The making of a king (7 page)

"The King's life and that of his son is in

The Escape of Auvergne

47

question," she cried bitterly, " and the mistress carries the day."

She was justified in her charge. The significance of the interruption of the course of justice was clear as daylight to all the world. A commission was issued to the Parlement for the trial of Biron, and in it was no mention of Biron's chief accomplice, Madame de Verneuil's brother, the Comte d'Auvergne.

CHAPTER V 1602—1604

Biron's execution— Pardon of Auvergne— Madarae's birth — The nursery at Saint-Germain —The King's children —Monseigneur the Dauphin —Domestic difficulties—Concini and Leonora — Rivalries at Court — The King's illness—Talk of a Spanish marriage— Henri complains to Rosny of his wife—And of Madame de Verneuil — Death of his sister—Rosny opposes the King—The Dauphin's training— Friction between father and son.

" [ r T^HE Dauphin] is taken to see the deer hunted ! by the King go by. ... He is carried to the King in bed, hurt by a fall he had in chasing the deer. He is holding a stick ; I take a twig from the faggot and strike it against his stick, as in fencing. The game pleases him, and he pursues me, laughing, round the room. All the rest of the day he is peaceful and very gay. This day, at five o'clock, the head of the Marechal de Biron was cut off at the Bastille."

So runs the entry for July 31 in Maitre Heroard's journal.

The King, said the Spanish Ambassador, was so defait after the execution, that he might have been taken for the man who had been executed. The two accounts are not irreconcilable. Amusing himself with his little son, or hunting the deer, Henri may have sought distraction from the sorrow of a man who

has been compelled to deliver up his friend to death.

" To-day I love none but you," he told Rosny, the words marking the loss he had sustained.

Yet he had never wavered in his determination to allow justice to take its course. Biron's guilt was clear. In one respect he showed himself a man of honour. Striving to throw suspicion upon the guiltless, he remained true to his genuine accomplices. It may be that his master was grateful for a silence which made it possible to pardon what was not too manifestly brought to light. The Constable Mont-morency, Auvergne, Bouillon, and others—above all, the Marquise—could be the more easily permitted to escape the consequences of their guilt. The part played by Spain and Savoy could be politicly ignored, and only added to the secret reckoning against them, to be settled at a future day.

It was curious that, by one of the caprices to which the multitude is subject, the common people displayed a strange anxiety to honour the memory of the arch-traitor, Biron ; whilst Auvergne, faithless to most, remained true to his friend, and swore to bring up with his own an illegitimate child the Marshal had left fatherless.

Auvergne himself made confession and received a pardon. The Constable was likewise forgiven ; and Bouillon would doubtless have been treated with no less leniency had he not preferred to ensure his safety by keeping at a distance.

To Biron's brother-in-law, the Due de la Force, Henri wrote to express his continued affection, coupled with a desire that the Duke's eldest son should be placed near his person. Biron, he told him, had

4

died confessing his guilt, but neither asking pardon, naming his confederates, nor praying to God. u I believe," added the King, " he clid not know how. . . . He begged, dying, that all the world might be told that he had died a good Catholic, without being able to say what a Catholic was."

Penitent or impenitent^ Biron was dead, and the kingdom was consequently left in comparative tranquillity. The Prince de Joinville, it was true, started a fresh intrigue with Spain ; but, treating it as " vraie niaiserie d'enfant," the King punished the culprit no more severely than by a few days' confinement to his own house. Of Biron's accomplices, Auvergne soon regained his place in his master's favour; Bouillon nursed his disappointment at Castres and there hatched new plots ; and the Marquise was, unfortunately, too necessary to Henri's happiness to be kept in disgrace.

In November Marie de Medicis gave birth to her eldest daughter, afterwards married to Philip IV. of Spain.

Belonging to the inferior sex, little Madame was greeted with, at the best, resignation. The Queen was said to have wept bitterly ; the King, though himself disappointed, did his best to comfort her by saying lightly that, had she not been of her daughter's sex, she would not have been Queen of France, and that, thank God, they were not without means of providing for the child. " My wife," he wrote to Madame de Montglat, "was confined yesterday morning at nine o'clock, with what it pleased God — a girl." A girl, however, opened the way to future possibilities

the way of alliances, already taking shape in Henri's lind. To the Grand-duke of Tuscany he wrote that the Queen had been delivered of a fair daughter, u de sorte que maintenant j'ai manage."

The more important question of a wife for the Dauphin was also, if informally, under consideration, those around him discussing the possibility of his finding a bride in the Infanta, Anne of Austria, who eventually became his wife. Heroard, taking as usual a favourable view of his charge's intelligence, perceived indications that the idea was not unwelcome to him. " He listens to the stories Mademoiselle de Ventelet tells him of the Infanta, and laughs at them. . . . He was screaming violently. Mademoiselle de Ventelet bids him good morning on behalf of the Infanta. He is appeased at once, and begins to laugh."

A constant visitor at Saint-Germain at all times when he could find leisure to resort thither, it was a strangely assorted group that shared the King's thought and care. Cesar de Vendome was only an occasional guest at the chateau, being, by reason of his age, more constantly attendant on his father. But his brother, Alexandre, some three years older than the Dauphin, as well as his sister, had their home there ; and to these were presently to be added, in spite of their mother's protests, the son and daughter of the Marquise de Verneuil. Lastly, the children of Marie de Medicis— six in all — were to take, one by one, their places in the royal nurseries.

Over this motley little company Monseigneur the Dauphin, as the years went by, was to reign supreme, one amongst them venturing to dispute his sove-

reignty. Save when the King visited Saint-Germain, his son was lord over all. When Henri was at the chateau, on the other hand, he was punctilious, rough soldier as he was, in demanding due respect from his heir and in enforcing the obedience which others found it difficult to exact from the spoilt child.

" Carried to the court-yard to meet the King/' records Heroard on one occasion, " he does not salute him till the King pulls off his hat, putting it on again when the King bids him, < Be covered, Monsieur/ The Dauphin dances a branle, giving his hand to Alexandre Monsieur, the King having bidden him to do so."

Court etiquette was rigidly observed, and the day ended with the baby's shirt being handed to him by his cousin, the Comte de Soissons, Prince of the Blood. On New Year's Eve, passed by the King and Queen at Saint-Germain, the Dauphin was promoted to offer his father his napkin at dinner, and so in peace the year closed.

Making the best of what she must have felt from many points of view to be a bad business, Marie de Medicis appears to have reconciled herself temporarily to the unsatisfactory conditions of her married life. It would nevertheless have required no great insight to perceive that, taking into consideration the characters of husband and wife, and the impossibility that their chosen favourites and counsellors should conduce to peace, storms in the future were inevitable. On the one side was the King, not without a determination to do his duty by the mother of his children in matters practical and material, but wholly destitute of affection

for her and liable to be made use of as the tool of another woman. Over against him was Marie de Medicis, with, as friends and confidants, Concini and his wife, distrusted with justice by Henri, rapacious, ambitious, and in all respects dangerous advisers. Towards the end of the year Concini had been entrusted by the Grand -duke with a mission to Spain, making a mystery of the matter and giving out that he was bound for England, though his true destination was known to all. Marie herself was annoyed by the incident, calculated to lessen the small amount of credit she possessed with the King, who told her, with displeasure, that her uncle had treated him better before they had become connected through his marriage. The Florentine, Giovannini, reiterated his entreaty to be recalled. The Queen, he said, did not trust him ; Concini was his enemy ; old, weary, sick, he now only wanted to be the servant of God.

The rivalries at Court found their reflection at Saint-Germain. The attendants of the infant heir had already inspired him with a marked dislike for his father's special friend, Rosny ; against whom, as controlling the finances, they had their private grievances. On the other hand, a scene which took place at the chateau on the occasion of a visit paid by Concini seems to indicate that his mother's favourites were not more popular.

Displaying his toys, the child pointed out some dolls, representing in miniature the Queen, Madame and Mademoiselle de Guise, with the Marquise de Guerche-ville, all placed in one of the royal carriages. Leonora was absent from the group.

" ' Monsieur,' asked Concini, noticing it, c where is my wife's place ?'

" Saying ' Ah !' he shows him an outside seat at the back of the coach. He will not accept a piece of preserve from the Sieur Concini, . . . draws back, looking at him as if importune."

Another time, again not improbably interpreting correctly the sentiments of those around him, it was observed that when Madame de Verneuil brought her son, a week or two younger than the Dauphin, to pay a visit at the chateau, the boy regarded " M. de Verneuil " with coldness ; and that though he had at first received the mother graciously, he resented the familiarity, when she ventured to touch his hair, with a blow. A significant scene followed.