The making of a king (16 page)

At every point, in every direction, the influence of the clever, unscrupulous, quick-witted Frenchwoman was working against the Queen, unequipped by nature to contend against her. Even those upon whose support Marie might have chiefly reckoned were liable to succumb to Madame de Verneuil's wiles. Amongst them was a kinsman of her own, Don Giovanni dc Medicis, illegitimate brother of her uncle, the Grand-duke, whose presence in Paris, hailed at first with satisfaction by his niece, was to prove in the sequel a source rather of trouble than of rejoicing. On his arrival in July the Queen had been anxious to do

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him honour ; whilst his brilliant record as a soldier— although his laurels had been wo$ in the service of Spain —commended him to the King's favour. By both he was made cordially welcome, an ample income was assigned him; and hopes were held out of high office in France.

The position he took up "at first with regard to the royal household was a prudent one. Upon receiving some hazardous confidence from Henri, he showed with blunt straightforwardness, real or assumed, that he had penetrated the object with which it was made, and let the King know that he was not disposed to carry it out.

" If your Majesty," he said, " tells me this in order that I should repeat it to the Queen, you deceive yourself, as would also be the case should the Queen command me to give a like message to your Majesty. ... I am here to serve you. I will do so gladly, and will give my life and blood for your Majesty, your children, and your State." As an intermediary he declined to act.

Had Don Giovanni's career at court corresponded to this fair beginning, he might have played a useful part there. Unfortunately, he was to fall under Madame de Verneuirs influence ; nor was it long before Marie demanded that he should be recalled to Florence.

The day was approaching when the ceremonies omitted from the private baptism of the Dauphin, ondoye at birth, were to be performed, and the boy was at length to be given a name. He would himself have liked to be called after his father ; but it had

been determined that he should bear the name of the old Kings of France. The rite was to have taken place in Paris, and to have been the occasion of public festivities ; the presence of the plague in the capital, however, necessitated a change of plans, and Fon-tainebleau was selected as the scene of the solemnity.

Those in charge of the Dauphin at Saint-Germain did their best to impress him with a sense of the importance of the function in which he was to be the central figure, and with the necessity that he should conduct himself with propriety. He must be very good, some one told him, lest another Dauphin instead of himself should be presented for baptism. The admonition roused him rather to a spirit of revolt than of submission.

" I should not care," he replied perversely; " I should be very glad of it. I should then go where I pleased, and no one would follow me."

On September 9 the journey to Fontainebleau was begun, and on the I4th, dressed in white, the Dauphin was presented at the font by the Cardinal de Joyeuse, representing Pope Paul V., and his mother's sister, the Duchess of Mantua. The ceremony took place in the keep of the castle, in the presence of a multitude who repaired thither to witness it, and who vied with each other in doing honour to the occasion by the magnificence of their apparel. The Queen was said to have worn thirty-two thousand pearls and three thousand diamonds ; and Bassompierre, at the moment possessed of no more than seven hundred crowns, ordered a dress which was to cost fourteen thousand, ifraying the cost of it afterwards at the gaming-table.

Notwithstanding his recalcitrance beforehand, the boy's behaviour left nothing to-be desired, as he made the due responses to the questions addressed to him. His two little sisters, sharing in the ceremony, received the names of Elizabeth and Christine, and the day closed with a banquet and a ball.

The visit to Fontainebleau passed off without the friction by which the former one had been marked. A change had come over the boy. If he feared his father, he also loved him with a child's passionate affection, jealous of any attempt he so much as suspected to infringe, in his own interest, upon the authority and pre-eminence of the King. Tenacious of his rights where others were concerned, he was eager to disavow them when they might be supposed to compete with those of his father.

" He, that belongs to papa," he protested, when at a Twelfth Night celebration the title of King was to be given him ; nor would he consent to assume it until the matter had been duly explained. All, in fact, belonged to his father, nothing to himself.

" Mon wait re" asked little Verneuil as the two were playing at making card castles, " does this house"—they were still at Fontainebleau—"belong

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to you r

" No," answered the child. " I have none It belongs to papa."

" I have one, I," returned Verneuil, bragging.

" What is it ? " asked the Dauphin.

" Verneuil," was the reply.

" You are a liar," retorted Louis angrily ; " it does not belong to you, it belongs to your maman"

It was always the same.

" 1 have been playing away all your property, my son," the King told him with a kiss, when he had lost money at the gaming-table.

" Excuse me, papa" he answered. " It is not mine, it is yours/*

As if oppressed by a presentiment of the tragedy by which he was so early to be placed in possession of his inheritance, he could not bear to be told by flatterers of the day when he would fill the King's place.

" Let us not speak of that," he said shortly, when reminded of his future sovereignty. The King's enemies were his enemies; and when the Chaplain was instructing him upon the commandments, the injunction not to kill gave him pause.

" Not Spaniards ? " he objected. " Ho, ho, I shall kill Spaniards, who are papas enemies. I shall turn them well into dust."

" Monsieur," replied the Chaplain in rebuke; "Spaniards must not be killed. They are Christians."

"But they are papa's enemies," persisted the boy.

"They are nevertheless Christians," repeated the priest, not improbably belonging to the Spanish faction. Louis gave in.

" I will then go and kill Turks," he said regretfully.

In his estimate of Spain, the child's instinct was a true one. Hostility might be, for the moment, quiescent ; it was no more. From this year 1606 —the year marked by Henri's triumph over the remains of open opposition in France—Michelet dates the development of the plot he believes to have

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resulted in the King's murder. Whatever the truth as to the actual end may be, it is undeniable that he stood in a sense alone, a single figure barring the way to the universal dominion aimed at by Spain. And upon the side of his enemies were secretly ranged many who should have been his defenders. His foes were too often those of his own household ; and the thought of their intrigues and of his hurrying doom lends pathos to the side-scenes of these last years.

CHAPTER X 1607

Quarrels between King and Queen— Sully and his enemies—His relations with Henri—And with the Queen—The Duke as mediator.

FOR part at least of the dangers gathering around him Henri himself was responsible. From the time when, with eyes that must have been opened to the perfidy of the Marquise, he was recaptured by her, the Queen was his enemy. She and her children on one side, a faithless husband and an insolent rival on the other—such was the position ; and she can scarcely be considered blameworthy if she attempted to meet intrigue by intrigue, endeavouring by every means in her power to defeat the machinations of her foe, and falling increasingly under the influence of the Italian favourites who could be trusted to support her cause.

In June 1606 the accident had occurred which furnished the opportunity for a renewal of intercourse between the King and Madame de Verneuil. A series of letters belonging to the October of that year show him entirely under the old yoke. The prudent policy of the Marquise, who, playing a cautious game, was again alleging conscientious scruples as a reason for keeping Henri at a distance, had succeeded, and her >way over him was once more established.

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Outwardly there may have been little change in the aspect of the Court. The undercurrents of jealousy and hatred, the dreams of a possible vengeance, were covered by the conventional courtesies of common life ; the combination of jest and grim earnest, the heartburnings under the laughter, giving its distinctive character to this period, when the 0 final scene was already in preparation. At times, indeed, glimpses are to be caught of what seem like amicable relations between King and Queen ; and Marie appears, in spite of what is sometimes stated to the contrary, to have been strangely tolerant of the children brought up with her own. " Our daughter," wrote Henri to Madame de Verneuil of the three-year-old Gabrielle, " entertained my wife and myself and all the company for three hours this evening, and nearly made us die of laughing. Maitre Guillaume " —his fool— " is nothing to her."

But Marie's letters to her uncle show the bitterness and the indignation working within.

The special matters upon which King and Queen were at issue— the infidelity of a servant of Marie's, his imprisonment at her request by the Grand-duke, the efforts and counter-efforts made for or against him —these are of little interest. The attitude, however, of the Queen during the following years is of importance, considered in conjunction with the catastrophe, and the suspicions entertained in some quarters that she connived at it.

Finally separated from his wife, so far, that is, as any remnant or possibility of genuine affection was concerned, with the Court divided into parties, and unable to count with certainty upon the fidelity of

most of the principal princes or nobles, one element of good fortune remained to Henri, in the possession of a friend as uncompromising in his views, as strong, as faithful, and as devoted as Sully. In his wife's animosity Henri reaped the just reward of his conduct towards her. In the loyal affection of the minister he also received his deserts. For, failing in his duty towards the woman he had married, he was worthy, as a friend, of all love and honour.