The Life of Marie de Medicis Volume II Part 24

Marie de Medicis listened incredulously when, on his return to her apartment, the equerry announced the failure of his mission. She would not comprehend that the stripling who had until that day shrunk before her frown could thus suddenly have acquired the necessary courage to brave her authority; and once more M. de Bressieux was instructed to urge her request upon the King. As he reached the royal anteroom her envoy encountered De Luynes, who dreaded nothing so much as a meeting between the mother and son, which could scarcely fail to prove fatal to himself; and he accordingly reported the return of the applicant in a manner which induced Louis to exclaim impatiently, "If he is here by desire of the Queen his mistress, tell him that there is nothing to apprehend, as I shall treat her well." [289]

Still Marie de Medicis would not be discouraged. She felt that in order to avert the ruin which impended over her she must put every instant to its use; and accordingly M. de Bressieux was a third time despatched to solicit in still more urgent terms that she might be permitted to see his Majesty, were it only for a few moments. But, unfortunately for the agonized Queen, the triumphant favourite was as fully aware as herself of the value of time at so critical a juncture; and he had accordingly profited so well by the opportunities which he was enabled to command, that on this last occasion the Marquis was rudely ordered to abstain from all further intrusion upon his Majesty unless he wished to repent his pertinacity within the walls of a prison.

Convinced at last that there was no hope through her own agency of effecting her object, the Queen-mother next endeavoured to secure its accomplishment through the medium of her daughter-in-law, the two Princesses, and the Duc d'Anjou; but when she summoned them to her apartment, she was informed that each and all had been forbidden to hold any intercourse with herself until the pleasure of the King should be made known.

The despair of the unhappy Marie was at its height; and as she paced her apartment, and approached a window looking upon the gardens, she discovered that a bridge which she had caused to be constructed for the purpose of reaching them without being compelled to traverse the galleries of the palace, was already in process of demolition; while she was also made aware that every other avenue leading to her apartments was strictly guarded, and thus she saw herself a prisoner in her own palace and entirely at the mercy of her son's advisers. Even yet she struggled against so cruel a conviction; and, eager to test its truth, sent to desire the presence of one of her confidential friends. Her messenger was not, however, permitted to accomplish his errand, but returned with the heart-sickening intelligence that thenceforward her Majesty would not be permitted to hold any communication, save with the members of her own immediate household, without the express sanction of the King.[290]

While the Queen-mother was still writhing under this new indignity, the unfortunate Leonora, who had been apprised of the murder of her husband, rushed into the apartment, and flinging herself at the feet of her royal foster-sister, implored her protection for herself and her young son; but sudden adversity had steeled the heart of Marie de Medicis, and sternly upbraiding her former favourite as the cause of her own overthrow, she refused to afford her any aid, and commanded her instantly to retire. The wretched woman obeyed without comment or remonstrance; and having regained her own apartment, which was immediately contiguous to that of the Queen, she hastened to conceal the Crown jewels which were in her keeping between the mattresses of her bed, with the exception of the rings, which were of great value, and which she habitually wore. This task accomplished, she threw herself upon her miserable couch to await in trembling and in tears the next act of the frightful tragedy in which she was called upon to play so conspicuous a part. Her suspense was not of long duration, as only a few minutes had elapsed when a tumult was heard without, amid which cries of "Vive le Roi!" "Vive M. de Luynes!" and "Death to the Italian!" were distinctly audible.

Leonora bounded from her rec.u.mbent position like a lioness at bay. Her parted lips were bloodless, her breath came quick and hard, and her heart heaved by its violent pulsations the rich velvet of the robe in which she was attired.

"My child!" she at length gasped out, as her attendants gathered about her--"save my child! He at least is guiltless."

The appeal was not made in vain. M. du Rouvray[291] took her little son, the Comte de la Pena, by the hand, raised him in his arms that his lips might once more touch those of his mother, and then, without uttering a syllable, led him from the apartment. In another instant the Norman n.o.ble was once more at her side. "The child is in sure hands," he said hurriedly; "and now, Madame, to provide for your own safety. Follow me--you have no time to spare."

It was, however, already too late; for as Du Rouvray ceased speaking, De Vitry, still reeking with the blood of Concini, stood upon the threshold of the chamber, attended by a troop of halberdiers.

"You are my prisoner, Madame," he exclaimed harshly: "prepare to accompany me to the Bastille."

"I am ready, Sir," replied the Marechale, with the composure of utter despair, "All is as it should be. The murderer of the husband is well fitted to be the gaoler of the wife."

The rings belonging to the Crown were then removed from the fingers of the Marquise; and upon her refusal to reveal where the remainder of the jewels were secreted, her apartments were strictly searched; and not only were the royal ornaments carried off by De Vitry and his companions, but also every other article of value which fell into their hands. While this unmanly outrage was going on around her, the Marechale d'Ancre pa.s.sively permitted her women to fasten her mantle, and to adjust her mask and hood; her thoughts were evidently elsewhere. Within a few yards of where she was then seated, and within hearing of the tumult occasioned by the reckless insolence of the men-at-arms by whom she was surrounded, her foster-sister, the playmate of her girlhood, the friend of her youth, and the protectress of her latter years--whose tears she had so often wiped away, whose sorrows she had so often soothed, and whose hopes and fears she had equally shared throughout so long a period--remained cold and unmoved by her misery. It was a bitter pang: and drops of anguish, wrung from the deepest recesses of a bursting heart, fell large and heavy upon the cheek of the new-made widow and the abandoned favourite, and moistened her clasped hands.

None, however, heeded her agony; each of her attendants, whatever might have been the previous attachment of all to her person, was absorbed by her own terrors; while the strangers who had invaded her privacy were eager, under the specious pretext of performing their duty to the King, to avail themselves to the uttermost of so favourable an opportunity of furthering their individual interests.

At length all was over: every cabinet and chest had been ransacked to its deepest recesses; every article of use or ornament had been displaced in search of plunder; and the wretched Leonora was warned that it was time to depart. She rose silent and rigid; and as De Vitry preceded her from the room, his guards closed up behind her. A carriage was in waiting at the foot of the staircase by which she descended; the twilight was rapidly deepening into night, and her melancholy path was lighted at intervals by the torches of the numerous attendants who were hurrying through the corridors in the service of their several employers. The long dark shadows of the Louvre lay heavy on the dull pavement of the court, save where they were broken at intervals by the resinous flambeaux which glared and flickered against the walls of the building. All looked wild, and sad, and strange; and not one kindly accent fell upon the ear of the unhappy captive as she was hurried onward. A few harsh words were uttered in a tone of authority: she was lifted into the conveyance which had been prepared for her: the cavalcade slowly traversed the enclosure; and then as the iron gates of the palace were pa.s.sed, the horses were lashed into a gallop; and in less than an hour the life-long companion of Marie de Medicis, husbandless, childless, and friendless, was an occupant of the gloomy prison-chamber which had recently been vacated by the Prince de Conde.

The noise created by the entrance of the new prisoner, the clashing of arms, the grating of the heavy portcullis, as it groaned and strained in its ascent, the dull fall of the drawbridge, the voices of men, and the rattling of wheels, awakened the Prince; who, with the natural weariness of a captive, had already retired to rest. Summoning an attendant he demanded to know the cause of the disturbance.

"It is M. de Vitry, Monseigneur," was the reply; "who has just transferred the Marechale d'Ancre to the safe keeping of the governor."

"Good!" said the Prince, as he once more settled himself to sleep; "I have now one enemy the less." [292]

This rapid succession of misfortunes produced an extraordinary effect upon the sensitive organization of Leonora Galiga. As we have already hinted, she had for a considerable period suffered under mental hallucination; and the disease had latterly fastened so tenaciously upon her system that she had even shunned the presence of the Queen, believing that every eye which rested on her produced some baneful result; while her very attendants were dismissed from her presence when they had terminated their duties, and she thus remained hour after hour in solitude, brooding over the sickly fancies of her disordered brain.

The sight of her husband's murderer had, however, instantly and for ever restored the healthful tone of her mind. She did not weep, for she had already exhausted all her tears; she asked no mercy, for she was aware that, whatever might be her fate, she was alike prejudged and pre-condemned; but she resigned herself pa.s.sively into the hands of her persecutors, with a Spartan firmness which she maintained to the last hour of her existence.

Who shall venture to follow her to her prison-cell, and to trace the tide of back-flowing thought which rolled like a receding wave from the present to the past? Now, indeed, she left little behind her to regret.

From the husband to whom she had once been devoted with a love which blinded her to all his errors and to all his egotism, she had, during the last two years, been almost utterly estranged; her first-born and idolized daughter was in her grave; the royal friend and almost relative, to whom she had clung from her youth up, had refused even a tear to her sufferings, or a shelter to her peril; her h.o.a.rded wealth was in the hands of her enemies; and of all that she once boasted there remained only her son. And what might be his fate?

But memory held wider stores than these; and who can doubt that throughout that first long night of captivity they were probed to their very depths! What palace-pageants--what closet-conspiracies--what struggles for pre-eminence and power--what heart-burnings at defeat, and exultation at success--must have swept hurricane-like across her awakened soul, to be forgotten in their turn as she recalled the childish sports of her early and hopeful years, under the sunny sky and among the orange-groves of her native Florence, where, with her royal playmate, she chased the hours along as though they were made only for the happy!

Did she sleep the weary and outworn sleep of the wretched while those sweet and soothing visions were still busy at her heart? And if so, breathes there one who would have roused her, whatever may have been her faults, from such a slumber?

FOOTNOTES:

[263] Richelieu, Unpublished MSS.

[264] Mezeray, vol. xi. p. 134.

[265] Ba.s.sompierre, _Mem_. p. 123.

[266] Ba.s.sompierre, _Mem_. p. 126. D'Estrees, _Mem_. p. 418.

[267] Richelieu, _Mem_. book viii. p. 411.

[268] Deageant was a man of considerable talent, but crafty and ambitious; his whole career was one of deceit and truckling. After numerous vicissitudes he was committed to the Bastille, where he beguiled the weariness of captivity by composing his Memoirs.

[269] Sismondi, vol. xxii. pp. 391, 392. Le Va.s.sor, vol. i. p. 583.

Richelieu, Unpublished MSS.

[270] Siri, _Mem. Rec_. vol. iv. pp. 29-31. _Mercure Francais_, 1617.

[271] Henri de Schomberg was the representative of an ancient family of Meissen established in France. He succeeded his father, Gaspard de Schomberg, in the government of La Marche, and in 1617 served in Piedmont. He was also one of the generals of Louis XIII, in 1621 and 1622, and in 1625 was created Marshal of France. He distinguished himself by defeating the English in the battle of the Isle de Rhe in 1627, and in forcing the defile of Susa in 1629. In the following year he took Pignerol. He was then despatched to Languedoc against the rebels, and in 1632 gained the battle of Castelnaudary, at which the Duc de Montmorency was made prisoner. For this victory he was invested with the government of Languedoc. He died in 1633.

[272] In his _History of the Parliament of Paris_, Voltaire, whose party-spirit was ever too ready to betray his judgment, and to obscure his genius, has not hesitated, in allusion to the arrogant boast of the Italian adventurer, to express himself thus:--"This Concini, at this very time, performed an action which merited a statue. Enriched by the liberality of Marie de Medicis, he raised at his own expense an army of between five and six thousand men against the rebels; he supported France as though she had been his native country." It is impossible to dwell upon the career of Concini, and not be startled by so extraordinary an encomium.

[273] _Mercure Francais,_ 1617. Siri, _Mem. Rec_. vol. iv. pp. 27-35.

[274] Deageant, _Mem_. pp. 38-44.

[275] Le Va.s.sor, vol. i. pp. 614-617. Deageant, _Mem_. pp. 43-56.

Ba.s.sompierre, _Mem_. pp. 123, 124.

[276] Siri, _Mem. Rec_. vol. iv. pp. 26, 27. Relation de la mort du Marechal d'Ancre, at the end of the _Histoire des Favoris_.

[277] Deageant, _Mem_. pp. 56, 57.

[278] Richelieu, _Mem_. book viii. p. 416.

[279] Brienne, _Mem_. vol. i. p. 300 _note_.

[280] Deageant, _Mem_. p. 48. Le Va.s.sor, vol. i. pp. 625, 626.

[281] Brienne, _Mem_. vol. i. p. 329.

[282] Alphonse d'Ornano, colonel-general of the Corsican troops in the French service, and himself a native of Corsica, was the son of San Pietro di Bastelica, a man of low birth, who attained to the rank of colonel of the Corsican infantry in France, and who married (in 1548) Vanina d'Ornano, the daughter and heiress of one of the most wealthy n.o.bles in Corsica. The avowed enemy of the Genoese, by whom himself and his family were proscribed and banished from their native island, San Pietro strangled his wife with his own hands on discovering that she had attempted to escape from Ma.r.s.eilles in order to obtain a revocation of the edict issued by the Genoese in 1563. Alphonse, the son of San Pietro, to whom his very name had become odious, adopted that of his mother, under which he rendered important services to Henri IV during the wars of the League, and by whom he was first appointed lieutenant of the King in Dauphiny, and subsequently Marshal of France (1595). He died in 1620, at the age of seventy-two. He was a man of probity, but had inherited the violent character of his father.

[283] Le Va.s.sor, vol. i. pp. 625-632. Brienne, _Mem_. vol. i. p. 327.

Sismondi, vol. xxii. pp. 393-395. Mezeray, vol. xi. pp. 134-136.

Matthieu, _Hist. des Derniers Troubles_, book iii. p. 603.

[284] Richelieu, Unpublished MSS. The words underlined in the text are in the Cardinal's autograph on the margin of the ma.n.u.script.

[285] Brienne, _Mem_. vol. i. p. 327.

[286] Le Va.s.sor, vol. i. p. 637. Sismondi, vol. xxii. p. 396.

[287] _Lumieres pour l'Histoire de France_. Le Va.s.sor, vol. i. pp. 634, 635.

[288] The Marquis de Bressieux was first equerry to Marie de Medicis.