Catherine De Medici

IV

THE KING’S TALE

“Yes,” returned the king.  “In a second I was there, followed by Tavannes, and then we clambered to a spot where I could see without being seen the interior of that devil’s kitchen, in which I beheld extraordinary things which inspired me to take certain measures.  Did you ever notice the end of the roof of that cursed perfumer?  The windows toward the street are always closed and dark, except the last, from which can be seen the hotel de Soissons and the observatory which my mother built for that astrologer, Cosmo Ruggiero.  Under the roof are lodging-rooms and a gallery which have no windows except on the courtyard, so that in order to see what was going on within, it was necessary to go where no man before ever dreamed of climbing,—­along the coping of a high wall which adjoins the roof of Rene’s house.  The men who set up in that house the furnaces by which they distil death, reckoned on the cowardice of Parisians to save them from being overlooked; but they little thought of Charles de Valois!  I crept along the coping until I came to a window, against the casing of which I was able to stand up straight with my arm round a carved monkey which ornamented it.”

“What did you see, dear heart?” said Marie, trembling.

“A den, where works of darkness were being done,” replied the king.  “The first object on which my eyes lighted was a tall old man seated in a chair, with a magnificent white beard, like that of old l’Hopital, and dressed like him in a black velvet robe.  On his broad forehead furrowed deep with wrinkles, on his crown of white hair, on his calm, attentive face, pale with toil and vigils, fell the concentrated rays of a lamp from which shone a vivid light.  His attention was divided between an old manuscript, the parchment of which must have been centuries old, and two lighted furnaces on which heretical compounds were cooking.  Neither the floor nor the ceiling of the laboratory could be seen, because of the myriads of hanging skeletons, bodies of animals, dried plants, minerals, and articles of all kinds that masked the walls; while on the floor were books, instruments for distilling, chests filled with utensils for magic and astrology; in one place I saw horoscopes and nativities, phials, wax-figures under spells, and possibly poisons.  Tavannes and I were fascinated, I do assure you, by the sight of this devil’s-arsenal.  Only to see it puts one under a spell, and if I had not been King of France, I might have been awed by it.  ’You can tremble for both of us,’ I whispered to Tavannes.  But Tavannes’ eyes were already caught by the most mysterious feature of the scene.  On a couch, near the old man, lay a girl of strangest beauty,—­slender and long like a snake, white as ermine, livid as death, motionless as a statue.  Perhaps it was a woman just taken from her grave, on whom they were trying experiments, for she seemed to wear a shroud; her eyes were fixed, and I could not see that she breathed.  The old fellow paid no attention to her.  I looked at him so intently that, after a while, his soul seemed to pass into mine.  By dint of studying him, I ended by admiring the glance of his eye,—­so keen, so profound, so bold, in spite of the chilling power of age.  I admired his mouth, mobile with thoughts emanating from a desire which seemed to be the solitary desire of his soul, and was stamped upon every line of the face.  All things in that man expressed a hope which nothing discouraged, and nothing could check.  His attitude,—­a quivering immovability,—­those outlines so free, carved by a single passion as by the chisel of a sculptor, that IDEA concentrated on some experiment criminal or scientific, that seeking Mind in quest of Nature, thwarted by her, bending but never broken under the weight of its own audacity, which it would not renounce, threatening creation with the fire it derived from it,—­ah! all that held me in a spell for the time being.  I saw before me an old man who was more of a king than I, for his glance embraced the world and mastered it.  I will forge swords no longer; I will soar above the abysses of existence, like that man; for his science, methinks, is true royalty!  Yes, I believe in occult science.”

“You, the eldest son, the defender of the Holy Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church?” said Marie.

“I.”

“What happened to you?  Go on, go on; I will fear for you, and you will have courage for me.”

“Looking at a clock, the old man rose,” continued the king.  “He went out, I don’t know where; but I heard the window on the side toward the rue Saint-Honore open.  Soon a brilliant light gleamed out upon the darkness; then I saw in the observatory of the hotel de Soissons another light replying to that of the old man, and by it I beheld the figure of Cosmo Ruggiero on the tower.  ‘See, they communicate!’ I said to Tavannes, who from that moment thought the matter frightfully suspicious, and agreed with me that we ought to seize the two men and search, incontinently, their accursed workshop.  But before proceeding to do so, we wanted to see what was going to happen.  After about fifteen minutes the door opened, and Cosmo Ruggiero, my mother’s counsellor,—­the bottomless pit which holds the secrets of the court, he from whom all women ask help against their husbands and lovers, and all the men ask help against their unfaithful wives and mistresses, he who traffics on the future as on the past, receiving pay with both hands, who sells horoscopes and is supposed to know all things,—­that semi-devil came in, saying to the old man, ‘Good-day to you, brother.’  With him he brought a hideous old woman,—­toothless, humpbacked, twisted, bent, like a Chinese image, only worse.  She was wrinkled as a withered apple; her skin was saffron-colored; her chin bit her nose; her mouth was a mere line scarcely visible; her eyes were like the black spots on a dice; her forehead emitted bitterness; her hair escaped in straggling gray locks from a dirty coif; she walked with a crutch; she smelt of heresy and witchcraft.  The sight of her actually frightened us, Tavannes and me!  We didn’t think her a natural woman.  God never made a woman so fearful as that.  She sat down on a stool near the pretty snake with whom Tavannes was in love.  The two brothers paid no attention to the old woman nor to the young woman, who together made a horrible couple,—­on the one side life in death, on the other death in life—­”

“Ah! my sweet poet!” cried Marie, kissing the king.

“‘Good-day, Cosmo,’ replied the old alchemist.  And they both looked into the furnace.  ‘What strength has the moon to-day?’ asked the elder.  ‘But, caro Lorenzo,’ replied my mother’s astrologer, ’the September tides are not yet over; we can learn nothing while that disorder lasts.’  ‘What says the East to-night?’ ’It discloses in the air a creative force which returns to earth all that earth takes from it.  The conclusion is that all things here below are the product of a slow transformation, but that all diversities are the forms of one and the same substance.’  ‘That is what my predecessor thought,’ replied Lorenzo.  ’This morning Bernard Palissy told me that metals were the result of compression, and that fire, which divides all, also unites all; fire has the power to compress as well as to separate.  That man has genius.’  Though I was placed where it was impossible for them to see me, Cosmo said, lifting the hand of the dead girl:  ’Some one is near us!  Who is it’ ‘The king,’ she answered.  I at once showed myself and rapped on the window.  Ruggiero opened it, and I sprang into that hellish kitchen, followed by Tavannes.  ‘Yes, the king,’ I said to the two Florentines, who seemed terrified.  ’In spite of your furnaces and your books, your sciences and your sorceries, you did not foresee my visit.  I am very glad to meet the famous Lorenzo Ruggiero, of whom my mother speaks mysteriously,’ I said, addressing the old man, who rose and bowed.  ’You are in this kingdom without my consent, my good man.  For whom are you working here, you whose ancestors from father to son have been devoted in heart to the house of Medici?  Listen to me!  You dive into so many purses that by this time, if you are grasping men, you have piled up gold.  You are too shrewd and cautious to cast yourselves imprudently into criminal actions; but, nevertheless, you are not here in this kitchen without a purpose.  Yes, you have some secret scheme, you who are satisfied neither by gold nor power.  Whom do you serve,—­God or the devil?  What are you concocting here?  I choose to know the whole truth; I am a man who can hear it and keep silence about your enterprise, however blamable it maybe.  Therefore you will tell me all, without reserve.  If you deceive me you will be treated severely.  Pagans or Christians, Calvinists or Mohammedans, you have my royal word that you shall leave the kingdom in safety if you have any misdemeanors to relate.  I shall leave you for the rest of the night and the forenoon of to-morrow to examine your thoughts; for you are now my prisoners, and you will at once follow me to a place where you will be guarded carefully.’  Before obeying me the two Italians consulted each other by a subtle glance; then Lorenzo Ruggiero said I might be assured that no torture could wring their secrets from them; that in spite of their apparent feebleness neither pain nor human feelings had any power of them; confidence alone could make their mouth say what their mind contained.  I must not, he said, be surprised if they treated as equals with a king who recognized God only as above him, for their thoughts came from God alone.  They therefore claimed from me as much confidence and trust as they should give to me.  But before engaging themselves to answer me without reserve they must request me to put my left hand into that of the young girl lying there, and my right into that of the old woman.  Not wishing them to think I was afraid of their sorcery, I held out my hands; Lorenzo took the right, Cosmo the left, and each placed a hand in that of each woman, so that I was like Jesus Christ between the two thieves.  During the time that the two witches were examining my hands Cosmo held a mirror before me and asked me to look into it; his brother, meanwhile, was talking with the two women in a language unknown to me.  Neither Tavannes nor I could catch the meaning of a single sentence.  Before bringing the men here we put seals on all the outlets of the laboratory, which Tavannes undertook to guard until such time as, by my express orders, Bernard Palissy, and Chapelain, my physician, could be brought there to examine thoroughly the drugs the place contained and which were evidently made there.  In order to keep the Ruggieri ignorant of this search, and to prevent them from communicating with a single soul outside, I put the two devils in your lower rooms in charge of Solern’s Germans, who are better than the walls of a jail.  Rene, the perfumer, is kept under guard in his own house by Solern’s equerry, and so are the two witches.  Now, my sweetest, inasmuch as I hold the keys of the whole cabal,—­the kings of Thune, the chiefs of sorcery, the gypsy fortune-tellers, the masters of the future, the heirs of all past soothsayers,—­I intend by their means to read you, to know your heart; and, together, we will find out what is to happen to us.”

“I shall be glad if they can lay my heart bare before you,” said Marie, without the slightest fear.

“I know why sorcerers don’t frighten you,—­because you are a witch yourself.”

“Will you have a peach?” she said, offering him some delicious fruit on a gold plate.  “See these grapes, these pears; I went to Vincennes myself and gathered them for you.”

“Yes, I’ll eat them; there is no poison there except a philter from your hands.”

“You ought to eat a great deal of fruit, Charles; it would cool your blood, which you heat by such excitements.”

“Must I love you less?”

“Perhaps so,” she said.  “If the things you love injure you—­and I have feared it—­I shall find strength in my heart to refuse them.  I adore Charles more than I love the king; I want the man to live, released from the tortures that make him grieve.”

“Royalty has ruined me.”

“Yes,” she replied.  “If you were only a poor prince, like your brother-in-law of Navarre, without a penny, possessing only a miserable little kingdom in Spain where he never sets his foot, and Bearn in France which doesn’t give him revenue enough to feed him, I should be happy, much happier than if I were really Queen of France.”

“But you are more than the Queen of France.  She has King Charles for the sake of the kingdom only; royal marriages are only politics.”

Marie smiled and made a pretty little grimace as she said:  “Yes, yes, I know that, sire.  And my sonnet, have you written it?”

“Dearest, verses are as difficult to write as treaties of peace; but you shall have them soon.  Ah, me! life is so easy here, I wish I might never leave you.  However, we must send for those Italians and question them. Tete-Dieu!  I thought one Ruggiero in the kingdom was one too many, but it seems there are two.  Now listen, my precious; you don’t lack sense, you would make an excellent lieutenant of police, for you can penetrate things—­”

“But, sire, we women suppose all we fear, and we turn what is probable into truths; that is the whole of our art in a nutshell.”

“Well, help me to sound these men.  Just now all my plans depend on the result of their examination.  Are they innocent?  Are they guilty?  My mother is behind them.”

“I hear Jacob’s voice in the next room,” said Marie.

Jacob was the favorite valet of the king, and the one who accompanied him on all his private excursions.  He now came to ask if it was the king’s good pleasure to speak to the two prisoners.  The king made a sign in the affirmative, and the mistress of the house gave her orders.

“Jacob,” she said, “clear the house of everybody, except the nurse and Monsieur le Dauphin d’Auvergne, who may remain.  As for you, stay in the lower hall; but first, close the windows, draw the curtains of the salon, and light the candles.”

The king’s impatience was so great that while these preparations were being made he sat down upon a raised seat at the corner of a lofty fireplace of white marble in which a bright fire was blazing, placing his pretty mistress by his side.  His portrait, framed in velvet, was over the mantle in place of a mirror.  Charles IX. rested his elbow on the arm of the seat as if to watch the two Florentines the better under cover of his hand.

The shutters closed, and the curtains drawn, Jacob lighted the wax tapers in a tall candelabrum of chiselled silver, which he placed on the table where the Florentines were to stand,—­an object, by the bye, which they would readily recognize as the work of their compatriot, Benvenuto Cellini.  The richness of the room, decorated in the taste of Charles IX., now shone forth.  The red-brown of the tapestries showed to better advantage than by daylight.  The various articles of furniture, delicately made or carved, reflected in their ebony panels the glow of the fire and the sparkle of the lights.  Gilding, soberly applied, shone here and there like eyes, brightening the brown color which prevailed in this nest of love.

Jacob presently gave two knocks, and, receiving permission, ushered in the Italians.  Marie Touchet was instantly affected by the grandeur of Lorenzo’s presence, which struck all those who met him, great and small alike.  The silvery whiteness of the old man’s beard was heightened by a robe of black velvet; his brow was like a marble dome.  His austere face, illumined by two black eyes which cast a pointed flame, conveyed an impression of genius issuing from solitude, and all the more effective because its power had not been dulled by contact with men.  It was like the steel of a blade that had never been fleshed.

As for Cosmo Ruggiero, he wore the dress of a courtier of the time.  Marie made a sign to the king to assure him that he had not exaggerated his description, and to thank him for having shown her these extraordinary men.

“I would like to have seen the sorceresses, too,” she whispered in his ear.