Old Court Life in France, Volume II (of 2)

His request was complied with, and Father Malavette, a Jesuit, was brought into the council-chamber. As soon as he saw him Cinq-Mars ran forward and embraced him. "My father, they are going to torture me," he cried; "I can scarcely bring myself to bear it! What is your opinion?"

"That you must submit to the hand of God, Monseigneur. Nothing happens but by his permission."

Cinq-Mars bowed his handsome head, covered with the sunny curls, and was silent. From the council-chamber he was led by Monsieur de Lanbardemont, an officer of the Court, to the torture-room. Here he remained about half an hour, and suffered torture, both ordinary and extraordinary. His supple limbs and delicate skin were horribly lacerated. He was unable to walk when he came out, and was supported by the officials. "Let me now think of my soul," he said faintly; "send my confessor to me, and permit me to be alone with him." This wish was granted, and an hour passed, during which he confessed and received absolution. Then he said to Father Malavette, "I have not eaten for twenty-four hours, my father, and I am very weak. I fear if I do not take something I may swoon upon the scaffold, though indeed, I assure you, I do not fear to die." A little wine and bread were brought to him, of which he partook. "Ah! my father," said the poor boy of twenty-two, "what a world it is! Everybody I know has forsaken me. How strange it is! I thought I had many friends, but I see no one cares for me now but poor De Thou, whom I alone have brought to this pass."

"Alas! my son, you are young, or you would not wonder at this," answered Father Malavette sorrowfully; "'put not your faith in princes.' What says Ovid too, who, like you, enjoyed the favour of Augustus, and was then cruelly punished?

"'Donec eris felix, multos numerabis amicos.'"

"But, my father, when I was the favourite of his Majesty, I tried to serve my friends in every way I possibly could, yet now I am alone."

"No matter," said the priest, shaking his head, "your service to them only made them your enemies."

"Alack, I fear it is so," replied Cinq-Mars, sighing deeply. Then he asked for paper, and wrote to his mother. He prayed her to pay all his debts, and again expressed his utter astonishment at the conduct of his friends. At three o'clock in the afternoon both he and De Thou were carried in a hired coach into the Place des Terraux, lying over against the banks of the river Soane, in the outskirts of the city. Here the scaffold was erected. Every house in the Place was covered by temporary balustrades and balconies; the roofs also were crowded with spectators. Thousands had come together to see the favourite die.

Cinq-Mars with difficulty mounted the ladder leading to the scaffold, with the help of Father Malavette. Then, still holding him by the hand to steady his wounded limbs, he raised his plumed hat from off his head, and, with a graceful air, saluted the multitude. He turned to every side, and passed around to each face of the platform, so that all might see him and receive his salutation. He wore a court suit of fine Holland broadcloth, trimmed with gold lace; his black hat ornamented with red feathers was turned back in the Spanish style. He had high-heeled shoes with diamond buckles, and green silk stockings, and he carried a large scarlet mantle, to cover his body after decapitation, neatly folded on one arm. His fair young face was perfectly serene, and his clustering curls, slightly powdered, were scented and tended as carefully as heretofore. Having bowed to the crowd, he replaced his hat on his head, and, with his hand resting on his right side, he turned round to look about him. Behind were two blocks, covered with red cloth. Beside them stood the executioner. He was only a city porter – the regular official being ill – a coarse and brutal fellow, with bloated face, wearing the dress of a labourer. When he came up to Cinq-Mars with scissors to cut off his hair, M. le Grand put him away with a motion of disgust. He begged Father Malavette to do him this office, and to keep his hair for his mother. While the long ringlets which fell over his shoulders were being cut off, Cinq-Mars turned towards the executioner, who had not yet taken the axe out of a dirty bag which lay beside him, and asked him haughtily, "What he was about?" and "Why he did not begin?" The rude fellow making a wry face in reply, Cinq-Mars frowned, and addressed himself to Father Malavette. "My father," said he, "assist me in my prayers, then I shall be ready."

After he had prayed very devoutly, and kissed the crucifix repeatedly, he rose from his knees, and again in a firm voice repeated, "I am ready, begin!" Then he added, "May God have mercy upon me, and forgive my sins." He threw away his hat, unloosed the lace ruff about his throat, put back his hair from his face, and laid his head on the block. Several blows descended ere his head was severed from the body; the executioner being unready and new to his office. When the head fell it gave a bound, turned itself a little on one side, and the lips palpitated visibly, the eyes being wide open. The body was covered with the scarlet mantle borne by Cinq-Mars on his arm for that purpose, and carried away to be buried.

The King, informed by the Cardinal of the precise day and hour when Cinq-Mars would suffer death, – for every detail had been virtually arranged before Richelieu left Valence in his wooden chamber, – took out his watch at the appointed time, and, with the most perfect unconcern, remarked to Chavigny, "At this moment Monsieur le Grand is making an ugly face at Lyons."

Then Richelieu ordered that the feudal castle of Cinq-Mars, in the valley of the Loire, should be blown up, and the towers razed "to the height of infamy."

CHAPTER VII.

THE END OF THE CARDINAL

WHEN the Louvre was a walled and turreted stronghold, with moat and drawbridge, bastion and tower, lying on grassy banks beside the river Seine, then unbordered by quays and untraversed by stone bridges, an ancient castle, strongly fortified, stood in the open country, hard by, without the city walls. In the time of Charles VI., the mad king, husband of the notorious Isabeau de Bavière, this castle belonged to Bernard Comte d'Armagnac, Constable of France, the ally of the English against his own sovereign, and a leader in those terrible civil wars that desolated France throughout the space of two reigns. Hither the English and the Burgundians often repaired, to meditate some murderous coup de main upon the capital, to mass their bloodthirsty troops for secret expeditions, or to seek a safe retreat when the fortune of war was adverse. As time went by this castle grew grey with age; the rebel nobles to whom it belonged were laid in their graves; no one cared to inhabit a gloomy fortress, torn and battered by war and sacked by marauders. The wind howled through the desolate chambers, owls hooted from the rents in its turrets, and noisome reptiles crawled in the rank weeds which choked up its courts. It came to be a gruesome place, lying among barren fields, where the ruffians and desperadoes of the city resorted to plan a murder or to hide from justice. This God-forgotten ruin and the foot-trodden fields about it were purchased at last by wealthy nobles, who loved the fresh country breezes beyond the new streets which now arose on this side of the river. The materials of the old castle served to furnish walls for the palaces of the Rambouillets and the Mercœurs, historic names in every age of the national annals. Here they kept their state, until Cardinal Richelieu, either by fair means or foul, it mattered little to him, bought and destroyed their spacious mansions, pulled down all that remained of the castle walls, filled up the ditches, levelled the earth, and, on the ill-omened spot, raised the sumptuous pile known as the Palais Cardinal, near, yet removed from, the residence of the sovereign at the Louvre. The principal buildings ran round an immense central square, or courtyard, planted symmetrically with trees and adorned with fountains and statues. From this central square four other smaller courts opened out towards each point of the compass. There was a chapel splendidly decorated, and, to balance that, two theatres, one sufficiently spacious to hold three thousand spectators, painted on panel by Philippe de Champagne. There were ballrooms furnished with a luxury unknown before; boudoirs – or rather bowers – miracles of taste and elegance; galleries filled with pictures and works of art, and countless suites of rooms, in which every decoration and adornment then practised were displayed. Over the grand entrance in the Rue Saint-Honoré appeared, carved in marble, the arms of Richelieu, surmounted by a cardinal's hat and the inscription "Palais Cardinal." Spacious gardens extended at the rear.

Still the Cardinal, like Wolsey at Hampton Court, added wall to wall of the already overgrown palace, and bought up street after street within the city to extend the gardens, until even the subservient Louis showed some tokens of displeasure. Then, and not till then, did the Cardinal cease building. At his death he presented his palace to the sovereign; and from that day to this the Palais Cardinal, now Palais Royal, has become an appanage of the State.

Before us stands the Palais Cardinal – solitary, in the midst of lonely gardens, sheltered by waving groves. The greensward is divided by straight walks, bordered by clipped lime-trees, rounded at intervals into niches for statues and trophies; balustraded terraces border deep canals, and fountains bubble up under formal groups of yew or cypress. The palace casts deep shadows on the grass. It is very still. High walls encircle the enclosure. The very birds are mute. Not the bay of a hound is heard. Moss gathers on the paths and among the tangled shrubberies, and no flowers catch the radiance of the sunshine. Within is the great, the terrible Cardinal. The ground is sacred to the despot of France, the ruler of the monarch, the glance of whose eye is death or fortune. Journeying direct from Lyons in his chamber on wheels – after the execution of Cinq-Mars – to Fontainebleau, where he rested, he is come here to die. Yonder he lies on a bed of state, hung with embroidered velvet in a painted chamber, the walls covered with rare pictures and choicest tapestry, the windows looking towards the garden. The moment approaches when he will have to answer for his merciless exercise of absolute power over king and people, to that Heavenly Master whose priest and servant he professes to be. How will he justify his bitter hatred, his arrogant oppression of the great princes and nobles of France? How will he meet the avenging ghosts of the chivalrous Montmorenci, the poetic Chalais, the gallant Cinq-Mars, the witty Saint-Preuil, the enthusiastic Urbain Grandier, in the unknown country whither he is fast hastening? Who tried to seduce, then to ruin, the Queen, Anne of Austria, and send her back, divorced and disgraced, into Spain? Who turned the feeble Louis into a servile agent of his ambition, and exercised over his weak mind a tyranny as shameful to himself as degrading to the sovereign? True, Richelieu may plead reasons of State, a rebellious nobility, traitorous princes, and an imbecile king; but the isolation of the throne, begun under his rule, was both barbarous and impolitic, as after ages showed. True, he possessed rare genius, and his life was industriously devoted to what he called "the glory of France"; but it was a mean and selfish glory, to attain which he had waded through the noblest blood of the land.

Look at him now – he has just received extreme unction. A hypocrite to the last, he folds his hands on his breast and exclaims – "This is my God; as in his visible presence, I declare I have sacrificed myself to France." When he is asked by the officiating priest – "If he forgives his enemies?" – he replies, "I have no enemies but those of the State." Now the hand of death is visibly upon him. In a loose robe of purple silk, he lies supported by pillows of fine lace. He is hardly recognisable, so great have been his sufferings, so complete is his weakness; his bloodless lips pant for breath, his hollow eyes wander on vacancy, his thin fingers work convulsively on the sheets, as though striving against the approach of invisible foes.

But, before he departs, a signal honour is reserved for him. Behold, the rich velvet curtains, heavy with golden embroideries, are held aside by pages who carry plumed hats in their hands, and Louis XIII. enters hastily. He is bareheaded, and is accompanied by the princes of the blood and the great ministers of State. Louis is so shrunken and attenuated, so white and large-eyed, that in any other presence he might have been deemed a dying man himself. As he advances to the ruelle that encloses the bed, he composes his thin lips and pinched face into a decent expression of condolence. How can he but affect to deplore the death of a minister whose fierce passions overshadowed his whole life like a moral upas-tree? Nevertheless the fitting phrases are spoken, and he embraces the ghastly form stretched out before him with a semblance of affection. The expiring Cardinal presses the hand of his master, and makes a sign that he would speak. Louis bows down his head to catch the feeble voice, which says – "Sire, I thank you for this honour; I have spent my whole life in your service. I leave you able ministers; trust them, Sire; but," – and he stops and struggles fearfully for breath, – "but, beware of your Court. It is your petit coucher who are dangerous. Your favourites have troubled me more than all your enemies." Then the Cardinal sinks back, fainting on his pillows.

Louis withdraws with affected concern; but, ere he reaches the spacious anteroom, lined with the Cardinal's retainers in magnificent liveries, he bursts into an inhuman laugh – "There goes a great politician to his death," he says to Chavigny, who is beside him, and he points with his thumb towards the Cardinal's chamber; "a wonderful genius. Now he is gone I shall be free – I shall reign." He chuckles with delight at the idea of being at last rid of the Cardinal; and a grim smile spreads itself over his ashen face.

It is a ghastly joke, as cruel as it is selfish. As if Louis's life were bound up in the existence of his great minister – he is himself a corpse within a year!

CHAPTER VIII.

THE QUEEN REGENT

LOUIS XIV. was four years and a half old when his father died at Saint-Germain, aged forty-two. Tardy in everything, Louis XIII. was six weeks in dying. The state christening of his son was celebrated during his illness. When asked his name, the little lad replied, "I am Louis XIV."

"Not yet, my son, not yet," murmured the dying King, "but shortly, if so it please God."

Anne of Austria, named Regent by her husband's will, rules in her son's name. A splendid Court assembles round her, at the Louvre, at Saint-Germain, and at Fontainebleau. Her exiled favourites are there to do her homage. The Duchesse de Chevreuse, after a long sojourn in Spain, England, and Flanders, – for she loves travel and the adventures of the road, either masked, or disguised as a page, a priest, or a cavalier, – is reinstated in her Majesty's favour. In Spain the Duchess's vanity was gratified by enslaving a royal lover – the King of Spain, brother of Anne of Austria; in England she diverted herself with fomenting personal quarrels between Charles I. and Henrietta Maria; in Flanders – a dull country – she found little to amuse her.

Mademoiselle de Hautefort (soon to become Duchesse and Maréchale de Schomberg) returns in obedience to the Queen's command, who wrote to her even when the King was alive, "Come, dearest friend, come quickly. I am all impatience to embrace you!"

The Duchesse de Sennécy arrives from the provinces, and the Chevalier de Jars from England. The latter had been imprisoned in the Bastille, and threatened with torture by Richelieu, to force him to betray the Queen's correspondence with Spain at the time of the Val de Grâce conspiracy. He had been liberated, however, but while the Cardinal lived had remained in England.

These, among many other faithful attendants, resume their places at the petit coucher, in the grand cercle, and at the morning lever.

Then there are the princes and princesses of the blood-royal: – Monsieur the Duc d'Orléans – no longer breathing vows of love in the moonlight, but a veteran intriguer – living on the road to Spain, which always meant rebellion, together with his daughter, La Grande Mademoiselle, a comely girl, the greatest heiress in Europe; Cæsar, Duc de Vendôme, son of Gabrielle and Henry IV., with his Duchess and his sons, the Ducs de Mercœur and De Beaufort; Condé, the uncrowned head of the great house of Bourbon – more ill-favoured and avaricious than ever – his jealous temper now excited against the bastards of the house of Vendôme, with his wife, Charlotte de Montmorenci, sobered down into a dignified matron, devoted to her eldest son, the Duc d'Enghien, and to her daughter, the Duchesse de Longueville, the brightest ornament of the Court; the Duc de Rochefoucauld and his son, the Prince de Marsillac, the author of Les Maximes, to become a shadow on the path of the last-named Duchess, who is to die in a convent; the great House of La Tour d'Auvergne, Viscomtes de Turenne and Ducs de Bouillon, from which springs Henri de Turenne, the rival of young Condé; Séguier, Duc de Villemer, generously forgiven for the part he took against the Queen as Chancellor, at the Val de Grâce; and, last of all, Henry, Duc de Guise – by-and-by to astonish all Europe by his daring escapade at Naples, where, but for Masaniello, he might have been crowned King, with the Queen's beautiful maid of honour, Mademoiselle de Pons, at his side.

There is also about the Court a young man named Giulio Mazarin, born in Rome of a Sicilian family, late secretary to Cardinal Richelieu. He has passed many years in Spain, and can converse fluently in that language with her Majesty whenever she deigns to address him. He has a pale, inexpressive face, with large black eyes, à fleur de tête, generally bent on the ground. His manners are modest, though insinuating; his address is gentle, his voice musical. Like all Italians, he is artistic; a conoscente in music, a collector of pictures, china, and antiquities. So unobtrusive and accomplished a gentleman cannot fail to please, especially as he is only a deacon, and, with a dispense, free to marry. The Queen, who often converses with him in her native tongue, appreciates his merits. Her minister, the Bishop of Beauvais, leaves the Court. He finds that his presence is useless, as the Queen acts entirely under the advice of this young Italian, whom she also selects as guardian to the young King, who, poor simple boy, looks on Mazarin as a father.

The Regency begins auspiciously. Fifteen days after the death of Louis XIII. the decisive victory of Rocroy was gained over the Spaniards by the Duc d'Enghien, a youthful general of twenty-two. Paris was exultant. The roads were strewed with wreaths and flowers; tapestry and banners hung from every window, fountains of choicest wines flowed at the corners of the streets, and amid the booming of cannon, the blare of trumpets, the crash of warlike instruments, and the frantic shouts of an entire population, the Queen, and her little four-year old son, ride in a gold coach to hear a Te Deum at Notre-Dame.

Her Majesty's authority is much increased by this victory. Mazarin, under favour of the Queen, gradually acquires more and more power. He presides at the council; he administers the finances – for which he came to be called "the plunderer"; he tramples on the parliament and bullies the young King. The princes of the blood and all the young nobles are excluded from offices of state or places in the household. Every one begins to tremble before the once modest young Italian, and to recall with dismay the eighteen years of Richelieu's autocracy.

But Mazarin has a rival in Henri de Gondi, afterwards Cardinal de Retz, now coadjutor to his uncle, the Archbishop of Paris. No greater contrast can be conceived than between the subtle, shuffling Italian, patient as he is false, and Gondi, bold, liberal, independent, generous even to his enemies, incapable of envy or deceit, grasping each turn of fortune with the ready adaptiveness of genius, and swaying the passions of men by his fiery eloquence; a daring statesmen, a resolute reformer, one of whom Cromwell had said – "that he, De Retz, was the only man in Europe who despised him."

Gondi considered himself sacrificed to the Church – for which he had no vocation – and did his utmost, by the libertinism of his early life, to render his ordination impossible; but in vain. Although he had abducted his own cousin, and been the hero of numberless scandals, the Archbishopric of Paris was considered a sinecure in the family of Gondi, and Archbishop and Cardinal he must be in spite of his inclination and of his excesses. In politics he was a republican, formed on the pattern of Cato and of Brutus, whose lives he had studied at the Sorbonne. He loved to be compared to Cicero and to Cataline, and to believe himself called on to revolutionize France after the fashion of a factious conspirator of old Rome. He longed to be anything belligerent, agitative – tribune, general, or demagogue. "Ancient Rome," he said, "honoured crime, therefore crime was to be honoured." "Rather let me be the leader of a great party than an emperor!" exclaimed he, in the climax of one of his thrilling perorations. The mild precepts of the gospel were clearly little to his taste. He had mistaken not only his vocation but his century. He should have lived in the Middle Ages; and as an ecclesiastical prince-militant led armies into battle, conquered territories, and made laws to subject peoples. Yet underlying the wild enthusiasm of his language, and the reckless energy of his actions, there was a kindly, almost gentle temper that imparted to his character a certain incompleteness which accounts for the falling off of his later years. Grand, noble as was De Retz, Mazarin ultimately beat him and remained master of the situation.

Under the guidance of Gondi (De Retz) the parliament, paralysed for a time, soon learns its power, and gives unmistakable tokens of insubordination by opposing every edict and tax proposed by the Government. Some of the most fractious of "these impertinent bourgeois," as Condé called them, were arrested and exhibited in chains like captives in a Roman triumph – at Notre-Dame on the occasion of a second Te Deum sung for a second great victory gained by young Condé. Mazarin, by this act, over-taxed the endurance of the citizens. In one night two hundred barricades rise in the streets of Paris. The Queen-Regent can see them from her windows. This ebullition of popular fury appears to Gondi as the realisation of his youthful dreams. The moment has come to make him a tribune of the people. He has loyally warned the Regent of the impending peril. The Queen considered his words mere bravado, and treated him personally with suspicion and contempt. Gondi was warned that Mazarin had decided on his exile. His generous nature was outraged: "To-morrow," he said, "before noon, I will be master of Paris." Noon did see him master of Paris; but, loose as was his estimate of the sacredness of his office, he was still Archbishop-Coadjutor; he could not personally lead the rabble, or publicly instigate the citizens to rebellion. A man of straw must represent him, and do what he dared not – harangue at the crosses and corners of the streets, head the popular assemblies, and generally excite the passions of the turbulent Parisians to fever heat. This man of straw was found in the Duc de Beaufort, grandson of Henri Quatre, through Gabrielle d'Estrées, – a dandy, a swaggerer, but a warrior.

Now the Duc de Beaufort, hot-headed and giddy, without either judgment or principles, cares little for either Cardinal, Coadjutor, or Queen, – is utterly indifferent as to who may rule or who may serve, provided always his own claims, as prince of the blood, to the most lucrative posts are admitted. But he does care very much for an affront offered to the Duchesse de Montbazon, of whom he is desperately enamoured.

The Duchesse de Montbazon, stepmother of the Duchesse de Chevreuse, and lady in waiting to the Queen, finds late one evening, on returning to her hotel, two love-letters dropped on the floor of her private closet. One is from a gentleman, the other is from a lady; both are unsigned. She of course at once decides that the handwriting of the one is that of the lady she most hates, that of the other, the lover of that same lady, whom she hates even more, if possible, than the lady herself. Now the lady whom she hates most is the Duchesse de Longueville, younger, more attractive, and more powerful than herself. The gentleman she selects is the Count de Coligni, who had deserted her for the sake of the Duchess. The next morning, at the Queen's lever, Madame de Montbazon shows these two love-letters to every one, and being the mistress of a caustic tongue, makes some diverting remarks on their contents. Her words are repeated to the Duchesse de Longueville; she denies the fact altogether. Her mother, the Princesse de Condé, Charlotte de Montmorenci, broadly hints to Anne of Austria that the Prince de Condé, the greatest general France had ever possessed since the days of the Constable de Bourbon, will join the malcontent parliament, nay, may even lead Spain into France, if her Majesty does not instantly cause the Duchesse de Montbazon to retract all she has said of his sister. Such is patriotism under the Regency! The Queen, overwhelmed by the clamour of the two duchesses, invokes the help of Cardinal Mazarin. The Cardinal, in his Italian-French, soothes and persuades both, muttering many classic oaths of Cospetto and Corpo di Bacco under his breath. He goes to and fro between the ladies, flatters both, and proposes terms of apology. Every suggestion is objected to; an hour is spent over each word. Such a negotiation is far more difficult than the government of France. All conclusion seems impossible, the Queen at last speaks with authority. She says that "if Madame de Montbazon will not retract, she shall lose her place at Court."