On Monday, the 18th of August, 1572,
there was a splendid festival at the Louvre.
The ordinarily gloomy windows of the
ancient royal residence were brilliantly lighted,
and the squares and streets adjacent, usually so solitary
after Saint Germain l’Auxerrois had struck the
hour of nine, were crowded with people, although it
was past midnight.
The vast, threatening, eager, turbulent
throng resembled, in the darkness, a black and tumbling
sea, each billow of which makes a roaring breaker;
this sea, flowing through the Rue des Fossés
Saint Germain and the Rue de l’Astruce and covering
the quay, surged against the base of the walls of
the Louvre, and, in its refluent tide, against the
Hôtel de Bourbon, which faced it on the other side.
In spite of the royal festival, and
perhaps even because of the royal festival, there
was something threatening in the appearance of the
people, for no doubt was felt that this imposing ceremony
which called them there as spectators, was only the
prelude to another in which they would participate
a week later as invited guests and amuse themselves
with all their hearts.
The court was celebrating the marriage
of Madame Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Henry
II. and sister of King Charles IX., with Henry de
Bourbon, King of Navarre. In truth, that very
morning, on a stage erected at the entrance to Notre-Dame,
the Cardinal de Bourbon had united the young couple
with the usual ceremonial observed at the marriages
of the royal daughters of France.
This marriage had astonished every
one, and occasioned much surmise to certain persons
who saw clearer than others. They found it difficult
to understand the union of two parties who hated each
other so thoroughly as did, at this moment, the Protestant
party and the Catholic party; and they wondered how
the young Prince de Condé could forgive the Duc
d’Anjou, the King’s brother, for the death
of his father, assassinated at Jarnac by Montesquiou.
They asked how the young Duc de Guise could pardon
Admiral de Coligny for the death of his father, assassinated
at Orléans by Poltrot de Méré.
Moreover, Jeanne de Navarre, the weak
Antoine de Bourbon’s courageous wife, who had
conducted her son Henry to the royal marriage awaiting
him, had died scarcely two months before, and singular
reports had been spread abroad as to her sudden death.
It was everywhere whispered, and in some places said
aloud, that she had discovered some terrible secret;
and that Catharine de Médicis, fearing its disclosure,
had poisoned her with perfumed gloves, which had been
made by a man named Réné, a Florentine deeply skilled
in such matters. This report was the more widely
spread and believed when, after this great queen’s
death, at her son’s request, two celebrated
physicians, one of whom was the famous Ambroise Paré,
were instructed to open and examine the body, but not
the skull. As Jeanne de Navarre had been poisoned
by a perfume, only the brain could show any trace
of the crime (the one part excluded from dissection).
We say crime, for no one doubted that a crime had been
committed.
This was not all. King Charles
in particular had, with a persistency almost approaching
obstinacy, urged this marriage, which not only reëstablished
peace in his kingdom, but also attracted to Paris the
principal Huguenots of France. As the two betrothed
belonged one to the Catholic religion and the other
to the reformed religion, they had been obliged to
obtain a dispensation from Gregory XIII., who then
filled the papal chair. The dispensation was
slow in coming, and the delay had caused the late
Queen of Navarre great uneasiness. She one day
expressed to Charles IX. her fears lest the dispensation
should not arrive; to which the King replied:
“Have no anxiety, my dear aunt.
I honor you more than I do the Pope, and I love my
sister more than I fear him. I am not a Huguenot,
neither am I a blockhead; and if the Pope makes a
fool of himself, I will myself take Margot by the
hand, and have her married to your son in some Protestant
meeting-house!”
This speech was soon spread from the
Louvre through the city, and, while it greatly rejoiced
the Huguenots, had given the Catholics something to
think about; they asked one another, in a whisper,
if the King was really betraying them or was only
playing a comedy which some fine morning or evening
might have an unexpected ending.
Charles IX.’s conduct toward
Admiral de Coligny, who for five or six years had
been so bitterly opposed to the King, appeared particularly
inexplicable; after having put on his head a price
of a hundred and fifty thousand golden crowns, the
King now swore by him, called him his father, and
declared openly that he should in future confide the
conduct of the war to him alone. To such a pitch
was this carried that Catharine de Médicis herself,
who until then had controlled the young prince’s
actions, will, and even desires, seemed to be growing
really uneasy, and not without reason; for, in a moment
of confidence, Charles IX. had said to the admiral,
in reference to the war in Flanders,
“My father, there is one other
thing against which we must be on our guard that
is, that the queen, my mother, who likes to poke her
nose everywhere, as you well know, shall learn nothing
of this undertaking; we must keep it so quiet that
she will not have a suspicion of it, or being such
a mischief-maker as I know she is, she would spoil
all.”
Now, wise and experienced as he was,
Coligny had not been able to keep such an absolute
secret; and, though he had come to Paris with great
suspicions, and albeit at his departure from Chatillon
a peasant woman had thrown herself at his feet, crying,
“Ah! sir, our good master, do not go to Paris,
for if you do, you will die you and all
who are with you!” these suspicions
were gradually lulled in his heart, and so it was
with Téligny, his son-in-law, to whom the King was
especially kind and attentive, calling him his brother,
as he called the admiral his father, and addressing
him with the familiar “thou,” as he did
his best friends.
The Huguenots, excepting some few
morose and suspicious spirits, were therefore completely
reassured. The death of the Queen of Navarre passed
as having been caused by pleurisy, and the spacious
apartments of the Louvre were filled with all those
gallant Protestants to whom the marriage of their
young chief, Henry, promised an unexpected return of
good fortune. Admiral Coligny, La Rochefoucault,
the young Prince de Condé, Téligny, in
short, all the leaders of the party, were
triumphant when they saw so powerful at the Louvre
and so welcome in Paris those whom, three months before,
King Charles and Queen Catharine would have hanged
on gibbets higher than those of assassins.
The Maréchal de Montmorency
was the only one who was missing among all his brothers,
for no promise could move him, no specious appearances
deceive him, and he remained secluded in his château
de l’Isle Adam, offering as his excuse for not
appearing the grief which he still felt for his father,
the Constable Anne de Montmorency, who had been killed
at the battle of Saint Denis by a pistol-shot fired
by Robert Stuart. But as this had taken place
more than three years before, and as sensitiveness
was a virtue little practised at that time, this unduly
protracted mourning was interpreted just as people
cared to interpret it.
However, everything seemed to show
that the Maréchal de Montmorency was mistaken.
The King, the Queen, the Duc d’Anjou, and
the Duc d’Alençon did the honors of the
royal festival with all courtesy and kindness.
The Duc d’Anjou received
from the Huguenots themselves well-deserved compliments
on the two battles of Jarnac and Montcontour, which
he had gained before he was eighteen years of age,
more precocious in that than either Cæsar or Alexander,
to whom they compared him, of course placing the conquerors
of Pharsalia and the Issus as inferior to the living
prince. The Duc d’Alençon looked on,
with his bland, false smile, while Queen Catharine,
radiant with joy and overflowing with honeyed phrases,
congratulated Prince Henry de Condé on his recent
marriage with Marie de Clèves; even the Messieurs
de Guise themselves smiled on the formidable enemies
of their house, and the Duc de Mayenne discoursed
with M. de Tavannes and the admiral on the impending
war, which was now more than ever threatened against
Philippe II.
In the midst of these groups a young
man of about nineteen years of age was walking to
and fro, his head a little on one side, his ear open
to all that was said. He had a keen eye, black
hair cut very close, thick eyebrows, a nose hooked
like an eagle’s, a sneering smile, and a growing
mustache and beard. This young man, who by his
reckless daring had first attracted attention at the
battle of Arnay-lé-Duc and was the recipient
of numberless compliments, was the dearly beloved pupil
of Coligny and the hero of the day. Three months
before that is to say, when his mother
was still living he was called the Prince
de Béarn, now he was called the King of Navarre,
afterwards he was known as Henry IV.
From time to time a swift and gloomy
cloud passed over his brow; unquestionably it was
at the thought that scarce had two months elapsed
since his mother’s death, and he, less than any
one, doubted that she had been poisoned. But
the cloud was transitory, and disappeared like a fleeting
shadow, for they who spoke to him, they who congratulated
him, they who elbowed him, were the very ones who
had assassinated the brave Jeanne d’Albret.
Some paces distant from the King of
Navarre, almost as pensive, almost as gloomy as the
king pretended to be joyous and open-hearted, was the
young Duc de Guise, conversing with Téligny.
More fortunate than the Béarnais, at two-and-twenty
he had almost attained the reputation of his father,
François, the great Duc de Guise. He
was an elegant gentleman, very tall, with a noble
and haughty look, and gifted with that natural majesty
which caused it to be said that in comparison with
him other princes seemed to belong to the people.
Young as he was, the Catholics looked up to him as
the chief of their party, as the Huguenots saw theirs
in Henry of Navarre, whose portrait we have just drawn.
At first he had borne the title of Prince de Joinville,
and at the siege of Orléans had fought his first
battle under his father, who died in his arms, denouncing
Admiral Coligny as his assassin. The young duke
then, like Hannibal, took a solemn oath to avenge
his father’s death on the admiral and his family,
and to pursue the foes to his religion without truce
or respite, promising God to be his destroying angel
on earth until the last heretic should be exterminated.
So with deep astonishment the people saw this prince,
usually so faithful to his word, offering his hand
to those whom he had sworn to hold as his eternal enemies,
and talking familiarly with the son-in-law of the
man whose death he had promised to his dying father.
But as we have said, this was an evening
of astonishments.
Indeed, an observer privileged to
be present at this festival, endowed with the knowledge
of the future which is fortunately hidden from men,
and with that power of reading men’s hearts which
unfortunately belongs only to God, would have certainly
enjoyed the strangest spectacle to be found in all
the annals of the melancholy human comedy.
But this observer who was absent from
the inner courts of the Louvre was to be found in
the streets gazing with flashing eyes and breaking
out into loud threats; this observer was the people,
who, with its marvellous instinct made keener by hatred,
watched from afar the shadows of its implacable enemies
and translated the impressions they made with as great
clearness as an inquisitive person can do before the
windows of a hermetically sealed ball-room. The
music intoxicates and governs the dancers, but the
inquisitive person sees only the movement and laughs
at the puppet jumping about without reason, because
the inquisitive person hears no music.
The music that intoxicated the Huguenots
was the voice of their pride.
The gleams which caught the eyes of
the Parisians that midnight were the lightning flashes
of their hatred illuminating the future.
And meantime everything was still
festive within, and a murmur softer and more flattering
than ever was at this moment pervading the Louvre,
for the youthful bride, having laid aside her toilet
of ceremony, her long mantle and flowing veil, had
just returned to the ball-room, accompanied by the
lovely Duchesse de Nevers, her most intimate friend,
and led by her brother, Charles IX., who presented
her to the principal guests.
The bride was the daughter of Henry
II., was the pearl of the crown of France, was Marguerite
de Valois, whom in his familiar tenderness
for her King Charles IX. always called “ma
soeur Margot,” “my sister Margot.”
Assuredly never was any welcome, however
flattering, more richly deserved than that which the
new Queen of Navarre was at this moment receiving.
Marguerite at this period was scarcely twenty, and
she was already the object of all the poets’
eulogies, some of whom compared her to Aurora, others
to Cytherea; she was, in truth, a beauty without rival
in that court in which Catharine de Médicis had assembled
the loveliest women she could find, to make of them
her sirens.
Marguerite had black hair and a brilliant
complexion; a voluptuous eye, veiled by long lashes;
delicate coral lips; a slender neck; a graceful, opulent
figure, and concealed in a satin slipper a tiny foot.
The French, who possessed her, were proud to see such
a lovely flower flourishing in their soil, and foreigners
who passed through France returned home dazzled with
her beauty if they had but seen her, and amazed at
her knowledge if they had discoursed with her; for
Marguerite was not only the loveliest, she was also
the most erudite woman of her time, and every one
was quoting the remark of an Italian scholar who had
been presented to her, and who, after having conversed
with her for an hour in Italian, Spanish, Latin, and
Greek, had gone away saying:
“To see the court without seeing
Marguerite de Valois is to see neither France nor
the court.”
Thus addresses to King Charles IX.
and the Queen of Navarre were not wanting. It
is well known that the Huguenots were great hands at
addresses. Many allusions to the past, many hints
as to the future, were adroitly slipped into these
harangues; but to all such allusions and speeches
the King replied, with his pale lips and artificial
smiles:
“In giving my sister Margot
to Henry of Navarre, I give my sister to all the Protestants
of the kingdom.”
This phrase assured some and made
others smile, for it had really a double sense:
the one paternal, with which Charles IX. would not
load his mind; the other insulting to the bride, to
her husband, and also to him who said it, for it recalled
some scandalous rumors with which the chroniclers
of the court had already found means to smirch the
nuptial robe of Marguerite de Valois.
However, M. de Guise was conversing,
as we have said, with Téligny; but he did not pay
to the conversation such sustained attention but that
he turned away somewhat, from time to time, to cast
a glance at the group of ladies, in the centre of
whom glittered the Queen of Navarre. When the
princess’s eye thus met that of the young duke,
a cloud seemed to over-spread that lovely brow, around
which stars of diamonds formed a tremulous halo, and
some agitating thought might be divined in her restless
and impatient manner.
The Princess Claude, Marguerite’s
eldest sister, who had been for some years married
to the Duc de Lorraine, had observed this uneasiness,
and was going up to her to inquire the cause, when
all stood aside at the approach of the queen mother,
who came forward, leaning on the arm of the young
Prince de Condé, and the princess was thus suddenly
separated from her sister. There was a general
movement, by which the Duc de Guise profited
to approach Madame de Nevers, his sister-in-law, and
Marguerite.
Madame de Lorraine, who had not lost
sight of her sister, then remarked, instead of the
cloud which she had before observed on her forehead,
a burning blush come into her cheeks. The duke
approached still nearer, and when he was within two
steps of Marguerite, she appeared rather to feel than
see his presence, and turned round, making a violent
effort over herself in order to give her features
an appearance of calmness and indifference. The
duke, then respectfully bowing, murmured in a low
tone,
“Ipse attuli.”
That meant: “I have brought it, or brought
it myself.”
Marguerite returned the young duke’s
bow, and as she straightened herself, replied, in
the same tone,
“Noctu pro more.”
That meant: “To-night, as usual.”
These soft words, absorbed by the
enormous collar which the princess wore, as in the
bell of a speaking-trumpet, were heard only by the
person to whom they were addressed; but brief as had
been the conference, it doubtless composed all the
young couple had to say, for after this exchange of
two words for three, they separated, Marguerite more
thoughtful and the duke with his brow less clouded
than when they met. This little scene took place
without the person most interested appearing to remark
it, for the King of Navarre had eyes but for one lady,
and she had around her a suite almost as numerous as
that which followed Marguerite de Valois. This
was the beautiful Madame de Sauve.
Charlotte de Beaune Semblançay, granddaughter
of the unfortunate Semblançay, and wife of Simon
de Fizes, Baron de Sauve, was one of the ladies-in-waiting
to Catharine de Médicis, and one of the most redoubtable
auxiliaries of this queen, who poured forth to her
enemies love-philtres when she dared not
pour out Florentine poison. Delicately fair,
and by turns sparkling with vivacity or languishing
in melancholy, always ready for love and intrigue,
the two great occupations which for fifty years employed
the court of the three succeeding kings, a
woman in every acceptation of the word and in all
the charm of the idea, from the blue eye languishing
or flashing with fire to the small rebellious feet
arched in their velvet slippers, Madame de Sauve had
already for some months taken complete possession
of every faculty of the King of Navarre, then beginning
his career as a lover as well as a politician; thus
it was that Marguerite de Valois, a magnificent and
royal beauty, had not even excited admiration in her
husband’s heart; and what was more strange,
and astonished all the world, even from a soul so full
of darkness and mystery, Catharine de Médicis, while
she prosecuted her project of union between her daughter
and the King of Navarre, had not ceased to favor almost
openly his amour with Madame de Sauve. But despite
this powerful aid, and despite the easy manners of
the age, the lovely Charlotte had hitherto resisted;
and this resistance, unheard of, incredible, unprecedented,
even more than the beauty and wit of her who resisted,
had excited in the heart of the Béarnais a passion
which, unable to satisfy itself, had destroyed in
the young king’s heart all timidity, pride,
and even that carelessness, half philosophic, half
indolent, which formed the basis of his character.
Madame de Sauve had been only a few
minutes in the ballroom; from spite or grief she had
at first resolved on not being present at her rival’s
triumph, and under the pretext of an indisposition
had allowed her husband, who had been for five years
secretary of state, to go alone to the Louvre; but
when Catharine de Médicis saw the baron without his
wife, she asked the cause that kept her dear Charlotte
away, and when she found that the indisposition was
but slight, she wrote a few words to her, which the
lady hastened to obey. Henry, sad as he had at
first been at her absence, had yet breathed more freely
when he saw M. de Sauve enter alone; but just as he
was about to pay some court to the charming creature
whom he was condemned, if not to love, at least to
treat as his wife, he unexpectedly saw Madame de Sauve
arise from the farther end of the gallery. He
remained stationary on the spot, his eyes fastened
on the Circe who enthralled him as if by magic chains,
and instead of proceeding towards his wife, by a movement
of hesitation which betrayed more astonishment than
alarm he advanced to meet Madame de Sauve.
The courtiers, seeing the King of
Navarre, whose inflammable heart they knew, approach
the beautiful Charlotte, had not the courage to prevent
their meeting, but drew aside complaisantly; so that
at the very moment when Marguerite de Valois and Monsieur
de Guise exchanged the few words in Latin which we
have noted above, Henry, having approached Madame de
Sauve, began, in very intelligible French, although
with somewhat of a Gascon accent, a conversation by
no means so mysterious.
“Ah, ma mie!” he
said, “you have, then, come at the very moment
when they assured me that you were ill, and I had
lost all hope of seeing you.”
“Would your majesty perhaps
wish me to believe that it had cost you something
to lose this hope?” replied Madame de Sauve.
“By Heaven! I believe it!”
replied the Béarnais; “know you not that you
are my sun by day and my star by night? By my
faith, I was in deepest darkness till you appeared
and suddenly illumined all.”
“Then, monseigneur, I serve you a very
ill turn.”
“What do you mean, ma mie?” inquired
Henry.
“I mean that he who is master
of the handsomest woman in France should only have
one desire that the light should disappear
and give way to darkness, for happiness awaits you
in the darkness.”
“You know, cruel one, that my
happiness is in the hands of one woman only, and that
she laughs at poor Henry.”
“Oh!” replied the baroness,
“I believed, on the contrary, that it was this
person who was the sport and jest of the King of Navarre.”
Henry was alarmed at this hostile attitude, and yet
he bethought him that it betrayed jealous spite, and
that jealous spite is only the mask of love.
“Indeed, dear Charlotte, you
reproach me very unjustly, and I do not comprehend
how so lovely a mouth can be so cruel. Do you
suppose for a moment that it is I who give myself
in marriage? No, ventre saint gris, it
is not I!”
“It is I, perhaps,” said
the baroness, sharply, if ever the voice
of the woman who loves us and reproaches us for not
loving her can seem sharp.
“With your lovely eyes have
you not seen farther, baroness? No, no; Henry
of Navarre is not marrying Marguerite de Valois.”
“And who, pray, is?”
“Why, by Heaven! it is the reformed
religion marrying the pope that’s
all.”
“No, no, I cannot be deceived
by your jests. Monseigneur loves Madame Marguerite.
And can I blame you? Heaven forbid! She is
beautiful enough to be adored.”
Henry reflected for a moment, and,
as he reflected, a meaning smile curled the corner
of his lips.
“Baroness,” said he, “you
seem to be seeking a quarrel with me, but you have
no right to do so. What have you done to prevent
me from marrying Madame Marguerite? Nothing.
On the contrary, you have always driven me to despair.”
“And well for me that I have,
monseigneur,” replied Madame de Sauve.
“How so?”
“Why, of course, because you are marrying another
woman!”
“I marry her because you love me not.”
“If I had loved you, sire, I must have died
in an hour.”
“In an hour? What do you mean? And
of what death would you have died?”
“Of jealousy! for
in an hour the Queen of Navarre will send away her
women, and your majesty your gentlemen.”
“Is that really the thought that is uppermost
in your mind, ma mie?”
“I did not say so. I only
say, that if I loved you it would be uppermost in
my mind most tormentingly.”
“Very well,” said Henry,
at the height of joy on hearing this confession, the
first which she had made to him, “suppose the
King of Navarre should not send away his gentlemen
this evening?”
“Sire,” replied Madame
de Sauve, looking at the king with astonishment for
once unfeigned, “you say things impossible and
incredible.”
“What must I do to make you believe them?”
“Give me a proof and that proof you
cannot give me.”
“Yes, baroness, yes! By
Saint Henry, I will give it you!” exclaimed the
king, gazing at the young woman with eyes hot with
love.
“Oh, your majesty!” exclaimed
the lovely Charlotte in an undertone and with downcast
eyes, “I do not understand No! no,
it is impossible for you to turn your back on the
happiness awaiting you.”
“There are four Henrys in this
room, my adorable!” replied the king, “Henry
de France, Henry de Condé, Henry de Guise, but there
is only one Henry of Navarre.”
“Well?”
“Well; if this Henry of Navarre is with you
all night”
“All night!”
“Yes; will that be a certain
proof to you that he is not with any other?”
“Ah! if you do that, sire,” cried Madame
Sauve.
“On the honor of a gentleman I will do it!”
Madame de Sauve raised her great eyes
dewy with voluptuous promises and looked at the king,
whose heart was filled with an intoxicating joy.
“And then,” said Henry, “what will
you say?”
“I will say,” replied Charlotte, “that
your majesty really loves me.”
“Ventre saint gris! then
you shall say it, baroness, for it is true.”
“But how can you manage it?” murmured
Madame de Sauve.
“Oh! by Heaven! baroness, have
you not about you some waiting-woman, some girl whom
you can trust?”
“Yes, Dariole is so devoted
to me that she would let herself be cut in pieces
for me; she is a real treasure.”
“By Heaven! then say to her
that I will make her fortune when I am King of France,
as the astrologers prophesy.”
Charlotte smiled, for even at this
period the Gascon reputation of the Béarnais was
already established with respect to his promises.
“Well, then, what do you want Dariole to do?”
“Little for her, a great deal for me. Your
apartment is over mine?”
“Yes.”
“Let her wait behind the door.
I will knock gently three times; she will open the
door, and you will have the proof that I have promised
you.”
Madame de Sauve kept silence for several
seconds, and then, as if she had looked around her
to observe if she were overheard, she fastened her
gaze for a moment on the group clustering around the
queen mother; brief as the moment was, it was sufficient
for Catharine and her lady-in-waiting to exchange
a look.
“Oh, if I were inclined,”
said Madame de Sauve, with a siren’s accent
that would have melted the wax in Ulysses’ ears,
“if I were inclined to make your majesty tell
a falsehood”
“Ma mie, try”
“Ah, ma foi! I confess I am tempted
to do so.”
“Give in! Women are never so strong as
after they are defeated.”
“Sire, I hold you to your promise
for Dariole when you shall be King of France.”
Henry uttered an exclamation of joy.
At the precise moment when this cry
escaped the lips of the Béarnais, the Queen of Navarre
was replying to the Duc de Guise:
“Noctu pro more to-night as
usual.”
Then Henry turned away from Madame
de Sauve as happy as the Duc de Guise had been
when he left Marguerite de Valois.
An hour after the double scene we
have just related, King Charles and the queen mother
retired to their apartments. Almost immediately
the rooms began to empty; the galleries exhibited
the bases of their marble columns. The admiral
and the Prince de Condé were escorted home by four
hundred Huguenot gentlemen through the middle of the
crowd, which hooted as they passed. Then Henry
de Guise, with the Lorraine gentlemen and the Catholics,
left in their turn, greeted by cries of joy and plaudits
of the people.
But Marguerite de Valois, Henry de
Navarre, and Madame de Sauve lived in the Louvre.