Catherine De Medici - Honoré de Balzac (the best books to read TXT) 📗

and l'Hopital, and de Thou! As for the burghers of Paris, I intend to make my son cajole them; we will get a support there."

Accordingly, Albert de Gondi became a marshal of France and was created Duc de Retz and governor of the king a few days later.

At the moment when this little private council ended, Cardinal de Tournon announced to the queen the arrival of the emissaries sent to Calvin. Admiral Coligny accompanied the party in order that his presence might ensure them due respect at the Louvre. The queen gathered the formidable phalanx of her maids of honor about her, and passed into the reception hall, built by her husband, which no longer exists in the Louvre of to-day.

At the period of which we write the staircase of the Louvre occupied the clock tower. Catherine's apartments were in the old buildings which still exist in the court of the Musee. The present staircase of the museum was built in what was formerly the _salle des ballets_. The ballet of those days was a sort of dramatic entertainment performed by the whole court.

Revolutionary passions gave rise to a most laughable error about Charles IX., in connection with the Louvre. During the Revolution hostile opinions as to this king, whose real character was masked, made a monster of him. Joseph Cheniers tragedy was written under the influence of certain words scratched on the window of the projecting wing of the Louvre, looking toward the quay. The words were as follows: "It was from this window that Charles IX., of execrable memory, fired upon French citizens." It is well to inform future historians and all sensible persons that this portion of the Louvre--called to-day the old Louvre--which projects upon the quay and is connected with the Louvre by the room called the Apollo gallery (while the great halls of the Museum connect the Louvre with the Tuileries) did not exist in the time of Charles IX. The greater part of the space where the frontage on the quay now stands, and where the Garden of the Infanta is laid out, was then occupied by the hotel de Bourbon, which belonged to and was the residence of the house of Navarre. It was absolutely impossible, therefore, for Charles IX. to fire from the Louvre of Henri II. upon a boat full of Huguenots crossing the river, although _at the present time_ the Seine can be seen from its windows. Even if learned men and libraries did not possess maps of the Louvre made in the time of Charles IX., on which its then position is clearly indicated, the building itself refutes the error. All the kings who co-operated in the work of erecting this enormous mass of buildings never failed to put their initials or some special monogram on the parts they had severally built. Now the part we speak of, the venerable and now blackened wing of the Louvre, projecting on the quay and overlooking the garden of the Infanta, bears the monograms of Henri III. and Henri IV., which are totally different from that of Henri II., who invariably joined his H to the two C's of Catherine, forming a D,--which, by the bye, has constantly deceived superficial persons into fancying that the king put the initial of his mistress, Diane, on great public buildings. Henri IV. united the Louvre with his own hotel de Bourbon, its garden and dependencies. He was the first to think of connecting Catherine de' Medici's palace of the Tuileries with the Louvre by his unfinished galleries, the precious sculptures of which have been so cruelly neglected. Even if the map of Paris, and the monograms of Henri III. and Henri IV. did not exist, the difference of architecture is refutation enough to the calumny. The vermiculated stone copings of the hotel de la Force mark the transition between what is called the architecture of the Renaissance and that of Henri III., Henri IV., and Louis XIII. This archaeological digression (continuing the sketches of old Paris with which we began this history) enables us to picture to our minds the then appearance of this other corner of the old city, of which nothing now remains but Henri IV.'s addition to the Louvre, with its admirable bas-reliefs, now being rapidly annihilated.

When the court heard that the queen was about to give an audience to Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu, presented by Admiral Coligny, all the courtiers who had the right of entrance to the reception hall, hastened thither to witness the interview. It was about six o'clock in the evening; Coligny had just supped, and was using a toothpick as he came up the staircase of the Louvre between the two Reformers. The practice of using a toothpick was so inveterate a habit with the admiral that he was seen to do it on the battle-field while planning a retreat. "Distrust the admiral's toothpick, the _No_ of the Connetable, and Catherine's _Yes_," was a court proverb of that day. After the Saint-Bartholomew the populace made a horrible jest on the body of Coligny, which hung for three days at Montfaucon, by putting a grotesque toothpick into his mouth. History has recorded this atrocious levity. So petty an act done in the midst of that great catastrophe pictures the Parisian populace, which deserves the sarcastic jibe of Boileau: "Frenchmen, born _malin_, created the guillotine." The Parisian of all time cracks jokes and makes lampoons before, during, and after the most horrible revolutions.

Theodore de Beze wore the dress of a courtier, black silk stockings, low shoes with straps across the instep, tight breeches, a black silk doublet with slashed sleeves, and a small black velvet mantle, over which lay an elegant white fluted ruff. His beard was trimmed to a moustache and _virgule_ (now called imperial) and he carried a sword at his side and a cane in his hand. Whosoever knows the galleries of Versailles or the collections of Odieuvre, knows also his round, almost jovial face and lively eyes, surmounted by the broad forehead which characterized the writers and poets of that day. De Beze had, what served him admirably, an agreeable air and manner. In this he was a great contrast to Coligny, of austere countenance, and to the sour, bilious Chaudieu, who chose to wear on this occasion the robe and bands of a Calvinist minister.

The scenes that happen in our day in the Chamber of Deputies, and which, no doubt, happened in the Convention, will give an idea of how, at this court, at this epoch, these men, who six months later were to fight to the death in a war without quarter, could meet and talk to each other with courtesy and even laughter. Birago, who was coldly to advise the Saint-Bartholomew, and Cardinal de Lorraine, who charged his servant Besme "not to miss the admiral," now advanced to meet Coligny; Birago saying, with a smile:--

"Well, my dear admiral, so you have really taken upon yourself to present these gentlemen from Geneva?"

"Perhaps you will call it a crime in _me_," replied the admiral, jesting, "whereas if you had done it yourself you would make a merit of it."

"They say that the Sieur Calvin is very ill," remarked the Cardinal de Lorraine to Theodore de Beze. "I hope no one suspects us of giving him his broth."

"Ah! monseigneur; it would be too great a risk," replied de Beze, maliciously.

The Duc de Guise, who was watching Chaudieu, looked fixedly at his brother and at Birago, who were both taken aback by de Beze's answer.

"Good God!" remarked the cardinal, "heretics are not diplomatic!"

To avoid embarrassment, the queen, who was announced at this moment, had arranged to remain standing during the audience. She began by speaking to the Connetable, who had previously remonstrated with her vehemently on the scandal of receiving messengers from Calvin.

"You see, my dear Connetable," she said, "that I receive them without ceremony."

"Madame," said the admiral, approaching the queen, "these are two teachers of the new religion, who have come to an understanding with Calvin, and who have his instructions as to a conference in which the churches of France may be able to settle their differences."

"This is Monsieur de Beze, to whom my wife is much attached," said the king of Navarre, coming forward and taking de Beze by the hand.

"And this is Chaudieu," said the Prince de Conde. "_My friend_ the Duc de Guise knows the soldier," he added, looking at Le Balafre, "perhaps he will now like to know the minister."

This gasconade made the whole court laugh, even Catherine.

"Faith!" replied the Duc de Guise, "I am enchanted to see a _gars_ who knows so well how to choose his men and to employ them in their right sphere. One of your agents," he said to Chaudieu, "actually endured the extraordinary question without dying and without confessing a single thing. I call myself brave; but I don't know that I could have endured it as he did."

"Hum!" muttered Ambroise, "you did not say a word when I pulled the javelin out of your face at Calais."

Catherine, standing at the centre of a semicircle of the courtiers and maids of honor, kept silence. She was observing the two Reformers, trying to penetrate their minds as, with the shrewd, intelligent glance of her black eyes, she studied them.

"One seems to be the scabbard, the other the blade," whispered Albert de Gondi in her ear.

"Well, gentlemen," said Catherine at last, unable to restrain a smile, "has your master given you permission to unite in a public conference, at which you will be converted by the arguments of the Fathers of the Church who are the glory of our State?"

"We have no master but the Lord," said Chaudieu.

"But surely you will allow some little authority to the king of France?" said Catherine, smiling.

"And much to the queen," said de Beze, bowing low.

"You will find," continued the queen, "that our most submissive subjects are heretics."

"Ah, madame!" cried Coligny, "we will indeed endeavor to make you a noble and peaceful kingdom! Europe has profited, alas! by our internal divisions. For the last fifty years she has had the advantage of one-half of the French people being against the other half."

"Are we here to sing anthems to the glory of heretics," said the Connetable, brutally.

"No, but to bring them to repentance," whispered the Cardinal de Lorraine in his ear; "we want to coax them by a little sugar."

"Do you know what I should have done under the late king?" said the Connetable, angrily. "I'd have called in the provost and hung those two knaves, then and there, on the gallows of the Louvre."

"Well, gentlemen, who are the learned men whom you have selected as our opponents?" inquired the queen, imposing silence on the Connetable by a look.

"Duplessis-Mornay and Theodore de Beze will speak on our side," replied Chaudieu.

"The court will doubtless go to Saint-Germain, and as it would be improper that this _colloquy_ should take place in a royal residence, we will have it in the little town of Poissy," said Catherine.

"Shall we be safe there, madame?" asked Chaudieu.

"Ah!" replied the queen, with a sort of naivete, "you will surely know how to take precautions. The Admiral will arrange all that with my cousins the Guises and de Montmorency."

"The devil take them!" cried the Connetable, "I'll have nothing to do with it."

"How do you contrive to give such strength of character to your converts?" said the queen, leading Chaudieu apart. "The son of my furrier was actually sublime."

"We