Catherine De Medici

XIV

CATHERINE IN POWER

The day on which Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu arrived in Paris, the court returned from Rheims, where Charles IX. was crowned.  This ceremony, which Catherine made magnificent with splendid fetes, enabled her to gather about her the leaders of the various parties.  Having studied all interests and all factions, she found herself with two alternatives from which to choose; either to rally them all to the throne, or to pit them one against the other.  The Connetable de Montmorency, supremely Catholic, whose nephew, the Prince de Conde, was leader of the Reformers, and whose sons were inclined to the new religion, blamed the alliance of the queen-mother with the Reformation.  The Guises, on their side, were endeavoring to gain over Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, a weak prince; a manoeuvre which his wife, Jeanne d’Albret, instructed by de Beze, allowed to succeed.  The difficulties were plain to Catherine, whose dawning power needed a period of tranquillity.  She therefore impatiently awaited Calvin’s reply to the message which the Prince de Conde, the king of Navarre, Coligny, d’Andelot, and the Cardinal de Chatillon had sent him through de Beze and Chaudieu.  Meantime, however, she was faithful to her promises as to the Prince de Conde.  The chancellor put an end to the proceedings in which Christophe was involved by referring the affair to the Parliament of Paris, which at once set aside the judgment of the committee, declaring it without power to try a prince of the blood.  The Parliament then reopened the trial, at the request of the Guises and the queen-mother.  Lasagne’s papers had already been given to Catherine, who burned them.  The giving up of these papers was a first pledge, uselessly made by the Guises to the queen-mother.  The Parliament, no longer able to take cognizance of those decisive proofs, reinstated the prince in all his rights, property, and honors.  Christophe, released during the tumult at Orleans on the death of the king, was acquitted in the first instance, and appointed, in compensation for his sufferings, solicitor to the Parliament, at the request of his godfather Monsieur de Thou.

The Triumvirate, that coming coalition of self-interests threatened by Catherine’s first acts, was now forming itself under her very eyes.  Just as in chemistry antagonistic substances separate at the first shock which jars their enforced union, so in politics the alliance of opposing interests never lasts.  Catherine thoroughly understood that sooner or later she should return to the Guises and combine with them and the Connetable to do battle against the Huguenots.  The proposed “colloquy” which tempted the vanity of the orators of all parties, and offered an imposing spectacle to succeed that of the coronation and enliven the bloody ground of a religious war which, in point of fact, had already begun, was as futile in the eyes of the Duc de Guise as in those of Catherine.  The Catholics would, in one sense be worsted; for the Huguenots, under pretext of conferring, would be able to proclaim their doctrine, with the sanction of the king and his mother, to the ears of all France.  The Cardinal de Lorraine, flattered by Catherine into the idea of destroying the heresy by the eloquence of the Church, persuaded his brother to consent; and thus the queen obtained what was all-essential to her, six months of peace.

A slight event, occurring at this time, came near compromising the power which Catherine had so painfully built up.  The following scene, preserved in history, took place, on the very day the envoys returned from Geneva, in the hotel de Coligny near the Louvre.  At his coronation, Charles IX., who was greatly attached to his tutor Amyot, appointed him grand-almoner of France.  This affection was shared by his brother the Duc d’Anjou, afterwards Henri III., another of Anjou’s pupils.  Catherine heard the news of this appointment from the two Gondis during the journey from Rheims to Paris.  She had counted on that office in the gift of the Crown to gain a supporter in the Church with whom to oppose the Cardinal de Lorraine.  Her choice had fallen on the Cardinal de Tournon, in whom she expected to find, as in l’Hopital, another crutch—­the word is her own.  As soon as she reached the Louvre she sent for the tutor, and her anger was such, on seeing the disaster to her policy caused by the ambition of this son of a shoemaker, that she was betrayed into using the following extraordinary language, which several memoirs of the day have handed down to us:—­

“What!” she cried, “am I, who compel the Guises, the Colignys, the Connetables, the house of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, to serve my ends, am I to be opposed by a priestling like you who are not satisfied to be bishop of Auxerre?”

Amyot excused himself.  He assured the queen that he had asked nothing; the king of his own will had given him the office of which he, the son of a poor tailor, felt himself quite unworthy.

“Be assured, maitre,” replied Catherine (that being the name which the two kings, Charles IX. and Henri III., gave to the great writer) “that you will not stand on your feet twenty-four hours hence, unless you make your pupil change his mind.”

Between the death thus threatened and the resignation of the highest ecclesiastical office in the gift of the crown, the son of the shoemaker, who had lately become extremely eager after honors, and may even have coveted a cardinal’s hat, thought it prudent to temporize.  He left the court and hid himself in the abbey of Saint-Germain.  When Charles IX. did not see him at his first dinner, he asked where he was.  Some Guisard doubtless told him of what had occurred between Amyot and the queen-mother.

“Has he been forced to disappear because I made him grand-almoner?” cried the king.

He thereupon rushed to his mother in the violent wrath of angry children when their caprices are opposed.

“Madame,” he said on entering, “did I not kindly sign the letter you asked me to send to Parliament, by means of which you govern my kingdom?  Did you not promise that if I did so my will should be yours?  And here, the first favor that I wish to bestow excites your jealousy!  The chancellor talks of declaring my majority at fourteen, three years from now, and you wish to treat me as a child.  By God, I will be king, and a king as my father and grandfather were kings!”

The tone and manner in which these words were said gave Catherine a revelation of her son’s true character; it was like a blow in the breast.

“He speaks to me thus, he whom I made a king!” she thought.  “Monsieur,” she said aloud, “the office of a king, in times like these, is a very difficult one; you do not yet know the shrewd men with whom you have to deal.  You will never have a safer and more sincere friend than your mother, or better servants than those who have been so long attached to her person, without whose services you might perhaps not even exist to-day.  The Guises want both your life and your throne, be sure of that.  If they could sew me into a sack and fling me into the river,” she said, pointing to the Seine, “it would be done to-night.  They know that I am a lioness defending her young, and that I alone prevent their daring hands from seizing your crown.  To whom—­to whose party does your tutor belong?  Who are his allies?  What authority has he?  What services can he do you?  What weight do his words carry?  Instead of finding a prop to sustain your power, you have cut the ground from under it.  The Cardinal de Lorraine is a living threat to you; he plays the king; he keeps his hat on his head before the princes of the blood; it was urgently necessary to invest another cardinal with powers greater than his own.  But what have you done?  Is Amyot, that shoemaker, fit only to tie the ribbons of his shoes, is he capable of making head against the Guise ambition?  However, you love Amyot, you have appointed him; your will must now be done, monsieur.  But before you make such gifts again, I pray you to consult me in affectionate good faith.  Listen to reasons of state; and your own good sense as a child may perhaps agree with my old experience, when you really understand the difficulties that lie before you.”

“Then I can have my master back again?” cried the king, not listening to his mother’s words, which he considered to be mere reproaches.

“Yes, you shall have him,” she replied.  “But it is not here, nor that brutal Cypierre who will teach you how to reign.”

“It is for you to do so, my dear mother,” said the boy, mollified by his victory and relaxing the surly and threatening look stamped by nature upon his countenance.

Catherine sent Gondi to recall the new grand-almoner.  When the Italian discovered the place of Amyot’s retreat, and the bishop heard that the courtier was sent by the queen, he was seized with terror and refused to leave the abbey.  In this extremity Catherine was obliged to write to him herself, in such terms that he returned to Paris and received from her own lips the assurance of her protection,—­on condition, however, that he would blindly promote her wishes with Charles IX.

This little domestic tempest over, the queen, now re-established in the Louvre after an absence of more than a year, held council with her closest friends as to the proper conduct to pursue with the young king whom Cypierre had complimented on his firmness.

“What is best to be done?” she said to the two Gondis, Ruggiero, Birago, and Chiverni who had lately become governor and chancellor to the Duc d’Anjou.

“Before all else,” replied Birago, “get rid of Cypierre.  He is not a courtier; he will never accommodate himself to your ideas, and will think he does his duty in thwarting you.”

“Whom can I trust?” cried the queen.

“One of us,” said Birago.

“On my honor!” exclaimed Gondi, “I’ll promise you to make the king as docile as the king of Navarre.”

“You allowed the late king to perish to save your other children,” said Albert de Gondi.  “Do, then, as the great signors of Constantinople do,—­divert the anger and amuse the caprices of the present king.  He loves art and poetry and hunting, also a little girl he saw at Orleans; there’s occupation enough for him.”

“Will you really be the king’s governor?” said Catherine to the ablest of the Gondis.

“Yes, if you will give me the necessary authority; you may even be obliged to make me marshal of France and a duke.  Cypierre is altogether too small a man to hold the office.  In future, the governor of a king of France should be of some great dignity, like that of duke and marshal.”

“He is right,” said Birago.

“Poet and huntsman,” said Catherine in a dreamy tone.

“We will hunt and make love!” cried Gondi.

“Moreover,” remarked Chiverni, “you are sure of Amyot, who will always fear poison in case of disobedience; so that you and he and Gondi can hold the king in leading-strings.”

“Amyot has deeply offended me,” said Catherine.

“He does not know what he owes to you; if he did know, you would be in danger,” replied Birago, gravely, emphasizing his words.

“Then, it is agreed,” exclaimed Catherine, on whom Birago’s reply made a powerful impression, “that you, Gondi, are to be the king’s governor.  My son must consent to do for one of my friends a favor equal to the one I have just permitted for his knave of a bishop.  That fool has lost the hat; for never, as long as I live, will I consent that the Pope shall give it to him!  How strong we might have been with Cardinal de Tournon!  What a trio with Tournon for grand-almoner, and l’Hopital, and de Thou!  As for the burghers of Paris, I intend to make my son cajole them; we will get a support there.”

Accordingly, Albert de Gondi became a marshal of France and was created Duc de Retz and governor of the king a few days later.

At the moment when this little private council ended, Cardinal de Tournon announced to the queen the arrival of the emissaries sent to Calvin.  Admiral Coligny accompanied the party in order that his presence might ensure them due respect at the Louvre.  The queen gathered the formidable phalanx of her maids of honor about her, and passed into the reception hall, built by her husband, which no longer exists in the Louvre of to-day.

At the period of which we write the staircase of the Louvre occupied the clock tower.  Catherine’s apartments were in the old buildings which still exist in the court of the Musee.  The present staircase of the museum was built in what was formerly the salle des ballets.  The ballet of those days was a sort of dramatic entertainment performed by the whole court.

Revolutionary passions gave rise to a most laughable error about Charles IX., in connection with the Louvre.  During the Revolution hostile opinions as to this king, whose real character was masked, made a monster of him.  Joseph Cheniers tragedy was written under the influence of certain words scratched on the window of the projecting wing of the Louvre, looking toward the quay.  The words were as follows:  “It was from this window that Charles IX., of execrable memory, fired upon French citizens.”  It is well to inform future historians and all sensible persons that this portion of the Louvre —­called to-day the old Louvre—­which projects upon the quay and is connected with the Louvre by the room called the Apollo gallery (while the great halls of the Museum connect the Louvre with the Tuileries) did not exist in the time of Charles IX.  The greater part of the space where the frontage on the quay now stands, and where the Garden of the Infanta is laid out, was then occupied by the hotel de Bourbon, which belonged to and was the residence of the house of Navarre.  It was absolutely impossible, therefore, for Charles IX. to fire from the Louvre of Henri II. upon a boat full of Huguenots crossing the river, although at the present time the Seine can be seen from its windows.  Even if learned men and libraries did not possess maps of the Louvre made in the time of Charles IX., on which its then position is clearly indicated, the building itself refutes the error.  All the kings who co-operated in the work of erecting this enormous mass of buildings never failed to put their initials or some special monogram on the parts they had severally built.  Now the part we speak of, the venerable and now blackened wing of the Louvre, projecting on the quay and overlooking the garden of the Infanta, bears the monograms of Henri III. and Henri IV., which are totally different from that of Henri II., who invariably joined his H to the two C’s of Catherine, forming a D,—­which, by the bye, has constantly deceived superficial persons into fancying that the king put the initial of his mistress, Diane, on great public buildings.  Henri IV. united the Louvre with his own hotel de Bourbon, its garden and dependencies.  He was the first to think of connecting Catherine de’ Medici’s palace of the Tuileries with the Louvre by his unfinished galleries, the precious sculptures of which have been so cruelly neglected.  Even if the map of Paris, and the monograms of Henri III. and Henri IV. did not exist, the difference of architecture is refutation enough to the calumny.  The vermiculated stone copings of the hotel de la Force mark the transition between what is called the architecture of the Renaissance and that of Henri III., Henri IV., and Louis XIII.  This archaeological digression (continuing the sketches of old Paris with which we began this history) enables us to picture to our minds the then appearance of this other corner of the old city, of which nothing now remains but Henri IV.’s addition to the Louvre, with its admirable bas-reliefs, now being rapidly annihilated.

When the court heard that the queen was about to give an audience to Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu, presented by Admiral Coligny, all the courtiers who had the right of entrance to the reception hall, hastened thither to witness the interview.  It was about six o’clock in the evening; Coligny had just supped, and was using a toothpick as he came up the staircase of the Louvre between the two Reformers.  The practice of using a toothpick was so inveterate a habit with the admiral that he was seen to do it on the battle-field while planning a retreat.  “Distrust the admiral’s toothpick, the No of the Connetable, and Catherine’s Yes,” was a court proverb of that day.  After the Saint-Bartholomew the populace made a horrible jest on the body of Coligny, which hung for three days at Montfaucon, by putting a grotesque toothpick into his mouth.  History has recorded this atrocious levity.  So petty an act done in the midst of that great catastrophe pictures the Parisian populace, which deserves the sarcastic jibe of Boileau:  “Frenchmen, born malin, created the guillotine.”  The Parisian of all time cracks jokes and makes lampoons before, during, and after the most horrible revolutions.

Theodore de Beze wore the dress of a courtier, black silk stockings, low shoes with straps across the instep, tight breeches, a black silk doublet with slashed sleeves, and a small black velvet mantle, over which lay an elegant white fluted ruff.  His beard was trimmed to a moustache and virgule (now called imperial) and he carried a sword at his side and a cane in his hand.  Whosoever knows the galleries of Versailles or the collections of Odieuvre, knows also his round, almost jovial face and lively eyes, surmounted by the broad forehead which characterized the writers and poets of that day.  De Beze had, what served him admirably, an agreeable air and manner.  In this he was a great contrast to Coligny, of austere countenance, and to the sour, bilious Chaudieu, who chose to wear on this occasion the robe and bands of a Calvinist minister.

The scenes that happen in our day in the Chamber of Deputies, and which, no doubt, happened in the Convention, will give an idea of how, at this court, at this epoch, these men, who six months later were to fight to the death in a war without quarter, could meet and talk to each other with courtesy and even laughter.  Birago, who was coldly to advise the Saint-Bartholomew, and Cardinal de Lorraine, who charged his servant Besme “not to miss the admiral,” now advanced to meet Coligny; Birago saying, with a smile:—­

“Well, my dear admiral, so you have really taken upon yourself to present these gentlemen from Geneva?”

“Perhaps you will call it a crime in me,” replied the admiral, jesting, “whereas if you had done it yourself you would make a merit of it.”

“They say that the Sieur Calvin is very ill,” remarked the Cardinal de Lorraine to Theodore de Beze.  “I hope no one suspects us of giving him his broth.”

“Ah! monseigneur; it would be too great a risk,” replied de Beze, maliciously.

The Duc de Guise, who was watching Chaudieu, looked fixedly at his brother and at Birago, who were both taken aback by de Beze’s answer.

“Good God!” remarked the cardinal, “heretics are not diplomatic!”

To avoid embarrassment, the queen, who was announced at this moment, had arranged to remain standing during the audience.  She began by speaking to the Connetable, who had previously remonstrated with her vehemently on the scandal of receiving messengers from Calvin.

“You see, my dear Connetable,” she said, “that I receive them without ceremony.”

“Madame,” said the admiral, approaching the queen, “these are two teachers of the new religion, who have come to an understanding with Calvin, and who have his instructions as to a conference in which the churches of France may be able to settle their differences.”

“This is Monsieur de Beze, to whom my wife is much attached,” said the king of Navarre, coming forward and taking de Beze by the hand.

“And this is Chaudieu,” said the Prince de Conde. “My friend the Duc de Guise knows the soldier,” he added, looking at Le Balafre, “perhaps he will now like to know the minister.”

This gasconade made the whole court laugh, even Catherine.

“Faith!” replied the Duc de Guise, “I am enchanted to see a gars who knows so well how to choose his men and to employ them in their right sphere.  One of your agents,” he said to Chaudieu, “actually endured the extraordinary question without dying and without confessing a single thing.  I call myself brave; but I don’t know that I could have endured it as he did.”

“Hum!” muttered Ambroise, “you did not say a word when I pulled the javelin out of your face at Calais.”

Catherine, standing at the centre of a semicircle of the courtiers and maids of honor, kept silence.  She was observing the two Reformers, trying to penetrate their minds as, with the shrewd, intelligent glance of her black eyes, she studied them.

“One seems to be the scabbard, the other the blade,” whispered Albert de Gondi in her ear.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Catherine at last, unable to restrain a smile, “has your master given you permission to unite in a public conference, at which you will be converted by the arguments of the Fathers of the Church who are the glory of our State?”

“We have no master but the Lord,” said Chaudieu.

“But surely you will allow some little authority to the king of France?” said Catherine, smiling.

“And much to the queen,” said de Beze, bowing low.

“You will find,” continued the queen, “that our most submissive subjects are heretics.”

“Ah, madame!” cried Coligny, “we will indeed endeavor to make you a noble and peaceful kingdom!  Europe has profited, alas! by our internal divisions.  For the last fifty years she has had the advantage of one-half of the French people being against the other half.”

“Are we here to sing anthems to the glory of heretics,” said the Connetable, brutally.

“No, but to bring them to repentance,” whispered the Cardinal de Lorraine in his ear; “we want to coax them by a little sugar.”

“Do you know what I should have done under the late king?” said the Connetable, angrily.  “I’d have called in the provost and hung those two knaves, then and there, on the gallows of the Louvre.”

“Well, gentlemen, who are the learned men whom you have selected as our opponents?” inquired the queen, imposing silence on the Connetable by a look.

“Duplessis-Mornay and Theodore de Beze will speak on our side,” replied Chaudieu.

“The court will doubtless go to Saint-Germain, and as it would be improper that this colloquy should take place in a royal residence, we will have it in the little town of Poissy,” said Catherine.

“Shall we be safe there, madame?” asked Chaudieu.

“Ah!” replied the queen, with a sort of naivete, “you will surely know how to take precautions.  The Admiral will arrange all that with my cousins the Guises and de Montmorency.”

“The devil take them!” cried the Connetable, “I’ll have nothing to do with it.”

“How do you contrive to give such strength of character to your converts?” said the queen, leading Chaudieu apart.  “The son of my furrier was actually sublime.”

“We 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.