Old Court Life in France, vol. 1

The masked knight, habited entirely in black armour, rides into the arena. Certain of the fatal event, the Queen rises abruptly from her seat. Her countenance expresses absolute terror. She beckons hastily to the Comte d’O, who is in attendance. “Go,” says she in a low voice, speaking rapidly; “go at once to the King. Tell him if he fights with this stranger he will die! – tell him so from me. Haste! for the love of the Virgin, haste!”

No sooner has the Comte d’O left her, than, leaning over the dais, Catherine, with clasped hands and eager eyes, watches him as he crosses the enclosure. She sees him parley with the King, who is replacing his casque and arranging his armour. Henry laughs. The Queen turns to the young Comte de la Molle, who is near – “Call up hither his Majesty to me instantly. Tell him he must come up to me here before he enters the lists. It is for life or death – the life of the King. Go! fly!”

This second messenger crosses to where Henry is just mounting on horseback. “Alas! alas! he does not heed my messenger. Let me go,” cries the Queen in the most violent agitation; “I will myself descend and speak with his Majesty.” She rushes forward through the astonished courtiers to where a flight of steps leads below into the enclosure. As her foot is on the topmost stair, she sees the King gallop forth, fully equipped, in face of the masked knight. The Queen is ashy pale, her large eyes are fixed on the King, her white lips tremble. She stands motionless, supported by the balustrade. Her daughters, the brides, and her ladies gather round her, full of wonder. By a great effort she masters her agitation, and slowly turns back into a retiring-room behind the dais, and seats herself on her chair of state. Then with solemn gesture she addresses herself to the princesses —

“Elizabeth, my daughter, and you, Marguerite, come hither. My sons, Francis and Charles, come to me all of you quickly.” At her invitation they assemble around her in astonishment. “Alas! my children, you are all orphans and I am a widow. I have seen it. It is true. Now, while I speak, the lance is pointed that will pierce the King. Your father must die, my children. I know it and I cannot save him.”

While they all press with pitying looks around her, trying to console yet unable to comprehend her meaning, she slowly rises. “Let us, my children,” says she in a hollow voice, “pray for the King’s soul.” She casts herself on the ground and folds her hands in silent prayer. Her children kneel around her. There is a great silence. Then a loud cry is heard from below – “The King is wounded; the King is unhorsed; the King bleeds; en avant to the King!” Catherine rises. She is calm now and perfectly composed. She approaches the wooden steps leading into the arena below. There she sees, stretched on the ground, the King insensible, his face bathed in blood, pierced in the eye by the lance of the masked knight, who has fled. Henry is mortally wounded, and is borne, as the Queen saw in her dream, into a strange chamber in the Palace des Tournelles, hard by. After some days of horrible agony he expires, aged forty-one. The masked knight struck but a random blow, and was held innocent of all malice. He was the Sieur de Montgomeri, ancestor of the present Earls of Eglinton.

CHAPTER XI.

THE WIDOWED QUEEN

EVEN while the King lay dying, Catherine gave a taste of her vindictive character by ordering Diane de Poitiers instantly to quit the Louvre; to deliver up the crown jewels; and to make over the possession of the Château of Chenonceau, in Touraine, to herself. Chenonceau was Catherine’s “Naboth’s vineyard.” From a girl, when she had often visited it in company with her father-in-law, Francis, she had longed to possess this lovely woodland palace, beside the clear waters of the river Cher. To her inexpressible disgust, her husband, when he became King, presented it to “the old hag,” Diane, Duchesse de Valentinois.

When Diane, sitting lonely at the Louvre, for Henry II. was dying at the Palace des Tournelles received the Queen’s message, she turned indignantly to the messenger and angrily asked, “Is the King then dead?” “No, madame, but his wound is pronounced mortal; he cannot last out the day.”

“Tell the Queen,” said Diane haughtily, “that her reign has not yet begun. I am mistress over her and the kingdom as long as the King lives. If he dies I care little how much she insults me. I shall be too wretched even to heed her.”

As Regent, Catherine’s real character appeared. She revelled in power. Gifted with a masculine understanding and a thorough aptitude for state business, she was also inscrutable, stern, and cruel. She believed in no one, and had faith in nothing save the prediction of astrologers and the course of the stars, to which she gave unquestioning belief. As in the days of her girlhood, Catherine (always armed with a concealed dagger, its blade dipped in poison) traded on the weaknesses of those around her. She intrigued when she could not command, and fascinated the victim she dared not attack. All who stood in the way of her ambition were “removed.” None can tell how many she hurried to an untimely grave. The direful traditions of her race, the philters, the perfumes, the powders, swift and deadly poisons, were imported by her into France. Her cunning hands could infuse death into the fairest and the freshest flowers. She had poisons for gloves and handkerchiefs, for the folds of royal robes, for the edge of gemmed drinking cups, for rich and savory dishes. She stands accused of having poisoned the Queen of Navarre, mother of Henry IV.,8 in a pair of gloves; and, spite of the trial and execution of Sebastian Montecucolli, she was held guilty of having compassed the death of her brother-in-law, the Dauphin, in a cup of water, thus opening the throne for her husband and herself.

Within her brain, fertile in evil, was conceived the massacre of St. Bartholomew – to exceed the horrors of the Sicilian Vespers under John of Procida – the plan of which she discussed years before the event with Philip II. and his minister, the Duke of Alva, whom she met at Bayonne, when she visited there her daughter, Elizabeth of Spain. Catherine was true to no party and faithful to no creed. During her long government she cajoled alike Catholics and Protestants. She balanced Guise against Coligni, and Condé against Navarre, as suited her immediate purpose. Provided the end she proposed was attained, she cared nothing for the means. Although attached to her children in infancy, before supreme power had come within her grasp, she did not hesitate to sacrifice them later to her political intrigues.

For her youngest daughter – the bewitching Marguerite, frail Queen of Navarre – she cared not at all. Her autobiography is filled with details of her mother’s falseness and unkindness. As to her sons, all – save Francis, who died at eighteen – were initiated early into vice. Their hands were soon red with blood. Long before they reached manhood they were steeped in debauchery and left the cares of government entirely to their mother. Her Court – an oasis of delight and artistic repose, in an age of bloodshed (for Catherine was a true Medici, and loved artists and the art, splendour and expenditure) – was as fatal as the gardens of Armida to virtue, truth, and honour. She surrounded herself with dissipated nobles, subservient courtiers, venal nymphs, and impure enchantresses, all ready to barter their souls and bodies in the service of their Queen. The names of the forty noble demoiselles by whom Catherine was always attended, are duly recorded by Brantôme.

“Know, my cousin,” said the Queen, speaking to the Duc de Guise, “that my maids of honour are the best allies of the royal cause.”

She imported ready-witted Italians, actors and singers, who played at a theatre within the Hôtel Bourbon at Paris; saltimbanques and rope-dancers, who paraded the streets; astrologers, like Ruggiero; jewellers, like Zametti; and bankers, like Gondi. These men were ready to sell themselves for any infamy; to call on the stars for confirmation of their prophesies; to tempt spendthrift princes with ample supply of ready cash; to insinuate themselves into the confidence of unwary nobles; all to serve their royal mistress as spies.

A woman of such powerful mind, infinite resource, and unscrupulous will, overawed and oppressed her children. During the three successive reigns of her sons, Francis II., Charles IX., and Henry III., Catherine ruled with the iron hand of a mediæval despot. Yet her cruelty, perfidy, and statescraft, were worse than useless. She lived to see the chivalric race of Valois degraded; her favourite child Anjou, Henry III., driven like a dog from Paris, by Henri de Guise; and son after son go down childless to a dishonoured grave.

CHAPTER XII.

MARY STUART AND HER HUSBAND

FRANCIS II., aged sixteen, eldest son of Henry II., is nominally King of France. He is gentle and affectionate (strange qualities for a son of Catherine), well principled, and not without understanding. Born with a feeble constitution and badly educated, he lacks vigour both of mind and body to grasp the reigns of government in a period so stormy – a period when Guise is at variance with Condé, and the nation is distracted between Catholic and Protestant intrigues. Though yet a boy, Francis is married to Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, daughter of James V. and Mary of Lorraine, and niece to the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine.

Francis and Mary have known each other from earliest childhood. At the age of five the little Scottish Princess was sent to the Louvre to be educated with her royal cousins. Even at that tender age she was the delight and wonder of the Court – a little northern rosebud, transplanted into a southern climate, by-and-by to expand into a perfect flower. Her sweet temper, beauty, and winning manners gained all hearts. She was, moreover, says Brantôme, quiet, discreet, and accomplished. Accomplished, indeed, as well as learned, for, at fourteen, the fascinating girl recited a Latin oration of her own composition in the great gallery of the Louvre, before her future father-in-law, King Henry, and the whole Court, to the effect “that women ought to rival, if not to excel, men in learning.” She spoke with such composure, her voice was so melodious, her gesture so graceful, and her person so lovely, that the King publicly embraced her, and swore a great oath that she alone was fit to marry with the Dauphin. Forthwith he betrothed her to his son Francis. This marriage between a youth and a girl yet in their teens was a dream of love, short, but without alloy.

Catherine rules, and Francis and Mary Stuart, too young and careless to desire any life but a perpetual holiday in each others company, tremble at her frown and implicitly obey her.

Now and then Mary’s maternal uncles, the princes of Lorraine, Francis, the great Duc de Guise (the same who took Calais and broke the English Queen’s heart), and the Cardinal de Lorraine, the proudest and falsest prelate in the sacred college,9 endeavour to traverse the designs of Catherine, and to inspire their beautiful niece with a taste for intrigue – under their guidance, be it well understood. But all such attempts are useless. Mary loves poetry and music, revels in banquets and masques, hunts and games, and toys with her boy-husband, of whose society she never wearies.

Nevertheless, the Queen-mother hates her, accuses her of acting the part of a spy for her uncles, the Guises, and, sneering, speaks of her as “une petite reinette qui fait tourner toutes les tétes.”

The Court is at Amboise, that majestic castle planted on a pile of sombre rocks that cast gloomy shadows across the waters of the Loire, widened at this spot into the magnitude of a lake, the river being divided by an island and crossed by two bridges.

Over these bridges they come, a glittering procession, preceded by archers and attended by pages and men-at-arms. Francis rides in front; he is tall, slight, and elegantly formed, and sits his horse with elegant grace. His grey, almond-shaped eyes sparkle as he turns them upon the young Queen riding at his side. Mary is seated on a dark palfrey. She is dressed in a white robe, fastened from the neck downwards with jewelled buttons. The robe itself is studded with gold embroidery and trimmed with ermine. A ruff of fine lace, and a chain of gold, from which hangs a medallion, are round her slender throat. Her hair is drawn back from her forehead, and a little pointed cap, set with jewels, to which is attached a thin white veil falling behind, sets off the chiselled features, the matchless eyes, and exquisite complexion of her fair young face.

Catherine and the Duc de Guise, the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duc de Nemours follow. Behind them the gay multitude of a luxurious Court fills up the causeway. Francis has a prepossessing face, but looks pale and ill. As they ride, side by side, Mary watches him with tender anxiety. Her sweet eyes rest on him as she speaks, and she caressingly places her hand upon his saddle-bow as they ascend the rocky steep leading to the castle.

When they dismount, the Queen-mother – her hard face set into a frown – passes, without speaking a word, into her own apartments. The Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine also retire with gloomy looks. Not a single word do either of them address to Francis or to Mary. The young sovereigns enter the royal chambers, a stately suite of apartments, the lofty windows of which, reaching from ceiling to floor, overlook the river. Folding doors open into a gallery wainscoted with oak richly gilt, with a carved ceiling richly emblazoned with coats-of-arms. The walls are covered with crimson brocade set in heavy frames of carved gold; chandeliers of glittering pendants hang from open rafters formed of various-coloured wood arranged in mosaic patterns. Beyond is a retiring room, hung with choice tapestry of flowers and fruit on a violet ground, let into arabesque borders of white and gold. Inlaid tables of marble bear statues and tazzas of alabaster and enamel. Clustered candelabra of coloured Venetian glass hold perfumed candles, and the flowers of the spring are placed in cups and vases of rarest pottery.

Mary, with a wave of her hand, dismisses her attendants. Francis sinks into a chair beside an open window, utterly exhausted. He sighs, leans back his head, and closes his eyes.

“Mon amour,” says Mary, throwing her arms round him, and kissing his white lips, “you are very weary. Tell me – why is the Queen-mother so grave and silent? When I spoke she did not answer me. My uncles, too, frighten me with their black looks. Tell me, Francis, what have I done?”

“Done, sweetest? – nothing,” answered Francis, unclosing his eyes, and looking at her. “Our mother is busied with affairs of state, as are also your uncles. There is much to disquiet them.” Francis draws her closer to him, laying his head upon her shoulder wearily, and again closing his eyes. “It is some conspiracy against her and your uncles – the Guises —mignonne,” added he, whispering into her ear.

“Conspiracy! Holy Virgin, how dreadful! Why did you not tell me this before we left Blois?”

“I feared to frighten you, dear love, ere we were safe within the thick walls of this old fortress.”

Mary starts up and seizes his hand.

“Tell me, tell me,” she says, in an unsteady voice, “what is this conspiracy?”

“A plot of the Huguenots, in which Condé and the Coligni are concerned,” replies Francis, roused by her vehemence into attention. “Did you not mark how suddenly our uncle, Francis of Guise, appeared at Blois, and that he was closeted with her Majesty for hours?” Mary, her eyes extended to their utmost limit and fixed on his, bows her head in assent. “Did we not leave immediately after the interview for Amboise? Did not that make you suspicious?”

“No, Francis; for you said that we came here to hold a joust and to hunt in the forest of Chanteloup. How could I doubt your word? Oh! this is horrible!”

“We came to Amboise, ma mie, because it is a stronghold, and Blois is an open town.”

“Do you know no more? or will you still deceive me?” asks Mary eagerly, looking at him with tearful eyes.

“My mother told me that the Duc de Guise was informed by the Catholics of England (which tidings have been since confirmed), that the Huguenots are arming in force, that they are headed by Condé, that they are plotting to imprison the Queen-mother and your uncles, and to carry you and me to Paris by force.”

“By force? Would they lay hands on us? Oh, Francis, are we safe in this castle?” exclaims Mary, clasping her hands. “Will our guards defend us? Are the walls manned? Is the town faithful? Are there plenty of troops to guard the bridges?”

As she speaks, Mary trembles so violently that she has slid from her chair and sinks upon the ground, clinging to Francis in an agony of fear.

“Courage, my reinette! rise up, and sit beside me,” and Francis raises her in his arms and replaces her on her chair. “Here we are safe. This conspiracy is not directed against us, Mary. The people say my mother and the Guises rule, not I, the anointed King. The Huguenots want to carry us off to Paris for our good. Pardieu! I know little of the plot myself as yet; my mother refused to tell me. Anyhow, we are secure here at Amboise from Turk, Jew, or Huguenot, so cheer up, my lovely queen!”

As Mary looks up again further to question him, he stops her mouth with kisses.

“Let us leave all to the Queen-mother. She is wise, and governs for us while we are young. She loves not to be questioned. Sweetest, I am weary, give me a cup of wine; let me lie in your closet, and you shall sing me to sleep with your lute.”

“But, Francis,” still urges Mary, gently disengaging herself from his arms as he leads her away, “surely my uncles must be in great danger; a conspiracy perhaps means an assassination. I beseech you let me go and question them myself.”

“Nenni,” answers Francis, drawing her to him. “You shall come with me. I will not part with you for a single instant. Ah! mignonne, if you knew how my head aches, you would ask me no more questions, or I shall faint.”

Mary’s expressive face changes as the April sunshine. Her eyes fill with tears of tenderness as she leads Francis to a small closet in a turret exclusively her own, – a chinoiserie, quaint and bright as the plumage of a bird, – and seats him, supported by a pile of pillows, on a couch – luxurious for that period of stiff-backed chairs and wooden benches.

“Talk to me,” says Francis, smoothing her abundant hair, which hung in dark masses on her shoulders as she knelt at his feet, “or, better still, sing to me, I love to hear your soft voice; only, no more politics – not a word of affairs of state, Mary. Sing to me those verses you showed to Ronsard, about the knight who leapt into a deep stream to pluck a flower for his love and was drowned by the spell of a jealous mermaid who watched him from among the flags.”

Mary rises and fetches her lute. All expression of fear has left her face. Reassured by Francis and occupied alone by him, she forgets not only the Huguenots and the conspiracy, but the whole world, beside the boy-husband, who bends lovingly over her as she tries the strings of her instrument. So let us leave them as they sit, two happy children, side by side, bathed in the brief sunshine of a changeful day in March, now singing, now talking of country fêtes, especially of a carrousel to take place on the morrow in the courtyard of the castle, in which the Grand Prieur is to ride disguised as a gipsy woman and carry a monkey on his back for a child!

CHAPTER XIII.

A TRAITOR

THE Queen-mother sits alone; a look of care overshadows her face; her prominent eyes are fixed and glassy. From her window she can gaze at an old familiar scene, the terrace and parterre bordered by lime walks, planted by Francis I., where she has romped in many a game of cache-cache with him.

Presently she rises and summons an attendant from the antechamber.

“Call hither to me Maître Avenelle,” says she to the dainty page who waits her command.

Avenelle, a lawyer and a Huguenot, is the friend of Barri, Seigneur de la Renaudie, the nominal leader of the Huguenot plot; of which the Duc de Guise has been warned by the Catholics of England. Avenelle has, for a heavy bribe, been gained over in Paris by the Duke’s secretary, Marmagne; he has come to Amboise to betray his friends “of the religion” by revealing to the Queen-mother all he knows of this vast Huguenot conspiracy, secretly headed by the Prince de Condé and by Admiral Coligni.

Avenelle enters and bows low before the Queen who is seated opposite to him at a writing-table. He is sallow and wasted-looking, with a grave face and an anxious eye; a tremor passes over him as he suddenly encounters the dark eyes of Catherine fixed upon him.

“Have you seen the Duc de Guise?” says she haughtily, shading her face with her hand the better to observe him, as he stands before her, motionless, and pale with fear.

“Yes, madame,” replies he, again humbly bowing; “I come now from his chamber, whither I was conducted by M. Marmagne, his secretary.”

“And you have confided to him all you know of this plot?”

“I have, madame, all.”

“Is it entirely composed of Huguenots?”

“It is, madame.”

“What are the numbers?”

“Perhaps two thousand, your Majesty.”

Catherine starts, the lines on her face deepen, and her eyes glitter with astonishment and rage.

“Who is at the head of these rebels?” she asks suddenly, after pausing a few moments.

Avenelle trembles violently; the savage tone of her voice and her imperious manner show him his danger. His teeth chatter, and drops of moisture trickle down his forehead. So great is his alarm that, in spite of his efforts to reply, his voice fails him. Catherine, her eyes riveted on his, waves her hand with an impatient gesture.

“Why do not you answer me, Maître Avenelle? If you are waiting to invent a lie with which to deceive me, believe me, such deceit is useless. The torture-chamber is at hand; the screw will make you speak.”

“Oh, madame,” gasps Avenelle, making a successful effort to recover his voice, “I had no intention to deceive your Majesty; I am come to tell you all I know. It was a passing weakness that overcame me.”

“Who, then, I again ask,” says the Queen, taking a pen in her hand in order to note his reply, “who is at the head of this plot?”

“Madame, it is secretly headed by that heretic, the Prince de Condé. Coligni knows of it, as does also his brother d’Andelot, and the Cardinal de Châtillon. The nominal leader, Barri de la Renaudie, is but a subordinate acting under their orders.”

“Heretics do you call them; are not you, then, yourself a Huguenot?”

“Madame, I was,” replies Avenelle, obsequiously, with an effort to look fearless, for Catherine’s glittering eyes are still upon him; “but his Highness, the Duc de Guise, has induced me to recant my errors.”

“Ah!” says Catherine, smiling sarcastically; “I did not know our cousin of Guise troubled himself with the souls of his enemies. But this La Renaudie, was he not your friend? Did he not lodge with you in Paris?”

“He did lodge, for a brief space, in my house in Paris, madame; but I have no friend that is not a loyal subject to your Majesty.” Avenelle now speaks more boldly.

Catherine eyes him from head to foot with a glance of infinite contempt. “I am glad to hear this for your own sake, Maître Avenelle,” she replies drily. “What is the precise purpose of this plot?”

“Madame, it is said by the Huguenots that your Majesty, not your son, his Majesty Francis II., governs, and that under your rule no justice will ever be done to those of ‘the religion’; that your Majesty seeks counsel of the Duc de Guise and of his brother, the Cardinal de Lorraine, who are even more bitterly opposed than yourself to their interests. Therefore they have addressed themselves to the Prince de Condé, who is believed to share their opinions both political and religious, for present redress. The conspirators propose, madame, to place his Highness the Prince de Condé on the throne as Regent, until such measures are taken as will insure their independence; imprison your Majesty; send the young King and Queen to some unfortified place – such as Blois or Chenonceau – and banish the noble Duke and his brother the Cardinal from France.”