"I shall only go there and back," he said; "I shall be here again almost directly."

On reaching his carriage, M. de Praslin, the captain of his guard, proposed to attend him, but he would not permit it, saying,—

"Get you gone; I want nobody; go about your business."

Yet that morning, in a conversation with Guise and Bassompierre, he had spoken as if he dreaded quickly coming death.

"You will live, please God, long years yet," said Bassompierre. "You are only in the flower of your age, in perfect bodily health and strength, full of honor more than any mortal man, in the most flourishing kingdom in the world, loved and adored by your subjects, with fine houses, fine women, fine children who are growing up."

Henry sighed, as if still oppressed by his presentiments, and sadly answered,—

"My friend, all that must be left."

Those were his last words of which any record remains, save the few he spoke in the carriage. A few hours afterwards all the earthly blessings of which Bassompierre spoke were naught to him. The king was dead.

To return to our subject; in the carriage with the king were several gentlemen of the court. Henry occupied the rear seat at the left, with M. d'Epernon seated at his right, and M. de Montbazon between him and the door, while several other gentlemen occupied the remaining seats. When the carriage reached the Croix du Tiroir, the coachman asked whither he should drive, and was bidden to go towards St. Innocent. On the way thither, while in the Rue de la Ferronnerie, a cart obstructed the way, so that the carriage had to turn towards the sidewalk and to proceed more slowly. Here were some ironmongers' shops, beside one of which lurked a man, his eyes keenly fixed on the approaching carriage, his hand nervously clutching some object in his pocket.

As the carriage moved slowly by, this man sprang from his covert and rushed towards it, a knife in his hand. In an instant he had dealt the king two blows, in rapid succession, in the left side. The first struck him below the armpit and went upward, merely grazing the flesh. The other proved more dangerous. It entered his side between the fifth and sixth ribs, and, taking a downward direction, cut a large blood-vessel. The king, by chance, had his left hand on the shoulder of M. de Montbazon, and was leaning towards M. d'Epernon, to whom he was speaking. He thus laid himself more fully open to the assassin's knife.

All had passed so quickly that no movement of defence was possible. Henry gave a low cry and made a few movements.

"What is the matter, sir?" asked M. de Montbazon, who had not seen the affair.

"It is nothing," answered the king. "It is nothing," he repeated, his voice now so low that they could barely hear him. Those were the last words he spoke.

The assassin had been seized. He was a fanatic, named Francois Ravaillac, who had been roused to his mad act by rumors that Henry intended to make war upon the pope, and other baseless fancies of the king's opponents. With him we are not further concerned, other than to say that he was made to suffer the most barbarous tortures for his deed.

The carriage was turned and driven back to the Louvre. On reaching the entrance steps some wine was given to the wounded monarch. An officer of the guard raised his head, his only sign of intelligence being some movements of the eyes. In a moment more they were closed, never to be opened again.

He was carried up-stairs and laid on the couch in his closet, and from there taken to the bed in his chamber. As he lay there some one gave him holy water, and M. de Vic, a councillor of state, put to his mouth the cross of his order, and directed his thoughts to God. All this was lost on the king. He lay motionless and insensible. All around him were in tears. The grief of the queen was unconsolable. All Paris was weeping. The monarch against whom the Parisians had so bitterly fought they now mourned as they would have done for their dearest friend.

The surgeons wanted to dress the king's wounds. Milon, the chief physician, who sat weeping at the bedside, waved them aside. A faint sigh died away on the king's lips. "It is all over," said Milon, sadly. "He is gone."

What followed may be told in a few words. The old adage, "The king is dead; long live the king!" was the thought of practical men of affairs. Sully, whom the news of the assassination had raised in haste from his sick-bed, put himself quickly at the head of some forty horse and rode towards the palace. Guise and Bassompierre had come to the door, to see what was passing outside, as he rode up.

"Gentlemen," he said to them, with tearful eyes, "if the service you vowed to the king be impressed upon your souls as deeply as it ought to be with all good Frenchmen, swear this moment to keep towards the king's son and heir the same allegiance that you showed him, and to spend your lives and your blood in avenging his death."

"Sir," answered Bassompierre, "it is for us to cause this oath to be taken by others; we have no need to be exhorted thereto."

Leaving them, Sully rode to the Bastille, which he took possession of, and sent out soldiers to seize and carry off all the bread that could be found in the market and at the shops of the bakers. He despatched a messenger also, in the greatest haste, to his son-in-law, M. de Rohan, then in command of a force of six thousand Swiss, bidding him to march with all speed upon Paris.

Henry IV. was dead. His son was his legitimate successor. But the murder of Henry III. had been followed by a contest for the throne. That of Henry IV. might be. Sully felt it necessary to take precautions, although the king was hardly cold in death. The king dies; the kingship survives; prudent men, on whom the peace of a people depend, prepare without delay; the Duke de Sully was such a man. His precautions, however, were not needed. No one thought of opposing the heirship of the king's son.



RICHELIEU AND THE CONSPIRATORS.

In a richly-furnished state apartment of the royal palace of the Luxembourg, on a day in November, 1630, stood Louis XIII., king of France, tapping nervously with his fingers on the window-pane, and with a disturbed and irresolute look upon his face. Beside him was his favorite, St. Simon, a showily-dressed and handsome gentleman of the court.

"What do you think of all this?" asked the king, his fingers keeping up their idle drumming on the glass.

"Sir, I seem to be in another world," was the politic reply. "But at any rate you are master."

"I am," said the king, proudly, "and I will make it felt, too."

The royal prisoner was stirring uneasily in the bonds which hard necessity had cast round his will. It was against Cardinal Richelieu that his testy remark was made, yet in the very speaking he could not but feel that to lose Richelieu was to lose the bulwark of his throne; that this imperious master, against whose rule he chafed, was the glory and the support of his reign.

Just now, however, the relations between king and cardinal were sadly strained. Mary de' Medici, the king's mother, once Richelieu's ardent friend, was now his active foe. The queen, Anne of Austria, was equally hostile. Their influence had been used to its utmost to poison the mind of the monarch against his minister, and seemingly with success. To all appearance it looked as if the great cardinal was near his fall.

Rumor of what was afloat had invaded the court. Everywhere were secret whisperings, knowing looks, expectant movements. The courtiers were flocking to the Luxembourg, in hopes of some advantage to themselves. Marillac, the keeper of the seals, was at his country house at Glatigny, very near Versailles, where the king was expected. He remained there in hopes that Louis would send for him and put the power of the disgraced cardinal into his hands. The colossus seemed about to fall. All waited expectantly.

The conspiracy of the queen-mother had gone farther than to use her personal influence with her son against the cardinal. There were others in league with her, particularly Marillac, the keeper of the seals, and Marshal Marillac, his brother, then in command of a large force in Piedmont. All had been carefully prepared against the fall of the minister. The astute conspirators had fully laid their plans as to what was to follow.

Unfortunately for them, they did not reckon with the two principal parties concerned, Louis XIII. and Cardinal Richelieu. With all his weaknesses of temper and mind, the king had intellect enough to know what were the great interests of his kingdom and power, and on whose shoulders they rested. Above all the littleness of a court cabal he could not but discern the great questions which impended, and with which he felt quite incompetent to deal. And he could perceive but one man in his kingdom able to handle these great problems of state.

As for Richelieu, he was by no means blind to what was going on around him. He was the last man in the world to be a dupe. Delaying until the time seemed ripe to move, he requested and obtained an interview with the king. They were a long time closeted, while all the courtier-world of Paris waited in expectation and suspense.

What passed in that private cabinet of the palace no one knew, but when the interview was over it quickly became evident that the queen-mother and her associates had lost, the cardinal had won. Michael de Marillac had hopeful dreams that night, as he slept in his house at Glatigny; but when he awoke in the morning it was to receive the disturbing news that the king and the cardinal were at Versailles together, the minister being lodged in a room under that of the monarch. Quickly came still more disturbing news. The king demanded a return of the seals. Before this tidings could be well digested, the frightened plotter learned that his own arrest had been ordered, and that the exons were already at his door to secure his person.

While the courtier conspirator was being thus attended to, the soldier, his brother, was not forgotten. A courier had been despatched to the headquarters of the army in Piedmont, bearing a letter to Marshal Schomberg, who, with Marshals La Force and Marillac, had formed there a junction of the forces under their control. Marillac was in command on the day of the courier's arrival, and was impatiently awaiting the news, for which he had been prepared by his brother, of the cardinal's disgrace.

Schomberg opened his despatches. The first words he saw, in the king's own handwriting, were these:

"My dear cousin, you will not fail to arrest Marshal Marillac; it is for the good of my service and for your own exculpation."

Schomberg looked at the document with startled eyes. What could this mean? And was it safe to attempt an arrest? A large section of the troops were devoted to Marillac. He consulted with La Force, who advised him to obey orders, whatever the consequences. Schomberg thereupon showed Marillac the despatch. He beheld it with surprise and alarm, but without thought of resistance.

"I can protest that I have done nothing contrary to the king's service," he said. "The truth is, that my brother, the keeper of the seals, and I have always been the servants of the queen-mother. She must have had the worst of it, and Cardinal Richelieu has won the day against her and her servants."

So it proved, indeed, and he was to suffer for it. He was tried,—not on any political charge, however, the crimes alleged against him were peculation and extortion, common practices with many of his fellow-generals.

"It is a very strange thing," said he, bitterly, "to prosecute me as they do; my trial is a mere question of hay, straw, wood, stones, and lime; there is not case enough for whipping a lackey."

He was mistaken; there was case enough for beheading a marshal. It was not a question of peculation, but of offending the great cardinal, for which he was really put on trial, and the case ended in his being found guilty of malfeasance in office and executed. His brother died in prison three months afterwards,—of decline, so the records say.

"Dupes' Day," as the day we have described came to be called, was over. The queen-mother had lost. Her dupes had suffered. Richelieu was more powerful than ever. She had but strengthened his ascendancy over the king. But Mary de' Medici was not the woman to acknowledge defeat easily. No sooner had her first effort failed than her enmity against the too-powerful minister showed itself in a new direction, the principal agent of her purposes being now her son, the Duke of Orleans, brother to the king. The duke, after an angry interview with the cardinal, left Paris in haste for Orleans, his mother declaring to the king that the occasion of his sudden departure was that he could no longer tolerate by his presence Richelieu's violent proceedings against herself. She professed to have been taken by surprise by his departure, which Louis doubting, "she took occasion to belch forth fire and flames against the cardinal, and made a fresh attempt to ruin him in the king's estimation, though she had previously bound herself by oath to take no more steps against him."

Her malignity defeated itself. Richelieu was too skilful an adept in the game of politics to be so easily beaten. He brought the affair before the council, seemingly utterly indifferent what might be done; the trouble might be ended, he suggested, by his own retirement or that of the queen-mother, whichever in their wisdom they might deem best.

The implied threat settled the matter. The king, alarmed at the idea of having the government of France left on his weak hands, at once gave the offending lady to understand that she had better retire for a time to one of his provincial palaces, recommending Moulins. Mary de' Medici heard this order with fiery indignation. She shut herself up in the castle of Compiegne, where she then was, and declared that she would not leave unless dragged out by main force. In the end, however, she changed her mind, fled by night from the castle, and made her way to Brussels, where she took refuge from her powerful foe. Richelieu's game was won. Mary de' Medici had lost all influence with her son. She was never to see him again.

A number of years passed before a new plot was hatched against the cardinal. Then a conspiracy was organized which threatened not only his power but his life. It was in 1636. The king's headquarters were then at the castle of Demuin. The Duke of Orleans, who had been recently in armed rebellion against the king, and had been pardoned for his treason, determined, in common with the Count of Soissons, that their enemy, the cardinal, should die. There were others in this plot of assassination, two of the duke's gentlemen, Montresor and Saint Ibal, being chosen to deal the fatal blow. They were to station themselves at the foot of the grand stairway, meet Richelieu at his exit from the council, and strike him dead. The duke was to give the signal for the murderous assault.

The door of the council chamber opened. The king and the cardinal came out together and descended the stairs in company, Richelieu attending Louis until he had reached the foot of the stairway, and gone into an adjoining room. The cardinal turned to ascend again, without a moment's suspicion that the two gentlemen at the stair-foot clutched hidden daggers in their hands, ready, at a signal from the duke, who stood near by, to plunge them in his breast.

The signal did not come. At the last moment the courage of Gaston of Orleans failed him. Whether from something in Richelieu's earnest and dignified aspect, or some sudden fear of serious consequences to himself, the chief conspirator turned hastily away, without speaking the fatal word agreed upon. What the duke feared to do, the count dared not do. The two chosen assassins stood expectant, greeting the cardinal as he passed, and waiting in nervous impatience for the promised signal. It failed to come. Their daggers remained undrawn. Richelieu calmly ascended the stairs to his rooms, without a dream of the deadly peril he had run.

The conspiracy against the cardinal which has attained the greatest historical notoriety is that associated with the name of Cinq-Mars, the famous favorite of Louis XIII. Brilliant and witty, a true type of the courtiers of the time, this handsome youth so amused and interested the king that, when he was only nineteen years of age, Louis made him master of the wardrobe and grand equerry of France. M. Le Grand he was called, and grand enough he seemed, in his independent and capricious dealings with the king. Louis went so far as to complain to Richelieu of the humors of his youthful favorite.

"I am very sorry," he wrote, under date of January 4, 1641, "to trouble you about the ill-tempers of M. Le Grand. I upbraided him with his heedlessness; he answered that for that matter he could not change, and that he should do no better than he had done. I said that, considering his obligations to me, he ought not to address me in that manner. He answered in his usual way; that he didn't want my kindness, that he could do very well without it, and that he would be quite as well content to be Cinq-Mars as M. Le Grand, but as for changing his ways and his life, he couldn't do it. And so, he continually nagging at me and I at him, we came as far as the court-yard, where I said to him that, being in the temper he was in, he would do me the pleasure of not coming to see me. I have not seen him since."

This letter yields a curious revelation of the secret history of a royal court. There have been few kings with whom such impudent independence would have served. Louis XIII. was one of them. Cinq-Mars seems to have known his man. The quarrel was not of long continuance. Richelieu, who had first placed the youth near the king, easily reconciled them, a service which the foolish boy soon repaid by lending an ear to the enemies of the cardinal. For this Richelieu was in a way responsible. He had begun to find the constant attendance of the favorite upon the king troublesome to himself, and gave him plainly to understand so. "One day he sent word to him not to be for the future so continually at his heels, and treated him even to his face with as much tartness and imperiousnesss as if he had been the lowest of his valets." Such treatment was not likely to be well received by one of the independent disposition of Cinq-Mars. He joined in a plot against the cardinal.

The king was ill; the cardinal more so. Gaston, Duke of Orleans, was again in Paris, and full of his old intriguing spirit. The Duke of Bouillon was there also, having been sent for by the king to take command of the army of Italy. He, too, was drawn into the plot which was being woven against Richelieu. The queen, Anne of Austria, was another of the conspirators. The plot thus organized was the deepest and most far-reaching which had yet been laid against the all-powerful minister.

Bouillon was prince-sovereign of the town of Sedan. This place was to serve the conspirators as an asylum in case of reverse. But a town was not enough; an army was needed; whence should it come? Spain might furnish it.

The affair was growing to the dimensions of a conspiracy against the crown as well as the minister. Viscount de Fontrailles, a man who detested the cardinal, and would not have hesitated to murder him as a simpler way of disposing of the difficulty, was named by Cinq-Mars as a proper person to deal with the Spaniards. He set out for Madrid, and soon succeeded in negotiating a secret treaty, in the name of the Duke of Orleans, by whose terms Spain was to furnish the conspirators with twelve thousand foot, five thousand horse, and the necessary funds for the enterprise. The town of Sedan, and the names of Cinq-Mars and Bouillon, were not mentioned in this treaty, but were given in a separate document.

While this dangerous work was going on the cardinal was dangerously ill, a prey to violent fever, and with an abscess on his arm which prevented him from writing. The king was with the army, which was besieging Perpignan. With him was Cinq-Mars, who was doing his best to insinuate suspicions of the minister into the mind of the king. All seemed promising for the conspirators, the illness of the cardinal, in their opinion, being likely to carry him off in no long period, and meanwhile preventing him from discovering the plot and setting himself right with the king.

Evidently these hopeful people did not know the resources of Cardinal Richelieu. In all his severe illness his eyes had not been blind, his intellect not at rest. Keen as they thought themselves, they had a man with double their resources to deal with. Though Richelieu was by no means surrounded by the intricate web of spies and intrigues with which fiction and the drama have credited him, he was not without his secret agents, and his means of tracing the most hidden movements of his enemies. Cinq-Mars lacked the caution necessary for a conspirator. His purposes became evident to the king, who had no thought of exchanging his great minister for a frivolous boy who was only fitted to amuse his hours of relaxation. The outcome of the affair appears in a piece of news published in the Gazette de France on June 21, 1642.

"The cardinal-duke," it said, "after remaining two days at Arles, embarked on the 11th of this month for Tarascon, his health becoming better and better. The king has ordered under arrest Marquis de Cinq-Mars, grand equerry of France."

Had a thunderbolt fallen in their midst, the enemies of Richelieu could not have been in greater consternation than at this simple item of news. How came it about? The fox was not asleep. Nor had his illness robbed his hand and his brain of their cunning. The king, overladen with affairs of state from which his minister when well had usually relieved him, sent a message of confidence to Richelieu, indicating that his enemies would seek in vain to separate them. In reply the cardinal sent the king a document which filled the monarch with an astonishment that was only equalled by his wrath. It was a copy of the secret treaty of Orleans with Spain!

The king could hardly believe his eyes. So this was what lay behind the insinuations of Cinq-Mars? An insurrection was projected against the state! The cardinal, mayhap the king himself, was to be overthrown by force of arms! Only the sleepless vigilance of Richelieu could have discovered and exposed this perilous plot. It remained for the king to second the work of his minister by decisive action. An order was at once issued for the arrest of Cinq-Mars and his intimate friend, M. de Thou; while a messenger was sent off in all haste to the army of Italy, bearing orders for the arrest of the Duke of Bouillon at the head of his troops.

Fontrailles, just arrived from his mission to Spain, returned to that kingdom with all haste, having first said to Cinq-Mars, "Sir, you are a fine figure; if you were shorter by the whole head you would not cease to be very tall. As for me, who am already very short, nothing could be taken off me without inconveniencing me and making me cut the poorest figure in the world. You will be good enough, if you please, to let me get out of the way of edge tools."

The minor parties to the conspiracy, with the exception of the prudent Fontrailles, were in custody. The most guilty of all, the king's brother, was at large. What part was he to play in the drama of retribution? Flight, or treachery to his accomplices, alone remained to him. He chose the latter, sending an agent to the king, who had just joined the cardinal at Tarascon, with directions to confess everything and implore for him the pardon of his royal brother. The cardinal questioned this agent, the Abbe de la Riviere, with unrelenting severity, made him write and sign everything, and was inclined to make the prince-duke appear as a witness at the trial, and yield up his accomplices in the face of the world. This final disgrace, however, was omitted at the wish of Louis, and an order of exile was sent from the king to his brother, which bore this note in the cardinal's hand,—

"Monsieur will have in his place of exile twelve thousand crowns a month, the same sum that the king of Spain had promised to give him."

The dying cardinal had triumphed over all his foes. He had, from his bed at Tarascon, dictated to the king the course to be pursued, entailing dishonor to the Duke of Orleans and death to the grand equerry of France. The king then took his way back to Fontainebleau in the litter of the cardinal, which the latter had lent him. Richelieu did not remain long behind him. He was conveyed to his house in Lyons in a litter shaped like a square chamber, covered with red damask, and borne on the shoulders of eighteen guards. Within, beside his couch, was a table covered with papers, at which he worked with his ordinary diligence, chatting pleasantly at intervals with such of his servants as accompanied him. In the same equipage he left Lyons for the Loire, on his return to Paris. On the way it was necessary to pull down walls and bridge ditches that this great litter, in which the greatest man in France lay in mortal illness, might pass.

What followed needs few words. The Duke of Bouillon confessed everything, and was pardoned on condition of his delivering up Sedan to the king. He was kept in prison, however, till after the death of his accomplices, Cinq-Mars and De Thou, who were tried and sentenced to execution.

Bouillon had not long to wait. The execution took place on the very day on which sentence had been pronounced. The two culprits met death firmly. Cinq-Mars was but twenty-two years of age. He had rapidly run his course. "Now that I make not a single step which does not lead me to death, I am more capable than anybody else of estimating the value of the things of the world," he wrote. "Enough of this world; away to Paradise!" said De Thou, as he walked to the scaffold.

There were no more conspiracies against Richelieu. There was no time for them, for in less than three months afterwards he was dead. The greatest, or at least the most dramatic, minister known to the pages of history had departed from this world. His royal master did not long survive him. In five months afterwards, Louis XIII. had followed his minister to the grave.



THE PARLIAMENT OF PARIS.

In the streets of Paris all was tumult and fiery indignation. Never had there been a more sudden or violent outbreak. The whole city seemed to have turned into the streets. Not until the era of the Revolution, a century and a half later, was the capital of France again to see such an uprising of the people against the court. Broussel had been arrested, Councillor Broussel, a favorite of the populace, who sustained him in his opposition to the court party, and at once the city was ablaze; for the first time in the history of France had the people risen in support of their representatives.

It was by no means the first time that royalty had ended its disputes with the Parliament in this summary manner. Four years previously, Anne of Austria, the queen-regent, had done the same thing, and scarce a voice had been raised in protest. But in the ensuing four years public opinion had changed. The king, Louis XIV., was but ten years old; his mother, aided by her favorite minister, Cardinal Mazarin, ruled the kingdom,—misruled it, as the people thought; the country was crushed under its weight of taxes; the finances were in utter disorder; France was successful abroad, but her successes had been dearly bought, and the people groaned under the burden of their victories. Parliament made itself the mouth-piece of the public discontent. It no longer felt upon it the iron hand of Richelieu. Mazarin was able, but he was not a master, and the Parliament began once more to claim that authority in affairs of state from which it had been deposed by the great cardinal. A conflict arose between the members and the court which soon led to acts of open hostility.

An edict laying a tax upon all provisions which entered Paris irritated the citizens, and the Parliament refused to register it. Other steps towards independence were taken by the members. Gradually they resumed their old rights, and the court party was forced to yield. But courage returned to the queen-regent with the news that the army of France had gained a great victory. No sooner had the tidings reached Paris than the city was electrified by hearing that President Brancmesnil and Councillor Broussel had been arrested.

It was the arrest of Broussel that stirred the popular heart. Mazarin and the queen had made the dangerous mistake of not taking into account the state of the public mind. "There was a blaze at once, a sensation, a rush, an outcry, and a shutting up of shops." The excitement of the people was intense. Moment by moment the tumult grew greater. "Broussel! Broussel!" they shouted. That perilous populace had arisen which was afterwards to show what frightful deeds it could do under the impulse of oppression and misgovernment.

Paul de Gondi, afterwards known as Cardinal de Retz, then coadjutor of the Archbishop of Paris, and the leading spirit with the populace, hurried to the palace, accompanied by Marshal de la Meilleraie.

"The city is in a frightful state," they told the queen. "The people are furious and may soon grow unmanageable. The air is full of revolt."

Anne of Austria listened to them with set lips and angry eyes.

"There is revolt in imagining there can be revolt," she sternly replied. "These are the ridiculous stories of those who favor trouble; the king's authority will soon restore order."

M. de Guitant, an old courtier, who entered as she was speaking, declared that the coadjutor had barely represented the facts, and said that he did not see how anybody could sleep with things in such a state.

"Well, M. de Guitant, and what is your advice?" asked De Retz.

"My advice is to give up that old rascal of a Broussel, dead or alive."

"To give him up dead," said the coadjutor, "would not accord with either the piety or the prudence of the queen; to yield him alive might quiet the people."

The queen turned to him a face hot with anger, and exclaimed,—

"I understand you, Mr. Coadjutor; you would have me set Broussel at liberty. I would strangle him with these hands first!" As she finished these words she put her hands close to the coadjutor's face, and added, in a threatening tone, "And those who—" Her voice ceased; he was left to infer the rest.

Yet, despite this infatuation of the queen, it was evident that something must be done, if Paris was to be saved. The people grew more tumultuous. Fresh tidings continued to come in, each more threatening than the last. The queen at length yielded so far as to promise that Broussel should be set free if the people would first disperse and cease their tumultuous behavior.

The coadjutor was bidden to proclaim this in the streets. He asked for an order to sustain him, but the queen refused to give it, and withdrew "to her little gray room," angry at herself for yielding so far as she had.

De Retz did not find the situation a very pleasant one for himself. Mazarin pushed him gently towards the door, saying, "Restore the peace of the realm." Marshal Meilleraie drew him onward. He went into the street, wearing his robe of office, and bestowing benedictions right and left, though while doing so his mind was busy in considering how he was going to get out of the difficulty which lay before him.

It grew worse instead of better. Marshal Meilleraie, losing his head through excitement, advanced waving his sword in the air, and shouting at the top of his voice,—

"Hurrah for the king! Liberation for Broussel!"

This did very well for those within hearing; but his sword provoked far more than his voice quieted; those at a distance looked on his action as a menace, and their fury was augmented. On all sides there was a rush for arms. Stones were flung by the rioters, one of which struck De Retz and felled him to the earth. As he picked himself up an excited youth rushed at him and put a musket to his head. Only the wit and readiness of the coadjutor saved him from imminent peril.

"Though I did not know him a bit," says De Retz, in his "Memoirs," "I thought it would not be well to let him suppose so at such a moment; on the contrary, I said to him, 'Ah, wretch, if thy father saw thee!' He thought I was the best friend of his father, on whom, however, I had never set eyes."

The fellow withdrew, ashamed of his violence, and before any further attack could be made upon De Retz he was recognized by the people and dragged to the market-place, constantly crying out as he went, "The queen has promised to restore Broussel."

The good news by this time had spread through the multitude, whose cries of anger were giving place to shouts of joy. Their arms were hastily disposed of, and a great throng, thirty or forty thousand in number, followed the coadjutor to the Palais-Royal. When he entered, Marshal Meilleraie turned to the queen and said,—

"Madame, here is he to whom I owe my life, and your Majesty the safety of the Palais-Royal."

The queen's answer was an incredulous smile. On seeing it, the hasty temper of the marshal broke out in an oath.

"Madame," he said, hotly, "no proper man can venture to flatter you in the state in which things are; and if you do not this very day set Broussel at liberty, to-morrow there will not be left one stone upon another in Paris."

Anne of Austria, carried away by her pride and superciliousness, could not be brought to believe that the populace would dare attempt an actual revolt against the king. De Retz would have spoken in support of the marshal's words, but she cut him short, saying in a tone of mockery,—

"Go and rest yourself, sir; you have worked very hard."

He left the palace in a rage. It was increased when word was brought to him that he had been ridiculed at the supper-table of the queen. She had gone so far as to blame him for increasing the tumult, and threatened to make an example of him and to interdict the Parliament. In short, the exercise of power had made the woman mad. De Retz reflected. If the queen designed to punish him, she should have something to punish him for. He was not the man to be made a cat's-paw of.

"We are not in such bad case as you suppose, gentlemen," he said to his friends. "There is an intention of crushing the public; it is for me to defend it from oppression; to-morrow before mid-day I shall be master of Paris."

Anne of Austria had made an enemy of one who had been her strong friend, a bold and restless man, capable of great deeds. He had long taken pains to make himself popular in Paris. During that night he and his emissaries worked in secret upon the people. Early the next day the mob was out again, arms in hand, and ripe for mischief. The chancellor, on his way to the Palace of Justice, suddenly found his carriage surrounded by these rioters. He hastily sought refuge in the Hotel de Luynes. The mob followed him, pillaging as they went, destroying the furniture, seeking the fugitive. He had taken refuge in a small chamber, where, thinking that his last hour had come, he knelt in confession before his brother, the Bishop of Meaux. Fortunately for him the rioters failed to discover him, and were led away by another fancy.

"It was like a sudden and violent conflagration lighted up from the Pont Neuf over the whole city," says De Retz. "Everybody without exception took up arms. Children of five and six years of age were seen dagger in hand, and the mothers themselves carried them. In less than two hours there were in Paris more than two hundred barricades, bordered with flags and all the arms that the League had left entire. Everybody cried 'Hurrah, for the king!' but echo answered, 'None of your Mazarin!'"

It was an incipient revolution, but it was the minister and the regent, not the king, against whom the people had risen, its object being the support of the Parliament of Paris, not the States General of the kingdom. France was not yet ready for the radical work reserved for a later day. The turbulent Parisians were in the street, arms in hand, but they had not yet lost the sentiment of loyalty to the king. A century and a half more of misrule were needed to complete this transformation in the national idea.

While all this was going on, the coadjutor, the soul of the outbreak, kept at home, vowing that he was powerless to control the people. At an early hour the Parliament assembled at the Palace of Justice, but its deliberations were interrupted by shouts of "Broussel! Broussel!" from the immense multitude which filled every adjoining avenue. Only the release of the arrested members could appease the mob. The Parliament determined to go in a body and demand this of the queen.

Their journey was an eventful one. Paris was in insurrection. Everywhere they found the people in arms, while barricades were thrown up at every hundred paces. Through the shouting and howling mob they made their way to the queen's palace, the ushers in front, with their square caps, the members following in their robes, at their head M. Mole, their premier president.

The conference with the queen was a passionate one. M. Mole spoke for the Parliament, representing to the queen the extreme danger Paris was in, the peril to all France, unless the prisoners were released and the sedition allayed. He spoke to a woman "who feared nothing because she knew but little," and who was just then controlled by pride and passion instead of reason.

"I am quite aware that there is a disturbance in the city," she answered, furiously; "but you shall answer to me for it, gentlemen of the Parliament, you, your wives, and your children."

With further threats that the king would remember the cause of these evils, when he reached his majority, the incensed woman flouted from the chamber of audience, slamming the door violently behind her. To deal with her, in her present mood, was evidently impracticable. The members left the palace to return. They quickly found themselves surrounded by an angry mob, furious at their non-success, disposed to hold them responsible for the failure. On their arrival at the Rue St. Honore, just as they were about to turn on to the Pont Neuf, a band of about two hundred men advanced threateningly upon them, headed by a cook-shop lad, armed with a halberd, which he thrust against M. Mole's body, crying,—

"Turn, traitor, and if thou wouldst not thyself be slain, give up to us Broussel, or Mazarin and the chancellor as hostages."

Mole quietly put the weapon aside.

"You forget yourself," he said, with calm dignity, "and are oblivious of the respect you owe to my office."

The mob, however, was past the point of paying respect to dignitaries. They hustled the members, threatened the president with swords and pistols, and several times tried to drag him into a private house. But he resisted, and was aided by members and friends who surrounded him. Slowly the parliamentary body made its way back to the Palais-Royal, whither they had resolved to return, M. Mole preserving his dignity of mien and movement, despite the "running fire of insults, threats, execrations, and blasphemies," that arose from every side. They reached the palace, at length, in diminished numbers, many of the members having dropped out of the procession.

The whole court was assembled in the gallery. Mole spoke first. He was a man of great natural eloquence, who was at his best as an orator when surrounded by peril, and he depicted the situation so graphically that all present, except the queen, were in terror. "Monsieur made as if he would throw himself upon his knees before the queen, who remained inflexible," says De Retz; "four or five princesses, who were trembling with fear, did throw themselves at her feet; the queen of England, who had come that day from St. Germain, represented that the troubles had never been so serious at their commencement in England, nor the feelings so heated or united."

Paris, in short, was on the eve of a revolution, and the queen could not be made to see it. Cardinal Mazarin, who was present, and who had been severely dealt with in the speeches, some of the orators telling him, in mockery, that if he would only go as far as the Pont Neuf he would learn for himself how things were, now joined the others in entreating Anne of Austria to give way. She did so at length, consenting to the release of Broussel, though "not without a deep sigh, which showed what violence she did her feelings in the struggle."

It is an interesting spectacle to see this woman, moved by sheer pride and obstinacy, conjoined with ignorance of the actual situation, seeking to set her single will against that of a city in revolt, and endangering the very existence of the monarchy by her sheer lack of reason. Her consent, for the time being, settled the difficulty, though the passions which had been aroused were not easily to be set at rest. Broussel was released and took his seat again in the Parliament, and the people returned to their homes, satisfied, for the time, with their victory over the queen and the cardinal.

In truth, a contest had arisen which was yet to yield important consequences. The Prince of Conde had arrived in Paris during these events. He had the prestige of a successful general; he did not like the cardinal, and he looked on the Parliament as imprudent and insolent.

"If I should join hands with them," he said to De Retz, "it might be best for my interests, but my name is Louis de Bourbon, and I do not wish to shake the throne. These devils of square-caps, are they mad about bringing me either to commence a civil war, or to put a rope round their own necks? I will let them see that they are not the potentates they think themselves, and that they may easily be brought to reason."

"The cardinal may possibly be mistaken in his measures," answered De Retz. "He will find Paris a hard nut to crack."

"It will not be taken, like Dunkerque, by mining and assaults," retorted the prince, angrily; "but if the bread of Gonesse were to fail them for a week—" He left the coadjutor to imagine the consequences.

The contest continued. In January, 1649, the queen, the boy king, and the whole court set out by night for the castle of St. Germain. It was unfurnished, with scarcely a bundle of straw to lie upon, but the queen could not have been more gay "had she won a battle, taken Paris, and had all who had displeased her hanged, and nevertheless she was very far from all that."

Far enough, indeed. Paris was in the hands of her enemies, who were as gay as the queen. On the 8th of January the Parliament of Paris decreed Cardinal Mazarin an enemy to the king and the state, and bade all subjects of the king to hunt him down. War was declared against the queen regent and her favorite, the cardinal. Had it been the States-General in place of the Parliament, the French Revolution might have then and there begun.

Many of the greatest lords joined the side of the people. Troops were levied in the city, their command being offered to the Prince of Conti. The Parliaments of Aix and Rouen voted to support that of Paris. It was decreed that all the royal funds, in the exchequers of the kingdom, should be seized and used for the defence of the people. All was festivity in the city. The versatile people seemed to imagine that to declare war was to decree victory. There was dancing everywhere within the walls. There was the rumble of war without. The Prince of Conde, at the head of the king's troops, had taken the post of Charentin from the Frondeurs, as the malcontents called themselves, and had carried out his threat of checking the flow of bread to the city. The gay Parisians were beginning to feel the inconvenience of hunger.

What followed is too long a story to be told here, except in bare epitome. A truce was patched up between the contending parties. Bread flowed again into Paris. The seared and hungry people grew courageous and violent again when their appetites were satisfied. When M. Mole and his fellows returned to Paris with a treaty of peace which they had signed, the populace gathered round them in fury.

"None of your peace! None of your Mazarin!" they angrily shouted. "We must go to St. Germain to seek our good king! We must fling into the river all the Mazarins."

One of them laid his hand threateningly on President Mole's arm. The latter looked him in the face calmly.

"When you have killed me," he said, quietly, "I shall only need six feet of earth."

"You can get back to your house secretly by way of the record offices," whispered one of his companions.

"The court never hides itself," he composedly replied. "If I were certain to perish, I would not commit this poltroonery, which, moreover, would but give courage to the rioters. They would seek me in my house if they thought I shrank from them here."

M. Mole was a man of courage. To face a mob is at times more dangerous than to face an army.

Paris was in disorder. The agitation was spreading all over France. But the army was faithful to the king, and without it the Fronde was powerless. The outbreak had ended in a treaty of peace and amnesty in which the Parliament had in a measure won, as it had preserved all its rights and privileges.

It was to be a short peace. Conde, elated by having beaten the Fronde, claimed a lion's share in the government. His brother, the Prince of Conti, and his sister, the Duchess of Longueville, joined him in these pretensions. The affair ended in a bold step on the part of Mazarin and the queen. The two princes and M. de Longueville were arrested and conveyed to the castle of Vincennes, while the princesses were ordered to retire to their estates, and the Duchess of Longueville, fearing arrest, fled in haste to Normandy.

For the present the star of the cardinal was in the ascendant. But his master-stroke set war on foot again. The Parliament of Paris supported the princes. Their partisans rallied. Bordeaux broke into insurrection. Elsewhere hot blood declared itself. The Duke of Orleans joined the party of the prisoners. The Parliament enjoined all the officers of the crown to obey none but the duke, the lieutenant-general of the kingdom. On the night of February 6, 1651, Mazarin set out again for St. Germain. Paris had become far too hot to hold him.

The tidings of his flight brought the people into the streets again. The Duke of Orleans informed Cardinal de Retz that the queen proposed to follow her flying minister, with the boy king.

"What is to be done?" he asked, somewhat helplessly. "It is a bad business; but how are we to stop it?"

"How?" cried the more practical De Retz; "why, by shutting the gates of Paris, to begin with. The king must not go."

Within an hour the emissaries of the ready coadjutor were rousing up the people right and left with the tidings of the projected flight of the queen with her son. Soon the city swarmed again with armed and angry men, the gates were seized, mounted guards patrolled the streets, the crowd surged towards the Palais-Royal.

Within the palace all was alarm and confusion. Anne of Austria had indeed been on the point of flight. Her son was in his travelling-dress. But the people were at the door, clamoring to see the king, threatening dire consequences if the doors were not opened to them. They could not long be kept out; some immediate action must be taken. The boy's travelling-attire was quickly replaced by his night dress, and he was laid in bed, his mother cautioning him to lie quiet and feign sleep.

"The king! we must see the king!" came the vociferous cry from the street. "Open! the people demand to see their king."

The doors were forced; the mob was in the palace; clamor and tumult reigned below the royal chambers. The queen sent word to the people that the king was asleep in his bed. They might enter and see him if they would promise to tread softly and keep strict silence. This message at once stopped the tumult; the noise subsided; the people began to file into the room, stepping as noiselessly as though shod with down, gazing with awed eyes on the seemingly sleeping face of the boy king.

The queen stood at the pillow of her son, a graceful and beautiful woman, her outstretched arm holding back the heavy folds of the drapery, her face schooled to quiet repose. Louis lay with closed eyes and regular breathing, playing his part well. For hours a stream of the men and women of Paris flowed through the chamber, moving in reverential silence, gazing on the boy's face as on a sacred treasure of their own. Till three o'clock in the morning the movement continued, the queen standing all this time like a beautiful statue, her son still feigning slumber. It was a scene of remarkable and picturesque character.

That night of strain and excitement passed. The king was with them still, of that the people were assured; he must remain with them, there must be an end of midnight flights. The patrol was kept up, the gates watched, the king was a prisoner in the hands of the Parisians.

"The king, our master, is a captive," said M. Mole, voicing to the Parliament the queen's complaint.

"He was a captive, in the hands of Mazarin," replied the Duke of Orleans; "but, thank God, he is so no longer."

The people had won. Mazarin was beaten. He hastened to La Havre, where the princes were then confined, and set them at liberty himself. His power in France, for the time, was at an end. He made his way to the frontier, which he crossed on the 12th of March. He was just in time: the Parliament of Paris had issued orders for his arrest, wherever found in France.

We must end here, with this closing of the contest between Mazarin and the Fronde. History goes on to tell that the contest was reopened, Mazarin returned, there was battle in Paris, the Fronde failed, and Mazarin died in office.

The popular outbreak here briefly chronicled is of interest from the fact that it immediately followed the success of the insurrection in England and the execution of Charles I. The provocation was the same in the two nations; the result highly different. In both cases it was a revolt against the tyranny of the court and the attempt to establish absolutism. But the difference in results lay in the fact that England had a single parliament, composed of politicians, while France had ten parliaments, composed of magistrates, and unaccustomed to handle great questions of public policy. Richelieu had taken from the civic parliaments of France what little power they possessed, and they were but shadowy prototypes of the English representative assembly. "Without any unity of action or aim, and by turns excited and dismayed by the examples that came to them from England, the Frondeurs had to guide them no Hampden or Cromwell; they had at their backs neither people nor army; the English had been able to accomplish a revolution; the Fronde failed before the dexterous prudence of Mazarin and the queen's fidelity to her minister."

There lay before France a century and a half of autocratic rule and popular suffering; then was to come the convening of the States-General, the rise of the people, and the final downfall of absolute royalty and feudal privileges in the red tide of the Revolution.



A MARTYR TO HIS PROFESSION.

The grounds of the Chateau de Chantilly, that charming retreat of the Prince de Conde, shone with all the splendor which artistic adornments, gleaming lanterns of varied form and color, splendidly-costumed dames and richly-attired cavaliers could give them, the whole scene having a fairy-like beauty and richness wonderfully pleasing to the eye. For more than a mile from the entrance to the grounds men holding lighted torches bordered the road, while in all the villages leading thither the peasants were out in their gala attire, and triumphal arches of verdure were erected in honor of the king, Louis XIV., who was on his way thither to visit Monsieur le Prince.

He was coming, the great Louis, the Grand Monarque of France, and noble and peasant alike were out to bid him welcome, while the artistic skill of the day had exhausted itself in efforts to provide him a splendid reception. And now there could be heard on the road the trampling of horses, the clanking of swords, the voices of approaching men, and a gallant cavalcade wheeled at length into the grounds, announcing that the king was close at hand. A few minutes of anxious expectation passed, and then the king, attended by a large group of courtiers, came sweeping grandly forward, while at the same moment a gleaming display of fireworks, at the end of the avenue, blazed off in fiery greeting. As the coruscating lights faded out Conde met the king in his coach, which he invited him to enter, and off they drove to the chateau, followed by a shining swarm of grand dames and great lords who had gathered to this fete from all parts of France.

Within the chateau as much had been done as without to render honor to the occasion. Hundreds of retainers lined chamber and hall in splendid attire, their only duty being to add life and richness to the scene. The rooms were luxuriously furnished, the banqueting hall was a scene for a painter, and the banquet a triumph of the art of the cuisine, for was it not prepared by the genius of Vatel, the great Vatel, the most famous of cooks ministering to the most showy of monarchs!

All went well; the king feasted on delicacies which were a triumph of art; Louis was satisfied; Vatel triumphed; so far the fete was a success. In the evening the king played at piquet, the cavaliers and ladies promenaded through the splendidly-furnished and richly-lighted saloons, some cracked jokes on sofas, some made love in alcoves, still all went well.

For the next day the programme included a grand promenade a la mode de Versailles, a collation in the park, under great trees laden with the freshest verdure of spring, a stag-hunt by moonlight, a brilliant display of fireworks, then a supper in the banqueting hall of the chateau. And still all went well. At least all thought so but Vatel; but as for that prince of cooks, he was in despair. A frightful disaster had occurred. After the days and nights of anxiety and care in preparing for this grand occasion, for a failure now to take place, it was to him unpardonable, unsupportable.

Tidings of his distress were brought to Conde. The generous prince sought his room to console him.

"Vatel," said he, "what is this I hear? The king's supper was superb."

"Monseigneur," said Vatel, tears in his eyes. "The roti was wanting at two tables."

"Not at all," replied the prince. "You surpassed yourself; nothing could have been better; everything was perfect."

Vatel, somewhat relieved by this praise, sought his couch, and a morsel of sleep visited his eyelids. But the shadow of doom still hung over his career. By break of day he was up again. Others might lie late abed, but there could be no such indulgence for him; for was not he the power behind the throne? What would this grand fete be should his genius fail, his powers prove unequal to the strain? King and prince, lord and lady might slumber, but Vatel must be up and alert.

Fresh fish formed an essential part of the menu which he had laid out for the dining-tables of the third day. He had ordered them from every part of the coast. Would they come? Could the fates fail him now, at this critical moment of his life? The anxious chief went abroad to view the situation. His eyes lighted. A fisher-boy had just arrived with two loads of fish, fresh brought from the coast. Vatel looked at them, and then gazed around with newly disturbed eyes.

"Is that all?" he asked, his voice faltering.

"That is all, sir," answered the boy, who knew nothing about the numerous orders.

Vatel turned pale. All? These few fish all he had to offer his multitude of guests? Only a miracle could divide these so as to give a portion to each. He waited, despair slowly descending upon his heart. In vain his anxious wait; no more fish appeared. Vatel's anxiety was fast becoming despair. The disaster of the night before, to be followed by this terrible stroke—it was more than his artistic soul could bear; disgrace had come upon him in its direst form; his reputation was at stake.

He met Gourville, a wit and factotum of the court, and told him of his misfortune.

"It is disgrace, ruin," he cried; "I cannot survive it."

Gourville heard him with merry laughter. To his light mind the affair seemed only a good joke. It was not so to Vatel. He sought his room and locked himself in.

He was too soon, alas, too soon; for now fish are coming; here, there, everywhere; the orders have been strictly obeyed, there is abundance for all purposes. The cooks receive them, and look for Vatel to give orders for their disposal. He is not to be seen. "He went to his room," says Gourville. They repair thither, knock persistently, but in vain, and finding that no answer can be obtained, they break open the door and enter.

A frightful spectacle meets their eyes. On the floor before them lies poor Vatel, in a pool of his own blood, pierced through the heart. In his ecstasy of despair at the non-arrival of the fish, he had fastened his sword in the door, and thrown himself upon its deadly point. Thrice he had done so, twice wounding himself slightly, the third time piercing himself through the heart. Poor fellow! he was dead, and the fish had arrived. It was a useless sacrifice of his life to his art.

The tidings of the tragedy filled the chateau with alarm and dismay. The prince was in despair, the more so as the king blamed him for the fatal occurrence. He had long avoided Chantilly, he said, knowing that his coming would occasion inconvenience, since his host would insist on providing for the whole of his suite. There should have been but two tables, and there were more than twenty-five; the strain on poor Vatel was the cause of his death and the loss of one of the ornaments of the reign. He would never allow such extravagance again. Men like Vatel were not to be so lightly sacrificed.

While the king thus petulantly scolded his great subject in the time-honored "I told you so" fashion, the whole chateau buzzed with opinions about the tragic event. "Vatel has played the hero," said some; "He has played the idiot," said others. Some praised his courage and devotion to his art; others blamed his haste and folly. But praise prevailed over blame, for, as all conceded, "he had died for the honor of his profession," and no soldier or martyr could do more.

But Vatel was gone, and dinner was not served. The dead was dead, but appetite remained. What was to be done? Gourville sprang into the breach and undertook to replace Vatel. The fish were cooked, the company dined, then they promenaded, then they played piquet, losing and winning largely, then they supped, then they enjoyed a moonlight chase of the deer in the park of Chantilly. Mirth and gayety prevailed, and before bedtime came poor Vatel was forgotten. The cook who had died for his art was as far from their thoughts as the martyrs of centuries before.

Early the next day the king and his train departed, leaving Conde to count the cost of the entertainment, which had been so great as to make him agree with Louis, that hereafter two tables would be better than twenty-five. Doubtless among his chief losses he counted Vatel. Money could be found again, waste repaired, but a genius of the kitchen the equal of Vatel was not to be had to order. Men like him are the growth of centuries. He died that his name might live.



THE MAN WITH THE IRON MASK.

In the year 1662, the first year of the absolute reign of Louis XIV., there occurred an event without parallel in history, and which still remains shrouded in the mystery in which it was from the first involved. There was sent with the utmost secrecy to the Chateau of Pignerol an unknown prisoner, whose identity was kept secret with the most extreme care. All that can be said of him is that he was young, well-formed and attractive in appearance, and above the usual stature. As for his face, whether it were handsome or ill-favored, noble or base, no man could say, for it was concealed by an impenetrable mask, the lower portion of which was made movable by steel springs, so that he could eat with it on, while the upper portion was immovably fixed.

This mysterious state prisoner remained for a number of years at Pignerol, under charge of its governor, M. de Saint Mars, an officer of the greatest discretion and trustworthiness. He was afterwards removed to the castle of the Isle of Sainte Marguerite, on the coast of Provence, where he remained for years in the same mysterious seclusion, an object of the greatest curiosity on the part of all the people of the prison, and of no less interest to the people of the kingdom, to whose love of the marvellous the secrecy surrounding him appealed. The mask was never removed, day or night, so far as any one could learn, while conjecture sought in vain to discover who this mysterious personage could be.

This much was certain, no person of leading importance had disappeared from Europe in the year 1662. On the other hand, the masked prisoner was treated with a consideration which could be looked for only by persons of the highest birth. The Marquis of Louvois, minister of war under the "Grand Monarque," was said to have visited him at Sainte Marguerite, and to have treated him with the respect due to one of royal birth. He spoke to him standing, as to one far his superior in station, and showed him throughout the interview the greatest deference.

In 1698, M. de Saint Mars was made governor of the Bastille. He brought with him this mysterious masked prisoner, whose secret it was apparently not deemed advisable to intrust to a new governor of Sainte Marguerite. As to what took place on the journey, we have some interesting details in a letter from M. de Formanoir, grand nephew of Saint Mars.

"In 1698, M. de Saint Mars exchanged the governorship of the islands [Sainte Marguerite and Sainte Honnat] for that of the Bastille. When he set out to enter on his new office he stayed with his prisoner for a short time at Palteau, his estate. The mask arrived in a litter which preceded that of M. de Saint Mars; they were accompanied by several men on horseback. The peasants went out to meet their seigneur. M. de Saint Mars took his meals with his prisoner, who sat with his back towards the windows of the room, which looked into the court-yard. The peasants of whom I made inquiry could not see if he had his mask on when eating; but they observed that M. de Saint Mars, who sat opposite to him at table, had a pair of pistols beside his plate. They were attended by a single valet only, Antoine Ru, who took away the dishes set down to him in an antechamber, having first carefully shut the door of the dining-room. When the prisoner crossed the court-yard a black mask was always on his face."

The extreme caution here indicated was continued until the prisoner reached the Bastille. With regard to his life in this fortress we are better informed, since it must be acknowledged that the record of his previous prison life is somewhat obscure. All that seems well established is that he was one of the "two prisoners of the Lower Tower" at Pignerol, in 1681; that he was spoken of to Saint Mars as "your ancient prisoner," and "your prisoner of twenty years' standing;" that in 1687 he was removed from Exiles to Sainte Marguerite with the same care and secrecy observed in the journey to the Bastille, his jailer accompanying him to the new prison, and that throughout he was under the care of the relentless Saint Mars.

Of the life of this remarkable state prisoner in the Bastille we have more detailed accounts. Dujunca, the chief turnkey of that prison, has left a journal, which contains the following entry: "On Thursday, the 18th September, 1698, at three o'clock in the afternoon, M. de Saint Mars, the governor, arrived at the Bastille for the first time from the islands of Sainte Marguerite and Sainte Honnat. He brought with him in his own litter an ancient prisoner formerly under his care at Pignerol, and whose name remains untold. This prisoner was always kept masked, and was at first lodged in the Basiniere tower.... I conducted him afterwards to the Bertaudiere tower, and put him in a room, which, by order of M. de Saint Mars, I had furnished before his arrival."

Throughout the life of this mysterious personage in the Bastille, the secrecy which had so far environed him was rigidly observed. So far as is known, no one ever saw him without his mask. Aside from this, and his detention, everything that could be was done to make his life enjoyable. He was given the best accommodation the Bastille afforded. Nothing that he desired was refused him. He had a strong taste for lace and linen of extreme fineness, and his wishes in this particular were complied with. His table was always served in the most elegant manner, while the governor, who frequently attended him, seldom sat in his presence.

During his intervals of ailment he was attended by the old doctor of the Bastille, who, while often examining his tongue and parts of his body, never saw his face. He represents him as very finely shaped, and of somewhat brownish complexion, with an agreeable and engaging voice. He never complained, nor gave any hint as to who he was, and throughout his whole prison life no one gained the least clue to his identity. The only instance in which he attempted to make himself known is described by Voltaire, who tells us that while at Sainte Marguerite he threw out from the grated window of his cell a piece of fine linen, and a silver plate on which he had traced some strange characters. This, however, is an unauthenticated story.

The detention of this mysterious prisoner in the Bastille was not an extended one. He died in 1703. Dujunca's journal tells the story of his death. "On Monday, the 19th of November, 1703, the unknown prisoner, who had continually worn a black velvet mask, and whom M. de Saint Mars had brought with him from the island of Sainte Marguerite, died to-day at about ten o'clock in the evening, having been yesterday taken slightly ill. He had been a long time in M. de Saint Mars' hands, and his illness was exceedingly trifling."

There is one particular of interest in this record. The "iron mask" appears to have been really a mask of black velvet, the only iron about it being the springs, which permitted the lower part to be lifted.

The question now arises, Who was the "man with the iron mask"? It is a question which has been long debated, without definite conclusion. Chamillard was the last minister of Louis XIV. who knew this secret. When he was dying, his son-in-law, Marshal de Feuillade, begged him on his knees to reveal the mystery. He begged in vain. Chamillard answered that it was a secret of state, which he had sworn never to reveal, and he died with it untold.

Voltaire, in his "Age of Louis XIV.," was the first to call special attention to this mystery, and since then numerous conjectures have been made as to who the Iron Mask really was. One writer has suggested that he was an illegitimate son of Anne of Austria, the queen-mother. Another identifies him with a supposed twin brother of Louis XIV., whose birth Richelieu had concealed. Others make him the Count of Vermandois, an illegitimate son of Louis XIV.; the Duke of Beaufort, a hero of the Fronde; the Duke of Monmouth, the English pretender of 1685; Fouquet, Louis's disgraced minister of finance; a son of Cromwell, the English protector; and various other wild and unfounded guesses. After all has been said, the identity of the prisoner remains unknown. Mattioli, a diplomatic agent of the Duke of Mantua, who was long imprisoned at Pignerol and at Sainte Marguerite, was for a long time generally thought to be the Iron Mask, but there is good reason to believe that he died in 1694.

Conjecture has exhausted itself, and yet the identity of this strange captive remains a mystery, and is likely always to continue so. The fact that all the exalted personages of the day can be traced renders it probable that the veiled prisoner was really an obscure individual, whom the caprice of Louis XIV. surrounded with conditions intended to excite the curiosity of the public. There are on record other instances of imprisonment under similar conditions of inviolate secrecy, and it is not impossible that the king may have endeavored, for no purpose higher than whim, to surround the story of this one with unbroken mystery. If such were his purpose it has succeeded, for there is no more mysterious person in history than the Man with the Iron Mask.



VOLTAIRE'S LAST VISIT TO PARIS.

Never had excitable Paris been more excited. Only one man was talked of, only one subject thought of; there was no longer interest in rumors of war, in political quarrels, in the doings at the king's court; all admiration and all sympathy were turned towards one feeble old man, who had returned to Paris to die. For twenty-seven years he had been absent, that brilliant writer and unsurpassed genius, the versatile Voltaire. His facile pen had given its greatest glory to the reign of Louis XV., yet for more than a quarter of a century he had been exiled from the land he loved, because he dared to exercise the privilege of free speech in that land of oppression, and to deal with kings and nobles as man with man, not as reverent worshipper with divinity. Now, in his eighty-fourth year of age, he had ventured to come back to the city he loved above all others, with scarcely enough life left for the journey, and far from sure that power would not still seek to suppress genius as it had done in the past.

If he had such fears, there was no warrant for them. Paris was ready to worship him. The king himself would not have dared to interfere with the popular idol in that interval of enthusiastic ebullition. All Paris was prepared to cast itself at his feet; all France was eager to do him honor; all calumny, jealousy, hatred were forgotten; a nation had risen to welcome and honor its greatest genius, and the splendors of the court paled before the glory which seemed to emanate from that feeble, tottering veteran of the empire of thought, who had come back to occupy, for a brief period, the throne of his old dominion.

The admiration, the enthusiasm, the glory were too much for him. He was dying in the excitement of joy and triumph. Yet, with his wonderful elasticity of frame and mind, he rose again for a fuller enjoyment of that popular ovation which was to him the wine of life. The story of his final triumph has been so graphically told by an eye-witness that we cannot do better than to quote his words.

"M. de Voltaire has appeared for the first time at the Academy and at the play; he found all the doors, all the approaches, to the Academy besieged by a multitude which only opened slowly to let him pass, and then rushed in immediately upon his footsteps with repeated plaudits and acclamations. The Academy came out into the first room to meet him, an honor it had never yet paid to any of its members, not even to the foreign princes who had deigned to be present at its meetings.

"The homage he received at the Academy was merely the prelude to that which awaited him at the National theatre. As soon as his carriage was seen at a distance, there arose a universal shout of joy. All the curb-stones, all the barriers, all the windows, were crammed with spectators, and scarcely was the carriage stopped when people were already on the imperial and even on the wheels to get a nearer view of the divinity. Scarcely had he entered the house when Sieur Brizard came up with a crown of laurels, which Madame de Villette placed upon the great man's head, but which he immediately took off, though the public urged him to keep it on by clapping of hands and by cheers which resounded from all parts of the house with such a din as never was heard.

"All the women stood up. I saw at one time that part of the pit which was under the boxes go down on their knees, in despair of getting a sight any other way. The whole house was darkened with the dust raised by the ebb and flow of the excited multitude. It was not without difficulty that the players managed at last to begin the piece. It was 'Irene,' which was given for the sixth time. Never had this tragedy been better played, never less listened to, never more applauded. The illustrious old man rose to thank the public, and, a moment afterwards, there appeared on a pedestal in the middle of the stage a bust of this great man, and the actresses, garlands and crowns in hand, covered it with laurels.

"M. de Voltaire seemed to be sinking beneath the burden of age and of the homage with which he had just been overwhelmed. He appeared deeply affected, his eyes still sparkled amidst the pallor of his face, but it seemed as if he breathed no longer save with the consciousness of his glory. The people shouted, 'Lights! lights! that everybody may see him!' The coachman was entreated to go at a walk, and thus he was accompanied by cheering and the crowd as far as Pont Royal."

This was a very different greeting from that which Voltaire had received fifty years before, when a nobleman with whom he had quarrelled had him beaten with sticks in the public street, and, when Voltaire showed an intention of making him answer at the sword's point for this outrage, had him seized and thrown into the Bastille by the authorities. This was but one of the several times he had been immured in this gloomy prison for daring to say what he thought about powers and potentates. But time brings its revenges. The Chevalier de Rohan, who had had the poet castigated, was forgotten except as the man who had dishonored himself in seeking to dishonor Voltaire, and the poet had become the idol of the people of Paris, high and low alike.

Voltaire was not the only great man in Paris at this period. There was another as great as he, but great in a very different fashion,—Benjamin Franklin, the American philosopher and statesman, as famous for common sense and public spirit as Voltaire was for poetical power and satirical keenness. These two great men met, and their meeting is worthy of description. The American envoys had asked permission to call on the veteran of literature, a request that was willingly granted when Voltaire learned that Franklin was one of the number. What passed between them may be briefly related.

They found the aged poet reclining on a couch, thin of body, wrinkled of face, evidently sick and feeble; yet his eyes, "glittering like two carbuncles," showed what spirit lay within his withered frame. As they entered, he raised himself with difficulty, and repeated the following lines from Thomson's "Ode to Liberty," a poem which he had been familiar with in England fifty years before.

"Lo! swarming southward on rejoicing suns, Gay colonies extend, the calm retreat Of undisturbed Distress, the better home Of those whom bigots chase from foreign lands; Not built on rapine, servitude, and woe, And in their turn some petty tyrant's prey; But bound by social Freedom, firm they rise."

He then began to converse with Franklin in English; but, on being asked by his niece to speak in French, that she and others present might understand what was said, he remarked,—

"I beg your pardon. I have, for the moment, yielded to the vanity of showing that I can speak in the language of a Franklin."

Shortly afterwards, Dr. Franklin presented him his grandson, whereupon the old man lifted his hands over the head of the youth, and said, "My child, God and liberty! Recollect those two words."

This was not the only scene between Franklin and Voltaire. Another took place at the Academy of Sciences at one of the meetings of that body. The two distinguished guests sat side by side on the platform, in full view of the audience.

During the proceedings an interruption occurred. A confused cry arose, the names of the two great visitors alone being distinguishable. It was taken to mean that they should be introduced. This was done. They rose and acknowledged the courtesy by bowing and a few words. But such a formal proceeding was far from enough to satisfy the audience. The noise continued. Franklin and Voltaire shook hands. This gave rise to plaudits, but the confused cries were not stilled; the audience wanted some more decided demonstration.

"Il faut s'embrasser, a la Francoise" ["You must embrace, in French fashion"], they cried.

John Adams, who witnessed the spectacle, thus describes what followed: "The two aged actors upon this great theatre of philosophy and frivolity, embraced each other by hugging one another in their arms, and kissing each other's cheeks, and then the tumult subsided. And the cry immediately spread through the whole kingdom, and, I suppose over all Europe, 'How charming it was to see Solon and Sophocles embrace.'"

A month later Voltaire lay dead, his brilliant eyes closed, his active brain at rest. The excitement of his visit to Paris and the constant ovation which he had received had been too much for the old man. He had died in the midst of his triumph, vanished from the stage of life just when his genius had compelled the highest display of appreciation which it was possible for his countrymen to give. As for the church, which his keen pen had dealt with as severely as with the temporal powers, it could not well forget his incessant and bitter attacks. That he might obtain Christian burial, he confessed and received absolution from the Abbe Gaultier; but, with his views, this was simply a sacrifice to the proprieties; he remained a heathen poet to the end, a born satirist and scoffer at all tradition and all conventionality.

Voltaire was deistic in belief, in no sense atheistic. Among his latest words were, "I die worshipping God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, but detesting superstition." Despite the admiration of the people, the powers of the state could not forget that the man so enthusiastically received was the great apostle of mockery and irreverence. The government gave its last kick to the dead lion by ordering the papers not to comment on his death. The church laid an interdict on his burial in consecrated ground,—an hour or two too late, as it proved. His body, minus the heart, was transferred in 1791 to the Pantheon, and when, in 1864, the sarcophagus was opened with the purpose of restoring the heart to the other remains, it was found to be empty. In the stirring days of France the body had by some one, in some way, been removed.



THE DIAMOND NECKLACE.

Paris, that city of sensations, was shaken to its centre by tidings of a new and startling event. The Cardinal de Rohan, grand almoner of France, at mass-time, and when dressed in his pontifical robes, had been suddenly arrested in the palace of Versailles and taken to the Bastille. Why? No one knew; though many had their opinions and beliefs. Rumors of some mysterious and disgraceful secret beneath this arrest, a mystery in which the honor of Marie Antoinette, the queen of France, was involved, had got afloat, and were whispered from end to end of the city, in which "the Austrian," as the queen was contemptuously designated, was by no means a favorite.

The truth gradually came out,—the story of a disgraceful and extraordinary intrigue, of which the prince cardinal was a victim rather than an accessory, and of which the queen was utterly ignorant, though the odium of the transaction clung to her until her death. When, eight years afterwards, she was borne through a raging mob to the guillotine, insulting references to this affair of the diamond necklace were among the terms of opprobrium heaped upon her by the dregs of the Parisian populace.

What was this disgraceful business? It is partly revealed in the graphic account of an interview with the king which preceded the arrest of the prince cardinal. On the 15th of August, 1785, Louis XVI. sent for M. de Rohan to his cabinet. He entered smilingly, not dreaming of the thunderbolt that was about to burst upon his head. He found there the king and queen, the former with indignant countenance, the latter grave and severe in expression.

"Cardinal," broke out the king, in an abrupt tone, "you bought some diamonds of Boehmer?"

"Yes, sir," rejoined the cardinal, disturbed by the stern severity of the king's looks and tone.

"What have you done with them?"

"I thought they had been sent to the queen."

"Who gave you the commission to buy them?"

"A lady, the Countess de La Motte Valois," answered the cardinal, growing more uneasy. "She gave me a letter from the queen; I thought I was obliging her Majesty."

The queen sharply interrupted him. She was no friend of the cardinal; he had maligned her years before, when her husband was but dauphin of France. Now was the opportunity to repay him for those malevolent letters.

"How, sir," she broke out severely; "how could you think—you to whom I have never spoken for eight years—that I should choose you for conducting such a negotiation, and by the medium of such a woman?"

"I was mistaken, I perceive," said the cardinal, humbly. "The desire I felt to please your Majesty misled me. Here is the letter which I was told was from you."

He drew a letter from his pocket and handed it to the king. Louis took it, and cast his eyes over the signature. He looked up indignantly.

"How could a prince of your house and my grand almoner suppose that the queen would sign, 'Marie Antoinette of France?'" he sternly demanded. "Queens do not sign their names at such length. It is not even the queen's writing. And what is the meaning of all these doings with jewellers, and these notes shown to bankers?"

By this time the cardinal was so agitated that he was obliged to rest himself against the table for support.

"Sir," he said, in a broken voice, "I am too much overcome to be able to reply. What you say overwhelms me with surprise."

"Walk into the room, cardinal," said the king, with more kindness of tone. "You may write your explanation of these occurrences."

The cardinal attempted to do so, but his written statement failed to make clear the mystery. In the end an officer of the king's body-guard was called in, and an order given him to convey Cardinal de Rohan to the Bastille. He had barely time to give secret directions to his grand vicar to burn all his papers, before he was carried off to that frightful fortress, the scene of so much injustice, haunted by so many woes.

The papers of De Rohan probably needed purging by fire, for the order to burn them indicates that they contained evidence derogatory to his position as a dignitary of the church. The prince cardinal was a vain and profligate man, full of vicious inclinations, and credulous to a degree that had made him the victim of the unscrupulous schemer, Madame de La Motte Valois, a woman as adroit and unscrupulous as she was daring. Of low birth, brought up by charity, married to a ruined nobleman, she had ended her career by duping and ruining Cardinal de Rohan, a man whose character exposed him to the machinations of an adventuress so skilful, bold, and alluring as La Motte Valois.

So much for preliminary. Let us take up the story at its beginning. The diamond necklace was an exceedingly handsome and highly valuable piece of jewelry, containing about five hundred diamonds, and held at a price equal to about four hundred thousand dollars of modern money. It had been made by Boehmer, a jeweller of Paris, about the year 1774, and was intended for Madame Dubarry, the favorite of Louis XV. But before the necklace was finished Louis had died, and a new king had come to the throne. With Louis XVI. virtue entered that profligate court, and Madame Dubarry was excluded from its precincts. As for the necklace, it remained without a purchaser. It was too costly for a subject, and was not craved by the queen. The jeweller had not failed to offer it to Marie Antoinette, but found her disinclined to buy. The American Revolution was going on, France was involved in the war, and money was needed for other purposes than diamond necklaces.

"That is the price of two frigates," said the king, on hearing of the estimated value of the famous trinket.

"We want ships, and not diamonds," said the queen, and ended the audience with the jeweller.

A few months afterwards, M. Boehmer openly declared that he had found a purchaser for the necklace. It had gone to Constantinople, he said, for the adornment of the favorite sultana.

"This was a real pleasure to the queen," says Madame Campan. "She, however, expressed some astonishment that a necklace made for the adornment of French women should be worn in the seraglio, and, thereupon, she talked to me a long time about the total change which took place in the tastes and desires of women in the period between twenty and thirty years of age. She told me that when she was ten years younger she loved diamonds madly, but that she had no longer any taste for anything but private society, the country, the work and the attentions required by the education of her children. From that moment until the fatal crisis there was nothing more said about the necklace."

The necklace had not been sold. It remained in the jeweller's hands until nearly ten years had passed. Then the vicious De La Motte laid an adroit plan for getting it into her possession, through the aid of the Cardinal de Rohan, who had come to admire her. She was a hanger-on of the court, and began her work by persuading the cardinal that the queen regarded him with favor. The credulous dupe was completely infatuated with the idea. One night, in August, 1784, he was given a brief interview in the groves around Versailles with a woman whom he supposed to be the queen, but who was really a girl resembling her, and taught by La Motte to play this part.

Filled with the idea that the queen loved him, the duped cardinal was ready for any folly. De La Motte played her next card by persuading him that the queen had a secret desire to possess this wonderful necklace, but had not the necessary money at that time. She would, however, sign an agreement to purchase it if the cardinal would become her security. De Rohan eagerly assented. This secret understanding seemed but another proof of the queen's predilection for him. An agreement was produced, signed with the queen's name, to which the cardinal added his own, and on February 1, 1785, the jeweller surrendered the necklace to De Rohan, receiving this agreement as his security. The cardinal carried the costly prize to Versailles, where he was told the queen would send for it. It was given by him to La Motte, who was commissioned to deliver it to her royal patroness. In a few days afterwards this lady's husband disappeared from Paris, and the diamond necklace with him.

The whole affair had been a trick. All the messages from the queen had been false ones, the written documents being prepared by a seeming valet, who was skilful in the imitation of handwriting. Throughout the whole business the cardinal had been readily deceived, infatuation closing his eyes to truth.

Such was the first act in the drama. The second opened when the jeweller began to press for payment. M. de La Motte sold some of the diamonds in England, and transmitted the money to his wife, who is said to have quieted the jeweller for a time by paying him some instalments on the price. But he quickly grew impatient and suspicious that all was not right, and went to court, where he earnestly inquired if the necklace had been delivered to the queen. For a time she could not understand what he meant. The diamond necklace? What diamond necklace? What did this mean? The Cardinal de Rohan her security for payment!—it was all false, all base, some dark intrigue behind it all.

Burning with indignation, she sent for Abbe de Vermond and Baron de Breteuil, the minister of the king's household, and told them of the affair. It was a shameful business, they said. They hated the cardinal, and did not spare him. The queen, growing momentarily more angry, at length decided to reveal the whole transaction to the king, and roused in his mind an indignation equal to her own. The result we have already seen. De Rohan and La Motte were consigned to the Bastille. M. de La Motte was in England, and thus out of reach of justice. Another celebrated individual who was concerned in the affair, and had aided in duping the cardinal, the famous, or infamous, Count Cagliostro, was also consigned to the Bastille for his share in the dark and deep intrigue.

The trial came on, as the closing act in this mysterious drama, in which all Paris had now become intensely interested. The cardinal had renounced all the privileges of his rank and condition, and accepted the jurisdiction of Parliament,—perhaps counting on the open enmity between that body and the court.

The trial revealed a disgraceful business, in which a high dignitary of the church had permitted himself to be completely gulled by a shameless woman and the equally shameless Cagliostro, and into which not only the name but even the virtue of the queen had been dragged. Public opinion became intense. The hostility to the queen which had long smouldered now openly declared itself. "It was for her and by her orders that the necklace was bought," said the respectable Parisians. Those who were not respectable said much worse things. The queen was being made a victim of these shameless and criminal adventurers.

The trial went on, political feeling being openly displayed in it. The great houses of Conde and Rohan took sides with the cardinal. Their representatives might be seen, dressed in mourning, interviewing the magistrates on their way to the tribunal, pleading with them on behalf of their relative. The magistrates needed little persuasion. The Parliament of Paris had long been at sword's point with the crown; now was its time for revenge; political prejudice blinded the members to the pure questions of law and justice; the cardinal was acquitted.