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

to which she replied by an affirmative sign. The king did not ask his mother the meaning of this conference, but he returned to his seat and kept silence, darting terrible looks of anger and suspicion all about him.

This little circumstance seemed of enormous consequence in the eyes of the courtiers; and, in truth, so marked an exercise of power by the queen-mother, without reference to the king, was like a drop of water overflowing the cup. Queen Elizabeth and the Comtesse de Fiesque now retired, but the king paid no attention to their movements, though the queen-mother rose and attended her daughter-in-law to the door; after which the courtiers, understanding that their presence was unwelcome, took their leave. By ten o'clock no one remained in the hall but a few intimates,--the two Gondis, Tavannes, Solern, Birago, the king, and the queen-mother.

The king sat plunged in the blackest melancholy. The silence was oppressive. Catherine seemed embarrassed. She wished to leave the room, and waited for the king to escort her to the door; but he still continued obstinately lost in thought. At last she rose to bid him good-night, and Charles IX. was forced to do likewise. As she took his arm and made a few steps toward the door, she bent to his ear and whispered:--

"Monsieur, I have important things to say to you."

Passing a mirror on her way, she glanced into it and made a sign with her eyes to the two Gondis, which escaped the king's notice, for he was at the moment exchanging looks of intelligence with the Comte de Solern and Villeroy. Tavannes was thoughtful.

"Sire," said the latter, coming out of his reverie, "I think you are royally ennuyed; don't you ever amuse yourself now? _Vive Dieu_! have you forgotten the times when we used to vagabondize about the streets at night?"

"Ah! those were the good old times!" said the king, with a sigh.

"Why not bring them back?" said Birago, glancing significantly at the Gondis as he took his leave.

"Yes, I always think of those days with pleasure," said Albert de Gondi, Duc de Retz.

"I'd like to see you on the roofs once more, monsieur le duc," remarked Tavannes. "Damned Italian cat! I wish he might break his neck!" he added in a whisper to the king.

"I don't know which of us two could climb the quickest in these days," replied de Gondi; "but one thing I do know, that neither of us fears to die."

"Well, sire, will you start upon a frolic in the streets to-night, as you did in the days of your youth?" said the other Gondi, master of the Wardrobe.

The days of his youth! so at twenty-four years of age the wretched king seemed no longer young to any one, not even to his flatterers!

Tavannes and his master now reminded each other, like two school-boys, of certain pranks they had played in Paris, and the evening's amusement was soon arranged. The two Italians, challenged to climb roofs, and jump from one to another across alleys and streets, wagered that they would follow the king wherever he went. They and Tavannes went off to change their clothes. The Comte de Solern, left alone with the king, looked at him in amazement. Though the worthy German, filled with compassion for the hapless position of the king of France, was honor and fidelity itself, he was certainly not quick of perception. Charles IX., surrounded by hostile persons, unable to trust any one, not even his wife (who had been guilty of some indiscretions, unaware as she was that his mother and his servants were his enemies), had been fortunate enough to find in Monsieur de Solern a faithful friend in whom he could place entire confidence. Tavannes and Villeroy were trusted with only a part of the king's secrets. The Comte de Solern alone knew the whole of the plan which he was now about to carry out. This devoted friend was also useful to his master, in possessing a body of discreet and affectionate followers, who blindly obeyed his orders. He commanded a detachment of the archers of the guards, and for the last few days he had been sifting out the men who were faithfully attached to the king, in order to make a company of tried men when the need came. The king took thought of everything.

"Why are you surprised, Solern?" he said. "You know very well I need a pretext to be out to-night. It is true, I have Madame de Belleville, but this is better; for who knows whether my mother does not hear of all that goes on at Marie's?"

Monsieur de Solern, who was to follow the king, asked if he might not take a few of his Germans to patrol the streets, and Charles consented. About eleven o'clock the king, who was now very gay, set forth with his three courtiers,--namely, Tavannes and the two Gondis.

"I'll go and take my little Marie by surprise," said Charles IX. to Tavannes, "as we pass through the rue de l'Autruche." That street being on the way to the rue Saint-Honore, it would have been strange indeed for the king to pass the house of his love without stopping.

Looking out for a chance of mischief,--a belated burgher to frighten, or a watchman to thrash--the king went along with his nose in the air, watching all the lighted windows to see what was happening, and striving to hear the conversations. But alas! he found his good city of Paris in a state of deplorable tranquillity. Suddenly, as he passed the house of a perfumer named Rene, who supplied the court, the king, noticing a strong light from a window in the roof, was seized by one of those apparently hasty inspirations which, to some minds, suggest a previous intention.

This perfumer was strongly suspected of curing rich uncles who thought themselves ill. The court laid at his door the famous "Elixir of Inheritance," and even accused him of poisoning Jeanne d'Albret, mother of Henri of Navarre, who was buried (in spite of Charles IX.'s positive order) without her head being opened. For the last two months the king had sought some way of sending a spy into Rene's laboratory, where, as he was well aware, Cosmo Ruggiero spent much time. The king intended, if anything suspicious were discovered, to proceed in the matter alone, without the assistance of the police or law, with whom, as he well knew, his mother would counteract him by means of either corruption or fear.

It is certain that during the sixteenth century, and the years that preceded and followed it, poisoning was brought to a perfection unknown to modern chemistry, as history itself will prove. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was, at this period, the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many of which are now lost. Hence the reputation for that crime which weighed for the two following centuries on Italy. Romance-writers have so greatly abused it that wherever they have introduced Italians into their tales they have almost always made them play the part of assassins and poisoners.[*] If Italy then had the traffic in subtle poisons which some historians attribute to her, we should remember her supremacy in the art of toxicology, as we do her pre-eminence in all other human knowledge and art in which she took the lead in Europe. The crimes of that period were not her crimes specially. She served the passions of the age, just as she built magnificent edifices, commanded armies, painted noble frescos, sang romances, loved queens, delighted kings, devised ballets and fetes, and ruled all policies. The horrible art of poisoning reached to such a pitch in Florence that a woman, dividing a peach with a duke, using a golden fruit-knife with one side of its blade poisoned, ate one half of the peach herself and killed the duke with the other half. A pair of perfumed gloves were known to have infiltrated mortal illness through the pores of the skin. Poison was instilled into bunches of natural roses, and the fragrance, when inhaled, gave death. Don John of Austria was poisoned, it was said, by a pair of boots.


[*] Written sixty-six years ago.--Tr.


Charles IX. had good reason to be curious in the matter; we know already the dark suspicions and beliefs which now prompted him to surprise the perfumer Rene at his work.

The old fountain at the corner of the rue de l'Arbre-See, which has since been rebuilt, offered every facility for the royal vagabonds to climb upon the roof of a house not far from that of Rene, which the king wished to visit. Charles, followed by his companions, began to ramble over the roofs, to the great terror of the burghers awakened by the tramp of these false thieves, who called to them in saucy language, listened to their talk, and even pretended to force an entrance. When the Italians saw the king and Tavannes threading their way among the roofs of the house next to that of Rene, Albert de Gondi sat down, declaring that he was tired, and his brother followed his example.

"So much the better," thought the king, glad to leave his spies behind him.

Tavannes began to laugh at the two Florentines, left sitting alone in the midst of deep silence, in a place where they had nought but the skies above them, and the cats for auditors. But the brothers made use of their position to exchange thoughts they would not dare to utter on any other spot in the world,--thoughts inspired by the events of the evening.

"Albert," said the Grand-master to the marechal, "the king will get the better of the queen-mother; we are doing a foolish thing for our own interests to stay by those of Catherine. If we go over to the king now, when he is searching everywhere for support against her and for able men to serve him, we shall not be driven away like wild beasts when the queen-mother is banished, imprisoned, or killed."

"You wouldn't get far with such ideas, Charles," replied the marechal, gravely. "You'd follow the king into the grave, and he won't live long; he is ruined by excesses. Cosmo Ruggiero predicts his death within a year."

"The dying boar has often killed the huntsman," said Charles de Gondi. "This conspiracy of the Duc d'Alencon, the king of Navarre, and the Prince de Conde, with whom La Mole and Coconnas are negotiating, is more dangerous than useful. In the first place, the king of Navarre, whom the queen-mother hoped to catch in the very act, distrusts her, and declines to run his head into the noose. He means to profit by the conspiracy without taking any of its risks. Besides, the notion now is to put the crown on the head of the Duc d'Alencon, who has turned Calvinist."

"_Budelone_! but don't you see that this conspiracy enables the queen-mother to find out what the Huguenots can do with the Duc d'Alencon, and what the king can do with the Huguenots?--for the king is even now negotiating with them; but he'll be finely pilloried to-morrow, when Catherine reveals to him the counter-conspiracy which will neutralize all his projects."

"Ah!" exclaimed Charles de Gondi, "by dint of profiting by our advice she's clever and stronger than we! Well, that's all right."

"All right for the Duc d'Anjou, who prefers to be king of France rather than king of Poland; I am going now to explain the matter to him."

"When do you start, Albert?"

"To-morrow. I am ordered to accompany the king of Poland; and I expect to join him