By the following May events proved the accuracy of Sully's judgment. The court was at Fontainebleau when the last bulwark of Henry's prudence was battered down by the vanity of that lovely fool, Charlotte, who must be encouraging her royal lover to resume his flattering homage. But both appear to have reckoned without the lady's husband.
Henry presented Charlotte with jewels to the value of eighteen thousand livres, purchased from Messier, the jeweller of the Pont au Change; and you conceive what the charitable ladies of the Court had to say about it. At the first hint of scandal Monsieur de Conde put himself into a fine heat, and said things which pained and annoyed the King exceedingly. Henry had amassed a considerable and varied experience of jealous husbands in his time; but he had never met one quite so intolerable as this nephew of his. He complained of it in a letter to Sully.
"My friend,—Monsieur the Prince is here, but he acts like a man possessed. You will be angry and ashamed at the things he says of me. I shall end by losing all patience with him. In the meanwhile I am obliged to taut to him with severity."
More severe than any talk was Henry's instruction to Sully to withhold payment of the last quarter of the prince's allowance, and to give refusals to his creditors and purveyors. Thus he intended also, no doubt, to make it clear to Conde that he did not receive a pension of a hundred thousand livres a year for nothing.
"If this does not keep him in bounds," Henry concluded, "we must think of some other method, for he says the most injurious things of me."
So little did it keep the prince in bounds—as Henry understood the phrase—that he immediately packed his belongings, and carried his wife off to his country house. It was quite in vain that Henry wrote to him representing that this conduct was dishonouring to them both, and that the only place for a prince of the blood was the court of his sovereign.
The end of it all was that the reckless and romantic Henry took to night-prowling about the grounds of Conde's chateau. In the disguise of a peasant you see his Majesty of France and Navarre, whose will was law in Europe, shivering behind damp hedges, ankle-deep in wet grass, spending long hours in love-lore, ecstatic contemplation of her lighted window, and all—so far as we can gather—for no other result than the aggravation of certain rheumatic troubles which should have reminded him that he was no longer of an age to pursue these amorous pernoctations.
But where his stiffening joints failed, the Queen succeeded. Henry had been spied upon, of course, as he always was when he strayed from the path of matrimonial rectitude. The Concinis saw to that. And when they judged the season ripe, they put her Majesty in possession of the facts. So inflamed was she by this fresh breach of trust that war was declared anew between the royal couple, and the best that Sully's wit and labours could now accomplish was a sort of armed truce.
And then at last in the following November the Prince de Conde took the desperate resolve of quitting France with his wife, without troubling—as was his duty—to obtain the King's consent. On the last night of that month, as Henry was at cards in the Louvre, the Chevalier du Guet brought him the news of the prince's flight.
"I never in my life," says Bassompierre, who was present, "saw a man so distracted or in so violent a passion."
He flung down his cards, and rose, sending his chair crashing over behind him. "I am undone!" was his cry. "Undone! This madman has carried off his wife—perhaps to kill her." White and shaking, he turned to Bassompierre. "Take care of my money," he bade him, "and go on with the game."
He lurched out of the room, and dispatched a messenger to the Arsenal to fetch M. de Sully. Sully obeyed the summons and came at once, but in an extremely bad temper, for it was late at night, and he was overburdened with work.
He found the King in the Queen's chamber, walking backward and forward, his head sunk upon his breast, his hands clenched behind him. The Queen, a squarely-built, square-faced woman, sat apart, attended by a few of her ladies and one or two gentlemen of her train. Her countenance was set and inscrutable, and her brooding eyes were fixed upon the King.
"Ha, Grand Master!" was Henry's greeting, his voice harsh and strained. "What do you say to this? What is to be done now?"
"Nothing at all, sire," says Sully, as calm as his master was excited.
"Nothing! What sort of advice is that?"
"The best advice that you can follow, sire. This affair should be talked of as little as possible, nor should it appear to be of any consequence to you, or capable of giving you the least uneasiness."
The Queen cleared her throat huskily. "Good advice, Monsieur le Duc," she approved him. "He will be wise to follow it." Her voice strained, almost threatening. "But in this matter I doubt wisdom and he have long since become strangers."
That put him in a passion, and in a passion he left her to do the maddest thing he had ever done. In the garb of a courier, and with a patch over one eye to complete his disguise, he set out in pursuit of the fugitives. He had learnt that they had taken the road to Landrecy, which was enough for him. Stage by stage he followed them in that flight to Flanders, picking up the trail as he went, and never pausing until he had reached the frontier without overtaking them.
It was all most romantic, and the lady, when she learnt of it, shed tears of mingled joy and rage, and wrote him impassioned letters in which she addressed him as her knight, and implored him, as he loved her, to come and deliver her from the detestable tyrant who held her in thrall. Those perfervid appeals completed his undoing, drove him mad, and blinded him to everything—even to the fact that his wife, too, was shedding tears, and that these were of rage undiluted by any more tender emotion.
He began by sending Praslin to require the Archduke to order the Prince of Conde to leave his dominions. And when the Archduke declined with dignity to be guilty of any such breach of the law of nations, Henry dispatched Coeuvres secretly to Brussels to carry off thence the princess. But Maria de' Medici was on the alert, anti frustrated the design by sending a warning of what was intended to the Marquis Spinola, as a result of which the Prince de Conde and his wife were housed for greater security in the Archduke's own palace.
Checkmated at all points, yet goaded further by the letters which he continued to receive from that most foolish of princesses, Henry took the wild decision that to obtain her he would invade the Low Countries as the first step in the execution of that design of a war with Spain which hitherto had been little more than a presence. The matter of the Duchy of Cleves was a pretext ready to his hand. To obtain the woman he desired he would set Europe in a blaze.
He took that monstrous resolve at the very beginning of the new year, and in the months that followed France rang with preparations. It rang, too, with other things which should have given him pause. It rang with the voice of preachers giving expression to the popular vied; that Cleves was not worth fighting for, that the war was unrighteous—a war undertaken by Catholic France to defend Protestant interests against the very champions of Catholicism in Europe. And soon it began to ring, tool with prophecies of the King's approaching end.
These prognostics rained upon him from every quarter. Thomassin, and the astrologer La Brosse, warned him of a message from the stars that May would be fraught with danger for him. From Rome—from the very pope himself Came notice of a conspiracy against him in which he was told that the very highest in the land were engaged. From Embrun, Bayonne, and Douai came messages of like purport, and early in May a note was found one morning on the altar of the church of Montargis announcing the King's approaching death.
But that is to anticipate. Meanwhile, Henry had pursued his preparations undeterred by either warnings or prognostications. There had been so many conspiracies against his life already that he was become careless and indifferent in such matters. Yet surely there never had been one that was so abundantly heralded from every quarter, or ever one that was hatched under conditions so propitious as those which he had himself created now. In his soul he was not at ease, and the source of his uneasiness was
the coronation of the Queen, for which the preparations were now going forward.
He must have known that if danger of assassination threatened him from any quarter it was most to be feared from those whose influence with the Queen was almost such as to give them a control over her—the Concinis and their unavowed but obvious ally the Duke of Epernon. If he were dead, and the Queen so left that she could be made absolute regent during the Dauphin's minority, it was those adventurers who would become through her the true rulers of France, and so enrich themselves and gratify to the full their covetous ambitions. He saw clearly that his safety lay in opposing this coronation—already fixed for the 13th May—which Maria de' Medici was so insistent should take place before his departure for the wars. The matter so preyed upon his mind that last he unburdened himself to Sully one day at the Arsenal.
"Oh, my friend," he cried, "this coronation does not please me. My heart tells me that some fatality will follow."
He sat down, grasping the case of his reading-glass, whilst Sully could only stare at him amazed by this out-burst. Thus he remained awhile in deep thought. Then he started up again.
"Pardieu!" he cried. "I shall be murdered in this city. It is their only resource. I see it plainly. This cursed coronation will be the cause of my death."
"What a thought, sir!"
"You think that I have been reading the almanach or paying heed to the prophets, eh? But listen to me now, Grand Master." And wrinkles deepened about the bold, piercing eyes. "It is four months and more since we announced our intention of going to war, and France has resounded with our preparations. We have made no secret of it. Yet in Spain not a finger has been lifted in preparation to resist us, not a sword has been sharpened. Upon what does Spain build? Whence her confidence that in despite of my firm resolve and my abundant preparations, despite the fact announced that I am to march on the lath of this month, despite the fact that my troops are already in Champagne with a train of artillery so complete and well-furnished that France has never seen the like of it, and perhaps never will again—whence the confidence that despite all this there is no need to prepare defences? Upon what do they build, I say, when they assume, as assume they must, that there will be no war? Resolve me that, Grand Master."
But Sully, overwhelmed, could only gasp and ejaculate.
"You had not thought of it, eh? Yet it is clear enough Spain builds on my death. And who are the friends of Spain here in France? Who was it intrigued with Spain in such a way and to such ends as in my lifetime could never have been carried to an issue? Ha! You see."
"I cannot, sire. It is too horrible. It is impossible!" cried that loyal, honest gentleman. "And yet if you are convinced of it, you should break off this coronation, your journey, and your war. If you wish it so, it is not difficult to satisfy you."
"Ay, that is it." He came to his feet, and gripped the duke's shoulder in his strong, nervous hand. "Break off this coronation, and never let me hear of it again. That will suffice. Thus I can rid my mind of apprehensions, and leave Paris with nothing to fear."
"Very well. I will send at once to Notre Dame and to St. Denis, to stop the preparations and dismiss the workmen."
"Ah, wait." The eyes that for a moment had sparkled with new hope, grew dull again; the lines of care descended between the brows. "Oh, what to decide! What to decide! It is what I wish, my friend. But how will my wife take it?"
"Let her take it as she will. I cannot believe that she will continue obstinate when she knows what apprehensions you have of disaster."
"Perhaps not, perhaps not," he answered. But his tone was not sanguine. "Try to persuade her, Sully. Without her consent I cannot do this thing. But you will know how to persuade her. Go to her."
Sully suspended the preparations for the coronation, and sought the Queen. For three days, he tells us, he used prayers, entreaties, and arguments with which to endeavour to move her. But all was labour lost. Maria de' Medici was not to be moved. To all Sully's arguments she opposed an argument that was unanswerable.
Unless she were crowned Queen of France, as was her absolute right, she would be a person of no account and subject to the Council of Regency during the King's absence, a position unworthy and intolerable to her, the mother of the Dauphin.
And so it was Henry's part to yield. His hands were tied by the wrongs that he had done, and the culminating wrong that he was doing her by this very war, as he had himself openly acknowledged. He had chanced one day to ask the Papal Nuncio what Rome thought of this war.
"Those who have the best information," the Nuncio answered boldly, "are of opinion that the principal object of the war is the Princess of Conde, whom your Majesty wishes to bring back to France."
Angered by this priestly insolence, Henry's answer had been an impudently defiant acknowledgment of the truth of that allegation.
"Yes, by God!" he cried. "Yes—most certainly I want to have her back, and I will have her back; no one shall hinder me, not even God's viceregent on earth."
Having uttered those words, which he knew to have been carried to the Queen, and to have wounded her perhaps more deeply than anything that had yet happened in this affair, his conscience left him, despite his fears, powerless now to thwart her even to the extent of removing those pernicious familiars of hers of whose plottings he had all but positive evidence.
And so the coronation was at last performed with proper pomp and magnificence at St. Denis on Thursday, the 13th May. It had been concerted that the festivities should last four days and conclude on the Sunday with the Queen's public entry into Paris. On the Monday the King was to set out to take command of his armies, which were already marching upon the frontiers.
Thus Henry proposed, but the Queen—convinced by his own admission of the real aim and object of the war, and driven by outraged pride to hate the man who offered her this crowning insult, and determined that at all costs it must be thwarted—had lent an ear to Concini's purpose to avenge her, and was ready to repay infidelity with infidelity. Concini and his fellow-conspirators had gone to work so confidently that a week before the coronation a courier had appeared in Liege, announcing that he was going with news of Henry's assassination to the Princes of Germany, whilst at the same time accounts of the King's death were being published in France and Italy.
Meanwhile, whatever inward misgivings Henry may have entertained, outwardly at least he appeared serene and good-humoured at his wife's coronation, gaily greeting her at the end of the ceremony by the title of "Madam Regent."
The little incident may have touched her, arousing her conscience. For that night she disturbed his slumbers by sudden screams, and when he sprang up in solicitous alarm she falteringly told him of a dream in which she had seen him slain, and fell to imploring him with a tenderness such as had been utterly foreign to her of late to take great care of himself in the days to come. In the morning she renewed those entreaties, beseeching him not to leave the Louvre that day, urging that she had a premonition it would be fatal to him.
He laughed for answer. "You have heard of the predictions of La Brosse," said he. "Bah! You should not attach credit to such nonsense."
Anon came the Duke of Vendome, his natural son by the Marquise de Verneuil, with a like warning and a like entreaty, only to receive a like answer.
Being dull and indisposed as a consequence of last night's broken rest, Henry lay down after dinner. But finding sleep denied him, he rose, pensive and gloomy, and wandered aimlessly down, and out into the courtyard. There an exempt of the guard, of whom he casually asked the time, observing the King's pallor and listlessness, took the liberty of suggesting that his Majesty might benefit if he took the air.
That chance remark decided Henry's fate. His eyes quickened responsively. "You advise well," said he. "Order my coach. I will go to the Arsenal to see the Duc de Sully, who is indisposed."
On the stones beyond the gates, where lackeys were wont to await their masters, sat a lean fellow of some thirty years of age, in a dingy, clerk
ly attire, so repulsively evil of countenance that he had once been arrested on no better grounds than because it was deemed impossible that a man with such a face could be other than a villain.
Whilst the coach was being got ready, Henry re-entered the Louvre, and startled the Queen by announcing his intention. With fearful insistence she besought him to countermand the order, and not to leave the palace.
"I will but go there and back," he said, laughing at her fears. "I shall have returned before you realize that I have gone." And so he went, never to return alive.
He sat at the back of the coach, and the weather being fine all the curtains were drawn up so that he might view the decorations of the city against the Queen's public entry on Sunday. The Duc d'Epernon was on his right, the Duc de Montbazon and the Marquis de la Force on his left. Lavordin and Roquelaure were in the right boot, whilst near the left boot, opposite to Henry, sat Mirebeau and du Plessis Liancourt. He was attended only by a small number of gentlemen on horseback, and some footmen.
The coach turned from the Rue St. Honore into the narrow Rue de la Ferronerie, and there was brought to a halt by a block occasioned by the meeting of two carts, one laden with hay, the other with wine. The footmen went ahead with the exception of two. Of these, one advanced to clear a way for the royal vehicle, whilst the other took the opportunity to fasten his garter.
At that moment, gliding like a shadow between the coach and the shops, came that shabby, hideous fellow who had been sitting on the stones outside the Louvre an hour ago. Raising himself by deliberately standing upon one of the spokes of the stationary wheel, he leaned over the Duc d'Epernon, and, whipping a long, stout knife from his sleeve, stabbed Henry in the breast. The King, who was in the act of reading a letter, cried out, and threw up his arms in an instinctive warding movement, thereby exposing his heart. The assassin stabbed again, and this time the blade went deep.
The Historical Nights' Entertainment. Second Series Page 10