Catherine De Medici

XII

DEATH OF FRANCOIS II

On the morrow the queen-mother was the first to enter the king’s chamber.  She found no one there but Mary Stuart, pale and weary, who had passed the night in prayer beside the bed.  The Duchesse de Guise had kept her mistress company, and the maids of honor had taken turns in relieving one another.  The young king slept.  Neither the duke nor the cardinal had yet appeared.  The priest, who was bolder than the soldier, had, it was afterward said, put forth his utmost energy during the night to induce his brother to make himself king.  But, in face of the assembled States-general, and threatened by a battle with Montmorency, the Balafre declared the circumstances unfavorable; he refused, against his brother’s utmost urgency, to arrest the king of Navarre, the queen-mother, l’Hopital, the Cardinal de Tournon, the Gondis, Ruggiero, and Birago, objecting that such violent measures would bring on a general rebellion.  He postponed the cardinal’s scheme until the fate of Francois II. should be determined.

The deepest silence reigned in the king’s chamber.  Catherine, accompanied by Madame de Fiesque, went to the bedside and gazed at her son with a semblance of grief that was admirably simulated.  She put her handkerchief to her eyes and walked to the window where Madame de Fiesque brought her a seat.  Thence she could see into the courtyard.

It had been agreed between Catherine and the Cardinal de Tournon that if the Connetable should successfully enter the town the cardinal would come to the king’s house with the two Gondis; if otherwise, he would come alone.  At nine in the morning the duke and cardinal, followed by their gentlemen, who remained in the hall, entered the king’s bedroom,—­the captain on duty having informed them that Ambroise Pare had arrived, together with Chapelain and three other physicians, who hated Pare and were all in the queen-mother’s interests.

A few moments later and the great hall of the Bailliage presented much the same aspect as that of the Salle des gardes at Blois on the day when Christophe was put to the torture and the Duc de Guise was proclaimed lieutenant-governor of the kingdom,—­with the single exception that whereas love and joy overflowed the royal chamber and the Guises triumphed, death and mourning now reigned within that darkened room, and the Guises felt that power was slipping through their fingers.  The maids of honor of the two queens were again in their separate camps on either side of the fireplace, in which glowed a monstrous fire.  The hall was filled with courtiers.  The news—­spread about, no one knew how—­of some daring operation contemplated by Ambroise Pare to save the king’s life, had brought back the lords and gentlemen who had deserted the house the day before.  The outer staircase and courtyard were filled by an anxious crowd.  The scaffold erected during the night for the Prince de Conde opposite to the convent of the Recollets, had amazed and startled the whole nobility.  All present spoke in a low voice and the talk was the same mixture as at Blois, of frivolous and serious, light and earnest matters.  The habit of expecting troubles, sudden revolutions, calls to arms, rebellions, and great events, which marked the long period during which the house of Valois was slowly being extinguished in spite of Catherine de’ Medici’s great efforts to preserve it, took its rise at this time.

A deep silence prevailed for a certain distance beyond the door of the king’s chamber, which was guarded by two halberdiers, two pages, and by the captain of the Scotch guard.  Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, held a prisoner in his own house, learned by his present desertion the hopes of the courtiers who had flocked to him the day before, and was horrified by the news of the preparations made during the night for the execution of his brother.

Standing before the fireplace in the great hall of the Bailliage was one of the greatest and noblest figures of that day,—­the Chancelier de l’Hopital, wearing his crimson robe lined and edged with ermine, and his cap on his head according to the privilege of his office.  This courageous man, seeing that his benefactors were traitorous and self-seeking, held firmly to the cause of the kings, represented by the queen-mother; at the risk of losing his head, he had gone to Rouen to consult with the Connetable de Montmorency.  No one ventured to draw him from the reverie in which he was plunged.  Robertet, the secretary of State, two marshals of France, Vieilleville, and Saint-Andre, and the keeper of the seals, were collected in a group before the chancellor.  The courtiers present were not precisely jesting; but their talk was malicious, especially among those who were not for the Guises.

Presently voices were heard to rise in the king’s chamber.  The two marshals, Robertet, and the chancellor went nearer to the door; for not only was the life of the king in question, but, as the whole court knew well, the chancellor, the queen-mother, and her adherents were in the utmost danger.  A deep silence fell on the whole assembly.

Ambroise Pare had by this time examined the king’s head; he thought the moment propitious for his operation; if it was not performed suffusion would take place, and Francois II. might die at any moment.  As soon as the duke and cardinal entered the chamber he explained to all present that in so urgent a case it was necessary to trepan the head, and he now waited till the king’s physician ordered him to perform the operation.

“Cut the head of my son as though it were a plank!—­with that horrible instrument!” cried Catherine de’ Medici.  “Maitre Ambroise, I will not permit it.”

The physicians were consulting together; but Catherine spoke in so loud a voice that her words reached, as she intended they should, beyond the door.

“But, madame, if there is no other way to save him?” said Mary Stuart, weeping.

“Ambroise,” cried Catherine; “remember that your head will answer for the king’s life.”

“We are opposed to the treatment suggested by Maitre Ambroise,” said the three physicians.  “The king can be saved by injecting through the ear a remedy which will draw the contents of the abscess through that passage.”

The Duc de Guise, who was watching Catherine’s face, suddenly went up to her and drew her into the recess of the window.

“Madame,” he said, “you wish the death of your son; you are in league with our enemies, and have been since Blois.  This morning the Counsellor Viole told the son of your furrier that the Prince de Conde’s head was about to be cut off.  That young man, who, when the question was applied, persisted in denying all relations with the prince, made a sign of farewell to him as he passed before the window of his dungeon.  You saw your unhappy accomplice tortured with royal insensibility.  You are now endeavoring to prevent the recovery of your eldest son.  Your conduct forces us to believe that the death of the dauphin, which placed the crown on your husband’s head was not a natural one, and that Montecuculi was your—­”

“Monsieur le chancilier!” cried Catherine, at a sign from whom Madame de Fiesque opened both sides of the bedroom door.

The company in the hall then saw the scene that was taking place in the royal chamber:  the livid little king, his face half dead, his eyes sightless, his lips stammering the word “Mary,” as he held the hand of the weeping queen; the Duchesse de Guise motionless, frightened by Catherine’s daring act; the duke and cardinal, also alarmed, keeping close to the queen-mother and resolving to have her arrested on the spot by Maille-Breze; lastly, the tall Ambroise Pare, assisted by the king’s physician, holding his instrument in his hand but not daring to begin the operation, for which composure and total silence were as necessary as the consent of the other surgeons.

“Monsieur le chancelier,” said Catherine, “the Messieurs de Guise wish to authorize a strange operation upon the person of the king; Ambroise Pare is preparing to cut open his head.  I, as the king’s mother and a member of the council of the regency,—­I protest against what appears to me a crime of lese-majeste.  The king’s physicians advise an injection through the ear, which seems to me as efficacious and less dangerous than the brutal operation proposed by Pare.”

When the company in the hall heard these words a smothered murmur rose from their midst; the cardinal allowed the chancellor to enter the bedroom and then he closed the door.

“I am lieutenant-general of the kingdom,” said the Duc de Guise; “and I would have you know, Monsieur le chancelier, that Ambroise, the king’s surgeon, answers for his life.”

“Ah! if this be the turn that things are taking!” exclaimed Ambroise Pare.  “I know my rights and how I should proceed.”  He stretched his arm over the bed.  “This bed and the king are mine.  I claim to be sole master of this case and solely responsible.  I know the duties of my office; I shall operate upon the king without the sanction of the physicians.”

“Save him!” said the cardinal, “and you shall be the richest man in France.”

“Go on!” cried Mary Stuart, pressing the surgeon’s hand.

“I cannot prevent it,” said the chancellor; “but I shall record the protest of the queen-mother.”

“Robertet!” called the Duc de Guise.

When Robertet entered, the lieutenant-general pointed to the chancellor.

“I appoint you chancellor of France in the place of that traitor,” he said.  “Monsieur de Maille, take Monsieur de l’Hopital and put him in the prison of the Prince de Conde.  As for you, madame,” he added, turning to Catherine; “your protest will not be received; you ought to be aware that any such protest must be supported by sufficient force.  I act as the faithful subject and loyal servant of king Francois II., my master.  Go on, Antoine,” he added, looking at the surgeon.

“Monsieur de Guise,” said l’Hopital; “if you employ violence either upon the king or upon the chancellor of France, remember that enough of the nobility of France are in that hall to rise and arrest you as a traitor.”

“Oh! my lords,” cried the great surgeon; “if you continue these arguments you will soon proclaim Charles IX!—­for king Francois is about to die.”

Catherine de’ Medici, absolutely impassive, gazed from the window.

“Well, then, we shall employ force to make ourselves masters of this room,” said the cardinal, advancing to the door.

But when he opened it even he was terrified; the whole house was deserted!  The courtiers, certain now of the death of the king, had gone in a body to the king of Navarre.

“Well, go on, perform your duty,” cried Mary Stuart, vehemently, to Ambroise.  “I—­and you, duchess,” she said to Madame de Guise,—­“will protect you.”

“Madame,” said Ambroise; “my zeal was carrying me away.  The doctors, with the exception of my friend Chapelain, prefer an injection, and it is my duty to submit to their wishes.  If I had been chief surgeon and chief physician, which I am not, the king’s life would probably have been saved.  Give that to me, gentlemen,” he said, stretching out his hand for the syringe, which he proceeded to fill.

“Good God!” cried Mary Start, “but I order you to—­”

“Alas! madame,” said Ambroise, “I am under the direction of these gentlemen.”

The young queen placed herself between the surgeon, the doctors, and the other persons present.  The chief physician held the king’s head, and Ambroise made the injection into the ear.  The duke and the cardinal watched the proceeding attentively.  Robertet and Monsieur de Maille stood motionless.  Madame de Fiesque, at a sign from Catherine, glided unperceived from the room.  A moment later l’Hopital boldly opened the door of the king’s chamber.

“I arrive in good time,” said the voice of a man whose hasty steps echoed through the great hall, and who stood the next moment on the threshold of the open door.  “Ah, messieurs, so you meant to take off the head of my good nephew, the Prince de Conde?  Instead of that, you have forced the lion from his lair and—­here I am!” added the Connetable de Montmorency.  “Ambroise, you shall not plunge your knife into the head of my king.  The first prince of the blood, Antoine de Bourbon, the Prince de Conde, the queen-mother, the Connetable, and the chancellor forbid the operation.”

To Catherine’s great satisfaction, the king of Navarre and the Prince de Conde now entered the room.

“What does this mean?” said the Duc de Guise, laying his hand on his dagger.

“It means that in my capacity as Connetable, I have dismissed the sentinels of all your posts. Tete Dieu! you are not in an enemy’s country, methinks.  The king, our master, is in the midst of his loyal subjects, and the States-general must be suffered to deliberate at liberty.  I come, messieurs, from the States-general.  I carried the protest of my nephew de Conde before that assembly, and three hundred of those gentlemen have released him.  You wish to shed royal blood and to decimate the nobility of the kingdom, do you?  Ha! in future, I defy you, and all your schemes, Messieurs de Lorraine.  If you order the king’s head opened, by this sword which saved France from Charles V., I say it shall not be done—­”

“All the more,” said Ambroise Pare; “because it is now too late; the suffusion has begun.”

“Your reign is over, messieurs,” said Catherine to the Guises, seeing from Pare’s face that there was no longer any hope.

“Ah! madame, you have killed your own son,” cried Mary Stuart as she bounded like a lioness from the bed to the window and seized the queen-mother by the arm, gripping it violently.

“My dear,” replied Catherine, giving her daughter-in-law a cold, keen glance in which she allowed her hatred, repressed for the last six months, to overflow; “you, to whose inordinate love we owe this death, you will now go to reign in your Scotland, and you will start to-morrow.  I am regent de facto.”  The three physicians having made her a sign, “Messieurs,” she added, addressing the Guises, “it is agreed between Monsieur de Bourbon, appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom by the States-general, and me that the conduct of the affairs of the State is our business solely.  Come, monsieur le chancelier.”

“The king is dead!” said the Duc de Guise, compelled to perform his duties as Grand-master.

“Long live King Charles IX.!” cried all the noblemen who had come with the king of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, and the Connetable.

The ceremonies which follow the death of a king of France were performed in almost total solitude.  When the king-at-arms proclaimed aloud three times in the hall, “The king is dead!” there were very few persons present to reply, “Vive le roi!”

The queen-mother, to whom the Comtesse de Fiesque had brought the Duc d’Orleans, now Charles IX., left the chamber, leading her son by the hand, and all the remaining courtiers followed her.  No one was left in the house where Francois II. had drawn his last breath, but the duke and the cardinal, the Duchesse de Guise, Mary Stuart, and Dayelle, together with the sentries at the door, the pages of the Grand-master, those of the cardinal, and their private secretaries.

“Vive la France!” cried several Reformers in the street, sounding the first cry of the opposition.

Robertet, who owed all he was to the duke and cardinal, terrified by their scheme and its present failure, went over secretly to the queen-mother, whom the ambassadors of Spain, England, the Empire, and Poland, hastened to meet on the staircase, brought thither by Cardinal de Tournon, who had gone to notify them as soon as he had made Queen Catherine a sign from the courtyard at the moment when she protested against the operation of Ambroise Pare.

“Well!” said the cardinal to the duke, “so the sons of Louis d’Outre-mer, the heirs of Charles de Lorraine flinched and lacked courage.”

“We should have been exiled to Lorraine,” replied the duke.  “I declare to you, Charles, that if the crown lay there before me I would not stretch out my hand to pick it up.  That’s for my son to do.”

“Will he have, as you have had, the army and Church on his side?”

“He will have something better.”

“What?”

“The people!”

“Ah!” exclaimed Mary Stuart, clasping the stiffened hand of her first husband, now dead, “there is none but me to weep for this poor boy who loved me so!”

“How can we patch up matters with the queen-mother?” said the cardinal.

“Wait till she quarrels with the Huguenots,” replied the duchess.

The conflicting interests of the house of Bourbon, of Catherine, of the Guises, and of the Reformed party produced such confusion in the town of Orleans that, three days after the king’s death, his body, completely forgotten in the Bailliage and put into a coffin by the menials of the house, was taken to Saint-Denis in a covered waggon, accompanied only by the Bishop of Senlis and two gentlemen.  When the pitiable procession reached the little town of Etampes, a servant of the Chancelier l’Hopital fastened to the waggon this severe inscription, which history has preserved:  “Tanneguy de Chastel, where art thou? and yet thou wert a Frenchman!”—­a stern reproach, which fell with equal force on Catherine de’ Medici, Mary Stuart, and the Guises.  What Frenchman does not know that Tanneguy de Chastel spent thirty thousand crowns of the coinage of that day (one million of our francs) at the funeral of Charles VII., the benefactor of his house?

No sooner did the tolling of the bells announce to the town of Orleans that Francois II. was dead, and the rumor spread that the Connetable de Montmorency had ordered the flinging open of the gates of the town, than Tourillon, the glover, rushed up into the garret of his house and went to a secret hiding-place.

“Good heavens! can he be dead?” he cried.

Hearing the words, a man rose to his feet and answered, “Ready to serve!”—­the password of the Reformers who belonged to Calvin.

This man was Chaudieu, to whom Tourillon now related the events of the last eight days, during which time he had prudently left the minister alone in his hiding-place with a twelve-pound loaf of bread for his sole nourishment.

“Go instantly to the Prince de Conde, brother:  ask him to give me a safe-conduct; and find me a horse,” cried the minister.  “I must start at once.”

“Write me a line, or he will not receive me.”

“Here,” said Chaudieu, after writing a few words, “ask for a pass from the king of Navarre, for I must go to Geneva without a moment’s loss of time.”