Catherine De Medici, Honoré de Balzac [best short novels of all time TXT] 📗

would have died had it not been for the devotion and prompt courage of Ambroise Pare. "The duke is not dead, gentlemen," he said to the weeping attendants, "but he soon will die if I dare not treat him as I would a dead man; and I shall risk doing so, no matter what it may cost me in the end. See!" And with that he put his left foot on the duke's breast, took the broken wooden end of the lance in his fingers, shook and loosened it by degrees in the wound, and finally succeeded in drawing out the iron head, as if he were handling a thing and not a man. Though he saved the prince by this heroic treatment, he could not prevent the horrible scar which gave the great soldier his nickname,--Le Balafre, the Scarred. This name descended to the son, and for a similar reason.

Absolutely masters of Francois II., whom his wife ruled through their mutual and excessive passion, these two great Lorrain princes, the duke and the cardinal, were masters of France, and had no other enemy at court than Catherine de' Medici. No great statesmen ever played a closer or more watchful game.

The mutual position of the ambitious widow of Henri II. and the ambitious house of Lorraine was pictured, as it were, to the eye by a scene which took place on the terrace of the chateau de Blois very early in the morning of the day on which Christophe Lecamus was destined to arrive there. The queen-mother, who feigned an extreme attachment to the Guises, had asked to be informed of the news brought by the three _seigneurs_ coming from three different parts of the kingdom; but she had the mortification of being courteously dismissed by the cardinal. She then walked to the parterres which overhung the Loire, where she was building, under the superintendence of her astrologer, Ruggieri, an observatory, which is still standing, and from which the eye may range over the whole landscape of that delightful valley. The two Lorrain princes were at the other end of the terrace, facing the Vendomois, which overlooks the upper part of the town, the perch of the Bretons, and the postern gate of the chateau.

Catherine had deceived the two brothers by pretending to a slight displeasure; for she was in reality very well pleased to have an opportunity to speak to one of the three young men who had arrived in such haste. This was a young nobleman named Chiverni, apparently a tool of the cardinal, in reality a devoted servant of Catherine. Catherine also counted among her devoted servants two Florentine nobles, the Gondi; but they were so suspected by the Guises that she dared not send them on any errand away from the court, where she kept them, watched, it is true, in all their words and actions, but where at least they were able to watch and study the Guises and counsel Catherine. These two Florentines maintained in the interests of the queen-mother another Italian, Birago,--a clever Piedmontese, who pretended, with Chiverni, to have abandoned their mistress, and gone over to the Guises, who encouraged their enterprises and employed them to watch Catherine.

Chiverni had come from Paris and Ecouen. The last to arrive was Saint-Andre, who was marshal of France and became so important that the Guises, whose creature he was, made him the third person in the triumvirate they formed the following year against Catherine. The other _seigneur_ who had arrived during the night was Vieilleville, also a creature of the Guises and a marshal of France, who was returning from a secret mission known only to the Grand Master, who had entrusted it to him. As for Saint-Andre, he was in charge of military measures taken with the object of driving all Reformers under arms into Amboise; a scheme which now formed the subject of a council held by the duke and cardinal, Birago, Chiverni, Vieilleville, and Saint-Andre. As the two Lorrains employed Birago, it is to be supposed that they relied upon their own powers; for they knew of his attachment to the queen-mother. At this singular epoch the double part played by many of the political men of the day was well known to both parties; they were like cards in the hands of gamblers,--the cleverest player won the game. During this council the two brothers maintained the most impenetrable reserve. A conversation which now took place between Catherine and certain of her friends will explain the object of this council, held by the Guises in the open air, in the hanging gardens, at break of day, as if they feared to speak within the walls of the chateau de Blois.

The queen-mother, under pretence of examining the observatory then in process of construction, walked in that direction accompanied by the two Gondis, glancing with a suspicious and inquisitive eye at the group of enemies who were still standing at the farther end of the terrace, and from whom Chiverni now detached himself to join the queen-mother. She was then at the corner of the terrace which looks down upon the Church of Saint-Nicholas; there, at least, there could be no danger of the slightest overhearing. The wall of the terrace is on a level with the towers of the church, and the Guises invariably held their council at the farther corner of the same terrace at the base of the great unfinished keep or dungeon,--going and returning between the Perchoir des Bretons and the gallery by the bridge which joined them to the gardens. No one was within sight. Chiverni raised the hand of the queen-mother to kiss it, and as he did so he slipped a little note from his hand to hers, without being observed by the two Italians. Catherine turned to the angle of the parapet and read as follows:--

You are powerful enough to hold the balance between the leaders
and to force them into a struggle as to who shall serve you; your
house is full of kings, and you have nothing to fear from the
Lorrains or the Bourbons provided you pit them one against the
other, for both are striving to snatch the crown from your
children. Be the mistress and not the servant of your counsellors;
support them, in turn, one against the other, or the kingdom will
go from bad to worse, and mighty wars may come of it.

L'Hopital.

The queen put the letter in the hollow of her corset, resolving to burn it as soon as she was alone.

"When did you see him?" she asked Chiverni.

"On my way back from visiting the Connetable, at Melun, where I met him with the Duchesse de Berry, whom he was most impatient to convey to Savoie, that he might return here and open the eyes of the chancellor Olivier, who is now completely duped by the Lorrains. As soon as Monsieur l'Hopital saw the true object of the Guises he determined to support your interests. That is why he is so anxious to get here and give you his vote at the councils."

"Is he sincere?" asked Catherine. "You know very well that if the Lorrains have put him in the council it is that he may help them to reign."

"L'Hopital is a Frenchman who comes of too good a stock not to be honest and sincere," said Chiverni; "Besides, his note is a sufficiently strong pledge."

"What answer did the Connetable send to the Guises?"

"He replied that he was the servant of the king and would await his orders. On receiving that answer the cardinal, to suppress all resistance, determined to propose the appointment of his brother as lieutenant-general of the kingdom."

"Have they got as far as that?" exclaimed Catherine, alarmed. "Well, did Monsieur l'Hopital send me no other message?"

"He told me to say to you, madame, that you alone could stand between the Crown and the Guises."

"Does he think that I ought to use the Huguenots as a weapon?"

"Ah! madame," cried Chiverni, surprised at such astuteness, "we never dreamed of casting you into such difficulties."

"Does he know the position I am in?" asked the queen, calmly.

"Very nearly. He thinks you were duped after the death of the king into accepting that castle on Madame Diane's overthrow. The Guises consider themselves released toward the queen by having satisfied the woman."

"Yes," said the queen, looking at the two Gondi, "I made a blunder."

"A blunder of the gods," replied Charles de Gondi.

"Gentlemen," said Catherine, "if I go over openly to the Reformers I shall become the slave of a party."

"Madame," said Chiverni, eagerly, "I approve entirely of your meaning. You must use them, but not serve them."

"Though your support does, undoubtedly, for the time being lie there," said Charles de Gondi, "we must not conceal from ourselves that success and defeat are both equally perilous."

"I know it," said the queen; "a single false step would be a pretext on which the Guises would seize at once to get rid of me."

"The niece of a Pope, the mother of four Valois, a queen of France, the widow of the most ardent persecutor of the Huguenots, an Italian Catholic, the aunt of Leo X.,--can _she_ ally herself with the Reformation?" asked Charles de Gondi.

"But," said his brother Albert, "if she seconds the Guises does she not play into the hands of a usurpation? We have to do with men who see a crown to seize in the coming struggle between Catholicism and Reform. It is possible to support the Reformers without abjuring."

"Reflect, madame, that your family, which ought to have been wholly devoted to the king of France, is at this moment the servant of the king of Spain; and to-morrow it will be that of the Reformation if the Reformation could make a king of the Duke of Florence."

"I am certainly disposed to lend a hand, for a time, to the Huguenots," said Catherine, "if only to revenge myself on that soldier and that priest and that woman!" As she spoke, she called attention with her subtile Italian glance to the duke and cardinal, and then to the second floor of the chateau on which were the apartments of her son and Mary Stuart. "That trio has taken from my hands the reins of State, for which I waited long while the old woman filled my place," she said gloomily, glancing toward Chenonceaux, the chateau she had lately exchanged with Diane de Poitiers against that of Chaumont. "_Ma_," she added in Italian, "it seems that these reforming gentry in Geneva have not the wit to address themselves to me; and, on my conscience, I cannot go to them. Not one of you would dare to risk carrying them a message!" She stamped her foot. "I did hope you would have met the cripple at Ecouen--_he_ has sense," she said to Chiverni.

"The Prince de Conde was there, madame," said Chiverni, "but he could not persuade the Connetable to join him. Monsieur de Montmorency wants to overthrow the Guises, who have sent him into exile, but he will not encourage heresy."

"What will ever break these individual wills which are forever thwarting royalty? God's truth!" exclaimed the queen, "the great nobles must be made to destroy each other, as Louis XI., the greatest of your kings, did with those of his time. There are four or five parties now in this kingdom, and the weakest of them is that of my children."

"The Reformation is an _idea_," said Charles de