Catherine De Medici

I

A HOUSE WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS AT THE CORNER OF A STREET
WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS IN A PARIS WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS

Few persons in the present day know how plain and unpretentious were the dwellings of the burghers of Paris in the sixteenth century, and how simple their lives.  Perhaps this simplicity of habits and of thought was the cause of the grandeur of that old bourgeoisie which was certainly grand, free, and noble,—­more so, perhaps, than the bourgeoisie of the present day.  Its history is still to be written; it requires and it awaits a man of genius.  This reflection will doubtless rise to the lips of every one after reading the almost unknown incident which forms the basis of this Study and is one of the most remarkable facts in the history of that bourgeoisie.  It will not be the first time in history that conclusion has preceded facts.

In 1560, the houses of the rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie skirted the left bank of the Seine, between the pont Notre-Dame and the pont au Change.  A public footpath and the houses then occupied the space covered by the present roadway.  Each house, standing almost in the river, allowed its dwellers to get down to the water by stone or wooden stairways, closed and protected by strong iron railings or wooden gates, clamped with iron.  The houses, like those in Venice, had an entrance on terra firma and a water entrance.  At the moment when the present sketch is published, only one of these houses remains to recall the old Paris of which we speak, and that is soon to disappear; it stands at the corner of the Petit-Pont, directly opposite to the guard-house of the Hotel-Dieu.

Formerly each dwelling presented on the river-side the fantastic appearance given either by the trade of its occupant and his habits, or by the originality of the exterior constructions invented by the proprietors to use or abuse the Seine.  The bridges being encumbered with more mills than the necessities of navigation could allow, the Seine formed as many enclosed basins as there were bridges.  Some of these basins in the heart of old Paris would have offered precious scenes and tones of color to painters.  What a forest of crossbeams supported the mills with their huge sails and their wheels!  What strange effects were produced by the piles or props driven into the water to project the upper floors of the houses above the stream!  Unfortunately, the art of genre painting did not exist in those days, and that of engraving was in its infancy.  We have therefore lost that curious spectacle, still offered, though in miniature, by certain provincial towns, where the rivers are overhung with wooden houses, and where, as at Vendome, the basins, full of water grasses, are enclosed by immense iron railings, to isolate each proprietor’s share of the stream, which extends from bank to bank.

The name of this street, which has now disappeared from the map, sufficiently indicates the trade that was carried on in it.  In those days the merchants of each class of commerce, instead of dispersing themselves about the city, kept together in the same neighborhood and protected themselves mutually.  Associated in corporations which limited their number, they were still further united into guilds by the Church.  In this way prices were maintained.  Also, the masters were not at the mercy of their workmen, and did not obey their whims as they do to-day; on the contrary, they made them their children, their apprentices, took care of them, and taught them the intricacies of the trade.  In order to become a master, a workman had to produce a masterpiece, which was always dedicated to the saint of his guild.  Will any one dare to say that the absence of competition destroyed the desire for perfection, or lessened the beauty of products?  What say you, you whose admiration for the masterpieces of past ages has created the modern trade of the sellers of bric-a-brac?

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the trade of the furrier was one of the most flourishing industries.  The difficulty of obtaining furs, which, being all brought from the north, required long and perilous journeys, gave a very high price and value to those products.  Then, as now, high prices led to consumption; for vanity likes to override obstacles.  In France, as in other kingdoms, not only did royal ordinances restrict the use of furs to the nobility (proved by the part which ermine plays in the old blazons), but also certain rare furs, such as vair (which was undoubtedly Siberian sable), could not be worn by any but kings, dukes, and certain lords clothed with official powers.  A distinction was made between the greater and lesser vair.  The very name has been so long disused, that in a vast number of editions of Perrault’s famous tale, Cinderella’s slipper, which was no doubt of vair (the fur), is said to have been made of verre (glass).  Lately one of our most distinguished poets was obliged to establish the true orthography of the word for the instruction of his brother-feuilletonists in giving an account of the opera of the “Cenerentola,” where the symbolic slipper has been replaced by a ring, which symbolizes nothing at all.

Naturally the sumptuary laws about the wearing of fur were perpetually infringed upon, to the great satisfaction of the furriers.  The costliness of stuffs and furs made a garment in those days a durable thing,—­as lasting as the furniture, the armor, and other items of that strong life of the fifteenth century.  A woman of rank, a seigneur, all rich men, also all the burghers, possessed at the most two garments for each season, which lasted their lifetime and beyond it.  These garments were bequeathed to their children.  Consequently the clause in the marriage-contract relating to arms and clothes, which in these days is almost a dead letter because of the small value of wardrobes that need constant renewing, was then of much importance.  Great costs brought with them solidity.  The toilet of a woman constituted a large capital; it was reckoned among the family possessions, and was kept in those enormous chests which threaten to break through the floors of our modern houses.  The jewels of a woman of 1840 would have been the undress ornaments of a great lady in 1540.

To-day, the discovery of America, the facilities of transportation, the ruin of social distinctions which has paved the way for the ruin of apparent distinctions, has reduced the trade of the furrier to what it now is,—­next to nothing.  The article which a furrier sells to-day, as in former days, for twenty livres has followed the depreciation of money:  formerly the livre, which is now worth one franc and is usually so called, was worth twenty francs.  To-day, the lesser bourgeoisie and the courtesans who edge their capes with sable, are ignorant than in 1440 an ill-disposed police-officer would have incontinently arrested them and marched them before the justice at the Chatelet.  Englishwomen, who are so fond of ermine, do not know that in former times none but queens, duchesses, and chancellors were allowed to wear that royal fur.  There are to-day in France several ennobled families whose true name is Pelletier or Lepelletier, the origin of which is evidently derived from some rich furrier’s counter, for most of our burgher’s names began in some such way.

This digression will explain, not only the long feud as to precedence which the guild of drapers maintained for two centuries against the guild of furriers and also of mercers (each claiming the right to walk first, as being the most important guild in Paris), but it will also serve to explain the importance of the Sieur Lecamus, a furrier honored with the custom of two queens, Catherine de’ Medici and Mary Stuart, also the custom of the parliament,—­a man who for twenty years was the syndic of his corporation, and who lived in the street we have just described.

The house of Lecamus was one of three which formed the three angles of the open space at the end of the pont au Change, where nothing now remains but the tower of the Palais de Justice, which made the fourth angle.  On the corner of this house, which stood at the angle of the pont au Change and the quai now called the quai aux Fleurs, the architect had constructed a little shrine for a Madonna, which was always lighted by wax-tapers and decked with real flowers in summer and artificial ones in winter.  On the side of the house toward the rue du Pont, as on the side toward the rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie, the upper story of the house was supported by wooden pillars.  All the houses in this mercantile quarter had an arcade behind these pillars, where the passers in the street walked under cover on a ground of trodden mud which kept the place always dirty.  In all French towns these arcades or galleries are called les piliers, a general term to which was added the name of the business transacted under them,—­as “piliers des Halles” (markets), “piliers de la Boucherie” (butchers).

These galleries, a necessity in the Parisian climate, which is so changeable and so rainy, gave this part of the city a peculiar character of its own; but they have now disappeared.  Not a single house in the river bank remains, and not more than about a hundred feet of the old “piliers des Halles,” the last that have resisted the action of time, are left; and before long even that relic of the sombre labyrinth of old Paris will be demolished.  Certainly, the existence of such old ruins of the middle-ages is incompatible with the grandeurs of modern Paris.  These observations are meant not so much to regret the destruction of the old town, as to preserve in words, and by the history of those who lived there, the memory of a place now turned to dust, and to excuse the following description, which may be precious to a future age now treading on the heels of our own.

The walls of this house were of wood covered with slate.  The spaces between the uprights had been filled in, as we may still see in some provincial towns, with brick, so placed, by reversing their thickness, as to make a pattern called “Hungarian point.”  The window-casings and lintels, also in wood, were richly carved, and so was the corner pillar where it rose above the shrine of the Madonna, and all the other pillars in front of the house.  Each window, and each main beam which separated the different storeys, was covered with arabesques of fantastic personages and animals wreathed with conventional foliage.  On the street side, as on the river side, the house was capped with a roof looking as if two cards were set up one against the other,—­thus presenting a gable to the street and a gable to the water.  This roof, like the roof of a Swiss chalet, overhung the building so far that on the second floor there was an outside gallery with a balustrade, on which the owners of the house could walk under cover and survey the street, also the river basin between the bridges and the two lines of houses.

These houses on the river bank were very valuable.  In those days a system of drains and fountains was still to be invented; nothing of the kind as yet existed except the circuit sewer, constructed by Aubriot, provost of Paris under Charles the Wise, who also built the Bastille, the pont Saint-Michel and other bridges, and was the first man of genius who ever thought of the sanitary improvement of Paris.  The houses situated like that of Lecamus took from the river the water necessary for the purposes of life, and also made the river serve as a natural drain for rain-water and household refuse.  The great works that the “merchants’ provosts” did in this direction are fast disappearing.  Middle-aged persons alone can remember to have seen the great holes in the rue Montmartre, rue du Temple, etc., down which the waters poured.  Those terrible open jaws were in the olden time of immense benefit to Paris.  Their place will probably be forever marked by the sudden rise of the paved roadways at the spots where they opened,—­another archaeological detail which will be quite inexplicable to the historian two centuries hence.  One day, about 1816, a little girl who was carrying a case of diamonds to an actress at the Ambigu, for her part as queen, was overtaken by a shower and so nearly washed down the great drainhole in the rue du Temple that she would have disappeared had it not been for a passer who heard her cries.  Unluckily, she had let go the diamonds, which were, however, recovered later at a man-hole.  This event made a great noise, and gave rise to many petitions against these engulfers of water and little girls.  They were singular constructions about five feet high, furnished with iron railings, more or less movable, which often caused the inundation of the neighboring cellars, whenever the artificial river produced by sudden rains was arrested in its course by the filth and refuse collected about these railings, which the owners of the abutting houses sometimes forgot to open.

The front of this shop of the Sieur Lecamus was all window, formed of sashes of leaded panes, which made the interior very dark.  The furs were taken for selection to the houses of rich customers.  As for those who came to the shop to buy, the goods were shown to them outside, between the pillars,—­the arcade being, let us remark, encumbered during the day-time with tables, and clerks sitting on stools, such as we all remember seeing some fifteen years ago under the “piliers des Halles.”  From these outposts, the clerks and apprentices talked, questioned, answered each other, and called to the passers,—­customs which the great Walter Scott has made use of in his “Fortunes of Nigel.”

The sign, which represented an ermine, hung outside, as we still see in some village hostelries, from a rich bracket of gilded iron filagree.  Above the ermine, on one side of the sign, were the words:—­

LECAMVS

FURRIER

TO MADAME LA ROYNE ET DU ROY NOSTRE SIRE.

On the other side of the sign were the words:—­

TO MADAME LA ROYNE-MERE

AND MESSIEURS DV PARLEMENT.

The words “Madame la Royne-mere” had been lately added.  The gilding was fresh.  This addition showed the recent changes produced by the sudden and violent death of Henri II., which overturned many fortunes at court and began that of the Guises.

The back-shop opened on the river.  In this room usually sat the respectable proprietor himself and Mademoiselle Lecamus.  In those days the wife of a man who was not noble had no right to the title of dame, “madame”; but the wives of the burghers of Paris were allowed to use that of “mademoiselle,” in virtue of privileges granted and confirmed to their husbands by the several kings to whom they had done service.  Between this back-shop and the main shop was the well of a corkscrew-staircase which gave access to the upper story, where were the great ware-room and the dwelling-rooms of the old couple, and the garrets lighted by skylights, where slept the children, the servant-woman, the apprentices, and the clerks.

This crowding of families, servants, and apprentices, the little space which each took up in the building where the apprentices all slept in one large chamber under the roof, explains the enormous population of Paris then agglomerated on one-tenth of the surface of the present city; also the queer details of private life in the middle ages; also, the contrivances of love which, with all due deference to historians, are found only in the pages of the romance-writers, without whom they would be lost to the world.  At this period very great seigneurs, such, for instance, as Admiral de Coligny, occupied three rooms, and their suites lived at some neighboring inn.  There were not, in those days, more than fifty private mansions in Paris, and those were fifty palaces belonging to sovereign princes, or to great vassals, whose way of living was superior to that of the greatest German rulers, such as the Duke of Bavaria and the Elector of Saxony.

The kitchen of the Lecamus family was beneath the back-shop and looked out upon the river.  It had a glass door opening upon a sort of iron balcony, from which the cook drew up water in a bucket, and where the household washing was done.  The back-shop was made the dining-room, office, and salon of the merchant.  In this important room (in all such houses richly panelled and adorned with some special work of art, and also a carved chest) the life of the merchant was passed; there the joyous suppers after the work of the day was over, there the secret conferences on the political interests of the burghers and of royalty took place.  The formidable corporations of Paris were at that time able to arm a hundred thousand men.  Therefore the opinions of the merchants were backed by their servants, their clerks, their apprentices, their workmen.  The burghers had a chief in the “provost of the merchants” who commanded them, and in the Hotel de Ville, a palace where they possessed the right to assemble.  In the famous “burghers’ parlor” their solemn deliberations took place.  Had it not been for the continual sacrifices which by that time made war intolerable to the corporations, who were weary of their losses and of the famine, Henri IV., that factionist who became king, might never perhaps have entered Paris.

Every one can now picture to himself the appearance of this corner of old Paris, where the bridge and quai still are, where the trees of the quai aux Fleurs now stand, but where no trace remains of the period of which we write except the tall and famous tower of the Palais de Justice, from which the signal was given for the Saint Bartholomew.  Strange circumstance! one of the houses standing at the foot of that tower then surrounded by wooden shops, that, namely, of Lecamus, was about to witness the birth of facts which were destined to prepare for that night of massacre, which was, unhappily, more favorable than fatal to Calvinism.

At the moment when our history begins, the audacity of the new religious doctrines was putting all Paris in a ferment.  A Scotchman named Stuart had just assassinated President Minard, the member of the Parliament to whom public opinion attributed the largest share in the execution of Councillor Anne du Bourg; who was burned on the place de Greve after the king’s tailor—­to whom Henri II. and Diane de Poitiers had caused the torture of the “question” to be applied in their very presence.  Paris was so closely watched that the archers compelled all passers along the street to pray before the shrines of the Madonna so as to discover heretics by their unwillingness or even refusal to do an act contrary to their beliefs.

The two archers who were stationed at the corner of the Lecamus house had departed, and Cristophe, son of the furrier, vehemently suspected of deserting Catholicism, was able to leave the shop without fear of being made to adore the Virgin.  By seven in the evening, in April, 1560, darkness was already falling, and the apprentices, seeing no signs of customers on either side of the arcade, were beginning to take in the merchandise exposed as samples beneath the pillars, in order to close the shop.  Christophe Lecamus, an ardent young man about twenty-two years old, was standing on the sill of the shop-door, apparently watching the apprentices.

“Monsieur,” said one of them, addressing Christophe and pointing to a man who was walking to and fro under the gallery with an air of indecision, “perhaps that’s a thief or a spy; anyhow, the shabby wretch can’t be an honest man; if he wanted to speak to us he would come over frankly, instead of sidling along as he does—­and what a face!” continued the apprentice, mimicking the man, “with his nose in his cloak, his yellow eyes, and that famished look!”

When the stranger thus described caught sight of Christophe alone on the door-sill, he suddenly left the opposite gallery where he was then walking, crossed the street rapidly, and came under the arcade in front of the Lecamus house.  There he passed slowly along in front of the shop, and before the apprentices returned to close the outer shutters he said to Christophe in a low voice:—­

“I am Chaudieu.”

Hearing the name of one of the most illustrious ministers and devoted actors in the terrible drama called “The Reformation,” Christophe quivered as a faithful peasant might have quivered on recognizing his disguised king.

“Perhaps you would like to see some furs?  Though it is almost dark I will show you some myself,” said Christophe, wishing to throw the apprentices, whom he heard behind him, off the scent.

With a wave of his hand he invited the minister to enter the shop, but the latter replied that he preferred to converse outside.  Christophe then fetched his cap and followed the disciple of Calvin.

Though banished by an edict, Chaudieu, the secret envoy of Theodore de Beze and Calvin (who were directing the French Reformation from Geneva), went and came, risking the cruel punishment to which the Parliament, in unison with the Church and Royalty, had condemned one of their number, the celebrated Anne du Bourg, in order to make a terrible example.  Chaudieu, whose brother was a captain and one of Admiral Coligny’s best soldiers, was a powerful auxiliary by whose arm Calvin shook France at the beginning of the twenty two years of religious warfare now on the point of breaking out.  This minister was one of the hidden wheels whose movements can best exhibit the wide-spread action of the Reform.

Chaudieu led Christophe to the water’s edge through an underground passage, which was like that of the Marion tunnel filled up by the authorities about ten years ago.  This passage, which was situated between the Lecamus house and the one adjoining it, ran under the rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie, and was called the Pont-aux-Fourreurs.  It was used by the dyers of the City to go to the river and wash their flax and silks, and other stuffs.  A little boat was at the entrance of it, rowed by a single sailor.  In the bow was a man unknown to Christophe, a man of low stature and very simply dressed.  Chaudieu and Christophe entered the boat, which in a moment was in the middle of the Seine; the sailor then directed its course beneath one of the wooden arches of the pont au Change, where he tied up quickly to an iron ring.  As yet, no one had said a word.

“Here we can speak without fear; there are no traitors or spies here,” said Chaudieu, looking at the two as yet unnamed men.  Then, turning an ardent face to Christophe, “Are you,” he said, “full of that devotion that should animate a martyr?  Are you ready to endure all for our sacred cause?  Do you fear the tortures applied to the Councillor du Bourg, to the king’s tailor,—­tortures which await the majority of us?”

“I shall confess the gospel,” replied Lecamus, simply, looking at the windows of his father’s back-shop.

The family lamp, standing on the table where his father was making up his books for the day, spoke to him, no doubt, of the joys of family and the peaceful existence which he now renounced.  The vision was rapid, but complete.  His mind took in, at a glance, the burgher quarter full of its own harmonies, where his happy childhood had been spent, where lived his promised bride, Babette Lallier, where all things promised him a sweet and full existence; he saw the past; he saw the future, and he sacrificed it, or, at any rate, he staked it all.  Such were the men of that day.

“We need ask no more,” said the impetuous sailor; “we know him for one of our saints.  If the Scotchman had not done the deed he would kill us that infamous Minard.”

“Yes,” said Lecamus, “my life belongs to the church; I shall give it with joy for the triumph of the Reformation, on which I have seriously reflected.  I know that what we do is for the happiness of the peoples.  In two words:  Popery drives to celibacy, the Reformation establishes the family.  It is time to rid France of her monks, to restore their lands to the Crown, who will, sooner or later, sell them to the burghers.  Let us learn to die for our children, and make our families some day free and prosperous.”

The face of the young enthusiast, that of Chaudieu, that of the sailor, that of the stranger seated in the bow, lighted by the last gleams of the twilight, formed a picture which ought the more to be described because the description contains in itself the whole history of the times—­if it is, indeed, true that to certain men it is given to sum up in their own persons the spirit of their age.

The religious reform undertaken by Luther in Germany, John Knox in Scotland, Calvin in France, took hold especially of those minds in the lower classes into which thought had penetrated.  The great lords sustained the movement only to serve interests that were foreign to the religious cause.  To these two classes were added adventurers, ruined noblemen, younger sons, to whom all troubles were equally acceptable.  But among the artisan and merchant classes the new faith was sincere and based on calculation.  The masses of the poorer people adhered at once to a religion which gave the ecclesiastical property to the State, and deprived the dignitaries of the Church of their enormous revenues.  Commerce everywhere reckoned up the profits of this religious operation, and devoted itself body, soul, and purse, to the cause.

But among the young men of the French bourgeoisie the Protestant movement found that noble inclination to sacrifices of all kinds which inspires youth, to which selfishness is, as yet, unknown.  Eminent men, sagacious minds, discerned the Republic in the Reformation; they desired to establish throughout Europe the government of the United Provinces, which ended by triumphing over the greatest Power of those times,—­Spain, under Philip the Second, represented in the Low Countries by the Duke of Alba.  Jean Hotoman was then meditating his famous book, in which this project is put forth,—­a book which spread throughout France the leaven of these ideas, which were stirred up anew by the Ligue, repressed by Richelieu, then by Louis XIV., always protected by the younger branches, by the house of Orleans in 1789, as by the house of Bourbon in 1589.  Whoso says “Investigate” says “Revolt.”  All revolt is either the cloak that hides a prince, or the swaddling-clothes of a new mastery.  The house of Bourbon, the younger sons of the Valois, were at work beneath the surface of the Reformation.

At the moment when the little boat floated beneath the arch of the pont au Change the question was strangely complicated by the ambitions of the Guises, who were rivalling the Bourbons.  Thus the Crown, represented by Catherine de’ Medici, was able to sustain the struggle for thirty years by pitting the one house against the other house; whereas later, the Crown, instead of standing between various jealous ambitions, found itself without a barrier, face to face with the people:  Richelieu and Louis XIV. had broken down the barrier of the Nobility; Louis XV. had broken down that of the Parliaments.  Alone before the people, as Louis XVI. was, a king must inevitably succumb.

Christophe Lecamus was a fine representative of the ardent and devoted portion of the people.  His wan face had the sharp hectic tones which distinguish certain fair complexions; his hair was yellow, of a coppery shade; his gray-blue eyes were sparkling.  In them alone was his fine soul visible; for his ill-proportioned face did not atone for its triangular shape by the noble mien of an elevated mind, and his low forehead indicated only extreme energy.  Life seemed to centre in his chest, which was rather hollow.  More nervous than sanguine, Cristophe’s bodily appearance was thin and threadlike, but wiry.  His pointed noise expressed the shrewdness of the people, and his countenance revealed an intelligence capable of conducting itself well on a single point of the circumference, without having the faculty of seeing all around it.  His eyes, the arching brows of which, scarcely covered with a whitish down, projected like an awning, were strongly circled by a pale-blue band, the skin being white and shining at the spring of the nose,—­a sign which almost always denotes excessive enthusiasm.  Christophe was of the people,—­the people who devote themselves, who fight for their devotions, who let themselves be inveigled and betrayed; intelligent enough to comprehend and serve an idea, too upright to turn it to his own account, too noble to sell himself.

Contrasting with this son of Lecamus, Chaudieu, the ardent minister, with brown hair thinned by vigils, a yellow skin, an eloquent mouth, a militant brow, with flaming brown eyes, and a short and prominent chin, embodied well the Christian faith which brought to the Reformation so many sincere and fanatical pastors, whose courage and spirit aroused the populations.  The aide-de-camp of Calvin and Theodore de Beze contrasted admirably with the son of the furrier.  He represented the fiery cause of which the effect was seen in Christophe.

The sailor, an impetuous being, tanned by the open air, accustomed to dewy nights and burning days, with closed lips, hasty gestures, orange eyes, ravenous as those of a vulture, and black, frizzled hair, was the embodiment of an adventurer who risks all in a venture, as a gambler stakes all on a card.  His whole appearance revealed terrific passions, and an audacity that flinched at nothing.  His vigorous muscles were made to be quiescent as well as to act.  His manner was more audacious than noble.  His nose, though thin, turned up and snuffed battle.  He seemed agile and capable.  You would have known him in all ages for the leader of a party.  If he were not of the Reformation, he might have been Pizarro, Fernando Cortez, or Morgan the Exterminator,—­a man of violent action of some kind.

The fourth man, sitting on a thwart wrapped in his cloak, belonged, evidently, to the highest portion of society.  The fineness of his linen, its cut, the material and scent of his clothing, the style and skin of his gloves, showed him to be a man of courts, just as his bearing, his haughtiness, his composure and his all-embracing glance proved him to be a man of war.  The aspect of this personage made a spectator uneasy in the first place, and then inclined him to respect.  We respect a man who respects himself.  Though short and deformed, his manners instantly redeemed the disadvantages of his figure.  The ice once broken, he showed a lively rapidity of decision, with an indefinable dash and fire which made him seem affable and winning.  He had the blue eyes and the curved nose of the house of Navarre, and the Spanish cut of the marked features which were in after days the type of the Bourbon kings.

In a word, the scene now assumed a startling interest.

“Well,” said Chaudieu, as young Lecamus ended his speech, “this boatman is La Renaudie.  And here is Monsiegneur the Prince de Conde,” he added, motioning to the deformed little man.

Thus these four men represented the faith of the people, the spirit of the Scriptures, the mailed hand of the soldier, and royalty itself hidden in that dark shadow of the bridge.

“You shall now know what we expect of you,” resumed the minister, after allowing a short pause for Christophe’s astonishment.  “In order that you may make no mistake, we feel obliged to initiate you into the most important secrets of the Reformation.”

The prince and La Renaudie emphasized the minister’s speech by a gesture, the latter having paused to allow the prince to speak, if he so wished.  Like all great men engaged in plotting, whose system it is to conceal their hand until the decisive moment, the prince kept silence—­but not from cowardice.  In these crises he was always the soul of the conspiracy; recoiling from no danger and ready to risk his own head; but from a sort of royal dignity he left the explanation of the enterprise to his minister, and contented himself with studying the new instrument he was about to use.

“My child,” said Chaudieu, in the Huguenot style of address, “we are about to do battle for the first time with the Roman prostitute.  In a few days either our legions will be dying on the scaffold, or the Guises will be dead.  This is the first call to arms on behalf of our religion in France, and France will not lay down those arms till they have conquered.  The question, mark you this, concerns the nation, not the kingdom.  The majority of the nobles of the kingdom see plainly what the Cardinal de Lorraine and his brother are seeking.  Under pretext of defending the Catholic religion, the house of Lorraine means to claim the crown of France as its patrimony.  Relying on the Church, it has made the Church a formidable ally; the monks are its support, its acolytes, its spies.  It has assumed the post of guardian to the throne it is seeking to usurp; it protects the house of Valois which it means to destroy.  We have decided to take up arms because the liberties of the people and the interests of the nobles are equally threatened.  Let us smother at its birth a faction as odious as that of the Burgundians who formerly put Paris and all France to fire and sword.  It required a Louis XI. to put a stop to the quarrel between the Burgundians and the Crown; and to-day a prince de Conde is needed to prevent the house of Lorraine from re-attempting that struggle.  This is not a civil war; it is a duel between the Guises and the Reformation,—­a duel to the death!  We will make their heads fall, or they shall have ours.”

“Well said!” cried the prince.

“In this crisis, Christophe,” said La Renaudie, “we mean to neglect nothing which shall strengthen our party,—­for there is a party in the Reformation, the party of thwarted interests, of nobles sacrificed to the Lorrains, of old captains shamefully treated at Fontainebleau, from which the cardinal has banished them by setting up gibbets on which to hang those who ask the king for the cost of their equipment and their back-pay.”

“This, my child,” resumed Chaudieu, observing a sort of terror in Christophe, “this it is which compels us to conquer by arms instead of conquering by conviction and by martyrdom.  The queen-mother is on the point of entering into our views.  Not that she means to abjure; she has not reached that decision as yet; but she may be forced to it by our triumph.  However that may be, Queen Catherine, humiliated and in despair at seeing the power she expected to wield on the death of the king passing into the hands of the Guises, alarmed at the empire of the young queen, Mary, niece of the Lorrains and their auxiliary, Queen Catherine is doubtless inclined to lend her support to the princes and lords who are now about to make an attempt which will deliver her from the Guises.  At this moment, devoted as she may seem to them, she hates them; she desires their overthrow, and will try to make use of us against them; but Monseigneur the Prince de Conde intends to make use of her against all.  The queen-mother will, undoubtedly, consent to all our plans.  We shall have the Connetable on our side; Monseigneur has just been to see him at Chantilly; but he does not wish to move without an order from his masters.  Being the uncle of Monseigneur, he will not leave him in the lurch; and this generous prince does not hesitate to fling himself into danger to force Anne de Montmorency to a decision.  All is prepared, and we have cast our eyes on you as the means of communicating to Queen Catherine our treaty of alliance, the drafts of edicts, and the bases of the new government.  The court is at Blois.  Many of our friends are with it; but they are to be our future chiefs, and, like Monseigneur,” he added, motioning to the prince, “they must not be suspected.  The queen-mother and our friends are so closely watched that it is impossible to employ as intermediary any known person of importance; they would instantly be suspected and kept from communicating with Madame Catherine.  God sends us at this crisis the shepherd David and his sling to do battle with Goliath of Guise.  Your father, unfortunately for him a good Catholic, is furrier to the two queens.  He is constantly supplying them with garments.  Get him to send you on some errand to the court.  You will excite no suspicion, and you cannot compromise Queen Catherine in any way.  All our leaders would lose their heads if a single imprudent act allowed their connivance with the queen-mother to be seen.  Where a great lord, if discovered, would give the alarm and destroy our chances, an insignificant man like you will pass unnoticed.  See!  The Guises keep the town so full of spies that we have only the river where we can talk without fear.  You are now, my son, like a sentinel who must die at his post.  Remember this:  if you are discovered, we shall all abandon you; we shall even cast, if necessary, opprobrium and infamy upon you.  We shall say that you are a creature of the Guises, made to play this part to ruin us.  You see therefore that we ask of you a total sacrifice.”

“If you perish,” said the Prince de Conde, “I pledge my honor as a noble that your family shall be sacred for the house of Navarre; I will bear it on my heart and serve it in all things.”

“Those words, my prince, suffice,” replied Christophe, without reflecting that the conspirator was a Gascon.  “We live in times when each man, prince or burgher, must do his duty.”

“There speaks the true Huguenot.  If all our men were like that,” said La Renaudie, laying his hand on Christophe’s shoulder, “we should be conquerors to-morrow.”

“Young man,” resumed the prince, “I desire to show you that if Chaudieu preaches, if the nobleman goes armed, the prince fights.  Therefore, in this hot game all stakes are played.”

“Now listen to me,” said La Renaudie.  “I will not give you the papers until you reach Beaugency; for they must not be risked during the whole of your journey.  You will find me waiting for you there on the wharf; my face, voice, and clothes will be so changed you cannot recognize me, but I shall say to you, ‘Are you a guepin?’ and you will answer, ‘Ready to serve.’  As to the performance of your mission, these are the means:  You will find a horse at the ’Pinte Fleurie,” close to Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois.  You will there ask for Jean le Breton, who will take you to the stable and give you one of my ponies which is known to do thirty leagues in eight hours.  Leave by the gate of Bussy.  Breton has a pass for me; use it yourself, and make your way by skirting the towns.  You can thus reach Orleans by daybreak.”

“But the horse?” said young Lecamus.

“He will not give out till you reach Orleans,” replied La Renaudie.  “Leave him at the entrance of the faubourg Bannier; for the gates are well guarded, and you must not excite suspicion.  It is for you, friend, to play your part intelligently.  You must invent whatever fable seems to you best to reach the third house to the left on entering Orleans; it belongs to a certain Tourillon, glove-maker.  Strike three blows on the door, and call out:  ’On service from Messieurs de Guise!’ The man will appear to be a rabid Guisist; no one knows but our four selves that he is one of us.  He will give you a faithful boatman,—­another Guisist of his own cut.  Go down at once to the wharf, and embark in a boat painted green and edged with white.  You will doubtless land at Beaugency to-morrow about mid-day.  There I will arrange to find you a boat which will take you to Blois without running any risk.  Our enemies the Guises do not watch the rivers, only the landings.  Thus you will be able to see the queen-mother to-morrow or the day after.”

“Your words are written there,” said Christophe, touching his forehead.

Chaudieu embraced his child with singular religious effusion; he was proud of him.

“God keep thee!” he said, pointing to the ruddy light of the sinking sun, which was touching the old roofs covered with shingles and sending its gleams slantwise through the forest of piles among which the water was rippling.

“You belong to the race of the Jacques Bonhomme,” said La Renaudie, pressing Christophe’s hand.

“We shall meet again, monsieur,” said the prince, with a gesture of infinite grace, in which there was something that seemed almost friendship.

With a stroke of his oars La Renaudie put the boat at the lower step of the stairway which led to the house.  Christophe landed, and the boat disappeared instantly beneath the arches of the pont au Change.