Part 10

Her ladies whispered and sobbed together; there were now so many men and women in the room that she felt the air close and heavy. She implored Sainte-Foy to open the window; the doctor forbade it.

With that she fell back, tossing in the grip of pain, crying out that she was poisoned.

M. Vyelen brought her a glass of oil; she forced it down, shuddering with nausea.

Then after the administration of several horrible nameless drugs she lay in a half-stupor.

The pain had ceased to be localised; it shuddered through her limbs like her very blood and seemed one with the thick air about her.

Her thoughts raced at a fever pace; she saw the towers of Exeter, the first thing she could remember; she saw the mean room in Paris where her girlhood had been spent and the waves tossing in the channel as she stood on the deck of the ship by her mother’s side: a man in cut velvet was there–George Villiers, the first man to profess himself mad for love of her.

Then masques, festivals, adorations, ballets danced with the King, snatched interviews with De Guiche, passionate letters from De Vardes, hunting parties with M. de Lorraine, little scenes with Monsieur, with the Queen Mother,–her last great triumph only a few days ago–and now?

Not the end? Oh, God! Oh, Christ! Not the end!

“She is better,” whispered Madame de la Fayette, seeing her lie still.

She opened her poor tortured blue eyes.

“The pain is always the same,” she said, “only I have no strength to complain.”

Then after a moment–

“Is there no remedy for this agony?”

They wept and whispered and talked. Monsieur was in the ante-chamber. The doctors seemed bewildered, frightened; one felt her pulse; it was beating furiously. She complained of heat though she had tossed the bedclothes off and torn open her night-gown; but there were so many people in the room, and they pressed so close to the bed that she obtained little air.

The curé of St. Cloud had arrived; they argued in the ante-chamber whether he should be admitted or not; to let Madame see a confessor was to admit that she was dying.

She had now been ill for three hours. The room was full of the yellow light of lamps and candles; some of it penetrated through her bed curtains. A spasm of horror shook her. What if she never saw the sun again! She resolved to live at least till dawn–so her thoughts, panting with her pain.

Monsieur came to her bedside; she opened her eyes and looked at him as he stood holding back her curtains. He had a spray of jasmine in the buttonhole of his pink coat; she noted that. He had not worn it when she had fainted in the saloon; since then he had found time to fix it there.

“Will you see the confessor, Madame?” he asked. How little he had changed since she had first known him; she looked up into his cold face, and their eyes met.

“No,” she murmured, and her heavy lids fell. “I am not dying. I shall be better soon.”

The light hurt her eyes; she was glad when he dropped the curtain and turned away.

How she had lied to Monsieur and laughed at him–especially laughed at him–never with malice; now she was prostrate, helpless before him.

She called Madame de la Fayette.

“Cannot you do anything for me?” she whispered desperately.

She was told that they had sent to Paris for a doctor, to Versailles for the King’s physician.

“Versailles,” she repeated; her eyes lit.

Madame de la Fayette put her arm about her and held her up in bed; she seemed for the moment a little eased of her agony.

M. Vyelen roused her as she lay in this half swoon to bleed her arm.

All her poor vanity was roused; there was a great ballet on Thursday–she might be there yet–and her arms were her especial beauty.

“My foot!” she pleaded; “Monsieur, bleed my foot.”

He insisted; her husband came and added his authority; she must be bled in the arm if M. Vyelen commanded it.

She protested still and moaned; Monsieur helped to support her while the doctor bared her arm.

She looked so pale, so worn with pain, so patient, she lifted her eyes with such a look of dumb helplessness that Monsieur was troubled and turned his face away.

The doctor opened a vein; she shuddered to see the blood run into the basin; she began to make complaint when all his bandaging would not stop the bleeding and her pillow began to be stained with the quick-spreading red.

Monsieur Vyelen had lost his nerve and cut too deeply. Madame de la Fayette had to hold Madame’s arm up. Monsieur moved away; the sight of blood made him sick.

Madame, lamentably feeble, strove with a clutching fear of death and demanded the confessor. They endeavoured to dispersuade her, vowing she was better. She shook her head with such a look of anguish that they cleared the room and brought the priest.

Madame de la Fayette remained, holding her up.

She was too weak to do more than repeat the formula of the church. When the priest had gone she lay back and tried hard to think of her real sins, but hopeless confusion engulfed her.

God was so shadowy. No one had ever told her what He wanted of her; she had thought very little about Him, very little about death. She wondered if it would ever be remembered to her that she was very young. What did it mean to be good? She had never wilfully injured any one, she had never felt wicked; but she hoped God would remember she was very young. For a while this thought gave her some ease; then it flashed across her mind that the Queen was no older, and the Queen was virtuous, obviously virtuous.

La Vallière also; she knew Louise de la Vallière was a good woman and one whom she had shamefully treated.

Surely her sins were not difficult to remember now. She fell out of Madame de la Fayette’s arms and lay silent on the pillow. The room had filled again; the King’s physician, M. Vallot, had arrived.

He was an old man and pompous; he came to the bedside and Madame lifted her head.

“Thank you for your attention, Monsieur,” she said. “But I am poisoned. Unless you can treat me for that—” She sank down again.

Monsieur Vallot smiled.

There was no danger, he said; it was merely the pain that frightened her. He retired to consult with the other doctors.

M. le Prince came to see her; she seemed pleased and tried to look at him, but he wore a black and gold brocade, and the candle light on it dazzled her. She half closed her eyes.

“I am dying,” she murmured.

M. le Prince was greatly moved; he tried to tell her that she was better.

She shook her head and asked what time it was.

“Nine o’clock, Madame,” he answered.

She asked if they might have the window open, and complained of the heat; but no one dared for fear of the doctor.

Then Madame caught hold of Monsieur le Prince’s arm so as to draw him down to her, and breathed the question she had so longed to ask.

“The King–does he know? Is he coming?”

The news was at Versailles, he told her; but no one thought her dying–she was not dying.

Monsieur came to her bedside. M. Vallot, he said, had come to him four times and assured him on his life that there was no danger; the other doctors had agreed with him, and he had returned to Versailles.

Madame looked at the pink figure of her husband and the jasmine drooping in his buttonhole.

“I know my state better than the doctors,” she said; “and I think there is no remedy.”

Her husband moved away with M. le Prince. Every one in the room seemed talking together; their voices echoed in her head horribly. She tried to compose her thoughts, but could not. If she might only have some respite from her pain! Why did not the King come?

Mme d’Epernon brought her a draught of senna that M. Vallot had ordered.

She drank it, and Mme Gamaches, approaching, said that the King had sent for news.

“Tell his Majesty I am dying,” said Madame. Not content with that, she asked them to send M. de Crequi to Versailles to say that she was in great peril.

Meanwhile no remedy had given her any ease; she asked if they could not bring her something to assuage her anguish.

M. Vyelen answered that she must wait; in two hours the senna would relieve her.

“Oh, my God!” cried Madame. “If you were in my pain you would not speak so quietly of waiting.”

For a while she tossed and twisted from side to side. People surged in and out of the room; none of them believed that she was in any danger; the doctor insisted that she was not, that in a while the pain would pass, that the coldness of her hands and feet was only an ordinary symptom of a chill.

Presently she called out that she would be moved; the bed had grown hot and uncomfortable and intolerable. There was a little bed in her dressing-room; they wrapped her in a blue silk mantle and Monsieur and two of her ladies carried her there. She was slight–of the weight of a child.

The clearer atmosphere of the dressing-room and the cool bed seemed to relieve her; she lay still, swathed in her mantle, her auburn hair, that was marvellously fine, in disorder on the pillow.

On the table by the bed stood a couple of candles, and by the light of these they saw her face more clearly than when she was in the curtained bed. And it startled them.

“Do the candles trouble you?” asked Monsieur, his voice unsteady.

“No, Monsieur,” she answered. “Nothing troubles me. To-morrow morning I shall be dead.”

Why did not the King come?

As she had eaten nothing since dinner, they brought her some supper on a silver tray; Monsieur showed some tenderness in holding it for her and in insisting that she should take something which at first she could not bring herself to; but at last she thanked him with a look and drank some soup. All at once her agony became so terrible that they thought she must die on the instant: she shook and stiffened with torment, like one at the stake; her face turned an ashy hue and glistened with moisture; the pupils of her eyes contracted and dilated.

“I am poisoned,” she said.

Some wept to see her cruel sufferings. Monsieur sat by her side and held her hand.

There was a commotion in the ante-chamber–in the bedroom; the door was flung open, and a gentleman in brown and gold, carrying his hat, entered, behind him M. de Crequi.

“The King,” said Monsieur.

Louis came half-way across the dressing-room.

“The doctors wish to see you, Monsieur,” he said; he was very pale and frowning.

All the light in the chamber was about the bed of Madame, where the candles burnt in their silver sticks and shone full on her pillow.

All beauty had been wiped from her face like paint from a mask. Against the blue of her robe and the glimmering hue of her hair her face was like gray wax; the blood had come through the bandages on her arm in a red stain–but he, to her vision was as godlike, as golden glorious as ever.

As he came up to her she controlled her pain with an heroic effort.

“Sire, you lose one of your truest servants to-night,” she said.

He answered in great agitation–

“You are not dying; I will not believe it—”

He seemed afraid to come too near to her; she spoke calmly, with a world of wild feeling in her eyes.

“You know I am not afraid of death–but I am afraid of losing your good thoughts—”

“Talk of God, Madame,” he replied hoarsely.

“Louis–I am dying,” she said. “Come and speak to me–close.”

She made a little feeble movement with her hand, and the King came up to her bed.

“I am poisoned,” she repeated; it seemed she wished to drive him to accept the statement to accuse some one.

“You show great courage, Madame,” he said, and looked at her in a terrified manner.

“I have never been afraid,” she repeated, “but I do not want to die.”

“I will see your doctors,” he said. “There must be some remedy.”

He turned away, seemed glad to go.

Madame clutched hold of Mme de la Fayette. “I am horrible. Give me a mirror.”

She reached out and caught up a heavy glass from her dressing-table; her frail strength could hardly lift it. She looked in it a second, then dropped it on the quilt.

“Madame de la Fayette,” she said, “my nose has shrunk—”

The lady could only weep. It was true; her nose had sunk into her face with a ghastly and corpse-like effect. She tossed herself about; whether in bodily or mental agony it was impossible to tell.

Mme de Gamaches came to say that Mme de la Vallière and Mme de Montespan had come together.

“Admit neither of them,” said Madame. She sent Mme de la Fayette out to them.

The two would share the crown she had left. Why had they come now? They must be glad she was dying–not la Vallière perhaps; she was a gentle woman.

It was now eleven o’clock, and the doctors suddenly informed the King that there was no hope; and those symptoms that two hours before they had vowed meant nothing they now declared the certain signs of gangrene and approaching death, and advised that Madame took the Holy Sacrament.

The King accused them of losing their heads. Monsieur fought his way into the dressing-room where Madame lay and told her, in an agitated manner, what they had said.

“So I have their permission to die?” She gave a tragic smile and fixed her eyes on her husband. “Where is the King?”

As she spoke he returned with the Queen and Mme de Soissons.

Madame lay silent; the King approached her bed; he railed against the doctors: he seemed confused, bewildered.

“I am no physician,” he said, “but I could have suggested thirty remedies they have not tried, and now they say there is no hope.”

He stood irresolute, looking at her; the candlelight could give no colour to his fair face. She could not believe that he would not send away the others and sit by her till the end; she waited for that. For some tenderness on his part, some passion, some regret, she waited; he came up to her bed, kissed her hands and bade her adieu.

“Adieu!” she echoed. She thought she saw tears in his eyes. “Do not weep for me yet, Sire. The first news you hear in the morning will be of my death; weep then.”

She turned her face away from him and he withdrew with Mme de Soissons. Hearing him go, she moved sharply and opened her eyes.

Close to her stood the stooping figure of Maria Teresa.

Madame looked at her curiously; a few days ago she had seen another Spanish Queen with the same look of grave suffering in her face, the butt of her brother’s court. How often she had laughed at both of them–but now–she suddenly stretched out her arms with an eager gesture.

The Queen’s face changed; she moved back.

“God forgive you, Madame la Duchesse,” she said in a voice torn and broken. “God have mercy on you.” With that she burst into tears and hurried from the room, the light running down her silver dress.

Madame was silent; she lay with her hand over her eyes until they came to move her back into her own bed that had been re-made.

Then she asked for the King.

He had returned, she was told, to Versailles.

She never mentioned his name again. With his departure all hope and desire of life had gone; he had fled, forsaken her. She almost wished to die now, so that she might have respite from her pain.

The Mârechal de Granmont was brought to her bedside; she told him that she was poisoned and bid him farewell.

She began to cough.

“It is the death cough,” she said. “Do you remember how my mother coughed just before she died?” She then asked how long she had to live, and expressed again her desire to confess.

The King had gone and the doctors had said there was no hope.

She thought no more of life; she made no complaint of her terrible and sudden death, of her cruel agonies; she made no reflection on the bitterness of dying in the midst of triumph, in the flower of her youth; she tried to face the certainty of approaching Death with what courage she might; she tried to realise a thing that till now she had never thought of.

She confessed again to M. Feuillet; he was a stern priest, and exhorted her in a severe fashion. When he had finished a Capuchin Father, her usual confessor, began to speak to her.

His discourse wearied her; she was trying to realise God for herself. The room was full of people; she saw them in a blur behind the figures of the two priests: she heard their talking, their sobbing. She noted the lines of her bed curtains, of her coverlet, and these things troubled her.

Presently another figure came to her bedside. After a moment she knew him–Lord Montagu, the English Ambassador. She thought of her brother.

“Tell him–that none loved him better than I—” Her voice failed.

My Lord answered her in English.

“Are you poisoned, Madame? I have heard it said. Is it true?”

“Yes. But in error–I accuse no one. Do not tell my brother; he might wish to take vengeance—”

Here M. Feuillet interrupted; she had spoken in English, but he had caught the word “poison.”

“Think of nothing but God, Madame–leaving these earthly matters.”

She held up her hand.

“My Lord–that diamond ring; take it to my brother.”

He drew it from her finger.

“Tell him I regret nothing so much as his grief. Tell the Duke of York–that–also.”

As she said no more the Ambassador drew back into the crowded chamber.

Madame became weaker; an intense chillness had succeeded her heat; her hands and feet were cold; it seemed to her that her heart had almost stopped. With a sudden unutterable pang she remembered her keys. Monsieur would get them; he would read her papers, her letters. If she had only known last night—

Now he would see how she had lied to him—

She strove to put this thought from her; he was the master now and she helpless.

The Capuchin continued his discourse; she prayed him, very sweetly, to leave her in peace for a while.

She received the Holy Eucharist; to her it was a blur of gold vessels, a murmur of words. She fainted three times while they administered it.

Another doctor arrived; he advised a bleeding in her foot.

“Then you must make haste,” she whispered.

Her head was whirling; she felt that the room had grown immense, that a great multitude was about her–talking, whispering, sobbing.

She never asked for her children and no one thought to speak of them or bring them; but they sent for M. de Condom.

She felt her foot bared and the prick of the lancet; as they bathed it they cried out she was dying. Very little blood came.

They gave her extreme unction.

She felt herself now in a soft darkness, striving for the light; she thought that this light would either blast or comfort her–and that it was God.

She called out for her husband; he came instantly.

“Will you leave the room now, Monsieur?” she asked. “Have you my keys?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“Be merciful,” she whispered piteously. “Adieu, Monsieur.”

He embraced her silently and went away, leaving her to her darkness.

The clock struck two. M. de Condom arrived; she saw him, heard that he was speaking to her but she did not know what he said. The lapping darkness was wrapping her; she saw through it glimmering points of candles and weeping faces; she saw, too, Exeter towers, very plainly, and the laughing eyes of M. de Guiche.

Then the mists cleared, and she beheld everything in a bright, strong light. She turned to a woman who bent over her pillow and said in English–

“When I am dead give M. de Condom the emerald ring I am having made for him.”

Her natural courtesy spared his thanks by speaking in a language he did not understand. Her agonies were suddenly ceased; she turned on her side with a soft sigh.

“I think I could sleep,” she said to M. de Condom. “May I, for a little–sleep?”

He said “Yes,” and that he would go and pray for her. He descended the steps of her bed; he had hardly crossed the room before she called to him in a sweet voice–

“It has come. I am dying.”

He returned to her bedside and held out the crucifix. She half raised herself; her pale, lovely hair hung about her blue wrap. She took the crucifix in her hands and clasped it to her bosom. The darkness was lifting–behind Exeter towers; she saw the Thames as she had seen it from the windows of Whitehall; she heard the priest’s voice reciting the prayers for the dying. Her lips were on the crucifix; she gave the responses, but her thoughts were not in the words. The light brightened into a dazzle that blotted everything out. She let the crucifix fall and sank back on her pillow. The clock chimed the half hour. She moved her lips convulsively and died–after nine hours of agony.

The King was asleep at Versailles and Monsieur was in her private cabinet, weeping furiously and tearing up the multitude of her love-letters by the light of a trembling candle flame.

M. de Condom, preaching her funeral sermon, displayed her as a Christian Princess, entirely virtuous.

THE BURNING OF THE VANITIES

BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE LAST DAY OF CARNIVAL AND THE VISION OF GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA IN THE CITY OF FLORENCE, 1497

“Behold, the sky shall be darkened! Behold, it shall rain fire and flame, stones and rocks; it shall be wild weather. I have placed ye between four winds,” saith the Lord–namely, prelates, princes, priests and bad citizens.

“Fly from their vices; gather ye together in charity. Fly from Rome, O Florence, and come to repentance! The Lord saith: ‘I will debase the princes of Italy and trample on the pride of Rome; then, O Italy, trouble after trouble shall befall thee, trouble from this side and from that–rumours from the east, rumours from the west, from all sides rumour after rumour.’

“Then men shall yearn for the visions of the prophets, and shall have them not, for the Lord saith, ‘Now do I prophesy in my turn.’”

So ended the sermon of Frà Girolamo, preached from a temporary pulpit erected in front of the church of Santa Maria del Fiore, the last day of the Carnival of the year fourteen hundred and ninety-seven, the third year since the expulsion of the Medici, the third year of the Friar’s rule in Florence.

The monks of St. Mark’s were gathered about the pulpit, and round them the Piangoni, the active supporters of the Friar; beyond them the crowd filled the Piazza from end to end, a crowd reverent, silent, excited.

It was a windless spring; the odours of the flowers in the fields without hung in the breezeless air and filled the city streets with perfume. Above the fine straight lines of the houses and the majestic shape of the church the sky hung pure of cloud and deeply blue as an early violet.

Frà Girolamo paused, gripping the smooth edge of the pulpit, and looked across the gathered multitude.

He wore the habit of the Friars of St. Mark, a loose coarse brown robe and a hood and shoulder-piece in one that fitted closely round his face and neck. He was of the middle height, stooping a little and gaunt; his features were harsh and rudely modelled, his complexion dark and sickly, cheeks and forehead fined with deep furrows, his nose a heavy aquiline, his eyes large, expressive and of a sparkling grey tint; his thick but mobile lips were at that moment compressed in a firmness that had the sweetness of true strength. Truly that expression of noble gentleness illumined the whole ungainly countenance, softened the unlovely lines and gave divine dignity to the common features.

As he stood so, motionless, the monks began to sing psalms and the crowd went to their knees on the paving stones of the great Piazza, their coloured garments shifting and changing in light and shade as they moved. When the men’s voices sank on the last pulse of the holy music that rose like incense on the clear thin air, Frà Girolamo took the Host, and raising it with his right hand lifted the left in blessing of the kneeling press of worshippers.

The great and stately door of the church was a fitting background for the frail figure holding the Host of God which gleamed in the lucid rays of the sun that struck straight from heaven on it, like a mystical jewel fed with inner light.