Chapter II: Part 2

“One morning,” says Cellini in his memoirs, “I put on my cloak to take a short walk, and was turning down the Julian street to enter the quarter called Chiavica, when Crispino, captain of the city guard, met me with his whole band of sbirri, and told me roughly I was the Pope’s prisoner. I answered him, ‘Crispino, you mistake your man.’ ‘By no means,’ said Crispino, ‘you are the clever artist Benvenuto; I know you very well, and have orders to conduct you to the Castle of St. Angelo, where noblemen and men of genius like yourself are confined.’ As four of his myrmidons were going to fall upon me and deprive me forcibly of a dagger which I had by my side, and of the rings on my fingers, Crispino ordered them not to offer to touch me. It was sufficient, he said, for them to do their office and prevent me from making my escape. Then coming up to me, he very politely demanded my arms. Whilst I was giving them up, I recollected that it was in that very place that I had formerly killed Pompeo. They conducted me to the castle, and locked me up in one of the upper apartments of the tower. This was the first time I ever tasted the inside of a prison; and I was then in my thirty-seventh year.”

It was not difficult for Benvenuto to disprove the charges against him; he was, nevertheless, kept in prison in spite of the good offices of Montluc, the ambassador of France, who begged for his release, in the name of Francis I. The governor of St. Angelo was a Florentine, and he showed every attention to his unfortunate fellow-citizen, even allowing him on parole a certain freedom of movement within the walls. But after a time he shut him up closely again; and then once more restored him to his state of partial liberty.

“When I found,” says Benvenuto, “that I was being treated with so much rigour, I reflected deeply on the matter; and I said to myself, ‘If this man should again happen to take such a freak, and not choose to trust me any longer, I should feel myself released from my word, and should make a trial of my own skill.’ I then began to get my servants to bring me new thick sheets, and did not send back the dirty ones; and when they asked me for them, I told them that I had given them away to some of the soldiers, but that they were not to speak about it or the poor fellows would run the risk of being sent to the galleys. I hid my sheets in the mattress that served me for a bed, and burnt the straw with which it was stuffed, bit by bit, in my chimney, to make room for them. I then tore them up into long bands, and when I had enough of these bands to reach to the bottom of the tower, I told my servants I did not mean to give away any more of my linen, adding that they were to bring me finer sheets in future, and I would return them the dirty ones.

“The constable of the castle had annually a certain disorder which totally deprived him of his senses, and when the fit came on him he was talkative to excess. Every year he had some different whim: at one time he thought himself metamorphosed into a pitcher of oil; at another he believed himself a frog, and began to leap around like one; and again he imagined he was dead, and it was found necessary to humour him by making a show of burying him. He had, in fact, a new mania every year. This year he fancied himself a bat,

and when he went to take a walk he sometimes made just such a noise as bats do, and made gestures with his hands and body as if he were going to fly. The physicians, who knew his disorder, and his old servants procured him all the amusements they could think of, and as they found he took very great pleasure in my conversation, they often fetched me to his apartments, where the poor man would chat with me for three or four hours at a time. On one of these occasions he asked me whether I had ever wished to fly. I answered that I had always been readiest to attempt such things as men found most difficult, and that with regard to flying, as God had given me a body admirably well calculated for running, I had even resolution enough to attempt to fly. He then asked me to explain how I proposed to do that. I replied that when I attentively considered the several creatures that fly, and thought of effecting by art what they do by the force of nature, I did not find one so fit to imitate as the bat. As soon as the poor man heard mention made of the bat, his mania for the year turning upon that animal, he cried out aloud, ‘That’s very true; a bat is the thing.’ He then suddenly turned to me and said, ‘Would you, Benvenuto, if you had the opportunity, have the heart to make the attempt to fly?’ I answered that if he would give me permission, I had courage enough to attempt to fly as far as Prati by means of a pair of wings waxed over. ‘I should like to see you fly,’ he returned, ‘but as the Pope has enjoined me to watch over you with the utmost care, and I know that you have the cunning of the devil, and would be glad of the opportunity to make your escape, I mean to keep you locked up with a hundred keys to prevent you from slipping out of my hands.’ I then began to supplicate him afresh, reminding him that I had had it in my power to make my escape, but would never avail myself of the opportunity through respect for the promise I had given him. Whilst I was uttering these words he gave peremptory orders that I should be bound, and confined a closer prisoner than ever.

“I at once began to think about the means of making my escape. As soon as I was locked in, I made a careful examination of my prison, and thinking that I had found a sure way out of it, I turned over several plans for descending from the top of the great tower, where I was, to the ground. At last, guessing the length of line which would about carry me down, I took a new pair of sheets, cut them into the requisite number of strips, and sewed them fast together. The next thing I wanted was a pair of pincers, which I stole from a Savoyard on guard at the castle. This man had the care of the casks and the cisterns, and likewise worked as a carpenter; and as he had several pairs of pincers, and one amongst others which was thick and large, I took it, thinking it would suit my purpose, and laid it in the tick of my bed. When the time had come for making use of the pincers, I began to pull at the nails fastening the plates of iron fixed upon the door; and, as the door was double, the clenching of those nails could not be perceived. I exerted my utmost efforts to draw out one of them, and at last, with great difficulty succeeded. As soon as I had drawn a few, I was again obliged to torture my invention in order to devise some expedient to prevent the loss being perceived. I immediately thought of mixing a little of the filings of the rusty iron with wax; and, as this mixture was exactly of the colour of the heads of the nails I had drawn, I counterfeited a resemblance of them on the iron plates, and in this manner imitated in wax as many as I drew. I left each of the plates fastened both at top and bottom, and refixed them with some of the nails I had drawn; but the nails were cut, and I drove them in only a little way, so that they just served to hold the plates. I found it a very difficult matter to do all this, because the governor dreamed every night that I had made my escape, and used to send often to have the prison searched. The man who came on these visits had the appearance and bearing of one of the city guards. His name was Bozza, and he used to bring with him another, named John Pedignone; the latter was a soldier, the former a servant. This Pedignone never came to my room without giving me abusive language. The other one confined himself to examining the plates of iron I have mentioned, as well as the whole prison. I constantly said to him, ‘Look after me well, for I mean to escape.’ These words once made him very angry with me, and I took that opportunity of depositing all my tools--that is to say, my pincers and a tolerably long dagger, with other things belonging to me--in the tick of my bed, and of sweeping the room myself, as soon as it was daylight, for I naturally delighted in cleanliness, and on this occasion I took care to be particularly neat. As soon as I had swept the room I made my bed with equal care, and adorned it with flowers which were every morning brought me by the Savoyard. When Bozza and Pedignone came near the bed, I told them angrily to keep away from it lest it should be defiled by their touch; and afterwards, when merely to amuse themselves, they tumbled the sheets, I added, ‘You dirty dogs, keep off, or I’ll draw one of your swords and maul you as you were never mauled before! Do you think your paws are fit to touch the bed of a man like me? If I made up my mind to kill you, I should not in the least hesitate to sacrifice my own life; so be warned in time; leave me to my own troubles and sorrows, and do not add to the bitterness of my lot, or I will show you what a desperate man can do.’ The men duly repeated all this to the constable, who expressly ordered them never to go near my bed, to unbuckle their swords before coming to my cell, and to be as careful as possible in all other respects. The object of all this on my part was to secure my bed from search, and I gained my point.

“One holiday evening the constable was in a very bad way, and his mania had risen to such a pitch that he did nothing but repeat that he had become a bat. He told his attendants to take no notice if Benvenuto should escape, for he would soon be caught by a bat so much better able to fly by night than himself. ‘Benvenuto,’ the poor man was pleased to add, ‘is a counterfeit bat; I am a real one; let me alone to manage him. I’ll soon have him back again. I’ll be bound.’ He had continued in this state for several nights, till he quite tried the patience of all his servants, as I learned from my faithful Savoyard, who continued very much attached to me. I had made up my mind to escape that night, let what would happen, and I began by praying fervently to Almighty God that it would please his Divine Majesty to befriend and assist me in my hazardous enterprise. I then went to work, and was employed the whole night in getting everything in readiness. Two hours before daybreak I took the iron plates from the door, with great trouble and difficulty, for the bolt and the wood that received it made a great resistance, so that I could not open them, but was obliged to cut the wood. I, however, at last forced the door; and having taken with me the slips of linen I have mentioned, which I had rolled up in bundles with the utmost care, I got out, and reached the right side of the tower, and leaped with the utmost ease upon two tiles of the roof which I had observed from within. I was in a white doublet, and had on a pair of white leggings, over which I wore tight boots that reached half-way up my legs, and in one of these I put my dagger. I then took the end of one of my bundles of long slips, which I had made out of the sheets of my bed, and fastened it to a tile that happened to jut out four inches, to which it hung like a stirrup. I then again prayed to God in these terms: ‘Almighty God,. come to my aid; for thou knowest that my cause is just, and that I aid myself.’ Then letting myself go very gently,. and supporting myself by the strength of my arms, I reached the ground. There was no moon, but the night was clear. When I once more felt the earth beneath my feet, I looked up with awe at the immense height from which I had made so adventurous a descent, and I went forward very joyfully believing I was free, though that was by no means the case.

“The constable had built on this side of the castle two pretty high walls, which enclosed his stables and his hen-houses, and which were closed by doors with very strong bolts. Despairing of being able to leave the place that way, I wandered on at hazard, reflecting on my sad position, when my foot struck suddenly against a large pole covered with straw. I reared it, though not without great difficulty, by the side of the wall, and then by sheer strength of arm I climbed to the top of it, and so reached the parapet. The end of the pole being firmly fixed in an angle of the coping stone, I could not draw it up after me, but it afforded me a secure fastening for my second band (I had been obliged to leave the first hanging from my window in the tower), and by this means I reached the ground on the other side of the wall, though with hands torn and dripping with blood. I was very greatly fatigued, but after I had rested a little I felt strong enough to attempt to surmount the last wall looking towards Prati. I accordingly laid my roll of bands on the ground for a moment, and was just about to throw one of them over a battlement, when I saw a sentinel standing almost by my side. Feeling that not only the success of my enterprise, but my very life was in danger, I was preparing to attack the fellow, when he saved me the trouble by taking to his heels as soon as he saw the glitter of the poniard in my hand. I lost no time in getting back to my bands, and then I saw another man on guard, but he appeared not to wish to notice me. I fastened my band to the battlement; I clambered up the wall on one side, and I slid down it on the other; but, whether from fatigue or from a miscalculation as to the distance between my feet and the ground, I opened my hands too soon, and fell head first to the earth with such violence that I remained unconscious an hour and a half, as nearly as I can judge.

“The freshness of early morning brought me to myself, but I did not at once recover my memory. It seemed to me that I had had my head cut off and that I was in purgatory. But as my reason gradually came back, I saw that I was outside the castle, and then I remembered all I had been doing. I put my hands to my head, and found that it was covered with blood. There was no serious wound upon my body, but on attempting to raise myself, I found I had broken my right leg in three places at a point about midway between the knee and the heel. Without in the least losing courage, I drew my knife and its sheath from my boot. There was a great ball at the end of the sheath, and this, pressing on the bone in my fall, had caused the fracture. I threw the sheath away, and cutting up what little of the band was left with the poniard, I set the leg as best I could and knife in hand began to crawl slowly on my knees towards the city gate. It was closed; but observing that one of the great stones that formed the threshold was loose, I managed to pick it out, and to squeeze my body through the aperture. It was more than five hundred paces from the place where I had fallen to this gate.

“I had hardly entered Rome when a number of prowling dogs rushed at me, and tore me cruelly; but when they returned to the charge, I gave them a taste of my poniard, and pricked one of them so vigorously that he limped off with a hideous howl that damped the ardour of the rest. I followed his example, so far as to leave that place, and I set out on my knees for the church of the Traspontina.

“When I came to the end of the street that turns down to St Angelo, I directed my steps towards St Peter’s. It was broad day, and I ran some risk of being discovered; so, seeing a water-carrier pass by leading a heavily laden ass, I called out to him to take me on his shoulders and carry me to St Peter’s market-place. ‘I am,’ said I, ‘a poor fellow who has broken his leg in trying to preserve the honour of a lady. I had to leap from a window to save myself from being cut to pieces, and I am still in danger. Take me up then, I beg of you, and you shall have a crown in gold for your trouble;’ and I put my hand to my purse, where I carried a good number of these tempters. He at once lifted me in his arms, and carried me to the market-place, where he left me very hastily, and went back to find the ass. I then took to my hands and knees once more, and slowly crawled towards the Duke Octavio’s house. The duchess, his wife, was a daughter of the Emperor, and had

been married to Duke Alexander of Florence. Many of my friends had accompanied this great princess from Florence to Rome, and I knew that she was extremely well disposed towards me.

“I crawled, then, towards his Excellency’s house, where I felt certain of finding safety. But, as the adventures I had gone through were too wonderful for a mere mortal, God would not let me give myself up to the vain glory which must have followed an absolute success, but mercifully ordained for my good an affliction far more severe than any to which I had yet been subjected.

“While I was on my way to St. Peter’s market-place, I was recognised by a servant of Cardinal Cornaro, who was lodged at the Vatican. The man ran at once to his master’s bedroom, woke him, and said, ‘Benvenuto, your protégé, is below; he has escaped from the castle, and he is dragging himself along all covered with blood. He seems to have his leg broken, and there is no saying where he is going.’ ‘Quick,’ said the cardinal, ‘run and bring him to me--in this room.’ When I came before him, he at once told me I had nothing to fear, and he sent for the best surgeons in Rome to attend upon me. He also took care to have me placed in a secret apartment; and having thus provided for my immediate wants, he set out to demand, in person, my pardon of the Pope.

“By this time there was a great stir in Rome, for the bands hanging from the high tower had been discovered, and all the city ran to see this incredible thing.

“When Cardinal Cornaro reached the Vatican, he met Signor Roberto Pucci, and related to him the details of my escape, and the fact that I was at that moment hidden in his house. The two then went together to throw themselves at the feet of the Pope; but before they could speak, his Holiness said to them, ‘I know what it is you want of me.’ ‘Most holy father,’ said Pucci, ‘we beg of you, for pity’s sake, to spare this poor man. His talents entitle him to some consideration; and he has just shown such courage and address as seem above humanity. We know not for what offences your Holiness has had him put in prison, but if they are at all pardonable, we entreat you to forget them for our sake.”

“The Pope, somewhat ashamed, replied that he had sent me to prison because I was too presumptuous; ‘But,’ he added, ‘his merit is very well known, and we wish to keep him near us, to which end we will place him beyond the necessity of returning to France. I am sorry that he is so ill. Tell him to make haste to get well, and say that we will then give him cause to forget all the miseries he has suffered.”

“These two great personages duly brought me these good tidings on the part of the Pope.”

* * * * *

The governor afterwards visited him, and asked if no one had aided him in his flight.

Cellini continues: “When he went back to the Pope, he gave him all the particulars of my escape, as he had heard them from me, to the astonishment of every one present. ‘It is truly something prodigious,’ said the Pope. ‘Most holy father,’ replied my old enemy, the Signor Peter Louis Farnese, ‘he will do many other things equally prodigious for you, if you set him at liberty, for he is one of the most audacious of men. I will give you a proof of it, of which perhaps you have not yet heard. Before you shut him up in the Castle of St. Angelo, this same Benvenuto, having had some words with one of the Cardinal Santa Fiore’s gentlemen, threatened to strike him; and the cardinal hearing of the affair, said that if the arch-fool attempted to carry out his threat, he would cure him once for all. The words were repeated to Benvenuto, and the cardinal’s palace being in front of his studio, he took his musket one day when he saw his Eminence at the window, and was just going to shoot him, when his intended victim happened to be warned in time and withdrew. He can put a ball in the centre of a farthing with that musket; and when he saw that the cardinal had escaped him, he coolly blew off the head of a pigeon perched on the opposite roof, to give his enemies a proof of his skill. But let your Holiness do what you please with him; I, at least, have warned you. The man is quite capable, if he thought himself unjustly treated, of firing upon even you. He has a character of the utmost ferocity, and he stops at nothing. Remember, he ran his dagger twice into Pompeo’s throat, although the poor wretch was in the midst of ten men appointed expressly to guard him. One of Santa Fiore’s gentlemen was present, and confirmed what the Pope’s son had said.

“The Pope was still under the unfortunate impression produced by these words when, two days after the above conversation, Cardinal Cornaro came to ask him for a bishopric for one of his gentlemen, André Centano. The Pope had, in fact, promised him the bishopric; and, as one was now vacant, the cardinal reminded him of his word. ‘It is true,’ said his Holiness, ‘I have promised you a bishopric, and you shall have one; but I have one favour to ask in return--let me have Benvenuto again.’ ‘Most holy father,’ replied the cardinal, ‘you have for my sake consented to his pardon and his liberty, what will the world say of both of us?’ ‘You want your bishopric,’ replied the Pope, ‘and I want my Benvenuto: let the world say what it pleases.’ ‘Give me my bishopric,’ said the good cardinal, ‘and for the rest your Holiness yourself shall be the judge of what ought to be, and what can be done.’ ‘I will send for Benvenuto,’ said the Pope, somewhat ashamed of breaking his word, ‘and I will put him in one of the lower apartments of my private garden, where he will want for nothing that can aid his recovery. His friends may come and see him, and I will bear the entire cost of his living myself.’

“The cardinal returned to his apartments, and sent to tell me through Signor André that the Pope wished to have me once more in his power, but that I should be lodged in his private garden, and should be free to see any one I pleased. I implored André to ask the cardinal not to give me up, but rather to let me have myself taken at once to a safe place I knew of outside Rome, for that to put me in the power of the Pope would be to send me to death.

“The cardinal would, I believe, have aided me to carry out this plan; but Signor André, who did not like to give up his bishopric, caused the Pope to be acquainted with the whole affair, and I was immediately ordered into custody.”

Cellini was well treated for a time in his new prison. He was afterwards sent to Torre di Nova, and from thence he was taken back again to the Castle of St. Angelo. The mad governor, incensed with a prisoner who had dared to brave him, threw the unfortunate artist into a subterranean cell, which only admitted the sun’s rays for about an hour and a half each day. He remained there four months, with nothing to occupy his time but the reading of the Bible and the Chronicles of Villani, which had been sent to him by his tormentor. This poor maniac felt that he was dying; and attributing his death to Benvenuto, he sometimes redoubled his cruelty towards him, though at others he treated him with greater tenderness. He had him removed from his first dungeon to another and a deeper one, particularly famed since a certain preacher named Foiano had died there of starvation. Meanwhile Montluc, the ambassador of France, had very energetically demanded Cellini’s liberty, in the name of his master, Francis I., and after a time, the governor, whose reason was restored a few days before his death, also urged his release. At length Cardinal Ferrara, on his arrival from France, went to pay his respects to the Pope, who kept him to dinner, “Thinking,” says Cellini, “that a good meal loosens the tongue, and wishing to hear his Eminence talk on several important subjects.” The cardinal, an accomplished diplomatist, accepted the invitation, and entertained the Pope with the pleasures and the amusements of the Court of France, till he saw that he had put his Holiness into an excellent humour, when he implored him in the name of the King to pardon Cellini. The Pope consented, and said to him with a loud burst of laughter, “Take him away at once with you.” The necessary orders were given, and without so much as waiting for the morrow, the cardinal sent immediately for Cellini, who left the Castle of St. Angelo, never to return to it again.

_MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS._

1568.

When the confederate Scotch lords had taken Mary Stuart prisoner after her defeat at Carberry Hill, and had resolved to dethrone her, they sent her for safe custody to the castle of Loch Leven, situate on a small island in the middle of the lake of that name. They chose this gloomy place, not only because it was nearly inaccessible, but because the hapless lady would there be in the keeping of that most watchful of all gaolers, a mortal enemy. Margaret Erskine, mother of William Douglas, the owner of the castle, had had a son by James V., whom it pleased her to regard as the legitimate heir to the throne of Scotland, and she hated Mary as an obstacle to her schemes of ambition. Religious differences intensified this feeling, for Margaret was a zealous Presbyterian. In short, her character, her faith, her family pride, and the natural harshness of her temper, all conspired to make her an inexorable guardian of the unfortunate Queen.

After Mary had been compelled by violence to renounce the crown in favour of her son, she was placed in the most rigorous confinement, the strictest watch being kept over her to prevent her, not only from effecting her escape, but from holding any sort of communication with the outer world. Many of the sovereigns of Europe were well disposed towards her, but she was not allowed to write to her friends, though she sometimes found an opportunity of doing so while the daughters of Margaret, who shared her chamber, were asleep, or at their meals. The cruelty of these restraints defeated their end, for it touched the very son her gaoler, George Douglas, with compassion for the captive Queen, and led him to form a plan for her escape. But his first attempt to aid her was unsuccessful. It was arranged that the Queen should leave the castle in the dress of the laundress who brought her linen to Loch Leven, and that George Douglas and a number of his partisans should be ready to receive her as soon she had crossed the lake. The appointed day came; the young man was at his post, and the Queen, thanks to her disguise, had actually got clear of the castle, and reached the boat, when one of the boatmen, struck by the figure of the pretended laundress, attempted to lift her veil, and the hasty gesture with which the Queen resisted his touch, revealed a hand too white and too delicately formed to be that of a hard-working girl. The man at once guessed her real rank, but even at that moment Mary did not lose her presence of mind. She declared her name and title, and ordered him, on pain of death, to row her across the lake. The name of Margaret Erskine had, however, greater terror for the fellow than that of Mary Stuart; and the Queen was taken back to captivity again.

As the penalty of this unfortunate attempt of the 25th March, George Douglas was sent away from the island. This did not, however, make him one whit the less eager to succeed in his noble design; and he confided the Queen to the care of one who was equally devoted to her--his brother, a youth of fifteen or sixteen, called the “Little Douglas,” and employed as page to his mother.

Mary was, of course, made to suffer more heavily, and every fresh precaution against her escape took the form of a new torture. Her life became almost unendurable. She wrote to Elizabeth, to Catherine de’ Medicis, and to Charles IX., supplicating them for aid, but before any of them could move in her favour other help was at hand. George Douglas had never forgotten his promise to set her free. He used the liberty gained by his banishment from the castle in extending the circle of her friends. He engaged the powerful families of the Seatons and the Hamiltons in her cause, and with their aid formed a more carefully prepared plan than the last for her escape. It was arranged that on a given night they should be waiting for her where he had formerly waited. The page, young Douglas, undertook the rest. Sunday, the 2nd May, 1568, was the day fixed for the execution of the project. The whole household at Loch Leven took their meals in a common hall; and while they were together the keys of the fortress were placed on the table by the governor’s side. At supper time on the appointed night the young page watched his opportunity; and while he held out his plate to be filled, he contrived to get possession of the keys without being for the moment observed. He at once ran to Mary’s chamber and released her, and then led her to the boat, locking every door behind him on his way to diminish the chances of pursuit. He then threw the keys into the lake, and took the oars, after handing the Queen and her waiting-woman into their seats, and pulled vigorously for the shore. Before leaving the castle he had placed a signal light in one of the windows, so that when the Queen stepped from the boat she found her friends waiting to receive her. She at once took horse, and accompanied by Lord Seaton, galloped hard for that nobleman’s house at Niddry, in East Lothian, whence after a few hours’ repose she made her way to the more strongly fortified castle of the Hamiltons. She was received there by the Archbishop St. Andrew’s and Lord Claude, who had gone out to meet her with fifty horses. The news of this escape, according to Scott, spread through Scotland with the rapidity of lightning, and the Queen was greeted everywhere with enthusiasm. The people remembered her affability, her grace, her beauty, and her misfortunes; and if they remembered her errors too, it was only to say that she had been punished for them too severely. On Sunday Mary had been a sad captive, abandoned to her enemies in a solitary tower; and on the Saturday

following she found herself at the head of a powerful confederation, in which nine counts, eight lords, nine bishops, and a great number of gentlemen of the highest rank were engaged to defend her and to restore her to her throne. But this ray of hope only illumined her sombre destiny for an instant.

The keys thrown into the lake by the page were found by a fisherman in 1805, and are now placed at Kinross. The place where the fugitive Queen landed, on the southern shore of the lake, is still called Mary’s Knoll.

_CAUMONT DE LA FORCE._

1572.

During the massacre of St. Bartholomew the murderers found their way into the Rue de la Seine, where lived Monsieur de la Force and his two sons, who were noted for their courageous profession of the condemned doctrines. Monsieur de la Force was strongly urged by his brother to escape, but he refused, because his eldest son, who had been very ill, was not yet able to travel, and he would not leave him behind. He had barely taken his heroic resolution before he was surrounded and made prisoner by a band of zealots, red-handed from the work of death. They threatened him, but desisted for a time when he offered their chief two thousand crowns of ransom. He was then led away with his two sons to a house in the Rue des Petits-Champs, and left there in the custody of two Swiss soldiers, after he had given his solemn word of honour that he would not try to escape. The soldiers felt some pity for the hapless gentleman, and gave him to understand that they would not stand in the way of his flight; but he was a slave to his word, and he refused either to move himself or to allow even his youngest son to be taken to a place of safety.

On the next day, according to the Memoirs of La Force, Count Coconas, with a party of fifty soldiers, came to the house in the Rue des Petits-Champs, and told Monsieur de la Force that he had come to fetch him by order of Monsieur the King’s brother. There was a purposed vagueness in the words which did not escape the unhappy gentleman’s notice, and he asked where he was to be taken, at the same time beginning to make some few alterations in his dress, as if he thought it best to pretend to believe what he had heard. But Coconas spared him this trouble, and at the same time relieved himself of the irksomeness of concealment, by tearing hat and cloak out of his hands before he could put them on. Then both father and sons knew what was intended for them, and began to prepare their minds for death. It soon became evident that they were not being conducted to the apartments of Monsieur in the Louvre; but when De la Force pointed this out to the escort, and complained bitterly of the breach of faith towards him after his offer of ransom had been accepted, they answered not a word, but pushed their victims on towards the slaughterhouse.

The father, bareheaded and without his cloak, walked first; the sons, in the same half-naked condition, followed--the elder, who could scarcely move, but to whom terror had given a little strength, being second; and the younger the last in the dismal column. In this way they were taken the entire length of the Rue des Petits-Champs, until they came to the rampart, when the officer in charge, without a word of warning, called out, “Kill! kill!” and in an instant, a circle of soldiers was formed round the victims, and the daggers were at work. The eldest son fell first with the cry, “O my God, I am dead!” The father, turning instinctively to help him, was struck as he was bending over the body, and fell across him--his shield even in death. The youngest son, by nothing less than a miracle of presence of mind, repeated his brother’s cry before a single dagger had reached him, and fell with the others, though his skin was not so much as scratched. But his body was covered all over with the blood that welled from their wounds, and the assassins stripped him almost naked without once suspecting that he had not received a mortal thrust. When they had treated all their victims in this way, they left their naked and still warm bodies with the contemptuous expression, “There they lie, all three.”

The eldest son was quite dead; his diseased frame had probably offered no resistance to the shock of the first blow; the father was mortally wounded, but he lay a long while gasping out his life, while the frame of his youngest and unhurt child, who had nestled close to him the better to feign death, vibrated to every shudder. The child was, of course, quite conscious, and perhaps his position was the more pitiable of the two, for he lay side by side with death, or worse than death, without daring to stir or to utter a single cry of horror, lest he should bring the assassins back. He remained in this sickening companionship till about four in the afternoon, when some persons crept out of the neighbouring houses to look at the bodies and secure what few valuables the soldiers had left behind. One of these marauders, a marker at tennis, in taking off the stockings of the living child, turned him over with his face to the sky, with the exclamation, “Alas! poor little one, what harm has he done?” “I am not dead,” whispered young Caumont, raising himself gently: “pray, pray, save my life!”

“Hush!” said the man; “keep quiet: they are still there,” and pointing to a group of the murderers who were still hovering about the place, he went away, but returned after a little while, when the coast was clear, and told the child to get up. He had brought a tattered, dirty cloak with him, which he threw over Caumont’s naked shoulders; and in this guise of poverty and wretchedness he drove the child before him through the streets, pretending that he was chastising a runaway nephew who had sold his clothes. By this ruse he contrived to pass almost unquestioned through several groups both of citizens and of soldiers, and to lead the boy to the miserable garret in which he and his family lived.

Caumont hid himself for a while in the straw of the marker’s bed, and tried to get a little sleep. In the meantime the man had observed that he wore several rings of great value; and he asked for them in return for his hospitality as soon as the child awoke. Caumont unhesitatingly drew them one by one off his fingers with the exception of a certain diamond, which had been his mother’s gift; and in answer to a question by the marker’s wife, he told her why he wished to keep it. The woman angrily replied that he ought to grudge nothing to persons who had shown him so much kindness, and who could not afford to be out of pocket by their good actions; and the child knowing how much he was in their power, reluctantly yielded up the coveted reward. She then gave him a meal of very unpalatable food, and her husband offered to guide him to any place of safety he might select. The child at first chose the Louvre, where his sister, Madame de Larchant, was near

the person of the Queen; but the man positively refused to take him there on account of the great risk of his being recognised by some of the guards. “Take me to the arsenal then,” said young De Caumont, “to the house of Madame de Brisambourg, my aunt.” “Agreed,” replied the tennis-marker; “it is a long way, but we will go round by the ramparts, and perhaps we shall be so lucky as not to meet a single person on the road.”

Early the next morning little Caumont, once more disguised in the dirtiest garments, and wearing a red hat bearing a leaden cross, set out with the tennis-marker for the arsenal, which they reached without any noteworthy incident. At the outer gate, Caumont told his guide to go no farther, but to wait until some one should return to him with the dress and thirty crowns. The child at the same time stood ready to enter the arsenal, but he could not summon up courage to call out to the soldiers to open the gate. At length, however, some one came out, and he passed in without having to submit to the dreaded scrutiny. He traversed the first court, and saw several people whom he thought he knew; but he was so effectually concealed in his rags that none of them had a moment’s suspicion of his real identity.

In the massacre in which Caumont had so narrowly escaped death, a page named La Vigerie, and called L’Auvergnat, to distinguish him from a namesake, had met with an equally miraculous preservation. He was with M. de la Force and his two sons in the house in the Rue des Petits-Champs when the Count de Coconas and his party arrived; and he was about to follow his master, when one of the Swiss soldiers said to him, “Look out for yourself; they are going to be killed.” He accordingly stayed behind; and as soon as the party had left he stole quietly out of the house, and followed them at a distance without attracting notice, for he wore the livery of the Count de la Marck, one of the chiefs of the massacre. He watched the assassins at their bloody work, and then hurried away to Madame de Brisambourg at the arsenal, with the news of her brother-in-law’s death. He was kindly received, and though the lady was well-nigh overwhelmed with grief, she took ample measures to provide for his safety.

The young De la Force had stood for some time trembling before Madame de Brisambourg’s door, when it was opened from within, and he saw this page standing in the entry. He called out to him, but in so weak a voice that he was not heard, and the door was closed again. But shortly after it opened a second time, and then he made himself heard, calling out two or three times in the energy of his misery and his despair, “Auvergnat! Auvergnat!” The page ran out, and for a time failed to recognise his young master in the dirty and ill-dressed little boy who began to appeal to him for protection. “Do you not know me, Auvergnat?” inquired the child, looking him full in the face. The Auvergnat returned his gaze, and when at length he found out who it was, his astonishment at this return to life of one slain, as he thought, before his very eyes was almost ludicrous to witness. He at once seized Caumont by the hand, and hurried away with him to a gentleman of the household, by whom he was taken to Madame de Brisambourg. The lady fell on his neck, and for some time could not speak for sobs.

When she was a little recovered Caumont told her his story, and her first care was to have his dress changed, and to send back the bundle of dirty clothes with the promised reward of thirty crowns to the tennis-marker at the outer gate. She then had him put to bed in the room occupied by her waiting-women. After he had slept a little he got up, and dressing himself, by his aunt’s direction, in the livery of the Marshal de Biron, Grand Master of the Artillery, was taken to see that nobleman, and allowed to enter his service as a page, with the Auvergnat for a play-fellow.

He had not been more than two days in the marshal’s apartments when word was brought that the King had heard of fugitives being concealed there, and had directed that the place should be searched. The marshal was greatly incensed, and he ordered four pieces of cannon to be pointed against the principal gate of the arsenal, to repel any attempt at intrusion. Whatever truth there may have been in this particular rumour, the Queen-mother had certainly heard of the escape and concealment of young De la Force; for a very few days after his arrival at the arsenal, she sent a gentleman to the marshal’s apartments, at the instance of a certain M. de Larchant, to demand him. While this messenger was discharging his errand, the child was hurried away into the room of the marshal’s daughters, and concealed between two beds, on which a few farthingales were thrown with such an appearance of carelessness that no one would ever have thought of looking for a fugitive there. When all was ready, the gentleman was invited to begin his search, and he passed through all the rooms without finding the boy. He then returned to the Louvre, with the tidings that the Queen had been deceived by a false rumour, greatly to the disgust and disappointment of M. de Larchant, for it was this person in effect who had mainly instigated the Queen-mother to order the search. He was actuated by the very vilest motives, being next heir after the three De la Forces to a very considerable property. His influence was all-powerful at the palace; and but for this circumstance it is more than probable that none of that family would have been marked for destruction at the massacre.

When the Queen’s gentleman had gone, young Caumont crept out from between the beds and went back to his old place of concealment in the marshal’s apartments. But it was not considered prudent to let him remain there, and the very next day, M. de Born, Lieutenant-general of the Artillery, and a friend of his aunt, took him very secretly to his own lodgings, where they breakfasted. M. de Born then told him that he was to enter the service of M. Guillon, Controller of the Artillery, as page, and that when asked his name he was to say he was son of M. de Beaupuy, a lieutenant under the Marshal de Biron. He at the same time cautioned him particularly against leaving the house when in M. Guillon’s service, and against talking, lest he should by some chance word betray the secret of his identity. The poor child promised faithfully to observe all these directions, and was led away to the controller’s house, trotting by the side of his new protector, who was on horseback because he had a wooden leg, and could not walk without pain.

Arrived at the house, M. de Born delivered the child over to the controller, in a speech full of praises of his friend’s goodness of heart, and lamentations about the disturbed state of the country, which made it very difficult for persons who had the care of young children and such helpless folk to know how best to provide for their security. M. Guillon listened, and readily undertook the charge of young De Beaupuy, as Caumont was called. This was done simply out of his friendship for M. de Born, for the two had been long acquainted; and the fact that, notwithstanding this intimacy, De Born did not think fit to entrust him with the whole secret, may serve to show in what extreme peril the young fugitive was judged to be. Guillon guessed it, nevertheless, from the evident anxiety of his friend, or at least he had a pretty shrewd suspicion that he had not heard all the truth.

Caumont had been some seven or eight days with the controller, and had not failed to do everything M. de Born had told him. His master came home every day to dinner, and it was the new page’s business to let him in; but one day opening the door in answer to a knock at the usual hour, Caumont was surprised to see, in place of M. Guillon, a person he had formerly known. He hastily shut the door in great terror; but the new comer only knocked more loudly than before, and called out that he had a very urgent message to deliver from Madame de Brisambourg. When he had thus gained admittance, he told the child that Madame de Brisambourg had sent him to say that she was in great trouble about her nephew, and wished to have news of him. This said he went away, and the terrified boy still suspecting him, jumped on horseback immediately, and rode to M. de Born to tell him what had happened. M. de Born took him to Madame de Brisambourg for an explanation, but the lady was equally astonished with himself, and said that no messenger had been sent by her.

The peril was immediate, and a council of the child’s friends was held without delay. It was seen that in the neighbourhood in which he then was, the safety of the little fugitive could no longer be reckoned on, and it was resolved to dispatch him into a distant part of the country. The marshal was accordingly prevailed on to apply to the King for a passport for his house-steward, whom he was sending with a page to Guyenne, to look after his affairs in that province. The request was granted; a trusty gentleman of the marshal’s personated the house-steward, and the page was, of course, no other than the poor hunted child. They set out, and thanks to M. de Born, passed safely through the gates of Paris; but when they were about a two days’ journey from the capital, the child was horrified at the sight of a fellow wearing his father’s dressing-gown, whom he recognised as one of the executioners of the Rue des Petits-Champs. The wretch was boasting of his exploits, but some chance words dropped by him acquainted Caumont with the fact that his uncle, with about a hundred of his gentlemen, had escaped the massacre. Farther on their guide put them all in great peril by his imprudence, in publicly condemning the massacre in a little inn in which they stayed. At length, after having escaped many dangers, they arrived on the eighth day of their journey at the chateau of Castelnaut-des-Mirandes, in Guyenne, where the child was received in the arms of his uncle, with every demonstration of gratitude and joy, and where he found plenty, peace, and security awaiting him after all his troubles. (_Memoirs of Caumont de la Force._)

_CHARLES DE GUISE._

1591.

Charles de Guise, eldest Son of Henry de Guise, who was assassinated at Blois, was arrested at the death of his father, in 1588, and confined in the chateau of Tours. He remained there three years (till 1591) before he could make his escape.