Chapter 1

I. A HOUSE WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS

AT THE CORNER OF A STREET WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS IN A PARIS WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS

Few persons in the present day know how plain and unpretentious were the dwellings of the burghers of Paris in the sixteenth century, and how simple their lives. Perhaps this simplicity of habits and of thought was the cause of the grandeur of that old bourgeoisie which was certainly grand, free, and noble,--more so, perhaps, than the bourgeoisie of the present day. Its history is still to be written; it requires and it awaits a man of genius. This reflection will doubtless rise to the lips of every one after reading the almost unknown incident which forms the basis of this Study and is one of the most remarkable facts in the history of that bourgeoisie. It will not be the first time in history that conclusion has preceded facts.

In 1560, the houses of the rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie skirted the left bank of the Seine, between the pont Notre-Dame and the pont au Change. A public footpath and the houses then occupied the space covered by the present roadway. Each house, standing almost in the river, allowed its dwellers to get down to the water by stone or wooden stairways, closed and protected by strong iron railings or wooden gates, clamped with iron. The houses, like those in Venice, had an entrance on _terra firma_ and a water entrance. At the moment when the present sketch is published, only one of these houses remains to recall the old Paris of which we speak, and that is soon to disappear; it stands at the corner of the Petit-Pont, directly opposite to the guard-house of the Hotel-Dieu.

Formerly each dwelling presented on the river-side the fantastic appearance given either by the trade of its occupant and his habits, or by the originality of the exterior constructions invented by the proprietors to use or abuse the Seine. The bridges being encumbered with more mills than the necessities of navigation could allow, the Seine formed as many enclosed basins as there were bridges. Some of these basins in the heart of old Paris would have offered precious scenes and tones of color to painters. What a forest of crossbeams supported the mills with their huge sails and their wheels! What strange effects were produced by the piles or props driven into the water to project the upper floors of the houses above the stream! Unfortunately, the art of genre painting did not exist in those days, and that of engraving was in its infancy. We have therefore lost that curious spectacle, still offered, though in miniature, by certain provincial towns, where the rivers are overhung with wooden houses, and where, as at Vendome, the basins, full of water grasses, are enclosed by immense iron railings, to isolate each proprietor’s share of the stream, which extends from bank to bank.

The name of this street, which has now disappeared from the map, sufficiently indicates the trade that was carried on in it. In those days the merchants of each class of commerce, instead of dispersing themselves about the city, kept together in the same neighborhood and protected themselves mutually. Associated in corporations which limited their number, they were still further united into guilds by the Church. In this way prices were maintained. Also, the masters were not at the mercy of their workmen, and did not obey their whims as they do to-day; on the contrary, they made them their children, their apprentices, took care of them, and taught them the intricacies of the trade. In order to become a master, a workman had to produce a masterpiece, which was always dedicated to the saint of his guild. Will any one dare to say that the absence of competition destroyed the desire for perfection, or lessened the beauty of products? What say you, you whose admiration for the masterpieces of past ages has created the modern trade of the sellers of bric-a-brac?

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the trade of the furrier was one of the most flourishing industries. The difficulty of obtaining furs, which, being all brought from the north, required long and perilous journeys, gave a very high price and value to those products. Then, as now, high prices led to consumption; for vanity likes to override obstacles. In France, as in other kingdoms, not only did royal ordinances restrict the use of furs to the nobility (proved by the part which ermine plays in the old blazons), but also certain rare furs, such as _vair_ (which was undoubtedly Siberian sable), could not be worn by any but kings, dukes, and certain lords clothed with official powers. A distinction was made between the greater and lesser _vair_. The very name has been so long disused, that in a vast number of editions of Perrault’s famous tale, Cinderella’s slipper, which was no doubt of _vair_ (the fur), is said to have been made of _verre_ (glass). Lately one of our most distinguished poets was obliged to establish the true orthography of the word for the instruction of his brother-feuilletonists in giving an account of the opera of the “Cenerentola,” where the symbolic slipper has been replaced by a ring, which symbolizes nothing at all.

Naturally the sumptuary laws about the wearing of fur were perpetually infringed upon, to the great satisfaction of the furriers. The costliness of stuffs and furs made a garment in those days a durable thing,--as lasting as the furniture, the armor, and other items of that strong life of the fifteenth century. A woman of rank, a seigneur, all rich men, also all the burghers, possessed at the most two garments for each season, which lasted their lifetime and beyond it. These garments were bequeathed to their children. Consequently the clause in the marriage-contract relating to arms and clothes, which in these days is almost a dead letter because of the small value of wardrobes that need constant renewing, was then of much importance. Great costs brought with them solidity. The toilet of a woman constituted a large capital; it was reckoned among the family possessions, and was kept in those enormous chests which threaten to break through the floors of our modern houses. The jewels of a woman of 1840 would have been the _undress_ ornaments of a great lady in 1540.

To-day, the discovery of America, the facilities of transportation, the ruin of social distinctions which has paved the way for the ruin of apparent distinctions, has reduced the trade of the furrier to what it now is,--next to nothing. The article which a furrier sells to-day, as in former days, for twenty _livres_ has followed the depreciation of money: formerly the _livre_, which is now worth one franc and is usually so called, was worth twenty francs. To-day, the lesser bourgeoisie and the courtesans who edge their capes with sable, are ignorant than in 1440 an ill-disposed police-officer would have incontinently arrested them and marched them before the justice at the Chatelet. Englishwomen, who are so fond of ermine, do not know that in former times none but queens, duchesses, and chancellors were allowed to wear that royal fur. There are to-day in France several ennobled families whose true name is Pelletier or Lepelletier, the origin of which is evidently derived from some rich furrier’s counter, for most of our burgher’s names began in some such way.

This digression will explain, not only the long feud as to precedence which the guild of drapers maintained for two centuries against the guild of furriers and also of mercers (each claiming the right to walk first, as being the most important guild in Paris), but it will also serve to explain the importance of the Sieur Lecamus, a furrier honored with the custom of two queens, Catherine de’ Medici and Mary Stuart, also the custom of the parliament,--a man who for twenty years was the syndic of his corporation, and who lived in the street we have just described.

The house of Lecamus was one of three which formed the three angles of the open space at the end of the pont au Change, where nothing now remains but the tower of the Palais de Justice, which made the fourth angle. On the corner of this house, which stood at the angle of the pont au Change and the quai now called the quai aux Fleurs, the architect had constructed a little shrine for a Madonna, which was always lighted by wax-tapers and decked with real flowers in summer and artificial ones in winter. On the side of the house toward the rue du Pont, as on the side toward the rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie, the upper story of the house was supported by wooden pillars. All the houses in this mercantile quarter had an arcade behind these pillars, where the passers in the street walked under cover on a ground of trodden mud which kept the place always dirty. In all French towns these arcades or galleries are called _les piliers_, a general term to which was added the name of the business transacted under them,--as “piliers des Halles” (markets), “piliers de la Boucherie” (butchers).

These galleries, a necessity in the Parisian climate, which is so changeable and so rainy, gave this part of the city a peculiar character of its own; but they have now disappeared. Not a single house in the river bank remains, and not more than about a hundred feet of the old “piliers des Halles,” the last that have resisted the action of time, are left; and before long even that relic of the sombre labyrinth of old Paris will be demolished. Certainly, the existence of such old ruins of the middle-ages is incompatible with the grandeurs of modern Paris. These observations are meant not so much to regret the destruction of the old town, as to preserve in words, and by the history of those who lived there, the memory of a place now turned to dust, and to excuse the following description, which may be precious to a future age now treading on the heels of our own.

The walls of this house were of wood covered with slate. The spaces between the uprights had been filled in, as we may still see in some provincial towns, with brick, so placed, by reversing their thickness, as to make a pattern called “Hungarian point.” The window-casings and lintels, also in wood, were richly carved, and so was the corner pillar where it rose above the shrine of the Madonna, and all the other pillars in front of the house. Each window, and each main beam which separated the different storeys, was covered with arabesques of fantastic personages and animals wreathed with conventional foliage. On the street side, as on the river side, the house was capped with a roof looking as if two cards were set up one against the other,--thus presenting a gable to the street and a gable to the water. This roof, like the roof of a Swiss chalet, overhung the building so far that on the second floor there was an outside gallery with a balustrade, on which the owners of the house could walk under cover and survey the street, also the river basin between the bridges and the two lines of houses.

These houses on the river bank were very valuable. In those days a system of drains and fountains was still to be invented; nothing of the kind as yet existed except the circuit sewer, constructed by Aubriot, provost of Paris under Charles the Wise, who also built the Bastille, the pont Saint-Michel and other bridges, and was the first man of genius who ever thought of the sanitary improvement of Paris. The houses situated like that of Lecamus took from the river the water necessary for the purposes of life, and also made the river serve as a natural drain for rain-water and household refuse. The great works that the “merchants’ provosts” did in this direction are fast disappearing. Middle-aged persons alone can remember to have seen the great holes in the rue Montmartre, rue du Temple, etc., down which the waters poured. Those terrible open jaws were in the olden time of immense benefit to Paris. Their place will probably be forever marked by the sudden rise of the paved roadways at the spots where they opened,--another archaeological detail which will be quite inexplicable to the historian two centuries hence. One day, about 1816, a little girl who was carrying a case of diamonds to an actress at the Ambigu, for her part as queen, was overtaken by a shower and so nearly washed down the great drainhole in the rue du Temple that she would have disappeared had it not been for a passer who heard her cries. Unluckily, she had let go the diamonds, which were, however, recovered later at a man-hole. This event made a great noise, and gave rise to many petitions against these engulfers of water and little girls. They were singular constructions about five feet high, furnished with iron railings, more or less movable, which often caused the inundation of the neighboring cellars, whenever the artificial river produced by sudden rains was arrested in its course by the filth and refuse collected about these railings, which the owners of the abutting houses sometimes forgot to open.

The front of this shop of the Sieur Lecamus was all window, formed of sashes of leaded panes, which made the interior very dark. The furs were taken for selection to the houses of rich customers. As for those who came to the shop to buy, the goods were shown to them outside, between the pillars,--the arcade being, let us remark, encumbered during the day-time with tables, and clerks sitting on stools, such as we all remember seeing some fifteen years ago under the “piliers des Halles.” From these outposts, the clerks and apprentices talked, questioned, answered each other, and called to the passers,--customs which the great Walter Scott has made use of in his “Fortunes of Nigel.”

The sign, which represented an ermine, hung outside, as we still see in some village hostelries, from a rich bracket of gilded iron filagree. Above the ermine, on one side of the sign, were the words:--

LECAMVS

FURRIER

TO MADAME LA ROYNE ET DU ROY NOSTRE SIRE.

On the other side of the sign were the words:--

TO MADAME LA ROYNE-MERE

AND MESSIEURS DV PARLEMENT.

The words “Madame la Royne-mere” had been lately added. The gilding was fresh. This addition showed the recent changes produced by the sudden and violent death of Henri II., which overturned many fortunes at court and began that of the Guises.

The back-shop opened on the river. In this room usually sat the respectable proprietor himself and Mademoiselle Lecamus. In those days the wife of a man who was not noble had no right to the title of dame, “madame”; but the wives of the burghers of Paris were allowed to use that of “mademoiselle,” in virtue of privileges granted and confirmed to their husbands by the several kings to whom they had done service. Between this back-shop and the main shop was the well of a corkscrew-staircase which gave access to the upper story, where were the great ware-room and the dwelling-rooms of the old couple, and the garrets lighted by skylights, where slept the children, the servant-woman, the apprentices, and the clerks.

This crowding of families, servants, and apprentices, the little space which each took up in the building where the apprentices all slept in one large chamber under the roof, explains the enormous population of Paris then agglomerated on one-tenth of the surface of the present city; also the queer details of private life in the middle ages; also, the contrivances of love which, with all due deference to historians, are found only in the pages of the romance-writers, without whom they would be lost to the world. At this period very great _seigneurs_, such, for instance, as Admiral de Coligny, occupied three rooms, and their suites lived at some neighboring inn. There were not, in those days, more than fifty private mansions in Paris, and those were fifty palaces belonging to sovereign princes, or to great vassals, whose way of living was superior to that of the greatest German rulers, such as the Duke of Bavaria and the Elector of Saxony.

The kitchen of the Lecamus family was beneath the back-shop and looked out upon the river. It had a glass door opening upon a sort of iron balcony, from which the cook drew up water in a bucket, and where the household washing was done. The back-shop was made the dining-room, office, and salon of the merchant. In this important room (in all such houses richly panelled and adorned with some special work of art, and also a carved chest) the life of the merchant was passed; there the joyous suppers after the work of the day was over, there the secret conferences on the political interests of the burghers and of royalty took place. The formidable corporations of Paris were at that time able to arm a hundred thousand men. Therefore the opinions of the merchants were backed by their servants, their clerks, their apprentices, their workmen. The burghers had a chief in the “provost of the merchants” who commanded them, and in the Hotel de Ville, a palace where they possessed the right to assemble. In the famous “burghers’ parlor” their solemn deliberations took place. Had it not been for the continual sacrifices which by that time made war intolerable to the corporations, who were weary of their losses and of the famine, Henri IV., that factionist who became king, might never perhaps have entered Paris.

Every one can now picture to himself the appearance of this corner of old Paris, where the bridge and quai still are, where the trees of the quai aux Fleurs now stand, but where no trace remains of the period of which we write except the tall and famous tower of the Palais de Justice, from which the signal was given for the Saint Bartholomew. Strange circumstance! one of the houses standing at the foot of that tower then surrounded by wooden shops, that, namely, of Lecamus, was about to witness the birth of facts which were destined to prepare for that night of massacre, which was, unhappily, more favorable than fatal to Calvinism.

At the moment when our history begins, the audacity of the new religious doctrines was putting all Paris in a ferment. A Scotchman named Stuart had just assassinated President Minard, the member of the Parliament to whom public opinion attributed the largest share in the execution of Councillor Anne du Bourg; who was burned on the place de Greve after the king’s tailor--to whom Henri II. and Diane de Poitiers had caused the torture of the “question” to be applied in their very presence. Paris was so closely watched that the archers compelled all passers along the street to pray before the shrines of the Madonna so as to discover heretics by their unwillingness or even refusal to do an act contrary to their beliefs.

The two archers who were stationed at the corner of the Lecamus house had departed, and Cristophe, son of the furrier, vehemently suspected of deserting Catholicism, was able to leave the shop without fear of being made to adore the Virgin. By seven in the evening, in April, 1560, darkness was already falling, and the apprentices, seeing no signs of customers on either side of the arcade, were beginning to take in the merchandise exposed as samples beneath the pillars, in order to close the shop. Christophe Lecamus, an ardent young man about twenty-two years old, was standing on the sill of the shop-door, apparently watching the apprentices.

“Monsieur,” said one of them, addressing Christophe and pointing to a man who was walking to and fro under the gallery with an air of indecision, “perhaps that’s a thief or a spy; anyhow, the shabby wretch can’t be an honest man; if he wanted to speak to us he would come over frankly, instead of sidling along as he does--and what a face!” continued the apprentice, mimicking the man, “with his nose in his cloak, his yellow eyes, and that famished look!”

When the stranger thus described caught sight of Christophe alone on the door-sill, he suddenly left the opposite gallery where he was then walking, crossed the street rapidly, and came under the arcade in front of the Lecamus house. There he passed slowly along in front of the shop, and before the apprentices returned to close the outer shutters he said to Christophe in a low voice:--

“I am Chaudieu.”

Hearing the name of one of the most illustrious ministers and devoted actors in the terrible drama called “The Reformation,” Christophe quivered as a faithful peasant might have quivered on recognizing his disguised king.

“Perhaps you would like to see some furs? Though it is almost dark I will show you some myself,” said Christophe, wishing to throw the apprentices, whom he heard behind him, off the scent.

With a wave of his hand he invited the minister to enter the shop, but the latter replied that he preferred to converse outside. Christophe then fetched his cap and followed the disciple of Calvin.

Though banished by an edict, Chaudieu, the secret envoy of Theodore de Beze and Calvin (who were directing the French Reformation from Geneva), went and came, risking the cruel punishment to which the Parliament, in unison with the Church and Royalty, had condemned one of their number, the celebrated Anne du Bourg, in order to make a terrible example. Chaudieu, whose brother was a captain and one of Admiral Coligny’s best soldiers, was a powerful auxiliary by whose arm Calvin shook France at the beginning of the twenty two years of religious warfare now on the point of breaking out. This minister was one of the hidden wheels whose movements can best exhibit the wide-spread action of the Reform.

Chaudieu led Christophe to the water’s edge through an underground passage, which was like that of the Marion tunnel filled up by the authorities about ten years ago. This passage, which was situated between the Lecamus house and the one adjoining it, ran under the rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie, and was called the Pont-aux-Fourreurs. It was used by the dyers of the City to go to the river and wash their flax and silks, and other stuffs. A little boat was at the entrance of it, rowed by a single sailor. In the bow was a man unknown to Christophe, a man of low stature and very simply dressed. Chaudieu and Christophe entered the boat, which in a moment was in the middle of the Seine; the sailor then directed its course beneath one of the wooden arches of the pont au Change, where he tied up quickly to an iron ring. As yet, no one had said a word.

“Here we can speak without fear; there are no traitors or spies here,” said Chaudieu, looking at the two as yet unnamed men. Then, turning an ardent face to Christophe, “Are you,” he said, “full of that devotion that should animate a martyr? Are you ready to endure all for our sacred cause? Do you fear the tortures applied to the Councillor du Bourg, to the king’s tailor,--tortures which await the majority of us?”

“I shall confess the gospel,” replied Lecamus, simply, looking at the windows of his father’s back-shop.

The family lamp, standing on the table where his father was making up his books for the day, spoke to him, no doubt, of the joys of family and the peaceful existence which he now renounced. The vision was rapid, but complete. His mind took in, at a glance, the burgher quarter full of its own harmonies, where his happy childhood had been spent, where lived his promised bride, Babette Lallier, where all things promised him a sweet and full existence; he saw the past; he saw the future, and he sacrificed it, or, at any rate, he staked it all. Such were the men of that day.

“We need ask no more,” said the impetuous sailor; “we know him for one of our _saints_. If the Scotchman had not done the deed he would kill us that infamous Minard.”

“Yes,” said Lecamus, “my life belongs to the church; I shall give it with joy for the triumph of the Reformation, on which I have seriously reflected. I know that what we do is for the happiness of the peoples. In two words: Popery drives to celibacy, the Reformation establishes the family. It is time to rid France of her monks, to restore their lands to the Crown, who will, sooner or later, sell them to the burghers. Let us learn to die for our children, and make our families some day free and prosperous.”

The face of the young enthusiast, that of Chaudieu, that of the sailor, that of the stranger seated in the bow, lighted by the last gleams of the twilight, formed a picture which ought the more to be described because the description contains in itself the whole history of the times--if it is, indeed, true that to certain men it is given to sum up in their own persons the spirit of their age.

The religious reform undertaken by Luther in Germany, John Knox in Scotland, Calvin in France, took hold especially of those minds in the lower classes into which thought had penetrated. The great lords sustained the movement only to serve interests that were foreign to the religious cause. To these two classes were added adventurers, ruined noblemen, younger sons, to whom all troubles were equally acceptable. But among the artisan and merchant classes the new faith was sincere and based on calculation. The masses of the poorer people adhered at once to a religion which gave the ecclesiastical property to the State, and deprived the dignitaries of the Church of their enormous revenues. Commerce everywhere reckoned up the profits of this religious operation, and devoted itself body, soul, and purse, to the cause.

But among the young men of the French bourgeoisie the Protestant movement found that noble inclination to sacrifices of all kinds which inspires youth, to which selfishness is, as yet, unknown. Eminent men, sagacious minds, discerned the Republic in the Reformation; they desired to establish throughout Europe the government of the United Provinces, which ended by triumphing over the greatest Power of those times,--Spain, under Philip the Second, represented in the Low Countries by the Duke of Alba. Jean Hotoman was then meditating his famous book, in which this project is put forth,--a book which spread throughout France the leaven of these ideas, which were stirred up anew by the Ligue, repressed by Richelieu, then by Louis XIV., always protected by the younger branches, by the house of Orleans in 1789, as by the house of Bourbon in 1589. Whoso says “Investigate” says “Revolt.” All revolt is either the cloak that hides a prince, or the swaddling-clothes of a new mastery. The house of Bourbon, the younger sons of the Valois, were at work beneath the surface of the Reformation.

At the moment when the little boat floated beneath the arch of the pont au Change the question was strangely complicated by the ambitions of the Guises, who were rivalling the Bourbons. Thus the Crown, represented by Catherine de’ Medici, was able to sustain the struggle for thirty years by pitting the one house against the other house; whereas later, the Crown, instead of standing between various jealous ambitions, found itself without a barrier, face to face with the people: Richelieu and Louis XIV. had broken down the barrier of the Nobility; Louis XV. had broken down that of the Parliaments. Alone before the people, as Louis XVI. was, a king must inevitably succumb.

Christophe Lecamus was a fine representative of the ardent and devoted portion of the people. His wan face had the sharp hectic tones which distinguish certain fair complexions; his hair was yellow, of a coppery shade; his gray-blue eyes were sparkling. In them alone was his fine soul visible; for his ill-proportioned face did not atone for its triangular shape by the noble mien of an elevated mind, and his low forehead indicated only extreme energy. Life seemed to centre in his chest, which was rather hollow. More nervous than sanguine, Cristophe’s bodily appearance was thin and threadlike, but wiry. His pointed noise expressed the shrewdness of the people, and his countenance revealed an intelligence capable of conducting itself well on a single point of the circumference, without having the faculty of seeing all around it. His eyes, the arching brows of which, scarcely covered with a whitish down, projected like an awning, were strongly circled by a pale-blue band, the skin being white and shining at the spring of the nose,--a sign which almost always denotes excessive enthusiasm. Christophe was of the people,--the people who devote themselves, who fight for their devotions, who let themselves be inveigled and betrayed; intelligent enough to comprehend and serve an idea, too upright to turn it to his own account, too noble to sell himself.

Contrasting with this son of Lecamus, Chaudieu, the ardent minister, with brown hair thinned by vigils, a yellow skin, an eloquent mouth, a militant brow, with flaming brown eyes, and a short and prominent chin, embodied well the Christian faith which brought to the Reformation so many sincere and fanatical pastors, whose courage and spirit aroused the populations. The aide-de-camp of Calvin and Theodore de Beze contrasted admirably with the son of the furrier. He represented the fiery cause of which the effect was seen in Christophe.

The sailor, an impetuous being, tanned by the open air, accustomed to dewy nights and burning days, with closed lips, hasty gestures, orange eyes, ravenous as those of a vulture, and black, frizzled hair, was the embodiment of an adventurer who risks all in a venture, as a gambler stakes all on a card. His whole appearance revealed terrific passions, and an audacity that flinched at nothing. His vigorous muscles were made to be quiescent as well as to act. His manner was more audacious than noble. His nose, though thin, turned up and snuffed battle. He seemed agile and capable. You would have known him in all ages for the leader of a party. If he were not of the Reformation, he might have been Pizarro, Fernando Cortez, or Morgan the Exterminator,--a man of violent action of some kind.

The fourth man, sitting on a thwart wrapped in his cloak, belonged, evidently, to the highest portion of society. The fineness of his linen, its cut, the material and scent of his clothing, the style and skin of his gloves, showed him to be a man of courts, just as his bearing, his haughtiness, his composure and his all-embracing glance proved him to be a man of war. The aspect of this personage made a spectator uneasy in the first place, and then inclined him to respect. We respect a man who respects himself. Though short and deformed, his manners instantly redeemed the disadvantages of his figure. The ice once broken, he showed a lively rapidity of decision, with an indefinable dash and fire which made him seem affable and winning. He had the blue eyes and the curved nose of the house of Navarre, and the Spanish cut of the marked features which were in after days the type of the Bourbon kings.

In a word, the scene now assumed a startling interest.

“Well,” said Chaudieu, as young Lecamus ended his speech, “this boatman is La Renaudie. And here is Monsiegneur the Prince de Conde,” he added, motioning to the deformed little man.

Thus these four men represented the faith of the people, the spirit of the Scriptures, the mailed hand of the soldier, and royalty itself hidden in that dark shadow of the bridge.

“You shall now know what we expect of you,” resumed the minister, after allowing a short pause for Christophe’s astonishment. “In order that you may make no mistake, we feel obliged to initiate you into the most important secrets of the Reformation.”

The prince and La Renaudie emphasized the minister’s speech by a gesture, the latter having paused to allow the prince to speak, if he so wished. Like all great men engaged in plotting, whose system it is to conceal their hand until the decisive moment, the prince kept silence--but not from cowardice. In these crises he was always the soul of the conspiracy; recoiling from no danger and ready to risk his own head; but from a sort of royal dignity he left the explanation of the enterprise to his minister, and contented himself with studying the new instrument he was about to use.

“My child,” said Chaudieu, in the Huguenot style of address, “we are about to do battle for the first time with the Roman prostitute. In a few days either our legions will be dying on the scaffold, or the Guises will be dead. This is the first call to arms on behalf of our religion in France, and France will not lay down those arms till they have conquered. The question, mark you this, concerns the nation, not the kingdom. The majority of the nobles of the kingdom see plainly what the Cardinal de Lorraine and his brother are seeking. Under pretext of defending the Catholic religion, the house of Lorraine means to claim the crown of France as its patrimony. Relying on the Church, it has made the Church a formidable ally; the monks are its support, its acolytes, its spies. It has assumed the post of guardian to the throne it is seeking to usurp; it protects the house of Valois which it means to destroy. We have decided to take up arms because the liberties of the people and the interests of the nobles are equally threatened. Let us smother at its birth a faction as odious as that of the Burgundians who formerly put Paris and all France to fire and sword. It required a Louis XI. to put a stop to the quarrel between the Burgundians and the Crown; and to-day a prince de Conde is needed to prevent the house of Lorraine from re-attempting that struggle. This is not a civil war; it is a duel between the Guises and the Reformation,--a duel to the death! We will make their heads fall, or they shall have ours.”

“Well said!” cried the prince.

“In this crisis, Christophe,” said La Renaudie, “we mean to neglect nothing which shall strengthen our party,--for there is a party in the Reformation, the party of thwarted interests, of nobles sacrificed to the Lorrains, of old captains shamefully treated at Fontainebleau, from which the cardinal has banished them by setting up gibbets on which to hang those who ask the king for the cost of their equipment and their back-pay.”

“This, my child,” resumed Chaudieu, observing a sort of terror in Christophe, “this it is which compels us to conquer by arms instead of conquering by conviction and by martyrdom. The queen-mother is on the point of entering into our views. Not that she means to abjure; she has not reached that decision as yet; but she may be forced to it by our triumph. However that may be, Queen Catherine, humiliated and in despair at seeing the power she expected to wield on the death of the king passing into the hands of the Guises, alarmed at the empire of the young queen, Mary, niece of the Lorrains and their auxiliary, Queen Catherine is doubtless inclined to lend her support to the princes and lords who are now about to make an attempt which will deliver her from the Guises. At this moment, devoted as she may seem to them, she hates them; she desires their overthrow, and will try to make use of us against them; but Monseigneur the Prince de Conde intends to make use of her against all. The queen-mother will, undoubtedly, consent to all our plans. We shall have the Connetable on our side; Monseigneur has just been to see him at Chantilly; but he does not wish to move without an order from his masters. Being the uncle of Monseigneur, he will not leave him in the lurch; and this generous prince does not hesitate to fling himself into danger to force Anne de Montmorency to a decision. All is prepared, and we have cast our eyes on you as the means of communicating to Queen Catherine our treaty of alliance, the drafts of edicts, and the bases of the new government. The court is at Blois. Many of our friends are with it; but they are to be our future chiefs, and, like Monseigneur,” he added, motioning to the prince, “they must not be suspected. The queen-mother and our friends are so closely watched that it is impossible to employ as intermediary any known person of importance; they would instantly be suspected and kept from communicating with Madame Catherine. God sends us at this crisis the shepherd David and his sling to do battle with Goliath of Guise. Your father, unfortunately for him a good Catholic, is furrier to the two queens. He is constantly supplying them with garments. Get him to send you on some errand to the court. You will excite no suspicion, and you cannot compromise Queen Catherine in any way. All our leaders would lose their heads if a single imprudent act allowed their connivance with the queen-mother to be seen. Where a great lord, if discovered, would give the alarm and destroy our chances, an insignificant man like you will pass unnoticed. See! The Guises keep the town so full of spies that we have only the river where we can talk without fear. You are now, my son, like a sentinel who must die at his post. Remember this: if you are discovered, we shall all abandon you; we shall even cast, if necessary, opprobrium and infamy upon you. We shall say that you are a creature of the Guises, made to play this part to ruin us. You see therefore that we ask of you a total sacrifice.”

“If you perish,” said the Prince de Conde, “I pledge my honor as a noble that your family shall be sacred for the house of Navarre; I will bear it on my heart and serve it in all things.”

“Those words, my prince, suffice,” replied Christophe, without reflecting that the conspirator was a Gascon. “We live in times when each man, prince or burgher, must do his duty.”

“There speaks the true Huguenot. If all our men were like that,” said La Renaudie, laying his hand on Christophe’s shoulder, “we should be conquerors to-morrow.”

“Young man,” resumed the prince, “I desire to show you that if Chaudieu preaches, if the nobleman goes armed, the prince fights. Therefore, in this hot game all stakes are played.”

“Now listen to me,” said La Renaudie. “I will not give you the papers until you reach Beaugency; for they must not be risked during the whole of your journey. You will find me waiting for you there on the wharf; my face, voice, and clothes will be so changed you cannot recognize me, but I shall say to you, ‘Are you a _guepin_?’ and you will answer, ‘Ready to serve.’ As to the performance of your mission, these are the means: You will find a horse at the ‘Pinte Fleurie,’ close to Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. You will there ask for Jean le Breton, who will take you to the stable and give you one of my ponies which is known to do thirty leagues in eight hours. Leave by the gate of Bussy. Breton has a pass for me; use it yourself, and make your way by skirting the towns. You can thus reach Orleans by daybreak.”

“But the horse?” said young Lecamus.

“He will not give out till you reach Orleans,” replied La Renaudie. “Leave him at the entrance of the faubourg Bannier; for the gates are well guarded, and you must not excite suspicion. It is for you, friend, to play your part intelligently. You must invent whatever fable seems to you best to reach the third house to the left on entering Orleans; it belongs to a certain Tourillon, glove-maker. Strike three blows on the door, and call out: ‘On service from Messieurs de Guise!’ The man will appear to be a rabid Guisist; no one knows but our four selves that he is one of us. He will give you a faithful boatman,--another Guisist of his own cut. Go down at once to the wharf, and embark in a boat painted green and edged with white. You will doubtless land at Beaugency to-morrow about mid-day. There I will arrange to find you a boat which will take you to Blois without running any risk. Our enemies the Guises do not watch the rivers, only the landings. Thus you will be able to see the queen-mother to-morrow or the day after.”

“Your words are written there,” said Christophe, touching his forehead.

Chaudieu embraced his child with singular religious effusion; he was proud of him.

“God keep thee!” he said, pointing to the ruddy light of the sinking sun, which was touching the old roofs covered with shingles and sending its gleams slantwise through the forest of piles among which the water was rippling.

“You belong to the race of the Jacques Bonhomme,” said La Renaudie, pressing Christophe’s hand.

“We shall meet again, _monsieur_,” said the prince, with a gesture of infinite grace, in which there was something that seemed almost friendship.

With a stroke of his oars La Renaudie put the boat at the lower step of the stairway which led to the house. Christophe landed, and the boat disappeared instantly beneath the arches of the pont au Change.

II. THE BURGHERS

Christophe shook the iron railing which closed the stairway on the river, and called. His mother heard him, opened one of the windows of the back shop, and asked what he was doing there. Christophe answered that he was cold and wanted to get in.

“Ha! my master,” said the Burgundian maid, “you went out by the street-door, and you return by the water-gate. Your father will be fine and angry.”

Christophe, bewildered by a confidence which had just brought him into communication with the Prince de Conde, La Renaudie, and Chaudieu, and still more moved at the prospect of impending civil war, made no answer; he ran hastily up from the kitchen to the back shop; but his mother, a rabid Catholic, could not control her anger.

“I’ll wager those three men I saw you talking with are Ref--”

“Hold your tongue, wife!” said the cautious old man with white hair who was turning over a thick ledger. “You dawdling fellows,” he went on, addressing three journeymen, who had long finished their suppers, “why don’t you go to bed? It is eight o’clock, and you have to be up at five; besides, you must carry home to-night President de Thou’s cap and mantle. All three of you had better go, and take your sticks and rapiers; and then, if you meet scamps like yourselves, at least you’ll be in force.”

“Are we going to take the ermine surcoat the young queen has ordered to be sent to the hotel des Soissons? there’s an express going from there to Blois for the queen-mother,” said one of the clerks.

“No,” said his master, “the queen-mother’s bill amounts to three thousand crowns; it is time to get the money, and I am going to Blois myself very soon.”

“Father, I do not think it right at your age and in these dangerous times to expose yourself on the high-roads. I am twenty-two years old, and you ought to employ me on such errands,” said Christophe, eyeing the box which he supposed contained the surcoat.

“Are you glued to your seats?” cried the old man to his apprentices, who at once jumped up and seized their rapiers, cloaks, and Monsieur de Thou’s furs.

The next day the Parliament was to receive in state, as its president, this illustrious judge, who, after signing the death warrant of Councillor du Bourg, was destined before the close of the year to sit in judgment on the Prince de Conde!

“Here!” said the old man, calling to the maid, “go and ask friend Lallier if he will come and sup with us and bring the wine; we’ll furnish the victuals. Tell him, above all, to bring his daughter.”

Lecamus, the syndic of the guild of furriers, was a handsome old man of sixty, with white hair, and a broad, open brow. As court furrier for the last forty years, he had witnessed all the revolutions of the reign of Francois I. He had seen the arrival at the French court of the young girl Catherine de’ Medici, then scarcely fifteen years of age. He had observed her giving way before the Duchesse d’Etampes, her father-in-law’s mistress; giving way before the Duchesse de Valentinois, the mistress of her husband the late king. But the furrier had brought himself safely through all the chances and changes by which court merchants were often involved in the disgrace and overthrow of mistresses. His caution led to his good luck. He maintained an attitude of extreme humility. Pride had never caught him in its toils. He made himself so small, so gentle, so compliant, of so little account at court and before the queens and princesses and favorites, that this modesty, combined with good-humor, had kept the royal sign above his door.

Such a policy was, of course, indicative of a shrewd and perspicacious mind. Humble as Lecamus seemed to the outer world, he was despotic in his own home; there he was an autocrat. Most respected and honored by his brother craftsmen, he owed to his long possession of the first place in the trade much of the consideration that was shown to him. He was, besides, very willing to do kindnesses to others, and among the many services he had rendered, none was more striking than the assistance he had long given to the greatest surgeon of the sixteenth century, Ambroise Pare, who owed to him the possibility of studying for his profession. In all the difficulties which came up among the merchants Lecamus was always conciliating. Thus a general good opinion of him consolidated his position among his equals; while his borrowed characteristics kept him steadily in favor with the court.

Not only this, but having intrigued for the honor of being on the vestry of his parish church, he did what was necessary to bring him into the odor of sanctity with the rector of Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs, who looked upon him as one of the men most devoted to the Catholic religion in Paris. Consequently, at the time of the convocation of the States-General he was unanimously elected to represent the _tiers etat_ through the influence of the clergy of Paris,--an influence which at that period was immense. This old man was, in short, one of those secretly ambitious souls who will bend for fifty years before all the world, gliding from office to office, no one exactly knowing how it came about that he was found securely and peacefully seated at last where no man, even the boldest, would have had the ambition at the beginning of life to fancy himself; so great was the distance, so many the gulfs and the precipices to cross! Lecamus, who had immense concealed wealth, would not run any risks, and was silently preparing a brilliant future for his son. Instead of having the personal ambition which sacrifices the future to the present, he had family ambition,--a lost sentiment in our time, a sentiment suppressed by the folly of our laws of inheritance. Lecamus saw himself first president of the Parliament of Paris in the person of his grandson.

Christophe, godson of the famous historian de Thou, was given a most solid education; but it had led him to doubt and to the spirit of examination which was then affecting both the Faculties and the students of the universities. Christophe was, at the period of which we are now writing, pursuing his studies for the bar, that first step toward the magistracy. The old furrier was pretending to some hesitation as to his son. Sometimes he seemed to wish to make Christophe his successor; then again he spoke of him as a lawyer; but in his heart he was ambitious of a place for this son as Councillor of the Parliament. He wanted to put the Lecamus family on a level with those old and celebrated burgher families from which came the Pasquiers, the Moles, the Mirons, the Seguiers, Lamoignon, du Tillet, Lecoigneux, Lescalopier, Goix, Arnauld, those famous sheriffs and grand-provosts of the merchants, among whom the throne found such strong defenders.

Therefore, in order that Christophe might in due course of time maintain his rank, he wished to marry him to the daughter of the richest jeweller in the city, his friend Lallier, whose nephew was destined to present to Henri IV. the keys of Paris. The strongest desire rooted in the heart of the worthy burgher was to use half of his fortune and half of that of the jeweller in the purchase of a large and beautiful seignorial estate, which, in those days, was a long and very difficult affair. But his shrewd mind knew the age in which he lived too well to be ignorant of the great movements which were now in preparation. He saw clearly, and he saw justly, and knew that the kingdom was about to be divided into two camps. The useless executions in the Place de l’Estrapade, that of the king’s tailor and the more recent one of the Councillor Anne du Bourg, the actual connivance of the great lords, and that of the favorite of Francois I. with the Reformers, were terrible indications. The furrier resolved to remain, whatever happened, Catholic, royalist, and parliamentarian; but it suited him, privately, that Christophe should belong to the Reformation. He knew he was rich enough to ransom his son if Christophe was too much compromised; and on the other hand if France became Calvinist his son could save the family in the event of one of those furious Parisian riots, the memory of which was ever-living with the bourgeoisie,--riots they were destined to see renewed through four reigns.

But these thoughts the old furrier, like Louis XI., did not even say to himself; his wariness went so far as to deceive his wife and son. This grave personage had long been the chief man of the richest and most populous quarter of Paris, that of the centre, under the title of _quartenier_,--the title and office which became so celebrated some fifteen months later. Clothed in cloth like all the prudent burghers who obeyed the sumptuary laws, Sieur Lecamus (he was tenacious of that title which Charles V. granted to the burghers of Paris, permitting them also to buy baronial estates and call their wives by the fine name of _demoiselle_, but not by that of madame) wore neither gold chains nor silk, but always a good doublet with large tarnished silver buttons, cloth gaiters mounting to the knee, and leather shoes with clasps. His shirt, of fine linen, showed, according to the fashion of the time, in great puffs between his half-opened jacket and his breeches. Though his large and handsome face received the full light of the lamp standing on the table, Christophe had no conception of the thoughts which lay buried beneath the rich and florid Dutch skin of the old man; but he understood well enough the advantage he himself had expected to obtain from his affection for pretty Babette Lallier. So Christophe, with the air of a man who had come to a decision, smiled bitterly as he heard of the invitation to his promised bride.

When the Burgundian cook and the apprentices had departed on their several errands, old Lecamus looked at his wife with a glance which showed the firmness and resolution of his character.

“You will not be satisfied till you have got that boy hanged with your damned tongue,” he said, in a stern voice.

“I would rather see him hanged and saved than living and a Huguenot,” she answered, gloomily. “To think that a child whom I carried nine months in my womb should be a bad Catholic, and be doomed to hell for all eternity!”

She began to weep.

“Old silly,” said the furrier; “let him live, if only to convert him. You said, before the apprentices, a word which may set fire to our house, and roast us all, like fleas in a straw bed.”

The mother crossed herself, and sat down silently.

“Now, then, you,” said the old man, with a judicial glance at his son, “explain to me what you were doing on the river with--come closer, that I may speak to you,” he added, grasping his son by the arm, and drawing him to him--“with the Prince de Conde,” he whispered. Christophe trembled. “Do you suppose the court furrier does not know every face that frequents the palace? Think you I am ignorant of what is going on? Monseigneur the Grand Master has been giving orders to send troops to Amboise. Withdrawing troops from Paris to send them to Amboise when the king is at Blois, and making them march through Chartres and Vendome, instead of going by Orleans--isn’t the meaning of that clear enough? There’ll be troubles. If the queens want their surcoats, they must send for them. The Prince de Conde has perhaps made up his mind to kill Messieurs de Guise; who, on their side, expect to rid themselves of him. The prince will use the Huguenots to protect himself. Why should the son of a furrier get himself into that fray? When you are married, and when you are councillor to the Parliament, you will be as prudent as your father. Before belonging to the new religion, the son of a furrier ought to wait until the rest of the world belongs to it. I don’t condemn the Reformers; it is not my business to do so; but the court is Catholic, the two queens are Catholic, the Parliament is Catholic; we must supply them with furs, and therefore we must be Catholic ourselves. You shall not go out from here, Christophe; if you do, I will send you to your godfather, President de Thou, who will keep you night and day blackening paper, instead of blackening your soul in company with those damned Genevese.”

“Father,” said Christophe, leaning upon the back of the old man’s chair, “send me to Blois to carry that surcoat to Queen Mary and get our money from the queen-mother. If you do not, I am lost; and you care for your son.”

“Lost?” repeated the old man, without showing the least surprise. “If you stay here you can’t be lost; I shall have my eye on you all the time.”

“They will kill me here.”

“Why?”

“The most powerful among the Huguenots have cast their eyes on me to serve them in a certain matter; if I fail to do what I have just promised to do, they will kill me in open day, here in the street, as they killed Minard. But if you send me to court on your affairs, perhaps I can justify myself equally well to both sides. Either I shall succeed without having run any danger at all, and shall then win a fine position in the party; or, if the danger turns out very great, I shall be there simply on your business.”

The father rose as if his chair was of red-hot iron.

“Wife,” he said, “leave us; and watch that we are left quite alone, Christophe and I.”

When Mademoiselle Lecamus had left them the furrier took his son by a button and led him to the corner of the room which made the angle of the bridge.

“Christophe,” he said, whispering in his ear as he had done when he mentioned the name of the Prince of Conde, “be a Huguenot, if you have that vice; but be so cautiously, in the depths of your soul, and not in a way to be pointed at as a heretic throughout the quarter. What you have just confessed to me shows that the leaders have confidence in you. What are you going to do for them at court?”

“I cannot tell you that,” replied Christophe; “for I do not know myself.”

“Hum! hum!” muttered the old man, looking at his son, “the scamp means to hoodwink his father; he’ll go far. You are not going to court,” he went on in a low tone, “to carry remittances to Messieurs de Guise or to the little king our master, or to the little Queen Marie. All those hearts are Catholic; but I would take my oath the Italian woman has some spite against the Scotch girl and against the Lorrains. I know her. She has a desperate desire to put her hand into the dough. The late king was so afraid of her that he did as the jewellers do, he cut diamond by diamond, he pitted one woman against another. That caused Queen Catherine’s hatred to the poor Duchesse de Valentinois, from whom she took the beautiful chateau of Chenonceaux. If it hadn’t been for the Connetable, the duchess might have been strangled. Back, back, my son; don’t put yourself in the hands of that Italian, who has no passion except in her brain; and that’s a bad kind of woman! Yes, what they are sending you to do at court may give you a very bad headache,” cried the father, seeing that Christophe was about to reply. “My son, I have plans for your future which you will not upset by making yourself useful to Queen Catherine; but, heavens and earth! don’t risk your head. Messieurs de Guise would cut it off as easily as the Burgundian cuts a turnip, and then those persons who are now employing you will disown you utterly.”

“I know that, father,” said Christophe.

“What! are you really so strong, my son? You know it, and are willing to risk all?”

“Yes, father.”

“By the powers above us!” cried the father, pressing his son in his arms, “we can understand each other; you are worthy of your father. My child, you’ll be the honor of the family, and I see that your old father can speak plainly with you. But do not be more Huguenot than Messieurs de Coligny. Never draw your sword; be a pen man; keep to your future role of lawyer. Now, then, tell me nothing until after you have succeeded. If I do not hear from you by the fourth day after you reach Blois, that silence will tell me that you are in some danger. The old man will go to save the young one. I have not sold furs for thirty-two years without a good knowledge of the wrong side of court robes. I have the means of making my way through many doors.”

Christophe opened his eyes very wide as he heard his father talking thus; but he thought there might be some parental trap in it, and he made no reply further than to say:--

“Well, make out the bill, and write a letter to the queen; I must start at once, or the greatest misfortunes may happen.”

“Start? How?”

“I shall buy a horse. Write at once, in God’s name.”

“Hey! mother! give your son some money,” cried the furrier to his wife.

The mother returned, went to her chest, took out a purse of gold, and gave it to Christophe, who kissed her with emotion.

“The bill was all ready,” said his father; “here it is. I will write the letter at once.”

Christophe took the bill and put it in his pocket.

“But you will sup with us, at any rate,” said the old man. “In such a crisis you ought to exchange rings with Lallier’s daughter.”

“Very well, I will go and fetch her,” said Christophe.

The young man was distrustful of his father’s stability in the matter. The old man’s character was not yet fully known to him. He ran up to his room, dressed himself, took a valise, came downstairs softly and laid it on a counter in the shop, together with his rapier and cloak.

“What the devil are you doing?” asked his father, hearing him.

Christophe came up to the old man and kissed him on both cheeks.

“I don’t want any one to see my preparations for departure, and I have put them on a counter in the shop,” he whispered.

“Here is the letter,” said his father.

Christophe took the paper and went out as if to fetch his young neighbor.

A few moments after his departure the goodman Lallier and his daughter arrived, preceded by a servant-woman, bearing three bottles of old wine.

“Well, where is Christophe?” said old Lecamus.

“Christophe!” exclaimed Babette. “We have not seen him.”

“Ha! ha! my son is a bold scamp! He tricks me as if I had no beard. My dear crony, what think you he will turn out to be? We live in days when the children have more sense than their fathers.”

“Why, the quarter has long been saying he is in some mischief,” said Lallier.

“Excuse him on that point, crony,” said the furrier. “Youth is foolish; it runs after new things; but Babette will keep him quiet; she is newer than Calvin.”

Babette smiled; she loved Christophe, and was angry when anything was said against him. She was one of those daughters of the old bourgeoisie brought up under the eyes of a mother who never left her. Her bearing was gentle and correct as her face; she always wore woollen stuffs of gray, harmonious in tone; her chemisette, simply pleated, contrasted its whiteness against the gown. Her cap of brown velvet was like an infant’s coif, but it was trimmed with a ruche and lappets of tanned gauze, that is, of a tan color, which came down on each side of her face. Though fair and white as a true blonde, she seemed to be shrewd and roguish, all the while trying to hide her roguishness under the air and manner of a well-trained girl. While the two servant-women went and came, laying the cloth and placing the jugs, the great pewter dishes, and the knives and forks, the jeweller and his daughter, the furrier and his wife, sat before the tall chimney-piece draped with lambrequins of red serge and black fringes, and were talking of trifles. Babette asked once or twice where Christophe could be, and the father and mother of the young Huguenot gave evasive answers; but when the two families were seated at table, and the two servants had retired to the kitchen, Lecamus said to his future daughter-in-law:--

“Christophe has gone to court.”

“To Blois! Such a journey as that without bidding me good-bye!” she said.

“The matter was pressing,” said the old mother.

“Crony,” said the furrier, resuming a suspended conversation. “We are going to have troublous times in France. The Reformers are bestirring themselves.”

“If they triumph, it will only be after a long war, during which business will be at a standstill,” said Lallier, incapable of rising higher than the commercial sphere.

“My father, who saw the wars between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs told me that our family would never have come out safely if one of his grandfathers--his mother’s father--had not been a Goix, one of those famous butchers in the Market who stood by the Burgundians; whereas the other, the Lecamus, was for the Armagnacs; they seemed ready to flay each other alive before the world, but they were excellent friends in the family. So, let us both try to save Christophe; perhaps the time may come when he will save us.”

“You are a shrewd one,” said the jeweller.

“No,” replied Lecamus. “The burghers ought to think of themselves; the populace and the nobility are both against them. The Parisian bourgeoisie alarms everybody except the king, who knows it is his friend.”

“You who are so wise and have seen so many things,” said Babette, timidly, “explain to me what the Reformers really want.”

“Yes, tell us that, crony,” cried the jeweller. “I knew the late king’s tailor, and I held him to be a man of simple life, without great talent; he was something like you; a man to whom they’d give the sacrament without confession; and behold! he plunged to the depths of this new religion,--he! a man whose two ears were worth all of a hundred thousand crowns apiece. He must have had secrets to reveal to induce the king and the Duchesse de Valentinois to be present at his torture.”

“And terrible secrets, too!” said the furrier. “The Reformation, my friends,” he continued in a low voice, “will give back to the bourgeoisie the estates of the Church. When the ecclesiastical privileges are suppressed the Reformers intend to ask that the _vilain_ shall be imposed on nobles as well as on burghers, and they mean to insist that the king alone shall be above others--if indeed, they allow the State to have a king.”

“Suppress the Throne!” ejaculated Lallier.

“Hey! crony,” said Lecamus, “in the Low Countries the burghers govern themselves with burgomasters of their own, who elect their own temporary head.”

“God bless me, crony; we ought to do these fine things and yet stay Catholics,” cried the jeweller.

“We are too old, you and I, to see the triumph of the Parisian bourgeoisie, but it will triumph, I tell you, in times to come as it did of yore. Ha! the king must rest upon it in order to resist, and we have always sold him our help dear. The last time, all the burghers were ennobled, and he gave them permission to buy seignorial estates and take titles from the land without special letters from the king. You and I, grandsons of the Goix through our mothers, are not we as good as any lord?”

These words were so alarming to the jeweller and the two women that they were followed by a dead silence. The ferments of 1789 were already tingling in the veins of Lecamus, who was not yet so old but what he could live to see the bold burghers of the Ligue.

“Are you selling well in spite of these troubles?” said Lallier to Mademoiselle Lecamus.

“Troubles always do harm,” she replied.

“That’s one reason why I am so set on making my son a lawyer,” said Lecamus; “for squabbles and law go on forever.”

The conversation then turned to commonplace topics, to the great satisfaction of the jeweller, who was not fond of either political troubles or audacity of thought.

III. THE CHATEAU DE BLOIS

The banks of the Loire, from Blois to Angers, were the favorite resort of the last two branches of the royal race which occupied the throne before the house of Bourbon. That beautiful valley plain so well deserves the honor bestowed upon it by kings that we must here repeat what was said of it by one of our most eloquent writers:--

“There is one province in France which is never sufficiently admired. Fragrant as Italy, flowery as the banks of the Guadalquivir, beautiful especially in its own characteristics, wholly French, having always been French,--unlike in that respect to our northern provinces, which have degenerated by contact with Germany, and to our southern provinces, which have lived in concubinage with Moors, Spaniards, and all other nationalities that adjoined them. This pure, chaste, brave, and loyal province is Touraine. Historic France is there! Auvergne is Auvergne, Languedoc is only Languedoc; but Touraine is France; the most national river for Frenchmen is the Loire, which waters Touraine. For this reason we ought not to be surprised at the great number of historically noble buildings possessed by those departments which have taken the name, or derivations of the name, of the Loire. At every step we take in this land of enchantment we discover a new picture, bordered, it may be, by a river, or a tranquil lake reflecting in its liquid depths a castle with towers, and woods and sparkling waterfalls. It is quite natural that in a region chosen by Royalty for its sojourn, where the court was long established, great families and fortunes and distinguished men should have settled and built palaces as grand as themselves.”

But is it not incomprehensible that Royalty did not follow the advice indirectly given by Louis XI. to place the capital of the kingdom at Tours? There, without great expense, the Loire might have been made accessible for the merchant service, and also for vessels-of-war of light draught. There, too, the seat of government would have been safe from the dangers of invasion. Had this been done, the northern cities would not have required such vast sums of money spent to fortify them,--sums as vast as were those expended on the sumptuous glories of Versailles. If Louis XIV. had listened to Vauban, who wished to build his great palace at Mont Louis, between the Loire and the Cher, perhaps the revolution of 1789 might never have taken place.

These beautiful shores still bear the marks of royal tenderness. The chateaus of Chambord, Amboise, Blois, Chenonceaux, Chaumont, Plessis-les-Tours, all those which the mistresses of kings, financiers, and nobles built at Veretz, Azay-le-Rideau, Usse, Villandri, Valencay, Chanteloup, Duretal, some of which have disappeared, though most of them still remain, are admirable relics which remind us of the marvels of a period that is little understood by the literary sect of the Middle-agists.

Among all these chateaus, that of Blois, where the court was then staying, is one on which the magnificence of the houses of Orleans and of Valois has placed its brilliant sign-manual,--making it the most interesting of all for historians, archaeologists, and Catholics. It was at the time of which we write completely isolated. The town, enclosed by massive walls supported by towers, lay below the fortress,--for the chateau served, in fact, as fort and pleasure-house. Above the town, with its blue-tiled, crowded roofs extending then, as now, from the river to the crest of the hill which commands the right bank, lies a triangular plateau, bounded to the west by a streamlet, which in these days is of no importance, for it flows beneath the town; but in the fifteenth century, so say historians, it formed quite a deep ravine, of which there still remains a sunken road, almost an abyss, between the suburbs of the town and the chateau.

It was on this plateau, with a double exposure to the north and south, that the counts of Blois built, in the architecture of the twelfth century, a castle where the famous Thibault de Tircheur, Thibault le Vieux, and others held a celebrated court. In those days of pure fuedality, in which the king was merely _primus inter pares_ (to use the fine expression of a king of Poland), the counts of Champagne, the counts of Blois, those of Anjou, the simple barons of Normandie, the dukes of Bretagne, lived with the splendor of sovereign princes and gave kings to the proudest kingdoms. The Plantagenets of Anjou, the Lusignans of Poitou, the Roberts of Normandie, maintained with a bold hand the royal races, and sometimes simple knights like du Glaicquin refused the purple, preferring the sword of a connetable.

When the Crown annexed the county of Blois to its domain, Louis XII., who had a liking for this residence (perhaps to escape Plessis of sinister memory), built at the back of the first building another building, facing east and west, which connected the chateau of the counts of Blois with the rest of the old structures, of which nothing now remains but the vast hall in which the States-general were held under Henri III.

Before he became enamoured of Chambord, Francois I. wished to complete the chateau of Blois by adding two other wings, which would have made the structure a perfect square. But Chambord weaned him from Blois, where he built only one wing, which in his time and that of his grandchildren was the only inhabited part of the chateau. This third building erected by Francois I. is more vast and far more decorated than the Louvre, the chateau of Henri II. It is in the style of architecture now called Renaissance, and presents the most fantastic features of that style. Therefore, at a period when a strict and jealous architecture ruled construction, when the Middle Ages were not even considered, at a time when literature was not as clearly welded to art as it is now, La Fontaine said of the chateau de Blois, in his hearty, good-humored way: “The part that Francois I. built, if looked at from the outside, pleased me better than all the rest; there I saw numbers of little galleries, little windows, little balconies, little ornamentations without order or regularity, and they make up a grand whole which I like.”

The chateau of Blois had, therefore, the merit of representing three orders of architecture, three epochs, three systems, three dominions. Perhaps there is no other royal residence that can compare with it in that respect. This immense structure presents to the eye in one enclosure, round one courtyard, a complete and perfect image of that grand presentation of the manners and customs and life of nations which is called Architecture. At the moment when Christophe was to visit the court, that part of the adjacent land which in our day is covered by a fourth palace, built seventy years later (by Gaston, the rebellious brother of Louis XIII., then exiled to Blois), was an open space containing pleasure-grounds and hanging gardens, picturesquely placed among the battlements and unfinished turrets of Francois I.’s chateau.

These gardens communicated, by a bridge of a fine, bold construction (which the old men of Blois may still remember to have seen demolished) with a pleasure-ground on the other side of the chateau, which, by the lay of the land, was on the same level. The nobles attached to the Court of Anne de Bretagne, or those of that province who came to solicit favors, or to confer with the queen as to the fate and condition of Brittany, awaited in this pleasure-ground the opportunity for an audience, either at the queen’s rising, or at her coming out to walk. Consequently, history has given the name of “Perchoir aux Bretons” to this piece of ground, which, in our day, is the fruit-garden of a worthy bourgeois, and forms a projection into the place des Jesuites. The latter place was included in the gardens of this beautiful royal residence, which had, as we have said, its upper and its lower gardens. Not far from the place des Jesuites may still be seen a pavilion built by Catherine de’ Medici, where, according to the historians of Blois, warm mineral baths were placed for her to use. This detail enables us to trace the very irregular disposition of the gardens, which went up or down according to the undulations of the ground, becoming extremely intricate around the chateau,--a fact which helped to give it strength, and caused, as we shall see, the discomfiture of the Duc de Guise.

The gardens were reached from the chateau through external and internal galleries, the most important of which was called the “Galerie des Cerfs” on account of its decoration. This gallery led to the magnificent staircase which, no doubt, inspired the famous double staircase of Chambord. It led, from floor to floor, to all the apartments of the castle.

Though La Fontaine preferred the chateau of Francois I. to that of Louis XII., perhaps the naivete of that of the good king will give true artists more pleasure, while at the same time they admire the magnificent structure of the knightly king. The elegance of the two staircases which are placed at each end of the chateau of Louis XII., the delicate carving and sculpture, so original in design, which abound everywhere, the remains of which, though time has done its worst, still charm the antiquary, all, even to the semi-cloistral distribution of the apartments, reveals a great simplicity of manners. Evidently, the _court_ did not yet exist; it had not developed, as it did under Francois I. and Catherine de’ Medici, to the great detriment of feudal customs. As we admire the galleries, or most of them, the capitals of the columns, and certain figurines of exquisite delicacy, it is impossible not to imagine that Michel Columb, that great sculptor, the Michel-Angelo of Brittany, passed that way for the pleasure of Queen Anne, whom he afterwards immortalized on the tomb of her father, the last duke of Brittany.

Whatever La Fontaine may choose to say about the “little galleries” and the “little ornamentations,” nothing can be more grandiose than the dwelling of the splendid Francois. Thanks to I know not what indifference, to forgetfulness perhaps, the apartments occupied by Catherine de’ Medici and her son Francois II. present to us to-day the leading features of that time. The historian can there restore the tragic scenes of the drama of the Reformation,--a drama in which the dual struggle of the Guises and of the Bourbons against the Valois was a series of most complicated acts, the plot of which was here unravelled.

The chateau of Francois I. completely crushes the artless habitation of Louis XII. by its imposing masses. On the side of the gardens, that is, toward the modern place des Jesuites, the castle presents an elevation nearly double that which it shows on the side of the courtyard. The ground-floor on this side forms the second floor on the side of the gardens, where are placed the celebrated galleries. Thus the first floor above the ground-floor toward the courtyard (where Queen Catherine was lodged) is the third floor on the garden side, and the king’s apartments were four storeys above the garden, which at the time of which we write was separated from the base of the castle by a deep moat. The chateau, already colossal as viewed from the courtyard, appears gigantic when seen from below, as La Fontaine saw it. He mentions particularly that he did not enter either the courtyard or the apartments, and it is to be remarked that from the place des Jesuites all the details seem small. The balconies on which the courtiers promenaded; the galleries, marvellously executed; the sculptured windows, whose embrasures are so deep as to form boudoirs--for which indeed they served--resemble at that great height the fantastic decorations which scene-painters give to a fairy palace at the opera.

But in the courtyard, although the three storeys above the ground-floor rise as high as the clock-tower of the Tuileries, the infinite delicacy of the architecture reveals itself to the rapture of our astonished eyes. This wing of the great building, in which the two queens, Catherine de’ Medici and Mary Stuart, held their sumptuous court, is divided in the centre by a hexagon tower, in the empty well of which winds up a spiral staircase,--a Moorish caprice, designed by giants, made by dwarfs, which gives to this wonderful facade the effect of a dream. The baluster of this staircase forms a spiral connecting itself by a square landing to five of the six sides of the tower, requiring at each landing transversal corbels which are decorated with arabesque carvings without and within. This bewildering creation of ingenious and delicate details, of marvels which give speech to stones, can be compared only to the deeply worked and crowded carving of the Chinese ivories. Stone is made to look like lace-work. The flowers, the figures of men and animals clinging to the structure of the stairway, are multiplied, step by step, until they crown the tower with a key-stone on which the chisels of the art of the sixteenth century have contended against the naive cutters of images who fifty years earlier had carved the key-stones of Louis XII.’s two stairways.

However dazzled we may be by these recurring forms of indefatigable labor, we cannot fail to see that money was lacking to Francois I. for Blois, as it was to Louis XIV. for Versailles. More than one figurine lifts its delicate head from a block of rough stone behind it; more than one fantastic flower is merely indicated by chiselled touches on the abandoned stone, though dampness has since laid its blossoms of mouldy greenery upon it. On the facade, side by side with the tracery of one window, another window presents its masses of jagged stone carved only by the hand of time. Here, to the least artistic and the least trained eye, is a ravishing contrast between this frontage, where marvels throng, and the interior frontage of the chateau of Louis XII., which is composed of a ground-floor of arcades of fairy lightness supported by tiny columns resting at their base on a graceful platform, and of two storeys above it, the windows of which are carved with delightful sobriety. Beneath the arcade is a gallery, the walls of which are painted in fresco, the ceiling also being painted; traces can still be found of this magnificence, derived from Italy, and testifying to the expeditions of our kings, to which the principality of Milan then belonged.

Opposite to Francois I.’s wing was the chapel of the counts of Blois, the facade of which is almost in harmony with the architecture of the later dwelling of Louis XII. No words can picture the majestic solidity of these three distinct masses of building. In spite of their nonconformity of style, Royalty, powerful and firm, demonstrating its dangers by the greatness of its precautions, was a bond, uniting these three edifices, so different in character, two of which rested against the vast hall of the States-general, towering high like a church.

Certainly, neither the simplicity nor the strength of the burgher existence (which were depicted at the beginning of this history) in which Art was always represented, were lacking to this royal habitation. Blois was the fruitful and brilliant example to which the Bourgeoisie and Feudality, Wealth and Nobility, gave such splendid replies in the towns and in the rural regions. Imagination could not desire any other sort of dwelling for the prince who reigned over France in the sixteenth century. The richness of seignorial garments, the luxury of female adornment, must have harmonized delightfully with the lace-work of these stones so wonderfully manipulated. From floor to floor, as the king of France went up the marvellous staircase of his chateau of Blois, he could see the broad expanse of the beautiful Loire, which brought him news of all his kingdom as it lay on either side of the great river, two halves of a State facing each other, and semi-rivals. If, instead of building Chambord in a barren, gloomy plain two leagues away, Francois I. had placed it where, seventy years later, Gaston built his palace, Versailles would never have existed, and Blois would have become, necessarily, the capital of France.

Four Valois and Catherine de’ Medici lavished their wealth on the wing built by Francois I. at Blois. Who can look at those massive partition-walls, the spinal column of the castle, in which are sunken deep alcoves, secret staircases, cabinets, while they themselves enclose halls as vast as that great council-room, the guardroom, and the royal chambers, in which, in our day, a regiment of infantry is comfortably lodged--who can look at all this and not be aware of the prodigalities of Crown and court? Even if a visitor does not at once understand how the splendor within must have corresponded with the splendor without, the remaining vestiges of Catherine de’ Medici’s cabinet, where Christophe was about to be introduced, would bear sufficient testimony to the elegances of Art which peopled these apartments with animated designs in which salamanders sparkled among the wreaths, and the palette of the sixteenth century illumined the darkest corners with its brilliant coloring. In this cabinet an observer will still find traces of that taste for gilding which Catherine brought with her from Italy; for the princesses of her house loved, in the words of the author already quoted, to veneer the castles of France with the gold earned by their ancestors in commerce, and to hang out their wealth on the walls of their apartments.

The queen-mother occupied on the first upper floor of the apartments of Queen Claude of France, wife of Francois I., in which may still be seen, delicately carved, the double C accompanied by figures, purely white, of swans and lilies, signifying _candidior candidis_--more white than the whitest--the motto of the queen whose name began, like that of Catherine, with a C, and which applied as well to the daughter of Louis XII. as to the mother of the last Valois; for no suspicion, in spite of the violence of Calvinist calumny, has tarnished the fidelity of Catherine de’ Medici to Henri II.

The queen-mother, still charged with the care of two young children (him who was afterward Duc d’Alencon, and Marguerite, the wife of Henri IV., the sister whom Charles IX. called Margot), had need of the whole of the first upper floor.

The king, Francois II., and the queen, Mary Stuart, occupied, on the second floor, the royal apartments which had formerly been those of Francois I. and were, subsequently, those of Henri III. This floor, like that taken by the queen-mother, is divided in two parts throughout its whole length by the famous partition-wall, which is more than four feet thick, against which rests the enormous walls which separate the rooms from each other. Thus, on both floors, the apartments are in two distinct halves. One half, to the south, looking to the courtyard, served for public receptions and for the transaction of business; whereas the private apartments were placed, partly to escape the heat, to the north, overlooking the gardens, on which side is the splendid facade with its balconies and galleries looking out upon the open country of the Vendomois, and down upon the “Perchoir des Bretons” and the moat, the only side of which La Fontaine speaks.

The chateau of Francois I. was, in those days, terminated by an enormous unfinished tower which was intended to mark the colossal angle of the building when the succeeding wing was built. Later, Gaston took down one side of it, in order to build his palace on to it; but he never finished the work, and the tower remained in ruins. This royal stronghold served as a prison or dungeon, according to popular tradition.

As we wander to-day through the halls of this matchless chateau, so precious to art and to history, what poet would not be haunted by regrets, and grieved for France, at seeing the arabesques of Catherine’s boudoir _whitewashed_ and almost obliterated, by order of the quartermaster of the barracks (this royal residence is now a barrack) at the time of an outbreak of cholera. The panels of Catherine’s boudoir, a room of which we are about to speak, is the last remaining relic of the rich decorations accumulated by five artistic kings. Making our way through the labyrinth of chambers, halls, stairways, towers, we may say to ourselves with solemn certitude: “Here Mary Stuart cajoled her husband on behalf of the Guises.” “There, the Guises insulted Catherine.” “Later, at that very spot the second Balafre fell beneath the daggers of the avengers of the Crown.” “A century earlier, from this very window, Louis XII. made signs to his friend Cardinal d’Amboise to come to him.” “Here, on this balcony, d’Epernon, the accomplice of Ravaillac, met Marie de’ Medici, who knew, it was said, of the proposed regicide, and allowed it to be committed.”

In the chapel, where the marriage of Henri IV. and Marguerite de Valois took place, the sole remaining fragment of the chateau of the counts of Blois, a regiment now makes it shoes. This wonderful structure, in which so many styles may still be seen, so many great deeds have been performed, is in a state of dilapidation which disgraces France. What grief for those who love the great historic monuments of our country to know that soon those eloquent stones will be lost to sight and knowledge, like others at the corner of the rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie; possibly, they will exist nowhere but in these pages.

It is necessary to remark that, in order to watch the royal court more closely, the Guises, although they had a house of their own in the town, which still exists, had obtained permission to occupy the upper floor above the apartments of Louis XII., the same lodgings afterwards occupied by the Duchesse de Nemours under the roof.

The young king, Francois II., and his bride Mary Stuart, in love with each other like the girl and boy of sixteen which they were, had been abruptly transferred, in the depth of winter, from the chateau de Saint-Germain, which the Duc de Guise thought liable to attack, to the fortress which the chateau of Blois then was, being isolated and protected on three sides by precipices, and admirably defended as to its entrance. The Guises, uncles of Mary Stuart, had powerful reasons for not residing in Paris and for keeping the king and court in a castle the whole exterior surroundings of which could easily be watched and defended. A struggle was now beginning around the throne, between the house of Lorraine and the house of Valois, which was destined to end in this very chateau, twenty-eight years later, namely in 1588, when Henri III., under the very eyes of his mother, at that moment deeply humiliated by the Lorrains, heard fall upon the floor of his own cabinet, the head of the boldest of all the Guises, the second Balafre, son of that first Balafre by whom Catherine de’ Medici was now being tricked, watched, threatened, and virtually imprisoned.

IV. THE QUEEN-MOTHER

This noble chateau of Blois was to Catherine de’ Medici the narrowest of prisons. On the death of her husband, who had always held her in subjection, she expected to reign; but, on the contrary, she found herself crushed under the thraldom of strangers, whose polished manners were really far more brutal than those of jailers. No action of hers could be done secretly. The women who attended her either had lovers among the Guises or were watched by Argus eyes. These were times when passions notably exhibited the strange effects produced in all ages by the strong antagonism of two powerful conflicting interests in the State. Gallantry, which served Catherine so well, was also an auxiliary of the Guises. The Prince de Conde, the first leader of the Reformation, was a lover of the Marechale de Saint-Andre, whose husband was the tool of the Grand Master. The cardinal, convinced by the affair of the Vidame de Chartres, that Catherine was more unconquered than invulnerable as to love, was paying court to her. The play of all these passions strangely complicated those of politics,--making, as it were, a double game of chess, in which both parties had to watch the head and heart of their opponent, in order to know, when a crisis came, whether the one would betray the other.

Though she was constantly in presence of the Cardinal de Lorraine or of Duc Francois de Guise, who both distrusted her, the closest and ablest enemy of Catherine de’ Medici was her daughter-in-law, Queen Mary, a fair little creature, malicious as a waiting-maid, proud as a Stuart wearing three crowns, learned as an old pedant, giddy as a school-girl, as much in love with her husband as a courtesan is with her lover, devoted to her uncles whom she admired, and delighted to see the king share (at her instigation) the regard she had for them. A mother-in-law is always a person whom the daughter-in-law is inclined not to like; especially when she wears the crown and wishes to retain it, which Catherine had imprudently made but too well known. Her former position, when Diane de Poitiers had ruled Henri II., was more tolerable than this; then at least she received the external honors that were due to a queen, and the homage of the court. But now the duke and the cardinal, who had none but their own minions about them, seemed to take pleasure in abasing her. Catherine, hemmed in on all sides by their courtiers, received, not only day by day but from hour to hour, terrible blows to her pride and her self-love; for the Guises were determined to treat her on the same system of repression which the late king, her husband, had so long pursued.

The thirty-six years of anguish which were now about to desolate France may, perhaps, be said to have begun by the scene in which the son of the furrier of the two queens was sent on the perilous errand which makes him the chief figure of our present Study. The danger into which this zealous Reformer was about to fall became imminent the very morning on which he started from the port of Beaugency for the chateau de Blois, bearing precious documents which compromised the highest heads of the nobility, placed in his hands by that wily partisan, the indefatigable La Renaudie, who met him, as agreed upon, at Beaugency, having reached that port before him.

While the tow-boat, in which Christophe now embarked floated, impelled by a light east wind, down the river Loire the famous Cardinal de Lorraine, and his brother the second Duc de Guise, one of the greatest warriors of those days, were contemplating, like eagles perched on a rocky summit, their present situation, and looking prudently about them before striking the great blow by which they intended to kill the Reform in France at Amboise,--an attempt renewed twelve years later in Paris, August 24, 1572, on the feast of Saint-Bartholomew.

During the night three _seigneurs_, who each played a great part in the twelve years’ drama which followed this double plot now laid by the Guises and also by the Reformers, had arrived at Blois from different directions, each riding at full speed, and leaving their horses half-dead at the postern-gate of the chateau, which was guarded by captains and soldiers absolutely devoted to the Duc de Guise, the idol of all warriors.

One word about that great man,--a word that must tell, in the first instance, whence his fortunes took their rise.

His mother was Antoinette de Bourbon, great-aunt of Henri IV. Of what avail is consanguinity? He was, at this moment, aiming at the head of his cousin the Prince de Conde. His niece was Mary Stuart. His wife was Anne, daughter of the Duke of Ferrara. The Grand Connetable de Montmorency called the Duc de Guise “Monseigneur” as he would the king,--ending his letter with “Your very humble servant.” Guise, Grand Master of the king’s household, replied “Monsieur le connetable,” and signed, as he did for the Parliament, “Your very good friend.”

As for the cardinal, called the transalpine pope, and his Holiness, by Estienne, he had the whole monastic Church of France on his side, and treated the Holy Father as an equal. Vain of his eloquence, and one of the greatest theologians of his time, he kept incessant watch over France and Italy by means of three religious orders who were absolutely devoted to him, toiling day and night in his service and serving him as spies and counsellors.

These few words will explain to what heights of power the duke and the cardinal had attained. In spite of their wealth and the enormous revenues of their several offices, they were so personally disinterested, so eagerly carried away on the current of their statesmanship, and so generous at heart, that they were always in debt, doubtless after the manner of Caesar. When Henri III. caused the death of the second Balafre, whose life was a menace to him, the house of Guise was necessarily ruined. The costs of endeavoring to seize the crown during a whole century will explain the lowered position of this great house during the reigns of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., when the sudden death of MADAME told all Europe the infamous part which a Chevalier de Lorraine had debased himself to play.

Calling themselves the heirs of the dispossessed Carolovingians, the duke and cardinal acted with the utmost insolence towards Catherine de’ Medici, the mother-in-law of their niece. The Duchesse de Guise spared her no mortification. This duchesse was a d’Este, and Catherine was a Medici, the daughter of upstart Florentine merchants, whom the sovereigns of Europe had never yet admitted into their royal fraternity. Francois I. himself has always considered his son’s marriage with a Medici as a mesalliance, and only consented to it under the expectation that his second son would never be dauphin. Hence his fury when his eldest son was poisoned by the Florentine Montecuculi. The d’Estes refused to recognize the Medici as Italian princes. Those former merchants were in fact trying to solve the impossible problem of maintaining a throne in the midst of republican institutions. The title of grand-duke was only granted very tardily by Philip the Second, king of Spain, to reward those Medici who bought it by betraying France their benefactress, and servilely attaching themselves to the court of Spain, which was at the very time covertly counteracting them in Italy.

“Flatter none but your enemies,” the famous saying of Catherine de’ Medici, seems to have been the political rule of life with that family of merchant princes, in which great men were never lacking until their destinies became great, when they fell, before their time, into that degeneracy in which royal races and noble families are wont to end.

For three generations there had been a great Lorrain warrior and a great Lorrain churchman; and, what is more singular, the churchmen all bore a strong resemblance in the face to Ximenes, as did Cardinal Richelieu in after days. These five great cardinals all had sly, mean, and yet terrible faces; while the warriors, on the other hand, were of that type of Basque mountaineer which we see in Henri IV. The two Balafres, father and son, wounded and scarred in the same manner, lost something of this type, but not the grace and affability by which, as much as by their bravery, they won the hearts of the soldiery.

It is not useless to relate how the present Grand Master received his wound; for it was healed by the heroic measures of a personage of our drama,--by Ambroise Pare, the man we have already mentioned as under obligations to Lecamus, syndic of the guild of furriers. At the siege of Calais the duke had his face pierced through and through by a lance, the point of which, after entering the cheek just below the right eye, went through to the neck, below the left eye, and remained, broken off, in the face. The duke lay dying in his tent in the midst of universal distress, and he would have died had it not been for the devotion and prompt courage of Ambroise Pare. “The duke is not dead, gentlemen,” he said to the weeping attendants, “but he soon will die if I dare not treat him as I would a dead man; and I shall risk doing so, no matter what it may cost me in the end. See!” And with that he put his left foot on the duke’s breast, took the broken wooden end of the lance in his fingers, shook and loosened it by degrees in the wound, and finally succeeded in drawing out the iron head, as if he were handling a thing and not a man. Though he saved the prince by this heroic treatment, he could not prevent the horrible scar which gave the great soldier his nickname,--Le Balafre, the Scarred. This name descended to the son, and for a similar reason.

Absolutely masters of Francois II., whom his wife ruled through their mutual and excessive passion, these two great Lorrain princes, the duke and the cardinal, were masters of France, and had no other enemy at court than Catherine de’ Medici. No great statesmen ever played a closer or more watchful game.

The mutual position of the ambitious widow of Henri II. and the ambitious house of Lorraine was pictured, as it were, to the eye by a scene which took place on the terrace of the chateau de Blois very early in the morning of the day on which Christophe Lecamus was destined to arrive there. The queen-mother, who feigned an extreme attachment to the Guises, had asked to be informed of the news brought by the three _seigneurs_ coming from three different parts of the kingdom; but she had the mortification of being courteously dismissed by the cardinal. She then walked to the parterres which overhung the Loire, where she was building, under the superintendence of her astrologer, Ruggieri, an observatory, which is still standing, and from which the eye may range over the whole landscape of that delightful valley. The two Lorrain princes were at the other end of the terrace, facing the Vendomois, which overlooks the upper part of the town, the perch of the Bretons, and the postern gate of the chateau.

Catherine had deceived the two brothers by pretending to a slight displeasure; for she was in reality very well pleased to have an opportunity to speak to one of the three young men who had arrived in such haste. This was a young nobleman named Chiverni, apparently a tool of the cardinal, in reality a devoted servant of Catherine. Catherine also counted among her devoted servants two Florentine nobles, the Gondi; but they were so suspected by the Guises that she dared not send them on any errand away from the court, where she kept them, watched, it is true, in all their words and actions, but where at least they were able to watch and study the Guises and counsel Catherine. These two Florentines maintained in the interests of the queen-mother another Italian, Birago,--a clever Piedmontese, who pretended, with Chiverni, to have abandoned their mistress, and gone over to the Guises, who encouraged their enterprises and employed them to watch Catherine.

Chiverni had come from Paris and Ecouen. The last to arrive was Saint-Andre, who was marshal of France and became so important that the Guises, whose creature he was, made him the third person in the triumvirate they formed the following year against Catherine. The other _seigneur_ who had arrived during the night was Vieilleville, also a creature of the Guises and a marshal of France, who was returning from a secret mission known only to the Grand Master, who had entrusted it to him. As for Saint-Andre, he was in charge of military measures taken with the object of driving all Reformers under arms into Amboise; a scheme which now formed the subject of a council held by the duke and cardinal, Birago, Chiverni, Vieilleville, and Saint-Andre. As the two Lorrains employed Birago, it is to be supposed that they relied upon their own powers; for they knew of his attachment to the queen-mother. At this singular epoch the double part played by many of the political men of the day was well known to both parties; they were like cards in the hands of gamblers,--the cleverest player won the game. During this council the two brothers maintained the most impenetrable reserve. A conversation which now took place between Catherine and certain of her friends will explain the object of this council, held by the Guises in the open air, in the hanging gardens, at break of day, as if they feared to speak within the walls of the chateau de Blois.

The queen-mother, under pretence of examining the observatory then in process of construction, walked in that direction accompanied by the two Gondis, glancing with a suspicious and inquisitive eye at the group of enemies who were still standing at the farther end of the terrace, and from whom Chiverni now detached himself to join the queen-mother. She was then at the corner of the terrace which looks down upon the Church of Saint-Nicholas; there, at least, there could be no danger of the slightest overhearing. The wall of the terrace is on a level with the towers of the church, and the Guises invariably held their council at the farther corner of the same terrace at the base of the great unfinished keep or dungeon,--going and returning between the Perchoir des Bretons and the gallery by the bridge which joined them to the gardens. No one was within sight. Chiverni raised the hand of the queen-mother to kiss it, and as he did so he slipped a little note from his hand to hers, without being observed by the two Italians. Catherine turned to the angle of the parapet and read as follows:--

You are powerful enough to hold the balance between the leaders and to force them into a struggle as to who shall serve you; your house is full of kings, and you have nothing to fear from the Lorrains or the Bourbons provided you pit them one against the other, for both are striving to snatch the crown from your children. Be the mistress and not the servant of your counsellors; support them, in turn, one against the other, or the kingdom will go from bad to worse, and mighty wars may come of it.

L’Hopital.

The queen put the letter in the hollow of her corset, resolving to burn it as soon as she was alone.

“When did you see him?” she asked Chiverni.

“On my way back from visiting the Connetable, at Melun, where I met him with the Duchesse de Berry, whom he was most impatient to convey to Savoie, that he might return here and open the eyes of the chancellor Olivier, who is now completely duped by the Lorrains. As soon as Monsieur l’Hopital saw the true object of the Guises he determined to support your interests. That is why he is so anxious to get here and give you his vote at the councils.”

“Is he sincere?” asked Catherine. “You know very well that if the Lorrains have put him in the council it is that he may help them to reign.”

“L’Hopital is a Frenchman who comes of too good a stock not to be honest and sincere,” said Chiverni; “Besides, his note is a sufficiently strong pledge.”

“What answer did the Connetable send to the Guises?”

“He replied that he was the servant of the king and would await his orders. On receiving that answer the cardinal, to suppress all resistance, determined to propose the appointment of his brother as lieutenant-general of the kingdom.”

“Have they got as far as that?” exclaimed Catherine, alarmed. “Well, did Monsieur l’Hopital send me no other message?”

“He told me to say to you, madame, that you alone could stand between the Crown and the Guises.”

“Does he think that I ought to use the Huguenots as a weapon?”

“Ah! madame,” cried Chiverni, surprised at such astuteness, “we never dreamed of casting you into such difficulties.”

“Does he know the position I am in?” asked the queen, calmly.

“Very nearly. He thinks you were duped after the death of the king into accepting that castle on Madame Diane’s overthrow. The Guises consider themselves released toward the queen by having satisfied the woman.”

“Yes,” said the queen, looking at the two Gondi, “I made a blunder.”

“A blunder of the gods,” replied Charles de Gondi.

“Gentlemen,” said Catherine, “if I go over openly to the Reformers I shall become the slave of a party.”

“Madame,” said Chiverni, eagerly, “I approve entirely of your meaning. You must use them, but not serve them.”

“Though your support does, undoubtedly, for the time being lie there,” said Charles de Gondi, “we must not conceal from ourselves that success and defeat are both equally perilous.”

“I know it,” said the queen; “a single false step would be a pretext on which the Guises would seize at once to get rid of me.”

“The niece of a Pope, the mother of four Valois, a queen of France, the widow of the most ardent persecutor of the Huguenots, an Italian Catholic, the aunt of Leo X.,--can _she_ ally herself with the Reformation?” asked Charles de Gondi.

“But,” said his brother Albert, “if she seconds the Guises does she not play into the hands of a usurpation? We have to do with men who see a crown to seize in the coming struggle between Catholicism and Reform. It is possible to support the Reformers without abjuring.”

“Reflect, madame, that your family, which ought to have been wholly devoted to the king of France, is at this moment the servant of the king of Spain; and to-morrow it will be that of the Reformation if the Reformation could make a king of the Duke of Florence.”

“I am certainly disposed to lend a hand, for a time, to the Huguenots,” said Catherine, “if only to revenge myself on that soldier and that priest and that woman!” As she spoke, she called attention with her subtile Italian glance to the duke and cardinal, and then to the second floor of the chateau on which were the apartments of her son and Mary Stuart. “That trio has taken from my hands the reins of State, for which I waited long while the old woman filled my place,” she said gloomily, glancing toward Chenonceaux, the chateau she had lately exchanged with Diane de Poitiers against that of Chaumont. “_Ma_,” she added in Italian, “it seems that these reforming gentry in Geneva have not the wit to address themselves to me; and, on my conscience, I cannot go to them. Not one of you would dare to risk carrying them a message!” She stamped her foot. “I did hope you would have met the cripple at Ecouen--_he_ has sense,” she said to Chiverni.

“The Prince de Conde was there, madame,” said Chiverni, “but he could not persuade the Connetable to join him. Monsieur de Montmorency wants to overthrow the Guises, who have sent him into exile, but he will not encourage heresy.”

“What will ever break these individual wills which are forever thwarting royalty? God’s truth!” exclaimed the queen, “the great nobles must be made to destroy each other, as Louis XI., the greatest of your kings, did with those of his time. There are four or five parties now in this kingdom, and the weakest of them is that of my children.”

“The Reformation is an _idea_,” said Charles de Gondi; “the parties that Louis XI. crushed were moved by self-interests only.”

“Ideas are behind selfish interests,” replied Chiverni. “Under Louis XI. the idea was the great Fiefs--”

“Make heresy an axe,” said Albert de Gondi, “and you will escape the odium of executions.”

“Ah!” cried the queen, “but I am ignorant of the strength and also of the plans of the Reformers; and I have no safe way of communicating with them. If I were detected in any manoeuvre of that kind, either by the queen, who watches me like an infant in a cradle, or by those two jailers over there, I should be banished from France and sent back to Florence with a terrible escort, commanded by Guise minions. Thank you, no, my daughter-in-law!--but I wish _you_ the fate of being a prisoner in your own home, that you may know what you have made me suffer.”

“Their plans!” exclaimed Chiverni; “the duke and the cardinal know what they are, but those two foxes will not divulge them. If you could induce them to do so, madame, I would sacrifice myself for your sake and come to an understanding with the Prince de Conde.”

“How much of the Guises’ own plans have they been forced to reveal to you?” asked the queen, with a glance at the two brothers.

“Monsieur de Vieilleville and Monsieur de Saint-Andre have just received fresh orders, the nature of which is concealed from us; but I think the duke is intending to concentrate his best troops on the left bank. Within a few days you will all be moved to Amboise. The duke has been studying the position from this terrace and decides that Blois is not a propitious spot for his secret schemes. What can he want better?” added Chiverni, pointing to the precipices which surrounded the chateau. “There is no place in the world where the court is more secure from attack than it is here.”

“Abdicate or reign,” said Albert in a low voice to the queen, who stood motionless and thoughtful.

A terrible expression of inward rage passed over the fine ivory face of Catherine de’ Medici, who was not yet forty years old, though she had lived for twenty-six years at the court of France,--without power, she, who from the moment of her arrival intended to play a leading part! Then, in her native language, the language of Dante, these terrible words came slowly from her lips:--

“Nothing so long as that son lives!--His little wife bewitches him,” she added after a pause.

Catherine’s exclamation was inspired by a prophecy which had been made to her a few days earlier at the chateau de Chaumont on the opposite bank of the river; where she had been taken by Ruggieri, her astrologer, to obtain information as to the lives of her four children from a celebrated female seer, secretly brought there by Nostradamus (chief among the physicians of that great sixteenth century) who practised, like the Ruggieri, the Cardans, Paracelsus, and others, the occult sciences. This woman, whose name and life have eluded history, foretold one year as the length of Francois’s reign.

“Give me your opinion on all this,” said Catherine to Chiverni.

“We shall have a battle,” replied the prudent courtier. “The king of Navarre--”

“Oh! say the queen,” interrupted Catherine.

“True, the queen,” said Chiverni, smiling, “the queen has given the Prince de Conde as leader to the Reformers, and he, in his position of younger son, can venture all; consequently the cardinal talks of ordering him here.”

“If he comes,” cried the queen, “I am saved!”

Thus the leaders of the great movement of the Reformation in France were justified in hoping for an ally in Catherine de’ Medici.

“There is one thing to be considered,” said the queen. “The Bourbons may fool the Huguenots and the Sieurs Calvin and de Beze may fool the Bourbons, but are we strong enough to fool Huguenots, Bourbons, and Guises? In presence of three such enemies it is allowable to feel one’s pulse.”

“But they have not the king,” said Albert de Gondi. “You will always triumph, having the king on your side.”

“_Maladetta Maria_!” muttered Catherine between her teeth.

“The Lorrains are, even now, endeavoring to turn the burghers against you,” remarked Birago.

V. THE COURT

The hope of gaining the crown was not the result of a premeditated plan in the minds of the restless Guises. Nothing warranted such a hope or such a plan. Circumstances alone inspired their audacity. The two cardinals and the two Balafres were four ambitious minds, superior in talents to all the other politicians who surrounded them. This family was never really brought low except by Henri IV.; a factionist himself, trained in the great school of which Catherine and the Guises were masters,--by whose lessons he had profited but too well.

At this moment the two brothers, the duke and cardinal, were the arbiters of the greatest revolution attempted in Europe since that of Henry VIII. in England, which was the direct consequence of the invention of printing. Adversaries to the Reformation, they meant to stifle it, power being in their hands. But their opponent, Calvin, though less famous than Luther, was far the stronger of the two. Calvin saw government where Luther saw dogma only. While the stout beer-drinker and amorous German fought with the devil and flung an inkbottle at his head, the man from Picardy, a sickly celibate, made plans of campaign, directed battles, armed princes, and roused whole peoples by sowing republican doctrines in the hearts of the burghers--recouping his continual defeats in the field by fresh progress in the mind of the nations.

The Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duc de Guise, like Philip the Second and the Duke of Alba, knew where and when the monarchy was threatened, and how close the alliance ought to be between Catholicism and Royalty. Charles the Fifth, drunk with the wine of Charlemagne’s cup, believing too blindly in the strength of his monarchy, and confident of sharing the world with Suleiman, did not at first feel the blow at his head; but no sooner had Cardinal Granvelle made him aware of the extent of the wound than he abdicated. The Guises had but one scheme,--that of annihilating heresy at a single blow. This blow they were now to attempt, for the first time, to strike at Amboise; failing there they tried it again, twelve years later, at the Saint-Bartholomew,--on the latter occasion in conjunction with Catherine de’ Medici, enlightened by that time by the flames of a twelve years’ war, enlightened above all by the significant word “republic,” uttered later and printed by the writers of the Reformation, but already foreseen (as we have said before) by Lecamus, that type of the Parisian bourgeoisie.

The two Guises, now on the point of striking a murderous blow at the heart of the French nobility, in order to separate it once for all from a religious party whose triumph would be its ruin, still stood together on the terrace, concerting as to the best means of revealing their coup-d’Etat to the king, while Catherine was talking with her counsellors.

“Jeanne d’Albret knew what she was about when she declared herself protectress of the Huguenots! She has a battering-ram in the Reformation, and she knows how to use it,” said the duke, who fathomed the deep designs of the Queen of Navarre, one of the great minds of the century.

“Theodore de Beze is now at Nerac,” remarked the cardinal, “after first going to Geneva to take Calvin’s orders.”

“What men these burghers know how to find!” exclaimed the duke.

“Ah! we have none on our side of the quality of La Renaudie!” cried the cardinal. “He is a true Catiline.”

“Such men always act for their own interests,” replied the duke. “Didn’t I fathom La Renaudie? I loaded him with favors; I helped him to escape when he was condemned by the parliament of Bourgogne; I brought him back from exile by obtaining a revision of his sentence; I intended to do far more for him; and all the while he was plotting a diabolical conspiracy against us! That rascal has united the Protestants of Germany with the heretics of France by reconciling the differences that grew up between the dogmas of Luther and those of Calvin. He has brought the discontented great seigneurs into the party of the Reformation without obliging them to abjure Catholicism openly. For the last year he has had thirty captains under him! He is everywhere at once,--at Lyon, in Languedoc, at Nantes! It was he who drew up those minutes of a consultation which were hawked about all Germany, in which the theologians declared that force might be resorted to in order to withdraw the king from our rule and tutelage; the paper is now being circulated from town to town. Wherever we look for him we never find him! And yet I have never done him anything but good! It comes to this, that we must now either thrash him like a dog, or try to throw him a golden bridge by which he will cross into our camp.”

“Bretagne, Languedoc, in fact the whole kingdom is in league to deal us a mortal blow,” said the cardinal. “After the fete was over yesterday I spent the rest of the night in reading the reports sent me by the monks; in which I found that the only persons who have compromised themselves are poor gentlemen, artisans, as to whom it doesn’t signify whether you hang them or let them live. The Colignys and Condes do not show their hand as yet, though they hold the threads of the whole conspiracy.”

“Yes,” replied the duke, “and, therefore, as soon as that lawyer Avenelles sold the secret of the plot, I told Braguelonne to let the conspirators carry it out. They have no suspicion that we know it; they are so sure of surprising us that the leaders may possibly show themselves then. My advice is to allow ourselves to be beaten for forty-eight hours.”

“Half an hour would be too much,” cried the cardinal, alarmed.

“So this is your courage, is it?” retorted the Balafre.

The cardinal, quite unmoved, replied: “Whether the Prince de Conde is compromised or not, if we are certain that he is the leader, we should strike him down at once and secure tranquillity. We need judges rather than soldiers for this business--and judges are never lacking. Victory is always more certain in the parliament than on the field, and it costs less.”

“I consent, willingly,” said the duke; “but do you think the Prince de Conde is powerful enough to inspire, himself alone, the audacity of those who are making this first attack upon us? Isn’t there, behind him--”

“The king of Navarre,” said the cardinal.

“Pooh! a fool who speaks to me cap in hand!” replied the duke. “The coquetries of that Florentine woman seem to blind your eyes--”

“Oh! as for that,” exclaimed the priest, “if I do play the gallant with her it is only that I may read to the bottom of her heart.”

“She has no heart,” said the duke, sharply; “she is even more ambitious than you and I.”

“You are a brave soldier,” said the cardinal; “but, believe me, I distance you in this matter. I have had Catherine watched by Mary Stuart long before you even suspected her. She has no more religion than my shoe; if she is not the soul of this plot it is not for want of will. But we shall now be able to test her on the scene itself, and find out then how she stands by us. Up to this time, however, I am certain she has held no communication whatever with the heretics.”

“Well, it is time now to reveal the whole plot to the king, and to the queen-mother, who, you say, knows nothing of it,--that is the sole proof of her innocence; perhaps the conspirators have waited till the last moment, expecting to dazzle her with the probabilities of success. La Renaudie must soon discover by my arrangements that we are warned. Last night Nemours was to follow detachments of the Reformers who are pouring in along the cross-roads, and the conspirators will be forced to attack us at Amboise, which place I intend to let them enter. Here,” added the duke, pointing to three sides of the rock on which the chateau de Blois is built; “we should have an assault without any result; the Huguenots could come and go at will. Blois is an open hall with four entrances; whereas Amboise is a sack with a single mouth.”

“I shall not leave Catherine’s side,” said the cardinal.

“We have made a blunder,” remarked the duke, who was playing with his dagger, tossing it into the air and catching it by the hilt. “We ought to have treated her as we did the Reformers,--given her complete freedom of action and caught her in the act.”

The cardinal looked at his brother for an instant and shook his head.

“What does Pardaillan want?” said the duke, observing the approach of the young nobleman who was later to become celebrated by his encounter with La Renaudie, in which they both lost their lives.

“Monseigneur, a man sent by the queen’s furrier is at the gate, and says he has an ermine suit to convey to her. Am I to let him enter?”

“Ah! yes,--the ermine coat she spoke of yesterday,” returned the cardinal; “let the shop-fellow pass; she will want the garment for the voyage down the Loire.”

“How did he get here without being stopped until he reached the gate?” asked the duke.

“I do not know,” replied Pardaillan.

“I’ll ask to see him when he is with the queen,” thought the Balafre. “Let him wait in the _salle des gardes_,” he said aloud. “Is he young, Pardaillan?”

“Yes, monseigneur; he says he is a son of Lecamus the furrier.”

“Lecamus is a good Catholic,” remarked the cardinal, who, like his brother the duke, was endowed with Caesar’s memory. “The rector of Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs relies upon him; he is the provost of that quarter.”

“Nevertheless,” said the duke, “make the son talk with the captain of the Scotch guard,” laying an emphasis on the verb which was readily understood. “Ambroise is in the chateau; he can tell us whether the fellow is really the son of Lecamus, for the old man did him good service in times past. Send for Ambroise Pare.”

It was at this moment that Queen Catherine went, unattended, toward the two brothers, who hastened to meet her with their accustomed show of respect, in which the Italian princess detected constant irony.

“Messieurs,” she said, “will you deign to inform me of what is about to take place? Is the widow of your former master of less importance in your esteem than the Sieurs Vieilleville, Birago, and Chiverni?”

“Madame,” replied the cardinal, in a tone of gallantry, “our duty as men, taking precedence of that of statecraft, forbids us to alarm the fair sex by false reports. But this morning there is indeed good reason to confer with you on the affairs of the country. You must excuse my brother for having already given orders to the gentlemen you mention,--orders which were purely military, and therefore did not concern you; the matters of real importance are still to be decided. If you are willing, we will now go the _lever_ of the king and queen; it is nearly time.”

“But what is all this, Monsieur le duc?” cried Catherine, pretending alarm. “Is anything the matter?”

“The Reformation, madame, is no longer a mere heresy; it is a party, which has taken arms and is coming here to snatch the king away from you.”

Catherine, the cardinal, the duke, and the three gentlemen made their way to the staircase through the gallery, which was crowded with courtiers who, being off duty, no longer had the right of entrance to the royal apartments, and stood in two hedges on either side. Gondi, who watched them while the queen-mother talked with the Lorraine princes, whispered in her ear, in good Tuscan, two words which afterwards became proverbs,--words which are the keynote to one aspect of her regal character: “Odiate e aspettate”--“Hate and wait.”

Pardaillan, who had gone to order the officer of the guard at the gate of the chateau to let the clerk of the queen’s furrier enter, found Christophe open-mouthed before the portal, staring at the facade built by the good king Louis XII., on which there was at that time a much greater number of grotesque carvings than we see there to-day,--grotesque, that is to say, if we may judge by those that remain to us. For instance, persons curious in such matters may remark the figurine of a woman carved on the capital of one of the portal columns, with her robe caught up to show to a stout monk crouching in the capital of the corresponding column “that which Brunelle showed to Marphise”; while above this portal stood, at the time of which we write, the statue of Louis XII. Several of the window-casings of this facade, carved in the same style, and now, unfortunately, destroyed, amused, or seemed to amuse Christophe, on whom the arquebusiers of the guard were raining jests.

“He would like to live there,” said the sub-corporal, playing with the cartridges of his weapon, which were prepared for use in the shape of little sugar-loaves, and slung to the baldricks of the men.

“Hey, Parisian!” said another; “you never saw the like of that, did you?”

“He recognizes the good King Louis XII.,” said a third.

Christophe pretended not to hear, and tried to exaggerate his amazement, the result being that his silly attitude and his behavior before the guard proved an excellent passport to the eyes of Pardaillan.

“The queen has not yet risen,” said the young captain; “come and wait for her in the _salle des gardes_.”

Christophe followed Pardaillan rather slowly. On the way he stopped to admire the pretty gallery in the form of an arcade, where the courtiers of Louis XII. awaited the reception-hour when it rained, and where, at the present moment, were several seigneurs attached to the Guises; for the staircase (so well preserved to the present day) which led to their apartments is at the end of this gallery in a tower, the architecture of which commends itself to the admiration of intelligent beholders.

“Well, well! did you come here to study the carving of images?” cried Pardaillan, as Christophe stopped before the charming sculptures of the balustrade which unites, or, if you prefer it, separates the columns of each arcade.

Christophe followed the young officer to the grand staircase, not without a glance of ecstasy at the semi-Moorish tower. The weather was fine, and the court was crowded with staff-officers and seigneurs, talking together in little groups,--their dazzling uniforms and court-dresses brightening a spot which the marvels of architecture, then fresh and new, had already made so brilliant.

“Come in here,” said Pardaillan, making Lecamus a sign to follow him through a carved wooden door leading to the second floor, which the door-keeper opened on recognizing the young officer.

It is easy to imagine Christophe’s amazement as he entered the great _salle des gardes_, then so vast that military necessity has since divided it by a partition into two chambers. It occupied on the second floor (that of the king), as did the corresponding hall on the first floor (that of the queen-mother), one third of the whole front of the chateau facing the courtyard; and it was lighted by two windows to right and two to left of the tower in which the famous staircase winds up. The young captain went to the door of the royal chamber, which opened upon this vast hall, and told one of the two pages on duty to inform Madame Dayelles, the queen’s bedchamber woman, that the furrier was in the hall with her surcoat.

On a sign from Pardaillan Christophe placed himself near an officer, who was seated on a stool at the corner of a fireplace as large as his father’s whole shop, which was at the end of the great hall, opposite to a precisely similar fireplace at the other end. While talking to this officer, a lieutenant, he contrived to interest him with an account of the stagnation of trade. Christophe seemed so thoroughly a shopkeeper that the officer imparted that conviction to the captain of the Scotch guard, who came in from the courtyard to question Lecamus, all the while watching him covertly and narrowly.

However much Christophe Lecamus had been warned, it was impossible for him to really apprehend the cold ferocity of the interests between which Chaudieu had slipped him. To an observer of this scene, who had known the secrets of it as the historian understands it in the light of to-day, there was indeed cause to tremble for this young man,--the hope of two families,--thrust between those powerful and pitiless machines, Catherine and the Guises. But do courageous beings, as a rule, measure the full extent of their dangers? By the way in which the port of Blois, the chateau, and the town were guarded, Christophe was prepared to find spies and traps everywhere; and he therefore resolved to conceal the importance of his mission and the tension of his mind under the empty-headed and shopkeeping appearance with which he presented himself to the eyes of young Pardaillan, the officer of the guard, and the Scottish captain.

The agitation which, in a royal castle, always attends the hour of the king’s rising, was beginning to show itself. The great lords, whose horses, pages, or grooms remained in the outer courtyard,--for no one, except the king and the queens, had the right to enter the inner courtyard on horseback,--were mounting by groups the magnificent staircase, and filling by degrees the vast hall, the beams of which are now stripped of the decorations that then adorned them. Miserable little red tiles have replaced the ingenious mosaics of the floors; and the thick walls, then draped with the crown tapestries and glowing with all the arts of that unique period of the splendors of humanity, are now denuded and whitewashed! Reformers and Catholics were pressing in to hear the news and to watch faces, quite as much as to pay their duty to the king. Francois II.’s excessive love for Mary Stuart, to which neither the queen-mother nor the Guises made any opposition, and the politic compliance of Mary Stuart herself, deprived the king of all regal power. At seventeen years of age he knew nothing of royalty but its pleasures, or of marriage beyond the indulgence of first passion. As a matter of fact, all present paid their court to Queen Mary and to her uncles, the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duc de Guise, rather than to the king.

This stir took place before Christophe, who watched the arrival of each new personage with natural eagerness. A magnificent portiere, on either side of which stood two pages and two soldiers of the Scotch guard, then on duty, showed him the entrance to the royal chamber,--the chamber so fatal to the son of the present Duc de Guise, the second Balafre, who fell at the foot of the bed now occupied by Mary Stuart and Francois II. The queen’s maids of honor surrounded the fireplace opposite to that where Christophe was being “talked with” by the captain of the guard. This second fireplace was considered the _chimney of honor_. It was built in the thick wall of the Salle de Conseil, between the door of the royal chamber and that of the council-hall, so that the maids of honor and the lords in waiting who had the right to be there were on the direct passage of the king and queen. The courtiers were certain on this occasion of seeing Catherine, for her maids of honor, dressed like the rest of the court ladies, in black, came up the staircase from the queen-mother’s apartment, and took their places, marshalled by the Comtesse de Fiesque, on the side toward the council-hall and opposite to the maids of honor of the young queen, led by the Duchesse de Guise, who occupied the other side of the fireplace on the side of the royal bedroom. The courtiers left an open space between the ranks of these young ladies (who all belonged to the first families of the kingdom), which none but the greatest lords had the right to enter. The Comtesse de Fiesque and the Duchesse de Guise were, in virtue of their office, seated in the midst of these noble maids, who were all standing.

The first gentleman who approached the dangerous ranks was the Duc d’Orleans, the king’s brother, who had come down from his apartment on the third floor, accompanied by Monsieur de Cypierre, his governor. This young prince, destined before the end of the year to reign under the title of Charles IX., was only ten years old and extremely timid. The Duc d’Anjou and the Duc d’Alencon, his younger brothers, also the Princesse Marguerite, afterwards the wife of Henri IV. (la Reine Margot), were too young to come to court, and were therefore kept by their mother in her own apartments. The Duc d’Orleans, richly dressed after the fashion of the times, in silken trunk-hose, a close-fitting jacket of cloth of gold embroidered with black flowers, and a little mantle of embroidered velvet, all black, for he still wore mourning for his father, bowed to the two ladies of honor and took his place beside his mother’s maids. Already full of antipathy for the adherents of the house of Guise, he replied coldly to the remarks of the duchess and leaned his arm on the back of the chair of the Comtesse de Fiesque. His governor, Monsieur de Cypierre, one of the noblest characters of that day, stood beside him like a shield. Amyot (afterwards Bishop of Auxerre and translator of Plutarch), in the simple soutane of an abbe, also accompanied the young prince, being his tutor, as he was of the two other princes, whose affection became so profitable to him.

Between the “chimney of honor” and the other chimney at the end of the hall, around which were grouped the guards, their captain, a few courtiers, and Christophe carrying his box of furs, the Chancellor Olivier, protector and predecessor of l’Hopital, in the robes which the chancellors of France have always worn, was walking up and down with the Cardinal de Tournon, who had recently returned from Rome. The pair were exchanging a few whispered sentences in the midst of great attention from the lords of the court, massed against the wall which separated the _salle des gardes_ from the royal bedroom, like a living tapestry backed by the rich tapestry of art crowded by a thousand personages. In spite of the present grave events, the court presented the appearance of all courts in all lands, at all epochs, and in the midst of the greatest dangers. The courtiers talked of trivial matters, thinking of serious ones; they jested as they studied faces, and apparently concerned themselves about love and the marriage of rich heiresses amid the bloodiest catastrophes.

“What did you think of yesterday’s fete?” asked Bourdeilles, seigneur of Brantome, approaching Mademoiselle de Piennes, one of the queen-mother’s maids of honor.

“Messieurs du Baif et du Bellay were inspired with delightful ideas,” she replied, indicating the organizers of the fete, who were standing near. “I thought it all in the worst taste,” she added in a low voice.

“You had no part to play in it, I think?” remarked Mademoiselle de Lewiston from the opposite ranks of Queen Mary’s maids.

“What are you reading there, madame?” asked Amyot of the Comtesse de Fiesque.

“‘Amadis de Gaule,’ by the Seigneur des Essarts, commissary in ordinary to the king’s artillery,” she replied.

“A charming work,” remarked the beautiful girl who was afterwards so celebrated under the name of Fosseuse when she was lady of honor to Queen Marguerite of Navarre.

“The style is a novelty in form,” said Amyot. “Do you accept such barbarisms?” he added, addressing Brantome.

“They please the ladies, you know,” said Brantome, crossing over to the Duchesse de Guise, who held the “Decamerone” in her hand. “Some of the women of your house must appear in the book, madame,” he said. “It is a pity that the Sieur Boccaccio did not live in our day; he would have known plenty of ladies to swell his volume--”

“How shrewd that Monsieur de Brantome is,” said the beautiful Mademoiselle de Limueil to the Comtesse de Fiesque; “he came to us first, but he means to remain in the Guise quarters.”

“Hush!” said Madame de Fiesque glancing at the beautiful Limueil. “Attend to what concerns yourself.”

The young girl turned her eyes to the door. She was expecting Sardini, a noble Italian, with whom the queen-mother, her relative, married her after an “accident” which happened in the dressing-room of Catherine de’ Medici herself; but which the young lady won the honor of having a queen as midwife.

“By the holy Alipantin! Mademoiselle Davila seems to me prettier and prettier every morning,” said Monsieur de Robertet, secretary of State, bowing to the ladies of the queen-mother.

The arrival of the secretary of State made no commotion whatever, though his office was precisely what that of a minister is in these days.

“If you really think so, monsieur,” said the beauty, “lend me the squib which was written against the Messieurs de Guise; I know it was lent to you.”

“It is no longer in my possession,” replied the secretary, turning round to bow to the Duchesse de Guise.

“I have it,” said the Comte de Grammont to Mademoiselle Davila, “but I will give it you on one condition only.”

“Condition! fie!” exclaimed Madame de Fiesque.

“You don’t know what it is,” replied Grammont.

“Oh! it is easy to guess,” remarked la Limueil.

The Italian custom of calling ladies, as peasants call their wives, “_la_ Such-a-one” was then the fashion at the court of France.

“You are mistaken,” said the count, hastily, “the matter is simply to give a letter from my cousin de Jarnac to one of the maids on the other side, Mademoiselle de Matha.”

“You must not compromise my young ladies,” said the Comtesse de Fiesque. “I will deliver the letter myself.--Do you know what is happening in Flanders?” she continued, turning to the Cardinal de Tournon. “It seems that Monsieur d’Egmont is given to surprises.”

“He and the Prince of Orange,” remarked Cypierre, with a significant shrug of his shoulders.

“The Duke of Alba and Cardinal Granvelle are going there, are they not, monsieur?” said Amyot to the Cardinal de Tournon, who remained standing, gloomy and anxious between the opposing groups after his conversation with the chancellor.

“Happily we are at peace; we need only conquer heresy on the stage,” remarked the young Duc d’Orleans, alluding to a part he had played the night before,--that of a knight subduing a hydra which bore upon its foreheads the word “Reformation.”

Catherine de’ Medici, agreeing in this with her daughter-in-law, had allowed a theatre to be made of the great hall (afterwards arranged for the Parliament of Blois), which, as we have already said, connected the chateau of Francois I. with that of Louis XII.

The cardinal made no answer to Amyot’s question, but resumed his walk through the centre of the hall, talking in low tones with Monsieur de Robertet and the chancellor. Many persons are ignorant of the difficulties which secretaries of State (subsequently called ministers) met with at the first establishment of their office, and how much trouble the kings of France had in creating it. At this epoch a secretary of State like Robertet was purely and simply a writer; he counted for almost nothing among the princes and grandees who decided the affairs of State. His functions were little more than those of the superintendent of finances, the chancellor, and the keeper of the seals. The kings granted seats at the council by letters-patent to those of their subjects whose advice seemed to them useful in the management of public affairs. Entrance to the council was given in this way to a president of the Chamber of Parliament, to a bishop, or to an untitled favorite. Once admitted to the council, the subject strengthened his position there by obtaining various crown offices on which devolved such prerogatives as the sword of a Constable, the government of provinces, the grand-mastership of artillery, the baton of a marshal, a leading rank in the army, or the admiralty, or a captaincy of the galleys, often some office at court, like that of grand-master of the household, now held, as we have already said, by the Duc de Guise.

“Do you think that the Duc de Nemours will marry Francoise?” said Madame de Guise to the tutor of the Duc d’Orleans.

“Ah, madame,” he replied, “I know nothing but Latin.”

This answer made all who were within hearing of it smile. The seduction of Francoise de Rohan by the Duc de Nemours was the topic of all conversations; but, as the duke was cousin to Francois II., and doubly allied to the house of Valois through his mother, the Guises regarded him more as the seduced than the seducer. Nevertheless, the power of the house of Rohan was such that the Duc de Nemours was obliged, after the death of Francois II., to leave France on consequence of suits brought against him by the Rohans; which suits the Guises settled. The duke’s marriage with the Duchesse de Guise after Poltrot’s assassination of her husband in 1563, may explain the question which she put to Amyot, by revealing the rivalry which must have existed between Mademoiselle de Rohan and the duchess.

“Do see that group of the discontented over there?” said the Comte de Grammont, motioning toward the Messieurs de Coligny, the Cardinal de Chatillon, Danville, Thore, Moret, and several other seigneurs suspected of tampering with the Reformation, who were standing between two windows on the other side of the fireplace.

“The Huguenots are bestirring themselves,” said Cypierre. “We know that Theodore de Beze has gone to Nerac to induce the Queen of Navarre to declare for the Reformers--by abjuring publicly,” he added, looking at the _bailli_ of Orleans, who held the office of chancellor to the Queen of Navarre, and was watching the court attentively.

“She will do it!” said the _bailli_, dryly.

This personage, the Orleans Jacques Coeur, one of the richest burghers of the day, was named Groslot, and had charge of Jeanne d’Albret’s business with the court of France.

“Do you really think so?” said the chancellor of France, appreciating the full importance of Groslot’s declaration.

“Are you not aware,” said the burgher, “that the Queen of Navarre has nothing of the woman in her except sex? She is wholly for things virile; her powerful mind turns to the great affairs of State; her heart is invincible under adversity.”

“Monsieur le cardinal,” whispered the Chancellor Olivier to Monsieur de Tournon, who had overheard Groslot, “what do you think of that audacity?”

“The Queen of Navarre did well in choosing for her chancellor a man from whom the house of Lorraine borrows money, and who offers his house to the king, if his Majesty visits Orleans,” replied the cardinal.

The chancellor and the cardinal looked at each other, without venturing to further communicate their thoughts; but Robertet expressed them, for he thought it necessary to show more devotion to the Guises than these great personages, inasmuch as he was smaller than they.

“It is a great misfortune that the house of Navarre, instead of abjuring the religion of its fathers, does not abjure the spirit of vengeance and rebellion which the Connetable de Bourbon breathed into it,” he said aloud. “We shall see the quarrels of the Armagnacs and the Bourguignons revive in our day.”

“No,” said Groslot, “there’s another Louis XI. in the Cardinal de Lorraine.”

“And also in Queen Catherine,” replied Robertet.

At this moment Madame Dayelle, the favorite bedchamber woman of Queen Mary Stuart, crossed the hall, and went toward the royal chamber. Her passage caused a general commotion.

“We shall soon enter,” said Madame de Fisque.

“I don’t think so,” replied the Duchesse de Guise. “Their Majesties will come out; a grand council is to be held.”

VI. THE LITTLE LEVER OF FRANCOIS II.

Madame Dayelle glided into the royal chamber after scratching on the door,--a respectful custom, invented by Catherine de’ Medici and adopted by the court of France.

“How is the weather, my dear Dayelle?” said Queen Mary, showing her fresh young face out of the bed, and shaking the curtains.

“Ah! madame--”

“What’s the matter, my Dayelle? You look as if the archers of the guard were after you.”

“Oh! madame, is the king still asleep?”

“Yes.”

“We are to leave the chateau; Monsieur le cardinal requests me to tell you so, and to ask you to make the king agree to it.

“Do you know why, my good Dayelle?”

“The Reformers want to seize you and carry you off.”

“Ah! that new religion does not leave me a minute’s peace! I dreamed last night that I was in prison,--I, who will some day unite the crowns of the three noblest kingdoms in the world!”

“Therefore it could only be a dream, madame.”

“Carry me off! well, ‘twould be rather pleasant; but on account of religion, and by heretics--oh, that would be horrid.”

The queen sprang from the bed and placed herself in a large arm-chair of red velvet before the fireplace, after Dayelle had given her a dressing-gown of black velvet, which she fastened loosely round her waist by a silken cord. Dayelle lit the fire, for the mornings are cool on the banks of the Loire in the month of May.

“My uncles must have received some news during the night?” said the queen, inquiringly to Dayelle, whom she treated with great familiarity.

“Messieurs de Guise have been walking together from early morning on the terrace, so as not to be overheard by any one; and there they received messengers, who came in hot haste from all the different points of the kingdom where the Reformers are stirring. Madame la reine mere was there too, with her Italians, hoping she would be consulted; but no, she was not admitted to the council.”

“She must have been furious.”

“All the more because she was so angry yesterday,” replied Dayelle. “They say that when she saw your Majesty appear in that beautiful dress of woven gold, with the charming veil of tan-colored crape, she was none too pleased--”

“Leave us, my good Dayelle, the king is waking up. Let no one, even those who have the little _entrees_, disturb us; an affair of State is in hand, and my uncles will not disturb us.”

“Why! my dear Mary, already out of bed? Is it daylight?” said the young king, waking up.

“My dear darling, while we were asleep the wicked waked, and now they are forcing us to leave this delightful place.”

“What makes you think of wicked people, my treasure? I am sure we enjoyed the prettiest fete in the world last night--if it were not for the Latin words those gentlemen will put into our French.”

“Ah!” said Mary, “your language is really in very good taste, and Rabelais exhibits it finely.”

“You are such a learned woman! I am so vexed that I can’t sing your praises in verse. If I were not the king, I would take my brother’s tutor, Amyot, and let him make me as accomplished as Charles.”

“You need not envy your brother, who writes verses and shows them to me, asking for mine in return. You are the best of the four, and will make as good a king as you are the dearest of lovers. Perhaps that is why your mother does not like you! But never mind! I, dear heart, will love you for all the world.”

“I have no great merit in loving such a perfect queen,” said the little king. “I don’t know what prevented me from kissing you before the whole court when you danced the _branle_ with the torches last night! I saw plainly that all the other women were mere servants compared to you, my beautiful Mary.”

“It may be only prose you speak, but it is ravishing speech, dear darling, for it is love that says those words. And you--you know well, my beloved, that were you only a poor little page, I should love you as much as I do now. And yet, there is nothing so sweet as to whisper to one’s self: ‘My lover is king!’”

“Oh! the pretty arm! Why must we dress ourselves? I love to pass my fingers through your silky hair and tangle its blond curls. Ah ca! sweet one, don’t let your women kiss that pretty throat and those white shoulders any more; don’t allow it, I say. It is too much that the fogs of Scotland ever touched them!”

“Won’t you come with me to see my dear country? The Scotch love you; there are no rebellions _there_!”

“Who rebels in this our kingdom?” said Francois, crossing his dressing-gown and taking Mary Stuart on his knee.

“Oh! ‘tis all very charming, I know that,” she said, withdrawing her cheek from the king; “but it is your business to reign, if you please, my sweet sire.”

“Why talk of reigning? This morning I wish--”

“Why say _wish_ when you have only to will all? That’s not the speech of a king, nor that of a lover.--But no more of love just now; let us drop it! We have business more important to speak of.”

“Oh!” cried the king, “it is long since we have had any business. Is it amusing?”

“No,” said Mary, “not at all; we are to move from Blois.”

“I’ll wager, darling, you have seen your uncles, who manage so well that I, at seventeen years of age, am no better than a _roi faineant_. In fact, I don’t know why I have attended any of the councils since the first. They could manage matters just as well by putting the crown in my chair; I see only through their eyes, and am forced to consent to things blindly.”

“Oh! monsieur,” said the queen, rising from the king’s knee with a little air of indignation, “you said you would never worry me again on this subject, and that my uncles used the royal power only for the good of your people. Your people!--they are so nice! They would gobble you up like a strawberry if you tried to rule them yourself. You want a warrior, a rough master with mailed hands; whereas you--you are a darling whom I love as you are; whom I should never love otherwise,--do you hear me, monsieur?” she added, kissing the forehead of the lad, who seemed inclined to rebel at her speech, but softened at her kisses.

“Oh! how I wish they were not your uncles!” cried Francois II. “I particularly dislike the cardinal; and when he puts on his wheedling air and his submissive manner and says to me, bowing: ‘Sire, the honor of the crown and the faith of your fathers forbid your Majesty to--this and that,’ I am sure he is working only for his cursed house of Lorraine.”

“Oh, how well you mimicked him!” cried the queen. “But why don’t you make the Guises inform you of what is going on, so that when you attain your grand majority you may know how to reign yourself? I am your wife, and your honor is mine. Trust me! we will reign together, my darling; but it won’t be a bed of roses for us until the day comes when we have our own wills. There is nothing so difficult for a king as to reign. Am I a queen, for example? Don’t you know that your mother returns me evil for all the good my uncles do to raise the splendor of your throne? Hey! what difference between them! My uncles are great princes, nephews of Charlemagne, filled with ardor and ready to die for you; whereas this daughter of a doctor or a shopkeeper, queen of France by accident, scolds like a burgher-woman who can’t manage her own household. She is discontented because she can’t set every one by the ears; and then she looks at me with a sour, pale face, and says from her pinched lips: ‘My daughter, you are a queen; I am only the second woman in the kingdom’ (she is really furious, you know, my darling), ‘but if I were in your place I should not wear crimson velvet while all the court is in mourning; neither should I appear in public with my own hair and no jewels, because what is not becoming in a simple lady is still less becoming in a queen. Also I should not dance myself, I should content myself with seeing others dance.’--that is what she says to me--”

“Heavens!” cried the king, “I think I hear her coming. If she were to know--”

“Oh, how you tremble before her. She worries you. Only say so, and we will send her away. Faith, she’s Florentine and we can’t help her tricking you, but when it comes to worrying--”

“For Heaven’s sake, Mary, hold your tongue!” said Francois, frightened and also pleased; “I don’t want you to lose her good-will.”

“Don’t be afraid that she will ever break with _me_, who will some day wear the three noblest crowns in the world, my dearest little king,” cried Mary Stuart. “Though she hates me for a thousand reasons she is always caressing me in the hope of turning me against my uncles.”

“Hates you!”

“Yes, my angel; and if I had not proofs of that feeling such as women only understand, for they alone know its malignity, I would forgive her perpetual opposition to our dear love, my darling. Is it my fault that your father could not endure Mademoiselle Medici or that his son loves me? The truth is, she hates me so much that if you had not put yourself into a rage, we should each have had our separate chamber at Saint-Germain, and also here. She pretended it was the custom of the kings and queens of France. Custom, indeed! it was your father’s custom, and that is easily understood. As for your grandfather, Francois, the good man set up the custom for the convenience of his loves. Therefore, I say, take care. And if we have to leave this place, be sure that we are not separated.”

“Leave Blois! Mary, what do you mean? I don’t wish to leave this beautiful chateau, where we can see the Loire and the country all round us, with a town at our feet and all these pretty gardens. If I go away it will be to Italy with you, to see St. Peter’s, and Raffaelle’s pictures.”

“And the orange-trees? Oh! my darling king, if you knew the longing your Mary has to ramble among the orange-groves in fruit and flower!”

“Let us go, then!” cried the king.

“Go!” exclaimed the grand-master as he entered the room. “Yes, sire, you must leave Blois. Pardon my boldness in entering your chamber; but circumstances are stronger than etiquette, and I come to entreat you to hold a council.”

Finding themselves thus surprised, Mary and Francois hastily separated, and on their faces was the same expression of offended royal majesty.

“You are too much of a grand-master, Monsieur de Guise,” said the king, though controlling his anger.

“The devil take lovers,” murmured the cardinal in Catherine’s ear.

“My son,” said the queen-mother, appearing behind the cardinal; “it is a matter concerning your safety and that of your kingdom.”

“Heresy wakes while you have slept, sire,” said the cardinal.

“Withdraw into the hall,” cried the little king, “and then we will hold a council.”

“Madame,” said the grand-master to the young queen; “the son of your furrier has brought some furs, which was just in time for the journey, for it is probable we shall sail down the Loire. But,” he added, turning to the queen-mother, “he also wishes to speak to you, madame. While the king dresses, you and Madame la reine had better see and dismiss him, so that we may not be delayed and harassed by this trifle.”

“Certainly,” said Catherine, thinking to herself, “If he expects to get rid of me by any such trick he little knows me.”

The cardinal and the duke withdrew, leaving the two queens and the king alone together. As they crossed the _salle des gardes_ to enter the council-chamber, the grand-master told the usher to bring the queen’s furrier to him. When Christophe saw the usher approaching from the farther end of the great hall, he took him, on account of his uniform, for some great personage, and his heart sank within him. But that sensation, natural as it was at the approach of the critical moment, grew terrible when the usher, whose movement had attracted the eyes of all that brilliant assembly upon Christophe, his homely face and his bundles, said to him:--

“Messeigneurs the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Grand-master wish to speak to you in the council chamber.”

“Can I have been betrayed?” thought the helpless ambassador of the Reformers.

Christophe followed the usher with lowered eyes, which he did not raise till he stood in the great council-chamber, the size of which is almost equal to that of the _salle des gardes_. The two Lorrain princes were there alone, standing before the magnificent fireplace, which backs against that in the _salle des gardes_ around which the ladies of the two queens were grouped.

“You have come from Paris; which route did you take?” said the cardinal.

“I came by water, monseigneur,” replied the reformer.

“How did you enter Blois?” asked the grand-master.

“By the docks, monseigneur.”

“Did no one question you?” exclaimed the duke, who was watching the young man closely.

“No, monseigneur. To the first soldier who looked as if he meant to stop me I said I came on duty to the two queens, to whom my father was furrier.”

“What is happening in Paris?” asked the cardinal.

“They are still looking for the murderer of the President Minard.”

“Are you not the son of my surgeon’s greatest friend?” said the Duc de Guise, misled by the candor of Christophe’s expression after his first alarm had passed away.

“Yes, monseigneur.”

The Grand-master turned aside, abruptly raised the portiere which concealed the double door of the council-chamber, and showed his face to the whole assembly, among whom he was searching for the king’s surgeon. Ambroise Pare, standing in a corner, caught a glance which the duke cast upon him, and immediately advanced. Ambroise, who at this time was inclined to the reformed religion, eventually adopted it; but the friendship of the Guises and that of the kings of France guaranteed him against the evils which overtook his co-religionists. The duke, who considered himself under obligations for life to Ambroise Pare, had lately caused him to be appointed chief-surgeon to the king.

“What is it, monseigneur?” said Ambroise. “Is the king ill? I think it likely.”

“Likely? Why?”

“The queen is too pretty,” replied the surgeon.

“Ah!” exclaimed the duke in astonishment. “However, that is not the matter now,” he added after a pause. “Ambroise, I want you to see a friend of yours.” So saying he drew him to the door of the council-room, and showed him Christophe.

“Ha! true, monseigneur,” cried the surgeon, extending his hand to the young furrier. “How is your father, my lad?”

“Very well, Maitre Ambroise,” replied Christophe.

“What are you doing at court?” asked the surgeon. “It is not your business to carry parcels; your father intends you for the law. Do you want the protection of these two great princes to make you a solicitor?”

“Indeed I do!” said Christophe; “but I am here only in the interests of my father; and if you could intercede for us, please do so,” he added in a piteous tone; “and ask the Grand Master for an order to pay certain sums that are due to my father, for he is at his wit’s end just now for money.”

The cardinal and the duke glanced at each other and seemed satisfied.

“Now leave us,” said the duke to the surgeon, making him a sign. “And you my friend,” turning to Christophe; “do your errand quickly and return to Paris. My secretary will give you a pass, for it is not safe, _mordieu_, to be travelling on the high-roads!”

Neither of the brothers formed the slightest suspicion of the grave importance of Christophe’s errand, convinced, as they now were, that he was really the son of the good Catholic Lecamus, the court furrier, sent to collect payment for their wares.

“Take him close to the door of the queen’s chamber; she will probably ask for him soon,” said the cardinal to the surgeon, motioning to Christophe.

While the son of the furrier was undergoing this brief examination in the council-chamber, the king, leaving the queen in company with her mother-in-law, had passed into his dressing-room, which was entered through another small room next to the chamber.

Standing in the wide recess of an immense window, Catherine looked at the gardens, her mind a prey to painful thoughts. She saw that in all probability one of the greatest captains of the age would be foisted that very day into the place and power of her son, the king of France, under the formidable title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Before this peril she stood alone, without power of action, without defence. She might have been likened to a phantom, as she stood there in her mourning garments (which she had not quitted since the death of Henri II.) so motionless was her pallid face in the grasp of her bitter reflections. Her black eyes floated in that species of indecision for which great statesmen are so often blamed, though it comes from the vast extent of the glance with which they embrace all difficulties,--setting one against the other, and adding up, as it were, all chances before deciding on a course. Her ears rang, her blood tingled, and yet she stood there calm and dignified, all the while measuring in her soul the depths of the political abyss which lay before her, like the natural depths which rolled away at her feet. This day was the second of those terrible days (that of the arrest of the Vidame of Chartres being the first) which she was destined to meet in so great numbers throughout her regal life; it also witnessed her last blunder in the school of power. Though the sceptre seemed escaping from her hands, she wished to seize it; and she did seize it by a flash of that power of will which was never relaxed by either the disdain of her father-in-law, Francois I., and his court,--where, in spite of her rank of dauphiness, she had been of no account,--or the constant repulses of her husband, Henri II., and the terrible opposition of her rival, Diane de Poitiers. A man would never have fathomed this thwarted queen; but the fair-haired Mary--so subtle, so clever, so girlish, and already so well-trained--examined her out of the corners of her eyes as she hummed an Italian air and assumed a careless countenance. Without being able to guess the storms of repressed ambition which sent the dew of a cold sweat to the forehead of the Florentine, the pretty Scotch girl, with her wilful, piquant face, knew very well that the advancement of her uncle the Duc de Guise to the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom was filling the queen-mother with inward rage. Nothing amused her more than to watch her mother-in-law, in whom she saw only an intriguing woman of low birth, always ready to avenge herself. The face of the one was grave and gloomy, and somewhat terrible, by reason of the livid tones which transform the skin of Italian women to yellow ivory by daylight, though it recovers its dazzling brilliancy under candlelight; the face of the other was fair and fresh and gay. At sixteen, Mary Stuart’s skin had that exquisite blond whiteness which made her beauty so celebrated. Her fresh and piquant face, with its pure lines, shone with the roguish mischief of childhood, expressed in the regular eyebrows, the vivacious eyes, and the archness of the pretty mouth. Already she displayed those feline graces which nothing, not even captivity nor the sight of her dreadful scaffold, could lessen. The two queens--one at the dawn, the other in the midsummer of life--presented at this moment the utmost contrast. Catherine was an imposing queen, an impenetrable widow, without other passion than that of power. Mary was a light-hearted, careless bride, making playthings of her triple crowns. One foreboded great evils,--foreseeing the assassination of the Guises as the only means of suppressing enemies who were resolved to rise above the Throne and the Parliament; foreseeing also the bloodshed of a long and bitter struggle; while the other little anticipated her own judicial murder. A sudden and strange reflection calmed the mind of the Italian.

“That sorceress and Ruggiero both declare this reign is coming to an end; my difficulties will not last long,” she thought.

And so, strangely enough, an occult science forgotten in our day--that of astrology--supported Catherine at this moment, as it did, in fact, throughout her life; for, as she witnessed the minute fulfilment of the prophecies of those who practised the art, her belief in it steadily increased.

“You are very gloomy, madame,” said Mary Stuart, taking from the hands of her waiting-woman, Dayelle, a little cap and placing the point of it on the parting of her hair, while two wings of rich lace surrounded the tufts of blond curls which clustered on her temples.

The pencil of many painters have so frequently represented this head-dress that it is thought to have belonged exclusively to Mary Queen of Scots; whereas it was really invented by Catherine de’ Medici, when she put on mourning for Henri II. But she never knew how to wear it with the grace of her daughter-in-law, to whom it was becoming. This annoyance was not the least among the many which the queen-mother cherished against the young queen.

“Is the queen reproving me?” said Catherine, turning to Mary.

“I owe you all respect, and should not dare to do so,” said the Scottish queen, maliciously, glancing at Dayelle.

Placed between the rival queens, the favorite waiting-woman stood rigid as an andiron; a smile of comprehension might have cost her her life.

“Can I be as gay as you, after losing the late king, and now beholding my son’s kingdom about to burst into flames?”

“Public affairs do not concern women,” said Mary Stuart. “Besides, my uncles are there.”

These words were, under the circumstances, like so many poisoned arrows.

“Let us look at our furs, madame,” replied the Italian, sarcastically; “that will employ us on our legitimate female affairs while your uncles decide those of the kingdom.”

“Oh! but we will go the Council, madame; we shall be more useful than you think.”

“We!” said Catherine, with an air of astonishment. “But I do not understand Latin, myself.”

“You think me very learned,” cried Mary Stuart, laughing, “but I assure you, madame, I study only to reach the level of the Medici, and learn how to _cure_ the wounds of the kingdom.”

Catherine was silenced by this sharp thrust, which referred to the origin of the Medici, who were descended, some said, from a doctor of medicine, others from a rich druggist. She made no direct answer. Dayelle colored as her mistress looked at her, asking for the applause that even queens demand from their inferiors if there are no other spectators.

“Your charming speeches, madame, will unfortunately cure the wounds of neither Church nor State,” said Catherine at last, with her calm and cold dignity. “The science of my fathers in that direction gave them thrones; whereas if you continue to trifle in the midst of danger you are liable to lose yours.”

It was at this moment that Ambroise Pare, the chief surgeon, scratched softly on the door, and Madame Dayelle, opening it, admitted Christophe.

VII. A DRAMA IN A SURCOAT

The young reformer intended to study Catherine’s face, all the while affecting a natural embarrassment at finding himself in such a place; but his proceedings were much hastened by the eagerness with which the younger queen darted to the cartons to see her surcoat.

“Madame,” said Christophe, addressing Catherine.

He turned his back on the other queen and on Dayelle, instantly profiting by the attention the two women were eager to bestow upon the furs to play a bold stroke.

“What do you want of me?” said Catherine giving him a searching look.

Christophe had put the treaty proposed by the Prince de Conde, the plan of the Reformers, and the detail of their forces in his bosom between his shirt and his cloth jacket, folding them, however, within the bill which Catherine owed to the furrier.

“Madame,” he said, “my father is in horrible need of money, and if you will deign to cast your eyes over your bill,” here he unfolded the paper and put the treaty on the top of it, “you will see that your Majesty owes him six thousand crowns. Have the goodness to take pity on us. See, madame!” and he held the treaty out to her. “Read it; the account dates from the time the late king came to the throne.”

Catherine was bewildered by the preamble of the treaty which met her eye, but she did not lose her head. She folded the paper quickly, admiring the audacity and presence of mind of the youth, and feeling sure that after performing such a masterly stroke he would not fail to understand her. She therefore tapped him on the head with the folded paper, saying:--

“It is very clumsy of you, my little friend, to present your bill before the furs. Learn to know women. You must never ask us to pay until the moment when we are satisfied.”

“Is that traditional?” said the young queen, turning to her mother-in-law, who made no reply.

“Ah, mesdames, pray excuse my father,” said Christophe. “If he had not had such need of money you would not have had your furs at all. The country is in arms, and there are so many dangers to run in getting here that nothing but our great distress would have brought me. No one but me was willing to risk them.”

“The lad is new to his business,” said Mary Stuart, smiling.

It may not be useless, for the understanding of this trifling, but very important scene, to remark that a surcoat was, as the name implies (_sur cotte_), a species of close-fitting spencer which women wore over their bodies and down to their thighs, defining the figure. This garment protected the back, chest, and throat from cold. These surcoats were lined with fur, a band of which, wide or narrow as the case might be, bordered the outer material. Mary Stuart, as she tried the garment on, looked at herself in a large Venetian mirror to see the effect behind, thus leaving her mother-in-law an opportunity to examine the papers, the bulk of which might have excited the young queen’s suspicions had she noticed it.

“Never tell women of the dangers you have run when you have come out of them safe and sound,” she said, turning to show herself to Christophe.

“Ah! madame, I have your bill, too,” he said, looking at her with well-played simplicity.

The young queen eyed him, but did not take the paper; and she noticed, though without at the moment drawing any conclusions, that he had taken her bill from his pocket, whereas he had carried Queen Catherine’s in his bosom. Neither did she find in the lad’s eyes that glance of admiration which her presence invariably excited in all beholders. But she was so engrossed by her surcoat that, for the moment, she did not ask herself the meaning of such indifference.

“Take the bill, Dayelle,” she said to her waiting-woman; “give it to Monsieur de Versailles (Lomenie) and tell him from me to pay it.”

“Oh! madame,” said Christophe, “if you do not ask the king or monseigneur the grand-master to sign me an order your gracious word will have no effect.”

“You are rather more eager than becomes a subject, my friend,” said Mary Stuart. “Do you not believe my royal word?”

The king now appeared, in silk stockings and trunk-hose (the breeches of that period), but without his doublet and mantle; he had, however, a rich loose coat of velvet edged with minever.

“Who is the wretch who dares to doubt your word?” he said, overhearing, in spite of his distance, his wife’s last words.

The door of the dressing-room was hidden by the royal bed. This room was afterwards called “the old cabinet,” to distinguish it from the fine cabinet of pictures which Henri III. constructed at the farther end of the same suite of rooms, next to the hall of the States-general. It was in the old cabinet that Henri III. hid the murderers when he sent for the Duc de Guise, while he himself remained hidden in the new cabinet during the murder, only emerging in time to see the overbearing subject for whom there were no longer prisons, tribunals, judges, nor even laws, draw his last breath. Were it not for these terrible circumstances the historian of to-day could hardly trace the former occupation of these cabinets, now filled with soldiers. A quartermaster writes to his mistress on the very spot where the pensive Catherine once decided on her course between the parties.

“Come with me, my friend,” said the queen-mother, “and I will see that you are paid. Commerce must live, and money is its backbone.”

“Go, my lad,” cried the young queen, laughing; “my august mother knows more than I do about commerce.”

Catherine was about to leave the room without replying to this last taunt; but she remembered that her indifference to it might provoke suspicion, and she answered hastily:--

“But you, my dear, understand the business of love.”

Then she descended to her own apartments.

“Put away these furs, Dayelle, and let us go to the Council, monsieur,” said Mary to the young king, enchanted with the opportunity of deciding in the absence of the queen-mother so important a question as the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom.

Mary Stuart took the king’s arm. Dayelle went out before them, whispering to the pages; one of whom (it was young Teligny, who afterwards perished so miserably during the Saint-Bartholomew) cried out:--

“The king!”

Hearing the words, the two soldiers of the guard presented arms, and the two pages went forward to the door of the Council-room through the lane of courtiers and that of the maids of honor of the two queens. All the members of the Council then grouped themselves about the door of their chamber, which was not very far from the door to the staircase. The grand-master, the cardinal, and the chancellor advanced to meet the young sovereign, who smiled to several of the maids of honor and replied to the remarks of a few courtiers more privileged than the rest. But the queen, evidently impatient, drew Francois II. as quickly as possible toward the Council-chamber. When the sound of arquebuses, dropping heavily on the floor, had announced the entrance of the couple, the pages replaced their caps upon their heads, and the private talk among the courtiers on the gravity of the matters now about to be discussed began again.

“They sent Chiverni to fetch the Connetable, but he has not come,” said one.

“There is not a single prince of the blood present,” said another.

“The chancellor and Monsieur de Tournon looked anxious,” remarked a third.

“The grand-master sent word to the keeper of the seals to be sure not to miss this Council; therefore you may be certain they will issue letters-patent.”

“Why does the queen-mother stay in her own apartments at such a time?”

“They’ll cut out plenty of work for us,” remarked Groslot to Cardinal de Chatillon.

In short, everybody had a word to say. Some went and came, in and out of the great hall; others hovered about the maids of honor of both queens, as if it might be possible to catch a few words through a wall three feet thick or through the double doors draped on each side with heavy curtains.

Seated at the upper end of a long table covered with blue velvet, which stood in the middle of the room, the king, near to whom the young queen was seated in an arm-chair, waited for his mother. Robertet, the secretary, was mending pens. The two cardinals, the grand-master, the chancellor, the keeper of the seals, and all the rest of the council looked at the little king, wondering why he did not give them the usual order to sit down.

The two Lorrain princes attributed the queen-mother’s absence to some trick of their niece. Incited presently by a significant glance, the audacious cardinal said to his Majesty:--

“Is it the king’s good pleasure to begin the council without waiting for Madame la reine-mere?”

Francois II., without daring to answer directly, said: “Messieurs, be seated.”

The cardinal then explained succinctly the dangers of the situation. This great political character, who showed extraordinary ability under these pressing circumstances, led up to the question of the lieutenancy of the kingdom in the midst of the deepest silence. The young king doubtless felt the tyranny that was being exercised over him; he knew that his mother had a deep sense of the rights of the Crown and was fully aware of the danger that threatened his power; he therefore replied to a positive question addressed to him by the cardinal by saying:--

“We will wait for the queen, my mother.”

Suddenly enlightened by the queen-mother’s delay, Mary Stuart recalled, in a flash of thought, three circumstances which now struck her vividly; first, the bulk of the papers presented to her mother-in-law, which she had noticed, absorbed as she was,--for a woman who seems to see nothing is often a lynx; next, the place where Christophe had carried them to keep them separate from hers: “Why so?” she thought to herself; and thirdly, she remembered the cold, indifferent glance of the young man, which she suddenly attributed to the hatred of the Reformers to a niece of the Guises. A voice cried to her, “He may have been an emissary of the Huguenots!” Obeying, like all excitable natures, her first impulse, she exclaimed:--

“I will go and fetch my mother myself!”

Then she left the room hurriedly, ran down the staircase, to the amazement of the courtiers and the ladies of honor, entered her mother-in-law’s apartments, crossed the guard-room, opened the door of the chamber with the caution of a thief, glided like a shadow over the carpet, saw no one, and bethought her that she should surely surprise the queen-mother in that magnificent dressing-room which comes between the bedroom and the oratory. The arrangement of this oratory, to which the manners of that period gave a role in private life like that of the boudoirs of our day, can still be traced.

By an almost inexplicable chance, when we consider the state of dilapidation into which the Crown has allowed the chateau of Blois to fall, the admirable woodwork of Catherine’s cabinet still exists; and in those delicately carved panels, persons interested in such things may still see traces of Italian splendor, and discover the secret hiding-places employed by the queen-mother. An exact description of these curious arrangements is necessary in order to give a clear understanding of what was now to happen. The woodwork of the oratory then consisted of about a hundred and eighty oblong panels, one hundred of which still exist, all presenting arabesques of different designs, evidently suggested by the most beautiful arabesques of Italy. The wood is live-oak. The red tones, seen through the layer of whitewash put on to avert cholera (useless precaution!), shows very plainly that the ground of the panels was formerly gilt. Certain portions of the design, visible where the wash has fallen away, seem to show that they once detached themselves from the gilded ground in colors, either blue, or red, or green. The multitude of these panels shows an evident intention to foil a search; but even if this could be doubted, the concierge of the chateau, while devoting the memory of Catherine to the execration of the humanity of our day, shows at the base of these panels and close to the floor a rather heavy foot-board, which can be lifted, and beneath which still remain the ingenious springs which move the panels. By pressing a knob thus hidden, the queen was able to open certain panels known to her alone, behind which, sunk in the wall, were hiding-places, oblong like the panels, and more or less deep. It is difficult, even in these days of dilapidation, for the best-trained eye to detect which of those panels is thus hinged; but when the eye was distracted by colors and gilding, cleverly used to conceal the joints, we can readily conceive that to find one or two such panels among two hundred was almost an impossible thing.

At the moment when Mary Stuart laid her hand on the somewhat complicated lock of the door of this oratory, the queen-mother, who had just become convinced of the greatness of the Prince de Conde’s plans, had touched the spring hidden beneath the foot-board, and one of the mysterious panels had turned over on its hinges. Catherine was in the act of lifting the papers from the table to hide them, intending after that to secure the safety of the devoted messenger who had brought them to her, when, hearing the sudden opening of the door, she at once knew that none but Queen Mary herself would dare thus to enter without announcement.

“You are lost!” she said to Christophe, perceiving that she could no longer put away the papers, nor close with sufficient rapidity the open panel, the secret of which was now betrayed.

Christophe answered her with a glance that was sublime.

“_Povero mio_!” said Catherine, before she looked at her daughter-in-law. “Treason, madame! I hold the traitors at last,” she cried. “Send for the duke and the cardinal; and see that that man,” pointing to Christophe, “does not escape.”

In an instant the able woman had seen the necessity of sacrificing the poor youth. She could not hide him; it was impossible to save him. Eight days earlier it might have been done; but the Guises now knew of the plot; they must already possess the lists she held in her hand, and were evidently drawing the Reformers into a trap. Thus, rejoiced to find in these adversaries the very spirit she desired them to have, her policy now led her to make a merit of the discovery of their plot. These horrible calculations were made during the rapid moment while the young queen was opening the door. Mary Stuart stood dumb for an instant; the gay look left her eyes, which took on the acuteness that suspicion gives to the eyes of all, and which, in hers, became terrible from the suddenness of the change. She glanced from Christophe to the queen-mother and from the queen-mother back to Christophe,--her face expressing malignant doubt. Then she seized a bell, at the sound of which one of the queen-mother’s maids of honor came running in.

“Mademoiselle du Rouet, send for the captain of the guard,” said Mary Stuart to the maid of honor, contrary to all etiquette, which was necessarily violated under the circumstances.

While the young queen gave this order, Catherine looked intently at Christophe, as if saying to him, “Courage!”

The Reformer understood, and replied by another glance, which seemed to say, “Sacrifice me, as _they_ have sacrificed me!”

“Rely on me,” said Catherine by a gesture. Then she absorbed herself in the documents as her daughter-in-law turned to him.

“You belong to the Reformed religion?” inquired Mary Stuart of Christophe.

“Yes, madame,” he answered.

“I was not mistaken,” she murmured as she again noticed in the eyes of the young Reformer the same cold glance in which dislike was hidden beneath an expression of humility.

Pardaillan suddenly appeared, sent by the two Lorrain princes and by the king to escort the queens. The captain of the guard called for by Mary Stuart followed the young officer, who was devoted to the Guises.

“Go and tell the king and the grand-master and the cardinal, from me, to come here at once, and say that I should not take the liberty of sending for them if something of the utmost importance had not occurred. Go, Pardaillan.--As for you, Lewiston, keep guard over that traitor of a Reformer,” she said to the Scotchman in his mother-tongue, pointing to Christophe.

The young queen and queen-mother maintained a total silence until the arrival of the king and princes. The moments that elapsed were terrible.

Mary Stuart had betrayed to her mother-in-law, in its fullest extent, the part her uncles were inducing her to play; her constant and habitual distrust and espionage were now revealed, and her young conscience told her how dishonoring to a great queen was the work that she was doing. Catherine, on the other hand, had yielded out of fear; she was still afraid of being rightly understood, and she trembled for her future. Both women, one ashamed and angry, the other filled with hatred and yet calm, went to the embrasure of the window and leaned against the casing, one to right, the other to left, silent; but their feelings were expressed in such speaking glances that they averted their eyes and, with mutual artfulness, gazed through the window at the sky. These two great and superior women had, at this crisis, no greater art of behavior than the vulgarest of their sex. Perhaps it is always thus when circumstances arise which overwhelm the human being. There is, inevitably, a moment when genius itself feels its littleness in presence of great catastrophes.

As for Christophe, he was like a man in the act of rolling down a precipice. Lewiston, the Scotch captain, listened to this silence, watching the son of the furrier and the two queens with soldierly curiosity. The entrance of the king and Mary Stuart’s two uncles put an end to the painful situation.

VIII. MARTYRDOM

The cardinal went straight to the queen-mother.

“I hold the threads of the conspiracy of the heretics,” said Catherine. “They have sent me this treaty and these documents by the hands of that child,” she added.

During the time that Catherine was explaining matters to the cardinal, Queen Mary whispered a few words to the grand-master.

“What is all this about?” asked the young king, who was left alone in the midst of the violent clash of interests.

“The proofs of what I was telling to your Majesty have not been long in reaching us,” said the cardinal, who had grasped the papers.

The Duc de Guise drew his brother aside without caring that he interrupted him, and said in his ear, “This makes me lieutenant-general without opposition.”

A shrewd glance was the cardinal’s only answer; showing his brother that he fully understood the advantages to be gained from Catherine’s false position.

“Who sent you here?” said the duke to Christophe.

“Chaudieu, the minister,” he replied.

“Young man, you lie!” said the soldier, sharply; “it was the Prince de Conde.”

“The Prince de Conde, monseigneur!” replied Christophe, with a puzzled look. “I never met him. I am studying law with Monsieur de Thou; I am his secretary, and he does not know that I belong to the Reformed religion. I yielded only to the entreaties of the minister.”

“Enough!” exclaimed the cardinal. “Call Monsieur de Robertet,” he said to Lewiston, “for this young scamp is slyer than an old statesman; he has managed to deceive my brother, and me too; an hour ago I would have given him the sacrament without confession.”

“You are not a child, _morbleu_!” cried the duke, “and we’ll treat you as a man.”

“The heretics have attempted to beguile your august mother,” said the cardinal, addressing the king, and trying to draw him apart to win him over to their ends.

“Alas!” said the queen-mother to her son, assuming a reproachful look and stopping the king at the moment when the cardinal was leading him into the oratory to subject him to his dangerous eloquence, “you see the result of the situation in which I am; they think me irritated by the little influence that I have in public affairs,--I, the mother of four princes of the house of Valois!”

The young king listened attentively. Mary Stuart, seeing the frown upon his brow, took his arm and led him away into the recess of the window, where she cajoled him with sweet speeches in a low voice, no doubt like those she had used that morning in their chamber. The two Guises read the documents given up to them by Catherine. Finding that they contained information which their spies, and Monsieur Braguelonne, the lieutenant of the Chatelet, had not obtained, they were inclined to believe in the sincerity of Catherine de’ Medici. Robertet came and received certain secret orders relative to Christophe. The youthful instrument of the leaders of the Reformation was then led away by four soldiers of the Scottish guard, who took him down the stairs and delivered him to Monsieur de Montresor, provost of the chateau. That terrible personage himself, accompanied by six of his men, conducted Christophe to the prison in the vaulted cellar of the tower, now in ruins, which the concierge of the chateau de Blois shows you with the information that these were the dungeons.

After such an event the Council could be only a formality. The king, the young queen, the Grand-master, and the cardinal returned to it, taking with them the vanquished Catherine, who said no word except to approve the measures proposed by the Guises. In spite of a slight opposition from the Chancelier Olivier (the only person present who said one word that expressed the independence to which his office bound him), the Duc de Guise was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Robertet brought the required documents, showing a devotion which might be called collusion. The king, giving his arm to his mother, recrossed the _salle des gardes_, announcing to the court as he passed along that on the following day he should leave Blois for the chateau of Amboise. The latter residence had been abandoned since the time when Charles VIII. accidentally killed himself by striking his head against the casing of a door on which he had ordered carvings, supposing that he could enter without stooping below the scaffolding. Catherine, to mask the plans of the Guises, remarked aloud that they intended to complete the chateau of Amboise for the Crown at the same time that her own chateau of Chemonceaux was finished. But no one was the dupe of that pretext, and all present awaited great events.

After spending about two hours endeavoring to see where he was in the obscurity of the dungeon, Christophe ended by discovering that the place was sheathed in rough woodwork, thick enough to make the square hole into which he was put both healthy and habitable. The door, like that of a pig-pen, was so low that he stooped almost double on entering it. Beside this door was a heavy iron grating, opening upon a sort of corridor, which gave a little light and a little air. This arrangement, in all respects like that of the dungeons of Venice, showed plainly that the architecture of the chateau of Blois belonged to the Venetian school, which during the Middle Ages, sent so many builders into all parts of Europe. By tapping this species of pit above the woodwork Christophe discovered that the walls which separated his cell to right and left from the adjoining ones were made of brick. Striking one of them to get an idea of its thickness, he was somewhat surprised to hear return blows given on the other side.

“Who are you?” said his neighbor, speaking to him through the corridor.

“I am Christophe Lecamus.”

“I,” replied the voice, “am Captain Chaudieu, brother of the minister. I was taken prisoner to-night at Beaugency; but, luckily, there is nothing against me.”

“All is discovered,” said Christophe; “you are fortunate to be saved from the fray.”

“We have three thousand men at this moment in the forests of the Vendomois, all determined men, who mean to abduct the king and the queen-mother during their journey. Happily La Renaudie was cleverer than I; he managed to escape. You had only just left us when the Guise men surprised us--”

“But I don’t know La Renaudie.”

“Pooh! my brother has told me all about it,” said the captain.

Hearing that, Christophe sat down upon his bench and made no further answer to the pretended captain, for he knew enough of the police to be aware how necessary it was to act with prudence in a prison. In the middle of the night he saw the pale light of a lantern in the corridor, after hearing the ponderous locks of the iron door which closed the cellar groan as they were turned. The provost himself had come to fetch Christophe. This attention to a prisoner who had been left in his dark dungeon for hours without food, struck the poor lad as singular. One of the provost’s men bound his hands with a rope and held him by the end of it until they reached one of the lower halls of the chateau of Louis XII., which was evidently the antechamber to the apartments of some important personage. The provost and his men bade him sit upon a bench, and the man then bound his feet as he had before bound his hands. On a sign from Monsieur de Montresor the man left the room.

“Now listen to me, my friend,” said the provost-marshal, toying with the collar of the Order; for, late as the hour was, he was in full uniform.

This little circumstance gave the young man several thoughts; he saw that all was not over; on the contrary, it was evidently neither to hang nor yet to condemn him that he was brought here.

“My friend, you may spare yourself cruel torture by telling me all you know of the understanding between Monsieur le Prince de Conde and Queen Catherine. Not only will no harm be done to you, but you shall enter the service of Monseigneur the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, who likes intelligent men and on whom your honest face has produced a good impression. The queen-mother is about to be sent back to Florence, and Monsieur de Conde will no doubt be brought to trial. Therefore, believe me, humble folks ought to attach themselves to the great men who are in power. Tell me all; and you will find your profit in it.”

“Alas, monsieur,” replied Christophe; “I have nothing to tell. I told all I know to Messieurs de Guise in the queen’s chamber. Chaudieu persuaded me to put those papers under the eyes of the queen-mother; assuring me that they concerned the peace of the kingdom.”

“You have never seen the Prince de Conde?”

“Never.”

Thereupon Monsieur de Montresor left Christophe and went into the adjoining room; but the youth was not left long alone. The door through which he had been brought opened and gave entrance to several men, who did not close it. Sounds that were far from reassuring were heard from the courtyard; men were bringing wood and machinery, evidently intended for the punishment of the Reformer’s messenger. Christophe’s anxiety soon had matter for reflection in the preparations which were made in the hall before his eyes.

Two coarse and ill-dressed serving-men obeyed the orders of a stout, squat, vigorous man, who cast upon Christophe, as he entered, the glance of a cannibal upon his victim; he looked him over and _estimated_ him,--measuring, like a connoisseur, the strength of his nerves, their power and their endurance. The man was the executioner of Blois. Coming and going, his assistants brought in a mattress, several mallets and wooden wedges, also planks and other articles, the use of which was not plain, nor their look comforting to the poor boy concerned in these preparations, whose blood now curdled in his veins from a vague but most terrible apprehension. Two personages entered the hall at the moment when Monsieur de Montresor reappeared.

“Hey, nothing ready!” cried the provost-marshal, to whom the new-comers bowed with great respect. “Don’t you know,” he said, addressing the stout man and his two assistants, “that Monseigneur the cardinal thinks you already at work? Doctor,” added the provost, turning to one of the new-comers, “this is the man”; and he pointed to Christophe.

The doctor went straight to the prisoner, unbound his hands, and struck him on the breast and back. Science now continued, in a serious manner, the truculent examination of the executioner’s eye. During this time a servant in the livery of the house of Guise brought in several arm-chairs, a table, and writing-materials.

“Begin the _proces verbal_,” said Monsieur de Montresor, motioning to the table the second personage, who was dressed in black, and was evidently a clerk. Then the provost went up to Christophe, and said to him in a very gentle way: “My friend, the chancellor, having learned that you refuse to answer me in a satisfactory manner, decrees that you be put to the question, ordinary and extraordinary.”

“Is he in good health, and can he bear it?” said the clerk to the doctor.

“Yes,” replied the latter, who was one of the physicians of the house of Lorraine.

“In that case, retire to the next room; we will send for you whenever we require your advice.”

The physician left the hall.

His first terror having passed, Christophe rallied his courage; the hour of his martyrdom had come. Thenceforth he looked with cold curiosity at the arrangements that were made by the executioner and his men. After hastily preparing a bed, the two assistants got ready certain appliances called _boots_; which consisted of several planks, between which each leg of the victim was placed. The legs thus placed were brought close together. The apparatus used by binders to press their volumes between two boards, which they fasten by cords, will give an exact idea of the manner in which each leg of the prisoner was bound. We can imagine the effect produced by the insertion of wooden wedges, driven in by hammers between the planks of the two bound legs,--the two sets of planks of course not yielding, being themselves bound together by ropes. These wedges were driven in on a line with the knees and the ankles. The choice of these places where there is little flesh, and where, consequently, the wedge could only be forced in by crushing the bones, made this form of torture, called the “question,” horribly painful. In the “ordinary question” four wedges were driven in,--two at the knees, two at the ankles; but in the “extraordinary question” the number was increased to eight, provided the doctor certified that the prisoner’s vitality was not exhausted. At the time of which we write the “boots” were also applied in the same manner to the hands and wrists; but, being pressed for time, the cardinal, the lieutenant-general, and the chancellor spared Christophe that additional suffering.

The _proces verbal_ was begun; the provost dictated a few sentences as he walked up and down with a meditative air, asking Christophe his name, baptismal name, age, and profession; then he inquired the name of the person from whom he had received the papers he had given to the queen.

“From the minister Chaudieu,” answered Christophe.

“Where did he give them to you?”

“In Paris.”

“In giving them to you he must have told you whether the queen-mother would receive you with pleasure?”

“He told me nothing of that kind,” said Christophe. “He merely asked me to give them to Queen Catherine secretly.”

“You must have seen Chaudieu frequently, or he would not have known that you were going to Blois.”

“The minister did not know from me that in carrying furs to the queen I was also to ask on my father’s behalf for the money the queen-mother owes him; and I did not have time to ask the minister who had told him of it.”

“But these papers, which were given to you without being sealed or enveloped, contained a treaty between the rebels and Queen Catherine. You must have seen that they exposed you to the punishment of all those who assist in a rebellion.”

“Yes.”

“The persons who persuaded you to this act of high treason must have promised you rewards and the protection of the queen-mother.”

“I did it out of attachment to Chaudieu, the only person whom I saw in the matter.”

“Do you persist in saying you did not see the Prince de Conde?”

“Yes.”

“The Prince de Conde did not tell you that the queen-mother was inclined to enter into his views against the Messieurs de Guise?”

“I did not see him.”

“Take care! one of your accomplices, La Renaudie, has been arrested. Strong as he is, he was not able to bear the ‘question,’ which will now be put to you; he confessed at last that both he and the Prince de Conde had an interview with you. If you wish to escape the torture of the question, I exhort you to tell me the simple truth. Perhaps you will thus obtain your full pardon.”

Christophe answered that he could not state a thing of which he had no knowledge, or give himself accomplices when he had none. Hearing these words, the provost-marshal signed to the executioner and retired himself to the inner room. At that fatal sign Christophe’s brows contracted, his forehead worked with nervous convulsion, as he prepared himself to suffer. His hands closed with such violence that the nails entered the flesh without his feeling them. Three men seized him, took him to the camp bed and laid him there, letting his legs hang down. While the executioner fastened him to the rough bedstead with strong cords, the assistants bound his legs into the “boots.” Presently the cords were tightened, by means of a wrench, without the pressure causing much pain to the young Reformer. When each leg was thus held as it were in a vice, the executioner grasped his hammer and picked up the wedges, looking alternately at the victim and at the clerk.

“Do you persist in your denial?” asked the clerk.

“I have told the truth,” replied Christophe.

“Very well. Go on,” said the clerk, closing his eyes.

The cords were tightened with great force. This was perhaps the most painful moment of the torture; the flesh being suddenly compressed, the blood rushed violently toward the breast. The poor boy could not restrain a dreadful cry and seemed about to faint. The doctor was called in. After feeling Christophe’s pulse, he told the executioner to wait a quarter of an hour before driving the first wedge in, to let the action of the blood subside and allow the victim to recover his full sensitiveness. The clerk suggested, kindly, that if he could not bear this beginning of sufferings which he could not escape, it would be better to reveal all at once; but Christophe made no reply except to say, “The king’s tailor! the king’s tailor!”

“What do you mean by those words?” asked the clerk.

“Seeing what torture I must bear,” said Christophe, slowly, hoping to gain time to rest, “I call up all my strength, and try to increase it by thinking of the martyrdom borne by the king’s tailor for the holy cause of the Reformation, when the question was applied to him in presence of Madame la Duchesse de Valentinois and the king. I shall try to be worthy of him.”

While the physician exhorted the unfortunate lad not to force them to have recourse to more violent measures, the cardinal and the duke, impatient to know the result of the interrogations, entered the hall and themselves asked Christophe to speak the truth, immediately. The young man repeated the only confession he had allowed himself to make, which implicated no one but Chaudieu. The princes made a sign, on which the executioner and his assistant seized their hammers, taking each a wedge, which then they drove in between the joints, standing one to right, the other to left of their victim; the executioner’s wedge was driven in at the knees, his assistant’s at the ankles.

The eyes of all present fastened on those of Christophe, and he, no doubt excited by the presence of those great personages, shot forth such burning glances that they appeared to have all the brilliancy of flame. As the third and fourth wedges were driven in, a dreadful groan escaped him. When he saw the executioner take up the wedges for the “extraordinary question” he said no word and made no sound, but his eyes took on so terrible a fixity, and he cast upon the two great princes who were watching him a glance so penetrating, that the duke and cardinal were forced to drop their eyes. Philippe le Bel met with the same resistance when the torture of the pendulum was applied in his presence to the Templars. That punishment consisted in striking the victim on the breast with one arm of the balance pole with which money is coined, its end being covered with a pad of leather. One of the knights thus tortured, looked so intently at the king that Philippe could not detach his eyes from him. At the third blow the king left the chamber on hearing the knight summon him to appear within a year before the judgment-seat of God,--as, in fact, he did. At the fifth blow, the first of the “extraordinary question,” Christophe said to the cardinal: “Monseigneur, put an end to my torture; it is useless.”

The cardinal and the duke re-entered the adjoining hall, and Christophe distinctly heard the following words said by Queen Catherine: “Go on; after all, he is only a heretic.”

She judged it prudent to be more stern to her accomplice than the executioners themselves.

The sixth and seventh wedges were driven in without a word of complaint from Christophe. His face shone with extraordinary brilliancy, due, no doubt, to the excess of strength which his fanatic devotion gave him. Where else but in the feelings of the soul can we find the power necessary to bear such sufferings? Finally, he smiled when he saw the executioner lifting the eighth and last wedge. This horrible torture had lasted by this time over an hour.

The clerk now went to call the physician that he might decide whether the eighth wedge could be driven in without endangering the life of the victim. During this delay the duke returned to look at Christophe.

“_Ventre-de-biche_! you are a fine fellow,” he said to him, bending down to whisper the words. “I love brave men. Enter my service, and you shall be rich and happy; my favors shall heal those wounded limbs. I do not propose to you any baseness; I will not ask you to return to your party and betray its plans,--there are always traitors enough for that, and the proof is in the prisons of Blois; tell me only on what terms are the queen-mother and the Prince de Conde?”

“I know nothing about it, monseigneur,” replied Christophe Lecamus.

The physician came, examined the victim, and said that he could bear the eighth wedge.

“Then insert it,” said the cardinal. “After all, as the queen says, he is only a heretic,” he added, looking at Christophe with a dreadful smile.

At this moment Catherine came with slow steps from the adjoining apartment and stood before Christophe, coldly observing him. Instantly she was the object of the closest attention on the part of the two brothers, who watched alternately the queen and her accomplice. On this solemn test the whole future of that ambitious woman depended; she felt the keenest admiration for Christophe, yet she gazed sternly at him; she hated the Guises, and she smiled upon them!

“Young man,” said the queen, “confess that you have seen the Prince de Conde, and you will be richly rewarded.”

“Ah! what a business this is for you, madame!” cried Christophe, pitying her.

The queen quivered.

“He insults me!” she exclaimed. “Why do you not hang him?” she cried, turning to the two brothers, who stood thoughtful.

“What a woman!” said the duke in a glance at his brother, consulting him by his eye, and leading him to the window.

“I shall stay in France and be revenged upon them,” thought the queen. “Come, make him confess, or let him die!” she said aloud, addressing Montresor.

The provost-marshal turned away his eyes, the executioners were busy with the wedges; Catherine was free to cast one glance upon the martyr, unseen by others, which fell on Christophe like the dew. The eyes of the great queen seemed to him moist; two tears were in them, but they did not fall. The wedges were driven; a plank was broken by the blow. Christophe gave one dreadful cry, after which he was silent; his face shone,--he believed he was dying.

“Let him die?” said the cardinal, echoing the queen’s last words with a sort of irony; “no, no! don’t break that thread,” he said to the provost.

The duke and the cardinal consulted together in a low voice.

“What is to be done with him?” asked the executioner.

“Send him to the prison at Orleans,” said the duke, addressing Monsieur de Montresor; “and don’t hang him without my order.”

The extreme sensitiveness to which Christophe’s internal organism had been brought, increased by a resistance which called into play every power of the human body, existed to the same degree, in his senses. He alone heard the following words whispered by the Duc de Guise in the ear of his brother the cardinal:

“I don’t give up all hope of getting the truth out of that little fellow yet.”

When the princes had left the hall the executioners unbound the legs of their victim roughly and without compassion.

“Did any one ever see a criminal with such strength?” said the chief executioner to his aids. “The rascal bore that last wedge when he ought to have died; I’ve lost the price of his body.”

“Unbind me gently; don’t make me suffer, friends,” said poor Christophe. “Some day I will reward you--”

“Come, come, show some humanity,” said the physician. “Monseigneur esteems the young man, and told me to look after him.”

“I am going to Amboise with my assistants,--take care of him yourself,” said the executioner, brutally. “Besides, here comes the jailer.”

The executioner departed, leaving Christophe in the hands of the soft-spoken doctor, who by the aid of Christophe’s future jailer, carried the poor boy to a bed, brought him some broth, helped him to swallow it, sat down beside him, felt his pulse, and tried to comfort him.

“You won’t die of this,” he said. “You ought to feel great inward comfort, knowing that you have done your duty.--The queen-mother bids me take care of you,” he added in a whisper.

“The queen is very good,” said Christophe, whose terrible sufferings had developed an extraordinary lucidity in his mind, and who, after enduring such unspeakable sufferings, was determined not to compromise the results of his devotion. “But she might have spared me much agony be telling my persecutors herself the secrets that I know nothing about, instead of urging them on.”

Hearing that reply, the doctor took his cap and cloak and left Christophe, rightly judging that he could worm nothing out of a man of that stamp. The jailer of Blois now ordered the poor lad to be carried away on a stretcher by four men, who took him to the prison in the town, where Christophe immediately fell into the deep sleep which, they say, comes to most mothers after the terrible pangs of childbirth.

IX. THE TUMULT AT AMBOISE

By moving the court to the chateau of Amboise, the two Lorrain princes intended to set a trap for the leader of the party of the Reformation, the Prince de Conde, whom they had made the king summon to his presence. As vassal of the Crown and prince of the blood, Conde was bound to obey the summons of his sovereign. Not to come to Amboise would constitute the crime of treason; but if he came, he put himself in the power of the Crown. Now, at this moment, as we have seen, the Crown, the council, the court, and all their powers were solely in the hands of the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine. The Prince de Conde showed, at this delicate crisis, a presence of mind and a decision and willingness which made him the worthy exponent of Jeanne d’Albret and the valorous general of the Reformers. He travelled at the rear of the conspirators as far as Vendome, intending to support them in case of their success. When the first uprising ended by a brief skirmish, in which the flower of the nobility beguiled by Calvin perished, the prince arrived, with fifty noblemen, at the chateau of Amboise on the very day after that fight, which the politic Guises termed “the Tumult of Amboise.” As soon as the duke and cardinal heard of his coming they sent the Marechal de Saint-Andre with an escort of a hundred men to meet him. When the prince and his own escort reached the gates of the chateau the marechal refused entrance to the latter.

“You must enter alone, monseigneur,” said the Chancellor Olivier, the Cardinal de Tournon, and Birago, who were stationed outside of the portcullis.

“And why?”

“You are suspected of treason,” replied the chancellor.

The prince, who saw that his suite were already surrounded by the troop of the Duc de Nemours, replied tranquilly: “If that is so, I will go alone to my cousin, and prove to him my innocence.”

He dismounted, talked with perfect freedom of mind to Birago, the Cardinal de Tournon, the chancellor, and the Duc de Nemours, from whom he asked for particulars of the “tumult.”

“Monseigneur,” replied the duke, “the rebels had confederates in Amboise. A captain, named Lanoue, had introduced armed men, who opened the gate to them, through which they entered and made themselves masters of the town--”

“That is to say, you opened the mouth of a sack, and they ran into it,” replied the prince, looking at Birago.

“If they had been supported by the attack which Captain Chaudieu, the preacher’s brother, was expected to make before the gate of the Bon-Hommes, they would have been completely successful,” replied the Duc de Nemours. “But in consequence of the position which the Duc de Guise ordered me to take up, Captain Chaudieu was obliged to turn my flank to avoid a fight. So instead of arriving by night, like the rest, this rebel and his men got there at daybreak, by which time the king’s troops had crushed the invaders of the town.”

“And you had a reserve force to recover the gate which had been opened to them?” said the prince.

“Monsieur le Marechal de Saint-Andre was there with five hundred men-at-arms.”

The prince gave the highest praise to these military arrangements.

“The lieutenant-general must have been fully aware of the plans of the Reformers, to have acted as he did,” he said in conclusion. “They were no doubt betrayed.”

The prince was treated with increasing harshness. After separating him from his escort at the gates, the cardinal and the chancellor barred his way when he reached the staircase which led to the apartments of the king.

“We are directed by his Majesty, monseigneur, to take you to your own apartments,” they said.

“Am I, then, a prisoner?”

“If that were the king’s intention you would not be accompanied by a prince of the Church, nor by me,” replied the chancellor.

These two personages escorted the prince to an apartment, where guards of honor--so-called--were given him. There he remained, without seeing any one, for some hours. From his window he looked down upon the Loire and the meadows of the beautiful valley stretching from Amboise to Tours. He was reflecting on the situation, and asking himself whether the Guises would really dare anything against his person, when the door of his chamber opened and Chicot, the king’s fool, formerly a dependent of his own, entered the room.

“They told me you were in disgrace,” said the prince.

“You’d never believe how virtuous the court has become since the death of Henri II.”

“But the king loves a laugh.”

“Which king,--Francois II., or Francois de Lorraine?”

“You are not afraid of the duke, if you talk in that way!”

“He wouldn’t punish me for it, monseigneur,” replied Chicot, laughing.

“To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

“Hey! Isn’t it due to you on your return? I bring you my cap and bells.”

“Can I go out?”

“Try.”

“Suppose I do go out, what then?”

“I should say that you had won the game by playing against the rules.”

“Chicot, you alarm me. Are you sent here by some one who takes an interest in me?”

“Yes,” said Chicot, nodding. He came nearer to the prince, and made him understand that they were being watched and overheard.

“What have you to say to me?” asked the Prince de Conde, in a low voice.

“Boldness alone can pull you out of this scrape; the message comes from the queen-mother,” replied the fool, slipping his words into the ear of the prince.

“Tell those who sent you,” replied Conde, “that I should not have entered this chateau if I had anything to reproach myself with, or to fear.”

“I rush to report that lofty answer!” cried the fool.

Two hours later, that is, about one o’clock in the afternoon, before the king’s dinner, the chancellor and Cardinal de Tournon came to fetch the prince and present him to Francois II. in the great gallery of the chateau of Amboise, where the councils were held. There, before the whole court, Conde pretended surprise at the coldness with which the little king received him, and asked the reason of it.

“You are accused, cousin,” said the queen-mother, sternly, “of taking part in the conspiracy of the Reformers; and you must prove yourself a faithful subject and a good Catholic, if you do not desire to draw down upon your house the anger of the king.”

Hearing these words said, in the midst of the most profound silence, by Catherine de’ Medici, on whose right arm the king was leaning, the Duc d’Orleans being on her left side, the Prince de Conde recoiled three steps, laid his hand on his sword with a proud motion, and looked at all the persons who surrounded him.

“Those who said that, madame,” he cried in an angry voice, “lied in their throats!”

Then he flung his glove at the king’s feet, saying: “Let him who believes that calumny come forward!”

The whole court trembled as the Duc de Guise was seen to leave his place; but instead of picking up the glove, he advanced to the intrepid hunchback.

“If you desire a second in that duel, monseigneur, do me the honor to accept my services,” he said. “I will answer for you; I know that you will show the Reformers how mistaken they are if they think to have you for their leader.”

The prince was forced to take the hand of the lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Chicot picked up the glove and returned it to Monsieur de Conde.

“Cousin,” said the little king, “you must draw your sword only for the defence of the kingdom. Come and dine.”

The Cardinal de Lorraine, surprised at his brother’s action, drew him away to his own apartments. The Prince de Conde, having escaped his apparent danger, offered his hand to Mary Stuart to lead her to the dining hall; but all the while that he made her flattering speeches he pondered in his mind what trap the astute Balafre was setting for him. In vain he worked his brains, for it was not until Queen Mary herself betrayed it that he guessed the intention of the Guises.

“‘Twould have been a great pity,” she said laughing, “if so clever a head had fallen; you must admit that my uncle has been generous.”

“Yes, madame; for my head is only useful on my shoulders, though one of them is notoriously higher than the other. But is this really your uncle’s generosity? Is he not getting the credit of it rather cheaply? Do you think it would be so easy to take off the head of a prince of the blood?”

“All is not over yet,” she said. “We shall see what your conduct will be at the execution of the noblemen, your friends, at which the Council has decided to make a great public display of severity.”

“I shall do,” said the prince, “whatever the king does.”

“The king, the queen-mother, and myself will be present at the execution, together with the whole court and the ambassadors--”

“A fete!” said the prince, sarcastically.

“Better than that,” said the young queen, “an _act of faith_, an act of the highest policy. ‘Tis a question of forcing the noblemen of France to submit themselves to the Crown, and compelling them to give up their tastes for plots and factions--”

“You will not break their belligerent tempers by the show of danger, madame; you will risk the Crown itself in the attempt,” replied the prince.

At the end of the dinner, which was gloomy enough, Queen Mary had the cruel boldness to turn the conversation openly upon the trial of the noblemen on the charge of being seized with arms in their hands, and to speak of the necessity of making a great public show of their execution.

“Madame,” said Francois II., “is it not enough for the king of France to know that so much brave blood is to flow? Must he make a triumph of it?”

“No, sire; but an example,” replied Catherine.

“It was the custom of your father and your grandfather to be present at the burning of heretics,” said Mary Stuart.

“The kings who reigned before me did as they thought best, and I choose to do as I please,” said the little king.

“Philip the Second,” remarked Catherine, “who is certainly a great king, lately postponed an _auto da fe_ until he could return from the Low Countries to Valladolid.”

“What do you think, cousin?” said the king to Prince de Conde.

“Sire, you cannot avoid it, and the papal nuncio and all the ambassadors should be present. I shall go willingly, as these ladies take part in the fete.”

Thus the Prince de Conde, at a glance from Catherine de’ Medici, bravely chose his course.

* * * * *

At the moment when the Prince de Conde was entering the chateau d’Amboise, Lecamus, the furrier of the two queens, was also arriving from Paris, brought to Amboise by the anxiety into which the news of the tumult had thrown both his family and that of Lallier. When the old man presented himself at the gate of the chateau, the captain of the guard, on hearing that he was the queens’ furrier, said:--

“My good man, if you want to be hanged you have only to set foot in this courtyard.”

Hearing these words, the father, in despair, sat down on a stone at a little distance and waited until some retainer of the two queens or some servant-woman might pass who would give him news of his son. But he sat there all day without seeing any one whom he knew, and was forced at last to go down into the town, where he found, not without some difficulty, a lodging in a hostelry on the public square where the executions took place. He was obliged to pay a pound a day to obtain a room with a window looking on the square. The next day he had the courage to watch, from his window, the execution of all the abettors of the rebellion who were condemned to be broken on the wheel or hanged, as persons of little importance. He was happy indeed not to see his own son among the victims.

When the execution was over he went into the square and put himself in the way of the clerk of the court. After giving his name, and slipping a purse full of crowns into the man’s hand, he begged him to look on the records and see if the name of Christophe Lecamus appeared in either of the three preceding executions. The clerk, touched by the manner and the tones of the despairing father, took him to his own house. After a careful search he was able to give the old man an absolute assurance that Christophe was not among the persons thus far executed, nor among those who were to be put to death within a few days.

“My dear man,” said the clerk, “Parliament has taken charge of the trial of the great lords implicated in the affair, and also that of the principal leaders. Perhaps your son is detained in the prisons of the chateau, and he may be brought forth for the magnificent execution which their Excellencies the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine are now preparing. The heads of twenty-seven barons, eleven counts, and seven marquises,--in all, fifty noblemen or leaders of the Reformers,--are to be cut off. As the justiciary of the county of Tourine is quite distinct from that of the parliament of Paris, if you are determined to know about your son, I advise you to go and see the Chancelier Olivier, who has the management of this great trial under orders from the lieutenant-general of the kingdom.”

The poor old man, acting on this advice, went three times to see the chancellor, standing in a long queue of persons waiting to ask mercy for their friends. But as the titled men were made to pass before the burghers, he was obliged to give up the hope of speaking to the chancellor, though he saw him several times leave the house to go either to the chateau or to the committee appointed by the Parliament,--passing each time between a double hedge of petitioners who were kept back by the guards to allow him free passage. It was a horrible scene of anguish and desolation; for among these petitioners were many women, wives, mothers, daughters, whole families in distress. Old Lecamus gave much gold to the footmen of the chateau, entreating them to put certain letters which he wrote into the hand either of Dayelle, Queen Mary’s woman, or into that of the queen-mother; but the footmen took the poor man’s money and carried the letters, according to the general order of the cardinal, to the provost-marshal. By displaying such unheard-of cruelty the Guises knew that they incurred great dangers from revenge, and never did they take such precautions for their safety as they did while the court was at Amboise; consequently, neither the greatest of all corrupters, gold, nor the incessant and active search which the old furrier instituted gave him the slightest gleam of light on the fate of his son. He went about the little town with a mournful air, watching the great preparations made by order of the cardinal for the dreadful show at which the Prince de Conde had agreed to be present.

Public curiosity was stimulated from Paris to Nantes by the means adopted on this occasion. The execution was announced from all pulpits by the rectors of the churches, while at the same time they gave thanks for the victory of the king over the heretics. Three handsome balconies, the middle one more sumptuous than the other two, were built against the terrace of the chateau of Amboise, at the foot of which the executions were appointed to take place. Around the open square, stagings were erected, and these were filled with an immense crowd of people attracted by the wide-spread notoriety given to this “act of faith.” Ten thousand persons camped in the adjoining fields the night before the day on which the horrible spectacle was appointed to take place. The roofs on the houses were crowded with spectators, and windows were let at ten pounds apiece,--an enormous sum in those days. The poor old father had engaged, as we may well believe, one of the best places from which the eye could take in the whole of the terrible scene, where so many men of noble blood were to perish on a vast scaffold covered with black cloth, erected in the middle of the open square. Thither, on the morning of the fatal day, they brought the _chouquet_,--a name given to the block on which the condemned man laid his head as he knelt before it. After this they brought an arm-chair draped with black, for the clerk of the Parliament, whose business it was to call up the condemned noblemen to their death and read their sentences. The whole square was guarded from early morning by the Scottish guard and the gendarmes of the king’s household, in order to keep back the crowd which threatened to fill it before the hour of the execution.

After a solemn mass said at the chateau and in the churches of the town, the condemned lords, the last of the conspirators who were left alive, were led out. These gentlemen, some of whom had been put to the torture, were grouped at the foot of the scaffold and surrounded by monks, who endeavored to make them abjure the doctrines of Calvin. But not a single man listened to the words of the priests who had been appointed for this duty by the Cardinal of Lorraine; among whom the gentlemen no doubt feared to find spies of the Guises. In order to avoid the importunity of these antagonists they chanted a psalm, put into French verse by Clement Marot. Calvin, as we all know, had ordained that prayers to God should be in the language of each country, as much from a principle of common sense as in opposition to the Roman worship. To those in the crowd who pitied these unfortunate gentlemen it was a moving incident to hear them chant the following verse at the very moment when the king and court arrived and took their places:--

“God be merciful unto us, And bless us! And show us the light of his countenance, And be merciful unto us.”

The eyes of all the Reformers turned to their leader, the Prince de Conde, who was placed intentionally between Queen Mary and the young Duc d’Orleans. Catherine de’ Medici was beside the king, and the rest of the court were on her left. The papal nuncio stood behind Queen Mary; the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, the Duc de Guise, was on horseback below the balcony, with two of the marshals of France and his staff captains. When the Prince de Conde appeared all the condemned noblemen who knew him bowed to him, and the brave hunchback returned their salutation.

“It would be hard,” he remarked to the Duc d’Orleans, “not to be civil to those about to die.”

The two other balconies were filled by invited guests, courtiers, and persons on duty about the court. In short, the whole company of the chateau de Blois had come to Amboise to assist at this festival of death, precisely as it passed, a little later, from the pleasures of a court to the perils of war, with an easy facility, which will always seem to foreigners one of the main supports of their policy toward France.

The poor syndic of the furriers of Paris was filled with the keenest joy at not seeing his son among the fifty-seven gentlemen who were condemned to die.

At a sign from the Duc de Guise, the clerk seated on the scaffold cried in a loud voice:--

“Jean-Louis-Alberic, Baron de Raunay, guilty of heresy, of the crime of _lese-majeste_, and assault with armed hand against the person of the king.”

A tall handsome man mounted the scaffold with a firm step, bowed to the people and the court, and said:

“That sentence lies. I took arms to deliver the king from his enemies, the Guises.”

He placed his head on the block, and it fell. The Reformers chanted:--

“Thou, O God! hast proved us; Thou hast tried us; As silver is tried in the fire, So hast thou purified us.”

“Robert-Jean-Rene Briquemart, Comte de Villemongis, guilty of the crime of _lese-majeste_, and of attempts against the person of the king!” called the clerk.

The count dipped his hands in the blood of the Baron de Raunay, and said:--

“May this blood recoil upon those who are really guilty of those crimes.”

The Reformers chanted:--

“Thou broughtest us into the snare; Thou laidest afflictions upon our loins; Thou hast suffered our enemies To ride over us.”

“You must admit, monseigneur,” said the Prince de Conde to the papal nuncio, “that if these French gentlemen know how to conspire, they also know how to die.”

“What hatreds, brother!” whispered the Duchesse de Guise to the Cardinal de Lorraine, “you are drawing down upon the heads of our children!”

“The sight makes me sick,” said the young king, turning pale at the flow of blood.

“Pooh! only rebels!” replied Catherine de’ Medici.

The chants went on; the axe still fell. The sublime spectacle of men singing as they died, and, above all, the impression produced upon the crowd by the progressive diminution of the chanting voices, superseded the fear inspired by the Guises.

“Mercy!” cried the people with one voice, when they heard the solitary chant of the last and most important of the great lords, who was saved to be the final victim. He alone remained at the foot of the steps by which the others had mounted the scaffold, and he chanted:--

“Thou, O God, be merciful unto us, And bless us, And cause thy face to shine upon us. Amen!”

“Come, Duc de Nemours,” said the Prince de Conde, weary of the part he was playing; “you who have the credit of the skirmish, and who helped to make these men prisoners, do you not feel under an obligation to ask mercy for this one? It is Castelnau, who, they say, received your word of honor that he should be courteously treated if he surrendered.”

“Do you think I waited till he was here before trying to save him?” said the Duc de Nemours, stung by the stern reproach.

The clerk called slowly--no doubt he was intentionally slow:--

“Michel-Jean-Louis, Baron de Castelnau-Chalosse, accused and convicted of the crime of _lese-majeste_, and of attempts against the person of the king.”

“No,” said Castelnau, proudly, “it cannot be a crime to oppose the tyranny and the projected usurpation of the Guises.”

The executioner, sick of his task, saw a movement in the king’s gallery, and fumbled with his axe.

“Monsieur le baron,” he said, “I do not want to execute you; a moment’s delay may save you.”

All the people again cried, “Mercy!”

“Come!” said the king, “mercy for that poor Castelnau, who saved the life of the Duc d’Orleans.”

The cardinal intentionally misunderstood the king’s speech.

“Go on,” he motioned to the executioner, and the head of Castelnau fell at the very moment when the king had pronounced his pardon.

“That head, cardinal, goes to your account,” said Catherine de’ Medici.

The day after this dreadful execution the Prince de Conde returned to Navarre.

The affair produced a great sensation in France and at all the foreign courts. The torrents of noble blood then shed caused such anguish to the chancellor Olivier that his honorable mind, perceiving at last the real end and aim of the Guises disguised under a pretext of defending religion and the monarchy, felt itself no longer able to make head against them. Though he was their creature, he was not willing to sacrifice his duty and the Throne to their ambition; and he withdrew from his post, suggesting l’Hopital as his rightful successor. Catherine, hearing of Olivier’s suggestion, immediately proposed Birago, and put much warmth into her request. The cardinal, knowing nothing of the letter written by l’Hopital to the queen-mother, and supposing him faithful to the house of Lorraine, pressed his appointment in opposition to that of Birago, and Catherine allowed herself to seem vanquished. From the moment that l’Hopital entered upon his duties he took measures against the Inquisition, which the Cardinal de Lorraine was desirous of introducing into France; and he thwarted so successfully all the anti-gallican policy of the Guises, and proved himself so true a Frenchmen, that in order to subdue him he was exiled, within three months of his appointment, to his country-seat of Vignay, near Etampes.

The worthy old Lecamus waited impatiently till the court left Amboise, being unable to find an opportunity to speak to either of the queens, and hoping to put himself in their way as the court advanced along the river-bank on its return to Blois. He disguised himself as a pauper, at the risk of being taken for a spy, and by means of this travesty, he mingled with the crowd of beggars which lined the roadway. After the departure of the Prince de Conde, and the execution of the leaders, the duke and cardinal thought they had sufficiently silenced the Reformers to allow the queen-mother a little more freedom. Lecamus knew that, instead of travelling in a litter, Catherine intended to go on horseback, _a la planchette_,--such was the name given to a sort of stirrup invented for or by the queen-mother, who, having hurt her leg on some occasion, ordered a velvet-covered saddle with a plank on which she could place both feet by sitting sideways on the horse and passing one leg through a depression in the saddle. As the queen-mother had very handsome legs, she was accused of inventing this method of riding, in order to show them. The old furrier fortunately found a moment when he could present himself to her sight; but the instant that the queen recognized him she gave signs of displeasure.

“Go away, my good man, and let no one see you speak to me,” she said with anxiety. “Get yourself elected deputy to the States-general, by the guild of your trade, and act for me when the Assembly convenes at Orleans; you shall know whom to trust in the matter of your son.”

“Is he living?” asked the old man.

“Alas!” said the queen, “I hope so.”

Lecamus was obliged to return to Paris with nothing better than those doubtful words and the secret of the approaching convocation of the States-general, thus confided to him by the queen-mother.

X. COSMO RUGGIERO

The Cardinal de Lorraine obtained, within a few days of the events just related, certain revelations as to the culpability of the court of Navarre. At Lyon, and at Mouvans in Dauphine, a body of Reformers, under command of the most enterprising prince of the house of Bourbon had endeavored to incite the populace to rise. Such audacity, after the bloody executions at Amboise, astonished the Guises, who (no doubt to put an end to heresy by means known only to themselves) proposed the convocation of the States-general at Orleans. Catherine de’ Medici, seeing a chance of support to her policy in a national representation, joyfully agreed to it. The cardinal, bent on recovering his prey and degrading the house of Bourbon, convoked the States for the sole purpose of bringing the Prince de Conde and the king of Navarre (Antoine de Bourbon, father of Henri IV.) to Orleans,--intending to make use of Christophe to convict the prince of high treason if he succeeded in again getting him within the power of the Crown.

After two months had passed in the prison at Blois, Christophe was removed on a litter to a tow-boat, which sailed up the Loire to Orleans, helped by a westerly wind. He arrived there in the evening and was taken at once to the celebrated tower of Saint-Aignan. The poor lad, who did not know what to think of his removal, had plenty of time to reflect on his conduct and on his future. He remained there two months, lying on his pallet, unable to move his legs. The bones of his joints were broken. When he asked for the help of a surgeon of the town, the jailer replied that the orders were so strict about him that he dared not allow any one but himself even to bring him food. This severity, which placed him virtually in solitary confinement, amazed Christophe. To his mind, he ought either to be hanged or released; for he was, of course, entirely ignorant of the events at Amboise.

In spite of certain secret advice sent to them by Catherine de’ Medici, the two chiefs of the house of Bourbon resolved to be present at the States-general, so completely did the autograph letters they received from the king reassure them; and no sooner had the court established itself at Orleans than it learned, not without amazement, from Groslot, chancellor of Navarre, that the Bourbon princes had arrived.

Francois II. established himself in the house of the chancellor of Navarre, who was also _bailli_, in other words, chief justice of the law courts, at Orleans. This Groslot, whose dual position was one of the singularities of this period--when Reformers themselves owned abbeys--Groslot, the Jacques Coeur of Orleans, one of the richest burghers of the day, did not bequeath his name to the house, for in after years it was called Le Bailliage, having been, undoubtedly, purchased either by the heirs of the Crown or by the provinces as the proper place in which to hold the legal courts. This charming structure, built by the bourgeoisie of the sixteenth century, which completes so admirably the history of a period in which king, nobles, and burghers rivalled each other in the grace, elegance, and richness of their dwellings (witness Varangeville, the splendid manor-house of Ango, and the mansion, called that of Hercules, in Paris), exists to this day, though in a state to fill archaeologists and lovers of the Middle Ages with despair. It would be difficult, however, to go to Orleans and not take notice of the Hotel-de-Ville which stands on the place de l’Estape. This hotel-de-ville, or town-hall, is the former Bailliage, the mansion of Groslot, the most illustrious house in Orleans, and the most neglected.

The remains of this old building will still show, to the eyes of an archaeologist, how magnificent it was at a period when the houses of the burghers were commonly built of wood rather than stone, a period when noblemen alone had the right to build _manors_,--a significant word. Having served as the dwelling of the king at a period when the court displayed much pomp and luxury, the hotel Groslot must have been the most splendid house in Orleans. It was here, on the place de l’Estape, that the Guises and the king reviewed the burgher guard, of which Monsieur de Cypierre was made the commander during the sojourn of the king. At this period the cathedral of Sainte-Croix, afterward completed by Henri IV.,--who chose to give that proof of the sincerity of his conversion,--was in process of erection, and its neighborhood, heaped with stones and cumbered with piles of wood, was occupied by the Guises and their retainers, who were quartered in the bishop’s palace, now destroyed.

The town was under military discipline, and the measures taken by the Guises proved how little liberty they intended to leave to the States-general, the members of which flocked into the town, raising the rents of the poorest lodgings. The court, the burgher militia, the nobility, and the burghers themselves were all in a state of expectation, awaiting some _coup-d’Etat_; and they found themselves not mistaken when the princes of the blood arrived. As the Bourbon princes entered the king’s chamber, the court saw with terror the insolent bearing of Cardinal de Lorraine. Determined to show his intentions openly, he remained covered, while the king of Navarre stood before him bare-headed. Catherine de’ Medici lowered her eyes, not to show the indignation that she felt. Then followed a solemn explanation between the young king and the two chiefs of the younger branch. It was short, for that the first words of the Prince de Conde Francois II. interrupted him, with threatening looks:

“Messieurs, my cousins, I had supposed the affair of Amboise over; I find it is not so, and you are compelling us to regret the indulgence which we showed.”

“It is not the king so much as the Messieurs de Guise who now address us,” replied the Prince de Conde.

“Adieu, monsieur,” cried the little king, crimson with anger. When he left the king’s presence the prince found his way barred in the great hall by two officers of the Scottish guard. As the captain of the French guard advanced, the prince drew a letter from his doublet, and said to him in presence of the whole court:--

“Can you read that paper aloud to me, Monsieur de Maille-Breze?”

“Willingly,” said the French captain:--

“‘My cousin, come in all security; I give you my royal word that you can do so. If you have need of a safe conduct, this letter will serve as one.’”

“Signed?” said the shrewd and courageous hunchback.

“Signed ‘Francois,’” said Maille.

“No, no!” exclaimed the prince, “it is signed: ‘Your good cousin and friend, Francois,’--Messieurs,” he said to the Scotch guard, “I follow you to the prison to which you are ordered, on behalf of the king, to conduct me. There is enough nobility in this hall to understand the matter!”

The profound silence which followed these words ought to have enlightened the Guises, but silence is that to which all princes listen least.

“Monseigneur,” said the Cardinal de Tournon, who was following the prince, “you know well that since the affair at Amboise you have made certain attempts both at Lyon and at Mouvans in Dauphine against the royal authority, of which the king had no knowledge when he wrote to you in those terms.”

“Tricksters!” cried the prince, laughing.

“You have made a public declaration against the Mass and in favor of heresy.”

“We are masters in Navarre,” said the prince.

“You mean to say in Bearn. But you owe homage to the Crown,” replied President de Thou.

“Ha! you here, president?” cried the prince, sarcastically. “Is the whole Parliament with you?”

So saying, he cast a look of contempt upon the cardinal and left the hall. He saw plainly enough that they meant to have his head. The next day, when Messieurs de Thou, de Viole, d’Espesse, the procureur-general Bourdin, and the chief clerk of the court du Tillet, entered his presence, he kept them standing, and expressed his regrets to see them charged with a duty which did not belong to them. Then he said to the clerk, “Write down what I say,” and dictated as follows:--

“I, Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Conde, peer of the kingdom, Marquis de Conti, Comte de Soissons, prince of the blood of France, do declare that I formally refuse to recognize any commission appointed to try me, because, in my quality and in virtue of the privilege appertaining to all members of the royal house, I can only be accused, tried, and judged by the Parliament of peers, both Chambers assembled, the king being seated on his bed of justice.”

“You ought to know that, gentlemen, better than others,” he added; “and this reply is all that you will get from me. For the rest, I trust in God and my right.”

The magistrates continued to address him notwithstanding his obstinate silence. The king of Navarre was left at liberty, but closely watched; his prison was larger than that of the prince, and this was the only real difference in the position of the two brothers,--the intention being that their heads should fall together.

Christophe was therefore kept in the strictest solitary confinement by order of the cardinal and the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, for no other purpose than to give the judges proof of the culpability of the Prince de Conde. The letters seized on Lasagne, the prince’s secretary, though intelligible to statesmen, where not sufficiently plain proof for judges. The cardinal intended to confront the prince and Christophe by accident; and it was not without intention that the young Reformer was placed in one of the lower rooms in the tower of Saint-Aignan, with a window looking on the prison yard. Each time that Christophe was brought before the magistrates, and subjected to a close examination, he sheltered himself behind a total and complete denial, which prolonged his trial until after the opening of the States-general.

Old Lecamus, who by that time had got himself elected deputy of the _tiers-etat_ by the burghers of Paris, arrived at Orleans a few days after the arrest of the Prince de Conde. This news, which reached him at Etampes, redoubled his anxiety; for he fully understood--he, who alone knew of Christophe’s interview with the prince under the bridge near his own house--that his son’s fate was closely bound up with that of the leader of the Reformed party. He therefore determined to study the dark tangle of interests which were struggling together at court in order to discover some means of rescuing his son. It was useless to think of Queen Catherine, who refused to see her furrier. No one about the court whom he was able to address could give him any satisfactory information about Christophe; and he fell at last into a state of such utter despair that he was on the verge of appealing to the cardinal himself, when he learned that Monsieur de Thou (and this was the great stain upon that good man’s life) had consented to be one of the judges of the Prince de Conde. The old furrier went at once to see him, and learned at last that Christophe was still living, though a prisoner.

Tourillon, the glover (to whom La Renaudie sent Christophe on his way to Blois), had offered a room in his house to the Sieur Lecamus for the whole time of his stay in Orleans during the sittings of the States-general. The glover believed the furrier to be, like himself, secretly attached to the Reformed religion; but he soon saw that a father who fears for the life of his child pays no heed to shades of religious opinion, but flings himself prone upon the bosom of God without caring what insignia men give to Him. The poor old man, repulsed in all his efforts, wandered like one bewildered through the streets. Contrary to his expectations, his money availed him nothing; Monsieur de Thou had warned him that if he bribed any servant of the house of Guise he would merely lose his money, for the duke and cardinal allowed nothing that related to Christophe to transpire. De Thou, whose fame is somewhat tarnished by the part he played at this crisis, endeavored to give some hope to the poor father; but he trembled so much himself for the fate of his godson that his attempts at consolation only alarmed the old man still more. Lecamus roamed the streets; in three months he had shrunk visibly. His only hope now lay in the warm friendship which for so many years had bound him to the Hippocrates of the sixteenth century. Ambroise Pare tried to say a word to Queen Mary on leaving the chamber of the king, who was then indisposed; but no sooner had he named Christophe than the daughter of the Stuarts, nervous at the prospect of her fate should any evil happen to the king, and believing that the Reformers were attempting to poison him, cried out:--

“If my uncles had only listened to me, that fanatic would have been hanged already.”

The evening on which this fatal answer was repeated to old Lecamus, by his friend Pare on the place de l’Estape, he returned home half dead to his own chamber, refusing to eat any supper. Tourillon, uneasy about him, went up to his room and found him in tears; the aged eyes showed the inflamed red lining of their lids, so that the glover fancied for a moment that he was weeping tears of blood.

“Comfort yourself, father,” said the Reformer; “the burghers of Orleans are furious to see their city treated as though it were taken by assault, and guarded by the soldiers of Monsieur de Cypierre. If the life of the Prince de Conde is in any real danger we will soon demolish the tower of Saint-Aignan; the whole town is on the side of the Reformers, and it will rise in rebellion; you may be sure of that!”

“But, even if they hang the Guises, it will not give me back my son,” said the wretched father.

At that instant some one rapped cautiously on Tourillon’s outer door, and the glover went downstairs to open it himself. The night was dark. In these troublous times the masters of all households took minute precautions. Tourillon looked through the peep-holes cut in the door, and saw a stranger, whose accent indicated an Italian. The man, who was dressed in black, asked to speak with Lecamus on matters of business, and Tourillon admitted him. When the furrier caught sight of his visitor he shuddered violently; but the stranger managed, unseen by Tourillon, to lay his fingers on his lips. Lecamus, understanding the gesture, said immediately:--

“You have come, I suppose, to offer furs?”

“_Si_,” said the Italian, discreetly.

This personage was no other than the famous Ruggiero, astrologer to the queen-mother. Tourillon went below to his own apartment, feeling convinced that he was one too many in that of his guest.

“Where can we talk without danger of being overheard?” said the cautious Florentine.

“We ought to be in the open fields for that,” replied Lecamus. “But we are not allowed to leave the town; you know the severity with which the gates are guarded. No one can leave Orleans without a pass from Monsieur de Cypierre,” he added,--“not even I, who am a member of the States-general. Complaint is to be made at to-morrow’s session of this restriction of liberty.”

“Work like a mole, but don’t let your paws be seen in anything, no matter what,” said the wary Italian. “To-morrow will, no doubt, prove a decisive day. Judging by my observations, you may, perhaps, recover your son to-morrow, or the day after.”

“May God hear you--you who are thought to traffic with the devil!”

“Come to my place,” said the astrologer, smiling. “I live in the tower of Sieur Touchet de Beauvais, the lieutenant of the Bailliage, whose daughter the little Duc d’Orleans has taken such a fancy to; it is there that I observe the planets. I have drawn the girl’s horoscope, and it says that she will become a great lady and be beloved by a king. The lieutenant, her father, is a clever man; he loves science, and the queen sent me to lodge with him. He has had the sense to be a rabid Guisist while awaiting the reign of Charles IX.”

The furrier and the astrologer reached the house of the Sieur de Beauvais without being met or even seen; but, in case Lecamus’ visit should be discovered, the Florentine intended to give a pretext of an astrological consultation on his son’s fate. When they were safely at the top of the tower, where the astrologer did his work, Lecamus said to him:--

“Is my son really living?”

“Yes, he still lives,” replied Ruggiero; “and the question now is how to save him. Remember this, seller of skins, I would not give two farthings for yours if ever in all your life a single syllable should escape you of what I am about to say.”

“That is a useless caution, my friend; I have been furrier to the court since the time of the late Louis XII.; this is the fourth reign that I have seen.”

“And you may soon see the fifth,” remarked Ruggiero.

“What do you know about my son?”

“He has been put to the question.”

“Poor boy!” said the old man, raising his eyes to heaven.

“His knees and ankles were a bit injured, but he has won a royal protection which will extend over his whole life,” said the Florentine hastily, seeing the terror of the poor father. “Your little Christophe has done a service to our great queen, Catherine. If we manage to pull him out of the claws of the Guises you will see him some day councillor to the Parliament. Any man would gladly have his bones cracked three times over to stand so high in the good graces of this dear sovereign,--a grand and noble genius, who will triumph in the end over all obstacles. I have drawn the horoscope of the Duc de Guise; he will be killed within a year. Well, so Christophe saw the Prince de Conde--”

“You who read the future ought to know the past,” said the furrier.

“My good man, I am not questioning you, I am telling you a fact. Now, if your son, who will to-morrow be placed in the prince’s way as he passes, should recognize him, or if the prince should recognize your son, the head of Monsieur de Conde will fall. God knows what will become of his accomplice! However, don’t be alarmed. Neither your son nor the prince will die; I have drawn their horoscope,--they will live; but I do not know in what way they will get out of this affair. Without distrusting the certainty of my calculations, we must do something to bring about results. To-morrow the prince will receive, from sure hands, a prayer-book in which we convey the information to him. God grant that your son be cautious, for him we cannot warn. A single glance of recognition will cost the prince’s life. Therefore, although the queen-mother has every reason to trust in Christophe’s faithfulness--”

“They’ve put it to a cruel test!” cried the furrier.

“Don’t speak so! Do you think the queen-mother is on a bed of roses? She is taking measures as if the Guises had already decided on the death of the prince, and right she is, the wise and prudent queen! Now listen to me; she counts on you to help her in all things. You have some influence with the _tiers-etat_, where you represent the body of the guilds of Paris, and though the Guisards may promise you to set your son at liberty, try to fool them and maintain the independence of the guilds. Demand the queen-mother as regent; the king of Navarre will publicly accept the proposal at the session of the States-general.”

“But the king?”

“The king will die,” replied Ruggiero; “I have read his horoscope. What the queen-mother requires you to do for her at the States-general is a very simple thing; but there is a far greater service which she asks of you. You helped Ambroise Pare in his studies, you are his friend--”

“Ambroise now loves the Duc de Guise more than he loves me; and he is right, for he owes his place to him. Besides, he is faithful to the king. Though he inclines to the Reformed religion, he will never do anything against his duty.”

“Curse these honest men!” cried the Florentine. “Ambroise boasted this evening that he could bring the little king safely through his present illness (for he is really ill). If the king recovers his health, the Guises triumph, the princes die, the house of Bourbon becomes extinct, we shall return to Florence, your son will be hanged, and the Lorrains will easily get the better of the other sons of France--”

“Great God!” exclaimed Lecamus.

“Don’t cry out in that way,--it is like a burgher who knows nothing of the court,--but go at once to Ambroise and find out from him what he intends to do to save the king’s life. If there is anything decided on, come back to me at once, and tell me the treatment in which he has such faith.”

“But--” said Lecamus.

“Obey blindly, my dear friend; otherwise you will get your mind bewildered.”

“He is right,” thought the furrier. “I had better not know more”; and he went at once in search of the king’s surgeon, who lived at a hostelry in the place du Martroi.

Catherine de’ Medici was at this moment in a political extremity very much like that in which poor Christophe had seen her at Blois. Though she had been in a way trained by the struggle, though she had exercised her lofty intellect by the lessons of that first defeat, her present situation, while nearly the same, had become more critical, more perilous than it was at Amboise. Events, like the woman herself, had magnified. Though she seemed to be in full accordance with the Guises, Catherine held in her hand the threads of a wisely planned conspiracy against her terrible associates, and was only awaiting a propitious moment to throw off the mask. The cardinal had just obtained the positive certainty that Catherine was deceiving him. Her subtle Italian spirit felt that the Younger branch was the best hindrance she could offer to the ambition of the duke and the cardinal; and (in spite of the advice of the two Gondis, who urged her to let the Guises wreak their vengeance on the Bourbons) she defeated the scheme concocted by them with Spain to seize the province of Bearn, by warning Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre, of that threatened danger. As this state secret was known only to them and to the queen-mother, the Guises knew of course who had betrayed it, and resolved to send her back to Florence. But in order to make themselves perfectly sure of what they called her treason against the State (the State being the house of Lorraine), the duke and cardinal confided to her their intention of getting rid of the king of Navarre. The precautions instantly taken by Antoine proved conclusively to the two brothers that the secrets known only to them and the queen-mother had been divulged by the latter. The cardinal instantly taxed her with treachery, in presence of Francois II.,--threatening her with an edict of banishment in case of future indiscretion, which might, as they said, put the kingdom in danger.

Catherine, who then felt herself in the utmost peril, acted in the spirit of a great king, giving proof of her high capacity. It must be added, however, that she was ably seconded by her friends. L’Hopital managed to send her a note, written in the following terms:--

“Do not allow a prince of the blood to be put to death by a committee; or you will yourself be carried off in some way.”

Catherine sent Birago to Vignay to tell the chancellor (l’Hopital) to come to Orleans at once, in spite of his being in disgrace. Birago returned the very night of which we are writing, and was now a few miles from Orleans with l’Hopital, who heartily avowed himself for the queen-mother. Chiverni, whose fidelity was very justly suspected by the Guises, had escaped from Orleans and reached Ecouen in ten hours, by a forced march which almost cost him his life. There he told the Connetable de Montmorency of the peril of his nephew, the Prince de Conde, and the audacious hopes of the Guises. The Connetable, furious at the thought that the prince’s life hung upon that of Francois II., started for Orleans at once with a hundred noblemen and fifteen hundred cavalry. In order to take the Messieurs de Guise by surprise he avoided Paris, and came direct from Ecouen to Corbeil, and from Corbeil to Pithiviers by the valley of the Essonne.

“Soldier against soldier, we must leave no chances,” he said on the occasion of this bold march.

Anne de Montmorency, who had saved France at the time of the invasion of Provence by Charles V., and the Duc de Guise, who had stopped the second invasion by the emperor at Metz, were, in truth, the two great warriors of France at this period. Catherine had awaited this precise moment to rouse the inextinguishable hatred of the Connetable, whose disgrace and banishment were the work of the Guises. The Marquis de Simeuse, however, who commanded at Gien, being made aware of the large force approaching under command of the Connetable, jumped on his horse hoping to reach Orleans in time to warn the duke and cardinal.

Sure that the Connetable would come to the rescue of his nephew, and full of confidence in the Chancelier l’Hopital’s devotion to the royal cause, the queen-mother revived the hopes and the boldness of the Reformed party. The Colignys and the friends of the house of Bourbon, aware of their danger, now made common cause with the adherents of the queen-mother. A coalition between these opposing interests, attacked by a common enemy, formed itself silently in the States-general, where it soon became a question of appointing Catherine as regent in case the king should die. Catherine, whose faith in astrology was much greater than her faith in the Church, now dared all against her oppressors, seeing that her son was ill and apparently dying at the expiration of the time assigned to his life by the famous sorceress, whom Nostradamus had brought to her at the chateau of Chaumont.

XI. AMBROISE PARE

Some days before the terrible end of the reign of Francois II., the king insisted on sailing down the Loire, wishing not to be in the town of Orleans on the day when the Prince de Conde was executed. Having yielded the head of the prince to the Cardinal de Lorraine, he was equally in dread of a rebellion among the townspeople and of the prayers and supplications of the Princesse de Conde. At the moment of embarkation, one of the cold winds which sweep along the Loire at the beginning of winter gave him so sharp an ear-ache that he was obliged to return to his apartments; there he took to his bed, not leaving it again until he died. In contradiction of the doctors, who, with the exception of Chapelain, were his enemies, Ambroise Pare insisted that an abscess was formed in the king’s head, and that unless an issue were given to it, the danger of death would increase daily. Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, and the curfew law, which was sternly enforced in Orleans, at this time practically in a state of siege, Pare’s lamp shone from his window, and he was deep in study, when Lecamus called to him from below. Recognizing the voice of his old friend, Pare ordered that he should be admitted.

“You take no rest, Ambroise; while saving the lives of others you are wasting your own,” said the furrier as he entered, looking at the surgeon, who sat, with opened books and scattered instruments, before the head of a dead man, lately buried and now disinterred, in which he had cut an opening.

“It is a matter of saving the king’s life.”

“Are you sure of doing it, Ambroise?” cried the old man, trembling.

“As sure as I am of my own existence. The king, my old friend, has a morbid ulcer pressing on his brain, which will presently suffice it if no vent is given to it, and the danger is imminent. But by boring the skull I expect to release the pus and clear the head. I have already performed this operation three times. It was invented by a Piedmontese; but I have had the honor to perfect it. The first operation I performed was at the siege of Metz, on Monsieur de Pienne, whom I cured, who was afterwards all the more intelligent in consequence. His was an abscess caused by the blow of an arquebuse. The second was on the head of a pauper, on whom I wanted to prove the value of the audacious operation Monsieur de Pienne had allowed me to perform. The third I did in Paris on a gentleman who is now entirely recovered. Trepanning--that is the name given to the operation--is very little known. Patients refuse it, partly because of the imperfection of the instruments; but I have at last improved them. I am practising now on this skull, that I may be sure of not failing to-morrow, when I operate on the head of the king.”

“You ought indeed to be very sure you are right, for your own head would be in danger in case--”

“I’d wager my life I can cure him,” replied Ambroise, with the conviction of a man of genius. “Ah! my old friend, where’s the danger of boring into a skull with proper precautions? That is what soldiers do in battle every day of their lives, without taking any precautions.”

“My son,” said the burgher, boldly, “do you know that to save the king is to ruin France? Do you know that this instrument of yours will place the crown of the Valois on the head of the Lorrain who calls himself the heir of Charlemagne? Do you know that surgery and policy are at this moment sternly opposed to each other? Yes, the triumph of your genius will be the death of your religion. If the Guises gain the regency, the blood of the Reformers will flow like water. Be a greater citizen than you are a surgeon; oversleep yourself to-morrow morning and leave a free field to the other doctors who if they cannot cure the king will cure France.”

“I!” exclaimed Pare. “I leave a man to die when I can cure him? No, no! were I to hang as an abettor of Calvin I shall go early to court. Do you not feel that the first and only reward I shall ask will be the life of your Christophe? Surely at such a moment Queen Mary can deny me nothing.”

“Alas! my friend,” returned Lecamus, “the little king has refused the pardon of the Prince de Conde to the princess. Do not kill your religion by saving the life of a man who ought to die.”

“Do not you meddle with God’s ordering of the future!” cried Pare. “Honest men can have but one motto: _Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra_!--do thy duty, come what will. That is what I did at the siege of Calais when I put my foot on the face of the Duc de Guise,--I ran the risk of being strangled by his friends and his servants; but to-day I am surgeon to the king; moreover I am of the Reformed religion; and yet the Guises are my friends. I shall save the king,” cried the surgeon, with the sacred enthusiasm of a conviction bestowed by genius, “and God will save France!”

A knock was heard on the street door and presently one of Pare’s servants gave a paper to Lecamus, who read aloud these terrifying words:--

“A scaffold is being erected at the convent of the Recollets: the Prince de Conde will be beheaded there to-morrow.”

Ambroise and Lecamus looked at each other with an expression of the deepest horror.

“I will go and see it for myself,” said the furrier.

No sooner was he in the open street than Ruggiero took his arm and asked by what means Ambroise Pare proposed to save the king. Fearing some trickery, the old man, instead of answering, replied that he wished to go and see the scaffold. The astrologer accompanied him to the place des Recollets, and there, truly enough, they found the carpenters putting up the horrible framework by torchlight.

“Hey, my friend,” said Lecamus to one of the men, “what are you doing here at this time of night?”

“We are preparing for the hanging of heretics, as the blood-letting at Amboise didn’t cure them,” said a young Recollet who was superintending the work.

“Monseigneur the cardinal is very right,” said Ruggiero, prudently; “but in my country we do better.”

“What do you do?” said the young priest.

“We burn them.”

Lecamus was forced to lean on the astrologer’s arm, for his legs gave way beneath him; he thought it probable that on the morrow his son would hang from one of those gibbets. The poor old man was thrust between two sciences, astrology and surgery, both of which promised him the life of his son, for whom in all probability that scaffold was now erecting. In the trouble and distress of his mind, the Florentine was able to knead him like dough.

“Well, my worthy dealer in minever, what do you say now to the Lorraine jokes?” whispered Ruggiero.

“Alas! you know I would give my skin if that of my son were safe and sound.”

“That is talking like your trade,” said the Italian; “but explain to me the operation which Ambroise means to perform upon the king, and in return I will promise you the life of your son.”

“Faithfully?” exclaimed the old furrier.

“Shall I swear it to you?” said Ruggiero.

Thereupon the poor old man repeated his conversation with Ambroise Pare to the astrologer, who, the moment that the secret of the great surgeon was divulged to him, left the poor father abruptly in the street in utter despair.

“What the devil does he mean, that miscreant?” cried Lecamus, as he watched Ruggiero hurrying with rapid steps to the place de l’Estape.

Lecamus was ignorant of the terrible scene that was taking place around the royal bed, where the imminent danger of the king’s death and the consequent loss of power to the Guises had caused the hasty erection of the scaffold for the Prince de Conde, whose sentence had been pronounced, as it were by default,--the execution of it being delayed by the king’s illness.

Absolutely no one but the persons on duty were in the halls, staircases, and courtyard of the royal residence, Le Bailliage. The crowd of courtiers were flocking to the house of the king of Navarre, on whom the regency would devolve on the death of the king, according to the laws of the kingdom. The French nobility, alarmed by the audacity of the Guises, felt the need of rallying around the chief of the younger branch, when, ignorant of the queen-mother’s Italian policy, they saw her the apparent slave of the duke and cardinal. Antoine de Bourbon, faithful to his secret agreement with Catherine, was bound not to renounce the regency in her favor until the States-general had declared for it.

The solitude in which the king’s house was left had a powerful effect on the mind of the Duc de Guise when, on his return from an inspection, made by way of precaution through the city, he found no one there but the friends who were attached exclusively to his own fortunes. The chamber in which was the king’s bed adjoined the great hall of the Bailliage. It was at that period panelled in oak. The ceiling, composed of long, narrow boards carefully joined and painted, was covered with blue arabesques on a gold ground, a part of which being torn down about fifty years ago was instantly purchased by a lover of antiquities. This room, hung with tapestry, the floor being covered with a carpet, was so dark and gloomy that the torches threw scarcely any light. The vast four-post bedstead with its silken curtains was like a tomb. Beside her husband, close to his pillow, sat Mary Stuart, and near her the Cardinal de Lorraine. Catherine was seated in a chair at a little distance. The famous Jean Chapelain, the physician on duty (who was afterwards chief physician to Charles IX.) was standing before the fireplace. The deepest silence reigned. The young king, pale and shrunken, lay as if buried in his sheets, his pinched little face scarcely showing on the pillow. The Duchesse de Guise, sitting on a stool, attended Queen Mary, while on the other side, near Catherine, in the recess of a window, Madame de Fiesque stood watching the gestures and looks of the queen-mother; for she knew the dangers of her position.

In the hall, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, Monsieur de Cypierre, governor of the Duc d’Orleans and now appointed governor of the town, occupied one corner of the fireplace with the two Gondis. Cardinal de Tournon, who in this crisis espoused the interests of the queen-mother on finding himself treated as an inferior by the Cardinal de Lorraine, of whom he was certainly the ecclesiastical equal, talked in a low voice to the Gondis. The marshals de Vieilleville and Saint-Andre and the keeper of the seals, who presided at the States-general, were talking together in a whisper of the dangers to which the Guises were exposed.

The lieutenant-general of the kingdom crossed the room on his entrance, casting a rapid glance about him, and bowed to the Duc d’Orleans whom he saw there.

“Monseigneur,” he said, “this will teach you to know men. The Catholic nobility of the kingdom have gone to pay court to a heretic prince, believing that the States-general will give the regency to the heirs of a traitor who long detained in prison your illustrious grandfather.”

Then having said these words, which were destined to plough a furrow in the heart of the young prince, he passed into the bedroom, where the king was not so much asleep as plunged in a heavy torpor. The Duc de Guise was usually able to correct the sinister aspect of his scarred face by an affable and pleasing manner, but on this occasion, when he saw the instrument of his power breaking in his very hands, he was unable to force a smile. The cardinal, whose civil courage was equal to his brother’s military daring, advanced a few steps to meet him.

“Robertet thinks that little Pinard is sold to the queen-mother,” he whispered, leading the duke into the hall; “they are using him to work upon the members of the States-general.”

“Well, what does it signify if we are betrayed by a secretary when all else betrays us?” cried the lieutenant-general. “The town is for the Reformation, and we are on the eve of a revolt. Yes! the _Wasps_ are discontented”; he continued, giving the Orleans people their nickname; “and if Pare does not save the king we shall have a terrible uprising. Before long we shall be forced to besiege Orleans, which is nothing but a bog of Huguenots.”

“I have been watching that Italian woman,” said the cardinal, “as she sits there with absolute insensibility. She is watching and waiting, God forgive her! for the death of her son; and I ask myself whether we should not do a wise thing to arrest her at once, and also the king of Navarre.”

“It is already more than we want upon our hands to have the Prince de Conde in prison,” replied the duke.

The sound of a horseman riding in haste to the gate of the Bailliage echoed through the hall. The duke and cardinal went to the window, and by the light of the torches which were in the portico the duke recognized on the rider’s hat the famous Lorraine cross, which the cardinal had lately ordered his partisans to wear. He sent an officer of the guard, who was stationed in the antechamber, to give entrance to the new-comer; and went himself, followed by his brother, to meet him on the landing.

“What is it, my dear Simeuse?” asked the duke, with that charm of manner which he always displayed to military men, as soon as he recognized the governor of Gien.

“The Connetable has reached Pithiviers; he left Ecouen with two thousand cavalry and one hundred nobles.”

“With their suites?”

“Yes, monseigneur,” replied Simeuse; “in all, two thousand six hundred men. Some say that Thore is behind them with a body of infantry. If the Connetable delays awhile, expecting his son, you still have time to repulse him.”

“Is that all you know? Are the reasons of this sudden call to arms made known?”

“Montmorency talks as little as he writes; go you and meet him, brother, while I prepare to welcome him with the head of his nephew,” said the cardinal, giving orders that Robertet be sent to him at once.

“Vieilleville!” cried the duke to the marechal, who came immediately. “The Connetable has the audacity to come here under arms; if I go to meet him will you be responsible to hold the town?”

“As soon as you leave it the burghers will fly to arms; and who can answer for the result of an affair between cavalry and citizens in these narrow streets?” replied the marechal.

“Monseigneur,” said Robertet, rushing hastily up the stairs, “the Chancelier de l’Hopital is at the gate and asks to enter; are we to let him in?”

“Yes, open the gate,” answered the cardinal. “Connetable and chancelier together would be dangerous; we must separate them. We have been boldly tricked by the queen-mother into choosing l’Hopital as chancellor.”

Robertet nodded to a captain of the guard, who awaited an answer at the foot of the staircase; then he turned round quickly to receive the orders of the cardinal.

“Monseigneur, I take the liberty,” he said, making one last effort, “to point out that the sentence should be approved by _the king in council_. If you violate the law on a prince of the blood, it will not be respected for either a cardinal or a Duc de Guise.”

“Pinard has upset your mind, Robertet,” said the cardinal, sternly. “Do you not know that the king signed the order of execution the day he was about to leave Orleans, in order that the sentence might be carried out in his absence?”

The lieutenant-general listened to this discussion without a word, but he took his brother by the arm and led him into a corner of the hall.

“Undoubtedly,” he said, “the heirs of Charlemagne have the right to recover the crown which was usurped from their house by Hugh Capet; but can they do it? The pear is not yet ripe. Our nephew is dying, and the whole court has gone over to the king of Navarre.”

“The king’s heart failed him, or the Bearnais would have been stabbed before now,” said the cardinal; “and we could easily have disposed of the Valois children.”

“We are very ill-placed here,” said the duke; “the rebellion of the town will be supported by the States-general. L’Hopital, whom we protected while the queen-mother opposed his appointment, is to-day against us, and yet it is all-important that we should have the justiciary with us. Catherine has too many supporters at the present time; we cannot send her back to Italy. Besides, there are still three Valois princes--”

“She is no longer a mother, she is all queen,” said the cardinal. “In my opinion, this is the moment to make an end of her. Vigor, and more and more vigor! that’s my prescription!” he cried.

So saying, the cardinal returned to the king’s chamber, followed by the duke. The priest went straight to the queen-mother.

“The papers of Lasagne, the secretary of the Prince de Conde, have been communicated to you, and you now know that the Bourbons are endeavoring to dethrone your son.”

“I know all that,” said Catherine.

“Well, then, will you give orders to arrest the king of Navarre?”

“There is,” she said with dignity, “a lieutenant-general of the kingdom.”

At this instant Francois II. groaned piteously, complaining aloud of the terrible pains in his ear. The physician left the fireplace where he was warming himself, and went to the bedside to examine the king’s head.

“Well, monsieur?” said the Duc de Guise, interrogatively.

“I dare not take upon myself to apply a blister to draw the abscess. Maitre Ambroise has promised to save the king’s life by an operation, and I might thwart it.”

“Let us postpone the treatment till to-morrow morning,” said Catherine, coldly, “and order all the physicians to be present; for we all know the calumnies to which the death of kings gives rise.”

She went to her son and kissed his hand; then she withdrew to her own apartments.

“With what composure that audacious daughter of a shop-keeper alluded to the death of the dauphin, poisoned by Montecuculi, one of her own Italian followers!” said Mary Stuart.

“Mary!” cried the little king, “my grandfather never doubted her innocence.”

“Can we prevent that woman from coming here to-morrow?” said the queen to her uncles in a low voice.

“What will become of us if the king dies?” returned the cardinal, in a whisper. “Catherine will shovel us all into his grave.”

Thus the question was plainly put between Catherine de’ Medici and the house of Lorraine during that fatal night. The arrival of the Connetable de Montmorency and the Chancelier de l’Hopital were distinct indications of rebellion; the morning of the next day would therefore be decisive.

XII. DEATH OF FRANCOIS II

On the morrow the queen-mother was the first to enter the king’s chamber. She found no one there but Mary Stuart, pale and weary, who had passed the night in prayer beside the bed. The Duchesse de Guise had kept her mistress company, and the maids of honor had taken turns in relieving one another. The young king slept. Neither the duke nor the cardinal had yet appeared. The priest, who was bolder than the soldier, had, it was afterward said, put forth his utmost energy during the night to induce his brother to make himself king. But, in face of the assembled States-general, and threatened by a battle with Montmorency, the Balafre declared the circumstances unfavorable; he refused, against his brother’s utmost urgency, to arrest the king of Navarre, the queen-mother, l’Hopital, the Cardinal de Tournon, the Gondis, Ruggiero, and Birago, objecting that such violent measures would bring on a general rebellion. He postponed the cardinal’s scheme until the fate of Francois II. should be determined.

The deepest silence reigned in the king’s chamber. Catherine, accompanied by Madame de Fiesque, went to the bedside and gazed at her son with a semblance of grief that was admirably simulated. She put her handkerchief to her eyes and walked to the window where Madame de Fiesque brought her a seat. Thence she could see into the courtyard.

It had been agreed between Catherine and the Cardinal de Tournon that if the Connetable should successfully enter the town the cardinal would come to the king’s house with the two Gondis; if otherwise, he would come alone. At nine in the morning the duke and cardinal, followed by their gentlemen, who remained in the hall, entered the king’s bedroom,--the captain on duty having informed them that Ambroise Pare had arrived, together with Chapelain and three other physicians, who hated Pare and were all in the queen-mother’s interests.

A few moments later and the great hall of the Bailliage presented much the same aspect as that of the Salle des gardes at Blois on the day when Christophe was put to the torture and the Duc de Guise was proclaimed lieutenant-governor of the kingdom,--with the single exception that whereas love and joy overflowed the royal chamber and the Guises triumphed, death and mourning now reigned within that darkened room, and the Guises felt that power was slipping through their fingers. The maids of honor of the two queens were again in their separate camps on either side of the fireplace, in which glowed a monstrous fire. The hall was filled with courtiers. The news--spread about, no one knew how--of some daring operation contemplated by Ambroise Pare to save the king’s life, had brought back the lords and gentlemen who had deserted the house the day before. The outer staircase and courtyard were filled by an anxious crowd. The scaffold erected during the night for the Prince de Conde opposite to the convent of the Recollets, had amazed and startled the whole nobility. All present spoke in a low voice and the talk was the same mixture as at Blois, of frivolous and serious, light and earnest matters. The habit of expecting troubles, sudden revolutions, calls to arms, rebellions, and great events, which marked the long period during which the house of Valois was slowly being extinguished in spite of Catherine de’ Medici’s great efforts to preserve it, took its rise at this time.

A deep silence prevailed for a certain distance beyond the door of the king’s chamber, which was guarded by two halberdiers, two pages, and by the captain of the Scotch guard. Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, held a prisoner in his own house, learned by his present desertion the hopes of the courtiers who had flocked to him the day before, and was horrified by the news of the preparations made during the night for the execution of his brother.

Standing before the fireplace in the great hall of the Bailliage was one of the greatest and noblest figures of that day,--the Chancelier de l’Hopital, wearing his crimson robe lined and edged with ermine, and his cap on his head according to the privilege of his office. This courageous man, seeing that his benefactors were traitorous and self-seeking, held firmly to the cause of the kings, represented by the queen-mother; at the risk of losing his head, he had gone to Rouen to consult with the Connetable de Montmorency. No one ventured to draw him from the reverie in which he was plunged. Robertet, the secretary of State, two marshals of France, Vieilleville, and Saint-Andre, and the keeper of the seals, were collected in a group before the chancellor. The courtiers present were not precisely jesting; but their talk was malicious, especially among those who were not for the Guises.

Presently voices were heard to rise in the king’s chamber. The two marshals, Robertet, and the chancellor went nearer to the door; for not only was the life of the king in question, but, as the whole court knew well, the chancellor, the queen-mother, and her adherents were in the utmost danger. A deep silence fell on the whole assembly.

Ambroise Pare had by this time examined the king’s head; he thought the moment propitious for his operation; if it was not performed suffusion would take place, and Francois II. might die at any moment. As soon as the duke and cardinal entered the chamber he explained to all present that in so urgent a case it was necessary to trepan the head, and he now waited till the king’s physician ordered him to perform the operation.

“Cut the head of my son as though it were a plank!--with that horrible instrument!” cried Catherine de’ Medici. “Maitre Ambroise, I will not permit it.”

The physicians were consulting together; but Catherine spoke in so loud a voice that her words reached, as she intended they should, beyond the door.

“But, madame, if there is no other way to save him?” said Mary Stuart, weeping.

“Ambroise,” cried Catherine; “remember that your head will answer for the king’s life.”

“We are opposed to the treatment suggested by Maitre Ambroise,” said the three physicians. “The king can be saved by injecting through the ear a remedy which will draw the contents of the abscess through that passage.”

The Duc de Guise, who was watching Catherine’s face, suddenly went up to her and drew her into the recess of the window.

“Madame,” he said, “you wish the death of your son; you are in league with our enemies, and have been since Blois. This morning the Counsellor Viole told the son of your furrier that the Prince de Conde’s head was about to be cut off. That young man, who, when the question was applied, persisted in denying all relations with the prince, made a sign of farewell to him as he passed before the window of his dungeon. You saw your unhappy accomplice tortured with royal insensibility. You are now endeavoring to prevent the recovery of your eldest son. Your conduct forces us to believe that the death of the dauphin, which placed the crown on your husband’s head was not a natural one, and that Montecuculi was your--”

“Monsieur le chancilier!” cried Catherine, at a sign from whom Madame de Fiesque opened both sides of the bedroom door.

The company in the hall then saw the scene that was taking place in the royal chamber: the livid little king, his face half dead, his eyes sightless, his lips stammering the word “Mary,” as he held the hand of the weeping queen; the Duchesse de Guise motionless, frightened by Catherine’s daring act; the duke and cardinal, also alarmed, keeping close to the queen-mother and resolving to have her arrested on the spot by Maille-Breze; lastly, the tall Ambroise Pare, assisted by the king’s physician, holding his instrument in his hand but not daring to begin the operation, for which composure and total silence were as necessary as the consent of the other surgeons.

“Monsieur le chancelier,” said Catherine, “the Messieurs de Guise wish to authorize a strange operation upon the person of the king; Ambroise Pare is preparing to cut open his head. I, as the king’s mother and a member of the council of the regency,--I protest against what appears to me a crime of _lese-majeste_. The king’s physicians advise an injection through the ear, which seems to me as efficacious and less dangerous than the brutal operation proposed by Pare.”

When the company in the hall heard these words a smothered murmur rose from their midst; the cardinal allowed the chancellor to enter the bedroom and then he closed the door.

“I am lieutenant-general of the kingdom,” said the Duc de Guise; “and I would have you know, Monsieur le chancelier, that Ambroise, the king’s surgeon, answers for his life.”

“Ah! if this be the turn that things are taking!” exclaimed Ambroise Pare. “I know my rights and how I should proceed.” He stretched his arm over the bed. “This bed and the king are mine. I claim to be sole master of this case and solely responsible. I know the duties of my office; I shall operate upon the king without the sanction of the physicians.”

“Save him!” said the cardinal, “and you shall be the richest man in France.”

“Go on!” cried Mary Stuart, pressing the surgeon’s hand.

“I cannot prevent it,” said the chancellor; “but I shall record the protest of the queen-mother.”

“Robertet!” called the Duc de Guise.

When Robertet entered, the lieutenant-general pointed to the chancellor.

“I appoint you chancellor of France in the place of that traitor,” he said. “Monsieur de Maille, take Monsieur de l’Hopital and put him in the prison of the Prince de Conde. As for you, madame,” he added, turning to Catherine; “your protest will not be received; you ought to be aware that any such protest must be supported by sufficient force. I act as the faithful subject and loyal servant of king Francois II., my master. Go on, Antoine,” he added, looking at the surgeon.

“Monsieur de Guise,” said l’Hopital; “if you employ violence either upon the king or upon the chancellor of France, remember that enough of the nobility of France are in that hall to rise and arrest you as a traitor.”

“Oh! my lords,” cried the great surgeon; “if you continue these arguments you will soon proclaim Charles IX!--for king Francois is about to die.”

Catherine de’ Medici, absolutely impassive, gazed from the window.

“Well, then, we shall employ force to make ourselves masters of this room,” said the cardinal, advancing to the door.

But when he opened it even he was terrified; the whole house was deserted! The courtiers, certain now of the death of the king, had gone in a body to the king of Navarre.

“Well, go on, perform your duty,” cried Mary Stuart, vehemently, to Ambroise. “I--and you, duchess,” she said to Madame de Guise,--“will protect you.”

“Madame,” said Ambroise; “my zeal was carrying me away. The doctors, with the exception of my friend Chapelain, prefer an injection, and it is my duty to submit to their wishes. If I had been chief surgeon and chief physician, which I am not, the king’s life would probably have been saved. Give that to me, gentlemen,” he said, stretching out his hand for the syringe, which he proceeded to fill.

“Good God!” cried Mary Start, “but I order you to--”

“Alas! madame,” said Ambroise, “I am under the direction of these gentlemen.”

The young queen placed herself between the surgeon, the doctors, and the other persons present. The chief physician held the king’s head, and Ambroise made the injection into the ear. The duke and the cardinal watched the proceeding attentively. Robertet and Monsieur de Maille stood motionless. Madame de Fiesque, at a sign from Catherine, glided unperceived from the room. A moment later l’Hopital boldly opened the door of the king’s chamber.

“I arrive in good time,” said the voice of a man whose hasty steps echoed through the great hall, and who stood the next moment on the threshold of the open door. “Ah, messieurs, so you meant to take off the head of my good nephew, the Prince de Conde? Instead of that, you have forced the lion from his lair and--here I am!” added the Connetable de Montmorency. “Ambroise, you shall not plunge your knife into the head of my king. The first prince of the blood, Antoine de Bourbon, the Prince de Conde, the queen-mother, the Connetable, and the chancellor forbid the operation.”

To Catherine’s great satisfaction, the king of Navarre and the Prince de Conde now entered the room.

“What does this mean?” said the Duc de Guise, laying his hand on his dagger.

“It means that in my capacity as Connetable, I have dismissed the sentinels of all your posts. _Tete Dieu_! you are not in an enemy’s country, methinks. The king, our master, is in the midst of his loyal subjects, and the States-general must be suffered to deliberate at liberty. I come, messieurs, from the States-general. I carried the protest of my nephew de Conde before that assembly, and three hundred of those gentlemen have released him. You wish to shed royal blood and to decimate the nobility of the kingdom, do you? Ha! in future, I defy you, and all your schemes, Messieurs de Lorraine. If you order the king’s head opened, by this sword which saved France from Charles V., I say it shall not be done--”

“All the more,” said Ambroise Pare; “because it is now too late; the suffusion has begun.”

“Your reign is over, messieurs,” said Catherine to the Guises, seeing from Pare’s face that there was no longer any hope.

“Ah! madame, you have killed your own son,” cried Mary Stuart as she bounded like a lioness from the bed to the window and seized the queen-mother by the arm, gripping it violently.

“My dear,” replied Catherine, giving her daughter-in-law a cold, keen glance in which she allowed her hatred, repressed for the last six months, to overflow; “you, to whose inordinate love we owe this death, you will now go to reign in your Scotland, and you will start to-morrow. I am regent _de facto_.” The three physicians having made her a sign, “Messieurs,” she added, addressing the Guises, “it is agreed between Monsieur de Bourbon, appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom by the States-general, and me that the conduct of the affairs of the State is our business solely. Come, monsieur le chancelier.”

“The king is dead!” said the Duc de Guise, compelled to perform his duties as Grand-master.

“Long live King Charles IX.!” cried all the noblemen who had come with the king of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, and the Connetable.

The ceremonies which follow the death of a king of France were performed in almost total solitude. When the king-at-arms proclaimed aloud three times in the hall, “The king is dead!” there were very few persons present to reply, “Vive le roi!”

The queen-mother, to whom the Comtesse de Fiesque had brought the Duc d’Orleans, now Charles IX., left the chamber, leading her son by the hand, and all the remaining courtiers followed her. No one was left in the house where Francois II. had drawn his last breath, but the duke and the cardinal, the Duchesse de Guise, Mary Stuart, and Dayelle, together with the sentries at the door, the pages of the Grand-master, those of the cardinal, and their private secretaries.

“Vive la France!” cried several Reformers in the street, sounding the first cry of the opposition.

Robertet, who owed all he was to the duke and cardinal, terrified by their scheme and its present failure, went over secretly to the queen-mother, whom the ambassadors of Spain, England, the Empire, and Poland, hastened to meet on the staircase, brought thither by Cardinal de Tournon, who had gone to notify them as soon as he had made Queen Catherine a sign from the courtyard at the moment when she protested against the operation of Ambroise Pare.

“Well!” said the cardinal to the duke, “so the sons of Louis d’Outre-mer, the heirs of Charles de Lorraine flinched and lacked courage.”

“We should have been exiled to Lorraine,” replied the duke. “I declare to you, Charles, that if the crown lay there before me I would not stretch out my hand to pick it up. That’s for my son to do.”

“Will he have, as you have had, the army and Church on his side?”

“He will have something better.”

“What?”

“The people!”

“Ah!” exclaimed Mary Stuart, clasping the stiffened hand of her first husband, now dead, “there is none but me to weep for this poor boy who loved me so!”

“How can we patch up matters with the queen-mother?” said the cardinal.

“Wait till she quarrels with the Huguenots,” replied the duchess.

The conflicting interests of the house of Bourbon, of Catherine, of the Guises, and of the Reformed party produced such confusion in the town of Orleans that, three days after the king’s death, his body, completely forgotten in the Bailliage and put into a coffin by the menials of the house, was taken to Saint-Denis in a covered waggon, accompanied only by the Bishop of Senlis and two gentlemen. When the pitiable procession reached the little town of Etampes, a servant of the Chancelier l’Hopital fastened to the waggon this severe inscription, which history has preserved: “Tanneguy de Chastel, where art thou? and yet thou wert a Frenchman!”--a stern reproach, which fell with equal force on Catherine de’ Medici, Mary Stuart, and the Guises. What Frenchman does not know that Tanneguy de Chastel spent thirty thousand crowns of the coinage of that day (one million of our francs) at the funeral of Charles VII., the benefactor of his house?

No sooner did the tolling of the bells announce to the town of Orleans that Francois II. was dead, and the rumor spread that the Connetable de Montmorency had ordered the flinging open of the gates of the town, than Tourillon, the glover, rushed up into the garret of his house and went to a secret hiding-place.

“Good heavens! can he be dead?” he cried.

Hearing the words, a man rose to his feet and answered, “Ready to serve!”--the password of the Reformers who belonged to Calvin.

This man was Chaudieu, to whom Tourillon now related the events of the last eight days, during which time he had prudently left the minister alone in his hiding-place with a twelve-pound loaf of bread for his sole nourishment.

“Go instantly to the Prince de Conde, brother: ask him to give me a safe-conduct; and find me a horse,” cried the minister. “I must start at once.”

“Write me a line, or he will not receive me.”

“Here,” said Chaudieu, after writing a few words, “ask for a pass from the king of Navarre, for I must go to Geneva without a moment’s loss of time.”

XIII. CALVIN

Two hours later all was ready, and the ardent minister was on his way to Switzerland, accompanied by a nobleman in the service of the king of Navarre (of whom Chaudieu pretended to be the secretary), carrying with him despatches from the Reformers in the Dauphine. This sudden departure was chiefly in the interests of Catherine de’ Medici, who, in order to gain time to establish her power, had made a bold proposition to the Reformers which was kept a profound secret. This strange proceeding explains the understanding so suddenly apparent between herself and the leaders of the Reform. The wily woman gave, as a pledge of her good faith, an intimation of her desire to heal all differences between the two churches by calling an assembly, which should be neither a council, nor a conclave, nor a synod, but should be known by some new and distinctive name, if Calvin consented to the project. When this secret was afterwards divulged (be it remarked in passing) it led to an alliance between the Duc de Guise and the Connetable de Montmorency against Catherine and the king of Navarre,--a strange alliance! known in history as the Triumvirate, the Marechal de Saint-Andre being the third personage in the purely Catholic coalition to which this singular proposition for a “colloquy” gave rise. The secret of Catherine’s wily policy was rightly understood by the Guises; they felt certain that the queen cared nothing for this mysterious assembly, and was only temporizing with her new allies in order to secure a period of peace until the majority of Charles IX.; but none the less did they deceive the Connetable into fearing a collusion of real interests between the queen and the Bourbons,--whereas, in reality, Catherine was playing them all one against another.

The queen had become, as the reader will perceive, extremely powerful in a very short time. The spirit of discussion and controversy which now sprang up was singularly favorable to her position. The Catholics and the Reformers were equally pleased to exhibit their brilliancy one after another in this tournament of words; for that is what it actually was, and no more. It is extraordinary that historians have mistaken one of the wiliest schemes of the great queen for uncertainty and hesitation! Catherine never went more directly to her own ends than in just such schemes which appeared to thwart them. The king of Navarre, quite incapable of understanding her motives, fell into her plan in all sincerity, and despatched Chaudieu to Calvin, as we have seen. The minister had risked his life to be secretly in Orleans and watch events; for he was, while there, in hourly peril of being discovered and hung as a man under sentence of banishment.

According to the then fashion of travelling, Chaudieu could not reach Geneva before the month of February, and the negotiations were not likely to be concluded before the end of March; consequently the assembly could certainly not take place before the month of May, 1561. Catherine, meantime, intended to amuse the court and the various conflicting interests by the coronation of the king, and the ceremonies of his first “lit de justice,” at which l’Hopital and de Thou recorded the letters-patent by which Charles IX. confided the administration to his mother in common with the present lieutenant-general of the kingdom, Antoine de Navarre, the weakest prince of those days.

Is it not a strange spectacle this of the great kingdom of France waiting in suspense for the “yes” or “no” of a French burgher, hitherto an obscure man, living for many years past in Geneva? The transalpine pope held in check by the pontiff of Geneva! The two Lorrain princes, lately all-powerful, now paralyzed by the momentary coalition of the queen-mother and the first prince of the blood with Calvin! Is not this, I say, one of the most instructive lessons ever given to kings by history,--a lesson which should teach them to study men, to seek out genius, and employ it, as did Louis XIV., wherever God has placed it?

Calvin, whose name was not Calvin but Cauvin, was the son of a cooper at Noyon in Picardy. The region of his birth explains in some degree the obstinacy combined with capricious eagerness which distinguished this arbiter of the destinies of France in the sixteenth century. Nothing is less known than the nature of this man, who gave birth to Geneva and to the spirit that emanated from that city. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who had very little historical knowledge, has completely ignored the influence of Calvin on his republic. At first the embryo Reformer, who lived in one of the humblest houses in the upper town, near the church of Saint-Pierre, over a carpenter’s shop (first resemblance between him and Robespierre), had no great authority in Geneva. In fact for a long time his power was malevolently checked by the Genevese. The town was the residence in those days of a citizen whose fame, like that of several others, remained unknown to the world at large and for a time to Geneva itself. This man, Farel, about the year 1537, detained Calvin in Geneva, pointing out to him that the place could be made the safe centre of a reformation more active and thorough than that of Luther. Farel and Calvin regarded Lutheranism as an incomplete work,--insufficient in itself and without any real grip upon France. Geneva, midway between France and Italy, and speaking the French language, was admirably situated for ready communication with Germany, France, and Italy. Calvin thereupon adopted Geneva as the site of his moral fortunes; he made it thenceforth the citadel of his ideas.

The Council of Geneva, at Farel’s entreaty, authorized Calvin in September, 1538, to give lectures on theology. Calvin left the duties of the ministry to Farel, his first disciple, and gave himself up patiently to the work of teaching his doctrine. His authority, which became so absolute in the last years of his life, was obtained with difficulty and very slowly. The great agitator met with such serious obstacles that he was banished for a time from Geneva on account of the severity of his reform. A party of honest citizens still clung to their old luxury and their old customs. But, as usually happens, these good people, fearing ridicule, would not admit the real object of their efforts, and kept up their warfare against the new doctrines on points altogether foreign to the real question. Calvin insisted that _leavened bread_ should be used for the communion, and that all feasts should be abolished except Sundays. These innovations were disapproved of at Berne and at Lausanne. Notice was served on the Genevese to conform to the ritual of Switzerland. Calvin and Farel resisted; their political opponents used this disobedience to drive them from Geneva, whence they were, in fact, banished for several years. Later Calvin returned triumphantly at the demand of his flock. Such persecutions always become in the end the consecration of a moral power; and, in this case, Calvin’s return was the beginning of his era as prophet. He then organized his religious Terror, and the executions began. On his reappearance in the city he was admitted into the ranks of the Genevese burghers; but even then, after fourteen years’ residence, he was not made a member of the Council. At the time of which we write, when Catherine sent her envoy to him, this king of ideas had no other title than that of “pastor of the Church of Geneva.” Moreover, Calvin never in his life received a salary of more than one hundred and fifty francs in money yearly, fifteen hundred-weight of wheat, and two barrels of wine. His brother, a tailor, kept a shop close to the place Saint-Pierre, in a street now occupied by one of the large printing establishments of Geneva. Such personal disinterestedness, which was lacking in Voltaire, Newton, and Bacon, but eminent in the lives of Rabelais, Spinosa, Loyola, Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is indeed a magnificent frame to those ardent and sublime figures.

The career of Robespierre can alone picture to the minds of the present day that of Calvin, who, founding his power on the same bases, was as despotic and as cruel as the lawyer of Arras. It is a noticeable fact that Picardy (Arras and Noyon) furnished both these instruments of reformation! Persons who wish to study the motives of the executions ordered by Calvin will find, all relations considered, another 1793 in Geneva. Calvin cut off the head of Jacques Gruet “for having written impious letters, libertine verses, and for working to overthrow ecclesiastical ordinances.” Reflect upon that sentence, and ask yourselves if the worst tyrants in their saturnalias ever gave more horribly burlesque reasons for their cruelties. Valentin Gentilis, condemned to death for “involuntary heresy,” escaped execution only by making a submission far more ignominious than was ever imposed by the Catholic Church. Seven years before the conference which was now to take place in Calvin’s house on the proposals of the queen-mother, Michel Servet, _a Frenchman_, travelling through Switzerland, was arrested at Geneva, tried, condemned, and burned alive, on Calvin’s accusation, for having “attacked the mystery of the Trinity,” in a book which was neither written nor published in Geneva. Remember the eloquent remonstrance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose book, overthrowing the Catholic religion, written in France and published in Holland, was burned by the hangman, while the author, a foreigner, was merely banished from the kingdom where he had endeavored to destroy the fundamental proofs of religion and of authority. Compare the conduct of our Parliament with that of the Genevese tyrant. Again: Bolsee was brought to trial for “having other ideas than those of Calvin on predestination.” Consider these things, and ask yourselves if Fourquier-Tinville did worse. The savage religious intolerance of Calvin was, morally speaking, more implacable than the savage political intolerance of Robespierre. On a larger stage than that of Geneva, Calvin would have shed more blood than did the terrible apostle of political equality as opposed to Catholic equality. Three centuries earlier a monk of Picardy drove the whole West upon the East. Peter the Hermit, Calvin, and Robespierre, each at an interval of three hundred years and all three from the same region, were, politically speaking, the Archimedean screws of their age,--at each epoch a Thought which found its fulcrum in the self-interest of mankind.

Calvin was undoubtedly the maker of that melancholy town called Geneva, where, only ten years ago, a man said, pointing to a porte-cochere in the upper town, the first ever built there: “By that door luxury has invaded Geneva.” Calvin gave birth, by the sternness of his doctrines and his executions, to that form of hypocritical sentiment called “cant.”[*] According to those who practice it, good morals consist in renouncing the arts and the charms of life, in eating richly but without luxury, in silently amassing money without enjoying it otherwise than as Calvin enjoyed power--by thought. Calvin imposed on all the citizens of his adopted town the same gloomy pall which he spread over his own life. He created in the Consistory a Calvinistic inquisition, absolutely similar to the revolutionary tribunal of Robespierre. The Consistory denounced the persons to be condemned to the Council, and Calvin ruled the Council through the Consistory, just as Robespierre ruled the Convention through the Club of the Jacobins. In this way an eminent magistrate of Geneva was condemned to two months’ imprisonment, the loss of all his offices, and the right of ever obtaining others “because he led a disorderly life and was intimate with Calvin’s enemies.” Calvin thus became a legislator. He created the austere, sober, commonplace, and hideously sad, but irreproachable manners and customs which characterize Geneva to the present day,--customs preceding those of England called Puritanism, which were due to the Cameronians, disciples of Cameron (a Frenchman deriving his doctrine from Calvin), whom Sir Walter Scott depicts so admirably. The poverty of a man, a sovereign master, who negotiated, power to power, with kings, demanding armies and subsidies, and plunging both hands into their savings laid aside for the unfortunate, proves that thought, used solely as a means of domination, gives birth to political misers,--men who enjoy by their brains only, and, like the Jesuits, want power for power’s sake. Pitt, Luther, Calvin, Robespierre, all those Harpagons of power, died without a penny. The inventory taken in Calvin’s house after his death, which comprised all his property, even his books, amounted in value, as history records, to two hundred and fifty francs. That of Luther came to about the same sum; his widow, the famous Catherine de Bora, was forced to petition for a pension of five hundred francs, which as granted to her by an Elector of Germany. Potemkin, Richelieu, Mazarin, those men of thought and action, all three of whom made or laid the foundation of empires, each left over three hundred millions behind them. They had hearts; they loved women and the arts; they built, they conquered; whereas with the exception of the wife of Luther, the Helen of that Iliad, all the others had no tenderness, no beating of the heart for any woman with which to reproach themselves.

[*] _Momerie_.

This brief digression was necessary in order to explain Calvin’s position in Geneva.

During the first days of the month of February in the year 1561, on a soft, warm evening such as we may sometimes find at that season on Lake Leman, two horsemen arrived at the Pre-l’Eveque,--thus called because it was the former country-place of the Bishop of Geneva, driven from Switzerland about thirty years earlier. These horsemen, who no doubt knew the laws of Geneva about the closing of the gates (then a necessity and now very ridiculous) rode in the direction of the Porte de Rive; but they stopped their horses suddenly on catching sight of a man, about fifty years of age, leaning on the arm of a servant-woman, and walking slowly toward the town. This man, who was rather stout, walked with difficulty, putting one foot after the other with pain apparently, for he wore round shoes of black velvet, laced in front.

“It is he!” said Chaudieu to the other horseman, who immediately dismounted, threw the reins to his companion, and went forward, opening wide his arms to the man on foot.

The man, who was Jean Calvin, drew back to avoid the embrace, casting a stern look at his disciple. At fifty years of age Calvin looked as though he were sixty. Stout and stocky in figure, he seemed shorter still because the horrible sufferings of stone in the bladder obliged him to bend almost double as he walked. These pains were complicated by attacks of gout of the worst kind. Every one trembled before that face, almost as broad as it was long, on which, in spite of its roundness, there was as little human-kindness as on that of Henry the Eighth, whom Calvin greatly resembled. Sufferings which gave him no respite were manifest in the deep-cut lines starting from each side of the nose and following the curve of the moustache till they were lost in the thick gray beard. This face, though red and inflamed like that of a heavy drinker, showed spots where the skin was yellow. In spite of the velvet cap, which covered the huge square head, a vast forehead of noble shape could be seen and admired; beneath it shone two dark eyes, which must have flashed forth flame in moments of anger. Whether by reason of his obesity, or because of his thick, short neck, or in consequence of his vigils and his constant labors, Calvin’s head was sunk between his broad shoulders, which obliged him to wear a fluted ruff of very small dimensions, on which his face seemed to lie like the head of John the Baptist on a charger. Between his moustache and his beard could be seen, like a rose, his small and fresh and eloquent little mouth, shaped in perfection. The face was divided by a square nose, remarkable for the flexibility of its entire length, the tip of which was significantly flat, seeming the more in harmony with the prodigious power expressed by the form of that imperial head. Though it might have been difficult to discover on his features any trace of the weekly headaches which tormented Calvin in the intervals of the slow fever that consumed him, suffering, ceaselessly resisted by study and by will, gave to that mask, superficially so florid, a certain something that was terrible. Perhaps this impression was explainable by the color of a sort of greasy layer on the skin, due to the sedentary habits of the toiler, showing evidence of the perpetual struggle which went on between that valetudinarian temperament and one of the strongest wills ever known in the history of the human mind. The mouth, though charming, had an expression of cruelty. Chastity, necessitated by vast designs, exacted by so many sickly conditions, was written upon that face. Regrets were there, notwithstanding the serenity of that all-powerful brow, together with pain in the glance of those eyes, the calmness of which was terrifying.

Calvin’s costume brought into full relief this powerful head. He wore the well-known cassock of black cloth, fastened round his waist by a black cloth belt with a brass buckle, which became thenceforth the distinctive dress of all Calvinist ministers, and was so uninteresting to the eye that it forced the spectator’s attention upon the wearer’s face.

“I suffer too much, Theodore, to embrace you,” said Calvin to the elegant cavalier.

Theodore de Beze, then forty-two years of age and lately admitted, at Calvin’s request, as a Genevese burgher, formed a violent contrast to the terrible pastor whom he had chosen as his sovereign guide and ruler. Calvin, like all burghers raised to moral sovereignty, and all inventors of social systems, was eaten up with jealousy. He abhorred his disciples; he wanted no equals; he could not bear the slightest contradiction. Yet there was between him and this graceful cavalier so marked a difference, Theodore de Beze was gifted with so charming a personality enhanced by a politeness trained by court life, and Calvin felt him to be so unlike his other surly janissaries, that the stern reformer departed in de Beze’s case from his usual habits. He never loved him, for this harsh legislator totally ignored all friendship, but, not fearing him in the light of a successor, he liked to play with Theodore as Richelieu played with his cat; he found him supple and agile. Seeing how admirably de Beze succeeded in all his missions, he took a fancy to the polished instrument of which he knew himself the mainspring and the manipulator; so true is it that the sternest of men cannot do without some semblance of affection. Theodore was Calvin’s spoilt child; the harsh reformer never scolded him; he forgave him his dissipations, his amours, his fine clothes and his elegance of language. Perhaps Calvin was not unwilling to show that the Reformation had a few men of the world to compare with the men of the court. Theodore de Beze was anxious to introduce a taste for the arts, for literature, and for poesy into Geneva, and Calvin listened to his plans without knitting his thick gray eyebrows. Thus the contrast of character and person between these two celebrated men was as complete and marked as the difference in their minds.

Calvin acknowledged Chaudieu’s very humble salutation by a slight inclination of the head. Chaudieu slipped the bridles of both horses through his arms and followed the two great men of the Reformation, walking to the left, behind de Beze, who was on Calvin’s right. The servant-woman hastened on in advance to prevent the closing of the Porte de Rive, by informing the captain of the guard that Calvin had been seized with sudden acute pains.

Theodore de Beze was a native of the canton of Vezelay, which was the first to enter the Confederation, the curious history of which transaction has been written by one of the Thierrys. The burgher spirit of resistance, endemic at Vezelay, no doubt, played its part in the person of this man, in the great revolt of the Reformers; for de Beze was undoubtedly one of the most singular personalities of the Heresy.

“You suffer still?” said Theodore to Calvin.

“A Catholic would say, ‘like a lost soul,’” replied the Reformer, with the bitterness he gave to his slightest remarks. “Ah! I shall not be here long, my son. What will become of you without me?”

“We shall fight by the light of your books,” said Chaudieu.

Calvin smiled; his red face changed to a pleased expression, and he looked favorably at Chaudieu.

“Well, have you brought me news? Have they massacred many of our people?” he said smiling, and letting a sarcastic joy shine in his brown eyes.

“No,” said Chaudieu, “all is peaceful.”

“So much the worse,” cried Calvin; “so much the worse! All pacification is an evil, if indeed it is not a trap. Our strength lies in persecution. Where should we be if the Church accepted Reform?”

“But,” said Theodore, “that is precisely what the queen-mother appears to wish.”

“She is capable of it,” remarked Calvin. “I study that woman--”

“What, at this distance?” cried Chaudieu.

“Is there any distance for the mind?” replied Calvin, sternly, for he thought the interruption irreverent. “Catherine seeks power, and women with that in their eye have neither honor nor faith. But what is she doing now?”

“I bring you a proposal from her to call a species of council,” replied Theodore de Beze.

“Near Paris?” asked Calvin, hastily.

“Yes.”

“Ha! so much the better!” exclaimed the Reformer.

“We are to try to understand each other and draw up some public agreement which shall unite the two churches.”

“Ah! if she would only have the courage to separate the French Church from the court of Rome, and create a patriarch for France as they did in the Greek Church!” cried Calvin, his eyes glistening at the idea thus presented to his mind of a possible throne. “But, my son, can the niece of a Pope be sincere? She is only trying to gain time.”

“She has sent away the Queen of Scots,” said Chaudieu.

“One less!” remarked Calvin, as they passed through the Porte de Rive. “Elizabeth of England will restrain that one for us. Two neighboring queens will soon be at war with each other. One is handsome, the other ugly,--a first cause for irritation; besides, there’s the question of illegitimacy--”

He rubbed his hands, and the character of his joy was so evidently ferocious that de Beze shuddered: he saw the sea of blood his master was contemplating.

“The Guises have irritated the house of Bourbon,” said Theodore after a pause. “They came to an open rupture at Orleans.”

“Ah!” said Calvin, “you would not believe me, my son, when I told you the last time you started for Nerac that we should end by stirring up war to the death between the two branches of the house of France? I have, at least, one court, one king and royal family on my side. My doctrine is producing its effect upon the masses. The burghers, too, understand me; they regard as idolators all who go to Mass, who paint the walls of their churches, and put pictures and statues within them. Ha! it is far more easy for a people to demolish churches and palaces than to argue the question of justification by faith, or the real presence. Luther was an argufier, but I,--I am an army! He was a reasoner, I am a system. In short, my sons, he was merely a skirmisher, but I am Tarquin! Yes, _my_ faithful shall destroy pictures and pull down churches; they shall make mill-stones of statues to grind the flour of the peoples. There are guilds and corporations in the States-general--I will have nothing there but individuals. Corporations resist; they see clear where the masses are blind. We must join to our doctrine political interests which will consolidate it, and keep together the _materiel_ of my armies. I have satisfied the logic of cautious souls and the minds of thinkers by this bared and naked worship which carries religion into the world of ideas; I have made the peoples understand the advantages of suppressing ceremony. It is for you, Theodore, to enlist their interests; hold to that; go not beyond it. All is said in the way of doctrine; let no one add one iota. Why does Cameron, that little Gascon pastor, presume to write of it?”

Calvin, de Beze, and Chaudieu were mounting the steep steps of the upper town in the midst of a crowd, but the crowd paid not the slightest attention to the men who were unchaining the mobs of other cities and preparing them to ravage France.

After this terrible tirade, the three marched on in silence till they entered the little place Saint-Pierre and turned toward the pastor’s house. On the second story of that house (never noted, and of which in these days no one is ever told in Geneva, where, it may be remarked, Calvin has no statue) his lodging consisted of three chambers with common pine floors and wainscots, at the end of which were the kitchen and the bedroom of his woman-servant. The entrance, as usually happened in most of the burgher households of Geneva, was through the kitchen, which opened into a little room with two windows, serving as parlor, salon, and dining-room. Calvin’s study, where his thought had wrestled with suffering for the last fourteen years, came next, with the bedroom beyond it. Four oaken chairs covered with tapestry and placed around a square table were the sole furniture of the parlor. A stove of white porcelain, standing in one corner of the room, cast out a gentle heat. Panels and a wainscot of pine wood left in its natural state without decoration covered the walls. Thus the nakedness of the place was in keeping with the sober and simple life of the Reformer.

“Well?” said de Beze as they entered, profiting by a few moments when Chaudieu left them to put up the horse at a neighboring inn, “what am I to do? Will you agree to the colloquy?”

“Of course,” replied Calvin. “And it is you, my son, who will fight for us there. Be peremptory, be arbitrary. No one, neither the queen nor the Guises nor I, wants a pacification; it would not suit us at all. I have confidence in Duplessis-Mornay; let him play the leading part. Are we alone?” he added, with a glance of distrust into the kitchen, where two shirts and a few collars were stretched on a line to dry. “Go and shut all the doors. Well,” he continued when Theodore had returned, “we must drive the king of Navarre to join the Guises and the Connetable by advising him to break with Queen Catherine de’ Medici. Let us all get the benefit of that poor creature’s weakness. If he turns against the Italian she will, when she sees herself deprived of that support, necessarily unite with the Prince de Conde and Coligny. Perhaps this manoeuvre will so compromise her that she will be forced to remain on our side.”

Theodore de Beze caught the hem of Calvin’s cassock and kissed it.

“Oh! my master,” he exclaimed, “how great you are!”

“Unfortunately, my dear Theodore, I am dying. If I die without seeing you again,” he added, sinking his voice and speaking in the ear of his minister of foreign affairs, “remember to strike a great blow by the hand of some one of our martyrs.”

“Another Minard to be killed?”

“Something better than a mere lawyer.”

“A king?”

“Still better!--a man who wants to be a king.”

“The Duc de Guise!” exclaimed Theodore, with an involuntary gesture.

“Well?” cried Calvin, who thought he saw disappointment or resistance in the gesture, and did not see at the same moment the entrance of Chaudieu. “Have we not the right to strike as we are struck?--yes, to strike in silence and in darkness. May we not return them wound for wound, and death for death? Would the Catholics hesitate to lay traps for us and massacre us? Assuredly not. Let us burn their churches! Forward, my children! And if you have devoted youths--”

“I have,” said Chaudieu.

“Use them as engines of war! our cause justifies all means. Le Balafre, that horrible soldier, is, like me, more than a man; he is a dynasty, just as I am a system. He is able to annihilate us; therefore, I say, Death to the Guise!”

“I would rather have a peaceful victory, won by time and reason,” said de Beze.

“Time!” exclaimed Calvin, dashing his chair to the ground, “reason! Are you mad? Can reason achieve conquests? You know nothing of men, you who deal with them, idiot! The thing that injures my doctrine, you triple fool! is the reason that is in it. By the lightning of Saul, by the sword of Vengeance, thou pumpkin-head, do you not see the vigor given to my Reform by the massacre at Amboise? Ideas never grow till they are watered with blood. The slaying of the Duc de Guise will lead to a horrible persecution, and I pray for it with all my might. Our reverses are preferable to success. The Reformation has an object to gain in being attacked; do you hear me, dolt? It cannot hurt us to be defeated, whereas Catholicism is at an end if we should win but a single battle. Ha! what are my lieutenants?--rags, wet rags instead of men! white-haired cravens! baptized apes! O God, grant me ten years more of life! If I die too soon the cause of true religion is lost in the hands of such boobies! You are as great a fool as Antoine de Navarre! Out of my sight! Leave me; I want a better negotiator than you! You are an ass, a popinjay, a poet! Go and make your elegies and your acrostics, you trifler! Hence!”

The pains of his body were absolutely overcome by the fire of his anger; even the gout subsided under this horrible excitement of his mind. Calvin’s face flushed purple, like the sky before a storm. His vast brow shone. His eyes flamed. He was no longer himself. He gave way utterly to the species of epileptic motion, full of passion, which was common with him. But in the very midst of it he was struck by the attitude of the two witnesses; then, as he caught the words of Chaudieu saying to de Beze, “The Burning Bush!” he sat down, was silent, and covered his face with his two hands, the knotted veins of which were throbbing in spite of their coarse texture.

Some minutes later, still shaken by this storm raised within him by the continence of his life, he said in a voice of emotion:--

“My sins, which are many, cost me less trouble to subdue, than my impatience. Oh, savage beast! shall I never vanquish you?” he cried, beating his breast.

“My dear master,” said de Beze, in a tender voice, taking Calvin’s hand and kissing it, “Jupiter thunders, but he knows how to smile.”

Calvin looked at his disciple with a softened eye and said:--

“Understand me, my friends.”

“I understand that the pastors of peoples bear great burdens,” replied Theodore. “You have a world upon your shoulders.”

“I have three martyrs,” said Chaudieu, whom the master’s outburst had rendered thoughtful, “on whom we can rely. Stuart, who killed Minard, is at liberty--”

“You are mistaken,” said Calvin, gently, smiling after the manner of great men who bring fair weather into their faces as though they were ashamed of the previous storm. “I know human nature; a man may kill one president, but not two.”

“Is it absolutely necessary?” asked de Beze.

“Again!” exclaimed Calvin, his nostrils swelling. “Come, leave me, you will drive me to fury. Take my decision to the queen. You, Chaudieu, go your way, and hold your flock together in Paris. God guide you! Dinah, light my friends to the door.”

“Will you not permit me to embrace you?” said Theodore, much moved. “Who knows what may happen to us on the morrow? We may be seized in spite of our safe-conduct.”

“And yet you want to spare them!” cried Calvin, embracing de Beze. Then he took Chaudieu’s hand and said: “Above all, no Huguenots, no Reformers, but _Calvinists_! Use no term but Calvinism. Alas! this is not ambition, for I am dying,--but it is necessary to destroy the whole of Luther, even to the name of Lutheran and Lutheranism.”

“Ah! man divine,” cried Chaudieu, “you well deserve such honors.”

“Maintain the uniformity of the doctrine; let no one henceforth change or remark it. We are lost if new sects issue from our bosom.”

We will here anticipate the events on which this Study is based, and close the history of Theodore de Beze, who went to Paris with Chaudieu. It is to be remarked that Poltrot, who fired at the Duc de Guise fifteen months later, confessed under torture that he had been urged to the crime by Theodore de Beze; though he retracted that avowal during subsequent tortures; so that Bossuet, after weighing all historical considerations, felt obliged to acquit Beze of instigating the crime. Since Bossuet’s time, however, an apparently futile dissertation, apropos of a celebrated song, has led a compiler of the eighteenth century to prove that the verses on the death of the Duc de Guise, sung by the Huguenots from one end of France to the other, was the work of Theodore de Beze; and it is also proved that the famous song on the burial of Marlborough was a plagiarism on it.[*]

[*] One of the most remarkable instances of the transmission of songs is that of Marlborough. Written in the first instance by a Huguenot on the death of the Duc de Guise in 1563, it was preserved in the French army, and appears to have been sung with variations, suppressions, and additions at the death of all generals of importance. When the intestine wars were over the song followed the soldiers into civil life. It was never forgotten (though the habit of singing it may have lessened), and in 1781, sixty years after the death of Marlborough, the wet-nurse of the Dauphin was heard to sing it as she suckled her nursling. When and why the name of the Duke of Marlborough was substituted for that of the Duc de Guise has never been ascertained. See “Chansons Populaires,” par Charles Nisard: Paris, Dentu, 1867.--Tr.

XIV. CATHERINE IN POWER

The day on which Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu arrived in Paris, the court returned from Rheims, where Charles IX. was crowned. This ceremony, which Catherine made magnificent with splendid fetes, enabled her to gather about her the leaders of the various parties. Having studied all interests and all factions, she found herself with two alternatives from which to choose; either to rally them all to the throne, or to pit them one against the other. The Connetable de Montmorency, supremely Catholic, whose nephew, the Prince de Conde, was leader of the Reformers, and whose sons were inclined to the new religion, blamed the alliance of the queen-mother with the Reformation. The Guises, on their side, were endeavoring to gain over Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, a weak prince; a manoeuvre which his wife, Jeanne d’Albret, instructed by de Beze, allowed to succeed. The difficulties were plain to Catherine, whose dawning power needed a period of tranquillity. She therefore impatiently awaited Calvin’s reply to the message which the Prince de Conde, the king of Navarre, Coligny, d’Andelot, and the Cardinal de Chatillon had sent him through de Beze and Chaudieu. Meantime, however, she was faithful to her promises as to the Prince de Conde. The chancellor put an end to the proceedings in which Christophe was involved by referring the affair to the Parliament of Paris, which at once set aside the judgment of the committee, declaring it without power to try a prince of the blood. The Parliament then reopened the trial, at the request of the Guises and the queen-mother. Lasagne’s papers had already been given to Catherine, who burned them. The giving up of these papers was a first pledge, uselessly made by the Guises to the queen-mother. The Parliament, no longer able to take cognizance of those decisive proofs, reinstated the prince in all his rights, property, and honors. Christophe, released during the tumult at Orleans on the death of the king, was acquitted in the first instance, and appointed, in compensation for his sufferings, solicitor to the Parliament, at the request of his godfather Monsieur de Thou.

The Triumvirate, that coming coalition of self-interests threatened by Catherine’s first acts, was now forming itself under her very eyes. Just as in chemistry antagonistic substances separate at the first shock which jars their enforced union, so in politics the alliance of opposing interests never lasts. Catherine thoroughly understood that sooner or later she should return to the Guises and combine with them and the Connetable to do battle against the Huguenots. The proposed “colloquy” which tempted the vanity of the orators of all parties, and offered an imposing spectacle to succeed that of the coronation and enliven the bloody ground of a religious war which, in point of fact, had already begun, was as futile in the eyes of the Duc de Guise as in those of Catherine. The Catholics would, in one sense be worsted; for the Huguenots, under pretext of conferring, would be able to proclaim their doctrine, with the sanction of the king and his mother, to the ears of all France. The Cardinal de Lorraine, flattered by Catherine into the idea of destroying the heresy by the eloquence of the Church, persuaded his brother to consent; and thus the queen obtained what was all-essential to her, six months of peace.

A slight event, occurring at this time, came near compromising the power which Catherine had so painfully built up. The following scene, preserved in history, took place, on the very day the envoys returned from Geneva, in the hotel de Coligny near the Louvre. At his coronation, Charles IX., who was greatly attached to his tutor Amyot, appointed him grand-almoner of France. This affection was shared by his brother the Duc d’Anjou, afterwards Henri III., another of Anjou’s pupils. Catherine heard the news of this appointment from the two Gondis during the journey from Rheims to Paris. She had counted on that office in the gift of the Crown to gain a supporter in the Church with whom to oppose the Cardinal de Lorraine. Her choice had fallen on the Cardinal de Tournon, in whom she expected to find, as in l’Hopital, another _crutch_--the word is her own. As soon as she reached the Louvre she sent for the tutor, and her anger was such, on seeing the disaster to her policy caused by the ambition of this son of a shoemaker, that she was betrayed into using the following extraordinary language, which several memoirs of the day have handed down to us:--

“What!” she cried, “am I, who compel the Guises, the Colignys, the Connetables, the house of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, to serve my ends, am I to be opposed by a priestling like you who are not satisfied to be bishop of Auxerre?”

Amyot excused himself. He assured the queen that he had asked nothing; the king of his own will had given him the office of which he, the son of a poor tailor, felt himself quite unworthy.

“Be assured, _maitre_,” replied Catherine (that being the name which the two kings, Charles IX. and Henri III., gave to the great writer) “that you will not stand on your feet twenty-four hours hence, unless you make your pupil change his mind.”

Between the death thus threatened and the resignation of the highest ecclesiastical office in the gift of the crown, the son of the shoemaker, who had lately become extremely eager after honors, and may even have coveted a cardinal’s hat, thought it prudent to temporize. He left the court and hid himself in the abbey of Saint-Germain. When Charles IX. did not see him at his first dinner, he asked where he was. Some Guisard doubtless told him of what had occurred between Amyot and the queen-mother.

“Has he been forced to disappear because I made him grand-almoner?” cried the king.

He thereupon rushed to his mother in the violent wrath of angry children when their caprices are opposed.

“Madame,” he said on entering, “did I not kindly sign the letter you asked me to send to Parliament, by means of which you govern my kingdom? Did you not promise that if I did so my will should be yours? And here, the first favor that I wish to bestow excites your jealousy! The chancellor talks of declaring my majority at fourteen, three years from now, and you wish to treat me as a child. By God, I will be king, and a king as my father and grandfather were kings!”

The tone and manner in which these words were said gave Catherine a revelation of her son’s true character; it was like a blow in the breast.

“He speaks to me thus, he whom I made a king!” she thought. “Monsieur,” she said aloud, “the office of a king, in times like these, is a very difficult one; you do not yet know the shrewd men with whom you have to deal. You will never have a safer and more sincere friend than your mother, or better servants than those who have been so long attached to her person, without whose services you might perhaps not even exist to-day. The Guises want both your life and your throne, be sure of that. If they could sew me into a sack and fling me into the river,” she said, pointing to the Seine, “it would be done to-night. They know that I am a lioness defending her young, and that I alone prevent their daring hands from seizing your crown. To whom--to whose party does your tutor belong? Who are his allies? What authority has he? What services can he do you? What weight do his words carry? Instead of finding a prop to sustain your power, you have cut the ground from under it. The Cardinal de Lorraine is a living threat to you; he plays the king; he keeps his hat on his head before the princes of the blood; it was urgently necessary to invest another cardinal with powers greater than his own. But what have you done? Is Amyot, that shoemaker, fit only to tie the ribbons of his shoes, is he capable of making head against the Guise ambition? However, you love Amyot, you have appointed him; your will must now be done, monsieur. But before you make such gifts again, I pray you to consult me in affectionate good faith. Listen to reasons of state; and your own good sense as a child may perhaps agree with my old experience, when you really understand the difficulties that lie before you.”

“Then I can have my master back again?” cried the king, not listening to his mother’s words, which he considered to be mere reproaches.

“Yes, you shall have him,” she replied. “But it is not here, nor that brutal Cypierre who will teach you how to reign.”

“It is for you to do so, my dear mother,” said the boy, mollified by his victory and relaxing the surly and threatening look stamped by nature upon his countenance.

Catherine sent Gondi to recall the new grand-almoner. When the Italian discovered the place of Amyot’s retreat, and the bishop heard that the courtier was sent by the queen, he was seized with terror and refused to leave the abbey. In this extremity Catherine was obliged to write to him herself, in such terms that he returned to Paris and received from her own lips the assurance of her protection,--on condition, however, that he would blindly promote her wishes with Charles IX.

This little domestic tempest over, the queen, now re-established in the Louvre after an absence of more than a year, held council with her closest friends as to the proper conduct to pursue with the young king whom Cypierre had complimented on his firmness.

“What is best to be done?” she said to the two Gondis, Ruggiero, Birago, and Chiverni who had lately become governor and chancellor to the Duc d’Anjou.

“Before all else,” replied Birago, “get rid of Cypierre. He is not a courtier; he will never accommodate himself to your ideas, and will think he does his duty in thwarting you.”

“Whom can I trust?” cried the queen.

“One of us,” said Birago.

“On my honor!” exclaimed Gondi, “I’ll promise you to make the king as docile as the king of Navarre.”

“You allowed the late king to perish to save your other children,” said Albert de Gondi. “Do, then, as the great signors of Constantinople do,--divert the anger and amuse the caprices of the present king. He loves art and poetry and hunting, also a little girl he saw at Orleans; _there’s_ occupation enough for him.”

“Will you really be the king’s governor?” said Catherine to the ablest of the Gondis.

“Yes, if you will give me the necessary authority; you may even be obliged to make me marshal of France and a duke. Cypierre is altogether too small a man to hold the office. In future, the governor of a king of France should be of some great dignity, like that of duke and marshal.”

“He is right,” said Birago.

“Poet and huntsman,” said Catherine in a dreamy tone.

“We will hunt and make love!” cried Gondi.

“Moreover,” remarked Chiverni, “you are sure of Amyot, who will always fear poison in case of disobedience; so that you and he and Gondi can hold the king in leading-strings.”

“Amyot has deeply offended me,” said Catherine.

“He does not know what he owes to you; if he did know, you would be in danger,” replied Birago, gravely, emphasizing his words.

“Then, it is agreed,” exclaimed Catherine, on whom Birago’s reply made a powerful impression, “that you, Gondi, are to be the king’s governor. My son must consent to do for one of my friends a favor equal to the one I have just permitted for his knave of a bishop. That fool has lost the hat; for never, as long as I live, will I consent that the Pope shall give it to him! How strong we might have been with Cardinal de Tournon! What a trio with Tournon for grand-almoner, and l’Hopital, and de Thou! As for the burghers of Paris, I intend to make my son cajole them; we will get a support there.”

Accordingly, Albert de Gondi became a marshal of France and was created Duc de Retz and governor of the king a few days later.

At the moment when this little private council ended, Cardinal de Tournon announced to the queen the arrival of the emissaries sent to Calvin. Admiral Coligny accompanied the party in order that his presence might ensure them due respect at the Louvre. The queen gathered the formidable phalanx of her maids of honor about her, and passed into the reception hall, built by her husband, which no longer exists in the Louvre of to-day.

At the period of which we write the staircase of the Louvre occupied the clock tower. Catherine’s apartments were in the old buildings which still exist in the court of the Musee. The present staircase of the museum was built in what was formerly the _salle des ballets_. The ballet of those days was a sort of dramatic entertainment performed by the whole court.

Revolutionary passions gave rise to a most laughable error about Charles IX., in connection with the Louvre. During the Revolution hostile opinions as to this king, whose real character was masked, made a monster of him. Joseph Cheniers tragedy was written under the influence of certain words scratched on the window of the projecting wing of the Louvre, looking toward the quay. The words were as follows: “It was from this window that Charles IX., of execrable memory, fired upon French citizens.” It is well to inform future historians and all sensible persons that this portion of the Louvre--called to-day the old Louvre--which projects upon the quay and is connected with the Louvre by the room called the Apollo gallery (while the great halls of the Museum connect the Louvre with the Tuileries) did not exist in the time of Charles IX. The greater part of the space where the frontage on the quay now stands, and where the Garden of the Infanta is laid out, was then occupied by the hotel de Bourbon, which belonged to and was the residence of the house of Navarre. It was absolutely impossible, therefore, for Charles IX. to fire from the Louvre of Henri II. upon a boat full of Huguenots crossing the river, although _at the present time_ the Seine can be seen from its windows. Even if learned men and libraries did not possess maps of the Louvre made in the time of Charles IX., on which its then position is clearly indicated, the building itself refutes the error. All the kings who co-operated in the work of erecting this enormous mass of buildings never failed to put their initials or some special monogram on the parts they had severally built. Now the part we speak of, the venerable and now blackened wing of the Louvre, projecting on the quay and overlooking the garden of the Infanta, bears the monograms of Henri III. and Henri IV., which are totally different from that of Henri II., who invariably joined his H to the two C’s of Catherine, forming a D,--which, by the bye, has constantly deceived superficial persons into fancying that the king put the initial of his mistress, Diane, on great public buildings. Henri IV. united the Louvre with his own hotel de Bourbon, its garden and dependencies. He was the first to think of connecting Catherine de’ Medici’s palace of the Tuileries with the Louvre by his unfinished galleries, the precious sculptures of which have been so cruelly neglected. Even if the map of Paris, and the monograms of Henri III. and Henri IV. did not exist, the difference of architecture is refutation enough to the calumny. The vermiculated stone copings of the hotel de la Force mark the transition between what is called the architecture of the Renaissance and that of Henri III., Henri IV., and Louis XIII. This archaeological digression (continuing the sketches of old Paris with which we began this history) enables us to picture to our minds the then appearance of this other corner of the old city, of which nothing now remains but Henri IV.’s addition to the Louvre, with its admirable bas-reliefs, now being rapidly annihilated.

When the court heard that the queen was about to give an audience to Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu, presented by Admiral Coligny, all the courtiers who had the right of entrance to the reception hall, hastened thither to witness the interview. It was about six o’clock in the evening; Coligny had just supped, and was using a toothpick as he came up the staircase of the Louvre between the two Reformers. The practice of using a toothpick was so inveterate a habit with the admiral that he was seen to do it on the battle-field while planning a retreat. “Distrust the admiral’s toothpick, the _No_ of the Connetable, and Catherine’s _Yes_,” was a court proverb of that day. After the Saint-Bartholomew the populace made a horrible jest on the body of Coligny, which hung for three days at Montfaucon, by putting a grotesque toothpick into his mouth. History has recorded this atrocious levity. So petty an act done in the midst of that great catastrophe pictures the Parisian populace, which deserves the sarcastic jibe of Boileau: “Frenchmen, born _malin_, created the guillotine.” The Parisian of all time cracks jokes and makes lampoons before, during, and after the most horrible revolutions.

Theodore de Beze wore the dress of a courtier, black silk stockings, low shoes with straps across the instep, tight breeches, a black silk doublet with slashed sleeves, and a small black velvet mantle, over which lay an elegant white fluted ruff. His beard was trimmed to a moustache and _virgule_ (now called imperial) and he carried a sword at his side and a cane in his hand. Whosoever knows the galleries of Versailles or the collections of Odieuvre, knows also his round, almost jovial face and lively eyes, surmounted by the broad forehead which characterized the writers and poets of that day. De Beze had, what served him admirably, an agreeable air and manner. In this he was a great contrast to Coligny, of austere countenance, and to the sour, bilious Chaudieu, who chose to wear on this occasion the robe and bands of a Calvinist minister.

The scenes that happen in our day in the Chamber of Deputies, and which, no doubt, happened in the Convention, will give an idea of how, at this court, at this epoch, these men, who six months later were to fight to the death in a war without quarter, could meet and talk to each other with courtesy and even laughter. Birago, who was coldly to advise the Saint-Bartholomew, and Cardinal de Lorraine, who charged his servant Besme “not to miss the admiral,” now advanced to meet Coligny; Birago saying, with a smile:--

“Well, my dear admiral, so you have really taken upon yourself to present these gentlemen from Geneva?”

“Perhaps you will call it a crime in _me_,” replied the admiral, jesting, “whereas if you had done it yourself you would make a merit of it.”

“They say that the Sieur Calvin is very ill,” remarked the Cardinal de Lorraine to Theodore de Beze. “I hope no one suspects us of giving him his broth.”

“Ah! monseigneur; it would be too great a risk,” replied de Beze, maliciously.

The Duc de Guise, who was watching Chaudieu, looked fixedly at his brother and at Birago, who were both taken aback by de Beze’s answer.

“Good God!” remarked the cardinal, “heretics are not diplomatic!”

To avoid embarrassment, the queen, who was announced at this moment, had arranged to remain standing during the audience. She began by speaking to the Connetable, who had previously remonstrated with her vehemently on the scandal of receiving messengers from Calvin.

“You see, my dear Connetable,” she said, “that I receive them without ceremony.”

“Madame,” said the admiral, approaching the queen, “these are two teachers of the new religion, who have come to an understanding with Calvin, and who have his instructions as to a conference in which the churches of France may be able to settle their differences.”

“This is Monsieur de Beze, to whom my wife is much attached,” said the king of Navarre, coming forward and taking de Beze by the hand.

“And this is Chaudieu,” said the Prince de Conde. “_My friend_ the Duc de Guise knows the soldier,” he added, looking at Le Balafre, “perhaps he will now like to know the minister.”

This gasconade made the whole court laugh, even Catherine.

“Faith!” replied the Duc de Guise, “I am enchanted to see a _gars_ who knows so well how to choose his men and to employ them in their right sphere. One of your agents,” he said to Chaudieu, “actually endured the extraordinary question without dying and without confessing a single thing. I call myself brave; but I don’t know that I could have endured it as he did.”

“Hum!” muttered Ambroise, “you did not say a word when I pulled the javelin out of your face at Calais.”

Catherine, standing at the centre of a semicircle of the courtiers and maids of honor, kept silence. She was observing the two Reformers, trying to penetrate their minds as, with the shrewd, intelligent glance of her black eyes, she studied them.

“One seems to be the scabbard, the other the blade,” whispered Albert de Gondi in her ear.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Catherine at last, unable to restrain a smile, “has your master given you permission to unite in a public conference, at which you will be converted by the arguments of the Fathers of the Church who are the glory of our State?”

“We have no master but the Lord,” said Chaudieu.

“But surely you will allow some little authority to the king of France?” said Catherine, smiling.

“And much to the queen,” said de Beze, bowing low.

“You will find,” continued the queen, “that our most submissive subjects are heretics.”

“Ah, madame!” cried Coligny, “we will indeed endeavor to make you a noble and peaceful kingdom! Europe has profited, alas! by our internal divisions. For the last fifty years she has had the advantage of one-half of the French people being against the other half.”

“Are we here to sing anthems to the glory of heretics,” said the Connetable, brutally.

“No, but to bring them to repentance,” whispered the Cardinal de Lorraine in his ear; “we want to coax them by a little sugar.”

“Do you know what I should have done under the late king?” said the Connetable, angrily. “I’d have called in the provost and hung those two knaves, then and there, on the gallows of the Louvre.”

“Well, gentlemen, who are the learned men whom you have selected as our opponents?” inquired the queen, imposing silence on the Connetable by a look.

“Duplessis-Mornay and Theodore de Beze will speak on our side,” replied Chaudieu.

“The court will doubtless go to Saint-Germain, and as it would be improper that this _colloquy_ should take place in a royal residence, we will have it in the little town of Poissy,” said Catherine.

“Shall we be safe there, madame?” asked Chaudieu.

“Ah!” replied the queen, with a sort of naivete, “you will surely know how to take precautions. The Admiral will arrange all that with my cousins the Guises and de Montmorency.”

“The devil take them!” cried the Connetable, “I’ll have nothing to do with it.”

“How do you contrive to give such strength of character to your converts?” said the queen, leading Chaudieu apart. “The son of my furrier was actually sublime.”

“We have faith,” replied Chaudieu.

At this moment the hall presented a scene of animated groups, all discussing the question of the proposed assembly, to which the few words said by the queen had already given the name of the “Colloquy of Poissy.” Catherine glanced at Chaudieu and was able to say to him unheard:--

“Yes, a new faith!”

“Ah, madame, if you were not blinded by your alliance with the court of Rome, you would see that we are returning to the true doctrines of Jesus Christ, who, recognizing the equality of souls, bestows upon all men equal rights on earth.”

“Do you think yourself the equal of Calvin?” asked the queen, shrewdly. “No, no; we are equals only in church. What! would you unbind the tie of the people to the throne?” she cried. “Then you are not only heretics, you are revolutionists,--rebels against obedience to the king as you are against that to the Pope!” So saying, she left Chaudieu abruptly and returned to Theodore de Beze. “I count on you, monsieur,” she said, “to conduct this colloquy in good faith. Take all the time you need.”

“I had supposed,” said Chaudieu to the Prince de Conde, the King of Navarre, and Admiral Coligny, as they left the hall, “that a great State matter would be treated more seriously.”

“Oh! we know very well what you want,” exclaimed the Prince de Conde, exchanging a sly look with Theodore de Beze.

The prince now left his adherents to attend a rendezvous. This great leader of a party was also one of the most favored gallants of the court. The two choice beauties of that day were even then striving with such desperate eagerness for his affections that one of them, the Marechale de Saint-Andre, the wife of the future triumvir, gave him her beautiful estate of Saint-Valery, hoping to win him away from the Duchesse de Guise, the wife of the man who had tried to take his head on the scaffold. The duchess, not being able to detach the Duc de Nemours from Mademoiselle de Rohan, fell in love, _en attendant_, with the leader of the Reformers.

“What a contrast to Geneva!” said Chaudieu to Theodore de Beze, as they crossed the little bridge of the Louvre.

“The people here are certainly gayer than the Genevese. I don’t see why they should be so treacherous,” replied de Beze.

“To treachery oppose treachery,” replied Chaudieu, whispering the words in his companion’s ear. “I have _saints_ in Paris on whom I can rely, and I intend to make Calvin a prophet. Christophe Lecamus shall deliver us from our most dangerous enemy.”

“The queen-mother, for whom the poor devil endured his torture, has already, with a high hand, caused him to be appointed solicitor to the Parliament; and solicitors make better prosecutors than murderers. Don’t you remember how Avenelles betrayed the secrets of our first uprising?”

“I know Christophe,” said Chaudieu, in a positive tone, as he turned to leave the envoy from Geneva.

XV. COMPENSATION

A few days after the reception of Calvin’s emissaries by the queen, that is to say, toward the close of the year (for the year then began at Easter and the present calendar was not adopted until later in the reign of Charles IX.), Christophe reclined in an easy chair beside the fire in the large brown hall, dedicated to family life, that overlooked the river in his father’s house, where the present drama was begun. His feet rested on a stool; his mother and Babette Lallier had just renewed the compresses, saturated with a solution brought by Ambroise Pare, who was charged by Catherine de’ Medici to take care of the young man. Once restored to his family, Christophe became the object of the most devoted care. Babette, authorized by her father, came very morning and only left the Lecamus household at night. Christophe, the admiration of the apprentices, gave rise throughout the quarter to various tales, which invested him with mysterious poesy. He had borne the worst torture; the celebrated Ambroise Pare was employing all his skill to cure him. What great deed had he done to be thus treated? Neither Christophe nor his father said a word on the subject. Catherine, then all-powerful, was concerned in their silence as well as the Prince de Conde. The constant visits of Pare, now chief surgeon of both the king and the house of Guise, whom the queen-mother and the Lorrains allowed to treat a youth accused of heresy, strangely complicated an affair through which no one saw clearly. Moreover, the rector of Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs came several times to visit the son of his church-warden, and these visits made the causes of Christophe’s present condition still more unintelligible to his neighbors.

The old syndic, who had his plan, gave evasive answers to his brother-furriers, the merchants of the neighborhood, and to all friends who spoke to him of his son: “Yes, I am very thankful to have saved him.”--“Well, you know, it won’t do to put your finger between the bark and the tree.”--“My son touched fire and came near burning up my house.”--“They took advantage of his youth; we burghers get nothing but shame and evil by frequenting the grandees.”--“This affair decides me to make a lawyer of Christophe; the practice of law will teach him to weigh his words and his acts.”--“The young queen, who is now in Scotland, had a great deal to do with it; but then, to be sure, my son may have been imprudent.”--“I have had cruel anxieties.”--“All this may decide me to give up my business; I do not wish ever to go to court again.”--“My son has had enough of the Reformation; it has cracked all his joints. If it had not been for Ambroise, I don’t know what would have become of me.”

Thanks to these ambiguous remarks and to the great discretion of such conduct, it was generally averred in the neighborhood that Christophe had seen the error of his ways; everybody thought it natural that the old syndic should wish to get his son appointed to the Parliament, and the rector’s visits no longer seemed extraordinary. As the neighbors reflected on the old man’s anxieties they no longer thought, as they would otherwise have done, that his ambition was inordinate. The young lawyer, who had lain helpless for months on the bed which his family made up for him in the old hall, was now, for the last week, able to rise and move about by the aid of crutches. Babette’s love and his mother’s tenderness had deeply touched his heart; and they, while they had him helpless in their hands, lectured him severely on religion. President de Thou paid his godson a visit during which he showed himself most fatherly. Christophe, being now a solicitor of the Parliament, must of course, he said, be Catholic; his oath would bind him to that; and the president, who assumed not to doubt of his godson’s orthodoxy, ended his remarks by saying with great earnestness:

“My son, you have been cruelly tried. I am myself ignorant of the reasons which made the Messieurs de Guise treat you thus; but I advise you in future to live peacefully, without entering into the troubles of the times; for the favor of the king and queen will not be shown to the makers of revolt. You are not important enough to play fast and loose with the king as the Guises do. If you wish to be some day counsellor to the Parliament remember that you cannot obtain that noble office unless by a real and serious attachment to the royal cause.”

Nevertheless, neither President de Thou’s visit, nor the seductions of Babette, nor the urgency of his mother, were sufficient to shake the constancy of the martyr of the Reformation. Christophe held to his religion all the more because he had suffered for it.

“My father will never let me marry a heretic,” whispered Babette in his ear.

Christophe answered only by tears, which made the young girl silent and thoughtful.

Old Lecamus maintained his paternal and magisterial dignity; he observed his son and said little. The stern old man, after recovering his dear Christophe, was dissatisfied with himself; he repented the tenderness he had shown for this only son; but he admired him secretly. At no period of his life did the syndic pull more wires to reach his ends, for he saw the field ripe for the harvest so painfully sown, and he wanted to gather the whole of it. Some days before the morning of which we write, he had had, being alone with Christophe, a long conversation with him in which he endeavored to discover the secret reason of the young man’s resistance. Christophe, who was not without ambition, betrayed his faith in the Prince de Conde. The generous promise of the prince, who, of course, was only exercising his profession of prince, remained graven on his heart; little did he think that Conde had sent him, mentally, to the devil in Orleans, muttering, “A Gascon would have understood me better,” when Christophe called out a touching farewell as the prince passed the window of his dungeon.

But besides this sentiment of admiration for the prince, Christophe had also conceived a profound reverence for the great queen, who had explained to him by a single look the necessity which compelled her to sacrifice him; and who during his agony had given him an illimitable promise in a single tear. During the silent months of his weakness, as he lay there waiting for recovery, he thought over each event at Blois and at Orleans. He weighed, one might almost say in spite of himself, the relative worth of these two protections. He floated between the queen and the prince. He had certainly served Catherine more than he had served the Reformation, and in a young man both heart and mind would naturally incline toward the queen; less because she was a queen than because she was a woman. Under such circumstances a man will always hope more from a woman than from a man.

“I sacrificed myself for her; what will she do for me?”

This question Christophe put to himself almost involuntarily as he remembered the tone in which she had said the words, _Povero mio_! It is difficult to believe how egotistical a man can become when he lies on a bed of sickness. Everything, even the exclusive devotion of which he is the object, drives him to think only of himself. By exaggerating in his own mind the obligation which the Prince de Conde was under to him he had come to expect that some office would be given to him at the court of Navarre. Still new to the world of political life, he forgot its contending interests and the rapid march of events which control and force the hand of all leaders of parties; he forgot it the more because he was practically a prisoner in solitary confinement on his bed in that old brown room. Each party is, necessarily, ungrateful while the struggle lasts; when it triumphs it has too many persons to reward not to be ungrateful still. Soldiers submit to this ingratitude; but their leaders turn against the new master at whose side they have acted and suffered like equals for so long. Christophe, who alone remembered his sufferings, felt himself already among the leaders of the Reformation by the fact of his martyrdom. His father, that old fox of commerce, so shrewd, so perspicacious, ended by divining the secret thought of his son; consequently, all his manoeuvres were now based on the natural expectancy to which Christophe had yielded himself.

“Wouldn’t it be a fine thing,” he had said to Babette, in presence of the family a few days before his interview with his son, “to be the wife of a counsellor of the Parliament? You would be called _madame_!”

“You are crazy, _compere_,” said Lallier. “Where would you get ten thousand crowns’ income from landed property, which a counsellor must have, according to law; and from whom could you buy the office? No one but the queen-mother and regent could help your son into Parliament, and I’m afraid he’s too tainted with the new opinions for that.”

“What would you pay to see your daughter the wife of a counsellor?”

“Ah! you want to look into my purse, shrewd-head!” said Lallier.

Counsellor to the Parliament! The words worked powerfully in Christophe’s brain.

Sometime after this conversation, one morning when Christophe was gazing at the river and thinking of the scene which began this history, of the Prince de Conde, Chaudieu, La Renaudie, of his journey to Blois,--in short, the whole story of his hopes,--his father came and sat down beside him, scarcely concealing a joyful thought beneath a serious manner.

“My son,” he said, “after what passed between you and the leaders of the Tumult of Amboise, they owe you enough to make the care of your future incumbent on the house of Navarre.”

“Yes,” replied Christophe.

“Well,” continued his father, “I have asked their permission to buy a legal practice for you in the province of Bearn. Our good friend Pare undertook to present the letters which I wrote on your behalf to the Prince de Conde and the queen of Navarre. Here, read the answer of Monsieur de Pibrac, vice-chancellor of Navarre:--

To the Sieur Lecamus, _syndic of the guild of furriers_:

Monseigneur le Prince de Conde desires me to express his regret that he cannot do what you ask for his late companion in the tower of Saint-Aignan, whom he perfectly remembers, and to whom, meanwhile, he offers the place of gendarme in his company; which will put your son in the way of making his mark as a man of courage, which he is.

The queen of Navarre awaits an opportunity to reward the Sieur Christophe, and will not fail to take advantage of it.

Upon which, Monsieur le syndic, we pray God to have you in His keeping.

Pibrac,

At Nerac. Chancellor of Navarre.”

“Nerac, Pibrac, crack!” cried Babette. “There’s no confidence to be placed in Gascons; they think only of themselves.”

Old Lecamus looked at his son, smiling scornfully.

“They propose to put on horseback a poor boy whose knees and ankles were shattered for their sakes!” cried the mother. “What a wicked jest!”

“I shall never see you a counsellor of Navarre,” said his father.

“I wish I knew what Queen Catherine would do for me, if I made a claim upon her,” said Christophe, cast down by the prince’s answer.

“She made you no promise,” said the old man, “but I am certain that _she_ will never mock you like these others; she will remember your sufferings. Still, how can the queen make a counsellor of the Parliament out of a protestant burgher?”

“But Christophe has not abjured!” cried Babette. “He can very well keep his private opinions secret.”

“The Prince de Conde would be less disdainful of a counsellor of the Parliament,” said Lallier.

“Well, what say you, Christophe?” urged Babette.

“You are counting without the queen,” replied the young lawyer.

A few days after this rather bitter disillusion, an apprentice brought Christophe the following laconic little missive:--

Chaudieu wishes to see his son.

“Let him come in!” cried Christophe.

“Oh! my sacred martyr!” said the minister, embracing him; “have you recovered from your sufferings?”

“Yes, thanks to Pare.”

“Thanks rather to God, who gave you the strength to endure the torture. But what is this I hear? Have you allowed them to make you a solicitor? Have you taken the oath of fidelity? Surely you will not recognize that prostitute, the Roman, Catholic, and apostolic Church?”

“My father wished it.”

“But ought we not to leave fathers and mothers and wives and children, all, all, for the sacred cause of Calvinism; nay, must we not suffer all things? Ah! Christophe, Calvin, the great Calvin, the whole party, the whole world, the Future counts upon your courage and the grandeur of your soul. We want your life.”

It is a remarkable fact in the mind of man that the most devoted spirits, even while devoting themselves, build romantic hopes upon their perilous enterprises. When the prince, the soldier, and the minister had asked Christophe, under the bridge, to convey to Catherine the treaty which, if discovered, would in all probability cost him his life, the lad had relied on his nerve, upon chance, upon the powers of his mind, and confident in such hopes he bravely, nay, audaciously put himself between those terrible adversaries, the Guises and Catherine. During the torture he still kept saying to himself: “I shall come out of it! it is only pain!” But when this second and brutal demand, “Die, we want your life,” was made upon a boy who was still almost helpless, scarcely recovered from his late torture, and clinging all the more to life because he had just seen death so near, it was impossible for him to launch into further illusions.

Christophe answered quietly:--

“What is it now?”

“To fire a pistol courageously, as Stuart did on Minard.”

“On whom?”

“The Duc de Guise.”

“A murder?”

“A vengeance. Have you forgotten the hundred gentlemen massacred on the scaffold at Amboise? A child who saw that butchery, the little d’Aubigne cried out, ‘They have slaughtered France!’”

“You should receive the blows of others and give none; that is the religion of the gospel,” said Christophe. “If you imitate the Catholics in their cruelty, of what good is it to reform the Church?”

“Oh! Christophe, they have made you a lawyer, and now you argue!” said Chaudieu.

“No, my friend,” replied the young man, “but parties are ungrateful; and you will be, both you and yours, nothing more than puppets of the Bourbons.”

“Christophe, if you could hear Calvin, you would know how we wear them like gloves! The Bourbons are the gloves, we are the hand.”

“Read that,” said Christophe, giving Chaudieu Pibrac’s letter containing the answer of the Prince de Conde.

“Oh! my son; you are ambitious, you can no longer make the sacrifice of yourself!--I pity you!”

With those fine words Chaudieu turned and left him.

Some days after that scene, the Lallier family and the Lecamus family were gathered together in honor of the formal betrothal of Christophe and Babette, in the old brown hall, from which Christophe’s bed had been removed; for he was now able to drag himself about and even mount the stairs without his crutches. It was nine o’clock in the evening and the company were awaiting Ambroise Pare. The family notary sat before a table on which lay various contracts. The furrier was selling his house and business to his head-clerk, who was to pay down forty thousand francs for the house and then mortgage it as security for the payment of the goods, for which, however, he paid twenty thousand francs on account.

Lecamus was also buying for his son a magnificent stone house, built by Philibert de l’Orme in the rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs, which he gave to Christophe as a marriage portion. He also took two hundred thousand francs from his own fortune, and Lallier gave as much more, for the purchase of a fine seignorial manor in Picardy, the price of which was five hundred thousand francs. As this manor was a tenure from the Crown it was necessary to obtain letters-patent (called _rescriptions_) granted by the king, and also to make payment to the Crown of considerable feudal dues. The marriage had been postponed until this royal favor was obtained. Though the burghers of Paris had lately acquired the right to purchase manors, the wisdom of the privy council had been exercised in putting certain restrictions on the sale of those estates which were dependencies of the Crown; and the one which old Lecamus had had in his eye for the last dozen years was among them. Ambroise was pledged to bring the royal ordinance that evening; and the old furrier went and came from the hall to the door in a state of impatience which showed how great his long-repressed ambition had been. Ambroise at last appeared.

“My old friend!” cried the surgeon, in an agitated manner, with a glance at the supper table, “let me see your linen. Good. Oh! you must have wax candles. Quick, quick! get out your best things!”

“Why? what is it all about?” asked the rector of Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs.

“The queen-mother and the young king are coming to sup with you,” replied the surgeon. “They are only waiting for an old counsellor who agreed to sell his place to Christophe, and with whom Monsieur de Thou has concluded a bargain. Don’t appear to know anything; I have escaped from the Louvre to warn you.”

In a second the whole family were astir; Christophe’s mother and Babette’s aunt bustled about with the celerity of housekeepers suddenly surprised. But in spite of the apparent confusion into which the news had thrown the entire family, the precautions were promptly made, with an activity that was nothing short of marvellous. Christophe, amazed and confounded by such a favor, was speechless, gazing mechanically at what went on.

“The queen and king here in our house!” said the old mother.

“The queen!” repeated Babette. “What must we say and do?”

In less than an hour all was changed; the hall was decorated; the supper-table sparkled. Presently the noise of horses sounded in the street. The light of torches carried by the horsemen of the escort brought all the burghers of the neighborhood to their windows. The noise soon subsided and the escort rode away, leaving the queen-mother and her son, King Charles IX., Charles de Gondi, now Grand-master of the wardrobe and governor of the king, Monsieur de Thou, Pinard, secretary of State, the old counsellor, and two pages, under the arcade before the door.

“My worthy people,” said the queen as she entered, “the king, my son, and I have come to sign the marriage-contract of the son of my furrier,--but only on condition that he remains a Catholic. A man must be a Catholic to enter Parliament; he must be a Catholic to own land which derives from the Crown; he must be a Catholic if he would sit at the king’s table. That is so, is it not, Pinard?”

The secretary of State entered and showed the letters-patent.

“If we are not all Catholics,” said the little king, “Pinard will throw those papers into the fire. But we are all Catholics here, I think,” he continued, casting his somewhat haughty eyes over the company.

“Yes, sire,” replied Christophe, bending his injured knees with difficulty, and kissing the hand which the king held out to him.

Queen Catherine stretched out her hand to Christophe and, raising him hastily, drew him aside into a corner, saying in a low voice:--

“Ah ca! my lad, no evasions here. Are you playing above-board now?”

“Yes, madame,” he answered, won by the dazzling reward and the honor done him by the grateful queen.

“Very good. Monsieur Lecamus, the king, my son, and I permit you to purchase the office of the goodman Groslay, counsellor of the Parliament, here present. Young man, you will follow, I hope, in the steps of your predecessor.”

De Thou advanced and said: “I will answer for him, madame.”

“Very well; draw up the deed, notary,” said Pinard.

“Inasmuch as the king our master does us the favor to sign my daughter’s marriage contract,” cried Lallier, “I will pay the whole price of the manor.”

“The ladies may sit down,” said the young king, graciously: “As a wedding present to the bride I remit, with my mother’s consent, all my dues and rights in the manor.”

Old Lecamus and Lallier fell on their knees and kissed the king’s hand.

“_Mordieu_! sire, what quantities of money these burghers have!” whispered de Gondi in his ear.

The young king laughed.

“As their Highnesses are so kind,” said old Lecamus, “will they permit me to present to them my successor, and ask them to continue to him the royal patent of furrier to their Majesties?”

“Let us see him,” said the king.

Lecamus led forward his successor, who was livid with fear.

“If my mother consents, we will now sit down to table,” said the little king.

Old Lecamus had bethought himself of presenting to the king a silver goblet which he had bought of Benvenuto Cellini when the latter stayed in Paris at the hotel de Nesle. This treasure of art had cost the furrier no less than two thousand crowns.

“Oh! my dear mother, see this beautiful work!” cried the young king, lifting the goblet by its stem.

“It was made in Florence,” replied Catherine.

“Pardon me, madame,” said Lecamus, “it was made in Paris by a Florentine. All that is made in Florence would belong to your Majesty; that which is made in France is the king’s.”

“I accept it, my good man,” cried Charles IX.; “and it shall henceforth be my particular drinking cup.”

“It is beautiful enough,” said the queen, examining the masterpiece, “to be included among the crown-jewels. Well, Maitre Ambroise,” she whispered in the surgeon’s ear, with a glance at Christophe, “have you taken good care of him? Will he walk again?”

“He will run,” replied the surgeon, smiling. “Ah! you have cleverly made him a renegade.”

“Ha!” said the queen, with the levity for which she has been blamed, though it was only on the surface, “the Church won’t stand still for want of one monk!”

The supper was gay; the queen thought Babette pretty, and, in the regal manner which was natural to her, she slipped upon the girl’s finger a diamond ring which compensated in value for the goblet bestowed upon the king. Charles IX., who afterwards became rather too fond of these invasions of burgher homes, supped with a good appetite. Then, at a word from his new governor (who, it is said, was instructed to make him forget the virtuous teachings of Cypierre), he obliged all the men present to drink so deeply that the queen, observing that the gaiety was about to become too noisy, rose to leave the room. As she rose, Christophe, his father, and the two women took torches and accompanied her to the shop-door. There Christophe ventured to touch the queen’s wide sleeve and to make her a sign that he had something to say. Catherine stopped, made a gesture to the father and the two women to leave her, and said, turning to Christophe:

“What is it?”

“It may serve you to know, madame,” replied Christophe, whispering in her ear, “that the Duc de Guise is being followed by assassins.”

“You are a loyal subject,” said Catherine, smiling, “and I shall never forget you.”

She held out to him her hand, so celebrated for its beauty, first ungloving it, which was indeed a mark of favor,--so much so that Christophe, then and there, became altogether royalist as he kissed that adorable hand.

“So they mean to rid me of that bully without my having a finger in it,” thought she as she replaced her glove.

Then she mounted her mule and returned to the Louvre, attended by her two pages.

Christophe went back to the supper-table, but was thoughtful and gloomy even while he drank; the fine, austere face of Ambroise Pare seemed to reproach him for his apostasy. But subsequent events justified the manoeuvres of the old syndic. Christophe would certainly not have escaped the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew; his wealth and his landed estates would have made him a mark for the murderers. History has recorded the cruel fate of the wife of Lallier’s successor, a beautiful woman, whose naked body hung by the hair for three days from one of the buttresses of the Pont au Change. Babette trembled as she thought that she, too, might have endured the same treatment if Christophe had continued a Calvinist,--for such became the name of the Reformers. Calvin’s personal ambition was thus gratified, though not until after his death.

Such was the origin of the celebrated parliamentary house of Lecamus. Tallemant des Reaux is in error when he states that they came originally from Picardy. It is only true that the Lecamus family found it for their interest in after days to date from the time the old furrier bought their principal estate, which, as we have said, was situated in Picardy. Christophe’s son, who succeeded him under Louis XIII., was the father of the rich president Lecamus who built, in the reign of Louis XIV., that magnificent mansion which shares with the hotel Lambert the admiration of Parisians and foreigners, and was assuredly one of the finest buildings in Paris. It may still be seen in the rue Thorigny, though at the beginning of the Revolution it was pillaged as having belonged to Monsieur de Juigne, the archbishop of Paris. All the decorations were then destroyed; and the tenants who lodge there have greatly damaged it; nevertheless this palace, which is reached through the old house in the rue de la Pelleterie, still shows the noble results obtained in former days by the spirit of family. It may be doubted whether modern individualism, brought about by the equal division of inheritances, will ever raise such noble buildings.