IX. THE MURDERERS
Coconnas had not fled, he had retreated; La Hurière had not fled, he had flown. The one had disappeared like a tiger, the other like a wolf.
The consequence was that La Hurière had already reached the Place Saint Germain l'Auxerrois when Coconnas was only just leaving the Louvre.
La Hurière, finding himself alone with his arquebuse, while around him men were running, bullets were whistling, and bodies were falling from windows,--some whole, others dismembered,--began to be afraid and was prudently thinking of returning to his tavern, but as he turned into the Rue de l'Arbre Sec from the Rue d'Averon he fell in with a troop of Swiss and light cavalry: it was the one commanded by Maurevel.
"Well," cried Maurevel, who had christened himself with the nickname of King's Killer, "have you finished so soon? Are you going back to your tavern, worthy landlord? And what the devil have you done with our Piedmontese gentleman? No misfortune has happened to him? That would be a shame, for he started out well."
"No, I think not," replied La Hurière; "I hope he will rejoin us!"
"Where have you been?"
"At the Louvre, and I must say we were very rudely treated there."
"By whom?"
"Monsieur le Duc d'Alençon. Isn't he interested in this affair?"
"Monseigneur le Duc d'Alençon is not interested in anything which does not concern himself personally. Propose to treat his two older brothers as Huguenots and he would be in it--provided only that the work should be done without compromising him. But won't you go with these worthy fellows, Maître La Hurière?"
"And where are they going?"
"Oh, mon Dieu! Rue Montorguen; there is a Huguenot minister there whom I know; he has a wife and six children. These heretics are enormous breeders; it will be interesting."
"And where are you going?"
"Oh, I have a little private business."
"Say, there! don't go off without me," said a voice which made Maurevel start, "you know all the good places and I want to have my share."
"Ah! it is our Piedmontese," said Maurevel.
"Yes, it is Monsieur de Coconnas," said La Hurière; "I thought you were following me."
"Hang it! you made off too swiftly for that; and besides I turned a little to one side so as to fling into the river a frightful child who was screaming, 'Down with the Papists! Long live the admiral!' Unfortunately, I believe the little rascal knew how to swim. These miserable heretics must be flung into the water like cats before their eyes are opened if they are to be drowned at all."
"Ah! you say you are just from the Louvre; so your Huguenot took refuge there, did he?" asked Maurevel.
"Mon Dieu! yes."
"I gave him a pistol-shot at the moment when he was picking up his sword in the admiral's court-yard, but I somehow or other missed him."
"Well, I did not miss him," added Coconnas; "I gave him such a thrust in the back that my sword was wet five inches up the blade. Besides, I saw him fall into the arms of Madame Marguerite, a pretty woman, by Heaven! yet I confess I should not be sorry to hear he was really dead; the vagabond is infernally spiteful, and capable of bearing me a grudge all his life. But didn't you say you were bound somewhere?"
"Why, do you mean to go with me?"
"I do not like standing still, by Heaven! I have killed only three or four as yet, and when I get cold my shoulder pains me. Forward! forward!"
"Captain," said Maurevel to the commander of the troop, "give me three men, and go and despatch your parson with the rest."
Three Swiss stepped forward and joined Maurevel. Nevertheless, the two companies proceeded side by side till they reached the top of the Rue Tirechappe; there the light horse and the Swiss took the Rue de la Tonnellerie, while Maurevel, Coconnas, La Hurière, and his three men were proceeding down the Rue Trousse Vache and entering the Rue Sainte Avoye. "Where the devil are you taking us?" asked Coconnas, who was beginning to be bored by this long march from which he could see no results.
"I am taking you on an expedition at once brilliant and useful. Next to the admiral, next to Téligny, next to the Huguenot princes, I could offer you nothing better. So have patience, our business calls us to the Rue du Chaume, and we shall be there in a second."
"Tell me," said Coconnas, "is not the Rue du Chaume near the Temple?"
"Yes, why?"
"Because an old creditor of our family lives there, one Lambert Mercandon, to whom my father wished me to hand over a hundred rose nobles I have in my pocket for that purpose."
"Well," replied Maurevel, "this is a good opportunity for paying it. This is the day for settling old accounts. Is your Mercandon a Huguenot?"
"Oho, I understand!" said Coconnas; "he must be"--
"Hush! here we are."
"What is that large hôtel, with its entrance in the street?"
"The Hôtel de Guise."
"Truly," returned Coconnas, "I should not have failed to come here, as I am under the patronage of the great Henry. But, by Heaven! all is so very quiet in this quarter, we scarcely hear any firing, and we might fancy ourselves in the country. The devil fetch me but every one is asleep!"
And indeed the Hôtel de Guise seemed as quiet as in ordinary times. All the windows were closed, and a solitary light was burning behind the blind of the principal window over the entrance which had attracted Coconnas's attention as soon as they entered the street.
Just beyond the Hôtel de Guise, in other words, at the corner of the Rue du Petit Chantier and the Rue des Quatre Fils, Maurevel halted.
"Here is the house of the man we want," said he.
"Of the man you want--that is to say"--observed La Hurière.
"Since you are with me we want him."
"What! that house which seems so sound asleep"--
"Exactly! La Hurière, now go and make practical use of the plausible face which heaven, by some blunder, gave you, and knock at that house. Hand your arquebuse to M. de Coconnas, who has been ogling it this last half hour. If you are admitted, you must ask to speak to Seigneur de Mouy."
"Aha!" exclaimed Coconnas, "now I understand--you also have a creditor in the quarter of the Temple, it would seem."
"Exactly so!" responded Maurevel. "You will go up to him pretending to be a Huguenot, and inform De Mouy of all that has taken place; he is brave, and will come down."
"And once down?" asked La Hurière.
"Once down, I will beg of him to cross swords with me."
"On my soul, 'tis a fine gentleman's," said Coconnas, "and I propose to do exactly the same thing with Lambert Mercandon; and if he is too old to respond, I will try it with one of his sons or nephews."
La Hurière, without making any reply, went and knocked at the door, and the sounds echoing in the silence of the night caused the doors of the Hôtel de Guise to open, and several heads to make their appearance from out them; it was evident that the hôtel was quiet after the manner of citadels, that is to say, because it was filled with soldiers.
The heads were almost instantly withdrawn, as doubtless an inkling of the matter in hand was divined.
"Does your Monsieur de Mouy live here?" inquired Coconnas, pointing to the house at which La Hurière was still knocking.
"No, but his mistress does."
"By Heaven! how gallant you are, to give him an occasion to draw sword in the presence of his lady-love! We shall be the judges of the field. However, I should like very well to fight myself--my shoulder burns."
"And your face," added Maurevel, "is considerably damaged."
Coconnas uttered a kind of growl.
"By Heaven!" he said, "I hope he is dead; if I thought not, I would return to the Louvre and finish him."
La Hurière still kept knocking.
Soon the window on the first floor opened, and a man appeared in the balcony, in a nightcap and drawers, and unarmed.
"Who's there?" cried he.
Maurevel made a sign to the Swiss, who retreated into a corner, whilst Coconnas stood close against the wall.
"Ah! Monsieur de Mouy!" said the innkeeper, in his blandest tones, "is that you?"
"Yes; what then?"
"It is he!" said Maurevel, with a thrill of joy.
"Why, sir," continued La Hurière, "do you not know what is going on? They are murdering the admiral, and massacring all of our religion. Hasten to their assistance; come!"
"Ah!" exclaimed De Mouy, "I feared something was plotted for this night. I ought not to have deserted my worthy comrades. I will come, my friend,--wait for me."
And without closing the window, through which a frightened woman could be heard uttering lamentations and tender entreaties, Monsieur de Mouy got his doublet, his mantle, and his weapons.
"He is coming down! He is coming down!" muttered Maurevel, pale with joy. "Attention, the rest of you!" he whispered to the Swiss.
Then taking the arquebuse from Coconnas he blew on the tinder to make sure that it was still alight.
"Here, La Hurière," he added, addressing the innkeeper, who had rejoined the main body of the company, "here, take your arquebuse!"
"By Heaven!" exclaimed Coconnas, "the moon is coming out of the clouds to witness this beautiful fight. I would give a great deal if Lambert Mercandon were here, to serve as Monsieur de Mouy's second."
"Wait, wait!" said Maurevel; "Monsieur de Mouy alone is equal to a dozen men, and it is likely that we six shall have enough to do to despatch him. Forward, my men!" continued Maurevel, making a sign to the Swiss to stand by the door, in order to strike De Mouy as he came forth.
"Oho!" said Coconnas, as he watched these arrangements; "it appears that this will not come off quite as I expected."
Already the noise made by De Mouy in withdrawing the bar was heard. The Swiss had left their hiding-place to arrange themselves near the door, Maurevel and La Hurière were going forward on tiptoe, and Coconnas with a dying gleam of gentlemanly feeling was standing where he was, when the young woman who had been for the moment utterly forgotten suddenly appeared on the balcony and uttered a terrible shriek at the sight of the Swiss, Maurevel, and La Hurière.
De Mouy, who had already half opened the door, paused.
"Come back! come back!" cried the young woman. "I see swords glitter, and the match of an arquebuse--there is treachery!"
"Oho!" said the young man; "let us see, then, what all this means."
And he closed the door, replaced the bar, and went upstairs again.
Maurevel's order of battle was changed as soon as he saw that De Mouy was not going to come out. The Swiss went and posted themselves at the other corner of the street, and La Hurière, with his arquebuse in his hand, waited till the enemy reappeared at the window.
He did not wait long. De Mouy came forward holding before him two pistols of such respectable length that La Hurière, who was already aiming, suddenly reflected that the Huguenot's bullets had no farther to fly in reaching the street from the balcony than his had in reaching the balcony.
"Assuredly," said he to himself, "I may kill this gentleman, but likewise this gentleman may kill me in the same way."
Now as Maître La Hurière, an innkeeper by profession, was only accidentally a soldier, this reflection determined him to retreat and seek shelter in the corner of the Rue de Braque, far enough away to cause him some difficulty in finding with a certain certainty, especially at night, the line which a bullet from his arquebuse would take in reaching De Mouy.
De Mouy cast a glance around him, and advanced cautiously like a man preparing to fight a duel; but seeing nothing, he exclaimed:
"Why, it appears, my worthy informant, that you have forgotten your arquebuse at my door! Here I am. What do you want with me?"
"Aha!" said Coconnas to himself; "he is certainly a brave fellow!"
"Well," continued De Mouy, "friends or enemies, whichever you are, do you not see I am waiting?"
La Hurière kept silence, Maurevel made no reply, and the three Swiss remained in covert.
Coconnas waited an instant; then, seeing that no one took part in the conversation begun by La Hurière and continued by De Mouy, he left his station, and advancing into the middle of the street, took off his hat and said:
"Sir, we are not here for an assassination, as you seem to suppose, but for a duel. I am here with one of your enemies, who was desirous of meeting you to end gallantly an old controversy. Eh, by Heaven! come forward, Monsieur de Maurevel, instead of turning your back. The gentleman accepts."
"Maurevel!" cried De Mouy; "Maurevel, the assassin of my father! Maurevel, the king's assassin! Ah, by Heaven! Yes, I accept."
And taking aim at Maurevel, who was about to knock at the Hôtel de Guise to request a reinforcement, he sent a bullet through his hat.
At the noise of the report and Maurevel's shouts, the guard which had escorted the Duchesse de Nevers came out, accompanied by three or four gentlemen, followed by their pages, and approached the house of young De Mouy's mistress.
A second pistol-shot, fired into the midst of the troop, killed the soldier next to Maurevel; after which De Mouy, finding himself weaponless, or at least with useless weapons, for his pistols had been fired and his adversaries were beyond the reach of his sword, took shelter behind the balcony gallery.
Meantime here and there windows began to be thrown open in the neighborhood, and according to the pacific or bellicose dispositions of their inhabitants, were barricaded or bristled with muskets and arquebuses.
"Help! my worthy Mercandon," shouted De Mouy, beckoning to an elderly man who, from a window which had just been thrown open in front of the Hôtel de Guise, was trying to make out the cause of the confusion.
"Is it you who call, Sire de Mouy?" cried the old man: "are they attacking you?"
"Me--you--all the Protestants; and wait--there is the proof!"
That moment De Mouy had seen La Hurière aim his arquebuse at him; it was fired; but the young man had time to stoop, and the ball broke a window above his head.
"Mercandon!" exclaimed Coconnas, who, in his delight at sight of this fray, had forgotten his creditor, but was reminded of him by De Mouy's apostrophe; "Mercandon, Rue du Chaume--that is it! Ah, he lives there! Good! Each of us will settle accounts with our man."
And, while the people from the Hôtel de Guise were breaking in the doors of De Mouy's house, and Maurevel, with a torch in his hand, was trying to set it on fire--while now that the doors were once broken, there was a fearful struggle with a single antagonist who at each rapier-thrust brought down his foe--Coconnas tried, by the help of a paving-stone, to break in Mercandon's door, and the latter, unmoved by this solitary effort, was doing his best with his arquebuse out of his window.
And now all this dark and deserted quarter was lighted up, as if by open day,--peopled like the interior of an ant-hive; for from the Hôtel de Montmorency six or eight Huguenot gentlemen, with their servants and friends, had just made a furious charge, and, supported by the firing from the windows, were beginning to repulse Maurevel's and the De Guises' force, who at length were driven back to the place whence they had come.
Coconnas, who had not yet succeeded in smashing Mercandon's door, though he was working at it with all his might, was caught in this sudden retreat. Placing his back to the wall, and grasping his sword firmly, he began not only to defend himself, but to attack his assailants, with cries so terrible that they were heard above all the uproar. He struck right and left, hitting friends and enemies, until a wide space was cleared around him. As his rapier made a hole in some breast, and the warm blood spurted over his hands and face, he, with dilated eye, expanded nostrils, and clinched teeth, regained the ground lost, and again approached the beleaguered house.
De Mouy, after a terrible combat in the staircase and hall, had finally come out of the burning house like a true hero. In the midst of all the struggle he had not ceased to cry, "Here, Maurevel!--Maurevel, where are you?" insulting him by the most opprobrious epithets.
He at length appeared in the street, supporting on one arm his mistress, half naked and nearly fainting, and holding a poniard between his teeth. His sword, flaming by the sweeping action he gave it, traced circles of white or red, according as the moon glittered on the blade or a flambeau glared on its blood-stained brightness.
Maurevel had fled. La Hurière, driven back by De Mouy as far as Coconnas, who did not recognize him, and received him at sword's point, was begging for mercy on both sides. At this moment Mercandon perceived him, and knew him, by his white scarf, to be one of the murderers. He fired. La Hurière shrieked, threw up his arms, dropped his arquebuse, and, after having vainly attempted to reach the wall, in order to support himself, fell with his face flat on the earth.
De Mouy took advantage of this circumstance, turned down the Rue de Paradis, and disappeared.
Such had been the resistance of the Huguenots that the De Guise party, quite repulsed, had retired into their hôtel, fearing to be besieged and taken in their own habitation.
Coconnas who, intoxicated with blood and tumult, had reached that degree of excitement when, with the men of the south more especially, courage changes into madness, had not seen or heard anything, and noticed only that there was not such a roar in his ears, and that his hands and face were a little dryer than they had been. Dropping the point of his sword, he saw near him a man lying face downward in a red stream, and around him burning houses.
It was a very short truce, for just as he was approaching this man, whom he recognized as La Hurière, the door of the house he had in vain tried to burst in, opened, and old Mercandon, followed by his son and two nephews, rushed upon him.
"Here he is! here he is!" cried they all, with one voice.
Coconnas was in the middle of the street, and fearing to be surrounded by these four men who assailed him at once, sprang backward with the agility of one of the chamois which he had so often hunted in his native mountains, and in an instant found himself with his back against the wall of the Hôtel de Guise. Once at ease as to not being surprised from behind he put himself in a posture of defence, and said, jestingly:
"Aha, father Mercandon, don't you know me?"
"Wretch!" cried the old Huguenot, "I know you well; you are engaged against me--me, your father's friend and companion."
"And his creditor, are you not?"
"Yes; his creditor, as you say."
"Well, then," said Coconnas, "I have come to settle our accounts."
"Seize him, bind him!" said Mercandon to the young men who accompanied him, and who at his bidding rushed toward the Piedmontese.
"One moment! one moment!" said Coconnas, laughing, "to seize a man you must have a writ, and you have forgotten to secure one from the provost."
And with these words he crossed his sword with the young man nearest to him and at the first blow cut his wrist.
The wounded man retreated with a howl.
"That will do for one!" said Coconnas.
At the same moment the window under which Coconnas had sought shelter opened noisily. He sprang to one side, fearing an attack from behind; but instead of an enemy he saw a woman; instead of the enemy's weapon he was prepared to encounter, a nosegay fell at his feet.
"Ah!" he said, "a woman!"
He saluted the lady with his sword, and stooped to pick up the bouquet.
"Be on your guard, brave Catholic!--be on your guard!" cried the lady.
Coconnas rose, but not before the second nephew's dagger had pierced his cloak, and wounded his other shoulder.
The lady uttered a piercing shriek.
Coconnas thanked her, assured her by a gesture, and then made a pass, which the nephew parried; but at the second thrust, his foot slipped in the blood, and Coconnas, springing at him like a tiger-cat, drove his sword through his breast.
"Good! good! brave cavalier!" exclaimed the lady of the Hôtel de Guise, "good! I will send you succor."
"Do not give yourself any trouble about that, madame," was Coconnas's reply; "rather look on to the end, if it interests you, and see how the Comte Annibal de Coconnas settles the Huguenots."
At this moment old Mercandon's son aimed a pistol at close range to Coconnas, and fired. The count fell on his knee. The lady at the window shrieked again; but Coconnas rose instantly; he had knelt only to avoid the bullet, which struck the wall about two feet beneath where the lady was standing.
Almost at the same moment a cry of rage issued from the window of Mercandon's house, and an old woman, who recognized Coconnas as a Catholic, from his white scarf and cross, hurled a flower-pot at him, which struck him above the knee.
"Capital!" said Coconnas; "one throws flowers at me and at the other, flower-pots; if this goes on, they'll be tearing houses down!"
"Thanks, mother, thanks!" said the young man.
"Go on, wife, go on," said old Mercandon; "but take care of yourself."
"Wait, Monsieur de Coconnas, wait!" said the young woman of the Hôtel de Guise, "I will have them shoot at the windows!"
"Ah! So it is a hell of women, is it?" said Coconnas. "Some of them for me and the others against me! By Heaven! let us put an end to this!"
The scene in fact was much changed and was evidently approaching its climax. Coconnas, who was wounded to be sure, but who had all the vigor of his four and twenty years, was used to arms, and angered rather than weakened by the three or four scratches he had received, now faced only Mercandon and his son: Mercandon, an aged man between sixty and seventy; his son, a youth of sixteen or eighteen, pale, fair-haired and slender, had flung down his pistol which had been discharged and was therefore useless, and was feebly brandishing a sword half as long as the Piedmontese's. The father, armed only with an unloaded arquebuse and a poniard, was calling for assistance. An old woman--the young man's mother--in the opposite window held in her hand a piece of marble which she was preparing to hurl.
Coconnas, excited on the one hand by threats, and on the other by encouragements, proud of his two-fold victory, intoxicated with powder and blood, lighted by the reflection of a burning house, elated by the idea that he was fighting under the eyes of a woman whose beauty was as superior as he was sure her rank was high,--Coconnas, like the last of the Horatii, felt his strength redouble, and seeing the young man falter, rushed on him and crossed his small weapon with his terrible and bloody rapier. Two strokes sufficed to drive it out of its owner's hands. Then Mercandon tried to drive Coconnas back, so that the projectiles thrown from the window might be sure to strike him, but Coconnas, to paralyze the double attack of the old man, who tried to stab him with his dagger, and the mother of the young man, who was endeavoring to break his skull with a stone she was ready to throw, seized his adversary by the body, presenting him to all the blows, like a shield, and well-nigh strangling him in his Herculean grasp.
"Help! help!" cried the young man; "he is crushing my chest--help! help!"
And his voice grew faint in a low and choking groan.
Then Mercandon ceased to attack, and began to entreat.
"Mercy, mercy! Monsieur de Coconnas, have mercy!--he is my only child!"
"He is my son, my son!" cried the mother; "the hope of our old age! Do not kill him, sir,--do not kill him!"
"Really," cried Coconnas, bursting into laughter, "not kill him! What, pray, did he mean to do to me, with his sword and pistol?"
"Sir," said Mercandon, clasping his hands, "I have at home your father's note of hand, I will give it back to you--I have ten thousand crowns of gold, I will give them to you--I have our family jewels, they shall be yours; but do not kill him--do not kill him!"
"And I have my love," said the lady in the Hôtel de Guise, in a low tone, "and I promise it you."
Coconnas reflected a moment, and said suddenly:
"Are you a Huguenot?"
"Yes, I am," murmured the youth.
"Then you must die!" replied Coconnas, frowning and putting to his adversary's breast his keen and glittering dagger.
"Die!" cried the old man; "my poor child die!"
And the mother's shriek resounded so pitifully and loud that for a moment it shook the Piedmontese's firm resolution.
"Oh, Madame la Duchesse!" cried the father, turning toward the lady at the Hôtel de Guise, "intercede for us, and every morning and evening you shall be remembered in our prayers."
"Then let him be a convert," said the lady.
"I am a Protestant," said the boy.
"Then die!" exclaimed Coconnas, lifting his dagger; "die! since you will not accept the life which those lovely lips offer to you."
Mercandon and his wife saw the blade of that deadly weapon gleam like lightning above the head of their son.
"My son Olivier," shrieked his mother, "abjure, abjure!"
"Abjure, my dear boy!" cried Mercandon, going on his knees to Coconnas; "do not leave us alone on the earth!"
"Abjure all together," said Coconnas; "for one Credo, three souls and one life."
"I am willing," said the youth.
"We are willing!" cried Mercandon and his wife.
"On your knees, then," said Coconnas, "and let your son repeat after me, word for word, the prayer I shall say."
The father obeyed first.
"I am ready," said the son, also kneeling.
Coconnas then began to repeat in Latin the words of the Credo. But whether from chance or calculation, young Olivier knelt close to where his sword had fallen. Scarcely did he see this weapon within his reach than, not ceasing to repeat the words which Coconnas dictated, he stretched out his hand to take it up. Coconnas watched the movement, although he pretended not to see it; but at the moment when the young man touched the handle of the sword with his fingers he rushed on him, knocked him over, exclaiming, "Ah, traitor!" and plunged his dagger into his throat.
The youth uttered one cry, raised himself convulsively on his knee, and fell dead.
"Ah, ruffian!" shrieked Mercandon, "you slay us to rob us of the hundred rose nobles you owe us."
"Faith! no," said Coconnas, "and the proof,"--and as he said these words he flung at the old man's feet the purse which his father had given him before his departure to pay his creditor,--"and the proof," he went on to say, "is this money which I give you!"
"And here's your death!" cried the old woman from the window.
"Take care, M. de Coconnas, take care!" called out the lady at the Hôtel de Guise.
But before Coconnas could turn his head to comply with this advice, or get out of the way of the threat, a heavy mass came hissing through the air, fell on the Piedmontese's hat, broke his sword, and prostrated him on the pavement; he was overcome, crushed, so that he did not hear the double cry of joy and distress which came from the right and left.
Mercandon instantly rushed, dagger in hand, on Coconnas, now bereft of his senses; but at this moment the door of the Hôtel de Guise opened, and the old man, seeing swords and partisans gleaming, fled, while the lady he had called "Madame la Duchesse," her beauty terrible in the light of the flames, dazzling with diamonds and other gems, leaned half out of the window, in order to direct the newcomers, pointing her arm toward Coconnas.
"There! there! in front of me--a gentleman in a red doublet. There!--that is he--yes, that is he."
X. DEATH, MASS, OR THE BASTILLE
Marguerite, as we have said, had shut the door and returned to her chamber. But as she entered, panting, she saw Gillonne, who, terror-struck, was leaning against the door of the closet, staring at the traces of blood on the bed, the furniture, and the carpet.
"Ah! madame!" she cried when she saw the queen. "Oh! madame! tell me, is he dead?"
"Silence!" said Marguerite in that tone of voice which gives some indication of the importance of the command.
Gillonne was silent.
Marguerite then took from her purse a tiny gilded key, opened the closet door, and showed the young man to the servant. La Mole had succeeded in getting to his feet and making his way to the window. A small poniard, such as women at that time were in the habit of carrying, was at hand, and when he heard the door opening he had seized it.
"Fear nothing, sir," said Marguerite; "for, on my soul, you are in safety!"
La Mole sank on his knees.
"Oh, madame," he cried, "you are more than a queen--you are a goddess!"
"Do not agitate yourself, sir," said Marguerite, "your blood is still flowing. Oh, look, Gillonne, how pale he is--let us see where you are wounded."
"Madame," said La Mole, trying to fix on certain parts of his body the pain which pervaded his whole frame, "I think I have a dagger-thrust in my shoulder, another in my chest,--the other wounds are not worth bothering about."
"We will see," said Marguerite. "Gillonne, bring me my balsam casket."
Gillonne obeyed, and returned holding in one hand a casket, and in the other a silver-gilt ewer and some fine Holland linen.
"Help me to lift him, Gillonne," said Queen Marguerite; "for in attempting to get up the poor gentleman has lost all his strength."
"But, madame," said La Mole, "I am wholly confused. Indeed, I cannot allow"--
"But, sir, you will let us do for you, I think," said Marguerite. "When we may save you, it would be a crime to let you die."
"Oh!" cried La Mole, "I would rather die than see you, the queen, stain your hands with blood as unworthy as mine. Oh, never, never!"
And he drew back respectfully.
"Your blood, sir," replied Gillonne, with a smile, "has already stained her majesty's bed and chamber."
Marguerite folded her mantle over her cambric peignoir, all bespattered with small red spots. This movement, so expressive of feminine modesty, caused La Mole to remember that he had held in his arms and pressed to his heart this beautiful, beloved queen, and at the recollection a fugitive glow of color came into his pallid cheeks.
"Madame," stammered La Mole, "can you not leave me to the care of the surgeon?"
"Of a Catholic surgeon, perhaps," said the queen, with an expression which La Mole understood and which made him shudder. "Do you not know," continued the queen in a voice and with a smile of incomparable sweetness, "that we daughters of France are trained to know the qualities of herbs and to make balsams? for our duty as women and as queens has always been to soften pain. Therefore we are equal to the best surgeons in the world; so our flatterers say! Has not my reputation in this regard come to your ears? Come, Gillonne, let us to work!"
La Mole again endeavored to resist; he repeated that he would rather die than occasion the queen labor which, though begun in pity, might end in disgust; but this exertion completely exhausted his strength, and falling back, he fainted a second time.
Marguerite, then seizing the poniard which he had dropped, quickly cut the lace of his doublet; while Gillonne, with another blade, ripped open the sleeves.
Next Gillonne, with a cloth dipped in fresh water, stanched the blood which escaped from his shoulder and breast, and Marguerite, with a silver needle with a round point, probed the wounds with all the delicacy and skill that Maître Ambroise Paré could have displayed in such a case.
"A dangerous but not mortal wound, acerrimum humeri vulnus, non autem lethale," murmured the lovely and learned lady-surgeon; "hand me the salve, Gillonne, and get the lint ready."
Meantime Gillonne, to whom the queen had just given this new order, had already dried and perfumed the young man's chest and arms, which were like an antique model, as well as his shoulders, which fell gracefully back; his neck shaded by thick, curling locks, and which seemed rather to belong to a statue of Parian marble than the mangled frame of a dying man.
"Poor young man!" whispered Gillonne, looking not so much at her work as at the object of it.
"Is he not handsome?" said Marguerite, with royal frankness.
"Yes, madame; but it seems to me that instead of leaving him lying there on the floor, we should lift him on this couch against which he is leaning."
"Yes," said Marguerite, "you are right."
And the two women, bending over, uniting their strength, raised La Mole, and laid him on a kind of great sofa in front of the window, which they opened in order to give them fresh air.
This movement aroused La Mole, who drew a long sigh, and opening his eyes, began to experience that indescribable sensation of well-being which comes to a wounded man when on his return to consciousness he finds coolness instead of burning heat, and the perfumes of balsams instead of the nauseating odor of blood.
He muttered some disconnected words, to which Marguerite replied with a smile, placing her finger on her lips.
At this moment several raps on the door were heard.
"Some one knocks at the secret passage," said Marguerite.
"Who can be coming, madame?" asked Gillonne, in a panic.
"I will go and see who it is," said Marguerite; "remain here, and do not leave him for a single instant."
Marguerite went into the chamber, and closing the closet door, opened that of the passage which led to the King's and queen mother's apartments.
"Madame de Sauve!" she exclaimed, suddenly drawing back with an expression which resembled hatred, if not terror, so true it is that a woman never forgives another for taking from her even a man whom she does not love,--"Madame de Sauve!"
"Yes, your majesty!" she replied, clasping her hands.
"You here, madame?" exclaimed Marguerite, more and more surprised, while at the same time her voice grew more and more imperative.
Charlotte fell on her knees.
"Madame," she said, "pardon me! I know how guilty I am toward you; but if you knew--the fault is not wholly mine; an express command of the queen mother"--
"Rise!" said Marguerite, "and as I do not suppose you have come with the intention of justifying yourself to me, tell me why you have come at all."
"I have come, madame," said Charlotte, still on her knees, and with a look of wild alarm, "I came to ask you if he were not here?"
"Here! who?--of whom are you speaking, madame? for I really do not understand."
"Of the king!"
"Of the king? What, do you follow him to my apartments? You know very well that he never comes here."
"Ah, madame!" continued the Baronne de Sauve, without replying to these attacks, or even seeming to comprehend them, "ah, would to Heaven he were here!"
"And why so?"
"Eh, mon Dieu! madame, because they are murdering the Huguenots, and the King of Navarre is the chief of the Huguenots."
"Oh!" cried Marguerite, seizing Madame de Sauve by the hand, and compelling her to rise; "ah! I had forgotten; besides, I did not think a king could run the same dangers as other men."
"More, madame,--a thousand times more!" cried Charlotte.
"In fact, Madame de Lorraine had warned me; I had begged him not to leave the Louvre. Has he done so?"
"No, no, madame, he is in the Louvre; but if he is not here"--
"He is not here!"
"Oh!" cried Madame de Sauve, with an outburst of agony, "then he is a dead man, for the queen mother has sworn his destruction!"
"His destruction! ah," said Marguerite, "you terrify me--impossible!"
"Madame," replied Madame de Sauve, with that energy which passion alone can give, "I tell you that no one knows where the King of Navarre is."
"And where is the queen mother?"
"The queen mother sent me to find Monsieur de Guise and Monsieur de Tavannes, who were in her oratory, and then dismissed me. Then--pardon me, madame--I went to my room and waited as usual."
"For my husband, I suppose."
"He did not come, madame. Then I sought for him everywhere and asked every one for him. One soldier told me he thought he had seen him in the midst of the guards who accompanied him, with his sword drawn in his hand, some time before the massacre began, and the massacre has begun an hour ago."
"Thanks, madame," said Marguerite; "and although perhaps the sentiment which impels you is an additional offence toward me,--yet, again, I thank you!"
"Oh, forgive me, madame!" she said, "and I will return to my apartments stronger for your pardon, for I dare not follow you, even at a distance."
Marguerite extended her hand to her.
"I will go to Queen Catharine," she said. "Return to your room. The King of Navarre is under my protection; I have promised him my alliance and I will be faithful to my promise."
"But suppose you cannot obtain access to the queen mother, madame?"
"Then I will go to my brother Charles, and I will speak to him."
"Go, madame, go," said Charlotte, leaving Marguerite room to pass, "and may God guide your majesty!"
Marguerite darted down the corridor, but when she reached the end of it she turned to make sure that Madame de Sauve was not lingering behind. Madame de Sauve was following her.
The Queen of Navarre saw her go upstairs to her own apartment, and then she herself went toward the queen's chamber.
All was changed here. Instead of the crowd of eager courtiers, who usually opened their ranks before the queen and respectfully saluted her, Marguerite met only guards with red partisans and garments stained with blood, or gentlemen in torn cloaks,--their faces blackened with powder, bearing orders and despatches,--some going in, others going out, and all this movement back and forth made a great and terrible confusion in the galleries.
Marguerite, however, went boldly on until she reached the queen mother's antechamber. But this room was guarded by a double file of soldiers, who allowed only those who had a certain countersign to enter. Marguerite in vain tried to pass this living barrier; several times she saw the door open and shut, and each time she saw Catharine, her youth restored by action, as alert as if she were only twenty years of age, writing, receiving letters, opening them, addressing a word to one, a smile to another; and those on whom she smiled most graciously were those who were the most covered with dust and blood.
Amid this vast tumult which reigned in the Louvre and filled it with frightful clamors, could be heard the rattling of musketry more and more insistently repeated.
"I shall never get to her," said Marguerite to herself after she had made three ineffectual attempts to pass the halberdiers. "Rather than waste my time here, I must go and find my brother."
At this moment M. de Guise passed; he had just informed the queen of the murder of the admiral, and was returning to the butchery.
"Oh, Henry!" cried Marguerite, "where is the King of Navarre?"
The duke looked at her with a smile of astonishment, bowed, and without any reply passed out with his guards.
Marguerite ran to a captain who was on the point of leaving the Louvre and was engaged in having his men's arquebuses loaded.
"The King of Navarre!" she exclaimed; "sir, where is the King of Navarre?"
"I do not know, madame," replied the captain, "I do not belong to his majesty's guards."
"Ah, my dear Réné," said the queen, recognizing Catharine's perfumer, "is that you?--you have just left my mother. Do you know what has become of my husband?"
"His majesty the King of Navarre is no friend of mine, madame, you ought to remember that. It is even said," he added, with a contraction of his features more like a grimace than a smile, "it is even said that he ventures to accuse me of having been the accomplice, with Madame Catharine, in poisoning his mother."
"No, no!" cried Marguerite, "my good Réné, do not believe that!"
"Oh, it is of little consequence, madame!" said the perfumer; "neither the King of Navarre nor his party is any longer to be feared!"
And he turned his back on Marguerite.
"Ah, Monsieur de Tavannes!" cried Marguerite, "one word, I beseech you!"
Tavannes, who was going by, stopped.
"Where is Henry of Navarre?"
"Faith," he replied, in a loud voice, "I believe he is somewhere in the city with the Messieurs d'Alençon and de Condé."
And then he added, in a tone so low that the queen alone could hear:
"Your majesty, if you would see him,--to be in whose place I would give my life,--go to the king's armory."
"Thanks, Tavannes, thanks!" said Marguerite, who, of all that Tavannes had said, had heard only the chief direction; "thank you, I will go there."
And she went on her way, murmuring:
"Oh, after all I promised him--after the way in which he behaved to me when that ingrate, Henry de Guise, was concealed in the closet--I cannot let him perish!"
And she knocked at the door of the King's apartments; but they were encompassed within by two companies of guards.
"No one is admitted to the King," said the officer, coming forward.
"But I"--said Marguerite.
"The order is general."
"I, the Queen of Navarre!--I, his sister!"
"My orders admit of no exception, madame; I pray you to pardon me."
And the officer closed the door.
"Oh, he is lost!" exclaimed Marguerite, alarmed at the sight of all those sinister faces, which even if they did not breathe vengeance, expressed sternness of purpose. "Yes, yes! I comprehend all. I have been used as a bait. I am the snare which has entrapped the Huguenots; but I will enter, if I am killed in the attempt!"
And Marguerite ran like a mad creature through the corridors and galleries, when suddenly, as she passed by a small door, she heard a sweet song, almost melancholy, so monotonous it was. It was a Calvinistic psalm, sung by a trembling voice in the next room.
"My brother the king's nurse--the good Madelon--she is there!" exclaimed Marguerite. "God of the Christians, aid me now!"
And, full of hope, Marguerite knocked at the little door.
* * * * *
Soon after the counsel which Marguerite had conveyed to him, after his conversation with Réné, and after leaving the queen mother's chamber, in spite of the efforts of the poor little Phoebe,--who like a good genius tried to detain him,--Henry of Navarre had met several Catholic gentlemen, who, under a pretext of doing him honor, had escorted him to his apartments, where a score of Huguenots awaited him, who had rallied round the young prince, and, having once rallied, would not leave him--so strongly, for some hours, had the presentiment of that fatal night weighed on the Louvre. They had remained there, without any one attempting to disturb them. At last, at the first stroke of the bell of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, which resounded through all hearts like a funeral knell, Tavannes entered, and, in the midst of a death-like silence, announced that King Charles IX. desired to speak to Henry.
It was useless to attempt resistance, and no one thought of it. They heard the ceilings, galleries, and corridors creaking beneath the feet of the assembled soldiers, who were in the court-yards, as well as in the apartments, to the number of two thousand. Henry, after having taken leave of his friends, whom he was never again to see, followed Tavannes, who led him to a small gallery next the King's apartments, where he left him alone, unarmed, and a prey to mistrust.
The King of Navarre counted here alone, minute by minute, two mortal hours; listening, with increasing alarm, to the sound of the tocsin and the discharge of fire-arms; seeing through a small window, by the light of the flames and flambeaux, the refugees and their assassins pass; understanding nothing of these shrieks of murder, these cries of distress,--not even suspecting, in spite of his knowledge of Charles IX., the queen mother, and the Duc de Guise, the horrible drama at this moment enacting.
Henry had not physical courage, but he had better than that--he had moral fortitude. Though he feared danger, yet he smiled at it and faced it; but it was danger in the field of battle--danger in the open air--danger in the eyes of all, and attended by the noisy harmony of trumpets and the loud and vibrating beat of drums; but now he was weaponless, alone, locked in, shut up in a semi-darkness where he could scarcely see the enemy that might glide toward him, and the weapon that might be raised to strike him.
These two hours were, perhaps, the most agonizing of his life.
In the hottest of the tumult, and as Henry was beginning to understand that, in all probability, this was some organized massacre, a captain came to him, and conducted the prince along a corridor to the King's rooms. As they approached, the door opened and closed behind them as if by magic. The captain then led Henry to the King, who was in his armory.
When they entered, the King was seated in a great arm-chair, his two hands placed on the two arms of the seat, and his head falling on his chest. At the noise made by their entrance Charles looked up, and Henry observed the perspiration dropping from his brow like large beads.
"Good evening, Harry," said the young King, roughly. "La Chastre, leave us."
The captain obeyed.
A gloomy silence ensued. Henry looked around him with uneasiness, and saw that he was alone with the King.
Charles IX. suddenly arose.
"Par la mordieu!" said he, passing his hands through his light brown hair, and wiping his brow at the same time, "you are glad to be with me, are you not, Harry?"
"Certainly, sire," replied the King of Navarre, "I am always happy to be with your Majesty."
"Happier than if you were down there, eh?" continued Charles, following his own thoughts rather than replying to Henry's compliment.
"I do not understand, sire," replied Henry.
"Look out, then, and you will soon understand."
And with a quick movement Charles stepped or rather sprang to the window, and drawing with him his brother-in-law, who became more and more terror-stricken, he pointed to him the horrible outlines of the assassins, who, on the deck of a boat, were cutting the throats or drowning the victims brought them at every moment.
"In the name of Heaven," cried Henry; "what is going on to-night?"
"To-night, sir," replied Charles IX., "they are ridding me of all the Huguenots. Look yonder, over the Hôtel de Bourbon, at the smoke and flames: they are the smoke and flames of the admiral's house, which is on fire. Do you see that body, which these good Catholics are drawing on a torn mattress? It is the corpse of the admiral's son-in-law--the carcass of your friend, Téligny."
"What means this?" cried the King of Navarre, seeking vainly by his side for the hilt of his dagger, and trembling equally with shame and anger; for he felt that he was at the same time laughed at and threatened.
"It means," cried Charles IX., becoming suddenly furious, and turning frightfully pale, "it means that I will no longer have any Huguenots about me. Do you hear me, Henry?--Am I King? Am I master?"
"But, your Majesty"--
"My Majesty kills and massacres at this moment all that is not Catholic; it is my pleasure. Are you a Catholic?" exclaimed Charles, whose anger was rising higher and higher, like an awful tide.
"Sire," replied Henry, "do you remember your own words, 'What matters the religion of those who serve me well'?"
"Ha! ha! ha!" cried Charles, bursting into a ferocious laugh; "you ask me if I remember my words, Henry! 'Verba volant,' as my sister Margot says; and had not all those"--and he pointed to the city with his finger--"served me well, also? Were they not brave in battle, wise in council, deeply devoted? They were all useful subjects--but they were Huguenots, and I want none but Catholics."
Henry remained silent.
"Do you understand me now, Harry?" asked Charles.
"I understand, sire."
"Well?"
"Well, sire, I do not see why the King of Navarre should not do what so many gentlemen and poor folk have done. For if they all die, poor unfortunates, it is because the same terms have been proposed to them which your Majesty proposes to me, and they have refused, as I refuse."
Charles seized the young prince's arm, and fixed on him a look the vacancy of which suddenly changed into a fierce and savage scowl.
"What!" he said, "do you believe that I have taken the trouble to offer the mass to those whose throats we are cutting yonder?"
"Sire," said Henry, disengaging his arm, "will you not die in the religion of your fathers?"
"Yes, par la mordieu! and you?"
"Well, sire, I will do the same!" replied Henry.
Charles uttered a roar of rage and, with trembling hand, seized his arquebuse, which lay on the table.
Henry, who stood leaning against the tapestry, with the perspiration on his brow, and nevertheless, owing to his presence of mind, calm to all appearance, followed every movement of the terrible king with the greedy stupefaction of a bird fascinated by a serpent.
Charles cocked his arquebuse, and stamping with blind rage cried, as he dazzled Henry's eyes with the polished barrel of the deadly gun:
"Will you accept the mass?"
Henry remained mute.
Charles IX. shook the vaults of the Louvre with the most terrible oath that ever issued from the lips of man, and grew even more livid than before.
"Death, mass, or the Bastille!" he cried, taking aim at the King of Navarre.
"Oh, sire!" exclaimed Henry, "will you kill me--me, your brother?"
Henry thus, by his incomparable cleverness, which was one of the strongest faculties of his organization, evaded the answer which Charles IX. expected, for undoubtedly had his reply been in the negative Henry had been a dead man.
As immediately after the climax of rage, reaction begins, Charles IX. did not repeat the question he had addressed to the Prince of Navarre; and after a moment's hesitation, during which he uttered a hoarse kind of growl, he went back to the open window, and aimed at a man who was running along the quay in front.
"I must kill some one!" cried Charles IX., ghastly as a corpse, his eyes suffused with blood; and firing as he spoke, he struck the man who was running.
Henry uttered a groan.
Then, animated by a frightful ardor, Charles loaded and fired his arquebuse without cessation, uttering cries of joy every time his aim was successful.
"It is all over with me!" said the King of Navarre to himself; "when he sees no one else to kill, he will kill me!"
"Well," said a voice behind the princes, suddenly, "is it done?"
It was Catharine de Médicis, who had entered unobserved just as the King was firing his last shot.
"No, thousand thunders of hell!" said the King, throwing his arquebuse across the room. "No, the obstinate blockhead--he will not consent!"
Catharine made no reply. She turned her eyes slowly where Henry stood as motionless as one of the figures of the tapestry against which he was leaning. She then gave a glance at the King, which seemed to say:
"Then why he is alive?"
"He is alive, he is alive!" murmured Charles IX., who perfectly understood the glance, and replied to it without hesitation,--"he is alive--because he is my relative."
Catharine smiled.
Henry saw the smile, and realized that his struggle was to be with Catharine.
"Madame," he said to her, "the whole thing comes from you, I see very well, and my brother-in-law Charles is not to blame. You laid the plan for drawing me into a snare. You made your daughter the bait which was to destroy us all. You separated me from my wife that she might not see me killed before her eyes"--
"Yes, but that shall not be!" cried another voice, breathless and impassioned, which Henry instantly recognized and which made Charles start with surprise and Catharine with rage.
"Marguerite!" exclaimed Henry.
"Margot!" said Charles IX.
"My daughter!" muttered Catharine.
"Sire," said Marguerite to Henry, "your last words were an accusation against me, and you were both right and wrong,--right, for I am the means by which they attempted to destroy you; wrong, for I did not know that you were going to your destruction. I, sire, owe my own life to chance--to my mother's forgetfulness, perhaps; but as soon as I learned your danger I remembered my duty, and a wife's duty is to share her husband's fortunes. If you are exiled, sire, I will follow you into exile; if you are put into prison I will be your fellow-captive; if they kill you, I will also die."
And she offered her husband her hand, which he eagerly seized, if not with love, at least with gratitude.
"Oh, my poor Margot!" said Charles, "you had much better bid him become a Catholic!"
"Sire," replied Marguerite, with that lofty dignity which was so natural to her, "for your own sake do not ask any prince of your house to commit a cowardly act."
Catharine darted a significant glance at Charles.
"Brother," cried Marguerite, who equally well with Charles IX. understood Catharine's ominous pantomime, "my brother, remember! you made him my husband!"
Charles IX., at bay between Catharine's commanding eyes and Marguerite's supplicating look, as if between the two opposing principles of good and evil, stood for an instant undecided; at last Ormazd won the day.
"In truth," said he, whispering in Catharine's ear, "Margot is right, and Harry is my brother-in-law."
"Yes," replied Catharine in a similar whisper in her son's ear, "yes--but supposing he were not?"
XI. THE HAWTHORN OF THE CEMETERY OF THE INNOCENTS
As soon as Marguerite reached her own apartments she tried in vain to divine the words which Catharine de Médicis had whispered to Charles IX., and which had cut short the terrible council of life and death which was taking place.
She spent a part of the morning in attending to La Mole, and the rest in trying to guess the enigma, which her mind could not discover.
The King of Navarre remained a prisoner in the Louvre, the persecution of the Huguenots went on hotter than ever. The terrible night was followed by a day of massacre still more horrible. No longer the bells rang the tocsin, but Te Deums, and the echoes of these joyous notes, resounding amid fire and slaughter, were perhaps even more lugubrious in sunlight than had been the last night's knell sounding in darkness. This was not all. A strange thing had happened: a hawthorn-tree, which had blossomed in the spring, and which, as usual, had lost its odorous flowers in the month of June, had blossomed again during the night, and the Catholics, who saw a miracle in this event, spread the report of the miracle far and wide, thus making God their accomplice; and with cross and banners they marched in a procession to the Cemetery of the Innocents, where this hawthorn-tree was blooming.
This method of acquiescence which Heaven seemed to show in the massacres redoubled the ardor of the assassins, and while every street, every square, every alley-way of the city continued to present a scene of desolation, the Louvre had become the common tomb for all Protestants who had been shut up there when the signal was given. The King of Navarre, the Prince de Condé, and La Mole were the only survivors.
Assured as to La Mole, whose wounds, as she had declared the evening before, were severe but not dangerous, Marguerite's mind was now occupied with one single idea: that was to save her husband's life, which was still threatened. No doubt the first sentiment which actuated the wife was one of generous pity for a man for whom, as the Béarnais himself had said, she had sworn, if not love, at least alliance; but there was, beside, another sentiment not so pure, which had penetrated the queen's heart.
Marguerite was ambitious, and had foreseen almost the certainty of royalty in her marriage with Henry de Bourbon. Navarre, though beset on one side by the kings of France and on the other by the kings of Spain, who strip by strip had absorbed half of its territory, might become a real kingdom with the French Huguenots for subjects, if only Henry de Bourbon should fulfil the hopes which the courage shown by him on the infrequent occasions vouchsafed him of drawing his sword had aroused.
Marguerite, with her keen, lofty intellect, foresaw and reckoned on all this. So if she lost Henry she lost not only a husband, but a throne.
As she was absorbed in these reflections she heard some one knocking at the door of the secret corridor. She started, for only three persons came by that door,--the King, the queen mother, and the Duc d'Alençon. She opened the closet door, made a gesture of silence to Gillonne and La Mole, and then went to let her visitor in.
It was the Duc d'Alençon.
The young prince had not been seen since the night before. For a moment, Marguerite had conceived the idea of asking his intercession for the King of Navarre, but a terrible idea restrained her. The marriage had taken place against his wishes. François detested Henry, and had evinced his neutrality toward the Béarnais only because he was convinced that Henry and his wife had remained strangers to each other. A mark of interest shown by Marguerite in her husband might thrust one of the three threatening poniards into his heart instead of turning it aside. Marguerite, therefore, on perceiving the young prince, shuddered more than she had shuddered at seeing the King or even the queen mother. Nevertheless no one could have told by his appearance that anything unusual was taking place either in the city or at the Louvre. He was dressed with his usual elegance. His clothes and linen breathed of those perfumes which Charles IX. despised, but of which the Duc d'Anjou and he made continual use.
A practised eye like Marguerite's, however, could detect the fact that in spite of his rather unusual pallor and in spite of a slight trembling in his hands--delicate hands, as carefully treated as a lady's--he felt a deep sense of joy in the bottom of his heart. His entrance was in no wise different from usual. He went to his sister to kiss her, but Marguerite, instead of offering him her cheek, as she would have done had it been King Charles or the Duc d'Anjou, made a courtesy and allowed him to kiss her forehead.
The Duc d'Alençon sighed and touched his bloodless lips to her brow.
Then taking a seat he began to tell his sister the sanguinary news of the night, the admiral's lingering and terrible death, Téligny's instantaneous death caused by a bullet. He took his time and emphasized all the bloody details of that night, with that love of blood characteristic of himself and his two brothers; Marguerite allowed him to tell his story.
"You did not come to tell me this only, brother?" she then asked.
The Duc d'Alençon smiled.
"You have something else to say to me?"
"No," replied the duke; "I am waiting."
"Waiting! for what?"
"Have you not told me, dearest Marguerite," said the duke, drawing his armchair close up to his sister's, "that your marriage with the King of Navarre was contracted against your wishes?"
"Yes, no doubt. I did not know the Prince of Béarn when he was proposed to me as a husband."
"And after you came to know him, did you not tell me that you felt no love for him?"
"I told you so; it is true."
"Was it not your opinion that this marriage would make you unhappy?"
"My dear François," said Marguerite, "when a marriage is not the height of happiness it is almost always the depth of wretchedness."
"Well, then, my dear Marguerite, as I said to you,--I am waiting."
"But what are you waiting for?"
"For you to display your joy!"
"What have I to be joyful for?"
"The unexpected chance which offers itself for you to resume your liberty."
"My liberty?" replied Marguerite, who was determined to compel the prince to express his whole thought.
"Yes; your liberty! You will now be separated from the King of Navarre."
"Separated!" said Marguerite, fastening her eyes on the young prince.
The Duc d'Alençon tried to endure his sister's look, but his eyes soon avoided hers with embarrassment.
"Separated!" repeated Marguerite; "let us talk this over, brother, for I should like to understand all you mean, and how you propose to separate us."
"Why," murmured the duke, "Henry is a Huguenot."
"No doubt; but he made no secret of his religion, and that was known when we were married."
"Yes; but since your marriage, sister," asked the duke, involuntarily allowing a ray of joy to shine upon his face, "what has Henry been doing?"
"Why, you know better than any one, François, for he has spent his days almost constantly in your society, either hunting or playing mall or tennis."
"Yes, his days, no doubt," replied the duke; "his days--but his nights?"
Marguerite was silent; it was now her turn to cast down her eyes.
"His nights," persisted the Duc d'Alençon, "his nights?"
"Well?" inquired Marguerite, feeling that it was requisite that she should say something in reply.
"Well, he has been spending them with Madame de Sauve!"
"How do you know that?" exclaimed Marguerite.
"I know it because I have an interest in knowing it," replied the young prince, growing pale and picking the embroidery of his sleeves.
Marguerite began to understand what Catharine had whispered to Charles, but pretended to remain in ignorance.
"Why do you tell me this, brother?" she replied, with a well-affected air of melancholy; "was it to remind me that no one here loves me or takes my part, neither those whom nature gave me as protectors nor the man whom the Church gave me as my husband?"
"You are unjust," said the Duc d'Alençon, drawing his armchair still nearer to his sister, "I love you and protect you!"
"Brother," said Marguerite, looking at him sharply, "have you anything to say to me from the queen mother?"
"I! you mistake, sister. I swear to you--what can make you think that?"
"What can make me think that?--why, because you are breaking off the intimacy that binds you to my husband, because you are abandoning the cause of the King of Navarre."
"The cause of the King of Navarre!" replied the Duc d'Alençon, wholly at his wits' end.
"Yes, certainly. Now look here, François; let us speak frankly. You have come to an agreement a score of times; you cannot raise yourself or even hold your own except by mutual help. This alliance"--
"Has now become impossible, sister," interrupted the Duc d'Alençon.
"And why so?"
"Because the King has designs on your husband! Pardon me, when I said your husband, I erred; I meant Henry of Navarre. Our mother has seen through the whole thing. I entered into an alliance with the Huguenots because I believed the Huguenots were in favor; but now they are killing the Huguenots, and in another week there will not remain fifty in the whole kingdom. I gave my hand to the King of Navarre because he was--your husband; but now he is not your husband. What can you say to that--you who are not only the loveliest woman in France, but have the clearest head in the kingdom?"
"Why, I have this to say," replied Marguerite, "I know our brother Charles; I saw him yesterday in one of those fits of frenzy, every one of which shortens his life ten years. I have to say that unfortunately these attacks are very frequent, and that thus, in all probability, our brother Charles has not very long to live; and, finally, I have to say that the King of Poland has just died, and the question of electing a prince of the house of France in his stead is much discussed; and when circumstances are thus, it is not the moment to abandon allies who, in the moment of struggle, might support us with the strength of a nation and the power of a kingdom."
"And you!" exclaimed the duke, "do you not act much more treasonably to me in preferring a foreigner to your own brother?"
"Explain yourself, François! In what have I acted treasonably to you?"
"You yesterday begged the life of the King of Navarre from King Charles."
"Well?" said Marguerite, with pretended innocence.
The duke rose hastily, paced round the chamber twice or thrice with a bewildered air, then came back and took Marguerite's hand.
It was cold and unresponsive.
"Good-by, sister!" he said at last. "You will not understand me; do not, therefore, complain of whatever misfortunes may happen to you."
Marguerite grew pale, but remained motionless in her place. She saw the Duc d'Alençon go away, without making any attempt to detain him; but he had scarcely more than disappeared down the corridor when he returned.
"Listen, Marguerite," he said, "I had forgotten to tell you one thing; that is, that by this time to-morrow the King of Navarre will be dead."
Marguerite uttered a cry, for the idea that she was the instrument of assassination caused in her a terror she could not subdue.
"And you will not prevent his death?" she said; "you will not save your best and most faithful ally?"
"Since yesterday the King of Navarre is no longer my ally."
"Who is, pray?"
"Monsieur de Guise. By destroying the Huguenots, Monsieur de Guise has become the king of the Catholics."
"And does a son of Henry II. recognize a duke of Lorraine as his king?"
"You are in a bad frame of mind, Marguerite, and you do not understand anything."
"I confess that I try in vain to read your thoughts."
"Sister, you are of as good a house as the Princesse de Porcian; De Guise is no more immortal than the King of Navarre. Now, then, Marguerite, suppose three things, three possibilities: first, suppose monsieur is chosen King of Poland; the second, that you loved me as I love you; well, I am King of France, and you are--queen of the Catholics."
Marguerite hid her face in her hands, overwhelmed at the depth of the views of this youth, whom no one at court thought possessed of even common understanding.
"But," she asked after a moment's silence, "I hope you are not jealous of Monsieur le Duc de Guise as you were of the King of Navarre!"
"What is done is done," said the Duc d'Alençon, in a muffled voice, "and if I had to be jealous of the Duc de Guise, well, then, I was!"
"There is only one thing that can prevent this capital plan from succeeding, brother."
"And what is that?"
"That I no longer love the Duc de Guise."
"And whom, pray, do you love?"
"No one."
The Duc d'Alençon looked at Marguerite with the astonishment of a man who takes his turn in failing to understand, and left the room, pressing his icy hand on his forehead, which ached to bursting.
Marguerite remained alone and thoughtful; the situation was beginning to take a clear and definite shape before her eyes; the King had permitted Saint Bartholomew's, Queen Catharine and the Duc de Guise had put it into execution. The Duc de Guise and the Duc d'Alençon were about to join partnership so as to get the greatest possible advantage. The death of the King of Navarre would be a natural result of this great catastrophe. With the King of Navarre out of the way, his kingdom would be seized upon, Marguerite would be left a throneless, impotent widow with no other prospect before her than a nunnery, where she would not even have the sad consolation of weeping for a consort who had never been her husband.
She was still in the same position when Queen Catharine sent to ask if she would not like to go with her and the whole court on a pious visitation to the hawthorn of the Cemetery of the Innocents. Marguerite's first impulse was to refuse to take part in this cavalcade. But the thought that this excursion might possibly give her a chance to learn something new about the King of Navarre's fate decided her to go. So she sent word that if they would have a palfrey ready for her she would willingly go with their majesties.
Five minutes later a page came to ask if she was ready to go down, for the procession was preparing to start.
Marguerite warned Gillonne by a gesture to look after the wounded man and so went downstairs.
The King, the queen mother, Tavannes, and the principal Catholics were already mounted. Marguerite cast a rapid glance over the group, which was composed of about a score of persons; the King of Navarre was not of the party.
Madame de Sauve was there. Marguerite exchanged a glance with her, and was convinced that her husband's mistress had something to tell her.
They rode down the Rue de l'Astruce and entered into the Rue Saint Honoré. As the populace caught sight of the King, Queen Catharine, and the principal Catholics they flocked together and followed the procession like a rising tide, and shouts rent the air.
"Vive le Roi!"
"Vive la Messe."
"Death to the Huguenots!"
These acclamations were accompanied by the waving of ensanguined swords and smoking arquebuses, which showed the part each had taken in the awful work just accomplished.
When they reached the top of the Rue des Prouvelles they met some men who were dragging a headless carcass. It was the admiral's. The men were going to hang it by the feet at Montfaucon.
They entered the Cemetery des Saints Innocents by the gate facing the Rue des Chaps, now known as the Rue des Déchargeurs; the clergy, notified in advance of the visit of the King and the queen mother, were waiting for their majesties to make them speeches.
Madame de Sauve took advantage of a moment when Catharine was listening to one of the discourses to approach the Queen of Navarre, and beg leave to kiss her hand. Marguerite extended her arm toward her, and Madame de Sauve, as she kissed the queen's hand, slipped a tiny roll of paper up her sleeve.
Madame de Sauve drew back quickly and with clever dissimulation; yet Catharine perceived it, and turned round just as the maid of honor was kissing Marguerite's hand.
The two women saw her glance, which penetrated them like a flash of lightning, but both remained unmoved; only Madame de Sauve left Marguerite and resumed her place near Catharine.
When Catharine had finished replying to the address which had just been made to her she smiled and beckoned the Queen of Navarre to go to her.
"Eh, my daughter," said the queen mother, in her Italian patois, "so you are on intimate terms with Madame de Sauve, are you?"
Marguerite smiled in turn, and gave to her lovely countenance the bitterest expression she could, and replied:
"Yes, mother; the serpent came to bite my hand!"
"Aha!" replied Catharine, with a smile; "you are jealous, I think!"
"You are mistaken, madame," replied Marguerite; "I am no more jealous of the King of Navarre than the King of Navarre is in love with me, but I know how to distinguish my friends from my enemies. I like those that like me, and detest those that hate me. Otherwise, madame, should I be your daughter?"
Catharine smiled so as to make Marguerite understand that if she had had any suspicion it had vanished.
Moreover, at that instant the arrival of other pilgrims attracted the attention of the august throng.
The Duc de Guise came with a troop of gentlemen all warm still from recent carnage. They escorted a richly decorated litter, which stopped in front of the King.
"The Duchesse de Nevers!" cried Charles IX., "Ah! let that lovely robust Catholic come and receive our compliments. Why, they tell me, cousin, that from your own window you have been hunting Huguenots, and that you killed one with a stone."
The Duchesse de Nevers blushed exceedingly red.
"Sire," she said in a low tone, and kneeling before the King, "on the contrary, it was a wounded Catholic whom I had the good fortune to rescue."
"Good--good, my cousin! there are two ways of serving me: one is by exterminating my enemies, the other is by rescuing my friends. One does what one can, and I am certain that if you could have done more you would!"
While this was going on, the populace, seeing the harmony existing between the house of Lorraine and Charles IX., shouted exultantly:
"Vive le Roi!"
"Vive le Duc de Guise!"
"Vive la Messe!"
"Do you return to the Louvre with us, Henriette?" inquired the queen mother of the lovely duchess.
Marguerite touched her friend on the elbow, and she, understanding the sign, replied:
"No, madame, unless your majesty desire it; for I have business in the city with her majesty the Queen of Navarre."
"And what are you going to do together?" inquired Catharine.
"To see some very rare and curious Greek books found at an old Protestant pastor's, and which have been taken to the Tower of Saint Jacques la Boucherie," replied Marguerite.
"You would do much better to see the last Huguenots flung into the Seine from the top of the Pont des Meuniers," said Charles IX.; "that is the place for all good Frenchmen."
"We will go, if it be your Majesty's desire," replied the Duchesse de Nevers.
Catharine cast a look of distrust on the two young women. Marguerite, on the watch, remarked it, and turning round uneasily, looked about her.
This assumed or real anxiety did not escape Catharine.
"What are you looking for?"
"I am seeking--I do not see"--she replied.
"Whom are you seeking? Who is it you fail to see?"
"La Sauve," said Marguerite; "can she have returned to the Louvre?"
"Did I not say you were jealous?" said Catharine, in her daughter's ear. "Oh, bestia! Come, come, Henriette," she added, shrugging her shoulders, "begone, and take the Queen of Navarre with you."
Marguerite pretended to be still looking about her; then, turning to her friend, she said in a whisper:
"Take me away quickly; I have something of the greatest importance to say to you."
The duchess courtesied to the King and queen mother, and then, bowing low before the Queen of Navarre:
"Will your majesty deign to come into my litter?"
"Willingly, only you will have to take me back to the Louvre."
"My litter, like my servants and myself, are at your majesty's orders."
Queen Marguerite entered the litter, while Catharine and her gentlemen returned to the Louvre just as they had come. But during the route it was observed that the queen mother kept talking to the King, pointing several times to Madame de Sauve, and at each time the King laughed--as Charles IX. laughed; that is, with a laugh more sinister than a threat.
As soon as Marguerite felt the litter in motion, and had no longer to fear Catharine's searching eyes, she quickly drew from her sleeve Madame de Sauve's note and read as follows:
"I have received orders to send to-night to the King of Navarre two keys; one is that of the room in which he is shut up, and the other is the key of my chamber; when once he has reached my apartment, I am enjoined to keep him there until six o'clock in the morning.
"Let your majesty reflect--let your majesty decide. Let your majesty esteem my life as nothing."
"There is now no doubt," murmured Marguerite, "and the poor woman is the tool of which they wish to make use to destroy us all. But we will see if the Queen Margot, as my brother Charles calls me, is so easily to be made a nun of."
"Tell me, whom is the letter from?" asked the Duchesse de Nevers.
"Ah, duchess, I have so many things to say to you!" replied Marguerite, tearing the note into a thousand bits.
XII. MUTUAL CONFIDENCES
"And, first, where are we going?" asked Marguerite; "not to the Pont des Meuniers, I suppose,--I have seen enough slaughter since yesterday, my poor Henriette."
"I have taken the liberty to conduct your majesty"--
"First and foremost, my majesty requests you to forget my majesty--you were taking me"--
"To the Hôtel de Guise, unless you decide otherwise."
"No, no, let us go there, Henriette; the Duc de Guise is not there, your husband is not there."
"Oh, no," cried the duchess, her bright emerald eyes sparkling with joy; "no, neither my husband, nor my brother-in-law, nor any one else. I am free--free as air, free as a bird,--free, my queen! Do you understand the happiness there is in that word? I go, I come, I command. Ah, poor queen, you are not free--and so you sigh."
"You go, you come, you command. Is that all? Is that all the use of liberty? You are happy with only freedom as an excuse!"
"Your majesty promised to tell me a secret."
"Again 'your majesty'! I shall be angry soon, Henriette. Have you forgotten our agreement?"
"No; your respectful servant in public--in private, your madcap confidante, is it not so, madame? Is it not so, Marguerite?"
"Yes, yes," said the queen, smiling.
"No family rivalry, no treachery in love; everything fair, open, and aboveboard! An offensive and defensive alliance, for the sole purpose of finding and, if we can, catching on the fly, that ephemeral thing called happiness."
"Just so, duchess. Let us again seal the compact with a kiss."
And the two beautiful women, the one so pale, so full of melancholy, the other so roseate, so fair, so animated, joined their lips as they had united their thoughts.
"Tell me, what is there new?" asked the duchess, giving Marguerite an eager, inquisitive look.
"Isn't everything new since day before yesterday?"
"Oh, I am speaking of love, not of politics. When we are as old as dame Catharine we will take part in politics; but we are only twenty, my pretty queen, and so let us talk about something else. Let me see! can it be that you are really married?"
"To whom?" asked Marguerite, laughing.
"Ah! you reassure me, truly!"
"Well, Henriette, that which reassures you, alarms me. Duchess, I must be married."
"When?"
"To-morrow."
"Oh, poor little friend! and is it necessary?"
"Absolutely."
"Mordi! as an acquaintance of mine says, this is very sad."
"And so you know some one who says mordi?" asked Marguerite, with a smile.
"Yes."
"And who is this some one?"
"You keep asking me questions when I am talking to you. Finish and I will begin."
"In two words, it is this: The King of Navarre is in love, and not with me; I am not in love, but I do not want him, yet we must both of us change, or seem to change, between now and to-morrow."
"Well, then, you change, and be very sure he will do the same."
"That is quite impossible, for I am less than ever inclined to change."
"Only with respect to your husband, I hope."
"Henriette, I have a scruple."
"A scruple! about what?"
"A religious one. Do you make any difference between Huguenots and Catholics?"
"In politics?"
"Yes."
"Of course."
"And in love?"
"My dear girl, we women are such heathens that we admit every kind of sect, and recognize many gods."
"In one, eh?"
"Yes," replied the duchess, her eyes sparkling; "he who is called Eros, Cupido, Amor. He who has a quiver on his back, wings on his shoulders, and a fillet over his eyes. Mordi, vive la dévotion!"
"You have a peculiar method of praying; you throw stones on the heads of Huguenots."
"Let us do our duty and let people talk. Ah, Marguerite! how the finest ideas, the noblest actions, are spoilt in passing through the mouths of the vulgar!"
"The vulgar!--why, it was my brother Charles who congratulated you on your exploits, wasn't it?"
"Your brother Charles is a mighty hunter blowing the horn all day, and that makes him very thin. I reject his compliments; besides, I gave him his answer--didn't you hear what I said?"
"No; you spoke so low."
"So much the better. I shall have more news to tell you. Now, then, finish your story, Marguerite."
"I was going to say--to say"--
"Well?"
"I was going to say," continued the queen, laughing, "if the stone my brother spoke of be a fact, I should resist."
"Ah!" cried Henriette, "so you have chosen a Huguenot, have you? Well, to reassure your conscience, I promise you that I will choose one myself on the first opportunity."
"Ah, so you have chosen a Catholic, have you?"
"Mordi!" replied the duchess.
"I see, I see."
"And what is this Huguenot of yours?"
"I did not choose him. The young man is nothing and probably never will be anything to me."
"But what sort is he? You can tell me that; you know how curious I am about these matters."
"A poor young fellow, beautiful as Benvenuto Cellini's Nisus,--and he came and took refuge in my room."
"Oho!--of course without any suggestion on your part?"
"Poor fellow! Do not laugh so, Henriette; at this very moment he is between life and death."
"He is ill, is he?"
"He is grievously wounded."
"A wounded Huguenot is very disagreeable, especially in these times; and what have you done with this wounded Huguenot, who is not and never will be anything to you?"
"He is in my closet; I am concealing him and I want to save him."
"He is handsome! he is young! he is wounded. You hide him in your closet; you want to save him. This Huguenot of yours will be very ungrateful if he is not too grateful."
"I am afraid he is already--much more so than I could wish."
"And this poor young man interests you?"
"From motives of humanity--that's all."
"Ah, humanity! my poor queen, that is the very virtue that is the ruin of all of us women."
"Yes; and you understand: as the King, the Duc d'Alençon, my mother, even my husband, may at any moment enter my room"--
"You want me to hide your little Huguenot as long as he is ill, on condition I send him back to you when he is cured?"
"Scoffer!" said Marguerite, "no! I do not lay my plans so far in advance; but if you could conceal the poor fellow,--if you could preserve the life I have saved,--I confess I should be most grateful. You are free at the Hôtel de Guise; you have neither brother-in-law nor husband to spy on you or constrain you; besides, behind your room there is a closet like mine into which no one is entitled to enter; so lend me your closet for my Huguenot, and when he is cured open the cage and let the bird fly away."
"There is only one difficulty, my dear queen: the cage is already occupied."
"What, have you also saved somebody?"
"That is exactly what I answered your brother with."
"Ah, I understand! that's why you spoke so low that I could not hear you."
"Listen, Marguerite: it is an admirable story--is no less poetical and romantic than yours. After I had left you six of my guards, I returned with the rest to the Hôtel de Guise, and I was watching them pillage and burn a house separated from my brother's palace only by the Rue des Quatre Fils, when I heard the voices of men swearing and of women crying. I went out on the balcony and the first thing I saw was a sword flashing so brilliantly that it seemed to light up the whole scene. I was filled with admiration for this fiery sword. I am fond of fine things, you know! Then naturally enough I tried to distinguish the arm wielding it and then the body to which the arm belonged. Amid sword-thrusts and shouts I at last made out the man and I saw--a hero, an Ajax Telamon. I heard a voice--the voice of a Stentor. My enthusiasm awoke--I stood there panting, trembling at every blow aimed at him, at every thrust he parried! That was a quarter hour of emotion such as I had never before experienced, my queen; and never believed was possible to experience. So there I was panting, holding my breath, trembling, and voiceless, when all of a sudden my hero disappeared."
"How?"
"Struck down by a stone an old woman threw at him. Then, like Cyrus, I found my voice, and screamed, 'Help! help!' my guards went out, lifted him up, and bore him to the room which you want for your protégé."
"Alas, my dear Henriette, I can better understand this story because it is so nearly my own."
"With this difference, queen, that as I am serving my King and my religion, I have no reason to send Monsieur Annibal de Coconnas away."
"His name is Annibal de Coconnas!" said Marguerite, laughing.
"A terrible name, is it not? Well, he who bears it is worthy of it. What a champion he is, by Heaven! and how he made the blood flow! Put on your mask, my queen, for we are now at the palace."
"Why put on my mask?"
"Because I wish to show you my hero."
"Is he handsome?"
"He seemed magnificent to me during the conflict. To be sure, it was at night and he was lighted up by the flames. This morning by daylight I confess he seemed to me to have lost a little."
"So then my protégé is rejected at the Hôtel de Guise. I am sorry for it, for that is the last place where they would look for a Huguenot."
"Oh, no, your Huguenot shall come; I will have him brought this evening: one shall sleep in the right-hand corner of the closet and the other in the left."
"But when they recognize each other as Protestant and Catholic they will fight."
"Oh, there is no danger. Monsieur de Coconnas has had a cut down the face that prevents him from seeing very well; your Huguenot is wounded in the chest so that he can't move; and, besides, you have only to tell him to be silent on the subject of religion, and all will go well."
"So be it."
"It's a bargain; and now let us go in."
"Thanks," said Marguerite, pressing her friend's hand.
"Here, madame," said the duchess, "you are again 'your majesty;' suffer me, then, to do the honors of the Hôtel de Guise fittingly for the Queen of Navarre."
And the duchess, alighting from the litter, almost knelt on the ground in helping Marguerite to step down; then pointing to the palace door guarded by two sentinels, arquebuse in hand, she followed the queen at a respectful distance, and this humble attitude she maintained as long as she was in sight.
As soon as she reached her room, the duchess closed the door, and, calling to her waiting-woman, a thorough Sicilian, said to her in Italian,
"Mica, how is Monsieur le Comte?"
"Better and better," replied she.
"What is he doing?"
"At this moment, madame, he is taking some refreshment."
"It is always a good sign," said Marguerite, "when the appetite returns."
"Ah, that is true. I forgot you were a pupil of Ambroise Paré. Leave us, Mica."
"Why do you send her away?"
"That she may be on the watch."
Mica left the room.
"Now," said the duchess, "will you go in to see him, or shall I send for him here?"
"Neither the one nor the other. I wish to see him without his seeing me."
"What matters it? You have your mask."
"He may recognize me by my hair, my hands, a jewel."
"How cautious she is since she has been married, my pretty queen!"
Marguerite smiled.
"Well," continued the duchess, "I see only one way."
"What is that?"
"To look through the keyhole."
"Very well! take me to the door."
The duchess took Marguerite by the hand and led her to a door covered with tapestry; then bending one knee, she applied her eye to the keyhole.
"'Tis all right; he is sitting at table, with his face turned toward us; come!"
The queen took her friend's place, and looked through the keyhole; Coconnas, as the duchess had said, was sitting at a well-served table, and, despite his wounds, was doing ample justice to the good things before him.
"Ah, great heavens!" cried Marguerite, starting back.
"What is the matter?" asked the duchess in amazement.
"Impossible!--no!--yes!--on my soul, 'tis the very man!"
"Who?"
"Hush," said Marguerite, getting to her feet and seizing the duchess's hand; "'tis the man who pursued my Huguenot into my room, and stabbed him in my arms! Oh, Henriette, how fortunate he did not see me!"
"Well, then, you have seen him fighting; was he not handsome?"
"I do not know," said Marguerite, "for I was looking at the man he was pursuing."
"What is his name?"
"You will not mention it before the count?"
"No, I give you my promise!"
"Lerac de la Mole."
"And what do you think of him now?"
"Of Monsieur de la Mole?"
"No, of Monsieur de Coconnas?"
"Faith!" said Marguerite, "I confess I think"--
She stopped.
"Come, come," said the duchess, "I see you are angry with him for having wounded your Huguenot."
"Why, so far," said Marguerite, laughing, "my Huguenot owes him nothing; the slash he gave him under his eye"--
"They are quits, then, and we can reconcile them. Send me your wounded man."
"Not now--by and by."
"When?"
"When you have found yours another room."
"Which?"
Marguerite looked meaningly at her friend, who, after a moment's silence, laughed.
"So be it," said the duchess; "alliance firmer than ever."
"Friendship ever sincere!"
"And the word, in case we need each other?"
"The triple name of your triple god, 'Eros, Cupido, Amor.'"
And the two princesses separated after one more kiss, and pressing each other's hand for the twentieth time.
Chapter XIII
HOW THERE ARE KEYS WHICH OPEN DOORS THEY ARE NOT MEANT FOR.
The Queen of Navarre on her return to the Louvre found Gillonne in great excitement. Madame de Sauve had been there in her absence. She had brought a key sent her by the queen mother. It was the key of the room in which Henry was confined. It was evident that the queen mother for some purpose of her own wished the Béarnais to spend that night in Madame de Sauve's apartment.
Marguerite took the key and turned it over and over; she made Gillonne repeat Madame de Sauve's every word, weighed them, letter by letter, in her mind, and at length thought she detected Catharine's plan.
She took pen and ink, and wrote:
"Instead of going to Madame de Sauve to-night, come to the Queen of Navarre."
"MARGUERITE."
She rolled up the paper, put it in the hollow of the key, and ordered Gillonne to slip the key under the king's door as soon as it was dark.
This first duty having been attended to, Marguerite thought of the wounded man, closed all the doors, entered the closet, and, to her great surprise, found La Mole dressed in all his clothes, torn and blood-stained as they were.
On seeing her he strove to rise, but, still dizzy, could not stand, and fell back upon the sofa which had served for his bed.
"What is the matter, sir?" asked Marguerite; "and why do you thus disobey your physician's orders? I recommended you rest, and instead of following my advice you do just the contrary."
"Oh, madame," said Gillonne, "it is not my fault; I have entreated Monsieur le Comte not to commit this folly, but he declares that nothing shall keep him any longer at the Louvre."
"Leave the Louvre!" said Marguerite, gazing with astonishment at the young man, who cast down his eyes. "Why, it is impossible--you cannot walk; you are pale and weak; your knees tremble. Only a few hours ago the wound in your shoulder was still bleeding."
"Madame," said the young man, "as earnestly as I thanked your majesty for having given me shelter, as earnestly do I pray you now to suffer me to depart."
"I scarcely know what to call such a resolution," said Marguerite; "it is worse than ingratitude."
"Oh," cried La Mole, clasping his hands, "think me not ungrateful; my gratitude will cease only with my life."
"It will not last long, then," said Marguerite, moved at these words, the sincerity of which it was impossible to doubt; "for your wounds will open, and you will die from loss of blood, or you will be recognized for a Huguenot and killed ere you have gone fifty yards in the street."
"Nevertheless I must leave the Louvre," murmured La Mole.
"Must," returned Marguerite, fixing her serene, inscrutable eyes upon him; then turning rather pale she added, "ah, yes; forgive me, sir, I understand; doubtless there is some one outside the Louvre who is anxiously waiting for you. You are right, Monsieur de la Mole; it is natural, and I understand it. Why didn't you say so at first? or rather, why didn't I think of it myself? It is duty in the exercise of hospitality to protect one's guest's affections as well as to cure his wounds, and to care for the spirit just as one cares for the body."
"Alas, madame," said La Mole, "you are laboring under a strange mistake. I am well nigh alone in the world, and altogether so in Paris, where no one knows me. My assassin is the first man I have spoken to in this city; your majesty the first woman who has spoken to me."
"Then," said Marguerite, "why would you go?"
"Because," replied La Mole, "last night you got no rest, and to-night"--
Marguerite blushed.
"Gillonne," said she, "it is already evening and time to deliver that key."
Gillonne smiled, and left the room.
"But," continued Marguerite, "if you are alone in Paris, without friends, what will you do?"
"Madame, I soon shall have friends enough, for while I was pursued I thought of my mother, who was a Catholic; methought I saw her with a cross in her hand gliding before me toward the Louvre, and I vowed that if God should save my life I would embrace my mother's religion. Madame, God did more than save my life, he sent me one of his angels to make me love life."
"But you cannot walk; before you have gone a hundred steps you will faint away."
"Madame, I have made the experiment in the closet, I walk slowly and painfully, it is true; but let me get as far as the Place du Louvre; once outside, let befall what will."
Marguerite leaned her head on her hand and sank into deep thought.
"And the King of Navarre," said she, significantly, "you no longer speak of him? In changing your religion, have you also changed your desire to enter his service?"
"Madame," replied La Mole, growing pale, "you have just hit upon the actual reason of my departure. I know that the King of Navarre is exposed to the greatest danger, and that all your majesty's influence as a daughter of France will barely suffice to save his life."
"What do you mean, sir," exclaimed Marguerite, "and what danger do you refer to?"
"Madame," replied La Mole, with some hesitation, "one can hear everything from the closet where I am."
"'Tis true," said Marguerite to herself; "Monsieur de Guise told me so before."
"Well," added she, aloud, "what did you hear?"
"In the first place, the conversation between your majesty and your brother."
"With François?" said Marguerite, changing color.
"Yes, madame, with the Duc d'Alençon; and then after you went out I heard what Gillonne and Madame de Sauve said."
"And these two conversations"--
"Yes, madame; married scarcely a week, you love your husband; your husband will come, in his turn, in the same way that the Duc d'Alençon and Madame de Sauve came. He will confide his secrets to you. Well, then, I must not overhear them; I should be indiscreet--I cannot--I must not--I will not be!"
By the tone in which La Mole uttered these last words, by the anxiety expressed in his voice, by the embarrassment shown in his eyes, Marguerite was enlightened as by a sudden revelation.
"Aha!" said she, "so you have heard everything that has been said in this room?"
"Yes, madame."
These words were uttered in a sigh.
"And you wish to depart to-night, this evening, to avoid hearing any more?"
"This moment, if it please your majesty to allow me to go."
"Poor fellow!" said Marguerite, with a strange accent of tender pity.
Astonished by such a gentle reply when he was expecting a rather forcible outburst, La Mole timidly raised his head; his eyes met Marguerite's and were riveted as by a magnetic power on their clear and limpid depths.
"So then you feel you cannot keep a secret, Monsieur de la Mole?" said Marguerite in a soft voice as she stood leaning on the back of her chair, half hidden in the shadow of a thick tapestry and enjoying the felicity of easily reading his frank and open soul while remaining impenetrable herself.
"Madame," said La Mole, "I have a miserable disposition: I distrust myself, and the happiness of another gives me pain."
"Whose happiness?" asked Marguerite, smiling. "Ah, yes--the King of Navarre's! Poor Henry!"
"You see," cried La Mole, passionately, "he is happy."
"Happy?"
"Yes, for your majesty is sorry for him."
Marguerite crumpled up the silk of her purse and smoothed out the golden fringe.
"So then you decline to see the King of Navarre?" said she; "you have made up your mind; you are decided?"
"I fear I should be troublesome to his majesty just at the present time."
"But the Duc d'Alençon, my brother?"
"Oh, no, madame!" cried La Mole, "the Duc d'Alençon even still less than the King of Navarre."
"Why so?" asked Marguerite, so stirred that her voice trembled as she spoke.
"Because, although I am already too bad a Huguenot to be a faithful servant of the King of Navarre, I am not a sufficiently good Catholic to be friends with the Duc d'Alençon and Monsieur de Guise."
This time Marguerite cast down her eyes, for she felt the very depths of her heart stirred by what he said, and yet she could not have told whether his reply was meant to give her joy or pain.
At this moment Gillonne came back. Marguerite asked her a question with a glance; Gillonne's answer, also conveyed by her eyes, was in the affirmative. She had succeeded in getting the key to the King of Navarre.
Marguerite turned her eyes toward La Mole, who stood before her, his head drooping on his breast, pale, like one suffering alike in mind and in body.
"Monsieur de la Mole is proud," said she, "and I hesitate to make him a proposition he will doubtless reject."
La Mole rose, took one step toward Marguerite, and was about to bow low before her to signify that he was at her service; but an intense, keen, burning pang forced the tears from his eyes, and conscious that he was in danger of falling, he clutched a piece of tapestry and clung to it.
"Don't you see, sir," cried Marguerite, springing to him and supporting him in her arms, "don't you see that you still need me?"
A scarcely perceptible movement passed over La Mole's lips.
"Oh, yes!" he whispered, "like the air I breathe, like the light I see!"
At this moment three knocks were heard at Marguerite's door.
"Do you hear, madame?" cried Gillonne, alarmed.
"Already!" exclaimed Marguerite.
"Shall I open?"
"Wait! perhaps it is the King of Navarre."
"Oh, madame!" cried La Mole, recalled to himself by these words, which the queen had spoken in such a low tone that she hoped Gillonne only had heard them, "on my knees I entreat you, let me depart. Yes, dead or alive! madame, have pity on me! Oh! you do not answer. I will tell you all, and then you will drive me away, I hope."
"Be silent," said Marguerite, who found an indescribable charm in the young man's reproaches; "be silent."
"Madame," replied La Mole, who did not find that anger he expected in the voice of the queen, "madame, I tell you again, everything is audible in this closet. Oh, do not make me perish by tortures more cruel than the executioner could inflict"--
"Silence! silence!" said Marguerite.
"Oh, madame, you are merciless! you will not hear me, you will not understand me. Know, then, that I love you"--
"Silence! I tell you," interrupted Marguerite, placing on his mouth her warm, perfumed hand, which he seized between both of his and pressed eagerly to his lips.
"But"--he whispered.
"Be silent, child--who is this rebel that refuses to obey his queen?"
Then darting out of the closet, she shut the door and stood leaning against the wall pressing her trembling hand to her heart, as if to control it.
"Open, Gillonne."
Gillonne left the room, and an instant after, the fine, intellectual, but rather anxious countenance of the King of Navarre appeared behind the tapestry.
"You have sent for me, madame?"
"Yes, sire. Your majesty received my letter?"
"And not without some surprise, I confess," said Henry, looking round with distrust, which, however, almost instantly vanished from his mind.
"And not without some apprehension," added Marguerite.
"I confess it, madame! But still, surrounded as I am by deadly enemies, by friends still more dangerous, perhaps, than my open foes, I recollected that one evening I had seen a noble generosity shining in your eyes--'twas the night of our marriage; that one other evening I had seen the star of courage beaming in them--'twas yesterday, the day fixed for my death."
"Well, sire?" said Marguerite, smiling, while Henry seemed striving to read her heart.
"Well, madame," returned the king, "thinking of these things, I said to myself, as I read your letter bidding me come: 'Without friends, for he is a disarmed prisoner, the King of Navarre has but one means of dying nobly, of dying a death that will be recorded in history. It is to die betrayed by his wife; and I am come'"--
"Sire," replied Marguerite, "you will change your tone when you learn that all this is the work of a woman who loves you--and whom you love."
Henry started back at these words, and his keen gray eyes under their black lashes were fixed on the queen with curiosity.
"Oh, reassure yourself, sire," said the queen, smiling; "I am not that person."
"But, madame," said Henry, "you sent me this key, and this is your writing."
"It is my writing, I confess; the letter came from me, but the key is a different matter. Let it satisfy you to know that it has passed through the hands of four women before it reached you."
"Of four women?" exclaimed Henry in astonishment.
"Yes," said Marguerite; "Queen Catharine's, Madame de Sauve's, Gillonne's, and mine."
Henry pondered over this enigma.
"Now let us talk reasonably, sire," said Marguerite, "and above all let us speak frankly. Common report has it that your majesty has consented to abjure. Is it true?"
"That report is mistaken; I have not yet consented."
"But your mind is made up?"
"That is to say, I am deliberating. When one is twenty and almost a king, ventre saint gris! there are many things well worth a mass."
"And among other things life, for instance!"
Henry could not repress a fleeting smile.
"You do not tell me your whole thought," said Marguerite.
"I have reservations for my allies, madame; and you know we are but allies as yet; if indeed you were both my ally--and"--
"And your wife, sire?"
"Faith! yes, and my wife"--
"What then?"
"Why, then, it might be different, and I perhaps might resolve to remain King of the Huguenots, as they call me. But as it is, I must be content to live."
Marguerite looked at Henry in such a peculiar manner that it would have awakened suspicion in a less acute mind than his.
"And are you quite sure of succeeding even in that?" she asked.
"Why, almost; but you know, in this world nothing is certain."
"It is true," replied Marguerite, "your majesty shows such moderation and professes such disinterestedness, that after having renounced your crown, after having renounced your religion, you will probably renounce your alliance with a daughter of France; at least this is hoped for."
These words bore a significance which sent a thrill through Henry's whole frame; but instantaneously repressing the emotion, he said:
"Deign to recollect, madame, that at this moment I am not my own master; I shall therefore do what the King of France orders me. If I were consulted the least in the world on this question, affecting as it does my throne, my honor, and my life, rather than build my future on this forced marriage of ours, I should prefer to enter a monastery or turn gamekeeper."
This calm resignation, this renunciation of the world, alarmed Marguerite. She thought perhaps this rupture of the marriage had been agreed upon by Charles IX., Catharine, and the King of Navarre. Why should she not be taken as a dupe or a victim? Because she was sister of the one and daughter of the other? Experience had taught her that this relationship gave her no ground on which to build her security.
So ambition was gnawing at this young woman's, or rather this young queen's heart, and she was too far above vulgar frailties to be drawn into any selfish meanness; in the case of every woman, however mediocre she may be, when she loves her love has none of these petty trials, for true love is also an ambition.
"Your majesty," said Marguerite, with a sort of mocking disdain, "has no confidence in the star that shines over the head of every king!"
"Ah," said Henry, "I vainly look for mine now, I cannot see it; 'tis hidden by the storm which now threatens me!"
"And suppose a woman's breath were to dispel this tempest, and make the star reappear, brilliant as ever?"
"'Twere difficult."
"Do you deny the existence of this woman?"
"No, I deny her power."
"You mean her will?"
"I said her power, and I repeat, her power. A woman is powerful only when love and interest are combined within her in equal degrees; if either sentiment predominates, she is, like Achilles, vulnerable; now as to this woman, if I mistake not, I cannot rely on her love."
Marguerite made no reply.
"Listen," said Henry; "at the last stroke of the bell of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois you must have thought of regaining your liberty, sacrificed for the purpose of destroying my followers. My concern was to save my life: that was the most essential thing. We lose Navarre, indeed; but what is that compared with your being enabled to speak aloud in your room, which you dared not do when you had some one listening to you in yonder closet?"
Deeply absorbed as she was in her thoughts, Marguerite could not refrain from smiling. The king rose and prepared to seek his own apartment, for it was some time after eleven, and every one at the Louvre was, or seemed to be, asleep.
Henry took three steps toward the door, then suddenly stopped as if for the first time recollecting the motive of his visit to the queen.
"By the way, madame," said he, "had you not something to communicate to me? or did you desire to give me an opportunity of thanking you for the reprieve which your brave presence in the King's armory brought me? In truth it was just in time, madame; I cannot deny it, you appeared like a goddess of antiquity, in the nick of time to save my life."
"Unfortunate man!" cried Marguerite, in a muffled voice, and seizing her husband's arm, "do you not see that nothing is saved, neither your liberty, your crown, nor your life? Infatuated madman! Poor madman! Did you, then, see nothing in my letter but a rendezvous? Did you believe that Marguerite, indignant at your coldness, desired reparation?"
"I confess, madame," said Henry in astonishment, "I confess"--
Marguerite shrugged her shoulders with an expression impossible to describe.
At this instant a strange sound was heard, like a sharp insistent scratching at the secret door.
Marguerite led the king toward the little door.
"Listen," said she.
"The queen mother is leaving her room," said a trembling voice outside, which Henry instantly recognized as Madame de Sauve's.
"Where is she going?" asked Marguerite.
"She is coming to your majesty."
And then the rustling of a silk gown, growing fainter, showed that Madame de Sauve was hastening rapidly away.
"Oho!" exclaimed Henry.
"I was sure of this," said Marguerite.
"And I," replied Henry, "feared it, and this is the proof of it."
And half opening his black velvet doublet, he showed the queen that he had beneath it a shirt of mail, and a long Milan poniard, which instantly glittered in his hand like a viper in the sun.
"As if you needed weapon and cuirass here!" cried Marguerite. "Quick, quick, sire! conceal that dagger; 'tis the queen mother, indeed, but the queen mother only."
"Yet"--
"Silence!--I hear her."
And putting her mouth close to Henry's ear, she whispered something which the young king heard with attention mingled with astonishment. Then he hid himself behind the curtains of the bed.
Meantime, with the quickness of a panther, Marguerite sprang to the closet, where La Mole was waiting in a fever of excitement, opened the door, found the young man, and pressing his hand in the darkness--"Silence," said she, approaching her lips so near that he felt her warm and balmy breath; "silence!"
Then returning to her chamber, she tore off her head-dress, cut the laces of her dress with her poniard, and sprang into bed.
It was time--the key turned in the lock. Catharine had a key for every door in the Louvre.
"Who is there?" cried Marguerite, as Catharine placed on guard at the door the four gentlemen by whom she was attended.
And, as if frightened by this sudden intrusion into her chamber, Marguerite sprang out from behind the curtains of her bed in a white dressing-gown, and then recognizing Catharine, came to kiss her hand with such well-feigned surprise that the wily Florentine herself could not help being deceived by it.
XIV. THE SECOND MARRIAGE NIGHT
The queen mother cast a marvellously rapid glance around her. The velvet slippers at the foot of the bed, Marguerite's clothes scattered over the chairs, the way she rubbed her eyes as if to drive away her sleepiness, all convinced Catharine that she had awakened her daughter.
Then she smiled as a woman does when she has succeeded in her plans, and drawing up an easy chair, she said:
"Let us sit down, Marguerite, and talk."
"Madame, I am listening."
"It is time," said Catharine, slowly shutting her eyes in the characteristic way of people who weigh each word or who deeply dissimulate, "it is time, my daughter, that you should know how ardently your brother and myself desire to see you happy."
This exordium for one who knew Catharine was alarming.
"What can she be about to say?" thought Marguerite.
"To be sure," continued La Florentine, "in giving you in marriage we fulfilled one of those acts of policy frequently required by important interests of those who govern; but I must confess, my poor child, that we had no expectation that the indifference manifested by the King of Navarre for one so young, so lovely, and so fascinating as yourself would be so obstinate."
Marguerite arose, and folding her robe de chambre around her, courtesied with ceremonious respect to her mother.
"I have heard to-night only," continued Catharine, "otherwise I should have paid you an earlier visit, that your husband is far from showing you those attentions you have a right to claim, not merely as a beautiful woman, but as a princess of France."
Marguerite sighed, and Catharine, encouraged by this mute approval, proceeded.
"In fact, that the King of Navarre is openly cohabiting one of my maids of honor who is scandalously smitten with him, that he scorns the love of the woman graciously given to him, is an insult to which we poor powerful ones of the earth cannot apply a remedy, and yet the meanest gentleman in our kingdom would avenge it by calling out his son-in-law or having his son do so."
Marguerite dropped her head.
"For some time, my daughter," Catharine went on to say, "I have seen by your reddened eyes, by your bitter sallies against La Sauve, that in spite of your efforts your heart must show external signs of its bleeding wound."
Marguerite trembled: a slight movement had shaken the curtains; but fortunately Catharine did not notice it.
"This wound," said she with affectionate sweetness redoubled, "this wound, my daughter, a mother's hand must cure. Those who with the intention of securing your happiness have brought about your marriage, and who in their anxiety about you notice that every night Henry of Navarre goes to the wrong rooms; those who cannot allow a kinglet like him to insult a woman of such beauty, of such high rank, and so worthy, by scorning your person and neglecting his chances of posterity; those who see that at the first favorable wind, this wild and insolent madcap will turn against our family and expel you from his house--I say have not they the right to secure your interests by entirely dividing them from his, so that your future may be better suited to yourself and your rank?"
"And yet, madame," replied Marguerite, "in spite of these observations so replete with maternal love, and filling me with joy and pride, I am bold enough to affirm to your majesty that the King of Navarre is my husband."
Catharine started with rage, and drawing closer to Marguerite she said:
"He, your husband? Is it sufficient to make you husband and wife that the Church has pronounced its blessing upon you? And is the marriage consecration only in the words of the priest? He, your husband? Ah, my daughter! if you were Madame de Sauve you might give me this reply. But wholly contrary of what we expected of him since you granted Henry of Navarre the honor of calling you his wife, he has given all your rights to another woman, and at this very instant even," said Catharine, raising her voice,--"this key opens the door of Madame de Sauve's apartment--come with me and you will see"--
"Oh, not so loud, madame, not so loud, I beseech you!" said Marguerite, "for not only are you mistaken, but"--
"Well?"
"Well, you will awaken my husband!"
As she said these words Marguerite arose with a perfectly voluptuous grace, her white dress fluttering loosely around her, while the large open sleeves displayed her bare and faultlessly modelled arm and truly royal hand, and taking a rose-colored taper she held it near the bed, and drawing back the curtain, and smiling significantly at her mother, pointed to the haughty profile, the black locks, and the parted lips of the King of Navarre, who, as he lay upon the disordered bed, seemed buried in profound repose.
Pale, with haggard eyes, her body thrown back as if an abyss had opened at her feet, Catharine uttered not a cry, but a hoarse bellow.
"You see, madame," said Marguerite, "you were misinformed."
Catharine looked first at Marguerite, then at Henry. In her active mind she combined Marguerite's smile with the picture of that pale and dewy brow, those eyes circled by dark-colored rings, and she bit her thin lips in silent fury.
Marguerite allowed her mother for a moment to contemplate this picture, which affected her like the head of Medusa. Then she dropped the curtain and stepping on her tip-toes she came back to Catharine and sat down:
"You were saying, madame?"--
The Florentine for several seconds tried to fathom the young woman's naïveté; but as if her keen glance had become blunted on Marguerite's calmness, she exclaimed, "Nothing," and hastily left the room.
As soon as the sound of her departing footsteps had died away down the long corridor, the bed-curtains opened a second time, and Henry, with sparkling eyes, trembling hand, and panting breath, came out and knelt at Marguerite's feet; he was dressed only in his short-clothes and his coat of mail, so that Marguerite, seeing him in such an odd rig, could not help laughing even while she was warmly shaking hands with him.
"Ah, madame! ah, Marguerite!" he cried, "how shall I ever repay you?"
And he covered her hand with kisses which gradually strayed higher up along her arm.
"Sire," said she, gently retreating, "can you forget that a poor woman to whom you owe your life is mourning and suffering on your account? Madame de Sauve," added she, in a lower tone, "has forgotten her jealousy in sending you to me; and to that sacrifice she may probably have to add her life, for you know better than any one how terrible is my mother's anger!"
Henry shuddered; and, rising, started to leave the room.
"Upon second thoughts," said Marguerite, with admirable coquetry, "I have thought it all over and I see no cause for alarm. The key was given to you without any directions, and it will be supposed that you granted me the preference for to-night."
"And so I do, Marguerite! Consent but to forget"--
"Not so loud, sire, not so loud!" replied the queen, employing the same words she had a few minutes before used to her mother; "any one in the adjoining closet can hear you. And as I am not yet quite free, I will ask you to speak in a lower tone."
"Oho!" said Henry, half smiling, half gloomily, "that's true! I was forgetting that I am probably not the one destined to play the end of this interesting scene! This closet"--
"Let me beg of your majesty to enter there," said Marguerite; "for I am desirous of having the honor of presenting to you a worthy gentleman, wounded during the massacre while making his way to the Louvre to apprise your majesty of the danger with which you were threatened."
The queen went toward the door, and Henry followed her. She opened it, and the king was thunderstruck at beholding a man in this cabinet, fated to reveal such continued surprises.
But La Mole was still more surprised at thus unexpectedly finding himself in the presence of Henry of Navarre. The result was that the king cast an ironical glance on Marguerite, who bore it without flinching.
"Sire," said she, "I am in dread lest this gentleman may be murdered even here, in my very chamber; he is devoted to your majesty's service, and for that reason I commend him to your royal protection."
"Sire," continued the young man, "I am the Comte Lerac de la Mole, whom your majesty was expecting; I was recommended to you by that poor Monsieur de Téligny, who was killed by my side."
"Aha!" replied Henry; "you are right, sir. The queen gave me his letter; but have you not also a letter from the governor of Languedoc?"
"Yes, sire, and I was recommended to deliver it to your majesty as soon as I arrived."
"Why did you not do so?"
"Sire, I hastened to the Louvre last evening, but your majesty was too much occupied to give me audience."
"True!" answered the king; "but I should think you might have sent the letter to me?"
"I had orders from Monsieur d'Auriac to give it to no one else but your majesty, since it contained, he said, information so important that he feared to entrust it to any ordinary messenger."
"The contents are, indeed, of a serious nature," said the king, when he had received and read the letter; "advising my instant withdrawal from the court of France, and retirement to Béarn. M. d'Auriac, although a Catholic, was always a stanch friend of mine; and it is possible that, acting as governor of a province, he got scent of what was in the wind here. Ventre saint gris! monsieur! why was not this letter given to me three days ago, instead of now?"
"Because, as I before assured your majesty, that using all the speed and diligence in my power, it was wholly impossible to arrive before yesterday."
"That is very unfortunate, very unfortunate," murmured the king; "we should then have been in security, either at Rochelle or in some broad plain surrounded by two or three thousand trusty horsemen."
"Sire, what is done is done," said Marguerite, in a low voice, "and instead of wasting your time complaining over the past you must do the best possible with the future."
"If you were in my place, madame," replied Henry, with his questioning look, "you would still have hope, would you?"
"Certainly I should; I should consider myself as playing a game of three points, of which I had lost only the first."
"Ah, madame," whispered Henry, "if I dared but hope that you would go partners with me in the game"--
"If I had intended to side with your adversaries," replied Marguerite, "I should scarcely have delayed so long."
"True!" replied Henry, "and I am ungrateful; and as you say, the past may still be repaired."
"Alas! sire," said La Mole, "I wish your majesty every kind of good fortune; but now the admiral is no more."
Over Henry's face passed that sly, peasant-like smile, which was not understood at court until after he became King of France.
"But, madame," said the king, attentively observing La Mole, "this gentleman cannot remain here without causing you considerable inconvenience, and being himself subject to very unpleasant surprises. What will you do with him?"
"Could we not remove him from the Louvre?" asked Marguerite, "for I entirely agree with you!"
"It will be difficult."
"Then could not Monsieur de la Mole find accommodation in your majesty's apartments?"
"Alas, madame! you speak as if I were still King of the Huguenots, and had subjects to command. You are aware that I am half converted to the Catholic faith and have no people at all."
Any one but Marguerite would have promptly answered: "He is a Catholic."
But the queen wished Henry himself to ask her to do the very thing she was desirous of effecting; while La Mole, perceiving his protectress's caution and not knowing where to set foot on the slippery ground of such a dangerous court as that of France, remained perfectly silent.
"But what is this the governor says in his letter?" said Henry, again casting his eyes over the missive he held in his hand. "He states that your mother was a Catholic, and from that circumstance originates the interest he felt in you."
"And what were you telling me, Monsieur le Comte," said Marguerite, "respecting a vow you had formed to change your religion? I confess my recollection on the subject is somewhat confused. Have the goodness to assist me, M. de la Mole. Did not your conversation refer to something of the nature the king appears to desire?"
"Alas! madame, what I did say was so coldly received by your majesty that I did not dare"--
"Simply because it in no way concerned me," answered Marguerite. "But explain yourself to the king--explain!"
"Well, what was the vow?" asked the king.
"Sire," said La Mole, "when pursued by assassins, myself unarmed, and almost expiring from my two wounds, I fancied I beheld my mother's spirit holding a cross in her hands and guiding me to the Louvre. Then I vowed that if my life were preserved I would adopt the religion of my mother, who had been permitted to leave her grave to direct me to a place of safety during that horrible night. Heaven conducted me here, sire. I find myself here under the protection of a princess of France and of the King of Navarre; my life was miraculously saved, therefore I must fulfil my vow. I am ready to become a Catholic."
Henry frowned. Sceptic that he was, he could well understand a change of religion from motives of interest, but he distrusted abjuration through faith.
"The king does not want to take charge of my protégé," thought Marguerite.
La Mole still remained mute and awkward between the two opposing wills. He felt, without being able to define why, that he was in a ridiculous position. Marguerite's womanly tact came to his relief.
"Sire," said she, "we forget that the poor wounded gentleman has need of repose. I myself am half asleep. Ah, see!"
La Mole did indeed turn pale; but it was at Marguerite's last words, which he had interpreted according to his own ideas.
"Well, madame," answered Henry, "nothing can be simpler. Can we not leave Monsieur de la Mole to take his repose."
The young man fixed a supplicating look on Marguerite, and, in spite of the presence of the two majesties, sunk upon a chair, overcome with fatigue and pain.
Marguerite understood all the love in his look, all the despair in his weakness.
"Sire," said she, "your majesty is bound to confer on this young man, who imperilled his life for his king, since he received his wounds while coming hither to inform you of the admiral's death and Téligny's,--your majesty is bound, I repeat, to confer on him an honor for which he will be grateful all his life long."
"What is it, madame?" asked Henry. "Command me, I am ready."
"Monsieur de la Mole must sleep to-night at your majesty's feet, while you, sire, can sleep on this couch. With the permission of my august spouse," added Marguerite, smiling, "I will summon Gillonne and return to bed, for I assure you I am not the least wearied of us three."
Henry had shrewd sense and a quick perception of things; friends and enemies subsequently found fault with him for possessing too much of both. He fully admitted that she who thus banished him from the nuptial bed was well justified in so doing by the indifference he had himself manifested toward her; and then, too, she had just repaid this indifference by saving his life; he therefore allowed no self-love to dictate his answer.
"Madame," said he, "if Monsieur de la Mole were able to come to my quarters I would give him my own bed."
"Yes," replied Marguerite, "but your quarters just at the present time would not be safe for either of you, and prudence dictates that your majesty should remain here until morning."
Then without awaiting the king's reply she summoned Gillonne, and bade her prepare the necessary cushions for the king, and to arrange a bed at the king's feet for La Mole, who appeared so happy and contented with the honor that one would have sworn he no longer felt his wounds.
Then Marguerite, courtesing low to the king, passed into her chamber, the door of which was well furnished with bolts, and threw herself on the bed.
"One thing is certain," said Marguerite to herself, "to-morrow Monsieur de la Mole must have a protector at the Louvre; and he who, to-night, sees and hears nothing, may change his mind to-morrow."
Then she called Gillonne, who was waiting to receive her last orders.
Gillonne came to her.
"Gillonne," said she in a whisper, "you must contrive to bring my brother the Duc d'Alençon here to-morrow morning before eight o'clock."
It was just striking two at the Louvre.
La Mole for a few moments talked on political subjects with the king, who gradually grew drowsy and was soon snoring.
La Mole might have slept as well as the king, but Marguerite was not asleep; she kept turning from side to side in her bed, and the noise she made disturbed the young man's ideas and sleep.
"He is very young," murmured Marguerite in her wakeful mood, "he is very timid; perhaps--but we must see--perhaps it will be ridiculous. Yet he has handsome eyes--and a good figure, and he is very charming; but if he should not turn out to be brave!--He ran away!--He is renouncing his faith! It is too bad--the dream began well. However, let things take their course and entrust them to that madcap Henriette's triple god."
And toward daybreak Marguerite fell asleep, murmuring:
"Eros, Cupido, Amor."
XV. WHAT WOMAN WILLS, GOD WILLS
Marguerite was not mistaken: the wrath distilled in the depths of Catharine's heart at sight of this comedy, the intrigue of which she followed without being in any way able to change its denouement, required a victim. So instead of going directly to her own room the queen mother proceeded to that of her lady in waiting.
Madame de Sauve was in expectation of two visits--one she hoped to receive from Henry, and the other she feared was in store for her from the queen mother. As she lay in her bed only partially undressed, while Dariole kept watch in the antechamber, she heard a key turn in the lock, and then slowly approaching footsteps which would have seemed heavy if they had not been deadened by thick rugs. She did not recognize Henry's light, eager step; she suspected that Dariole was prevented from coming to warn her, and so leaning on her elbow she waited with eye and ear alert. The portière was lifted and the trembling young woman saw Catharine de Médicis appear.
Catharine seemed calm; but Madame de Sauve, accustomed for two years to study her, well knew what dark designs, and possibly cruel vengeance, might be concealed beneath that apparent calm.
At sight of Catharine, Madame de Sauve was about to spring from her bed, but Catharine signed to her to stay where she was; and poor Charlotte was fixed to the spot, inwardly endeavoring to collect all the forces of her soul to endure the storm which was silently gathering.
"Did you convey the key to the King of Navarre?" inquired Catharine, without the tone of her voice betraying any change; and yet as she spoke her lips grew paler and paler.
"I did, madame," answered Charlotte, in a voice which she vainly tried to make as firm and assured as Catherine's was.
"And have you seen him?"
"Who?" asked Madame de Sauve.
"The King of Navarre."
"No, madame; but I am expecting him, and when I heard the key turn in the lock, I firmly believed it was he."
At this answer, which indicated either perfect confidence or deep dissimulation on Madame de Sauve's part, Catharine could not repress a slight shiver. She clinched her short plump hand.
"And yet you knew perfectly well," said she with her evil smile, "you knew perfectly well, Carlotta, that the King of Navarre would not come to-night."
"I, madame? I knew that?" exclaimed Charlotte, with a tone of surprise perfectly well assumed.
"Yes, you knew it!"
"If he does not come, he must be dead!" replied the young woman, shuddering at the mere supposition.
What gave Charlotte the courage to lie so was the certainty that she would suffer from a terrible vengeance if her little treason should be discovered.
"But did you not write to the king, Carlotta mia?" inquired Catharine, with the same cruel and silent laugh.
"No, madame," answered Charlotte, with well-assumed naïveté, "I cannot recollect receiving your majesty's commands to do so."
A short silence followed, during which Catharine continued to gaze on Madame de Sauve as the serpent looks at the bird it wishes to fascinate.
"You think you are pretty," said Catharine, "you think you are clever, do you not?"
"No, madame," answered Charlotte; "I only know that sometimes your majesty has been graciously pleased to commend both my personal attractions and address."
"Well, then," said Catharine, growing eager and animated, "you were mistaken if you think so, and I lied when I told you so; you are a simpleton and hideous compared to my daughter Margot."
"Oh, madame," replied Charlotte, "that is a fact I will not even try to deny--least of all in your presence."
"So, then, the King of Navarre prefers my daughter to you; a circumstance, I presume, not to your wishes, and certainly not what we agreed should be the case."
"Alas, madame," cried Charlotte, bursting into a torrent of tears which now flowed from no feigned source, "if it be so, I can but say I am very unfortunate!"
"It is so," said Catharine, darting the two-fold keenness of her eyes like a double poniard into Madame de Sauve's heart.
"But who can make you believe that?" asked Charlotte.
"Go down to the Queen of Navarre's pazza, and you will find your lover there!"
"Oh!" exclaimed Madame de Sauve.
Catharine shrugged her shoulders.
"Are you jealous, pray?" asked the queen mother.
"I?" exclaimed Madame de Sauve, recalling her fast-failing strength.
"Yes, you! I should like to see a Frenchwoman's jealousy."
"But," said Madame de Sauve, "how should your majesty expect me to be jealous except out of vanity? I love the King of Navarre only as far as your majesty's service requires it."
Catharine gazed at her for a moment with dreamy eyes.
"What you tell me may on the whole be true," she murmured.
"Your majesty reads my heart."
"And your heart is wholly devoted to me?"
"Command me, madame, and you shall judge for yourself."
"Well, then, Carlotta, since you are ready to sacrifice yourself in my service, you must still continue for my sake to be in love with the King of Navarre and, above all, to be very jealous,--jealous as an Italian woman."
"But, madame," asked Charlotte, "how does an Italian woman show her jealousy?"
"I will tell you," replied Catharine, and after nodding her head two or three times she left the room as deliberately and noiselessly as she had come in.
Charlotte, confused by the keen look of those eyes dilated like a cat's or a panther's without thereby losing anything of their inscrutability, allowed her to go without uttering a single word, without even letting her breathing be heard, and she did not even take a respiration until she heard the door close behind her and Dariole came to say that the terrible apparition had departed.
"Dariole," said she, "draw up an armchair close to my bed and spend the night in it. I beg you to do so, for I should not dare to stay alone."
Dariole obeyed; but in spite of the company of her faithful attendant, who stayed near her, in spite of the light from the lamp which she commanded to be left burning for the sake of greater tranquillity, Madame de Sauve also did not fall asleep till daylight, so insistently rang in her ears the metallic accent of Catharine's voice.
* * * * *
Though Marguerite had not fallen asleep till daybreak she awoke at the first blast of the trumpets, at the first barking of the dogs. She instantly arose and began to put on a costume so negligent that it could not fail to attract attention. Then she summoned her women, and had the gentlemen ordinarily in attendance on the King of Navarre shown into her antechamber, and finally opening the door which shut Henry and De la Mole into the same room, she gave the count an affectionate glance and addressing her husband she said:
"Come, sire, it is not sufficient to have made madame my mother believe in what is not; it still remains for you to convince your whole court that a perfect understanding exists between us. But make yourself quite easy," added she, laughing, "and remember my words, rendered almost solemn by the circumstances. To-day will be the last time that I shall put your majesty to such a cruel test."
The King of Navarre smiled and ordered his gentlemen to be admitted.
Just as they were bowing to him he pretended suddenly to recollect having left his mantle on the queen's bed and begged their excuse for receiving them in such a way; then, taking his mantle from the hands of Marguerite, who stood blushing by his side, he clasped it on his shoulder. Next, turning to his gentlemen, he inquired what news there was in the city and at court.
Marguerite was engaged in watching out of the corner of her eye the imperceptible signs of astonishment betrayed by the gentlemen at detecting this newly revealed intimacy between the king and queen of Navarre, when an usher entered, followed by three or four gentlemen, and announced the Duc d'Alençon.
To bring him there Gillonne had only to tell him that the king had spent the night in the queen's room.
François rushed in so precipitately that he almost upset those who preceded him. His first glance was for Henry; his next was for Marguerite.
Henry replied with a courteous bow; Marguerite composed her features so that they expressed the utmost serenity.
Then the duke cast a vague but scrutinizing look around the whole room: he saw the two pillows placed at the head of the bed, the derangement of its tapestried coverings, and the king's hat thrown on a chair.
He turned pale, but quickly recovering himself, he said:
"Does my royal brother Henry join this morning with the King in his game of tennis?"
"Does his Majesty do me the honor to select me as his partner?" inquired Henry, "or is it only a little attention on your part, my brother-in-law?"
"His Majesty has not so said, certainly," replied the duke, somewhat embarrassed; "but don't you generally play with him?"
Henry smiled, for so many and such serious events had occurred since he last played with the King that he would not have been astonished to learn that the King had changed his habitual companions at the game.
"I shall go there," said Henry, with a smile.
"Come," cried the duke.
"Are you going away?" inquired Marguerite.
"Yes, sister!"
"Are you in great haste?"
"In great haste."
"Might I venture to detain you for a few minutes?"
Such a request was so unusual coming from Marguerite that her brother looked at her while her color came and went.
"What can she be going to say to him?" thought Henry, no less surprised than the duke himself.
Marguerite, as if she had guessed her husband's thought, turned toward him.
"Sire," said she, with a charming smile, "you may go back to his majesty if it seem good to you, for the secret which I am going to reveal to my brother is already known to you, for the reason that the request which I made you yesterday in regard to this secret was as good as refused by your majesty. I should not wish, therefore," continued Marguerite, "to weary your majesty a second time by expressing in your presence a wish which seemed to be disagreeable."
"What do you mean?" asked François, looking at both of them with astonishment.
"Aha!" exclaimed Henry, flushing, with indignation, "I know what you mean, madame. In truth, I regret that I am not free. But if I cannot offer Monsieur de la Mole such hospitality as would be equivalent to an assurance, I cannot do less than to recommend to my brother D'Alençon the person in whom you feel such a lively interest. Perhaps," he added, in order to give still more emphasis to the words italicized, "perhaps my brother will discover some way whereby you will be permitted to keep Monsieur de la Mole here near you--that would be better than anything else, would it not, madame?"
"Come, come!" said Marguerite to herself, "the two together will do what neither of them would do individually."
And she opened the closet door and invited the wounded young man to come forth, saying to Henry as she did so:
"Your majesty must now explain to my brother why we are interested in Monsieur de la Mole."
Henry, caught in the snare, briefly related to M. d'Alençon, half a Protestant for the sake of opposition, as he himself was partly a Catholic from prudence, the arrival of Monsieur de la Mole at Paris, and how the young man had been severely wounded while bringing to him a letter from M. d'Auriac.
When the duke turned round, La Mole had come out from the closet and was standing before him.
François, at the sight of him, so handsome, so pale, and consequently doubly captivating by reason of his good looks and his pallor, felt a new sense of distrust spring up in the depths of his soul. Marguerite held him both through jealousy and through pride.
"Brother," said Marguerite, "I will engage that this young gentleman will be useful to whoever may employ him. Should you accept his services, he will obtain a powerful protector, and you, a devoted servitor. In such times as the present, brother," continued she, "we cannot be too well surrounded by devoted friends; more especially," added she, lowering her voice so as to be heard by no one but the duke, "when one is ambitious, and has the misfortune to be only third in the succession to the throne."
Then she put her finger on her lip, to intimate to François that in spite of the initiation she still kept secret an important part of her idea.
"Perhaps," she added, "you may differ from Henry, in considering it not befitting that this young gentleman should remain so immediately in the vicinity of my apartments."
"Sister," replied François, eagerly, "if it meet your wishes, Monsieur de la Mole shall, in half an hour, be installed in my quarters, where, I think, he can have no cause to fear any danger. Let him love me and I will love him."
François was untruthful, for already in the very depths of his heart he detested La Mole.
"Well, well! So then I was not mistaken," said Marguerite to herself, seeing the King of Navarre's scowling face. "Ah, I see that to lead you two, one must lead the other."
Then finishing her thought:
"There! 'then you are doing well, Marguerite,' Henriette would say."
In fact, half an hour later La Mole, having been solemnly catechised by Marguerite, kissed the hem of her gown and with an agility remarkable in a wounded man was mounting the stairs that led to the Duc d'Alençon's quarters.
* * * * *
Two or three days passed, during which the excellent understanding between Henry and his wife seemed to grow more and more firmly established.
Henry had obtained permission not to make a public renunciation of his religion; but he had formally recanted in the presence of the king's confessor, and every morning he listened to the mass performed at the Louvre. At night he made a show of going to his wife's rooms, entered by the principal door, talked a few minutes with her, and then took his departure by the small secret door, and went up to Madame de Sauve, who had duly informed him of the queen mother's visit as well as the unquestionable danger which threatened him. Warned on both sides, Henry redoubled his watchfulness against the queen mother and felt all distrust of her because little by little her face began to unbend, and one morning Henry detected a friendly smile on her bloodless lips. That day he had the greatest difficulty to bring himself to eat anything else than eggs cooked by himself or to drink anything else than water which his own eyes had seen dipped up from the Seine.
The massacres were still going on, but nevertheless were diminishing in violence. There had been such a wholesale butchery of the Huguenots that their number was greatly reduced. The larger part were dead; many had fled; a few had remained in concealment. Occasionally a great outcry arose in one district or another; it meant that one of these was discovered. Then the execution was either private or public according as the victim was driven into a corner or could escape. In such circumstances it furnished great amusement for the neighborhood where the affair took place; for instead of growing calmer as their enemies were annihilated, the Catholics grew more and more ferocious; the fewer the remaining victims, the more bloodthirsty they seemed in their persecution of the rest.
Charles IX. had taken great pleasure in hunting the Huguenots, and when he could no longer continue the chase himself he took delight in the noise of others hunting them.
One day, returning from playing at mall, which with tennis and hunting were his favorite amusements, he went to his mother's apartments in high spirits, followed by his usual train of courtiers.
"Mother," he said, embracing the Florentine, who, observing his joy, was already trying to detect its cause; "mother, good news! Mort de tous les diables! Do you know that the admiral's illustrious carcass which it was said was lost has been found?"
"Aha!" said Catharine.
"Oh, heavens! yes. You thought as I did, mother, the dogs had eaten a wedding dinner off him, but it was not so. My people, my dear people, my good people, had a clever idea and have hung the admiral up at the gibbet of Montfaucon.
"Du haut en bas Gaspard on a jété, Et puis de bas en haut on l'a monté."[3]
"Well!" said Catharine.
"Well, good mother," replied Charles IX., "I have a strong desire to see him again, dear old man, now I know he is really dead. It is very fine weather and everything seems to be blooming to-day. The air is full of life and perfume, and I feel better than I ever did. If you like, mother, we will get on horseback and go to Montfaucon."
"Willingly, my son," said Catharine, "if I had not made an appointment which I cannot defer; and beside, to pay a visit to a man of such importance as the admiral, we should invite the whole court. It will be an occasion for observers to make curious observations. We shall see who comes and who stays away."
"Faith, you are right, mother, we will put it off till to-morrow; that will be better, so send out your invitations and I will send mine; or rather let us not invite any one. We will only say we are going, and then every one will be free. Good-by, mother! I am going to play on the horn."
"You will exhaust yourself, Charles, as Ambroise Paré is always telling you, and he is right. It is too severe an exercise for you."
"Bah! bah! bah!" said Charles; "I wish I were sure nothing else would be the cause of my death. I should then bury every one here, including Harry, who will one day succeed us all, as Nostradamus prophesies."
Catharine frowned.
"My son," she said, "mistrust especially all things that appear impossible, and meanwhile take care of yourself."
"Only two or three blasts to rejoice my dogs, poor things; they are wearied to death with doing nothing. I ought to have let them loose on the Huguenots; that would have done them good!"
And Charles IX. left his mother's room, went into his armory, took down a horn, and played on it with a vigor that would have done honor to Roland himself. It was difficult to understand how so weak a frame and such pale lips could blow a blast so powerful.
Catharine, in truth, was awaiting some one as she had told her son. A moment after he had left her, one of her women came and spoke to her in a low voice. The queen smiled, rose, and saluting the persons who formed her court, followed the messenger.
Réné the Florentine, the man to whom on the eve of Saint Bartholomew the King of Navarre had given such a diplomatic reception, had just entered her oratory.
"Ah, here you are, Réné," said Catharine, "I was impatiently waiting for you."
Réné bowed.
"Did you receive the note I wrote you yesterday?"
"I had that honor."
"Did you make another trial, as I asked you to do, of the horoscope cast by Ruggieri, and agreeing so well with the prophecy of Nostradamus, which says that all my three sons shall reign? For several days past, affairs have decidedly changed, Réné, and it has occurred to me that possibly fate has become less threatening."
"Madame," replied Réné, shaking his head, "your majesty knows well that affairs do not change fate; on the contrary, fate controls affairs."
"Still, you have tried the sacrifice again, have you not?"
"Yes, madame," replied Réné; "for it is my duty to obey you in all things."
"Well--and the result?"
"Still the same, madame."
"What, the black lamb uttered its three cries?"
"Just the same as before, madame."
"The sign of three cruel deaths in my family," murmured Catharine.
"Alas!" said Réné.
"What then?"
"Then, madame, there was in its entrails that strange displacement of the liver which we had already observed in the first two--it was wrong side up!"
"A change of dynasty! Still--still--still the same!" muttered Catharine; "yet we must fight against this, Réné," she added.
Réné shook his head.
"I have told your majesty," he said, "that fate rules."
"Is that your opinion?" asked Catharine.
"Yes, madame."
"Do you remember Jeanne d'Albret's horoscope?"
"Yes, madame."
"Repeat it to me, I have quite forgotten it."
"Vives honorata," said Réné, "morieris reformidata, regina amplificabere."
"That means, I believe," said Catharine, "Thou shalt live honored--and she lacked common necessaries, poor thing! Thou shalt die feared--and we laughed at her. Thou shalt be greater than thou hast been as a queen--and she is dead, and sleeps in a tomb on which we have not even engraved her name."
"Madame, your majesty does not translate the vives honorata rightly. The Queen of Navarre lived honored; for all her life she enjoyed the love of her children, the respect of her partisans; respect and love all the more sincere in that she was poor."
"Yes," said Catharine, "I grant you the vives honorata; but morieris reformidata: how will you explain that?"
"Nothing more easy: Thou shalt die feared."
"Well--did she die feared?"
"So much so that she would not have died had not your majesty feared her. Then--As a queen thou shalt be greater; or, Thou shalt be greater than thou hast been as a queen. This is equally true, madame; for in exchange for a terrestrial crown she has doubtless, as a queen and martyr, a celestial crown; and, besides, who knows what the future may reserve for her posterity?"
Catharine was excessively superstitious; she was even more alarmed at Réné's coolness than at the steadfastness of the auguries, and as in her case any scrape was a chance for her boldly to master the situation, she said suddenly to him, without any other transition than the working of her own thoughts:
"Are any perfumes come from Italy?"
"Yes, madame."
"Send me a boxful."
"Of which?"
"Of the last, of those"--
Catharine stopped.
"Of those the Queen of Navarre was so fond of?" asked Réné.
"Exactly."
"I need not prepare them, for your majesty is now as skilful at them as I am."
"You think so?" said Catharine. "They certainly succeed."
"Has your majesty anything more to say to me?" asked the perfumer.
"Nothing," replied Catharine, thoughtfully; "at least I think not, only if there is any change in the sacrifices, let me know it in time. By the way, let us leave the lambs, and try the hens."
"Alas, madame, I fear that in changing the victim we shall not change the presages."
"Do as I tell you."
The perfumer bowed and left the apartment.
Catharine mused for a short time, then rose and returning to her bedchamber, where her women awaited her, announced the pilgrimage to Montfaucon for the morrow.
The news of this pleasure party caused great excitement in the palace and great confusion in the city: the ladies prepared their most elegant toilets; the gentlemen, their finest arms and steeds; the tradesmen closed their shops, and the populace killed a few straggling Huguenots, in order to furnish company for the dead admiral.
There was a tremendous hubbub all the evening and during a good part of the night.
La Mole had spent a miserable day, and this miserable day had followed three or four others equally miserable. Monsieur d'Alençon, to please his sister, had installed him in his apartments, but had not seen him since. He felt himself like a poor deserted child, deprived of the tender care, the soothing attention of two women, the recollection of one of whom occupied him perpetually. He had heard of her through the surgeon Ambroise Paré, whom she had sent to him, but what he heard from a man of fifty who was ignorant or pretended to be ignorant of the interest felt by La Mole in everything appertaining to Marguerite was very fragmentary and insufficient. Gillonne, indeed, had come once, of her own accord, be it understood, to ask after him, and the visit was to him like a sunbeam darting into a dungeon, and La Mole had remained dazzled by it, and had expected a second visit, and yet two days passed and she had not appeared.
As soon, therefore, as the convalescent heard of this magnificent reunion of the whole court for the following day he sent to ask Monsieur d'Alençon the favor of accompanying it.
The duke did not even inquire whether La Mole was able to bear the fatigue, but merely answered:
"Capital! Let him have one of my horses."
That was all La Mole wanted. Maître Ambroise Paré came as usual to dress his wounds, and La Mole explained to him the necessity he was under of mounting on horseback, and begged him to put on the bandages with double care.
The two wounds, both that on the breast and that on the shoulder, were closed; the one on the shoulder only pained him. Both were rose-red in color, which showed that they were in a fair way of healing. Maître Ambroise Paré covered them with gummed taffetas, a remedy greatly in vogue then, and promised La Mole that if he did not exert himself too much everything would go well.
La Mole was at the height of joy. Save for a certain weakness caused by loss of blood and a slight giddiness attributable to the same cause, he felt as well as could be. Besides, doubtless Marguerite would be in the party; he should see Marguerite again. And when he remembered what benefit he had received from the sight of Gillonne, he had no doubt that her mistress would have a still more efficacious influence upon him.
So La Mole spent a part of the money which he had received when he went away from his family in the purchase of the most beautiful white satin doublet and the finest embroidered mantle that could be furnished by a fashionable tailor. The same tailor procured for him a pair of those perfumed boots such as were worn at that period. The whole outfit was brought to him in the morning only a half hour later than the time at which La Mole had ordered it, so that he had not much fault to find.
He dressed himself quickly, looked in the glass, and found that he was suitably attired, arranged, and perfumed. Then by walking up and down the room several times, he assured himself that though it caused him some sharp pangs, still the happiness which he felt in his heart would render these physical inconveniences of no account. A cherry-colored mantle of his own design, and cut rather longer than they were worn then, proved to be very becoming to him.
While he was thus engaged in the Louvre, another scene, of a similar kind, was going on at the Hôtel de Guise. A tall gentleman, with red hair, was examining, before a glass, a reddish mark which went across his face very disagreeably; he combed and perfumed his mustache, and while he was perfuming it, he kept spreading over that unfortunate mark which, in spite of all the cosmetics then in use, persisted in reappearing, a three-fold layer of white and red; but as the application was insufficient an idea came to him: a hot sun, an August sun, was flashing its rays into the court-yard; he made his way down there, took his hat in his hand, and with his nose in the air and his eyes closed, he walked up and down for ten minutes, fully exposed to the devouring flame which fell from heaven like a torrent. At the end of these ten minutes, owing to the unexampled ardor of the sun, the gentleman's face had acquired such a brilliant color that the red streak was now no more in harmony with the rest than it had been, but in comparison seemed yellow.
Nevertheless, the gentleman did not seem much dissatisfied with this rainbow effect which he did his best to bring into accord with the rest of his face by spreading a layer of vermilion over it, after which he put on a magnificent suit which a tailor had brought to his room without any commands from him. Thus attired, scented, and armed from head to foot, he again went down into the court-yard and began to pat a large black horse whose beauty would have been matchless but for a small cut, like his own, made by a reiter's sabre in one of the last civil conflicts.
Yet, enchanted with the good steed as he was with himself, the gentleman, whom no doubt our readers have easily recognized, was on his back a quarter of an hour before any of the others and making the court-yard of the Hôtel de Guise resound with the whinnying of the charger accompanied by exclamations of mordi, pronounced in every variety of accent according as he compelled the horse to submit to this authority. At the end of a moment the horse completely subdued, recognized by his obedience and subjection his master's legitimate control, but the victory had not been obtained without noise, and this noise, which was perhaps the very thing our gentleman reckoned upon, this noise had attracted to the windows a lady whom our queller of horses saluted respectfully, and who smiled at him in the most agreeable manner.
Five minutes later Madame de Nevers summoned her steward.
"Sir," said she, "has Monsieur le Comte Annibal de Coconnas been furnished a suitable breakfast?"
"Yes, madame," replied the steward, "he ate this morning with a better appetite than usual."
"Very well, sir," said the duchess.
Then addressing her first gentleman in waiting:
"Monsieur d'Arguzon," she said, "let us set out for the Louvre, and keep an eye, I beg, on Monsieur le Comte Annibal de Coconnas, for he is wounded, and consequently still weak; and I would not for all the world any accident should happen to him. That would make the Huguenots laugh, for they owe him a spite since the blessed night of Saint Bartholomew."
And Madame de Nevers, mounting her horse, went joyfully towards the Louvre, which was the general rendezvous.
It was two o'clock in the afternoon as a file of cavaliers, overflowing with gold, jewels, and magnificent garments, appeared in the Rue Saint Denis, entering by the corner of the Cemetery of the Innocents and stretching itself out in the sunlight between the two rows of gloomy looking houses like an immense reptile with variegated rings.
XVI. A DEAD ENEMY'S BODY ALWAYS SMELLS SWEET
No brilliant company, however, could give any idea of this spectacle. The rich and elegant silk dresses, bequeathed as a magnificent fashion by François I. to his successors, had not yet been changed into those formal and sombre vestments which came into fashion under Henry III.; so that the costume of Charles IX., less rich, but perhaps more elegant than those of preceding reigns, displayed its perfect harmony. In our day no similar cortège could have any standard of comparison, for when we wish magnificence of display we are reduced to mere symmetry and uniform.
Pages, esquires, gentlemen of low degree, dogs and horses, following on the flanks and in the rear, formed of the royal cortège an absolute army. Behind this army came the populace, or rather the populace was everywhere.
It followed, trooped alongside, and rushed ahead; there were shouts of Noel and Haro, for there were distinguishable in the procession many Calvinists to hoot at, and the populace harbors resentment.
That morning Charles, in presence of Catharine and the Duc de Guise, had, as a perfectly natural thing spoken before Henry of Navarre of going to visit the gibbet of Montfaucon, or, rather, the admiral's mutilated corpse which had been suspended from it. Henry's first impulse had been to refuse to take part in this excursion. Catharine supposed he would. At the first words in which he expressed his repugnance she exchanged a glance and a smile with the Duc de Guise. Henry detected them both, understood what they meant, and suddenly recovering his presence of mind said:
"But why should I not go? I am a Catholic, and am bound to my new religion."
Then addressing the King:
"Your Majesty may reckon on my company," he said; "and I shall be always happy to accompany you wheresoever you may go."
And he threw a sweeping glance around, to see whose brows might be frowning.
Perhaps of all that cortège, the person who was looked at with the greatest curiosity was that motherless son, that kingless king, that Huguenot turned Catholic. His long and marked countenance, his somewhat vulgar figure, his familiarity with his inferiors, which he carried to a degree almost derogatory to a king,--a familiarity acquired by the mountaineer habits of his youth, and which he preserved till his death,--marked him out to the spectators, some of whom cried:
"To mass, Harry, to mass!"
To which Henry replied:
"I attended it yesterday, to-day, and I shall attend it again to-morrow. Ventre saint gris! surely that is sufficient."
Marguerite was on horseback--so lovely, so fresh, so elegant that admiration made a regular concert around her, though it must be confessed that a few notes of it were addressed to her companion, the Duchesse de Nevers, who had just joined her on a white horse so proud of his burden that he kept tossing his head.
"Well, duchess!" said the Queen of Navarre, "what is there new?"
"Why, madame," replied the duchess, aloud, "I know of nothing."
Then in a lower tone:
"And what has become of the Huguenot?"
"I have found him a retreat almost safe," replied Marguerite. "And the wholesale assassin, what have you done with him?"
"He wished to take part in the festivity, and so we mounted him on Monsieur de Nevers' war-horse, a creature as big as an elephant. He is a fearful cavalier. I allowed him to be present at the ceremony to-day, as I felt that your Huguenot would be prudent enough to keep his chamber and that there was no fear of their meeting."
"Oh, faith!" replied Marguerite, smiling, "if he were here, and he is not here, I do not think a collision would take place. My Huguenot is remarkably handsome, but nothing more--a dove, and not a hawk; he coos, but does not bite. After all," she added, with a gesture impossible to describe, and shrugging her shoulders slightly, "after all, perhaps our King thought him a Huguenot while he is only a Brahmin, and his religion forbids him to shed blood."
"But where, pray, is the Duc d'Alençon?" inquired Henriette; "I do not see him."
"He will join us later; his eyes troubled him this morning and he was inclined not to come, but as it is known that because he holds a different opinion from Charles and his brother Henry he inclines toward the Huguenots, he became convinced that the King might put a bad interpretation on his absence and he changed his mind. There, hark! people are gazing and shouting yonder; it must be that he is coming by the Porte Montmartre."
"You are right; 'tis he; I recognize him. How elegant he looks to-day," said Henriette. "For some time he has taken particular pains with his appearance; he must be in love. See how nice it is to be a prince of the blood, he gallops over every one, they all draw on one side."
"Yes," said Marguerite, laughing, "he will ride over us. For Heaven's sake draw your attendants to one side, duchess, for there is one of them who will be killed if he does not give way."
"It is my hero!" cried the duchess; "look, only look!"
Coconnas had left his place to approach the Duchesse de Nevers, but just as his horse was crossing the kind of exterior boulevard which separates the street from the Faubourg Saint Denis, a cavalier of the Duc d'Alençon's suite, trying in vain to rein in his excited horse, dashed full against Coconnas. Coconnas, shaken by the collision, reeled on his colossal mount, his hat nearly fell off; he put it on more firmly and turned round furiously.
"Heavens!" said Marguerite, in a low tone, to her friend, "Monsieur de la Mole!"
"That handsome, pale young man?" exclaimed the duchess, unable to repress her first impression.
"Yes, yes; the very one who nearly upset your Piedmontese."
"Oh," said the duchess, "something terrible will happen! they look at each other--recollect each other!"
Coconnas had indeed recognized La Mole, and in his surprise dropped his bridle, for he believed he had killed his old companion, or at least put him hors de combat for some time. La Mole had also recognized Coconnas, and he felt a fire mount up into his face. For some seconds, which sufficed for the expression of all the sentiments these two men harbored, they gazed at each other in a way which made the two women shudder.
After which, La Mole, having looked about him, and doubtless seeing that the place was ill chosen for an explanation, spurred his horse and rejoined the Duc d'Alençon. Coconnas remained stationary for a moment, twisting his mustache until the point almost entered his eye; then seeing La Mole dash off without a word, he did the same.
"Ah, ha!" said Marguerite, with pain and contempt, "so I was not mistaken--it is really too much;" and she bit her lips till the blood came.
"He is very handsome," added the Duchesse de Nevers, with commiseration.
Just at this moment the Duc d'Alençon reached his place behind the King and the queen mother, so that his suite, in following him, were obliged to pass before Marguerite and the Duchesse de Nevers. La Mole, as he rode before the two princesses, raised his hat, saluted the queen, and, bowing to his horse's neck, remained uncovered until her majesty should honor him with a look.
But Marguerite turned her head aside disdainfully.
La Mole, no doubt, comprehended the contemptuous expression of the queen's features, and from pale he became livid, and that he might not fall from his horse was compelled to hold on by the mane.
"Oh, oh!" said Henriette to the queen; "look, cruel that you are!--he is going to faint."
"Good," said the queen, with a cruel smile; "that is the only thing we need. Where are your salts?"
Madame de Nevers was mistaken. La Mole, with an effort, recovered himself, and sitting erect on his horse took his place in the Duc d'Alençon's suite.
Meantime they kept on their way and at length saw the lugubrious outline of the gibbet, erected and first used by Enguerrand de Marigny. Never before had it been so adorned.
The ushers and guards went forward and made a wide circle around the enclosure. As they drew near, the crows perched on the gibbet flew away with croakings of despair.
The gibbet erected at Montfaucon generally offered behind its posts a shelter for the dogs that gathered there attracted by frequent prey, and for philosophic bandits who came to ponder on the sad chances of fortune.
That day at Montfaucon there were apparently neither dogs nor bandits. The ushers and guards had scared away the dogs together with the crows, and the bandits had mingled with the throng so as to make some of the lucky hits which are the more cheerful vicissitudes of their profession.
The procession moved forward; the King and Catharine arrived first, then came the Duc d'Anjou, Duc d'Alençon, the King of Navarre, Monsieur de Guise, and their followers, then Madame Marguerite, the Duchesse de Nevers, and all the women who composed what was called the queen's flying squadron; then the pages, squires, attendants, and people--in all ten thousand persons.
From the principal gibbet hung a misshapen mass, a black corpse stained with coagulated blood and mud, whitened by layers of dust. The carcass was headless, and it was hung by the legs, and the populace, ingenious as it always is, had replaced the head with a bunch of straw, to which was fastened a mask; and in the mouth of this mask some wag, knowing the admiral's habit, had introduced a toothpick.
At once appalling and singular was the spectacle of all these elegant lords and handsome ladies like a procession painted by Goya, riding along in the midst of those blackened carcasses and gibbets, with their long lean arms.
The noisier the exultation of the spectators, the more strikingly it contrasted with the melancholy silence and cold insensibility of those corpses--objects of ridicule which made even the jesters shudder.
Many could scarcely endure this horrible spectacle, and by his pallor might be distinguished, in the centre of collected Huguenots, Henry, who, great as was his power of self-control and the degree of dissimulation conferred on him by Heaven, could no longer bear it.
He made as his excuse the strong stench which emanated from all those human remains, and going to Charles, who, with Catharine, had stopped in front of the admiral's dead body, he said:
"Sire, does not your Majesty find that this poor carcass smells so strong that it is impossible to remain near it any longer?"
"Do you find it so, Harry?" inquired the King, his eyes sparkling with ferocious joy.
"Yes, sire."
"Well, then, I am not of your opinion; a dead enemy's corpse always smells sweet."
"Faith, sire," said Tavannes, "since your Majesty knew that we were going to make a little call on the admiral, you should have invited Pierre Ronsard, your teacher of poetry; he would have extemporized an epitaph for the old Gaspard."
"There is no need of him for that," said Charles IX., after an instant's thought:
"Ci-gît,--mais c'est mal entendu, Pour lui le mot est trop honnête,-- Ici l'amiral est pendu Par les pieds, à faute de tête."[4]
"Bravo! bravo!" cried the Catholic gentlemen in unison, while the collected Huguenots scowled and kept silent, and Henry, as he was talking with Marguerite and Madame de Nevers, pretended not to have heard.
"Come, come, sir!" said Catharine, who, in spite of the perfumes with which she was covered, began to be made ill by the odor. "Come, however agreeable company may be, it must be left at last; let us therefore say good-by to the admiral, and return to Paris."
She nodded ironically as when one takes leave of a friend, and, taking the head of the column, turned to the road, while the cortège defiled before Coligny's corpse.
The sun was sinking in the horizon.
The throng followed fast on their majesties so as to enjoy to the very end all the splendors of the procession and the details of the spectacle; the thieves followed the populace, so that in ten minutes after the King's departure there was no person about the admiral's mutilated carcass on which now blew the first breezes of the evening.
When we say no person, we err. A gentleman mounted on a black horse, and who, doubtless, could not contemplate at his ease the black mutilated trunk when it was honored by the presence of princes, had remained behind, and was examining, in all their details, the bolts, stone pillars, chains, and in fact the gibbet, which no doubt appeared to him (but lately arrived in Paris, and ignorant of the perfection to which things could be brought in the capital) the paragon of all that man could invent in the way of awful ugliness.
We need hardly inform our friends that this man was M. Annibal de Coconnas.
A woman's practised eye had vainly looked for him in the cavalcade and had searched among the ranks without being able to find him.
Monsieur de Coconnas, as we have said, was standing ecstatically contemplating Enguerrand de Marigny's work.
But this woman was not the only person who was trying to find Monsieur de Coconnas. Another gentleman, noticeable for his white satin doublet and gallant plume, after looking toward the front and on all sides, bethought him to look back, and saw Coconnas's tall figure and the silhouette of his gigantic horse standing out strongly against the sky reddened by the last rays of the setting sun.
Then the gentleman in the white satin doublet turned out from the road taken by the majority of the company, struck into a narrow footpath, and describing a curve rode back toward the gibbet.
Almost at the same time the lady whom we have recognized as the Duchesse de Nevers, just as we recognized the tall gentleman on the black horse as Coconnas, rode alongside of Marguerite and said to her:
"We were both mistaken, Marguerite, for the Piedmontese has remained behind and Monsieur de la Mole has gone back to meet him."
"By Heaven!" exclaimed Marguerite, laughing, "then something is going to happen. Faith, I confess I should not be sorry to revise my opinion about him."
Marguerite then turned her horse and witnessed the manoeuvre which we have described La Mole as performing.
The two princesses left the procession; the opportunity was most favorable: they were passing by a hedge-lined footpath which led up the hill, and in doing so passed within thirty yards of the gibbet. Madame de Nevers whispered a word in her captain's ear, Marguerite beckoned to Gillonne, and the four turned into this cross path and went and hid behind the shrubbery nearest to the place where the scene which they evidently expected to witness was to take place. It was about thirty yards, as we have already said, from the spot where Coconnas in a state of ecstasy was gesticulating before the admiral.
Marguerite dismounted, Madame de Nevers and Gillonne did the same; the captain then got down and took the bridles of the four horses. Thick green furnished the three women a seat such as princesses often seek in vain. The glade before them was so open that they would not miss the slightest detail.
La Mole had accomplished his circuit. He rode up slowly and took his stand behind Coconnas; then stretching out his hand tapped him on the shoulder.
The Piedmontese turned round.
"Oh!" said he, "so it was not a dream! You are still alive!"
"Yes, sir," replied La Mole; "yes, I am still alive. It is no fault of yours, but I am still alive."
"By Heaven! I know you again well enough," replied Coconnas, "in spite of your pale face. You were redder than that the last time we met!"
"And I," said La Mole, "I also recognize you, in spite of that yellow line across your face. You were paler than that when I made that mark for you!"
Coconnas bit his lips, but, evidently resolved on continuing the conversation in a tone of irony, he said:
"It is curious, is it not, Monsieur de la Mole, particularly for a Huguenot, to be able to look at the admiral suspended from that iron hook? And yet they say there are people extravagant enough to accuse us of killing even small Huguenots, sucklings."
"Count," said La Mole, bowing, "I am no longer a Huguenot; I have the happiness of being a Catholic!"
"Bah!" exclaimed Coconnas, bursting into loud laughter; "so you are a convert, sir? Oh, that was clever of you!"
"Sir," replied La Mole, with the same seriousness and the same politeness, "I made a vow to become a convert if I escaped the massacre."
"Count," said the Piedmontese, "that was a very prudent vow, and I beg to congratulate you. Perhaps you made still others?"
"Yes, I made a second," answered La Mole, patting his horse with entire coolness.
"And what might that be?" inquired Coconnas.
"To hang you up there, by that small nail which seems to await you beneath Monsieur de Coligny."
"What, as I am now?" asked Coconnas, "alive and merry?"
"No, sir; after I have passed my sword through your body!"
Coconnas became purple, and his eyes darted flames.
"Do you mean," said he in a bantering tone, "to that nail?"
"Yes," replied La Mole, "to that nail."
"You are not tall enough to do it, my little sir!"
"Then I'll get on your horse, my great man-slayer," replied La Mole. "Ah, you believe, my dear Monsieur Annibal de Coconnas, that one may with impunity assassinate people under the loyal and honorable excuse of being a hundred to one, forsooth! But the day comes when a man finds his man; and I believe that day has come now. I should very well like to send a bullet through your ugly head; but, bah! I might miss you, for my hand is still trembling from the traitorous wounds you inflicted upon me."
"My ugly head!" shouted Coconnas, leaping down from his steed. "Down--down from your horse, M. le Comte, and draw!"
And he drew his sword.
"I believe your Huguenot called Monsieur de Coconnas an 'ugly head,'" whispered the Duchesse de Nevers. "Do you think he is bad looking?"
"He is charming," said Marguerite, laughing, "and I am compelled to acknowledge that fury renders Monsieur de La Mole unjust; but hush! let us watch!"
In fact, La Mole had dismounted from his horse with as much deliberation as Coconnas had shown of precipitation; he had taken off his cherry-colored cloak, laid it leisurely on the ground, drawn his sword, and put himself on guard.
"Aïe!" he exclaimed, as he stretched out his arm.
"Ouf!" muttered Coconnas, as he moved his,--for both, as it will be remembered, had been wounded in the shoulder and it hurt them when they made any violent movement.
A burst of laughter, ill repressed, came from the clump of bushes. The princesses could not quite contain themselves at the sight of their two champions rubbing their omoplates and making up faces.
This burst of merriment reached the ears of the two gentlemen, who were ignorant that they had witnesses; turning round, they beheld their ladies.
La Mole resumed his guard as firm as an automaton, and Coconnas crossed his blade with an emphatic "By Heaven!"
"Ah ça! now they will murder each other in real earnest, if we do not interfere. There has been enough of this. Holá, gentlemen!--holá!" cried Marguerite.
"Let them be! let them be!" said Henriette, who having seen Coconnas at work, hoped in her heart that he would have as easy a victory over La Mole as he had over Mercandon's son and two nephews.
"Oh, they are really beautiful so!" exclaimed Marguerite. "Look--they seem to breathe fire!"
Indeed, the combat, begun with sarcasms and mutual insults, became silent as soon as the champions had crossed their swords. Each distrusted his own strength, and each, at every quick pass, was compelled to restrain an expression of pain occasioned by his own wounds. Nevertheless, with eyes fixed and burning, mouth half open, and teeth clenched, La Mole advanced with short and firm steps toward his adversary, who, seeing in him a most skilful swordsman, retreated step by step. They both thus reached the edge of the ditch on the other side of which were the spectators; then, as if his retreat had been only a simple stratagem to draw nearer to his lady, Coconnas took his stand, and as La Mole made his guard a little too wide, he made a thrust with the quickness of lightning and instantly La Mole's white satin doublet was stained with a spot of blood which kept growing larger.
"Courage!" cried the Duchesse de Nevers.
"Ah, poor La Mole!" exclaimed Marguerite, with a cry of distress.
La Mole heard this cry, darted at the queen one of those looks which penetrate the heart even deeper than a sword-point, and taking advantage of a false parade, thrust vigorously at his adversary.
This time the two women uttered two cries which seemed like one. The point of La Mole's rapier had appeared, all covered with blood, behind Coconnas's back.
Yet neither fell. Both remained erect, looking at each other with open mouth, and feeling that on the slightest movement they must lose their balance. At last the Piedmontese, more dangerously wounded than his adversary, and feeling his senses forsaking him with his blood, fell on La Mole, grasping him with one hand, while with the other he endeavored to unsheath his poniard.
La Mole roused all his strength, raised his hand, and let fall the pommel of his sword on Coconnas's forehead. Coconnas, stupefied by the blow, fell, but in his fall drew down his adversary with him, and both rolled into the ditch.
Then Marguerite and the Duchesse de Nevers, seeing that, dying as they were, they were still struggling to destroy each other, hastened to them, followed by the captain of the guards; but before they could reach them the combatants' hands unloosened, their eyes closed, and letting go their grasp of their weapons they stiffened in what seemed like their final agony. A wide stream of blood bubbled round them.
"Oh, brave, brave La Mole!" cried Marguerite, unable any longer to repress her admiration. "Ah! pardon me a thousand times for having a moment doubted your courage."
And her eyes filled with tears.
"Alas! alas!" murmured the duchess, "gallant Annibal. Did you ever see two such intrepid lions, madame?"
And she sobbed aloud.
"Heavens! what ugly thrusts," said the captain, endeavoring to stanch the streams of blood. "Holá! you, there, come here as quickly as you can--here, I say"--
He addressed a man who, seated on a kind of tumbril or cart painted red, appeared in the evening mist singing this old song, which had doubtless been suggested to him by the miracle of the Cemetery of the Innocents:
"Bel aubespin fleurissant Verdissant, Le long de ce beau rivage, Tu es vétu, jusqu'au bas Des longs bras D'une lambrusche sauvage.
"Le chantre rossignolet, Nouvelet, Courtisant sa bien-aimée Pour ses amours alléger _Vient logerv Tous les ans sous ta ramée.
"Or, vis, gentil aubespin Vis sans fin; Vis, sans que jamais tonnerre, Ou la cognée, ou les vents Ou le temps Te puissent ruer par."...[5]
"Holá! hé!" shouted the captain a second time, "come when you are called. Don't you see that these gentlemen need help?"
The carter, whose repulsive exterior and coarse face formed a singular contrast with the sweet and sylvan song we have just quoted, stopped his horse, got out, and bending over the two bodies said:
"These be terrible wounds, sure enough, but I have made worse in my time."
"Who are you, pray?" inquired Marguerite, experiencing, in spite of herself, a certain vague terror which she could not overcome.
"Madame," replied the man, bowing down to the ground, "I am Maître Caboche, headsman to the provostry of Paris, and I have come to hang up at the gibbet some companions for Monsieur the Admiral."
"Well! and I am the Queen of Navarre," replied Marguerite; "cast your corpses down there, spread in your cart the housings of our horses, and bring these two gentlemen softly behind us to the Louvre."
XVII. MAÎTRE AMBROISE PARÉ'S CONFRÈRE
The tumbril in which Coconnas and La Mole were laid started back toward Paris, following in the shadow the guiding group. It stopped at the Louvre, and the driver was amply rewarded. The wounded men were carried to the Duc d'Alençon's quarters, and Maître Ambroise Paré was sent for.
When he arrived, neither of the two men had recovered consciousness.
La Mole was the least hurt of the two. The sword had struck him below the right armpit, but without touching any vital parts. Coconnas was run through the lungs, and the air that escaped from his wound made the flame of a candle waver.
Ambroise Paré would not answer for Coconnas.
Madame de Nevers was in despair. Relying on Coconnas's strength, courage, and skill, she had prevented Marguerite from interfering with the duel. She would have had Coconnas taken to the Hôtel de Guise and gladly bestowed on him a second time the care which she had already lavished on his comfort, but her husband was likely to arrive from Rome at any moment and find fault with the introduction of a strange man in the domestic establishment.
To hide the cause of the wounds, Marguerite had had the two young men brought to her brother's rooms, where one of them, to be sure, had already been installed, by saying that they were two gentlemen who had been thrown from their horses during the excursion, but the truth was divulged by the captain, who, having witnessed the duel, could not help expressing his admiration, and it was soon known at court that two new raffinés[6] had burst into sudden fame. Attended by the same surgeon, who divided his attentions between them, the two wounded men passed through the different phases of convalescence arising from the greater or less severity of their wounds. La Mole, who was less severely wounded of the two, was the first to recover consciousness. A terrible fever had taken possession of Coconnas and his return to life was attended by all the symptoms of the most horrible delirium.
Though La Mole was confined in the same room with Coconnas, he had not, when he came to himself, seen his companion, or if he saw him, he betrayed no sign that he saw him. Coconnas, on the contrary, as soon as he opened his eyes, fastened them on La Mole with an expression which proved that the blood he had lost had not modified the passions of his fiery temperament.
Coconnas thought he was dreaming, and that in this dream he saw the enemy he imagined he had twice slain, only the dream was unduly prolonged. After having observed La Mole laid, like himself, on a couch, and his wounds dressed by the surgeon, he saw him rise up in bed, while he himself was still confined to his by his fever, his weakness, and his pain; he saw him get out of bed, then walk, first leaning on the surgeon's arm, and then on a cane, and finally without assistance.
Coconnas, still delirious, viewed these different stages of his companion's recovery with eyes sometimes dull, at others wandering, but always threatening.
All this presented to the Piedmontese's fiery spirit a fearful mixture of the fantastic and the real. For him La Mole was dead, wholly dead, having been actually killed twice and not merely once, and yet he recognized this same La Mole's ghost lying in a bed like his own; then, as we have said, he saw this ghost get up, walk round, and, horrible to relate, come toward his bed. This ghost, whom Coconnas would have wished to avoid, even had it been in the depths of hell, came straight to him and stopped beside his pillow, standing there and looking at him; there was in his features a look of gentleness and compassion which Coconnas took for the expression of hellish derision.
There arose in his mind, possibly more wounded than his body, an insatiable thirst of vengeance. He was wholly occupied with one idea, that of procuring some weapon, and with that weapon piercing the body or the ghost of La Mole which so cruelly persecuted him. His clothes, stained with blood, had been placed on a chair by his bed, but afterwards removed, it being thought imprudent to leave them in his sight; but his poniard still remained on the chair, for it was imagined it would be some time before he would want to use it.
Coconnas saw the poniard; three nights while La Mole was slumbering he strove to reach it; three nights his strength failed him, and he fainted. At length, on the fourth night, he clutched it convulsively, and groaning with the pain of the effort, hid the weapon beneath his pillow.
The next day he saw something he had never deemed possible. La Mole's ghost, which every day seemed to gain strength, while he, occupied with the terrible dream, kept losing his in the eternal weaving of the scheme which was to rid him of it,--La Mole's ghost, growing more and more energetic, walked thoughtfully up and down the room three or four times, then, after having put on his mantle, buckled on his sword, and put on a broad-brimmed felt hat, opened the door and went out.
Coconnas breathed again. He thought that he was freed from his phantom. For two or three hours his blood circulated more calmly and coolly in his veins than it had done since the duel. La Mole's absence for one day would have restored Coconnas to his senses; a week's absence would perhaps have cured him; unfortunately, La Mole returned at the end of two hours.
This reappearance of La Mole was like a poniard-stab for Coconnas; and although La Mole did not return alone, Coconnas did not give a single look at his companion.
And yet his companion was worth looking at.
He was a man of forty, short, thick-set, and vigorous, with black hair which came to his eyebrows, and a black beard, which, contrary to the fashion of the period, thickly covered the chin; but he seemed one who cared little for the fashion.
He wore a leather jerkin, all covered with brown spots; red hose and leggings, thick shoes coming above the ankle, a cap the same color as his stockings, and a girdle, from which hung a large knife in a leather sheaf, completed his attire.
This singular personage, whose presence in the Louvre seemed so anomalous, threw his brown mantle on a chair and unceremoniously approached Coconnas, whose eyes, as if fascinated, remained fixed upon La Mole, who remained at some distance. He looked at the sick man, and shaking his head, said to La Mole:
"You have waited till it was rather late, my dear gentleman."
"I could not get out sooner," said La Mole.
"Eh! Heavens! you should have sent for me."
"Whom had I to send?"
"True, I forgot where we are. I had told those ladies, but they would not listen to me. If my prescriptions had been followed instead of those of that ass, Ambroise Paré, you would by this time have been in a condition to go in pursuit of adventures together, or exchange another sword-thrust if such had been your good pleasure; but we shall see. Does your friend listen to reason?"
"Scarcely."
"Hold out your tongue, my dear gentleman."
Coconnas thrust out his tongue to La Mole, making such a hideous grimace that the practitioner shook his head a second time.
"Oho!" he muttered, "contraction of the muscles. There's no time to be lost. This evening I will send you a potion ready prepared; you must make him take it three times: once at midnight, once at one o'clock, and once at two."
"Very well."
"But who will make him take it?"
"I will."
"You?"
"Yes."
"You give me your word?"
"On my honor."
"And if any physician should attempt to abstract the slightest portion to analyze it and discover what its ingredients are"--
"I will spill it to the last drop."
"This also on your honor?"
"I swear it!"
"Whom shall I send you this potion by?"
"Any one you please."
"But my messenger"--
"Well?"
"How will he get to you?"
"That is easily managed. He will say that he comes from Monsieur Réné, the perfumer."
"That Florentine who lives on the Pont Saint Michel?"
"Exactly. He is allowed to enter the Louvre at any hour, day or night."
The man smiled.
"In fact," said he, "the queen mother at least owes him that much. It is understood, then; he will come from Maître Réné, the perfumer. I may surely use his name for once: he has often enough practised my profession without having taken his degree either."
"Then," said La Mole, "I may rely on you."
"You may."
"And about the payment?"
"Oh, we will arrange about that with the gentleman himself when he is well again."
"You may be quite easy on that score, for I am sure he will pay you generously."
"I believe you. And yet," he added with a strange smile, "as the people with whom I have to do are not wont to be grateful, I should not be surprised if when he is on his legs again he should forget or at least not think to give a single thought to me."
"All right," said La Mole, smiling also, "in that case I should have to jog his memory."
"Very well, we'll leave it so. In two hours you will receive the medicine."
"Au revoir!"
"You said"--
"Au revoir."
The man smiled.
"It is always my custom," he added, "to say adieu! So adieu, Monsieur de la Mole. In two hours you will have the potion. You understand, it must be given at midnight--in three doses--at intervals of an hour."
So saying he took his departure, and La Mole was left alone with Coconnas.
Coconnas had heard the whole conversation, but understood nothing of it; a senseless babble of words, a senseless jangling of phrases, was all that came to him. Of the whole interview he remembered nothing except the word "midnight."
He continued to watch La Mole, who remained in the room, pacing thoughtfully up and down.
The unknown doctor kept his word, and at the appointed time sent the medicine, which La Mole placed on a small silver chafing-dish, and having taken this precaution, went to bed.
This action on the part of La Mole gave Coconnas a little quietude. He tried to shut his eyes, but his feverish slumbers were only a continuation of his waking delirium. The same phantom which haunted him by day came to disturb him by night; across his hot eyelids he still saw La Mole as threatening as ever, and a voice kept repeating in his ear: "Midnight, midnight, midnight!"
Suddenly the echoing note of a clock's bell awoke in the night and struck twelve. Coconnas opened his blood-shot eyes; the fiery breath from his breast scorched his dry lips, an unquenchable thirst devoured his burning throat; the little night lamp was burning as usual, and its dim light made thousands of phantoms dance before his wandering eyes.
And then a horrible vision--he saw La Mole get out of bed, and after walking up and down the room two or three times, as the sparrow-hawk flits before the little bird it is trying to fascinate, come toward him with his fist clinched.
Coconnas seized his poniard and prepared to plunge it into his enemy.
La Mole kept coming nearer.
Coconnas muttered:
"Ah! here you are again! you are always here! Come on! You threaten me, do you! you smile! Come, come, come! ah, you still keep coming nearer, a step at a time! Come, come, and let me kill you."
And suiting the action to the word, just as La Mole bent down to him, Coconnas flashed out the poniard from under the clothes; but the effort he made in rising exhausted him, the weapon dropped from his hand, and he fell back upon his pillow.
"There, there!" said La Mole, gently lifting his head; "drink this, my poor fellow, for you are burning up."
It was really a cup La Mole presented to Coconnas, who in the wild excitement of his delirium took it to be a threatening fist.
But at the nectarous sensation of this beneficent draught, soothing his lips and cooling his throat, Coconnas's reason, or rather his instinct, came back to him, a never before experienced feeling of comfort pervaded his frame; he turned an intelligent look at La Mole, who was supporting him in his arms, and smiling on him; and from those eyes, so lately glowing with fury, a tear rolled down his burning cheek, which drank it with avidity.
"Mordi!" whispered Coconnas, as he fell back on his bolster. "If I get over this, Monsieur de la Mole, you shall be my friend."
"And you will get over it," said La Mole, "if you will drink the other two cups, and have no more ugly dreams."
An hour afterward La Mole, assuming the duties of a nurse, and scrupulously carrying out the unknown doctor's orders, rose again, poured a second dose into the cup, and carried it to Coconnas, who instead of waiting for him with his poniard, received him with open arms, eagerly swallowed the potion, and calmly fell asleep.
The third cup had a no less marvellous effect. The sick man's breathing became more regular, his stiff limbs relaxed, a gentle perspiration diffused itself over his burning skin, and when Ambroise Paré visited him the next morning, he smiled complacently, saying:
"I answer for Monsieur de Coconnas now; and this will not be one of the least difficult cures I have effected."
This scene, half-dramatic, half-burlesque, and yet not lacking in a certain poetic touch when Coconnas's fierce ways were taken into consideration, resulted in the friendship which the two gentlemen had begun at the Inn of the Belle Étoile, and which had been so violently interrupted by the Saint Bartholomew night's occurrences, from that time forth taking on a new vigor and soon surpassing that of Orestes and Pylades by five sword-thrusts and one pistol-wound exchanged between them.
At all events, wounds old and new, slight or serious, were at last in a fair way of cure. La Mole, faithful to his duties as nurse, would not forsake the sick-room until Coconnas was entirely well. As long as weakness kept the invalid on the bed, he lifted him, and when he began to improve he helped him to walk; in a word, he lavished on him all the attentions suggested by his gentle and affectionate disposition, and this care, together with the Piedmontese's natural vigor, brought about a more rapid convalescence than would have been expected.
However, one and the same thought tormented both the young men. Each had in his delirium apparently seen the woman he loved approach his couch, and yet, certainly since they had recovered their senses, neither Marguerite nor Madame de Nevers had entered the room. However, that was perfectly comprehensible; the one, wife of the King of Navarre, the other, the Duc de Guise's sister-in-law, could not have publicly shown two simple gentlemen such a mark of evident interest, could they? No! La Mole and Coconnas could not make any other reply to this question. But still the absence of the ladies, tantamount perhaps to utter forgetfulness, was not the less painful.
It is true the gentleman who had witnessed the duel had come several times, as if of his own accord, to inquire after them; it is true Gillonne had done the same; but La Mole had not ventured to speak to the one concerning the queen; Coconnas had not ventured to speak to the other of Madame de Nevers.