Catherine De Medici (35 page)

"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."