The making of a king (31 page)

" They want to make a man of him," reported the Tuscan Secretary, Scipione Ammirato, " and as he has many little children of his own age as companions, they wish to remove them, which will annoy him very much at first, as he has been used to amuse himself with them."

Marie de Medicis, one would have thought, had little reason to desire to curtail the period of her supremacy ; she told him, one evening as he was being put to

bed, that she wished she could pull out his arms and legs so as to make him grow faster.

14 A quoi bon ? " answered Louis, with precocious wisdom, " since my mind would not grow at the same time."

Already he was treated as if his voice was of weight in the conduct of affairs ; already, also, he was learning caution in the expression of his opinion. The young Due de Rohan, taking leave of him before joining the forces sent —with a show of carrying out the late King's intentions—to assist the Protestant princes in gaining possession of Cleves and Juliers, asked for a message to take to the Commander-in-Chief.

" Tell him to do the best he can," was the boy's reply, wisely vague.

u But, Sire," persisted the questioner—he was Sully's son-in-law, and would have his heart in the fight—" is it your pleasure that he should give battle ? '

Louis still refused to commit himself to a definite opinion.

" Let him do the best he can," he repeated.

He may have shrewdly divined that his pleasure would have little to do with the operations to be carried on in the field. Clear-sighted and sagacious, in spite of the incense habitually offered him, he was not easily taken in by flattery. When his tutor instructed him, in courtly fashion, that, according to Plato, the gods were above Kings in the same way that Kings were above other men, he was quick to point out the difference.

44 There is only one God," he answered sharply, * c there are many Kings " ; and again, a passage in a

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Louis's Dislike of Flattery 235

Roman newspaper having been read aloud to him commending his own intelligence and gifts, he put the suggestion that he should hear it a second time impatiently aside. To himself words did not come easily. " You know very well that I am not a great talker " — grand parleur —he said, when M. de Souvre would complain of his lack of admiration for what was beautiful.

Of his rank, of his station, of the respect due to him, he thought much ; there is no evidence that he over-estimated himself personally ; and he detected, with some humour, the emptiness of the outward tokens of reverence paid him. He would rather have fewer obeisances and not be whipped, he observed, corporal punishment having been administered by his mother's orders, the Queen afterwards receiving him with the exaggerated signs of deference she never failed to show.

Not only at Rome, but elsewhere, the gifts, character, and tendencies of the little King were discussed with interest by those they might in the future affect. Cioli, the Florentine envoy, sent home minute accounts. Though Louis might outwardly resemble his mother, it was the Italian's opinion that he displayed a likeness in other ways to his dead father. Heroard, with more opportunities for forming a judgment, thought the same. Yet, save in a boy's natural leaning towards outdoor pursuits, hunting or hawking,

e absence of any inclination to idleness, his inde-

tigable energy, and a liking for warlike games nd lead soldiers, it is difficult to see where the

milarity lay.

A certain dignity of demeanour, quiet and cold, remarkable in so young a child, was certainly not inherited from Henri-Quatre. He could show himself capable of keeping order, and of making his authority felt; and voices having been unduly raised in the presence-chamber on one occasion, he told the nobles who filled it to make less noise, and his command was obeyed.

" Eh bien / M. le Cardinal de Sourdis," he said another time, his eminence, on entering, having made obeisance only to the Queen, " you look upon me, then, as a child ? "

Nor were these incidents mere accidents. A scene taking place a year or two later shows that the tendency they indicated was growing to be a settled purpose. Souvre, when the boy was to go for a drive, had inquired whom he wished to share his carriage ? " The King makes no reply. Asked the same question several times, still the same silence. M. de Souvre says at last, < Sire, here is M. de la Force, captain of the guard. Is it your pleasure that he should enter ? * The King says not a word. ( Sire, the captains of your guard used to do this in the time of the late King, your father.' * They accustomed themselves to do it, little by little. Little by little, I will make them lose the habit.' ' Such was the boy's reply.

The anecdote presents him in a light contrasting curiously with the careless friendliness of Henri's bearing towards his servants ; though the line he took up in this particular instance may have been partly explained by the instinctive craving for a certain amount of solitude which he had already shown.

Like or unlike his father, the love he had borne him was not quickly forgotten. More than a year after Henri's death—a year crowded with new interests and excitement—he was listening, with the Due de Vendome, to music, a song alluding to the late King having been chosen. At the words —

Dessous la loi D'un si grand roi —

Louis turned away in tears. Vendome, too, was weeping.

Notwithstanding his capacity for strong attachments, he had hitherto displayed little preference for any person about the Court, with the exception of the younger Vendome brother. The Chevalier he loved, and though, in the course of the summer following upon his father's death, Alexandre was to have gone to join his brother in Brittany, Louis wept so bitterly that the arrangement was cancelled. His own little brothers and sisters remained at Saint-Germain, and meetings were comparatively rare. That he clung to the memory of the childish years passed at the chateau was shown when, one August day, a peasant lad named Pierrot, with whom he had then been accustomed to play, suddenly appeared at the Tuileries, where Louis was standing, surrounded by courtiers, watching the pond.

Pierrot, it seemed, had made his way from Saint-Germain to Paris with the express purpose of visiting " M. le Dauphin," and bringing him a gift of some sparrows. Recognising his old playmate, Louis ran up

the boy, threw his arms round him and kissed him.

Proper clothes, he said, should be given him, and he should remain at Court. The boy, however, declined the proffered honour. He must go home ; otherwise he would be beaten, for • his father and mother had not been willing that he should go to Paris to see M. le Dauphin ; and Louis, who had doubtless hoped to secure a playfellow, had no alternative but to let him go.

Such was the boy — a mixture of sagacity, precocious knowledge of the world, reserve, pride, coldness, self-consciousness, and childishness —who, at eight years old, was deprived of the guidance and authority of his father, and left to the care of Marie de Medicis and the counsellors she gathered about her.

CHAPTER XIX 1610-11

Policy of the Government —Unrest in Paris —Concini dominant—The Duke de Feria's mission—The King's coronation—Louis and Cond6—Sully's dismissal—Rumours of war.

THE coronation of Louis XIII. was to take place in October. Meantime the views of those administering the government in his name were becoming increasingly clear. Summoned to a meeting of the secret council on a certain morning, Sully found a debate going on well calculated to enlighten him, had he needed enlightenment, as to what the future had in store. The question at issue had reference to the course to be pursued towards Savoy. That State, in consequence of the persuasions of the late King, and relying upon his support, had taken the step of declaring openly against Spain, and Sully now expressed himself, with uncompromising directness, as to the duty of France towards her ally. The conception of the Queen and her other counsellors of that duty did not coincide with his. The matter, Marie informed him, had been under discussion, and she, with those present, had determined that, care being taken not to destroy the hopes of the Duke of Savoy until the proper moment, an :tempt should be made to establish peaceful relations r ith Spain by means of the double marriage.

It was more natural than prudent that, to this exposition of a nascent policy so wholly at variance with his dead master's views, as well as with his loyal and straightforward methods,»Sully should have at first merely replied by a shrug of his shoulders. Pressed to speak by the Queen, he repeated his opinion that good faith should be kept with Savoy. But the time was past when either a shrug of the shoulders or reasoned arguments on the part of Sully would avail to alter the course of events.

In the meantime Paris was pervaded by a spirit of uneasiness and unrest. Everybody was alarmed. No one could precisely specify their cause of fear. The weak-minded were once again terrified by vague prophecies of coming catastrophes. The Paris militia was placed under arms, the palace was closely guarded. The Princes of the Blood rode through the streets strongly escorted. Some people apprehended a fresh St. Bartholomew. Bouillon believed, or affected to believe, that it was necessary for his safety to sleep under Conde's roof. Sully had hundreds of armed men at hand in case of need.

Whilst the citizens of Paris had been eager to give proof of their loyalty towards the son of their dead King, other classes of the community had been more remiss. Conde was popular at the moment, and nobles and courtiers showed so great a disposition to attach themselves by preference to the royal Princes that it was observed that the King was, in comparison, thinly attended—a state of things his mother set herself at once, with success, to remedy. It was essential to maintain the prestige of the Crown.

Concini's power and influence was becoming more and more apparent as the weeks of that hot summer went by. His ambition, it was true, was more personal than political. He wanted power ; he wanted — perhaps more — money. Therefore he wished the Queen to have her way ; he was jealous of any one who could be suspected of exercising a counter-influence, either over her or the little King. The great issues at stake, the destinies of France or of Europe, were of minor importance.

At present there was no one who could compete with him, or rather, with him and his wife. His position had been secured by his admission into the Council of State, at which his attendance had hitherto been of an informal character ; in August he was to become Marquis d'Ancre, and was, further, to obtain the government of Peronne, Roye, and Montdidier. He had, indeed, aspired to the charge of Calais, but there were difficulties in the way. A claimant with a better right to the post, and determined not to abandon it to a foreign adventurer, stated openly that he would first perform his religious duties and then proceed to kill Concini, were he to find him in the Queen's arms. Marie took the hint; the important post was not entrusted to her favourite.

Though, however, the Italian might be said to have no friends in France save the Queen, there were few who, at this juncture, did not consider it necessary to disguise their hatred. The King's minority would not last for ever ; and, apart from this, history had taught those astute enough to learn patience from it that the prosperity of a favourite is not likely to be

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prolonged. It was, therefore, safest to dissemble and to await developments.

If the rule of a Regent was, by the nature of things, temporary, its consequences rtfight be made lasting, and from the first it was the Queen's endeavour to lay the foundations of that alliance with Spain upon which she had been always bent. When, in September, the Duke de Feria arrived from Spain as Envoy-extraordinary, entrusted with the duty of presenting the belated condolences of his master upon the late King's murder, nothing was wanting on her part to do him honour. By the public the guest was regarded with mingled feelings. The choice of the Ambassador had not been fortunate, so far as Parisian sentiment was concerned, and Lestoile remembered, and so did doubtless others, that Feria was son to the Duke of that name who had commanded the Spanish troops at the time of the League, and had been expelled by Henri from the city. Crowds, nevertheless, love pageants, and the envoy's entry was greeted with acclamation. From Concini's house Marie de Medicis watched the procession in person, herself unseen, the favourite being deputed to wait upon the Duke and to make him welcome upon her behalf.