however, from acting
as a deterrent, the royal scowl was mere incense to the
vanity of Buckingham, a spur to goad him on to
greater daring.
On the id of June a splendid company of some four
thousand French nobles and ladies, besides Bucking-
ham and his retinue, quitted Paris to accompany
Henrietta Maria, now Queen of England, on the first
stage of her journey to her new home. The King was
not of the party. He had gone with Richelieu to
1 86 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
Fontainebleau, leaving it to the Queen and the Queen-
Mother to accompany his sister.
Buckingham missed no chance upon that journey
of pressing his attentions upon Anne of Austria.
Duty dictated that his place should be beside the car-
riage of Henrietta Maria. But duty did not apply to
His Insolence of Buckingham, so indifferent of whom
he might slight or offend. And then the devil took a
hand in the game.
At Amiens, the Queen-Mother fell ill, so that the
Court was compelled to halt there for a few days to
give Her Majesty the repose she required. Whilst
Amiens was thus honoured by the presence of three
queens at one and the same time within its walls, the
Due de Chaulnes gave an entertainment in the Cita-
del. Buckingham attended this, and in the dance
that followed the banquet it was Buckingham who led
out the Queen.
Thereafter the royal party had returned to the
Bishop's Palace, where it was lodged, and a small
company went out to take the evening cool in the
Bishop's fragrant gardens on the Somme, Bucking-
ham ever at the Queen's side. Anne of Austria was at-
tended by her Mistress of the Household, the beauti-
ful, witty Marie de Rohan, Duchess of Chevreuse,
and by her equerry, Monsieur de Putange. Madame
de Chevreuse had for cavalier that handsome cox-
comb, Lord Holland, who was one of Buckingham's
creatures, between whom and herself a certain tran-
sient tenderness had sprung up. Monsieur de Pu-
tange was accompanied by Madame de Vernet, with
whom at the time he was over head and ears in love.
Elsewhere about the spacious gardens other courtiers
sauntered.
HIS INSOLENCE OF BUCKINGHAM 187
Now either Madame de Chevreuse and Monsieur
de Putange were too deeply engrossed in their respec-
tive companions, or else the state of their own hearts
and the tepid, languorous eventide disposed them
complacently towards the affair of gallantry upon
which their mistress almost seemed to wish to be em-
barked. They forgot, it would seem, that she was a
queen, and remembered sympathetically that she was
a woman, and that she had for companion the most
splendid cavalier in all the world. Thus they com-
mitted the unpardonable fault of lagging behind, and
allowing her to pass out of their sight round the bend
of an avenue by the water.
No sooner did Buckingham realize that he was
alone with the Queen, that the friendly dusk and a
screen of trees secured them from observation, than,
piling audacity upon audacity, he determined to ac-
complish here and now the conquest of this lovely
lady who had used him so graciously and received his
advances with such manifest pleasure.
"How soft the night! How exquisite!" he sighed.
"Indeed," she agreed. "And how still but for the
gentle murmur of the river."
"The river!" he cried, on a new note. "That is no
gentle murmur. The river laughs, maliciously mock-
ing. The river is evil."
"Evil? "quoth she.
He had checked in his step, and they stood now
side by side.
"Evil," he repeated. "Evil and cruel. It goes to
swell the sea that soon shall divide me from you, and
it mocks me, rejoicing wickedly in the pain that will
presently be mine."
i88 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
It took her aback. She laughed, a little breath-
lessly, to hide her discomposure, and scarce knew how
to answer him, scarce knew whether she took pleasure
or offence in his daring encroachment upon that royal
aloofness in which she dwelt, and in which her Spanish
rearing had taught her she must ever dwell.
"Oh, but Monsieur TAmbassadeur, you will be
with us again, perhaps before so very long."
His answer came in a swift, throbbing question, his
lips so near her face that she could feel his breath hot
upon her cheek.
"Do you wish it, Madame? Do you wish it? I im-
plore you, of your pity, say but that you wish it, and I
will come, though I tear down half a world to reach
you."
She recoiled in affright and displeasure before a
wooing so impetuous and violently outspoken; though
the displeasure was perhaps but a passing emotion,
the result of early training. Yet she contrived to an-
swer him with the proper icy dignity due to her posi-
tion as a princess of Spain, now Queen of France.
"Monsieur, you forget yourself. The Queen of
France does not listen to such words. You are mad, I
think."
"Yes, I am mad," he flung back. "Mad with love
so mad that I have forgot that you are a queen and
I an ambassador. Under the ambassador there is a
man, under the queen a woman our real selves, not
the titles with which Fate seeks to dissemble our true
natures. And with the whole strength of my true na-
ture do I love you, so potently, so overwhelmingly
that I will not believe you sensible of no response."
Thus torrentially he delivered himself, and swept
HIS INSOLENCE OF BUCKINGHAM 189
her a little off her feet. She was a woman, as he said;
a queen, it is true; but also a neglected, coldly used
wife; and no one had ever addressed her in anything
approaching this manner, no one had ever so much as
suggested that her existence could matter greatly,
that in her woman's nature there was the magic power
of awakening passion and devotion. He was so
splendidly magnificent, so masterful and unrivalled,
and he came thus to lay his being, as it were, in hom-
age at her feet. It touched her a little, who knew so
little of the real man. It cost her an effort to repulse
him, and the effort was not very convincing.
"Hush, monsieur, for pity's sake! You must not
talk so to me. It ... it hurts."
O fatal word! She meant that it was her dignity as
Queen he wounded, for she clung to that as to the an-
chor of salvation. But he in his egregious vanity must
of course misunderstand.
"Hurts!" he cried, and the rapture in his accents
should have warned her. "Because you resist it, be-
cause you fight against the commands of your true
self. Anne!" He seized her, and crushed her to him.
"Anne!"
Wild terror gripped her at that almost brutal con-
tact, and anger, too, her dignity surging up in violent
outraged rebellion. A scream, loud and piercing,
broke from her, and rang through the still garden. It
brought him to his senses. It was as if he had been
lifted up into the air, and then suddenly allowed to
fall.
He sprang away from her, an incoherent exclama-
tion on his lips, and when an instant later Monsieur
de Putange came running up in alarm, his hand upon
1 9 o HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
his sword, those two stood with the width of the av-
enue between them, Buckingham erect and defiant,
the Queen breathing hard and trembling, a hand upon
her heaving breast as if to repress its tumult.
"Madame! Madame!" had been Putange's cry, as
he sprang forward in alarm and self-reproach.
He stood now almost between them, looking from
one to the other in bewilderment. Neither spoke.
"You cried out, Madame," Monsieur de Putange
reminded her, and Buckingham may well have won-
dered whether presently he would be receiving Mon-
sieur de Putange's sword in his vitals. He must have
known that his life now hung upon her answer.
"I called you, that was all," said the Queen, in a
voice that she strove to render calm. "I confess that
I was startled to find myself alone with Monsieur
TAmbassadeur. Do not let it occur again, Monsieur
de Putange!"
The equerry bowed in silence. His itching fingers
fell away from his sword-hilt, and he breathed more
freely. He had no illusions as to what must have hap-
pened. But he was relieved there were to be no com-
plications. The others now coming up with them, the
party thereafter kept together until presently Buck-
ingham and Lord Holland took their leave.
On the morrow the last stage of the escorting jour-
ney was accomplished. A little way beyond Amiens
the Court took its leave of Henrietta Maria, entrust-
ing her now to Buckingham and his followers, who
were to convey her safely to Charles.
It was a very contrite and downcast Buckingham
who came now to Anne of Austria as she sat in her
coach with the Princesse de Conti for only companion.
HIS INSOLENCE OF BUCKINGHAM 191
"Madame/' he said, "I am come to take my
leave."
"Fare you well, Monsieur 1'Ambassadeur," she
said, and her voice was warm and gentle, as if to show
him that she bore no malice.
"I am come to ask your pardon, Madame," he
said, in a low voice.
"Oh, monsieur no more, I beg you." She
looked down; her hands were trembling, her cheeks
going red and white by turns.
He put his head behind the curtains of the coach, so
that none might see him from outside, and looking at
him now, she beheld tears in his eyes.
"Do not misunderstand me, Madame. I ask your
pardon only for having discomposed you, startled
you. As for what I said, it were idle to ask pardon,
since I could no more help saying it than I can help
drawing breath. I obeyed an instinct stronger than
the will to live. I gave expression to something that
dominates my whole being, and will ever dominate it
as long as I have life. Adieu, Madame ! At need you
know where a servant who will gladly die for you is to
be found. " He kissed the hem of her robe, dashed the
back of his hand across his eyes, and was gone before
she could say a word in answer.
She sat pale, and very thoughtful, and the Princesse
de Conti, watching her furtively, observed that her
eyes were moist.
"I will answer for the Queen's virtue," she stated
afterwards, "but I cannot speak so positively for the
hardness of her heart, since without doubt the Duke's
tears affected her spirits."
But it was not yet the end. As Buckingham was
i 9 2 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
nearing Calais, he was met by a courier from White-
hall, with instructions for him regarding the negotia-
tions he had been empowered to carry out with France
in the matter of an alliance against Spain negotia-
tions which had not thriven with Louis and Richelieu,
possibly because the ambassador was ill-chosen. The
instructions came too late to be of use, but in time to
serve as a pretext for Buckingham's return to Amiens.
There he sought an audience of the Queen-Mother,
and delivered himself to her of a futile message for
the King. This chimerical business as Madame de
Motteville shrewdly calls it being accomplished, he
came to the real matter which had prompted him to
use that pretext for his return, and sought audience
of Anne of Austria.
It was early morning, and the Queen was not yet
risen. But the levees at the Court of France were pre-
cisely what the word implies, and they were held by
royalty whilst still abed. It was not, therefore, amaz-
ing that he should have been admitted to her pres-
ence. She was alone save for her lady-in-waiting,
Madame de Lannoi, who was, we are told, aged, pru-
dent, and virtuous. Conceive, therefore, the out-
raged feelings of this lady upon seeing the English
duke precipitate himself wildly into the room, and on
his knees at the royal bedside seize the coverlet and
bear it to his lips.
Whilst the young Queen looked confused and agi-
tated, Madame de Lannoi became a pillar of icy dig-
nity.
"Monsieur le Due," said she, "it is not customary
in France to kneel when speaking to the Queen."
"I care nothing for the customs of France, Ma-
HIS INSOLENCE OF BUCKINGHAM 193
dame," he answered rudely. "I am not a French-
man."
"That is too obvious, Monsieur," snapped the el-
derly, prudent, and virtuous Countess. "Neverthe-
less, whilst in France perhaps Monsieur will perceive
the convenience of conforming to French customs.
Let me call for a chair for Monsieur le Due."
"I do not want a chair, Madame."
The Countess cast her eyes to Heaven, as if to say,
" I suppose one cannot expect anything else in a for-
eigner," and let him kneel as he insisted, placing her-
self, however, protectingly at the Queen's pillow.
Nevertheless, entirely unabashed, heeding Madame
de Lannoi's presence no more than if she had been
part of the room's furniture, the Duke delivered him-
self freely of what was in his mind. He had been
obliged to return to Amiens on a matter of State. It
was unthinkable that he should be so near to Her Ma-
jesty and not hasten to cast himself at her feet; and
whilst gladdening the eyes of his body with the sight
of her matchless perfection, the image of which was
ever before the eyes of his soul, allow himself the only
felicity life now held for him that of protesting
himself her utter slave. This, and much more of the
kind, did he pour out, what time the Queen, embar-
rassed and annoyed beyond utterance, could only
stare at him in silence.
Apart from the matchless impudence of it, it was
also of a rashness beyond pardon. Unless Madame
de Lannoi were the most circumspect of women, here
was a fine tale for Court gossips, and for the King's
ears, a tale that must hopelessly compromise the
Queen. For that, Buckingham, in his self-sufficiency
i 94 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
and arrogance, appears to have cared nothing. One
suspects that it would have pleased his vanity to have
his name linked with the Queen's by the lips of
scandal.
She found her tongue at last.
"Monsieur le Due," she said in her confusion, "it
was not necessary, it was not worth while, to have
asked audience of me for this. You have leave to go."
He looked up in doubt, and saw only confusion;
attributed it, perhaps, to the presence of that third
party to which himself he had been so indifferent. He
kissed the coverlet again, stumbled to his feet, and
reached the door. Thence he sent her a flaming glance
of his bold eyes, and hand on heart
"Adieu, Madame!" said he in tragic tones, and so
departed.
Madame de Lannoi was discreet, and related at the
time nothing of what had passed at that interview.
But that the interview itself had taken place under
such conditions was enough to set the tongue of gos-
sip wagging. An echo of it reached the King, together
with the story of that other business in the garden,
and he was glad to know that the Duke of Bucking-
ham was back in London. Richelieu, to vent his own
malice against the Queen, sought to feed the King's
suspicions.
"Why did she cry out, Sire?" he will have asked.
"What did Monsieur de Buckingham do to make her
cry out?"
"I don't know. But whatever it was, she was no
party to it since she did cry out."
Richelieu did not pursue the matter just then. But
neither did he abandon it. He had his agents in Lon-
HIS INSOLENCE OF BUCKINGHAM 195
don and elsewhere, and he desired of them a close re-
port upon the Duke of Buckingham's movements,
and the fullest particulars of his private life.
Meanwhile, Buckingham had left behind him in
France two faithful agents of his own, with instruc-
tions to keep his memory green with the Queen. For
he intended to return upon one pretext or another be-
fore very long, and complete the conquest. Those
agents of his were Lord Holland and the artist Bal-
thazar Gerbier. It is to be presumed that they served
the Duke's interests well, and it is no less to be pre-
sumed from that which followed that they found Her
Majesty willing enough to hear news of that amazingly
romantic fellow who had flashed across the path of
her grey life, touching it for a moment with his own
flaming radiance. In her loneliness she came to think
of him with tenderness and pity, in which pity for her-
self and her dull lot was also blent. He was away,
overseas; she might never see him again; therefore
there could be little harm in indulging the romantic
tenderness he had inspired.
So one day, many months after his departure, she
begged Gerbier as La Rochefoucauld tells us to
journey to London and bear the Duke a trifling me-
mento of her a set of diamond studs. That love-
token for it amounted to no less Gerbier con-
veyed to England, and delivered to the Duke.
Buckingham's head was so completely turned by
the event, and his desire to see Anne of Austria again
became thereupon so overmastering, that he at once
communicated to France that he was coming over as
the ambassador of the King of England to treat of
certain matters connected with Spain. But Richelieu
196 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
had heard from the French ambassador in London
that portraits of the Queen of France were excessively
abundant at York House, the Duke's residence, and
he had considered it his duty to inform the King.
Louis was angry, but not with the Queen. To have
believed her guilty of any indiscretion would have
hurt his gloomy pride too deeply. All that he believed
was that this was merely an expression of Bucking-
ham's fanfaronading, thrasonical disposition, a form
of vain, empty boasting peculiar to megalomaniacs.
As a consequence, the King of England was in-
formed that the Duke of Buckingham, for reasons
well known to himself, would not be agreeable as
Charles's ambassador to His Most Christian Majesty.
Upon learning this, the vainglorious Buckingham was
loud in proclaiming the reason ("well known to him-
self") and in protesting that he would go to France to
see the Queen with the French King's consent or with-
out it. This was duly reported to Richelieu, and by
Richelieu to King Louis. But His Most Christian
Majesty merely sneered, accounted it more empty
boasting on the part of the parvenu, and dismissed it
from his mind.
Richelieu found this attitude singularly exasperat-
ing in a King who was temperamentally suspicious.
It so piqued and annoyed him that, when considered in
addition to his undying rancour against Anne of Aus-
tria, it is easily believed he spared no pains to obtain
something in the nature of a proof that the Queen was
not as innocent as Louis insisted upon believing.
Now it happened that one of his London agents in-
formed him, among other matters connected with the
Duke's private life, that he had a bitter and secret
HIS INSOLENCE OF BUCKINGHAM 197
enemy in the Countess of Carlisle, between whom and
himself there had been a passage of some tenderness
too abruptly ended by the Duke. Richelieu, acting
upon this information, contrived to enter into corre-
spondence with Lady Carlisle, and in the course of
this correspondence he managed her so craftily
says La Rochefoucauld that very soon she was,
whikt hardly realizing it, his eminence's most valu-
able spy near Buckingham. Richelieu informed her
that he was mainly concerned with information that
would throw light upon the real relations of Bucking-
ham and the Queen of France, and he persuaded her
that nothing was too insignificant to be communi-
cated. Her resentment of the treatment she had re-
ceived from Buckingham, a resentment the more bit-
ter for being stifled since for her reputation's sake
she dared not have given it expression made her a
very ready instrument in Richelieu's hands, and there
was no scrap of gossip she did not carefully gather up
and dispatch to him. But all was naught until one
day at last she was able to tell him something that set
his pulses beating more quickly than their habit.
She had it upon the best authority that a set of dia-
mond studs constantly worn of late by the Duke was
a love-token from the Queen of France sent over to
Buckingham by a messenger of her own. Here, in-
deed, was news. Here was a weapon by which the
Queen might be destroyed. Richelieu considered. If
he could but obtain possession of the studs, the rest
would be easy. There would be an end and such
an end! to the King's obstinate, indolent faith in
his wife's indifference to that boastful, flamboyant
English upstart. Richelieu held his peace for the time
being, and wrote to the Countess.
198 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
Some little time thereafter there was a sumptuous
ball given at York House, graced by the presence of
King Charles and his young French Queen. Lady
Carlisle was present, and in the course of the evening
Buckingham danced with her. She was a very beauti-
ful, accomplished, and ready-witted woman, and to-
night his grace found her charms so alluring that he
was almost disposed to blame himself for having per-
haps treated her too lightly. Yet she seemed at pains
to show him that it was his to take up again the affair at
the point at which it had been dropped. She was gay,
arch, provoking, and irresistible. So irresistible that
presently, yielding to the lure of her, the Duke slipped
away from his guests with the lady on his arm, and
they found themselves at the foot of the garden in the
shadow of the water-gate that Inigo Jones had just
completed for him. My lady languished at his side,
permitted him to encircle her with a protecting arm.,
and for a moment lay heavily against him. He caught
her violently to him, and now her ladyship, hitherto
so yielding, with true feminine contrariness set her-
self to resist him. A scuffle ensued between them.
She broke from him at last, and sped swift as a doe
across the lawn towards the lights of the great house,
his grace in pursuit between vexation and amusement.
But he did not overtake her, and it was with a sense
of having been fooled that he rejoined his guests. His
questing eyes could discern her nowhere. Presently
he made inquiries, to be told that she had desired her
carriage to be called, and had left York House imme-
diately upon coming in from the garden.
He concluded that she was gone off in a pet. It was
very odd. It was, in fact, most flagrantly contradic-
HIS INSOLENCE OF BUCKINGHAM 199
tory that she should have taken offence at that which
she had so obviously invited. But then she always
had been a perverse and provoking jade. With that
reflection he put her from his mind.
But anon, when his guests had departed, and the
lights in the great house were extinguished, Bucking-
ham thought of the incident again. Cogitating it, he
sat in his room, his fingers combing his fine, pointed,
auburn beard. At last, with a shrug and a half-laugh,
he rose to undress for bed. And then a cry escaped him,
and brought in his valet from an adjoining room. The
riband of diamond studs was gone.
Reckless and indifferent as he was, a sense of evil
took him in the moment of his discovery of that loss,
so that he stood there pale, staring, and moist of
brow. It was no ordinary theft. There were upon his
person a dozen ornaments of greater value, any one of
which could have been more easily detached. This
was the work of some French agent. He had made no
secret of whence those studs had come to him.
There his thoughts checked on a sudden. As in a
flash of revelation, he saw the meaning of Lady Car-
lisle's oddly contradictory behaviour. The jade had
fooled him. It was she who had stolen the riband. He
sat down again, his head in his hands, and swiftly,
link by link, he pieced together a complete chain.
Almost as swiftly he decided upon the course of ac-
tion which he must adopt so as to protect the Queen
of France's honour. He was virtually the ruler of
England, master in these islands of an almost bound-
less power. That power he would exert to the full this
very night to thwart those enemies of his own and of
the Queen's, who worked so subtly in concert. Many
200 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
would be wronged, much harm would be done, the
liberties of some thousands of freeborn Englishmen
would be trampled underfoot. What did it matter?
It was necessary that his grace of Buckingham should
cover up an indiscretion.
"Set ink and paper yonder," he bade his gaping
valet. "Then go call Monsieur Gerbier. Rouse Lacy
and Thorn, and send them to me at once, and leave
word that I shall require a score of couriers to be in
the saddle and ready to set out in half an hour."
; Bewildered, the valet went off upon his errand.
The Duke sat down to write. And next morning Eng-
lish merchants learnt that the ports of England were
closed by the King's express command delivered
by his minister, the Duke of Buckingham that
measures were being taken were already taken in
all southern ports so that no vessel of any kind
should leave the island until the King's further pleas-
ure were made known. Startled, the people wondered
was this enactment the forerunner of war. Had they
known the truth, they might have been more startled
still, though in a different manner. As swiftly as
couriers could travel and certainly well ahead of
any messenger seeking escape overseas did this
blockade spread, until the gates of England were
tight-locked against the outgoing of those diamond
studs which meant the honour of the Queen of France.
And meanwhile a diamond-cutter was replacing the
purloined stones by others, matching them so closely
that no man should be able to say which were the orig-
inals and which the copies. Buckingham and Gerbier
between them guided the work. Soon it was accom-
plished, and a vessel slipped down the Thames, al-
HIS INSOLENCE OF BUCKINGHAM 201
lowed to pass by those who kept close watch to en-
force the royal decree, and made sail for Calais, which
was beginning to manifest surprise at this entire cessa-
tion of traffic from England. From that vessel landed
Gerbier, and rode straight to Paris, carrying the
Queen of France the duplicate studs, which were to
replace those which she had sent to Buckingham.
Twenty-four hours later the ports of England were
unsealed, and commerce was free and unhampered
once more. But it was twenty-four hours too late for
Richelieu and his agent, the Countess of Carlisle.
His eminence deplored a fine chance lost through the
excessive power that was wielded in England by the
parvenu.
Yet that is not quite the end of the story. Bucking-
ham's inflamed and reckless mind would stop at
nothing now to achieve the object of his desires to
go to France and see the Queen. Since the country
was closed to him, he would force a way into it, the
red way of war. Blood should flow, ruin and misery
desolate the land, but in the end he would go to Paris
to negotiate a peace, and that should be his opportu-
nity. Other reasons there may have been, but none so
dominant, none that could not have been removed by
negotiation. The pretexted casus belli was the matter
of the Protestants of La Rochelle, who were in rebel-
lion against their king.
To their aid sailed Buckingham with an English ex-
pedition. Disaster and defeat awaited it. Its shat-
tered remnant crept back in disgrace to England, and
the Duke found himself more detested by the people
than he had been already which is saying much.
202 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
He went off to seek comfort at the hands of the two
persons who really loved him his doting King and
his splendid wife.
But the defeat had neither lessened his resolve nor
chastened his insolence. He prepared a second expedi-
tion in the very teeth of a long-suffering nation's hos-
tility, indifferent to the mutinies and mutterings
about him. What signified to him the will of a nation ?
He desired to win to the woman whom he loved, and
to accomplish that he nothing recked that he should
set Europe in a blaze, nothing recked what blood
should be poured out, what treasure dissipated.
Hatred of him by now was so widespread and vocal
that his friends, fearing that soon it would pass from
words to deeds, urged him to take precautions, ad-
vised the wearing of a shirt of mail for greater safety.
But he laughed sneeringly, ever arrogant and
scornful.
"It needs not. There are no Roman spirits left/'
was his contemptuous answer.
He was mistaken. One morning after breakfast, as
he was leaving the house in the High Street, Ports-
mouth, where he lodged whilst superintending the
final preparations for that unpopular expedition,
John Felton, a self-appointed instrument of national
vengeance, drove a knife to the hilt into the Duke's
breast.
" May the Lord have mercy on your soul ! " was the
pious exclamation with which the slayer struck home.
And, in all the circumstances, there seems to have
been occasion for the prayer.
IX
THE PATH OF EXILE
THE FALL OF LORD CLARENDON
TIGHT-WRAPPED in his cloak against the icy
whips of the black winter's night, a portly gen-
tleman, well advanced in years, picked his way care-
fully down the wet, slippery steps of the jetty by the
light of a lanthorn, whose rays gleamed lividly on
crushed brown seaweed and trailing green sea slime.
Leaning heavily upon the arm which a sailor held out
to his assistance, he stepped into the waiting boat
that rose and fell on the heaving black waters. A
boathook scraped against the stones, and the frail
craft was pushed off.
The oars dipped, and the boat slipped away
through the darkness, steering a course for the two
great poop lanterns that were swinging rhythmically
high up against the black background of the night.
The elderly gentleman, huddled now in the stern-
sheets, looked behind him to look his last upon the
England he had loved and served and ruled. The
lanthorn, shedding its wheel of yellow light upon
the jetty steps, was all of it that he could now see.
He sighed, and settled down again to face the poop
lights, dancing there above the invisible hull of the
ship that was to carry Edward Hyde, Earl of Claren-
don, lately Lord Chancellor of England, into exile.
As a dying man looks down the foreshortened vista
204 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
of his active life, so may Edward Hyde whose ca-
reer had reached a finality but one degree removed
from the finality of death have reviewed in that
moment those thirty years of sincere endeavour and
high achievement since he had been a law student in
the Temple when Charles I was king.
That king he had served faithfully, so faithfully
that when the desperate fortunes of the Royalist
party made it necessary to place the Prince of Wales
beyond the reach of Cromwell, it was in Sir Edward
Hyde's care that the boy was sent upon his travels.
The present was not to be Hyde's first experience of
exile. He had known it, and of a bitter sort, in those
impecunious days when the Second Charles, whose
steps he guided, was a needy, homeless outcast. A
man less staunch and loyal might have thrown over so
profitless a service. He had talents that would have
commanded a price in the Roundhead market. Yet
staunchly adhering to the Stuart fortunes, labouring
ceaselessly and shrewdly in the Stuart interest, em-
ploying his great ability and statecraft, he achieved
at long length the restoration of the Stuarts to the
throne of England. And for all those loyal, self-
denying labours in exile on the Stuart behalf, all the
reward he had at the time was that James Stuart,
Duke of York, debauched his daughter.
Nor did Hyde's labours cease when he had made
possible the Restoration; it was Hyde who, when that
Restoration was accomplished, took in hand and car-
ried out the difficult task of welding together the old
and the new conditions of political affairs. And it wa:
Hyde who was the scapegoat when things did not run
the course that Englishmen desired. As the head of
THE PATH OF EXILE 205
the administration he was held responsible even for
those acts which he had strongly but vainly repro-
bated in Council. It was Hyde who was blamed when
Charles sold Dunkirk to the French, and spent the
money in harlotry; it was Hyde who was blamed be-
cause the Queen was childless.
The reason for this last lay in the fact that the
wrong done to Hyde's daughter Anne had now been
righted by marriage with the Duke of York. Now the
Duke of York was the heir-apparent, and the people,
ever ready to attach most credit to that which is most
incredible and fantastic, believed that to ensure the
succession of his own grandchildren Hyde had delib-
erately provided Charles with a barren wife.
When the Dutch, sailing up the Thames, had
burnt the ships of war at Chatham, and Londoners
heard the thunder of enemy guns, Hyde was openly
denounced as a traitor by a people stricken with ter-
ror and seeking a victim in the blind, unreasoning way
of public feeling. They broke his windows, ravaged
his garden, and erected a gibbet before the gates of his
superb mansion on the north side of Piccadilly.
Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, and Lord Chan-
cellor of England, commanded the love of his inti-
mates, but did not possess those qualities of cheap glit-
ter that make for popularity with the masses. Nor
did he court popularity elsewhere. Because he was
austere in his morals, grave and sober in his conduct,
he was hated by those who made up the debauched
court of his prince. Because he was deeply religious in
his principles, the Puritans mistrusted him for a bigot.
Because he was autocratic in his policy, he was de-
tested by the Commons, the day of autocracy being
done.
2o6 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
Yet might he have weathered the general hostility
had Charles been half as loyal to him as he had ever
been loyal to Charles. For a time, it is true, the King
stood his friend, and might so have continued to the
end had not the women become mixed up in the busi-
ness. As Evelyn, the diarist, puts it, this great man's
fall was the work of "the buffoones and ladys of
pleasure."
It really is a very tangled story this inner history
of the fall of Clarendon, with which the school-books
are not concerned. In a sense, it is also the story of
the King's marriage and of Catherine of Braganza, his
unfortunate little ugly Queen, who must have suf-
fered as much as any woman wedded to a sultan in
any country where the seraglio is not a natural and
proper institution.
If Clarendon could not be said to have brought
about the marriage, at least he had given it his suf-
frages when proposed by Portugal, which was anxious
to establish an alliance with England as some protec-
tion against the predatory designs of Spain. He had
been influenced by the dowry offered five hundred
thousand pounds in money, Tangier, which would
give England a commanding position on the Mediter-
ranean, and the Island of Bombay. Without yet fore-
seeing that the possession of Bombay, and the free-
dom to trade in the East Indies which Portugal
had hitherto kept jealously to herself were to en-
able England to build up her great Indian Empire,
yet the commercial advantages alone were obvious
enough to make the match desirable.
Catherine of Braganza sailed for England, and on
the 1 9th of May, 1662, Charles, attended by a splen-
THE PATH OF EXILE 207
did following, went to meet his bride at Portsmouth.
He was himself a very personable man, tall he
stood a full six feet high lean and elegantly vigor-
ous. The ugliness of his drawn, harsh-featured face
was mitigated by the glory of full, low-lidded, dark
eyes, and his smile could be irresistibly captivating.
He was as graceful in manner as in person, felicitous
of speech, and of an indolent good temper that found
expression in a charming urbanity.
Good temper and urbanity alike suffered rudely
when he beheld the wife brought him. Catherine, who
was in her twenty-fifth year, was of an absurdly low
stature, so long in the body and short in the legs that,
dressed as she was in an outlandish, full-skirted far-
thingale, she had the appearance of being on her
knees when she stood before him. Her complexion
was sallow, and though her eyes, like his own, were
fine, they were not fine enough to redeem the dull
plainness of her face. Her black hair was grotesquely
dressed, with a long fore- top and two great ribbon
bows standing out, one on each side of her head, like
a pair of miniature wings.
It is little wonder that the Merry Monarch, the
fastidious voluptuary, with his nice discernment in
women, should have checked in his long stride, and
halted a moment in consternation.
"Lord!" was his wry comment to Etheredge, who
was beside him. "They've brought me a bat, not a
woman."
But if she lacked beauty, she was well dowered, and
Charles was in desperate need of money.
"I suppose," he told Clarendon anon, "I must
swallow this black draught to get the jam that goes
with it."
208 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
The Chancellor's grave eyes considered him almost
sternly what time he coldly recited the advantages of
this marriage. If he did not presume to rebuke the
ribaldry of his master, neither would he condescend to
smile at it. He was too honest ever to be a sycophant.
Catherine was immediately attended in the
words of Grammont by six frights who called
themselves maids-of-honour, and a governess who
was a monster. With this retinue she repaired to
Hampton Court, where the honeymoon was spent,
and where for a brief season the poor woman en-
tirely enamoured of the graceful, long-legged rake she
had married lived in a fool's paradise.
Disillusion was to follow soon enough. She might
be, by the grace of her dowry, Queen of England, but
she was soon to discover that to King Charles she was
no more than a wife de jure. With wives de facto
Charles would people his seraglio as fancy moved him;
and the present wife de facto, the mistress of his heart,
the first lady of his harem, was that beautiful terma-
gant, Barbara Villiers, wife of the accommodating
Roger Palmer, Earl of Castlemaine.
There was no lack there never is in such cases
of those who out of concern and love for the happily
deluded wife lifted the veil for her, and made her
aware of the facts of His Majesty's association with
my Lady Castlemaine an association dating back
to the time when he was still a homeless wanderer.
The knowledge would appear to have troubled the
poor soul profoundly; but the climax of her distress
was reached when, on her coming to Whitehall, she
found at the head of the list of ladies-in-waiting as-
signed to her the name of my Lady Castlemaine.
THE PATH OF EXILE 209
The forlorn little woman's pride rose up before this
outrage. She struck out that offending name, and
gave orders that the favourite was not to be admitted
to her presence.
But she reckoned without Charles. For all his ur-
bane, good-tempered, debonair ways, there was an
ugly cynical streak in his nature, manifested now in
the manner in which he dealt with this situation.
Himself he led his boldly handsome favourite by the
hand into his wife's presence, before the whole Court
assembled, and himself presented her to Catherine,
what time that Court, dissolute and profligate as it
was, looked on in amazement at so outrageous a
slight to the dignity of a queen.
What followed may well have exceeded all expecta-
tions. Catherine stiffened as if the blow dealt her had
been physical. Gradually her face paled until it was
grey and drawn; tears of outraged pride and mortifi-
cation flooded her eyes. And then, as if something
snapped within her brain under this stress of bitter
emotion, blood gushed from her nostrils, and she sank
back in a swoon into the arms of her Portuguese
ladies.
Confusion followed, and under cover of it Charles
and his light of love withdrew, realizing that if he
lingered not all his easy skill in handling delicate situ-
ations could avail him to save his royal dignity.
Naturally the experiment was not to be repeated.
But since it was his wish that the Countess of Castle-
maine should be established as one of the Queen's la-
dies or, rather, since it was her ladyship's wish, and
since Charles was as wax in her ladyship's hands it
became necessary to have the Queen instructed in
210 HISTORICAL NIGHTS 7 ENTERTAINMENT
what was, in her husband's view, fitting. For this
task he selected Clarendon. But the Chancellor, who
had so long and loyally played Mentor to Charles's
Telemachus, sought now to guide him in matters
moral as he had hitherto guided him in matters
political.
Clarendon declined the office of mediator, and
even expostulated with Charles upon the unseemli-
ness of the course upon which His Majesty was bent.
"Surely, Sire, it is for Her Majesty to say who shall
and who shall not be the ladies of her bedchamber.
And I nothing marvel at her decision in this instance."
"Yet I tell you, my lord, that it is a decision that
shall be revoked. "
"By whom, Sire?" the Chancellor asked him
gravely.
"By Her Majesty, of course."
"Under coercion, of which you ask me to be the in-
strument," said Clarendon, in the tutorly manner he
had used with the King from the latter's boyhood.
"Yourself, Sire, at a time when your own wishes did
not warp your judgment, have condemned the very
thing that now you are urging. Yourself, Sire, hotly
blamed your cousin, King Louis, for thrusting Ma-
demoiselle de Valliere upon his queen. You will not
have forgotten the things you said then of King
Louis."
Charles remembered those unflattering criticisms
which he was now invited to apply to his own case.
He bit his lip, admitting himself in check.
But anon no doubt in obedience to the over-
bearing suasion of my Lady Castlemaine he re-
turned to the attack, and sent the Chancellor his or-
THE PATH OF EXILE 211
ders in a letter demanding unquestioning obedience.
"Use your best endeavours," wrote Charles, "to
facilitate what I am sure my honour is so much con-
cerned in. And whosoever I find to be my Lady Cas-
tlemaine's enemy in this matter, I do promise upon
my word to be his enemy so long as I live."
My Lord Clarendon had few illusions on the score
of mankind. He knew his world from froth to dregs
having studied it under a variety of conditions.
Yet that letter from his king was a bitter draught.
All that Charles possessed and was he owed to Claren-
don. Yet in such a contest as this, Charles did not hesi-
tate to pen that bitter, threatening line: "Whosoever
I find to be my Lady Castlemaine's enemy in this
matter, I do promise upon my word to be his enemy
so long as I live."
All that Clarendon had done in the past was to
count for nothing unless he also did the unworthy
thing that Charles now demanded. All that he had
accomplished in the service of his king was to be
swept into oblivion by the breath of a spiteful wanton.
Clarendon swallowed the draught and sought the
Queen, upon that odious embassy with whose ends he
was so entirely out of sympathy. He used arguments
whose hollowness was not more obvious to the Queen
than to himself.
That industrious and entertaining chronicler of
trifles, Mr. Pepys, tells us, scandalized, in his diary
that on the following day the talk of the Court was all
upon a midnight scene between the royal couple in the
privacy of their own apartments, so stormy that the
sounds of it were plainly to be heard in the neighbour-
ing chambers.
212 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
You conceive the poor little woman, smarting un-
der the insult of Charles's proposal by the mouth of
Clarendon, assailing her royal husband, and fiercely
upbraiding him with his lack, not merely of affection,
but even of the respect that was her absolute due.
And Charles, his purpose set, urged to it by the hand-
some termagant whom he dared not refuse, stirred
out of his indolent good-nature, turning upon her,
storming back, and finally threatening her with the
greater disgrace of seeing herself packed home to Por-
tugal, unless she would submit to the lesser disgrace
he thrust upon her here.
Whether by these or by other arguments he made
his will prevail, prevail it did. Catherine of Braganza
swallowed her pride and submitted. And a very com-
plete submission it was. Lady Castlemaine was not
only installed as a lady of the bedchamber, but very
soon we find the Queen treating her with a friendliness
that provoked comment and amazement.
The favourite's triumph was complete, and marked
by an increasing insolence, most marked in her de-
meanour towards the Chancellor, of whose views on
the subject, as expressed to the King, she was aware.
Consequently she hated him with all the spiteful bit-
terness that is inseparable from the nature of such
women. And she hated him the more because,
wrapped in his cold contempt, he moved in utter un-
concern of her hostility. In this hatred she certainly
did not lack for allies, members of that licentious
Court whose hostility towards the austere Chancellor
was begotten of his own scorn of them. Among them
they worked to pull him down.
The attempt to undermine his influence with the
THE PATH OF EXILE 213
King proving vain for Charles was as well aware of
its inspiration as of the Chancellor's value to him
that crew of rakes went laboriously and insidiously to
work upon the public mind, which is to say the public
ignorance most fruitful soil for scandal against the
great. Who shall say how far my lady and the Court
were responsible for the lampoon affixed one day to
my Lord Clarendon's gatepost:
Three sights to be seen:
Dunkirk, Tangier, and a barren queen.
Her ladyship might well have considered the un-
popularity of the Chancellor as the crown of her tri-
umph, had this triumph been as stable as she could
have wished. But, Charles being what he was, it fol-
lows that her ladyship had frequent, if transient,
anxious jealousies to mar the perfection of her exist-
ence, to remind her how insecure is the tenure of
positions such as hers, ever at the mercy of the very
caprice to which they owe their existence.
And then, at long length, there came a day of horrid
dread for her, a day when she found herself bereft of
her influence with her royal lover, when pleadings and
railings failed alike to sway him. In part she owed it
to an indiscretion of her own, but in far greater meas-
ure to a child of sixteen, of a golden-headed, fresh,
youthful loveliness, and a nature that still found
pleasure in dolls and kindred childish things, yet of a
quick and lively wit, and a clear, intelligent mind, un-
troubled either by the assiduity of the royal atten-
tions or the fact that she was become the toast of the
day.
This was Miss Frances Stewart, the daughter of
2i 4 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
Lord Blantyre, newly come to Court as a lady-in-
waiting to Her Majesty. How profound an impres-
sion her beauty made upon the admittedly impres-
sionable old Pepys you may study in his diary. He
had a glimpse of her one day riding in the Park with
the King, and a troop of ladies, among whom my
Lady Castlemaine, looking, as he tells us, "mighty
out of humour." There was a moment when Miss
Stewart came very near to becoming Queen of Eng-
land, and although she never reached that eminence,
yet her effigy not only found its way into the coinage,
but abides there to this day (more perdurable than
that of any actual queen) in the figure of Britannia,
for which she was the model.
Charles wooed her openly. It was never his way to
study appearances in these matters. He was so assid-
uous that it became customary in that winter of 1666
for those seeking the King at Whitehall to inquire
whether he were above or below "below" meaning
Miss Stewart's apartments on the ground-floor of the
palace, in which apartments His Majesty was a con-
stant visitor. And since where the King goes the
Court follows, and where the King smiles there the
Court fawns, it resulted that this child now found her-
self queening it over a court that flocked to her apart-
ments. Gallants and ladies came there to flirt and to
gossip, to gamble and to pay homage.
About a great table in her splendid salon, a com-
pany of rustling, iridescent fops in satin and heavy
periwigs, and of ladies with curled head-dresses and
bare shoulders, played at basset one night in January.
Conversation rippled, breaking here and there into
laughter, white, jewelled hands reached out for cards,
THE PATH OF EXILE 215
or for a share of the heaps of gold that swept this way
and that with the varying fortunes of the game.
My Lady Castlemaine, seated between Etheredge
and Rochester, played in silence, with lips tight-set
and brooding eyes. She had lost, it is true, some
fifteen hundred pounds that night; yet, a prodigal
gamester, and one who came easily by money, she had
been known to lose ten times that sum and yet pre-
serve her smile. The source of her ill-humour was not
the game. She played recklessly, her attention wan-
dering; those handsome, brooding eyes of hers were
intent upon watching what went on at the other end
of the long room. There, at a smaller table, sat Miss
Stewart, half a dozen gallants hovering near her, en-
gaged upon a game of cards of a vastly different sort.
Miss Stewart did not gamble. The only purpose she
could find for cards was to build castles; and here she
was building one with the assistance of her gallants,
and under the superintendence of his grace of Buck-
ingham, who was as skilled in this as in other equally
unstable forms of architecture.
Apart, over by the fire, in a great chair of gilt
leather, lounged the King, languidly observing this
smaller party, a faint, indolent smile on his swarthy,
saturnine countenance. Absently, with one hand he
stroked a little spaniel that was curled in his lap. A
black boy in a gorgeous, plumed turban and a long,
crimson surcoat arabesqued in gold there were
three or four such attendants about the room prof-
fered him a cup of posset on a golden salver.
The King rose, thrust aside the little blackamoor,
and with his spaniel under his arm, sauntered across
to Miss Stewart's table. Soon he found himself alone
216 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
with her the others having removed themselves on
his approach, as jackals fall back before the coming
of the lion. The last to go, and with signs of obvious
reluctance, was his grace of Richmond, a delicately
built, uncomely, but very glittering gentleman.
Charles faced her across the table, the tall house of
cards standing between them.
Miss invited His Majesty's admiration for my Lord
of Buckingham's architecture. Pouf! His Majesty
blew, and the edifice rustled down to a mere heap of
cards again.
"Symbol of kingly power," said Miss, pertly.
"You demolish better than you build, Sire."
"Oddsfish! If you challenge me, it were easy to
prove you wrong," quoth he.
"Pray do. The cards are here."
"Cards! Pooh! Card castles are well enough for
Buckingham. But such is not the castle I'll build you
if you command me."
"I command the King's Majesty? Mon Dieu!
But it would be treason surely."
"Not greater treason than to have enslaved me."
His fine eyes were oddly ardent. "Shall I build you
this castle, child?"
Miss looked at him, and looked away. Her eyelids
fluttered distractingly. She fetched a sigh.
"The castle that Your Majesty would build for any
but your Queen must prove a prison."
She rose, and, looking across the room, she met the
handsome, scowling eyes of the neglected favourite.
"My Lady Castlemaine looks as if she feared that
Fortune were not favouring her." She was so artless
that Charles could not be sure there was a double
THE PATH OF EXILE '217
meaning to her speech. "Shall we go see how she is
faring?" she added, with a disregard for etiquette,
whose artlessness he also doubted.
He yielded, of course. That was his way with
beauty, especially with beauty not yet reduced into
possession. But the characteristic urbanity with
which he sauntered beside her across the room was no
more than a mask upon his chagrin. It was always
thus that pretty Frances Stewart used him. She al-
ways knew how to elude him and, always with that
cursed air of artlessness, uttered seemingly simple
sentences that clung to his mind to tantalize him.
"The castle Your Majesty would build for any but
your Queen must prove a prison." What had she
meant by that? Must he take her to queen before she
would allow him to build a castle for her?
It was an insistent, haunting thought, racking his
mind. He knew there was a party hostile to the Duke
of York and Clarendon, which, fearing the succession
of the former, and, so, of the grandchildren of the
latter, as a result of Catherine of Braganza's child-
lessness, strongly favoured the King's divorce.
It was a singular irony that my Lady Castlemaine
should be largely responsible for the existence of that
party. In her hatred for Clarendon, and her blind
search for weapons that would slay the Chancellor,
she had, if not actually invented, at least helped to
give currency to the silly slander that Clarendon had
deliberately chosen for Charles a barren queen, so as
to ensure the ultimate succession of his own daughter's
children. But she had never thought to see that slan-
der recoil upon her as it now did; she had never
thought that a party would come to rise up in conse-
218 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
quence that would urge divorce upon the King at the
very moment when he was consumed by passion for
the unattainable, artlessly artful Frances Stewart.
It was Buckingham, greatly daring, who slyly made
himself that party's mouthpiece. The suggestion
startled Charles, voicing, as perhaps it did, the temp-
tation by which he was secretly assailed. He looked
at Buckingham, frowning.
" I verily believe you are the wickedest dog in Eng-
land."
The impudent gallant made a leg. "For a subject,
Sire, I believe I am."
Charles with whom the amusing word seems
ever to have been more compelling than the serious
laughed his soft, mellow laugh. Then he sighed,
and the frown of thought returned.
"It would be a wicked thing to make a poor lady
miserable only because she is my wife, and has no
children by me, which is no fault of hers."
He was a thoroughly bad husband, but his indolent
good-nature shrank from purchasing his desires at the
price of so much ignominy to the Queen. Before that
could come to pass it would be necessary to give the
screw of temptation another turn or two. And it was
Miss Stewart herself who in all innocence sup-
plied what was required in that direction. Driven to
bay by the importunities of Charles, she announced
at last that it was her intention to retire from Court,
so as to preserve herself from the temptations by
which she was beset, and to determine the uneasiness
which, through no fault of her own, her presence was
occasioning the Queen; and she announced further,
that, so desperate had she been rendered that she
THE PATH OF EXILE 219
would marry any gentleman of fifteen hundred
pounds a year who would have her in honour.
You behold Charles reduced to a state of panic. He
sought to bribe her with offers of any settlements she
chose to name, or any title she coveted, offering her
these things at the nation's expense as freely and
lightly as the jewels he had tossed into her lap, or the
collar of pearls worth sixteen hundred pounds he had
put about her neck. The offers were ineffectual, and
Charles, driven almost to distraction by such invul-
nerable virtue, might now have yielded to the insidi-
ous whispers of divorce and remarriage had not my
Lady Castlemaine taken a hand in the game.
Her ladyship, dwelling already, as a consequence of
that royal infatuation for Miss Stewart, in the cold,
rarefied atmosphere of a neglect that amounted al-
most to disgrace, may have considered with bitter-
ness how her attempt to exploit her hatred of the
Chancellor had recoiled upon herself.
In the blackest hour of her despair, when hope
seemed almost dead, she made a discovery or,
rather, the King's page, the ineffable Chiffinch, Lord
Keeper of the Back Stairs and Grand Eunuch of the
Royal Seraglio, who was her ladyship's friend, made
it and communicated it to her.
There had been one ardent respondent in the Duke
of Richmond to that proclamation of Miss Stewart's
that she would marry any gentleman of fifteen hun-
dred pounds a year. Long enamoured of her, his
grace saw here his opportunity, and he seized it. Con-
sequently he was now in constant attendance upon
her, but very secretly, since he feared the King's dis-
pleasure.
220 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
My Lady Castlemaine, having discovered this, and
being well served in the matter by Chiffinch, spied her
opportunity. It came one cold night towards the end
of February of that year 1667. Charles, going below
at a late hour to visit Miss Stewart, when he judged
that she would be alone, was informed by her maid
that Miss was not receiving, a headache compelling
her to keep her room.
His Majesty returned above in a very ill-humour,
to find himself confronted in his own apartments by
my Lady Castlemaine. Chiffinch had introduced her
by the back-stairs entrance. Charles stiffened at sight
of her.
" I hope I may be allowed to pay my homage," says
she, on a note of irony, "although the angelic Stewart
has forbid you to see me at my own house. I come to
condole with you upon the affliction and grief into
which the new-fashioned chastity of the inhuman
Stewart has reduced Your Majesty."
"You are pleased to be amused, ma'am," says
Charles frostily.
"I will not," she returned him, "make use of re-
proaches which would disgrace myself; still less will I
endeavour to excuse frailties in myself which nothing
can justify, since your constancy for me deprives me
of all defence." Her ladyship, you see, had a consider-
able gift of sarcasm.
" In that case, may I ask you why you have come ? "
"To open your eyes. Because I cannot bear that
you should be made the jest of your own Court."
"Madam!"
"Ah! You didn't know, of course, that you are be-
ing laughed at for the gross manner in which you are
THE PATH OF EXILE 221
being imposed upon by the Stewart's affectations, any
more than you know that whilst you are denied ad-
mittance to her apartments, under the pretence of
some indisposition, the Duke of Richmond is with her
now."
"That is false," he was beginning, very indig-
nantly.
" I do not desire you to take my word for it. If you
will follow me, you will no longer be the dupe of a
false prude, who makes you act so ridiculous a part."
She took him, still half-resisting, by the hand, and
in silence led him, despite his reluctance, back by the
way he had so lately come. Outside her rival's door
she left him, but she paused at the end of the gallery
to make sure that he had entered.
Within he found himself confronted by several
of Miss Stewart's chambermaids, who respectfully
barred his way, one of them informing him scarcely
above a whisper that her mistress had been very ill
since-His Majesty left, but that, being gone to bed,
she was, God be thanked, in a very fine sleep.
"That I must see," said the King. And, since one
of the women placed herself before the door of the in-
ner room, His Majesty unceremoniously took her by
the shoulders and put her aside.
He thrust open the door, and stepped without fur-
ther ceremony into the well-lighted bedroom. Miss
Stewart occupied the handsome, canopied bed. But
far from being, as he had been told, in "a very fine
sleep," she was sitting up; and far from presenting an
ailing appearance, she looked radiantly well and very
lovely in her diaphanous sleeping toilet, with golden
ringlets in distracting disarray. Nor was she alone.
222 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
By her pillow sat one who, if at first to be presumed
her physician, proved upon scrutiny to be the Duke of
Richmond.
The King's swarthy face turned a variety of col-
ours, his languid eyes lost all trace of languor. Those
who knew his nature might have expected that he
would now deliver himself with that sneering sarcasm,
that indolent cynicism, which he used upon occasion.
But he was too deeply stirred for acting. His self-
control deserted him entirely. Exactly what he said
has not been preserved for us. All that we are told is
that he signified his resentment in such terms as he
had never before used; and that his grace, almost
petrified by the King's most royal rage, uttered never
a word in answer. The windows of the room over-
looked the Thames. The King's eyes strayed towards
them. Richmond was slight of build, Charles vigor-
ous and athletic. His grace took the door betimes,
lest the window should occur to His Majesty, and so
he left the lady alone with the outraged monarch.
Thereafter Charles did not have it all quite his own
way. Miss Stewart faced him in an indignation noth-
ing less than his own, and she was very far from at-
tempting any such justification of herself, or her con-
duct, as he may have expected.
"Will Your Majesty be more precise as to the
grounds of your complaint?" she invited him chal-
lengingly.
That checked his wildness. It brought him up with
a round tusn. His jaw fell, and he stared at her, lost
now for words. Of this she took the fullest advantage.
"If I am not allowed to receive visits from a man of
the Duke of Richmond's rank, who comes with hon-
THE PATH OF EXILE 223
curable intentions, then I am a slave in a free coun-
try. I know of no engagement that should prevent
me from disposing of my hand as I think fit. But if
this is not permitted me in Your Majesty's domin-
ions, I do not believe there is any power on earth can
prevent me going back to France, and throwing my-
self into a convent, there to enjoy the peace denied
me at this Court."
With that she melted into tears, and his discomfi-
ture was complete. On his knees he begged her for-
giveness for the injury he had done her. But Miss
was not in a forgiving humour.
"If Your Majesty would graciously consent to
leave me now in peace," said she, "you would avoid
offending by a longer visit those who accompanied or
conducted you to my apartments."
She had drawn a bow at a venture, but shrewdly,
and the shaft went home. Charles rose, red in the
face. Swearing he would never speak to her again, he
stalked out.
Later, however, he considered. If he felt bitterly
aggrieved, he must also have realized that he had no
just grounds for this, and that in his conduct in Miss
Stewart's room he had been entirely ridiculous. She
was rightly resolved against being lightly worn by any
man. If anything, the reflection must have fanned his
passion. It was impossible, he thought, that she
should love that knock-kneed fellow, Richmond, who
had no graces either of body or of mind, and if she
suffered the man's suit, it must be, as she had all but
said, so that she might be delivered from the persecu-
tion to which His Majesty had submitted her. The
thought of her marrying Richmond, or, indeed, any-
224 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
body, was unbearable to Charles, and it may have
stifled his last scruple in the matter of the divorce.
His first measure next morning was to banish Rich-
mond from the Court. But Richmond had not stayed
for the order to quit. The King's messenger found
him gone already.
Then Charles took counsel in the matter with the
Chancellor. Clarendon's habitual gravity was in-
creased to sternness. He spoke to the King taking
the fullest advantage of the tutelary position in which
for the last twenty-five years he had stood to him
much as he had spoken when Charles had proposed to
make Barbara Palmer a lady of the Queen's bedcham-
ber, saving that he was now even more uncompromis-
ing. The King was not pleased with him. But just as
he had had his way, despite the Chancellor, in that
other matter, so he would have his way despite him
now.
This time, however, the Chancellor took no risks.
He feared too much the consequences for Charles, and
he determined to spare no effort to avoid a scandal,
and to save the already deeply injured Queen. So he
went secretly to work to outwit the King. He made
himself the protector of those lovers, the Duke of
Richmond and Miss Stewart, with the result that one
dark night, a week or two later, the lady stole away
from the Palace of Whitehall, and made her way to
the Bear Tavern, at the Bridgefoot, Westminster,
where Richmond awaited her with a coach. And so,
by the secret favour of the Lord Chancellor, they
stole away to Kent and matrimony.
That was checkmate, indeed, to Charles, who
swore all manner of things in his mortification. But it
THE PATH OF EXILE 225
was not until some six weeks later that he learnt by
whose agency the thing had been accomplished. He
learnt it, not a doubt, from my Lady Castlemaine.
The estrangement between her ladyship and the
King, which dated back to the time of his desperate
courtship of Miss Stewart, was at last made up; and
once again we see her ladyship triumphant, and firmly
established in the amorous King's affections. She had <
cause to be grateful to the Chancellor for this. But
her vindictive nature remembered only the earlier in-
jury still unavenged. Here at last was her chance to
pay off that score. Clarendon, beset by enemies on
every hand, yet trusting in the King whom he had
served so well, stood his ground unintimidated and
unmoved an oak that had weathered mightier
storms than this. He did not dream that he was in the
power of an evil woman. And that woman used her
power. When all else failed, she told the King of
Clarendon's part in the flight of Miss Stewart, and
lest the King should be disposed to pardon the Chan-
cellor out of consideration for his motives, represented
him as a self-seeker, and charged him with having
acted thus so as to make sure of keeping his daughter's
children by the Duke of York in the succession.
That was the end. Charles withdrew his protection,
threw Clarendon to the wolves. He sent the Duke of
Albemarle to him with a command that he should sur-
render his seals of office. The proud old man refused
to yield his seals to any but the King himself. He may
have hoped that the memory of all that lay between
them would rise up once more when they were face to
face. So he came in person to Whitehall to make sur-
render. He walked deliberately, firmly, and with
226 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
head erect, through the hostile throng of courtiers
"especially the buffoones and ladys of pleasure/' as
Evelyn says.
Of his departure thence, his disgrace now consum-
mated, Pepys has left us a vivid picture:
"When he went from the King on Monday morning
my Lady Castlemaine was in bed (though about
twelve o'clock), and ran out in her smock into her
aviary looking into Whitehall Gardens; and thither
her woman brought her her nightgown; and she stood,
blessing herself at the old man's going away; and sev-
eral of the gallants of Whitehall of which there
were many staying to see the Chancellor's return
did talk to her in her birdcage; among others Bland-
ford, telling her she was the bird of passage."
Clarendon lingered, melancholy and disillusioned,
at his fine house in Piccadilly until, impeached by
Parliament, he remembered Strafford's fate, and set
out to tread once more and for the remainder of his
days the path of exile.
Time avenged him. Two of his granddaughters
Mary and Anne reigned successively as queens in
England.
THE TRAGEDY OF HERRENHAUSEN
COUNT PHILIP KONIGSMARK AND THE PRINCESS
SOPHIA DOROTHEA
HE was accounted something of a scamp through-
out Europe, and particularly in England, where
he had been associated with his brother in the killing
of Mr. Thynne. But the seventeenth century did not
look for excessively nice scruples in a soldier of for-
tune; and so it condoned the lack of virtue in Count
Philip Christof Konigsmark for the sake of his per-
sonal beauty, his elegance, his ready wit, and his mag-
nificent address. The Court of Hanover made him
warmly welcome, counting itself the richer for his
presence; whilst he, on his side, was retained there by
the colonelcy in the Electoral Guard to which he had
been appointed, and by his deep and ill-starred affec-
tion for the Princess Sophia Dorothea, the wife of the
Electoral Prince, who later was to reign in England as
King George I.
His acquaintance with her dated back to childhood,
for they had been playmates at her father's ducal
Court of Zell, where Konigsmark had been brought
up. With adolescence he had gone out into the world
to seek the broader education which it offered to men
of quality and spirit. He had fought bulls in Madrid,
and the infidel overseas; he had wooed adventure
wherever it was to be met, until romance hung about
228 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
him like an aura. Thus Sophia met him again, a daz-
zling personality, whose effulgence shone the more
brightly against the dull background of that gross
Hanoverian Court; an accomplished, graceful, self-
reliant man of the world, in whom she scarcely recog-
nized her sometime playmate.
The change he found in her was no less marked,
though of a different kind. The sweet child he had
known she had been married in 1682, at the age of
sixteen had come in her ten years of wedded life to
the fulfilment of the handsome promise of her maiden-
hood. But her beauty was spiritualized by a certain
wistfulness that had not been there before, that
should not have been there now had all been well.
The sprightliness inherent in her had not abated, but
it had assumed a certain warp of bitterness; humour,
which is of the heart, had given place in her to wit,
which is of the mind, and this wit was barbed, and a
little reckless of how or where it offended.
Konigsmark observed these changes that the years
had wrought, and knew enough of her story to ac-
count for them. He knew of her thwarted love for her
cousin, the Duke of Wolfenbuttel, thwarted for the
sake of dynastic ambition, to the end that by marry-
ing her to the Electoral Prince George the whole of
the Duchy of Liineberg might be united. Thus, for
political reasons, she had been thrust into a union
that was mutually loveless; for Prince George had
as little affection to bring to it as herself. Yet for
a prince the door to compensations is ever open.
Prince George's taste, as is notorious, was ever for
ugly women, and this taste he indulged so freely,
openly, and grossly that the coldness towards him
THE TRAGEDY OF HERRENHAUSEN 229
with which Sophia had entered the alliance was event-
ually converted into disgust and contempt.
Thus matters stood between that ill-matched
couple; contempt on her side, cold dislike on his, a dis-
like that was fully shared by his father, the Elector,
Ernest Augustus, and encouraged in the latter by the
Countess von Platen.
Madame von Platen, the wife of the Elector's chief
minister of state, was with the connivance of her
despicable husband, who saw therein the means to his
own advancement the acknowledged mistress of
Ernest Augustus. She was a fleshy, gauche, vain, and
ill-favoured woman. Malevolence sat in the creases of
her painted face, and peered from her mean eyes.
Yet, such as she was, the Elector Ernest loved her.
His son's taste for ugly women would appear to have
been hereditary.
Between the Countess and Sophia there was a
deadly feud. The Princess had mortally offended her
father-in-law's favourite. Not only had she never
troubled to dissemble the loathing which that detest-
able woman inspired in her, but she had actually
given it such free and stinging expression as had pro-
voked against Madame von Platen the derision of the
Court, a derision so ill-concealed that echoes of it had
reached its object, and made her aware of the source
from whence it sprang.
It was into this atmosphere of hostility that the ad-
vent of the elegant, romantic Konigsmark took place.
He found the stage set for comedy of a grim and bitter
kind, which he was himself, by his recklessness, to
convert into tragedy.
It began by the Countess von Platen's falling in
230 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
love with him. It was some time before he suspected
it, though Heaven knows he did not lack for self-
esteem. Perhaps it was this very self-esteem that
blinded him here to the appalling truth. Yet in the
end understanding came to him. When the precise
significance of the fond leer of that painted harridan's
repellent coquetry was borne in upon him, he felt the
skin of his body creep and roughen. But he dissem-
bled craftily. He was a venal scamp, after all, and in
the Court of Hanover he saw opportunities to employ
his gifts and his knowledge of the great world in such
a way as to win to eminence. He saw that the Elec-
tor's favourite could be of use to him; and it is not
your adventurer's way to look too closely into the
nature of the ladder by which he has the chance to
climb.
Skilfully, craftily, then, he played the enamoured
Countess so long as her fondness for him might be
useful, her hostility detrimental. But once the colo-
nelcy of the Electoral Guard was firmly in his grasp,
and an intimate friendship had ripened between him-
self and Prince Charles the Elector's younger son
sufficiently to ensure his future, he plucked off the
mask and allied himself with Sophia in her hostility
towards Madame von Platen. He did worse. Some
little time thereafter, whilst on a visit to the Court of
Poland, he made one night in his cups a droll story of
the amorous persecution which he had suffered at
Madame von Platen's hands.
It was a tale that set the profligate company in a
roar. But there was one present who afterwards sent
a report of it to the Countess, and you conceive the na-
ture of the emotions it aroused in her. Her rage was
THE TRAGEDY OF HERRENHAUSEN 231
the greater for being stifled. It was obviously impos-
sible for her to appeal to her lover, the Elector, tc
avenge her. From the Elector, above all others, must
the matter be kept concealed. But not on that ac-
count would she forgo the vengeance due. She would
present a reckoning in full ere all was done, and bit-
terly should the presumptuous young adventurer who
had flouted her be made to pay.
The opportunity was very soon to be afforded her.
It arose more or less directly out of an act in which she
indulged her spite against Sophia. This lay in throw-
ing Melusina Schulemberg into the arms of the Elec-
toral Prince. Melusina, who was years afterwards to
be created Duchess of Kendal, had not yet attained to
that completeness of lank, bony hideousness that
was later to distinguish her in England. But even
in youth she could boast of little attraction. Prince
George, however, was easily attracted. A dull, undig-
nified libertine, addicted to over-eating, heavy drink-
ing, and low conversation, he found in Melusina
von Schulemberg an ideal mate. Her installation as
maitresse-en-titre took place publicly at a ball given
by Prince George at Herrenhausen, a ball at which
the Princess Sophia was present.
Accustomed, inured, as she was to the coarse prof-
ligacy of her dullard husband, and indifferent to his
philandering as her contempt of him now left her, yet,
in the affront thus publicly offered her, she felt that
the limit of endurance had been reached. Next day it
was found that she had disappeared from Herren-
hausen. She had fled to her father's Court at Zell.
But her father received her coldly; lectured her
upon the freedom and levity of her manners, which he
232 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
condemned as unbecoming the dignity of her rank;
recommended her to use in future greater prudence,
and a proper, wifely submission; and, the homily de-
livered, packed her back to her husband at Herren-
hausen.
George's reception of her on her return was bitterly
hostile. She had been guilty of a more than usual, of
an unpardonable want of respect for him. She must
learn what was due to her station, and to her hus-
band. He would thank her to instruct herself in these
matters against his return from Berlin, whither he
was about to journey, and he warned her that he
would suffer no more tantrums of that kind.
Thus he delivered himself, with cold hate in his
white, flabby, frog- face and in the very poise of his
squat, ungainly figure.
Thereafter he departed for Berlin, bearing hate of
her with him, and leaving hate and despair behind.
It was then, in this despair, that Sophia looked
about her for a true friend to lend her the aid she so
urgently required; to rescue her from her intolerable,
soul-destroying fate. And at her elbow, against this
dreadful need, Destiny had placed her sometime
playmate, her most devoted friend as she ac-
counted him, and as, indeed, he was the elegant,
reckless Konigsmark, with his beautiful face, his
golden mane, and his unfathomable blue eyes.
Walking with him one summer day between clipped
hedges in the formal gardens of Herrenhausen that
palace as squat and ungraceful as those who had
built and who inhabited it she opened her heart to
him very fully, allowed him, in her overwhelming
need of sympathy, to see things which for very shame
THE TRAGEDY OF HERRENHAUSEN 233
she had hitherto veiled from all other eyes. She kept
nothing back; she dwelt upon her unhappiness with
her boorish husband, told him of slights and indigni-
ties innumerable, whose pain she had hitherto so
bravely dissembled, confessed, even, that he had
beaten her upon occasion.
Konigsmark went red and white by turns, with the
violent surge of his emotions, and the deep sapphire
eyes blazed with wrath when she came at last to the
culminating horror of blows endured.
" It is enough, Madame," he cried. " I swear to you,
as Heaven hears me, that he shall be punished."
"Punished?" she echoed, checking in her stride,
and looked at him with a smile of sad incredulity.
"It is not his punishment I seek, my friend, but my
own salvation."
"The one can be accomplished with the other," he
answered hotly, and struck the cut-steel hilt of his
sword. "You shall be rid of this lout as soon as ever I
can come to him. I go after him to Berlin to-night."
The colour all faded from her cheeks, her sensitive
lips fell apart, as she looked at him aghast.
"Why, what would you do? What do you mean?"
she asked him.
"I will send him the length of my sword, and so
make a widow of you, Madame."
She shook her head. "Princes do not fight," she
said, on a note of contempt.
"I shall so shame him that he will have no alterna-
tive unless, indeed, he is shameless. I will choose
my occasion shrewdly, put an affront on him one eve-
ning in his cups, when drink shall have made him
valiant enough to commit himself to a meeting. If
234 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
even that will not answer, and he still shields him-
self behind his rank why, there are other ways
to serve him." He was thinking, perhaps, of Mr.
Thynne.
The heat of so much reckless, romantic fury on her
behalf warmed the poor lady, who had so long been
chilled for want of sympathy, and starved of love.
Impulsively she caught his hand in hers.
"My friend, my friend!" she cried, on a note that
quivered and broke, "you are mad wonderfully,
beautifully mad, but mad. What would become of
you if you did this?"
He swept the consideration aside by a contemptu-
ous, almost angry gesture. "Does that matter? I am
concerned with what is to become of you. I was born
for your service, my Princess, and the service being
rendered ..." He shrugged and smiled, threw out his
hands and let them fall again to his sides in an eloquent
gesture. He was the complete courtier, the knight-
errant, the romantic preux-chevalier all in one.
She drew closer to him, took the blue lapels of his
military coat in her white hands, and looked patheti-
cally up into his beautiful face. If ever she wanted to
kiss a man, she surely wanted to kiss Konigsmark in
that moment, but as she might have kissed a loving
brother, in token of her deep gratitude for his devo-
tion to her who had known so little true devotion.
"If you knew," she said, "what balsam this proof
of your friendship has poured upon the wounds of my
soul, you would understand my utter lack of words
in which to thank you. You dumbfound me, my
friend; I can find no expression for my gratitude."
" I ask no gratitude," quoth he. "I am all gratitude
THE TRAGEDY OF HERRENHAUSEN 235
myself that you should have come to me in the hour
of your need. I but ask your leave to serve you in my
own way."
She shook her head. She saw his blue eyes grow
troubled. He was about to speak, to protest, but she
hurried on. "Serve me if you will God knows I
need the service of a loyal friend but serve me as
I shall myself decide no other way."
" But what alternative service can exist? " he asked,
almost impatiently.
"I have it in mind to escape from this horrible
place to quit Hanover, never to return."
"But to go whither?"
"Does it matter? Anywhere away from this hate-
ful Court, and this hateful life; anywhere, since my
father will not let me find shelter at Zell, as I had
hoped. Had it not been for the thought of my chil-
dren, I should have fled long ago. For the sake of
those two little ones I have suffered patiently through
all these years. But the limit of endurance has been
reached and passed. Take me away, Konigsmark!"
She was clutching his lapels again. "If you would
really serve me, help me to escape."
His hands descended upon hers, and held them
prisoned against his breast. A flush crept into his fair
cheeks, there was a sudden kindling of the eyes that
looked down into her own piteous ones. These sensi-
tive, romantic natures are quickly stirred to passion,
ever ready to yield to the adventure of it.
" My Princess," he said, " you may count upon your
Konigsmark while he has life." Disengaging her
hands from his lapels, but still holding them, he
bowed low over them, so low that his heavy golden
236 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
mane tumbled forward on either side of his handsome
head to form a screen under cover of which he pressed
his lips upon her ringers.
She let him have his will with her hands. It was
little enough reward for so much devotion.
"I thank you again," she breathed. "And now I
must think I must consider where I can count upon
finding refuge."
That cooled his ardour a little. His own high ro-
mantic notion was, no doubt, to fling her there and
then upon the withers of his horse, and so ride out into
the wide world to carve a kingdom for her with his
sword. Her sober words dispelled the dream, re-
vealed to him that it was not quite intended he should
hereafter be her custodian. And there for the moment
the matter was suspended.
Both had behaved quite recklessly. Each should
have remembered that an Electoral Princess is not
wise to grant a protracted interview, accompanied
by lapel-holding, hand-holding, and hand-kissings,
within sight of the windows of a palace. And, as it
happened, behind one of those windows lurked the
Countess von Platen, watching them jealously, and
without any disposition to construe the meeting in-
nocently. Was she not the deadly enemy of both?
Had not the Princess whetted satire upon her, and
had not Konigsmark scorned the love she proffered
him, and then unpardonably published it in a ribald
story to excite the mirth of profligates ?
That evening the Countess purposefully sought her
lover, the Elector.
"Your son is away in Prussia," quoth she. "Who
guards his honour in his absence?"
THE TRAGEDY OF HERRENHAUSEN 237
"George's honour?" quoth the Elector, bulging
eyes staring at the Countess. He did not laugh, as
might have been expected at the notion of guarding
something whose existence was not easily discerned.
He had no sense of humour, as his appearance sug-
gested. He was a short, fat man with a face shaped
like a pear narrow in the brow and heavy in the
jowl. "What the devil do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean that this foreign adventurer, Konigsmark,
and Sophia grow too intimate."
"Sophia!" Thick eyebrows were raised until they
almost met the line of his ponderous peruke. His face
broke into malevolent creases expressive of contempt.
"That white- faced ninny! Bah!" Her very virtue
was matter for his scorn.
"It is these white-faced ninnies can be most sly,"
replied the Countess, out of her worldly wisdom.
"Listen a moment now." And she related, with in-
terest rather than discount, you may be sure, what
she had witnessed that afternoon.
The malevolence deepened in his face. He had
never loved Sophia, and he felt none the kinder to-
wards her for her recent trip to Zell. Then, too, being
a libertine, and the father of a libertine, it logically
followed that unchastity in his women-folk was in his
eyes the unpardonable sin.
He heaved himself out of his deep chair. "How far
has this gone?" he demanded.
Prudence restrained the Countess from any over-
statement that might afterwards be disproved. Be-
sides, there was not the need, if she could trust her
senses. Patience and vigilance would presently afford
her all the evidence required to damn the pair. She
238 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
said as much, and promised the Elector that she
would exercise herself the latter quality in his son's
service. Again the Elector did not find it grotesque
that his mistress should appoint herself the guardian
of his son's honour.
The Countess went about that congenial task with
zeal though George's honour was the least thing
that concerned her. What concerned her was the dis-
honour of Sophia, and the ruin of Konigsmark. So
she watched assiduously, and set others, too, to watch
for her and to report. And almost daily now she had
for the Elector a tale of whisperings and hand-
pressings, and secret stolen meetings between the
guilty twain. The Elector raged, and would have
taken action, but that the guileful Countess curbed
him. All this was not enough. An accusation that
could not be substantiated would ruin all chance of
punishing the offenders, might recoil, indeed, upon
the accusers by bringing the Duke of Zell to his daugh-
ter's aid. So they must wait yet awhile until they
held more absolute proof of this intrigue.
And then at last one day the Countess sped in
haste to the Elector with word that Konigsmark and
the Princess had shut themselves up together in the
garden pavilion. Let him come at once, and he should
so discover them for himself, and thus at last be able
to take action. The Countess was flushed with tri-
umph. Be that meeting never so innocent and
Madame von Platen could not, being what she was,
and having seen what she had seen, conceive it inno-
cent it was in an Electoral Princess an unforgiv-
able indiscretion, to take the most charitable view,
which none would dream of taking. So the Elector,
THE TRAGEDY OF HERRENHAUSEN 239
fiercely red in the face, hurried off to the pavilion
with Madame von Platen following. He came too
late, despite the diligence of his spy.
Sophia had been there, but her interview with the
Count had been a brief one. She had to tell him that
at last she was resolved in all particulars. She would
seek a refuge at the Court of her cousin, the Duke of
Wolfenbiittel, who, she was sure for the sake of
what once had lain between them would not now
refuse to shelter and protect her. Of Konigsmark she
desired that he should act as her escort to her cousin's
Court.
Konigsmark was ready, eager. In Hanover he
would leave nothing that he regretted. At Wolfen-
biittel, having served Sophia faithfully, his ever-
growing, romantic passion for her might find expres-
sion. She would make all dispositions, and advise him
when she was ready to set out. But they must use
caution, for they were being spied upon. Madame
von Platen's over-eagerness had in part betrayed her.
It was, indeed, their consciousness of espionage which
had led to this dangerous meeting in the seclusion of
the pavilion, and which urged him to linger after
Sophia had left him. They were not to be seen to
emerge together.
The young Dane sat alone on the window-seat, his
chin in his hands, his eyes dreamy, a faint smile on his
shapely lips, when Ernest Augustus burst furiously in,
the Countess von Platen lingering just beyond the
threshold. The Elector's face was apoplectically pur-
ple from rage and haste, his breath came in wheezing
gasps. His bulging eyes swept round the chamber,
and fastened finally, glaring, upon the startled
Konigsmark.
2 4 o HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
"Where is the Princess?" he blurted out.
The Count espied Madame von Platen' in the
background, and had the scent of mischief very
strong. But he preserved an air of innocent mystifica-
tion. He rose and answered with courteous ease:
"Your Highness is seeking her? Shall I ascertain
for you?"
At a loss, Ernest Augustus stared a moment, then
flung a glance over his shoulder at the Countess.
"I was told that Her Highness was here," he said.
"Plainly," said Konigsmark, with perfect calm,
"you have been misinformed." And his quiet glance
and gesture invited the Elector to look round for
himself.
"How long have you been here yourself?" Feeling
at a disadvantage, the Elector avoided the direct
question that was in his mind.
"Half an hour at least."
"And in that time you have not seen the
Princess?"
"Seen the Princess?" Konigsmark's brows were
knit perplexedly. "I scarcely understand Your High-
ness."
The Elector moved a step and trod on a soft sub-
stance. He looked down, then stooped, and rose
again, holding in his hand a woman's glove.
"What's this?" quoth he. "Whose glove is this?"
If Konigsmark's heart missed a beat as well it
may have done he did not betray it outwardly.
He smiled; indeed, he almost laughed.
"Your Highness is amusing himself at my expense
by asking me questions that only a seer could
answer."
THE TRAGEDY OF HERRENHAUSEN 241
The Elector was still considering him with his pon-
derously suspicious glance, when quick steps ap-
proached. A serving-maid, one of Sophia's women,
appeared in the doorway of the pavilion.
"What do you want?" the Elector snapped at her.
"A glove Her Highness lately dropped here," was
the timid answer, innocently precipitating the very
discovery which the woman had been too hastily dis-
patched to avert.
The Elector flung the glove at her, and there was a
creak of evil laughter from him. When she had de-
parted, he turned again to Konigsmark.
"You fence skilfully," said he, sneering, "too skil-
fully for an honest man. Will you now tell me with-
out any more of this, precisely what the Princess
Sophia was doing here with you?"
Konigsmark drew himself stiffly up, looking
squarely into the furnace of the Elector's face.
" Your Highness assumes that the Princess was here
with me, and a prince is not to be contradicted, even
when he insults a lady whose spotless purity is beyond
his understanding. But Your Highness can hardly
expect me to become in never so slight a degree a
party to that insult by vouchsafing any answer to
your question."
"That is your last word, sir?" The Elector shook
with suppressed anger.
"Your Highness cannot think that words are
necessary?"
The bulging eyes grew narrow, the heavy nether lip
was thrust forth in scorn and menace.
"You are relieved, sir, of your duties in the Elec-
toral Guard, and as that is the only tie binding you to
242 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
Hanover, we see no reason why your sojourn here
should be protracted."
Konigsmark bowed stiffly, formally. "It shall end,
Your Highness, as soon as I can make the necessary
arrangements for my departure in a week at
most."
"You are accorded three days, sir." The Elector
turned, and waddled out, leaving Konigsmark to
breathe freely again. The three days should suffice
for the Princess also. It was very well.
The Elector, too, thought that it was very well.
He had given this troublesome fellow his dismissal,
averted a scandal, and placed his daughter-in-law out
of the reach of harm. Madame von Platen was the
only one concerned who thought that it was not well
at all, the consummation being far from that which
she had desired. She had dreamt of a flaming scandal,
that should utterly consume her two enemies, Sophia
and Konigsmark. Instead, she saw them both escap-
ing, and the fact that she was as she may have
supposed effectively separating two loving hearts
could be no sort of adequate satisfaction for such bit-
ter spite as hers. Therefore she plied her wicked wits
to force an issue more germane to her desires.
The course she took was fraught with a certain
peril. Yet confident that at worst she could justify it,
and little fearing that the worst would happen, she
boldly went to work. She forged next day a brief note
in which the Princess Sophia urgently bade Konigs-
mark to come to her at ten o'clock that night in her
own apartments, and with threat and bribe induced
the waiting woman of the glove to bear that letter.
Now it so happened that Konigsmark, through the
THE TRAGEDY OF HERRENHAUSEN 243
kind offices of Sophia's maid-of-honour, Mademoiselle
de Knesebeck, who was in the secret of their inten-
tions, had sent the Princess a note that morning,
briefly stating the urgency of departure, and begging
her so to arrange that she could leave Herrenhausen
with him on the morrow. He imagined the note now
brought him to be in answer to that appeal of his.
Its genuineness he never doubted, being unacquainted
with Sophia's writing. He was aghast at the rashness
which dictated such an assignation, yet never hesi-
tated as to keeping it. It was not his way to hesitate.
He trusted to the gods who watch over the destinies
of the bold.
And meanwhile Madame von Platen was reproach-
ing her lover with having dealt too softly with the
Dane.
"Bah!" said the Elector. "To-morrow he goes his
ways, and we are rid of him. Is not that enough?"
"Enough, if, soon as he goes, he goes not too late
already," quoth she.
"Now what will you be hinting?" he asked her
peevishly.
"I'll be more plain. I will tell you what I know.
It is this. Konigsmark has an assignation with the
Princess Sophia this very night at ten o'clock and
where do you suppose? In Her Highness's own apart-
ments."
The Elector came to his feet with an oath. "That
is not true!" he cried. "It cannot be!"
"Then I'll say no more/' quoth Jezebel, and
snapped her thin lips.
"Ah, but you shall. How do you know this?"
"That I cannot tell you without betraying a con-
244 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
iidence. Let it suffice you that I do know it. Con-
sider now whether in banishing this profligate you
have sufficiently avenged the honour of your son."
"My God, if I thought this were true ..." He
choked with rage, stood shaking a moment, then
strode to the door, calling.
"The truth is easily ascertained," said Madame.
"Conceal yourself in the Rittersaal, and await his
coming forth. But you had best go attended, for it is
a very reckless rogue, and he has been known afore-
time to practise murder."
Whilst the Elector, acting upon this advice, was
getting his men together, Konigsmark was wasting
precious moments in Sophia's ante-chamber, whilst
Mademoiselle de Knesebeck apprised Her Highness of
his visit. Sophia had already retired to bed, and the
amazing announcement of the Count's presence there
startled her into a fear of untoward happenings. She
was overwhelmed, too, by the rashness of this step
of his, coming after the events of yesterday. If it
should be known that he had visited her thus, terrible
consequences might ensue. She rose, and with Ma-
demoiselle de Knesebeck's aid made ready to receive
him. Yet for all that she made haste, the precious
irreclaimable moments sped.
She came to him at last, Mademoiselle de Knese-
beck following, for propriety's sake.
"What is it?" she asked him breathlessly. "What
brings you here at such an hour?"
"What brings me?" quoth he, surprised at that re-
ception. "Why, your commands your letter."
"My letter? What letter?"
A sense of doom, of being trapped, suddenly awoke
THE TRAGEDY OF HERRENHAUSEN 245
in him. He plucked forth the treacherous note, and
proffered it.
"Why, what does this mean?" She swept a white
hand over her eyes and brows, as if to brush away
something that obscured her vision. "That is not
mine. I never wrote it. How could you dream I
should be so imprudent as to bid you hither, and at
such an hour? How could you dream it?"
"You are right," said he, and laughed, perhaps to
ease her alarm, perhaps in sheer bitter mirth. "It will
be, no doubt, the work of our friend, Madame von
Platen. I had best begone. For the rest, my travel-
ing-chaise will wait from noon until sunset to-
morrow by the Markt Kirck in Hanover, and I shall
wait within it. I shall hope to conduct you safely to
Wolfenbiittel."
"I will come, I will come. But go now oh, go!"
He looked very deeply into her eyes a valedic-
tory glance against the worst befalling him. Then he
took her hand, bowed over it and kissed it, and so de-
parted.
He crossed the outer ante-room, descended the
short flight of stairs, and pushed open the heavy door
of the Hall of Knights. He passed through, and thrust
the door behind him, then stood a moment looking
round the vast apartment. If he was too late to avoid
the springs of the baited trap, it was here that they
should snap upon him. Yet all was still. A single
lamp on a table in the middle of the vast chamber
shed a feeble, flickering light, yet sufficient to assure
him that no one waited here. He sighed relief,
wrapped his cloak about him, and set out swiftly to
cross the hall.
246 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
But even as he passed, four shadows detached
themselves from the tall stove, resolved themselves
into armed men, and sprang after him.
He heard them, wheeled about, flung off his cloak,
and disengaged his sword, all with the speed of
lightning and the address of the man who for ten
years had walked amid perils, and learned to depend
upon his blade. That swift action sealed his doom.
Their orders were to take him living or dead, and
standing in awe of his repute, they were not the men
to incur risks. Even as he came on guard, a partisan
grazed his head, and another opened his breast.
He went down, coughing and gasping, blood dab-
bling his bright golden hair, and staining the priceless
Mechlin at his throat, yet his right hand still desper-
ately clutching his useless sword.
His assassins stood about him, their partisans
levelled to strike again, and summoned him to yield.
Then, beside one of them, he suddenly beheld the
Countess von Platen materializing out of the sur-
rounding shadows as it seemed, and behind her the
squat, ungraceful figure of the Elector. He fought for
breath.
" I am slain," he gasped, "and as I am to appear be-
fore my Maker I swear to you that the Princess So-
phia is innocent. Spare her at least, Your Highness."
"Innocent!" said the Elector hoarsely. "Then
what did you now in her apartments?"
"It was a trap set for us by this foul hag, who ..."
The heel of the vindictive harridan ground viciously
upon the lips of the dying man and choked his utter-
ance. Thereafter the halberts finished him off, and he
was buried there and then, in lime, under the floor of
THE TRAGEDY OF HERRENHAUSEN 247
the Hall of Knights, under the very spot where he hacf
fallen, which was long to remain imbrued with his
blood.
Thus miserably perished the glittering Konigs-
mark, a martyr to his own irrepressible romanticism.
As for Sophia, better might it have been for her had
she shared his fate that night. She was placed under
arrest next morning, and Prince George was sum-
moned back from Berlin at once.
The evidence may have satisfied him that his hon-
our had not suffered, for he was disposed to let the
matter drop, content that they should remain in the
forbidding relations which had existed between them
before this happening. But Sophia was uncompromis-
ing in her demand for strict justice.
"If I am guilty, I am unworthy of you," she told
him. "If innocent, you are unworthy of me."
There was no more to be said. A consistory court
was assembled to divorce them. But since with the
best intentions there was no faintest evidence of her
adultery, this court had to be content to pronounce
the divorce upon the ground of her desertion.
She protested against the iniquity of this. But she
protested in vain. She was carried off into the grim
captivity of a castle on the Ahlen, to drag out in that
melancholy duress another thirty-two years of life.
Her death took place in November of 1726. And
the story runs that on her death-bed she delivered to
a person of trust a letter to her sometime husband,
now King George I of England. Seven months later,
as King George was on his way to his beloved Han-
over, that letter was placed in his carriage as it
crossed the frontier into Germany. It contained So-
248 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
phia's dying declaration of innocence, and her solemn
summons to King George to stand by her side before
the judgment-seat of Heaven within a year, and there
make answer in her presence for the wrongs he had
done her, for her blighted life and her miserable death.
King George's answer to that summons was imme-
diate. The reading of that letter brought on the
apoplectic seizure of which he died in his carriage
next day the 9th of June, 1727 on the road to
Osnabriick.
XI
THE TYRANNICIDE
CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND JEAN PAUL MARAT
TYRANNICIDE was the term applied to her
deed by Adam Lux, her lover in the sublimest
and most spiritual sense of the word for he never so
much as spoke to her, and she never so much as knew
of his existence.
The sudden spiritual passion which inflamed him
when he beheld her in the tumbril on her way to the
scaffold is a fitting corollary to her action. She in her
way and he in his were alike sublime; her tranquil
martyrdom upon the altar of Republicanism and his
exultant martyrdom upon the altar of Love were alike
splendidly futile.
It is surely the strangest love-story enshrined in
history. It has its pathos, yet leaves no regrets be-
hind, for there is no might-have-been which death had
thwarted. Because she died, he loved her; because he
loved her, he died. That is all but for the details
which I am now to give you.
The convent-bred Marie Charlotte Corday d'Ar-
mont was the daughter of a landless squire of Nor-
mandy, a member of the chetive noblesse, a man of
gentle birth, whose sadly reduced fortune may have
predisposed him against the law of entail or primogen-
iture the prime cause of the inequality out of which
were sprung so many of the evils that afflicted France.
250 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
Like many of his order and condition he was among
the earliest converts to republicanism the pure,
ideal republicanism, demanding constitutional gov-
ernment of the people by the people, holding mo-
narchical and aristocratic rule an effete and parasitic
anachronism.
From M. de Corday Charlotte absorbed the lofty
Republican doctrines to which anon she was to sacri-
fice her life; and she rejoiced when the hour of awak-
ening sounded and the children of France rose up and
snapped the fetters in which they had been tram-
melled for centuries by an insolent minority of their
f ello w-coun trymen .
In the early violence of the Revolution she thought
she saw a transient phase horrible, but inevitable
in the dread convulsion of that awakening. Soon this
would pass, and the sane, ideal government of her
dreams would follow must follow, since among the
people's elected representatives was a goodly number
of unselfish, single-minded men of her father's class of
life; men of breeding and education, impelled by a
lofty altruistic patriotism; men who gradually came to
form a party presently to be known as the Girondins.
But the formation of one party argues the forma-
tion of at least another. And this other in the Na-
tional Assembly was that of the Jacobins, less pure of
motive, less restrained in deed, a party in which stood
preeminent such ruthless, uncompromising men as
Robespierre, Danton and Marat.
Where the Girondins stood for Republicanism, the
Jacobins stood for Anarchy. War was declared be-
tween the two. The Girondins arraigned Marat and
Robespierre for complicity in the September massa-
THE TYRANNICIDE 251
cres, and thereby precipitated their own fall. The tri-
umphant acquittal of Marat was the prelude to the
ruin of the Girondins, and the proscription of twenty-
nine deputies followed at once as the first step. These
fled into the country, hoping to raise an army that
should yet save France, and several of the fugitives
made their way to Caen. Thence by pamphlets and
oratory they laboured to arouse true Republican en-
thusiasm. They were gifted, able men, eloquent
speakers and skilled writers, and they might have
succeeded but that in Paris sat another man no less
gifted, and with surer knowledge of the temper of the
proletariat, tirelessly wielding a vitriolic pen, skilled
in the art of inflaming the passions of the mob.
That man was Jean Paul Marat, sometime medical
practitioner, sometime professor of literature, a grad-
uate of the Scottish University of Saint Andrews,
author of some scientific and many sociological works,
inveterate pamphleteer and Revolutionary journalist,
proprietor and editor of "L' Ami du Peuple," and idol
of the Parisian rabble, who had bestowed upon him
the name borne by his gazette, so that he was known
as "The People's Friend."
Such was the foe of the Girondins, and of the pure,
altruistic, Utopian Republicanism for which they
stood; and whilst he lived and laboured, their own en-
deavours to influence the people were all in vain.
From his vile lodging in the rue de 1'Ecole de Mede-
cine in Paris he span with his clever, wicked pen a
web that paralyzed their high endeavours and threat-
ened finally to choke them.
He was not alone, of course. He was one of the
dread triumvirate in which Danton and Robespierre
252 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
were his associates. But to the Girondins he appeared
by far the most formidable and ruthless and implac-
able of the three, whilst to Charlotte Corday the
friend and associate now of the proscribed Girondins
who had sought refuge in Caen he loomed so vast
and terrible as to eclipse his associates entirely. To
her young mind, inflamed with enthusiasm for the re-
ligion of Liberty as preached by the Girondins, Marat
was a loathly, dangerous heresiarch, threatening to
corrupt that sublime new faith with false, anarchical
doctrine, and to replace the tyranny that had been
overthrown by a tyranny more odious still.
She witnessed in Caen the failure of the Girondin
attempt to raise an army with which to deliver Paris
from the foul clutches of the Jacobins. An anguished
spectator of this failure, she saw in it a sign that Lib-
erty was being strangled at its birth. On the lips of
her friends the Girondins she caught again the name
of Marat, the murderer of Liberty; and, brooding, she
reached a conclusion embodied in a phrase of a letter
which she wrote about that time:
As long as Marat lives there will never be any safety for
the friends of law and humanity.
From that negative conclusion to its positive, logi-
cal equivalent it was but a step. That step she took.
She may have considered awhile the proposition thus
presented to her, or resolve may have come to her
with realization. She understood that a great sacrifice
was necessary; that who undertook to rid France of
that unclean monster must go prepared for self-
immolation. She counted the cost calmly and soberly
for calm and sober was now her every act.
THE TYRANNICIDE 253
She made her packages, and set out one morning by
the Paris coach from Caen, leaving a note for her
father, in which she had written:
I am going to England, because I do not believe that it
will be possible for a long time to live happily and tran-
quilly in France. On leaving I post this letter to you. When
you receive it I shall no longer be here. Heaven de-
nied us the happiness of living together, as it has denied us
other happinesses. May it show itself more clement to our
country. Good-bye, dear Father. Embrace my sister for
me, and do not forget me.
That was all. The fiction that she was going to
England was intended to save him pain. For she had
so laid her plans that her identity should remain undis-
closed. She would seek Marat in the very Hall of the
Convention, and publicly slay him in his seat. Thus
Paris should behold Nemesis overtaking the false Re-
publican in the very Assembly which he corrupted,
and anon should adduce a moral from the spectacle of
the monster's death. For herself she counted upon in-
stant destruction at the hands of the furious specta-
tors. Thus, thinking to die unidentified, she trusted
that her father, hearing, as all France must hear, the
great tidings that Marat was dead, would never con-
nect her with the instrument of Fate shattered by the
fury of the mob.
You realize, then, how great and how terrible was
the purpose of this maid of twenty-five, who so de-
murely took her seat in the Paris diligence on that
July morning of the Year 2 of the Republic i?93>
old style. She was becomingly dressed in brown cloth,
a lace fichu folded across her well-developed breast, a
conical hat above her light brown hair. She was of a
254 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
good height and finely proportioned, and her carriage
as full of dignity as of grace. Her skin was of such
white loveliness that a contemporary compares it
with the lily. Like Athene, she was grey-eyed, and,
like Athene, noble-featured, the oval of her face
squaring a little at the chin, in which there was a cleft.
Calm was her habit, calm her slow-moving eyes, calm
and deliberate her movements, and calm the mind
reflected in all this.
And as the heavy diligence trundles out of Caen
and takes the open country and the Paris road, not
even the thought of the errand upon which she goes,
of her death-dealing and death-receiving mission, can
shake that normal calm. Here is no wild exaltation,
no hysterical obedience to hotly conceived impulse.
Here is purpose, as cold as it is lofty, to liberate
France and pay with her life for the privilege of doing
so.
That lover of hers, whom we are presently to see,
has compared her ineptly with Joan of Arc, that other
maid of France. But Joan moved with pomp in a gor-
geous pageantry, amid acclamations, sustained by the
heady wine of combat and of enthusiasm openly in-
dulged, towards a goal of triumph. Charlotte trav-
elled quietly in the stuffy diligence with the quiet con-
viction that her days were numbered.
So normal did she appear to her travelling compan-
ions, that one among them, with an eye for beauty,
pestered her with amorous attentions, and actually
proposed marriage to her before the coach had rolled
over the bridge of Neuilly into Paris two days later.
She repaired to the Providence Inn in the rue des
Vieux Augustins, where she engaged a room on the
THE TYRANNICIDE 255
first floor, and then she set out in quest of the Deputy
Duperret. She had a letter of introduction to him
from the Girondin Barbaroux, with whom she had
been on friendly terms at Caen. Duperret was to as-
sist her to obtain an interview with the Minister of
the Interior. She had undertaken to see the latter on
the subject of certain papers relating to the affairs of
a nun of Caen, an old convent friend of her own, and
she was in haste to discharge this errand, so as to be
free for the great task upon which she was come.
From inquiries that she made, she learnt at once
that Marat was ill, and confined to his house. This
rendered necessary a change of plans, and the relin-
quishing of her project of affording him a spectacular
death in the crowded Hall of the Convention.
The next day, which was Friday, she devoted to
furthering the business of her friend the nun. On Sat-
urday morning she rose early, and by six o'clock she
was walking in the cool gardens of the Palais Royal,
considering with that almost unnatural calm of hers
the ways and means of accomplishing her purpose in
the unexpected conditions that she found.
Towards eight o'clock, when Paris was awakening
to the business of the day and taking down its shut-
ters, she entered a cutler's shop in the Palais Royal,
and bought for two francs a stout kitchen knife in a
shagreen case. She then returned to her hotel to
breakfast, and afterwards, dressed in her brown
travelling-gown and conical hat, she went forth again,
and, hailing a hackney carriage, drove to Marat's
house in the rue de 1'Ecole de Medecine.
But admittance to that squalid dwelling was denied
her. The Citizen Marat was ill, she was told, and
256 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
could receive no visitors. It was Simonne Evrard,
the triumvir's mistress later to be known as the
Widow Marat who barred her ingress with this
message.
Checked, she drove back to the Providence Inn and
wrote a letter to the triumvir:
PARIS, iyh Jufyy Year 2 of the Republic
CITIZEN, I have arrived from Caen. Your love for
your country leads me to assume that you will be anxious
to hear of the unfortunate events which are taking place in
that part of the Republic. I shall therefore call upon you
towards one o'clock. Have the kindness to receive me, and
accord me a moment's audience. I shall put you in the way
of rendering a great service to France.
MARIE CORDAY
Having dispatched that letter to Marat, she sat un-
til late afternoon waiting vainly for an answer. De-
spairing at last of receiving any, she wrote a second
note, more peremptory in tone:
I wrote to you this morning, Marat. Have you received
my letter? May I hope for a moment's audience? If you
have received my letter, I hope you will not refuse me, con-
sidering the importance of the matter. It should suffice for
you that I am very unfortunate to give me the right to your
protection.
Having changed into a grey-striped dimity gown
you observe this further manifestation of a calm so
complete that it admits of no departure from the or-
dinary habits of life she goes forth to deliver in per-
son this second letter, the knife concealed in the folds
of the muslin fichu crossed high upon her breast.
In a mean, brick-paved, ill-lighted, and almost un-
THE TYRANNICIDE 257
furnished room of that house in the rue de 1'ficole de
Medecine, the People's Friend is seated in a bath. It
is no instinct of cleanliness he is obeying, for in all
France there is no man more filthy in his person and
his habits than this triumvir. His bath is medicated.
The horrible, loathsome disease that corrodes his flesh
demands these long immersions to quiet the gnawing
pains which distract his active, restless mind. In
these baths he can benumb the torment of the body
with which he is encumbered.
For Marat is an intellect, and nothing more
leastways, nothing more that matters. What else
there is to him of trunk and limbs and organs he has
neglected until it has all fallen into decay. His very
lack of personal cleanliness, the squalor in which he
lives, the insufficient sleep which he allows himself, his
habit of careless feeding at irregular intervals, all have
their source in his contempt for the physical part of
him. This talented man of varied attainments, ac-
complished linguist, skilled physician, able naturalist
and profound psychologist, lives in his intellect alone,
impatient of all physical interruptions. If he consents
to these immersions, if he spends whole days seated in
this medicated bath, it is solely because it quenches or
cools the fires that are devouring him, and thus per-
mits him to bend his mind to the work that is his life.
But his long-suffering body is avenging upon the mind
the neglect to which it has been submitted. The mor-
bid condition of the former is being communicated to
the latter, whence results that disconcerting admixture
of cold, cynical cruelty and exalted sensibility which
marked his nature in the closing years of his life.
In his bath, then, sat the People's Friend on that
258 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
July evening, immersed to the hips, his head swathed
in a filthy turban, his emaciated body cased in a
sleeveless waistcoat. He is fifty years of age, dying of
consumption and other things, so that, did Charlotte
but know it, there is no need to murder him. Disease
and Death have marked him for their own, and grow
impatient.
A board covering the bath served him for writing-
table; an empty wooden box at his side bore an ink-
stand some pens, sheets of paper, and two or three
copies of "L'Ami du Peuple." There was no sound in
the room but the scratch and splutter of his quill. He
was writing diligently, revising and editing a proof of
the forthcoming issue of his paper.
A noise of voices raised in the outer room invaded
the quiet in which he was at work, and gradually
penetrated his absorption, until it disturbed and irri-
tated him. He moved restlessly in his bath, listened a
moment, then, with intent to make an end of the in-
terruption, he raised a hoarse, croaking voice to in-
quire what might be taking place.
The door opened, and Simonne, his mistress and
household drudge, entered the room. She was fully
twenty years younger than himself, and under the slat-
tern appearance which life in that house had imposed
upon her there were vestiges of a certain comeliness.
"There is a young woman here from Caen, who de-
mands insistently to see you upon a matter of na-
tional importance."
The dull eyes kindle at the mention of Caen; inter-
est quickens in that leaden-hued countenance. Was it
not in Caen that those old foes of his, the Girondins,
were stirring up rebellion?
THE TYRANNICIDE 259
"She says," Simonne continued, "that she wrote a
letter to you this morning, and she brings you a sec*
ond note herself. I have told her that you will not re-
ceive any one, and ..."
"Give me the note," he snapped. Setting down his
pen, he thrust out an unclean paw to snatch the folded
sheet from Simonne's hand. He spread it, and read,
his bloodless lips compressed, his eyes narrowing to
slits.
"Let her in," he commanded sharply, and Simonne
obeyed him without more ado. She admitted Char-
lotte, and left them alone together the avenger and
her victim. For a moment each regarded the other.
Marat beheld a handsome young woman, elegantly
attired. But these things had no interest for the
People's Friend. What to him was woman and the
lure of beauty? Charlotte beheld a feeble man of a re-
pulsive hideousness, and was full satisfied, for in this
outward loathsomeness she imagined a confirmation
of the vileness of the mind she was come to blot
out.
Then Marat spoke. "So you are from Caen,
child?" he said. "And what is doing in Caen that
makes you so anxious to see me?"
She approached him.
"Rebellion is stirring there, Citizen Marat."
"Rebellion, ha!" It was a sound between a laugh
and a croak. "Tell me what deputies are sheltered in
Caen. Come, child, their names." He took up and
dipped his quill, and drew a sheet of paper towards
him.
She approached still nearer; she came to stand
close beside him, erect and calm. She recited the
260 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
names of her friends, the Girondins, whilst hunched
there in his bath his pen scratched briskly.
"So many for the guillotine," he snarled, when it
was done.
But whilst he was writing, she had drawn the knife
from her fichu, and as he uttered those words of doom
to others his own doom descended upon him in a
lightning stroke. Straight driven by that strong
young arm, the long, stout blade was buried to its
black hilt in his breast.
He looked at her with eyes in which there was a
faint surprise as he sank back. Then he raised his
voice for the last time.
"Help, chere amie! Help!" he cried, and was for-
ever silent.
The hand still grasping the pen trailed on the
ground beside the bath at the end of his long, emaci-
ated arm. His body sank sideways in the same direc-
tion, the head lolling nervelessly upon his right
shoulder, whilst from the great rent in his breast the
blood gushed forth, embruing the water of his bath,
trickling to the brick-paved floor, bespattering
symbolically almost a copy of "L'Ami du Peuple,"
the journal to which he had devoted so much of his
uneasy life.
In answer to that cry of his came now Simonne in
haste. A glance sufficed to reveai to her the horrible
event, and,. like a tigress, she sprang upon the unre-
sisting slayer, seizing her by the head, and calling
loudly the while for assistance. Came instantly from
the ante-room Jeanne, the old cook, the portress of
the house, and Laurent Basse, a folder of Marat's
paper; and now Charlotte found herself confronted by
THE TYRANNICIDE 261
four maddened, vociferous beings, at whose hands she
may well have expected to receive the death for which
she was prepared.
Laurent, indeed, snatched up a chair, and felled her
by a blow of it across her head. He would, no doubt,
have proceeded in his fury to have battered her to
death, but for the arrival of gens d'armes and the po-
lice commissioner of the district, who took her in their
protecting charge.
The soul of Paris was convulsed by the tragedy
when it became known. All night terror and confu-
sion were abroad. All night the Revolutionary rabble,
in angry grief, surged about and kept watch upon the
house wherein the People's Friend lay dead.
That night, and for two days and nights thereafter,
Charlotte Corday lay in the Prison of the Abbaye,
supporting with fortitude the indignities that for a
woman were almost inseparable from Revolutionary
incarceration. She preserved throughout her imper-
turbable calm, based now upon a state of mind con-
tent in the contemplation of accomplished purpose,
duty done. She had saved France, she believed; saved
Liberty, by slaying the man who would have stran-
gled it. In that illusion she was content. Her own life
was a small price to pay for the splendid achievement.
Some of her time of waiting she spent in writing
letters to her friends, in which tranquilly and sanely
she dwelt upon what she had done, expounding fully
the motives that had impelled her, dwelling upon the
details of the execution, and of all that had followed.
Among the letters written by her during those "days
of the preparation of peace" - as she calls that pe-
riod, dating in such terms a long epistle to Barbaroux
262 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
was one to the Committee of Public Safety, in
which she begs that a miniature-painter may be sent
to her to paint her portrait, so that she may leave this
token of remembrance to her friends. It is only in
this, as the end approaches, that we see in her conduct
any thought for her own self, any suggestion that she
is anything more than an instrument in the hands of
Fate.
On the 1 5th, at eight o'clock in the morning, her
trial began before the Revolutionary Tribunal. A
murmur ran through the hall as she appeared in her
gown of grey-striped dimity, composed and calm
always calm.
The trial opened with the examination of witnesses;
into that of the cutler, who had sold her the knife, she
broke impatiently.
"These details are a waste of time. It is I who
killed Marat."
The audience gasped, and rumbled ominously.
Montane turned to examine her.
"What was the object of your visit to Paris?" he
asks.
"To kill Marat."
"What motives induced you to this horrible deed?"
"His many crimes."
"Of what crimes do you accuse him?"
"That he instigated the massacre of September;
that he kept alive the fires of civil war, so that he
might be elected dictator; that he sought to infringe
upon the sovereignty of the People by causing the ar-
rest and imprisonment of the deputies to the Conven-
tion on May 3ist."
"What proof have you of this?"
THE TYRANNICIDE 263
"The future will afford the proof. Marat hid his
designs behind a mask of patriotism."
Montane shifted the ground of his interrogatory.
"Who were your accomplices in this atrocious
act?"
"I have none."
Montane shook his head. "You cannot convince
any one that a person of your age and sex could have
conceived such a crime unless instigated by some per-
son or persons whom you are unwilling to name."
Charlotte almost smiled. "That shows but a poor
knowledge of the human heart. It is easier to carry
out such a project upon the strength of one's own ha-
tred than upon that of others." And then, raising her
voice, she proclaimed: "I killed one man to save a
hundred thousand; I killed a villain to save inno-
cents; I killed a savage wild beast to give repose to
France. I was a Republican before the Revolution.
I never lacked for energy."
What more was there to say? Her guilt was com-
pletely established. Her fearless self-possession was
not to be ruffled. Yet Fouquier-Tinville, the dread
prosecutor, made the attempt. Beholding her so vir-
ginal and fair and brave, feeling perhaps that the Tri-
bunal had not had the best of it, he sought with a
handful of Revolutionary filth to restore the balance.
He rose slowly, his ferrety eyes upon her.
"How many children have you had?" he raspea ;
sardonic, his tone a slur, an insult.
Faintly her cheeks crimsoned. But her voice was
composed, disdainful, as she answered coldly:
"Have I not stated that I am not married?"
A leer, a dry laugh, a shrug from Tinville to com-
264 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
plete the impression he sought to convey, and he sat
down again.
It was the turn of Chauveau de la Garde, the advo-
cate instructed to defend her. But what defence was
possible? And Chauveau had been intimidated. He
had received a note from the jury ordering him to re-
main silent, another from the President bidding him
declare her mad.
Yet Chauveau took a middle course. His brief
speech is admirable; it satisfied his self-respect,
without derogating from his client. It uttered the
whole truth.
"The prisoner," he said, "confesses with calm the
horrible crime she has committed; she confesses with
calm its premeditation; she confesses its most dread-
ful details; in short, she confesses everything, and
does not seek to justify herself. That, citizens of the
jury, is her whole defence. This imperturbable calm,
this utter abnegation of self, which displays no re-
morse even in the very presence of death, are contrary
to nature. They can only be explained by the excite-
ment of political fanaticism which armed her hand.
It is for you, citizens of the jury, to judge what weight
that moral consideration should have in the scales of
justice."
The jury voted her guilty, and Tinville rose to de-
mand the full sentence of the law.
It was the end. She was removed to the Concier-
gerie, the ante-chamber of the guillotine. A constitu-
tional priest was sent to her, but she dismissed him
with thanks, not requiring his ministrations. She pre-
ferred the painter Hauer, who had received the Rev-
olutionary Tribunal's permission to paint her portrait
THE TYRANNICIDE 265
in accordance with her request. And during the sit-
ting, which lasted half an hour, she conversed with
him quietly on ordinary topics, the tranquillity of her
spirit unruffled by any fear of the death that was so
swiftly approaching.
The door opened, and Sanson, the public execu-
tioner, came in. He carried the red smock worn by
those convicted of assassination. She showed no dis-
may; no more, indeed, than a faint surprise that the
time spent with Hauer should have gone so quickly.
She begged for a few moments in which to write a
note, and, the request being granted, acquitted her-
self briskly of that task; then announcing herself
ready, she removed her cap that Sanson might cut her
luxuriant hair. Yet first, taking his scissors, she her-
self cut off a lock and gave it to Hauer for remem-
brance. When Sanson would have bound her hands,
she begged that she might be allowed to wear gloves,
as her wrists were bruised and cut by the cord with
which she had been pinioned in Marat's house. He
answered that she might do so if she wished, but that
it was unnecessary, as he could bind her without
causing pain.
"To be sure," she said, "those others had not your
experience," and she proffered her bare wrists to his
cord without further demur. " If this toilet of death is
performed by rude hands," she commented, "at
least it leads to immortality."
She mounted the tumbril awaiting in the prison
yard, and, disdaining the chair offered her by Sanson,
remained standing, to show herself dauntless to the
mob and brave its rage. And fierce was that rage, in-
deed. So densely thronged were the streets that the
266 HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
tumbril proceeded at a crawl, and the people surging
about the cart screamed death and insult at the
doomed woman. It took two hours to reach the Place
de la Revolution, and meanwhile a terrific summer
thunderstorm had broken over Paris, and a torrential
rain had descended upon the densely packed streets.
Charlotte's garments were soaked through and
through, so that her red smock, becoming glued now
to her body and fitting her like a skin, threw into re-
lief its sculptural beauty, whilst a reflection of the
vivid crimson of the garment faintly tinged her
cheeks, and thus heightened her appearance of com-
plete composure.
And it is now in the rue Saint-Honore that at long
last we reach the opening of our tragic love-story.
A tall, slim, fair young man, named Adam Lux
sent to Paris by the city of Mayence as Deputy
Extraordinary to the National Convention was
standing there in the howling press of spectators. He
was an accomplished, learned young gentleman, doc-
tor at once of philosophy and of medicine, although in
the latter capacity he had never practised owing to an
extreme sensibility of nature, which rendered ana-
tomical work repugnant to him. He was a man of a
rather exalted imagination, unhappily married the
not uncommon fate of such delicate temperaments
and now living apart from his wife. He had heard, as
all Paris had heard, every detail of the affair, and of
the trial, and he waited there, curious to see this
woman, with whose deed he was secretly in sympathy.
The tumbril slowly approached, the groans and ex-
ecrations swelled up around him, and at last he be-
held her beautiful, serene, full of life, a still smile
THE TYRANNICIDE 267
upon her lips. For a long moment he gazed upon her,
standing as if stricken into stone. Then heedless of
those about him, he bared his head, and thus silently
saluted and paid homage to her. She did not see him.
He had not thought that she would. He saluted her
as the devout salute the unresponsive image of a
saint. The tumbril crawled on. He turned his head,
and followed her with his eyes for a while; then, driv-
ing his elbows into the ribs of those about him, he
clove himself a passage through the throng, and so
followed, bare-headed now, with fixed gaze, a man
entranced.
He was at the foot of the scaffold when her head
fell. To the last he had seen that noble countenance
preserve its immutable calm, and in the hush that
followed the sibilant fall of the great knife his voice
suddenly rang out.
"She is greater than Brutus!" was his cry; and he
added, addressing those who stared at him in stupe-
faction: "It were beautiful to have died with her!"
He was suffered to depart unmolested. Chiefly,
perhaps, because at that moment the attention of the
crowd was upon the executioner's attendant, who, in
holding up Charlotte's truncated head, slapped the
cheek with his hand. The story runs that the dead
face reddened under the blow. Scientists of the day
disputed over this, some arguing from it a proof that
consciousness does not at once depart the brain upon
decapitation.
That night, while Paris slept, its walls were secretly
placarded with copies of a eulogy of Charlotte Cor-
day, the martyr of Republicanism, the deliverer of
France, in which occurs the comparison with Joan of
268 HISTORICAL NIGHTS* ENTERTAINMENT
Arc, that other great heroine of France. This was the
work of Adam Lux. He made no secret of it. The vi-
sion of her had so wrought upon the imagination of
this susceptible dreamer, had fired his spirit with such
enthusiasm, that he was utterly reckless in yielding to
his emotions, in expressing the phrenetic, immaterial
love with which in her last moments of life she had
inspired him.
Two days after her execution he issued a long mani-
festo, in which he urged the purity of her motive as
the fullest justification of her act, placed her on the
level of Brutus and Cato, and passionately demanded
for her the honour and veneration of posterity. It is in
this manifesto that he applies euphemistically to her
deed the term "tyrannicide." That document he
boldly signed with his own name, realizing that he
would pay for that temerity with his life.
He was arrested on the 24th of July exactly a
week from the day on which he had seen her die. He
had powerful friends, and they exerted themselves to
obtain for him a promise of pardon and release if he
would publicly retract what he had written. But he
laughed the proposal to scorn, ardently resolved to
follow into death the woman who had aroused the
hopeless, immaterial love that made his present tor-
ment.
Still his friends strove for him. His trial was put off.
A doctor named Wetekind was found to testify that
Adam Lux was mad, that the sight of Charlotte Cor-
day had turned his head. He wrote a paper on this
plea, recommending that clemency be shown to the
young doctor on the score of his affliction, and that he
should be sent to a hospital or to America. Adam Lux
THE TYRANNICIDE 269
was angry when he heard of this, and protested indig-
nantly against the allegations of Dr. Wetekind. He
wrote to the "Journal de la Montagne," which pub-
lished his declaration on the 26th of September, to the
effect that he was not mad enough to desire to live,
and that his anxiety to meet death halfway was a
crowning proof of his sanity.
He languished on in the prison of La Force until the
loth of October, when at last he was brought to trial.
He stood it joyously, in a mood of exultation at his
approaching deliverance. He assured the court that
he did not fear the guillotine, and that all ignominy
had been removed from such a death by the pure
blood of Charlotte.
They sentenced him to death, and he thanked them
for the boon.
"Forgive me, sublime Charlotte," he exclaimed,
"if I should find it impossible to exhibit at the last the
courage and gentleness that were yours. I glory in
your superiority, for it is right that the adored should
be above the adorer."
Yet his courage did not fail him. Far from it, in-
deed; if hers had been a mood of gentle calm, his was
one of ecstatic exaltation. At five o'clock that same
afternoon he stepped from the tumbril under the
gaunt shadow of the guillotine. He turned to the
people, his eyes bright, a flush on his cheeks.
"At last I am to have the happiness of dying for
Charlotte," he told them, and mounted the scaffold
with the eager step of the bridegroom on his way to
the nuptial altar.
THE HONOUR OF VARANO
THE HONOUR OF VARANO
CESARE BORGIA, Duke of Valentinois and
Romagna, rose slowly from his chair, and
slowly crossed to the window of that spacious cham-
ber in the Rocca of Imola. He stood there in the au-
tumn sunshine gazing down upon the tented meadow
and the river beyond, and upon the long ribbon of
road, the ancient Via Emilia, stretching smooth and
straight with never a crease until it was lost in the
distant hazy pile that was Faenza.
That road which crosses Northern Italy diagonally
a line of almost unwavering straightness for a hun-
dred miles from the ancient Rubicon to Piacenza
may well have been a source of pride to Marcus
^milius Lepidus, some fifteen hundred years before;
to Cesare Borgia, contemplating it upon that autumn
day, it was no better than a source of vexation a
way north and south by which to his relief might
march the troops he did not dare to summon.
From the road his eyes shifted again to the besieg-
ing camp in the meadows by the river. There all was
bustle, an incessant movement of men and horses,
industrious as a colony of ants. Yonder a group of
engineers were mounting a park of artillery with
which they hoped to smash a way into his stronghold.
Farther off was a great coming-and-going of glittering
armed figures about the large green tent that housed
the too-daring Venanzio Varano. Away to the west a
swarm of half-naked men laboured with picks and
274 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
spades at a ditch by which to deviate the water from
the river and so serve them as a rampart against any
sudden sortie of the besieged.
A faint hum of all this business reached the watcher
in his eyrie, and he cursed it between contempt and
anger; contempt, to think how the mere lifting of his
finger would scatter that presumptuous little army,
as a flock of sparrows scatters perceiving the hawk
poised above them in the blue; anger, to consider that
he dared not lift that same finger lest other and
greater plans, not yet mature, should suffer by this
too-early display of might; contempt again, of this
fool Varano, and his petty daring, to conceive that
Cesare Borgia was at the end of his resources and a
prey for such a handful of mercenaries the very
sweepings of the martial market-place as Varano
had assembled; anger again, that for a day, for an
hour, he must allow Varano to continue in that con-
ceit. With what a puffed-up arrogance would not this
fool of Camerino be ordering the business of the siege
against this Imola that gave no sign, against this
brown citadel drowsing unresponsive in the late
autumn sunshine under the Borgia banner with its
bull device that floated from the Maschio Tower!
A stealthy step in the room behind him went un-
heeded by the Duke. That it did so proved the extent
of his absorption, for there never lived a man of keener
senses; never a man who combined with an intellect
super-acute such splendid animal faculties as were his.
Merely to behold him was to perceive all this. He was
in the very flower of his youth; some seven and twenty
years of age; tall, straight, and lithe as steel. His
father, Pope Alexander VI, had been accounted in
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 275
early life the handsomest man of his day; of a beauty
of countenance, it was said, that acted upon women
as the lodestone upon iron which had by no means
helped him to. the virtuous course that should be
looked for in a churchman. That beauty Cesare had
inherited, but refined and glorified by the graces of
Madonna Vanozza de' Catanei, the Roman lady who
had been his mother. If there was sensuality in the
full lips of the red mouth, half-hidden by the silky
tawny beard, this was corrected by the loftiness of the
pale brow; the nose was delicately arched, the nostrils
sensitive, and the eyes who shall describe the glory
of those hazel eyes? Who shall read their message,
who shall depict the will, the intellect, the dreamy
wistfulness, the impassiveness that looks out of
them?
He was dressed from head to foot in black; but
through the slashings of his velvet doublet gleamed
the rich yellow of an undervest of cloth of gold; a
ruby-studded girdle gripped his loins, and on his hip
hung a heavy gold-hilted Pistoja dagger in a golden
sheath of cunning workmanship. His tawny head was
bare.
Again came never so faintly the creak of that
stealthy footstep behind him, and again it went un-
perceived. Nor yet did Cesare move when another
and heavier tread rang on the staircase mounting to
his room. Absorbed he continued his survey of
Varano's camp.
The door was opened and reclosed. Some one had
entered and was approaching him. Still he did not
stir; yet without stirring he spoke, addressing the
newcomer by name.
276 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
"And so, Agabito," said he, "you have sent my
summons to Varano?"
To another less accustomed than his secretary,
Agabito Gherardi, to Cesare's ways, this might have
seemed almost uncanny. But Agabito was familiar
with that super-acuteness of his master, whose per-
ceptions were keen as a blind man's and who could
recognize a step where another would have needed to
behold the face.
He bowed as Cesare turned to him. He was a man
of middle height, well-nourished, with a mobile, hu-
morous mouth and keen dark eyes. His age may have
been forty, and, as became his clerkly station, he
wore a black surcoat that descended to his knees.
"It has gone, Highness," he answered. "But I
doubt the gentleman of Camerino will decline the
invitation."
Agabito obseryed the Duke's glance to stray past
and beyond him. Musing and idle seemed his eyes to
Agabito which but serves to show that, intimately
though the secretary accounted that he knew his mas-
ter, yet he had not fathomed the inscrutability of
Cesare's glance. For the eyes which looked dreamy
were alert and watchful, and the brain behind them
was working swiftly to conclusions. The arras over
beyond the great carved writing-table was quivering
never so faintly. This Cesare was observing seem-
ing to muse and he was considering that the air
was still and that no draught could account for that
phenomenon. Yet, when presently he spoke, he be-
trayed nothing of observation or conclusion.
"Art ever a pessimist, Agabito," said he.
"True-sighted, my lord," amended the secretary,
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 277
with the easy familiarity Cesare conceded him. "For
the rest, what does it matter, whether he comes or
not?" And he smiled, a thousand wrinkles gathering
about his eyes. "There is always the back door."
"It is your cursed pessimism again to remind me
that there is that and naught but that."
Agabito spread his hands, his countenance a gri-
mace of deprecation.
"Who cares to open that back door?" quoth the
Duke. "Why, man, if I make the allies aware of its
existence, if I so much as lift the latch, the click of it
will so scare them that they'll every one escape me.
The back door, you say! You are growing old, Aga-
bito. Show me the way to drive off that shallow fo( )
with such means as I dispose of here."
"Alas!" sighed the secretary, hopelessly.'
"Alas, indeed!" snapped the Duke, and strode past
him into the room. There he paced a while, consider-
ing the position, Agabito observing him.
To a more vexatious pass than this matters could
not have come. It was the season of the league against
him formed by the Orsini in alliance with his own re-
volted captains Vitelli and Baglioni. These rebels
stood in arms a full ten thousand strong, determined
upon his destruction, having sworn his death. Cun-
ningly they spread their net to hem him in, believing
that they had him safe and that his strength was
sapped. And he, the better to take them in the toils
they were spinning for himself, had indulged them in
their conviction that he was powerless and unpre-
pared. Actively had he done so, deliberately dismiss-
ing three of his companies of French lances the
very backbone of his army and putting it about
278 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
that they had left him of their own accord, led off by
their captains with whom he had quarrelled. Thus
had it seemed as if his knell had indeed sounded; al-
ready the allies accounted him their prey, for, without
the French lances, the forces of which he disposed
were of no account. But they knew nothing of the
Romagnuoli men-at-arms that Naldo had assembled
for him, still less of the Swiss foot and the Gascon
mercenaries whom his officers held ready for him in
Lombardy nor should they know until the hour
was ripe. He had but to lift his finger, and there
would sprout up such an army as should make the
allies sick with misgivings. Meanwhile he desired that
they should bait their trap for him, lulled by their false
security. He would walk into it complacently enough;
but by the Host! what a surprising stir would
he not make within it. How the springs of that same
trap should take them on the recoil and crush them !
To have planned so well, so precisely to have
reckoned the moves that must enable him to cry
"Checkmate!" and to find himself, instead, stale-
mated by the act of this rash fool of Camerino who
sat out there in egregious self-complacency, little
reckoning the volcano that was under him !
For here is what had happened. This Venanzio
Varano, one of the dethroned lords of Camerino, im-
patient at the sluggishness of the allies, and unabh
to urge them into swifter action, had drawn off and
taken matters into his own hands. Gathering together
a desperate, out-at-elbow army of discredited merce-
naries of all nations, numbering perhaps a thousand
strong, he had marched upon Imola, and there laid
siege to Cesare in his stronghold cursed alike by
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 279
the allies and by Cesare for his interference in the
plans of each.
"Perhaps," said Agabito presently, "if the allies
observe the success that seems to attend Varano, they
will join him here. Then would be your opportunity/ 5 "
But Cesare waved a hand impatiently. "How can I
put a net about them here?" he asked. "I could rout
their army; but what of that? It is the brains of it
I want and at one blow. No, no," he ended.
"Meanwhile, let us see what answer Varano makes to
my invitation, and what comes of it."
"And if nothing comes, you II strike?" said Aga-
bito, as though he urged it.
Cesare pondered, his face clouding. "Not yet,"
said he. "I'll wait and hope for some chance. My
luck there is my luck, remember." He turned to
the massive, richly wrought writing-table, and took
up a packet. "Here is the letter for the Signory of
Florence. I have signed it. Contrive to get it hence."
Agabito took the package. "It will tax my in-
genuity," said he, and pursed his lips.
"Attend to it," said Cesare, and so dismissed him.
The door closed upon the secretary; his steps re-
ceded down the stone staircase, and the sound of them
was lost. Then Cesare, standing in mid-apartment,
faced the arras which had quivered on Agabito's
entrance.
" Come forth, messer the spy," said he quite calmly.
He was prepared to see a man emerge in answer to
that summons and he had some notion of that
man's identity but he was quite unprepared for the
manner in which his order was to be obeyed.
The arras was swept aside, and across the inter-
280 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
vening space, it seemed to Cesare, was hurled as from
a catapult a great, brown human shape with one arm
raised to strike. The ^blow descended. The dagger
took Cesare full in the breast, and there snapped sud-
denly. As the broken blade tinkled on the floor, the
Duke's hands closed like manacles about the wrists of
his assailant.
The wretch may never have seen Cesare snap a
horseshoe in his fingers, nor yet seen Cesare decapi-
tate a bull at one single stroke of a spadoon, but of the
awful strength that could accomplish such feats as
those he had now the fullest and most painful demon-
stration. This murderer was a big fellow, of stout
thews and sinews, yet in the grip of that lithe young
man his strength was all turned to water. He felt as if
the iron pressure of Cesare's fingers were crushing his
wrists to pulp, were twisting his elbows out of joint.
He came howling to his knees, then caught his nether
lip in his teeth to repress another howl. His right
hand opened and released the hilt and stump of his
poniard, which went to rejoin the blade upon the
floor. He looked up with fearful eyes into the Duke's
face, and found it calm horribly, terrifically calm
betraying neither anger nor exertion.
"Messer Malipiero," said His Highness, "you
should never have chanced a shirt of mail when there
was my naked throat to offer you so fair a mark."
And he smiled amiably the very superlative of
mockery into the other's tortured countenance.
Then he released him. "Get up!" he said more
briskly. "We must talk."
"My lord! My lord!" whimpered the assassin,
holding out his maimed wrists. "Forgive!;Forgive!"
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 281
"Forgive?" echoed Cesare, halting as he moved
away. "Forgive what?"
"My the thing I did but now."
"Oh, that! Why, it is the manliest thing you have
done since you came hither. Count it forgiven. Bu
the rest, Malipiero your offering your sword to me
in a time of need, your lies to me, your gaining my
confidence, and you the spy of Varano must I for-
give that too?"
"My lord!" groaned the abject Malipiero.
"And even if I forgive you all this, can you forgive
yourself you, a patrician that you should have
come to turn spy and assassin?"
"Not not assassin, my lord. I had not meant
that. It was in self-defence, seeing myself discovered
and accounting myself lost. Oh, I was mad! Mad!"
The Duke moved away towards the table. "Well,
well," said he, "it is over and done with." He took
up a silver whistle, and blew a blast upon it. Mali-
piero, staggering to his feet, turned if possible a shade
paler than he had been. But the Duke's next words
reassured him. "And for my own part, since you lay
such store by it I forgive you."
"You forgive me?" Malipiero could not believe his
ears.
"Why not? I am a good Christian, I hope; and I
practice the Christian virtue of forgiveness; so much,
indeed, that I deplore most deeply the necessity of
hanging you none the less."
Malipiero flung wide his aching arms, and made a
sound in his throat, terror staring from his protruding
eyes.
"What choice have I?" quoth Cesare, in answer
282 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
to that incoherent cry. "There are the things you
have overheard. It was unfortunate."
"Gesu!" cried the other, and advanced a step
towards Cesare. "I swear that I'll be dumb."
"You shall," said Cesare.
Heavy steps approached. Malipiero gulped, then
spoke quickly, with fearful earnestness.
"I swear no word of what I heard shall ever cross
my lips I swear it by all my hopes of heaven, by the
Blessed Mother of God!"
"You shall not be forsworn," Cesare assured him.
Then the door opened, and the officer of the guard
stood at attention on the threshold.
Malipiero clutched at his breast, swung about this
way and that in the frenzy of his despair, until his
glance met Cesare's calm eyes and impassive counte-
nance. Then his tongue was loosened. Imprecations,
ordures of speech too horrible for chronicling, poured
torrentially from his quivering lips, until a touch
upon the shoulder struck him into a shuddering si-
lence. Limply he surrendered himself to the officer
who at a sign from Cesare had advanced.
"Let him be confined in solitude," said the Duke,
"until I make known my pleasure."
Malipiero looked hopelessly at Cesare. "When
when is it to be?" he asked hoarsely.
"At dawn to-morrow," Cesare answered. "God
rest your soul!"
A trumpet blared beneath the walls of Imola, and
its brazen voice reached Cesare Borgia in that room
in the Maschio Tower. He dropped his pen and lay
back in his chair. Conjecturing what might hang
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 283
upon that trumpet-blast, he smiled pensively at the
groined ceiling that was painted blue and flecked with
golden stars, and waited.
Presently came Messer Gherardi with news that an
ambassador had arrived from Varano's camp, and
Cesare ceased to smile.
"An ambassador?" he echoed, his brows knitting.
" Does a servant come in response to the invitation I
sent the master?"
Agabito's ready smile deprecated this vexation.
"Is it really matter for wonder? These Varani are
treacherous, bloody men. Venanzio fears that you
might deal with him as he with you in the like circum-
stances. He knows that were he removed, his mer-
cenaries would not avenge him, would not stand to-
gether for a day. You will see the ambassador, my
lord? I can promise that you will find Varano's choice
of messenger most interesting."
"How?" quoth Cesare shortly.
But the secretary's answer seemed almost an eva-
sion. "There has been an arrest made since last I was
here," said he. "I never trusted Gustavo Malipiero.
How came he in this room, Highness?"
"That matters little. What he sought matters
rather more. It was my life." And Cesare pointed to
the pieces of the broken dagger, still lying where
Malipiero had dropped them half an hour ago. " Pick
it up, Agabito," said he.
On the point of obeying, Agabito checked, a queer
smile twisting the corners of his mobile mouth. " You
might presently wish that I had left it," said he.
"Let it lie there yet a while, my lord."
Cesare's eyes questioned the secretary.
284 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
"Shall I introduce the ambassador of Varano?"
was Agabito's bland inquiry.
"Why what has he to do with Malipiero's dag-
ger?" quoth the Duke, perceiving that in Gherardi's
mind some connection must exist.
"Perhaps nothing, perhaps much. Be Your High-
ness the judge."
Cesare waved a hand, assenting. Agabito crossed
to the door, opened it and called; then leisurely re-
turned to take his stand by the table at Cesare's el-
bow. Steps ascended the stairs. Two men-at-arms
in morion and corselet clattered in and flanked the
doorway, and between them entered, with clank and
scabbard and ring of spurs, an elderly man of middle
height, very splendid in purple velvet. In mid-apart-
ment he checked with military abruptness, and bowed
stiffly, yet profoundly, to the Duke. Then he came
upright again, and out of a vulture face a pair of
shifty eyes met Cesare's stern glance.
Whilst a man might count a dozen there was ut-
ter silence in the chamber, the ambassador waiting
for the Duke to address him, the Duke seeming in
no haste, but staring at the man and understand-
ing what had been in Gherardi's mind when he had
begged that the dagger should be let lie a while.
A bee sailed through the window and the hum of its
wings was the only sound that disturbed a stillness
that was becoming unnatural. At last Cesare spoke
to the ambassador of Varano, to the father of the man
who half an hour ago had sought to murder him.
"It is thou, Malipiero, eh?" said he, his face im-
passive as a mask, his brain a whirl of speculation, of
considering and connecting.
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 285
The man bowed again. "Your servant always,
Highness."
"Art the servant of the lord of Camerino?" the
Duke amended. "Art the fox that waits upon the
wolf?" And the evenness of his tones was marred by
the faintest suspicion of a sneer. "I bade your mas-
ter attend me that we might arrange the terms upon
which he will consent to raise this siege. He sends
you in his place. It is an affront tell him which
I shall lay to his already very heavy score. Let him
flout me while the little fleeting chance is his. But let
him not cry out hereafter when I call the reckoning."
"My lord was afraid to come, Magnificent."
Cesare laughed shortly. "I nothing doubt it. But
you you, Malipiero?" And he leant forward, his
tone of a sudden invested with a deadly menace.
"Were you not afraid to take his place?"
Malipiero started, his natural pallor deepened, and
the corners of his mouth were perceived by Agabito
to quiver slightly.
But before he could answer, the Duke had sunk
back into his chair again, and asked in normal tones:
"Why have you come?"
"To treat in my lord's name."
Cesare considered him a moment in silence. "For
that, and nothing else?" he inquired.
"What else, indeed, Highness?"
J Tis what I asked thee," said Cesare shortly.
"My lord," the other cried in quaking protest, "I
come as an ambassador."
"Why, true. I was forgetting. Discharge your em-
bassy. You know the thing that I would buy. Tell
me the price this trader of Camerino asks."
286 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
Malipiero the elder drew himself erect, and for-
mally performed his errand. As he spoke, his eyes
strayed to the broken dagger lying almost at his feet,
the gold hilt gleaming in a shaft of sunlight; but
the weapon told him nothing, it was plain, for
he never checked or faltered in the delivery of his
message.
"My lord of Camerino," he announced, "will raise
this siege and withdraw his army in return for your
signed undertaking to recall your troops from Came-
rino, reinstating him in his lordship and leaving him
to enjoy it unmolested."
Cesare stared in amazement at the effrontery of the
demand. "Was he drunk, this lout of Camerino, when
he sent that message?"
Malipiero quailed under the scorn of the Duke's
eyes. "Magnificent," he said, "it may be that my
Lord Venanzio seems arrogant to you. But you will
find him firm in his resolve. He has you, he swears,
in the hollow of his hand."
"Has he so? Body of God! Then he shall find that
I am made of gunpowder, and when I burst, that same
hand of his shall be blown to rags. Go tell him so."
"You'll not accept his terms?"
"Sooner will I sit in Imola until the Resurrection
of the Flesh."
Malipiero paused a moment like a man undecided.
His glance shifted to the shaven, humorous face of
Agabito Gherardi; but he saw nothing there to em-
bolden him. Nevertheless, like a good ambassador,
he said what else he had been bidden say.
"Vitellozzo, the Orsini, and the Baglioni are co-
alescing."
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 287
"Do you give me news? And how shall that serve
Varano? His subjects of Camerino loathe him for a
bloody tyrant, and being once rid of him they'll never
suffer his return."
"I am not sure ..." began Malipiero.
"I know thou'rt not. But I, who am, tell thee."
He pushed back his chair on that, and rose. "Aga-
bito, let this ambassador of Varano be reconducted,
and with courteous treatment."
And with that, as if dismissing the entire matter
from his mind, he sauntered across the room, past
Malipiero, towards the window; and as he went he
drew from his pocket a little comfit-box in gold and
blue enamel.
Agabito experienced a pang of disappointment.
Not so, by much, had he pictured the conclusion of
this interview. And yet, perhaps Cesare in his cun-
ning and unfailing calculation counted upon some-
thing more. Even as he thought of it, he saw in
Malipiero's attitude that it was so, indeed. For the
ambassador made no shift to go. He stood there
shuffling uneasily, his foxy old eyes roaming from the
secretary to the young duke, and betraying the labour
of his mind.
"Highness," he said at last, "may I speak with you
alone?"
"We are alone," said Cesare over his shoulder.
"What else have you to add?"
"Something that will make for the advancement of
your interests."
Cesare turned his back to the window, and his
beautiful eyes grew very narrow as they surveyed the
bowing Malipiero. Then a faint smile hovered round
288 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
his lips. He made a sign to the men-at-arms standing
by the door. They turned and clattered out.
"Agabito remains. I have no secrets from my sec-
retary. Speak out."
"Highness ..." began the ambassador, and halted
there. Then, under Cesare's impatient eye, "My
Lord Varano is in earnest," he concluded lamely.
Cesare shrugged and raised the lid of his comfit-box.
"So I had understood from you already. Is there
no thing more?"
"You were pleased to correct me, Highness, when
upon entering here I announced myself your serv-
ant."
"By what tortuous ways do you travel to your
goal? Well, well! You were my servant once; now
you are his. Would you be mine again? Is that your
meaning?"
Malipiero bowed eloquently. The Duke considered
him, shot a glance at Agabito, then with deliberation
picked a coriander-seed. "The Lord of Camerino'?
fortunes, then, do not wear so very prosperous a
look?" said he, between question and conclusion, and
thereby set Malipiero infernally ill at ease.
The ambassador had looked for some eagerness on
Cesare's part. This calm, half-mocking indifference
chilled him. At last he took his courage in both
hands. "It was I," he announced, "who made Va-
rano afraid to come to the end that he might send
me."
The lid of the comfit-box snapped down. His Mag-
nificence of Valentinois was interested at last, it
seemed.
Encouraged, Malipiero went on. " I did this that I
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 289
might lay my poor services at your disposal; for at
heart, Highness, I have ever been your most devoted.
My only son is in your service."
"You lie, you foul, infernal traitor! You lie!"
And Cesare advanced upon him as if to strike him
into dust. Gone now was the impassive calm of his
face; gone the inscrutable softness of his eyes; their
glance enveloped Malipiero as in a flame a flame
that swept about his heart and left it ashes.
"My lord! My lord!" he babbled foolishly.
Cesare halted in his approach, and resumed his
quiet manner as abruptly as he had cast it off.
"Look at that dagger at your feet," he said, and
Malipiero obeyed him stupidly. "It was broken an
hour ago against my breast. Can you guess whose
the hand that wielded it? Your son's this precious
only son of yours, who is in my service."
Malipiero recoiled, bearing a hand to his throat as
if something choked him.
"You came hither for such scraps of knowledge as
that spy might have gleaned. My invitation to Va-
rano was your opportunity. Without it you would
still have come, bearing as spontaneous the offer that
you brought as answer. The object of your spying
you best know you that never yet kept faith with
any man. Oh! there is no doubt, Malipiero, that at
heart you have ever been my devoted servants
you and your son."
"O God!" groaned the unhappy wretch.
"Your only son is to be hanged at daybreak to-
morrow. It shall be from this window here, in sight
of this Varano whom he served, in sight of you who
have ever been my most devoted/'
290 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
Malipiero cast himself upon his knees; he flung out
his arms wildly. "My lord, I swear to you that I
knew naught of any plot to to hurt you."
"Why, I believe you for once. There may have
been no such plot. But I caught your son in the act of
spying, and so he took, perhaps, what seemed to him
the only course. It makes no difference. He would
have hanged without that."
Malipiero, on his knees, raised a livid face, his brow
glistening with the sweat of the agony that racked him.
"Highness," he cried in a quavering voice, "I have
it in my power to make amends for my son's folly. I
can rid you of this bankrupt of Camerino. Shall it
shall it be a bargain between us? My son's life for the
raising of this siege?"
Cesare smiled. "It was to make me some such pro-
posal, I think, that you desired to speak with me
alone. Nothing is altered but the price for not a
doubt but that you intended some other profit from
the treachery you had conceived."
Malipiero flung dissimulation to the winds. What,
indeed, could it avail him against one who looked so
deep and unerringly into motives? The greed of gold
which had made him a constant traitor to any whom
he served had been his only stimulus in this fresh
treachery. But now, the life of his boy was all the
recompense he asked. He frankly said as much.
"I will not bargain with you," was Cesare's con-
temptuous answer.
Tears welled to the eyes of the distraught man and
coursed down the furrows of the livid cheeks. Wildly
he implored clemency and urged upon the Duke's
attention the gain he stood to make.
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 291
"There is not in all Italy a knave with whom I
would so scorn to deal as you, Malipiero. Man, you
have steeped yourself in the filth of treachery until
you stink of it. The very sight of you offends me."
"My lord," the wretch clamoured, "I can raise this
siege as could no other man. Grant me Gustavo's life,
and it shall be done to-morrow. I will draw Varano
away back to Camerino. What are his men with-
out him ? You know their worth, Highness a par-
cel of hirelings with no heart in the business, who
would never stay to oppose a sally if Varano were not
at hand to urge them."
Cesare measured the man with a calculating eye.
"What means have you to perform so much?"
At that suggestion that the Duke was inclined to
treat with him, Malipiero rose. He shuffled a step
nearer, licking his lips. "Varano loves his throne of
Camerino dearly. But there is one thing he loves still
more his honour. Let it be whispered to him that
the lady, his wife" He leered horribly. "You
understand, Magnificent? He would leave his camp
out yonder and dash back to Camerino, where she
bides, as fast as horse could bear him."
Cesare felt his soul revolt. The thing was vile, the
fruit of a vile mind, uttered by a vile mouth; and, as
he looked at the leering creature before him, a sense
of nausea took him. But his face showed no sign of
this; his beautiful passionless eyes betrayed none of
the loathing with which this arch-traitor inspired
him. Presently his lips parted in a smile; but what
that smile portended Malipiero could not guess until
he spoke.
"Possibly there is in Italy a viler thing than thou;
292 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
probably there is not. Still, it is for me to use thee,
not convert thee. Do this thing, then, since you are
assured it may be done."
Malipiero drew a deep breath of relief. Insults were
of no account to him. "Grant me my son's life, and
I undertake that by to-night Varano shall be in the
saddle."
"I'll make no bargains with you," Cesare answered
him.
" But if I do this thing you will be clement, you will
be merciful, Highness ? "
"Rest content. You shall not fail to find me just."
"I am content," said Malipiero. "I count upon
that. And yet and yet . . . Reassure me, High-
ness ! I am a father. Promise me that, if I serve you
in this, Gustavo shall not hang."
Cesare eyed him a moment and shrugged contemp-
tuously. "He shall not hang. I have said that you
shall find me just. And now to details." Cesare
crossed briskly to the writing-table. "Have you
power in Varano's name to grant a safe-conduct?"
"I have, Highness."
"Here is what you will need. Write, then for
twenty men from Imola."
Malipiero snatched a quill, and in a hand that
shook, for all his efforts to steady it, he wrote and
signed the order Cesare demanded. The Duke took
the paper and sat down.
"How shall I have knowledge that Varano has de-
parted?" he inquired.
Malipiero considered a moment. Then, "As soon
as he goes to-night I will extinguish the cresset that
burns outside his tent. You can see it from here."
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 293
Cesare nodded shortly, and blew upon his silver
whistle. To the men-at-arms, reentering in answer
to that summons, he consigned the person of the
ambassador, bidding them reconduct him to the
gates.
When the door had closed again, Cesare turned to
Agabito with a smile of grim contempt. "I had best
served the world had I violated the sacredness of that
ambassador's person, and held a family hanging in the
morning. The toad! Madonna! The foul, crapulous
toad! But there! Summon Corella, and bid them
have young Malipiero at hand."
When, presently, Cesare's Venetian captain, whom
so many supposed to be a Spaniard, stalked into the
room a tall, stately man, all steel and leather
the Duke tossed Malipiero's safe-conduct across to
him, and gave his orders.
" You will watch to-night the cresset that burns out-
side Varano's tent. Ten minutes after it has been
quenched, you will ride out with the twenty men you
choose, and make for Camerino." Cesare unrolled a
map and beckoned Corella to his side. "But not this
way, Michele not by Faenza and Forli. You shall
take to the hills and thus outstrip another party going
by the main road. Contrive that you reach Camerino
in advance of it by at least six hours, and remember
that those others will ride desperately. Agabito will
instruct you later in what else you have to do. The
manner of it shall be in your own hands."
Michele da Corella gasped. "They will set out
before me," he said. "They will take the shorter
road, and they will ride desperately. Yet I am to be
in Camerino at least six hours ahead of them. In
294 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
short, I am to work a miracle, and I am just Michele
da Corella, a captain of horse."
Cesare looked up quietly. " Chucklehead ! " said he.
"You will detach the two best-mounted men of your
company, and send them after the other party by the
Rimini road. Let them pass and precede them, and so
contrive with the relays to delay them upon the road
sufficiently to enable you to do as I command."
Corella flushed out of shame of wits that must
appear so dull.
"Now, go, Michele," the Duke bade him, "and
make ready."
As Corella was withdrawing, the Duke recalled
him. "I said twenty men. I should have said nine-
teen counting yourself; the twentieth will be
Messer Gustavo Malipiero, who is to ride with you.
Bid them bring him in now."
Corella saluted and withdrew. Cesare sat back in
his great leathern chair and glanced at Agabito.
"Well?" he inquired. "Do you perceive what a web
of justice I am weaving?"
"Not yet, my lord," confessed Agabito.
"Not? I sometimes think you are as dull-witted as
Michele."
And Agabito kept it to himself that he sometimes
thought his master possessed all the guile and craft of
Satan.
As Malipiero the elder had undertaken, so did he
perform; though in the performance he went near to
being strangled by the powerful hands of Venanzio
Varano.
He repaired at nightfall to Venanzio's tent with his
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 295
foul invention, and at the first hint of his meaning the
passionate lord of Camerino flung into a fury. He
caught Malipiero by his scraggy throat, swung him
off his feet, and went over with him in a dark corner
of the tent. There he pinned him to the ground under
a knee that seemed to be crushing every bone in the
old traitor's breast.
"Dog!" he snarled, and Malipiero writhed and
squirmed, half-dead from shock and fright, expecting
to feel the other's teeth close on his windpipe, so
brutal was Varano become in his great rage. "Do
you proclaim my wife a trull?" he roared. "Say that
you lied! Confound yourself, you rogue, or, by the
Host! I'll wring your carrion neck."
Then Malipiero, coward though he was at heart,
was fired with the courage of despair. "Fool!" he
panted, struggling for breath. "Fool, I spoke out of
love for you, and I can prove the thing I say."
"Prove it?" roared the infuriate Varano, and he
heaved the wretch up to dash him down again.
"Prove it? Can lies be proved?"
"No," said Malipiero. "But truth can."
It was a simple and very obvious retort. Yet it
produced its effect upon Varano, and Malipiero was
able to breathe more freely at last. Varano had re-
leased him; he had risen, and was bawling for lights.
Malipiero sat up, nursing his bruises, making sure
that no bones were broken, and breathing a prayer of
thanksgiving to Our Lady of Loreto who had ever
been the object of a special devotion on his part
that he had had the wit to forge proofs betimes that
should lend countenance to the foul charges he made
against a pure lady's honour. He comforted himself,
296 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
too, with the reflection that those same proofs would
avenge the mishandling he had suffered, and that for
the bruises Varano had dealt his body he would pres-
ently deal such bruises to Varano's soul as should go
some way to make them quits.
Lights came, revealing the shrivelled, yellow-faced
/nan sitting there upon the floor, with tumbled hair
and rent garments and a very evil glimmer in his
rat's eyes, and the other the great lumbering
Varano standing over him, no less pale and evil to
behold.
"Now, dog, the proofs."
This was Malipiero's hour of vengeance. Slowly he
loosed the points of his purple doublet; slowly he
groped within the breast of it, and slowly he drew
forth a package tied with an orange ribbon. Slowly
he was proceeding to unfasten it, when Varano, with
an oath of impatience, stooped, snatched the package,
and tore away the ribbon. Then he strode to the table,
unfolded a letter, and spread it under his great hand.
Malipiero, watching him with fearful, unblinking
eyes, saw the great head slowly sink forward on to his
breast. But Varano rallied quickly. His faith in his
wife was no mere thistledown to be so lightly scat-
tered. He sank to a chair, and turned to Malipiero,
who had now risen.
"Tell me," he said, " tell me again, how came these
into your hands?" There was now no anger in his
voice. He spoke like a man who is struggling between
dark unconsciousness and painful consciousness.
"Madonna's chamberlain Fabio brought them an
hour ago during your absence. He dared not come
while you were here. Love of you made him traitor to
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 297
your lady. Fear of you kept him from delivering the
letters to you himself. And no sooner had he said so
much to me than he was gone again, leaving the cursed
package in my hands."
"If if they were false!" cried Varano, wrestling
with that fierce natural jealousy of his upon which the
cunning Malipiero had built his schemes.
The traitor's face grew long with simulated sorrow.
"My lord," he murmured dolefully, " to bid you build
on that were not to love you. What ends could Fabio
wish to serve ? And Fabio loves you. And Fabio, who
purloined those letters from madonna's treasure cas-
ket, knew of their existence, else he had not sought
them."
"Enough!" cried the wretched Varano a cry of
anguish. Then with an oath he opened out another
letter. "Oh, vile!" he groaned. "Oh, worse and
worse!" and he read the signature "Galeotto"
then knit his brows. "But who is this Galeotto?"
On the livid face of the satyr behind his chair a
faint smile was smeared. He had a sense of humour,
this Malipiero, and in the fiction of that name, in the
equivoque it covered, it had found a sly expression.
Aloud he parodied a line of Dante's:
"Galeotto fu il nome, e chi lo scrisse!"
With a snort the lord of Camerino turned to a third
letter. His hand clenched and unclenched as he read.
Then he raised it, and smashed it down upon the ta-
ble with a fearful oath. He came to his feet. "Oh,
shameless!" he inveighed. "Adulteress! Trull! Oh,
and yet so fond to all seeming, and so foully false!
God help me! Is it possible is it "
298 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
He checked, his blood-injected eyes fastened upon
Malipiero, and Malipiero recoiled now in horror of the
devil he had raised. He drew hastily aside, out of
Varano's way, as the latter, moved by a sudden re-
solve, strode to the entrance of the tent, beating his
hands together and calling.
"Saddle me three horses on the instant," he com-
manded, "and bid Gianpaolo make ready for a jour-
ney." Then, striding back into the tent, "The third
horse is for you, Malipiero."
"For me?" clucked the traitor, in a greater fright
than any that had yet touched him since embarking
on this evil business.
"For thee," said Varano sternly. Then, towering
above the shivering wretch, "Hast ever known tor-
ture, Malipiero?" he inquired. "Hast ever seen the
hoist at work; or the rack disjointing bones and
stretching sinews till they burst, till the patient
screams for the mercy of a speedy death? If God in
His great clemency should please that you have lied
to me as I pray He may you shall make ac-
quaintance with those horrors, Malipiero. Ah, it
makes you faint to think on them," he gloated, for he
was, as Cesare had said, a cruel, bloody man. Then
suddenly, sternly, "Go, make you ready for this jour-
ney," he commanded, and Malipiero went.
Here was a tangle, a complication on which the
astute Venetian for this Malipiero hailed from
Venice, the very home and source of craft had
failed to reckon. That Varano should still be suspi-
cious amid all his passion of jealousy, and should wish
to make sure of Malipiero against the chance of pre-
cisely some such situation as the existing one, was
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 299
something that had never entered the traitor's cal-
culations.
What was he to do? Mother of God, what was he
to do?
As he stood in his own tent a sickness took him, a
sickness that was physical as well as spiritual. Then
he rallied, played the man a moment, and drew his
sword. He ran his thumb along the edge of it to test
its keenness; he set the hilt against the ground, and
paused. He had but to place himself with his heart
over the point so and drop forward. A Roman
death was here swift and painless. Surely he had
reached the end, and if he took not this easy means
of egress, there were the horrors Varano had promised
him the rack and the hoist.
Then he bethought him of his son. His son would
hang at dawn unless Varano went. And if he killed
himself now, Varano must guess the truth, and would
remain. That, and the reflection that between Imola
and Camerino much might betide, restrained him.
He took up his sword again, and restored it to its
sheath. Steps sounded without; a soldier stood at the
entrance, with a summons from Varano. The traitor
braced himself to go.
As they reached Varano's tent, he bethought him
of one thing there was yet to do, and, turning to the
mercenary who paced behind him,
"Quench me that cresset," he commanded shortly.
The fellow caught up a pail of water standing near,
and flung the contents on the blaze, extinguishing it.
"Why, what is this?" asked Varano, stepping forth.
"There was too much light," said Malipiero glibly.
"They can see us from the castle."
joo THE HONOUR OF VARANO
"What, then, man?"
"Would you have Cesare Borgia know that you
ride forth?" cried Malipiero, with a very obvious
sneer for the thing the other overlooked.
"Ah, true! You are a thoughtful knave. Come,
now. To horse!"
As they mounted, and were ready to set out
Malipiero between Varano and Gianpaolo da Trani,
his esquire Schwarz, the captain of the mercenaries,
came up. The rumour of Varano's departure running
round the camp had reached the Swiss, and, incredu-
lous, he came for orders.
"Plague me not," growled the Lord Venanzio in
answer.
"But, Excellency," the man protested, "shall you
be absent long?"
"As long as my business needs."
"Then, from whom shall I take orders in the mean
time?" cried the condottiero, out of patience.
"From the Devil," said Varano, and gave his horse
the spur.
All night they rode, and so desperately that by
dawn they were in San Arcangelo, and Malipiero be-
thought him with a pang that here, under this bridge,
which gave back a hollow echo of their horses' hoofs,
flowed the ancient fateful Rubicon, which he was
crossing figuratively as well as literally.
Varano, riding half a horse's length in advance of
his companions, pushed on, his face set, his eyes ahead.
A mile or so beyond Arcangelo they were overtaken
and passed by two riders going at the gallop, who
thundered away towards Rimini in a cloud of dust.
They were the men despatched by Corella, and they
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 301
had taken fresh horses at Cesena in the Duke's name,
thus outstripping the weary cattle of the men of
Camerino.
Varano watched their speed with eyes of furious
envy, and cursed the spent condition of his own horse.
So they pressed on towards Rimini, their pace slack-
ening now with every mile and in spite of all their
flogging. At last the town was reached, and at the
"Three Kings" Varano bawled for fresh horses with
never a thought for breakfast. But horses, the host
regretfully informed them, there were none to be had
that morning.
"Perhaps at Cattolica ..." he suggested.
Varano never stayed to argue. He drank a cup of
wine and ate a crust, then heaved himself back into
the saddle and urged his companions on. He was to
pay for this unreasoning haste; for it was a haste that
did not make for speed in the end. It took them three
hours to reach Cattolica three weary men on three
spent horses. And here again they were met by the
same tale of no relays. There would be none until the
evening.
"Until evening?" roared Varano hoarsely. "Why
'tis not yet noon!"
Malipiero, utterly worn out, had sunk on to a stone
bench in the innyard. "Horses or no horses," he
groaned, " I can go no farther." His face was grey, hk
eyes encircled by black lines. Yet Varano observed
nothing of this, as he turned upon the fellow in a fury
of suspicion. Before he could speak, however, his
esquire had come to Malipiero's rescue.
"Nor I, Body of God!" he swore. "Before I ride
another mile I must eat and sleep. What odds, my
302 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
lord?" he reasoned with the scowling Varano. "We'll
sleep by day, and ride by night. When all is said, it is
the speediest travelling."
"Sleep?" growled Varano. "I had not meant to
sleep this side Camerino perhaps, indeed, not then.
But since I ride with women . . . Pshaw!"
Thus matters stood, then. They rested all that day
in Cattolica, and what hopes of escaping Malipiero
may have fostered were quenched entirely by the lack
of means. They resumed their journey again at dusk,
upon fresh horses then provided indifferent beasts,
however, and far from such as Varano's hot impatience
craved. Again they rode all night, going westward by
Urbino, which was in the hands of Cesare's revolted
captains, then south to Pergola, where they came soon
after daybreak on the morrow.
Thence to Camerino was little more than thirty 1
miles, and Varano would have gone straight on, but
that again the lack of fresh horses foiled his purpose.
It was in vain he swore, besought, or threatened.
The country was all topsy-turvy, he was answered,
infested with men-at-arms, and horses were scarce.
He must wait until his own were rested. Until noon,
then, they abode there, and now it was that Malipiero
had the inspiration to feign illness, since flight was
impossible.
"My head swims," he had whimpered, "and my
loins burn. I am an old man, my lord, unfit to ride as
you have made me ride."
Varano's eyes, dull, aching and bloodshot from his
sleeplessness, measured the other fiercely. "Shalt
have a physician in Camerino," said he.
" But, my lord> it is my fcar that I may never get
so far."
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 303
"Dismiss the fear/' Varano enjoined him. "For
you shall be there this evening living or dead."
And he stalked out, leaving Malipiero cold with a
great fear that already he was suspected. When the
hour to resume the journey came, Malipiero renewed
his protestations.
" Mount ! " was all the answer Varano returned him,
and Malipiero, resigning himself to the awful fate
that awaited him, climbed painfully to the saddle.
He was ill, indeed; between fear and saddle-weariness
he was all but spent. Yet he sat his horse in a sort of
desperation, and so came into Camerino at eventide
between his companions.
The place was garrisoned by a small company of
Borgia soldiers nor were many needed, for had the
Varani attempted to return, the whole State would
have taken up arms to beat them off. Under cover
of the dusk Venanzio led his companions to a mean
hostelry in the borgo. There he left Malipiero with
Gianpaolo the latter virtually jailer to the former.
Alone Varano went forth to seek for himself the truth
of this vile tale that had been told him.
Meanwhile, Malipiero, wrapped in his cloak, lay
stretched on a settle shivering with horrid anticipa-
tion of the hoist and the rack. Soon, soon now Va-
rano would discover the treachery, and then He
groaned aloud, disturbing Gianpaolo, who sat at
table eating.
" Do you suffer, sir ? " quoth the esquire; not that he
greatly cared, for he loved Malipiero little, but that it
seemed an inquiry which courtesy demanded.
Malipiero groaned again for only answer, and the
esquire, moved to pity, brought the unhappy man a
cup of wine.
3 o 4 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
Malipiero gulped it down. It warmed him, he pro-
tested, and begged for more. Then having drained a
second, and after that a third goblet, he relapsed into
his forlorn attitude. But the wine creeping through
his veins inspired him with new courage. He had been
too fearful of consequences, he now perceived. He
should have made a dash for it before this. Even now
it might not be too late. There were Borgia troops ir?
the town. He would find refuge at the citadel. He
had but to inform the captain or the governor, or who-
ever might be in command, of Varano's whereabouts
in the town, and he would find shelter and gratitude.
Fired by the notion, he flung off the cloak, and got
briskly to his feet.
"I need air! "he cried.
"I'll open the window," said the too-obliging
Gianpaolo.
"The window? Bah! This place is foul. I will take
a turn outside."
Gianpaolo eyeing him curiously and with good
reason, for the man had lately sworn he could not
move without pain barred his way to the door.
" Best await my lord's return," said he.
"Why, I shall be back before then."
But Gianpaolo had his orders that Malipiero was
not to be allowed out of his sight. Moreover, there
was this sudden vigour in one who so lately had been
prostrate from exhaustion. Gianpaolo could not be-
lieve that wine alone had wrought a change so por-
tentous.
"Why, if you will, you will," said he. " But in that
case I'll with you," and he reached for his cap.
Malipiero's face fell at that. But his recovery was
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 305
swift. Let the fool come, by all means, if he insisted.
Malipiero would march him into a trap, and quickly.
And then, even as he was on the point of consenting,
the stairs groaned under a heavy step; the door was
flung open so violently that it struck against the wall,
and Venanzio Varano, with mad blazing eyes and a
brow of thunder, strode into the room.
Malipiero backed away in terror, with an inward
curse at his own tardiness in perceiving the obvious
way of escape. Now it was too late. Varano had
learnt the truth already, and again Malipiero be-
thought him of the rack; already in imagination he
felt his sinews cracking and the rude hands of the
executioner upon him.
And then, marvel of marvels, Varano dropped into
a chair, and took his great black head in his hands.
A while he remained thus, Gianpaolo and Malipiero
watching him the traitor understanding nothing of
this bearing, unable to think what could have hap-
pened.
Presently Varano sat up, composed himself, and
looked sorrowfully at Malipiero.
"Malipiero," said he, "I have prayed God ever
since we left Imola that, for some reasons which
the rack should tear from you, you had lied to me.
But " A sob cut his utterance. "Oh, there is no
more pity in heaven than on earth. This thing is
true, it seems most vilely, hideously true."
True! Malipiero's senses reeled an instant under
the shock of it. Then a great warmth thawed his
terror-frozen veins; a great exultation sang within his
vile soul; a great thankfulness welled up from his
306 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
heart to heaven for this miraculous escape. His spirit
capered and jested within him. He would set up for
a diviner, a seer, after this.
Outwardly he remained a pale embodiment of sor-
row. He licked his dry lips, his little eyes sought
Varano's and fell away before the awful glance that
met them. So may the damned look.
He wanted to question Varano, to ask how he had
discovered this thing, that he might satisfy himself of
the incredible truth of it; and yet he dared not. Nor
was there the need; for presently Varano gave him the
information that he craved.
" I was recognized in the street as I quitted the inn.
A man who saw me come forth followed me, overtook
me, and called to me by name. He had been my
servant once, he said, and had ever loved me, where-
fore he had meant this very night to ride forth in
quest of me to tell me of the things that were happen-
ing in my absence.
"When I had heard this story, I would have gone
at once to that accursed palace where by the Borgia
clemency that vile adulteress is housed. But he
stayed my impatience with his counsel. He bade me
wait wait until dead midnight, and so make cer-
tain. He himself this good soul that loves me
will watch for me, and will be at hand when I arrive."
He rose violently. His grief and shame dropped
from him, and were replaced by an anger dreadful to
behold. Imprecations rained from his mouth, which
was twisted like that of a man in physical suffering.
A mirror hanging from a wall of that poor chamber
caught his eye. He strode to it and scanned himself,
rubbing his brow the while.
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 307
Then with his fist he shivered the thing to atoms.
"It lied," he roared, and laughed most terribly.
"It showed a fair smooth brow no horns no
horns! I that am an tiered like a stag!" And his aw-
ful laugh shook the windows in their crazy frames.
At midnight the Lord Venanzio rose from his chair
where he had been sitting motionless for upwards of
an hour. His face was haggard, his eyes stern and his
mouth hard.
" Come," he said quietly, "it is the hour."
Gianpaolo, with a deep sorrow in his heart, and
Malipiero, with an unholy glee in his, followed their
lord down the narrow stairs, and out into the scented
autumn night. They went up the steep street to the
palace that crowned the hill. But passing the main
doors they struck down a narrow lane and so came to
a wicket in a high wall. A man rose up before them,
seeming to materialize out of the gloom.
"He is within," he murmured to Varano. "He
went the usual way, leaving the gate unlocked."
"That was considerate in him," said Varano heav-
ily, and dropped a purse into the hands of the spy.
Then he pushed the wicket till it opened, and beck-
oned his companions after him into a garden that was
thick with shrubs. They came by an alley black .as
Erebus into a fair clearing under the stars; and here
Varano checked, and gripped Malipiero's wrist.
"Yonder," he snarled. "That is her chamber."
And with his other hand he pointed to a lighted win-
dow the only window of the palace that still showed
a light. "See with what a warmth it burns a Ves-
tal fire!" he sneered, and laughed softly.
308 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
Next he sped swiftly forward across the yielding
turf, his companions following. Under her balcony he
paused.
"See," he whispered back to them. "Is he not
considerate, this gallant? Look!" And they saw
dangling from the balcony a grey ladder of silken
rope.
Had Varano still hoped against hope, still set his
trust in his wife against the things he had been told,
the letters he had seen, then must this last hope have
foundered here.
He swarmed the ladder with the ease and speed of
an ape. They saw him fling one leg over the stone
parapet and then the other; there followed a crash
and ring of shivered glass, as with his shoulder the
infuriate husband smashed a way into the room.
He found his quarry standing in mid-apartment,
startled by this terrific entrance a fair young man,
tall and comely, decked like a bridegroom all in white
and gold, his discarded doublet still hanging in his
hand.
Varano swooped upon him ere he could utter a
word, locked an arm about his neck, wrenched him
backward, and, dropping on one knee, caught him, as
he fell, across the other. The wretch, half-strangled
in that awful grip, saw a long dagger gleam above
him, heard a terrific voice:
"Hound of hell, I am Venanzio Varano. Look on
me and die!"
The dagger sank to the hilt; it was raised again,
and yet again, to be replunged into the heart of this
man who had dishonoured him. Then, by an arm,
Varano dragged the warm, twitching body across the
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 309
room towards the bed, leaving a great crimson smear
in its wake along the mosaic floor.
"Shalt lie snug to-night," he sneered, "snug and
warm, snug and warm. And this wanton " He
dropped his hold of the dead arm and turned to the
bed, his thoughts running now directly upon his wife.
Clutching his dagger firmly in one hand he swung
aside the heavy curtains with the other.
"Now, harlot ..." He checked. The bed was
empty, undisturbed.
The door behind him opened suddenly. He swung
about, a horrid, blood-spattered sight.
On the threshold stood a tall man with a grave dark
countenance and a very martial bearing, a man whose
fame was almost as well known to every soldier in
Italy as was that of the Duke his master.
"Michele da Corella!" quoth Varano, thunder-
struck. " You were in Imola. What make you here ? "
Then, his mind swinging back to the weightier matter
that oppressed it. "My wife?" he cried. "Where is
Madonna Eulalia?"
Corella advanced into the room. Behind him
pressed a posse of javelin-men in the Borgia livery of
red and yellow.
"Your wife, my lord, is in Bologna safe," said he.
Varano, bewildered, stared at Cesare's captain.
"Why why what treachery is here?" he mum-
bled thickly, like a drunkard.
"A very foul one, my lord yet not one that
touches you so nearly as that other. The traitor is
that knave, that scavenger, Malipiero, a part of whose
plot it was most vilely to slander the fair name of the
spotless lady of Venanzio Varano."
310 THE HONOUR OF VARANO
"Slander?" echoed Varano, and "Spotless?" fas-
tening upon those words amid all that Corella had
spoken. "It is not true, then?" he cried.
"As Heaven hears me, it is not true," Corella an-
swered. "The people of Camerino were venting upon
Madonna Eulalia their resentment against your
house, my lord; and so, a week ago, she sought shelter
with her father in Bologna. No doubt her courier
would reach your camp almost in the hour in which
you left it."
A great sob broke from Varano; tears coursed down
his war-worn cheeks. What signified to him that he
had been betrayed in other matters? What signified
losses and reverses so that his Eulalia was true and
spotless?
Corella was speaking. Briefly he gave Varano the
details of the treachery by which Malipiero had drawn
him away from Imola, so that Cesare might rout the
mercenary rabble that would never stand in its
leader's absence. He had sought to bargain for the
life of his son, who was to have hanged for spying and
for attempting to murder the Duke. Cesare, loving
the treason but loathing the traitor, had refused to
make terms, promising Malipiero in return for the
betrayal he proposed no more than justice.
"It was by Malipiero's contriving," he pursued,
" that I left Imola, and did what else was necessary to
accomplish my lord's wishes in this matter, even to
housing comfortably in this chamber a person whom
His Highness had entrusted to me. My thought was
that he would attempt to escape by the ladder pro-
vided for the purpose and that you would take him
as he came forth. Your impatience, my lord "
THE HONOUR OF VARANO 311
"By the Host!" roared Varano, breaking in, "Ce-
sare Borgia shall answer to me for having put upon
me the slaying of an innocent man."
Corella looked at him a moment with lifted brows.
"You have not understood," he said. He pointed to
the corpse. "That carrion was Gustavo Malipiero."
Varano recoiled. "Gustavo Malipiero? His son?"
And he jerked a thumb in the direction of the window.
"His son."
"My God!" said Varano hoarsely. "Is this the
justice of your Duke?"
"Aye, my lord, upon the assassin there and the
traitor outside; upon both at one blow and that by
the hand of yourself, whom Malipiero so foully abused,
and through the very scheme that he invented. Such
is the very perfect justice of my Duke."
Varano looked at Corella. "And incidentally his
own purposes are served," he sneered.
Corella shrugged. But already Varano had turned
from him. He took up the body in his powerful arms,
and staggered with it to the shattered window. He
heaved it over the balcony into the garden below.
" There, Malipiero," he cried, "is the price of your
services to me. Take it, and begone."
THE LUST OF CONQUEST
THE LUST OF CONQUEST
A I \HE hour of Cesare Borgia's power and glory was
J^ that of full noontide. He had made an end of
the treacherous condottieri who had dared to rise
against him and for a moment to hold him in check,
threatened not only to arrest his conquering progress,
but to undo all that he had done. He had limed a
springe for them at Sinigaglia, and in the words
of the Florentine Secretary, Macchiavelli he had
lured them thither by the sweetness of his whis-
tling. They came the more readily in that they mis-
took their roles, conceiving themselves the fowlers,
and him the victim. He quickly disabused their minds
on that score; and having taken them, he wrung their
necks with no more compunction than had they been
so many capons. Their considerable forces he partly
destroyed and partly dispersed, partly assimilated
into his own vast army, whereafter he swept south-
ward and homeward to Rome by way of Umbria.
In Perugia his sometime captain, Gianpaolo Ba-
glioni, one of the more fortunate rebels who had
escaped him, was arming to resist him, and making
big talk of the reckoning he would present to Cesare
Borgia. But when, from the high-perched eyrie of
his ancient Etruscan stronghold, Gianpaolo caught
afar the first gleam of arms in the white January sun-
shine, he talked no more. He packed instead, and fled
discreetly, intent to reach Siena and take shelter with
Petrucci.
And no sooner was he gone than Perugia which
316 THE LUST OF CONQUEST
for generations had been weary of his blood-smeared
family sent ambassadors with messages of welcome
to the Duke.
Gianpaolo heard of this in Assisi, and his rage was a
prodigy even for a Baglioni. He was a black-browed,
powerful man, built like an ape with a long body and
short legs, a fine soldier, as well the world knows,
endowed with a reckless courage and a persuasive
tongue that lured men to follow him. In quitting
Perugia, he had listened for once to the voice of dis-
cretion, urged by the cold and calculating quality of
his hatred of the Borgia, and by the hope that in
alliance with Petrucci he might stir up Tuscany and
so return in force against the Duke.
But now that he had word of how cravenly as he
accounted it his city of Perugia had not only bent
her neck to the yoke of the conqueror, which was per-
haps inevitable, but had further bent the knee in
homage and held out her arms in welcome, he repented
him fiercely of his departure, and was blinded to
reason by his rage.
He was so mad as to attempt to induce Assisi to
resist the advancing Duke. But the city of Saint
Francis bade the belligerent Gianpaolo go with God
ere the Duke arrived; for the Duke was already on his
way, and did he find Gianpaolo there, the latter would
assuredly share the fate which had visited his fellow-
rebels.
Baglioni angrily took his departure, to pursue his
road to Siena. But some three miles to the south of
Assisi he drew rein, and lifted his eyes to the strong-
hold of Solignola, poised, gaunt and grey, upon a
projecting crag of the Subasian hills. It was the lair
THE LUST OF CONQUEST 317
of that indomitable old wolf, Count Guido degli
Speranzoni, whose pride was as the pride of Lucifer,
whose fierceness was as the fierceness of the Baglioni
to which family he claimed kinship through his
mother whose defiance of the Pope was as the de-
fiance of an infidel.
Gianpaolo sat his horse under the drizzling rain,
and considered Solignola a while, with pursed lips.
To-night, he reflected, Cesare would lie at Assisi,
which was as ready as a strumpet for surrender. To-
morrow his envoys would wait upon the Lord of
Solignola, and surely, if he knew the old warrior,
Count Guide's answer would be a haughty refusal to
receive the Duke.
He took his resolve. He would ride up, and seek
out Speranzoni. If the Count were, indeed, prepared
for resistance, Gianpaolo had that to say that should
encourage him. If his resoluteness had not been
weakened, as had most men's, by the mere approach
of Cesare Borgia, then it might yet come to pass that
here they should do the thing that at Sinigaglia had so
grievously miscarried. Thus should his strangled com-
rades be avenged, and thus should Italy be rid of this
scourge. Of that same scourge, as he now dubbed tht
Lord Cesare Borgia, he had himself but lately been
one of the thongs. But Messer Gianpaolo was not
subtle.
He turned to his armoured followers a score or so
of men-at-arms who remained faithful to him in this
hour of general defection and made known his
intention to ride up to Solignola. Then, by a winding
mountain path, he led the way thither.
As they ascended from the vast plain of Umbria, so
3i8 THE LUST OF CONQUEST
leafless, grey, and desolate under that leaden, wintry
sky, they perceived through a gap in the hills the
cluster of little townships and hamlets, on the slopes
and in the eastern valley, which formed the territory
and dominion of Solignola. These lay practically
without defences, and they must fall an easy prey to
the Duke. But Baglioni knew that the fierce old
Count was not the man to allow any such considera-
tions to weaken his resolve to resist the Borgia, and
to that resolve Gianpaolo hoped to spur him.
Dusk was descending when the little company of
Perugians reached the northern gate of Solignola, and
the bells of the Duomo were ringing the Angelus
the evening prayer in honour of the Blessed Mother
of Chastity revived in Italy by the unchaste Borgia
Pope. Baglioni's party clattered over the bridge
spanning a chasm in the rocks in the depths of which
a foaming mountain torrent, swollen and umber-
tinted by the recent rains, hurled itself down its head-
long course to join the Tiber in the valley.
Having satisfied the guard, they rode forward into
the city and up the steep long street to the Rocca,
regarded with awe by the burghers, who looked upon
them as the harbingers of this invasion which they
knew to be sweeping towards them from the north.
Thus they came to the mighty citadel and thudded
over the drawbridge into the great courtyard, where
they were instantly hemmed about by a swarm of
men-at-arms who demanded of them not only an ac-
count of themselves, but news as well of Cesare
Borgia's army. Gianpaolo satisfied them briefly, an-
nounced his name, and demanded to see Count Guido
at once.
THE LUST OF CONQUEST 319
The Lord of Solignola sat in council in the Sala
degli Angioli a chamber so known from the fresco
which Luini had painted on the ceiling, representing
the opening heavens and a vision of angels beyond the
parted clouds. With the Count sat Messer del Campo,
the President of the Council of Anziani; Messer Pino
Pavianc, the Master of the Artificers' Guild; two
gentlemen from the valley the lords of Aldi and
Barbero; a gentleman of Assisi Messer Gianluca
della Pieve; and the Count's two principal officers, the
Seneschal of Solignola and the condottiero Santa-
fiora.
They sat about a long, quadrangular oak table in
the thickening gloom, with no other light but that of
the log fire that roared under the wide cowled chim-
ney; and with them, at the foot of the table, facing
the Count, odd member of his warlike council, sat a
woman the Lady Panthasilea degli Speranzoni,
Count Guide's daughter. In years she was little more
than a girl; in form and face she showed a glorious
maturity of womanhood; in mind and character she
was a very man. To describe her the scholarly Cer-
bone had already, a year ago, made use of the term
"virago" not in its perverted, but in its literal and
original meaning, signifying a woman who in intellect
and spirit is a man.
It was by virtue of these endowments, as much as
because she was Count Guide's only child and heir,
that she attended now this council, and listened
gravely to all that was urged in this matter of the
Borgia invasion. She was magnificently tall, and very
regal in her bearing and in the carriage of her glorious
head. Her eyes were large, dark, and lustrous; her
320 THE LUST OF CONQUEST
hair of a glowing copper; and her tint of the delicate
fairness that is attributed to the daughters of the
North. The rich colour of her sensitive lips told of the
warm blood that flowed in her; their set and shape
bore witness to her courage and her will.
Into this assembly, which rose eagerly to receive
him, was ushered the Lord Gianpaolo Baglioni. He
clanked into the room upon his muscular bowed legs,
a sinister figure as seen in the gloom with the firelight
playing ruddily upon his armour and his swarthy,
black-bearded face.
Count Guido advanced to embrace him and to greet
him with words of very cordial welcome, which at
once told the crafty Baglioni all that he most desired
to know. The Count presented him to the company,
and invited him to join their council, since his arrival
was so timely, and since, no doubt, he would be able
to offer them advice of which they stood most sorely
in need, that they might determine upon their course
of action.
He thanked them for the honour, and dropped with
a rattle of metal into the proffered chair. Count
Guido called for lights, and when these were fetched
they revealed the haggard air of Messer Gianpaolo,
which was accentuated by the splashed harness in
which he came amongst them, just as he had ridden.
His smouldering eyes travelled round the board, and
when they found the Assisian gentleman, Gianluca
della Pieve, he smiled sombrely.
"Hard though I have ridden," said he, "it seems
that another is before me with news of what is hap-
pening in Assisi."
Delia Pieve answered him. "I arrived three hours
THE LUST OF CONQUEST 321
ago, and I bore the news that Assisi had thrown up
her gates to receive and harbour the invader. The
Communal Palace is being prepared for him; it is ex-
pected that he will remain a while in the city, making
it a centre whence he can conduct such operations as
he intends against such strongholds as may resist
him."
"And is Solignola to be reckoned among these?"
inquired Gianpaolo bluntly, his eyes upon Count
Guido.
The old Lord of Solignola met his glance calmly,
his shaven, hawk face inscrutable, his almost lipless
mouth tight and firm. It was a face at once handsome,
strong, and crafty the face of one who never would
yield lightly.
"That," he answered slowly, "is what we are as-
sembled to determine. Have you anything to add to
the information afforded us by Delia Pieve?"
" I have not. This gentleman has told you all that
is known to me."
"None the less your coming is most timely. Our
deliberations make no progress, and we do not seem
likely to agree. You, perhaps, may guide us with
your counsel."
"You see, Messer Baglioni," put in the Lord of
Barbero, a red-faced, jovial gentleman of middle-age,
"our interests are different, and we are naturally
governed by our interests."
"Naturally, as you say," agreed Baglioni with im-
perceptible sarcasm.
"Now, we of the valley and my friend Francisco
d'Aldi, there, cannot deny it we of the valley lie
open to attack; we are defenceless; the few townships
322 THE LUST OF CONQUEST
that have walls at all have not such walls as will resist
bombardment. It is a fine thing for Count Guido and
the folk of Solignola itself to talk of resistance. Soli-
gnola is all but impregnable. And well-provisioned and
well-garrisoned as the city is, Count Guido may, if it
please him, resist long enough to enforce advanta-
geous terms. But what in the mean while will be our
fate down yonder? Cesare Borgia will avenge upon
us the stubbornness of the capital. Therefore do we
urge His Excellency and we have in this the suf-
frage also of the Master of the Artificers' Guild to
follow the example of Assisi and your own Perugia"
(Gianpaolo winced) " and send his ambassadors to the
Duke with offers of submission."
Gianpaolo shook his great head. "It is not the
Duke's way to avenge upon dependencies the resist-
ance of a capital. He is too guileful, believe me.
Whom he subjects he conciliates. There will be no
such fire and sword as you fear for your townships of
the valley. Solignola's resistance if she resist
will be visited upon Solignola alone. That much I can
say from my knowledge gained in service with the
Duke. Let me remind you of Faenza. What harm
was suffered by the folk of the Val di Lamone? Why,
none. The strongholds surrendered, and knew no
violence, although Faenza herself resisted stub-
bornly."
"But to little purpose," put in Paviano the
Guildmaster sourly.
"That," said Count Guido, "is beside the point.
And Faenza had not the natural strength of So-
lignola."
"Yet, ultimately," protested Barbero, "surrender
THE LUST OF CONQUEST 323
you must. You cannot resist an army of ten thousand
men forever."
"They cannot besiege us forever/' snapped Santa-
, flora, the condottiero, rearing his cropped bullet-head.
Baglioni sat back in his chair, and listened to the
hot debate that followed now. He was as one who
has tossed down a ball into a field of players, and,
having done so, watches it being flung back and forth
in the course of the ensuing game.
Count Guido, too, took little part in the discussion,
but listened silently, his eyes passing from speaker to
speaker, his countenance a mask. Facing him his
daughter was sitting forward, her elbows on the table,
her chin in her cupped palms, intent upon every word
that was uttered, her eyes now glowing with enthu-
siasm, now coldly scornful, as the argument turned
for or against resistance. But it was all inconclusive,
and at the end of a half-hour's wrangling they were no
nearer a decision than when Gianpaolo had arrived.
It was at this stage that Count Guido turned again
to the Perugian, and, profiting by a momentary si-
lence, following a vigorous plea for resistance from
Santafiora, invited him to speak.
"It may be that I can help you," said Gianpaolo
slowly, "for it happens that my proposal supports
neither one side nor the other of the discussion to
which I have listened. My suggestion concerns a mid-
dle course; and since something of the sort seems to
be needed here if you are not to spend your days in
talk, perhaps your courtesy will give attention to
what I have to say."
The company stirred expectantly, and settled into
an attentive silence. Panthasilea's eyes turned with
324 THE LUST 
