Volume I Part 17 (1/2)
The Parliament had nominated as its commissaries Achille de Harlay, the first president,[286] and MM. Etienne Dufour and Philibert Turin, councillors, to whose interrogatories, however, the Comte d'Auvergne at first refused to reply, alleging as his reason the pardon which had been accorded to him by Henry during the past year. In this emergency M.
Louis Servin,[287] the King's Advocate, was deputed to offer to his Majesty the remonstrance of the commissaries, and to represent that as the accused had already been convicted of conspiring, first with Maturin Carterie, and subsequently with the Duc de Biron, he was unworthy of pardon on this third occasion; while the most imperious necessity existed that an example should be made, in order to secure the safety of their Majesties and the Dauphin, which, moreover, as a natural consequence, involved the tranquillity and welfare of the state.
To this appeal the King replied that the abolition accorded to the accused on the two former occasions had been granted with a view of inducing him to return to his allegiance, but that since it had failed to produce the desired result it could form no pretext for his escape from the penalties of this new crime, and that should he persist in refusing to reply to the questions put to him by his judges his silence must be construed into an acknowledgment of treason; upon which M.
d'Auvergne immediately endeavoured to redeem his error by revealing all the details of the past plots, as well as those of the one in which he was now implicated.
Madame de Verneuil, who had been summoned to appear at the same time, excused herself upon the plea of indisposition; and it was a.s.serted that she had caused herself to be bled in order that the temporary delay in her examination thus secured might enable her, ere she appeared before the commissaries, to ascertain to what extent she had been implicated by the revelations of her step-brother. She no sooner learnt, however, that the Count had thrown all the odium of the conspiracy upon herself than she hastened to obey a second summons, and presented herself with her arm in a sling to undergo in her turn the necessary interrogatories. Her manner was firm, and her delivery at once haughty and energetic. She insisted upon the innocence of her father, declared that the whole cabal had been organized by D'Auvergne, and admitted that feeling herself wronged she had willingly entered into his views; but at the same time she coupled with this admission the a.s.surance that having nothing with which to reproach herself she asked for no indulgence, and was quite prepared to abide by the consequences of her attempt to do justice alike to herself and to her children.
When the Comte d'Entragues was in his turn examined, he did not seek to deny his partic.i.p.ation in the plot, but placed in the hands of his judges a written doc.u.ment, setting forth the services which he had rendered to the King since his accession, and which had merely been recompensed by the government of Orleans, a dignity of which he was moreover shortly afterwards deprived in order that it might be conferred upon another, although in his zeal for the monarch he had not only exhausted his own resources but had even raised considerable loans which still remained unliquidated. Yet, as he stated, he had uttered no complaint, although he was reduced to poverty and deprived of the means of suitably establis.h.i.+ng his children, for he still had faith in the justice and generosity of his sovereign; and with this a.s.surance he had retired to his paternal home, old, sick, and poor, to await as best he might the happy moment in which his claims should be remembered. And then it was, as he emphatically declared, that the last and crowning misfortune of a long life had overtaken him. Then it was that the King conceived that unfortunate attachment for his younger daughter, which deprived him of the greatest solace of his old age and exposed him to the raillery and contempt of his fellow-n.o.bles, coupled with sarcastic congratulations upon the advantages which he was supposed to have derived from the dishonour of his child; an event which had clouded his remnant of existence with shame and despair. He had, as he a.s.serted, several times requested of his Majesty that he might be permitted to withdraw entirely from the Court and finish his days in retirement and in the bosom of his family, but this favour had constantly been denied.
As a last effort he had then represented the deplorable state of his health, and entreated that he might be permitted to travel in order to regain his strength, leaving his wife and children at Marcoussis; a favour which also was not only refused, but the refusal rendered doubly bitter by a prohibition either to see or correspond with his daughter, whose safety was at that moment endangered by the menaces of the Queen.
He then entered briefly into the circ.u.mstances of the conspiracy, and concluded by declaring that no attempt upon the life either of the sovereign or the Dauphin had ever been contemplated by himself or by any of his accomplices.[288]
Such was the defence of the dishonoured old man who had placed himself beyond the pale of sympathy by his own degrading marriage. Yet he was still a father; and who shall decide that the shame which in his own case had been silenced by the voice of pa.s.sion, did not crush him with double violence when it involved the reputation of his child? Who shall say that he had not, in the throbbing recesses of his wrung heart, mourned with an undying remorse the fault of which he had himself been guilty, and felt that it was visited in vengeance upon the dearest object of his paternal love? Contemporary historians waste not a word upon the ruined n.o.ble, the disappointed partisan, and the disgraced father; yet the scene must have been a pitiable one in the midst of which he stood an attainted criminal, blighted in every affection and in every hope, the creditor of his King, and the victim of his paternal ambition.
The sentence of the Parliament was p.r.o.nounced on the 2nd of February.
The Comtes d'Auvergne and d'Entragues were condemned to death for the crime of _lese-majeste_, and Madame de Verneuil to imprisonment in the convent of Beaumont, near Tours, until more ample information could be obtained of the exact extent of her partic.i.p.ation; and meanwhile she was to be prohibited from holding any communication save with the sisterhood.
On the same day, the sentence having been instantly communicated to Madame d'Entragues, with the information that the King was about to repair to the chapel of the palace to attend ma.s.s, she hastened, accompanied by her daughter Marie de Balzac,[289] to the Tuileries, where the two unfortunate women threw themselves on their knees before Henry as he entered the grand gallery, and with tears and sobs entreated mercy, the one for her husband, and the other for her father. The monarch burst into tears as he saw them at his feet. He could not forget that the mourners thus prostrate before him were the mother and the sister of the woman whom he still loved, and as he raised them from the ground he said soothingly: ”You shall see that I am indulgent--I will convene a council this very day. Go, and pray to G.o.d to inspire me with right resolutions, while I proceed in my turn to ma.s.s with the same intention.” [290]
The King kept his word. In the afternoon the Council again met, when he charged them upon their consciences to deliberate seriously before they condemned two of their fellow-creatures to an ignominious death; but they remained firm in their decision, declaring that by extending pardon to crimes of so serious a nature as those upon which judgment had just been pa.s.sed, nothing but danger and disorder could ensue; and that after the execution of the Duc de Biron, individuals convicted of the same offence could not be suffered to escape with impunity without endangering by such misplaced clemency the safety of the kingdom, while a revocation of the sentence now p.r.o.nounced would moreover tend to bring contempt upon the judicial authority.
Henry listened, but he would not yield; and before the close of the meeting, contrary to the advice of all his Council, he announced that he commuted the pain of death in both instances to perpetual imprisonment, and revoked the sentence that condemned the Marquise to the cloister, which he superseded by an order of exile to her own estate of Verneuil.
To express the disappointment and mortification of the Queen when this decision was announced to her would be impossible, as she instantly felt that any further attempt to destroy the influence of the favourite must prove ineffectual. She no longer exhibited any violence, but became a prey to the deepest melancholy, weeping where she had formerly reproached, and seeking her only consolation in prayer and in the society of her chosen friends. Upon Henry, however, the effect of his extraordinary and ill-judged leniency was far different. Although mercy, and even indulgence, had been extended towards the Marquise without eliciting one word either of entreaty or of acknowledgment, he felt convinced that so marked an exhibition of his favour must be recompensed by a return of affection on her part; and thus he continued to partic.i.p.ate in the gaieties of the Court with a zest which was strangely contrasted by the gloom and sadness of his royal consort, and even derived amus.e.m.e.nt from the epigrams and satires which were circulated at his expense among the people.
On the 13th of the month M. de Rohan[291] was married at Ablon[292] to Marguerite de Bethune, the daughter of the Duc de Sully, whom Henry had previously determined to bestow upon the Comte de Laval,[293] and not only did he confer the honour of his presence upon the well-dowered bride, but he also signed her marriage contract and presented to her ten thousand crowns for the purchase of her _trousseau_, with a similar sum to her bridegroom to defray the expenses of the wedding-feast. A singular ceremony followed upon the nuptial blessing, for M. de Rohan had no sooner led his newly-made wife from the altar than his ducal coronet was placed upon his brow, his ducal mantle flung upon his shoulders, and in this pompous costume he was, at the close of the banquet, escorted to Paris by the princes and n.o.bles who had been the guests of M. de Sully.
Seldom had the King evinced more gaiety of heart than at this particular period, or appeared to derive greater amus.e.m.e.nt from the gossipry of the Court and the gallantries of the courtiers; and he no sooner ascertained that Mademoiselle d'Entragues had become the mistress of Ba.s.sompierre than he said laughingly to the Duc de Guise: ”D'Entragues despises us all in her idolatry of Ba.s.sompierre. I have good grounds for what I state.”
”Well, Sire,” was the reply, ”you can be at no loss to revenge the affront; while for myself I know of no means so fitting as those of knight-errantry, and I am consequently ready to break three lances with him this afternoon at any hour and place which your Majesty may be pleased to ordain.”
The preparations for this combat are so graphically described by Ba.s.sompierre himself, and so characteristic of the manners of the time, that we shall offer no apology for giving them in his own words.
”The King acceded to our wishes, as such encounters were by no means unusual, and told us that the tilting should take place in the great court of the Louvre, which he would cause to be covered with sand. M. de Guise selected as his seconds his brother the Prince de Joinville and M.
de Thermes;[294] while I chose M. de Saint-Luc[295] and the Comte de Sault.[296] We all six dressed and armed ourselves at the house of Saint-Luc, and as we had armour and liveries ready for every occasion, my party wore silver-mail, with plumes of red and white, as were our silk stockings; while M. de Guise and his troop, on account of the imprisonment of Madame de Verneuil, of whom he was secretly the lover, were dressed and armed in black and gold. In this equipage we arrived at the Louvre, myself and my friends being the first upon the ground.” [297]
Henry, with his whole Court, both male and female, was present on the occasion, and the lists were placed immediately beneath the windows of the Queen's apartments; but the diversion was not fated to be of long duration, for at the first encounter the lance of M. de Guise entered the body of his antagonist and inflicted so formidable a wound that he was carried from the spot and laid upon the bed of the Duc de Vendome, apparently in a dying state. After his hurt had been dressed, the Queen sent her sedan chair to convey him to his residence.
Although Ba.s.sompierre, in the preceding column, a.s.sures his readers that ”such encounters were by no means unusual,” he goes on to state that directly he fell the King not only forbade the continuance of the tourney, but would never permit another to take place, and that this was the only one which had been held in France for the preceding century.[298]
”No one can imagine,” says the wounded hero in continuation, ”the mult.i.tude of visits that I received, especially from the ladies. All the Princesses came to see me, and the Queen on three occasions sent her maids of honour, who were brought to me by Mademoiselle de Guise, and stayed during the whole afternoon.”
These courtly diversions were abruptly terminated by the intelligence which reached Paris of the death, on the 3rd of March, of Pope Clement VIII.[299] The piety of this distinguished Pontiff, and the eminent services which he had rendered to the French King, caused his loss to be deeply felt by Henry; but when, on the 1st day of April, Alessandro de Medicis, the cousin of the Queen, was unanimously elected as his successor under the t.i.tle of Leo XI, nothing could exceed the joy which was manifested throughout the country. Paris was illuminated, bonfires were lighted on the surrounding heights, and salvos of artillery rang from the dark walls of the Bastille. This demonstration proved, however, to be premature, as the next courier who arrived in the French capital from Rome brought the fatal tidings of his death. On the day succeeding his elevation he had made his solemn entry into St. Peter's; on Easter Sunday the triple tiara was placed upon his brow, and the public procession to St. John de Lateran took place on the 17th; but on returning from this ceremony the new Pontiff complained of indisposition, and on the 27th he breathed his last; and was in his turn succeeded, on the Day of Pentecost (29th of May), by Paul V.[300]
About this time the King, wearied of the perpetual coldness of Madame de Verneuil, which not even his excessive clemency had sufficed to overcome, made a last attempt to compel her grat.i.tude by forwarding letters under the great seal, authorizing the Comte d'Entragues to retire to his estate of Marcoussis, and re-establis.h.i.+ng both himself and his son-in-law in all their wealth and honours, save the posts which they had held under the crown, and their respective governments.
D'Auvergne, however, was still a prisoner in the Bastille, where, after las.h.i.+ng himself into fury for a few months, he adopted the more prudent and manly alternative of study, and thus contrived to educe enjoyment even from his privations.
Yet still the haughty spirit of the Marquise scorned to yield. She was indeed living in her own house, the gift of the monarch against whom she exhibited this firm and calm defiance, and surrounded by luxuries, the whole of which she owed to his uncalculating generosity; but she could not, and would not, forget that she was, nevertheless, an exile from the Court, and a prisoner within the boundary of her estate, while the Queen, whom she had affected to despise, was triumphing in her disgrace. Nor was it until the month of September, when Henry, who was pining for her return, finally declared that no proof of culpability having been brought against her, she must be forthwith duly and fully acquitted of the crime with which she had been charged, that the icy barrier was at last broken down, and the haughty Marquise condescended to acknowledge herself indebted to her sovereign. The King did not satisfy himself with this mere declaration, though he had caused it to be legally registered by the Parliament; but, fearful lest some further revelations might be made, by which she might become once more involved, he moreover strictly forbade his Attorney-general to take any new steps whatever relating to the conspiracy, or tending further to incriminate any of its presumed members.[301]
The jealousy which existed between the two houses of Bourbon and Lorraine, and which Henry was anxious if possible to terminate, coupled perhaps with no small feeling of wounded vanity, determined him to bestow the hand of Louise Marguerite de Lorraine, Demoiselle de Guise (who, since she had been in the household of the Queen, had lent a less willing ear than formerly to his renewed gallantries), upon Francois, Prince de Conti; and accordingly the marriage was celebrated with great pomp in the month of July, in the presence of their Majesties and the whole Court. Madame de Conti herself a.s.serts that the Queen first suggested this union, and did everything in her power to effect it;[302]