Chapter 2

I. THE COURT UNDER CHARLES IX.

Between eleven o’clock and midnight toward the end of October, 1573, two Italians, Florentines and brothers, Albert de Gondi, Duc de Retz and marshal of France, and Charles de Gondi la Tour, Grand-master of the robes of Charles IX., were sitting on the roof of a house in the rue Saint-Honore, at the edge of a gutter. This gutter was one of those stone channels which in former days were constructed below the roofs of houses to receive the rain-water, discharging it at regular intervals through those long gargoyles carved in the shape of fantastic animals with gaping mouths. In spite of the zeal with which our present general pulls down and demolishes venerable buildings, there still existed many of these projecting gutters until, quite recently, an ordinance of the police as to water-conduits compelled them to disappear. But even so, a few of these carved gargoyles still remain, chiefly in the _quartier_ Saint-Antoine, where low rents and values hinder the building of new storeys under the eaves of the roofs.

It certainly seems strange that two personages invested with such important offices should be playing the part of cats. But whosoever will burrow into the historic treasures of those days, when personal interests jostled and thwarted each other around the throne till the whole political centre of France was like a skein of tangled thread, will readily understand that the two Florentines were cats indeed, and very much in their places in a gutter. Their devotion to the person of the queen-mother, Catherine de’ Medici--who had brought them to the court of France and foisted them into their high offices--compelled them not to recoil before any of the consequences of their intrusion. But to explain how and why these courtiers were thus perched, it is necessary to relate a scene which had taken place an hour earlier not far from this very gutter, in that beautiful brown room of the Louvre, all that now remains to us of the apartments of Henri II., in which after supper the courtiers had been paying court to the two queens, Catherine de’ Medici and Elizabeth of Austria, and to their son and husband King Charles IX.

In those days the majority of the burghers and great lords supped at six, or at seven o’clock, but the more refined and elegant supped at eight or even nine. This repast was the dinner of to-day. Many persons erroneously believe that etiquette was invented by Louis XIV.; on the contrary it was introduced into France by Catherine de’ Medici, who made it so severe that the Connetable de Montmorency had more difficulty in obtaining permission to enter the court of the Louvre on horseback than in winning his sword; moreover, that unheard-of distinction was granted to him only on account of his great age. Etiquette, which was, it is true, slightly relaxed under the first two Bourbon kings, took an Oriental form under the Great Monarch, for it was introduced from the Eastern Empire, which derived it from Persia. In 1573 few persons had the right to enter the courtyard of the Louvre with their servants and torches (under Louis XIV. the coaches of none but dukes and peers were allowed to pass under the peristyle); moreover, the cost of obtaining entrance after supper to the royal apartments was very heavy. The Marechal de Retz, whom we have just seen, perched on a gutter, offered on one occasion a thousand crowns of that day, six thousand francs of our present money, to the usher of the king’s cabinet to be allowed to speak to Henri III. on a day when he was not on duty. To an historian who knows the truth, it is laughable to see the well-known picture of the courtyard at Blois, in which the artist has introduced a courtier on horseback!

On the present occasion, therefore, none but the most eminent personages in the kingdom were in the royal apartments. The queen, Elizabeth of Austria, and her mother-in-law, Catherine de’ Medici, were seated together on the left of the fireplace. On the other side sat the king, buried in an arm-chair, affecting a lethargy consequent on digestion,--for he had just supped like a prince returned from hunting; possibly he was seeking to avoid conversation in presence of so many persons who were spies upon his thoughts. The courtiers stood erect and uncovered at the end of the room. Some talked in a low voice; others watched the king, awaiting the bestowal of a look or a word. Occasionally one was called up by the queen-mother, who talked with him for a few moments; another risked saying a word to the king, who replied with either a nod or a brief sentence. A German nobleman, the Comte de Solern, stood at the corner of the fireplace behind the young queen, the granddaughter of Charles V., whom he had accompanied into France. Near to her on a stool sat her lady of honor, the Comtesse de Fiesque, a Strozzi, and a relation of Catherine de’ Medici. The beautiful Madame de Sauves, a descendant of Jacques Coeur, mistress of the king of Navarre, then of the king of Poland, and lastly of the Duc d’Alencon, had been invited to supper; but she stood like the rest of the court, her husband’s rank (that of secretary of State) giving her no right to be seated. Behind these two ladies stood the two Gondis, talking to them. They alone of this dismal assembly were smiling. Albert Gondi, now Duc de Retz, marshal of France, and gentleman of the bed-chamber, had been deputed to marry the queen by proxy at Spire. In the first line of courtiers nearest to the king stood the Marechal de Tavannes, who was present on court business; Neufville de Villeroy, one of the ablest bankers of the period, who laid the foundation of the great house of that name; Birago and Chiverni, gentlemen of the queen-mother, who, knowing her preference for her son Henri (the brother whom Charles IX. regarded as an enemy), attached themselves especially to him; then Strozzi, Catherine’s cousin; and finally, a number of great lords, among them the old Cardinal de Lorraine and his nephew, the young Duc de Guise, who were held at a distance by the king and his mother. These two leaders of the Holy Alliance, and later of the League (founded in conjunction with Spain a few years earlier), affected the submission of servants who are only waiting an opportunity to make themselves masters. Catherine and Charles IX. watched each other with close attention.

At this gloomy court, as gloomy as the room in which it was held, each individual had his or her own reasons for being sad or thoughtful. The young queen, Elizabeth, was a prey to the tortures of jealousy, and could ill-disguise them, though she smiled upon her husband, whom she passionately adored, good and pious woman that she was! Marie Touchet, the only mistress Charles IX. ever had and to whom he was loyally faithful, had lately returned from the chateau de Fayet in Dauphine, whither she had gone to give birth to a child. She brought back to Charles IX. a son, his only son, Charles de Valois, first Comte d’Auvergne, and afterward Duc d’Angouleme. The poor queen, in addition to the mortification of her abandonment, now endured the pang of knowing that her rival had borne a son to her husband while she had brought him only a daughter. And these were not her only troubles and disillusions, for Catherine de’ Medici, who had seemed her friend in the first instance, now, out of policy, favored her betrayal, preferring to serve the mistress rather than the wife of the king,--for the following reason.

When Charles IX. openly avowed his passion for Marie Touchet, Catherine showed favor to the girl in the interests of her own desire for domination. Marie Touchet, who was very young when brought to court, came at an age when all the noblest sentiments are predominant. She loved the king for himself alone. Frightened at the fate to which ambition had led the Duchesse de Valentinois (better known as Diane de Poitiers), she dreaded the queen-mother, and greatly preferred her simple happiness to grandeur. Perhaps she thought that lovers as young as the king and herself could never struggle successfully against the queen-mother. As the daughter of Jean Touchet, Sieur de Beauvais and Quillard, she was born between the burgher class and the lower nobility; she had none of the inborn ambitions of the Pisseleus and Saint-Valliers, girls of rank, who battled for their families with the hidden weapons of love. Marie Touchet, without family or friends, spared Catherine de’ Medici all antagonism with her son’s mistress; the daughter of a great house would have been her rival. Jean Touchet, the father, one of the finest wits of the time, a man to whom poets dedicated their works, wanted nothing at court. Marie, a young girl without connections, intelligent and well-educated, and also simple and artless, whose desires would probably never be aggressive to the royal power, suited the queen-mother admirably. In short, she made the parliament recognize the son to whom Marie Touchet had just given birth in the month of April, and she allowed him to take the title of Comte d’Auvergne, assuring Charles IX. that she would leave the boy her personal property, the counties of Auvergne and Laraguais. At a later period, Marguerite de Valois, queen of Navarre, contested this legacy after she was queen of France, and the parliament annulled it. But later still, Louis XIII., out of respect for the Valois blood, indemnified the Comte d’Auvergne by the gift of the duchy of Angouleme.

Catherine had already given Marie Touchet, who asked nothing, the manor of Belleville, an estate close to Vincennes which carried no title; and thither she went whenever the king hunted and spent the night at the castle. It was in this gloomy fortress that Charles IX. passed the greater part of his last years, ending his life there, according to some historians, as Louis XII. had ended his.

The queen-mother kept close watch upon her son. All the occupations of his personal life, outside of politics, were reported to her. The king had begun to look upon his mother as an enemy, but the kind intentions she expressed toward his son diverted his suspicions for a time. Catherine’s motives in this matter were never understood by Queen Elizabeth, who, according to Brantome, was one of the gentlest queens that ever reigned, who never did harm or even gave pain to any one, “and was careful to read her prayer-book secretly.” But this single-minded princess began at last to see the precipices yawning around the throne,--a dreadful discovery, which might indeed have made her quail; it was some such remembrance, no doubt, that led her to say to one of her ladies, after the death of the king, in reply to a condolence that she had no son, and could not, therefore, be regent and queen-mother:

“Ah! I thank God that I have no son. I know well what would have happened. My poor son would have been despoiled and wronged like the king, my husband, and I should have been the cause of it. God had mercy on the State; he has done all for the best.”

This princess, whose portrait Brantome thinks he draws by saying that her complexion was as beautiful and delicate as the ladies of her suite were charming and agreeable, and that her figure was fine though rather short, was of little account at her own court. Suffering from a double grief, her saddened attitude added another gloomy tone to a scene which most young queens, less cruelly injured, might have enlivened. The pious Elizabeth proved at this crisis that the qualities which are the shining glory of women in the ordinary ways of life can be fatal to a sovereign. A princess able to occupy herself with other things besides her prayer-book might have been a useful helper to Charles IX., who found no prop to lean on, either in his wife or in his mistress.

The queen-mother, as she sat there in that brown room, was closely observing the king, who, during supper, had exhibited a boisterous good-humor which she felt to be assumed in order to mask some intention against her. This sudden gaiety contrasted too vividly with the struggle of mind he endeavored to conceal by his eagerness in hunting, and by an almost maniacal toil at his forge, where he spent many hours in hammering iron; and Catherine was not deceived by it. Without being able even to guess which of the statesmen about the king was employed to prepare or negotiate it (for Charles IX. contrived to mislead his mother’s spies), Catherine felt no doubt whatever that some scheme for her overthrow was being planned. The unlooked-for presence of Tavannes, who arrived at the same time as Strozzi, whom she herself had summoned, gave her food for thought. Strong in the strength of her political combination, Catherine was above the reach of circumstances; but she was powerless against some hidden violence. As many persons are ignorant of the actual state of public affairs then so complicated by the various parties that distracted France, the leaders of which had each their private interests to carry out, it is necessary to describe, in a few words, the perilous game in which the queen-mother was now engaged. To show Catherine de’ Medici in a new light is, in fact, the root and stock of our present history.

Two words explain this woman, so curiously interesting to study, a woman whose influence has left such deep impressions upon France. Those words are: Power and Astrology. Exclusively ambitious, Catherine de’ Medici had no other passion than that of power. Superstitious and fatalistic, like so many superior men, she had no sincere belief except in occult sciences. Unless this double mainspring is known, the conduct of Catherine de’ Medici will remain forever misunderstood. As we picture her faith in judicial astrology, the light will fall upon two personages, who are, in fact, the philosophical subjects of this Study.

There lived a man for whom Catherine cared more than for any of her children; his name was Cosmo Ruggiero. He lived in a house belonging to her, the hotel de Soissons; she made him her supreme adviser. It was his duty to tell her whether the stars ratified the advice and judgment of her ordinary counsellors. Certain remarkable antecedents warranted the power which Cosmo Ruggiero retained over his mistress to her last hour. One of the most learned men of the sixteenth century was physician to Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duc d’Urbino, Catherine’s father. This physician was called Ruggiero the Elder (Vecchio Ruggier and Roger l’Ancien in the French authors who have written on alchemy), to distinguish him from his two sons, Lorenzo Ruggiero, called the Great by cabalistic writers, and Cosmo Ruggiero, Catherine’s astrologer, also called Roger by several French historians. In France it was the custom to pronounce the name in general as Ruggieri. Ruggiero the elder was so highly valued by the Medici that the two dukes, Cosmo and Lorenzo, stood godfathers to his two sons. He cast, in concert with the famous mathematician, Basilio, the horoscope of Catherine’s nativity, in his official capacity as mathematicion, astrologer, and physician to the house of Medici; three offices which are often confounded.

At the period of which we write the occult sciences were studied with an ardor that may surprise the incredulous minds of our own age, which is supremely analytical. Perhaps such minds may find in this historical sketch the dawn, or rather the germ, of the positive sciences which have flowered in the nineteenth century, though without the poetic grandeur given to them by the audacious Seekers of the sixteenth, who, instead of using them solely for mechanical industries, magnified Art and fertilized Thought by their means. The protection universally given to occult science by the sovereigns of those days was justified by the noble creations of many inventors, who, starting in quest of the Great Work (the so-called philosophers’ stone), attained to astonishing results. At no period were the sovereigns of the world more eager for the study of these mysteries. The Fuggers of Augsburg, in whom all modern Luculluses will recognize their princes, and all bankers their masters, were gifted with powers of calculation it would be difficult to surpass. Well, those practical men, who loaned the funds of all Europe to the sovereigns of the sixteenth century (as deeply in debt as the kings of the present day), those illustrious guests of Charles V. were sleeping partners in the crucibles of Paracelsus. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Ruggiero the elder was the head of that secret university from which issued the Cardans, the Nostradamuses, and the Agrippas (all in their turn physicians of the house of Valois); also the astronomers, astrologers, and alchemists who surrounded the princes of Christendom and were more especially welcomed and protected in France by Catherine de’ Medici. In the nativity drawn by Basilio and Ruggiero the elder, the principal events of Catherine’s life were foretold with a correctness which is quite disheartening for those who deny the power of occult science. This horoscope predicted the misfortunes which during the siege of Florence imperilled the beginning of her life; also her marriage with a son of the king of France, the unexpected succession of that son to his father’s throne, the birth of her children, their number, and the fact that three of her sons would be kings in succession, that two of her daughters would be queens, and that all of them were destined to die without posterity. This prediction was so fully realized that many historians have assumed that it was written after the events.

It is well known that Nostradamus took to the chateau de Chaumont, whither Catherine went after the conspiracy of La Renaudie, a woman who possessed the faculty of reading the future. Now, during the reign of Francois II., while the queen had with her her four sons, all young and in good health, and before the marriage of her daughter Elizabeth with Philip II., king of Spain, or that of her daughter Marguerite with Henri de Bourbon, king of Navarre (afterward Henri IV.), Nostradamus and this woman reiterated the circumstances formerly predicted in the famous nativity. This woman, who was no doubt gifted with second sight, and who belonged to the great school of Seekers of the Great Work, though the particulars of her life and name are lost to history, stated that the last crowned child would be assassinated. Having placed the queen-mother in front of a magic mirror, in which was reflected a wheel on the several spokes of which were the faces of her children, the sorceress set the wheel revolving, and Catherine counted the number of revolutions which it made. Each revolution was for each son one year of his reign. Henri IV. was also put upon the wheel, which then made twenty-four rounds, and the woman (some historians have said it was a man) told the frightened queen that Henri de Bourbon would be king of France and reign that number of years. From that time forth Catherine de’ Medici vowed a mortal hatred to the man whom she knew would succeed the last of her Valois sons, who was to die assassinated. Anxious to know what her own death would be, she was warned to beware of Saint-Germain. Supposing, therefore, that she would be either put to death or imprisoned in the chateau de Saint-Germain, she would never so much as put her foot there, although that residence was far more convenient for her political plans, owing to its proximity to Paris, than the other castles to which she retreated with the king during the troubles. When she was taken suddenly ill, a few days after the murder of the Duc de Guise at Blois, she asked the name of the bishop who came to assist her. Being told it was Saint-Germain, she cried out, “I am dead!” and did actually die on the morrow,--having, moreover, lived the exact number of years given to her by all her horoscopes.

These predictions, which were known to the Cardinal de Lorraine, who regarded them as witchcraft, were now in process of realization. Francois II. had reigned his two revolutions of the wheel, and Charles IX. was now making his last turn. If Catherine said the strange words which history has attributed to her when her son Henri started for Poland,--“You will soon return,”--they must be set down to her faith in occult science and not to the intention of poisoning Charles IX.

Many other circumstances corroborated Catherine’s faith in the occult sciences. The night before the tournament at which Henri II. was killed, Catherine saw the fatal blow in a dream. Her astrological council, then composed of Nostradamus and the two Ruggieri, had already predicted to her the death of the king. History has recorded the efforts made by Catherine to persuade her husband not to enter the lists. The prognostic, and the dream produced by the prognostic, were verified. The memoirs of the day relate another fact that was no less singular. The courier who announced the victory of Moncontour arrived in the night, after riding with such speed that he killed three horses. The queen-mother was awakened to receive the news, to which she replied, “I knew it already.” In fact, as Brantome relates, she had told of her son’s triumph the evening before, and narrated several circumstances of the battle. The astrologer of the house of Bourbon predicted that the youngest of all the princes descended from Saint-Louis (the son of Antoine de Bourbon) would ascend the throne of France. This prediction, related by Sully, was accomplished in the precise terms of the horoscope; which led Henri IV. to say that by dint of lying these people sometimes hit the truth. However that may be, if most of the great minds of that epoch believed in this vast science,--called Magic by the masters of judicial astrology, and Sorcery by the public,--they were justified in doing so by the fulfilment of horoscopes.

It was for the use of Cosmo Ruggiero, her mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer, that Catherine de’ Medici erected the tower behind the Halle aux Bles,--all that now remains of the hotel de Soissons. Cosmo Ruggiero possessed, like confessors, a mysterious influence, the possession of which, like them again, sufficed him. He cherished an ambitious thought superior to all vulgar ambitions. This man, whom dramatists and romance-writers depict as a juggler, owned the rich abbey of Saint-Mahe in Lower Brittany, and refused many high ecclesiastical dignities; the gold which the superstitious passions of the age poured into his coffers sufficed for his secret enterprise; and the queen’s hand, stretched above his head, preserved every hair of it from danger.

II. SCHEMES AGAINST SCHEMES

The thirst for power which consumed the queen-mother, her desire for dominion, was so great that in order to retain it she had, as we have seen, allied herself to the Guises, those enemies of the throne; to keep the reins of power, now obtained, within her hands, she was using every means, even to the sacrifice of her friends and that of her children. This woman, of whom one of her enemies said at her death, “It is more than a queen, it is monarchy itself that has died,”--this woman could not exist without the intrigues of government, as a gambler can live only by the emotions of play. Although she was an Italian of the voluptuous race of the Medici, the Calvinists who calumniated her never accused her of having a lover. A great admirer of the maxim, “Divide to reign,” she had learned the art of perpetually pitting one force against another. No sooner had she grasped the reins of power than she was forced to keep up dissensions in order to neutralize the strength of two rival houses, and thus save the Crown. Catherine invented the game of political see-saw (since imitated by all princes who find themselves in a like situation), by instigating, first the Calvinists against the Guises, and then the Guises against the Calvinists. Next, after pitting the two religions against each other in the heart of the nation, Catherine instigated the Duc d’Anjou against his brother Charles IX. After neutralizing events by opposing them to one another, she neutralized men, by holding the thread of all their interests in her hands. But so fearful a game, which needs the head of a Louis XI. to play it, draws down inevitably the hatred of all parties upon the player, who condemns himself forever to the necessity of conquering; for one lost game will turn every selfish interest into an enemy.

The greater part of the reign of Charles IX. witnessed the triumph of the domestic policy of this astonishing woman. What adroit persuasion must Catherine have employed to have obtained the command of the armies for the Duc d’Anjou under a young and brave king, thirsting for glory, capable of military achievement, generous, and in presence, too, of the Connetable de Montmorency. In the eyes of the statesmen of Europe the Duc d’Anjou had all the honors of the Saint-Bartholomew, and Charles IX. all the odium. After inspiring the king with a false and secret jealousy of his brother, she used that passion to wear out by the intrigues of fraternal jealousy the really noble qualities of Charles IX. Cypierre, the king’s first governor, and Amyot, his first tutor, had made him so great a man, they had paved the way for so noble a reign, that the queen-mother began to hate her son as soon as she found reason to fear the loss of the power she had so slowly and so painfully obtained. On these general grounds most historians have believed that Catherine de’ Medici felt a preference for Henri III.; but her conduct at the period of which we are now writing, proves the absolute indifference of her heart toward all her children.

When the Duc d’Anjou went to reign in Poland Catherine was deprived of the instrument by which she had worked to keep the king’s passions occupied in domestic intrigues, which neutralized his energy in other directions. She then set up the conspiracy of La Mole and Coconnas, in which her youngest son, the Duc d’Alencon (afterwards Duc d’Anjou, on the accession of Henri III.) took part, lending himself very willingly to his mother’s wishes, and displaying an ambition much encouraged by his sister Marguerite, then queen of Navarre. This secret conspiracy had now reached the point to which Catherine sought to bring it. Its object was to put the young duke and his brother-in-law, the king of Navarre, at the head of the Calvinists, to seize the person of Charles IX., and imprison that king without an heir,--leaving the throne to the Duc d’Alencon, whose intention it was to establish Calvinism as the religion of France. Calvin, as we have already said, had obtained, a few days before his death, the reward he had so deeply coveted,--the Reformation was now called Calvinism in his honor.

If Le Laboureur and other sensible writers had not already proved that La Mole and Coconnas,--arrested fifty nights after the day on which our present history begins, and beheaded the following April,--even, we say, if it had not been made historically clear that these men were the victims of the queen-mother’s policy, the part which Cosmo Ruggiero took in this affair would go far to show that she secretly directed their enterprise. Ruggiero, against whom the king had suspicions, and for whom he cherished a hatred the motives of which we are about to explain, was included in the prosecution. He admitted having given to La Mole a wax figure representing the king, which was pierced through the heart by two needles. This method of casting spells constituted a crime, which, in those days, was punished by death. It presents one of the most startling and infernal images of hatred that humanity could invent; it pictures admirably the magnetic and terrible working in the occult world of a constant malevolent desire surrounding the person doomed to death; the effects of which on the person are exhibited by the figure of wax. The law in those days thought, and thought justly, that a desire to which an actual form was given should be regarded as a crime of _lese majeste_. Charles IX. demanded the death of Ruggiero; Catherine, more powerful than her son, obtained from the Parliament, through the young counsellor, Lecamus, a commutation of the sentence, and Cosmo was sent to the galleys. The following year, on the death of the king, he was pardoned by a decree of Henri III., who restored his pension, and received him at court.

But, to return now to the moment of which we are writing, Catherine had, by this time, struck so many blows on the heart of her son that he was eagerly desirous of casting off her yoke. During the absence of Marie Touchet, Charles IX., deprived of his usual occupation, had taken to observing everything about him. He cleverly set traps for the persons in whom he trusted most, in order to test their fidelity. He spied on his mother’s actions, concealing from her all knowledge of his own, employing for this deception the evil qualities she had fostered in him. Consumed by a desire to blot out the horror excited in France by the Saint-Bartholomew, he busied himself actively in public affairs; he presided at the Council, and tried to seize the reins of government by well-laid schemes. Though the queen-mother endeavored to check these attempts of her son by employing all the means of influence over his mind which her maternal authority and a long habit of domineering gave her, his rush into distrust was so vehement that he went too far at the first bound ever to return from it. The day on which his mother’s speech to the king of Poland was reported to him, Charles IX., conscious of his failing health, conceived the most horrible suspicions, and when such thoughts take possession of the mind of a son and a king nothing can remove them. In fact, on his deathbed, at the moment when he confided his wife and daughter to Henri IV., he began to put the latter on his guard against Catherine, so that she cried out passionately, endeavoring to silence him, “Do not say that, monsieur!”

Though Charles IX. never ceased to show her the outward respect of which she was so tenacious that she would never call the kings her sons anything but “Monsieur,” the queen-mother had detected in her son’s manner during the last few months an ill-disguised purpose of vengeance. But clever indeed must be the man who counted on taking Catherine unawares. She held ready in her hand at this moment the conspiracy of the Duke d’Alencon and La Mole, in order to counteract, by another fraternal struggle, the efforts Charles IX. was making toward emancipation. But, before employing this means, she wanted to remove his distrust of her, which would render impossible their future reconciliation; for was he likely to restore power to the hands of a mother whom he thought capable of poisoning him? She felt herself at this moment in such serious danger that she had sent for Strozzi, her relation and a soldier noted for his promptitude of action. She took counsel in secret with Birago and the two Gondis, and never did she so frequently consult her oracle, Cosmo Ruggiero, as at the present crisis.

Though the habit of dissimulation, together with advancing age, had given the queen-mother that well-known abbess face, with its haughty and macerated mask, expressionless yet full of depth, inscrutable yet vigilant, remarked by all who have studied her portrait, the courtiers now observed some clouds on her icy countenance. No sovereign was ever so imposing as this woman from the day when she succeeded in restraining the Guises after the death of Francois II. Her black velvet cap, made with a point upon the forehead (for she never relinquished her widow’s mourning) seemed a species of feminine cowl around the cold, imperious face, to which, however, she knew how to give, at the right moment, a seductive Italian charm. Catherine de’ Medici was so well made that she was accused of inventing side-saddles to show the shape of her legs, which were absolutely perfect. Women followed her example in this respect throughout Europe, which even then took its fashions from France. Those who desire to bring this grand figure before their minds will find that the scene now taking place in the brown hall of the Louvre presents it in a striking aspect.

The two queens, different in spirit, in beauty, in dress, and now estranged,--one naive and thoughtful, the other thoughtful and gravely abstracted,--were far too preoccupied to think of giving the order awaited by the courtiers for the amusements of the evening. The carefully concealed drama, played for the last six months by the mother and son was more than suspected by many of the courtiers; but the Italians were watching it with special anxiety, for Catherine’s failure involved their ruin.

During this evening Charles IX., weary with the day’s hunting, looked to be forty years old. He had reached the last stages of the malady of which he died, the symptoms of which were such that many reflecting persons were justified in thinking that he was poisoned. According to de Thou (the Tacitus of the Valois) the surgeons found suspicious spots--_ex causa incognita reperti livores_--on his body. Moreover, his funeral was even more neglected than that of Francois II. The body was conducted from Saint-Lazare to Saint-Denis by Brantome and a few archers of the guard under command of the Comte de Solern. This circumstances, coupled with the supposed hatred of the mother to the son, may or may not give color to de Thou’s supposition, but it proves how little affection Catherine felt for any of her children,--a want of feeling which may be explained by her implicit faith in the predictions of judicial astrology. This woman was unable to feel affection for the instruments which were destined to fail her. Henri III. was the last king under whom her reign of power was to last; that was the sole consideration of her heart and mind.

In these days, however, we can readily believe that Charles IX. died a natural death. His excesses, his manner of life, the sudden development of his faculties, his last spasmodic attempt to recover the reins of power, his desire to live, the abuse of his vital strength, his final sufferings and last pleasures, all prove to an impartial mind that he died of consumption, a disease scarcely studied at that time, and very little understood, the symptoms of which might, not unnaturally, lead Charles IX. to believe himself poisoned. The real poison which his mother gave him was in the fatal counsels of the courtiers whom she placed about him,--men who led him to waste his intellectual as well as his physical vigor, thus bringing on a malady which was purely fortuitous and not constitutional. Under these harrowing circumstances, Charles IX. displayed a gloomy majesty of demeanor which was not unbecoming to a king. The solemnity of his secret thoughts was reflected on his face, the olive tones of which he inherited from his mother. This ivory pallor, so fine by candlelight, so suited to the expression of melancholy thought, brought out vigorously the fire of the blue-black eyes, which gazed from their thick and heavy lids with the keen perception our fancy lends to kings, their color being a cloak for dissimulation. Those eyes were terrible,--especially from the movement of their brows, which he could raise or lower at will on his bald, high forehead. His nose was broad and long, thick at the end,--the nose of a lion; his ears were large, his hair sandy, his lips blood-red, like those of all consumptives, the upper lip thin and sarcastic, the lower one firm, and full enough to give an impression of the noblest qualities of the heart. The wrinkles of his brow, the youth of which was killed by dreadful cares, inspired the strongest interest; remorse, caused by the uselessness of the Saint-Bartholomew, accounted for some, but there were two others on that face which would have been eloquent indeed to any student whose premature genius had led him to divine the principles of modern physiology. These wrinkles made a deeply indented furrow going from each cheek-bone to each corner of the mouth, revealing the inward efforts of an organization wearied by the toil of thought and the violent excitements of the body. Charles IX. was worn-out. If policy did not stifle remorse in the breasts of those who sit beneath the purple, the queen-mother, looking at her own work, would surely have felt it. Had Catherine foreseen the effect of her intrigues upon her son, would she have recoiled from them? What a fearful spectacle was this! A king born vigorous, and now so feeble; a mind powerfully tempered, shaken by distrust; a man clothed with authority, conscious of no support; a firm mind brought to the pass of having lost all confidence in itself! His warlike valor had changed by degrees to ferocity; his discretion to deceit; the refined and delicate love of a Valois was now a mere quenchless thirst for pleasure. This perverted and misjudged great man, with all the many facets of a noble soul worn-out,--a king without power, a generous heart without a friend, dragged hither and thither by a thousand conflicting intrigues,--presented the melancholy spectacle of a youth, only twenty-four years old, disillusioned of life, distrusting everybody and everything, now resolving to risk all, even his life, on a last effort. For some time past he had fully understood his royal mission, his power, his resources, and the obstacles which his mother opposed to the pacification of the kingdom; but alas! this light now burned in a shattered lantern.

Two men, whom Charles IX. loved sufficiently to protect under circumstances of great danger,--Jean Chapelain, his physician, whom he saved from the Saint-Bartholomew, and Ambroise Pare, with whom he went to dine when Pare’s enemies were accusing him of intending to poison the king,--had arrived this evening in haste from the provinces, recalled by the queen-mother. Both were watching their master anxiously. A few courtiers spoke to them in a low voice; but the men of science made guarded answers, carefully concealing the fatal verdict which was in their minds. Every now and then the king would raise his heavy eyelids and give his mother a furtive look which he tried to conceal from those about him. Suddenly he sprang up and stood before the fireplace.

“Monsieur de Chiverni,” he said abruptly, “why do you keep the title of chancellor of Anjou and Poland? Are you in our service, or in that of our brother?”

“I am all yours, sire,” replied Chiverni, bowing low.

“Then come to me to-morrow; I intend to send you to Spain. Very strange things are happening at the court of Madrid, gentlemen.”

The king looked at his wife and flung himself back into his chair.

“Strange things are happening everywhere,” said the Marechal de Tavannes, one of the friends of the king’s youth, in a low voice.

The king rose again and led this companion of his youthful pleasures apart into the embrasure of the window at the corner of the room, saying, when they were out of hearing:--

“I want you. Remain here when the others go. I shall know to-night whether you are for me or against me. Don’t look astonished. I am about to burst my bonds. My mother is the cause of all the evil about me. Three months hence I shall be king indeed, or dead. Silence, if you value your life! You will have my secret, you and Solern and Villeroy only. If it is betrayed, it will be by one of you three. Don’t keep near me; go and pay your court to my mother. Tell her I am dying, and that you don’t regret it, for I am only a poor creature.”

The king was leaning on the shoulder of his old favorite, and pretending to tell him of his ailments, in order to mislead the inquisitive eyes about him; then, not wishing to make his aversion too visible, he went up to his wife and mother and talked with them, calling Birago to their side.

Just then Pinard, one of the secretaries of State, glided like an eel through the door and along the wall until he reached the queen-mother, in whose ear he said a few words, to which she replied by an affirmative sign. The king did not ask his mother the meaning of this conference, but he returned to his seat and kept silence, darting terrible looks of anger and suspicion all about him.

This little circumstance seemed of enormous consequence in the eyes of the courtiers; and, in truth, so marked an exercise of power by the queen-mother, without reference to the king, was like a drop of water overflowing the cup. Queen Elizabeth and the Comtesse de Fiesque now retired, but the king paid no attention to their movements, though the queen-mother rose and attended her daughter-in-law to the door; after which the courtiers, understanding that their presence was unwelcome, took their leave. By ten o’clock no one remained in the hall but a few intimates,--the two Gondis, Tavannes, Solern, Birago, the king, and the queen-mother.

The king sat plunged in the blackest melancholy. The silence was oppressive. Catherine seemed embarrassed. She wished to leave the room, and waited for the king to escort her to the door; but he still continued obstinately lost in thought. At last she rose to bid him good-night, and Charles IX. was forced to do likewise. As she took his arm and made a few steps toward the door, she bent to his ear and whispered:--

“Monsieur, I have important things to say to you.”

Passing a mirror on her way, she glanced into it and made a sign with her eyes to the two Gondis, which escaped the king’s notice, for he was at the moment exchanging looks of intelligence with the Comte de Solern and Villeroy. Tavannes was thoughtful.

“Sire,” said the latter, coming out of his reverie, “I think you are royally ennuyed; don’t you ever amuse yourself now? _Vive Dieu_! have you forgotten the times when we used to vagabondize about the streets at night?”

“Ah! those were the good old times!” said the king, with a sigh.

“Why not bring them back?” said Birago, glancing significantly at the Gondis as he took his leave.

“Yes, I always think of those days with pleasure,” said Albert de Gondi, Duc de Retz.

“I’d like to see you on the roofs once more, monsieur le duc,” remarked Tavannes. “Damned Italian cat! I wish he might break his neck!” he added in a whisper to the king.

“I don’t know which of us two could climb the quickest in these days,” replied de Gondi; “but one thing I do know, that neither of us fears to die.”

“Well, sire, will you start upon a frolic in the streets to-night, as you did in the days of your youth?” said the other Gondi, master of the Wardrobe.

The days of his youth! so at twenty-four years of age the wretched king seemed no longer young to any one, not even to his flatterers!

Tavannes and his master now reminded each other, like two school-boys, of certain pranks they had played in Paris, and the evening’s amusement was soon arranged. The two Italians, challenged to climb roofs, and jump from one to another across alleys and streets, wagered that they would follow the king wherever he went. They and Tavannes went off to change their clothes. The Comte de Solern, left alone with the king, looked at him in amazement. Though the worthy German, filled with compassion for the hapless position of the king of France, was honor and fidelity itself, he was certainly not quick of perception. Charles IX., surrounded by hostile persons, unable to trust any one, not even his wife (who had been guilty of some indiscretions, unaware as she was that his mother and his servants were his enemies), had been fortunate enough to find in Monsieur de Solern a faithful friend in whom he could place entire confidence. Tavannes and Villeroy were trusted with only a part of the king’s secrets. The Comte de Solern alone knew the whole of the plan which he was now about to carry out. This devoted friend was also useful to his master, in possessing a body of discreet and affectionate followers, who blindly obeyed his orders. He commanded a detachment of the archers of the guards, and for the last few days he had been sifting out the men who were faithfully attached to the king, in order to make a company of tried men when the need came. The king took thought of everything.

“Why are you surprised, Solern?” he said. “You know very well I need a pretext to be out to-night. It is true, I have Madame de Belleville, but this is better; for who knows whether my mother does not hear of all that goes on at Marie’s?”

Monsieur de Solern, who was to follow the king, asked if he might not take a few of his Germans to patrol the streets, and Charles consented. About eleven o’clock the king, who was now very gay, set forth with his three courtiers,--namely, Tavannes and the two Gondis.

“I’ll go and take my little Marie by surprise,” said Charles IX. to Tavannes, “as we pass through the rue de l’Autruche.” That street being on the way to the rue Saint-Honore, it would have been strange indeed for the king to pass the house of his love without stopping.

Looking out for a chance of mischief,--a belated burgher to frighten, or a watchman to thrash--the king went along with his nose in the air, watching all the lighted windows to see what was happening, and striving to hear the conversations. But alas! he found his good city of Paris in a state of deplorable tranquillity. Suddenly, as he passed the house of a perfumer named Rene, who supplied the court, the king, noticing a strong light from a window in the roof, was seized by one of those apparently hasty inspirations which, to some minds, suggest a previous intention.

This perfumer was strongly suspected of curing rich uncles who thought themselves ill. The court laid at his door the famous “Elixir of Inheritance,” and even accused him of poisoning Jeanne d’Albret, mother of Henri of Navarre, who was buried (in spite of Charles IX.’s positive order) without her head being opened. For the last two months the king had sought some way of sending a spy into Rene’s laboratory, where, as he was well aware, Cosmo Ruggiero spent much time. The king intended, if anything suspicious were discovered, to proceed in the matter alone, without the assistance of the police or law, with whom, as he well knew, his mother would counteract him by means of either corruption or fear.

It is certain that during the sixteenth century, and the years that preceded and followed it, poisoning was brought to a perfection unknown to modern chemistry, as history itself will prove. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was, at this period, the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many of which are now lost. Hence the reputation for that crime which weighed for the two following centuries on Italy. Romance-writers have so greatly abused it that wherever they have introduced Italians into their tales they have almost always made them play the part of assassins and poisoners.[*] If Italy then had the traffic in subtle poisons which some historians attribute to her, we should remember her supremacy in the art of toxicology, as we do her pre-eminence in all other human knowledge and art in which she took the lead in Europe. The crimes of that period were not her crimes specially. She served the passions of the age, just as she built magnificent edifices, commanded armies, painted noble frescos, sang romances, loved queens, delighted kings, devised ballets and fetes, and ruled all policies. The horrible art of poisoning reached to such a pitch in Florence that a woman, dividing a peach with a duke, using a golden fruit-knife with one side of its blade poisoned, ate one half of the peach herself and killed the duke with the other half. A pair of perfumed gloves were known to have infiltrated mortal illness through the pores of the skin. Poison was instilled into bunches of natural roses, and the fragrance, when inhaled, gave death. Don John of Austria was poisoned, it was said, by a pair of boots.

[*] Written sixty-six years ago.--Tr.

Charles IX. had good reason to be curious in the matter; we know already the dark suspicions and beliefs which now prompted him to surprise the perfumer Rene at his work.

The old fountain at the corner of the rue de l’Arbre-See, which has since been rebuilt, offered every facility for the royal vagabonds to climb upon the roof of a house not far from that of Rene, which the king wished to visit. Charles, followed by his companions, began to ramble over the roofs, to the great terror of the burghers awakened by the tramp of these false thieves, who called to them in saucy language, listened to their talk, and even pretended to force an entrance. When the Italians saw the king and Tavannes threading their way among the roofs of the house next to that of Rene, Albert de Gondi sat down, declaring that he was tired, and his brother followed his example.

“So much the better,” thought the king, glad to leave his spies behind him.

Tavannes began to laugh at the two Florentines, left sitting alone in the midst of deep silence, in a place where they had nought but the skies above them, and the cats for auditors. But the brothers made use of their position to exchange thoughts they would not dare to utter on any other spot in the world,--thoughts inspired by the events of the evening.

“Albert,” said the Grand-master to the marechal, “the king will get the better of the queen-mother; we are doing a foolish thing for our own interests to stay by those of Catherine. If we go over to the king now, when he is searching everywhere for support against her and for able men to serve him, we shall not be driven away like wild beasts when the queen-mother is banished, imprisoned, or killed.”

“You wouldn’t get far with such ideas, Charles,” replied the marechal, gravely. “You’d follow the king into the grave, and he won’t live long; he is ruined by excesses. Cosmo Ruggiero predicts his death within a year.”

“The dying boar has often killed the huntsman,” said Charles de Gondi. “This conspiracy of the Duc d’Alencon, the king of Navarre, and the Prince de Conde, with whom La Mole and Coconnas are negotiating, is more dangerous than useful. In the first place, the king of Navarre, whom the queen-mother hoped to catch in the very act, distrusts her, and declines to run his head into the noose. He means to profit by the conspiracy without taking any of its risks. Besides, the notion now is to put the crown on the head of the Duc d’Alencon, who has turned Calvinist.”

“_Budelone_! but don’t you see that this conspiracy enables the queen-mother to find out what the Huguenots can do with the Duc d’Alencon, and what the king can do with the Huguenots?--for the king is even now negotiating with them; but he’ll be finely pilloried to-morrow, when Catherine reveals to him the counter-conspiracy which will neutralize all his projects.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Charles de Gondi, “by dint of profiting by our advice she’s clever and stronger than we! Well, that’s all right.”

“All right for the Duc d’Anjou, who prefers to be king of France rather than king of Poland; I am going now to explain the matter to him.”

“When do you start, Albert?”

“To-morrow. I am ordered to accompany the king of Poland; and I expect to join him in Venice, where the patricians have taken upon themselves to amuse and delay him.”

“You are prudence itself!”

“_Che bestia_! I swear to you there is not the slightest danger for either of us in remaining at court. If there were, do you think I would go away? I should stay by the side of our kind mistress.”

“Kind!” exclaimed the Grand-master; “she is a woman to drop all her instruments the moment she finds them heavy.”

“_O coglione_! you pretend to be a soldier, and you fear death! Every business has its duties, and we have ours in making our fortune. By attaching ourselves to kings, the source of all temporal power which protects, elevates, and enriches families, we are forced to give them as devoted a love as that which burns in the hearts of martyrs toward heaven. We must suffer in their cause; when they sacrifice us to the interests of their throne we may perish, for we die as much for ourselves as for them, but our name and our families perish not. _Ecco_!”

“You are right as to yourself, Albert; for they have given you the ancient title and duchy of de Retz.”

“Now listen to me,” replied his brother. “The queen hopes much from the cleverness of the Ruggieri; she expects them to bring the king once more under her control. When Charles refused to use Rene’s perfumes any longer the wary woman knew at once on whom his suspicions really rested. But who can tell the schemes that are in his mind? Perhaps he is only hesitating as to what fate he shall give his mother; he hates her, you know. He said a few words about it to his wife; she repeated them to Madame de Fiesque, and Madame de Fiesque told the queen-mother. Since then the king has kept away from his wife.”

“The time has come,” said Charles de Gondi.

“To do what?” asked the marechal.

“To lay hold of the king’s mind,” replied the Grand-master, who, if he was not so much in the queen’s confidence as his brother, was by no means less clear-sighted.

“Charles, I have opened a great career to you,” said his brother gravely. “If you wish to be a duke also, be, as I am, the accomplice and cat’s-paw of our mistress; she is the strongest here, and she will continue in power. Madame de Sauves is on her side, and the king of Navarre and the Duc d’Alencon are still for Madame de Sauves. Catherine holds the pair in a leash under Charles IX., and she will hold them in future under Henri III. God grant that Henri may not prove ungrateful.”

“How so?”

“His mother is doing too much for him.”

“Hush! what noise is that I hear in the rue Saint-Honore?” cried the Grand-master. “Listen! there is some one at Rene’s door! Don’t you hear the footsteps of many men. Can they have arrested the Ruggieri?”

“Ah, _diavolo_! this is prudence indeed. The king has not shown his usual impetuosity. But where will they imprison them? Let us go down into the street and see.”

The two brothers reached the corner of the rue de l’Autruche just as the king was entering the house of his mistress, Marie Touchet. By the light of the torches which the concierge carried, they distinguished Tavannes and the two Ruggieri.

“Hey, Tavannes!” cried the grand-master, running after the king’s companion, who had turned and was making his way back to the Louvre, “What happened to you?”

“We fell into a nest of sorcerers and arrested two, compatriots of yours, who may perhaps be able to explain to the minds of French gentlemen how you, who are not Frenchmen, have managed to lay hands on two of the chief offices of the Crown,” replied Tavannes, half jesting, half in earnest.

“But the king?” inquired the Grand-master, who cared little for Tavanne’s enmity.

“He stays with his mistress.”

“We reached our present distinction through an absolute devotion to our masters,--a noble course, my dear Tavannes, which I see that you also have adopted,” replied Albert de Gondi.

The three courtiers walked on in silence. At the moment when they parted, on meeting their servants who then escorted them, two men glided swiftly along the walls of the rue de l’Autruche. These men were the king and the Comte de Solern, who soon reached the banks of the Seine, at a point where a boat and two rowers, carefully selected by de Solern, awaited them. In a very few moments they reached the other shore.

“My mother has not gone to bed,” cried the king. “She will see us; we chose a bad place for the interview.”

“She will think it a duel,” replied Solern; “and she cannot possibly distinguish who we are at this distance.”

“Well, let her see me!” exclaimed Charles IX. “I am resolved now!”

The king and his confidant sprang ashore and walked quickly in the direction of the Pre-aux-Clercs. When they reached it the Comte de Solern, preceding the king, met a man who was evidently on the watch, and with whom he exchanged a few words; the man then retired to a distance. Presently two other men, who seemed to be princes by the marks of respect which the first man paid to them, left the place where they were evidently hiding behind the broken fence of a field, and approached the king, to whom they bent the knee. But Charles IX. raised them before they touched the ground, saying:--

“No ceremony, we are all gentlemen here.”

A venerable old man, who might have been taken for the Chancelier de l’Hopital, had the latter not died in the preceding year, now joined the three gentlemen, all four walking rapidly so as to reach a spot where their conference could not be overheard by their attendants. The Comte de Solern followed at a slight distance to keep watch over the king. That faithful servant was filled with a distrust not shared by Charles IX., a man to whom life was now a burden. He was the only person on the king’s side who witnessed this mysterious conference, which presently became animated.

“Sire,” said one of the new-comers, “the Connetable de Montmorency, the closest friend of the king your father, agreed with the Marechal de Saint-Andre in declaring that Madame Catherine ought to be sewn up in a sack and flung into the river. If that had been done then, many worthy persons would still be alive.”

“I have enough executions on my conscience, monsieur,” replied the king.

“But, sire,” said the youngest of the four personages, “if you merely banish her, from the depths of her exile Queen Catherine will continue to stir up strife, and to find auxiliaries. We have everything to fear from the Guises, who, for the last nine years, have schemed for a vast Catholic alliance, in the secret of which your Majesty is not included; and it threatens your throne. This alliance was invented by Spain, which will never renounce its project of destroying the boundary of the Pyrenees. Sire, Calvinism will save France by setting up a moral barrier between her and a nation which covets the empire of the world. If the queen-mother is exiled, she will turn for help to Spain and to the Guises.”

“Gentlemen,” said the king, “know this, if by your help peace without distrust is once established, I will take upon myself the duty of making all subjects tremble. _Tete-Dieu_! it is time indeed for royalty to assert itself. My mother is right in that, at any rate. You ought to know that it is to your interest was well as mine, for your hands, your fortunes depend upon our throne. If religion is overthrown, the hands you allow to do it will be laid next upon the throne and then upon you. I no longer care to fight ideas with weapons that cannot touch them. Let us see now if Protestantism will make progress when left to itself; above all, I would like to see with whom and what the spirit of that faction will wrestle. The admiral, God rest his soul! was not my enemy; he swore to me to restrain the revolt within spiritual limits, and to leave the ruling of the kingdom to the monarch, his master, with submissive subjects. Gentlemen, if the matter be still within your power, set that example now; help your sovereign to put down a spirit of rebellion which takes tranquillity from each and all of us. War is depriving us of revenue; it is ruining the kingdom. I am weary of these constant troubles; so weary, that if it is absolutely necessary I will sacrifice my mother. Nay, I will go farther; I will keep an equal number of Protestants and Catholics about me, and I will hold the axe of Louis XI. above their heads to force them to be on good terms. If the Messieurs de Guise plot a Holy Alliance to attack our crown, the executioner shall begin with their heads. I see the miseries of my people, and I will make short work of the great lords who care little for consciences,--let them hold what opinions they like; what I want in future is submissive subjects, who will work, according to my will, for the prosperity of the State. Gentlemen, I give you ten days to negotiate with your friends, to break off your plots, and to return to me who will be your father. If you refuse you will see great changes. I shall use the mass of the people, who will rise at my voice against the lords. I will make myself a king who pacificates his kingdom by striking down those who are more powerful even than you, and who dare defy him. If the troops fail me, I have my brother of Spain, on whom I shall call to defend our menaced thrones, and if I lack a minister to carry out my will, he can lend me the Duke of Alba.”

“But in that case, sire, we should have Germans to oppose to your Spaniards,” said one of his hearers.

“Cousin,” replied Charles IX., coldly, “my wife’s name is Elizabeth of Austria; support might fail you on the German side. But, for Heaven’s sake, let us fight, if fight we must, alone, without the help of foreigners. You are the object of my mother’s hatred, and you stand near enough to me to be my second in the duel I am about to fight with her; well then, listen to what I now say. You seem to me so worthy of confidence that I offer you the post of _connetable_; _you_ will not betray me like the other.”

The prince to whom Charles IX. had addressed himself, struck his hand into that of the king, exclaiming:

“_Ventre-saint-gris_! brother; this is enough to make me forget many wrongs. But, sire, the head cannot march without the tail, and ours is a long tail to drag. Give me more than ten days; we want at least a month to make our friends hear reason. At the end of that time we shall be masters.”

“A month, so be it! My only negotiator will be Villeroy; trust no one else, no matter what is said to you.”

“One month,” echoed the other seigneurs, “that is sufficient.”

“Gentlemen, we are five,” said the king,--“five men of honor. If any betrayal takes place, we shall know on whom to avenge it.”

The three strangers kissed the hand of Charles IX. and took leave of him with every mark of the utmost respect. As the king recrossed the Seine, four o’clock was ringing from the clock-tower of the Louvre. Lights were on in the queen-mother’s room; she had not yet gone to bed.

“My mother is still on the watch,” said Charles to the Comte de Solern.

“She has her forge as you have yours,” remarked the German.

“Dear count, what do you think of a king who is reduced to become a conspirator?” said Charles IX., bitterly, after a pause.

“I think, sire, that if you would allow me to fling that woman into the river, as your young cousin said, France would soon be at peace.”

“What! a parricide in addition to the Saint-Bartholomew, count?” cried the king. “No, no! I will exile her. Once fallen, my mother will no longer have either servants or partisans.”

“Well, then, sire,” replied the Comte de Solern, “give me the order to arrest her at once and take her out of the kingdom; for to-morrow she will have forced you to change your mind.”

“Come to my forge,” said the king, “no one can overhear us there; besides, I don’t want my mother to suspect the capture of the Ruggieri. If she knows I am in my work-shop she’ll suppose nothing, and we can consult about the proper measures for her arrest.”

As the king entered a lower room of the palace, which he used for a workshop, he called his companion’s attention to the forge and his implements with a laugh.

“I don’t believe,” he said, “among all the kings that France will ever have, there’ll be another to take pleasure in such work as that. But when I am really king, I’ll forge no swords; they shall all go back into their scabbards.”

“Sire,” said the Comte de Solern, “the fatigues of tennis and hunting, your toil at this forge, and--if I may say it--love, are chariots which the devil is offering you to get the faster to Saint-Denis.”

“Solern,” said the king, in a piteous tone, “if you knew the fire they have put into my soul and body! nothing can quench it. Are you sure of the men who are guarding the Ruggieri?”

“As sure as of myself.”

“Very good; then, during this coming day I shall take my own course. Think of the proper means of making the arrest, and I will give you my final orders by five o’clock at Madame de Belleville’s.”

As the first rays of dawn were struggling with the lights of the workshop, Charles IX., left alone by the departure of the Comte de Solern, heard the door of the apartment turn on its hinges, and saw his mother standing within it in the dim light like a phantom. Though very nervous and impressible, the king did not quiver, albeit, under the circumstances in which he then stood, this apparition had a certain air of mystery and horror.

“Monsieur,” she said, “you are killing yourself.”

“I am fulfilling my horoscope,” he replied with a bitter smile. “But you, madame, you appear to be as early as I.”

“We have both been up all night, monsieur; but with very different intentions. While you have been conferring with your worst enemies in the open fields, concealing your acts from your mother, assisted by Tavannes and the Gondis, with whom you have been scouring the town, I have been reading despatches which contained the proofs of a terrible conspiracy in which your brother, the Duc d’Alencon, your brother-in-law, the king of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, and half the nobles of your kingdom are taking part. Their purpose is nothing less than to take the crown from your head and seize your person. Those gentlemen have already fifty thousand good troops behind them.”

“Bah!” exclaimed the king, incredulously.

“Your brother has turned Huguenot,” she continued.

“My brother! gone over to the Huguenots!” cried Charles, brandishing the piece of iron which he held in his hand.

“Yes; the Duc d’Alencon, Huguenot at heart, will soon be one before the eyes of the world. Your sister, the queen of Navarre, has almost ceased to love you; she cares more for the Duc d’Alencon; she cares of Bussy; and she loves that little La Mole.”

“What a heart!” exclaimed the king.

“That little La Mole,” went on the queen, “wishes to make himself a great man by giving France a king of his own stripe. He is promised, they say, the place of connetable.”

“Curse that Margot!” cried the king. “This is what comes of her marriage with a heretic.”

“Heretic or not is of no consequence; the trouble is that, in spite of my advice, you have brought the head of the younger branch too near the throne by that marriage, and Henri’s purpose is now to embroil you with the rest and make you kill one another. The house of Bourbon is the enemy of the house of Valois; remember that, monsieur. All younger branches should be kept in a state of poverty, for they are born conspirators. It is sheer folly to give them arms when they have none, or to leave them in possession of arms when they seize them. Let every younger son be made incapable of doing harm; that is the law of Crowns; the Sultans of Asia follow it. The proofs of this conspiracy are in my room upstairs, where I asked you to follow me last evening, when you bade me good-night; but instead of doing so, it seems you had other plans. I therefore waited for you. If we do not take the proper measures immediately you will meet the fate of Charles the Simple within a month.”

“A month!” exclaimed the king, thunderstruck at the coincidence of that period with the delay asked for by the princes themselves. “‘In a month we shall be masters,’” he added to himself, quoting their words. “Madame,” he said aloud, “what are your proofs?”

“They are unanswerable, monsieur; they come from my daughter Marguerite. Alarmed herself at the possibilities of such a combination, her love for the throne of the Valois has proved stronger, this time, than all her other loves. She asks, as the price of her revelations that nothing shall be done to La Mole; but the scoundrel seems to me a dangerous villain whom we had better be rid of, as well as the Comte de Coconnas, your brother d’Alencon’s right hand. As for the Prince de Conde, he consents to everything, provided I am thrown into the sea; perhaps that is the wedding present he gives me in return for the pretty wife I gave him! All this is a serious matter, monsieur. You talk of horoscopes! I know of the prediction which gives the throne of the Valois to the Bourbons, and if we do not take care it will be fulfilled. Do not be angry with your sister; she has behaved well in this affair. My son,” continued the queen, after a pause, giving a tone of tenderness to her words, “evil persons on the side of the Guises are trying to sow dissensions between you and me; and yet we are the only ones in the kingdom whose interests are absolutely identical. You blame me, I know, for the Saint-Bartholomew; you accuse me of having forced you into it. Catholicism, monsieur, must be the bond between France, Spain, and Italy, three countries which can, by skilful management, secretly planned, be united in course of time, under the house of Valois. Do not deprive yourself of such chances by loosing the cord which binds the three kingdoms in the bonds of a common faith. Why should not the Valois and the Medici carry out for their own glory the scheme of Charles the Fifth, whose head failed him? Let us fling off that race of Jeanne la Folle. The Medici, masters of Florence and of Rome, will force Italy to support your interests; they will guarantee you advantages by treaties of commerce and alliance which shall recognize your fiefs in Piedmont, the Milanais, and Naples, where you have rights. These, monsieur, are the reasons of the war to the death which we make against the Huguenots. Why do you force me to repeat these things? Charlemagne was wrong in advancing toward the north. France is a body whose heart is on the Gulf of Lyons, and its two arms over Spain and Italy. Therefore, she must rule the Mediterranean, that basket into which are poured all the riches of the Orient, now turned to the profit of those seigneurs of Venice, in the very teeth of Philip II. If the friendship of the Medici and your rights justify you in hoping for Italy, force, alliances, or a possible inheritance may give you Spain. Warn the house of Austria as to this,--that ambitious house to which the Guelphs sold Italy, and which is even now hankering after Spain. Though your wife is of that house, humble it! Clasp it so closely that you will smother it! _There_ are the enemies of your kingdom; thence comes help to the Reformers. Do not listen to those who find their profit in causing us to disagree, and who torment your life by making you believe I am your secret enemy. Have _I_ prevented you from having heirs? Why has your mistress given you a son, and your wife a daughter? Why have you not to-day three legitimate heirs to root out the hopes of these seditious persons? Is it I, monsieur, who am responsible for such failures? If you had an heir, would the Duc d’Alencon be now conspiring?”

As she ended these words, Catherine fixed upon her son the magnetic glance of a bird of prey upon its victim. The daughter of the Medici became magnificent; her real self shone upon her face, which, like that of a gambler over the green table, glittered with vast cupidities. Charles IX. saw no longer the mother of one man, but (as was said of her) the mother of armies and of empires,--_mater castrorum_. Catherine had now spread wide the wings of her genius, and boldly flown to the heights of the Medici and Valois policy, tracing once more the mighty plans which terrified in earlier days her husband Henri II., and which, transmitted by the genius of the Medici to Richelieu, remain in writing among the papers of the house of Bourbon. But Charles IX., hearing the unusual persuasions his mother was using, thought that there must be some necessity for them, and he began to ask himself what could be her motive. He dropped his eyes; he hesitated; his distrust was not lessened by her studied phrases. Catherine was amazed at the depths of suspicion she now beheld in her son’s heart.

“Well, monsieur,” she said, “do you not understand me? What are we, you and I, in comparison with the eternity of royal crowns? Do you suppose me to have other designs than those that ought to actuate all royal persons who inhabit the sphere where empires are ruled?”

“Madame, I will follow you to your cabinet; we must act--”

“Act!” cried Catherine; “let our enemies alone; let _them_ act; take them red-handed, and law and justice will deliver you from their assaults. For God’s sake, monsieur, show them good-will.”

The queen withdrew; the king remained alone for a few moments, for he was utterly overwhelmed.

“On which side is the trap?” thought he. “Which of the two--she or they--deceive me? What is my best policy? _Deus, discerne causam meam_!” he muttered with tears in his eyes. “Life is a burden to me! I prefer death, natural or violent, to these perpetual torments!” he cried presently, bringing down his hammer upon the anvil with such force that the vaults of the palace trembled.

“My God!” he said, as he went outside and looked up at the sky, “thou for whose holy religion I struggle, give me the light of thy countenance that I may penetrate the secrets of my mother’s heart while I question the Ruggieri.”

III. MARIE TOUCHET

The little house of Madame de Belleville, where Charles IX. had deposited his prisoners, was the last but one in the rue de l’Autruche on the side of the rue Saint-Honore. The street gate, flanked by two little brick pavilions, seemed very simple in those days, when gates and their accessories were so elaborately treated. It had two pilasters of stone cut in facets, and the coping represented a reclining woman holding a cornucopia. The gate itself, closed by enormous locks, had a wicket through which to examine those who asked admittance. In each pavilion lived a porter; for the king’s extremely capricious pleasure required a porter by day and by night. The house had a little courtyard, paved like those of Venice. At this period, before carriages were invented, ladies went about on horseback, or in litters, so that courtyards could be made magnificent without fear of injury from horses or carriages. This fact is always to be remembered as an explanation of the narrowness of streets, the small size of courtyards, and certain other details of the private dwellings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The house, of one story only above the ground-floor, was capped by a sculptured frieze, above which rose a roof with four sides, the peak being flattened to form a platform. Dormer windows were cut in this roof, with casings and pediments which the chisel of some great artist had covered with arabesques and dentils; each of the three windows on the main floor were equally beautiful in stone embroidery, which the brick of the walls showed off to great advantage. On the ground-floor, a double portico, very delicately decorated, led to the entrance door, which was covered with bosses cut with facets in the Venetian manner,--a style of decoration which was further carried on round the windows placed to right and left of the door.

A garden, carefully laid out in the fashion of the times and filled with choice flowers, occupied a space behind the house equal to that of the courtyard in front. A grape-vine draped its walls. In the centre of a grass plot rose a silver fir-tree. The flower-borders were separated from the grass by meandering paths which led to an arbor of clipped yews at the farther end of the little garden. The walls were covered with a mosaic of variously colored pebbles, coarse in design, it is true, but pleasing to the eye from the harmony of its tints with those of the flower-beds. The house had a carved balcony on the garden side, above the door, and also on the front toward the courtyard, and around the middle windows. On both sides of the house the ornamentation of the principal window, which projected some feet from the wall, rose to the frieze; so that it formed a little pavilion, hung there like a lantern. The casings of the other windows were inlaid on the stone with precious marbles.

In spite of the exquisite taste displayed in the little house, there was an air of melancholy about it. It was darkened by the buildings that surrounded it and by the roofs of the hotel d’Alencon which threw a heavy shadow over both court and garden; moreover, a deep silence reigned there. But this silence, these half-lights, this solitude, soothed a royal soul, which could there surrender itself to a single emotion, as in a cloister where men pray, or in some sheltered home wherein they love.

It is easy now to imagine the interior charm and choiceness of this haven, the sole spot in his kingdom where this dying Valois could pour out his soul, reveal his sufferings, exercise his taste for art, and give himself up to the poesy he loved,--pleasures denied him by the cares of a cruel royalty. Here, alone, were his great soul and his high intrinsic worth appreciated; here he could give himself up, for a few brief months, the last of his life, to the joys of fatherhood,--pleasures into which he flung himself with the frenzy that a sense of his coming and dreadful death impressed on all his actions.

In the afternoon of the day succeeding the night-scene we have just described, Marie Touchet was finishing her toilet in the oratory, which was the boudoir of those days. She was arranging the long curls of her beautiful black hair, blending them with the velvet of a new coif, and gazing intently into her mirror.

“It is nearly four o’clock; that interminable council must surely be over,” she thought to herself. “Jacob has returned from the Louvre; he says that everybody he saw was excited about the number of the councillors summoned and the length of the session. What can have happened? Is it some misfortune? Good God! surely _he_ knows how suspense wears out the soul! Perhaps he has gone a-hunting? If he is happy and amused, it is all right. When I see him gay, I forget all I have suffered.”

She drew her hands round her slender waist as if to smooth some trifling wrinkle in her gown, turning sideways to see if its folds fell properly, and as she did so, she caught sight of the king on the couch behind her. The carpet had so muffled the sound of his steps that he had slipped in softly without being heard.

“You frightened me!” she said, with a cry of surprise, which was quickly repressed.

“Were you thinking of me?” said the king.

“When do I not think of you?” she answered, sitting down beside him.

She took off his cap and cloak, passing her hands through his hair as though she combed it with her fingers. Charles let her do as she pleased, but made no answer. Surprised at this, Marie knelt down to study the pale face of her royal master, and then saw the signs of a dreadful weariness and a more consummate melancholy than any she had yet consoled. She repressed her tears and kept silence, that she might not irritate by mistaken words the sorrow which, as yet, she did not understand. In this she did as tender women do under like circumstances. She kissed that forehead, seamed with untimely wrinkles, and those livid cheeks, trying to convey to the worn-out soul the freshness of hers,--pouring her spirit into the sweet caresses which met with no response. Presently she raised her head to the level of the king’s, clasping him softly in her arms; then she lay still, her face hidden on that suffering breast, watching for the opportune moment to question his dejected mind.

“My Charlot,” she said at last, “will you not tell your poor, distressed Marie the troubles that cloud that precious brow, and whiten those beautiful red lips?”

“Except Charlemagne,” he said in a hollow voice, “all the kings of France named Charles have ended miserably.”

“Pooh!” she said, “look at Charles VIII.”

“That poor prince!” exclaimed the king. “In the flower of his age he struck his head against a low door at the chateau of Amboise, which he was having decorated, and died in horrible agony. It was his death which gave the crown to our family.”

“Charles VII. reconquered his kingdom.”

“Darling, he died” (the king lowered his voice) “of hunger; for he feared being poisoned by the dauphin, who had already caused the death of his beautiful Agnes. The father feared his son; to-day the son dreads his mother!”

“Why drag up the past?” she said hastily, remembering the dreadful life of Charles VI.

“Ah! sweetest, kings have no need to go to sorcerers to discover their coming fate; they need only turn to history. I am at this moment endeavoring to escape the fate of Charles the Simple, who was robbed of his crown, and died in prison after seven years’ captivity.”

“Charles V. conquered the English,” she cried triumphantly.

“No, not he, but du Guesclin. He himself, poisoned by Charles de Navarre, dragged out a wretched existence.”

“Well, Charles IV., then?”

“He married three times to obtain an heir, in spite of the masculine beauty of the children of Philippe le Bel. The first house of Valois ended with him, and the second is about to end in the same way. The queen has given me only a daughter, and I shall die without leaving her pregnant; for a long minority would be the greatest curse I could bequeath to the kingdom. Besides, if I had a son, would he live? The name of Charles is fatal; Charlemagne exhausted the luck of it. If I left a son I would tremble at the thought that he would be Charles X.”

“Who is it that wants to seize your crown?”

“My brother d’Alencon conspires against it. Enemies are all about me.”

“Monsieur,” said Marie, with a charming little pout, “do tell me something gayer.”

“Ah! my little jewel, my treasure, don’t call me ‘monsieur,’ even in jest; you remind me of my mother, who stabs me incessantly with that title, by which she seems to snatch away my crown. She says ‘my son’ to the Duc d’Anjou--I mean the king of Poland.”

“Sire,” exclaimed Marie, clasping her hands as though she were praying, “there is a kingdom where you are worshipped. Your Majesty fills it with his glory, his power; and there the word ‘monsieur,’ means ‘my beloved lord.’”

She unclasped her hands, and with a pretty gesture pointed to her heart. The words were so _musiques_ (to use a word of the times which depicted the melodies of love) that Charles IX. caught her round the waist with the nervous force that characterized him, and seated her on his knee, rubbing his forehead gently against the pretty curls so coquettishly arranged. Marie thought the moment favorable; she ventured a few kisses, which Charles allowed rather than accepted, then she said softly:--

“If my servants were not mistaken you were out all night in the streets, as in the days when you played the pranks of a younger son.”

“Yes,” replied the king, still lost in his own thoughts.

“Did you fight the watchman and frighten some of the burghers? Who are the men you brought here and locked up? They must be very criminal, as you won’t allow any communication with them. No girl was ever locked in as carefully, and they have not had a mouthful to eat since they came. The Germans whom Solern left to guard them won’t let any one go near the room. Is it a joke you are playing; or is it something serious?”

“Yes, you are right,” said the king, coming out of his reverie, “last night I did scour the roofs with Tavannes and the Gondis. I wanted to try my old follies with the old companions; but my legs were not what they once were; I did not dare leap the streets; though we did jump two alleys from one roof to the next. At the second, however, Tavannes and I, holding on to a chimney, agreed that we couldn’t do it again. If either of us had been alone we couldn’t have done it then.”

“I’ll wager that you sprang first.” The king smiled. “I know why you risk your life in that way.”

“And why, you little witch?”

“You are tired of life.”

“Ah, sorceress! But I am being hunted down by sorcery,” said the king, resuming his anxious look.

“My sorcery is love,” she replied, smiling. “Since the happy day when you first loved me, have I not always divined your thoughts? And--if you will let me speak the truth--the thoughts which torture you to-day are not worthy of a king.”

“Am I a king?” he said bitterly.

“Cannot you be one? What did Charles VII. do? He listened to his mistress, monseigneur, and he reconquered his kingdom, invaded by the English as yours is now by the enemies of our religion. Your last _coup d’Etat_ showed you the course you have to follow. Exterminate heresy.”

“You blamed the Saint-Bartholomew,” said Charles, “and now you--”

“That is over,” she said; “besides, I agree with Madame Catherine that it was better to do it yourselves than let the Guises do it.”

“Charles VII. had only men to fight; I am face to face with ideas,” resumed the king. “We can kill men, but we can’t kill words! The Emperor Charles V. gave up the attempt; his son Philip has spent his strength upon it; we shall all perish, we kings, in that struggle. On whom can I rely? To right, among the Catholics, I find the Guises, who are my enemies; to left, the Calvinists, who will never forgive me the death of my poor old Coligny, nor that bloody day in August; besides, they want to suppress the throne; and in front of me what have I?--my mother!”

“Arrest her; reign alone,” said Marie in a low voice, whispering in his ear.

“I meant to do so yesterday; to-day I no longer intend it. You speak of it rather coolly.”

“Between the daughter of an apothecary and that of a doctor there is no great difference,” replied Touchet, always ready to laugh at the false origin attributed to her.

The king frowned.

“Marie, don’t take such liberties. Catherine de’ Medici is my mother, and you ought to tremble lest--”

“What is it you fear?”

“Poison!” cried the king, beside himself.

“Poor child!” cried Marie, restraining her tears; for the sight of such strength united to such weakness touched her deeply. “Ah!” she continued, “you make me hate Madame Catherine, who has been so good to me; her kindness now seems perfidy. Why is she so kind to me, and bad to you? During my stay in Dauphine I heard many things about the beginning of your reign which you concealed from me; it seems to me that the queen, your mother, is the real cause of all your troubles.”

“In what way?” cried the king, deeply interested.

“Women whose souls and whose intentions are pure use virtue wherewith to rule the men they love; but women who do not seek good rule men through their evil instincts. Now, the queen made vices out of certain of your noblest qualities, and she taught you to believe that your worst inclinations were virtues. Was that the part of a mother? Be a tyrant like Louis XI.; inspire terror; imitate Philip II.; banish the Italians; drive out the Guises; confiscate the lands of the Calvinists. Out of this solitude you will rise a king; you will save the throne. The moment is propitious; your brother is in Poland.”

“We are two children at statecraft,” said Charles, bitterly; “we know nothing except how to love. Alas! my treasure, yesterday I, too, thought all these things; I dreamed of accomplishing great deeds--bah! my mother blew down my house of cards! From a distance we see great questions outlined like the summits of mountains, and it is easy to say: ‘I’ll make an end of Calvinism; I’ll bring those Guises to task; I’ll separate from the Court of Rome; I’ll rely upon my people, upon the burghers--’ ah! yes, from afar it all seems simple enough! but try to climb those mountains and the higher you go the more the difficulties appear. Calvinism, in itself, is the last thing the leaders of that party care for; and the Guises, those rabid Catholics, would be sorry indeed to see the Calvinists put down. Each side considers its own interests exclusively, and religious opinions are but a cloak for insatiable ambition. The party of Charles IX. is the feeblest of all. That of the king of Navarre, that of the king of Poland, that of the Duc d’Alencon, that of the Condes, that of the Guises, that of my mother, are all intriguing one against another, but they take no account of me, not even in my own council. My mother, in the midst of so many contending elements, is, nevertheless, the strongest among them; she has just proved to me the inanity of my plans. We are surrounded by rebellious subjects who defy the law. The axe of Louis XI. of which you speak, is lacking to us. Parliament would not condemn the Guises, nor the king of Navarre, nor the Condes, nor my brother. No! the courage to assassinate is needed; the throne will be forced to strike down those insolent men who suppress both law and justice; but where can we find the faithful arm? The council I held this morning has disgusted me with everything; treason everywhere; contending interests all about me. I am tired with the burden of my crown. I only want to die in peace.”

He dropped into a sort of gloomy somnolence.

“Disgusted with everything!” repeated Marie Touchet, sadly; but she did not disturb the black torpor of her lover.

Charles was the victim of a complete prostration of mind and body, produced by three things,--the exhaustion of all his faculties, aggravated by the disheartenment of realizing the extent of an evil; the recognized impossibility of surmounting his weakness; and the aspect of difficulties so great that genius itself would dread them. The king’s depression was in proportion to the courage and the loftiness of ideas to which he had risen during the last few months. In addition to this, an attack of nervous melancholy, caused by his malady, had seized him as he left the protracted council which had taken place in his private cabinet. Marie saw that he was in one of those crises when the least word, even of love, would be importunate and painful; so she remained kneeling quietly beside him, her head on his knee, the king’s hand buried in her hair, and he himself motionless, without a word, without a sigh, as still as Marie herself,--Charles IX. in the lethargy of impotence, Marie in the stupor of despair which comes to a loving woman when she perceives the boundaries at which love ends.

The lovers thus remained, in the deepest silence, during one of those terrible hours when all reflection wounds, when the clouds of an inward tempest veil even the memory of happiness. Marie believed that she herself was partly the cause of this frightful dejection. She asked herself, not without horror, if the excessive joys and the violent love which she had never yet found strength to resist, did not contribute to weaken the mind and body of the king. As she raised her eyes, bathed in tears, toward her lover, she saw the slow tears rolling down his pallid cheeks. This mark of the sympathy that united them so moved the king that he rushed from his depression like a spurred horse. He took Marie in his arms and placed her on the sofa.

“I will no longer be a king,” he cried. “I will be your lover, your lover only, wholly given up to that happiness. I will die happy, and not consumed by the cares and miseries of a throne.”

The tone of these words, the fire that shone in the half-extinct eyes of the king, gave Marie a terrible shock instead of happiness; she blamed her love as an accomplice in the malady of which the king was dying.

“Meanwhile you forget your prisoners,” she said, rising abruptly.

“Hey! what care I for them? I give them leave to kill me.”

“What! are they murderers?”

“Oh, don’t be frightened, little one; we hold them fast. Don’t think of them, but of me. Do you love me?”

“Sire!” she cried.

“Sire!” he repeated, sparks darting from his eyes, so violent was the rush of his anger at the untimely respect of his mistress. “You are in league with my mother.”

“O God!” cried Marie, looking at the picture above her _prie-dieu_ and turning toward it to say her prayer, “grant that he comprehend me!”

“Ah!” said the king suspiciously, “you have some wrong to me upon your conscience!” Then looking at her from between his arms, he plunged his eyes into hers. “I have heard some talk of the mad passion of a certain Entragues,” he went on wildly. “Ever since their grandfather, the soldier Balzac, married a viscontessa at Milan that family hold their heads too high.”

Marie looked at the king with so proud an air that he was ashamed. At that instant the cries of little Charles de Valois, who had just awakened, were heard in the next room. Marie ran to the door.

“Come in, Bourguignonne!” she said, taking the child from its nurse and carrying it to the king. “You are more of a child than he,” she cried, half angry, half appeased.

“He is beautiful!” said Charles IX., taking his son in his arms.

“I alone know how like he is to you,” said Marie; “already he has your smile and your gestures.”

“So tiny as that!” said the king, laughing at her.

“Oh, I know men don’t believe such things; but watch him, my Charlot, play with him. Look there! See! Am I not right?”

“True!” exclaimed the king, astonished by a motion of the child which seemed the very miniature of a gesture of his own.

“Ah, the pretty flower!” cried the mother. “Never shall he leave us! _He_ will never cause me grief.”

The king frolicked with his son; he tossed him in his arms, and kissed him passionately, talking the foolish, unmeaning talk, the pretty, baby language invented by nurses and mothers. His voice grew child-like. At last his forehead cleared, joy returned to his saddened face, and then, as Marie saw that he had forgotten his troubles, she laid her head upon his shoulder and whispered in his ear:--

“Won’t you tell me, Charlot, why you have made me keep murderers in my house? Who are these men, and what do you mean to do with them? In short, I want to know what you were doing on the roofs. I hope there was no woman in the business?”

“Then you love me as much as ever!” cried the king, meeting the clear, interrogatory glance that women know so well how to cast upon occasion.

“You doubted _me_,” she replied, as a tear shone on her beautiful eyelashes.

“There are women in my adventure,” said the king; “but they are sorceresses. How far had I told you?”

“You were on the roofs near by--what street was it?”

“Rue Saint-Honore, sweetest,” said the king, who seemed to have recovered himself. Collecting this thoughts, he began to explain to his mistress what had happened, as if to prepare her for a scene that was presently to take place in her presence.

“As I was passing through the street last night on a frolic,” he said, “I chanced to see a bright light from the dormer window of the house occupied by Rene, my mother’s glover and perfumer, and once yours. I have strong doubts about that man and what goes on in his house. If I am poisoned, the drug will come from there.”

“I shall dismiss him to-morrow.”

“Ah! so you kept him after I had given him up?” cried the king. “I thought my life was safe with you,” he added gloomily; “but no doubt death is following me even here.”

“But, my dearest, I have only just returned from Dauphine with our dauphin,” she said, smiling, “and Rene has supplied me with nothing since the death of the Queen of Navarre. Go on; you climbed to the roof of Rene’s house?”

IV. THE KING’S TALE

“Yes,” returned the king. “In a second I was there, followed by Tavannes, and then we clambered to a spot where I could see without being seen the interior of that devil’s kitchen, in which I beheld extraordinary things which inspired me to take certain measures. Did you ever notice the end of the roof of that cursed perfumer? The windows toward the street are always closed and dark, except the last, from which can be seen the hotel de Soissons and the observatory which my mother built for that astrologer, Cosmo Ruggiero. Under the roof are lodging-rooms and a gallery which have no windows except on the courtyard, so that in order to see what was going on within, it was necessary to go where no man before ever dreamed of climbing,--along the coping of a high wall which adjoins the roof of Rene’s house. The men who set up in that house the furnaces by which they distil death, reckoned on the cowardice of Parisians to save them from being overlooked; but they little thought of Charles de Valois! I crept along the coping until I came to a window, against the casing of which I was able to stand up straight with my arm round a carved monkey which ornamented it.”

“What did you see, dear heart?” said Marie, trembling.

“A den, where works of darkness were being done,” replied the king. “The first object on which my eyes lighted was a tall old man seated in a chair, with a magnificent white beard, like that of old l’Hopital, and dressed like him in a black velvet robe. On his broad forehead furrowed deep with wrinkles, on his crown of white hair, on his calm, attentive face, pale with toil and vigils, fell the concentrated rays of a lamp from which shone a vivid light. His attention was divided between an old manuscript, the parchment of which must have been centuries old, and two lighted furnaces on which heretical compounds were cooking. Neither the floor nor the ceiling of the laboratory could be seen, because of the myriads of hanging skeletons, bodies of animals, dried plants, minerals, and articles of all kinds that masked the walls; while on the floor were books, instruments for distilling, chests filled with utensils for magic and astrology; in one place I saw horoscopes and nativities, phials, wax-figures under spells, and possibly poisons. Tavannes and I were fascinated, I do assure you, by the sight of this devil’s-arsenal. Only to see it puts one under a spell, and if I had not been King of France, I might have been awed by it. ‘You can tremble for both of us,’ I whispered to Tavannes. But Tavannes’ eyes were already caught by the most mysterious feature of the scene. On a couch, near the old man, lay a girl of strangest beauty,--slender and long like a snake, white as ermine, livid as death, motionless as a statue. Perhaps it was a woman just taken from her grave, on whom they were trying experiments, for she seemed to wear a shroud; her eyes were fixed, and I could not see that she breathed. The old fellow paid no attention to her. I looked at him so intently that, after a while, his soul seemed to pass into mine. By dint of studying him, I ended by admiring the glance of his eye,--so keen, so profound, so bold, in spite of the chilling power of age. I admired his mouth, mobile with thoughts emanating from a desire which seemed to be the solitary desire of his soul, and was stamped upon every line of the face. All things in that man expressed a hope which nothing discouraged, and nothing could check. His attitude,--a quivering immovability,--those outlines so free, carved by a single passion as by the chisel of a sculptor, that IDEA concentrated on some experiment criminal or scientific, that seeking Mind in quest of Nature, thwarted by her, bending but never broken under the weight of its own audacity, which it would not renounce, threatening creation with the fire it derived from it,--ah! all that held me in a spell for the time being. I saw before me an old man who was more of a king than I, for his glance embraced the world and mastered it. I will forge swords no longer; I will soar above the abysses of existence, like that man; for his science, methinks, is true royalty! Yes, I believe in occult science.”

“You, the eldest son, the defender of the Holy Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church?” said Marie.

“I.”

“What happened to you? Go on, go on; I will fear for you, and you will have courage for me.”

“Looking at a clock, the old man rose,” continued the king. “He went out, I don’t know where; but I heard the window on the side toward the rue Saint-Honore open. Soon a brilliant light gleamed out upon the darkness; then I saw in the observatory of the hotel de Soissons another light replying to that of the old man, and by it I beheld the figure of Cosmo Ruggiero on the tower. ‘See, they communicate!’ I said to Tavannes, who from that moment thought the matter frightfully suspicious, and agreed with me that we ought to seize the two men and search, incontinently, their accursed workshop. But before proceeding to do so, we wanted to see what was going to happen. After about fifteen minutes the door opened, and Cosmo Ruggiero, my mother’s counsellor,--the bottomless pit which holds the secrets of the court, he from whom all women ask help against their husbands and lovers, and all the men ask help against their unfaithful wives and mistresses, he who traffics on the future as on the past, receiving pay with both hands, who sells horoscopes and is supposed to know all things,--that semi-devil came in, saying to the old man, ‘Good-day to you, brother.’ With him he brought a hideous old woman,--toothless, humpbacked, twisted, bent, like a Chinese image, only worse. She was wrinkled as a withered apple; her skin was saffron-colored; her chin bit her nose; her mouth was a mere line scarcely visible; her eyes were like the black spots on a dice; her forehead emitted bitterness; her hair escaped in straggling gray locks from a dirty coif; she walked with a crutch; she smelt of heresy and witchcraft. The sight of her actually frightened us, Tavannes and me! We didn’t think her a natural woman. God never made a woman so fearful as that. She sat down on a stool near the pretty snake with whom Tavannes was in love. The two brothers paid no attention to the old woman nor to the young woman, who together made a horrible couple,--on the one side life in death, on the other death in life--”

“Ah! my sweet poet!” cried Marie, kissing the king.

“‘Good-day, Cosmo,’ replied the old alchemist. And they both looked into the furnace. ‘What strength has the moon to-day?’ asked the elder. ‘But, _caro Lorenzo_,’ replied my mother’s astrologer, ‘the September tides are not yet over; we can learn nothing while that disorder lasts.’ ‘What says the East to-night?’ ‘It discloses in the air a creative force which returns to earth all that earth takes from it. The conclusion is that all things here below are the product of a slow transformation, but that all diversities are the forms of one and the same substance.’ ‘That is what my predecessor thought,’ replied Lorenzo. ‘This morning Bernard Palissy told me that metals were the result of compression, and that fire, which divides all, also unites all; fire has the power to compress as well as to separate. That man has genius.’ Though I was placed where it was impossible for them to see me, Cosmo said, lifting the hand of the dead girl: ‘Some one is near us! Who is it’ ‘The king,’ she answered. I at once showed myself and rapped on the window. Ruggiero opened it, and I sprang into that hellish kitchen, followed by Tavannes. ‘Yes, the king,’ I said to the two Florentines, who seemed terrified. ‘In spite of your furnaces and your books, your sciences and your sorceries, you did not foresee my visit. I am very glad to meet the famous Lorenzo Ruggiero, of whom my mother speaks mysteriously,’ I said, addressing the old man, who rose and bowed. ‘You are in this kingdom without my consent, my good man. For whom are you working here, you whose ancestors from father to son have been devoted in heart to the house of Medici? Listen to me! You dive into so many purses that by this time, if you are grasping men, you have piled up gold. You are too shrewd and cautious to cast yourselves imprudently into criminal actions; but, nevertheless, you are not here in this kitchen without a purpose. Yes, you have some secret scheme, you who are satisfied neither by gold nor power. Whom do you serve,--God or the devil? What are you concocting here? I choose to know the whole truth; I am a man who can hear it and keep silence about your enterprise, however blamable it maybe. Therefore you will tell me all, without reserve. If you deceive me you will be treated severely. Pagans or Christians, Calvinists or Mohammedans, you have my royal word that you shall leave the kingdom in safety if you have any misdemeanors to relate. I shall leave you for the rest of the night and the forenoon of to-morrow to examine your thoughts; for you are now my prisoners, and you will at once follow me to a place where you will be guarded carefully.’ Before obeying me the two Italians consulted each other by a subtle glance; then Lorenzo Ruggiero said I might be assured that no torture could wring their secrets from them; that in spite of their apparent feebleness neither pain nor human feelings had any power of them; confidence alone could make their mouth say what their mind contained. I must not, he said, be surprised if they treated as equals with a king who recognized God only as above him, for their thoughts came from God alone. They therefore claimed from me as much confidence and trust as they should give to me. But before engaging themselves to answer me without reserve they must request me to put my left hand into that of the young girl lying there, and my right into that of the old woman. Not wishing them to think I was afraid of their sorcery, I held out my hands; Lorenzo took the right, Cosmo the left, and each placed a hand in that of each woman, so that I was like Jesus Christ between the two thieves. During the time that the two witches were examining my hands Cosmo held a mirror before me and asked me to look into it; his brother, meanwhile, was talking with the two women in a language unknown to me. Neither Tavannes nor I could catch the meaning of a single sentence. Before bringing the men here we put seals on all the outlets of the laboratory, which Tavannes undertook to guard until such time as, by my express orders, Bernard Palissy, and Chapelain, my physician, could be brought there to examine thoroughly the drugs the place contained and which were evidently made there. In order to keep the Ruggieri ignorant of this search, and to prevent them from communicating with a single soul outside, I put the two devils in your lower rooms in charge of Solern’s Germans, who are better than the walls of a jail. Rene, the perfumer, is kept under guard in his own house by Solern’s equerry, and so are the two witches. Now, my sweetest, inasmuch as I hold the keys of the whole cabal,--the kings of Thune, the chiefs of sorcery, the gypsy fortune-tellers, the masters of the future, the heirs of all past soothsayers,--I intend by their means to read _you_, to know your heart; and, together, we will find out what is to happen to us.”

“I shall be glad if they can lay my heart bare before you,” said Marie, without the slightest fear.

“I know why sorcerers don’t frighten you,--because you are a witch yourself.”

“Will you have a peach?” she said, offering him some delicious fruit on a gold plate. “See these grapes, these pears; I went to Vincennes myself and gathered them for you.”

“Yes, I’ll eat them; there is no poison there except a philter from your hands.”

“You ought to eat a great deal of fruit, Charles; it would cool your blood, which you heat by such excitements.”

“Must I love you less?”

“Perhaps so,” she said. “If the things you love injure you--and I have feared it--I shall find strength in my heart to refuse them. I adore Charles more than I love the king; I want the man to live, released from the tortures that make him grieve.”

“Royalty has ruined me.”

“Yes,” she replied. “If you were only a poor prince, like your brother-in-law of Navarre, without a penny, possessing only a miserable little kingdom in Spain where he never sets his foot, and Bearn in France which doesn’t give him revenue enough to feed him, I should be happy, much happier than if I were really Queen of France.”

“But you are more than the Queen of France. She has King Charles for the sake of the kingdom only; royal marriages are only politics.”

Marie smiled and made a pretty little grimace as she said: “Yes, yes, I know that, sire. And my sonnet, have you written it?”

“Dearest, verses are as difficult to write as treaties of peace; but you shall have them soon. Ah, me! life is so easy here, I wish I might never leave you. However, we must send for those Italians and question them. _Tete-Dieu_! I thought one Ruggiero in the kingdom was one too many, but it seems there are two. Now listen, my precious; you don’t lack sense, you would make an excellent lieutenant of police, for you can penetrate things--”

“But, sire, we women suppose all we fear, and we turn what is probable into truths; that is the whole of our art in a nutshell.”

“Well, help me to sound these men. Just now all my plans depend on the result of their examination. Are they innocent? Are they guilty? My mother is behind them.”

“I hear Jacob’s voice in the next room,” said Marie.

Jacob was the favorite valet of the king, and the one who accompanied him on all his private excursions. He now came to ask if it was the king’s good pleasure to speak to the two prisoners. The king made a sign in the affirmative, and the mistress of the house gave her orders.

“Jacob,” she said, “clear the house of everybody, except the nurse and Monsieur le Dauphin d’Auvergne, who may remain. As for you, stay in the lower hall; but first, close the windows, draw the curtains of the salon, and light the candles.”

The king’s impatience was so great that while these preparations were being made he sat down upon a raised seat at the corner of a lofty fireplace of white marble in which a bright fire was blazing, placing his pretty mistress by his side. His portrait, framed in velvet, was over the mantle in place of a mirror. Charles IX. rested his elbow on the arm of the seat as if to watch the two Florentines the better under cover of his hand.

The shutters closed, and the curtains drawn, Jacob lighted the wax tapers in a tall candelabrum of chiselled silver, which he placed on the table where the Florentines were to stand,--an object, by the bye, which they would readily recognize as the work of their compatriot, Benvenuto Cellini. The richness of the room, decorated in the taste of Charles IX., now shone forth. The red-brown of the tapestries showed to better advantage than by daylight. The various articles of furniture, delicately made or carved, reflected in their ebony panels the glow of the fire and the sparkle of the lights. Gilding, soberly applied, shone here and there like eyes, brightening the brown color which prevailed in this nest of love.

Jacob presently gave two knocks, and, receiving permission, ushered in the Italians. Marie Touchet was instantly affected by the grandeur of Lorenzo’s presence, which struck all those who met him, great and small alike. The silvery whiteness of the old man’s beard was heightened by a robe of black velvet; his brow was like a marble dome. His austere face, illumined by two black eyes which cast a pointed flame, conveyed an impression of genius issuing from solitude, and all the more effective because its power had not been dulled by contact with men. It was like the steel of a blade that had never been fleshed.

As for Cosmo Ruggiero, he wore the dress of a courtier of the time. Marie made a sign to the king to assure him that he had not exaggerated his description, and to thank him for having shown her these extraordinary men.

“I would like to have seen the sorceresses, too,” she whispered in his ear.

V. THE ALCHEMISTS

Again absorbed in thought, Charles IX. made her no answer; he was idly flicking crumbs of bread from his doublet and breeches.

“Your science cannot change the heavens or make the sun to shine, messieurs,” he said at last, pointing to the curtains which the gray atmosphere of Paris darkened.

“Our science can make the skies what we like, sire,” replied Lorenzo Ruggiero. “The weather is always fine for those who work in a laboratory by the light of a furnace.”

“That is true,” said the king. “Well, father,” he added, using an expression familiar to him when addressing old men, “explain to us clearly the object of your studies.”

“What will guarantee our safety?”

“The word of a king,” replied Charles IX., whose curiosity was keenly excited by the question.

Lorenzo Ruggiero seemed to hesitate, and Charles IX. cried out: “What hinders you? We are here alone.”

“But is the King of France here?” asked Lorenzo.

Charles reflected an instant, and then answered, “No.”

The imposing old man then took a chair, and seated himself. Cosmo, astonished at this boldness, dared not imitate it.

Charles IX. remarked, with cutting sarcasm: “The king is not here, monsieur, but a lady is, whose permission it was your duty to await.”

“He whom you see before you, madame,” said the old man, “is as far above kings as kings are above their subjects; you will think me courteous when you know my powers.”

Hearing these audacious words, with Italian emphasis, Charles and Marie looked at each other, and also at Cosmo, who, with his eyes fixed on his brother, seemed to be asking himself: “How does he intend to get us out of the danger in which we are?”

In fact, there was but one person present who could understand the boldness and the art of Lorenzo Ruggiero’s first step; and that person was neither the king nor his young mistress, on whom that great seer had already flung the spell of his audacity,--it was Cosmo Ruggiero, his wily brother. Though superior himself to the ablest men at court, perhaps even to Catherine de’ Medici herself, the astrologer always recognized his brother Lorenzo as his master.

Buried in studious solitude, the old savant weighed and estimated sovereigns, most of whom were worn out by the perpetual turmoil of politics, the crises of which at this period came so suddenly and were so keen, so intense, so unexpected. He knew their ennui, their lassitude, their disgust with things about them; he knew the ardor with which they sought what seemed to them new or strange or fantastic; above all, how they loved to enter some unknown intellectual region to escape their endless struggle with men and events. To those who have exhausted statecraft, nothing remains but the realm of pure thought. Charles the Fifth proved this by his abdication. Charles IX., who wrote sonnets and forged blades to escape the exhausting cares of an age in which both throne and king were threatened, to whom royalty had brought only cares and never pleasures, was likely to be roused to a high pitch of interest by the bold denial of his power thus uttered by Lorenzo. Religious doubt was not surprising in an age when Catholicism was so violently arraigned; but the upsetting of all religion, given as the basis of a strange, mysterious art, would surely strike the king’s mind, and drag it from its present preoccupations. The essential thing for the two brothers was to make the king forget his suspicions by turning his mind to new ideas.

The Ruggieri were well aware that their stake in this game was their own life, and the glances, so humble, and yet so proud, which they exchanged with the searching, suspicious eyes of Marie and the king, were a scene in themselves.

“Sire,” said Lorenzo Ruggiero, “you have asked me for the truth; but, to show the truth in all her nakedness, I must also show you and make you sound the depths of the well from which she comes. I appeal to the gentleman and the poet to pardon words which the eldest son of the Church might take for blasphemy,--I believe that God does not concern himself with human affairs.”

Though determined to maintain a kingly composure, Charles IX. could not repress a motion of surprise.

“Without that conviction I should have no faith whatever in the miraculous work to which my life is devoted. To do that work I must have this belief; and if the finger of God guides all things, then--I am a madman. Therefore, let the king understand, once for all, that this work means a victory to be won over the present course of Nature. I am an alchemist, sire. But do not think, as the common-minded do, that I seek to make gold. The making of gold is not the object but an incident of our researches; otherwise our toil could not be called the GREAT WORK. The Great Work is something far loftier than that. If, therefore, I were forced to admit the presence of God in matter, my voice must logically command the extinction of furnaces kept burning throughout the ages. But to deny the direct action of God in the world is not to deny God; do not make that mistake. We place the Creator of all things far higher than the sphere to which religions have degraded Him. Do not accuse of atheism those who look for immortality. Like Lucifer, we are jealous of our God; and jealousy means love. Though the doctrine of which I speak is the basis of our work, all our disciples are not imbued with it. Cosmo,” said the old man, pointing to his brother, “Cosmo is devout; he pays for masses for the repose of our father’s soul, and he goes to hear them. Your mother’s astrologer believes in the divinity of Christ, in the Immaculate Conception, in Transubstantiation; he believes also in the Pope’s indulgences and in hell, and in a multitude of such things. His hour has not yet come. I have drawn his horoscope; he will live to be almost a centenarian; he will live through two more reigns, and he will see two kings of France assassinated.”

“Who are they?” asked the king.

“The last of the Valois and the first of the Bourbons,” replied Lorenzo. “But Cosmo shares my opinion. It is impossible to be an alchemist and a Catholic, to have faith in the despotism of man over matter, and also in the sovereignty of the divine.”

“Cosmo to die a centenarian!” exclaimed the king, with his terrible frown of the eyebrows.

“Yes, sire,” replied Lorenzo, with authority; “and he will die peaceably in his bed.”

“If you have power to foresee the moment of your death, why are you ignorant of the outcome of your researches?” asked the king.

Charles IX. smiled as he said this, looking triumphantly at Marie Touchet. The brothers exchanged a rapid glance of satisfaction.

“He begins to be interested,” thought they. “We are saved!”

“Our prognostics depend on the immediate relations which exist at the time between man and Nature; but our purpose itself is to change those relations entirely,” replied Lorenzo.

The king was thoughtful.

“But, if you are certain of dying you are certain of defeat,” he said, at last.

“Like our predecessors,” replied Lorenzo, raising his hand and letting it fall again with an emphatic and solemn gesture, which presented visibly the grandeur of his thought. “But your mind has bounded to the confines of the matter, sire; we must return upon our steps. If you do not know the ground on which our edifice is built, you may well think it doomed to crumble with our lives, and so judge the Science cultivated from century to century by the greatest among men, as the common herd judge of it.”

The king made a sign of assent.

“I think,” continued Lorenzo, “that this earth belongs to man; he is the master of it, and he can appropriate to his use all forces and all substances. Man is not a creation issuing directly from the hand of God; but the development of a principle sown broadcast into the infinite of ether, from which millions of creatures are produced,--differing beings in different worlds, because the conditions surrounding life are varied. Yes, sire, the subtle element which we call _life_ takes its rise beyond the visible worlds; creation divides that principle according to the centres into which it flows; and all beings, even the lowest, share it, taking so much as they can take of it at their own risk and peril. It is for them to protect themselves from death,--the whole purpose of alchemy lies there, sire. If man, the most perfect animal on this globe, bore within himself a portion of the divine, he would not die; but he does die. To solve this difficulty, Socrates and his school invented the Soul. I, the successor of so many great and unknown kings, the rulers of this science, I stand for the ancient theories, not the new. I believe in the transformations of matter which I see, and not in the possible eternity of a soul which I do not see. I do not recognize that world of the soul. If such a world existed, the substances whose magnificent conjunction produced your body, and are so dazzling in that of Madame, would not resolve themselves after your death each into its own element, water to water, fire to fire, metal to metal, just as the elements of my coal, when burned, return to their primitive molecules. If you believe that a certain part of us survives, _we_ do not survive; for all that makes our actual being perishes. Now, it is this actual being that I am striving to continue beyond the limit assigned to life; it is our present transformation to which I wish to give a greater duration. Why! the trees live for centuries, but man lives only years, though the former are passive, the others active; the first motionless and speechless, the others gifted with language and motion. No created thing should be superior in this world to man, either in power or in duration. Already we are widening our perceptions, for we look into the stars; therefore we ought to be able to lengthen the duration of our lives. I place life before power. What good is power if life escapes us? A wise man should have no other purpose than to seek, not whether he has some other life within him, but the secret springs of his actual form, in order that he may prolong its existence at his will. That is the desire which has whitened my hair; but I walk boldly in the darkness, marshalling to the search all those great intellects that share my faith. Life will some day be ours,--ours to control.”

“Ah! but how?” cried the king, rising hastily.

“The first condition of our faith being that the earth belongs to man, you must grant me that point,” said Lorenzo.

“So be it!” said Charles de Valois, already under the spell.

“Then, sire, if we take God out of this world, what remains? Man. Let us therefore examine our domain. The material world is composed of elements; these elements are themselves principles; these principles resolve themselves into an ultimate principle, endowed with motion. The number THREE is the formula of creation: Matter, Motion, Product.”

“Stop!” cried the king, “what proof is there of this?”

“Do you not see the effects?” replied Lorenzo. “We have tried in our crucibles the acorn which produces the oak, and the embryo from which grows a man; from this tiny substance results a single principle, to which some force, some movement must be given. Since there is no overruling creator, this principle must give to itself the outward forms which constitute our world--for this phenomenon of life is the same everywhere. Yes, for metals as for human beings, for plants as for men, life begins in an imperceptible embryo which develops itself. A primitive principle exists; let us seize it at the point where it begins to act upon itself, where it is a unit, where it is a principle before taking definite form, a cause before being an effect; we must see it single, without form, susceptible of clothing itself with all the outward forms we shall see it take. When we are face to face with this atomic particle, when we shall have caught its movement at the very instant of motion, _then_ we shall know the law; thenceforth we are the masters of life, masters who can impose upon that principle the form we choose,--with gold to win the world, and the power to make for ourselves centuries of life in which to enjoy it! That is what my people and I are seeking. All our strength, all our thoughts are strained in that direction; nothing distracts us from it. One hour wasted on any other passion is a theft committed against our true grandeur. Just as you have never found your hounds relinquishing the hunted animal or failing to be in at the death, so I have never seen one of my patient disciples diverted from this great quest by the love of woman or a selfish thought. If an adept seeks power and wealth, the desire is instigated by our needs; he grasps treasure as a thirsty dog laps water while he swims a stream, because his crucibles are in need of a diamond to melt or an ingot of gold to reduce to powder. To each his own work. One seeks the secret of vegetable nature; he watches the slow life of plants; he notes the parity of motion among all the species, and the parity of their nutrition; he finds everywhere the need of sun and air and water, to fecundate and nourish them. Another scrutinizes the blood of animals. A third studies the laws of universal motion and its connection with celestial revolutions. Nearly all are eager to struggle with the intractable nature of metal, for while we find many principles in other things, we find all metals like unto themselves in every particular. Hence a common error as to our work. Behold these patient, indefatigable athletes, ever vanquished, yet ever returning to the combat! Humanity, sire, is behind us, as the huntsman is behind your hounds. She cries to us: ‘Make haste! neglect nothing! sacrifice all, even a man, ye who sacrifice yourselves! Hasten! hasten! Beat down the arms of DEATH, mine enemy!’ Yes, sire, we are inspired by a hope which involves the happiness of all coming generations. We have buried many men--and what men!--dying of this Search. Setting foot in this career we cannot work for ourselves; we may die without discovering the Secret; and our death is that of those who do not believe in another life; it is this life that we have sought, and failed to perpetuate. We are glorious martyrs; we have the welfare of the race at heart; we have failed but we live again in our successors. As we go through this existence we discover secrets with which we endow the liberal and the mechanical arts. From our furnaces gleam lights which illumine industrial enterprises, and perfect them. Gunpowder issued from our alembics; nay, we have mastered the lightning. In our persistent vigils lie political revolutions.”

“Can this be true?” cried the king, springing once more from his chair.

“Why not?” said the grand-master of the new Templars. “_Tradidit mundum disputationibus_! God has given us the earth. Hear this once more: man is master here below; matter is his; all forces, all means are at his disposal. Who created us? Motion. What power maintains life in us? Motion. Why cannot science seize the secret of that motion? Nothing is lost here below; nothing escapes from our planet to go elsewhere,--otherwise the stars would stumble over each other; the waters of the deluge are still with us in their principle, and not a drop is lost. Around us, above us, beneath us, are to be found the elements from which have come innumerable hosts of men who have crowded the earth before and since the deluge. What is the secret of our struggle? To discover the force that disunites, and then, _then_ we shall discover that which binds. We are the product of a visible manufacture. When the waters covered the globe men issued from them who found the elements of their life in the crust of the earth, in the air, and in the nourishment derived from them. Earth and air possess, therefore, the principle of human transformations; those transformations take place under our eyes, by means of that which is also under our eyes. We are able, therefore, to discover that secret,--not limiting the effort of the search to one man or to one age, but devoting humanity in its duration to it. We are engaged, hand to hand, in a struggle with Matter, into whose secret, I, the grand-master of our order, seek to penetrate. Christophe Columbus gave a world to the King of Spain; I seek an ever-living people for the King of France. Standing on the confines which separate us from a knowledge of material things, a patient observer of atoms, I destroy forms, I dissolve the bonds of combinations; I imitate death that I may learn how to imitate life. I strike incessantly at the door of creation, and I shall continue so to strike until the day of my death. When I am dead the knocker will pass into other hands equally persistent with those of the mighty men who handed it to me. Fabulous and uncomprehended beings, like Prometheus, Ixion, Adonis, Pan, and others, who have entered into the religious beliefs of all countries and all ages, prove to the world that the hopes we now embody were born with the human races. Chaldea, India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, the Moors, have transmitted from one to another Magic, the highest of all the occult sciences, which holds within it, as a precious deposit the fruits of the studies of each generation. In it lay the tie that bound the grand and majestic institution of the Templars. Sire, when one of your predecessors burned the Templars, he burned men only,--their Secret lived. The reconstruction of the Temple is a vow of an unknown nation, a race of daring seekers, whose faces are turned to the Orient of _life_,--all brothers, all inseparable, all united by one idea, and stamped with the mark of toil. I am the sovereign leader of that people, sovereign by election, not by birth. I guide them onward to a knowledge of the essence of life. Grand-master, Red-Cross-bearers, companions, adepts, we forever follow the imperceptible molecule which still escapes our eyes. But soon we shall make ourselves eyes more powerful than those which Nature has given us; we shall attain to a sight of the primitive atom, the corpuscular element so persistently sought by the wise and learned of all ages who have preceded us in the glorious search. Sire, when a man is astride of that abyss, when he commands bold divers like my disciples, all other human interests are as nothing. Therefore we are not dangerous. Religious disputes and political struggles are far away from us; we have passed beyond and above them. No man takes others by the throat when his whole strength is given to a struggle with Nature. Besides, in our science results are perceivable; we can measure effects and predict them; whereas all things are uncertain and vacillating in the struggles of men and their selfish interests. We decompose the diamond in our crucibles, and we shall make diamonds, we shall make gold! We shall impel vessels (as they have at Barcelona) with fire and a little water! We test the wind, and we shall make wind; we shall make light; we shall renew the face of empires with new industries! But we shall never debase ourselves to mount a throne to be crucified by the peoples!”

In spite of his strong determination not to be taken in by Italian wiles, the king, together with his gentle mistress, was already caught and snared by the ambiguous phrases and doublings of this pompous and humbugging loquacity. The eyes of the two lovers showed how their minds were dazzled by the mysterious riches of power thus displayed; they saw, as it were, a series of subterranean caverns filled with gnomes at their toil. The impatience of their curiosity put to flight all suspicion.

“But,” cried the king, “if this be so, you are great statesmen who can enlighten us.”

“No, sire,” said Lorenzo, naively.

“Why not?” asked the king.

“Sire, it is not given to any man to foresee what will happen when thousands of men are gathered together. We can tell what one man will do, how long he will live, whether he will be happy or unhappy; but we cannot tell what a collection of wills may do; and to calculate the oscillations of their selfish interests is more difficult still, for interests are men _plus_ things. We can, in solitude, see the future as a whole, and that is all. The Protestantism that now torments you will be destroyed in turn by its material consequences, which will turn to theories in due time. Europe is at the present moment getting the better of religion; to-morrow it will attack royalty.”

“Then the Saint-Bartholomew was a great conception?”

“Yes, sire; for if the people triumph it will have a Saint-Bartholomew of its own. When religion and royalty are destroyed the people will attack the nobles; after the nobles, the rich. When Europe has become a mere troop of men without consistence or stability, because without leaders, it will fall a prey to brutal conquerors. Twenty times already has the world seen that sight, and Europe is now preparing to renew it. Ideas consume the ages as passions consume men. When man is cured, humanity may possibly cure itself. Science is the essence of humanity, and we are its pontiffs; whoso concerns himself about the essence cares little about the individual life.”

“To what have you attained, so far?” asked the king.

“We advance slowly; but we lose nothing that we have won.”

“Then you are the king of sorcerers?” retorted the king, piqued at being of no account in the presence of this man.

The majestic grand-master of the Rosicrucians cast a look on Charles IX. which withered him.

“You are the king of men,” he said; “I am the king of ideas. If we were sorcerers, you would already have burned us. We have had our martyrs.”

“But by what means are you able to cast nativities?” persisted the king. “How did you know that the man who came to your window last night was King of France? What power authorized one of you to tell my mother the fate of her three sons? Can you, grand-master of an art which claims to mould the world, can you tell me what my mother is planning at this moment?”

“Yes, sire.”

This answer was given before Cosmo could pull his brother’s robe to enjoin silence.

“Do you know why my brother, the King of Poland, has returned?”

“Yes, sire.”

“Why?”

“To take your place.”

“Our most cruel enemies are our nearest in blood!” exclaimed the king, violently, rising and walking about the room with hasty steps. “Kings have neither brothers, nor sons, nor mothers. Coligny was right; my murderers are not among the Huguenots, but in the Louvre. You are either imposters or regicides!--Jacob, call Solern.”

“Sire,” said Marie Touchet, “the Ruggieri have your word as a gentleman. You wanted to taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge; do not complain of its bitterness.”

The king smiled, with an expression of bitter self-contempt; he thought his material royalty petty in presence of the august intellectual royalty of Lorenzo Ruggiero. Charles IX. knew that he could scarcely govern France, but this grand-master of Rosicrucians ruled a submissive and intelligent world.

“Answer me truthfully; I pledge my word as a gentleman that your answer, in case it confesses dreadful crimes, shall be as if it were never uttered,” resumed the king. “Do you deal with poisons?”

“To discover that which gives life, we must also have full knowledge of that which kills.”

“Do you possess the secret of many poisons?”

“Yes, sire,--in theory, but not in practice. We understand all poisons, but do not use them.”

“Has my mother asked you for any?” said the king, breathlessly.

“Sire,” replied Lorenzo, “Queen Catherine is too able a woman to employ such means. She knows that the sovereign who poisons dies by poison. The Borgias, also Bianca Capello, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, are noted examples of the dangers of that miserable resource. All things are known at courts; there can be no concealment. It may be possible to kill a poor devil--and what is the good of that?--but to aim at great men cannot be done secretly. Who shot Coligny? It could only be you, or the queen-mother, or the Guises. Not a soul is doubtful of that. Believe me, poison cannot be twice used with impunity in statecraft. Princes have successors. As for other men, if, like Luther, they are sovereigns through the power of ideas, their doctrines are not killed by killing them. The queen is from Florence; she knows that poison should never be used except as a weapon of personal revenge. My brother, who has not been parted from her since her arrival in France, knows the grief that Madame Diane caused your mother. But she never thought of poisoning her, though she might easily have done so. What could your father have said? Never had a woman a better right to do it; and she could have done it with impunity; but Madame de Valentinois still lives.”

“But what of those waxen images?” asked the king.

“Sire,” said Cosmo, “these things are so absolutely harmless that we lend ourselves to the practice to satisfy blind passions, just as physicians give bread pills to imaginary invalids. A disappointed woman fancies that by stabbing the heart of a wax-figure she has brought misfortunes upon the head of the man who has been unfaithful to her. What harm in that? Besides, it is our revenue.”

“The Pope sells indulgences,” said Lorenzo Ruggiero, smiling.

“Has my mother practised these spells with waxen images?”

“What good would such harmless means be to one who has the actual power to do all things?”

“Has Queen Catherine the power to save you at this moment?” inquired the king, in a threatening manner.

“Sire, we are not in any danger,” replied Lorenzo, tranquilly. “I knew before I came into this house that I should leave it safely, just as I know that the king will be evilly disposed to my brother Cosmo a few weeks hence. My brother may run some danger then, but he will escape it. If the king reigns by the sword, he also reigns by justice,” added the old man, alluding to the famous motto on a medal struck for Charles IX.

“You know all, and you know that I shall die soon, which is very well,” said the king, hiding his anger under nervous impatience; “but how will my brother die,--he whom you say is to be Henri III.?”

“By a violent death.”

“And the Duc d’Alencon?”

“He will not reign.”

“Then Henri de Bourbon will be king of France?”

“Yes, sire.”

“How will he die?”

“By a violent death.”

“When I am dead what will become of madame?” asked the king, motioning to Marie Touchet.

“Madame de Belleville will marry, sire.”

“You are imposters!” cried Marie Touchet. “Send them away, sire.”

“Dearest, the Ruggieri have my word as a gentleman,” replied the king, smiling. “Will madame have children?” he continued.

“Yes, sire; and madame will live to be more than eighty years old.”

“Shall I order them to be hanged?” said the king to his mistress. “But about my son, the Comte d’Auvergne?” he continued, going into the next room to fetch the child.

“Why did you tell him I should marry?” said Marie to the two brothers, the moment they were alone.

“Madame,” replied Lorenzo, with dignity, “the king bound us to tell the truth, and we have told it.”

“_Is_ that true?” she exclaimed.

“As true as it is that the governor of the city of Orleans is madly in love with you.”

“But I do not love him,” she cried.

“That is true, madame,” replied Lorenzo; “but your horoscope declares that you will marry the man who is in love with you at the present time.”

“Can you not lie a little for my sake?” she said smiling; “for if the king believes your predictions--”

“Is it not also necessary that he should believe our innocence?” interrupted Cosmo, with a wily glance at the young favorite. “The precautions taken against us by the king have made us think during the time we have spent in your charming jail that the occult sciences have been traduced to him.”

“Do not feel uneasy,” replied Marie. “I know him; his suspicions are at an end.”

“We are innocent,” said the grand-master of the Rosicrucians, proudly.

“So much the better for you,” said Marie, “for your laboratory, and your retorts and phials are now being searched by order of the king.”

The brothers looked at each other smiling. Marie Touchet took that smile for one of innocence, though it really signified: “Poor fools! can they suppose that if we brew poisons, we do not hide them?”

“Where are the king’s searchers?”

“In Rene’s laboratory,” replied Marie.

Again the brothers glanced at each other with a look which said: “The hotel de Soissons is inviolable.”

The king had so completely forgotten his suspicions that when, as he took his boy in his arms, Jacob gave him a note from Chapelain, he opened it with the certainty of finding in his physician’s report that nothing had been discovered in the laboratory but what related exclusively to alchemy.

“Will he live a happy man?” asked the king, presenting his son to the two alchemists.

“That is a question which concerns Cosmo,” replied Lorenzo, signing his brother.

Cosmo took the tiny hand of the child, and examined it carefully.

“Monsieur,” said Charles IX. to the old man, “if you find it necessary to deny the existence of the soul in order to believe in the possibility of your enterprise, will you explain to my why you should doubt what your power does? Thought, which you seek to nullify, is the certainty, the torch which lights your researches. Ha! ha! is not that the motion of a spirit within you, while you deny such motion?” cried the king, pleased with his argument, and looking triumphantly at his mistress.

“Thought,” replied Lorenzo Ruggiero, “is the exercise of an inward sense; just as the faculty of seeing several objects and noticing their size and color is an effect of sight. It has no connection with what people choose to call another life. Thought is a faculty which ceases, with the forces which produced it, when we cease to breathe.”

“You are logical,” said the king, surprised. “But alchemy must therefore be an atheistical science.’

“A materialist science, sire, which is a very different thing. Materialism is the outcome of Indian doctrines, transmitted through the mysteries of Isis to Chaldea and Egypt, and brought to Greece by Pythagoras, one of the demigods of humanity. His doctrine of re-incarnation is the mathematics of materialism, the vital law of its phases. To each of the different creations which form the terrestrial creation belongs the power of retarding the movement which sweeps on the rest.”

“Alchemy is the science of sciences!” cried Charles IX., enthusiastically. “I want to see you at work.”

“Whenever it pleases you, sire; you cannot be more interested than Madame the Queen-mother.”

“Ah! so this is why she cares for you?” exclaimed the king.

“The house of Medici has secretly protected our Search for more than a century.”

“Sire,” said Cosmo, “this child will live nearly a hundred years; he will have trials; nevertheless, he will be happy and honored, because he has in his veins the blood of the Valois.”

“I will go and see you in your laboratory, messieurs,” said the king, his good-humor quite restored. “You may now go.”

The brothers bowed to Marie and to the king and then withdrew. They went down the steps of the portico gravely, without looking or speaking to each other; neither did they turn their faces to the windows as they crossed the courtyard, feeling sure that the king’s eye watched them. But as they passed sideways out of the gate into the street they looked back and saw Charles IX. gazing after them from a window. When the alchemist and the astrologer were safely in the rue de l’Autruche, they cast their eyes before and behind them, to see if they were followed or overheard; then they continued their way to the moat of the Louvre without uttering a word. Once there, however, feeling themselves securely alone, Lorenzo said to Cosmo, in the Tuscan Italian of that day:--

“Affe d’Iddio! how we have fooled him!”

“Much good may it do him; let him make what he can of it!” said Cosmo. “We have given him a helping hand,--whether the queen pays it back to us or not.”

Some days after this scene, which struck the king’s mistress as forcibly as it did the king, Marie suddenly exclaimed, in one of those moments when the soul seems, as it were, disengaged from the body in the plenitude of happiness:--

“Charles, I understand Lorenzo Ruggiero; but did you observe that Cosmo said nothing?”

“True,” said the king, struck by that sudden light. “After all, there was as much falsehood as truth in what they said. Those Italians are as supple as the silk they weave.”

This suspicion explains the rancor which the king showed against Cosmo when the trial of La Mole and Coconnas took place a few weeks later. Finding him one of the agents of that conspiracy, he thought the Italians had tricked him; for it was proved that his mother’s astrologer was not exclusively concerned with stars, the powder of projection, and the primitive atom. Lorenzo had by that time left the kingdom.

In spite of the incredulity which most persons show in these matters, the events which followed the scene we have narrated confirmed the predictions of the Ruggieri.

The king died within three months.

Charles de Gondi followed Charles IX. to the grave, as had been foretold to him jestingly by his brother the Marechal de Retz, a friend of the Ruggieri, who believed in their predictions.

Marie Touchet married Charles de Balzac, Marquis d’Entragues, the governor of Orleans, by whom she had two daughters. The most celebrated of these daughters, the half-sister of the Comte d’Auvergne, was the mistress of Henri IV., and it was she who endeavored, at the time of Biron’s conspiracy, to put her brother on the throne of France by driving out the Bourbons.

The Comte d’Auvergne, who became the Duc d’Angouleme, lived into the reign of Louis XIV. He coined money on his estates and altered the inscriptions; but Louis XIV. let him do as he pleased, out of respect for the blood of the Valois.

Cosmo Ruggiero lived till the middle of the reign of Louis XIII.; he witnessed the fall of the house of the Medici in France, also that of the Concini. History has taken pains to record that he died an atheist, that is, a materialist.

The Marquise d’Entragues was over eighty when she died.

The famous Comte de Saint-Germain, who made so much noise under Louis XIV., was a pupil of Lorenzo and Cosmo Ruggiero. This celebrated alchemist lived to be one hundred and thirty years old,--an age which some biographers give to Marion de Lorme. He must have heard from the Ruggieri the various incidents of the Saint-Bartholomew and of the reigns of the Valois kings, which he afterwards recounted in the first person singular, as though he had played a part in them. The Comte de Saint-Germain was the last of the alchemists who knew how to clearly explain their science; but he left no writings. The cabalistic doctrine presented in this Study is that taught by this mysterious personage.

And here, behold a strange thing! Three lives, that of the old man from whom I have obtained these facts, that of the Comte de Saint-Germain, and that of Cosmo Ruggiero, suffice to cover the whole of European history from Francois I. to Napoleon! Only fifty such lives are needed to reach back to the first known period of the world. “What are fifty generations for the study of the mysteries of life?” said the Comte de Saint-Germain.