Catherine De Medici

VIII

MARTYRDOM

The cardinal went straight to the queen-mother.

“I hold the threads of the conspiracy of the heretics,” said Catherine.  “They have sent me this treaty and these documents by the hands of that child,” she added.

During the time that Catherine was explaining matters to the cardinal, Queen Mary whispered a few words to the grand-master.

“What is all this about?” asked the young king, who was left alone in the midst of the violent clash of interests.

“The proofs of what I was telling to your Majesty have not been long in reaching us,” said the cardinal, who had grasped the papers.

The Duc de Guise drew his brother aside without caring that he interrupted him, and said in his ear, “This makes me lieutenant-general without opposition.”

A shrewd glance was the cardinal’s only answer; showing his brother that he fully understood the advantages to be gained from Catherine’s false position.

“Who sent you here?” said the duke to Christophe.

“Chaudieu, the minister,” he replied.

“Young man, you lie!” said the soldier, sharply; “it was the Prince de Conde.”

“The Prince de Conde, monseigneur!” replied Christophe, with a puzzled look.  “I never met him.  I am studying law with Monsieur de Thou; I am his secretary, and he does not know that I belong to the Reformed religion.  I yielded only to the entreaties of the minister.”

“Enough!” exclaimed the cardinal.  “Call Monsieur de Robertet,” he said to Lewiston, “for this young scamp is slyer than an old statesman; he has managed to deceive my brother, and me too; an hour ago I would have given him the sacrament without confession.”

“You are not a child, morbleu!” cried the duke, “and we’ll treat you as a man.”

“The heretics have attempted to beguile your august mother,” said the cardinal, addressing the king, and trying to draw him apart to win him over to their ends.

“Alas!” said the queen-mother to her son, assuming a reproachful look and stopping the king at the moment when the cardinal was leading him into the oratory to subject him to his dangerous eloquence, “you see the result of the situation in which I am; they think me irritated by the little influence that I have in public affairs,—­I, the mother of four princes of the house of Valois!”

The young king listened attentively.  Mary Stuart, seeing the frown upon his brow, took his arm and led him away into the recess of the window, where she cajoled him with sweet speeches in a low voice, no doubt like those she had used that morning in their chamber.  The two Guises read the documents given up to them by Catherine.  Finding that they contained information which their spies, and Monsieur Braguelonne, the lieutenant of the Chatelet, had not obtained, they were inclined to believe in the sincerity of Catherine de’ Medici.  Robertet came and received certain secret orders relative to Christophe.  The youthful instrument of the leaders of the Reformation was then led away by four soldiers of the Scottish guard, who took him down the stairs and delivered him to Monsieur de Montresor, provost of the chateau.  That terrible personage himself, accompanied by six of his men, conducted Christophe to the prison in the vaulted cellar of the tower, now in ruins, which the concierge of the chateau de Blois shows you with the information that these were the dungeons.

After such an event the Council could be only a formality.  The king, the young queen, the Grand-master, and the cardinal returned to it, taking with them the vanquished Catherine, who said no word except to approve the measures proposed by the Guises.  In spite of a slight opposition from the Chancelier Olivier (the only person present who said one word that expressed the independence to which his office bound him), the Duc de Guise was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom.  Robertet brought the required documents, showing a devotion which might be called collusion.  The king, giving his arm to his mother, recrossed the salle des gardes, announcing to the court as he passed along that on the following day he should leave Blois for the chateau of Amboise.  The latter residence had been abandoned since the time when Charles VIII. accidentally killed himself by striking his head against the casing of a door on which he had ordered carvings, supposing that he could enter without stooping below the scaffolding.  Catherine, to mask the plans of the Guises, remarked aloud that they intended to complete the chateau of Amboise for the Crown at the same time that her own chateau of Chemonceaux was finished.  But no one was the dupe of that pretext, and all present awaited great events.

After spending about two hours endeavoring to see where he was in the obscurity of the dungeon, Christophe ended by discovering that the place was sheathed in rough woodwork, thick enough to make the square hole into which he was put both healthy and habitable.  The door, like that of a pig-pen, was so low that he stooped almost double on entering it.  Beside this door was a heavy iron grating, opening upon a sort of corridor, which gave a little light and a little air.  This arrangement, in all respects like that of the dungeons of Venice, showed plainly that the architecture of the chateau of Blois belonged to the Venetian school, which during the Middle Ages, sent so many builders into all parts of Europe.  By tapping this species of pit above the woodwork Christophe discovered that the walls which separated his cell to right and left from the adjoining ones were made of brick.  Striking one of them to get an idea of its thickness, he was somewhat surprised to hear return blows given on the other side.

“Who are you?” said his neighbor, speaking to him through the corridor.

“I am Christophe Lecamus.”

“I,” replied the voice, “am Captain Chaudieu, brother of the minister.  I was taken prisoner to-night at Beaugency; but, luckily, there is nothing against me.”

“All is discovered,” said Christophe; “you are fortunate to be saved from the fray.”

“We have three thousand men at this moment in the forests of the Vendomois, all determined men, who mean to abduct the king and the queen-mother during their journey.  Happily La Renaudie was cleverer than I; he managed to escape.  You had only just left us when the Guise men surprised us—­”

“But I don’t know La Renaudie.”

“Pooh! my brother has told me all about it,” said the captain.

Hearing that, Christophe sat down upon his bench and made no further answer to the pretended captain, for he knew enough of the police to be aware how necessary it was to act with prudence in a prison.  In the middle of the night he saw the pale light of a lantern in the corridor, after hearing the ponderous locks of the iron door which closed the cellar groan as they were turned.  The provost himself had come to fetch Christophe.  This attention to a prisoner who had been left in his dark dungeon for hours without food, struck the poor lad as singular.  One of the provost’s men bound his hands with a rope and held him by the end of it until they reached one of the lower halls of the chateau of Louis XII., which was evidently the antechamber to the apartments of some important personage.  The provost and his men bade him sit upon a bench, and the man then bound his feet as he had before bound his hands.  On a sign from Monsieur de Montresor the man left the room.

“Now listen to me, my friend,” said the provost-marshal, toying with the collar of the Order; for, late as the hour was, he was in full uniform.

This little circumstance gave the young man several thoughts; he saw that all was not over; on the contrary, it was evidently neither to hang nor yet to condemn him that he was brought here.

“My friend, you may spare yourself cruel torture by telling me all you know of the understanding between Monsieur le Prince de Conde and Queen Catherine.  Not only will no harm be done to you, but you shall enter the service of Monseigneur the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, who likes intelligent men and on whom your honest face has produced a good impression.  The queen-mother is about to be sent back to Florence, and Monsieur de Conde will no doubt be brought to trial.  Therefore, believe me, humble folks ought to attach themselves to the great men who are in power.  Tell me all; and you will find your profit in it.”

“Alas, monsieur,” replied Christophe; “I have nothing to tell.  I told all I know to Messieurs de Guise in the queen’s chamber.  Chaudieu persuaded me to put those papers under the eyes of the queen-mother; assuring me that they concerned the peace of the kingdom.”

“You have never seen the Prince de Conde?”

“Never.”

Thereupon Monsieur de Montresor left Christophe and went into the adjoining room; but the youth was not left long alone.  The door through which he had been brought opened and gave entrance to several men, who did not close it.  Sounds that were far from reassuring were heard from the courtyard; men were bringing wood and machinery, evidently intended for the punishment of the Reformer’s messenger.  Christophe’s anxiety soon had matter for reflection in the preparations which were made in the hall before his eyes.

Two coarse and ill-dressed serving-men obeyed the orders of a stout, squat, vigorous man, who cast upon Christophe, as he entered, the glance of a cannibal upon his victim; he looked him over and estimated him,—­measuring, like a connoisseur, the strength of his nerves, their power and their endurance.  The man was the executioner of Blois.  Coming and going, his assistants brought in a mattress, several mallets and wooden wedges, also planks and other articles, the use of which was not plain, nor their look comforting to the poor boy concerned in these preparations, whose blood now curdled in his veins from a vague but most terrible apprehension.  Two personages entered the hall at the moment when Monsieur de Montresor reappeared.

“Hey, nothing ready!” cried the provost-marshal, to whom the new-comers bowed with great respect.  “Don’t you know,” he said, addressing the stout man and his two assistants, “that Monseigneur the cardinal thinks you already at work?  Doctor,” added the provost, turning to one of the new-comers, “this is the man”; and he pointed to Christophe.

The doctor went straight to the prisoner, unbound his hands, and struck him on the breast and back.  Science now continued, in a serious manner, the truculent examination of the executioner’s eye.  During this time a servant in the livery of the house of Guise brought in several arm-chairs, a table, and writing-materials.

“Begin the proces verbal,” said Monsieur de Montresor, motioning to the table the second personage, who was dressed in black, and was evidently a clerk.  Then the provost went up to Christophe, and said to him in a very gentle way:  “My friend, the chancellor, having learned that you refuse to answer me in a satisfactory manner, decrees that you be put to the question, ordinary and extraordinary.”

“Is he in good health, and can he bear it?” said the clerk to the doctor.

“Yes,” replied the latter, who was one of the physicians of the house of Lorraine.

“In that case, retire to the next room; we will send for you whenever we require your advice.”

The physician left the hall.

His first terror having passed, Christophe rallied his courage; the hour of his martyrdom had come.  Thenceforth he looked with cold curiosity at the arrangements that were made by the executioner and his men.  After hastily preparing a bed, the two assistants got ready certain appliances called boots; which consisted of several planks, between which each leg of the victim was placed.  The legs thus placed were brought close together.  The apparatus used by binders to press their volumes between two boards, which they fasten by cords, will give an exact idea of the manner in which each leg of the prisoner was bound.  We can imagine the effect produced by the insertion of wooden wedges, driven in by hammers between the planks of the two bound legs, —­the two sets of planks of course not yielding, being themselves bound together by ropes.  These wedges were driven in on a line with the knees and the ankles.  The choice of these places where there is little flesh, and where, consequently, the wedge could only be forced in by crushing the bones, made this form of torture, called the “question,” horribly painful.  In the “ordinary question” four wedges were driven in,—­two at the knees, two at the ankles; but in the “extraordinary question” the number was increased to eight, provided the doctor certified that the prisoner’s vitality was not exhausted.  At the time of which we write the “boots” were also applied in the same manner to the hands and wrists; but, being pressed for time, the cardinal, the lieutenant-general, and the chancellor spared Christophe that additional suffering.

The proces verbal was begun; the provost dictated a few sentences as he walked up and down with a meditative air, asking Christophe his name, baptismal name, age, and profession; then he inquired the name of the person from whom he had received the papers he had given to the queen.

“From the minister Chaudieu,” answered Christophe.

“Where did he give them to you?”

“In Paris.”

“In giving them to you he must have told you whether the queen-mother would receive you with pleasure?”

“He told me nothing of that kind,” said Christophe.  “He merely asked me to give them to Queen Catherine secretly.”

“You must have seen Chaudieu frequently, or he would not have known that you were going to Blois.”

“The minister did not know from me that in carrying furs to the queen I was also to ask on my father’s behalf for the money the queen-mother owes him; and I did not have time to ask the minister who had told him of it.”

“But these papers, which were given to you without being sealed or enveloped, contained a treaty between the rebels and Queen Catherine.  You must have seen that they exposed you to the punishment of all those who assist in a rebellion.”

“Yes.”

“The persons who persuaded you to this act of high treason must have promised you rewards and the protection of the queen-mother.”

“I did it out of attachment to Chaudieu, the only person whom I saw in the matter.”

“Do you persist in saying you did not see the Prince de Conde?”

“Yes.”

“The Prince de Conde did not tell you that the queen-mother was inclined to enter into his views against the Messieurs de Guise?”

“I did not see him.”

“Take care! one of your accomplices, La Renaudie, has been arrested.  Strong as he is, he was not able to bear the ‘question,’ which will now be put to you; he confessed at last that both he and the Prince de Conde had an interview with you.  If you wish to escape the torture of the question, I exhort you to tell me the simple truth.  Perhaps you will thus obtain your full pardon.”

Christophe answered that he could not state a thing of which he had no knowledge, or give himself accomplices when he had none.  Hearing these words, the provost-marshal signed to the executioner and retired himself to the inner room.  At that fatal sign Christophe’s brows contracted, his forehead worked with nervous convulsion, as he prepared himself to suffer.  His hands closed with such violence that the nails entered the flesh without his feeling them.  Three men seized him, took him to the camp bed and laid him there, letting his legs hang down.  While the executioner fastened him to the rough bedstead with strong cords, the assistants bound his legs into the “boots.”  Presently the cords were tightened, by means of a wrench, without the pressure causing much pain to the young Reformer.  When each leg was thus held as it were in a vice, the executioner grasped his hammer and picked up the wedges, looking alternately at the victim and at the clerk.

“Do you persist in your denial?” asked the clerk.

“I have told the truth,” replied Christophe.

“Very well.  Go on,” said the clerk, closing his eyes.

The cords were tightened with great force.  This was perhaps the most painful moment of the torture; the flesh being suddenly compressed, the blood rushed violently toward the breast.  The poor boy could not restrain a dreadful cry and seemed about to faint.  The doctor was called in.  After feeling Christophe’s pulse, he told the executioner to wait a quarter of an hour before driving the first wedge in, to let the action of the blood subside and allow the victim to recover his full sensitiveness.  The clerk suggested, kindly, that if he could not bear this beginning of sufferings which he could not escape, it would be better to reveal all at once; but Christophe made no reply except to say, “The king’s tailor! the king’s tailor!”

“What do you mean by those words?” asked the clerk.

“Seeing what torture I must bear,” said Christophe, slowly, hoping to gain time to rest, “I call up all my strength, and try to increase it by thinking of the martyrdom borne by the king’s tailor for the holy cause of the Reformation, when the question was applied to him in presence of Madame la Duchesse de Valentinois and the king.  I shall try to be worthy of him.”

While the physician exhorted the unfortunate lad not to force them to have recourse to more violent measures, the cardinal and the duke, impatient to know the result of the interrogations, entered the hall and themselves asked Christophe to speak the truth, immediately.  The young man repeated the only confession he had allowed himself to make, which implicated no one but Chaudieu.  The princes made a sign, on which the executioner and his assistant seized their hammers, taking each a wedge, which then they drove in between the joints, standing one to right, the other to left of their victim; the executioner’s wedge was driven in at the knees, his assistant’s at the ankles.

The eyes of all present fastened on those of Christophe, and he, no doubt excited by the presence of those great personages, shot forth such burning glances that they appeared to have all the brilliancy of flame.  As the third and fourth wedges were driven in, a dreadful groan escaped him.  When he saw the executioner take up the wedges for the “extraordinary question” he said no word and made no sound, but his eyes took on so terrible a fixity, and he cast upon the two great princes who were watching him a glance so penetrating, that the duke and cardinal were forced to drop their eyes.  Philippe le Bel met with the same resistance when the torture of the pendulum was applied in his presence to the Templars.  That punishment consisted in striking the victim on the breast with one arm of the balance pole with which money is coined, its end being covered with a pad of leather.  One of the knights thus tortured, looked so intently at the king that Philippe could not detach his eyes from him.  At the third blow the king left the chamber on hearing the knight summon him to appear within a year before the judgment-seat of God,—­as, in fact, he did.  At the fifth blow, the first of the “extraordinary question,” Christophe said to the cardinal:  “Monseigneur, put an end to my torture; it is useless.”

The cardinal and the duke re-entered the adjoining hall, and Christophe distinctly heard the following words said by Queen Catherine:  “Go on; after all, he is only a heretic.”

She judged it prudent to be more stern to her accomplice than the executioners themselves.

The sixth and seventh wedges were driven in without a word of complaint from Christophe.  His face shone with extraordinary brilliancy, due, no doubt, to the excess of strength which his fanatic devotion gave him.  Where else but in the feelings of the soul can we find the power necessary to bear such sufferings?  Finally, he smiled when he saw the executioner lifting the eighth and last wedge.  This horrible torture had lasted by this time over an hour.

The clerk now went to call the physician that he might decide whether the eighth wedge could be driven in without endangering the life of the victim.  During this delay the duke returned to look at Christophe.

“Ventre-de-biche! you are a fine fellow,” he said to him, bending down to whisper the words.  “I love brave men.  Enter my service, and you shall be rich and happy; my favors shall heal those wounded limbs.  I do not propose to you any baseness; I will not ask you to return to your party and betray its plans,—­there are always traitors enough for that, and the proof is in the prisons of Blois; tell me only on what terms are the queen-mother and the Prince de Conde?”

“I know nothing about it, monseigneur,” replied Christophe Lecamus.

The physician came, examined the victim, and said that he could bear the eighth wedge.

“Then insert it,” said the cardinal.  “After all, as the queen says, he is only a heretic,” he added, looking at Christophe with a dreadful smile.

At this moment Catherine came with slow steps from the adjoining apartment and stood before Christophe, coldly observing him.  Instantly she was the object of the closest attention on the part of the two brothers, who watched alternately the queen and her accomplice.  On this solemn test the whole future of that ambitious woman depended; she felt the keenest admiration for Christophe, yet she gazed sternly at him; she hated the Guises, and she smiled upon them!

“Young man,” said the queen, “confess that you have seen the Prince de Conde, and you will be richly rewarded.”

“Ah! what a business this is for you, madame!” cried Christophe, pitying her.

The queen quivered.

“He insults me!” she exclaimed.  “Why do you not hang him?” she cried, turning to the two brothers, who stood thoughtful.

“What a woman!” said the duke in a glance at his brother, consulting him by his eye, and leading him to the window.

“I shall stay in France and be revenged upon them,” thought the queen.  “Come, make him confess, or let him die!” she said aloud, addressing Montresor.

The provost-marshal turned away his eyes, the executioners were busy with the wedges; Catherine was free to cast one glance upon the martyr, unseen by others, which fell on Christophe like the dew.  The eyes of the great queen seemed to him moist; two tears were in them, but they did not fall.  The wedges were driven; a plank was broken by the blow.  Christophe gave one dreadful cry, after which he was silent; his face shone,—­he believed he was dying.

“Let him die?” said the cardinal, echoing the queen’s last words with a sort of irony; “no, no! don’t break that thread,” he said to the provost.

The duke and the cardinal consulted together in a low voice.

“What is to be done with him?” asked the executioner.

“Send him to the prison at Orleans,” said the duke, addressing Monsieur de Montresor; “and don’t hang him without my order.”

The extreme sensitiveness to which Christophe’s internal organism had been brought, increased by a resistance which called into play every power of the human body, existed to the same degree, in his senses.  He alone heard the following words whispered by the Duc de Guise in the ear of his brother the cardinal: 

“I don’t give up all hope of getting the truth out of that little fellow yet.”

When the princes had left the hall the executioners unbound the legs of their victim roughly and without compassion.

“Did any one ever see a criminal with such strength?” said the chief executioner to his aids.  “The rascal bore that last wedge when he ought to have died; I’ve lost the price of his body.”

“Unbind me gently; don’t make me suffer, friends,” said poor Christophe.  “Some day I will reward you—­”

“Come, come, show some humanity,” said the physician.  “Monseigneur esteems the young man, and told me to look after him.”

“I am going to Amboise with my assistants,—­take care of him yourself,” said the executioner, brutally.  “Besides, here comes the jailer.”

The executioner departed, leaving Christophe in the hands of the soft-spoken doctor, who by the aid of Christophe’s future jailer, carried the poor boy to a bed, brought him some broth, helped him to swallow it, sat down beside him, felt his pulse, and tried to comfort him.

“You won’t die of this,” he said.  “You ought to feel great inward comfort, knowing that you have done your duty.—­The queen-mother bids me take care of you,” he added in a whisper.

“The queen is very good,” said Christophe, whose terrible sufferings had developed an extraordinary lucidity in his mind, and who, after enduring such unspeakable sufferings, was determined not to compromise the results of his devotion.  “But she might have spared me much agony be telling my persecutors herself the secrets that I know nothing about, instead of urging them on.”

Hearing that reply, the doctor took his cap and cloak and left Christophe, rightly judging that he could worm nothing out of a man of that stamp.  The jailer of Blois now ordered the poor lad to be carried away on a stretcher by four men, who took him to the prison in the town, where Christophe immediately fell into the deep sleep which, they say, comes to most mothers after the terrible pangs of childbirth.