The making of a king (32 page)

It was true that, to the uninitiated, it may have seemed singular that a person no higher in rank than the " Sieur Concini" had been chosen to represent Marie de Medicis upon so important an occasion, but an inquiry from one of the new-comers elicited from the resident Spanish Ambassador a full explanation of the situation. Concini was, he informed his countryman, the Queen's major-domo, her chief courtier, the

man she favoured and heaped with benefits. " In short," he ended, " he is her Duke of Lerma. What can I say more ? " proceeding to dwell upon the necessity of showing every courtesy to the favourite.

On September 11 the audience of the Duke took place. On the preceding day a Spaniard belonging to his suite had paid Louis a more informal visit; when the boy, not without a suggestion of malice, had selected as a subject of conversation the recent capture of Juliers by the allied Powers, displaying to his guest a map of the town, and pointing out the disposition of the several forces. Lestoile was no doubt repeating the current gossip when, comparing the King's conduct towards the Spanish and English envoys, he observed that he seemed to have sucked in hatred of Spain with the milk from the breast.

In the speech Louis made at the State reception of the envoy the same hint of an undercurrent of unfriendliness might be detected. Greeting the Duke in the presence of a crowd of nobles and courtiers, he begged that he would assure his master that he would entertain for him "the same affection as the late King his father." On this occasion, as on others of the like kind, the dignity and self-possession of the child of eight appears to have struck the foreigners, no less than his own countrymen, with surprise, and if Louis and all present were aware that Henri had ever hated Spain, no exception could be taken to the ambiguous terms of his speech.

To the Parisians, traditionally hostile to Spain, the supposed animosity of their boy-King to that country was dear, and the evidences of it were eagerly reported.

Amongst the stories current was one which told how, finding Louis pensive, Pere Cotton had asked him the reason.

"I shall take care not to*tell it to you," the child was said to have answered, " for you would write it to Spain at once."

The reply was too significant to be overlooked ; and Cotton, repeating it to the Queen, complained that her son was being prejudiced by those about him against the Society. Rebuked by his mother, Louis remained impenitent, if not defiant, observing that he would not always be little, and that it might afterwards be remembered how he had been reprimanded. It is not recorded how the Queen received what sounded like a menace. She may afterwards have recalled it.

The date fixed for the coronation was approaching. It was to take place at Rheims, with the customary solemnities. There was a lull in the struggle between the rival claimants for place and power, and the function was to be graced by the presence of all the nobles and princes of importance in the realm, save those whose duties detained them elsewhere.

" You will witness," Marie boasted to the Tuscan envoy, "what you have never yet seen, and what I shall never care to see again."

Louis was impatient for the ceremony in which he was to play the leading part. Speaking of his mother's Sacre, he complained that at Saint-Denis the worst lodging had been allotted to him, that his apartment had included a well and a cellar, and that a stable and a duck-pond had been below it. There was no danger that he would suffer these indignities now.

Wherever he might go, he was a personage of importance, and was treated as such. He will have appreciated the change. Yet his position must often have entailed weariness and fatigue. The long journey towards Rheims had been begun on October 2 ; and, as the Court proceeded on its way, the Queen once asked the boy whether he would undertake it again for a second coronation.

" Yes, Madame," answered Louis readily ; " for another kingdom, not otherwise."

During the days passed at Rheims and in the intervals of more serious avocations, a healthy survival of childhood— a childhood those around him were doing their best to crush —is at times apparent, alternating with attention to religious rites and to the duties belonging to his station. He listens patiently to the harangues greeting his arrival in the Norman city ; is confirmed on the eve of his coronation by the Cardinal de Joyeuse ; and that same afternoon — " enfant en-fantissime "—plays at horses with his boy companions, driving them, harnessed, before him.

At the coronation ceremony — lasting two hours and a quarter—he conducted himself, on the whole, " fort vertueusement." But ebullitions of boyish spirits nevertheless broke out. The anointing over, he was undergoing the ordeal of being kissed by each peer, and, discerning a familiar face, bestowed a gay little box on the ear to the Due d'Elbeuf; and again varied the solemnity of the scene by an attempt to tread upon the train of the Marechal de la Chatre as he preceded him up the church. When Epernon, on the other hand, offered him the prescribed salute, he was

observed—and those who distrusted the Duke took note of it—to raise both hands to steady the crown upon his head.

At last the long rite was over and, put to bed that he might rest, France's anointed sovereign lay contentedly playing with his favourite lead soldiers and fashioning engines out of cards.

Other functions followed. Made a Knight of the Holy Ghost, he admitted, in his turn, the Prince de Conde into the Order. On October 19 the journey homewards was begun, and two days later, at Saint-Marcoul, he performed the distasteful duty of touching nine hundred sick for the King's Evil. The days when he had refused to replace his father in washing the feet of the poor were gone by. He accomplished his present task steadily and dexterously, turning a little pale as the work proceeded, but refusing to admit that he was weary.

At nightfall on October 30 Paris was reached, the King's first entry into his capital being greeted by a hundred salutes from a hundred cannon, as, a gallant little scarlet-clad figure, " stately and bold," he rode on his great white horse through the torch-lit streets.

Amongst the great officers and servants of the Crown one place had been empty. Sully had not assisted at the coronation of his master's son. Illness was the ostensible cause of his absence ; but, though this was no mere pretext, other reasons had contributed to make him crave permission of the Queen to visit his own estates rather than accompany the Court to Rheims. He was, in fact, contemplating retirement from public life, so long as the present condition of

affairs should last—one giving him no hope of exercising a beneficial influence. The time, however, was not yet come when he could be spared, and pressure was successfully brought upon him by the Queen to induce him to resume his duties at Paris. It was not until the following January that he finally abandoned his post.

Meanwhile the autumn was occupied by incessant struggles between the Princes of the Blood, at variance with each other as well as with the great house of Lorraine, each claiming the pre-eminence —such preeminence as could be hoped for, Marie being Regent and a foreign adventurer directing the performance from behind the scenes. How much Louis understood of what was going forward is uncertain. "The King," observes Heroard, "listens to everything, remembers everything, knows everything, and gives no sign of it." Perhaps Heroard was right ; Louis, as he said himself, was not " grand parleur." A scene taking place in January, graphically described by the physician, may indicate that he was on the watch for an absence of respect on the part of Conde, one of the chief offenders in the matters in dispute.

A meeting was being held in the Queen's private cabinet, with a view of adjusting the differences between the Princes, when the first Prince of the Blood entered brusquely and with no sign of deference. Covering himself at once, with no special salutation to the King, he took a seat, and addressed M. de Bouillon. The King went to M. de Souvre, and indignantly complained.

" Mousseu de Souvre," he said, " Look, look at

Mousseu le Prince. He has seated himself in my presence ; he is insolent."

" Sire," replied M. de Souvre soothingly, " it is that he is speaking to M. de Bouillon, and does not see you."

The King was not content with the excuse.

" I will go and place myself near him," he said,

The test was applied. Conde retained his seat, disregarding the approach of the sovereign. Louis returned to the gouverneur.

" You saw that he did not rise ? " he asked. " He is very insolent."

Signs were not wanting that the boy was growing older. His life was one to foster rapid development. Already the thought of the impression he would make weighed upon him. Retiring to his private room to play with his " little toy-men," he would forbid his attendants to mention his occupation ; and, more than once, when he considered that his slumbers had been unduly protracted, he would complain, almost with tears, of having been allowed to sleep so long ; it would be said that he was lazy.

More significant was his bearing when told that Sully—it will be remembered he had never shown any liking for him—was in January deprived of his posts. Louis was manifestly disturbed.

" They have taken away the finances from M. de Sully ? " he asked his gouverneur.

" Yes, Sire," was the reply.

" Why ? " he inquired, with a startled air.

" I am ignorant of the reasons," answered Souvre

discreetly. " But the Queen has not done it without much cause, as she always acts after great consideration. Are you sorry ? "

" Yes," answered Louis laconically.

He may have remembered that the minister had been his father's friend. He may, with a child's instinct, have divined that he was more true and loyal and wise than the courtiers who treated him with flattery and adulation. The expression of regret is, in any case, in curious contradiction to the dislike he had displayed towards the Duke in former days.

If the King had more cause than he knew to be " marri," there were singularly few who shared his sentiments. Sully was hated on all hands. The roughness of his manners and bearing, amounting to positive discourtesy, the duties appertaining to his office, his State economies, the necessity of constantly opposing obstacles to rapacity and ambition, combined with the favour shown him by the late King, to render him odious ; the fact that, in serving his master, he had not omitted to serve himself, and had amassed, though with the King's knowledge, an enormous fortune, adding an edge, comprehensible if not justifiable, to the animosity of his enemies.

Into the causes of his fall, the rivalries and intrigues at work to ensure it, it is not necessary to enter. To have remained at his post under the changed circumstances would have been, sooner or later, an impossibility, unless he had been prepared to buy office by an absolute sacrifice of principle. The man who had been Henri's friend and confidant, and had shared his views and projects, foreign and domestic, could not act as

the instrument of a government aiming at a reversal, in almost every respect, of the policy of the late reign.

Marie told Richelieu, it is true, and Richelieu believed, or pretended to belieVe, that Henri, wearying at length of Sully's ill-temper and perversity, had contemplated at the time of his death his removal from the management of the finances ; and it has been seen that Malherbe described a quarrel which had for a brief moment raised the hopes of the minister's foes. But that Henri seriously intended his dismissal is inconceivable. The cloud, whether it was that alluded to by the poet or another, would have been dispersed; a storm, as often before, would have cleared the air, and the statesman would have retained both his post and the affection of the King. It is also abundantly clear that, up to the very last, the two were on confidential terms. Marie's interest was, however, to make it appear that she had done no more than carry out her husband's intention in dispensing with the services of the man he trusted most.

The parting took place ostensibly on terms of amity. A farewell gift of 300,000 crowns was presented to the Duke ; and, though deprived of the charge of the finances and the Bastille, he retained the governorship of Poitou and other subordinate posts. Nevertheless, to a man of his powers, and accustomed to exercise them, his forced withdrawal from public life could not be otherwise than bitter.

" I know of no one capable of doing what I have done," he told Elb&ne, the Queen's maitre d'hot el. The statement could not have been controverted ; but of his services Louis was to be deprived.

The public, looking on, drew its own conclusions as to the causes dictating the minister's dismissal. Of those conclusions a placard affixed to the Arsenal is an indication : " A house to be let for the Easter quarter " —thus it ran — " apply to the Marquis d'Ancre, at the Faubourg Saint-Germain."

The Queen might have hesitated to deprive herself of the services of so practised and skilled a financier. Yet, the step once taken, his absence must have been a relief; for she could not doubt that she would find him irreconcilably opposed to the scheme she had most at heart — namely, the Spanish marriages and alliance. Through all the months which had elapsed since Henri's death negotiations, proposals, counterproposals, had gone on, Spain now hanging back, now showing herself fully prepared to fall in with the project. The chief obstacle in the way had been Savoy. Promised by the late King the hand of his eldest daughter for his heir, the Duke protested in vain against the breach of faith in contemplation. But, though indignant, he was helpless. At one moment, indeed, war.had appeared possible. Savoyard troops had menaced Geneva, whose existence as an independent republic had been guaranteed by the treaties of Vervins and Lyons. The Queen talked of taking her son to the latter city, where, should hostilities ensue, his presence with the army would have obviated the* necessity of entrusting its command to Conde.