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THE WORKS OF HONORÉ De BALZAC

About Catherine de' Medici

Seraphita

AND OTHER STORIES

With Introductions by

GEORGE SAINTSBURY

UNIVERSITY EDITION

AVIL PUBLISHING COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA.

COPYRIGHTED 1901

BY

John D. Avil

_All Rights Reserved_

CONTENTS

PART I

                                                                 PAGE

_INTRODUCTION_                                                     ix

_ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI_:
              (_Sur Catherine de Medicis_)

PREFACE                                                             3

PART I. THE CALVINIST MARTYR                                       44

 "  II. THE RUGGIERI'S SECRET                                     233

 " III. THE TWO DREAMS                                            308

_GAMBARA_                                                         327

      (_Gambara_)

PART II

_INTRODUCTION_                                                     ix

_SERAPHITA_:

      (_Séraphita_)

I. SERAPHITUS                                                       2

II. SERAPHITA                                                      22

III. SERAPHITA--SERAPHITUS                                         40

IV. THE CLOUDS OF THE SANCTUARY                                    82

V. THE FAREWELL                                                   112

VI. THE ROAD TO HEAVEN                                            123

VII. THE ASSUMPTION                                               134

_LOUIS LAMBERT_                                                   145

      (_Louis Lambert_)

_THE EXILES_

      (_Les Proscrits_)

      ALMAE SORORI                                                259

_MAÎTRE CORNÉLIUS_                                                293

      (_Maître Cornélius_)

_THE ELIXIR OF LIFE_                                              359

      (_L'Elixir de longue Vie_)

      (Translators, CLARA BELL AND JAMES WARING)

ILLUSTRATIONS

PART I

QUADRANGLE OF THE COLLEGE OF VENDÔME WHERE
BALZAC WAS EDUCATED                                   _Frontispiece_

                                                                 PAGE

"I AM CHAUDIEU!"                                                   53

PLACED HIMSELF IN FRONT OF A LOOKING-GLASS                        328

PART II

TOWER IN WHICH BALZAC PASSED MOST OF HIS TIME
AT COLLEGE                                                        164

HE NOW SAW WITH A TERRIFIED SHUDDER THAT THERE
WAS A BRIGHT LIGHT ON THE STAIRS, AND PERCEIVED
CORNÉLIUS, IN HIS OLD DALMATIC, CARRYING
HIS LAMP                                                          324

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

AND

GAMBARA

INTRODUCTION

This book (as to which it is important to remember the _Sur_ if injustice
is not to be done to the intentions of the author) has plenty of interest
of more kinds than one; but it is perhaps more interesting because of the
place it holds in Balzac's work than for itself. He had always considerable
hankerings after the historical novel: his early and lifelong devotion to
Scott would sufficiently account for that. More than one of the _Oeuvres
de Jeunesse_ attempts the form in a more or less conscious way: the
_Chouans_, the first successful book, definitely attempts it; but by far
the most ambitious attempt is to be found in the book before us. It is most
probable that it was of this, if of anything of his own, that Balzac was
thinking when, in 1846, he wrote disdainfully to Madame Hanska about Dumas,
and expressed himself towards _Les Trois Mousquetaires_ (which had whiled
him through a day of cold and inability to work) nearly as ungratefully as
Carlyle did towards Captain Marryat. And though it is, let it be repeated,
a mistake, and a rather unfair mistake, to give such a title to the book as
might induce readers to regard it as a single and definite novel, of which
Catherine is the heroine, though it is made up of three parts written at
very different times, it has a unity which the introduction shows to some
extent, and which a rejected preface given by M. de Lovenjoul shows still
better.

To understand this, we must remember that Balzac, though not exactly an
historical scholar, was a considerable student of history; and that,
although rather an amateur politician, he was a constant thinker and writer
on political subjects. We must add to these remembrances the fact of his
intense interest in all such matters as Alchemy, the Elixir of Life, and so
forth, to which the sixteenth century in general, and Catherine de' Medici
in particular, were known to be devoted. All these interests of his met in
the present book, the parts of which appeared in inverse order, and the
genesis of which is important enough to make it desirable to incorporate
some of the usual bibliographical matter in the substance of this preface.
The third and shortest, _Les Deux Rêves_, a piece partly suggestive of the
famous _Prophecy of Cazotte_ and other legends of the Revolution (but with
more retrospective than prospective view), is dated as early as 1828
(before the turning-point), and was actually published in a periodical in
1830. _La Confidence des Ruggieri_, written in 1836 (and, as I have noted
in the general introduction, according to its author, in a single night)
followed, and _Le Martyr Calviniste_, which had several titles, and was
advertised as in preparation for a long time, did not come till 1841.

It is unnecessary to say that all are interesting. The personages, both
imaginary and historical, appear at times in a manner worthy of Balzac;
many separate scenes are excellent; and, to those who care to perceive
them, the various occupations of the author appear in the most interesting
manner. Politically, his object was, at least by his own account, to defend
the maxim that private and public morality are different; that the policy
of a state cannot be, and ought not to be, governed by the same
considerations of duty to its neighbors as those which ought to govern the
conduct of an individual. The very best men--those least liable to the
slightest imputation of corrupt morals and motives--have endorsed this
principle; though it has been screamed at by a few fanatics, a somewhat
larger number of persons who found their account in so doing, and a great
multitude of hasty, dense, or foolish folk. But it was something of a mark
of that amateurishness which spoilt Balzac's dealing with the subject to
choose the sixteenth century for his text. For every cool-headed student of
history and ethics will admit that it was precisely the abuse of this
principle at this time, and by persons of whom Catherine de' Medici, if not
the most blamable, has had the most blame put on her, that brought the
principle itself into discredit. Between the assertion that the strictest
morality of the Sermon on the Mount must obtain between nation and nation,
between governor and governed, and the maxim that in politics the end of
public safety justifies _any_ means whatever, there is a perfectly immense
gulf fixed.

If, however, we turn from this somewhat academic point, and do not dwell
very much on the occult and magical sides of the matter, interesting as
they are, we shall be brought at once face to face with the question, Is
the handling of this book the right and proper one for an historical novel?
Can we in virtue of it rank Balzac (this is the test which he would
himself, beyond all question, have accepted) a long way above Dumas and
near Scott?

I must say that I can see no possibility of answer except, "Certainly not."
For the historical novel depends almost more than any other division of the
kind upon interest of story. Interest of story is not, as has been several
times pointed out, at any time Balzac's main appeal, and he has succeeded
in it here less than in most other places. He has discussed too much; he
has brought in too many personages without sufficient interest of plot;
but, above all, he exhibits throughout an incapacity to handle his
materials in the peculiar way required. How long he was before he grasped
"the way to do it," even on his own special lines, is the commonplace and
refrain of all writing about him. Now, to this special kind he gave
comparatively little attention, and the result is that he mastered it less
than any other. In the best stories of Dumas (and the best number some
fifteen or twenty at least) the interest of narrative, of adventure, of
what will happen to the personages, takes you by the throat at once, and
never lets you go till the end. There is little or nothing of this sort
here. The three stories are excellently well-informed studies, very curious
and interesting in divers ways. The _Ruggieri_ is perhaps something more;
but it is, as its author no doubt honestly entitled it, much more an _Étude
Philosophique_ than an historical novelette. In short, this was not
Balzac's way. We need not be sorry--it is very rarely necessary to be
that--that he tried it; we may easily forgive him for not recognizing the
ease and certainty with which Dumas trod the path. But we should be most of
all thankful that he did not himself enter it frequently, or ever pursue it
far.

The most important part of the bibliography of the book has been given
above. The rest is a little complicated, and for its ins and outs reference
must be made to the usual authority. It should be enough to say that the
_Martyr_, under the title of _Les Lecamus_, first appeared in the _Siècle_
during the spring of 1841. Souverain published it as a book two years later
with the other two, as _Catherine de Medicis Expliquée_. The second part,
entitled, not _La Confidence_, but _Le Secret des Ruggieri_, had appeared
much earlier in the _Chronique de Paris_ during the winter of 1836-37, and
had been published as a book in the latter year; it was joined to
_Catherine de Medicis Expliquée_ as above. The third part, after appearing
in the _Monde_ as early as May 1830, also appeared in the _Deux Mondes_ for
December of the same year, then became one of the _Romans et Contes
Philosophiques_, then an _Étude Philosophique_, and in 1843 joined
_Catherine de Medicis Expliquée_. The whole was inserted in the _Comédie_
in 1846.

                                        G. S.

_Gambara_ exhibits a curious and, it must be admitted, a somewhat
incoherent mixture of two of Balzac's chief outside interests--Italy and
music. In his helter-skelter ramblings, indulged in despite his enormous
literary labors, he took many a peep at Italy; and it is evident that for
him the country exercised a powerful fascination. In his eyes it was
ideal--ideal in its music, in its painting, and in those who fanned the
fires divine. His affection for Italy was, in fact, about as ardent and
untutored as that for the arts. The story of _Gambara_ is an illustration
of these two sentiments; it can best be understood when the author's
attitude is known.

There is a little about the forceful character of Andrea Marcosini that
reminds one of de Marsay. He has an inherent nobleness unknown to the
latter, but unfortunately made subservient to a banality which even the
genius of Balzac cannot efface. This marring clause of the Count and
Marianna is hardly to be excused on the ground of dramatic necessity, since
other themes of this nature are not cloyed by baser earth. The introductory
scene in the restaurant is good, and stands out brightly contrasted with
Gambara's music-ravings and the faint echo of Giardini's cookery conceits.
Each is but the quest of something unattained--a note more grandly uttered
in _La Peau de Chagrin_, or _La Recherche de l'Absolu_, or the wonderful
sketch, _Le Chef d'Oeuvre Inconnu_. But as a fresh embodiment of this
thought, _Gambara_ may be welcomed, for in such themes as these the
novelist is most distinctly in his element.

The first appearance of _Gambara_ was in the _Revue et Gazette Musicale de
Paris_ during July and August 1837, in four chapters and a conclusion. In
1839 it was included in a book with the _Cabinet des Antiques_. Ten years
later it was included as _Le Livre des Douleurs_ with _Séraphita_, _Les
Proscrits_, and _Massimilla Doni_. It took its place in the _Comédie_ in
1846.

ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

     _To Monsieur le Marquis de Pastoret, Member of the
     Académie des Beaux-Arts._

When we consider the amazing number of volumes written to ascertain the
spot where Hannibal crossed the Alps, without our knowing to this day
whether it was, as Whitaker and Rivaz say, by Lyons, Geneva, the
Saint-Bernard, and the Valley of Aosta; or, as we are told by Letronne,
Follard, Saint-Simon, and Fortia d'Urban, by the Isère, Grenoble,
Saint-Bonnet, Mont Genèvre, Fenestrella, and the Pass of Susa, or,
according to Larauza, by the Mont Cenis and Susa; or, as Strabo, Polybius
and de Luc tell us, by the Rhône, Vienne, Yenne, and the Mont du Chat; or,
as certain clever people opine, by Genoa, la Bochetta, and la Scrivia--the
view I hold, and which Napoleon had adopted--to say nothing of the vinegar
with which some learned men have dressed the Alpine rocks, can we wonder,
Monsieur le Marquis, to find modern history so much neglected that some
most important points remain obscure, and that the most odious calumnies
still weigh on names which ought to be revered?--And it may be noted
incidentally that by dint of explanations it has become problematical
whether Hannibal ever crossed the Alps at all. Father Ménestrier believes
that the Scoras spoken of by Polybius was the Saôme; Letronne, Larauza, and
Schweighauser believe it to be the Isère; Cochard, a learned man of Lyons,
identifies it with the Drôme. But to any one who has eyes, are there not
striking geographical and linguistic affinities between Scoras and Scrivia,
to say nothing of the almost certain fact that the Carthaginian fleet lay
at la Spezzia or in the Gulf of Genoa?

I could understand all this patient research if the battle of Cannae could
be doubted; but since its consequences are well known, what is the use of
blackening so much paper with theories that are but the Arabesque of
hypothesis, so to speak; while the most important history of later times,
that of the Reformation, is so full of obscurities that the name remains
unknown of the man[A] who was making a boat move by steam at Barcelona at
the time when Luther and Calvin were inventing the revolt of mind?

We, I believe, after having made, each in his own way, the same
investigation as to the great and noble character of Catherine de' Medici,
have come to the same opinion. So I thought that my historical studies on
the subject might be suitably dedicated to a writer who has labored so long
on the history of the Reformation; and that I should thus do public homage,
precious perhaps for its rarity, to the character and fidelity of a man
true to the Monarchy.

                                        PARIS, _January 1842_.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] The inventor of this experiment was probably Salomon of Caux, not of
Caus. This great man was always unlucky; after his death even his name was
misspelt. Salomon, whose original portrait, at the age of forty-six, was
discovered by the author of the _Human Comedy_, was born at Caux, in
Normandy.

PREFACE

When men of learning are struck by a historical blunder, and try to correct
it, "Paradox!" is generally the cry; but to those who thoroughly examine
the history of modern times, it is evident that historians are privileged
liars, who lend their pen to popular beliefs, exactly as most of the
newspapers of the day express nothing but the opinions of their readers.

Historical independence of thought has been far less conspicuous among lay
writers than among the priesthood. The purest light thrown on history has
come from the Benedictines, one of the glories of France--so long, that is
to say, as the interests of the monastic orders are not in question. Since
the middle of the eighteenth century, some great and learned
controversialists have arisen who, struck by the need for rectifying
certain popular errors to which historians have lent credit, have published
some remarkable works. Thus Monsieur Launoy, nicknamed the Evicter of
Saints, made ruthless war on certain saints who have sneaked into the
Church Calendar. Thus the rivals of the Benedictines, the two little known
members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, began their
_mémoires_, their studious notes, full of patience, erudition, and logic,
on certain obscure passages of history. Thus Voltaire, with an unfortunate
bias, and sadly perverted passions, often brought the light of his
intellect to bear on historical prejudices. Diderot, with this end in view,
began a book--much too long--on a period of the history of Imperial Rome.
But for the French Revolution, criticism, as applied to history, might
perhaps have laid up the materials for a good and true history of France,
for which evidence had long been amassed by the great French Benedictines.
Louis XVI., a man of clear mind, himself translated the English work,
which so much agitated the last century, in which Walpole tried to explain
the career of Richard III.

How is it that persons so famous as kings and queens, so important as
generals of great armies, become objects of aversion or derision? Half the
world hesitates between the song on Marlborough and the history of England,
as they do between popular tradition and history as concerning Charles IX.

At all periods when great battles are fought between the masses and the
authorities, the populace creates an _ogresque_ figure--to coin a word for
the sake of its exactitude. Thus in our own time, but for the _Memorials of
Saint-Helena_, and the controversies of Royalists and Bonapartists, there
was scarcely a chance but that Napoleon would have been misunderstood.
Another Abbé de Pradt or two, a few more newspaper articles, and Napoleon
from an Emperor would have become an Ogre.

How is error propagated and accredited? The mystery is accomplished under
our eyes without our discerning the process. No one suspects how greatly
printing has helped to give body both to the envy which attends persons in
high places, and to the popular irony which sums up the converse view of
every great historical fact. For instance, every bad horse in France that
needs flogging is called after the Prince de Polignac; and so who knows
what opinion the future may hold as to the Prince de Polignac's _coup
d'État_? In consequence of a caprice of Shakespeare's--a stroke of revenge
perhaps, like that of Beaumarchais on Bergasse (Begearss)--Falstaff, in
England, is a type of the grotesque; his name raises a laugh, he is the
King of Buffoons. Now, instead of being enormously fat, ridiculously
amorous, vain, old, drunken, and a corrupter of youth, Falstaff was one of
the most important figures of his time, a Knight of the Garter, holding
high command. At the date of Henry V.'s accession, Falstaff was at most
four-and-thirty. This General, who distinguished himself at the battle of
Agincourt, where he took the Duc d'Alençon prisoner, in 1420 took the town
of Montereau, which was stoutly defended. Finally, under Henry VI., he beat
ten thousand Frenchmen with fifteen hundred men who were dropping with
fatigue and hunger. So much for valor!

If we turn to literature, Rabelais, among the French, a sober man who drank
nothing but water, is thought of as a lover of good cheer and a persistent
sot. Hundreds of absurd stories have been coined concerning the author of
one of the finest books in French literature, _Pantagruel_.

Aretino, Titian's friend, and the Voltaire of his day, is now credited with
a reputation, in complete antagonism with his works and character, which he
acquired by his over free wit, characteristic of the writings of an age
when gross jests were held in honor, and queens and cardinals indited tales
which are now considered licentious. Instances might be infinitely
multiplied.

In France, and at the most important period of our history, Catherine de'
Medici has suffered more from popular error than any other woman, unless it
be Brunehaut or Frédégonde; while Marie de' Medici, whose every action was
prejudicial to France, has escaped the disgrace that should cover her name.
Marie dissipated the treasure amassed by Henri IV.; she never purged
herself of the suspicion that she was cognizant of his murder; Epernon, who
had long known Ravaillac, and who did not parry his blow, was _intimate_
with the Queen; she compelled her son to banish her from France, where she
was fostering the rebellion of her other son, Gaston; and Richelieu's
triumph over her on the _Journée des Dupes_ was due solely to the
Cardinal's revealing to Louis XIII. certain documents secreted after the
death of Henri IV.

Catherine de' Medici, on the contrary, saved the throne of France, she
maintained the Royal authority under circumstances to which more than one
great prince would have succumbed. Face to face with such leaders of the
factions and ambitions of the houses of Guise and of Bourbon as the two
Cardinals de Lorraine and the two "Balafrés," the two Princes de Condé,
Queen Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV., the Connétable de Montmorency, Calvin,
the Colignys, and Théodore de Bèze, she was forced to put forth the rarest
fine qualities, the most essential gifts of statesmanship, under the fire
of the Calvinist press. These, at any rate, are indisputable facts. And to
the student who digs deep into the history of the sixteenth century in
France, the figure of Catherine de' Medici stands out as that of a great
king.

When once calumnies are undermined by facts laboriously brought to light
from under the contradictions of pamphlets and false anecdotes, everything
is explained to the glory of this wonderful woman, who had none of the
weakness of her sex, who lived chaste in the midst of the gallantries of
the most licentious Court in Europe, and who, notwithstanding her lack of
money, erected noble buildings, as if to make good the losses caused by the
destructive Calvinists, who injured Art as deeply as they did the body
politic.

Hemmed in between a race of princes who proclaimed themselves the heirs of
Charlemagne, and a factious younger branch that was eager to bury the
Connétable de Bourbon's treason under the throne; obliged, too, to fight
down a heresy on the verge of devouring the Monarchy, without friends, and
aware of treachery in the chiefs of the Catholic party and of republicanism
in the Calvinists, Catherine used the most dangerous but the surest of
political weapons--Craft. She determined to deceive by turns the party that
was anxious to secure the downfall of the House of Valois, the Bourbons who
aimed at the Crown, and the Reformers--the Radicals of that day, who
dreamed of an impossible republic, like those of our own day, who, however,
have nothing to reform. Indeed, so long as she lived, the Valois sat on the
throne. The great de Thou understood the worth of this woman when he
exclaimed, on hearing of her death:

"It is not a woman, it is Royalty that dies in her!"

Catherine had, in fact, the sense of Royalty in the highest degree, and she
defended it with admirable courage and persistency. The reproaches flung
at her by Calvinist writers are indeed her glory; she earned them solely by
her triumphs. And how was she to triumph but by cunning? Here lies the
whole question.

As to violence--that method bears on one of the most hotly disputed points
of policy, which, in recent days, has been answered here, on the spot where
a big stone from Egypt has been placed to wipe out the memory of regicide,
and to stand as an emblem of the materialistic policy which now rules us;
it was answered at les Carmes and at the Abbaye; it was answered on the
steps of Saint Roch; it was answered in front of the Louvre in 1830, and
again by the people against the King, as it has since been answered once
more by la Fayette's "best of all republics" against the republican
rebellion, at Saint-Merri and the Rue Transnonnain.

Every power, whether legitimate or illegitimate, must defend itself when it
is attacked; but, strange to say, while the people is heroic when it
triumphs over the nobility, the authorities are murderers when they oppose
the people! And, finally, if after their appeal to force they succumb, they
are regarded as effete idiots. The present Government (1840) will try to
save itself, by two laws, from the same evil as attacked Charles X., and
which he tried to scotch by two decrees. Is not this a bitter mockery? May
those in power meet cunning with cunning? Ought they to kill those who try
to kill them?

The massacres of the Revolution are the reply to the massacre of
Saint-Bartholomew. The People, being King, did by the nobility and the King
as the King and the nobility did by the rebels in the sixteenth century.
And popular writers, who know full well that, under similar conditions, the
people would do the same again, are inexcusable when they blame Catherine
de' Medici and Charles IX.

"All power is a permanent conspiracy," said Casimir Périer, when teaching
what power ought to be. We admire the anti-social maxims published by
audacious writers; why, then, are social truths received in France with
such disfavor when they are boldly stated? This question alone
sufficiently accounts for historical mistakes. Apply the solution of this
problem to the devastating doctrines which flatter popular passion, and to
the conservative doctrines which would repress the ferocious or foolish
attempts of the populace, and you will see the reason why certain
personages are popular or unpopular. Laubardemont and Laffemas, like some
people now living, were devoted to the maintenance of the power they
believed in. Soldiers and judges, they obeyed a Royal authority. D'Orthez,
in our day, would be discharged from office for misinterpreting orders from
the Ministry, but Charles X. left him to govern his province. The power of
the masses is accountable to no one; the power of one is obliged to account
to its subjects, great and small alike.

Catherine, like Philip II. and the Duke of Alva, like the Guises and
Cardinal Granvelle, foresaw the future to which the Reformation was dooming
Europe. They saw monarchies, religion, and power all overthrown. Catherine,
from the Cabinet of the French kings, forthwith issued sentence of death on
that inquiring spirit which threatened modern society--a sentence which
Louis XIV. finally carried out. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes was a
measure that proved unfortunate, simply in consequence of the irritation
Louis XIV. had aroused in Europe. At any other time England, Holland, and
the German Empire would not have encouraged on their territory French
exiles and French rebels.

Why, in these days, refuse to recognize the greatness which the majestic
adversary of that most barren heresy derived from the struggle itself?
Calvinists have written strongly against Charles IX.'s stratagems; but
travel through France: as you see the ruins of so many fine churches
destroyed, and consider the vast breaches made by religious fanatics in the
social body; when you learn the revenges they took, while deploring the
mischief of individualism--the plague of France to-day, of which the germ
lay in the questions of liberty of conscience which they stirred up--you
will ask yourself on which side were the barbarians. There are always, as
Catherine says in the third part of this Study, "unluckily, in all ages,
hypocritical writers ready to bewail two hundred scoundrels killed in due
season." Cæsar, who tried to incite the Senate to pity for Catiline's
party, would very likely have conquered Cicero if he had had newspapers and
an Opposition at his service.

Another consideration accounts for Catherine's historical and popular
disfavor. In France the Opposition has always been Protestant, because its
policy has never been anything but negative; it has inherited the theories
of the Lutherans, the Calvinists, and the Protestants on the terrible texts
of liberty, tolerance, progress, and philanthropy. The opponents of power
spent two centuries in establishing the very doubtful doctrine of freewill.
Two more were spent in working out the first corollary of freewill--liberty
of conscience. Our age is striving to prove the second--political liberty.

Standing between the fields already traversed and the fields as yet
untrodden, Catherine and the Church proclaimed the salutary principle of
modern communities, _Una fides, unus Dominus_, but asserting their right of
life and death over all innovators. Even if she had been conquered,
succeeding times have shown that Catherine was right. The outcome of
freewill, religious liberty, and political liberty (note, this does not
mean _civil_ liberty) is France as we now see it.

And what is France in 1840? A country exclusively absorbed in material
interests, devoid of patriotism, devoid of conscience; where authority is
powerless; where electoral rights, the fruit of freewill and political
liberty, raise none but mediocrities; where brute force is necessary to
oppose the violence of the populace; where discussion, brought to bear on
the smallest matter, checks every action of the body politic; and where
individualism--the odious result of the indefinite subdivision of property,
which destroys family cohesion--will devour everything, even the nation,
which sheer selfishness will some day lay open to invasion. Men will say,
"Why not the Tzar?" as they now say, "Why not the Duc d'Orléans?" We do
not care for many things even now; fifty years hence we shall care for
nothing.

Therefore, according to Catherine--and according to all who wish to see
Society soundly organized--man as a social unit, as a subject, has no
freewill, has no right to accept the dogma of liberty of conscience, or to
have political liberty. Still, as no community can subsist without some
guarantee given to the subject against the sovereign, the subject derives
from that certain liberties under restrictions. Liberty--no, but
liberties--yes; well defined and circumscribed liberties. This is in the
nature of things. For instance, it is beyond human power to fetter freedom
of thought; and no sovereign may ever tamper with money.

The great politicians who have failed in this long contest--it has gone on
for five centuries--have allowed their subjects wide liberties; but they
never recognize their liberty to publish anti-social opinions, nor the
unlimited freedom of the subject. To them the words _subject_ and _free_
are, politically speaking, a contradiction in terms; and, in the same way,
the statement that all citizens are equal is pure nonsense, and
contradicted by Nature every hour. To acknowledge the need for religion,
the need for authority, and at the same time to leave all men at liberty to
deny religion, to attack its services, to oppose the exercise of authority
by the public and published expression of opinion, is an impossibility such
as the Catholics of the sixteenth century would have nothing to say to.
Alas! the triumph of Calvinism will cost France more yet than it has ever
done; for the sects of to-day--religious, political, humanitarian, and
leveling--are the train of Calvinism; and when we see the blunders of those
in power, their contempt for intelligence, their devotion to those material
interests in which they seek support, and which are the most delusive of
all props, unless by the special aid of Providence the genius of
destruction must certainly win the day from the genius of conservatism. The
attacking forces, who have nothing to lose, and everything to win, are
thoroughly in agreement; whereas their wealthy opponents refuse to make
any sacrifice of money or of self-conceit to secure defenders.

Printing came to the aid of the resistance inaugurated by the Vaudois and
the Albigenses. As soon as human thought--no longer condensed, as it had
necessarily been in order to preserve the most communicable form--had
assumed a multitude of garbs and become the very people, instead of
remaining in some sense divinely axiomatic, there were two vast armies to
contend with--that of ideas and that of men. Royal power perished in the
struggle, and we, in France, at this day are looking on at its last
coalition with elements which make it difficult, not to say impossible.

Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action
is possible when discussion is permanently established. So we ought to
regard the woman as truly great who foresaw that future, and fought it so
bravely. The House of Bourbon was able to succeed to the House of Valois,
and owed it to Catherine de' Medici that it found that crown to wear. If
the second Balafré had been alive, it is very doubtful that the Béarnais,
strong as he was, could have seized the throne, seeing how dearly it was
sold by the Duc de Mayenne and the remnant of the Guise faction. The
necessary steps taken by Catherine, who had the deaths of François II. and
Charles IX. on her soul--both dying opportunely for her safety--are not, it
must be noted, what the Calvinist and modern writers blame her for! Though
there was no poisoning, as some serious authors have asserted, there were
other not less criminal plots. It is beyond question that she hindered Paré
from saving one, and murdered the other morally by inches.

But the swift death of François II. and the skilfully contrived end of
Charles IX. did no injury to Calvinist interests. The causes of these two
events concerned only the uppermost sphere, and were never suspected by
writers or by the lower orders at the time; they were guessed only by de
Thou, by l'Hôpital, by men of the highest talents, or the chiefs of the two
parties who coveted and clung to the Crown, and who thought such means
indispensable.

Popular songs, strange to say, fell foul of Catherine's morality. The
anecdote is known of a soldier who was roasting a goose in the guardroom of
the Château of Tours while Catherine and Henri IV. were holding a
conference there, and who sang a ballad in which the Queen was insultingly
compared to the largest cannon in the hands of the Calvinists. Henri IV.
drew his sword to go out and kill the man; Catherine stopped him, and only
shouted out:

"It is Catherine who provides the goose!"

Though the executions at Amboise were attributed to Catherine, and the
Calvinists made that able woman responsible for all the inevitable
disasters of the struggle, she must be judged by posterity, like
Robespierre at a future date.

And Catherine was cruelly punished for her preference for the Duc d'Anjou,
which made her hold her two elder sons so cheap. Henri III. having ceased,
like all spoilt children, to care for his mother, rushed voluntarily into
such debauchery as made him, what the mother had made Charles IX., a
childless husband, a king without an heir. Unhappily, Catherine's youngest
son, the Duc d'Alençon, died--a natural death. The Queen-mother made every
effort to control her son's passions. History preserves the tradition of a
supper to nude women given in the banqueting-hall at Chenonceaux on his
return from Poland, but it did not cure Henri III. of his bad habits.

This great Queen's last words summed up her policy, which was indeed so
governed by good sense that we see the Cabinets of every country putting it
into practice in similar circumstances.

"Well cut, my son," said she, when Henri III. came to her, on her deathbed,
to announce that the enemy of the throne had been put to death. "Now you
must sew up again."

She thus expressed her opinion that the sovereign must make friends with
the House of Lorraine, and make it useful, as the only way to hinder the
effects of the Guises' hatred, by giving them a hope of circumventing the
King. But this indefatigable cunning of the Italian and the woman was
incompatible with Henri III.'s life of debauchery. When once the Great
Mother was dead, the Mother of Armies (_Mater castrorum_), the policy of
the Valois died too.

Before attempting to write this picture of manners in action, the author
patiently and minutely studied the principal reigns of French history, the
quarrels of the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, and those of the Guises and
the Valois, each in the forefront of a century. His purpose was to write a
picturesque history of France. Isabella of Bavaria, Catherine and Marie de'
Medici, each fills a conspicuous place, dominating from the fourteenth to
the seventeenth centuries, and leading up to Louis XIV.

Of these three queens, Catherine was the most interesting and the most
beautiful. Hers was a manly rule, not disgraced by the terrible amours of
Isabella, nor those, even more terrible though less known, of Marie de'
Medici. Isabella brought the English into France to oppose her son, was in
love with her brother-in-law, the Duc d'Orléans, and with Boisbourdon.
Marie de' Medici's account is still heavier. Neither of them had any
political genius.

In the course of these studies and comparisons, the author became convinced
of Catherine's greatness; by initiating himself into the peculiar
difficulties of her position, he discerned how unjust historians, biased by
Protestantism, had been to this queen; and the outcome was the three
sketches here presented, in which some erroneous opinions of her, of those
who were about her, and of the aspect of the times, are combated.

The work is placed among my Philosophical Studies, because it illustrates
the spirit of a period, and plainly shows the influence of opinions.

But before depicting the political arena on which Catherine comes into
collision with the two great obstacles in her career, it is necessary to
give a short account of her previous life from the point of view of an
impartial critic, so that the reader may form a general idea of this large
and royal life up to the time when the first part of this narrative opens.

Never at any period, in any country, or in any ruling family was there more
contempt felt for legitimacy than by the famous race of the Medici (in
French commonly written and pronounced Medicis). They held the same opinion
of monarchy as is now professed in Russia: The ruler on whom the crown
devolves is the real and legitimate monarch. Mirabeau was justified in
saying, "There has been but one mésalliance in my family--that with the
Medici;" for, notwithstanding the exertions of well-paid genealogists, it
is certain that the Medici, till the time of Avérardo de' Medici,
gonfaloniere of Florence in 1314, were no more than Florentine merchants of
great wealth. The first personage of the family who filled a conspicuous
place in the history of the great Tuscan Republic was Salvestro de' Medici,
gonfaloniere in 1378. This Salvestro had two sons--Cosmo and Lorenzo de'
Medici.

From Cosmo descended Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Duc de Nemours, the Duke
of Urbino, Catherine's father, Pope Leo X., Pope Clement VII., and
Alessandro, not indeed Duke of Florence, as he is sometimes called, but
Duke _della città di Penna_, a title created by Pope Clement VII. as a step
towards that of Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Lorenzo's descendants were Lorenzino--the Brutus of Florence--who killed
Duke Alessandro; Cosmo, the first Grand Duke, and all the rulers of
Florence till 1737, when the family became extinct.

But neither of the two branches--that of Cosmo or that of
Lorenzo--succeeded in a direct line, till the time when Marie de' Medici's
father subjugated Tuscany, and the Grand Dukes inherited in regular
succession. Thus Alessandro de' Medici, who assumed the title of Duke
_della città di Penna_, and whom Lorenzino assassinated, was the son of the
Duke of Urbino, Catherine's father, by a Moorish slave. Hence Lorenzino,
the legitimate son of Lorenzo, had a double right to kill Alessandro, both
as a usurper in the family and as an oppressor of the city. Some historians
have indeed supposed that Alessandro was the son of Clement VII. The event
that led to the recognition of this bastard as head of the Republic was his
marriage with Margaret of Austria, the natural daughter of Charles V.

Francesco de' Medici, the husband of Bianca Capello, recognized as his son
a child of low birth bought by that notorious Venetian lady; and, strange
to say, Fernando, succeeding Francesco, upheld the hypothetical rights of
this boy. Indeed, this youth, known as Don Antonio de' Medici, was
recognized by the family during four ducal reigns; he won the affection of
all, did them important service, and was universally regretted.

Almost all the early Medici had natural children, whose lot was in every
case splendid. The Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, Pope Clement VII., was the
illegitimate son of Giuliano I. Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici was also a
bastard, and he was within an ace of being Pope and head of the family.

Certain inventors of anecdote have a story that the Duke of Urbino,
Catherine's father, told her: "_A figlia d'inganno non manca mai
figliuolanza_" (A clever woman can always have children, _à propos_ to some
natural defect in Henri, the second son of François I., to whom she was
betrothed). This Lorenzo de' Medici, Catherine's father, had married, for
the second time, in 1518, Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, and died in
1519, a few days after his wife, who died in giving birth to Catherine.
Catherine was thus fatherless and motherless as soon as she saw the light.
Hence the strange events of her childhood, chequered by the violent
struggles of the Florentines, in the attempt to recover their liberty,
against the Medici who were determined to govern Florence, but who were so
circumspect in their policy that Catherine's father took the title of Duke
of Urbino.

At his death, the legitimate head of the House of the Medici was Pope Leo
X., who appointed Giuliano's illegitimate son, Giulio de' Medici, then
Cardinal, Governor of Florence. Leo X. was Catherine's grand-uncle, and
this Cardinal Giulio, afterwards Clement VII., was her _left-handed_ uncle
only. This it was which made Brantôme so wittily speak of that Pope as an
"uncle in Our Lady."

During the siege by the Medici to regain possession of Florence, the
Republican party, not satisfied with having shut up Catherine, then nine
years old, in a convent, after stripping her of all her possessions,
proposed to expose her to the fire of the artillery, between two
battlements--the suggestion of a certain Battista Cei. Bernardo Castiglione
went even further in a council held to determine on some conclusion to the
business; he advised that, rather than surrender Catherine to the Pope who
demanded it, she should be handed over to the tender mercies of the
soldiers. All revolutions of the populace are alike. Catherine's policy,
always in favor of royal authority, may have been fostered by such scenes,
which an Italian girl of nine could not fail to understand.

Alessandro's promotion, to which Clement VII., himself a bastard, largely
contributed, was no doubt owing partly to the fact of his being
illegitimate, and to Charles V.'s affection for his famous natural daughter
Margaret. Thus the Pope and the Emperor were moved by similar feelings. At
this period Venice was mistress of the commerce of the world; Rome governed
its morals; Italy was still supreme, by the poets, the generals, and the
statesmen who were her sons. At no other time has any one country had so
curious or so various a multitude of men of genius. There were so many,
that the smallest princelings were superior men. Italy was overflowing with
talent, daring, science, poetry, wealth, and gallantry, though rent by
constant internal wars, and at all times the arena on which conquerors met
to fight for her fairest provinces.

When men are so great, they are not afraid to confess their weakness;
hence, no doubt, this golden age for bastards. And it is but justice to
declare that these illegitimate sons of the Medici were ardent for the
glory and the advancement of the family, alike in possessions and in power.
And as soon as the Duke _della città di Penna_, the Moorish slave's son,
was established as Tyrant of Florence, he took up the interest shown by
Pope Clement VII. for Lorenzo II.'s daughter, now eleven years of age.

As we study the march of events and of men in that strange sixteenth
century, we must never forget that the chief element of political conduct
was unremitting craft, destroying in every nature the upright conduct, the
_squareness_ which imagination looks for in eminent men. In this,
especially, lies Catherine's absolution. This observation, in fact,
disposes of all the mean and foolish accusations brought against her by the
writers of the reformed faith. It was indeed the golden age of this type of
policy, of which Machiavelli and Spinoza formulated the code, and Hobbes
and Montesquieu; for the Dialogue of "Sylla and Eucrates" expresses
Montesquieu's real mind, which he could not set forth in any other form in
consequence of his connection with the Encyclopedists. These principles are
to this day the unconfessed morality of every Cabinet where schemes of vast
dominion are worked out. In France we were severe on Napoleon when he
exerted this Italian genius which was in his blood, and its plots did not
always succeed; but Charles V., Catherine, Philip II., Giulio II., would
have done just as he did in the affairs of Spain.

At the time when Catherine was born, history, if related from the point of
view of honesty, would seem an impossible romance. Charles V., while forced
to uphold the Catholic Church against the attacks of Luther, who by
threatening the tiara threatened his throne, allowed Rome to be besieged,
and kept Pope Clement VII. in prison. This same Pope, who had no more
bitter foe than Charles V., cringed to him that he might place Alessandro
de' Medici at Florence, and the Emperor gave his daughter in marriage to
the bastard Duke. No sooner was he firmly settled there than Alessandro, in
concert with the Pope, attempted to injure Charles V. by an alliance,
through Catherine de' Medici, with Francis I., and both promised to assist
the French king to conquer Italy.

Lorenzino de' Medici became Alessandro's boon companion, and pandered to
him to get an opportunity of killing him; and Filippo Strozzi, one of the
loftiest spirits of that age, regarded this murder with such high esteem
that he vowed that each of his sons should marry one of the assassin's
daughters. The sons religiously fulfilled the father's pledge at a time
when each of them, under Catherine's protection, could have made a splendid
alliance; for one was Doria's rival, and the other Marshal of France.

Cosmo de' Medici, Alessandro's successor, avenged the death of the Tyrant
with great cruelty, and persistently for twelve years, during which his
hatred never flagged against the people who had, after all, placed him in
power. He was eighteen years of age when he succeeded to the government;
his first act was to annul the rights of Alessandro's legitimate sons, at
the time when he was avenging Alessandro! Charles V. confirmed the
dispossession of his grandson, and recognized Cosmo instead of Alessandro's
son.

Cosmo, raised to the throne by Cardinal Cibo, at once sent the prelate into
exile. Then Cardinal Cibo accused his creature, Cosmo, the first Grand
Duke, of having tried to poison Alessandro's son. The Grand Duke, as
jealous of his authority as Charles V. was of his, abdicated, like the
Emperor, in favor of his son Francesco, after ordering the death of Don
Garcias, his other son, in revenge for that of Cardinal Giovanni de'
Medici, whom Garcias had assassinated.

Cosmo I. and his son Francesco, who ought to have been devoted, soul and
body, to the Royal House of France, the only power able to lend them
support, were the humble servants of Charles V. and Philip II., and
consequently the secret, perfidious, and cowardly foes of Catherine de'
Medici, one of the glories of their race.

Such are the more important features--contradictory and illogical
indeed--the dishonest acts, the dark intrigues of the House of the Medici
alone. From this sketch some idea may be formed of the other princes of
Italy and Europe. Every envoy from Cosmo I. to the Court of France had
secret instructions to poison Strozzi, Queen Catherine's relation, when he
should find him there. Charles V. had three ambassadors from Francis I.
murdered.

It was early in October 1533 that the Duke _della città di Penna_ left
Florence for Leghorn, accompanied by Catherine de' Medici, sole heiress of
Lorenzo II. The Duke and the Princess of Florence, for this was the title
borne by the girl, now fourteen years of age, left the city with a large
following of servants, officials, and secretaries, preceded by men-at-arms,
and escorted by a mounted guard. The young Princess as yet knew nothing of
her fate, excepting that the Pope and Duke Alessandro were to have an
interview at Leghorn; but her uncle, Filippo Strozzi, soon told her of the
future that lay before her.

Filippo Strozzi had married Clarissa de' Medici, whole sister to Lorenzo
de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, Catherine's father; but this union, arranged
quite as much with a view to converting one of the stoutest champions of
the popular cause to the support of Medici as to secure the recall of that
then exiled family, never shook the tenets of the rough soldier who was
persecuted by his party for having consented to it. In spite of some
superficial change of conduct, somewhat overruled by this alliance, he
remained faithful to the popular side, and declared against the Medici as
soon as he perceived their scheme of subjugating Florence. This great man
even refused the offer of a principality from Leo X. At that time Filippo
Strozzi was a victim to the policy of the Medici, so shifty in its means,
so unvarying in its aim.

After sharing the Pope's misfortunes and captivity, when, surprised by
Colonna, he took refuge in the castle of Saint-Angelo, he was given up by
Clement VII. as a hostage and carried to Naples. As soon as the Pope was
free, he fell upon his foes, and Strozzi was then near being killed; he was
forced to pay an enormous bribe to get out of the prison, where he was
closely guarded. As soon as he was at liberty, with the natural
trustfulness of an honest man, he was simple enough to appear before
Clement VII., who perhaps had flattered himself that he was rid of him. The
Pope had so much to be ashamed of that he received Strozzi very
ungraciously. Thus Strozzi had very early begun his apprenticeship to the
life of disaster, which is that of a man who is honest in politics, and
whose conscience will not lend itself to the caprices of opportunity, whose
actions are pleasing only to virtue, which is persecuted by all--by the
populace, because it withstands their blind passions; by authority, because
it resists its usurpations.

The life of these great citizens is a martyrdom, through which they have
nothing to support them but the strong voice of conscience, and the sense
of social duty, which in all cases dictates their conduct.

There were many such men in the Republic of Florence, all as great as
Strozzi and as masterly as their adversaries on the Medici side, though
beaten by Florentine cunning. In the conspiracy of the Pazzi, what can be
finer than the attitude of the head of that house? His trade was immense,
and he settled all his accounts with Asia, the Levant, and Europe before
carrying out that great plot, to the end that his correspondents should not
be the losers if he should fail.

And the history of the rise of the Medici family in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries is one of the finest that remains unwritten, though men
of great genius have attempted it. It is not the history of a republic, or
of any particular community or phase of civilization; it is the history of
political man, and the eternal history of political developments, that of
usurpers and conquerors.

On his return to Florence, Filippo Strozzi restored the ancient form of
government, and banished Ippolito de' Medici, another bastard, as well as
Alessandro, with whom he was now acting. But he then was afraid of the
inconstancy of the populace; and as he dreaded Pope Clement's vengeance, he
went to take charge of a large commercial house he had at Lyons in
correspondence with his bankers at Venice and Rome, in France, and in
Spain. A strange fact! These men, who bore the burden of public affairs as
well as that of a perennial struggle with the Medici, to say nothing of
their squabbles with their own party, could also endure the cares of
commerce and speculation, of banking with all its complications, which the
vast multiplicity of coinages and frequent forgeries made far more
difficult then than now. The word banker is derived from the bench on which
they sat, and which served also to ring the gold and silver pieces on.
Strozzi found in his adored wife's death a pretext to offer to the
Republican party, whose police is always all the more terrible because
everybody is a voluntary spy in the name of Liberty, which justifies all
things.

Filippo's return to Florence happened just at the time when the city was
compelled to bow to Alessandro's yoke; but he had previously been to see
Pope Clement, with whom matters were so promising that his feelings towards
Strozzi had changed. In the moment of triumph the Medici so badly needed
such a man as Strozzi, were it only to lend a grace to Alessandro's
assumption of dignity, that Clement persuaded him to sit on the bastard's
council, which was about to take oppressive measures, and Filippo had
accepted a diploma as senator. But for the last two years and a half--like
Seneca and Burrhus with Nero--he had noted the beginnings of tyranny. He
found himself the object of distrust to the populace, and so little in
favor with the Medici, whom he opposed, that he foresaw a catastrophe. And
as soon as he heard from Alessandro of the negotiations for the marriage of
Catherine with a French Prince, which were perhaps to be concluded at
Leghorn, where the contracting powers had agreed to meet, he resolved to go
to France and follow the fortunes of his niece, who would need a guardian.
Alessandro, delighted to be quit of a man so difficult to manage in what
concerned Florence, applauded this decision, which spared him a murder, and
advised Strozzi to place himself at the head of Catherine's household.

In point of fact, to dazzle the French Court, the Medici had constituted a
brilliant suite for the young girl whom they quite incorrectly styled the
Princess of Florence, and who was also called the Duchess of Urbino. The
procession, at the head of it Duke Alessandro, Catherine, and Strozzi,
consisted of more than a thousand persons, exclusive of the escort and
serving-men; and when the last of them were still at the gate of Florence,
the foremost had already got beyond the first village outside the
town--where straw plait for hats is now made.

It was beginning to be generally known that Catherine was to marry a son of
Francis the First, but as yet it was no more than a rumor which found
confirmation in the country from this triumphant progress from Florence to
Leghorn. From the preparations required, Catherine suspected that her
marriage was in question, and her uncle revealed to her the abortive scheme
of her ambitious family, who had aspired to the hand of the Dauphin. Duke
Alessandro still hoped that the Duke of Albany might succeed in changing
the determination of the French King, who, though anxious to secure the aid
of the Medici in Italy, would only give them the Duc d'Orléans. This
narrowness lost Italy to France, and did not hinder Catherine from being
Queen.

This Duke of Albany, the son of Alexander Stuart, brother of James III. of
Scotland, had married Anne de la Tour de Boulogne, sister to Madeleine,
Catherine's mother; he was thus her maternal uncle. It was through her
mother that Catherine was so rich and connected with so many families; for,
strangely enough, Diane de Poitiers, her rival, was also her cousin. Jean
de Poitiers, Diane's father, was son of Jeanne de la Tour de Boulogne, the
Duchess of Urbino's aunt. Catherine was also related to Mary Stuart, her
daughter-in-law.

Catherine was now informed that her dower in money would amount to a
hundred thousand ducats. The ducat was a gold piece as large as one of our
old louis d'or, but only half as thick. Thus a hundred thousand ducats in
those days represented, in consequence of the high value of gold, six
millions of francs at the present time, the ducat being worth about twelve
francs. The importance of the banking-house of Strozzi, at Lyons, may be
imagined from this, as it was his factor there who paid over the twelve
hundred thousand livres in gold. The counties of Auvergne and Lauraguais
also formed part of Catherine's portion, and the Pope Clement VII. made her
a gift of a hundred thousand ducats more in jewels, precious stones, and
other wedding gifts, to which Duke Alessandro contributed.

On reaching Leghorn, Catherine, still so young, must have been flattered by
the extraordinary magnificence displayed by Pope Clement VII., her "uncle
in Our Lady," then the head of the House of Medici, to crush the Court of
France. He had arrived at the port in one of his galleys hung with crimson
satin trimmed with gold fringe, and covered with an awning of cloth of
gold. This barge, of which the decorations had cost nearly twenty thousand
ducats, contained several rooms for the use of Henri de France's future
bride, furnished with the choicest curiosities the Medici had been able to
collect. The oarsmen, magnificently dressed, and the seamen were under the
captaincy of a Prior of the Order of the Knights of Rhodes. The Pope's
household filled three more barges.

The Duke of Albany's galleys, moored by the side of the Pope's, formed,
with these, a considerable flotilla.

Duke Alessandro presented the officers of Catherine's household to the
Pope, with whom he held a secret conference, introducing to him, as seems
probable, Count Sebastian Montecuculi, who had just left the Emperor's
service--rather suddenly, it was said--and the two Generals, Antonio de
Leyva and Fernando Gonzaga. Was there a premeditated plan between these two
bastards to make the Duc d'Orléans the Dauphin? What was the reward
promised to Count Sebastian Montecuculi, who, before entering the service
of Charles V., had studied medicine? History is silent on these points. We
shall see indeed in what obscurity the subject is wrapped. It is so great
that some serious and conscientious historians have recently recognized
Montecuculi's innocence.

Catherine was now officially informed by the Pope himself of the alliance
proposed for her. The Duke of Albany had had great difficulty in keeping
the King of France to his promise of giving even his second son to
Catherine de' Medici; and Clement's impatience was so great, he was so much
afraid of seeing his schemes upset either by some intrigue on the part of
the Emperor, or by the haughtiness of France, where the great nobles cast
an evil eye on this union, that he embarked forthwith and made for
Marseilles. He arrived there at the end of October 1533.

In spite of his splendor, the House of the Medici was eclipsed by the
sovereign of France. To show to what a pitch these great bankers carried
their magnificence, the dozen pieces given by the Pope in the bride's
wedding purse consisted of gold medals of inestimable historical interest,
for they were at that time unique. But Francis I., who loved festivity and
display, distinguished himself on this occasion. The wedding feasts for
Henri de Valois and Catherine went on for thirty-four days. It is useless
to repeat here details which may be read in every history of Provence and
Marseilles as to this famous meeting between the Pope and the King of
France, which was the occasion of a jest of the Duke of Albany's as to the
duty of fasting; a retort recorded by Brantôme which vastly amused the
Court, and shows the tone of manners at that time.

Though Henri de Valois was but three weeks older than Catherine, the Pope
insisted on the immediate consummation of the marriage between these two
children, so greatly did he dread the subterfuges of diplomacy and the
trickery commonly practised at that period. Clement, indeed, anxious for
proof, remained thirty-four days at Marseilles, in the hope, it is said, of
some visible evidence in his young relation, who at fourteen was
marriageable. And it was, no doubt, when questioning Catherine before his
departure, that he tried to console her by the famous speech ascribed to
Catherine's father: "_A figlia d'inganno, non manca mai la figliuolanza_."

The strangest conjectures have been given to the world as to the causes of
Catherine's barrenness during ten years. Few persons nowadays are aware
that various medical works contain suppositions as to this matter, so
grossly indecent that they could not be repeated.[B] This gives some clue
to the strange calumnies which still blacken this Queen, whose every action
was distorted to her injury. The reason lay simply with her husband. It is
sufficient evidence that at a time when no prince was shy of having natural
children, Diane de Poitiers, far more highly favored than his wife, had no
children; and nothing is commoner in surgical experience than such a
malformation as this Prince's, which gave rise to a jest of the ladies of
the Court, who would have made him Abbé de Saint-Victor, at a time when the
French language was as free as the Latin tongue. After the Prince was
operated on, Catherine had ten children.

The delay was a happy thing for France. If Henri II. had had children by
Diane de Poitiers, it would have caused serious political complications. At
the time of his treatment, the Duchesse de Valentinois was in the second
youth of womanhood. These facts alone show that the history of Catherine
de' Medici remains to be entirely re-written; and that, as Napoleon very
shrewdly remarked, the history of France should be in one volume only, or
in a thousand.

When we compare the conduct of Charles V. with that of the King of France
during the Pope's stay at Marseilles, it is greatly to the advantage of
Francis--as indeed in every instance. Here is a brief report of this
meeting as given by a contemporary:--

"His Holiness the Pope, having been conducted to the Palace prepared for
him, as I have said, outside the port, each one withdrew to his chamber
until the morrow, when his said Holiness prepared to make his entry. Which
was done with great sumptuousness and magnificence, he being set on a
throne borne on the shoulders of two men in his pontifical habit, saving
only the tiara, while before him went a white palfry bearing the Holy
Sacrament, the said palfrey being led by two men on foot in very fine
raiment holding a bridle of white silk. After him came all the cardinals in
their habit, riding their pontifical mules, and Madame the Duchess of
Urbino in great magnificence, with a goodly company of ladies and gentlemen
alike of France and of Italy. And the Pope, with all this company, being
come to the place prepared where they should lodge, each one withdrew; and
all this was ordered and done without any disorder or tumult. Now, while as
the Pope was making his entry, the King crossed the water in his frigate
and went to lodge there whence the Pope had come, to the end that on the
morrow he might come from thence to pay homage to the Holy Father, as
beseemed a most Christian King.

"The King being then ready, set forth to go to the Palace where the Pope
was, accompanied by the Princes of his blood, Monseigneur the Duc de
Vendosmois (father of the Vidame de Chartres), the Comte de Saint-Pol,
Monsieur de Montmorency, and Monsieur de la Roche-sur-Yon, the Duc de
Nemours (brother to the Duke of Savoy who died at that place), the Duke of
Albany, and many others, counts, barons, and nobles, the Duc de Montmorency
being at all times about the King's person. The King, being come to the
Palace, was received by the Pope and all the College of Cardinals assembled
in consistory, with much civility (_fort humainement_). This done, each one
went to the place appointed to him, and the King took with him many
cardinals to feast them, and among them Cardinal de' Medici, the Pope's
nephew, a very magnificent lord with a fine escort. On the morrow, those
deputed by his Holiness and by the King began to treat of those matters
whereon they had met to agree. First of all, they treated of the question
of faith, and a bull was read for the repression of heresy, and to hinder
things from coming to a greater combustion (_une plus grande combustion_)
than they are in already. Then was performed the marriage ceremony between
the Duc d'Orléans, the King's second son, and Catherine de' Medici, Duchess
of Urbino, his Holiness' niece, under conditions the same, or nearly the
same, as had been formerly proposed to the Duke of Albany. The said
marriage was concluded with great magnificence, and our Holy Father married
them.[C] This marriage being thus concluded, the Holy Father held a
consistory, wherein he created four cardinals to wait on the King, to wit:
Cardinal le Veneur, heretofore Bishop of Lisieux and High Almoner; Cardinal
de Boulogne, of the family of la Chambre, half-brother on his mother's side
to the Duke of Albany; Cardinal de Châtillon of the family of Coligny,
nephew to the Sire de Montmorency; and Cardinal de Givry."

When Strozzi paid down the marriage portion in the presence of the Court,
he observed some surprise on the part of the French nobles; they said
pretty loudly that it was a small price for such a mésalliance--what would
they say to-day? Cardinal Ippolito replied:

"Then you are not informed as to your King's secrets. His Holiness consents
to bestow on France three pearls of inestimable price--Genoa, Milan, and
Naples."

The Pope left Count Sebastian Montecuculi to present himself at the French
Court, where he made an offer of his services, complaining of Antonio de
Leyva and Fernando Gonzaga, for which reason he was accepted. Montecuculi
was not one of Catherine's household, which was composed entirely of French
ladies and gentlemen; for, by a law of the realm which the Pope was
rejoiced to see carried out, Catherine was naturalized by letters patent
before her marriage. Montecuculi was at first attached to the household of
the Queen, Charles V.'s sister. Then, not long after, he entered the
Dauphin's service in the capacity of cupbearer.

The Duchesse d'Orléans found herself entirely swamped at the Court of
Francis I. Her young husband was in love with Diane de Poitiers, who was
certainly her equal in point of birth, and a far greater lady. The daughter
of the Medici took rank below Queen Eleanor, Charles V.'s sister, and the
Duchesse d'Etampes, whose marriage to the head of the family of de Brosse
had given her one of the most powerful positions and highest titles in
France. Her aunt, the Duchess of Albany, the Queen of Navarre, the Duchesse
de Guise, the Duchesse de Vendôme, the wife of the Connétable, and many
other women, by their birth and privileges as well as by their influence in
the most sumptuous Court ever held by a French King--not excepting Louis
XIV.--wholly eclipsed the daughter of the Florentine merchants, who was
indeed more illustrious and richer through the Tour de Boulogne family than
through her descent from the Medici.

Filippo Strozzi, a republican at heart, regarded his niece's position as so
critical and difficult, that he felt himself incapable of directing her in
the midst of conflicting interests, and deserted her at the end of a year,
being indeed recalled to Italy by the death of Clement VII. Catherine's
conduct, when we remember that she was but just fifteen, was a marvel of
prudence. She very adroitly attached herself to the King, her
father-in-law, leaving him as rarely as possible; she was with him on
horseback, in hunting, and in war.

Her adoration of Francis I. saved the House of Medici from all suspicion
when the Dauphin died poisoned. At that time Catherine and the Duc
d'Orléans were at the King's headquarters in Provence, for France had
already been invaded by Charles V., the King's brother-in-law. The whole
Court had remained on the scene of the wedding festivities, now the theatre
of the most barbarous war. Just as Charles V., compelled to retreat, had
fled, leaving the bones of his army in Provence, the Dauphin was returning
to Lyons by the Rhône. Stopping at Tournon for the night, to amuse himself,
he went through some athletic exercises, such as formed almost the sole
education he or his brother received, in consequence of their long
detention as hostages. The Prince being very hot--it was in the month of
August--was so rash as to ask for a glass of water, which was given to him,
iced, by Montecuculi. The Dauphin died almost instantaneously.

The King idolized his son. The Dauphin was indeed, as historians are
agreed, a very accomplished Prince. His father, in despair, gave the utmost
publicity to the proceedings against Montecuculi, and placed the matter in
the hands of the most learned judges of the day.

After heroically enduring the first tests of torture without confessing
anything, the Count made an avowal by which he fully implicated the Emperor
and his two generals, Antonio de Leyva and Fernando Gonzaga. This, however,
did not satisfy Francis I. Never was a case more solemnly thrashed out than
this. An eye-witness gives the following account of what the King did:--

"The King called all the Princes of the Blood, and all the Knights of his
Order, and many other high personages of the realm, to meet at Lyons; the
Pope's Legate and Nuncio, the cardinals who were of his Court, and the
ambassadors of England, Scotland, Portugal, Venice, Ferrara, and others;
together with all the princes and great nobles of foreign countries, both
of Italy and of Germany, who were at that time residing at his Court,
to-wit: The Duke of Wittemberg, in Allemaigne; the Dukes of Somma, of
Arianna, and of Atria; the Princes of Melphe [Malfi?] (who had desired to
marry Catherine), and of Stilliano, Neapolitan; the Marquis di Vigevo, of
the House of Trivulzio, Milanese; the Signor Giovanni Paolo di Ceri, Roman;
the Signor Césare Fregose, Genoese; the Signor Annibale Gonzaga, Mantuan,
and many more. Who being assembled, he caused to be read in their presence,
from the beginning to the end, the trial of that wretched man who had
poisoned his late Highness the Dauphin, with all the interrogations,
confessions, confrontings, and other proceedings usual in criminal trials,
not choosing that the sentence should be carried out until all those
present had given their opinion on this monstrous and miserable matter."

Count Montecuculi's fidelity and devotion may seem extraordinary in our day
of universal indiscretion, when everybody, and even Ministers, talk over
the most trivial incidents in which they have put a finger; but in those
times princes could command devoted servants, or knew how to choose them.
There were monarchical Moreys then, because there was faith. Never look for
great things from self-interest: interests may change; but look for
anything from feeling, from religious faith, monarchical faith, patriotic
faith. These three beliefs alone can produce a Berthereau of Geneva, a
Sydney or a Strafford in England, assassins to murder Thomas à Becket, or a
Montecuculi; Jacques Coeur and Jeanne d'Arc, or Richelieu and Danton; a
Bonchamp, a Talmont, or a Clément, a Chabot.

Charles V. made use of the highest personages to carry out the murder of
three ambassadors from Francis I. A year later Lorenzino, Catherine's
cousin, assassinated Duke Alessandro after three years of dissimulation,
and in circumstances which gained him the surname of the Florentine Brutus.
The rank of the victim was so little a check on such undertakings that
neither Leo X. nor Clement VII. seems to have died a natural death.
Mariana, the historian of Philip II., almost jests in speaking of the death
of the Queen of Spain, a Princess of France, saying that "for the greater
glory of the Spanish throne God suffered the blindness of the doctors who
treated the Queen for dropsy." When King Henri II. allowed himself to utter
a scandal which deserved a sword-thrust, he could find la Châtaignerie
willing to take it. At that time royal personages had their meals served to
them in padlocked boxes of which they had the key. Hence the _droit de
cadenas_, the _right of the padlock_, an honor which ceased to exist in the
reign of Louis XIV.

The Dauphin died of poison, the same perhaps as caused the death of MADAME,
under Louis XIV. Pope Clement had been dead two years; Duke Alessandro,
steeped in debauchery, seemed to have no interest in the Duc d'Orléans'
elevation. Catherine, now seventeen years old, was with her father-in-law,
whom she devotedly admired; Charles V. alone seemed to have an interest in
the Dauphin's death, because Francis I. intended his son to form an
alliance which would have extended the power of France. Thus the Count's
confession was very ingeniously based on the passions and policy of the
day. Charles V. had fled after seeing his troops overwhelmed in Provence,
and with them his good fortune, his reputation, and his hopes of
aggrandizement. And note, that even if an innocent man had confessed under
torture, the King afterwards gave him freedom of speech before an august
assembly, and in the presence of men with whom innocence had a fair chance
of a hearing. The King wanted the truth, and sought it in good faith.

In spite of her now brilliant prospects, Catherine's position at court was
unchanged by the Dauphin's death; her childlessness made a divorce seem
probable when her husband should become king. The Dauphin was now enslaved
by Diane de Poitiers, who had dared to be the rival of Madame d'Etampes.
Catherine was therefore doubly attentive and insinuating to her
father-in-law, understanding that he was her sole mainstay.

Thus the first ten years of Catherine's married life were spent in the
unceasing regrets caused by repeated disappointments when she hoped to have
a child, and the vexations of her rivalry with Diane. Imagine what the life
must be of a princess constantly spied on by a jealous mistress who was
favored by the Catholic party, and by the strong support the Sénéchale had
acquired through the marriage of her daughters--one to Robert de la Mark,
Duc de Bouillon, Prince de Sédan; the other to Claude de Lorraine, Duc
d'Aumale.

Swamped between the party of the Duchesse d'Etampes and that of the
Sénéchale (the title borne by Diane de Poitiers during the reign of Francis
I.), who divided the Court and political feeling between the two mortal
foes, Catherine tried to be the friend of both the Duchess and Diane de
Poitiers. She, who was to become so great a queen, played the part of a
subaltern. Thus she served her apprenticeship to the double-faced policy
which afterwards was the secret clue to her life. At a later date the queen
found herself between the Catholics and the Calvinists, as the woman had
been, for ten years, between Madame d'Etampes and Madame de Poitiers.

She studied the contradictions of French policy. Francis upheld Calvin and
the Lutherans, to annoy Charles V. Then, after having covertly and
patiently fostered the Reformation in Germany, after tolerating Calvin's
presence at the Court of Navarre, he turned against it with undisguised
severity. So Catherine could see the Court and the women of the Court
playing with the fire of heresy; Diane at the head of the Catholic party
with the Guises, only because the Duchesse d'Etampes was on the side of
Calvin and the Protestants.

This was Catherine's political education; and in the King's private circle
she could study the mistakes made by the Medici. The Dauphin was
antagonistic to his father on every point; he was a bad son. He forgot the
hardest but the truest axiom of Royalty, namely, that the throne is a
responsible entity, and that a son who may oppose his father during his
lifetime must carry out his policy on succeeding to the throne. Spinoza,
who was as deep a politician as he was a great philosopher, says, in
treating of the case of a king who has succeeded to another by a revolution
or by treason: "If the new King hopes to secure his throne and protect his
life, he must display so much zeal in avenging his predecessor's death that
no one shall feel tempted to repeat such a crime. But to avenge him
worthily it is not enough that he should shed the blood of his subjects; he
must confirm the maxims of him whose place he fills, and walk in the same
ways of government."

It was the application of this principle which gave the Medici to Florence.
Cosmo I., Alessandro's successor, eleven years later instigated the murder,
at Venice, of the Florentine Brutus, and, as has been said, persecuted the
Strozzi without mercy. It was the neglect of this principle that overthrew
Louis XVI. That King was false to every principle of government when he
reinstated the Parlements suppressed by his grandfather. Louis XV. had been
clear-sighted; the Parlements, and especially that of Paris, were quite
half to blame for the disorders that necessitated the assembling of the
States-General. Louis XV.'s mistake was that when he threw down that
barrier between the throne and the people, he did not erect a stronger one,
that he did not substitute for the Parlements a strong constitutional rule
in the provinces. There lay the remedy for the evils of the Monarchy, the
voting power for taxation and the incidence of the taxes, with consent
gradually won to the reforms needed in the monarchical rule.

Henri II.'s first act was to give all his confidence to the Connétable de
Montmorency, whom his father had desired him to leave in banishment. The
Connétable de Montmorency, with Diane de Poitiers, to whom he was closely
attached, was master of the kingdom. Hence Catherine was even less powerful
and happy as Queen of France than she had been as the Dauphiness.

At first, from the year 1543, she had a child every year for ten years, and
was fully taken up by her maternal functions during that time, which
included the last years of Francis I.'s reign, and almost the whole of her
husband's. It is impossible not to detect in this constant child-bearing
the malicious influence of a rival who thus kept the legitimate wife out of
the way. This feminine and barbarous policy was no doubt one of Catherine's
grievances against Diane. Being thus kept out of the tide of affairs, this
clever woman spent her time in observing all the interests of the persons
at Court, and all the parties formed there. The Italians who had followed
her excited violent suspicions. After the execution of Montecuculi, the
Connétable de Montmorency, Diane, and most of the crafty politicians at
Court were racked with doubts of the Medici; but Francis I. always scouted
them. Still the Gondi, the Biraguas, the Strozzi, the Ruggieri, the
Sardini, in short, all who were classed as the Italians who had arrived in
Catherine's wake, were compelled to exercise every faculty of wit, policy,
and courage to enable them to remain at Court under the burden of disfavor
that weighed on them. During the supremacy of Diane de Poitiers,
Catherine's obligingness went so far that some clever folks have seen in it
an evidence of the profound dissimulation to which she was compelled by men
and circumstances, and by the conduct of Henri II. But it is going too far
to say that she never asserted her rights as a wife and a queen. Her ten
children (besides one miscarriage) were a sufficient explanation of the
King's conduct, who was thus set free to spend his time with Diane de
Poitiers. But the King certainly never fell short of what he owed to
himself; he gave the Queen an entry worthy of any that had previously taken
place, on the occasion of her coronation. The records of the _Parlement_
and of the Exchequer prove that these two important bodies went to meet
Catherine outside Paris, as far as Saint-Lazare. Here, indeed, is a passage
from du Tillet's narrative:--

"A scaffolding had been erected at Saint-Lazare, whereon was a throne
(which du Tillet calls a chair of state, _chaire de parement_). Catherine
seated herself on this, dressed in a surcoat, or sort of cape of ermine,
covered with jewels; beneath it a bodice, with a court train, and on her
head a crown of pearls and diamonds; she was supported by the Maréchale de
la Mark, her lady of honor. Around her, standing, were the princes of the
Blood and other princes and noblemen richly dressed, with the Chancellor of
France in a robe of cloth of gold in a pattern on a ground of red
cramoisy.[D] In front of the Queen and on the same scaffolding were seated,
in two rows, twelve duchesses and countesses, dressed in surcoats of
ermine, stomachers, trains, and fillets, that is to say, coronets, whether
duchesses or countesses. There were the Duchesse d'Estouteville, de
Montpensier--the elder and the younger--the Princesse de la Roche-sur-Yon;
the Duchesses de Guise, de Nivernois, d'Aumale, de Valentinois (Diane de
Poitiers); Mademoiselle the legitimized bastard 'of France' (a title given
to the King's daughter Diane, who became Duchesse de Castro-Farnese, and
afterwards Duchesse de Montmorency-Damville), Madame la Connétable, and
Mademoiselle de Nemours, not to mention the other ladies who could find no
room. The four _capped_ Presidents (_à mortier_), with some other members
of the Court and the chief clerk, du Tillet, went up on to the platform and
did their service, and the First President Lizet, kneeling on one knee,
addressed the Queen. The Chancellor, likewise on one knee, made response.
She made her entrance into Paris at about three in the afternoon, riding in
an open litter, Madame Marguerite de France sitting opposite to her, and by
the side of the litter came the Cardinals d'Amboise, de Châtillon, de
Boulogne, and de Lenoncourt, in their rochets. She got out at the Church of
Notre-Dame, and was received by the clergy. After she had made her prayer,
she was carried along the Rue de la Calandre to the Palace, where the royal
supper was spread in the great hall. She sat there in the middle at a
marble table, under a canopy of velvet powdered with gold fleurs de lys."

It will here be fitting to controvert a popular error which some persons
have perpetuated, following Sauval in the mistake. It has been said that
Henri II. carried his oblivion of decency so far as to place his mistress'
initials even on the buildings which Catherine had advised him to undertake
or to carry on at such lavish expense. But the cipher, which is to be seen
at the Louvre, amply refutes those who have so little comprehension as to
lend credit to such nonsense, a gratuitous slur on the honor of our kings
and queens. The H for Henri and the two C's, face to face, for Catherine
seem indeed to make two D's for Diane; and this coincidence was no doubt
pleasing to the King. But it is not the less certain that the royal cipher
was officially constructed of the initials of the King and the Queen. And
this is so true, that the same cipher is still to be seen on the
corn-market in Paris which Catherine herself had built. It may also be
found in the crypt of Saint-Denis on Catherine's tomb, which she caused to
be constructed during her lifetime by the side of that of Henri II., and on
which she is represented from life by the sculptor to whom she sat.

On a solemn occasion, when he was setting out on an expedition to Germany,
Henri II. proclaimed Catherine Regent during his absence, as also in the
event of his death--on March 25, 1552. Catherine's bitterest enemy, the
author of the _Discours merveilleux sur les déportements de Catherine II._,
admits that she acquitted herself of these functions to the general
approbation, and that the King was satisfied with her administration. Henri
II. had men and money at the right moment. And after the disastrous day of
Saint-Quentin, Catherine obtained from the Parisians considerable sums,
which she forwarded to Compiègne, whither the King had come.

In politics Catherine made immense efforts to acquire some little
influence. She was clever enough to gain over to her interests the
Connétable de Montmorency, who was all-powerful under Henri II. The King's
terrible reply to Montmorency's insistency is well known. This answer was
the result of the good advice given by Catherine in the rare moments when
she was alone with the King, and could explain to him the policy of the
Florentines, which was to set the magnates of a kingdom by the ears and
build up the sovereign authority on the ruins--Louis XI.'s system,
subsequently carried out by Richelieu. Henri II., who saw only through the
eyes of Diane and the Connétable, was quite a feudal King, and on friendly
terms with the great Houses of the realm.

After an ineffectual effort in her favor made by the Connétable, probably
in the year 1556, Catherine paid great court to the Guises, and schemed to
detach them from Diane's party so as to set them in opposition to
Montmorency. But, unfortunately, Diane and the Connétable were as virulent
against the Protestants as the Guises were. Hence their antagonism lacked
the virus which religious feeling would have given it. Besides, Diane
boldly defied the Queen's plans by coquetting with the Guises and giving
her daughter to the Duc d'Aumale. She went so far that she has been accused
by some writers of granting more than smiles to the gallant Cardinal de
Lorraine.[E]

The signs of grief and the ostentatious regret displayed by Catherine on
the King's death cannot be regarded as genuine. The fact that Henri II. had
been so passionately and faithfully attached to Diane de Poitiers made it
incumbent on Catherine that she should play the part of a neglected wife
who idolized her husband; but, like every clever woman, she carried on her
dissimulation, and never ceased to speak with tender regret of Henri II.
Diane herself, it is well known, wore mourning all her life for her
husband, Monsieur de Brézé. Her colors were black and white, and the King
was wearing them at the tournament when he was fatally wounded. Catherine,
in imitation no doubt of her rival, wore mourning for the King to the end
of her life.

On the King's death, the Duchesse de Valentinois was shamelessly deserted
and dishonored by the Connétable de Montmorency, a man in every respect
beneath his reputation. Diane sent to offer her estate and Château of
Chenonceaux to the Queen. Catherine then replied in the presence of
witnesses, "I can never forget that she was all the joy of my dear Henri; I
should be ashamed to accept, I will give her an estate in exchange. I would
propose that of Chaumont-on-the-Loire." The deed of exchange was, in fact,
signed at Blois in 1559. Diane, whose sons-in-law were the Duc d'Aumale and
the Duc de Bouillon, kept her whole fortune and died peacefully in 1566 at
the age of sixty-six. She was thus nineteen years older than Henri II.
These dates, copied from the epitaph on her tomb by an historian who
studied the question at the end of the last century, clear up many
historical difficulties; for many writers have said she was forty when her
father was sentenced in 1523, while others have said she was but sixteen.
She was, in fact, four-and-twenty.

After reading everything both for and against her conduct with Francis I.,
at a time when the House of Poitiers was in the greatest danger, we can
neither confirm nor deny anything. It is a passage of history that still
remains obscure. We can see by what happens in our own day how history is
falsified, as it were, in the making.

Catherine, who founded great hopes on her rival's age, several times made
an attempt to overthrow her. On one occasion she was very near the
accomplishment of her hopes. In 1554, Madame Diane, being ill, begged the
King to go to Saint-Germain pending her recovery. This sovereign coquette
would not be seen in the midst of the paraphernalia of doctors, nor bereft
of the adjuncts of dress. To receive the King on his return, Catherine
arranged a splendid _ballet_, in which five or six young ladies were to
address him in verse. She selected for the purpose Miss Fleming, related to
her uncle, the Duke of Albany, and one of the loveliest girls imaginable,
fair and golden-haired; then a young connection of her own, Clarissa
Strozzi, with magnificent black hair and rarely fine hands; Miss Lewiston,
maid of honor to Mary Stuart; Mary Stuart herself; Madame Elizabeth de
France, the unhappy Queen of Spain; and Madame Claude. Elizabeth was nine
years old, Claude eight, and Mary Stuart twelve. Obviously, the Queen aimed
at showing off Clarissa Strozzi and Miss Fleming without other rivals in
the King's eyes. The King succumbed: he fell in love with Miss Fleming, and
she bore him a son, Henri de Valois, Comte d'Angoulême, Grand Prior of
France.

But Diane's influence and position remained unshaken. Like Madame de
Pompadour later with Louis XV., the Duchesse de Valentinois was forgiving.
But to what sort of love are we to ascribe this scheme on Catherine's part?
Love of power or love of her husband? Women must decide.

A great deal is said in these days as to the license of the press; but it
is difficult to imagine to what a pitch it was carried when printing was a
new thing. Aretino, the Voltaire of his time, as is well known, made
monarchs tremble, and foremost of them all Charles V. But few people know
perhaps how far the audacity of pamphleteers could go. This Château of
Chenonceaux had been given to Diane, nay, she was entreated to accept it,
to induce her to overlook one of the most horrible publications ever hurled
at a woman, one which shows how violent was the animosity between her and
Madame d'Etampes. In 1537, when she was eight-and-thirty, a poet of
Champagne, named Jean Voûté, published a collection of Latin verses, and
among them three epigrams aimed at her. We must conclude that the poet was
under high patronage from the fact that his volume is introduced by an
_eulogium_ written by Simon Macrin, the King's First Gentleman of the
Bedchamber. Here is the only passage quotable to-day from these epigrams,
which bear the title: _In Pictaviam, anum aulicam_. (Against _la Poitiers_,
an old woman of the Court.)

    "Non trahit esca ficta prædam."

"A painted bait catches no game," says the poet, after telling her that she
paints her face and buys her teeth and hair; and he goes on: "Even if you
could buy the finest essence that makes a woman, you would not get what you
want of your lover, for you would need to be living, and you are dead."

This volume, printed by Simon de Colines, was dedicated "To a Bishop!"--To
François Bohier, the brother of the man who, to save his credit at Court
and atone for his crime, made an offering on the accession of Henri II. of
the château of Chenonceaux, built by his father, Thomas Bohier, Councillor
of State under four Kings: Louis XI., Charles VIII., Louis XII., and
Francis I. What were the pamphlets published against Madame de Pompadour
and Marie Antoinette in comparison with verses that might have been
written by Martial! Voûté must have come to a bad end. Thus the estate and
château of Chenonceaux cost Diane nothing but the forgiveness of an
offence--a duty enjoined by the Gospel. Not being assessed by a jury, the
penalties inflicted on the Press were rather severer then than they are
now.

The widowed Queens of France were required to remain for forty days in the
King's bedchamber, seeing no light but that of the tapers; they might not
come out till after the funeral. This inviolable custom annoyed Catherine
greatly; she was afraid of cabals. She found a way to evade it. The
Cardinal de Lorraine coming out one morning--at such a time! at such a
juncture!--from the house of "the fair Roman," a famous courtesan of that
day, who lived in the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, was roughly handled by
a party of roisterers. "Whereat his Holiness was much amazed," says Henri
Estienne, "and gave it out that heretics were lying in wait for him."--And
on this account the Court moved from Paris to Saint-Germain. The Queen
would not leave the King her son behind, but took him with her.

The accession of Francis II., the moment when Catherine proposed to seize
the reins of power, was a disappointment that formed a cruel climax to the
twenty-six years of endurance she had already spent at the French Court.
The Guises, with incredible audacity, at once usurped the sovereign power.
The Duc de Guise was placed in command of the army, and the Connétable de
Montmorency was shelved. The Cardinal took the control of the finances and
the clergy.

Catherine's political career opened with one of those dramas which, though
it was less notorious than some others, was not the less horrible, and
initiated her no doubt into the agitating shocks of her life. Whether it
was that Catherine, after vainly trying the most violent remedies, had
thought she might bring the King back to her through jealousy; whether on
coming to her second youth she had felt it hard never to have known love,
she had shown a warm interest in a gentleman of royal blood, François de
Vendôme, son of Louis de Vendôme--the parent House of the Bourbons--the
Vidame de Chartres, the name by which he is known to history. Catherine's
covert hatred of Diane betrayed itself in many ways, which historians,
studying only political developments, have failed to note with due
attention. Catherine's attachment to the Vidame arose from an insult
offered by the young man to the favorite. Diane looked for the most
splendid matches for her daughters, who were indeed of the best blood in
the kingdom. Above all, she was ambitious of an alliance with the Royal
family. And her second daughter, who became the Duchesse d'Aumale, was
proposed in marriage to the Vidame, whom Francis I., with sage policy, kept
in poverty. For, in fact, when the Vidame de Chartres and the Prince de
Condé first came to Court, Francis I. gave them appointments! What? the
office of chamberlains in ordinary, with twelve hundred crowns a year, as
much as he bestowed on the humblest of his gentlemen. And yet, though Diane
offered him immense wealth, some high office under the Crown, and the
King's personal favor, the Vidame refused. And then this Bourbon, factious
as he was, married Jeanne, daughter of the Baron d'Estissac, by whom he had
no children.

This proud demeanor naturally commended the Vidame to Catherine, who
received him with marked favor, and made him her devoted friend. Historians
have compared the last Duc de Montmorency, who was beheaded at Toulouse,
with the Vidame de Chartres for his power of charming, his merits, and his
talents.

Henri II. was not jealous; he did not apparently think it possible that a
Queen of France could fail in her duty, or that a Medici could forget the
honor done her by a Valois. When the Queen was said to be flirting with the
Vidame de Chartres, she had been almost deserted by the King since the
birth of her last child. So this attempt came to nothing--as the King died
wearing the colors of Diane de Poitiers.

So, at the King's death, Catherine was on terms of gallant familiarity with
the Vidame, a state of things in no way out of harmony with the manners of
the time, when love was at once so chivalrous and so licentious that the
finest actions seemed as natural as the most blamable. But, as usual,
historians have blundered by regarding exceptional cases as the rule.

Henri II.'s four sons nullified every pretension of the Bourbons, who were
all miserably poor, and crushed under the scorn brought upon them by the
Connétable de Montmorency's treason, in spite of the reasons which had led
him to quit the country. The Vidame de Chartres, who was to the first
Prince de Condé what Richelieu was to Mazarin, a father in politics, a
model, and yet more a master in gallantry, hid the vast ambition of his
family under a semblance of levity. Being unable to contend with the
Guises, the Montmorencys, the Princes of Scotland, the Cardinals, and the
Bouillons, he aimed at distinction by his gracious manners, his elegance,
and his wit, which won him the favors of the most charming women, and the
heart of many he never thought about. He was a man privileged by nature,
whose fascinations were irresistible, and who owed to his love affairs the
means of keeping up his rank. The Bourbons would not have taken offence,
like Jarnac, at la Châtaignerie's scandal; they were very ready to accept
lands and houses from their mistresses--witness the Prince de Condé, who
had the estate of Saint-Valery from Madame la Maréchale de Saint-André.

During the first twenty days of mourning for Henri II., a sudden change
came over the Vidame's prospects. Courted by the Queen-mother, and courting
her as a man may court a queen, in the utmost secrecy, he seemed fated to
play an important part; and Catherine, in fact, resolved to make him
useful. The Prince received letters from her to the Prince de Condé, in
which she pointed out the necessity for a coalition against the Guises. The
Guises, informed of this intrigue, made their way into the Queen's chamber
to compel her to sign an order consigning the Vidame to the Bastille, and
Catherine found herself under the cruel necessity of submitting. The
Vidame died after a few months' captivity, on the day when he came out of
prison, a short time before the Amboise conspiracy.

This was the end of Catherine de' Medici's first and only love affair.
Protestant writers declared that the Queen had him poisoned to bury the
secret of her gallantries in the tomb.

Such was this woman's apprenticeship to the exercise of royal power.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] See _Bayle_. Art. _Fernel_.

[C] At that time in French, as in Italian, the words _marry_ and _espouse_
were used in a contrary sense to their present meaning. _Marier_ was the
fact of being married, _épouser_ was the priestly function.

[D] The old French word _cramoisi_ did not mean merely a crimson red, but
denoted a special excellence of the dye. (See Rabelais.)

[E] Some satirist of the time has left the following lines on Henri II. [in
which the pun on the words Sire and Cire (wax) would be lost in
translation]:--

    "Sire, si vous laissez, comme Charles désire,
    Comme Diane veut, par trop vous gouverner,
    Fondre, pétrir, mollir, refondre, retourner,
    Sire, vous n'êtes plus, vous n'êtes plus que cire."

Charles was the Cardinal de Lorraine.

PART I

THE CALVINIST MARTYR

Few persons in these days know how artless were the dwellings of the
citizens of Paris in the sixteenth century, and how simple their lives.
This very simplicity of habits and thought perhaps was the cause of the
greatness of this primitive citizen class--for they were certainly great,
free and noble, more so perhaps than the citizens of our time. Their
history remains to be written; it requires and awaits a man of genius.
Inspired by an incident which, though little known, forms the basis of this
narrative, and is one of the most remarkable in the history of the citizen
class, this reflection will no doubt occur to every one who shall read it
to the end. Is it the first time in history that the conclusion has come
before the facts?

In 1560, the houses of the Rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie lay close to the
left bank of the Seine, between the Pont Notre-Dame and the Pont au Change.
The public way and the houses occupied the ground now given up to the
single path of the present quay. Each house, rising from the river, had a
way down to it by stone or wooden steps, defended by strong iron gates, or
doors of nail-studded timber. These houses, like those of Venice, had a
door to the land and one to the water. At the moment of writing this
sketch, only one house remains of this kind as a reminiscence of old Paris,
and that is doomed soon to disappear; it stands at the corner of the
Petit-Pont, the little bridge facing the guard-house of the Hôtel-Dieu.

Of old each dwelling presented, on the river side, the peculiar
physiognomy stamped on it either by the trade and the habits of its owners,
or by the eccentricity of the constructions devised by them for utilizing
or defiling the Seine. The bridges being built, and almost all choked up by
more mills than were convenient for the requirements of navigation, the
Seine in Paris was divided into as many pools as there were bridges. Some
of these old Paris basins would have afforded delightful studies of color
for the painter. What a forest of timbers was built into the cross-beams
that supported the mills, with their immense sails and wheels! What curious
effects were to be found in the joists that shored up the houses from the
river. Genre painting as yet, unfortunately, was not, and engraving in its
infancy; so we have no record of the curious scenes which may still be
found, on a small scale, in some provincial towns where the rivers are
fringed with wooden houses, and where, as at Vendôme, for instance, the
pools, overgrown with tall grasses, are divided by railings to separate the
various properties on each bank.

The name of this street, which has now vanished from the map, sufficiently
indicates the kind of business carried on there. At that time the merchants
engaged in any particular trade, far from dispersing themselves about the
city, gathered together for mutual protection. Being socially bound by the
guild which limited their increase, they were also united into a
brotherhood by the Church. This kept up prices. And then the masters were
not at the mercy of their workmen, and did not yield, as they do now, to
all their vagaries; on the contrary, they took charge of them, treated them
as their children, and taught them the finer mysteries of their craft. A
workman, to become a master, was required to produce a masterpiece--always
an offering to the patron saint of the guild. And will you venture to
assert that the absence of competition diminished their sense of
perfection, or hindered beauty of workmanship, when your admiration of the
work of the older craftsmen has created the new trade of dealers in
_bric-à-brac_?

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the fur trade was one of the most
flourishing industries. The difficulty of obtaining furs, which, coming
from the North, necessitated long and dangerous voyages, gave a high value
to skins and furriers' work. Then, as now, high prices led to demand, for
vanity knows no obstacles.

In France, and in other kingdoms, not only was the use of furs restricted
by law to the great nobility, as is proved by the part played by ermine in
ancient coats-of-arms; but certain rare furs, such as _vair_, which was
beyond doubt imperial sable, might be worn only by kings, dukes, and men of
high rank holding certain offices. _Vair_ (a name still used in heraldry,
_vair_ and _counter vair_) was sub-divided into _grand vair_ and _menu
vair_. The word has within the last hundred years fallen so completely into
disuse, that in hundreds of editions of Perrault's fairy tales,
Cinderella's famous slipper, probably of fur, _menu vair_, has become a
glass slipper, _pantoufle de verre_. Not long since a distinguished French
poet was obliged to restore and explain the original spelling of this word,
for the edification of his brethren of the press, when giving an account of
the "Cenerentola," in which a ring is substituted for the symbolical
slipper--an unmeaning change.

The laws against the use of fur were, of course, perpetually transgressed,
to the great advantage of the furriers. The high price of textiles and of
furs made a garment in those days a durable thing, in keeping with the
furniture, armor, and general details of the sturdy life of the time. A
nobleman or lady, every rich man as well as every citizen, possessed at
most two dresses for each season, and they lasted a lifetime or more. These
articles were bequeathed to their children. Indeed, the clauses relating to
weapons and raiment in marriage contracts, in these days unimportant by
reason of the small value of clothes that are constantly renewed, were at
that period of great interest. High prices had led to durability.

A lady's outfit represented a vast sum of money; it was included in her
fortune, and safely bestowed in those enormous chests which endanger the
ceilings of modern houses. The full dress of a lady in 1840 would have been
the _déshabillé_ of a fine lady of 1540. The discovery of America, the
facility of transport, the destruction of social distinctions, which has
led to the effacement of visible distinctions, have all contributed to
reduce the furrier's craft to the low ebb at which it stands, almost to
nothing. The article sold by a furrier at the same price as of old--say
twenty livres--has fallen in value with the money: the livre or franc was
then worth twenty of our present money. The citizen's wife or the courtesan
who, in our day, trims her cloak with sable, does not know that in 1440 a
malignant constable of the watch would have taken her forthwith into
custody, and haled her before the judge at le Châtelet. The English ladies
who are so fond of ermine are unconscious of the fact that formerly none
but queens, duchesses, and the Chancellor of France were permitted to wear
this royal fur. There are at this day various ennobled families bearing the
name of Pelletier or Lepelletier, whose forebears were obviously wealthy
furriers; for most of our citizen names were originally surnames of that
kind.

This digression not only explains the long squabbles as to precedence which
the Drapers' Guild carried on for two centuries with the Mercers and the
Furriers, each insisting on marching first, as being the most important,
but also accounts for the consequence of one Master Lecamus, a furrier
honored with the patronage of the two Queens, Catherine de' Medici and Mary
Stuart, as well as that of the legal profession, who for twenty years had
been the Syndic of his Corporation, and who lived in this street. The house
occupied by Lecamus was one of the three forming the three corners of the
cross-roads at the end of the Pont au Change, where only the tower now
remains that formed the fourth corner. At the angle of this house, forming
the corner of the bridge and of the quay, now called the Quai aux Fleurs,
the architect had placed a niche for a Madonna, before whom tapers
constantly burned, with posies of real flowers in their season, and
artificial flowers in the winter.

On the side towards the Rue du Pont, as well as on that to the Rue de la
Vieille-Pelleterie, the house was supported on wooden pillars. All the
houses of the trading quarters were thus constructed, with an arcade
beneath, where foot passengers walked under cover on a floor hardened by
the mud they brought in, which made it a rather rough pavement. In all the
towns of France these arcades have been called _piliers_--in England
_rows_--a general term to which the name of a trade is commonly added, as
"Piliers des Halles," "Piliers de la Boucherie." These covered ways,
required by the changeable and rainy climate of Paris, gave the town a
highly characteristic feature, but they have entirely disappeared. Just as
there now remains one house only on the river-bank, so no more than about a
hundred feet are left of the old _Piliers_ in the market, the last that
have survived till now; and in a few days this remnant of the gloomy
labyrinth of old Paris will also be destroyed. The existence of these
relics of the Middle Ages is, no doubt, incompatible with the splendor of
modern Paris. And these remarks are not intended as a lament over those
fragments of the old city, but as a verification of this picture by the
last surviving examples now falling into dust, and to win forgiveness for
such descriptions, which will be precious in the future which is following
hard on the heels of this age.

The walls were of timber covered with slates. The spaces between the
timbers had been filled up with bricks, in a way that may still be seen in
some provincial towns, laid in a zigzag pattern known as _Point de
Hongrie_. The window-sills and lintels, also of wood, were handsomely
carved, as were the corner tabernacle above the Madonna, and the pillars in
front of the shop. Every window, every beam dividing the stories, was
graced with arabesques of fantastic figures and animals wreathed in scrolls
of foliage. On the street side, as on the river side, the house was crowned
with a high-pitched roof having a gable to the river and one to the
street. This roof, like that of a Swiss chalet, projected far enough to
cover a balcony on the second floor, with an ornamental balustrade; here
the mistress might walk under shelter and command a view of the street, or
of the pool shut in between two bridges and two rows of houses.

Houses by the river were at that time highly valued. The system of drainage
and water supply was not yet invented; the only main drain was one round
Paris, constructed by Aubriot, the first man of genius and determination
who--in the time of Charles V.--thought of sanitation for Paris. Houses
situated like this of the Sieur Lecamus found in the river a necessary
water-supply, and a natural outlet for rain water and waste. The vast works
of this kind under the direction of the Trade Provosts are only now
disappearing. None but octogenarians can still remember having seen the
pits which swallowed up the surface waters, in the Rue Montmartre, Rue du
Temple, etc. These hideous yawning culverts were in their day of
inestimable utility. Their place will probably be for ever marked by the
sudden rising of the roadway over what was their open channel--another
archæological detail which, in a couple of centuries, the historian will
find inexplicable.

One day, in 1816, a little girl, who had been sent to an actress at the
Ambigu with some diamonds for the part of a queen, was caught in a storm,
and so irresistibly swept away by the waters to the opening of the drain in
the Rue du Temple, that she would have been drowned in it but for the help
of a passer-by, who was touched by her cries. But she had dropped the
jewels, which were found in a man-hole. This accident made a great
commotion, and gave weight to the demands for the closing of these gulfs
for swallowing water and little girls. These curious structures, five feet
high, had more or less movable gratings, which led to the flooding of
cellars when the stream produced by heavy rain was checked by the grating
being choked with rubbish, which the residents often forgot to remove.

The front of Master Lecamus' shop was a large window, but filled in with
small panes of leaded glass, which made the place very dark. The furs for
wealthy purchasers were carried to them for inspection. To those who came
to buy in the shop, the goods were displayed outside between the pillars,
which, during the day, were always more or less blocked by tables and
salesmen sitting on stools, as they could still be seen doing under the
arcade of the Halles some fifteen years since. From these outposts the
clerks, apprentices, and sewing girls could chat, question, and answer each
other, and hail the passer-by in a way which Walter Scott has depicted in
the _Fortunes of Nigel_. The signboard, representing an ermine, was hung
out as we still see those of village inns, swinging from a handsome arm of
pierced and gilt ironwork. Over the ermine were these words:

    LECAMUS

    Furrier

    To Her Majesty the Queen and the King our
    Sovereign Lord

On one side, and on the other:

      "To Her Majesty the Queen Mother
    And to the Gentlemen of the Parlement."

The words "To Her Majesty the Queen" had been lately added; the gilt
letters were new. This addition was a consequence of the recent changes
produced by Henri II.'s sudden and violent death, which overthrew many
fortunes at Court, and began that of the Guises.

The back shop looked over the river. In this room sat the worthy citizen
and his wife, Mademoiselle Lecamus. The wife of a man who was not noble had
not at any time any right to the title of Dame, or lady; but the wives of
the citizens of Paris were allowed to call themselves Demoiselle (as we
might say Mistress), as part of the privileges granted and confirmed to
their husbands by many kings to whom they had rendered great services.
Between this back room and the front shop was a spiral ladder or staircase
of wood, a sort of corkscrew leading up to the next story, where the furs
were stored, to the old couple's bedroom, and again to the attics, lighted
by dormer windows, where their children slept, the maid-servant, the
clerks, and the apprentices.

This herding of families, servants, and apprentices, and the small space
allotted to each in the dwelling, where the apprentices all slept in one
large room under the tiles, accounts for the enormous population at that
time crowded together in Paris on a tenth of the ground now occupied by the
city, and also for the many curious details of mediæval life, and the
cunning love affairs, though these, _pace_ the grave historian, are nowhere
recorded but by the story writers, and without them would have been lost.

At this time a grand gentleman--such as the Admiral de Coligny, for
instance--had three rooms for himself in Paris, and his people lived in a
neighboring hostelry. There were not fifty mansions in all Paris, not fifty
palaces, that is to say, belonging to the sovereign princes or great
vassals, whose existence was far superior to that of the greatest German
rulers, such as the Duke of Bavaria or the Elector of Saxony.

The kitchen in the Lecamus' house was on the river side below the back
shop. It had a glass door opening on to an ironwork balcony, where the cook
could stand to draw up water in a pail and to wash the household linen.
Thus the back shop was at once the sitting-room, the dining-room, and the
counting-house. It was in this important room--always fitted with
richly-carved wood, and adorned by some chest or artistic article of
furniture--that the merchant spent most of his life; there he had jolly
suppers after his day's work; there were held secret debates on the
political interests of the citizens and the Royal family. The formidable
guilds of Paris could at that time arm a hundred thousand men. Their
resolutions were stoutly upheld by their serving-men, their clerks, their
apprentices, and their workmen. Their Provost was their commander-in-chief,
and they had, in the Hôtel de Ville, a palace where they had a right to
assemble.

In that famous "citizens' parlor" (_parlouer aux bourgeois_) very solemn
decisions were taken. But for the continual sacrifices which had made war
unendurable to the Guilds, wearied out with losses and famine, Henri IV., a
rebel-made king, might never have entered Paris.

Every reader may now imagine for himself the characteristic appearance of
this corner of Paris where the bridge and the Quay now open out, where the
trees rise from the Quai aux Fleurs, and where nothing is left of the past
but the lofty and famous clock-tower whence the signal was tolled for the
Massacre of Saint-Bartholomew. Strange coincidence! One of the houses built
round the foot of that tower--at that time surrounded by wooden shops--the
house of the Lecamus, was to be the scene of one of the incidents that led
to that night of horrors, which proved, unfortunately, propitious rather
than fatal to Calvinism.

At the moment when this story begins, the audacity of the new religious
teaching was setting Paris by the ears. A Scotchman, named Stuart, had just
assassinated President Minard, that member of the Parlement to whom public
opinion attributed a principal share in the execution of Anne du Bourg, a
councillor burnt on the Place de Grève after the tailor of the late King,
who had been tortured in the presence of Henri II. and Diane de Poitiers.
Paris was so closely watched, that the archers on guard compelled every
passer-by to pray to the Virgin, in order to detect heretics, who yielded
unwillingly, or even refused to perform an act opposed to their
convictions.

The two archers on guard at the corner of the Lecamus' house had just gone
off duty; thus Christophe, the furrier's son, strongly suspected of
deserting the Catholic faith, had been able to go out without fear of being
compelled to adore the Virgin's image. At seven in the evening of an April
day, 1560, night was falling, and the apprentices, seeing only a few
persons walking along the arcades on each side of the street, were carrying
in the goods laid out for inspection preparatory to closing the house and
the shop. Christophe Lecamus, an ardent youth of two-and-twenty, was
standing in the door, apparently engaged in looking after the apprentices.

[Illustration: "I am Chaudieu!"]

"Monsieur," said one of these lads to Christophe, pointing out a man who
was pacing to and fro under the arcade with a doubtful expression, "that is
probably a spy or a thief, but whatever he is, such a lean wretch cannot be
an honest man. If he wanted to speak to us on business, he would come up
boldly instead of creeping up and down as he is doing.--And what a face!"
he went on, mimicking the stranger, "with his nose hidden in his cloak!
What a jaundiced eye, and what a starved complexion!"

As soon as the stranger thus described saw Christophe standing alone in the
doorway, he hastily crossed from the opposite arcade where he was walking,
came under the pillars of the Lecamus' house, and passing along by the shop
before the apprentices had come out again to close the shutters, he went up
to the young man.

"I am Chaudieu!" he said in a low voice.

On hearing the name of one of the most famous ministers, and one of the
most heroic actors in the terrible drama called the Reformation, Christophe
felt such a thrill as a faithful peasant would have felt on recognizing his
King under a disguise.

"Would you like to see some furs?" said Christophe, to deceive the
apprentices whom he heard behind him. "Though it is almost dark, I can show
you some myself."

He invited the minister to enter, but the man replied that he would rather
speak to him out of doors. Christophe fetched his cap and followed the
Calvinist.

Chaudieu, though banished by an edict, as secret plenipotentiary of
Théodore de Bèze and Calvin--who directed the Reformation in France from
Geneva--went and came, defying the risk of the horrible death inflicted by
the Parlement, in concert with the Church and the Monarch, on a leading
reformer, the famous Anne du Bourg. This man, whose brother was a captain
in the army, and one of Admiral Coligny's best warriors, was the arm used
by Calvin to stir up France at the beginning of the twenty-two years of
religious wars which were on the eve of an outbreak. This preacher of the
reformed faith was one of those secret wheels which may best explain the
immense spread of the Reformation.

Chaudieu led Christophe down to the edge of the water by an underground
passage like that of the Arche Marion, filled in some ten years since. This
tunnel between the house of Lecamus and that next it ran under the Rue de
la Vieille-Pelleterie, and was known as le Pont aux Fourreurs. It was used
by the dyers of the Cité as a way down to the river to wash their thread,
silk, and materials. A little boat lay there, held and rowed by one man. In
the bows sat a stranger, a small man, and very simply dressed. In an
instant the boat was in the middle of the river, and the boatman steered it
under one of the wooden arches of the Pont au Change, where he quickly
secured it to an iron ring. No one had said a word.

"Here we may talk in safety, there are neither spies nor traitors," said
Chaudieu to the two others. "Are you filled with the spirit of
self-sacrifice that should animate a martyr? Are you ready to suffer all
things for our holy Cause? Do you fear the torments endured by the late
King's tailor, and the Councillor du Bourg, which of a truth await us all?"
He spoke to Christophe, looking at him with a radiant face.

"I will testify to the Gospel," replied Christophe simply, looking up at
the windows of the back shop.

The familiar lamp standing on a table, where his father was no doubt
balancing his books, reminded him by its mild beam of the peaceful life and
family joys he was renouncing. It was a brief but complete vision. The
young man's fancy took in the homely harmony of the whole scene--the
places where he had spent his happy childhood, where Babette Lallier
lived, his future wife, where everything promised him a calm and busy life;
he saw the past, he saw the future, and he sacrificed it all. At any rate,
he staked it.

Such were men in those days.

"We need say no more," cried the impetuous boatman. "We know him for one of
the saints. If the Scotchman had not dealt the blow, he would have killed
the infamous Minard."

"Yes," said Lecamus, "my life is in the hands of the brethren, and I devote
it with joy for the success of the Reformation. I have thought of it all
seriously. I know what we are doing for the joy of the nations. In two
words, the Papacy makes for celibacy, the Reformation makes for the family.
It is time to purge France of its monks, to restore their possessions to
the Crown, which will sell them sooner or later to the middle classes. Let
us show that we can die for our children, and to make our families free and
happy!"

The young enthusiast's face, with Chaudieu's, the boatman's, and that of
the stranger seated in the bows, formed a picture that deserves to be
described, all the more so because such a description entails the whole
history of that epoch, if it be true that it is given to some men to sum up
in themselves the spirit of their age.

Religious reform, attempted in Germany by Luther, in Scotland by John Knox,
and in France by Calvin, found partisans chiefly among those of the lower
classes who had begun to think. The great nobles encouraged the movement
only to serve other interests quite foreign to the religious question.
These parties were joined by adventurers, by gentlemen who had lost all, by
youngsters to whom every form of excitement was acceptable. But among the
artisans and men employed in trade, faith was genuine, and founded on
intelligent interests. The poorer nations at once gave their adherence to a
religion which brought the property of the Church back to the State, which
suppressed the convents, and deprived the dignitaries of the Church of
their enormous revenues. Everybody in trade calculated the profits from
this religious transaction, and devoted themselves to it body, soul, and
purse; and among the youth of the French citizen class, the new preaching
met that noble disposition for self-sacrifice of every kind which animates
the young to whom egoism is unknown.

Eminent men, penetrating minds, such as are always to be found among the
masses, foresaw the Republic in the Reformation, and hoped to establish
throughout Europe a form of government like that of the United Netherlands,
which at last triumphed over the greatest power of the time--Spain, ruled
by Philip II., and represented in the Low Countries by the Duke of Alva.
Jean Hotoman was at that time planning the famous book in which this scheme
is set forth, which diffused through France the leaven of these ideas,
stirred up once more by the League, subdued by Richelieu, and afterwards by
Louis XIV., to reappear with the Economists and the Encyclopedists under
Louis XV., and burst into life under Louis XVI.; ideas which were always
approved by the younger branches, by the House of Orléans in 1789, as by
the House of Bourbon in 1589.

The questioning spirit is the rebellious spirit. A rebellion is always
either a cloak to hide a prince, or the swaddling wrapper of a new rule.
The House of Bourbon, a younger branch than the Valois, was busy at the
bottom of the Reformation. At the moment when the little boat lay moored
under the arch of the Pont au Change, the question was further complicated
by the ambition of the Guises, the rivals of the Bourbons. Indeed, the
Crown as represented by Catherine de' Medici could, for thirty years, hold
its own in the strife by setting these two factions against each other;
whereas later, instead of being clutched at by many hands, the Crown stood
face to face with the people without a barrier between; for Richelieu and
Louis XIV. had broken down the nobility, and Louis XV. had overthrown the
Parlements. Now a king alone face to face with a nation, as Louis XVI. was,
must inevitably succumb.

Christophe Lecamus was very typical of the ardent and devoted sons of the
people. His pale complexion had that warm burnt hue which is seen in some
fair people; his hair was of a coppery yellow; his eyes were bluish-gray,
and sparkled brightly. In them alone was his noble soul visible, for his
clumsy features did not disguise the somewhat triangular shape of a plain
face by lending it the look of dignity which a man of rank can assume, and
his forehead was low, and characteristic only of great energy. His vitality
seemed to be seated no lower down than his chest, which was somewhat
hollow. Sinewy, rather than muscular, Christophe was of tough texture, lean
but wiry. His sharp nose showed homely cunning, and his countenance
revealed intelligence of the kind that acts wisely on one point of a
circle, but has not the power of commanding the whole circumference. His
eyes, set under brows that projected like a penthouse, and faintly outlined
with light down, were surrounded with broad light-blue circles, with a
sheeny white patch at the root of the nose, almost always a sign of great
excitability. Christophe was of the people--the race that fights and allows
itself to be deceived; intelligent enough to understand and to serve an
idea, too noble to take advantage of it, too magnanimous to sell himself.

By the side of old Lecamus' only son, Chaudieu, the ardent minister, lean
from watchfulness, with brown hair, a yellow skin, a contumacious brow, an
eloquent mouth, fiery hazel eyes, and a short rounded chin, symbolized that
Christian zeal which gave the Reformation so many fanatical and earnest
preachers, whose spirit and boldness fired whole communities. This
aide-de-camp of Calvin and Théodore de Bèze contrasted well with the
furrier's son. He represented the living cause of which Christophe was the
effect. You could not have conceived of the active firebrand of the popular
machine under any other aspect.

The boatman, an impetuous creature, tanned by the open air, the dews of
night, and the heats of the day, with firmly set lips, quick motions, a
hungry, tawny eye like a vulture's, and crisp black hair, was the
characteristic adventurer who risks his all in an undertaking as a gambler
stakes his whole fortune on a card. Everything in the man spoke of terrible
passions and a daring that would flinch at nothing. His quivering muscles
were as able to keep silence as to speak. His look was assertive rather
than noble. His nose, upturned but narrow, scented battle. He seemed active
and adroit. In any age you would have known him for a party leader. He
might have been Pizarro, Hernando Cortez, or Morgan the Destroyer if there
had been no Reformation--a doer of violent deeds.

The stranger who sat on a seat, wrapped in his cloak, evidently belonged to
the highest social rank. The fineness of his linen, the cut, material, and
perfume of his raiment, the make and texture of his gloves, showed a man of
the Court, as his attitude, his haughtiness, his cool demeanor, and his