[154] De Thou, vol. x. p. 375.

[155] M. de la Riviere had originally been the chief medical attendant of the Due de Bouillon, who ceded him to Henri IV, by whom he was appointed his body-surgeon, in which office he succeeded M. d'Aliboust.

He was born at Falaise, in Normandy, and was the son of Jean Ribel, professor of theology at Geneva. He himself, however, embraced the reformed religion, and died in 1605, sincerely regretted by the monarch, to whom his eminent talents and unwearied devotion had greatly endeared him.

[156] Sully, _Mem_. vol. vi. pp. 46-49.

[157] Gaston Henri, the son of Henri IV and of Henriette d'Entragues, Marquise de Verneuil, originally took orders, and became the inc.u.mbent of several abbeys, among others that of St. Germain-des-Pres. He was subsequently made Bishop of Metz, and bore that t.i.tle for a considerable time. On the 1st of January 1662, having been created a knight of the Order of the Holy Ghost, and in the following year a duke and peer, he took the t.i.tle of Duc de Verneuil, and as such was sent to England in 1665 as amba.s.sador extraordinary. Finally, in 1666, Louis XIV bestowed upon him the government of Languedoc, when he sold his church property, and married (in 1668) Charlotte Seguier, the widow of Maximilien-Francois de Bethune III, Duc de Sully. He died without issue, at Versailles, on the 28th of May 1682.

CHAPTER III

1602

Court festivities--The Queen's ballet--A gallant prelate--A poetical almoner--Insolence of the royal favourite--Unhappiness of the Queen--Weakness of Henry--Intrigue of Madame de Villars--The King quarrels with the favourite--They are reconciled--Madame de Villars is exiled, and the Prince de Joinville sent to join the army in Hungary--Mortification of the Queen--Her want of judgment--New dissension in the royal menage--Sully endeavours to restore peace--Mademoiselle de Sourdis--The Court removes to Blois--Royal rupture--A bewildered minister--Marie and her foster-sister--Conspiracy of the Dues de Bouillon and de Biron--Parallel between the two n.o.bles--The Comte d'Auvergne--Ingrat.i.tude of Biron--He is betrayed--His arrogance--He is summoned to the capital to justify himself--He refuses to obey the royal summons--Henry sends a messenger to command his presence at Court--Precautionary measures of Sully--The President Jeannin prevails over the obstinacy of Biron--Double treachery of La Fin--The King endeavours to induce Biron to confess his crime--Arrest of the Duc de Biron and the Comte d'Auvergne--The royal soiree--A timely caution--Biron is made prisoner by Vitry, and the Comte d'Auvergne by Praslin--They are conveyed separately to the Bastille--Exultation of the citizens--Firmness of the King--Violence of Biron--Tardy repentance--Trial of Biron--A scene in the Bastille--Condemnation of the Duke--He is beheaded--The subordinate conspirators are pardoned--The Duc de Bouillon retires to Turenne--Refuses to appear at Court--Execution of the Baron de Fontenelles--A salutary lesson--The Comte d'Auvergne is restored to liberty--Revolt of the Prince de Joinville--He is treated with contempt by the King--He is imprisoned by the Duc de Guise--Removal of the Court to Fontainebleau--Legitimation of the son of Madame de Verneuil--Unhappiness of the Queen--She is consoled by Sully--Birth of the Princesse Elisabeth de France--Disappointment of the Queen--Soeur Ange.

The convalescence of the Queen was the signal for a succession of festivities, and the whole winter was spent in gaiety and dissipation; banquets, ballets, and hunting-parties succeeded each other with bewildering rapidity; and so magnificent were several of the Court festivals that even some of the gravest historians of the time did not disdain to record them. The most brilliant of the whole, however, and that which will best serve to exemplify the taste of the period, was the ballet to which allusion has already been made as given in honour of the King by his royal consort, and in which Marie de Medicis herself appeared. In order to heighten its effect she had selected fifteen of the most beautiful women of the Court, Madame de Verneuil being, according to the royal promise, one of the number; and the first part of the exhibition took place at the Louvre. The entertainment commenced with the entrance of Apollo and the nine Muses into the great hall of the palace, which was thronged with native and foreign princes, amba.s.sadors, and ministers, in the midst of whom sat the King with the Papal Nuncio on his right hand. The G.o.d and his attendants sang the glory of the monarch, the pacificator of Europe; and each stanza terminated with the somewhat fulsome and ungraceful words:

"Il faut que tout vous rende hommage, Grand Roi, miracle de notre age."

Thence the whole gay and gallant company proceeded to the Hotel de Guise, where the eight maids of honour of the Queen performed the second act; and this was no sooner concluded than the brilliant revellers removed to the archiepiscopal palace, where the Queen appeared in person upon the scene, with her suite divided into four quadrilles. Marie herself represented Venus, and led by the hand Cesar de Vendome[158]

attired as Cupid; when the splendour of her jewels produced so startling an effect that murmurs of astonishment and admiration ran through the hall. Gratified at the sensation caused by the unexampled magnificence and grace of his royal consort, Henry smilingly inquired of the Nuncio "if he had ever before seen so fine a squadron?"

"_Bellissimo e pericolosissimo_!" was the reply of the gallant prelate.

Each of the ladies composing the party of the Queen represented a _virtue_, an arrangement which, when it is remembered that Madame de Verneuil was one of the chosen, rendered their attributes at least equivocal. This royal ballet was nevertheless considered worthy of a poetical immortality by Berthault,[159] a popular bard of the day, who left little behind him worthy of preservation, but who enjoyed great vogue among the fashionables of the Court at that period. Its most important result was, however, the marriage of Concini and Leonora; to which, in consideration of the honour done to the favourite by the Queen, Henry withdrew his opposition; even authorizing his royal consort to bestow rich presents upon the bride, and to celebrate the nuptials with considerable ceremony.[160]

All these royal diversions were suddenly and disagreeably terminated some months afterwards by an intrigue which once more threw the King and his courtiers into a state of agitation and discomfort.

As regards Marie de Medicis herself, she had long ceased to derive any gratification from the splendid festivities of which she was one of the brightest ornaments; her ill-judged indulgence, far from exciting the grat.i.tude of Madame de Verneuil, having rendered the insolent favourite still more arrogant and overbearing. To such an extent, indeed, did the Marquise carry her presumption, that she affected to believe herself indebted for the forbearance of the Queen to the conviction of the latter that she had a superior claim upon the monarch to her own; and while she permitted herself to comment upon the words, actions, and tastes, and even upon the personal peculiarities of her royal mistress, she declared her conviction of the legality of the written promise obtained by her from the King; and announced her determination, now that she had become the mother of a son, to enforce its observance.

These monstrous pretensions, which were soon made known to the Queen, at once wounded and exasperated her feelings; and she anxiously awaited the moment when some new imprudence of the favourite should open the eyes of the monarch to her delinquency, as she had already become aware that mere argument on her own part would avail nothing.

Several writers, and among them even female ones, yielding to the prestige attached to the name of Henri IV, have sought the solution of all his domestic discomfort in the "Italian jealousy" of Marie de Medicis; but surely it is not difficult to excuse it under circ.u.mstances of such extraordinary trial. Marie was a wife, a mother, and a queen; and in each of these characters she was insulted and outraged. As a wife, she saw her rights invaded--as a mother, the legitimacy of her son questioned--and as a queen her dignity compromised. What very inferior causes have produced disastrous effects even in private life! The only subject of astonishment which can be rationally entertained is the comparative patience with which at this period of her career she submitted to the humiliations that were heaped upon her.

In vain did she complain to her royal consort of the insulting calumnies of Madame de Verneuil; he either affected to disbelieve that she had been guilty of such absurd a.s.sumption, or reproached Marie with a want of self-respect in listening to the idle tattle of eavesdroppers and sycophants; alleging that her foreign followers, spoiled by her indulgence, and encouraged by her credulity, were the scourge of his Court; and that she would do well to dismiss them before they accomplished her own unhappiness. A hint to this effect always sufficed to silence the Queen, to whom the society and support of Leonora and her husband were becoming each day more necessary; and thus she devoured her tears and stifled her wretchedness, trusting that the arrogance and presumption of the Marquise would ultimately serve her better than her own remonstrances.

Such was the position of affairs when the intrigue to which allusion has been already made promised to produce the desired result; and it can create no surprise that Marie should eagerly indulge the hope of delivering herself from an obnoxious and formidable rival, when the opportunity presented itself of accomplishing so desirable an end without betraying her own agency.

During the lifetime of _la belle Gabrielle_, her sister, Juliette Hippolyte d'Estrees, Marquise de Cerisay, who in 1597 became the wife of Georges de Brancas, Duc de Villars, had attracted the attention of the King, whose dissipated tastes were always flattered by novelty; although if we are to credit the statements of the Princesse de Conti, this lady, so far from rivalling the beauty of her younger sister, had no personal charms to recommend her beyond _her youth and her hair_.[161] Being as unscrupulous as the d.u.c.h.esse de Beaufort herself, Juliette exulted in the idea of captivating the King, and left no effort untried to secure her supposed conquest; but this caprice on the part of Henry was only momentary, and in his pa.s.sion for Henriette d'Entragues, he soon forgot his pa.s.sing fancy for Madame de Villars. The d.u.c.h.ess herself, however, was far from being equally oblivious; and listening to the dictates of her ambition and self-love, she became persuaded that she was indebted to the Marquise alone for the sudden coldness of the King; and accordingly she vowed an eternal hatred to the woman whom she considered in the light of a successful rival. Up to the present period, anxious as she was to avenge her wounded vanity, she had been unable to secure an opportunity of revenge; but having at this particular moment won the affection of the Prince de Joinville,[162] who had been a former lover of Madame de Verneuil, and with whom, as she was well aware, he had maintained an active correspondence, she made his surrender of the letters of that lady the price of her own honour. For a time the Prince hesitated; he felt all the disloyalty of such a concession; but those were not times in which principles waged an equal war against pa.s.sion; and the letters were ultimately placed in the possession of Madame de Villars.

The d.u.c.h.ess was fully cognizant of the fact that it was from an impulse of self-preservation alone that M. de Joinville had been induced to forego his suit to the favourite, and to absent himself from the Court, a consideration which should have aroused her delicacy as a woman; but she was by no means disposed to yield to so inconvenient a weakness; and she had consequently no sooner secured the coveted doc.u.ments than she prepared to profit by her good fortune.

Henriette d'Entragues had really loved the Prince--if indeed so venal and vicious a woman can be supposed capable of loving anything save herself--and thus the letters which were transferred to Madame de Villars, many of them having been written immediately after the separation of the lovers, were filled with regrets at his absence, professions of unalterable affection, and disrespectful expressions concerning the King and Queen; the latter of whom was ridiculed and slandered without pity. It is easy to imagine the triumphant joy of the d.u.c.h.ess. She held her enemy at her mercy, and she had no inclination to be merciful. She read and re-read the precious letters; and finally, after deep reflection, her plans were matured.

The Princesse de Conti was her personal friend, and was, moreover, attached to the household of the Queen, to whom Madame de Villars, from circ.u.mstances which require no comment, had hitherto been comparatively a stranger. Marie de Medicis, who had experienced little sympathy from the great ladies of the Court, having thrown herself princ.i.p.ally upon her Italian followers for society, had in consequence been cold and distant in her deportment to the French members of her circle; who, on their side, trammelled by the rigorous propriety of her conduct, were quite satisfied to be partially overlooked, in order that their own less scrupulous bearing might pa.s.s unnoticed by so rigid a censor; and thus, when, upon the earnest request of Madame de Villars to be introduced to the more intimate acquaintance of the Queen, the Princess succeeded in obtaining for her the privilege of the _pet.i.tes entrees_ (unaware of the powerful pa.s.sport to favour which she possessed), she found it difficult to account for the eagerness with which the ordinarily unapproachable Marie greeted the appearance and courted the society of the astute d.u.c.h.ess; nor did she for an instant dream that by facilitating the intercourse between them, she was undermining the fortunes of a brother whom she loved.

It appears extraordinary that of all the ladies about the Queen, Madame de Villars should have selected the sister of the Prince de Joinville to enable her to effect her purpose; but let her have acted from whatever motive she might, it is certain that day by day her favour became more marked; and the circ.u.mstance which most excited the surprise of Madame de Conti, was the fact that her _protegee_ was often closeted with the Queen when, for reasons sufficiently obvious, she herself and even Leonora Galiga were excluded. In encouraging the vengeance of her new friend, Marie was well aware that she was committing an imprudence from which the more far-seeing Florentine would have dissuaded her; and thus, with that impetuosity which was destined through life to be her scourge, she resolved only to consult her own feelings. The secret of this new discovery was consequently not divulged to her favourite; and as her cheek burned and her eye flashed, while lingering over the insults to which she had been subjected by the unscrupulous mistress of the monarch, she urged Madame de Villars to lose no time in communicating the contents of the obnoxious letters to her sovereign.

The undertaking was difficult as well as dangerous; and in the case of the d.u.c.h.ess it required more than usual tact and caution. She had not only to encounter the risk of arousing the anger of Henry by accusing the woman whom he loved, but also to combat his wounded vanity when he should see his somewhat mature pa.s.sion made a subject of ridicule, and, at the same time, to conceal her own motive for the treachery of which she was guilty. This threefold trial, even daring as she was, the d.u.c.h.ess feared to hazard. In communicating the fatal letters to the Queen, she had calculated that the indignation and jealousy of the Italian Princess would instigate her to take instant possession of so formidable a weapon against her most dangerous enemy, and to work out her own vengeance; but Marie had learnt prudence from past experience, and she was anxious to conceal her own agency in the cabal until she could avow it with a certainty of triumph. Perceiving the reluctance of Madame de Villars to take the initiative, she hastened to explain to her the suspicion which would naturally be engendered in the mind of the King, should he imagine that the affair had been preconcerted to satisfy her private animosity; and moreover suggested that the d.u.c.h.ess should, in her interview with the monarch, carefully avoid even the mention of her name. Encouragement and entreaties followed this caution; while a few rich presents sufficed to convince her auditor--and ultimately, Madame de Villars (who had too long waited patiently for such an opportunity of revenge to shrink from her purpose when it was secured to her), having gained the favour and confidence of the Queen at the expense of her rival, resolved to terminate her task.

The pretext of urgent business easily procured for her a private interview with the King, for the name of D'Estrees still acted like a spell upon the mind and heart of Henry, and the d.u.c.h.ess was a consummate tactician. Notice was given to her of the day on which the sovereign would visit St. Denis; and as she presented herself in the lateral chapel where he had just concluded his devotions, Henry made a sign for his attendant n.o.bles to withdraw, when the d.u.c.h.ess found herself in a position to explain her errand, and to a.s.sure him that she had only been induced to make the present disclosure from her affection for his person, and the grat.i.tude which she owed to him for the many benefits that she had experienced from his condescension. Having briefly dwelt on the contents of the letters which she delivered into his keeping, she did not even seek an excuse for the means by which they had come into her own possession, but concluded by observing: "I could not reconcile it to my conscience, Sire, to conceal so great an outrage; I should have felt like a criminal myself, had I been capable of suffering in silence such treason against the greatest king, the best master, and the most gallant gentleman on earth." [163]

Henry was not proof against this compliment. He believed himself to be all that the d.u.c.h.ess had a.s.serted, but he liked to hear his own opinion confirmed by the lips of others; and, although smarting under the mortification of wounded vanity occasioned by the contents of the letters of his perfidious mistress, he smiled complacently upon Madame de Villars, thanking her for her zeal and attachment to his person, and a.s.suring her that both were fully appreciated.

She had no sooner retired than, as the Queen had previously done, he repeatedly read over each letter in turn until his patience gave way under the task; when hastily summoning the Duc de Lude, he desired him to forthwith proceed to the apartments of the Marquise, and inform her in his name that "she was a perfidious woman, a monster, and the most wicked of her s.e.x; and that he was resolved never to see her again." [164]

At this period Madame de Verneuil had quitted the palace, and was residing in an hotel in the city, which had been presented to her by the King: a fortunate circ.u.mstance for the envoy, who required time and consideration to enable him to execute his onerous mission in a manner that might not tend to his own subsequent discomfiture; but on the delivery of the royal message, which even the courtly De Lude could not divest of its offensive character, Madame de Verneuil (who was well aware that the King, however he might yield to his momentary anger, was even less able to dispense with her society than she herself was to lose the favour which alone preserved her from the ignominy her conduct had justly merited) did not for an instant lose her self-possession. "Tell his Majesty," she replied, as calmly as though a sense of innocence had given her strength, "that being perfectly a.s.sured that I have never been guilty of word or deed which could justly incur his anger, I cannot imagine what can have induced him to treat me with so little consideration. That some one has traduced me, I cannot doubt; but I shall be revenged by a discovery of the truth." [165]

She then rose from her seat, and retired to her private room, much more alarmed and agitated than she was willing to betray. De Lude had, during the interview, suffered a few remarks to escape him from which she was enabled to guess whence the blow had come; and conscious of the enormity of her imprudence, she lost no time in confiding to her most confidential friends the difficulty of her position, and entreated them to discover some method by which she might escape its consequences.

As had been previously arranged with the Queen, Madame de Villars, at her audience of the King, had carefully abstained from betraying the share which his consort had taken in the intrigue, and had a.s.sumed to herself the very equivocal honour of the whole proceeding; and it was, consequently, against the d.u.c.h.ess alone that the anger of the favourite was excited. Even the Prince de Joinville was forgiven, when with protestations of repentance he threw himself at the feet of the Marquise, and implored her pardon--he could scarcely fail to be understood by such a woman, when he pleaded the extremes to which pa.s.sion and disappointment could urge an ardent nature--while the Duc de Bellegarde was no sooner informed by the Princesse de Conti that the fortune, and perhaps even the life, of her brother were involved in the affair, than he devoted himself to her cause.

We have already stated that the time was not one of unnecessary scruple, and the peril of the Marquise was imminent. The letters not only existed, but were in the hands of the King: no honest or simple remedy could be suggested for such a disaster; and thus, as it was imperative to clear Madame de Verneuil from blame in order to save the Prince, it was ultimately determined to deny the authenticity of the doc.u.ments, and to attribute the forgery to a secretary of the Duc de Guise, who was celebrated for his apt.i.tude in imitating every species of handwriting.

The attempt was hazardous; but the infatuation of Henry for the fascinating favourite was so well known, that the conspirators were a.s.sured of the eagerness with which he would welcome any explanation, however doubtful; and they accordingly instructed the Marquise boldly to disavow the authorship of the obnoxious packet. The advice was, unfortunately, somewhat tardy; as, in her first terror, Madame de Verneuil had declared her inability to deny that she had written the letters which had aroused the anger of the King; but she modified the admission, by declaring that her hand had betrayed her heart, and that she had never felt what, in a moment of pique and annoyance, she had permitted herself to express. These were, however, mere words; and she had no sooner become cognizant of the expedients suggested by her advisers than she resolved to gainsay them; and accordingly, without a moment's hesitation, she despatched a message to the monarch to entreat that he would allow her to justify herself.

For a few days Henry remained inexorable, but at length his pa.s.sion triumphed over his pride; and instead of summoning the Marquise to his presence as a criminal he proceeded to her residence, listened blindly to her explanations, became, or feigned to become, convinced by her arguments, and ultimately confessing himself to have been sufficiently credulous to be the culprit rather than the judge, he made a peace with his exulting mistress, which was cemented by a donation of six thousand livres.

As is usual in such cases, all the blame was now visited upon her accusers. Madame de Villars was exiled from the Court--a sentence to her almost as terrible as that of death, wedded as she was to a court-life, and by this unexpected result, separated from the Prince de Joinville, whose pardon she had hoped to secure by her apparent zeal for the honour of the monarch. The Prince himself was directed to proceed forthwith to Hungary to serve against the Turks; and the unfortunate secretary, who had been an unconscious instrument in the hands of the able conspirators, and whom it was necessary to consider guilty of a crime absolutely profitless to himself whatever might be its result, was committed to a prison; there to moralize at his leisure upon the vices of the great.

No mortification could, however, equal that of the Queen; who, having felt a.s.sured of the ruin of her rival, had incautiously betrayed her exultation in a manner better suited to a jealous wife than to an indignant sovereign; and who, when she became apprised of the reconciliation of the King with his wily mistress, expressed herself with so much warmth upon his wilful blindness, that a fortnight elapsed before they met again.

Nothing could be more ill-judged upon the part of Marie than this violence, as by estranging the King from herself she gave ample opportunity to the Marquise to resume her empire over his mind. It nevertheless appears certain that although he resented the sarcasms of the Queen, he was less the dupe of Madame de Verneuil than those about him imagined; he was fascinated, but not convinced; and it is probable that had Marie de Medicis at this moment sufficiently controlled her feelings to remain neuter, she might, for a time at least, have retained her truant husband under the spell of her own attractions. Such, however, was not the case; and between his suspicion of being deceived by his mistress, and his irritation at being openly taunted by his wife, the King, who shrank with morbid terror from domestic discomfort, instead of finding repose in the privacy of his own hearth, even while he was anxious to shake off the trammels by which he had been so long fettered, and to abandon a _liaison_ which had ceased to inspire him with confidence, only sought to escape by transferring his somewhat exhausted affections to a new object. The struggle was, however, a formidable one; for although the Marquise had forfeited his good opinion, she had not lost her powers of fascination; and she so well knew how to use them, that, despite his better reason, the sensual monarch still remained her slave.

Thus his life became at this period one of perpetual worry and annoyance. Marie, irritated by what she justly considered as a culpable weakness and want of dignity on the part of her royal consort, persisted in exhibiting her resentment, and in loading the favourite with every mark of contempt and obloquy; while Madame de Verneuil, in her turn, renewed her a.s.sertions of the illegality of the Queen's marriage, and the consequent illegitimacy of the Dauphin. The effect of such a feud may be readily imagined: the Court soon became divided into two distinct factions; and those among the great ladies and n.o.bles who frequented the circle of the Marquise were forbidden the entrance of the Queen's apartments. One intrigue succeeded another; and while Marie, with jealous vindictiveness, endeavoured to mar the fortunes of those who attached themselves to the party of Madame de Verneuil, the Marquise left no effort untried to injure the partisans of the Queen. This last rupture was an irrevocable one.[166]

In vain did Sully endeavour to restore peace. He could control the finances, and regulate the defences of a great nation; but he was as powerless as the King himself when he sought to fuse such jarring elements as these in the social crucible; and while he was still striving against hope to weaken, even if he could not wholly destroy, an animosity which endangered the dignity of the crown, and the respect due to one of the most powerful monarchs of Christendom, that monarch himself, wearied of a strife which he had not the moral courage either to terminate or to sustain, sought consolation for his trials in the smiles of Mademoiselle de Sourdis,[167] whose favour he purchased by giving her in marriage to the Comte d'Estanges. This caprice, engendered rather by _ennui_ than affection, was, however, soon terminated, as the new favourite could not, either personally or mentally, sustain a comparison with Madame de Verneuil; and great coldness still existed between the royal couple when the Court removed to Blois.

During the sojourn of their Majesties in that city, a misunderstanding infinitely more serious than any by which it had been preceded took place between them; and at length became so threatening, that although the night was far advanced, the King despatched D'Armagnac, his first valet-de-chambre, to desire the immediate presence of M. de Sully at the castle. Singularly enough, the Duke in his Memoirs affects a morbid reluctance even to allude to this outbreak, and professes his determination, in accordance with his promise to that effect made to both parties, not to reveal the subject of dispute; while at the same time he admits that, after a long interview with Henry, he spent the remainder of the night in pa.s.sing from one chamber to the other, endeavouring to restore harmony between the royal pair, during which attempt many of the attendants of the Court were enabled at intervals to hear all parties mention the names of the Grand Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Florence, the d.u.c.h.ess of Mantua, Virgilio Ursino, Don Juan de Medicis, the Duc de Bellegarde, Joannini, Concini, Leonora, Trainel, Vinti, Caterina Selvaggio,[168] Gondy, and more frequently still, of Madame de Verneuil;[169] a circ.u.mstance which was quite sufficient to dispel all mystery, as it at once became evident to those who mentally combined these significant names, that the royal quarrel was a recriminatory one, and that while the Queen was indulging in invectives against the Marquise, and her champion M. le Grand, the King retorted by reproaching her with the insolence of her Italian favourites, and her own weak submission to their thrall.[170]

Capefigue, in his history, has shown less desire than Sully to envelop this royal quarrel in mystery; and plainly a.s.serts, although without quoting his authority for such a declaration, that after mutual reproaches had pa.s.sed between Henry and his wife, the Queen became so enraged that she sprang out of bed, and throwing herself upon the monarch, severely scratched him in the face; a violence which he immediately repaid with interest, and which induced him to summon the minister to the palace, whose first care was to prevail upon the King to retire to another apartment.[171]

Marie, exasperated by the persevering infidelity of her husband, considered herself, with some reason, as the aggrieved party: she had given a Dauphin to France; her fair fame was untainted; and she persisted in enforcing her right to retain and protect her Tuscan attendants. Henry, on his part, was equally unyielding; and it was, as we have already shown, several hours before the bewildered minister of finance could succeed in restoring even a semblance of peace. To every argument which he advanced the Queen replied by enumerating the libertine adventures of her husband (with the whole of which she proved herself to be unhappily only too familiar), and by declaring that she would one day take ample vengeance on his mistresses; strong in the conviction that to whatever acts of violence she might be induced by the insults heaped upon her, no rightly thinking person would be found to condemn so just a revenge.[172]

This declaration, let Sully modify it as he might, could but aggravate the anger of the King; and accordingly, he replied by a threat of banishing his wife to one of his distant palaces, and even of sending her back to Florence, with the whole of her foreign attendants.

From this project, if he really ever seriously entertained it, Henry was, however, at once dissuaded by his minister; who, less blinded by pa.s.sion than himself, instantly recognised its enormity when proportioned to the offence which it was intended to punish; and consequently he did not hesitate to represent the odium which so unjust a measure must call down upon the head of the King.[173] The Queen, whose irritation had reached its climax, was less easily persuaded; or the astute Concini, who was ever daring where his personal fortunes might be benefited, sacrificed his royal mistress to his own interests; for we find it recorded that some time subsequently, when Madame de Verneuil was residing at her hotel in Paris, the Florentine favourite privately informed the monarch that Marie had engaged some persons on whom she could rely, to insult the Marquise; upon which Henry, after expressing his thanks for the communication, caused the favourite to leave the city under a strong escort.[174]

Had the King been less unscrupulously inconstant, there is, however, no doubt that Marie de Medicis, from the strict propriety of her conduct to the last, and under every provocation, would ultimately have become an attached and devoted wife. Her ambition was satisfied, and her heart interested, in her maternal duties; but the open and unblushing licentiousness with which Henry pursued his numerous and frequently ign.o.ble intrigues, irritated her naturally excitable temper, and consequently tended to throw her more completely into the power of the ambitious Italians by whom she was surrounded; among whom the most influential was Madame de Concini, a woman of firm mind, engaging manners, and strong national prejudices, who, in following the fortunes of her ill.u.s.trious foster-sister, had deceived herself into the belief that they would be almost without a cloud; and it is therefore probable that a disappointment in this expectation, which, moreover, involved her own personal interests, rendered her bitter in her judgment of the _debonnaire_ and reckless monarch who showed himself so indifferent to the attractions of her idolized mistress.

The subsequent ingrat.i.tude of Marie, indeed, only tends to increase the admiration of a dispa.s.sionate critic for the ill-requited Leonora; to whom it would appear, after a close a.n.a.lysis of her character, that ample justice has never yet been done; for ambitious as she was, it is certain that this unfortunate woman ever sought the welfare of the Queen, to whom she owed her advancement in life, even when the more short-sighted selfishness of her husband would have induced him to sacrifice all other considerations to his own insatiable thirst for power.

Unfortunately, however, the very excess of her affection rendered her a dangerous adviser to the indignant and neglected Princess, from whose private circle Henry at this period almost wholly absented himself.

Nor were these domestic anxieties the only ones against which the French King had to contend at this particular crisis; for while the Court circle had been absorbed in banquets and festivals, the seeds of civil war, sown by a few of the still discontented n.o.bles, began to germinate; and Henry constantly received intelligence of seditious movements in the provinces. On the banks of the Loire and the Garonne the symptoms of disaffection had already ceased to be problematical; while at La Roch.e.l.le and Limoges the inhabitants had a.s.saulted the government officers who sought to levy an obnoxious tax.

Little doubt existed in the minds of the monarch and his ministers that these hostile demonstrations were encouraged, if not suggested, by the secret agents of Philip III of Spain, and the Duke of Savoy, who had been busily engaged some time previously in dissuading the Swiss and Grisons from renewing the alliance which they had formed with Henri III, and which became void at his death. This attempt was, however, frustrated by an offer made to them by Sillery of a million in gold, as payment of the debt still due to them from the French government for their past services; which enormous sum reached them through the hands of the Duc de Biron, to whom, as well as to the memory of his father, the old Marechal, many of the Switzers were strongly and personally attached.

Day by day, also, the King had still more serious cause of apprehension, having ascertained almost beyond a doubt that the Duc de Bouillon, the head of the Huguenot party, who were incensed against Henry for having deserted their faith, was secretly engaged in a treaty with Spain, Savoy, and England, a circ.u.mstance rendered doubly dangerous from the fact that the Protestants still held several fortified places in Guienne, Languedoc, and other provinces, which would necessarily, should the negotiation prove successful, be delivered into his hands. There can be no doubt, moreover, that the monarch keenly felt the ingrat.i.tude of this n.o.ble, whom he had himself raised to the independent sovereignty of the duchy whence he derived his t.i.tle; but his mortification was increased upon ascertaining that the Marechal de Biron, who had been one of his most familiar friends, and in whose good-faith and loyalty he had ever placed implicit trust, was also numbered among his enemies, and endeavouring to secure his own personal advancement by betraying his master.