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

have faith," replied Chaudieu.

At this moment the hall presented a scene of animated groups, all discussing the question of the proposed assembly, to which the few words said by the queen had already given the name of the "Colloquy of Poissy." Catherine glanced at Chaudieu and was able to say to him unheard:--

"Yes, a new faith!"

"Ah, madame, if you were not blinded by your alliance with the court of Rome, you would see that we are returning to the true doctrines of Jesus Christ, who, recognizing the equality of souls, bestows upon all men equal rights on earth."

"Do you think yourself the equal of Calvin?" asked the queen, shrewdly. "No, no; we are equals only in church. What! would you unbind the tie of the people to the throne?" she cried. "Then you are not only heretics, you are revolutionists,--rebels against obedience to the king as you are against that to the Pope!" So saying, she left Chaudieu abruptly and returned to Theodore de Beze. "I count on you, monsieur," she said, "to conduct this colloquy in good faith. Take all the time you need."

"I had supposed," said Chaudieu to the Prince de Conde, the King of Navarre, and Admiral Coligny, as they left the hall, "that a great State matter would be treated more seriously."

"Oh! we know very well what you want," exclaimed the Prince de Conde, exchanging a sly look with Theodore de Beze.

The prince now left his adherents to attend a rendezvous. This great leader of a party was also one of the most favored gallants of the court. The two choice beauties of that day were even then striving with such desperate eagerness for his affections that one of them, the Marechale de Saint-Andre, the wife of the future triumvir, gave him her beautiful estate of Saint-Valery, hoping to win him away from the Duchesse de Guise, the wife of the man who had tried to take his head on the scaffold. The duchess, not being able to detach the Duc de Nemours from Mademoiselle de Rohan, fell in love, _en attendant_, with the leader of the Reformers.

"What a contrast to Geneva!" said Chaudieu to Theodore de Beze, as they crossed the little bridge of the Louvre.

"The people here are certainly gayer than the Genevese. I don't see why they should be so treacherous," replied de Beze.

"To treachery oppose treachery," replied Chaudieu, whispering the words in his companion's ear. "I have _saints_ in Paris on whom I can rely, and I intend to make Calvin a prophet. Christophe Lecamus shall deliver us from our most dangerous enemy."

"The queen-mother, for whom the poor devil endured his torture, has already, with a high hand, caused him to be appointed solicitor to the Parliament; and solicitors make better prosecutors than murderers. Don't you remember how Avenelles betrayed the secrets of our first uprising?"

"I know Christophe," said Chaudieu, in a positive tone, as he turned to leave the envoy from Geneva.


XV. COMPENSATION

A few days after the reception of Calvin's emissaries by the queen, that is to say, toward the close of the year (for the year then began at Easter and the present calendar was not adopted until later in the reign of Charles IX.), Christophe reclined in an easy chair beside the fire in the large brown hall, dedicated to family life, that overlooked the river in his father's house, where the present drama was begun. His feet rested on a stool; his mother and Babette Lallier had just renewed the compresses, saturated with a solution brought by Ambroise Pare, who was charged by Catherine de' Medici to take care of the young man. Once restored to his family, Christophe became the object of the most devoted care. Babette, authorized by her father, came very morning and only left the Lecamus household at night. Christophe, the admiration of the apprentices, gave rise throughout the quarter to various tales, which invested him with mysterious poesy. He had borne the worst torture; the celebrated Ambroise Pare was employing all his skill to cure him. What great deed had he done to be thus treated? Neither Christophe nor his father said a word on the subject. Catherine, then all-powerful, was concerned in their silence as well as the Prince de Conde. The constant visits of Pare, now chief surgeon of both the king and the house of Guise, whom the queen-mother and the Lorrains allowed to treat a youth accused of heresy, strangely complicated an affair through which no one saw clearly. Moreover, the rector of Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs came several times to visit the son of his church-warden, and these visits made the causes of Christophe's present condition still more unintelligible to his neighbors.

The old syndic, who had his plan, gave evasive answers to his brother-furriers, the merchants of the neighborhood, and to all friends who spoke to him of his son: "Yes, I am very thankful to have saved him."--"Well, you know, it won't do to put your finger between the bark and the tree."--"My son touched fire and came near burning up my house."--"They took advantage of his youth; we burghers get nothing but shame and evil by frequenting the grandees."--"This affair decides me to make a lawyer of Christophe; the practice of law will teach him to weigh his words and his acts."--"The young queen, who is now in Scotland, had a great deal to do with it; but then, to be sure, my son may have been imprudent."--"I have had cruel anxieties."--"All this may decide me to give up my business; I do not wish ever to go to court again."--"My son has had enough of the Reformation; it has cracked all his joints. If it had not been for Ambroise, I don't know what would have become of me."

Thanks to these ambiguous remarks and to the great discretion of such conduct, it was generally averred in the neighborhood that Christophe had seen the error of his ways; everybody thought it natural that the old syndic should wish to get his son appointed to the Parliament, and the rector's visits no longer seemed extraordinary. As the neighbors reflected on the old man's anxieties they no longer thought, as they would otherwise have done, that his ambition was inordinate. The young lawyer, who had lain helpless for months on the bed which his family made up for him in the old hall, was now, for the last week, able to rise and move about by the aid of crutches. Babette's love and his mother's tenderness had deeply touched his heart; and they, while they had him helpless in their hands, lectured him severely on religion. President de Thou paid his godson a visit during which he showed himself most fatherly. Christophe, being now a solicitor of the Parliament, must of course, he said, be Catholic; his oath would bind him to that; and the president, who assumed not to doubt of his godson's orthodoxy, ended his remarks by saying with great earnestness:

"My son, you have been cruelly tried. I am myself ignorant of the reasons which made the Messieurs de Guise treat you thus; but I advise you in future to live peacefully, without entering into the troubles of the times; for the favor of the king and queen will not be shown to the makers of revolt. You are not important enough to play fast and loose with the king as the Guises do. If you wish to be some day counsellor to the Parliament remember that you cannot obtain that noble office unless by a real and serious attachment to the royal cause."

Nevertheless, neither President de Thou's visit, nor the seductions of Babette, nor the urgency of his mother, were sufficient to shake the constancy of the martyr of the Reformation. Christophe held to his religion all the more because he had suffered for it.

"My father will never let me marry a heretic," whispered Babette in his ear.

Christophe answered only by tears, which made the young girl silent and thoughtful.

Old Lecamus maintained his paternal and magisterial dignity; he observed his son and said little. The stern old man, after recovering his dear Christophe, was dissatisfied with himself; he repented the tenderness he had shown for this only son; but he admired him secretly. At no period of his life did the syndic pull more wires to reach his ends, for he saw the field ripe for the harvest so painfully sown, and he wanted to gather the whole of it. Some days before the morning of which we write, he had had, being alone with Christophe, a long conversation with him in which he endeavored to discover the secret reason of the young man's resistance. Christophe, who was not without ambition, betrayed his faith in the Prince de Conde. The generous promise of the prince, who, of course, was only exercising his profession of prince, remained graven on his heart; little did he think that Conde had sent him, mentally, to the devil in Orleans, muttering, "A Gascon would have understood me better," when Christophe called out a touching farewell as the prince passed the window of his dungeon.

But besides this sentiment of admiration for the prince, Christophe had also conceived a profound reverence for the great queen, who had explained to him by a single look the necessity which compelled her to sacrifice him; and who during his agony had given him an illimitable promise in a single tear. During the silent months of his weakness, as he lay there waiting for recovery, he thought over each event at Blois and at Orleans. He weighed, one might almost say in spite of himself, the relative worth of these two protections. He floated between the queen and the prince. He had certainly served Catherine more than he had served the Reformation, and in a young man both heart and mind would naturally incline toward the queen; less because she was a queen than because she was a woman. Under such circumstances a man will always hope more from a woman than from a man.

"I sacrificed myself for her; what will she do for me?"

This question Christophe put to himself almost involuntarily as he remembered the tone in which she had said the words, _Povero mio_! It is difficult to believe how egotistical a man can become when he lies on a bed of sickness. Everything, even the exclusive devotion of which he is the object, drives him to think only of himself. By exaggerating in his own mind the obligation which the Prince de Conde was under to him he had come to expect that some office would be given to him at the court of Navarre. Still new to the world of political life, he forgot its contending interests and the rapid march of events which control and force the hand of all leaders of parties; he forgot it the more because he was practically a prisoner in solitary confinement on his bed in that old brown room. Each party is, necessarily, ungrateful while the struggle lasts; when it triumphs it has too many persons to reward not to be ungrateful still. Soldiers submit to this ingratitude; but their leaders turn against the new master at whose side they have acted and suffered like equals for so long. Christophe, who alone remembered his sufferings, felt himself already among the leaders of the Reformation by the fact of his martyrdom. His father, that old fox of commerce, so shrewd, so perspicacious, ended by divining the secret thought of his son; consequently, all his manoeuvres were now based on the natural expectancy to which Christophe had yielded himself.

"Wouldn't it be a fine thing," he had said to Babette,