"He told me to say to you, madame, that you alone could stand between the Crown and the Guises."

"Does he think that I ought to use the Huguenots as a weapon?"

"Ah! madame," cried Chiverni, surprised at such astuteness, "we never dreamed of casting you into such difficulties."

"Does he know the position I am in?" asked the queen, calmly.

"Very nearly. He thinks you were duped after the death of the king into accepting that castle on Madame Diane's overthrow. The Guises consider themselves released toward the queen by having satisfied the woman."

"Yes," said the queen, looking at the two Gondi, "I made a blunder."

"A blunder of the gods," replied Charles de Gondi.

"Gentlemen," said Catherine, "if I go over openly to the Reformers I shall become the slave of a party."

"Madame," said Chiverni, eagerly, "I approve entirely of your meaning. You must use them, but not serve them."

"Though your support does, undoubtedly, for the time being lie there," said Charles de Gondi, "we must not conceal from ourselves that success and defeat are both equally perilous."

"I know it," said the queen; "a single false step would be a pretext on which the Guises would seize at once to get rid of me."

"The niece of a Pope, the mother of four Valois, a queen of France, the widow of the most ardent persecutor of the Huguenots, an Italian Catholic, the aunt of Leo X.,—can she ally herself with the Reformation?" asked Charles de Gondi.

"But," said his brother Albert, "if she seconds the Guises does she not play into the hands of a usurpation? We have to do with men who see a crown to seize in the coming struggle between Catholicism and Reform. It is possible to support the Reformers without abjuring."

"Reflect, madame, that your family, which ought to have been wholly devoted to the king of France, is at this moment the servant of the king of Spain; and to-morrow it will be that of the Reformation if the Reformation could make a king of the Duke of Florence."

"I am certainly disposed to lend a hand, for a time, to the Huguenots," said Catherine, "if only to revenge myself on that soldier and that priest and that woman!" As she spoke, she called attention with her subtile Italian glance to the duke and cardinal, and then to the second floor of the chateau on which were the apartments of her son and Mary Stuart. "That trio has taken from my hands the reins of State, for which I waited long while the old woman filled my place," she said gloomily, glancing toward Chenonceaux, the chateau she had lately exchanged with Diane de Poitiers against that of Chaumont. "Ma," she added in Italian, "it seems that these reforming gentry in Geneva have not the wit to address themselves to me; and, on my conscience, I cannot go to them. Not one of you would dare to risk carrying them a message!" She stamped her foot. "I did hope you would have met the cripple at Ecouen—he has sense," she said to Chiverni.

"The Prince de Conde was there, madame," said Chiverni, "but he could not persuade the Connetable to join him. Monsieur de Montmorency wants to overthrow the Guises, who have sent him into exile, but he will not encourage heresy."

"What will ever break these individual wills which are forever thwarting royalty? God's truth!" exclaimed the queen, "the great nobles must be made to destroy each other, as Louis XI., the greatest of your kings, did with those of his time. There are four or five parties now in this kingdom, and the weakest of them is that of my children."

"The Reformation is an idea," said Charles de Gondi; "the parties that Louis XI. crushed were moved by self-interests only."

"Ideas are behind selfish interests," replied Chiverni. "Under Louis XI. the idea was the great Fiefs—"

"Make heresy an axe," said Albert de Gondi, "and you will escape the odium of executions."

"Ah!" cried the queen, "but I am ignorant of the strength and also of the plans of the Reformers; and I have no safe way of communicating with them. If I were detected in any manoeuvre of that kind, either by the queen, who watches me like an infant in a cradle, or by those two jailers over there, I should be banished from France and sent back to Florence with a terrible escort, commanded by Guise minions. Thank you, no, my daughter-in-law!—but I wish you the fate of being a prisoner in your own home, that you may know what you have made me suffer."

"Their plans!" exclaimed Chiverni; "the duke and the cardinal know what they are, but those two foxes will not divulge them. If you could induce them to do so, madame, I would sacrifice myself for your sake and come to an understanding with the Prince de Conde."

"How much of the Guises' own plans have they been forced to reveal to you?" asked the queen, with a glance at the two brothers.

"Monsieur de Vieilleville and Monsieur de Saint-Andre have just received fresh orders, the nature of which is concealed from us; but I think the duke is intending to concentrate his best troops on the left bank. Within a few days you will all be moved to Amboise. The duke has been studying the position from this terrace and decides that Blois is not a propitious spot for his secret schemes. What can he want better?" added Chiverni, pointing to the precipices which surrounded the chateau. "There is no place in the world where the court is more secure from attack than it is here."

"Abdicate or reign," said Albert in a low voice to the queen, who stood motionless and thoughtful.

A terrible expression of inward rage passed over the fine ivory face of Catherine de' Medici, who was not yet forty years old, though she had lived for twenty-six years at the court of France,—without power, she, who from the moment of her arrival intended to play a leading part! Then, in her native language, the language of Dante, these terrible words came slowly from her lips:—

"Nothing so long as that son lives!—His little wife bewitches him," she added after a pause.

Catherine's exclamation was inspired by a prophecy which had been made to her a few days earlier at the chateau de Chaumont on the opposite bank of the river; where she had been taken by Ruggieri, her astrologer, to obtain information as to the lives of her four children from a celebrated female seer, secretly brought there by Nostradamus (chief among the physicians of that great sixteenth century) who practised, like the Ruggieri, the Cardans, Paracelsus, and others, the occult sciences. This woman, whose name and life have eluded history, foretold one year as the length of Francois's reign.

"Give me your opinion on all this," said Catherine to Chiverni.

"We shall have a battle," replied the prudent courtier. "The king of Navarre—"

"Oh! say the queen," interrupted Catherine.

"True, the queen," said Chiverni, smiling, "the queen has given the Prince de Conde as leader to the Reformers, and he, in his position of younger son, can venture all; consequently the cardinal talks of ordering him here."

"If he comes," cried the queen, "I am saved!"

Thus the leaders of the great movement of the Reformation in France were justified in hoping for an ally in Catherine de' Medici.

"There is one thing to be considered," said the queen. "The Bourbons may fool the Huguenots and the Sieurs Calvin and de Beze may fool the Bourbons, but are we strong enough to fool Huguenots, Bourbons, and Guises? In presence of three such enemies it is allowable to feel one's pulse."

"But they have not the king," said Albert de Gondi. "You will always triumph, having the king on your side."

"Maladetta Maria!" muttered Catherine between her teeth.

"The Lorrains are, even now, endeavoring to turn the burghers against you," remarked Birago.



V. THE COURT

The hope of gaining the crown was not the result of a premeditated plan in the minds of the restless Guises. Nothing warranted such a hope or such a plan. Circumstances alone inspired their audacity. The two cardinals and the two Balafres were four ambitious minds, superior in talents to all the other politicians who surrounded them. This family was never really brought low except by Henri IV.; a factionist himself, trained in the great school of which Catherine and the Guises were masters,—by whose lessons he had profited but too well.

At this moment the two brothers, the duke and cardinal, were the arbiters of the greatest revolution attempted in Europe since that of Henry VIII. in England, which was the direct consequence of the invention of printing. Adversaries to the Reformation, they meant to stifle it, power being in their hands. But their opponent, Calvin, though less famous than Luther, was far the stronger of the two. Calvin saw government where Luther saw dogma only. While the stout beer-drinker and amorous German fought with the devil and flung an inkbottle at his head, the man from Picardy, a sickly celibate, made plans of campaign, directed battles, armed princes, and roused whole peoples by sowing republican doctrines in the hearts of the burghers—recouping his continual defeats in the field by fresh progress in the mind of the nations.

The Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duc de Guise, like Philip the Second and the Duke of Alba, knew where and when the monarchy was threatened, and how close the alliance ought to be between Catholicism and Royalty. Charles the Fifth, drunk with the wine of Charlemagne's cup, believing too blindly in the strength of his monarchy, and confident of sharing the world with Suleiman, did not at first feel the blow at his head; but no sooner had Cardinal Granvelle made him aware of the extent of the wound than he abdicated. The Guises had but one scheme,—that of annihilating heresy at a single blow. This blow they were now to attempt, for the first time, to strike at Amboise; failing there they tried it again, twelve years later, at the Saint-Bartholomew,—on the latter occasion in conjunction with Catherine de' Medici, enlightened by that time by the flames of a twelve years' war, enlightened above all by the significant word "republic," uttered later and printed by the writers of the Reformation, but already foreseen (as we have said before) by Lecamus, that type of the Parisian bourgeoisie.

The two Guises, now on the point of striking a murderous blow at the heart of the French nobility, in order to separate it once for all from a religious party whose triumph would be its ruin, still stood together on the terrace, concerting as to the best means of revealing their coup-d'Etat to the king, while Catherine was talking with her counsellors.

"Jeanne d'Albret knew what she was about when she declared herself protectress of the Huguenots! She has a battering-ram in the Reformation, and she knows how to use it," said the duke, who fathomed the deep designs of the Queen of Navarre, one of the great minds of the century.

"Theodore de Beze is now at Nerac," remarked the cardinal, "after first going to Geneva to take Calvin's orders."

"What men these burghers know how to find!" exclaimed the duke.

"Ah! we have none on our side of the quality of La Renaudie!" cried the cardinal. "He is a true Catiline."

"Such men always act for their own interests," replied the duke. "Didn't I fathom La Renaudie? I loaded him with favors; I helped him to escape when he was condemned by the parliament of Bourgogne; I brought him back from exile by obtaining a revision of his sentence; I intended to do far more for him; and all the while he was plotting a diabolical conspiracy against us! That rascal has united the Protestants of Germany with the heretics of France by reconciling the differences that grew up between the dogmas of Luther and those of Calvin. He has brought the discontented great seigneurs into the party of the Reformation without obliging them to abjure Catholicism openly. For the last year he has had thirty captains under him! He is everywhere at once,—at Lyon, in Languedoc, at Nantes! It was he who drew up those minutes of a consultation which were hawked about all Germany, in which the theologians declared that force might be resorted to in order to withdraw the king from our rule and tutelage; the paper is now being circulated from town to town. Wherever we look for him we never find him! And yet I have never done him anything but good! It comes to this, that we must now either thrash him like a dog, or try to throw him a golden bridge by which he will cross into our camp."

"Bretagne, Languedoc, in fact the whole kingdom is in league to deal us a mortal blow," said the cardinal. "After the fete was over yesterday I spent the rest of the night in reading the reports sent me by the monks; in which I found that the only persons who have compromised themselves are poor gentlemen, artisans, as to whom it doesn't signify whether you hang them or let them live. The Colignys and Condes do not show their hand as yet, though they hold the threads of the whole conspiracy."

"Yes," replied the duke, "and, therefore, as soon as that lawyer Avenelles sold the secret of the plot, I told Braguelonne to let the conspirators carry it out. They have no suspicion that we know it; they are so sure of surprising us that the leaders may possibly show themselves then. My advice is to allow ourselves to be beaten for forty-eight hours."

"Half an hour would be too much," cried the cardinal, alarmed.

"So this is your courage, is it?" retorted the Balafre.

The cardinal, quite unmoved, replied: "Whether the Prince de Conde is compromised or not, if we are certain that he is the leader, we should strike him down at once and secure tranquillity. We need judges rather than soldiers for this business—and judges are never lacking. Victory is always more certain in the parliament than on the field, and it costs less."

"I consent, willingly," said the duke; "but do you think the Prince de Conde is powerful enough to inspire, himself alone, the audacity of those who are making this first attack upon us? Isn't there, behind him—"

"The king of Navarre," said the cardinal.

"Pooh! a fool who speaks to me cap in hand!" replied the duke. "The coquetries of that Florentine woman seem to blind your eyes—"

"Oh! as for that," exclaimed the priest, "if I do play the gallant with her it is only that I may read to the bottom of her heart."

"She has no heart," said the duke, sharply; "she is even more ambitious than you and I."

"You are a brave soldier," said the cardinal; "but, believe me, I distance you in this matter. I have had Catherine watched by Mary Stuart long before you even suspected her. She has no more religion than my shoe; if she is not the soul of this plot it is not for want of will. But we shall now be able to test her on the scene itself, and find out then how she stands by us. Up to this time, however, I am certain she has held no communication whatever with the heretics."

"Well, it is time now to reveal the whole plot to the king, and to the queen-mother, who, you say, knows nothing of it,—that is the sole proof of her innocence; perhaps the conspirators have waited till the last moment, expecting to dazzle her with the probabilities of success. La Renaudie must soon discover by my arrangements that we are warned. Last night Nemours was to follow detachments of the Reformers who are pouring in along the cross-roads, and the conspirators will be forced to attack us at Amboise, which place I intend to let them enter. Here," added the duke, pointing to three sides of the rock on which the chateau de Blois is built; "we should have an assault without any result; the Huguenots could come and go at will. Blois is an open hall with four entrances; whereas Amboise is a sack with a single mouth."

"I shall not leave Catherine's side," said the cardinal.

"We have made a blunder," remarked the duke, who was playing with his dagger, tossing it into the air and catching it by the hilt. "We ought to have treated her as we did the Reformers,—given her complete freedom of action and caught her in the act."

The cardinal looked at his brother for an instant and shook his head.

"What does Pardaillan want?" said the duke, observing the approach of the young nobleman who was later to become celebrated by his encounter with La Renaudie, in which they both lost their lives.

"Monseigneur, a man sent by the queen's furrier is at the gate, and says he has an ermine suit to convey to her. Am I to let him enter?"

"Ah! yes,—the ermine coat she spoke of yesterday," returned the cardinal; "let the shop-fellow pass; she will want the garment for the voyage down the Loire."

"How did he get here without being stopped until he reached the gate?" asked the duke.

"I do not know," replied Pardaillan.

"I'll ask to see him when he is with the queen," thought the Balafre. "Let him wait in the salle des gardes," he said aloud. "Is he young, Pardaillan?"

"Yes, monseigneur; he says he is a son of Lecamus the furrier."

"Lecamus is a good Catholic," remarked the cardinal, who, like his brother the duke, was endowed with Caesar's memory. "The rector of Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs relies upon him; he is the provost of that quarter."

"Nevertheless," said the duke, "make the son talk with the captain of the Scotch guard," laying an emphasis on the verb which was readily understood. "Ambroise is in the chateau; he can tell us whether the fellow is really the son of Lecamus, for the old man did him good service in times past. Send for Ambroise Pare."

It was at this moment that Queen Catherine went, unattended, toward the two brothers, who hastened to meet her with their accustomed show of respect, in which the Italian princess detected constant irony.

"Messieurs," she said, "will you deign to inform me of what is about to take place? Is the widow of your former master of less importance in your esteem than the Sieurs Vieilleville, Birago, and Chiverni?"

"Madame," replied the cardinal, in a tone of gallantry, "our duty as men, taking precedence of that of statecraft, forbids us to alarm the fair sex by false reports. But this morning there is indeed good reason to confer with you on the affairs of the country. You must excuse my brother for having already given orders to the gentlemen you mention,—orders which were purely military, and therefore did not concern you; the matters of real importance are still to be decided. If you are willing, we will now go the lever of the king and queen; it is nearly time."

"But what is all this, Monsieur le duc?" cried Catherine, pretending alarm. "Is anything the matter?"

"The Reformation, madame, is no longer a mere heresy; it is a party, which has taken arms and is coming here to snatch the king away from you."

Catherine, the cardinal, the duke, and the three gentlemen made their way to the staircase through the gallery, which was crowded with courtiers who, being off duty, no longer had the right of entrance to the royal apartments, and stood in two hedges on either side. Gondi, who watched them while the queen-mother talked with the Lorraine princes, whispered in her ear, in good Tuscan, two words which afterwards became proverbs,—words which are the keynote to one aspect of her regal character: "Odiate e aspettate"—"Hate and wait."

Pardaillan, who had gone to order the officer of the guard at the gate of the chateau to let the clerk of the queen's furrier enter, found Christophe open-mouthed before the portal, staring at the facade built by the good king Louis XII., on which there was at that time a much greater number of grotesque carvings than we see there to-day,—grotesque, that is to say, if we may judge by those that remain to us. For instance, persons curious in such matters may remark the figurine of a woman carved on the capital of one of the portal columns, with her robe caught up to show to a stout monk crouching in the capital of the corresponding column "that which Brunelle showed to Marphise"; while above this portal stood, at the time of which we write, the statue of Louis XII. Several of the window-casings of this facade, carved in the same style, and now, unfortunately, destroyed, amused, or seemed to amuse Christophe, on whom the arquebusiers of the guard were raining jests.

"He would like to live there," said the sub-corporal, playing with the cartridges of his weapon, which were prepared for use in the shape of little sugar-loaves, and slung to the baldricks of the men.

"Hey, Parisian!" said another; "you never saw the like of that, did you?"

"He recognizes the good King Louis XII.," said a third.

Christophe pretended not to hear, and tried to exaggerate his amazement, the result being that his silly attitude and his behavior before the guard proved an excellent passport to the eyes of Pardaillan.

"The queen has not yet risen," said the young captain; "come and wait for her in the salle des gardes."

Christophe followed Pardaillan rather slowly. On the way he stopped to admire the pretty gallery in the form of an arcade, where the courtiers of Louis XII. awaited the reception-hour when it rained, and where, at the present moment, were several seigneurs attached to the Guises; for the staircase (so well preserved to the present day) which led to their apartments is at the end of this gallery in a tower, the architecture of which commends itself to the admiration of intelligent beholders.

"Well, well! did you come here to study the carving of images?" cried Pardaillan, as Christophe stopped before the charming sculptures of the balustrade which unites, or, if you prefer it, separates the columns of each arcade.

Christophe followed the young officer to the grand staircase, not without a glance of ecstasy at the semi-Moorish tower. The weather was fine, and the court was crowded with staff-officers and seigneurs, talking together in little groups,—their dazzling uniforms and court-dresses brightening a spot which the marvels of architecture, then fresh and new, had already made so brilliant.

"Come in here," said Pardaillan, making Lecamus a sign to follow him through a carved wooden door leading to the second floor, which the door-keeper opened on recognizing the young officer.

It is easy to imagine Christophe's amazement as he entered the great salle des gardes, then so vast that military necessity has since divided it by a partition into two chambers. It occupied on the second floor (that of the king), as did the corresponding hall on the first floor (that of the queen-mother), one third of the whole front of the chateau facing the courtyard; and it was lighted by two windows to right and two to left of the tower in which the famous staircase winds up. The young captain went to the door of the royal chamber, which opened upon this vast hall, and told one of the two pages on duty to inform Madame Dayelles, the queen's bedchamber woman, that the furrier was in the hall with her surcoat.

On a sign from Pardaillan Christophe placed himself near an officer, who was seated on a stool at the corner of a fireplace as large as his father's whole shop, which was at the end of the great hall, opposite to a precisely similar fireplace at the other end. While talking to this officer, a lieutenant, he contrived to interest him with an account of the stagnation of trade. Christophe seemed so thoroughly a shopkeeper that the officer imparted that conviction to the captain of the Scotch guard, who came in from the courtyard to question Lecamus, all the while watching him covertly and narrowly.

However much Christophe Lecamus had been warned, it was impossible for him to really apprehend the cold ferocity of the interests between which Chaudieu had slipped him. To an observer of this scene, who had known the secrets of it as the historian understands it in the light of to-day, there was indeed cause to tremble for this young man,—the hope of two families,—thrust between those powerful and pitiless machines, Catherine and the Guises. But do courageous beings, as a rule, measure the full extent of their dangers? By the way in which the port of Blois, the chateau, and the town were guarded, Christophe was prepared to find spies and traps everywhere; and he therefore resolved to conceal the importance of his mission and the tension of his mind under the empty-headed and shopkeeping appearance with which he presented himself to the eyes of young Pardaillan, the officer of the guard, and the Scottish captain.

The agitation which, in a royal castle, always attends the hour of the king's rising, was beginning to show itself. The great lords, whose horses, pages, or grooms remained in the outer courtyard,—for no one, except the king and the queens, had the right to enter the inner courtyard on horseback,—were mounting by groups the magnificent staircase, and filling by degrees the vast hall, the beams of which are now stripped of the decorations that then adorned them. Miserable little red tiles have replaced the ingenious mosaics of the floors; and the thick walls, then draped with the crown tapestries and glowing with all the arts of that unique period of the splendors of humanity, are now denuded and whitewashed! Reformers and Catholics were pressing in to hear the news and to watch faces, quite as much as to pay their duty to the king. Francois II.'s excessive love for Mary Stuart, to which neither the queen-mother nor the Guises made any opposition, and the politic compliance of Mary Stuart herself, deprived the king of all regal power. At seventeen years of age he knew nothing of royalty but its pleasures, or of marriage beyond the indulgence of first passion. As a matter of fact, all present paid their court to Queen Mary and to her uncles, the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duc de Guise, rather than to the king.

This stir took place before Christophe, who watched the arrival of each new personage with natural eagerness. A magnificent portiere, on either side of which stood two pages and two soldiers of the Scotch guard, then on duty, showed him the entrance to the royal chamber,—the chamber so fatal to the son of the present Duc de Guise, the second Balafre, who fell at the foot of the bed now occupied by Mary Stuart and Francois II. The queen's maids of honor surrounded the fireplace opposite to that where Christophe was being "talked with" by the captain of the guard. This second fireplace was considered the chimney of honor. It was built in the thick wall of the Salle de Conseil, between the door of the royal chamber and that of the council-hall, so that the maids of honor and the lords in waiting who had the right to be there were on the direct passage of the king and queen. The courtiers were certain on this occasion of seeing Catherine, for her maids of honor, dressed like the rest of the court ladies, in black, came up the staircase from the queen-mother's apartment, and took their places, marshalled by the Comtesse de Fiesque, on the side toward the council-hall and opposite to the maids of honor of the young queen, led by the Duchesse de Guise, who occupied the other side of the fireplace on the side of the royal bedroom. The courtiers left an open space between the ranks of these young ladies (who all belonged to the first families of the kingdom), which none but the greatest lords had the right to enter. The Comtesse de Fiesque and the Duchesse de Guise were, in virtue of their office, seated in the midst of these noble maids, who were all standing.

The first gentleman who approached the dangerous ranks was the Duc d'Orleans, the king's brother, who had come down from his apartment on the third floor, accompanied by Monsieur de Cypierre, his governor. This young prince, destined before the end of the year to reign under the title of Charles IX., was only ten years old and extremely timid. The Duc d'Anjou and the Duc d'Alencon, his younger brothers, also the Princesse Marguerite, afterwards the wife of Henri IV. (la Reine Margot), were too young to come to court, and were therefore kept by their mother in her own apartments. The Duc d'Orleans, richly dressed after the fashion of the times, in silken trunk-hose, a close-fitting jacket of cloth of gold embroidered with black flowers, and a little mantle of embroidered velvet, all black, for he still wore mourning for his father, bowed to the two ladies of honor and took his place beside his mother's maids. Already full of antipathy for the adherents of the house of Guise, he replied coldly to the remarks of the duchess and leaned his arm on the back of the chair of the Comtesse de Fiesque. His governor, Monsieur de Cypierre, one of the noblest characters of that day, stood beside him like a shield. Amyot (afterwards Bishop of Auxerre and translator of Plutarch), in the simple soutane of an abbe, also accompanied the young prince, being his tutor, as he was of the two other princes, whose affection became so profitable to him.

Between the "chimney of honor" and the other chimney at the end of the hall, around which were grouped the guards, their captain, a few courtiers, and Christophe carrying his box of furs, the Chancellor Olivier, protector and predecessor of l'Hopital, in the robes which the chancellors of France have always worn, was walking up and down with the Cardinal de Tournon, who had recently returned from Rome. The pair were exchanging a few whispered sentences in the midst of great attention from the lords of the court, massed against the wall which separated the salle des gardes from the royal bedroom, like a living tapestry backed by the rich tapestry of art crowded by a thousand personages. In spite of the present grave events, the court presented the appearance of all courts in all lands, at all epochs, and in the midst of the greatest dangers. The courtiers talked of trivial matters, thinking of serious ones; they jested as they studied faces, and apparently concerned themselves about love and the marriage of rich heiresses amid the bloodiest catastrophes.

"What did you think of yesterday's fete?" asked Bourdeilles, seigneur of Brantome, approaching Mademoiselle de Piennes, one of the queen-mother's maids of honor.

"Messieurs du Baif et du Bellay were inspired with delightful ideas," she replied, indicating the organizers of the fete, who were standing near. "I thought it all in the worst taste," she added in a low voice.

"You had no part to play in it, I think?" remarked Mademoiselle de Lewiston from the opposite ranks of Queen Mary's maids.

"What are you reading there, madame?" asked Amyot of the Comtesse de Fiesque.

"'Amadis de Gaule,' by the Seigneur des Essarts, commissary in ordinary to the king's artillery," she replied.

"A charming work," remarked the beautiful girl who was afterwards so celebrated under the name of Fosseuse when she was lady of honor to Queen Marguerite of Navarre.

"The style is a novelty in form," said Amyot. "Do you accept such barbarisms?" he added, addressing Brantome.

"They please the ladies, you know," said Brantome, crossing over to the Duchesse de Guise, who held the "Decamerone" in her hand. "Some of the women of your house must appear in the book, madame," he said. "It is a pity that the Sieur Boccaccio did not live in our day; he would have known plenty of ladies to swell his volume—"

"How shrewd that Monsieur de Brantome is," said the beautiful Mademoiselle de Limueil to the Comtesse de Fiesque; "he came to us first, but he means to remain in the Guise quarters."

"Hush!" said Madame de Fiesque glancing at the beautiful Limueil. "Attend to what concerns yourself."

The young girl turned her eyes to the door. She was expecting Sardini, a noble Italian, with whom the queen-mother, her relative, married her after an "accident" which happened in the dressing-room of Catherine de' Medici herself; but which the young lady won the honor of having a queen as midwife.

"By the holy Alipantin! Mademoiselle Davila seems to me prettier and prettier every morning," said Monsieur de Robertet, secretary of State, bowing to the ladies of the queen-mother.

The arrival of the secretary of State made no commotion whatever, though his office was precisely what that of a minister is in these days.

"If you really think so, monsieur," said the beauty, "lend me the squib which was written against the Messieurs de Guise; I know it was lent to you."

"It is no longer in my possession," replied the secretary, turning round to bow to the Duchesse de Guise.

"I have it," said the Comte de Grammont to Mademoiselle Davila, "but I will give it you on one condition only."

"Condition! fie!" exclaimed Madame de Fiesque.

"You don't know what it is," replied Grammont.

"Oh! it is easy to guess," remarked la Limueil.

The Italian custom of calling ladies, as peasants call their wives, "la Such-a-one" was then the fashion at the court of France.

"You are mistaken," said the count, hastily, "the matter is simply to give a letter from my cousin de Jarnac to one of the maids on the other side, Mademoiselle de Matha."

"You must not compromise my young ladies," said the Comtesse de Fiesque. "I will deliver the letter myself.—Do you know what is happening in Flanders?" she continued, turning to the Cardinal de Tournon. "It seems that Monsieur d'Egmont is given to surprises."

"He and the Prince of Orange," remarked Cypierre, with a significant shrug of his shoulders.

"The Duke of Alba and Cardinal Granvelle are going there, are they not, monsieur?" said Amyot to the Cardinal de Tournon, who remained standing, gloomy and anxious between the opposing groups after his conversation with the chancellor.

"Happily we are at peace; we need only conquer heresy on the stage," remarked the young Duc d'Orleans, alluding to a part he had played the night before,—that of a knight subduing a hydra which bore upon its foreheads the word "Reformation."

Catherine de' Medici, agreeing in this with her daughter-in-law, had allowed a theatre to be made of the great hall (afterwards arranged for the Parliament of Blois), which, as we have already said, connected the chateau of Francois I. with that of Louis XII.

The cardinal made no answer to Amyot's question, but resumed his walk through the centre of the hall, talking in low tones with Monsieur de Robertet and the chancellor. Many persons are ignorant of the difficulties which secretaries of State (subsequently called ministers) met with at the first establishment of their office, and how much trouble the kings of France had in creating it. At this epoch a secretary of State like Robertet was purely and simply a writer; he counted for almost nothing among the princes and grandees who decided the affairs of State. His functions were little more than those of the superintendent of finances, the chancellor, and the keeper of the seals. The kings granted seats at the council by letters-patent to those of their subjects whose advice seemed to them useful in the management of public affairs. Entrance to the council was given in this way to a president of the Chamber of Parliament, to a bishop, or to an untitled favorite. Once admitted to the council, the subject strengthened his position there by obtaining various crown offices on which devolved such prerogatives as the sword of a Constable, the government of provinces, the grand-mastership of artillery, the baton of a marshal, a leading rank in the army, or the admiralty, or a captaincy of the galleys, often some office at court, like that of grand-master of the household, now held, as we have already said, by the Duc de Guise.

"Do you think that the Duc de Nemours will marry Francoise?" said Madame de Guise to the tutor of the Duc d'Orleans.

"Ah, madame," he replied, "I know nothing but Latin."

This answer made all who were within hearing of it smile. The seduction of Francoise de Rohan by the Duc de Nemours was the topic of all conversations; but, as the duke was cousin to Francois II., and doubly allied to the house of Valois through his mother, the Guises regarded him more as the seduced than the seducer. Nevertheless, the power of the house of Rohan was such that the Duc de Nemours was obliged, after the death of Francois II., to leave France on consequence of suits brought against him by the Rohans; which suits the Guises settled. The duke's marriage with the Duchesse de Guise after Poltrot's assassination of her husband in 1563, may explain the question which she put to Amyot, by revealing the rivalry which must have existed between Mademoiselle de Rohan and the duchess.

"Do see that group of the discontented over there?" said the Comte de Grammont, motioning toward the Messieurs de Coligny, the Cardinal de Chatillon, Danville, Thore, Moret, and several other seigneurs suspected of tampering with the Reformation, who were standing between two windows on the other side of the fireplace.

"The Huguenots are bestirring themselves," said Cypierre. "We know that Theodore de Beze has gone to Nerac to induce the Queen of Navarre to declare for the Reformers—by abjuring publicly," he added, looking at the bailli of Orleans, who held the office of chancellor to the Queen of Navarre, and was watching the court attentively.

"She will do it!" said the bailli, dryly.

This personage, the Orleans Jacques Coeur, one of the richest burghers of the day, was named Groslot, and had charge of Jeanne d'Albret's business with the court of France.

"Do you really think so?" said the chancellor of France, appreciating the full importance of Groslot's declaration.

"Are you not aware," said the burgher, "that the Queen of Navarre has nothing of the woman in her except sex? She is wholly for things virile; her powerful mind turns to the great affairs of State; her heart is invincible under adversity."

"Monsieur le cardinal," whispered the Chancellor Olivier to Monsieur de Tournon, who had overheard Groslot, "what do you think of that audacity?"

"The Queen of Navarre did well in choosing for her chancellor a man from whom the house of Lorraine borrows money, and who offers his house to the king, if his Majesty visits Orleans," replied the cardinal.

The chancellor and the cardinal looked at each other, without venturing to further communicate their thoughts; but Robertet expressed them, for he thought it necessary to show more devotion to the Guises than these great personages, inasmuch as he was smaller than they.

"It is a great misfortune that the house of Navarre, instead of abjuring the religion of its fathers, does not abjure the spirit of vengeance and rebellion which the Connetable de Bourbon breathed into it," he said aloud. "We shall see the quarrels of the Armagnacs and the Bourguignons revive in our day."

"No," said Groslot, "there's another Louis XI. in the Cardinal de Lorraine."

"And also in Queen Catherine," replied Robertet.

At this moment Madame Dayelle, the favorite bedchamber woman of Queen Mary Stuart, crossed the hall, and went toward the royal chamber. Her passage caused a general commotion.

"We shall soon enter," said Madame de Fisque.

"I don't think so," replied the Duchesse de Guise. "Their Majesties will come out; a grand council is to be held."



VI. THE LITTLE LEVER OF FRANCOIS II.

Madame Dayelle glided into the royal chamber after scratching on the door,—a respectful custom, invented by Catherine de' Medici and adopted by the court of France.

"How is the weather, my dear Dayelle?" said Queen Mary, showing her fresh young face out of the bed, and shaking the curtains.

"Ah! madame—"

"What's the matter, my Dayelle? You look as if the archers of the guard were after you."

"Oh! madame, is the king still asleep?"

"Yes."

"We are to leave the chateau; Monsieur le cardinal requests me to tell you so, and to ask you to make the king agree to it.

"Do you know why, my good Dayelle?"

"The Reformers want to seize you and carry you off."

"Ah! that new religion does not leave me a minute's peace! I dreamed last night that I was in prison,—I, who will some day unite the crowns of the three noblest kingdoms in the world!"

"Therefore it could only be a dream, madame."

"Carry me off! well, 'twould be rather pleasant; but on account of religion, and by heretics—oh, that would be horrid."

The queen sprang from the bed and placed herself in a large arm-chair of red velvet before the fireplace, after Dayelle had given her a dressing-gown of black velvet, which she fastened loosely round her waist by a silken cord. Dayelle lit the fire, for the mornings are cool on the banks of the Loire in the month of May.

"My uncles must have received some news during the night?" said the queen, inquiringly to Dayelle, whom she treated with great familiarity.

"Messieurs de Guise have been walking together from early morning on the terrace, so as not to be overheard by any one; and there they received messengers, who came in hot haste from all the different points of the kingdom where the Reformers are stirring. Madame la reine mere was there too, with her Italians, hoping she would be consulted; but no, she was not admitted to the council."

"She must have been furious."

"All the more because she was so angry yesterday," replied Dayelle. "They say that when she saw your Majesty appear in that beautiful dress of woven gold, with the charming veil of tan-colored crape, she was none too pleased—"

"Leave us, my good Dayelle, the king is waking up. Let no one, even those who have the little entrees, disturb us; an affair of State is in hand, and my uncles will not disturb us."

"Why! my dear Mary, already out of bed? Is it daylight?" said the young king, waking up.

"My dear darling, while we were asleep the wicked waked, and now they are forcing us to leave this delightful place."

"What makes you think of wicked people, my treasure? I am sure we enjoyed the prettiest fete in the world last night—if it were not for the Latin words those gentlemen will put into our French."

"Ah!" said Mary, "your language is really in very good taste, and Rabelais exhibits it finely."

"You are such a learned woman! I am so vexed that I can't sing your praises in verse. If I were not the king, I would take my brother's tutor, Amyot, and let him make me as accomplished as Charles."

"You need not envy your brother, who writes verses and shows them to me, asking for mine in return. You are the best of the four, and will make as good a king as you are the dearest of lovers. Perhaps that is why your mother does not like you! But never mind! I, dear heart, will love you for all the world."

"I have no great merit in loving such a perfect queen," said the little king. "I don't know what prevented me from kissing you before the whole court when you danced the branle with the torches last night! I saw plainly that all the other women were mere servants compared to you, my beautiful Mary."

"It may be only prose you speak, but it is ravishing speech, dear darling, for it is love that says those words. And you—you know well, my beloved, that were you only a poor little page, I should love you as much as I do now. And yet, there is nothing so sweet as to whisper to one's self: 'My lover is king!'"

"Oh! the pretty arm! Why must we dress ourselves? I love to pass my fingers through your silky hair and tangle its blond curls. Ah ca! sweet one, don't let your women kiss that pretty throat and those white shoulders any more; don't allow it, I say. It is too much that the fogs of Scotland ever touched them!"

"Won't you come with me to see my dear country? The Scotch love you; there are no rebellions there!"

"Who rebels in this our kingdom?" said Francois, crossing his dressing-gown and taking Mary Stuart on his knee.

"Oh! 'tis all very charming, I know that," she said, withdrawing her cheek from the king; "but it is your business to reign, if you please, my sweet sire."

"Why talk of reigning? This morning I wish—"

"Why say wish when you have only to will all? That's not the speech of a king, nor that of a lover.—But no more of love just now; let us drop it! We have business more important to speak of."

"Oh!" cried the king, "it is long since we have had any business. Is it amusing?"

"No," said Mary, "not at all; we are to move from Blois."

"I'll wager, darling, you have seen your uncles, who manage so well that I, at seventeen years of age, am no better than a roi faineant. In fact, I don't know why I have attended any of the councils since the first. They could manage matters just as well by putting the crown in my chair; I see only through their eyes, and am forced to consent to things blindly."

"Oh! monsieur," said the queen, rising from the king's knee with a little air of indignation, "you said you would never worry me again on this subject, and that my uncles used the royal power only for the good of your people. Your people!—they are so nice! They would gobble you up like a strawberry if you tried to rule them yourself. You want a warrior, a rough master with mailed hands; whereas you—you are a darling whom I love as you are; whom I should never love otherwise,—do you hear me, monsieur?" she added, kissing the forehead of the lad, who seemed inclined to rebel at her speech, but softened at her kisses.

"Oh! how I wish they were not your uncles!" cried Francois II. "I particularly dislike the cardinal; and when he puts on his wheedling air and his submissive manner and says to me, bowing: 'Sire, the honor of the crown and the faith of your fathers forbid your Majesty to—this and that,' I am sure he is working only for his cursed house of Lorraine."

"Oh, how well you mimicked him!" cried the queen. "But why don't you make the Guises inform you of what is going on, so that when you attain your grand majority you may know how to reign yourself? I am your wife, and your honor is mine. Trust me! we will reign together, my darling; but it won't be a bed of roses for us until the day comes when we have our own wills. There is nothing so difficult for a king as to reign. Am I a queen, for example? Don't you know that your mother returns me evil for all the good my uncles do to raise the splendor of your throne? Hey! what difference between them! My uncles are great princes, nephews of Charlemagne, filled with ardor and ready to die for you; whereas this daughter of a doctor or a shopkeeper, queen of France by accident, scolds like a burgher-woman who can't manage her own household. She is discontented because she can't set every one by the ears; and then she looks at me with a sour, pale face, and says from her pinched lips: 'My daughter, you are a queen; I am only the second woman in the kingdom' (she is really furious, you know, my darling), 'but if I were in your place I should not wear crimson velvet while all the court is in mourning; neither should I appear in public with my own hair and no jewels, because what is not becoming in a simple lady is still less becoming in a queen. Also I should not dance myself, I should content myself with seeing others dance.'—that is what she says to me—"

"Heavens!" cried the king, "I think I hear her coming. If she were to know—"

"Oh, how you tremble before her. She worries you. Only say so, and we will send her away. Faith, she's Florentine and we can't help her tricking you, but when it comes to worrying—"

"For Heaven's sake, Mary, hold your tongue!" said Francois, frightened and also pleased; "I don't want you to lose her good-will."

"Don't be afraid that she will ever break with me, who will some day wear the three noblest crowns in the world, my dearest little king," cried Mary Stuart. "Though she hates me for a thousand reasons she is always caressing me in the hope of turning me against my uncles."

"Hates you!"

"Yes, my angel; and if I had not proofs of that feeling such as women only understand, for they alone know its malignity, I would forgive her perpetual opposition to our dear love, my darling. Is it my fault that your father could not endure Mademoiselle Medici or that his son loves me? The truth is, she hates me so much that if you had not put yourself into a rage, we should each have had our separate chamber at Saint-Germain, and also here. She pretended it was the custom of the kings and queens of France. Custom, indeed! it was your father's custom, and that is easily understood. As for your grandfather, Francois, the good man set up the custom for the convenience of his loves. Therefore, I say, take care. And if we have to leave this place, be sure that we are not separated."

"Leave Blois! Mary, what do you mean? I don't wish to leave this beautiful chateau, where we can see the Loire and the country all round us, with a town at our feet and all these pretty gardens. If I go away it will be to Italy with you, to see St. Peter's, and Raffaelle's pictures."

"And the orange-trees? Oh! my darling king, if you knew the longing your Mary has to ramble among the orange-groves in fruit and flower!"

"Let us go, then!" cried the king.

"Go!" exclaimed the grand-master as he entered the room. "Yes, sire, you must leave Blois. Pardon my boldness in entering your chamber; but circumstances are stronger than etiquette, and I come to entreat you to hold a council."

Finding themselves thus surprised, Mary and Francois hastily separated, and on their faces was the same expression of offended royal majesty.

"You are too much of a grand-master, Monsieur de Guise," said the king, though controlling his anger.

"The devil take lovers," murmured the cardinal in Catherine's ear.

"My son," said the queen-mother, appearing behind the cardinal; "it is a matter concerning your safety and that of your kingdom."

"Heresy wakes while you have slept, sire," said the cardinal.

"Withdraw into the hall," cried the little king, "and then we will hold a council."

"Madame," said the grand-master to the young queen; "the son of your furrier has brought some furs, which was just in time for the journey, for it is probable we shall sail down the Loire. But," he added, turning to the queen-mother, "he also wishes to speak to you, madame. While the king dresses, you and Madame la reine had better see and dismiss him, so that we may not be delayed and harassed by this trifle."

"Certainly," said Catherine, thinking to herself, "If he expects to get rid of me by any such trick he little knows me."

The cardinal and the duke withdrew, leaving the two queens and the king alone together. As they crossed the salle des gardes to enter the council-chamber, the grand-master told the usher to bring the queen's furrier to him. When Christophe saw the usher approaching from the farther end of the great hall, he took him, on account of his uniform, for some great personage, and his heart sank within him. But that sensation, natural as it was at the approach of the critical moment, grew terrible when the usher, whose movement had attracted the eyes of all that brilliant assembly upon Christophe, his homely face and his bundles, said to him:—

"Messeigneurs the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Grand-master wish to speak to you in the council chamber."

"Can I have been betrayed?" thought the helpless ambassador of the Reformers.

Christophe followed the usher with lowered eyes, which he did not raise till he stood in the great council-chamber, the size of which is almost equal to that of the salle des gardes. The two Lorrain princes were there alone, standing before the magnificent fireplace, which backs against that in the salle des gardes around which the ladies of the two queens were grouped.

"You have come from Paris; which route did you take?" said the cardinal.

"I came by water, monseigneur," replied the reformer.

"How did you enter Blois?" asked the grand-master.

"By the docks, monseigneur."

"Did no one question you?" exclaimed the duke, who was watching the young man closely.

"No, monseigneur. To the first soldier who looked as if he meant to stop me I said I came on duty to the two queens, to whom my father was furrier."

"What is happening in Paris?" asked the cardinal.

"They are still looking for the murderer of the President Minard."

"Are you not the son of my surgeon's greatest friend?" said the Duc de Guise, misled by the candor of Christophe's expression after his first alarm had passed away.

"Yes, monseigneur."

The Grand-master turned aside, abruptly raised the portiere which concealed the double door of the council-chamber, and showed his face to the whole assembly, among whom he was searching for the king's surgeon. Ambroise Pare, standing in a corner, caught a glance which the duke cast upon him, and immediately advanced. Ambroise, who at this time was inclined to the reformed religion, eventually adopted it; but the friendship of the Guises and that of the kings of France guaranteed him against the evils which overtook his co-religionists. The duke, who considered himself under obligations for life to Ambroise Pare, had lately caused him to be appointed chief-surgeon to the king.

"What is it, monseigneur?" said Ambroise. "Is the king ill? I think it likely."

"Likely? Why?"

"The queen is too pretty," replied the surgeon.

"Ah!" exclaimed the duke in astonishment. "However, that is not the matter now," he added after a pause. "Ambroise, I want you to see a friend of yours." So saying he drew him to the door of the council-room, and showed him Christophe.

"Ha! true, monseigneur," cried the surgeon, extending his hand to the young furrier. "How is your father, my lad?"

"Very well, Maitre Ambroise," replied Christophe.

"What are you doing at court?" asked the surgeon. "It is not your business to carry parcels; your father intends you for the law. Do you want the protection of these two great princes to make you a solicitor?"

"Indeed I do!" said Christophe; "but I am here only in the interests of my father; and if you could intercede for us, please do so," he added in a piteous tone; "and ask the Grand Master for an order to pay certain sums that are due to my father, for he is at his wit's end just now for money."

The cardinal and the duke glanced at each other and seemed satisfied.

"Now leave us," said the duke to the surgeon, making him a sign. "And you my friend," turning to Christophe; "do your errand quickly and return to Paris. My secretary will give you a pass, for it is not safe, mordieu, to be travelling on the high-roads!"

Neither of the brothers formed the slightest suspicion of the grave importance of Christophe's errand, convinced, as they now were, that he was really the son of the good Catholic Lecamus, the court furrier, sent to collect payment for their wares.

"Take him close to the door of the queen's chamber; she will probably ask for him soon," said the cardinal to the surgeon, motioning to Christophe.

While the son of the furrier was undergoing this brief examination in the council-chamber, the king, leaving the queen in company with her mother-in-law, had passed into his dressing-room, which was entered through another small room next to the chamber.

Standing in the wide recess of an immense window, Catherine looked at the gardens, her mind a prey to painful thoughts. She saw that in all probability one of the greatest captains of the age would be foisted that very day into the place and power of her son, the king of France, under the formidable title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Before this peril she stood alone, without power of action, without defence. She might have been likened to a phantom, as she stood there in her mourning garments (which she had not quitted since the death of Henri II.) so motionless was her pallid face in the grasp of her bitter reflections. Her black eyes floated in that species of indecision for which great statesmen are so often blamed, though it comes from the vast extent of the glance with which they embrace all difficulties,—setting one against the other, and adding up, as it were, all chances before deciding on a course. Her ears rang, her blood tingled, and yet she stood there calm and dignified, all the while measuring in her soul the depths of the political abyss which lay before her, like the natural depths which rolled away at her feet. This day was the second of those terrible days (that of the arrest of the Vidame of Chartres being the first) which she was destined to meet in so great numbers throughout her regal life; it also witnessed her last blunder in the school of power. Though the sceptre seemed escaping from her hands, she wished to seize it; and she did seize it by a flash of that power of will which was never relaxed by either the disdain of her father-in-law, Francois I., and his court,—where, in spite of her rank of dauphiness, she had been of no account,—or the constant repulses of her husband, Henri II., and the terrible opposition of her rival, Diane de Poitiers. A man would never have fathomed this thwarted queen; but the fair-haired Mary—so subtle, so clever, so girlish, and already so well-trained—examined her out of the corners of her eyes as she hummed an Italian air and assumed a careless countenance. Without being able to guess the storms of repressed ambition which sent the dew of a cold sweat to the forehead of the Florentine, the pretty Scotch girl, with her wilful, piquant face, knew very well that the advancement of her uncle the Duc de Guise to the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom was filling the queen-mother with inward rage. Nothing amused her more than to watch her mother-in-law, in whom she saw only an intriguing woman of low birth, always ready to avenge herself. The face of the one was grave and gloomy, and somewhat terrible, by reason of the livid tones which transform the skin of Italian women to yellow ivory by daylight, though it recovers its dazzling brilliancy under candlelight; the face of the other was fair and fresh and gay. At sixteen, Mary Stuart's skin had that exquisite blond whiteness which made her beauty so celebrated. Her fresh and piquant face, with its pure lines, shone with the roguish mischief of childhood, expressed in the regular eyebrows, the vivacious eyes, and the archness of the pretty mouth. Already she displayed those feline graces which nothing, not even captivity nor the sight of her dreadful scaffold, could lessen. The two queens—one at the dawn, the other in the midsummer of life—presented at this moment the utmost contrast. Catherine was an imposing queen, an impenetrable widow, without other passion than that of power. Mary was a light-hearted, careless bride, making playthings of her triple crowns. One foreboded great evils,—foreseeing the assassination of the Guises as the only means of suppressing enemies who were resolved to rise above the Throne and the Parliament; foreseeing also the bloodshed of a long and bitter struggle; while the other little anticipated her own judicial murder. A sudden and strange reflection calmed the mind of the Italian.

"That sorceress and Ruggiero both declare this reign is coming to an end; my difficulties will not last long," she thought.

And so, strangely enough, an occult science forgotten in our day—that of astrology—supported Catherine at this moment, as it did, in fact, throughout her life; for, as she witnessed the minute fulfilment of the prophecies of those who practised the art, her belief in it steadily increased.

"You are very gloomy, madame," said Mary Stuart, taking from the hands of her waiting-woman, Dayelle, a little cap and placing the point of it on the parting of her hair, while two wings of rich lace surrounded the tufts of blond curls which clustered on her temples.

The pencil of many painters have so frequently represented this head-dress that it is thought to have belonged exclusively to Mary Queen of Scots; whereas it was really invented by Catherine de' Medici, when she put on mourning for Henri II. But she never knew how to wear it with the grace of her daughter-in-law, to whom it was becoming. This annoyance was not the least among the many which the queen-mother cherished against the young queen.

"Is the queen reproving me?" said Catherine, turning to Mary.

"I owe you all respect, and should not dare to do so," said the Scottish queen, maliciously, glancing at Dayelle.

Placed between the rival queens, the favorite waiting-woman stood rigid as an andiron; a smile of comprehension might have cost her her life.

"Can I be as gay as you, after losing the late king, and now beholding my son's kingdom about to burst into flames?"

"Public affairs do not concern women," said Mary Stuart. "Besides, my uncles are there."

These words were, under the circumstances, like so many poisoned arrows.

"Let us look at our furs, madame," replied the Italian, sarcastically; "that will employ us on our legitimate female affairs while your uncles decide those of the kingdom."

"Oh! but we will go the Council, madame; we shall be more useful than you think."

"We!" said Catherine, with an air of astonishment. "But I do not understand Latin, myself."

"You think me very learned," cried Mary Stuart, laughing, "but I assure you, madame, I study only to reach the level of the Medici, and learn how to cure the wounds of the kingdom."

Catherine was silenced by this sharp thrust, which referred to the origin of the Medici, who were descended, some said, from a doctor of medicine, others from a rich druggist. She made no direct answer. Dayelle colored as her mistress looked at her, asking for the applause that even queens demand from their inferiors if there are no other spectators.

"Your charming speeches, madame, will unfortunately cure the wounds of neither Church nor State," said Catherine at last, with her calm and cold dignity. "The science of my fathers in that direction gave them thrones; whereas if you continue to trifle in the midst of danger you are liable to lose yours."

It was at this moment that Ambroise Pare, the chief surgeon, scratched softly on the door, and Madame Dayelle, opening it, admitted Christophe.



VII. A DRAMA IN A SURCOAT

The young reformer intended to study Catherine's face, all the while affecting a natural embarrassment at finding himself in such a place; but his proceedings were much hastened by the eagerness with which the younger queen darted to the cartons to see her surcoat.

"Madame," said Christophe, addressing Catherine.

He turned his back on the other queen and on Dayelle, instantly profiting by the attention the two women were eager to bestow upon the furs to play a bold stroke.

"What do you want of me?" said Catherine giving him a searching look.

Christophe had put the treaty proposed by the Prince de Conde, the plan of the Reformers, and the detail of their forces in his bosom between his shirt and his cloth jacket, folding them, however, within the bill which Catherine owed to the furrier.

"Madame," he said, "my father is in horrible need of money, and if you will deign to cast your eyes over your bill," here he unfolded the paper and put the treaty on the top of it, "you will see that your Majesty owes him six thousand crowns. Have the goodness to take pity on us. See, madame!" and he held the treaty out to her. "Read it; the account dates from the time the late king came to the throne."

Catherine was bewildered by the preamble of the treaty which met her eye, but she did not lose her head. She folded the paper quickly, admiring the audacity and presence of mind of the youth, and feeling sure that after performing such a masterly stroke he would not fail to understand her. She therefore tapped him on the head with the folded paper, saying:—

"It is very clumsy of you, my little friend, to present your bill before the furs. Learn to know women. You must never ask us to pay until the moment when we are satisfied."

"Is that traditional?" said the young queen, turning to her mother-in-law, who made no reply.

"Ah, mesdames, pray excuse my father," said Christophe. "If he had not had such need of money you would not have had your furs at all. The country is in arms, and there are so many dangers to run in getting here that nothing but our great distress would have brought me. No one but me was willing to risk them."

"The lad is new to his business," said Mary Stuart, smiling.

It may not be useless, for the understanding of this trifling, but very important scene, to remark that a surcoat was, as the name implies (sur cotte), a species of close-fitting spencer which women wore over their bodies and down to their thighs, defining the figure. This garment protected the back, chest, and throat from cold. These surcoats were lined with fur, a band of which, wide or narrow as the case might be, bordered the outer material. Mary Stuart, as she tried the garment on, looked at herself in a large Venetian mirror to see the effect behind, thus leaving her mother-in-law an opportunity to examine the papers, the bulk of which might have excited the young queen's suspicions had she noticed it.

"Never tell women of the dangers you have run when you have come out of them safe and sound," she said, turning to show herself to Christophe.

"Ah! madame, I have your bill, too," he said, looking at her with well-played simplicity.

The young queen eyed him, but did not take the paper; and she noticed, though without at the moment drawing any conclusions, that he had taken her bill from his pocket, whereas he had carried Queen Catherine's in his bosom. Neither did she find in the lad's eyes that glance of admiration which her presence invariably excited in all beholders. But she was so engrossed by her surcoat that, for the moment, she did not ask herself the meaning of such indifference.

"Take the bill, Dayelle," she said to her waiting-woman; "give it to Monsieur de Versailles (Lomenie) and tell him from me to pay it."

"Oh! madame," said Christophe, "if you do not ask the king or monseigneur the grand-master to sign me an order your gracious word will have no effect."

"You are rather more eager than becomes a subject, my friend," said Mary Stuart. "Do you not believe my royal word?"

The king now appeared, in silk stockings and trunk-hose (the breeches of that period), but without his doublet and mantle; he had, however, a rich loose coat of velvet edged with minever.

"Who is the wretch who dares to doubt your word?" he said, overhearing, in spite of his distance, his wife's last words.

The door of the dressing-room was hidden by the royal bed. This room was afterwards called "the old cabinet," to distinguish it from the fine cabinet of pictures which Henri III. constructed at the farther end of the same suite of rooms, next to the hall of the States-general. It was in the old cabinet that Henri III. hid the murderers when he sent for the Duc de Guise, while he himself remained hidden in the new cabinet during the murder, only emerging in time to see the overbearing subject for whom there were no longer prisons, tribunals, judges, nor even laws, draw his last breath. Were it not for these terrible circumstances the historian of to-day could hardly trace the former occupation of these cabinets, now filled with soldiers. A quartermaster writes to his mistress on the very spot where the pensive Catherine once decided on her course between the parties.

"Come with me, my friend," said the queen-mother, "and I will see that you are paid. Commerce must live, and money is its backbone."

"Go, my lad," cried the young queen, laughing; "my august mother knows more than I do about commerce."

Catherine was about to leave the room without replying to this last taunt; but she remembered that her indifference to it might provoke suspicion, and she answered hastily:—

"But you, my dear, understand the business of love."

Then she descended to her own apartments.

"Put away these furs, Dayelle, and let us go to the Council, monsieur," said Mary to the young king, enchanted with the opportunity of deciding in the absence of the queen-mother so important a question as the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom.

Mary Stuart took the king's arm. Dayelle went out before them, whispering to the pages; one of whom (it was young Teligny, who afterwards perished so miserably during the Saint-Bartholomew) cried out:—

"The king!"

Hearing the words, the two soldiers of the guard presented arms, and the two pages went forward to the door of the Council-room through the lane of courtiers and that of the maids of honor of the two queens. All the members of the Council then grouped themselves about the door of their chamber, which was not very far from the door to the staircase. The grand-master, the cardinal, and the chancellor advanced to meet the young sovereign, who smiled to several of the maids of honor and replied to the remarks of a few courtiers more privileged than the rest. But the queen, evidently impatient, drew Francois II. as quickly as possible toward the Council-chamber. When the sound of arquebuses, dropping heavily on the floor, had announced the entrance of the couple, the pages replaced their caps upon their heads, and the private talk among the courtiers on the gravity of the matters now about to be discussed began again.

"They sent Chiverni to fetch the Connetable, but he has not come," said one.

"There is not a single prince of the blood present," said another.

"The chancellor and Monsieur de Tournon looked anxious," remarked a third.

"The grand-master sent word to the keeper of the seals to be sure not to miss this Council; therefore you may be certain they will issue letters-patent."

"Why does the queen-mother stay in her own apartments at such a time?"

"They'll cut out plenty of work for us," remarked Groslot to Cardinal de Chatillon.

In short, everybody had a word to say. Some went and came, in and out of the great hall; others hovered about the maids of honor of both queens, as if it might be possible to catch a few words through a wall three feet thick or through the double doors draped on each side with heavy curtains.

Seated at the upper end of a long table covered with blue velvet, which stood in the middle of the room, the king, near to whom the young queen was seated in an arm-chair, waited for his mother. Robertet, the secretary, was mending pens. The two cardinals, the grand-master, the chancellor, the keeper of the seals, and all the rest of the council looked at the little king, wondering why he did not give them the usual order to sit down.

The two Lorrain princes attributed the queen-mother's absence to some trick of their niece. Incited presently by a significant glance, the audacious cardinal said to his Majesty:—

"Is it the king's good pleasure to begin the council without waiting for Madame la reine-mere?"

Francois II., without daring to answer directly, said: "Messieurs, be seated."

The cardinal then explained succinctly the dangers of the situation. This great political character, who showed extraordinary ability under these pressing circumstances, led up to the question of the lieutenancy of the kingdom in the midst of the deepest silence. The young king doubtless felt the tyranny that was being exercised over him; he knew that his mother had a deep sense of the rights of the Crown and was fully aware of the danger that threatened his power; he therefore replied to a positive question addressed to him by the cardinal by saying:—

"We will wait for the queen, my mother."

Suddenly enlightened by the queen-mother's delay, Mary Stuart recalled, in a flash of thought, three circumstances which now struck her vividly; first, the bulk of the papers presented to her mother-in-law, which she had noticed, absorbed as she was,—for a woman who seems to see nothing is often a lynx; next, the place where Christophe had carried them to keep them separate from hers: "Why so?" she thought to herself; and thirdly, she remembered the cold, indifferent glance of the young man, which she suddenly attributed to the hatred of the Reformers to a niece of the Guises. A voice cried to her, "He may have been an emissary of the Huguenots!" Obeying, like all excitable natures, her first impulse, she exclaimed:—

"I will go and fetch my mother myself!"

Then she left the room hurriedly, ran down the staircase, to the amazement of the courtiers and the ladies of honor, entered her mother-in-law's apartments, crossed the guard-room, opened the door of the chamber with the caution of a thief, glided like a shadow over the carpet, saw no one, and bethought her that she should surely surprise the queen-mother in that magnificent dressing-room which comes between the bedroom and the oratory. The arrangement of this oratory, to which the manners of that period gave a role in private life like that of the boudoirs of our day, can still be traced.

By an almost inexplicable chance, when we consider the state of dilapidation into which the Crown has allowed the chateau of Blois to fall, the admirable woodwork of Catherine's cabinet still exists; and in those delicately carved panels, persons interested in such things may still see traces of Italian splendor, and discover the secret hiding-places employed by the queen-mother. An exact description of these curious arrangements is necessary in order to give a clear understanding of what was now to happen. The woodwork of the oratory then consisted of about a hundred and eighty oblong panels, one hundred of which still exist, all presenting arabesques of different designs, evidently suggested by the most beautiful arabesques of Italy. The wood is live-oak. The red tones, seen through the layer of whitewash put on to avert cholera (useless precaution!), shows very plainly that the ground of the panels was formerly gilt. Certain portions of the design, visible where the wash has fallen away, seem to show that they once detached themselves from the gilded ground in colors, either blue, or red, or green. The multitude of these panels shows an evident intention to foil a search; but even if this could be doubted, the concierge of the chateau, while devoting the memory of Catherine to the execration of the humanity of our day, shows at the base of these panels and close to the floor a rather heavy foot-board, which can be lifted, and beneath which still remain the ingenious springs which move the panels. By pressing a knob thus hidden, the queen was able to open certain panels known to her alone, behind which, sunk in the wall, were hiding-places, oblong like the panels, and more or less deep. It is difficult, even in these days of dilapidation, for the best-trained eye to detect which of those panels is thus hinged; but when the eye was distracted by colors and gilding, cleverly used to conceal the joints, we can readily conceive that to find one or two such panels among two hundred was almost an impossible thing.

At the moment when Mary Stuart laid her hand on the somewhat complicated lock of the door of this oratory, the queen-mother, who had just become convinced of the greatness of the Prince de Conde's plans, had touched the spring hidden beneath the foot-board, and one of the mysterious panels had turned over on its hinges. Catherine was in the act of lifting the papers from the table to hide them, intending after that to secure the safety of the devoted messenger who had brought them to her, when, hearing the sudden opening of the door, she at once knew that none but Queen Mary herself would dare thus to enter without announcement.

"You are lost!" she said to Christophe, perceiving that she could no longer put away the papers, nor close with sufficient rapidity the open panel, the secret of which was now betrayed.

Christophe answered her with a glance that was sublime.

"Povero mio!" said Catherine, before she looked at her daughter-in-law. "Treason, madame! I hold the traitors at last," she cried. "Send for the duke and the cardinal; and see that that man," pointing to Christophe, "does not escape."

In an instant the able woman had seen the necessity of sacrificing the poor youth. She could not hide him; it was impossible to save him. Eight days earlier it might have been done; but the Guises now knew of the plot; they must already possess the lists she held in her hand, and were evidently drawing the Reformers into a trap. Thus, rejoiced to find in these adversaries the very spirit she desired them to have, her policy now led her to make a merit of the discovery of their plot. These horrible calculations were made during the rapid moment while the young queen was opening the door. Mary Stuart stood dumb for an instant; the gay look left her eyes, which took on the acuteness that suspicion gives to the eyes of all, and which, in hers, became terrible from the suddenness of the change. She glanced from Christophe to the queen-mother and from the queen-mother back to Christophe,—her face expressing malignant doubt. Then she seized a bell, at the sound of which one of the queen-mother's maids of honor came running in.

"Mademoiselle du Rouet, send for the captain of the guard," said Mary Stuart to the maid of honor, contrary to all etiquette, which was necessarily violated under the circumstances.

While the young queen gave this order, Catherine looked intently at Christophe, as if saying to him, "Courage!"

The Reformer understood, and replied by another glance, which seemed to say, "Sacrifice me, as they have sacrificed me!"

"Rely on me," said Catherine by a gesture. Then she absorbed herself in the documents as her daughter-in-law turned to him.

"You belong to the Reformed religion?" inquired Mary Stuart of Christophe.

"Yes, madame," he answered.

"I was not mistaken," she murmured as she again noticed in the eyes of the young Reformer the same cold glance in which dislike was hidden beneath an expression of humility.

Pardaillan suddenly appeared, sent by the two Lorrain princes and by the king to escort the queens. The captain of the guard called for by Mary Stuart followed the young officer, who was devoted to the Guises.

"Go and tell the king and the grand-master and the cardinal, from me, to come here at once, and say that I should not take the liberty of sending for them if something of the utmost importance had not occurred. Go, Pardaillan.—As for you, Lewiston, keep guard over that traitor of a Reformer," she said to the Scotchman in his mother-tongue, pointing to Christophe.

The young queen and queen-mother maintained a total silence until the arrival of the king and princes. The moments that elapsed were terrible.

Mary Stuart had betrayed to her mother-in-law, in its fullest extent, the part her uncles were inducing her to play; her constant and habitual distrust and espionage were now revealed, and her young conscience told her how dishonoring to a great queen was the work that she was doing. Catherine, on the other hand, had yielded out of fear; she was still afraid of being rightly understood, and she trembled for her future. Both women, one ashamed and angry, the other filled with hatred and yet calm, went to the embrasure of the window and leaned against the casing, one to right, the other to left, silent; but their feelings were expressed in such speaking glances that they averted their eyes and, with mutual artfulness, gazed through the window at the sky. These two great and superior women had, at this crisis, no greater art of behavior than the vulgarest of their sex. Perhaps it is always thus when circumstances arise which overwhelm the human being. There is, inevitably, a moment when genius itself feels its littleness in presence of great catastrophes.

As for Christophe, he was like a man in the act of rolling down a precipice. Lewiston, the Scotch captain, listened to this silence, watching the son of the furrier and the two queens with soldierly curiosity. The entrance of the king and Mary Stuart's two uncles put an end to the painful situation.



VIII. MARTYRDOM

The cardinal went straight to the queen-mother.

"I hold the threads of the conspiracy of the heretics," said Catherine. "They have sent me this treaty and these documents by the hands of that child," she added.

During the time that Catherine was explaining matters to the cardinal, Queen Mary whispered a few words to the grand-master.

"What is all this about?" asked the young king, who was left alone in the midst of the violent clash of interests.

"The proofs of what I was telling to your Majesty have not been long in reaching us," said the cardinal, who had grasped the papers.

The Duc de Guise drew his brother aside without caring that he interrupted him, and said in his ear, "This makes me lieutenant-general without opposition."

A shrewd glance was the cardinal's only answer; showing his brother that he fully understood the advantages to be gained from Catherine's false position.

"Who sent you here?" said the duke to Christophe.

"Chaudieu, the minister," he replied.

"Young man, you lie!" said the soldier, sharply; "it was the Prince de Conde."

"The Prince de Conde, monseigneur!" replied Christophe, with a puzzled look. "I never met him. I am studying law with Monsieur de Thou; I am his secretary, and he does not know that I belong to the Reformed religion. I yielded only to the entreaties of the minister."

"Enough!" exclaimed the cardinal. "Call Monsieur de Robertet," he said to Lewiston, "for this young scamp is slyer than an old statesman; he has managed to deceive my brother, and me too; an hour ago I would have given him the sacrament without confession."

"You are not a child, morbleu!" cried the duke, "and we'll treat you as a man."

"The heretics have attempted to beguile your august mother," said the cardinal, addressing the king, and trying to draw him apart to win him over to their ends.

"Alas!" said the queen-mother to her son, assuming a reproachful look and stopping the king at the moment when the cardinal was leading him into the oratory to subject him to his dangerous eloquence, "you see the result of the situation in which I am; they think me irritated by the little influence that I have in public affairs,—I, the mother of four princes of the house of Valois!"

The young king listened attentively. Mary Stuart, seeing the frown upon his brow, took his arm and led him away into the recess of the window, where she cajoled him with sweet speeches in a low voice, no doubt like those she had used that morning in their chamber. The two Guises read the documents given up to them by Catherine. Finding that they contained information which their spies, and Monsieur Braguelonne, the lieutenant of the Chatelet, had not obtained, they were inclined to believe in the sincerity of Catherine de' Medici. Robertet came and received certain secret orders relative to Christophe. The youthful instrument of the leaders of the Reformation was then led away by four soldiers of the Scottish guard, who took him down the stairs and delivered him to Monsieur de Montresor, provost of the chateau. That terrible personage himself, accompanied by six of his men, conducted Christophe to the prison in the vaulted cellar of the tower, now in ruins, which the concierge of the chateau de Blois shows you with the information that these were the dungeons.

After such an event the Council could be only a formality. The king, the young queen, the Grand-master, and the cardinal returned to it, taking with them the vanquished Catherine, who said no word except to approve the measures proposed by the Guises. In spite of a slight opposition from the Chancelier Olivier (the only person present who said one word that expressed the independence to which his office bound him), the Duc de Guise was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Robertet brought the required documents, showing a devotion which might be called collusion. The king, giving his arm to his mother, recrossed the salle des gardes, announcing to the court as he passed along that on the following day he should leave Blois for the chateau of Amboise. The latter residence had been abandoned since the time when Charles VIII. accidentally killed himself by striking his head against the casing of a door on which he had ordered carvings, supposing that he could enter without stooping below the scaffolding. Catherine, to mask the plans of the Guises, remarked aloud that they intended to complete the chateau of Amboise for the Crown at the same time that her own chateau of Chemonceaux was finished. But no one was the dupe of that pretext, and all present awaited great events.

After spending about two hours endeavoring to see where he was in the obscurity of the dungeon, Christophe ended by discovering that the place was sheathed in rough woodwork, thick enough to make the square hole into which he was put both healthy and habitable. The door, like that of a pig-pen, was so low that he stooped almost double on entering it. Beside this door was a heavy iron grating, opening upon a sort of corridor, which gave a little light and a little air. This arrangement, in all respects like that of the dungeons of Venice, showed plainly that the architecture of the chateau of Blois belonged to the Venetian school, which during the Middle Ages, sent so many builders into all parts of Europe. By tapping this species of pit above the woodwork Christophe discovered that the walls which separated his cell to right and left from the adjoining ones were made of brick. Striking one of them to get an idea of its thickness, he was somewhat surprised to hear return blows given on the other side.

"Who are you?" said his neighbor, speaking to him through the corridor.

"I am Christophe Lecamus."

"I," replied the voice, "am Captain Chaudieu, brother of the minister. I was taken prisoner to-night at Beaugency; but, luckily, there is nothing against me."

"All is discovered," said Christophe; "you are fortunate to be saved from the fray."

"We have three thousand men at this moment in the forests of the Vendomois, all determined men, who mean to abduct the king and the queen-mother during their journey. Happily La Renaudie was cleverer than I; he managed to escape. You had only just left us when the Guise men surprised us—"

"But I don't know La Renaudie."

"Pooh! my brother has told me all about it," said the captain.

Hearing that, Christophe sat down upon his bench and made no further answer to the pretended captain, for he knew enough of the police to be aware how necessary it was to act with prudence in a prison. In the middle of the night he saw the pale light of a lantern in the corridor, after hearing the ponderous locks of the iron door which closed the cellar groan as they were turned. The provost himself had come to fetch Christophe. This attention to a prisoner who had been left in his dark dungeon for hours without food, struck the poor lad as singular. One of the provost's men bound his hands with a rope and held him by the end of it until they reached one of the lower halls of the chateau of Louis XII., which was evidently the antechamber to the apartments of some important personage. The provost and his men bade him sit upon a bench, and the man then bound his feet as he had before bound his hands. On a sign from Monsieur de Montresor the man left the room.

"Now listen to me, my friend," said the provost-marshal, toying with the collar of the Order; for, late as the hour was, he was in full uniform.

This little circumstance gave the young man several thoughts; he saw that all was not over; on the contrary, it was evidently neither to hang nor yet to condemn him that he was brought here.

"My friend, you may spare yourself cruel torture by telling me all you know of the understanding between Monsieur le Prince de Conde and Queen Catherine. Not only will no harm be done to you, but you shall enter the service of Monseigneur the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, who likes intelligent men and on whom your honest face has produced a good impression. The queen-mother is about to be sent back to Florence, and Monsieur de Conde will no doubt be brought to trial. Therefore, believe me, humble folks ought to attach themselves to the great men who are in power. Tell me all; and you will find your profit in it."

"Alas, monsieur," replied Christophe; "I have nothing to tell. I told all I know to Messieurs de Guise in the queen's chamber. Chaudieu persuaded me to put those papers under the eyes of the queen-mother; assuring me that they concerned the peace of the kingdom."

"You have never seen the Prince de Conde?"

"Never."

Thereupon Monsieur de Montresor left Christophe and went into the adjoining room; but the youth was not left long alone. The door through which he had been brought opened and gave entrance to several men, who did not close it. Sounds that were far from reassuring were heard from the courtyard; men were bringing wood and machinery, evidently intended for the punishment of the Reformer's messenger. Christophe's anxiety soon had matter for reflection in the preparations which were made in the hall before his eyes.

Two coarse and ill-dressed serving-men obeyed the orders of a stout, squat, vigorous man, who cast upon Christophe, as he entered, the glance of a cannibal upon his victim; he looked him over and estimated him,—measuring, like a connoisseur, the strength of his nerves, their power and their endurance. The man was the executioner of Blois. Coming and going, his assistants brought in a mattress, several mallets and wooden wedges, also planks and other articles, the use of which was not plain, nor their look comforting to the poor boy concerned in these preparations, whose blood now curdled in his veins from a vague but most terrible apprehension. Two personages entered the hall at the moment when Monsieur de Montresor reappeared.

"Hey, nothing ready!" cried the provost-marshal, to whom the new-comers bowed with great respect. "Don't you know," he said, addressing the stout man and his two assistants, "that Monseigneur the cardinal thinks you already at work? Doctor," added the provost, turning to one of the new-comers, "this is the man"; and he pointed to Christophe.

The doctor went straight to the prisoner, unbound his hands, and struck him on the breast and back. Science now continued, in a serious manner, the truculent examination of the executioner's eye. During this time a servant in the livery of the house of Guise brought in several arm-chairs, a table, and writing-materials.

"Begin the proces verbal," said Monsieur de Montresor, motioning to the table the second personage, who was dressed in black, and was evidently a clerk. Then the provost went up to Christophe, and said to him in a very gentle way: "My friend, the chancellor, having learned that you refuse to answer me in a satisfactory manner, decrees that you be put to the question, ordinary and extraordinary."

"Is he in good health, and can he bear it?" said the clerk to the doctor.

"Yes," replied the latter, who was one of the physicians of the house of Lorraine.

"In that case, retire to the next room; we will send for you whenever we require your advice."

The physician left the hall.

His first terror having passed, Christophe rallied his courage; the hour of his martyrdom had come. Thenceforth he looked with cold curiosity at the arrangements that were made by the executioner and his men. After hastily preparing a bed, the two assistants got ready certain appliances called boots; which consisted of several planks, between which each leg of the victim was placed. The legs thus placed were brought close together. The apparatus used by binders to press their volumes between two boards, which they fasten by cords, will give an exact idea of the manner in which each leg of the prisoner was bound. We can imagine the effect produced by the insertion of wooden wedges, driven in by hammers between the planks of the two bound legs,—the two sets of planks of course not yielding, being themselves bound together by ropes. These wedges were driven in on a line with the knees and the ankles. The choice of these places where there is little flesh, and where, consequently, the wedge could only be forced in by crushing the bones, made this form of torture, called the "question," horribly painful. In the "ordinary question" four wedges were driven in,—two at the knees, two at the ankles; but in the "extraordinary question" the number was increased to eight, provided the doctor certified that the prisoner's vitality was not exhausted. At the time of which we write the "boots" were also applied in the same manner to the hands and wrists; but, being pressed for time, the cardinal, the lieutenant-general, and the chancellor spared Christophe that additional suffering.

The proces verbal was begun; the provost dictated a few sentences as he walked up and down with a meditative air, asking Christophe his name, baptismal name, age, and profession; then he inquired the name of the person from whom he had received the papers he had given to the queen.

"From the minister Chaudieu," answered Christophe.

"Where did he give them to you?"

"In Paris."

"In giving them to you he must have told you whether the queen-mother would receive you with pleasure?"

"He told me nothing of that kind," said Christophe. "He merely asked me to give them to Queen Catherine secretly."

"You must have seen Chaudieu frequently, or he would not have known that you were going to Blois."

"The minister did not know from me that in carrying furs to the queen I was also to ask on my father's behalf for the money the queen-mother owes him; and I did not have time to ask the minister who had told him of it."

"But these papers, which were given to you without being sealed or enveloped, contained a treaty between the rebels and Queen Catherine. You must have seen that they exposed you to the punishment of all those who assist in a rebellion."

"Yes."

"The persons who persuaded you to this act of high treason must have promised you rewards and the protection of the queen-mother."