The Parliament had nominated as its commissaries Achille de Harlay, the first president,[286] and MM. Etienne Dufour and Philibert Turin, councillors, to whose interrogatories, however, the Comte d'Auvergne at first refused to reply, alleging as his reason the pardon which had been accorded to him by Henry during the past year. In this emergency M.

Louis Servin,[287] the King's Advocate, was deputed to offer to his Majesty the remonstrance of the commissaries, and to represent that as the accused had already been convicted of conspiring, first with Maturin Carterie, and subsequently with the Duc de Biron, he was unworthy of pardon on this third occasion; while the most imperious necessity existed that an example should be made, in order to secure the safety of their Majesties and the Dauphin, which, moreover, as a natural consequence, involved the tranquillity and welfare of the state.

To this appeal the King replied that the abolition accorded to the accused on the two former occasions had been granted with a view of inducing him to return to his allegiance, but that since it had failed to produce the desired result it could form no pretext for his escape from the penalties of this new crime, and that should he persist in refusing to reply to the questions put to him by his judges his silence must be construed into an acknowledgment of treason; upon which M.

d'Auvergne immediately endeavoured to redeem his error by revealing all the details of the past plots, as well as those of the one in which he was now implicated.

Madame de Verneuil, who had been summoned to appear at the same time, excused herself upon the plea of indisposition; and it was a.s.serted that she had caused herself to be bled in order that the temporary delay in her examination thus secured might enable her, ere she appeared before the commissaries, to ascertain to what extent she had been implicated by the revelations of her step-brother. She no sooner learnt, however, that the Count had thrown all the odium of the conspiracy upon herself than she hastened to obey a second summons, and presented herself with her arm in a sling to undergo in her turn the necessary interrogatories. Her manner was firm, and her delivery at once haughty and energetic. She insisted upon the innocence of her father, declared that the whole cabal had been organized by D'Auvergne, and admitted that feeling herself wronged she had willingly entered into his views; but at the same time she coupled with this admission the a.s.surance that having nothing with which to reproach herself she asked for no indulgence, and was quite prepared to abide by the consequences of her attempt to do justice alike to herself and to her children.

When the Comte d'Entragues was in his turn examined, he did not seek to deny his partic.i.p.ation in the plot, but placed in the hands of his judges a written doc.u.ment, setting forth the services which he had rendered to the King since his accession, and which had merely been recompensed by the government of Orleans, a dignity of which he was moreover shortly afterwards deprived in order that it might be conferred upon another, although in his zeal for the monarch he had not only exhausted his own resources but had even raised considerable loans which still remained unliquidated. Yet, as he stated, he had uttered no complaint, although he was reduced to poverty and deprived of the means of suitably establishing his children, for he still had faith in the justice and generosity of his sovereign; and with this a.s.surance he had retired to his paternal home, old, sick, and poor, to await as best he might the happy moment in which his claims should be remembered. And then it was, as he emphatically declared, that the last and crowning misfortune of a long life had overtaken him. Then it was that the King conceived that unfortunate attachment for his younger daughter, which deprived him of the greatest solace of his old age and exposed him to the raillery and contempt of his fellow-n.o.bles, coupled with sarcastic congratulations upon the advantages which he was supposed to have derived from the dishonour of his child; an event which had clouded his remnant of existence with shame and despair. He had, as he a.s.serted, several times requested of his Majesty that he might be permitted to withdraw entirely from the Court and finish his days in retirement and in the bosom of his family, but this favour had constantly been denied.

As a last effort he had then represented the deplorable state of his health, and entreated that he might be permitted to travel in order to regain his strength, leaving his wife and children at Marcoussis; a favour which also was not only refused, but the refusal rendered doubly bitter by a prohibition either to see or correspond with his daughter, whose safety was at that moment endangered by the menaces of the Queen.

He then entered briefly into the circ.u.mstances of the conspiracy, and concluded by declaring that no attempt upon the life either of the sovereign or the Dauphin had ever been contemplated by himself or by any of his accomplices.[288]

Such was the defence of the dishonoured old man who had placed himself beyond the pale of sympathy by his own degrading marriage. Yet he was still a father; and who shall decide that the shame which in his own case had been silenced by the voice of pa.s.sion, did not crush him with double violence when it involved the reputation of his child? Who shall say that he had not, in the throbbing recesses of his wrung heart, mourned with an undying remorse the fault of which he had himself been guilty, and felt that it was visited in vengeance upon the dearest object of his paternal love? Contemporary historians waste not a word upon the ruined n.o.ble, the disappointed partisan, and the disgraced father; yet the scene must have been a pitiable one in the midst of which he stood an attainted criminal, blighted in every affection and in every hope, the creditor of his King, and the victim of his paternal ambition.

The sentence of the Parliament was p.r.o.nounced on the 2nd of February.

The Comtes d'Auvergne and d'Entragues were condemned to death for the crime of _lese-majeste_, and Madame de Verneuil to imprisonment in the convent of Beaumont, near Tours, until more ample information could be obtained of the exact extent of her partic.i.p.ation; and meanwhile she was to be prohibited from holding any communication save with the sisterhood.

On the same day, the sentence having been instantly communicated to Madame d'Entragues, with the information that the King was about to repair to the chapel of the palace to attend ma.s.s, she hastened, accompanied by her daughter Marie de Balzac,[289] to the Tuileries, where the two unfortunate women threw themselves on their knees before Henry as he entered the grand gallery, and with tears and sobs entreated mercy, the one for her husband, and the other for her father. The monarch burst into tears as he saw them at his feet. He could not forget that the mourners thus prostrate before him were the mother and the sister of the woman whom he still loved, and as he raised them from the ground he said soothingly: "You shall see that I am indulgent--I will convene a council this very day. Go, and pray to G.o.d to inspire me with right resolutions, while I proceed in my turn to ma.s.s with the same intention." [290]

The King kept his word. In the afternoon the Council again met, when he charged them upon their consciences to deliberate seriously before they condemned two of their fellow-creatures to an ignominious death; but they remained firm in their decision, declaring that by extending pardon to crimes of so serious a nature as those upon which judgment had just been pa.s.sed, nothing but danger and disorder could ensue; and that after the execution of the Duc de Biron, individuals convicted of the same offence could not be suffered to escape with impunity without endangering by such misplaced clemency the safety of the kingdom, while a revocation of the sentence now p.r.o.nounced would moreover tend to bring contempt upon the judicial authority.

Henry listened, but he would not yield; and before the close of the meeting, contrary to the advice of all his Council, he announced that he commuted the pain of death in both instances to perpetual imprisonment, and revoked the sentence that condemned the Marquise to the cloister, which he superseded by an order of exile to her own estate of Verneuil.

To express the disappointment and mortification of the Queen when this decision was announced to her would be impossible, as she instantly felt that any further attempt to destroy the influence of the favourite must prove ineffectual. She no longer exhibited any violence, but became a prey to the deepest melancholy, weeping where she had formerly reproached, and seeking her only consolation in prayer and in the society of her chosen friends. Upon Henry, however, the effect of his extraordinary and ill-judged leniency was far different. Although mercy, and even indulgence, had been extended towards the Marquise without eliciting one word either of entreaty or of acknowledgment, he felt convinced that so marked an exhibition of his favour must be recompensed by a return of affection on her part; and thus he continued to partic.i.p.ate in the gaieties of the Court with a zest which was strangely contrasted by the gloom and sadness of his royal consort, and even derived amus.e.m.e.nt from the epigrams and satires which were circulated at his expense among the people.

On the 13th of the month M. de Rohan[291] was married at Ablon[292] to Marguerite de Bethune, the daughter of the Duc de Sully, whom Henry had previously determined to bestow upon the Comte de Laval,[293] and not only did he confer the honour of his presence upon the well-dowered bride, but he also signed her marriage contract and presented to her ten thousand crowns for the purchase of her _trousseau_, with a similar sum to her bridegroom to defray the expenses of the wedding-feast. A singular ceremony followed upon the nuptial blessing, for M. de Rohan had no sooner led his newly-made wife from the altar than his ducal coronet was placed upon his brow, his ducal mantle flung upon his shoulders, and in this pompous costume he was, at the close of the banquet, escorted to Paris by the princes and n.o.bles who had been the guests of M. de Sully.

Seldom had the King evinced more gaiety of heart than at this particular period, or appeared to derive greater amus.e.m.e.nt from the gossipry of the Court and the gallantries of the courtiers; and he no sooner ascertained that Mademoiselle d'Entragues had become the mistress of Ba.s.sompierre than he said laughingly to the Duc de Guise: "D'Entragues despises us all in her idolatry of Ba.s.sompierre. I have good grounds for what I state."

"Well, Sire," was the reply, "you can be at no loss to revenge the affront; while for myself I know of no means so fitting as those of knight-errantry, and I am consequently ready to break three lances with him this afternoon at any hour and place which your Majesty may be pleased to ordain."

The preparations for this combat are so graphically described by Ba.s.sompierre himself, and so characteristic of the manners of the time, that we shall offer no apology for giving them in his own words.

"The King acceded to our wishes, as such encounters were by no means unusual, and told us that the tilting should take place in the great court of the Louvre, which he would cause to be covered with sand. M. de Guise selected as his seconds his brother the Prince de Joinville and M.

de Thermes;[294] while I chose M. de Saint-Luc[295] and the Comte de Sault.[296] We all six dressed and armed ourselves at the house of Saint-Luc, and as we had armour and liveries ready for every occasion, my party wore silver-mail, with plumes of red and white, as were our silk stockings; while M. de Guise and his troop, on account of the imprisonment of Madame de Verneuil, of whom he was secretly the lover, were dressed and armed in black and gold. In this equipage we arrived at the Louvre, myself and my friends being the first upon the ground." [297]

Henry, with his whole Court, both male and female, was present on the occasion, and the lists were placed immediately beneath the windows of the Queen's apartments; but the diversion was not fated to be of long duration, for at the first encounter the lance of M. de Guise entered the body of his antagonist and inflicted so formidable a wound that he was carried from the spot and laid upon the bed of the Duc de Vendome, apparently in a dying state. After his hurt had been dressed, the Queen sent her sedan chair to convey him to his residence.

Although Ba.s.sompierre, in the preceding column, a.s.sures his readers that "such encounters were by no means unusual," he goes on to state that directly he fell the King not only forbade the continuance of the tourney, but would never permit another to take place, and that this was the only one which had been held in France for the preceding century.[298]

"No one can imagine," says the wounded hero in continuation, "the mult.i.tude of visits that I received, especially from the ladies. All the Princesses came to see me, and the Queen on three occasions sent her maids of honour, who were brought to me by Mademoiselle de Guise, and stayed during the whole afternoon."

These courtly diversions were abruptly terminated by the intelligence which reached Paris of the death, on the 3rd of March, of Pope Clement VIII.[299] The piety of this distinguished Pontiff, and the eminent services which he had rendered to the French King, caused his loss to be deeply felt by Henry; but when, on the 1st day of April, Alessandro de Medicis, the cousin of the Queen, was unanimously elected as his successor under the t.i.tle of Leo XI, nothing could exceed the joy which was manifested throughout the country. Paris was illuminated, bonfires were lighted on the surrounding heights, and salvos of artillery rang from the dark walls of the Bastille. This demonstration proved, however, to be premature, as the next courier who arrived in the French capital from Rome brought the fatal tidings of his death. On the day succeeding his elevation he had made his solemn entry into St. Peter's; on Easter Sunday the triple tiara was placed upon his brow, and the public procession to St. John de Lateran took place on the 17th; but on returning from this ceremony the new Pontiff complained of indisposition, and on the 27th he breathed his last; and was in his turn succeeded, on the Day of Pentecost (29th of May), by Paul V.[300]

About this time the King, wearied of the perpetual coldness of Madame de Verneuil, which not even his excessive clemency had sufficed to overcome, made a last attempt to compel her grat.i.tude by forwarding letters under the great seal, authorizing the Comte d'Entragues to retire to his estate of Marcoussis, and re-establishing both himself and his son-in-law in all their wealth and honours, save the posts which they had held under the crown, and their respective governments.

D'Auvergne, however, was still a prisoner in the Bastille, where, after lashing himself into fury for a few months, he adopted the more prudent and manly alternative of study, and thus contrived to educe enjoyment even from his privations.

Yet still the haughty spirit of the Marquise scorned to yield. She was indeed living in her own house, the gift of the monarch against whom she exhibited this firm and calm defiance, and surrounded by luxuries, the whole of which she owed to his uncalculating generosity; but she could not, and would not, forget that she was, nevertheless, an exile from the Court, and a prisoner within the boundary of her estate, while the Queen, whom she had affected to despise, was triumphing in her disgrace. Nor was it until the month of September, when Henry, who was pining for her return, finally declared that no proof of culpability having been brought against her, she must be forthwith duly and fully acquitted of the crime with which she had been charged, that the icy barrier was at last broken down, and the haughty Marquise condescended to acknowledge herself indebted to her sovereign. The King did not satisfy himself with this mere declaration, though he had caused it to be legally registered by the Parliament; but, fearful lest some further revelations might be made, by which she might become once more involved, he moreover strictly forbade his Attorney-general to take any new steps whatever relating to the conspiracy, or tending further to incriminate any of its presumed members.[301]

The jealousy which existed between the two houses of Bourbon and Lorraine, and which Henry was anxious if possible to terminate, coupled perhaps with no small feeling of wounded vanity, determined him to bestow the hand of Louise Marguerite de Lorraine, Demoiselle de Guise (who, since she had been in the household of the Queen, had lent a less willing ear than formerly to his renewed gallantries), upon Francois, Prince de Conti; and accordingly the marriage was celebrated with great pomp in the month of July, in the presence of their Majesties and the whole Court. Madame de Conti herself a.s.serts that the Queen first suggested this union, and did everything in her power to effect it;[302]

for which it is highly probable that Marie had a double motive, as the antecedents of Mademoiselle de Guise might well excuse her jealousy.

While besieging Paris, and before his public _liaison_ with Gabrielle d'Estrees, Henry had sent to demand the portrait of Mademoiselle de Guise, giving her reason to believe that so soon as the war should be terminated he was desirous of making her his wife; a prospect which, as she very naively acknowledges, led her to despise the addresses of the Comte de Giury,[303] who was her declared suitor, as well as those of the other n.o.bles who sought her favour. One day, however, during a brief truce of six hours, the d.u.c.h.esse de Guise and herself, accompanied by several other ladies, having ascended the rampart to converse with such of their friends as were in the besieging army, all the young gallants crowded to the foot of the walls to pay their respects to the fair being whose presence offered so graceful a contrast to the objects by which they were more immediately surrounded; and among the rest came Roger, Duc de Bellegarde, at that period the handsomest man in France.

It was the first occasion upon which Mademoiselle de Guise and the Duke had met; and we have the authority of the lady for stating that the attraction was mutual. M. de Bellegarde had long been the avowed lover of _la belle Gabrielle_; but, inconstant as the fair D'Estrees herself, he at once surrendered his previously-occupied heart to this new G.o.ddess. His prior attachment was not, however, the only reason which should have deterred Mademoiselle de Guise from thus suffering her fancy to overcome her better feelings, as M. de Bellegarde was accused of having been accessory to the a.s.sa.s.sination of her father; but neither of these considerations appears to have had any weight with the young Princess. According to her own version of the circ.u.mstance, Gabrielle conceived so violent a jealousy that the Duke was compelled to condescend to every imaginable subterfuge in order to conceal the truth; while the King, who soon became aware of the secret intelligence which subsisted between the lovers, ceased to feel any inclination to raise Mademoiselle de Guise to the throne of France; although, as we have seen, he was by no means insensible either to the charm of her wit or the attraction of her beauty.

In order to follow up his great design of pacification, Henry, after having re-established Philip of Na.s.sau in his princ.i.p.ality of Orange, also effected his marriage with Eleonore de Bourbon,[304] by which union he secured another desirable ally.[305]

During the development of the late conspiracy the monarch had been indebted for much of the information which he had received relative to the intrigues of the Comte d'Auvergne to the intelligence afforded by the ex-Queen Marguerite, who, having come into possession of many facts which could not otherwise have been known to the King, had a.s.siduously imparted to him every circ.u.mstance that she conceived to be of importance; a service for which he had not failed to express his grat.i.tude. That Marguerite had, however, been in no small degree actuated in this matter by feelings of self-interest, there can be no doubt, D'Auvergne having long enjoyed the proprietorship of the county from whence he derived his t.i.tle, and which had been bestowed on him by Henri III, as well as several other estates which that monarch had inherited from his mother, Catherine de Medicis, the said territories having formed a portion of her dowry on her union with Henri II.

Marguerite's memories of her brother, as the reader will readily comprehend, were not sufficiently attaching to induce her to submit patiently to such a subst.i.tution, as she was aware that, by the marriage contract, the property in question was settled upon the female offspring of Catherine in default of male issue; and her lavish expenditure and errant adventures having exhausted her means, she resolved to exert every effort to establish her claim. She had already upon several occasions solicited permission to return to the French capital; and, although it had never been distinctly refused, it was so coldly conceded that her pride had hitherto prevented her from availing herself of an indulgence thus reluctantly accorded; but aware at the present moment that she could so materially serve the King as to ensure a more gracious reception than she might previously have antic.i.p.ated, she resolved to seize the opportunity; and accordingly, greatly to the surprise, not only of the whole Court, but of the monarch himself, she arrived in Paris without having intimated her intention, lest the permission should be revoked.

For five-and-twenty years the last survivor of the ill.u.s.trious house of Valois had existed in obscurity and poverty among the mountains and precipices of the inhospitable province of Auvergne, apparently forgetting for a time that world by which she had been so readily forgotten; but Marguerite began at length to yearn for a restoration of her privileges as a member of the great human family. She could not have chosen a more judicious moment in which to hazard so extreme a step; as in addition to the respect which, despite all her vices, she could still command as the descendant of a long line of sovereigns, she had latterly established many claims upon the grat.i.tude of the King. It was impossible for him not to feel, and that deeply, the generous self-abnegation with which she had lent herself to the dissolution of their ill-omened marriage, when not only his own happiness, but that of the whole nation, required the sacrifice; nor could he fail to remember that while those upon whom he lavished alike his affection and his treasure, had constantly laboured to embitter his domestic life, and to undermine the dignity of his Queen, the repudiated wife had never once evinced the slightest disposition to withhold from her the deference and respect to which she was ent.i.tled.

Thus then, when her near approach to the capital was suddenly announced to him, Henry lost not a moment in hastening, with his royal consort and a brilliant retinue, to receive her before she could reach the gates; and gave orders that the palace of Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne should immediately be prepared in a befitting manner for her residence. Nor was Marie de Medicis less willing than himself to welcome the truant Princess, to whom she was aware that she owed many obligations; and the meeting was consequently a cordial one on both sides. After the usual ceremonies had been observed, Marguerite, abandoning the litter in which she had hitherto travelled, took her place in the state coach beside their Majesties, by whom she was conducted to her appointed abode; nor was it until repeated expressions of regard had been exchanged between the ex-Queen and her successor, that the royal party returned to the Tuileries.

After a sojourn of six weeks in the palace of Madrid, during which time Marguerite not only revealed to the monarch all the details of the Verneuil conspiracy, but also the particulars of another still more serious, as it involved the cession of Ma.r.s.eilles, Toulon, and other cities to the Spaniards, she became wearied of the forest villa, and established herself in the archiepiscopal Hotel de Sens[306]; an arrangement to which the King consented on condition that she should make him two promises, one of which was that she would be more careful of her health, "and not turn night into day, and day into night," as she was accustomed to do; and the other, that she would restrain her liberality, and endeavour to economize. To these requests the Princess cheerfully answered that she would make an effort to obey his Majesty upon the first point, although it would be a privation almost beyond endurance, from the habit in which she had so long indulged of enjoying the sunrise before she retired to rest; but with regard to the other she must decline to give a pledge which she was certain to falsify, no Valois having ever succeeded in such an attempt. It is probable that Henry, from a consciousness of his own peculiar prodigalities, did not feel himself authorized to insist upon a rigid observance of his expressed wish, as although Marguerite had so frankly refused to regulate her expenditure with more prudence, she was nevertheless permitted to remain in the asylum which she had chosen; and this she continued to do until the 5th of April 1606, when she was driven from it by a tragedy that rendered it hateful to her.

Slender as was her retinue, it unfortunately included a young favourite named Saint-Julien,[307] who, from some private pique, had induced her to discharge from her service two attendants who had from their earliest youth been members of her household, the one as page, and the other as maid of honour; and who had ultimately married with her consent and approbation, but upon being thus cast off, had found themselves ruined, no n.o.ble house being willing to receive the dismissed attendants of the dishonoured Queen. Of this union a son had been born, possessed, however, of less patience and self-control than his unhappy parents, who, after having clung to Marguerite through good and evil fortune, now found themselves abandoned to all the miseries of poverty and neglect.

This youth, called by L'Etoile Vermond, and by Ba.s.sompierre Charmond, made his way to Paris as best he might, and arrived in the capital after Marguerite had taken up her residence as already stated in the Faubourg St. Antoine. There can be no doubt that the utter dest.i.tution of his parents had made him desperate, for he could not rationally indulge the slightest hope of impunity; suffice it, that as the Princess was alighting from her coach on her return from attending ma.s.s at the abbey of the Celestines, between mid-day and one o'clock on the 5th of April, while her favourite stood beside the steps to a.s.sist her to descend, the unhappy Vermond shot him through the head, and then, turning his horse towards the gate of St. Denis, endeavoured to make his escape. He was, however, too ill-mounted to succeed in this attempt, the carriage of the ex-Queen having been followed by many of the n.o.bles who were anxious to propitiate the favour of the King by so easy a display of respect to the dethroned Marguerite; and ere he reached the barrier the wretched young man found himself a prisoner.

The body of his victim had, meanwhile, been conveyed to an apartment on the ground floor of the hotel, where on his arrival he was immediately confronted with it; but no sign of remorse or regret was visible as he gazed upon the corpse. "Turn it over," he said huskily, after he had gazed for awhile upon the glazed eyes and the parted lips. "Let me see if he be really dead." His request was complied with; and as he became convinced that life had indeed departed from the already stiffening form, he exclaimed joyfully: "It is well--I have not failed--my task is accomplished. Had it been otherwise I could yet have repaired the error."

When this scene was reported to Marguerite, who, absorbed in the most pa.s.sionate grief, had retired to her appartment, she vowed that she would not touch food until she had vengeance on the murderer; and she kept her word, as she persisted in her resolution till, on the third day after he had committed the crime, the unhappy young man was decapitated in front of the house, and almost upon the very spot still reeking with the blood of his victim. But the nerves of the ex-Queen could endure no further tension; and on the morrow she removed to a new residence in the Faubourg St. Germain, where she was shortly afterwards visited by Ba.s.sompierre, who was charged with the condolences of the King on her late loss.[308]

This fact alone tends more fully to develop the manners and morals (?) of the age than a thousand comments; and thus we have considered it our duty to place it upon record.

Meanwhile M. de Saint-Julien was far from having been the only favourite of the profligate Marguerite, who divided her time between devotional exercises and the indulgence of those guilty pleasures to which she was so unhappily addicted; but while the citizens were not slow to remark her excesses, she gained the love of the poor by a profuse alms-giving, and enjoyed a perfect impunity of action from the real or feigned ignorance of the King relative to the private arrangements of her household. She was, moreover, the avowed patroness of men of letters, by whom her table was constantly surrounded; and in whose society she took so much delight that she acquired, by this constant intercourse with the most learned individuals of the capital, a facility not only of expression, but also of composition, very remarkable in one of her s.e.x at that period.[309] Carefully avoiding all political intrigue, she made no distinction of persons beyond that due to their rank; and thus, while her intercourse with the Queen was marked by an affectionate respect peculiarly gratifying to its object, she was no less urbane and condescending to the Marquise de Verneuil; who had, as may have been antic.i.p.ated, already regained all her former influence over the mind of the monarch, his pa.s.sion even appearing to have derived new strength from their temporary estrangement.

The peculiar situation of the Queen, however, who was about once more to become a mother, and whose tranquillity of mind he feared to disturb at such a moment, rendered the monarch unusually anxious to conceal this fact; and it was consequently not until some weeks afterwards that Marie de Medicis was apprised of the new triumph of her rival.

The month of December accordingly pa.s.sed away without the domestic discord which must have arisen had the Queen been less happily ignorant of her real position; but it was nevertheless fated to be an eventful one. The death of M. de la Riviere, the King's body-surgeon, a loss which was severely felt by Henry, was succeeded by the execution of M.

de Merargues[310], whose conspiracy to deliver up Ma.r.s.eilles to the Spaniards was revealed to the monarch by Marguerite; and who, tried and convicted of _lese-majeste_, was decapitated in the Place de Greve, his body quartered and exposed at the four gates of the capital, and his head carried to Ma.r.s.eilles, and stuck upon a pike over the princ.i.p.al entrance to the city; while, on the very day of his execution, as the King was returning from a hunt and riding slowly across the Pont Neuf, at about five in the afternoon, a man suddenly sprang up behind him and threw him backwards upon his horse, attempting at the same time to plunge a dagger which he held into the body of his Majesty. Fortunately, however, Henry was so closely m.u.f.fled in a thick cloak that before the a.s.sa.s.sin could effect his purpose the attendants were enabled to seize him and liberate their royal master, who was perfectly uninjured. The consternation was nevertheless universal; nor was it lessened by the calmness with which, when interrogated, the a.s.sa.s.sin declared that his intention had been to take the life of the sovereign. It was soon discovered, however, by the incoherency of his language that he was a maniac; and although many of the n.o.bles urged that he should be put to death as an example to others, the King resolutely resisted their advice, declaring that the man's family, who had long been aware of his infirmity, were more to blame than himself; and commanding that he should be placed in security, and thus rendered unable to repeat any act of violence. He was accordingly conveyed to prison, where he shortly afterwards died.

At this period, whether it were that the King hoped, by occupying her attention with subjects of more moment, to be enabled to pursue his _liaison_ with Madame de Verneuil with less difficulty, or that his advancing age rendered him in reality anxious to initiate her into the mysteries of government, it is certain that he endeavoured to induce the Queen to take more interest than she had hitherto done in questions of national importance; and revealed to her many state secrets, not one of which, as he afterwards declared to Sully, did she ever communicate, even to her most confidential friends. But Marie de Medicis was far from evincing the delight which he had antic.i.p.ated at his avowed wish that she should share with him in the hopes and disappointments of royalty; her ambition had not then been thoroughly awakened; she still felt as a wife and as a woman rather than as a Queen; and an insolence from Madame de Verneuil occupied her feelings more nearly than a threatened conspiracy. So great, indeed, was her distaste to the new character in which she was summoned to appear, that when the King occasionally addressed her with a gay smile as _Madame la Regente_, a cloud invariably gathered upon her brow. Upon one occasion, when the royal couple were walking in the park at Fontainebleau, attended by all the Court, and that the monarch, who led the Dauphin by the hand, vainly endeavoured to induce him to jump across a little stream which ran beside their path, Henry became so enraged by his cowardice and obstinacy that he raised him in his arms to dip him into the pigmy current, a punishment which was, however, averted by the entreaties of his mother; and the King reluctantly consented that he should suffer nothing more than the mortification of being compelled to exchange her care for that of his governess, Madame de Montglat. As the child was led away the King sighed audibly, but in a few seconds he resumed the conversation which had been thus unpleasantly interrupted, and once more he addressed the Queen as _Madame la Regente_.

"I entreat of you, Sire, not to call me by that name," said Marie; "it is full of a.s.sociations which cannot fail to be painful to me."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARIE DE MEDICIS. Paris: Richard Bentley and Son 1890.]

The King looked earnestly and even sadly upon her for a moment ere he replied, and then it was in a tone as grave as that in which she uttered her expostulation. "You are right," he said, "quite right not to wish to survive me, for the close of my life will be the commencement of your own troubles. You have occasionally shed tears when I have flogged your son, but one day you will weep still more bitterly either over him or yourself. My favourites have often excited your displeasure, but you will find yourself some time hence more ill-used by those who obtain an influence over the actions of Louis. Of one thing I can a.s.sure you, and that is, knowing your temper so well as I do, and foreseeing that which his will prove in after years--you, Madame, self-opinionated, not to say headstrong, and he obstinate--you will a.s.suredly break more than one lance together." [311]

Poor Marie! She was little aware at that moment how soon so mournful a prophecy was to become a still more mournful reality.

FOOTNOTES:

[284] A very low wooden stool upon which accused persons were formerly seated during their trial; an arrangement deemed so great a degradation by persons of condition that many attainted n.o.bles indignantly appealed against it.

[285] L'Etoile, vol. iii. p. 256.

[286] Achille de Harlay was the representative of a distinguished family, many of whose members were celebrated during four centuries both as magistrates and ecclesiastics. He was born on the 7th of May 1536, and was the son of Christophe de Harlay, President _de Mortier_ of the Parliament of Paris, one of the most learned and upright magistrates of his time. Achille was a parliamentary councillor at the age of twenty-two years, president of the Parliament of Paris at thirty-six, and succeeded his father-in-law, Christophe de Thou, as first president in 1582. During the time of the League under Henri III he made to the Duc de Guise the celebrated answer which covered him with glory and paralyzed the strength of the malcontents: "My soul belongs to my G.o.d and my heart to my King, although my body is in the power of rebels." He was imprisoned for a time by the chiefs of the League, after which he returned to the service of the King. He resigned his office in favour of Nicolas de Verdun, and died on the 23rd of October 1616 at the age of eighty years.