The making of a king (30 page)

Yet the impression stamped upon the boy's mind by the ceremony was shown by his entreaty when, a year or two later, little Orleans had gone to join his father, that he might not be obliged to perform a similar office by him.

Four days afterwards the body of the King was removed from the palace on its way to his place of sepulture, the occasion being disgraced by brawls within the precincts of the Louvre itself, which testified to the absence of discipline and authority reigning there.

" The body of the late King was to be taken away," records H£roard with graphic simplicity. " There was much dissension amongst the hundred gentlemen and the bodyguard, who nearly came to blows. The King comes out on to a balcony leading from the small staircase to the great hall, and looks on for more than half an hour at what was doing in the courtyard. His guide [sic] was told of it, and he is removed. M. de Gondi, Bishop of Paris, disputes precedence with the Court of Parlement ; the Court at last pushes him in front. The body leaves the Louvre at half-past six ; arrives at nine at Notre Dame."

On the following day the body of Henri-Quatre was borne to his last resting-place amongst the Kings of France at Saint-Denis.

" The King is dead. Pray God for his soul ! " the herald cried in mournful accents from the vault to which the body was lowered, and, as the proclamation was heard, almost all present were moved to tears. Then, from the same herald, still below, rose the cry, " Long live Louis XIII., King, by the grace of God, of France and of Navarre." Caught up by a second voice

Proclamation of Louis XIII

225

in the choir above, the words were greeted by a blare of trumpets and fifes, with the beating of drums, and all was over.

The King was dead. Much had died with him. The wise administration, the great reign, of Henri-Quatre was over. France was to be, to use Michelet's phrase, " retournee comme un gant."

CHAPTER XVIII 1610

Rival forces in the State — Condi's return — Louis and his gouverneur — His position and training — Unlikeness to his father — His love for him — Pierrot at Court.

reversal of the late King's policy was the natural A and inevitable result of the Queen's supremacy. Italian by blood, Spanish in sympathy, dominated by Tuscan favourites to whom France was merely a means of fortune and rank, the welfare of the country could not fail to be subordinated to her personal interests and tastes — tastes and interests in almost every respect differing from those of Henri-Quatre.

In setting to work to carry out the projects she had at heart, Marie de Medici probably under-estimated the difficulties she would encounter, indulging that happy confidence in her own powers and capabilities commonly found in those who have never been called upon to put them to a practical test. She had to learn that the art of government does not consist alone in the possession of a strong will and a determination to rule. To command is one thing ; to enforce obedience is another and a harder matter.

The management of the forces at work in France

during the period following upon Henri's death

t>'rotn an engraving bv Nicolas de Mathoniere, after a painting by F. Quesnei

LOUIS XIII. AND THE REGENT MARIE DE MEDICIS.

he come as a friend or an enemy ? The question was at least provisionally answered on July 16, when at six o'clock in the evening he entered Paris, attended by ' some two hundred* horsemen, and met, with the Queen's permission, by the Due de Bellegarde and the Due d'Epernon, each with a considerable train. The windows of the houses, as he rode through the streets, were crowded with spectators. He had left Paris a fugitive, almost a rebel. He returned in triumph ; stopping on his way to visit Saint-Denis and have Mass said there for the man who had, in effect, driven him forth. And so, peace having been made with his vanquished enemy, he entered the capital.

At the Louvre he was anxiously awaited. As the little King noted the crowd that went forth to meet his cousin the old spirit of jealousy awakened within him. Was the Chevalier de Vendome also going ? he inquired as he accorded permission to some other of his household who had come to ask it ; receiving the Chevalier's contemptuous disclaimer of any such intention with manifest satisfaction. " You give me pleasure when you speak like that," he told him.

All was ready for the Prince, whether he came in amity or in hostility. The oath had been administered afresh to the marshals ; the captains of the guard had been enjoined to take no orders save from the King, the Queen, or their own colonels ; the citizens had been directed to arm. Precautions proved unnecessary. Without waiting so much as to change his dress, the Prince repaired to the palace, and was there received by the King and his mother. In the presence of a throng of courtiers, he bent .the

knee so low that some said it had touched the ground, and was embraced twice over by both. The formal meeting over, the Queen led the way into her private chamber and there continued for a few minutes in converse with him, Soissons, Vendome and the few who had been admitted remaining discreetly out of earshot; with the exception of the Cardinal de Sourdis, who approached the speakers more closely.

" Go and tell that Prince of your blood to take himself off/' said Soissons, jesting, to Vendome, connected with the Cardinal through his mother.

The interview over, Marie directed the Prince to go and unboot himself and to return to the palace. That night, as first Prince of the Blood, he gave the King his shirt. The fears he had roused were allayed. The Queen was at least to be permitted to take breath before being called upon to grapple with the leader of the rival forces in the State.

With the dead King, the single figure possessing intrinsic greatness, or making an appeal to the imagination, had passed from the French stage. Amongst those who remain, Sully excepted, it is difficult to discover any single character commanding admiration or respect ; and this fact should be taken into account in considering the position of the new sovereign. His father gone—great, in spite of his littleness—there seems to have been none near to whom Louis would naturally have looked up.

From first to last he was indeed singularly unfortunate in this respect. Few there were he could respect, whom he could love. Whether or not, in chile}-

hood, he loved his mother is difficult to determine. Even between mother and son a barrier was interposed by court etiquette. Signs of tenderness on her part appear to have been rare, since Balzac was told by a courtier that, during the four years covered by the Regency, she had never once kissed him. The statement may or may not have been accurate ; in any case that it should have been credible is significant of the terms existing between the two. True affection, however, may be combined with a minimum of demonstration, and it should be remembered that Henri would charge his wife in jest, with being the least caressing of women. Of her solicitude concerning her son's health and safety there can be no question. He was constantly under her own eye, and, from the time of his father's murder, slept in her bedchamber. But she was a stern woman, and the severity of her discipline, coupled with the absence of signs of affection, was not calculated to endear her to the victim.

With regard to others, it has been seen that Louis's training at Saint-Germain had not been of a sort to foster the habit of respect for lawful authority ; nor in his relations with his gouverneur is much trace of amendment to be found. If he yielded him obedience it was rather because it was enforced by the rod than from more worthy reasons ; and there were outbreaks of insolence on the boy's part indicative of an undercurrent of dislike kept in check by fear. Nor does Souvre appear to have been a man to inspire respect. It is true that the editors of Heroard's journal point with satisfaction to his condemnation of a coarse expression used by one of Louis's boy companions ;

but though he may have been strict as to manners, the nature of the influence he was likely to exert in matters of taste and morality may be inferred from a conversation on the subject of certain songs the boy had caused to be sung to him ; the gouverneur inquiring whether he had not called for those commemorating his dead father's loves for the Princesse de Conde and others.

" No," replied Louis, adding brusquely, pressed for his reasons, " I do not like them."

He had an instinctive distaste —singular when the fashion of his bringing up and the customs of the day are remembered — for coarseness.

" Ouy les vilaines ! " he said, turning his back with a look of anger on Concini, who had hazarded a jest of the kind. " Serium et pudiceum responsum," wrote Heroard approvingly, as he noted the occurrence.

If Souvre was not a man to fall into the mistake made by the Italian in outraging his charge's natural instincts of refinement, trifling incidents constantly prove the unsatisfactory nature of their relationship. Thus Louis is found taking a seat beside the gouverneur with the sole object of forcing him, in deference to court etiquette, to rise ; Souvre's irritation, on the repetition of the trick, showing that he divined and resented its motive.

" You have come to make me stand up," he told the boy ; " but I shall not do it, for all that."

" You should not equal yourself to me," replied Louis, loftily if inapropos.

" You have your hat on," he told Souvre sharply on Another occasion.

" Yes, and I shall not take it off to you now," answered the gouverneur^ with an undignified display of temper. " It is not that I do not know what I owe you, which is a thousand limes more. You can complain to the Queen."

Frequently the same lack of cordiality is apparent.

c< One would have to be a great fool to believe that,'* returned Louis, with contemptuous insolence, when his inquiries as to Souvre's skill as a marksman had elicited what sounded like a boast. Nor would he, another time, mount his horse, lest the gouverneur should ride his second nag.

If Souvre had failed to win the affections of his charge, Louis displayed a certain liking for his tutor, Des Yveteaux. Yet, though he may have condoned his shortcomings, it would seem that he had detected and taxed him with them ; for, put upon his defence, the tutor is found observing, with manifest acrimony, that though he might not be amongst the most learned, neither was he common or vulgar, or he would not have held his present position.

Saint-Simon asserts that the boy was kept purposely ignorant. The charge is unsupported. As he grew older, the Queen, anxious to retain the direction of affairs, may have discouraged him from taking an interest in serious business. But he was steadily, if not rigorously, compelled to apply himself to his studies ; and if Des Yveteaux was not a competent instructor, it was Henri-Quatre, and not his wife, who had chosen him for the post.

Looked at from almost any point of view, the fate of a child who is an important asset in a great game of

hazard is a melancholy one. It was the obvious interest of those in power to exclude from Louis's life all ties of intimacy or affection liable to endanger their personal supremacy in the future — to narrow, in the words of Saint-Simon, his prison and render him more and more inaccessible to others. At the same time, and somewhat inconsistently, his childhood was relentlessly shortened. He loved toys and playthings —save in the matter of hunting and painting he was, in the words of a contemporary observer, " enfant, enfan-tissime." Again and again Souvre is found reproaching him with his childishness ; and on one occasion, reluctantly assenting to the justice of the gouverneurs reproofs, he made up his cherished possessions into a package, to be handed over to his little brother. Childish games were also, if not forbidden, discouraged by Souvre, and Louis bowed to the decision.

" But one must do something," he added, rather pitifully. " Tell me what to do, and I will do it."

This, it is true, was a year later ; but his father was no sooner dead than it was the endeavour of those in authority that he should leave childhood behind.