Chapter XXI: The End of Catherine De’ Medici

Fifteen years have passed. The Queen-mother is now seventy. She suffers from a mortal disease, and lies sick at the Château of Blois.

Hither her son Henry III. and his Court have come to meet the States-General. Trouble is in the kingdom; for the great Balafré, supported by Rome and Spain, is in rebellion; Henry totters on his throne.

And what a throne! What a monarch! Henry, who in his youth was learned, elegant, sober, who fought at Jarnac and Moncontour[17] like a Paladin, has become effeminate, superstitious, and vicious. His sceptre is a cup-and-ball; his sword, a tuft of feathers; he paints and dresses like a woman, covers himself with jewels, and passes his time in arranging ecclesiastical processions, or in festivals, pageants, masques, and banquets. His four favourites (“minions” they are called, and also “beggars,” from their greed and luxury), De Joyeuse, D’Epernon, Schomberg, and Maugiron, govern him and the kingdom. They are handsome and satirical, and think to kill the King’s enemies with ridicule and _jeux de mots_. But Henri de Guise, who sternly rebukes their ribaldry and abhors their dissolute manners, is not the man to be conquered by such weapons as words. He has placed himself at the head of the Catholic League, negotiates with Spain, and openly aspires to the throne.

For a moment there is peace. Henry before leaving Paris, by the advice of his mother summoned the Duc de Guise from Nancy to Paris. The Balafré enters the capital in disguise. The cry, “The Duke is with us!” spreads over the city like lightning. The populace, who adore Guise and detest Henry, tear off his mask and cloak and lead him through the streets in triumph. Catherine, although very ill, is so alarmed at the threatening aspect of affairs, that she causes herself to be carried out to meet him, borne in a chair, and so brings him to the Louvre into the presence of the King. His insolent bearing transports Henry with rage. The citizens, not to be pacified, fall out with the King’s guards, and there is a fearful uproar in the city. The Louvre is besieged. Henry, haughty and obstinate, is no longer safe in Paris. Maréchal d’Ornano offers to assassinate the Duc de Guise, but the King, by advice of D’Epernon, affects to yield to the policy of his mother, and to accept the supremacy of Guise. Under pretence, however, of a walk in the Tuileries Gardens, then newly planted, he orders his horses to be saddled, and escapes out of Paris, by way of Montmartre, attended only by his favourites. He reaches Chartres in safety. At Chartres he is joined by Catherine, and a treaty is signed--a treaty of false peace, for already D’Epernon and Joyeuse are whispering into the King’s ear that “the Duc de Guise must die.”

The treaty stipulates that Henry be declared Head of the Catholic League; that all Huguenots be banished--notably the King of Navarre, heir-presumptive to the throne; and that the Duc de

Guise be Lieutenant-General of the kingdom. The States-General are to be immediately assembled; and Henri de Guise, once the poetic lover, now hardened into the cold, ambitious bigot--ready to usurp the throne of France to ensure the triumph of the Catholic party, and exclude the King of Navarre--canvasses France, to insure a majority for the Holy League against those pertinacious enemies of orthodoxy, Condé and Navarre.

The King, meanwhile, overridden and humiliated, agrees to everything, and listens complacently to D’Epernon, who tells him, “He will never be king while Guise lives.” So, for the moment, there is peace.

Now the King has left Chartres, and is at Blois. The Balafré and his brother the Cardinal are also there to attend the Parliament, which is summoned, and to make known their grievances. So the sunny little town of Blois, sloping sweetly downwards to the Loire, with its superb castle marked by towers, turrets, broad flat roofs, painted windows, and ample courts, is the theatre on which the great battle is to be fought between the rival houses of Guise and Valois. All the chiefs on either side are to be present at a council which is to precede the meeting of the Assembly. Henry--at the instigation of D’Epernon--the better to play his perfidious game has communicated at the same altar with the Balafré and his brother the Cardinal, and given them the kiss of peace to seal their reconciliation.

Catherine’s apartments are on the first floor of the château,--a gallery-saloon, the diamonded windows set in painted arches overlooking the town, the dark walls, decorated with a crowned C and a monogram in gold; her oratory, with a large oval window where an altar stands; her writing-closet, with many concealed drawers and _secrets_ in the walls--a hidden stair leading to an observatory, and a sleeping-room with a recess for her bed. So unaltered are these rooms that the presence of Catherine still haunts them; she faces one at every step.

In her bed within that recess the great Queen lies dying. She is old and broken, and her mind wanders at times through excess of pain. But she cannot die in peace, for she knows that her son Henry--the last of her race--meditates a hideous crime; a crime in which she would have gloried once, but now, racked with bodily suffering and mental anguish, with remorse for the past and terror for the future, she shudders at the very thought.

She calls him to her. Henry, her beloved Anjou! As he enters her chamber, she struggles upright on her bed. No one would have recognised the majestic Queen in the hideous skeleton that now speaks.

“What are you about to do, my son?” she asks in a tremulous voice; “answer me, Henry. I fear I know too well what is on your mind. God grant you may succeed, but I fear evil will come of it. The Duke and his brother are too powerful.”

“The very reason they should die, my mother. I shall never be King of France while they live.”

“But, Henry,” gasps Catherine, trembling from weakness and excitement, as she clasps her son’s hand, “have you taken measures to assure yourself of the cities? Have you communicated with the Holy Father? Do this, do it at once!”

“Madame, good measures have been taken; trouble not yourself further.”

“But, my son,” continues Catherine with increasing agitation, “the Cardinal de Guise has been here to visit me; they are full of suspicion. The Cardinal says that I have betrayed them. I replied, ‘May I die, my cousin, if I have anything to do with any treason whatever.’ My son, I am in great agony,” and she groans and turns her eyes glowing with fever full upon him; “do not listen to D’Epernon; let there be peace while I live, and after.”

“What!” cries Henry, disengaging himself from her and striding up and down the room. “What! spare, when Guise, triumphant among the citizens of Paris, dared to lay his hand on the hilt of his sword in our very presence at the Louvre! Spare him who drove me a fugitive from the capital! Spare the chief of the League, who, assisted by Spain, is dismembering France! Spare them, when they will both be within this castle to-night, to attend the council! Spare _them_ who never spared ME! No, my mother, I will NOT spare them! Your sickness has weakened your courage. ‘A nut for a nut’ was once your motto. It is mine. If the Balafré and the Cardinal enter these doors to-morrow they shall not go hence alive; they shall die like rebels as they are.”

“Alas! my son,” says the Queen in a very low voice,--she has fallen back exhausted upon the bed,--“alas! it is easy to cut the thread of life; but once cut, can you mend it? Shed no more blood, Henry, for my sake, for I am dying. Let my last hour be undisturbed. I have much that troubles me,” and she heaves a deep sigh. “Too much blood has flowed already. Spare them, Henry, spare them.”

“My mother, _you_ never spared an enemy when within your power, nor will I. Either Guise or I must die. You have taught me that all means are good to save the sovereign and support his authority. My brother Charles, by your order, spared not Coligni and massacred the Huguenots at the festival of St. Bartholomew. _I helped him._ The Guises, madame, must die.”

“But, my son,” replies Catherine, wringing her bony hands, and struggling again to raise herself upright, “it is sacrilege. You have sworn peace upon the altar; you have eaten together the body of the Lord.”

Catherine’s voice is so feeble, that the King either does not hear, or does not heed her. He still strides up and down the room, speaking from time to time as if to himself.

“Every detail is arranged; we cannot fail. To-morrow the guards within the walls will be doubled; a hundred Swiss will be posted at the entrance in the courtyard and on the grand staircase. When the Duke arrives, Crillon will see that the outer gates are closed. As soon as Guise enters the council-chamber, I will send for him into my closet. When he has passed through the guard-room to reach it, Nambre will bar the door, that he may not return. My trusty Dalahaide and the guards--the 45th--who will be hidden on the secret stair behind the arras, will then rush down, fall upon the traitor as he passes through the guard-room, and finish him.”

Catherine, with haggard eyes, listens breathlessly. When the King has ceased speaking and looks round for a reply, she has fainted.

* * * * *

The next morning the sky was black with clouds. The month was December. It rained violently, and the wind howled round the corners of the château. Catherine, lying in the uneasy slumber of disease, was awakened at eight o’clock by the sound of heavy footsteps overhead. The state apartments are on the second floor, immediately over and corresponding with those of the Queen-mother. They still remain, gloomy and ill-omened, haunted by evil memories. Every plank has its history--each corner a ghastly detail. There is the hidden stair within the wall, concealed by tapestry, where Dalahaide and the guards hid; the door against which the great Balafré fell, stabbed by Malines in the breast, where he was spurned by the heel of the King, as he himself had spurned Coligni, and where he lay long uncovered, until an old carpet was found in which to wrap his corpse.

* * * * *

Catherine, listening breathlessly, hears the council assembling. Heavy footsteps are passing backwards and forwards through the guard-room overhead to the royal gallery where the council is to meet. Then all is hushed, and the face of the dying queen flushes with hope, and her hands clasp themselves in prayer, if, perchance, at the last moment Henry has relented and listened to her entreaties to spare the Duke.

A moment after a door closes violently. She hears a single footstep--a powerful and firm footstep. It crosses the floor. Then came loud tramplings, as of a rush of armed men, a clash of weapons, a fall as of a heavy body; then a terrible cry--

“À moi, mes amis!--trahison!--à moi, Guise,--je me meurs.”

The dying woman knows that all is over; she sinks back on her bed raving in delirium. In a few days she was dead.