The making of a king (26 page)

" I know not why," he once said to Bassompierre, " but I cannot persuade myself that I shall go to Germany," and to others besides Bassompierre he spoke on several occasions of his conviction that death was near. Most of all to Sully he opened his mind on the subject.

" Ah, my friend," he would say, " how displeasing to me is this Sucre \ I know not why, but my heart warns me that evil will come of it."

Seating himself in a low chair provided for his use in the minister's apartment at the Arsenal, he sank into a melancholy reverie ; then, rousing himself, he rose suddenly to his feet.

" By God ! " he exclaimed, " I shall die in this city, and shall never leave it. They will kill me, for well do I see that my death is the only remedy to the danger that threatens them. Cursed Sacre, you will be the cause of my death ! "

Impressed, in spite of himself, by the strength of the King's apprehensions, the Duke, though attempting to make light of them as mere fancies, suggested that, under the circumstances, it might be well to put an end not only to the dreaded ceremonial but to the war, the King's journey — all. Let Henri give the word and it should be done.

With regard at least to the coronation, it seemed that Henri was disposed at one moment to act on the suggestion. Were the Sacre abandoned, his mind

would be at rest, and he would start for the war fearing nought. " For, to hide nothing from you," he said, opening his heart entirely to his friend, " I have been told that I shall be killed at my first great ceremonial, and that I shall die in a coach. It is this which renders me so fearful/'

More and more infected by the King's misgivings, Sully proposed a new plan. Let Henri leave Paris at once, on the morrow, neither returning to the capital nor entering a coach for a prolonged period, The Duke was ready to cause all the workmen employed in preparations to cease from their labours.

Henri hesitated.

" I am willing enough," he admitted, " but what will my wife say ? She is wonderfully bent upon this Sacrer

" Let her say what she will," answered Sully bluntly ; he could not believe that, aware how the King regarded the matter, she would persist in her desire.

Henri knew better. Unable to face what would follow should the minister's advice be taken, he decided to allow the affair to take its course, and the workmen continued their operations.

The ceremony was to take place on Thursday, May 13. On the ensuing Monday, when the solemnities following upon it were concluded, Henri was to start for the seat of war. He had written to the Archduke formally announcing his intention of assisting his allies in the vindication of their rights in the matter of the succession of Cleves and Juliers, and asking whether, since his route lay through Flanders, he was

enter that territory as friend or as enemy. All was

completed ; the troops were already on the march. The great soldier was once again to take the field. There was nothing more to wait for save the Sacre.

As the day appointed for^it approached the spirit of uneasiness and unrest abroad continued. On May Day the King, returning with Guise and Bassompierre from the Tuileries to the Louvre, quitted his companions for a few minutes in order to hasten the Queen in dressing for dinner, lest he should be kept waiting.

Pending his return, the two were leaning idly over the balustrade overlooking the courtyard of the palace, when the " mai " set up in the centre of it crashed down without apparent cause and lay pointing towards the small staircase leading to the King's apartment.

Bassompierre, with a strain of German blood in his veins and inclined to superstition, called the attention of Guise to the fallen branches.

" I would give much that it had not happened," he told him. " It is a very ill omen. God protect the King—the * mai' of the Louvre ! It would be made more of in Italy or Germany," he added, as the Duke uttered a contemptuous protest, " than here. God preserve the King and all belonging to him ! "

Unperceived by either, Henri had drawn near, and, overhearing Bassompierre's words, took the answer upon himself. They were fools, he told them, to pay attention to prognostications. Astrologers and charlatans had predicted danger to him for thirty years. When the time of his death should arrive, the prophecies touching that particular year would be remembered, all the others forgotten.

It was doubtless true. But the mind is not governed

by reason, and no one reading Sully's memoirs could fail to perceive that Henri was far from being unmoved by what he affected to treat with contempt.

As the days went by warnings and omens increased and multiplied. Now it was a nun who was afflicted by a startling vision of death and murder ; an image of St. Louis was said to have shed tears; bells tolled without visible agency ; a little shepherdess, bringing home her flock at night, asked the meaning of the word " King." A voice, she said, had cried in her ears that the King was slain. A general condition of nervous apprehension prevailed. Things of small account in themselves were afterwards remembered. The King had been heard more than once, as if by accident, to allude to his wife as the Regent. Again, two days before his death, he had shown the Dauphin to the nobles present, saying, " Here is henceforth your master." Had all gone well, these trifles would have been buried in oblivion. The King dead, they became part of the multitude of incidents that had seemed to prepare the way for the tragedy and usher it in.

At length the long-anticipated ceremony took place. On Wednesday, May 12, the Court slept at Saint-Denis, all the royal children being brought from Saint-Germain for the occasion. The Comte de Soissons had left Paris owing to a quarrel concerning the dress to be worn by the young Duchesse de Vend6me, considered by him to infringe upon the rights of the Princes of the Blood ; Conde and his wife were still finding shelter with the King's enemies ; Sully, pleading sickness as his excuse, was absent ; but, with few exceptions, all the French nobles, dignitaries of the

Church, and officers of State assisted at the Queen's tardy triumph.

The hour of midday on the Thursday had been fixed for the Sacre. On that morning Henri appeared to have thrown off his melancholy, and was unusually gay. Yet, as he passed from the brilliant spring sunshine outside into the dimly-lighted church, thronged from end to end with a silent and expectant crowd, he observed to those around him that he was reminded of the scene of the last great Judgment—for which might all men prepare.

To Marie de Medicis that moment was the proudest of a life marked by not a few humiliations. To-day she—not the King—was the central figure of the pageant; she had achieved the object of her legitimate desire. Nothing was wanting to complete her satisfaction. The account of the show, as she gave it later on to a Tuscan envoy, indicates the attention she had paid to its details and the gratification it afforded her to recall them even after the tragedy which might have blotted them out from her memory. The sight, she told her countryman, had been as fair a one as was possible in France. Dwelling upon its salient features, she described the arrangement of the seats, princes, princesses, cardinals, bishops, and officers of State being placed in their several orders and degrees below her. It was, she agreed—adopting the simile suggested by the obsequious Italian—like Paradise, the choirs of angels being represented by the tiers of spectators.

One incident had occurred to which, as to others, an ominous significance had been attached. The

stone marking the place of sepulchre of the Kings of France had cracked across in a manner rendering it necessary to close the fissure with lime. But Marie had been kept ignorant of the mishap, and, with this exception, all had gone well. If the heavy crown, set insecurely on the Queen's head, had come near to falling, she had steadied it so effectually with her two hands that it remained firmly fixed in its place, and the ceremony concluded without misadventure. The Dauphin, with no knowledge of the past heartburnings, doubts, suspicions, fears, lending its chief importance to what was no less his triumph than that of his mother, played a leading part in the show. Dressed in cloth of silver, and covered with diamonds, he preceded the Queen in the procession, and with his little sister, Madame, assisted in placing the crown —inefficiently, as it appeared — upon her head. Every one of her children were present, Gaston, Due d'Anjou, and Henriette Marie, Charles I.'s future wife, being carried in the arms of their attendants.

As Marie de Medicis left the church, the long rite concluded, her position was vindicated. Whatever the future might have in store for her, no one could dispute her right to be considered the lawful wife of Henri-Quatre, or her son's position as his heir. In the plenitude of her satisfaction, she felt she could afford to laugh at presages of misfortune ; and, meeting one of the astrologers who had foretold that the festivity was destined to end in weeping, she is said to have taxed him gaily with his error.

" Madame," replied the soothsayer, " your entree

has not yet been made. God grant my science may be at fault."

Henri, on leaving Saint-Denis, had likewise met an acquaintance. In his* case it was a Jesuit, whom he accosted in friendly fashion.

" Eh bien ! mon pere" he said. u I go to join my army. Will you not pray God for us here ? "

" H£, Sire," replied the priest, " how could we pray God for you, who are going to a country full of heretics, in order to exterminate the little handful of Catholics who remain there ? "

Henri's indomitable good-humour was undisturbed.

" It is zeal," he said, with a laugh, " which carries this good man away, and causes him to speak like this," and proceeded on his way.

Regaining the palace before his wife had reached it and watching her approach from an upper window, he scattered some drops of water on her as she passed below. Meeting her afterwards at the foot of the staircase, he joined in the banquet given to celebrate the event before returning with the Court to the Louvre. And so the long day ended.

CHAPTER XVI 1610

May 14, 1 610— Henri and Guise — The King's melancholy —His last hours—His murder — The scene at the Louvre —Sully's ride through Paris—Effect of the murder — Marie declared Regent—Louis XIII. King.

THE history of the tragedy of Friday, May 14, has been often told. Yet, from a narrative of which it is a central and determining event, it cannot be omitted, and the various accounts of contemporaries make it possible to follow the King in detail through the last hours of his life.

He rose that morning after a sleepless night. All through the hours of darkness, as Marie afterwards told the Tuscan envoy, a night-bird had circled round and round the palace, disturbing the inmates with its mournful cries. It was remarked that the King spent a longer time than usual at his devotions ; but, though feeling the effects of his wakefulness, he preserved the cheerfulness he had displayed on the preceding day; and as he walked home after hearing Mass at the Feuillants, the Due de Guise, who, with Bassompierre, had gone to meet him, congratulated him on his wit. He was one of the most amusing men in the world, the Duke said ; had he been born in a different sphere of life he would have considered no price too high

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