The Life of Marie de Medicis Volume I Part 24

It was soon evident, however, that M. de Conde was by no means prepared to lend-himself to the licentious views of the King, and he maintained so strict a guard over his beautiful young wife that neither sarcasm nor reproach could induce him to relax his vigilance. This opposition only served to aggravate the unhappy pa.s.sion of the monarch, while the indignation of the Prince and the anger of the Queen were, although from a different motive, similarly excited; and in the month of July, during the festivities which took place on the marriage of the Duc de Vendome with Mademoiselle de Mercoeur, the advances of the monarch to the wife of his nephew became so undisguised that the latter openly resented so great an insult to his honour; a crime for which he was immediately punished by the revocation of all the grants made to him on the occasion of his marriage, and he was thus reduced to comparative poverty.[402]

This extreme and wanton severity produced a diametrically opposite effect to that which had been antic.i.p.ated by the King, the Prince instantly feeling that he had been wronged as well as insulted; while the Queen, alarmed by the evident progress of this new and fatal pa.s.sion, which must, should it ultimately prove successful, overwhelm the monarch with disgrace and remorse from the near consanguinity of the parties, did not fail to urge upon M. de Conde in the most energetic manner the necessity of preserving alike his own honour and that of the King by removing his wife from the Court. This advice found support on all sides, as those who made it a matter of conscience trembled at the idea of the scandal which must ensue; while others, who merely sought to annoy the sovereign without any regard for his reputation, still saw their purpose answered by the proposed departure of the Princess.

Difficult as it was for the Prince to consent to a separation from his beautiful young bride, the perseverance of Henry soon convinced him that he had no other alternative, and he accordingly caused her to quit the capital, and to take up her temporary abode at Saint-Valery; but the remonstrances of the monarch were so earnest, and he succeeded so thoroughly in concealing his indignation against M. de Conde personally, that for a time he flattered himself that he should be enabled to effect her recall. Upon this point, however, the Prince was firm; and as day after day went by without eliciting the obedience which he had antic.i.p.ated, the entreaties of the King were exchanged for threats. Nor did Henry rest satisfied even with this show of displeasure towards his young kinsman, for, resolved to ascertain if he should not be more favourably received by the Princess herself, he a.s.sumed a disguise, and proceeded with a few attendants to the place of her retreat in order to obtain an interview. On ascertaining this fact M. de Conde removed her to Muret, but the pursuit of the King was so resolute that the hara.s.sed bridegroom ultimately found himself compelled to choose between his ruin and his dishonour.[403]

His first measure was to change the residence of the Princess from Saint-Valery to his chateau at Breteuil, and to expostulate with her upon the encouragement which she gave by her levity to the advances of the monarch; but as some time pa.s.sed without any further cause for alarm, the Prince at length began to feel greater confidence, and in the month of November joined a hunting expedition which compelled him to absent himself from his wife, a circ.u.mstance that was forthwith communicated to Henry, who immediately a.s.sumed a second disguise and proceeded to Breteuil. M. de Conde had, however, been careful to establish a strict watch over his household, and being apprised in his turn of the royal visit, he suddenly returned, and the disappointed monarch was compelled to leave the chateau.

Madame de Verneuil, to whom the adventure was soon made known, and who, despite the extreme precariousness of her position, never failed to revenge herself upon the King whenever an opportunity presented itself, related the whole story in his presence during a Court reception, only suppressing the name of the adventurous lover; an indiscretion which so offended and alarmed the Prince that he determined to emanc.i.p.ate himself from the threatened disgrace.[404]

He felt that he had but one alternative, for he was too high-spirited to condescend to disgrace, whatever might be the penalty of his resistance; and driven at length to an expedient which wounded his pride, but which he found it impossible to reject, he affected to be determined by the anger of the monarch, and requested permission to go in person to conduct the Princess back to Court. This was instantly and joyfully conceded, and M. de Conde no sooner found himself free to act than he set forth; but, instead of returning to Paris as Henry had anxiously antic.i.p.ated, he took the precaution to have relays of post-horses secretly secured all along the road to the Low Countries.[405]

On his arrival at Muret the Prince lost not a moment in causing the Princess to enter a carriage drawn by eight horses which he had provided for the purpose, and at once proceeded to Flanders by way of Artois. The dread of dishonour, coupled with the fear of arrest upon the road, lent wings to his speed; and without once alighting the Prince and his fair companion reached Landrecies;[406] the entire suite of the first Prince and Princess of the Blood comprising on this occasion only Messieurs de Rochefort and de Tournay, and Mademoiselle de Certeau, with a valet and a femme-de-chambre, who followed on horseback.

The news of their flight reached Fontainebleau on the following evening, while the Queen was still convalescent (having given birth to her third and last daughter, Henriette Marie, on the 26th of November), and the King was endeavouring to employ the interval which must ensue before the arrival of the Princess by pursuing with renewed ardour his favourite pastime. Pimentello, the hated of Sully, had returned to Court, and the play was consequently "fast and furious." It was in the very height of this maddening excitement, when he was surrounded by piles of gold, and devotees as earnest as himself at the same shrine discreetly a.s.sembled in his private closet, that Henry, whose spirits were exalted by his hopes, and who was risking sum after sum with a recklessness which would have taken away the breath of his finance minister, received from M.

d'Elbene,[407] and subsequently from his lieutenant of police, the important and mortifying intelligence that his destined prey had escaped him. The agitation which the King exhibited when convinced of the truth of this report exceeded any that he had hitherto evinced even upon the most important occasions, and hastily rising from the table, he murmured in the ear of Ba.s.sompierre who was seated next to him, "Ah! my friend, I am lost. The man has taken his wife into the depths of a forest. I know not if it be to escape with her from France, or to put her to death.

Take care of my money, and keep up the play until I have procured more certain and detailed information." [408]

From his closet Henry proceeded to the last place on earth which might, under the circ.u.mstances, have been antic.i.p.ated. He went straight to the chamber of the Queen, where her Majesty was still unable to leave her bed, and there he gave full scope to the anguish under which he was labouring. "Never," says Ba.s.sompierre, "did I see a man so lost or so overcome." In the room were also a.s.sembled the Marquis de Coeuvres,[409]

the Comte de Cramail, and MM. d'Elbene and de Lomenie, with whom he unscrupulously discussed, in the presence of his outraged wife, the readiest means of compelling the immediate return of the fugitives. As may naturally be antic.i.p.ated, the advice likely to prove the most flattering to his wishes was offered on all sides, and a thousand expedients were suggested and discussed only to be found unfeasible, until the King, in despair, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, resolved upon summoning his ministers. Accordingly MM. de Sillery, de Villeroy, de Jeannin, and de Sully soon joined the party, which had, moreover, been augmented by the presence of several of the most confidential friends of the monarch, among others by De Gevres,[410] De la Force,[411] and La Varenne; and once more the King sought a solution of the difficulty. Here, however, the judgment and policy of the several councillors differed upon every point. The Chancellor gave it as his opinion that a strong declaration should be made against the step taken by the Prince himself, and another equally stringent against those by whom he should be aided and abetted in his evasion; M. de Villeroy advised that despatches should forthwith be forwarded to the several amba.s.sadors of the French King at foreign Courts to warn the sovereigns of those states against receiving the fugitive Prince within their territories, and to exhort them to take measures for enforcing his return to France; M. de Jeannin declared that the most expeditious method of compelling obedience, and forestalling the inconvenience and scandal of the self-expatriation of the first Prince of the Blood, would be to cause him to be immediately followed by a captain of the bodyguard, instructed to expostulate with him on his disloyalty and imprudence, and to threaten instant war against any state by whom he should be harboured; while when Sully at length spoke it was only to deprecate each and all of these measures, by which he insisted that the monarch would give an importance to the departure of the Prince that his enemies would but too gladly turn to their own account; whereas, if he made no comment upon the flight of M. de Conde, and treated it as a matter without importance, he would at once render him insignificant in the eyes of those sovereigns who would fain look upon him as a martyr, and use him as a means to hara.s.s and annoy his own monarch.

Henry was, however, too much excited to defer to the sober reasonings of his finance minister, and declared that he would suffer no petty prince to harbour the first n.o.ble of his kingdom without resenting so gross an affront. The advice of Jeannin suited his views far better, and he accordingly despatched M. de Praslin on the following day to Landrecies with a peremptory order for the return of the fugitives. His messenger was met by a firm refusal on the part of the Prince; upon which, finding that his expostulations were of no avail, he proceeded, as he had been ordered, to Brussels, where, in an interview with the Archduke Albert,[412] he delivered to him the message of his sovereign, and explained the danger of the position in which he would personally be placed should he venture to oppose the royal will.

This intelligence greatly embarra.s.sed the Archduke, who had already given to M. de Rochefort an a.s.surance of the readiness with which he would offer an asylum to the princely fugitives; but as M. de Praslin continued to press upon him the certain indignation of the French monarch should he venture to receive them at his Court, his previous resolution gave way; and he hastened to despatch a messenger to Landrecies to decline the honour proffered to him by M. de Conde, but at the same time to a.s.sure him of a safe pa.s.sage through his territories.

On the receipt of this unexpected prohibition the self-exiled Prince, who had gone too far to recede, had no other alternative than to proceed through the duchy of Juliers to Cologne; in which, being a free city, and perfectly neuter in the affairs of France and Spain, the chief magistrate granted him permission to reside.

Although the Prince de Conde had been refused a retreat in Flanders, the Archduke willingly yielded to the request of the Princess that she might be permitted to reside for a time in Brussels, until the final abode of her husband should be decided; and she accordingly arrived in that city under his escort, where the ill.u.s.trious couple were received with great ceremony and cordiality by the Papal Nuncio and the other dignitaries of the town. Their arrival was no sooner known than Philip of Orange and his Princess (the sister of M. de Conde) hastened from Breda to welcome them; and they were followed a few days afterwards by the Archduke and Archd.u.c.h.ess, by whom the royal fugitives were entertained with all the honour due to their exalted rank, and their unmerited misfortunes. The Prince then took his departure for Cologne, while the fair cause of his flight remained in the Flemish capital under the protection of her new friends.

Marie de Medicis had, meanwhile, no sooner ascertained that the emba.s.sy of M. de Praslin had been successful, and that the self-expatriated pair had been denied a refuge in the Low Countries, than she addressed a letter to the Marquis de Spinola, entreating him to cause a revocation of the denial, and representing how entirely her domestic peace depended upon the absence of the Princesse de Conde; an absence which could not fail to be abridged by the necessity of residing in a city like Cologne, where the ardent spirit of the Prince could not but revolt at the tedium around him. The effect of her appeal was all that she had antic.i.p.ated, strengthening as it did the preconceived measures of the confidential minister of Philip III, who hastened to represent to that monarch the gross error into which the Archduke had fallen, and the favourable opportunity which he had thus lost of retorting upon Henry the protection that he had accorded to Don Antonio Perez, a traitor to his sovereign and to his country; and of securing to the Court of Spain the advantage which it must have derived from having in its power, and securing to its interests, the first Prince of the Blood in France. His arguments proved conclusive, the jealousy of Philip always prompting him to lend a willing ear to every project by which he might be enabled to accomplish any triumph over the French monarch; and accordingly instructions were forwarded to the Archduke to repair his fault without delay, by inviting the Prince to rejoin his bride at Brussels. Little as the sovereign of the Low Countries was disposed to involve himself in a war with France, he did not hesitate to comply with the injunction. He placed so firm a reliance on the support of Spain in the event of hostilities, and had been so long accustomed to conform to her counsels, that he immediately made known to M. de Conde his change of resolution, and declared himself ready to receive him whenever he should see fit to return to his territories; while at the same time he wrote to apprise the French King of what he had done, a.s.suring him that the permission granted to the fugitive Prince involved no want of respect for himself or of deference to his wishes, but had been accorded in the full persuasion of his ultimate approval.

The Spanish minister also despatched a messenger to the Prince, declaring that he was at liberty to take up his abode in the Low Countries, where he would be treated in a manner worthy of his birth and dignity, and, under the protection of the King his master, be a.s.sured of safety and respect. M, de Conde gladly availed himself of this permission, and a short time subsequently established himself in the palace of his sister, the Princess of Orange.

Enraged at this open violation of his wishes, and still reluctant to commence a war which he was conscious would rather owe its origin to private feeling than to national expediency, Henry resolved, as a last resource, to invest M. de Coeuvres with full powers to treat with the revolted Prince; and for this purpose he furnished him with an autograph letter, in which he a.s.sured the fugitive of an unreserved pardon in the event of his immediate return to France; but threatened, should he persist in his contumacy, to declare him guilty of the crime of _lese-majeste._ M. de Conde simply replied to this missive by a declaration of his innocence, and his respect for the person of the King, and by protesting against all that might be done to prejudice his interests; nor did the interviews which took place between himself and the royal envoy prove more satisfactory, although the Marquis exerted all his eloquence to induce him to comply with the will of the sovereign. Moreover, the letter of Henry, instead of exciting his confidence, had rendered the Prince more suspicious than ever of the designs of the monarch; and he accordingly left Brussels, where he no longer considered himself safe, at the end of February (1610), and took refuge at Milan with the Conde de Fuentes, the governor of that city.

More than one rumour had meanwhile reached the Archd.u.c.h.ess that Madame de Conde was by no means so indifferent to the degrading pa.s.sion of the King as was befitting to her honour, and the Princess was accordingly soon made sensible that her sojourn at Brussels had degenerated into a species of ceremonious imprisonment. Naturally vain and volatile, dazzled by the consciousness that she had become a sort of heroine, and moreover saddened by her memories of the brilliant existence from which she had been so suddenly shut out, the widowed bride would gladly have followed her husband to the gayer city of Milan, even wounded as she was by his indifference and coldness, rather than remain at the austere Court of the pious Infanta, where she was aware that her words and actions were subjected to the closest scrutiny; but the will of her father compelled her to remain at Brussels, the Connetable being apprehensive, from the marked neglect and suspicion evinced towards her by the Prince, that this latter might endeavour to remove her beyond the reach of her friends in order to hold her more completely in his power.

Under this impression her father had consequently insisted upon her residence at the Archducal Court, and had instructed her to solicit the influence of the Infanta, and to employ every means in her own power, to prevent M. de Conde from effecting her removal in the event of his finding it himself expedient to leave Flanders.

Not satisfied with this precaution, moreover, M. de Montmorency also demanded an audience of the King, in which he laid before him the apprehensions that he entertained; and finally he entreated his Majesty's permission to compel his daughter to return to France, and to take up her residence with the d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme, her aunt.

Henry made a ready and gracious reply to this request, and before he finally retired from the royal closet, the Connetable asked and obtained the royal sanction to authorize the Marquis de Coeuvres to concert with him some scheme for carrying off the Princess.

M. de Coeuvres had no sooner received these instructions than he admitted to his confidence Madame de Berny, the wife of the French Amba.s.sador at the Flemish Court (who from political reasons was himself kept in ignorance of the plot), and M. de Chateauneuf,[413] who was at that period residing in Brussels on a special mission from his Government; and the quasi-conspirators were not long ere they flattered themselves that their success was certain.

Near the palace of the Prince of Orange, in which Madame de Conde had taken up her residence, was a breach in the city wall by which it was easy to descend into the moat; and it was decided that the Princess should effect her escape from this point during the night. Saddled horses were to be prepared for herself and her retinue near the outer bank of the ditch, and nothing remained undecided save the moment of her evasion. She was to proceed at all speed to Pontarme, where a relay of fresh horses and an armed escort were to await her arrival, and similar arrangements were to be made throughout the whole of the route to Rocroy. Finally, the precise night of her flight was decided on; and this had no sooner been determined than M. de Coeuvres despatched a courier to the Connetable, informing him that there now remained no doubt of the immediate return of the Princess to his protection.

This intelligence reached Paris on the Wednesday, and the following Sat.u.r.day was the period fixed for the projected evasion, a fact which M.

de Montmorency had no sooner ascertained than he hastened to communicate the success of M. de Coeuvres to the King. Henry was overjoyed, and in the fulness of his satisfaction was guilty of an indiscretion which was fated to overthrow his hopes; for, believing that in so short a time no effectual measures could be taken to frustrate the plot, he was incautious enough to confide the whole conspiracy to the Queen, who was still an invalid, not having yet recovered from the birth of her third daughter.[414] Agitated and alarmed, Marie listened to the narrative with an earnest attention, which only tended to render her royal consort more communicative than he might otherwise have been; and, in the excess of his self-gratulation, he moreover exhibited such unequivocal proofs of the interest which he personally felt in the result of the evasion, that she at once resolved to prevent the reappearance of the Princess in France. The King had accordingly no sooner quitted her apartment than she desired Madame Concini to bring her kinsman the Nuncio Ubaldini to her private closet without losing an instant, a command which was so zealously obeyed by her favourite that she was enabled, after a prolonged conference with this ecclesiastic, to despatch a courier secretly to Spinola the same night to acquaint him with the projected design, and to entreat him to frustrate it should there yet be time.

The royal messenger travelled so rapidly that he reached Brussels at eleven o'clock on the morning of Sat.u.r.day, and Spinola had no sooner read the despatch than he hastened to communicate its contents to the Archduke and the Infanta, who instantly sent a company of the light horse of the bodyguard to possess themselves of all the approaches to the palace of the Prince of Orange. This done, their Imperial Highnesses next caused several state carriages to be prepared, which were placed under the charge of one of the princ.i.p.al officers of their household, who received directions to invite Madame de Conde in their joint names to take immediate possession of a suite of rooms in the Archducal palace which they desired to appropriate to her use and that of her suite, as better suited to the dignity of her high rank than those which she then inhabited. He was, moreover, instructed to accept no denial, but to insist upon the compliance of the Princess; and thus armed the courtier proceeded to the Hotel d'Orange, where he communicated the subject of his mission to Madame de Conde in the presence of her two confidants.

The consternation of the whole party may be imagined when, just as they conceived themselves secure of success, they thus discovered that their design had been betrayed; nor was it until the Princess had exhausted every subterfuge she could invent that she found herself compelled to accompany the Archducal envoy. It was in vain that she represented the greater propriety of her residence under the roof of her husband's sister during that husband's absence; she was a.s.sured that she would find the palace equally eligible and far more worthy of her occupation.

She then pleaded her reluctance to intrude further upon the splendid hospitality of her princely hosts; her objection was met by an a.s.surance that so eager were the sovereigns to receive her as a guest that they were even at that moment waiting in the greatest anxiety to bid her welcome, an intimation which served to convince Madame de Conde that she had no alternative save to submit to this polite tyranny, and that upon the instant. She accordingly summoned her attendants, and without having been permitted to hold any private communication with her equally discomfited friends, she entered the carriage a.s.signed to her, and was rapidly driven-to the palace.[415]

The indignation of the Prince de Conde equalled the mortification of the King when he learnt the failure of the projected evasion; while the Marquis de Coeuvres and M. de Berny demanded an audience of the Archduke, at which they loudly complained of the insults to which the Princess had been subjected, and which were, as they alleged, calculated to strengthen the odious suspicions that had already been generated against the King their master. M. de Berny, who was entirely ignorant of the plot, was naturally the loudest in his denunciations of the violence offered to Madame de Conde, and the species of captivity to which she was condemned, when she had been led to expect nothing but consideration for her rank and sympathy for her misfortunes. He, moreover, a.s.sured the Archduke that nothing could be more wild and absurd than the idea of her flight, warmly demanding wherefore she was likely to leave a capital wherein she had hitherto been so well and so generously received.

The genuine indignation of the Amba.s.sador produced as little effect upon the Archduke as the laboured arguments of M. de Coeuvres, and he contented himself by courteously regretting that an attention, intended to convey to the Princess the extent of the respect and friendship with which she had inspired him, should have been so ill-interpreted, adding, moreover, that far from disapproving the step which he had taken, he felt convinced that the French King would recognize in it only his earnest desire to do honour to the first Princess of the Blood. Further argument was useless, the imperturbable composure of the Archduke totally overpowering the wordy violence of his interlocutors, who were eventually compelled to withdraw without having effected the restoration of Madame de Conde. On the return of the Marquis de Coeuvres to Paris, Henry, still believing that the Archduke would not venture to brave his displeasure by any further opposition to his will, accredited M. de Preau[416] to the Court of Brussels, with instructions to demand the immediate return of the Princess in the joint names of the Duke her father and Madame d'Angouleme her aunt; but this new procuration was met by the Austrian Prince with the announcement that he had pledged himself to M. de Conde not to permit the Princess to leave Brussels without his consent, and that he consequently could not without dishonour forfeit his plighted word.

Exasperated by a firmness for which he was unprepared, and satisfied that the support of the Spanish Cabinet could alone have induced the Archduke thus to drive him to extremities, Henry at once resolved no longer to delay the hostilities which he had long meditated against Spain, and to which he was now urged as much by private feeling as by state policy. A sufficient pretext offered itself, moreover, in the efforts which had been made by several of the German Princes to possess themselves of the duchies of Cleves and Juliers; the death of Jean Guillaume, Duc de Cleves, Juliers, and Bergh, Comte de la Mark, and Lord of Ravenstein, which had occurred on the 25th of March, and the numerous claims made upon his succession, having rendered the ultimate disposition of his duchy a matter of extreme importance to Henry, who was reluctant to strengthen the power of Austria by permitting this increase of territory to pa.s.s definitely into her hands,[417] as it had already partially done, the Emperor having hastened to place the duchy under sequestration.

The petty sovereigns thus despoiled protested energetically against such an usurpation, and several among them had even entreated the protection of France, to the great gratification of Henri IV, who thus found himself doubly armed, as his interference on behalf of the aggrieved Princes a.s.sured their cooperation in his own project of recovering from the Emperor the provinces of Franche-Comte and Flanders, which had been in the possession of Spain since the time of Charles V, and which had formed, as we have elsewhere stated, the dowry of the Infanta on her marriage with the Archduke Albert. Thus in the eyes of Europe the French King was about to engage in this new war simply to enforce justice to himself and his allies; but it was so evident to all who considered the subject that these pretensions might have been put down at once by the slightest show of resistance on his own part, and that so comparatively unimportant a campaign might prudently have been entrusted to one of his many able generals, that when it became known that an army of forty thousand infantry, six thousand Swiss, the bodyguard, and a corps of four thousand mounted n.o.bles, together with a strong park of artillery, were about to take the field under the command of the King in person, there were few individuals acquainted with the circ.u.mstances which we have just narrated who did not feel convinced that the monarch was rather about to undertake a crusade for the deliverance of the Princesse de Conde than a war for the preservation of his territories.

This opinion was, moreover, strengthened by the fact that throughout all these hostile preparations Henry did not discontinue his negotiations for the return of Madame de Conde to France. He pleaded the authority of her father, the anxiety of her more than mother the d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme, his own authority over his subjects, the inclination of the Princess herself to be once more under the protection of her family; but all these pretexts signally failed. Yet neither Henry nor his agent M.

de Preau would yield to discouragement; pa.s.sion on the one hand, and ambition on the other, lent them strength to persevere; and having exhausted their first scheme of attack, they next represented the necessity of her presence at the approaching coronation of the Queen, where it was important that she should occupy the position suited to her rank as first Princess of the Blood; and next they alleged the impossibility of furthering her views in the separation from her husband which she was about to demand, unless she were enabled personally to expose her reasons to the Parliament. Moreover, Madame de Conde had written to the French ministers to complain of violence and imprisonment, and the King insisted upon the necessity of her liberation.

De Preau, however, zealous as he was, made no impression upon the firmness of the Archduke. The Spanish Cabinet had rendered itself responsible for his opposition, and he defied the menaces of France, a circ.u.mstance which decided Henry upon immediate war. The resolution which he had taken of heading the army in person determined him, before his departure from France, solemnly to invest the Queen with the t.i.tle of Regent during his absence; but the precautions which he took to name an efficient Council by whom she was to be a.s.sisted in the government of the kingdom excited the indignation and resentment of her personal favourites, especially of Concini, who thus saw himself rendered powerless when he had hoped to a.s.sert his influence and to improve his fortunes; and under the pressure of this disappointment he hastened to represent to his royal mistress the utter emptiness of the dignity with which Henry proposed to invest her.

"You are an uncrowned Queen," he said, "and you are about to become a powerless Regent. Thus, Madame, you will be known by two high-sounding t.i.tles, neither of which will in reality appertain to you. Cause yourself to be crowned, and then you will indeed possess the authority which is your due and the honour of which you have heretofore been unjustly deprived. Cease to be a puppet in the hands of a faithless husband, and at least compel this coming war, undertaken for the recovery of a new mistress, to be the means of establishing your own rightful position."

This advice was eagerly accepted by Marie, whose ambition had at length been aroused by a consideration of the failing health and advanced age of the King and the prospect afforded by the extreme youth of the Dauphin of a protracted minority, and she consequently hastened to express to Henry her earnest desire to feel herself in reality Queen of France before his departure from the kingdom, in order that she might not have to apprehend any neglect of her legitimate authority upon the part of the ministers whom he had selected to share with her the burthen of state affairs. The monarch, who had hitherto refused to listen to every suggestion which had been made to him of the propriety of showing this mark of consideration to his royal consort, was even less inclined to make the concession at this particular moment, when the expenses of his meditated campaign had been estimated at twelve hundred and fifty livres a month for the support of his own troops and an equal sum for those of his allies;[418] and he replied with considerable warmth that she had chosen her time for such a request most injudiciously, since she must be aware that he had neither the time nor the funds necessary to the indulgence of so puerile a vanity. The Queen, however, urged by her advisers, resolutely returned to the charge, declaring that she could a.s.sume no prominent position in the temporary government of the kingdom while her own remained so vague and undefined. She reminded him, moreover, of the uncomplaining patience with which she had awaited his pleasure upon this particular; a patience which, as she a.s.serted, she could still have exercised had he not been about to cross the frontier, but which, under existing circ.u.mstances, she now considered as weak and pusillanimous in the mother of three princes.[419]

"At length, however," says Ba.s.sompierre, whose own more than questionable morality did not permit him to enact the censor upon his sovereign, "as he was the best husband in the world, he finished by giving his consent, and delayed his departure until she should have made her public entry into the capital." [420]

On retiring to his closet the King declared to one or two of his confidential friends, as he had already done on former occasions when the same question had been mooted, that the actual cause of the repugnance which he felt to accede to the wishes of the Queen arose from a firm conviction that her coronation would cost him his life, and that he should never leave Paris in safety, as his enemies could only hope to triumph by depriving him of existence.[421]

"a.s.suredly," pursues the quaint old chronicler from whom we have just quoted, "heaven and earth had given us only too many prognostics of what was to happen to him: it was in the year 1608 that a great eclipse nearly covered the whole body of the sun; in the preceding year 1607 that the terrible comet appeared; after which some three months or thereabout we had two earthquakes; then several monsters born in divers provinces of France; b.l.o.o.d.y rains that fell at Orleans and at Troyes; the great plague that afflicted Paris in the past year 1609; the furious overflowing of the Loire; next the Cure of Montargis found upon the altar, when he went to celebrate the ma.s.s, a scroll by which he was informed that his Majesty would be killed by a determined blow, and the said Cure of Montargis carried the paper to the Due de Sully. Several conspiracies," he goes on to say, "must have been formed against the life of this good King, since from twenty quarters he received notice of it. The Pope Paul V sent him a courier express to warn him to be upon his guard, as very high and powerful ladies and some of the greatest n.o.bles of his Court were involved in a plot against his life." [422]

What reason the King may have supposed himself to possess for considering his own death to be consequent upon the coronation of Marie, or whether he did actually so combine the two events in his own mind, it were impossible for posterity to decide; but it is at least certain that Rambure himself is not singular in adducing extraordinary coincidences and in lending his support to these superst.i.tious terrors, for it is on record that Cardinal Barberino, who subsequently (in 1623) became Pope under the t.i.tle of Urban VIII, and who was, at the period of which we now write, celebrated for his acquaintance with the occult sciences, as well as for his skill in astrology, sent a message to the King in the month of January, by which he cautioned him not to sojourn in any large city throughout the whole of the year, but more especially during the months of March, April, May, June, and July; declaring that, should he disregard the warning, he would be a.s.sa.s.sinated by an unfrocked monk of saturnine temperament born in his own kingdom; and adding that he would do well carefully to ascertain whether any individual answering to this description were then residing within his dominions, in order that should such an one be discovered, he might be closely watched; and he, moreover, concluded by a.s.suring the monarch that if he would submit to absent himself from all the great cities of his kingdom during the months specified, he (the Cardinal) would answer with his life that he should escape the threatened peril.

This intimation, extraordinary as it seems, was, however, insignificant beside another which reached Henry at the same period through the Marquis Dufresne, his amba.s.sador at the Court of Constantinople, who was instructed by the Sultan to desire him to take off the heads of the six princ.i.p.al n.o.bles of his nation immediately on the receipt of his letter, and to be upon his guard against the greatest lady in his dominions, as well as against three persons who were in her confidence, whom he advised him to imprison during their lives, the whole of them being implicated in the plot.[423]

Both these communications may, however, find a probable solution in the circ.u.mstance of their having been made by individuals who had obtained information of a conspiracy against the life of the French King, a supposition rendered the more rational by the fact that although aware of the formidable army then organized in France, the Austrians made no preparation to resist a force which they were conscious was to be used against themselves; an inertness which could only be accounted for by the supposition that they were about to employ other and surer methods of evading the threatened evil.[424] But in addition to these probably political prophecies, others of a still more singular nature were made to Henry of his approaching fate. A young female named Anne de Comans voluntarily declared that a fatal conspiracy had been organized, whose avowed object was to terminate the existence of the monarch by violence, and even after his death she persisted in maintaining the truth of her a.s.sertion, not only orally but in writing; for which persistence she was p.r.o.nounced to be insane, and so closely confined in an asylum for lunatics as actually to become in a few months the madwoman which she had been represented, although it would appear that great doubts were entertained as to her previous hallucination.[425] Six months before his death the King being in the house of Zamet retired immediately that he had dined to a private apartment, whence he sent to summon Thoma.s.sin, one of the most celebrated astrologers of the time, whom he interrogated respecting his own future destiny and that of his kingdom. In reply he was warned as usual to beware of the approaching month of May, and at length, irritated by his scepticism, the professor of the black art predicted to him not only the day but the very hour which was to terminate his existence.[426]

A short time subsequently a n.o.bleman of Bearn arrived in Paris and requested an audience of the King, which he had no sooner obtained than he informed him that he had been instructed in a vision to seek his presence in order to warn him of his approaching death. Henry, however, who piqued himself in public upon denying credence to these supernatural revelations, and who, moreover, imagined that the object of his countryman was to obtain a recompense for his zeal, treated the matter lightly and ordered three hundred crowns to be presented to the stranger to defray his travelling expenses. This present he, however, respectfully refused, protesting that he had acted only upon a principle of duty, and that he should be amply recompensed should his warning suffice to induce the monarch to adopt such precautions as would enable him to escape the threatened peril.[427]

Only a few nights previous to her coronation the Queen suddenly awoke from a profound slumber uttering a piercing shriek and trembling in every limb. Alarmed by her evident state of agony, the monarch, having at length succeeded in restoring her to a state of comparative composure, urged her to explain the cause of her terror, but for a considerable time she refused to yield to his entreaties. Overcome at last, however, by his evident anxiety and uneasiness, she informed him that she had just had a frightful dream, in which she had seen him fall under the knife of an a.s.sa.s.sin.[428]

Two remarkable coincidences also demand mention, particularly as they occurred at a distance from the capital. On the day of the King's a.s.sa.s.sination his shield, bearing his blazon, which was attached to the princ.i.p.al entrance of the chateau of Pau in Bearn, fell heavily to the ground and broke to pieces; while immediately afterwards the cows of the royal herd, which had previously been grazing quietly in the park, began to low in a frightful manner, and suddenly the bull known as _the king_ rushed violently against the gate whence the trophy had fallen and then sprang into the moat, where it was drowned. The effect produced upon the inhabitants of the district was instantaneous; loud and lamentable shouts of "The King is dead!" arose on all sides, and within two hours every Bearnais felt convinced that his beloved monarch had ceased to exist.[429]

It is useless to multiply these strange tales; but it is certain that they did not fail in their effect upon the mind of the monarch, however he might struggle to conceal the feelings which they excited, for Ba.s.sompierre relates that during the preparations which were making for the coronation of the Queen, Henry repeatedly alluded to his approaching death with a sadness which evinced his entire belief in the predictions that had reached him.

"I know not wherefore, Ba.s.sompierre," he said on one occasion, "but I am persuaded that I shall never again see Germany, nor do I believe that you will go to Italy. I shall not live much longer."

On the 1st of May, when returning from the Tuileries by the great gallery to the Louvre, supported in consequence of his gout by the Due de Guise and the narrator himself, he said on reaching the door of the Queen's closet to his two attendants, "Wait for me here. I will hasten the toilet of my wife that she may not keep my dinner waiting." He was of course obeyed, and the Duke and Ba.s.sompierre, in order to while away the time, walked to the balcony that overhung the court of the Louvre, against which they leant watching what pa.s.sed below, when suddenly the great hawthorn which occupied the centre of the area swayed for an instant and then fell to the earth with a loud crash in the direction of the King's private staircase without any apparent agency, as not a breath of air was stirring, nor was any one near it at the time.

The impressionable imagination of Ba.s.sompierre was deeply moved.

"Would," he exclaimed to his companion, "that any sacrifice on my part could have averted so dire a presage as this. G.o.d preserve the King!"

"You are mad," was the reply of the Duke, "to connect the fortunes of the King with the fall of a tree."

"It may be so," was the melancholy rejoinder; "but neither in Italy nor in Germany would this circ.u.mstance fail to produce alarm. Heaven guard the monarch, and all who are near and dear to him!"