Александр Дюма
Marguerite de Valois
"Yes, yes," muttered La Mole; "but I have an objection to all these sorceries."
"Ah, then, if you have any such objections, you should not come here," answered Réné.
"Come, come, this is child's play!" interposed Coconnas. "Maître Réné, can you show me the devil?"
"No, Monsieur le Comte."
"I'm sorry for that; for I had a word or two to say to him, and it might have encouraged La Mole."
"Well, then, let it be so," said La Mole, "let us go to the point at once. I have been told of figures modelled in wax to look like the beloved object. Is that one way?"
"An infallible one."
"And there is nothing in the experiment likely to affect the life or health of the person beloved?"
"Nothing."
"Let us try, then."
"Shall I make first trial?" said Coconnas.
"No," said La Mole, "since I have begun, I will go through to the end."
"Is your desire mighty, ardent, imperious to know what the obstacle is, Monsieur de la Mole?"
"Oh," exclaimed La Mole, "I am dying with anxiety."
At this moment some one rapped lightly at the street door – so lightly that no one but Maître Réné heard the noise, doubtless because he had been expecting it.
Without any hesitation he went to the speaking-tube and put his ear to the mouthpiece, at the same time asking La Mole several idle questions. Then he added, suddenly:
"Now put all your energy into your wish, and call the person whom you love."
La Mole knelt, as if about to address a divinity; and Réné, going into the other compartment, went out noiselessly by the exterior staircase, and an instant afterward light steps trod the floor of his shop.
When La Mole rose he beheld before him Maître Réné. The Florentine held in his hand a small wax figure, very indifferently modelled; it wore a crown and mantle.
"Do you desire to be always beloved by your royal mistress?" demanded the perfumer.
"Yes, even if it cost me my life – even if my soul should be the sacrifice!" replied La Mole.
"Very good," said the Florentine, taking with the ends of his fingers some drops of water from a ewer and sprinkling them over the figure, at the same time muttering certain Latin words.
La Mole shuddered, believing that some sacrilege was committed.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"I am christening this figure with the name of Marguerite."
"What for?"
"To establish a sympathy."
La Mole opened his mouth to prevent his going any further, but a mocking look from Coconnas stopped him.
Réné, who had noticed the impulse, waited. "Your absolute and undivided will is necessary," he said.
"Go on," said La Mole.
Réné wrote on a small strip of red paper some cabalistic characters, put it into the eye of a steel needle, and with the needle pierced the small wax model in the heart.
Strange to say, at the orifice of the wound appeared a small drop of blood; then he set fire to the paper.
The heat of the needle melted the wax around it and dried up the spot of blood.
"Thus," said Réné, "by the power of sympathy, your love shall pierce and burn the heart of the woman whom you love."
Coconnas, true to his repute as a bold thinker, laughed in his mustache, and in a low tone jested; but La Mole, desperately in love and full of superstition, felt a cold perspiration start from the roots of his hair.
"And now," continued Réné, "press your lips to the lips of the figure, and say: 'Marguerite, I love thee! Come, Marguerite!'"
La Mole obeyed.
At this moment the door of the second chamber was heard to open, and light steps approached. Coconnas, curious and incredulous, drew his poniard, and fearing that if he raised the tapestry Réné would repeat what he said about the door, he cut a hole in the thick curtain, and applying his eye to the hole, uttered a cry of astonishment, to which two women's voices responded.
"What is it?" exclaimed La Mole, nearly dropping the waxen figure, which Réné caught from his hands.
"Why," replied Coconnas, "the Duchesse de Nevers and Madame Marguerite are there!"
"There, now, you unbelievers!" replied Réné, with an austere smile; "do you still doubt the force of sympathy?"
La Mole was petrified on seeing the queen; Coconnas was amazed at beholding Madame de Nevers. One believed that Réné's sorceries had evoked the phantom Marguerite; the other, seeing the door half open, by which the lovely phantoms had entered, gave at once a worldly and substantial explanation to the mystery.
While La Mole was crossing himself and sighing enough to split a rock, Coconnas, who had taken time to indulge in philosophical questionings and to drive away the foul fiend with the aid of that holy water sprinkler called scepticism, having observed, through the hole in the curtain, the astonishment shown by Madame de Nevers and Marguerite's somewhat caustic smile, judged the moment to be decisive, and understanding that a man may say in behalf of a friend what he cannot say for himself, instead of going to Madame de Nevers, went straight to Marguerite, and bending his knee, after the fashion of the great Artaxerxes as represented in the farces of the day, cried, in a voice to which the whistling of his wound added a peculiar accent not without some power:
"Madame, this very moment, at the demand of my friend the Comte de la Mole, Maître Réné was evoking your spirit; and to my great astonishment, your spirit is accompanied with a body most dear to me, and which I recommend to my friend. Shade of her majesty the Queen of Navarre, will you desire the body of your companion to come to the other side of the curtain?"
Marguerite began to laugh, and made a sign to Henriette, who passed to the other side of the curtain.
"La Mole, my friend," continued Coconnas, "be as eloquent as Demosthenes, as Cicero, as the Chancellor de l'Hôpital! and be assured that my life will be imperilled if you do not persuade the body of Madame de Nevers that I am her most devoted, most obedient, and most faithful servant."
"But" – stammered La Mole.
"Do as I say! And you, Maître Réné, watch that we are not interrupted."
Réné did as Coconnas asked.
"By Heaven, monsieur," said Marguerite, "you are a clever man. I am listening to you. What have you to say?"
"I have to say to you, madame, that the shadow of my friend – for he is a shadow, and he proves it by not uttering a single little word – I say, that this shadow begs me to use the faculty which material bodies possess of speaking so as to be understood, and to say to you: Lovely shadow, the gentleman thus disembodied has lost his whole body and all his breath by the cruelty of your eyes. If this were really you, I should ask Maître Réné to plunge me in some sulphurous pit rather than use such language to the daughter of King Henry II., to the sister of King Charles IX., to the wife of the King of Navarre. But shades are freed from all earthly pride and they are never angry when men love them. Therefore, pray your body, madame, to love the soul of this poor La Mole a little – a soul in trouble, if ever there was one; a soul first persecuted by friendship, which three times thrust into him several inches of cold steel; a soul burnt by the fire of your eyes – fire a thousand times more consuming than all the flames of hell. So have pity on this poor soul! Love a little what was the handsome La Mole; and if you no longer possess speech, ah! bestow a gesture, bestow a smile upon him. My friend's soul is a very intelligent soul, and will comprehend everything. Be kind to him, then; or, by Heaven! I will run my sword through Réné's body in order that, by virtue of the power which he possesses over spirits, he may force yours, which he has already so opportunely evoked, to do all a shade so amiably disposed as yours appears to be should do."
At this burst of eloquence delivered by Coconnas as he stood in front of the queen like Æneas descending into Hades, Marguerite could not refrain from a hearty burst of laughter, yet, preserving the silence which on such an occasion may be the supposed characteristic of a royal shade, she presented her hand to Coconnas. He took it daintily in his, and, calling to La Mole, said:
"Shade of my friend, come hither instantly!"
La Mole, amazed, overcome, silently obeyed.
"’T is well," said Coconnas, taking him by the back of the head; "and now bring the shadow of your handsome brown countenance into contact with the white and vaporous hand before you."
And Coconnas, suiting the action to the word, raised the delicate hand to La Mole's lips, and kept them for a moment respectfully united, without the hand seeking to withdraw itself from the gentle pressure.
Marguerite had not ceased to smile, but Madame de Nevers did not smile at all; she was still trembling at the unexpected appearance of the two gentlemen. She was conscious that her awkwardness was increased by all the fever of a growing jealousy, for it seemed to her that Coconnas ought not thus to forget her affairs for those of others.
La Mole saw her eyebrows contracted, detected the flashing threat of her eyes, and in spite of the intoxicating fever to which his delight was insensibly urging him to succumb he realized the danger which his friend was running and perceived what he should try to do to rescue him.
So rising and leaving Marguerite's hand in Coconnas's, he grasped the Duchesse de Nevers's, and bending his knee he said:
"O loveliest – O most adorable of women – I speak of living women, and not of shades!" and he turned a look and a smile to Marguerite; "allow a soul released from its mortal envelope to repair the absence of a body fully absorbed by material friendship. Monsieur de Coconnas, whom you see, is only a man – a man of bold and hardy frame, of flesh handsome to gaze upon perchance, but perishable, like all flesh. Omnis caro fenum. Although this gentleman keeps on from morning to night pouring into my ears the most touching litanies about you, though you have seen him distribute as heavy blows as were ever seen in wide France – this champion, so full of eloquence in presence of a spirit, dares not address a woman. That is why he has addressed the shade of the queen, charging me to speak to your lovely body, and to tell you that he lays at your feet his soul and heart; that he entreats from your divine eyes a look in pity, from your rosy fingers a beckoning sign, and from your musical and heavenly voice those words which men can never forget; if not, he has supplicated another thing, and that is, in case he should not soften you, you will run my sword – which is a real blade, for swords have no shadows except in the sunshine – run my sword right through his body for the second time, for he can live no longer if you do not authorize him to live exclusively for you." All the verve and comical exaggeration which Coconnas had put into his speech found their counterpart in the tenderness, the intoxicating vigor, and the mock humility which La Mole introduced into his supplication.
Henriette's eyes turned from La Mole, to whom she had listened till he ended, and rested on Coconnas, to see if the expression of that gentleman's countenance harmonized with his friend's ardent address. It seemed that she was satisfied, for blushing, breathless, conquered, she said to Coconnas, with a smile which disclosed a double row of pearls enclosed in coral:
"Is this true?"
"By Heaven!" exclaimed Coconnas, fascinated by her look, "it is true, indeed. Oh, yes, madame, it is true – true on your life – true on my death!"
"Come with me, then," said Henriette, extending to him her hand, while her eyes proclaimed the feelings of her heart.
Coconnas flung his velvet cap into the air and with one stride was at the young woman's side, while La Mole, recalled to Marguerite by a gesture, executed at the same time an amorous chassez with his friend.
Réné appeared at the door in the background.
"Silence!" he exclaimed, in a voice which at once damped all the ardor of the lovers; "silence!"
And they heard in the solid wall the sound of a key in a lock, and of a door grating on its hinges.
"But," said Marguerite, haughtily, "I should think that no one has the right to enter whilst we are here!"
"Not even the queen mother?" whispered Réné in her ear.
Marguerite instantly rushed out by the exterior staircase, leading La Mole after her; Henriette and Coconnas almost arm-in-arm followed them, all four taking flight, as fly at the first noise the birds seen engaged in loving parley on the boughs of a flowering shrub.
CHAPTER XX
THE BLACK HENS
It was time the two couples disappeared! Catharine was putting the key in the lock of the second door just as Coconnas and Madame de Nevers stepped out of the house by the lower entrance, and Catharine as she entered could hear the steps of the fugitives on the stairs.
She cast a searching glance around, and then fixing her suspicious eyes on Réné, who stood motionless, bowing before her, said:
"Who was that?"
"Some lovers, who are satisfied with the assurance I gave them that they are really in love."
"Never mind them," said Catharine, shrugging her shoulders; "is there no one else here?"
"No one but your majesty and myself."
"Have you done what I ordered you?"
"About the two black hens?"
"Yes!"
"They are ready, madame."
"Ah," muttered Catharine, "if you were a Jew!"
"Why a Jew, madame?"
"Because you could then read the precious treatises which the Hebrews have written about sacrifices. I have had one of them translated, and I found that the Hebrews did not look for omens in the heart or liver as the Romans did, but in the configuration of the brain, and in the shape of the letters traced there by the all-powerful hand of destiny."
"Yes, madame; so I have heard from an old rabbi."
"There are," said Catharine, "characters thus marked that reveal all the future. Only the Chaldean seers recommend" —
"Recommend – what?" asked Réné, seeing the queen hesitate.
"That the experiment shall be tried on the human brain, as more developed and more nearly sympathizing with the wishes of the consulter."
"Alas!" said Réné, "your majesty knows it is impossible."
"Difficult, at least," said Catharine; "if we had known this at Saint Bartholomew's, what a rich harvest we might have had – The first convict – but I will think of it. Meantime, let us do what we can. Is the chamber of sacrifice prepared?"
"Yes, madame."
"Let us go there."
Réné lighted a taper made of strange substances, the odor of which, both insidious and penetrating as well as nauseating and stupefying, betokened the introduction of many elements; holding this taper up, he preceded Catharine into the cell.
Catharine selected from amongst the sacrificial instruments a knife of blue steel, while Réné took up one of the two fowls that were huddling in one corner, with anxious, golden eyes.
"How shall we proceed?"
"We will examine the liver of the one and the brain of the other. If these two experiments lead to the same result we must be convinced, especially if these results coincide with those we got before."
"Which shall we begin with?"
"With the liver."
"Very well," said Réné, and he fastened the bird down to two rings attached to the little altar, so that the creature, turned on its back, could only struggle, without stirring from the spot.
Catharine opened its breast with a single stroke of her knife; the fowl uttered three cries, and, after some convulsions, expired.
"Always three cries!" said Catharine; "three signs of death."
She then opened the body.
"And the liver inclining to the left, always to the left, – a triple death, followed by a downfall. ’T is terrible, Réné."
"We must see, madame, whether the presages from the second will correspond with those of the first."
Réné unfastened the body of the fowl from the altar and tossed it into a corner; then he went to the other, which, foreseeing what its fate would be by its companion's, tried to escape by running round the cell, and finding itself pent up in a corner flew over Réné's head, and in its flight extinguished the magic taper Catharine held.
"You see, Réné, thus shall our race be extinguished," said the queen; "death shall breathe upon it, and destroy it from the face of the earth! Yet three sons! three sons!" she murmured, sorrowfully.
Réné took from her the extinguished taper, and went into the adjoining room to relight it.
On his return he saw the hen hiding its head in the tunnel.
"This time," said Catharine, "I will prevent the cries, for I will cut off the head at once."
And accordingly, as soon as the hen was bound, Catharine, as she had said, severed the head at a single blow; but in the last agony the beak opened three times, and then closed forever.
"Do you see," said Catharine, terrified, "instead of three cries, three sighs? Always three! – they will all three die. All these spirits before they depart count and call three. Let us now see the prognostications in the head."
She severed the bloodless comb from the head, carefully opened the skull, and laying bare the lobes of the brain endeavored to trace a letter formed in the bloody sinuosities made by the division of the central pulp.
"Always so!" cried she, clasping her hands; "and this time clearer than ever; see here!"
Réné approached.
"What is the letter?" asked Catharine.
"An H," replied Réné.
"How many times repeated?"
Réné counted.
"Four," said he.
"Ay, ay! I see it! that is to say, Henry IV. Oh," she cried, flinging the knife from her, "I am accursed in my posterity!"
She was terrible, that woman, pale as a corpse, lighted by the dismal taper, and clasping her bloody hands.
"He will reign!" she exclaimed with a sigh of despair; "he will reign!"
"He will reign!" repeated Réné, plunged in meditation.
Nevertheless, the gloomy expression of Catharine's face soon disappeared under the light of a thought which unfolded in the depths of her mind.
"Réné," said she, stretching out her hand toward the perfumer without lifting her head from her breast, "Réné, is there not a terrible history of a doctor at Perugia, who killed at once, by the aid of a pomade,7 his daughter and his daughter's lover?"
"Yes, madame."
"And this lover was" —
"Was King Ladislas, madame."
"Ah, yes!" murmured she; "have you any of the details of this story?"
"I have an old book which mentions it," replied Réné.
"Well, let us go into the other room, and you can show it me."
They left the cell, the door of which Réné closed after him.
"Has your majesty any other orders to give me concerning the sacrifices?"
"No, Réné, I am for the present sufficiently convinced. We will wait till we can secure the head of some criminal, and on the day of the execution you must arrange with the hangman."
Réné bowed in token of obedience, then holding his candle up he let the light fall on the shelves where his books stood, climbed on a chair, took one down, and handed it to the queen.
Catharine opened it.
"What is this?" she asked; "'On the Method of Raising and Training Tercels, Falcons, and Gerfalcons to be Courageous, Valiant, and always ready for Flight.'"
"Ah! pardon me, madame, I made a mistake. That is a treatise on venery written by a scientific man of Lucca for the famous Castruccio Castracani. It stood next the other and was bound exactly like it. I took down the wrong one. However, it is a very precious volume; there are only three copies extant – one belongs to the library at Venice, the other was bought by your grandfather Lorenzo and was offered by Pietro de Médicis to King Charles VIII., when he visited Florence, and the third you have in your hands."
"I venerate it," said Catharine, "because of its rarity, but as I do not need it, I return it to you."
And she held out her right hand to Réné to receive the book which she wished, while with her left hand she returned to him the one which she had first taken.
This time Réné was not mistaken; it was the volume she wished. He stepped down, turned the leaves for a moment, and gave it to her open.
Catharine went and sat down at a table. Réné placed the magic taper near her and by the light of its bluish flame she read a few lines in an undertone:
"Good!" said she, shutting the book; "that is all I wanted to know."
She rose from her seat, leaving the book on the table, but bearing away the idea which had germinated in her mind and would ripen there.
Réné waited respectfully, taper in hand, until the queen, who seemed about to retire, should give him fresh orders or ask fresh questions.
Catharine, with her head bent and her finger on her mouth, walked up and down several times without speaking.
Then suddenly stopping before Réné, and fixing on him her eyes, round and piercing like a hawk's:
"Confess you have made for her some love-philter," said she.
"For whom?" asked Réné, starting.
"La Sauve."
"I, madame?" said Réné; "never!"
"Never?"
"I swear it on my soul."
"There must be some magic in it, however, for he is desperately in love with her, though he is not famous for his constancy."
"Who, madame?"
"He, Henry, the accursed, – he who is to succeed my three sons, – he who shall one day be called Henry IV., and is yet the son of Jeanne d'Albret."
And Catharine accompanied these words with a sigh which made Réné shudder, for he thought of the famous gloves he had prepared by Catharine's order for the Queen of Navarre.
"So he still runs after her, does he?" said Réné.
"He does," replied the queen.
"I thought that the King of Navarre was quite in love with his wife now."
"A farce, Réné, a farce! I know not why, but every one is seeking to deceive me. My daughter Marguerite is leagued against me; perhaps she, too, is looking forward to the death of her brothers; perhaps she, too, hopes to be Queen of France."
"Perhaps so," re-echoed Réné, falling back into his own reverie and echoing Catharine's terrible suspicion.
"Ha! we shall see," said Catharine, going to the main door, for she doubtless judged it useless to descend the secret stair, now that she was sure that they were alone.
Réné preceded her, and in a few minutes they stood in the perfumer's shop.
"You promised me some new kind of cosmetic for my hands and lips, Réné; the winter is at hand and you know how sensitive my skin is to the cold."
"I have already provided for this, madame; and I shall bring you some to-morrow."
"You would not find me in before nine o'clock to-morrow evening; I shall be occupied with my devotions during the day."
"I will be at the Louvre at nine o'clock, then, madame."
"Madame de Sauve has beautiful hands and beautiful lips," said Catharine in a careless tone. "What pomade does she use?"
"For her hands?"
"Yes, for her hands first."
"Heliotrope."
"What for her lips?"
"She is going to try a new opiate of my invention. I was going to bring your majesty a box of it at the same time."
Catharine mused an instant.
"She is certainly a very beautiful creature," said she, pursuing her secret thoughts; "and the passion of the Béarnais for her is not strange at all."
"And she is so devoted to your majesty," said Réné. "At least I should think so."
Catharine smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
"When a woman loves, is she faithful to any one but her lover? You must have given her some philter, Réné."
"I swear I have not, madame."
"Well, well; we'll say no more about it. Show me this new opiate you spoke of, that is to make her lips fresher and rosier than ever."
Réné approached a shelf and showed Catharine six small boxes of the same shape, i. e., round silver boxes ranged side by side.
"This is the only philter she ever asked me for," observed Réné; "it is true, as your majesty says, I composed it expressly for her, for her lips are so tender that the sun and wind affect them equally."
Catharine opened one of the boxes; it contained a most fascinating carmine paste.
"Give me some paste for my hands, Réné," said she; "I will take it away with me."
Réné took the taper, and went to seek, in a private compartment, what the queen asked for. As he turned, he fancied that he saw the queen quickly conceal a box under her mantle; he was, however, too familiar with these little thefts of the queen mother to have the rudeness to seem to perceive the movement; so wrapping the cosmetic she demanded in a paper bag, ornamented with fleurs-de-lis:
"Here it is, madame," he said.
"Thanks, Réné," returned the queen; then, after a moment's silence: "Do not give Madame de Sauve that paste for a week or ten days; I wish to make the first trial of it myself."
And she prepared to go.
"Your majesty, do you desire me to accompany you?" asked Réné.
"Only to the end of the bridge," replied Catharine; "my gentlemen and my litter wait for me there."
They left the house, and at the end of the Rue de la Barillerie four gentlemen on horseback and a plain litter were waiting.
On his return Réné's first care was to count his boxes of opiates. One was wanting.
