"I did it out of attachment to Chaudieu, the only person whom I saw in the matter."

"Do you persist in saying you did not see the Prince de Conde?"

"Yes."

"The Prince de Conde did not tell you that the queen-mother was inclined to enter into his views against the Messieurs de Guise?"

"I did not see him."

"Take care! one of your accomplices, La Renaudie, has been arrested. Strong as he is, he was not able to bear the 'question,' which will now be put to you; he confessed at last that both he and the Prince de Conde had an interview with you. If you wish to escape the torture of the question, I exhort you to tell me the simple truth. Perhaps you will thus obtain your full pardon."

Christophe answered that he could not state a thing of which he had no knowledge, or give himself accomplices when he had none. Hearing these words, the provost-marshal signed to the executioner and retired himself to the inner room. At that fatal sign Christophe's brows contracted, his forehead worked with nervous convulsion, as he prepared himself to suffer. His hands closed with such violence that the nails entered the flesh without his feeling them. Three men seized him, took him to the camp bed and laid him there, letting his legs hang down. While the executioner fastened him to the rough bedstead with strong cords, the assistants bound his legs into the "boots." Presently the cords were tightened, by means of a wrench, without the pressure causing much pain to the young Reformer. When each leg was thus held as it were in a vice, the executioner grasped his hammer and picked up the wedges, looking alternately at the victim and at the clerk.

"Do you persist in your denial?" asked the clerk.

"I have told the truth," replied Christophe.

"Very well. Go on," said the clerk, closing his eyes.

The cords were tightened with great force. This was perhaps the most painful moment of the torture; the flesh being suddenly compressed, the blood rushed violently toward the breast. The poor boy could not restrain a dreadful cry and seemed about to faint. The doctor was called in. After feeling Christophe's pulse, he told the executioner to wait a quarter of an hour before driving the first wedge in, to let the action of the blood subside and allow the victim to recover his full sensitiveness. The clerk suggested, kindly, that if he could not bear this beginning of sufferings which he could not escape, it would be better to reveal all at once; but Christophe made no reply except to say, "The king's tailor! the king's tailor!"

"What do you mean by those words?" asked the clerk.

"Seeing what torture I must bear," said Christophe, slowly, hoping to gain time to rest, "I call up all my strength, and try to increase it by thinking of the martyrdom borne by the king's tailor for the holy cause of the Reformation, when the question was applied to him in presence of Madame la Duchesse de Valentinois and the king. I shall try to be worthy of him."

While the physician exhorted the unfortunate lad not to force them to have recourse to more violent measures, the cardinal and the duke, impatient to know the result of the interrogations, entered the hall and themselves asked Christophe to speak the truth, immediately. The young man repeated the only confession he had allowed himself to make, which implicated no one but Chaudieu. The princes made a sign, on which the executioner and his assistant seized their hammers, taking each a wedge, which then they drove in between the joints, standing one to right, the other to left of their victim; the executioner's wedge was driven in at the knees, his assistant's at the ankles.

The eyes of all present fastened on those of Christophe, and he, no doubt excited by the presence of those great personages, shot forth such burning glances that they appeared to have all the brilliancy of flame. As the third and fourth wedges were driven in, a dreadful groan escaped him. When he saw the executioner take up the wedges for the "extraordinary question" he said no word and made no sound, but his eyes took on so terrible a fixity, and he cast upon the two great princes who were watching him a glance so penetrating, that the duke and cardinal were forced to drop their eyes. Philippe le Bel met with the same resistance when the torture of the pendulum was applied in his presence to the Templars. That punishment consisted in striking the victim on the breast with one arm of the balance pole with which money is coined, its end being covered with a pad of leather. One of the knights thus tortured, looked so intently at the king that Philippe could not detach his eyes from him. At the third blow the king left the chamber on hearing the knight summon him to appear within a year before the judgment-seat of God,—as, in fact, he did. At the fifth blow, the first of the "extraordinary question," Christophe said to the cardinal: "Monseigneur, put an end to my torture; it is useless."

The cardinal and the duke re-entered the adjoining hall, and Christophe distinctly heard the following words said by Queen Catherine: "Go on; after all, he is only a heretic."

She judged it prudent to be more stern to her accomplice than the executioners themselves.

The sixth and seventh wedges were driven in without a word of complaint from Christophe. His face shone with extraordinary brilliancy, due, no doubt, to the excess of strength which his fanatic devotion gave him. Where else but in the feelings of the soul can we find the power necessary to bear such sufferings? Finally, he smiled when he saw the executioner lifting the eighth and last wedge. This horrible torture had lasted by this time over an hour.

The clerk now went to call the physician that he might decide whether the eighth wedge could be driven in without endangering the life of the victim. During this delay the duke returned to look at Christophe.

"Ventre-de-biche! you are a fine fellow," he said to him, bending down to whisper the words. "I love brave men. Enter my service, and you shall be rich and happy; my favors shall heal those wounded limbs. I do not propose to you any baseness; I will not ask you to return to your party and betray its plans,—there are always traitors enough for that, and the proof is in the prisons of Blois; tell me only on what terms are the queen-mother and the Prince de Conde?"

"I know nothing about it, monseigneur," replied Christophe Lecamus.

The physician came, examined the victim, and said that he could bear the eighth wedge.

"Then insert it," said the cardinal. "After all, as the queen says, he is only a heretic," he added, looking at Christophe with a dreadful smile.

At this moment Catherine came with slow steps from the adjoining apartment and stood before Christophe, coldly observing him. Instantly she was the object of the closest attention on the part of the two brothers, who watched alternately the queen and her accomplice. On this solemn test the whole future of that ambitious woman depended; she felt the keenest admiration for Christophe, yet she gazed sternly at him; she hated the Guises, and she smiled upon them!

"Young man," said the queen, "confess that you have seen the Prince de Conde, and you will be richly rewarded."

"Ah! what a business this is for you, madame!" cried Christophe, pitying her.

The queen quivered.

"He insults me!" she exclaimed. "Why do you not hang him?" she cried, turning to the two brothers, who stood thoughtful.

"What a woman!" said the duke in a glance at his brother, consulting him by his eye, and leading him to the window.

"I shall stay in France and be revenged upon them," thought the queen. "Come, make him confess, or let him die!" she said aloud, addressing Montresor.

The provost-marshal turned away his eyes, the executioners were busy with the wedges; Catherine was free to cast one glance upon the martyr, unseen by others, which fell on Christophe like the dew. The eyes of the great queen seemed to him moist; two tears were in them, but they did not fall. The wedges were driven; a plank was broken by the blow. Christophe gave one dreadful cry, after which he was silent; his face shone,—he believed he was dying.

"Let him die?" said the cardinal, echoing the queen's last words with a sort of irony; "no, no! don't break that thread," he said to the provost.

The duke and the cardinal consulted together in a low voice.

"What is to be done with him?" asked the executioner.

"Send him to the prison at Orleans," said the duke, addressing Monsieur de Montresor; "and don't hang him without my order."

The extreme sensitiveness to which Christophe's internal organism had been brought, increased by a resistance which called into play every power of the human body, existed to the same degree, in his senses. He alone heard the following words whispered by the Duc de Guise in the ear of his brother the cardinal:

"I don't give up all hope of getting the truth out of that little fellow yet."

When the princes had left the hall the executioners unbound the legs of their victim roughly and without compassion.

"Did any one ever see a criminal with such strength?" said the chief executioner to his aids. "The rascal bore that last wedge when he ought to have died; I've lost the price of his body."

"Unbind me gently; don't make me suffer, friends," said poor Christophe. "Some day I will reward you—"

"Come, come, show some humanity," said the physician. "Monseigneur esteems the young man, and told me to look after him."

"I am going to Amboise with my assistants,—take care of him yourself," said the executioner, brutally. "Besides, here comes the jailer."

The executioner departed, leaving Christophe in the hands of the soft-spoken doctor, who by the aid of Christophe's future jailer, carried the poor boy to a bed, brought him some broth, helped him to swallow it, sat down beside him, felt his pulse, and tried to comfort him.

"You won't die of this," he said. "You ought to feel great inward comfort, knowing that you have done your duty.—The queen-mother bids me take care of you," he added in a whisper.

"The queen is very good," said Christophe, whose terrible sufferings had developed an extraordinary lucidity in his mind, and who, after enduring such unspeakable sufferings, was determined not to compromise the results of his devotion. "But she might have spared me much agony be telling my persecutors herself the secrets that I know nothing about, instead of urging them on."

Hearing that reply, the doctor took his cap and cloak and left Christophe, rightly judging that he could worm nothing out of a man of that stamp. The jailer of Blois now ordered the poor lad to be carried away on a stretcher by four men, who took him to the prison in the town, where Christophe immediately fell into the deep sleep which, they say, comes to most mothers after the terrible pangs of childbirth.



IX. THE TUMULT AT AMBOISE

By moving the court to the chateau of Amboise, the two Lorrain princes intended to set a trap for the leader of the party of the Reformation, the Prince de Conde, whom they had made the king summon to his presence. As vassal of the Crown and prince of the blood, Conde was bound to obey the summons of his sovereign. Not to come to Amboise would constitute the crime of treason; but if he came, he put himself in the power of the Crown. Now, at this moment, as we have seen, the Crown, the council, the court, and all their powers were solely in the hands of the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine. The Prince de Conde showed, at this delicate crisis, a presence of mind and a decision and willingness which made him the worthy exponent of Jeanne d'Albret and the valorous general of the Reformers. He travelled at the rear of the conspirators as far as Vendome, intending to support them in case of their success. When the first uprising ended by a brief skirmish, in which the flower of the nobility beguiled by Calvin perished, the prince arrived, with fifty noblemen, at the chateau of Amboise on the very day after that fight, which the politic Guises termed "the Tumult of Amboise." As soon as the duke and cardinal heard of his coming they sent the Marechal de Saint-Andre with an escort of a hundred men to meet him. When the prince and his own escort reached the gates of the chateau the marechal refused entrance to the latter.

"You must enter alone, monseigneur," said the Chancellor Olivier, the Cardinal de Tournon, and Birago, who were stationed outside of the portcullis.

"And why?"

"You are suspected of treason," replied the chancellor.

The prince, who saw that his suite were already surrounded by the troop of the Duc de Nemours, replied tranquilly: "If that is so, I will go alone to my cousin, and prove to him my innocence."

He dismounted, talked with perfect freedom of mind to Birago, the Cardinal de Tournon, the chancellor, and the Duc de Nemours, from whom he asked for particulars of the "tumult."

"Monseigneur," replied the duke, "the rebels had confederates in Amboise. A captain, named Lanoue, had introduced armed men, who opened the gate to them, through which they entered and made themselves masters of the town—"

"That is to say, you opened the mouth of a sack, and they ran into it," replied the prince, looking at Birago.

"If they had been supported by the attack which Captain Chaudieu, the preacher's brother, was expected to make before the gate of the Bon-Hommes, they would have been completely successful," replied the Duc de Nemours. "But in consequence of the position which the Duc de Guise ordered me to take up, Captain Chaudieu was obliged to turn my flank to avoid a fight. So instead of arriving by night, like the rest, this rebel and his men got there at daybreak, by which time the king's troops had crushed the invaders of the town."

"And you had a reserve force to recover the gate which had been opened to them?" said the prince.

"Monsieur le Marechal de Saint-Andre was there with five hundred men-at-arms."

The prince gave the highest praise to these military arrangements.

"The lieutenant-general must have been fully aware of the plans of the Reformers, to have acted as he did," he said in conclusion. "They were no doubt betrayed."

The prince was treated with increasing harshness. After separating him from his escort at the gates, the cardinal and the chancellor barred his way when he reached the staircase which led to the apartments of the king.

"We are directed by his Majesty, monseigneur, to take you to your own apartments," they said.

"Am I, then, a prisoner?"

"If that were the king's intention you would not be accompanied by a prince of the Church, nor by me," replied the chancellor.

These two personages escorted the prince to an apartment, where guards of honor—so-called—were given him. There he remained, without seeing any one, for some hours. From his window he looked down upon the Loire and the meadows of the beautiful valley stretching from Amboise to Tours. He was reflecting on the situation, and asking himself whether the Guises would really dare anything against his person, when the door of his chamber opened and Chicot, the king's fool, formerly a dependent of his own, entered the room.

"They told me you were in disgrace," said the prince.

"You'd never believe how virtuous the court has become since the death of Henri II."

"But the king loves a laugh."

"Which king,—Francois II., or Francois de Lorraine?"

"You are not afraid of the duke, if you talk in that way!"

"He wouldn't punish me for it, monseigneur," replied Chicot, laughing.

"To what do I owe the honor of this visit?"

"Hey! Isn't it due to you on your return? I bring you my cap and bells."

"Can I go out?"

"Try."

"Suppose I do go out, what then?"

"I should say that you had won the game by playing against the rules."

"Chicot, you alarm me. Are you sent here by some one who takes an interest in me?"

"Yes," said Chicot, nodding. He came nearer to the prince, and made him understand that they were being watched and overheard.

"What have you to say to me?" asked the Prince de Conde, in a low voice.

"Boldness alone can pull you out of this scrape; the message comes from the queen-mother," replied the fool, slipping his words into the ear of the prince.

"Tell those who sent you," replied Conde, "that I should not have entered this chateau if I had anything to reproach myself with, or to fear."

"I rush to report that lofty answer!" cried the fool.

Two hours later, that is, about one o'clock in the afternoon, before the king's dinner, the chancellor and Cardinal de Tournon came to fetch the prince and present him to Francois II. in the great gallery of the chateau of Amboise, where the councils were held. There, before the whole court, Conde pretended surprise at the coldness with which the little king received him, and asked the reason of it.

"You are accused, cousin," said the queen-mother, sternly, "of taking part in the conspiracy of the Reformers; and you must prove yourself a faithful subject and a good Catholic, if you do not desire to draw down upon your house the anger of the king."

Hearing these words said, in the midst of the most profound silence, by Catherine de' Medici, on whose right arm the king was leaning, the Duc d'Orleans being on her left side, the Prince de Conde recoiled three steps, laid his hand on his sword with a proud motion, and looked at all the persons who surrounded him.

"Those who said that, madame," he cried in an angry voice, "lied in their throats!"

Then he flung his glove at the king's feet, saying: "Let him who believes that calumny come forward!"

The whole court trembled as the Duc de Guise was seen to leave his place; but instead of picking up the glove, he advanced to the intrepid hunchback.

"If you desire a second in that duel, monseigneur, do me the honor to accept my services," he said. "I will answer for you; I know that you will show the Reformers how mistaken they are if they think to have you for their leader."

The prince was forced to take the hand of the lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Chicot picked up the glove and returned it to Monsieur de Conde.

"Cousin," said the little king, "you must draw your sword only for the defence of the kingdom. Come and dine."

The Cardinal de Lorraine, surprised at his brother's action, drew him away to his own apartments. The Prince de Conde, having escaped his apparent danger, offered his hand to Mary Stuart to lead her to the dining hall; but all the while that he made her flattering speeches he pondered in his mind what trap the astute Balafre was setting for him. In vain he worked his brains, for it was not until Queen Mary herself betrayed it that he guessed the intention of the Guises.

"'Twould have been a great pity," she said laughing, "if so clever a head had fallen; you must admit that my uncle has been generous."

"Yes, madame; for my head is only useful on my shoulders, though one of them is notoriously higher than the other. But is this really your uncle's generosity? Is he not getting the credit of it rather cheaply? Do you think it would be so easy to take off the head of a prince of the blood?"

"All is not over yet," she said. "We shall see what your conduct will be at the execution of the noblemen, your friends, at which the Council has decided to make a great public display of severity."

"I shall do," said the prince, "whatever the king does."

"The king, the queen-mother, and myself will be present at the execution, together with the whole court and the ambassadors—"

"A fete!" said the prince, sarcastically.

"Better than that," said the young queen, "an act of faith, an act of the highest policy. 'Tis a question of forcing the noblemen of France to submit themselves to the Crown, and compelling them to give up their tastes for plots and factions—"

"You will not break their belligerent tempers by the show of danger, madame; you will risk the Crown itself in the attempt," replied the prince.

At the end of the dinner, which was gloomy enough, Queen Mary had the cruel boldness to turn the conversation openly upon the trial of the noblemen on the charge of being seized with arms in their hands, and to speak of the necessity of making a great public show of their execution.

"Madame," said Francois II., "is it not enough for the king of France to know that so much brave blood is to flow? Must he make a triumph of it?"

"No, sire; but an example," replied Catherine.

"It was the custom of your father and your grandfather to be present at the burning of heretics," said Mary Stuart.

"The kings who reigned before me did as they thought best, and I choose to do as I please," said the little king.

"Philip the Second," remarked Catherine, "who is certainly a great king, lately postponed an auto da fe until he could return from the Low Countries to Valladolid."

"What do you think, cousin?" said the king to Prince de Conde.

"Sire, you cannot avoid it, and the papal nuncio and all the ambassadors should be present. I shall go willingly, as these ladies take part in the fete."

Thus the Prince de Conde, at a glance from Catherine de' Medici, bravely chose his course.

* * * * *

At the moment when the Prince de Conde was entering the chateau d'Amboise, Lecamus, the furrier of the two queens, was also arriving from Paris, brought to Amboise by the anxiety into which the news of the tumult had thrown both his family and that of Lallier. When the old man presented himself at the gate of the chateau, the captain of the guard, on hearing that he was the queens' furrier, said:—

"My good man, if you want to be hanged you have only to set foot in this courtyard."

Hearing these words, the father, in despair, sat down on a stone at a little distance and waited until some retainer of the two queens or some servant-woman might pass who would give him news of his son. But he sat there all day without seeing any one whom he knew, and was forced at last to go down into the town, where he found, not without some difficulty, a lodging in a hostelry on the public square where the executions took place. He was obliged to pay a pound a day to obtain a room with a window looking on the square. The next day he had the courage to watch, from his window, the execution of all the abettors of the rebellion who were condemned to be broken on the wheel or hanged, as persons of little importance. He was happy indeed not to see his own son among the victims.

When the execution was over he went into the square and put himself in the way of the clerk of the court. After giving his name, and slipping a purse full of crowns into the man's hand, he begged him to look on the records and see if the name of Christophe Lecamus appeared in either of the three preceding executions. The clerk, touched by the manner and the tones of the despairing father, took him to his own house. After a careful search he was able to give the old man an absolute assurance that Christophe was not among the persons thus far executed, nor among those who were to be put to death within a few days.

"My dear man," said the clerk, "Parliament has taken charge of the trial of the great lords implicated in the affair, and also that of the principal leaders. Perhaps your son is detained in the prisons of the chateau, and he may be brought forth for the magnificent execution which their Excellencies the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine are now preparing. The heads of twenty-seven barons, eleven counts, and seven marquises,—in all, fifty noblemen or leaders of the Reformers,—are to be cut off. As the justiciary of the county of Tourine is quite distinct from that of the parliament of Paris, if you are determined to know about your son, I advise you to go and see the Chancelier Olivier, who has the management of this great trial under orders from the lieutenant-general of the kingdom."

The poor old man, acting on this advice, went three times to see the chancellor, standing in a long queue of persons waiting to ask mercy for their friends. But as the titled men were made to pass before the burghers, he was obliged to give up the hope of speaking to the chancellor, though he saw him several times leave the house to go either to the chateau or to the committee appointed by the Parliament,—passing each time between a double hedge of petitioners who were kept back by the guards to allow him free passage. It was a horrible scene of anguish and desolation; for among these petitioners were many women, wives, mothers, daughters, whole families in distress. Old Lecamus gave much gold to the footmen of the chateau, entreating them to put certain letters which he wrote into the hand either of Dayelle, Queen Mary's woman, or into that of the queen-mother; but the footmen took the poor man's money and carried the letters, according to the general order of the cardinal, to the provost-marshal. By displaying such unheard-of cruelty the Guises knew that they incurred great dangers from revenge, and never did they take such precautions for their safety as they did while the court was at Amboise; consequently, neither the greatest of all corrupters, gold, nor the incessant and active search which the old furrier instituted gave him the slightest gleam of light on the fate of his son. He went about the little town with a mournful air, watching the great preparations made by order of the cardinal for the dreadful show at which the Prince de Conde had agreed to be present.

Public curiosity was stimulated from Paris to Nantes by the means adopted on this occasion. The execution was announced from all pulpits by the rectors of the churches, while at the same time they gave thanks for the victory of the king over the heretics. Three handsome balconies, the middle one more sumptuous than the other two, were built against the terrace of the chateau of Amboise, at the foot of which the executions were appointed to take place. Around the open square, stagings were erected, and these were filled with an immense crowd of people attracted by the wide-spread notoriety given to this "act of faith." Ten thousand persons camped in the adjoining fields the night before the day on which the horrible spectacle was appointed to take place. The roofs on the houses were crowded with spectators, and windows were let at ten pounds apiece,—an enormous sum in those days. The poor old father had engaged, as we may well believe, one of the best places from which the eye could take in the whole of the terrible scene, where so many men of noble blood were to perish on a vast scaffold covered with black cloth, erected in the middle of the open square. Thither, on the morning of the fatal day, they brought the chouquet,—a name given to the block on which the condemned man laid his head as he knelt before it. After this they brought an arm-chair draped with black, for the clerk of the Parliament, whose business it was to call up the condemned noblemen to their death and read their sentences. The whole square was guarded from early morning by the Scottish guard and the gendarmes of the king's household, in order to keep back the crowd which threatened to fill it before the hour of the execution.

After a solemn mass said at the chateau and in the churches of the town, the condemned lords, the last of the conspirators who were left alive, were led out. These gentlemen, some of whom had been put to the torture, were grouped at the foot of the scaffold and surrounded by monks, who endeavored to make them abjure the doctrines of Calvin. But not a single man listened to the words of the priests who had been appointed for this duty by the Cardinal of Lorraine; among whom the gentlemen no doubt feared to find spies of the Guises. In order to avoid the importunity of these antagonists they chanted a psalm, put into French verse by Clement Marot. Calvin, as we all know, had ordained that prayers to God should be in the language of each country, as much from a principle of common sense as in opposition to the Roman worship. To those in the crowd who pitied these unfortunate gentlemen it was a moving incident to hear them chant the following verse at the very moment when the king and court arrived and took their places:—

"God be merciful unto us, And bless us! And show us the light of his countenance, And be merciful unto us."

The eyes of all the Reformers turned to their leader, the Prince de Conde, who was placed intentionally between Queen Mary and the young Duc d'Orleans. Catherine de' Medici was beside the king, and the rest of the court were on her left. The papal nuncio stood behind Queen Mary; the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, the Duc de Guise, was on horseback below the balcony, with two of the marshals of France and his staff captains. When the Prince de Conde appeared all the condemned noblemen who knew him bowed to him, and the brave hunchback returned their salutation.

"It would be hard," he remarked to the Duc d'Orleans, "not to be civil to those about to die."

The two other balconies were filled by invited guests, courtiers, and persons on duty about the court. In short, the whole company of the chateau de Blois had come to Amboise to assist at this festival of death, precisely as it passed, a little later, from the pleasures of a court to the perils of war, with an easy facility, which will always seem to foreigners one of the main supports of their policy toward France.

The poor syndic of the furriers of Paris was filled with the keenest joy at not seeing his son among the fifty-seven gentlemen who were condemned to die.

At a sign from the Duc de Guise, the clerk seated on the scaffold cried in a loud voice:—

"Jean-Louis-Alberic, Baron de Raunay, guilty of heresy, of the crime of lese-majeste, and assault with armed hand against the person of the king."

A tall handsome man mounted the scaffold with a firm step, bowed to the people and the court, and said:

"That sentence lies. I took arms to deliver the king from his enemies, the Guises."

He placed his head on the block, and it fell. The Reformers chanted:—

"Thou, O God! hast proved us; Thou hast tried us; As silver is tried in the fire, So hast thou purified us."

"Robert-Jean-Rene Briquemart, Comte de Villemongis, guilty of the crime of lese-majeste, and of attempts against the person of the king!" called the clerk.

The count dipped his hands in the blood of the Baron de Raunay, and said:—

"May this blood recoil upon those who are really guilty of those crimes."

The Reformers chanted:—

"Thou broughtest us into the snare; Thou laidest afflictions upon our loins; Thou hast suffered our enemies To ride over us."

"You must admit, monseigneur," said the Prince de Conde to the papal nuncio, "that if these French gentlemen know how to conspire, they also know how to die."

"What hatreds, brother!" whispered the Duchesse de Guise to the Cardinal de Lorraine, "you are drawing down upon the heads of our children!"

"The sight makes me sick," said the young king, turning pale at the flow of blood.

"Pooh! only rebels!" replied Catherine de' Medici.

The chants went on; the axe still fell. The sublime spectacle of men singing as they died, and, above all, the impression produced upon the crowd by the progressive diminution of the chanting voices, superseded the fear inspired by the Guises.

"Mercy!" cried the people with one voice, when they heard the solitary chant of the last and most important of the great lords, who was saved to be the final victim. He alone remained at the foot of the steps by which the others had mounted the scaffold, and he chanted:—

"Thou, O God, be merciful unto us, And bless us, And cause thy face to shine upon us. Amen!"

"Come, Duc de Nemours," said the Prince de Conde, weary of the part he was playing; "you who have the credit of the skirmish, and who helped to make these men prisoners, do you not feel under an obligation to ask mercy for this one? It is Castelnau, who, they say, received your word of honor that he should be courteously treated if he surrendered."

"Do you think I waited till he was here before trying to save him?" said the Duc de Nemours, stung by the stern reproach.

The clerk called slowly—no doubt he was intentionally slow:—

"Michel-Jean-Louis, Baron de Castelnau-Chalosse, accused and convicted of the crime of lese-majeste, and of attempts against the person of the king."

"No," said Castelnau, proudly, "it cannot be a crime to oppose the tyranny and the projected usurpation of the Guises."

The executioner, sick of his task, saw a movement in the king's gallery, and fumbled with his axe.

"Monsieur le baron," he said, "I do not want to execute you; a moment's delay may save you."

All the people again cried, "Mercy!"

"Come!" said the king, "mercy for that poor Castelnau, who saved the life of the Duc d'Orleans."

The cardinal intentionally misunderstood the king's speech.

"Go on," he motioned to the executioner, and the head of Castelnau fell at the very moment when the king had pronounced his pardon.

"That head, cardinal, goes to your account," said Catherine de' Medici.

The day after this dreadful execution the Prince de Conde returned to Navarre.

The affair produced a great sensation in France and at all the foreign courts. The torrents of noble blood then shed caused such anguish to the chancellor Olivier that his honorable mind, perceiving at last the real end and aim of the Guises disguised under a pretext of defending religion and the monarchy, felt itself no longer able to make head against them. Though he was their creature, he was not willing to sacrifice his duty and the Throne to their ambition; and he withdrew from his post, suggesting l'Hopital as his rightful successor. Catherine, hearing of Olivier's suggestion, immediately proposed Birago, and put much warmth into her request. The cardinal, knowing nothing of the letter written by l'Hopital to the queen-mother, and supposing him faithful to the house of Lorraine, pressed his appointment in opposition to that of Birago, and Catherine allowed herself to seem vanquished. From the moment that l'Hopital entered upon his duties he took measures against the Inquisition, which the Cardinal de Lorraine was desirous of introducing into France; and he thwarted so successfully all the anti-gallican policy of the Guises, and proved himself so true a Frenchmen, that in order to subdue him he was exiled, within three months of his appointment, to his country-seat of Vignay, near Etampes.

The worthy old Lecamus waited impatiently till the court left Amboise, being unable to find an opportunity to speak to either of the queens, and hoping to put himself in their way as the court advanced along the river-bank on its return to Blois. He disguised himself as a pauper, at the risk of being taken for a spy, and by means of this travesty, he mingled with the crowd of beggars which lined the roadway. After the departure of the Prince de Conde, and the execution of the leaders, the duke and cardinal thought they had sufficiently silenced the Reformers to allow the queen-mother a little more freedom. Lecamus knew that, instead of travelling in a litter, Catherine intended to go on horseback, a la planchette,—such was the name given to a sort of stirrup invented for or by the queen-mother, who, having hurt her leg on some occasion, ordered a velvet-covered saddle with a plank on which she could place both feet by sitting sideways on the horse and passing one leg through a depression in the saddle. As the queen-mother had very handsome legs, she was accused of inventing this method of riding, in order to show them. The old furrier fortunately found a moment when he could present himself to her sight; but the instant that the queen recognized him she gave signs of displeasure.

"Go away, my good man, and let no one see you speak to me," she said with anxiety. "Get yourself elected deputy to the States-general, by the guild of your trade, and act for me when the Assembly convenes at Orleans; you shall know whom to trust in the matter of your son."

"Is he living?" asked the old man.

"Alas!" said the queen, "I hope so."

Lecamus was obliged to return to Paris with nothing better than those doubtful words and the secret of the approaching convocation of the States-general, thus confided to him by the queen-mother.



X. COSMO RUGGIERO

The Cardinal de Lorraine obtained, within a few days of the events just related, certain revelations as to the culpability of the court of Navarre. At Lyon, and at Mouvans in Dauphine, a body of Reformers, under command of the most enterprising prince of the house of Bourbon had endeavored to incite the populace to rise. Such audacity, after the bloody executions at Amboise, astonished the Guises, who (no doubt to put an end to heresy by means known only to themselves) proposed the convocation of the States-general at Orleans. Catherine de' Medici, seeing a chance of support to her policy in a national representation, joyfully agreed to it. The cardinal, bent on recovering his prey and degrading the house of Bourbon, convoked the States for the sole purpose of bringing the Prince de Conde and the king of Navarre (Antoine de Bourbon, father of Henri IV.) to Orleans,—intending to make use of Christophe to convict the prince of high treason if he succeeded in again getting him within the power of the Crown.

After two months had passed in the prison at Blois, Christophe was removed on a litter to a tow-boat, which sailed up the Loire to Orleans, helped by a westerly wind. He arrived there in the evening and was taken at once to the celebrated tower of Saint-Aignan. The poor lad, who did not know what to think of his removal, had plenty of time to reflect on his conduct and on his future. He remained there two months, lying on his pallet, unable to move his legs. The bones of his joints were broken. When he asked for the help of a surgeon of the town, the jailer replied that the orders were so strict about him that he dared not allow any one but himself even to bring him food. This severity, which placed him virtually in solitary confinement, amazed Christophe. To his mind, he ought either to be hanged or released; for he was, of course, entirely ignorant of the events at Amboise.

In spite of certain secret advice sent to them by Catherine de' Medici, the two chiefs of the house of Bourbon resolved to be present at the States-general, so completely did the autograph letters they received from the king reassure them; and no sooner had the court established itself at Orleans than it learned, not without amazement, from Groslot, chancellor of Navarre, that the Bourbon princes had arrived.

Francois II. established himself in the house of the chancellor of Navarre, who was also bailli, in other words, chief justice of the law courts, at Orleans. This Groslot, whose dual position was one of the singularities of this period—when Reformers themselves owned abbeys—Groslot, the Jacques Coeur of Orleans, one of the richest burghers of the day, did not bequeath his name to the house, for in after years it was called Le Bailliage, having been, undoubtedly, purchased either by the heirs of the Crown or by the provinces as the proper place in which to hold the legal courts. This charming structure, built by the bourgeoisie of the sixteenth century, which completes so admirably the history of a period in which king, nobles, and burghers rivalled each other in the grace, elegance, and richness of their dwellings (witness Varangeville, the splendid manor-house of Ango, and the mansion, called that of Hercules, in Paris), exists to this day, though in a state to fill archaeologists and lovers of the Middle Ages with despair. It would be difficult, however, to go to Orleans and not take notice of the Hotel-de-Ville which stands on the place de l'Estape. This hotel-de-ville, or town-hall, is the former Bailliage, the mansion of Groslot, the most illustrious house in Orleans, and the most neglected.

The remains of this old building will still show, to the eyes of an archaeologist, how magnificent it was at a period when the houses of the burghers were commonly built of wood rather than stone, a period when noblemen alone had the right to build manors,—a significant word. Having served as the dwelling of the king at a period when the court displayed much pomp and luxury, the hotel Groslot must have been the most splendid house in Orleans. It was here, on the place de l'Estape, that the Guises and the king reviewed the burgher guard, of which Monsieur de Cypierre was made the commander during the sojourn of the king. At this period the cathedral of Sainte-Croix, afterward completed by Henri IV.,—who chose to give that proof of the sincerity of his conversion,—was in process of erection, and its neighborhood, heaped with stones and cumbered with piles of wood, was occupied by the Guises and their retainers, who were quartered in the bishop's palace, now destroyed.

The town was under military discipline, and the measures taken by the Guises proved how little liberty they intended to leave to the States-general, the members of which flocked into the town, raising the rents of the poorest lodgings. The court, the burgher militia, the nobility, and the burghers themselves were all in a state of expectation, awaiting some coup-d'Etat; and they found themselves not mistaken when the princes of the blood arrived. As the Bourbon princes entered the king's chamber, the court saw with terror the insolent bearing of Cardinal de Lorraine. Determined to show his intentions openly, he remained covered, while the king of Navarre stood before him bare-headed. Catherine de' Medici lowered her eyes, not to show the indignation that she felt. Then followed a solemn explanation between the young king and the two chiefs of the younger branch. It was short, for that the first words of the Prince de Conde Francois II. interrupted him, with threatening looks:

"Messieurs, my cousins, I had supposed the affair of Amboise over; I find it is not so, and you are compelling us to regret the indulgence which we showed."

"It is not the king so much as the Messieurs de Guise who now address us," replied the Prince de Conde.

"Adieu, monsieur," cried the little king, crimson with anger. When he left the king's presence the prince found his way barred in the great hall by two officers of the Scottish guard. As the captain of the French guard advanced, the prince drew a letter from his doublet, and said to him in presence of the whole court:—

"Can you read that paper aloud to me, Monsieur de Maille-Breze?"

"Willingly," said the French captain:—

"'My cousin, come in all security; I give you my royal word that you can do so. If you have need of a safe conduct, this letter will serve as one.'"

"Signed?" said the shrewd and courageous hunchback.

"Signed 'Francois,'" said Maille.

"No, no!" exclaimed the prince, "it is signed: 'Your good cousin and friend, Francois,'—Messieurs," he said to the Scotch guard, "I follow you to the prison to which you are ordered, on behalf of the king, to conduct me. There is enough nobility in this hall to understand the matter!"

The profound silence which followed these words ought to have enlightened the Guises, but silence is that to which all princes listen least.

"Monseigneur," said the Cardinal de Tournon, who was following the prince, "you know well that since the affair at Amboise you have made certain attempts both at Lyon and at Mouvans in Dauphine against the royal authority, of which the king had no knowledge when he wrote to you in those terms."

"Tricksters!" cried the prince, laughing.

"You have made a public declaration against the Mass and in favor of heresy."

"We are masters in Navarre," said the prince.

"You mean to say in Bearn. But you owe homage to the Crown," replied President de Thou.

"Ha! you here, president?" cried the prince, sarcastically. "Is the whole Parliament with you?"

So saying, he cast a look of contempt upon the cardinal and left the hall. He saw plainly enough that they meant to have his head. The next day, when Messieurs de Thou, de Viole, d'Espesse, the procureur-general Bourdin, and the chief clerk of the court du Tillet, entered his presence, he kept them standing, and expressed his regrets to see them charged with a duty which did not belong to them. Then he said to the clerk, "Write down what I say," and dictated as follows:—

"I, Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Conde, peer of the kingdom, Marquis de Conti, Comte de Soissons, prince of the blood of France, do declare that I formally refuse to recognize any commission appointed to try me, because, in my quality and in virtue of the privilege appertaining to all members of the royal house, I can only be accused, tried, and judged by the Parliament of peers, both Chambers assembled, the king being seated on his bed of justice."

"You ought to know that, gentlemen, better than others," he added; "and this reply is all that you will get from me. For the rest, I trust in God and my right."

The magistrates continued to address him notwithstanding his obstinate silence. The king of Navarre was left at liberty, but closely watched; his prison was larger than that of the prince, and this was the only real difference in the position of the two brothers,—the intention being that their heads should fall together.

Christophe was therefore kept in the strictest solitary confinement by order of the cardinal and the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, for no other purpose than to give the judges proof of the culpability of the Prince de Conde. The letters seized on Lasagne, the prince's secretary, though intelligible to statesmen, where not sufficiently plain proof for judges. The cardinal intended to confront the prince and Christophe by accident; and it was not without intention that the young Reformer was placed in one of the lower rooms in the tower of Saint-Aignan, with a window looking on the prison yard. Each time that Christophe was brought before the magistrates, and subjected to a close examination, he sheltered himself behind a total and complete denial, which prolonged his trial until after the opening of the States-general.

Old Lecamus, who by that time had got himself elected deputy of the tiers-etat by the burghers of Paris, arrived at Orleans a few days after the arrest of the Prince de Conde. This news, which reached him at Etampes, redoubled his anxiety; for he fully understood—he, who alone knew of Christophe's interview with the prince under the bridge near his own house—that his son's fate was closely bound up with that of the leader of the Reformed party. He therefore determined to study the dark tangle of interests which were struggling together at court in order to discover some means of rescuing his son. It was useless to think of Queen Catherine, who refused to see her furrier. No one about the court whom he was able to address could give him any satisfactory information about Christophe; and he fell at last into a state of such utter despair that he was on the verge of appealing to the cardinal himself, when he learned that Monsieur de Thou (and this was the great stain upon that good man's life) had consented to be one of the judges of the Prince de Conde. The old furrier went at once to see him, and learned at last that Christophe was still living, though a prisoner.

Tourillon, the glover (to whom La Renaudie sent Christophe on his way to Blois), had offered a room in his house to the Sieur Lecamus for the whole time of his stay in Orleans during the sittings of the States-general. The glover believed the furrier to be, like himself, secretly attached to the Reformed religion; but he soon saw that a father who fears for the life of his child pays no heed to shades of religious opinion, but flings himself prone upon the bosom of God without caring what insignia men give to Him. The poor old man, repulsed in all his efforts, wandered like one bewildered through the streets. Contrary to his expectations, his money availed him nothing; Monsieur de Thou had warned him that if he bribed any servant of the house of Guise he would merely lose his money, for the duke and cardinal allowed nothing that related to Christophe to transpire. De Thou, whose fame is somewhat tarnished by the part he played at this crisis, endeavored to give some hope to the poor father; but he trembled so much himself for the fate of his godson that his attempts at consolation only alarmed the old man still more. Lecamus roamed the streets; in three months he had shrunk visibly. His only hope now lay in the warm friendship which for so many years had bound him to the Hippocrates of the sixteenth century. Ambroise Pare tried to say a word to Queen Mary on leaving the chamber of the king, who was then indisposed; but no sooner had he named Christophe than the daughter of the Stuarts, nervous at the prospect of her fate should any evil happen to the king, and believing that the Reformers were attempting to poison him, cried out:—

"If my uncles had only listened to me, that fanatic would have been hanged already."

The evening on which this fatal answer was repeated to old Lecamus, by his friend Pare on the place de l'Estape, he returned home half dead to his own chamber, refusing to eat any supper. Tourillon, uneasy about him, went up to his room and found him in tears; the aged eyes showed the inflamed red lining of their lids, so that the glover fancied for a moment that he was weeping tears of blood.

"Comfort yourself, father," said the Reformer; "the burghers of Orleans are furious to see their city treated as though it were taken by assault, and guarded by the soldiers of Monsieur de Cypierre. If the life of the Prince de Conde is in any real danger we will soon demolish the tower of Saint-Aignan; the whole town is on the side of the Reformers, and it will rise in rebellion; you may be sure of that!"

"But, even if they hang the Guises, it will not give me back my son," said the wretched father.

At that instant some one rapped cautiously on Tourillon's outer door, and the glover went downstairs to open it himself. The night was dark. In these troublous times the masters of all households took minute precautions. Tourillon looked through the peep-holes cut in the door, and saw a stranger, whose accent indicated an Italian. The man, who was dressed in black, asked to speak with Lecamus on matters of business, and Tourillon admitted him. When the furrier caught sight of his visitor he shuddered violently; but the stranger managed, unseen by Tourillon, to lay his fingers on his lips. Lecamus, understanding the gesture, said immediately:—

"You have come, I suppose, to offer furs?"

"Si," said the Italian, discreetly.

This personage was no other than the famous Ruggiero, astrologer to the queen-mother. Tourillon went below to his own apartment, feeling convinced that he was one too many in that of his guest.

"Where can we talk without danger of being overheard?" said the cautious Florentine.

"We ought to be in the open fields for that," replied Lecamus. "But we are not allowed to leave the town; you know the severity with which the gates are guarded. No one can leave Orleans without a pass from Monsieur de Cypierre," he added,—"not even I, who am a member of the States-general. Complaint is to be made at to-morrow's session of this restriction of liberty."

"Work like a mole, but don't let your paws be seen in anything, no matter what," said the wary Italian. "To-morrow will, no doubt, prove a decisive day. Judging by my observations, you may, perhaps, recover your son to-morrow, or the day after."

"May God hear you—you who are thought to traffic with the devil!"

"Come to my place," said the astrologer, smiling. "I live in the tower of Sieur Touchet de Beauvais, the lieutenant of the Bailliage, whose daughter the little Duc d'Orleans has taken such a fancy to; it is there that I observe the planets. I have drawn the girl's horoscope, and it says that she will become a great lady and be beloved by a king. The lieutenant, her father, is a clever man; he loves science, and the queen sent me to lodge with him. He has had the sense to be a rabid Guisist while awaiting the reign of Charles IX."

The furrier and the astrologer reached the house of the Sieur de Beauvais without being met or even seen; but, in case Lecamus' visit should be discovered, the Florentine intended to give a pretext of an astrological consultation on his son's fate. When they were safely at the top of the tower, where the astrologer did his work, Lecamus said to him:—

"Is my son really living?"

"Yes, he still lives," replied Ruggiero; "and the question now is how to save him. Remember this, seller of skins, I would not give two farthings for yours if ever in all your life a single syllable should escape you of what I am about to say."

"That is a useless caution, my friend; I have been furrier to the court since the time of the late Louis XII.; this is the fourth reign that I have seen."

"And you may soon see the fifth," remarked Ruggiero.

"What do you know about my son?"

"He has been put to the question."

"Poor boy!" said the old man, raising his eyes to heaven.

"His knees and ankles were a bit injured, but he has won a royal protection which will extend over his whole life," said the Florentine hastily, seeing the terror of the poor father. "Your little Christophe has done a service to our great queen, Catherine. If we manage to pull him out of the claws of the Guises you will see him some day councillor to the Parliament. Any man would gladly have his bones cracked three times over to stand so high in the good graces of this dear sovereign,—a grand and noble genius, who will triumph in the end over all obstacles. I have drawn the horoscope of the Duc de Guise; he will be killed within a year. Well, so Christophe saw the Prince de Conde—"

"You who read the future ought to know the past," said the furrier.

"My good man, I am not questioning you, I am telling you a fact. Now, if your son, who will to-morrow be placed in the prince's way as he passes, should recognize him, or if the prince should recognize your son, the head of Monsieur de Conde will fall. God knows what will become of his accomplice! However, don't be alarmed. Neither your son nor the prince will die; I have drawn their horoscope,—they will live; but I do not know in what way they will get out of this affair. Without distrusting the certainty of my calculations, we must do something to bring about results. To-morrow the prince will receive, from sure hands, a prayer-book in which we convey the information to him. God grant that your son be cautious, for him we cannot warn. A single glance of recognition will cost the prince's life. Therefore, although the queen-mother has every reason to trust in Christophe's faithfulness—"

"They've put it to a cruel test!" cried the furrier.

"Don't speak so! Do you think the queen-mother is on a bed of roses? She is taking measures as if the Guises had already decided on the death of the prince, and right she is, the wise and prudent queen! Now listen to me; she counts on you to help her in all things. You have some influence with the tiers-etat, where you represent the body of the guilds of Paris, and though the Guisards may promise you to set your son at liberty, try to fool them and maintain the independence of the guilds. Demand the queen-mother as regent; the king of Navarre will publicly accept the proposal at the session of the States-general."

"But the king?"

"The king will die," replied Ruggiero; "I have read his horoscope. What the queen-mother requires you to do for her at the States-general is a very simple thing; but there is a far greater service which she asks of you. You helped Ambroise Pare in his studies, you are his friend—"

"Ambroise now loves the Duc de Guise more than he loves me; and he is right, for he owes his place to him. Besides, he is faithful to the king. Though he inclines to the Reformed religion, he will never do anything against his duty."

"Curse these honest men!" cried the Florentine. "Ambroise boasted this evening that he could bring the little king safely through his present illness (for he is really ill). If the king recovers his health, the Guises triumph, the princes die, the house of Bourbon becomes extinct, we shall return to Florence, your son will be hanged, and the Lorrains will easily get the better of the other sons of France—"

"Great God!" exclaimed Lecamus.

"Don't cry out in that way,—it is like a burgher who knows nothing of the court,—but go at once to Ambroise and find out from him what he intends to do to save the king's life. If there is anything decided on, come back to me at once, and tell me the treatment in which he has such faith."

"But—" said Lecamus.

"Obey blindly, my dear friend; otherwise you will get your mind bewildered."

"He is right," thought the furrier. "I had better not know more"; and he went at once in search of the king's surgeon, who lived at a hostelry in the place du Martroi.

Catherine de' Medici was at this moment in a political extremity very much like that in which poor Christophe had seen her at Blois. Though she had been in a way trained by the struggle, though she had exercised her lofty intellect by the lessons of that first defeat, her present situation, while nearly the same, had become more critical, more perilous than it was at Amboise. Events, like the woman herself, had magnified. Though she seemed to be in full accordance with the Guises, Catherine held in her hand the threads of a wisely planned conspiracy against her terrible associates, and was only awaiting a propitious moment to throw off the mask. The cardinal had just obtained the positive certainty that Catherine was deceiving him. Her subtle Italian spirit felt that the Younger branch was the best hindrance she could offer to the ambition of the duke and the cardinal; and (in spite of the advice of the two Gondis, who urged her to let the Guises wreak their vengeance on the Bourbons) she defeated the scheme concocted by them with Spain to seize the province of Bearn, by warning Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre, of that threatened danger. As this state secret was known only to them and to the queen-mother, the Guises knew of course who had betrayed it, and resolved to send her back to Florence. But in order to make themselves perfectly sure of what they called her treason against the State (the State being the house of Lorraine), the duke and cardinal confided to her their intention of getting rid of the king of Navarre. The precautions instantly taken by Antoine proved conclusively to the two brothers that the secrets known only to them and the queen-mother had been divulged by the latter. The cardinal instantly taxed her with treachery, in presence of Francois II.,—threatening her with an edict of banishment in case of future indiscretion, which might, as they said, put the kingdom in danger.

Catherine, who then felt herself in the utmost peril, acted in the spirit of a great king, giving proof of her high capacity. It must be added, however, that she was ably seconded by her friends. L'Hopital managed to send her a note, written in the following terms:—

"Do not allow a prince of the blood to be put to death by a committee; or you will yourself be carried off in some way."

Catherine sent Birago to Vignay to tell the chancellor (l'Hopital) to come to Orleans at once, in spite of his being in disgrace. Birago returned the very night of which we are writing, and was now a few miles from Orleans with l'Hopital, who heartily avowed himself for the queen-mother. Chiverni, whose fidelity was very justly suspected by the Guises, had escaped from Orleans and reached Ecouen in ten hours, by a forced march which almost cost him his life. There he told the Connetable de Montmorency of the peril of his nephew, the Prince de Conde, and the audacious hopes of the Guises. The Connetable, furious at the thought that the prince's life hung upon that of Francois II., started for Orleans at once with a hundred noblemen and fifteen hundred cavalry. In order to take the Messieurs de Guise by surprise he avoided Paris, and came direct from Ecouen to Corbeil, and from Corbeil to Pithiviers by the valley of the Essonne.

"Soldier against soldier, we must leave no chances," he said on the occasion of this bold march.

Anne de Montmorency, who had saved France at the time of the invasion of Provence by Charles V., and the Duc de Guise, who had stopped the second invasion by the emperor at Metz, were, in truth, the two great warriors of France at this period. Catherine had awaited this precise moment to rouse the inextinguishable hatred of the Connetable, whose disgrace and banishment were the work of the Guises. The Marquis de Simeuse, however, who commanded at Gien, being made aware of the large force approaching under command of the Connetable, jumped on his horse hoping to reach Orleans in time to warn the duke and cardinal.

Sure that the Connetable would come to the rescue of his nephew, and full of confidence in the Chancelier l'Hopital's devotion to the royal cause, the queen-mother revived the hopes and the boldness of the Reformed party. The Colignys and the friends of the house of Bourbon, aware of their danger, now made common cause with the adherents of the queen-mother. A coalition between these opposing interests, attacked by a common enemy, formed itself silently in the States-general, where it soon became a question of appointing Catherine as regent in case the king should die. Catherine, whose faith in astrology was much greater than her faith in the Church, now dared all against her oppressors, seeing that her son was ill and apparently dying at the expiration of the time assigned to his life by the famous sorceress, whom Nostradamus had brought to her at the chateau of Chaumont.



XI. AMBROISE PARE

Some days before the terrible end of the reign of Francois II., the king insisted on sailing down the Loire, wishing not to be in the town of Orleans on the day when the Prince de Conde was executed. Having yielded the head of the prince to the Cardinal de Lorraine, he was equally in dread of a rebellion among the townspeople and of the prayers and supplications of the Princesse de Conde. At the moment of embarkation, one of the cold winds which sweep along the Loire at the beginning of winter gave him so sharp an ear-ache that he was obliged to return to his apartments; there he took to his bed, not leaving it again until he died. In contradiction of the doctors, who, with the exception of Chapelain, were his enemies, Ambroise Pare insisted that an abscess was formed in the king's head, and that unless an issue were given to it, the danger of death would increase daily. Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, and the curfew law, which was sternly enforced in Orleans, at this time practically in a state of siege, Pare's lamp shone from his window, and he was deep in study, when Lecamus called to him from below. Recognizing the voice of his old friend, Pare ordered that he should be admitted.

"You take no rest, Ambroise; while saving the lives of others you are wasting your own," said the furrier as he entered, looking at the surgeon, who sat, with opened books and scattered instruments, before the head of a dead man, lately buried and now disinterred, in which he had cut an opening.

"It is a matter of saving the king's life."

"Are you sure of doing it, Ambroise?" cried the old man, trembling.

"As sure as I am of my own existence. The king, my old friend, has a morbid ulcer pressing on his brain, which will presently suffice it if no vent is given to it, and the danger is imminent. But by boring the skull I expect to release the pus and clear the head. I have already performed this operation three times. It was invented by a Piedmontese; but I have had the honor to perfect it. The first operation I performed was at the siege of Metz, on Monsieur de Pienne, whom I cured, who was afterwards all the more intelligent in consequence. His was an abscess caused by the blow of an arquebuse. The second was on the head of a pauper, on whom I wanted to prove the value of the audacious operation Monsieur de Pienne had allowed me to perform. The third I did in Paris on a gentleman who is now entirely recovered. Trepanning—that is the name given to the operation—is very little known. Patients refuse it, partly because of the imperfection of the instruments; but I have at last improved them. I am practising now on this skull, that I may be sure of not failing to-morrow, when I operate on the head of the king."

"You ought indeed to be very sure you are right, for your own head would be in danger in case—"

"I'd wager my life I can cure him," replied Ambroise, with the conviction of a man of genius. "Ah! my old friend, where's the danger of boring into a skull with proper precautions? That is what soldiers do in battle every day of their lives, without taking any precautions."

"My son," said the burgher, boldly, "do you know that to save the king is to ruin France? Do you know that this instrument of yours will place the crown of the Valois on the head of the Lorrain who calls himself the heir of Charlemagne? Do you know that surgery and policy are at this moment sternly opposed to each other? Yes, the triumph of your genius will be the death of your religion. If the Guises gain the regency, the blood of the Reformers will flow like water. Be a greater citizen than you are a surgeon; oversleep yourself to-morrow morning and leave a free field to the other doctors who if they cannot cure the king will cure France."

"I!" exclaimed Pare. "I leave a man to die when I can cure him? No, no! were I to hang as an abettor of Calvin I shall go early to court. Do you not feel that the first and only reward I shall ask will be the life of your Christophe? Surely at such a moment Queen Mary can deny me nothing."

"Alas! my friend," returned Lecamus, "the little king has refused the pardon of the Prince de Conde to the princess. Do not kill your religion by saving the life of a man who ought to die."

"Do not you meddle with God's ordering of the future!" cried Pare. "Honest men can have but one motto: Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra!—do thy duty, come what will. That is what I did at the siege of Calais when I put my foot on the face of the Duc de Guise,—I ran the risk of being strangled by his friends and his servants; but to-day I am surgeon to the king; moreover I am of the Reformed religion; and yet the Guises are my friends. I shall save the king," cried the surgeon, with the sacred enthusiasm of a conviction bestowed by genius, "and God will save France!"

A knock was heard on the street door and presently one of Pare's servants gave a paper to Lecamus, who read aloud these terrifying words:—

"A scaffold is being erected at the convent of the Recollets: the Prince de Conde will be beheaded there to-morrow."

Ambroise and Lecamus looked at each other with an expression of the deepest horror.

"I will go and see it for myself," said the furrier.

No sooner was he in the open street than Ruggiero took his arm and asked by what means Ambroise Pare proposed to save the king. Fearing some trickery, the old man, instead of answering, replied that he wished to go and see the scaffold. The astrologer accompanied him to the place des Recollets, and there, truly enough, they found the carpenters putting up the horrible framework by torchlight.

"Hey, my friend," said Lecamus to one of the men, "what are you doing here at this time of night?"

"We are preparing for the hanging of heretics, as the blood-letting at Amboise didn't cure them," said a young Recollet who was superintending the work.

"Monseigneur the cardinal is very right," said Ruggiero, prudently; "but in my country we do better."

"What do you do?" said the young priest.

"We burn them."

Lecamus was forced to lean on the astrologer's arm, for his legs gave way beneath him; he thought it probable that on the morrow his son would hang from one of those gibbets. The poor old man was thrust between two sciences, astrology and surgery, both of which promised him the life of his son, for whom in all probability that scaffold was now erecting. In the trouble and distress of his mind, the Florentine was able to knead him like dough.

"Well, my worthy dealer in minever, what do you say now to the Lorraine jokes?" whispered Ruggiero.

"Alas! you know I would give my skin if that of my son were safe and sound."

"That is talking like your trade," said the Italian; "but explain to me the operation which Ambroise means to perform upon the king, and in return I will promise you the life of your son."

"Faithfully?" exclaimed the old furrier.

"Shall I swear it to you?" said Ruggiero.

Thereupon the poor old man repeated his conversation with Ambroise Pare to the astrologer, who, the moment that the secret of the great surgeon was divulged to him, left the poor father abruptly in the street in utter despair.

"What the devil does he mean, that miscreant?" cried Lecamus, as he watched Ruggiero hurrying with rapid steps to the place de l'Estape.

Lecamus was ignorant of the terrible scene that was taking place around the royal bed, where the imminent danger of the king's death and the consequent loss of power to the Guises had caused the hasty erection of the scaffold for the Prince de Conde, whose sentence had been pronounced, as it were by default,—the execution of it being delayed by the king's illness.

Absolutely no one but the persons on duty were in the halls, staircases, and courtyard of the royal residence, Le Bailliage. The crowd of courtiers were flocking to the house of the king of Navarre, on whom the regency would devolve on the death of the king, according to the laws of the kingdom. The French nobility, alarmed by the audacity of the Guises, felt the need of rallying around the chief of the younger branch, when, ignorant of the queen-mother's Italian policy, they saw her the apparent slave of the duke and cardinal. Antoine de Bourbon, faithful to his secret agreement with Catherine, was bound not to renounce the regency in her favor until the States-general had declared for it.

The solitude in which the king's house was left had a powerful effect on the mind of the Duc de Guise when, on his return from an inspection, made by way of precaution through the city, he found no one there but the friends who were attached exclusively to his own fortunes. The chamber in which was the king's bed adjoined the great hall of the Bailliage. It was at that period panelled in oak. The ceiling, composed of long, narrow boards carefully joined and painted, was covered with blue arabesques on a gold ground, a part of which being torn down about fifty years ago was instantly purchased by a lover of antiquities. This room, hung with tapestry, the floor being covered with a carpet, was so dark and gloomy that the torches threw scarcely any light. The vast four-post bedstead with its silken curtains was like a tomb. Beside her husband, close to his pillow, sat Mary Stuart, and near her the Cardinal de Lorraine. Catherine was seated in a chair at a little distance. The famous Jean Chapelain, the physician on duty (who was afterwards chief physician to Charles IX.) was standing before the fireplace. The deepest silence reigned. The young king, pale and shrunken, lay as if buried in his sheets, his pinched little face scarcely showing on the pillow. The Duchesse de Guise, sitting on a stool, attended Queen Mary, while on the other side, near Catherine, in the recess of a window, Madame de Fiesque stood watching the gestures and looks of the queen-mother; for she knew the dangers of her position.

In the hall, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, Monsieur de Cypierre, governor of the Duc d'Orleans and now appointed governor of the town, occupied one corner of the fireplace with the two Gondis. Cardinal de Tournon, who in this crisis espoused the interests of the queen-mother on finding himself treated as an inferior by the Cardinal de Lorraine, of whom he was certainly the ecclesiastical equal, talked in a low voice to the Gondis. The marshals de Vieilleville and Saint-Andre and the keeper of the seals, who presided at the States-general, were talking together in a whisper of the dangers to which the Guises were exposed.

The lieutenant-general of the kingdom crossed the room on his entrance, casting a rapid glance about him, and bowed to the Duc d'Orleans whom he saw there.

"Monseigneur," he said, "this will teach you to know men. The Catholic nobility of the kingdom have gone to pay court to a heretic prince, believing that the States-general will give the regency to the heirs of a traitor who long detained in prison your illustrious grandfather."

Then having said these words, which were destined to plough a furrow in the heart of the young prince, he passed into the bedroom, where the king was not so much asleep as plunged in a heavy torpor. The Duc de Guise was usually able to correct the sinister aspect of his scarred face by an affable and pleasing manner, but on this occasion, when he saw the instrument of his power breaking in his very hands, he was unable to force a smile. The cardinal, whose civil courage was equal to his brother's military daring, advanced a few steps to meet him.

"Robertet thinks that little Pinard is sold to the queen-mother," he whispered, leading the duke into the hall; "they are using him to work upon the members of the States-general."

"Well, what does it signify if we are betrayed by a secretary when all else betrays us?" cried the lieutenant-general. "The town is for the Reformation, and we are on the eve of a revolt. Yes! the Wasps are discontented"; he continued, giving the Orleans people their nickname; "and if Pare does not save the king we shall have a terrible uprising. Before long we shall be forced to besiege Orleans, which is nothing but a bog of Huguenots."

"I have been watching that Italian woman," said the cardinal, "as she sits there with absolute insensibility. She is watching and waiting, God forgive her! for the death of her son; and I ask myself whether we should not do a wise thing to arrest her at once, and also the king of Navarre."

"It is already more than we want upon our hands to have the Prince de Conde in prison," replied the duke.

The sound of a horseman riding in haste to the gate of the Bailliage echoed through the hall. The duke and cardinal went to the window, and by the light of the torches which were in the portico the duke recognized on the rider's hat the famous Lorraine cross, which the cardinal had lately ordered his partisans to wear. He sent an officer of the guard, who was stationed in the antechamber, to give entrance to the new-comer; and went himself, followed by his brother, to meet him on the landing.

"What is it, my dear Simeuse?" asked the duke, with that charm of manner which he always displayed to military men, as soon as he recognized the governor of Gien.

"The Connetable has reached Pithiviers; he left Ecouen with two thousand cavalry and one hundred nobles."

"With their suites?"

"Yes, monseigneur," replied Simeuse; "in all, two thousand six hundred men. Some say that Thore is behind them with a body of infantry. If the Connetable delays awhile, expecting his son, you still have time to repulse him."

"Is that all you know? Are the reasons of this sudden call to arms made known?"

"Montmorency talks as little as he writes; go you and meet him, brother, while I prepare to welcome him with the head of his nephew," said the cardinal, giving orders that Robertet be sent to him at once.

"Vieilleville!" cried the duke to the marechal, who came immediately. "The Connetable has the audacity to come here under arms; if I go to meet him will you be responsible to hold the town?"

"As soon as you leave it the burghers will fly to arms; and who can answer for the result of an affair between cavalry and citizens in these narrow streets?" replied the marechal.

"Monseigneur," said Robertet, rushing hastily up the stairs, "the Chancelier de l'Hopital is at the gate and asks to enter; are we to let him in?"

"Yes, open the gate," answered the cardinal. "Connetable and chancelier together would be dangerous; we must separate them. We have been boldly tricked by the queen-mother into choosing l'Hopital as chancellor."

Robertet nodded to a captain of the guard, who awaited an answer at the foot of the staircase; then he turned round quickly to receive the orders of the cardinal.

"Monseigneur, I take the liberty," he said, making one last effort, "to point out that the sentence should be approved by the king in council. If you violate the law on a prince of the blood, it will not be respected for either a cardinal or a Duc de Guise."

"Pinard has upset your mind, Robertet," said the cardinal, sternly. "Do you not know that the king signed the order of execution the day he was about to leave Orleans, in order that the sentence might be carried out in his absence?"

The lieutenant-general listened to this discussion without a word, but he took his brother by the arm and led him into a corner of the hall.

"Undoubtedly," he said, "the heirs of Charlemagne have the right to recover the crown which was usurped from their house by Hugh Capet; but can they do it? The pear is not yet ripe. Our nephew is dying, and the whole court has gone over to the king of Navarre."

"The king's heart failed him, or the Bearnais would have been stabbed before now," said the cardinal; "and we could easily have disposed of the Valois children."

"We are very ill-placed here," said the duke; "the rebellion of the town will be supported by the States-general. L'Hopital, whom we protected while the queen-mother opposed his appointment, is to-day against us, and yet it is all-important that we should have the justiciary with us. Catherine has too many supporters at the present time; we cannot send her back to Italy. Besides, there are still three Valois princes—"

"She is no longer a mother, she is all queen," said the cardinal. "In my opinion, this is the moment to make an end of her. Vigor, and more and more vigor! that's my prescription!" he cried.

So saying, the cardinal returned to the king's chamber, followed by the duke. The priest went straight to the queen-mother.

"The papers of Lasagne, the secretary of the Prince de Conde, have been communicated to you, and you now know that the Bourbons are endeavoring to dethrone your son."

"I know all that," said Catherine.

"Well, then, will you give orders to arrest the king of Navarre?"

"There is," she said with dignity, "a lieutenant-general of the kingdom."

At this instant Francois II. groaned piteously, complaining aloud of the terrible pains in his ear. The physician left the fireplace where he was warming himself, and went to the bedside to examine the king's head.

"Well, monsieur?" said the Duc de Guise, interrogatively.

"I dare not take upon myself to apply a blister to draw the abscess. Maitre Ambroise has promised to save the king's life by an operation, and I might thwart it."

"Let us postpone the treatment till to-morrow morning," said Catherine, coldly, "and order all the physicians to be present; for we all know the calumnies to which the death of kings gives rise."

She went to her son and kissed his hand; then she withdrew to her own apartments.

"With what composure that audacious daughter of a shop-keeper alluded to the death of the dauphin, poisoned by Montecuculi, one of her own Italian followers!" said Mary Stuart.

"Mary!" cried the little king, "my grandfather never doubted her innocence."

"Can we prevent that woman from coming here to-morrow?" said the queen to her uncles in a low voice.

"What will become of us if the king dies?" returned the cardinal, in a whisper. "Catherine will shovel us all into his grave."

Thus the question was plainly put between Catherine de' Medici and the house of Lorraine during that fatal night. The arrival of the Connetable de Montmorency and the Chancelier de l'Hopital were distinct indications of rebellion; the morning of the next day would therefore be decisive.



XII. DEATH OF FRANCOIS II

On the morrow the queen-mother was the first to enter the king's chamber. She found no one there but Mary Stuart, pale and weary, who had passed the night in prayer beside the bed. The Duchesse de Guise had kept her mistress company, and the maids of honor had taken turns in relieving one another. The young king slept. Neither the duke nor the cardinal had yet appeared. The priest, who was bolder than the soldier, had, it was afterward said, put forth his utmost energy during the night to induce his brother to make himself king. But, in face of the assembled States-general, and threatened by a battle with Montmorency, the Balafre declared the circumstances unfavorable; he refused, against his brother's utmost urgency, to arrest the king of Navarre, the queen-mother, l'Hopital, the Cardinal de Tournon, the Gondis, Ruggiero, and Birago, objecting that such violent measures would bring on a general rebellion. He postponed the cardinal's scheme until the fate of Francois II. should be determined.

The deepest silence reigned in the king's chamber. Catherine, accompanied by Madame de Fiesque, went to the bedside and gazed at her son with a semblance of grief that was admirably simulated. She put her handkerchief to her eyes and walked to the window where Madame de Fiesque brought her a seat. Thence she could see into the courtyard.

It had been agreed between Catherine and the Cardinal de Tournon that if the Connetable should successfully enter the town the cardinal would come to the king's house with the two Gondis; if otherwise, he would come alone. At nine in the morning the duke and cardinal, followed by their gentlemen, who remained in the hall, entered the king's bedroom,—the captain on duty having informed them that Ambroise Pare had arrived, together with Chapelain and three other physicians, who hated Pare and were all in the queen-mother's interests.

A few moments later and the great hall of the Bailliage presented much the same aspect as that of the Salle des gardes at Blois on the day when Christophe was put to the torture and the Duc de Guise was proclaimed lieutenant-governor of the kingdom,—with the single exception that whereas love and joy overflowed the royal chamber and the Guises triumphed, death and mourning now reigned within that darkened room, and the Guises felt that power was slipping through their fingers. The maids of honor of the two queens were again in their separate camps on either side of the fireplace, in which glowed a monstrous fire. The hall was filled with courtiers. The news—spread about, no one knew how—of some daring operation contemplated by Ambroise Pare to save the king's life, had brought back the lords and gentlemen who had deserted the house the day before. The outer staircase and courtyard were filled by an anxious crowd. The scaffold erected during the night for the Prince de Conde opposite to the convent of the Recollets, had amazed and startled the whole nobility. All present spoke in a low voice and the talk was the same mixture as at Blois, of frivolous and serious, light and earnest matters. The habit of expecting troubles, sudden revolutions, calls to arms, rebellions, and great events, which marked the long period during which the house of Valois was slowly being extinguished in spite of Catherine de' Medici's great efforts to preserve it, took its rise at this time.

A deep silence prevailed for a certain distance beyond the door of the king's chamber, which was guarded by two halberdiers, two pages, and by the captain of the Scotch guard. Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, held a prisoner in his own house, learned by his present desertion the hopes of the courtiers who had flocked to him the day before, and was horrified by the news of the preparations made during the night for the execution of his brother.

Standing before the fireplace in the great hall of the Bailliage was one of the greatest and noblest figures of that day,—the Chancelier de l'Hopital, wearing his crimson robe lined and edged with ermine, and his cap on his head according to the privilege of his office. This courageous man, seeing that his benefactors were traitorous and self-seeking, held firmly to the cause of the kings, represented by the queen-mother; at the risk of losing his head, he had gone to Rouen to consult with the Connetable de Montmorency. No one ventured to draw him from the reverie in which he was plunged. Robertet, the secretary of State, two marshals of France, Vieilleville, and Saint-Andre, and the keeper of the seals, were collected in a group before the chancellor. The courtiers present were not precisely jesting; but their talk was malicious, especially among those who were not for the Guises.

Presently voices were heard to rise in the king's chamber. The two marshals, Robertet, and the chancellor went nearer to the door; for not only was the life of the king in question, but, as the whole court knew well, the chancellor, the queen-mother, and her adherents were in the utmost danger. A deep silence fell on the whole assembly.

Ambroise Pare had by this time examined the king's head; he thought the moment propitious for his operation; if it was not performed suffusion would take place, and Francois II. might die at any moment. As soon as the duke and cardinal entered the chamber he explained to all present that in so urgent a case it was necessary to trepan the head, and he now waited till the king's physician ordered him to perform the operation.

"Cut the head of my son as though it were a plank!—with that horrible instrument!" cried Catherine de' Medici. "Maitre Ambroise, I will not permit it."

The physicians were consulting together; but Catherine spoke in so loud a voice that her words reached, as she intended they should, beyond the door.

"But, madame, if there is no other way to save him?" said Mary Stuart, weeping.

"Ambroise," cried Catherine; "remember that your head will answer for the king's life."

"We are opposed to the treatment suggested by Maitre Ambroise," said the three physicians. "The king can be saved by injecting through the ear a remedy which will draw the contents of the abscess through that passage."

The Duc de Guise, who was watching Catherine's face, suddenly went up to her and drew her into the recess of the window.

"Madame," he said, "you wish the death of your son; you are in league with our enemies, and have been since Blois. This morning the Counsellor Viole told the son of your furrier that the Prince de Conde's head was about to be cut off. That young man, who, when the question was applied, persisted in denying all relations with the prince, made a sign of farewell to him as he passed before the window of his dungeon. You saw your unhappy accomplice tortured with royal insensibility. You are now endeavoring to prevent the recovery of your eldest son. Your conduct forces us to believe that the death of the dauphin, which placed the crown on your husband's head was not a natural one, and that Montecuculi was your—"

"Monsieur le chancilier!" cried Catherine, at a sign from whom Madame de Fiesque opened both sides of the bedroom door.

The company in the hall then saw the scene that was taking place in the royal chamber: the livid little king, his face half dead, his eyes sightless, his lips stammering the word "Mary," as he held the hand of the weeping queen; the Duchesse de Guise motionless, frightened by Catherine's daring act; the duke and cardinal, also alarmed, keeping close to the queen-mother and resolving to have her arrested on the spot by Maille-Breze; lastly, the tall Ambroise Pare, assisted by the king's physician, holding his instrument in his hand but not daring to begin the operation, for which composure and total silence were as necessary as the consent of the other surgeons.

"Monsieur le chancelier," said Catherine, "the Messieurs de Guise wish to authorize a strange operation upon the person of the king; Ambroise Pare is preparing to cut open his head. I, as the king's mother and a member of the council of the regency,—I protest against what appears to me a crime of lese-majeste. The king's physicians advise an injection through the ear, which seems to me as efficacious and less dangerous than the brutal operation proposed by Pare."

When the company in the hall heard these words a smothered murmur rose from their midst; the cardinal allowed the chancellor to enter the bedroom and then he closed the door.

"I am lieutenant-general of the kingdom," said the Duc de Guise; "and I would have you know, Monsieur le chancelier, that Ambroise, the king's surgeon, answers for his life."

"Ah! if this be the turn that things are taking!" exclaimed Ambroise Pare. "I know my rights and how I should proceed." He stretched his arm over the bed. "This bed and the king are mine. I claim to be sole master of this case and solely responsible. I know the duties of my office; I shall operate upon the king without the sanction of the physicians."

"Save him!" said the cardinal, "and you shall be the richest man in France."

"Go on!" cried Mary Stuart, pressing the surgeon's hand.

"I cannot prevent it," said the chancellor; "but I shall record the protest of the queen-mother."

"Robertet!" called the Duc de Guise.