The making of a king (12 page)

a difficulty in obeying, removed it with his own hands. Already pre-disposed to wrath, nothing more was needed to put the Dauphin into a thoroughly bad temper.

" He is angry. Then the King takes away his drum and drum-sticks. This was still worse. ( My hat, my drum, my drumsticks/ The King, to annoy him, puts the hat on his own head. * I want my hat/ The King strikes him with it on the head. He is angry, and the King is angry with him. The King takes him by the wrists, and lifts him into the air, extending his little arms in a cross. * He I you hurt me ! HI! my drum ! Ht! my hat! ' The Queen gives him back his hat ; then his drumsticks. It was a little tragedy."

Carried away still enraged, he could neither be comforted nor quieted in spite of all that could be done. Having been whipped, he kicked and scratched Madame de Montglat. At last his nurse, possibly more pitiful than the gouvernante y took him apart and reasoned with him gravely.

" Monsieur," she said, " you have been very stubborn. You must not be so. You must obey papa."

" Kill Mamanga" l he said with a great sigh, " she is wicked. I will kill all the world. I will kill God/'

Ah, no, Monsieur," replied the nurse. u You drink His blood every day when you drink wine."

The child stopped short.

"I drink the blood of the good God?" he 1 Madame de Montglat.

asked. " Then He must not be killed," and, in spite of sobbing sighs, allowed himself to be appeased.

The effect of the incident did not pass off for some time. The Dauphin, hurt and strained by the King's rough usage, was at first ill and nervous ; and, when recovered, continued to nurs« his resentment. Sent for by his father, it was necessary to compel him to obey the summons ; he was quiet and sullen in his presence, and anxious to escape from it, parading his indifference to the King's movements. When all were crowding to the windows to watch Henri set forth to hunt, he remained in his place, merely asking coldly if papa were going hunting? His free and fearless bearing was replaced by shrinking and timidity, and, taken with Verneuil to visit the King and Queen in bed, he withdrew in sulky silence to his mother's side, leaving his father, contrary to his custom, to his half-brother. When Verneuil, however, would have in turn approached the Queen the Dauphin made it clear that this would not be permitted, giving the boy, still without a word, a blow which caused him, also in silence, to retire discomfited. With the Queen at least Verneuil was to have no dealings.

Even after the children had quitted Fontainebleau and were again at Saint-Germain the Dauphin continued, with singular tenacity, to cherish the remembrance of his wrongs. Hearing that the King and Queen were expected at the chateau, he expressed his regret, and displayed an unwillingness to be taken to meet them, and though Heroard set himself, by means of a combination of promises and threats, to produce a

Auvergne in Prison 85

better frame of mind, his efforts were not attended with success.

" You will, then, not have the fine drum and beautiful drumsticks that [the King] is bringing you," he warned him. " He will give them to M. de Verneuil. Eh bien! " as the child flung himself upon him in an access of fury, " eh bien ! you beat me. What do you wish papa to do with that drum ?"

" * Let him give it to Moucheu de Veneuil,' he replied, shaking his head as if it was a thing he despised. He cannot forget the rough treatment at Fontainebleau."

The child's demeanour was a vexation to Henri, who, probably conscious that he himself had been to blame, was inclined to lay the responsibility for his son's prolonged resentment on others. But he can have had no more than a divided attention to bestow upon the Dauphin's ill-humour; and more serious subjects were weighing on his mind. The first tardy step had been taken towards meting out justice to the traitors concerned in the late conspiracy : the Comte d'Auvergne had been captured and was in prison, his fate uncertain. Having remained for some time at a safe distance in his own province of Auvergne, he had ventured to quit his place of refuge on the occasion of some military display, and was at once arrested. The King, observed some one in the Dauphin's presence, knew how to catch his enemies.

" Are my enemies taken ? " asked the boy, identifying himself, notwithstanding recent passages of arms, with his father. " Where are they ? " learning that they were lodged in the Bastille.

D'Entragues was, shortly after, placed in confinement in the Conciergerie, and -his daughter, though undergoing no regular imprisonment, was kept under supervision in the faubourg Saint-Germain, carefully guarded.

She was no coward, and met the situation with proud defiance. She did not, she said, fear death ; on the contrary, she desired it. But, should the King cause her to die, it would always be said that he had slain his wife. , She, rather than Marie, was Queen. Three things she asked of his Majesty : a pardon for her father, a rope for her brother — who, it may be mentioned, had in dastardly fashion sought to throw the blame of his treason on his sister and d'Entragues—and justice for herself. Nor could she be brought to sue for the forgiveness which Henri was only too anxious to bestow. Where offence was none there was no subject-matter for a pardon, she said, and if the King had been told that she desired one it was false. "With which his Majesty was very ill satisfied." When the Comtesse d'Auvergne, on the other hand, threw herself at his feet, imploring his clemency on behalf of her husband, the King, whilst treating her personally with courtesy, and expressing his compassion, explained — taking the Queen's arm as he spoke — that to listen to her entreaties would be equivalent to a declaration that his marriage was void and his son a bastard.

The objects of the conspiracy had been defeated ; its promoters were in the King's hands ; the present danger had been averted. Domestic peace had also been restored at Saint-Germain. "Le petit valet de

A Reconciliation

papa," as the Dauphin was learning to call himself, was beginning to show self-restraint and to control his temper. Father and son were once more on good terms. When, shortly before the close of the year, the King gave audience to a deputation from the States of Normandy, the boy was at his side, and was presented to them as their future King. He would leave behind him, Henri said, in concluding his speech, a son who would carry out the measures he had set on foot for their benefit.

The Dauphin had listened attentively to what went on.

" Grand merci, papa" he said coldly, as he heard the promise given.

CHAPTER VIII

•

1605

Results of the conspiracy— Rosny and his enemies— Temporary estrangement of the King— Their reconciliation — The Dauphin and Rosny— The Spanish match projected— The Dauphin's love for his father—Visit of Queen Marguerite— The King and Queen on good terms— The Marquise at Saint-Germain.

IN the end the King's clemency again triumphed over the counsels of those who would have made an example of the promoters of the latest attempt to subvert his government. The Marquise and her father escaped chastisement, and the capital penalty was, in Auvergne's case, commuted into an imprisonment lasting over several years. His attempts to shift the blame upon others, and his demeanour at his trial, showed him to be worthy of little compassion.

The conspiracy had, at all events, resulted in the destruction of the notorious promise of marriage which had been so dangerous an engine in the hands of the Queen's enemies ; the menace it had contained to her rights and those of the Dauphin was at an end, and, not less important to the domestic peace of the palace, the King had been temporarily emancipated from the control of the Marquise.

If, however, there were those who indulged the hope that, his eyes having been once opened to her

Rosny and his Enemies 89

true aims and ambitions, the estrangement would prove permanent, they were doomed to disappointment; a note written in February 1605 proving that her delinquencies were already on the way to be, if not forgotten, forgiven. She was to be permitted to see her father—by this time set at liberty —though enjoined to pass no more than a day with him, " for his contagion is dangerous." She was likewise to be allowed to visit her children at Saint-Germain, and a meeting was to be arranged with the King himself. The letter displays the injured man in an attitude which must have caused surprise to those who knew him best.

Such being the case, it was perhaps not unnatural that his friendship with Rosny, who never pandered to what was worst in his master, who never shrank from pointing out his failings, or stooped to flattery, should have undergone a momentary eclipse. There were many who would have rejoiced in the minister's disgrace. The man who controlled the King's expenditure, public and private, who checked his extravagance or his reckless liberality, was certain to be the object of the hostility of every person averse to economical aims and methods, and the ultimate failure of their efforts to detach Henri from the love and trust he had bestowed upon his servant is perhaps a greater title to honour than any other to be found in his record.

Reviewing the position, Rosny saw ranged against him divers classes of the community. There were the great officers of the Crown, jealous of his ascendancy ; the Catholics, distrustful of the Huguenot minister, and many of them attached to the Spanish

interest; the idlers about Court and palace, conscious of his contempt; the turbulent and seditious, seeking to disturb the tranquillity of the realm ; and above all others, those who owed a grudge to the statesman who held the purse-strings.

Straws show which way the wind blows, and the sentiments entertained with regard to Rosny continued to find their reflection in the nursery at Saint-Germain. Almost in babyhood, the Dauphin received his father's friend with coldness, refusing to permit him to kiss his hand. Again, when a letter was brought from the minister, he would have had it thrown out of the window, notwithstanding an accompanying gift of toys. Later, visited by Rosny in person, and enjoined by Madame de Montglat to ask him for money in order that, by giving it away, he might escape the charge of miserliness, he refused.

" It is not his — it is papas" the child answered sulkily.

Incidents of the kind, trivial as they are, indicate the aspect in which the minister was regarded at Saint-Germain, no less than in the King's own environment, where no method was left untried to poison Henri's mind against him.

In the spring of 1605 it seemed that his foes had obtained their wish, and the change in his master's deportment called forth a letter in which he begged to be informed of the King's causes of displeasure. The dryness of Henri's answer cannot have been reassuring.

" I should require more time and leisure than I have at present," he wrote, " were I to reply to the dis-

courses, reasoning, and complaints of your letter of March 13. I will, therefore, permit you to speak of it when next I see you and am at leisure. Meantime, I would advise you to act according to the counsels you offer me when I give way to anger with regard to those who blame my conduct —that is, to let the world say what it pleases without tormenting yourself about the matter, and to act always better and better. Thus you will show the strength of your mind, will make your innocence apparent, and will preserve my good-will, of which you may be as well assured as ever."

Rosny was strong and patient, and may have felt that, confident in his innocence, he could afford to wait. He made no attempt to hasten the promised opportunity of exculpation, though as the weeks went by matters between himself and the King went from bad to worse. Those who looked on may well have believed that the minister's fall was at hand, when Henri said in their hearing that a day might come when he would work more ill to the State than Coligny himself. His enemies were busily at work. Slanders were poured into the King's ears ; written libels were placed in his hands. Nor was it until May that an explanation took place. Even then it was not by the minister that it was invited. Intrenched in his silence, he went his way, making no attempt to regain his master's trust, and leaving it to the King to decide when the " leisure " of which he had spoken should give him an opportunity to make his vindication.

Whether his course were dictated by policy or pride,

it was wholly successful. Henri, possibly not insensible to the mute rebuke contained in the deportment of the man who had served him so well, and whom he had now, unheard, shut out from his confidence, at last broke the silence ; and when, one day, Rosny was taking leave of him and returning to Paris, he called him back.