Catherine De Medici (34 page)

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.