Оноре де Бальзак
Catherine De Medici
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.
IX. THE TUMULT AT AMBOISE
By moving the court to the chateau of Amboise, the two Lorrain princes intended to set a trap for the leader of the party of the Reformation, the Prince de Conde, whom they had made the king summon to his presence. As vassal of the Crown and prince of the blood, Conde was bound to obey the summons of his sovereign. Not to come to Amboise would constitute the crime of treason; but if he came, he put himself in the power of the Crown. Now, at this moment, as we have seen, the Crown, the council, the court, and all their powers were solely in the hands of the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine. The Prince de Conde showed, at this delicate crisis, a presence of mind and a decision and willingness which made him the worthy exponent of Jeanne d’Albret and the valorous general of the Reformers. He travelled at the rear of the conspirators as far as Vendome, intending to support them in case of their success. When the first uprising ended by a brief skirmish, in which the flower of the nobility beguiled by Calvin perished, the prince arrived, with fifty noblemen, at the chateau of Amboise on the very day after that fight, which the politic Guises termed “the Tumult of Amboise.” As soon as the duke and cardinal heard of his coming they sent the Marechal de Saint-Andre with an escort of a hundred men to meet him. When the prince and his own escort reached the gates of the chateau the marechal refused entrance to the latter.
“You must enter alone, monseigneur,” said the Chancellor Olivier, the Cardinal de Tournon, and Birago, who were stationed outside of the portcullis.
“And why?”
“You are suspected of treason,” replied the chancellor.
The prince, who saw that his suite were already surrounded by the troop of the Duc de Nemours, replied tranquilly: “If that is so, I will go alone to my cousin, and prove to him my innocence.”
He dismounted, talked with perfect freedom of mind to Birago, the Cardinal de Tournon, the chancellor, and the Duc de Nemours, from whom he asked for particulars of the “tumult.”
“Monseigneur,” replied the duke, “the rebels had confederates in Amboise. A captain, named Lanoue, had introduced armed men, who opened the gate to them, through which they entered and made themselves masters of the town – ”
“That is to say, you opened the mouth of a sack, and they ran into it,” replied the prince, looking at Birago.
“If they had been supported by the attack which Captain Chaudieu, the preacher’s brother, was expected to make before the gate of the Bon-Hommes, they would have been completely successful,” replied the Duc de Nemours. “But in consequence of the position which the Duc de Guise ordered me to take up, Captain Chaudieu was obliged to turn my flank to avoid a fight. So instead of arriving by night, like the rest, this rebel and his men got there at daybreak, by which time the king’s troops had crushed the invaders of the town.”
“And you had a reserve force to recover the gate which had been opened to them?” said the prince.
“Monsieur le Marechal de Saint-Andre was there with five hundred men-at-arms.”
The prince gave the highest praise to these military arrangements.
“The lieutenant-general must have been fully aware of the plans of the Reformers, to have acted as he did,” he said in conclusion. “They were no doubt betrayed.”
The prince was treated with increasing harshness. After separating him from his escort at the gates, the cardinal and the chancellor barred his way when he reached the staircase which led to the apartments of the king.
“We are directed by his Majesty, monseigneur, to take you to your own apartments,” they said.
“Am I, then, a prisoner?”
“If that were the king’s intention you would not be accompanied by a prince of the Church, nor by me,” replied the chancellor.
These two personages escorted the prince to an apartment, where guards of honor – so-called – were given him. There he remained, without seeing any one, for some hours. From his window he looked down upon the Loire and the meadows of the beautiful valley stretching from Amboise to Tours. He was reflecting on the situation, and asking himself whether the Guises would really dare anything against his person, when the door of his chamber opened and Chicot, the king’s fool, formerly a dependent of his own, entered the room.
“They told me you were in disgrace,” said the prince.
“You’d never believe how virtuous the court has become since the death of Henri II.”
“But the king loves a laugh.”
“Which king, – Francois II., or Francois de Lorraine?”
“You are not afraid of the duke, if you talk in that way!”
“He wouldn’t punish me for it, monseigneur,” replied Chicot, laughing.
“To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”
“Hey! Isn’t it due to you on your return? I bring you my cap and bells.”
“Can I go out?”
“Try.”
“Suppose I do go out, what then?”
“I should say that you had won the game by playing against the rules.”
“Chicot, you alarm me. Are you sent here by some one who takes an interest in me?”
“Yes,” said Chicot, nodding. He came nearer to the prince, and made him understand that they were being watched and overheard.
“What have you to say to me?” asked the Prince de Conde, in a low voice.
“Boldness alone can pull you out of this scrape; the message comes from the queen-mother,” replied the fool, slipping his words into the ear of the prince.
“Tell those who sent you,” replied Conde, “that I should not have entered this chateau if I had anything to reproach myself with, or to fear.”
“I rush to report that lofty answer!” cried the fool.
Two hours later, that is, about one o’clock in the afternoon, before the king’s dinner, the chancellor and Cardinal de Tournon came to fetch the prince and present him to Francois II. in the great gallery of the chateau of Amboise, where the councils were held. There, before the whole court, Conde pretended surprise at the coldness with which the little king received him, and asked the reason of it.
“You are accused, cousin,” said the queen-mother, sternly, “of taking part in the conspiracy of the Reformers; and you must prove yourself a faithful subject and a good Catholic, if you do not desire to draw down upon your house the anger of the king.”
Hearing these words said, in the midst of the most profound silence, by Catherine de’ Medici, on whose right arm the king was leaning, the Duc d’Orleans being on her left side, the Prince de Conde recoiled three steps, laid his hand on his sword with a proud motion, and looked at all the persons who surrounded him.
“Those who said that, madame,” he cried in an angry voice, “lied in their throats!”
Then he flung his glove at the king’s feet, saying: “Let him who believes that calumny come forward!”
The whole court trembled as the Duc de Guise was seen to leave his place; but instead of picking up the glove, he advanced to the intrepid hunchback.
“If you desire a second in that duel, monseigneur, do me the honor to accept my services,” he said. “I will answer for you; I know that you will show the Reformers how mistaken they are if they think to have you for their leader.”
The prince was forced to take the hand of the lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Chicot picked up the glove and returned it to Monsieur de Conde.
“Cousin,” said the little king, “you must draw your sword only for the defence of the kingdom. Come and dine.”
The Cardinal de Lorraine, surprised at his brother’s action, drew him away to his own apartments. The Prince de Conde, having escaped his apparent danger, offered his hand to Mary Stuart to lead her to the dining hall; but all the while that he made her flattering speeches he pondered in his mind what trap the astute Balafre was setting for him. In vain he worked his brains, for it was not until Queen Mary herself betrayed it that he guessed the intention of the Guises.
“‘Twould have been a great pity,” she said laughing, “if so clever a head had fallen; you must admit that my uncle has been generous.”
“Yes, madame; for my head is only useful on my shoulders, though one of them is notoriously higher than the other. But is this really your uncle’s generosity? Is he not getting the credit of it rather cheaply? Do you think it would be so easy to take off the head of a prince of the blood?”
“All is not over yet,” she said. “We shall see what your conduct will be at the execution of the noblemen, your friends, at which the Council has decided to make a great public display of severity.”
“I shall do,” said the prince, “whatever the king does.”
“The king, the queen-mother, and myself will be present at the execution, together with the whole court and the ambassadors – ”
“A fete!” said the prince, sarcastically.
“Better than that,” said the young queen, “an act of faith, an act of the highest policy. ‘Tis a question of forcing the noblemen of France to submit themselves to the Crown, and compelling them to give up their tastes for plots and factions – ”
“You will not break their belligerent tempers by the show of danger, madame; you will risk the Crown itself in the attempt,” replied the prince.
At the end of the dinner, which was gloomy enough, Queen Mary had the cruel boldness to turn the conversation openly upon the trial of the noblemen on the charge of being seized with arms in their hands, and to speak of the necessity of making a great public show of their execution.
“Madame,” said Francois II., “is it not enough for the king of France to know that so much brave blood is to flow? Must he make a triumph of it?”
“No, sire; but an example,” replied Catherine.
“It was the custom of your father and your grandfather to be present at the burning of heretics,” said Mary Stuart.
“The kings who reigned before me did as they thought best, and I choose to do as I please,” said the little king.
“Philip the Second,” remarked Catherine, “who is certainly a great king, lately postponed an auto da fe until he could return from the Low Countries to Valladolid.”
“What do you think, cousin?” said the king to Prince de Conde.
“Sire, you cannot avoid it, and the papal nuncio and all the ambassadors should be present. I shall go willingly, as these ladies take part in the fete.”
Thus the Prince de Conde, at a glance from Catherine de’ Medici, bravely chose his course.
At the moment when the Prince de Conde was entering the chateau d’Amboise, Lecamus, the furrier of the two queens, was also arriving from Paris, brought to Amboise by the anxiety into which the news of the tumult had thrown both his family and that of Lallier. When the old man presented himself at the gate of the chateau, the captain of the guard, on hearing that he was the queens’ furrier, said: —
“My good man, if you want to be hanged you have only to set foot in this courtyard.”
Hearing these words, the father, in despair, sat down on a stone at a little distance and waited until some retainer of the two queens or some servant-woman might pass who would give him news of his son. But he sat there all day without seeing any one whom he knew, and was forced at last to go down into the town, where he found, not without some difficulty, a lodging in a hostelry on the public square where the executions took place. He was obliged to pay a pound a day to obtain a room with a window looking on the square. The next day he had the courage to watch, from his window, the execution of all the abettors of the rebellion who were condemned to be broken on the wheel or hanged, as persons of little importance. He was happy indeed not to see his own son among the victims.
When the execution was over he went into the square and put himself in the way of the clerk of the court. After giving his name, and slipping a purse full of crowns into the man’s hand, he begged him to look on the records and see if the name of Christophe Lecamus appeared in either of the three preceding executions. The clerk, touched by the manner and the tones of the despairing father, took him to his own house. After a careful search he was able to give the old man an absolute assurance that Christophe was not among the persons thus far executed, nor among those who were to be put to death within a few days.
“My dear man,” said the clerk, “Parliament has taken charge of the trial of the great lords implicated in the affair, and also that of the principal leaders. Perhaps your son is detained in the prisons of the chateau, and he may be brought forth for the magnificent execution which their Excellencies the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine are now preparing. The heads of twenty-seven barons, eleven counts, and seven marquises, – in all, fifty noblemen or leaders of the Reformers, – are to be cut off. As the justiciary of the county of Tourine is quite distinct from that of the parliament of Paris, if you are determined to know about your son, I advise you to go and see the Chancelier Olivier, who has the management of this great trial under orders from the lieutenant-general of the kingdom.”
The poor old man, acting on this advice, went three times to see the chancellor, standing in a long queue of persons waiting to ask mercy for their friends. But as the titled men were made to pass before the burghers, he was obliged to give up the hope of speaking to the chancellor, though he saw him several times leave the house to go either to the chateau or to the committee appointed by the Parliament, – passing each time between a double hedge of petitioners who were kept back by the guards to allow him free passage. It was a horrible scene of anguish and desolation; for among these petitioners were many women, wives, mothers, daughters, whole families in distress. Old Lecamus gave much gold to the footmen of the chateau, entreating them to put certain letters which he wrote into the hand either of Dayelle, Queen Mary’s woman, or into that of the queen-mother; but the footmen took the poor man’s money and carried the letters, according to the general order of the cardinal, to the provost-marshal. By displaying such unheard-of cruelty the Guises knew that they incurred great dangers from revenge, and never did they take such precautions for their safety as they did while the court was at Amboise; consequently, neither the greatest of all corrupters, gold, nor the incessant and active search which the old furrier instituted gave him the slightest gleam of light on the fate of his son. He went about the little town with a mournful air, watching the great preparations made by order of the cardinal for the dreadful show at which the Prince de Conde had agreed to be present.
Public curiosity was stimulated from Paris to Nantes by the means adopted on this occasion. The execution was announced from all pulpits by the rectors of the churches, while at the same time they gave thanks for the victory of the king over the heretics. Three handsome balconies, the middle one more sumptuous than the other two, were built against the terrace of the chateau of Amboise, at the foot of which the executions were appointed to take place. Around the open square, stagings were erected, and these were filled with an immense crowd of people attracted by the wide-spread notoriety given to this “act of faith.” Ten thousand persons camped in the adjoining fields the night before the day on which the horrible spectacle was appointed to take place. The roofs on the houses were crowded with spectators, and windows were let at ten pounds apiece, – an enormous sum in those days. The poor old father had engaged, as we may well believe, one of the best places from which the eye could take in the whole of the terrible scene, where so many men of noble blood were to perish on a vast scaffold covered with black cloth, erected in the middle of the open square. Thither, on the morning of the fatal day, they brought the chouquet, – a name given to the block on which the condemned man laid his head as he knelt before it. After this they brought an arm-chair draped with black, for the clerk of the Parliament, whose business it was to call up the condemned noblemen to their death and read their sentences. The whole square was guarded from early morning by the Scottish guard and the gendarmes of the king’s household, in order to keep back the crowd which threatened to fill it before the hour of the execution.
After a solemn mass said at the chateau and in the churches of the town, the condemned lords, the last of the conspirators who were left alive, were led out. These gentlemen, some of whom had been put to the torture, were grouped at the foot of the scaffold and surrounded by monks, who endeavored to make them abjure the doctrines of Calvin. But not a single man listened to the words of the priests who had been appointed for this duty by the Cardinal of Lorraine; among whom the gentlemen no doubt feared to find spies of the Guises. In order to avoid the importunity of these antagonists they chanted a psalm, put into French verse by Clement Marot. Calvin, as we all know, had ordained that prayers to God should be in the language of each country, as much from a principle of common sense as in opposition to the Roman worship. To those in the crowd who pitied these unfortunate gentlemen it was a moving incident to hear them chant the following verse at the very moment when the king and court arrived and took their places: —
“God be merciful unto us,
And bless us!
And show us the light of his countenance,
And be merciful unto us.”
The eyes of all the Reformers turned to their leader, the Prince de Conde, who was placed intentionally between Queen Mary and the young Duc d’Orleans. Catherine de’ Medici was beside the king, and the rest of the court were on her left. The papal nuncio stood behind Queen Mary; the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, the Duc de Guise, was on horseback below the balcony, with two of the marshals of France and his staff captains. When the Prince de Conde appeared all the condemned noblemen who knew him bowed to him, and the brave hunchback returned their salutation.