The making of a king (37 page)

Such was the bitter complaint of the brother of the murderer. Bassompierre felt that something must be done. Belonging to no party save that of King and Queen, " paroissien de celui qui sera cure," he was a fit go-between, and, having made his report to the Regent, was commissioned by her to offer a propitiatory gift to Guise of 100,000 crowns, to which, upon his suggestion, she added the recall of La Rochefoucauld— banished from Paris on account of his hot partisanship of the Chevalier — an important gift for his sister, the Princesse de Conti, and, stranger still, the Lieutenant-Generalship of Provence for the Chevalier. Guise allowed himself to be persuaded, on these terms,

t consent to a reconciliation with the Court; the nisters were included in the pacification ; Epernon, marked contrast to most of the participants in the angement, agreed to forget his grievances —since the Queen was wife and mother of his two masters, dead and living—only stipulating that nothing should be offered him in return, and that the Regent should treat her faithful servants better for the future. 11 were satisfied, save the Prince de Conde, his rsonal adherents, the Concini, and the young Baron

de Luz, who, seeing little hope of obtaining justice, took the matter into his own hands, sent a challenge to his father's murderer^, and, meeting him in fair fight, was slain.

The result of this supplementary tragedy was singular. Guise became forthwith a hero in public estimation, and was, in the language of a contemporary, lauded as a Mars. Even Bassompierre was taken by surprise by the suddenness of the reaction in his favour. The Chevalier having slain the father, the Parlement had been ordered to take cognisance of the deed, to inquire into it, and to set on foot an action against him. Less than a week later, with the blood of the dead man's son in addition on his hands, the Queen sent to visit him and to learn how his wounds were progressing.

Throughout the affair the Due de Guise had displayed prudence and moderation ; had shown, or pretended, disapproval of his brother's conduct, and had risen in the estimation of the world to a degree causing no little uneasiness to the Regent. The episode is worth recording in detail, representing as it does the main character and features of this stage of the Regency.

At the very time that Bassompierre was hurrying from the Queen to Guise, and from Guise to Sillery and his colleagues, in the endeavour to compose matters, the boy-King, in his part of the palace, was also preoccupied by a criminal case which had likewise been referred to the decision of the Parlement. In the eyes of the Court it would have been of the smallest possible consequence, the question being merely whether an insignificant country-woman should or should not

suffer the capital penalty. But Louis took a different view of the affair.

Riding home from hunting on a certain January day, not a week after de Luz's murder, a woman, probably on her way to the prison to which she was to be consigned, flung herself at his feet, imploring mercy. Condemned at Senlis, on the charge of having caused the death of her unborn child, she had appealed to the Parlement, and had consequently been brought to Paris to abide its sentence.

Having listened to her story and weighed the facts in a judicial spirit remarkable in a child of eleven, the King gave his orders. She was to be kept in a place apart, and not taken to the Conciergerie until such time as he had conferred with his mother.

u The Parlement would put her to death," he told Souvre, and was, likely enough, right.

Louis was determined that, if he could compass it, she should be saved. Nor was he acting upon any blind impulse of compassion ; judging and considering the evidence, so far as he was acquainted with it, with care. The proofs of the death were not, he said, certain ; the woman had been condemned upon conjecture. Lest his influence with the Queen should not be sufficient, he begged that Souvre and Bassom-pierre would likewise add their intercessions, and sent his nurse to ask the Marquise d'Ancre to persuade his mother to bestow a pardon upon the culprit.

He had put forward the arguments in her favour earnestly, " avec passion," and, having taken his measures, remained wrapped in uneasy thought.

" Ceci me met en peine," he told Souvre suddenly

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and almost with tears ; continuing for some days his efforts to effect his purpose, and, after they had been attended with success, m taking care that money was supplied to his prot£g£e, and that she was enabled to return to her home in the country.

The trouble and thought Louis expended on the affair were curiously at variance with the spirit of the Court. Nor was it a solitary instance of that love of justice and fair dealing afterwards winning him the title of le Juste. He refused to recognise, as those around him would have had him do, the privilege of a King to override the rights of his subjects. Thus, the owner of some pigeons having declined to give them up, Luynes would have had him take them by force. Everything, urged other courtiers present, belonged to the King. Let him have the birds seized.

The boy listened, according to his wont, in silence. When at length he spoke, it was not to express his acquiescence in the course suggested.

" Take an archer," he ordered Luynes, " and bid that man bring me four pigeons. Say I will pay him more than their value."

Willingly or unwillingly, the command was obeyed. The recalcitrant possessor of the birds was introduced into the King's presence, and, instead of the forty sous at which he valued them, received a crown.

The partial pacification following upon the pardon of the Chevalier de Guise left the Court merry. There were plays and ballets and dancing, the Prince's cabal alone holding aloof. Bassompierre, as the instrument of the Queen's reconciliation with the house of

Lorraine and with Epernon, was in special favour with her, and, when Conde left him out from an entertainment to which all the rest of the Court was bidden, Marie invited him to a private party of her own. It was true that he had to pay for her kindness by declining to attend a ball at the house of the Due de Longueville to which the Regent herself had not been asked ; but, though he felt the price to be heavy, there were manifest advantages to be reaped from the enjoyment of the favour of the head of the Government. D'Ancre, under a temporary cloud, had retired, at the Queen's suggestion, to his post as Governor of Amiens; and she sent him a message that she would teach him obedience; adding that, were it not for his wife, he would have gone to a place he would not have been able to quit at his will. If sceptics doubted whether the Queen's severity was genuine or assumed, the disgrace of the favourite, real or pretended, contributed to the gaiety of those he left behind.

During the summer the Queen was afforded a welcome distraction from cares of State by the success of one of the matrimonial arrangements in which she was always engaged. Having failed to marry young Montmorency to any of her Italian nieces, she had succeeded in contriving a match between him and the daughter of her kinsman, Virgilio Orsini, Duke of Bracciano. Married in Italy by proxy, the bride was sent to France and consigned to the care of the Queen until the arrival in Paris of the bridegroom two or three weeks later. Marie's satisfaction was great. A rumour had been afloat, ascribed by her to the malice of Conde, to the effect that the Princess was deformed,

and relief possibly mingled with her gratification when the story proved to be false. Though endowed with no remarkable beauty, if was the general opinion that age and development would improve the girl's appearance, and Montmorency, on his arrival, showed no dissatisfaction with his bride, who had meantime been arrayed in French fashion so that she might appear to advantage. The Queen and King were present at the introduction of bride and bridegroom, and all went well, save that the little Chevalier de Souvre, having intruded himself surreptitiously where he was not wanted, underwent corporal punishment in consequence.

A more important matter claimed Marie's attention whenever she had leisure to bestow upon it. This was the projected betrothal of her own daughter Christine to the Prince of Wales ; but though ambassadors came and went, and the preliminaries of the match were much under discussion, the affair made little progress.

In the meantime the species of disgrace in which d'Ancre had remained at Amiens had suddenly come to an end, and he had returned to resume his place at Court. A reconciliation with Epernon and Guise followed, and it was plain that he had fully regained his former place in the Queen's favour. On November 19 the seal was put to a matter of public scandal and he took the oath as Marshal of France — an honour conferred upon him by the Regent with a total disregard of the sentiments aroused by the appointment to the highest dignity in the French army of a foreigner who not only had never served in it, but in view of whose antecedents it was necessary

Louis's Moods of Dejection

abolish the ancient custom of reciting before the Parlement his titles to the distinction.

No one had power to gainsay the will of the Queen; and in the presence of the young King, who had never disguised his dislike for his mother's favourite, d'Ancre took the oath, making a speech in humble acknowledgment of the benefits conferred upon a foreigner who had come empty-handed to France. The King listened and, perhaps, contemplated a day when the dignity of France would be no longer prostituted as at present.

It had been observed, with some uneasiness, by those about him during the previous months, that Louis had become subject to a melancholy unnatural at his age, and efforts were made to provide him with amusement to distract his mind. Whether the illuminations and displays of fireworks had the desired effect does not appear ; it was perhaps partly in consequence of his moods of depression that the Queen was beginning

reconsider the sentence of banishment she had passed upon the Chevalier de Vendome, and to contemplate recall before Louis's majority should enable him, no grace of her own, to recover the society of his vourite playmate. It was not, however, till three ears later that the Chevalier was to return to Court.

It would be tedious, as well as impossible within the

its of the present volume, to follow in detail the shifting combinations of parties at this period. If one element of turbulence had been removed in Soissons, Conde, avaricious and grasping and anxious to accumulate as much wealth as possible during the King's minority, was always advancing fresh demands,

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