Оноре де Бальзак
Catherine De Medici
Many other circumstances corroborated Catherine’s faith in the occult sciences. The night before the tournament at which Henri II. was killed, Catherine saw the fatal blow in a dream. Her astrological council, then composed of Nostradamus and the two Ruggieri, had already predicted to her the death of the king. History has recorded the efforts made by Catherine to persuade her husband not to enter the lists. The prognostic, and the dream produced by the prognostic, were verified. The memoirs of the day relate another fact that was no less singular. The courier who announced the victory of Moncontour arrived in the night, after riding with such speed that he killed three horses. The queen-mother was awakened to receive the news, to which she replied, “I knew it already.” In fact, as Brantome relates, she had told of her son’s triumph the evening before, and narrated several circumstances of the battle. The astrologer of the house of Bourbon predicted that the youngest of all the princes descended from Saint-Louis (the son of Antoine de Bourbon) would ascend the throne of France. This prediction, related by Sully, was accomplished in the precise terms of the horoscope; which led Henri IV. to say that by dint of lying these people sometimes hit the truth. However that may be, if most of the great minds of that epoch believed in this vast science, – called Magic by the masters of judicial astrology, and Sorcery by the public, – they were justified in doing so by the fulfilment of horoscopes.
It was for the use of Cosmo Ruggiero, her mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer, that Catherine de’ Medici erected the tower behind the Halle aux Bles, – all that now remains of the hotel de Soissons. Cosmo Ruggiero possessed, like confessors, a mysterious influence, the possession of which, like them again, sufficed him. He cherished an ambitious thought superior to all vulgar ambitions. This man, whom dramatists and romance-writers depict as a juggler, owned the rich abbey of Saint-Mahe in Lower Brittany, and refused many high ecclesiastical dignities; the gold which the superstitious passions of the age poured into his coffers sufficed for his secret enterprise; and the queen’s hand, stretched above his head, preserved every hair of it from danger.
II. SCHEMES AGAINST SCHEMES
The thirst for power which consumed the queen-mother, her desire for dominion, was so great that in order to retain it she had, as we have seen, allied herself to the Guises, those enemies of the throne; to keep the reins of power, now obtained, within her hands, she was using every means, even to the sacrifice of her friends and that of her children. This woman, of whom one of her enemies said at her death, “It is more than a queen, it is monarchy itself that has died,” – this woman could not exist without the intrigues of government, as a gambler can live only by the emotions of play. Although she was an Italian of the voluptuous race of the Medici, the Calvinists who calumniated her never accused her of having a lover. A great admirer of the maxim, “Divide to reign,” she had learned the art of perpetually pitting one force against another. No sooner had she grasped the reins of power than she was forced to keep up dissensions in order to neutralize the strength of two rival houses, and thus save the Crown. Catherine invented the game of political see-saw (since imitated by all princes who find themselves in a like situation), by instigating, first the Calvinists against the Guises, and then the Guises against the Calvinists. Next, after pitting the two religions against each other in the heart of the nation, Catherine instigated the Duc d’Anjou against his brother Charles IX. After neutralizing events by opposing them to one another, she neutralized men, by holding the thread of all their interests in her hands. But so fearful a game, which needs the head of a Louis XI. to play it, draws down inevitably the hatred of all parties upon the player, who condemns himself forever to the necessity of conquering; for one lost game will turn every selfish interest into an enemy.
The greater part of the reign of Charles IX. witnessed the triumph of the domestic policy of this astonishing woman. What adroit persuasion must Catherine have employed to have obtained the command of the armies for the Duc d’Anjou under a young and brave king, thirsting for glory, capable of military achievement, generous, and in presence, too, of the Connetable de Montmorency. In the eyes of the statesmen of Europe the Duc d’Anjou had all the honors of the Saint-Bartholomew, and Charles IX. all the odium. After inspiring the king with a false and secret jealousy of his brother, she used that passion to wear out by the intrigues of fraternal jealousy the really noble qualities of Charles IX. Cypierre, the king’s first governor, and Amyot, his first tutor, had made him so great a man, they had paved the way for so noble a reign, that the queen-mother began to hate her son as soon as she found reason to fear the loss of the power she had so slowly and so painfully obtained. On these general grounds most historians have believed that Catherine de’ Medici felt a preference for Henri III.; but her conduct at the period of which we are now writing, proves the absolute indifference of her heart toward all her children.
When the Duc d’Anjou went to reign in Poland Catherine was deprived of the instrument by which she had worked to keep the king’s passions occupied in domestic intrigues, which neutralized his energy in other directions. She then set up the conspiracy of La Mole and Coconnas, in which her youngest son, the Duc d’Alencon (afterwards Duc d’Anjou, on the accession of Henri III.) took part, lending himself very willingly to his mother’s wishes, and displaying an ambition much encouraged by his sister Marguerite, then queen of Navarre. This secret conspiracy had now reached the point to which Catherine sought to bring it. Its object was to put the young duke and his brother-in-law, the king of Navarre, at the head of the Calvinists, to seize the person of Charles IX., and imprison that king without an heir, – leaving the throne to the Duc d’Alencon, whose intention it was to establish Calvinism as the religion of France. Calvin, as we have already said, had obtained, a few days before his death, the reward he had so deeply coveted, – the Reformation was now called Calvinism in his honor.
If Le Laboureur and other sensible writers had not already proved that La Mole and Coconnas, – arrested fifty nights after the day on which our present history begins, and beheaded the following April, – even, we say, if it had not been made historically clear that these men were the victims of the queen-mother’s policy, the part which Cosmo Ruggiero took in this affair would go far to show that she secretly directed their enterprise. Ruggiero, against whom the king had suspicions, and for whom he cherished a hatred the motives of which we are about to explain, was included in the prosecution. He admitted having given to La Mole a wax figure representing the king, which was pierced through the heart by two needles. This method of casting spells constituted a crime, which, in those days, was punished by death. It presents one of the most startling and infernal images of hatred that humanity could invent; it pictures admirably the magnetic and terrible working in the occult world of a constant malevolent desire surrounding the person doomed to death; the effects of which on the person are exhibited by the figure of wax. The law in those days thought, and thought justly, that a desire to which an actual form was given should be regarded as a crime of lese majeste. Charles IX. demanded the death of Ruggiero; Catherine, more powerful than her son, obtained from the Parliament, through the young counsellor, Lecamus, a commutation of the sentence, and Cosmo was sent to the galleys. The following year, on the death of the king, he was pardoned by a decree of Henri III., who restored his pension, and received him at court.
But, to return now to the moment of which we are writing, Catherine had, by this time, struck so many blows on the heart of her son that he was eagerly desirous of casting off her yoke. During the absence of Marie Touchet, Charles IX., deprived of his usual occupation, had taken to observing everything about him. He cleverly set traps for the persons in whom he trusted most, in order to test their fidelity. He spied on his mother’s actions, concealing from her all knowledge of his own, employing for this deception the evil qualities she had fostered in him. Consumed by a desire to blot out the horror excited in France by the Saint-Bartholomew, he busied himself actively in public affairs; he presided at the Council, and tried to seize the reins of government by well-laid schemes. Though the queen-mother endeavored to check these attempts of her son by employing all the means of influence over his mind which her maternal authority and a long habit of domineering gave her, his rush into distrust was so vehement that he went too far at the first bound ever to return from it. The day on which his mother’s speech to the king of Poland was reported to him, Charles IX., conscious of his failing health, conceived the most horrible suspicions, and when such thoughts take possession of the mind of a son and a king nothing can remove them. In fact, on his deathbed, at the moment when he confided his wife and daughter to Henri IV., he began to put the latter on his guard against Catherine, so that she cried out passionately, endeavoring to silence him, “Do not say that, monsieur!”
Though Charles IX. never ceased to show her the outward respect of which she was so tenacious that she would never call the kings her sons anything but “Monsieur,” the queen-mother had detected in her son’s manner during the last few months an ill-disguised purpose of vengeance. But clever indeed must be the man who counted on taking Catherine unawares. She held ready in her hand at this moment the conspiracy of the Duke d’Alencon and La Mole, in order to counteract, by another fraternal struggle, the efforts Charles IX. was making toward emancipation. But, before employing this means, she wanted to remove his distrust of her, which would render impossible their future reconciliation; for was he likely to restore power to the hands of a mother whom he thought capable of poisoning him? She felt herself at this moment in such serious danger that she had sent for Strozzi, her relation and a soldier noted for his promptitude of action. She took counsel in secret with Birago and the two Gondis, and never did she so frequently consult her oracle, Cosmo Ruggiero, as at the present crisis.
Though the habit of dissimulation, together with advancing age, had given the queen-mother that well-known abbess face, with its haughty and macerated mask, expressionless yet full of depth, inscrutable yet vigilant, remarked by all who have studied her portrait, the courtiers now observed some clouds on her icy countenance. No sovereign was ever so imposing as this woman from the day when she succeeded in restraining the Guises after the death of Francois II. Her black velvet cap, made with a point upon the forehead (for she never relinquished her widow’s mourning) seemed a species of feminine cowl around the cold, imperious face, to which, however, she knew how to give, at the right moment, a seductive Italian charm. Catherine de’ Medici was so well made that she was accused of inventing side-saddles to show the shape of her legs, which were absolutely perfect. Women followed her example in this respect throughout Europe, which even then took its fashions from France. Those who desire to bring this grand figure before their minds will find that the scene now taking place in the brown hall of the Louvre presents it in a striking aspect.
The two queens, different in spirit, in beauty, in dress, and now estranged, – one naive and thoughtful, the other thoughtful and gravely abstracted, – were far too preoccupied to think of giving the order awaited by the courtiers for the amusements of the evening. The carefully concealed drama, played for the last six months by the mother and son was more than suspected by many of the courtiers; but the Italians were watching it with special anxiety, for Catherine’s failure involved their ruin.
During this evening Charles IX., weary with the day’s hunting, looked to be forty years old. He had reached the last stages of the malady of which he died, the symptoms of which were such that many reflecting persons were justified in thinking that he was poisoned. According to de Thou (the Tacitus of the Valois) the surgeons found suspicious spots —ex causa incognita reperti livores– on his body. Moreover, his funeral was even more neglected than that of Francois II. The body was conducted from Saint-Lazare to Saint-Denis by Brantome and a few archers of the guard under command of the Comte de Solern. This circumstances, coupled with the supposed hatred of the mother to the son, may or may not give color to de Thou’s supposition, but it proves how little affection Catherine felt for any of her children, – a want of feeling which may be explained by her implicit faith in the predictions of judicial astrology. This woman was unable to feel affection for the instruments which were destined to fail her. Henri III. was the last king under whom her reign of power was to last; that was the sole consideration of her heart and mind.
In these days, however, we can readily believe that Charles IX. died a natural death. His excesses, his manner of life, the sudden development of his faculties, his last spasmodic attempt to recover the reins of power, his desire to live, the abuse of his vital strength, his final sufferings and last pleasures, all prove to an impartial mind that he died of consumption, a disease scarcely studied at that time, and very little understood, the symptoms of which might, not unnaturally, lead Charles IX. to believe himself poisoned. The real poison which his mother gave him was in the fatal counsels of the courtiers whom she placed about him, – men who led him to waste his intellectual as well as his physical vigor, thus bringing on a malady which was purely fortuitous and not constitutional. Under these harrowing circumstances, Charles IX. displayed a gloomy majesty of demeanor which was not unbecoming to a king. The solemnity of his secret thoughts was reflected on his face, the olive tones of which he inherited from his mother. This ivory pallor, so fine by candlelight, so suited to the expression of melancholy thought, brought out vigorously the fire of the blue-black eyes, which gazed from their thick and heavy lids with the keen perception our fancy lends to kings, their color being a cloak for dissimulation. Those eyes were terrible, – especially from the movement of their brows, which he could raise or lower at will on his bald, high forehead. His nose was broad and long, thick at the end, – the nose of a lion; his ears were large, his hair sandy, his lips blood-red, like those of all consumptives, the upper lip thin and sarcastic, the lower one firm, and full enough to give an impression of the noblest qualities of the heart. The wrinkles of his brow, the youth of which was killed by dreadful cares, inspired the strongest interest; remorse, caused by the uselessness of the Saint-Bartholomew, accounted for some, but there were two others on that face which would have been eloquent indeed to any student whose premature genius had led him to divine the principles of modern physiology. These wrinkles made a deeply indented furrow going from each cheek-bone to each corner of the mouth, revealing the inward efforts of an organization wearied by the toil of thought and the violent excitements of the body. Charles IX. was worn-out. If policy did not stifle remorse in the breasts of those who sit beneath the purple, the queen-mother, looking at her own work, would surely have felt it. Had Catherine foreseen the effect of her intrigues upon her son, would she have recoiled from them? What a fearful spectacle was this! A king born vigorous, and now so feeble; a mind powerfully tempered, shaken by distrust; a man clothed with authority, conscious of no support; a firm mind brought to the pass of having lost all confidence in itself! His warlike valor had changed by degrees to ferocity; his discretion to deceit; the refined and delicate love of a Valois was now a mere quenchless thirst for pleasure. This perverted and misjudged great man, with all the many facets of a noble soul worn-out, – a king without power, a generous heart without a friend, dragged hither and thither by a thousand conflicting intrigues, – presented the melancholy spectacle of a youth, only twenty-four years old, disillusioned of life, distrusting everybody and everything, now resolving to risk all, even his life, on a last effort. For some time past he had fully understood his royal mission, his power, his resources, and the obstacles which his mother opposed to the pacification of the kingdom; but alas! this light now burned in a shattered lantern.
Two men, whom Charles IX. loved sufficiently to protect under circumstances of great danger, – Jean Chapelain, his physician, whom he saved from the Saint-Bartholomew, and Ambroise Pare, with whom he went to dine when Pare’s enemies were accusing him of intending to poison the king, – had arrived this evening in haste from the provinces, recalled by the queen-mother. Both were watching their master anxiously. A few courtiers spoke to them in a low voice; but the men of science made guarded answers, carefully concealing the fatal verdict which was in their minds. Every now and then the king would raise his heavy eyelids and give his mother a furtive look which he tried to conceal from those about him. Suddenly he sprang up and stood before the fireplace.
“Monsieur de Chiverni,” he said abruptly, “why do you keep the title of chancellor of Anjou and Poland? Are you in our service, or in that of our brother?”
“I am all yours, sire,” replied Chiverni, bowing low.
“Then come to me to-morrow; I intend to send you to Spain. Very strange things are happening at the court of Madrid, gentlemen.”
The king looked at his wife and flung himself back into his chair.
“Strange things are happening everywhere,” said the Marechal de Tavannes, one of the friends of the king’s youth, in a low voice.
The king rose again and led this companion of his youthful pleasures apart into the embrasure of the window at the corner of the room, saying, when they were out of hearing: —
“I want you. Remain here when the others go. I shall know to-night whether you are for me or against me. Don’t look astonished. I am about to burst my bonds. My mother is the cause of all the evil about me. Three months hence I shall be king indeed, or dead. Silence, if you value your life! You will have my secret, you and Solern and Villeroy only. If it is betrayed, it will be by one of you three. Don’t keep near me; go and pay your court to my mother. Tell her I am dying, and that you don’t regret it, for I am only a poor creature.”
The king was leaning on the shoulder of his old favorite, and pretending to tell him of his ailments, in order to mislead the inquisitive eyes about him; then, not wishing to make his aversion too visible, he went up to his wife and mother and talked with them, calling Birago to their side.
Just then Pinard, one of the secretaries of State, glided like an eel through the door and along the wall until he reached the queen-mother, in whose ear he said a few words, to which she replied by an affirmative sign. The king did not ask his mother the meaning of this conference, but he returned to his seat and kept silence, darting terrible looks of anger and suspicion all about him.
This little circumstance seemed of enormous consequence in the eyes of the courtiers; and, in truth, so marked an exercise of power by the queen-mother, without reference to the king, was like a drop of water overflowing the cup. Queen Elizabeth and the Comtesse de Fiesque now retired, but the king paid no attention to their movements, though the queen-mother rose and attended her daughter-in-law to the door; after which the courtiers, understanding that their presence was unwelcome, took their leave. By ten o’clock no one remained in the hall but a few intimates, – the two Gondis, Tavannes, Solern, Birago, the king, and the queen-mother.
The king sat plunged in the blackest melancholy. The silence was oppressive. Catherine seemed embarrassed. She wished to leave the room, and waited for the king to escort her to the door; but he still continued obstinately lost in thought. At last she rose to bid him good-night, and Charles IX. was forced to do likewise. As she took his arm and made a few steps toward the door, she bent to his ear and whispered: —
“Monsieur, I have important things to say to you.”
Passing a mirror on her way, she glanced into it and made a sign with her eyes to the two Gondis, which escaped the king’s notice, for he was at the moment exchanging looks of intelligence with the Comte de Solern and Villeroy. Tavannes was thoughtful.
“Sire,” said the latter, coming out of his reverie, “I think you are royally ennuyed; don’t you ever amuse yourself now? Vive Dieu! have you forgotten the times when we used to vagabondize about the streets at night?”
“Ah! those were the good old times!” said the king, with a sigh.
“Why not bring them back?” said Birago, glancing significantly at the Gondis as he took his leave.
“Yes, I always think of those days with pleasure,” said Albert de Gondi, Duc de Retz.
“I’d like to see you on the roofs once more, monsieur le duc,” remarked Tavannes. “Damned Italian cat! I wish he might break his neck!” he added in a whisper to the king.
“I don’t know which of us two could climb the quickest in these days,” replied de Gondi; “but one thing I do know, that neither of us fears to die.”
“Well, sire, will you start upon a frolic in the streets to-night, as you did in the days of your youth?” said the other Gondi, master of the Wardrobe.
The days of his youth! so at twenty-four years of age the wretched king seemed no longer young to any one, not even to his flatterers!
Tavannes and his master now reminded each other, like two school-boys, of certain pranks they had played in Paris, and the evening’s amusement was soon arranged. The two Italians, challenged to climb roofs, and jump from one to another across alleys and streets, wagered that they would follow the king wherever he went. They and Tavannes went off to change their clothes. The Comte de Solern, left alone with the king, looked at him in amazement. Though the worthy German, filled with compassion for the hapless position of the king of France, was honor and fidelity itself, he was certainly not quick of perception. Charles IX., surrounded by hostile persons, unable to trust any one, not even his wife (who had been guilty of some indiscretions, unaware as she was that his mother and his servants were his enemies), had been fortunate enough to find in Monsieur de Solern a faithful friend in whom he could place entire confidence. Tavannes and Villeroy were trusted with only a part of the king’s secrets. The Comte de Solern alone knew the whole of the plan which he was now about to carry out. This devoted friend was also useful to his master, in possessing a body of discreet and affectionate followers, who blindly obeyed his orders. He commanded a detachment of the archers of the guards, and for the last few days he had been sifting out the men who were faithfully attached to the king, in order to make a company of tried men when the need came. The king took thought of everything.
“Why are you surprised, Solern?” he said. “You know very well I need a pretext to be out to-night. It is true, I have Madame de Belleville, but this is better; for who knows whether my mother does not hear of all that goes on at Marie’s?”
Monsieur de Solern, who was to follow the king, asked if he might not take a few of his Germans to patrol the streets, and Charles consented. About eleven o’clock the king, who was now very gay, set forth with his three courtiers, – namely, Tavannes and the two Gondis.
“I’ll go and take my little Marie by surprise,” said Charles IX. to Tavannes, “as we pass through the rue de l’Autruche.” That street being on the way to the rue Saint-Honore, it would have been strange indeed for the king to pass the house of his love without stopping.
Looking out for a chance of mischief, – a belated burgher to frighten, or a watchman to thrash – the king went along with his nose in the air, watching all the lighted windows to see what was happening, and striving to hear the conversations. But alas! he found his good city of Paris in a state of deplorable tranquillity. Suddenly, as he passed the house of a perfumer named Rene, who supplied the court, the king, noticing a strong light from a window in the roof, was seized by one of those apparently hasty inspirations which, to some minds, suggest a previous intention.
This perfumer was strongly suspected of curing rich uncles who thought themselves ill. The court laid at his door the famous “Elixir of Inheritance,” and even accused him of poisoning Jeanne d’Albret, mother of Henri of Navarre, who was buried (in spite of Charles IX.‘s positive order) without her head being opened. For the last two months the king had sought some way of sending a spy into Rene’s laboratory, where, as he was well aware, Cosmo Ruggiero spent much time. The king intended, if anything suspicious were discovered, to proceed in the matter alone, without the assistance of the police or law, with whom, as he well knew, his mother would counteract him by means of either corruption or fear.
It is certain that during the sixteenth century, and the years that preceded and followed it, poisoning was brought to a perfection unknown to modern chemistry, as history itself will prove. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was, at this period, the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many of which are now lost. Hence the reputation for that crime which weighed for the two following centuries on Italy. Romance-writers have so greatly abused it that wherever they have introduced Italians into their tales they have almost always made them play the part of assassins and poisoners.[*] If Italy then had the traffic in subtle poisons which some historians attribute to her, we should remember her supremacy in the art of toxicology, as we do her pre-eminence in all other human knowledge and art in which she took the lead in Europe. The crimes of that period were not her crimes specially. She served the passions of the age, just as she built magnificent edifices, commanded armies, painted noble frescos, sang romances, loved queens, delighted kings, devised ballets and fetes, and ruled all policies. The horrible art of poisoning reached to such a pitch in Florence that a woman, dividing a peach with a duke, using a golden fruit-knife with one side of its blade poisoned, ate one half of the peach herself and killed the duke with the other half. A pair of perfumed gloves were known to have infiltrated mortal illness through the pores of the skin. Poison was instilled into bunches of natural roses, and the fragrance, when inhaled, gave death. Don John of Austria was poisoned, it was said, by a pair of boots.
[*] Written sixty-six years ago. – Tr.
Charles IX. had good reason to be curious in the matter; we know already the dark suspicions and beliefs which now prompted him to surprise the perfumer Rene at his work.
The old fountain at the corner of the rue de l’Arbre-See, which has since been rebuilt, offered every facility for the royal vagabonds to climb upon the roof of a house not far from that of Rene, which the king wished to visit. Charles, followed by his companions, began to ramble over the roofs, to the great terror of the burghers awakened by the tramp of these false thieves, who called to them in saucy language, listened to their talk, and even pretended to force an entrance. When the Italians saw the king and Tavannes threading their way among the roofs of the house next to that of Rene, Albert de Gondi sat down, declaring that he was tired, and his brother followed his example.
“So much the better,” thought the king, glad to leave his spies behind him.
Tavannes began to laugh at the two Florentines, left sitting alone in the midst of deep silence, in a place where they had nought but the skies above them, and the cats for auditors. But the brothers made use of their position to exchange thoughts they would not dare to utter on any other spot in the world, – thoughts inspired by the events of the evening.
“Albert,” said the Grand-master to the marechal, “the king will get the better of the queen-mother; we are doing a foolish thing for our own interests to stay by those of Catherine. If we go over to the king now, when he is searching everywhere for support against her and for able men to serve him, we shall not be driven away like wild beasts when the queen-mother is banished, imprisoned, or killed.”
“You wouldn’t get far with such ideas, Charles,” replied the marechal, gravely. “You’d follow the king into the grave, and he won’t live long; he is ruined by excesses. Cosmo Ruggiero predicts his death within a year.”
“The dying boar has often killed the huntsman,” said Charles de Gondi. “This conspiracy of the Duc d’Alencon, the king of Navarre, and the Prince de Conde, with whom La Mole and Coconnas are negotiating, is more dangerous than useful. In the first place, the king of Navarre, whom the queen-mother hoped to catch in the very act, distrusts her, and declines to run his head into the noose. He means to profit by the conspiracy without taking any of its risks. Besides, the notion now is to put the crown on the head of the Duc d’Alencon, who has turned Calvinist.”