The making of a king (21 page)

asm in the affirmative, rendering thanks to God and to his Majesty. After which, perceiving that the King had business to transact, he withdrew discreetly to a distance ; whence he watched, with admiration, the ease of Henri's manners and the freedom of his intercourse with those around him.

The audience concluded, King and Queen went out driving together in friendly fashion ; and the envoy paid a visit to Louis, to whom he presented letters from the Grand-duke, his wife, and his son.

If Signor Guidi had flattered himself that he would experience no great difficulty in the fulfilment of his master's directions, he was quickly undeceived ; nor was it long before the favourable impression created by his first visit to Court was modified. He was soon to discover that to perform his duty as prescribed by the Grand-duke and at the same time to please the Queen would be no easy task. Marie had become, as he wrote, " non poco ombrosa e col-lerica." Though resenting the King's conduct towards herself, the coolness between her uncle and Henri had affected her sentiments towards the Grand-duke ; she was no longer inclined to render him obedience, and refused to be treated as a child. Queen of France and mother of four children, she declared she would not continue to submit to this species of discipline.

There was no more to be said. The lips of the Tuscan Ambassador were closed, and his counsels of prudence rejected ; the Concini couple flattered their mistress, encouraged her in her unwisdom, and were daily increasing in power and prosperity. There

was even talk, reported the envoy, of a government being bestowed upon the favourite. The King, however, would not venture on that step, in the face of the indignation it would evoke. In the meantime, he had been appointed First Equerry to the Queen.

The visit of the Dauphin to Paris, where he had been present at Guidi's reception, had lasted no more than a week, but had been spent in learning royal ways. So large a number of the nobles had met him on his arrival that the King had been left almost deserted in the palace. Louis also received in audience the Venetian Ambassador, who came to take leave of him and to introduce his successor. Sully was visited, and the Arsenal inspected by the young heir, to whom the Duke presented a gift of a hundred crowns, half that sum being given to Madame and twenty-five crowns to Catherine de Vend6me. The Verneuil brother and sister received nothing.

The boy appears about this time to have conceived a horror of parsimony, probably instilled into him by those who hoped to profit by his liberality. Making purchases in Paris, he would insist upon paying more than was demanded, would give three crowns when one had been named as the price of some article ; and when fifteen were to have been the purchase-money of an attractive cart moved by springs, he refused to take possession of the toy until fifty had been handed over to the fortunate owner.

If it was desirable that the future King should be indoctrinated with the principle that generosity is a royal virtue, Madame de Montglat appears to have

found at times that her lesson had been too well mastered.

" Monsieur," she remonstrated, when the child demanded four crowns to bestow upon the porters who had carried his luggage to Fontainebleau, " would not two crowns be enough ?"

" He! no, mamanga" he pleaded ; " they are so poor/' And the gouvernante gave way.

Towards the poor he was always pitiful. Towards others every means was taken to teach him to assume from the first the place to which he was entitled as heir to the throne. It was Louis who, in the King's absence, took the watchword from his mother and passed it on to the captain of the guard, making minute inquiries as to the arrangements for the night. It was he who wrote, on the Queen's behalf, when she herself was ill, to his father. Nor was there any danger that the boy would forget his position.

c< My place is everywhere," he replied loftily, when Cesar de Vend6me had bidden him take his place in a ballet.

The pleasure the King took in his children was in some measure counterbalanced by the anxiety they caused him. Not only were they, and especially the Dauphin, threatened with danger from those whose interests would have been served by their removal, but health was a recurrent source of anxiety in the royal nursery. The little Due d'Orleans had been delicate from his birth ; and the detailed bulletins sent by his father to Sully bear witness to the close and personal watch he kept upon the child, his spirits fluctuating in accordance with the changes in the

patient. " I am as gay to-day," he wrote, when amendment could be reported, " as I was sad yesterday " ; and again and again the same note is repeated.

In April a fifth child had been added to those Marie had borne to the King, in the person of Gaston, to become, on his brother's death, Due d'Orleans. The birth of a third son was a matter of rejoicing in which the Dauphin cordially joined. " I am glad," he said ; " there are now three of us." His brother, Gaston, was to give him little reason to regard him with affection.

On the whole matters were going well with the King. During the month of July he succeeded in carrying out, in spite of strong and persistent opposition, the betrothal of his eldest son, Cesar de Vendome, to Mademoiselle du Mercoeur, a project upon which his heart was set.

Attached to all his children, Henri had ever shown particular affection for the young Duke. He was his eldest son ; he was also the son of Gabrielle ; and the boy had been his constant companion. With regard to his nature and disposition he cherished illusions which death left undispelled. Louis's instinct was truer, and he had never liked his half-brother. The coming years were to show that he was right, and that there was little in Vendome to command admiration or trust.

For this lad Henri was bent upon obtaining the hand of one of the great heiresses of the house of Lorraine, but there were difficulties in the way. The nobles of France, allied with the royal

house, and proud of their lineage and descent, were not unnaturally inclined to resent the King's endeavours to wed their sons and daughters with his illegitimate children. In some cases his overtures were flatly rejected. When he attempted, a little later, to marry Gabrielle de Verneuil to the son of the Due de Montmorency, Constable of France, the Duke bluntly refused to consent to the match ; and at first it seemed that the Due de Mercoeur would be equally unyielding. The women of the family were likewise in arms. Vendome was no more than fifteen, and looked younger. The girl was somewhat older, and> supported by her mother and grandmother, was violent in her opposition. She would, she declared, not only rather become a nun, but would be buried alive sooner than consent. Young Vend6me, for his part, was not less reluctant. But the King, as his letters to Sully show, was bent upon the arrangement.

" Send me word,'* he wrote, " if that woman (the Duchesse de Mercceur)is not frightened ; tell me what you have learnt; how the affair is going on. ... I am told she is a little softened, but that she has determined, in consultation with those nearest to her, to gain time. Therefore she must be hurried, so that we may see light." In three or four days he recurs to the subject. The Bishop of Verdun was to be employed as intermediary : " I will give him all the fine phrases I can think of."

Sully—not, one imagines, without congratulating himself that religion had afforded his own son a way of escape—set himself to further the King's scheme as best he might. Three expedients were

possible. The first was the exercise of the King's sovereign authority—which would be the most rapid. The second, and the more just and desirable, would be the use of gentleness and persuasion. The third was to proceed by means of common law — the longest and most vulgar. Sully advocated the second, a method already employed by Pere Cotton, the King's Jesuit confessor, more adapted, in the Duke's opinion, than any other man to carry it to perfection, " for if ecclesiastics and those who deal with cases of conscience do not know how by these means to bring grandmother, mother, and daughter to a better state of mind, I know not how any other method can succeed."

Cotton, and others, were successful. The King's will was accomplished, and on July 16 the Dauphin assisted at the ceremony of the betrothal; the King, as Guidi wrote, " having been so determined and in such a fury on the subject that any one would have been dismissed who had opposed it." The unwilling pair were to be allowed a year's respite before their marriage, and the boy was to be sent to his government of Brittany. They appear, however, to have quickly become resigned to the inevitable, and the Tuscan Resident reported, not a fortnight later, that they were perfectly happy, and only anxious that the time of probation should pass swiftly.

This affair brought to a successful conclusion, Henri was at liberty to turn to his favourite amusements, and in particular to the completion of the improvements he had set in hand at Fontainebleau.

sale of whose vacant post would bring in a considerable sum, " for you must know," wrote Malherbe, " that this canal is at present his predominant passion, and that, with all this heat—excessive if ever it was so— he was usually seated on*a stone from five or six in the morning until midday, without parasol or any sort of shade, watching his masons at work."

The canal and kindred interests afforded a welcome distraction from serious business. Vendome's future might be secured, but the more important question of the Spanish marriages was now to be pressed forward.

Four days after he had assisted at the betrothal of his half-brother the Dauphin received an important visit. The guest on this occasion was Don Pedro de Toledo, sent to France on a special mission, who, coming to salute the Dauphin, " kisses his hand, and says he is very glad to see that he is so handsome and gentil a prince, praying God for his prosperity."

That same day Don Pedro had been accorded a formal audience by the King, preparatory to entering upon the discussion of the business that brought him to Paris. The negotiation was intended to pave the way for no less than three intermarriages between the houses of France and Spain. Having failed to effect the subjugation of the revolted provinces of the Netherlands, Philip III. had devised this scheme in the hope of thereby detaching Henri from the cause of his rebellious subjects, and depriving them of the support, moral and material, they had hitherto never failed to receive from him.

With the object of furthering this project Don

Pedro had been sent. The envoy proved to have been singularly ill-chosen. Described by the King as a solemn idiot, his line of conduct and the arguments by which he sought to convince Henri of the wisdom of acceding to his master's wishes displayed a deplorable lack of diplomatic skill and ability. What was wanting in these respects he strove to supply by pomp and magnificence, his retinue numbering upwards of a hundred persons.

The first meeting of King and envoy did not, according to Lestoile, promise well for the future. Greeting the guest with courtesy, Henri expressed a fear that his reception had not corresponded with his deserts.

"Sire," replied the Ambassador, "I have been so well received that I regret the misunderstanding that may cause me to return with an army, in which case I should not be equally welcome/'

" Ventre Saint-gris^ exclaimed the King. " Come whensoever your master may please, and you shall not yourself lack a welcome. In the event of what you speak of coming to pass, your master and all his forces will find obstacles in their way at the frontier, which I may possibly not allow him leisure to inspect.' 1

To Don Pedro's complaints of breaches of Henri's engagements with Spain, in the shape of assistance afforded to the Low Countries, the King was able to retort by pointing out that his alleged offences had been as nothing in comparison with the injuries inflicted upon himself. Yet, though differing, as was perhaps inevitable, upon matters of fact, this first interview was on the whole not otherwise than amicable,

the King afterwards praising the humility and patience displayed by the envoy.

What Don Pedro thought of Henri—of his sagacity, quickness, and command of language — may be inferred from a remark he is quoted as making, to the effect that his master had not sent him to a King, but rather to a devil, " for," he added, " he knows more than the great Devil and all the other devils.' 1

On the other hand, meeting one day a servant who was bearing the King's sword, he begged to be permitted to examine and handle it, and, after turning it every way, kissed the weapon before giving it back, happy, as he explained, to have seen and held the sword of the greatest, best, most valiant and magnanimous monarch alive.

It was one thing to pay exaggerated compliments ; it was quite another to conduct a difficult mission with success. Preliminary courtesies over, the true object of Don Pedro's embassy was introduced at a subsequent audience, his manner of dealing with it leaving much to be desired. In blundering fashion he explained that his master had been informed from Rome that Henri was desirous of effecting the marriages in question, adding that, should Philip lend a favourable ear to the proposal, it would be conditional upon Henri's undertaking to bring about the submission of the United Provinces. The Pope had pressed the scheme, but Henri's conduct with regard to the Netherlands caused the King of Spain to hesitate.

Such was the substance of Don Pedro's discourse, such the means by which he strove to carry his point. To a

Don Pedro de Toledo's Mission 159

sensitive, proud, and hot-tempered man it was little short of insulting, and not once or twice Henri gave the envoy the lie direct. " Ce n'est pas vrai," he said again and again. With regard to the intervention of Rome he declared that, whilst venerating the Pope as the successor of St. Peter, he made no account of him in connection with public affairs. He had neither thought nor said what was reported. It was a singular notion that he would have offered his children to any person in the world. They would only be accorded if demanded in due form.