Catherine De Medici

XIII. CALVIN

Two hours later all was ready, and the ardent minister was on his way to Switzerland, accompanied by a nobleman in the service of the king of Navarre (of whom Chaudieu pretended to be the secretary), carrying with him despatches from the Reformers in the Dauphine. This sudden departure was chiefly in the interests of Catherine de’ Medici, who, in order to gain time to establish her power, had made a bold proposition to the Reformers which was kept a profound secret. This strange proceeding explains the understanding so suddenly apparent between herself and the leaders of the Reform. The wily woman gave, as a pledge of her good faith, an intimation of her desire to heal all differences between the two churches by calling an assembly, which should be neither a council, nor a conclave, nor a synod, but should be known by some new and distinctive name, if Calvin consented to the project. When this secret was afterwards divulged (be it remarked in passing) it led to an alliance between the Duc de Guise and the Connetable de Montmorency against Catherine and the king of Navarre,—a strange alliance! known in history as the Triumvirate, the Marechal de Saint-Andre being the third personage in the purely Catholic coalition to which this singular proposition for a “colloquy” gave rise. The secret of Catherine’s wily policy was rightly understood by the Guises; they felt certain that the queen cared nothing for this mysterious assembly, and was only temporizing with her new allies in order to secure a period of peace until the majority of Charles IX.; but none the less did they deceive the Connetable into fearing a collusion of real interests between the queen and the Bourbons,—whereas, in reality, Catherine was playing them all one against another.

The queen had become, as the reader will perceive, extremely powerful in a very short time. The spirit of discussion and controversy which now sprang up was singularly favorable to her position. The Catholics and the Reformers were equally pleased to exhibit their brilliancy one after another in this tournament of words; for that is what it actually was, and no more. It is extraordinary that historians have mistaken one of the wiliest schemes of the great queen for uncertainty and hesitation! Catherine never went more directly to her own ends than in just such schemes which appeared to thwart them. The king of Navarre, quite incapable of understanding her motives, fell into her plan in all sincerity, and despatched Chaudieu to Calvin, as we have seen. The minister had risked his life to be secretly in Orleans and watch events; for he was, while there, in hourly peril of being discovered and hung as a man under sentence of banishment.

According to the then fashion of travelling, Chaudieu could not reach Geneva before the month of February, and the negotiations were not likely to be concluded before the end of March; consequently the assembly could certainly not take place before the month of May, 1561. Catherine, meantime, intended to amuse the court and the various conflicting interests by the coronation of the king, and the ceremonies of his first “lit de justice,” at which l’Hopital and de Thou recorded the letters-patent by which Charles IX. confided the administration to his mother in common with the present lieutenant-general of the kingdom, Antoine de Navarre, the weakest prince of those days.

Is it not a strange spectacle this of the great kingdom of France waiting in suspense for the “yes” or “no” of a French burgher, hitherto an obscure man, living for many years past in Geneva? The transalpine pope held in check by the pontiff of Geneva! The two Lorrain princes, lately all-powerful, now paralyzed by the momentary coalition of the queen-mother and the first prince of the blood with Calvin! Is not this, I say, one of the most instructive lessons ever given to kings by history,—a lesson which should teach them to study men, to seek out genius, and employ it, as did Louis XIV., wherever God has placed it?

Calvin, whose name was not Calvin but Cauvin, was the son of a cooper at Noyon in Picardy. The region of his birth explains in some degree the obstinacy combined with capricious eagerness which distinguished this arbiter of the destinies of France in the sixteenth century. Nothing is less known than the nature of this man, who gave birth to Geneva and to the spirit that emanated from that city. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who had very little historical knowledge, has completely ignored the influence of Calvin on his republic. At first the embryo Reformer, who lived in one of the humblest houses in the upper town, near the church of Saint-Pierre, over a carpenter’s shop (first resemblance between him and Robespierre), had no great authority in Geneva. In fact for a long time his power was malevolently checked by the Genevese. The town was the residence in those days of a citizen whose fame, like that of several others, remained unknown to the world at large and for a time to Geneva itself. This man, Farel, about the year 1537, detained Calvin in Geneva, pointing out to him that the place could be made the safe centre of a reformation more active and thorough than that of Luther. Farel and Calvin regarded Lutheranism as an incomplete work,—insufficient in itself and without any real grip upon France. Geneva, midway between France and Italy, and speaking the French language, was admirably situated for ready communication with Germany, France, and Italy. Calvin thereupon adopted Geneva as the site of his moral fortunes; he made it thenceforth the citadel of his ideas.

The Council of Geneva, at Farel’s entreaty, authorized Calvin in September, 1538, to give lectures on theology. Calvin left the duties of the ministry to Farel, his first disciple, and gave himself up patiently to the work of teaching his doctrine. His authority, which became so absolute in the last years of his life, was obtained with difficulty and very slowly. The great agitator met with such serious obstacles that he was banished for a time from Geneva on account of the severity of his reform. A party of honest citizens still clung to their old luxury and their old customs. But, as usually happens, these good people, fearing ridicule, would not admit the real object of their efforts, and kept up their warfare against the new doctrines on points altogether foreign to the real question. Calvin insisted that leavened bread should be used for the communion, and that all feasts should be abolished except Sundays. These innovations were disapproved of at Berne and at Lausanne. Notice was served on the Genevese to conform to the ritual of Switzerland. Calvin and Farel resisted; their political opponents used this disobedience to drive them from Geneva, whence they were, in fact, banished for several years. Later Calvin returned triumphantly at the demand of his flock. Such persecutions always become in the end the consecration of a moral power; and, in this case, Calvin’s return was the beginning of his era as prophet. He then organized his religious Terror, and the executions began. On his reappearance in the city he was admitted into the ranks of the Genevese burghers; but even then, after fourteen years’ residence, he was not made a member of the Council. At the time of which we write, when Catherine sent her envoy to him, this king of ideas had no other title than that of “pastor of the Church of Geneva.” Moreover, Calvin never in his life received a salary of more than one hundred and fifty francs in money yearly, fifteen hundred-weight of wheat, and two barrels of wine. His brother, a tailor, kept a shop close to the place Saint-Pierre, in a street now occupied by one of the large printing establishments of Geneva. Such personal disinterestedness, which was lacking in Voltaire, Newton, and Bacon, but eminent in the lives of Rabelais, Spinosa, Loyola, Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is indeed a magnificent frame to those ardent and sublime figures.

The career of Robespierre can alone picture to the minds of the present day that of Calvin, who, founding his power on the same bases, was as despotic and as cruel as the lawyer of Arras. It is a noticeable fact that Picardy (Arras and Noyon) furnished both these instruments of reformation! Persons who wish to study the motives of the executions ordered by Calvin will find, all relations considered, another 1793 in Geneva. Calvin cut off the head of Jacques Gruet “for having written impious letters, libertine verses, and for working to overthrow ecclesiastical ordinances.” Reflect upon that sentence, and ask yourselves if the worst tyrants in their saturnalias ever gave more horribly burlesque reasons for their cruelties. Valentin Gentilis, condemned to death for “involuntary heresy,” escaped execution only by making a submission far more ignominious than was ever imposed by the Catholic Church. Seven years before the conference which was now to take place in Calvin’s house on the proposals of the queen-mother, Michel Servet, a Frenchman, travelling through Switzerland, was arrested at Geneva, tried, condemned, and burned alive, on Calvin’s accusation, for having “attacked the mystery of the Trinity,” in a book which was neither written nor published in Geneva. Remember the eloquent remonstrance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose book, overthrowing the Catholic religion, written in France and published in Holland, was burned by the hangman, while the author, a foreigner, was merely banished from the kingdom where he had endeavored to destroy the fundamental proofs of religion and of authority. Compare the conduct of our Parliament with that of the Genevese tyrant. Again: Bolsee was brought to trial for “having other ideas than those of Calvin on predestination.” Consider these things, and ask yourselves if Fourquier-Tinville did worse. The savage religious intolerance of Calvin was, morally speaking, more implacable than the savage political intolerance of Robespierre. On a larger stage than that of Geneva, Calvin would have shed more blood than did the terrible apostle of political equality as opposed to Catholic equality. Three centuries earlier a monk of Picardy drove the whole West upon the East. Peter the Hermit, Calvin, and Robespierre, each at an interval of three hundred years and all three from the same region, were, politically speaking, the Archimedean screws of their age,—at each epoch a Thought which found its fulcrum in the self-interest of mankind.

Calvin was undoubtedly the maker of that melancholy town called Geneva, where, only ten years ago, a man said, pointing to a porte-cochere in the upper town, the first ever built there: “By that door luxury has invaded Geneva.” Calvin gave birth, by the sternness of his doctrines and his executions, to that form of hypocritical sentiment called “cant.”[*] According to those who practice it, good morals consist in renouncing the arts and the charms of life, in eating richly but without luxury, in silently amassing money without enjoying it otherwise than as Calvin enjoyed power—by thought. Calvin imposed on all the citizens of his adopted town the same gloomy pall which he spread over his own life. He created in the Consistory a Calvinistic inquisition, absolutely similar to the revolutionary tribunal of Robespierre. The Consistory denounced the persons to be condemned to the Council, and Calvin ruled the Council through the Consistory, just as Robespierre ruled the Convention through the Club of the Jacobins. In this way an eminent magistrate of Geneva was condemned to two months’ imprisonment, the loss of all his offices, and the right of ever obtaining others “because he led a disorderly life and was intimate with Calvin’s enemies.” Calvin thus became a legislator. He created the austere, sober, commonplace, and hideously sad, but irreproachable manners and customs which characterize Geneva to the present day,—customs preceding those of England called Puritanism, which were due to the Cameronians, disciples of Cameron (a Frenchman deriving his doctrine from Calvin), whom Sir Walter Scott depicts so admirably. The poverty of a man, a sovereign master, who negotiated, power to power, with kings, demanding armies and subsidies, and plunging both hands into their savings laid aside for the unfortunate, proves that thought, used solely as a means of domination, gives birth to political misers,—men who enjoy by their brains only, and, like the Jesuits, want power for power’s sake. Pitt, Luther, Calvin, Robespierre, all those Harpagons of power, died without a penny. The inventory taken in Calvin’s house after his death, which comprised all his property, even his books, amounted in value, as history records, to two hundred and fifty francs. That of Luther came to about the same sum; his widow, the famous Catherine de Bora, was forced to petition for a pension of five hundred francs, which as granted to her by an Elector of Germany. Potemkin, Richelieu, Mazarin, those men of thought and action, all three of whom made or laid the foundation of empires, each left over three hundred millions behind them. They had hearts; they loved women and the arts; they built, they conquered; whereas with the exception of the wife of Luther, the Helen of that Iliad, all the others had no tenderness, no beating of the heart for any woman with which to reproach themselves.

This brief digression was necessary in order to explain Calvin’s position in Geneva.

During the first days of the month of February in the year 1561, on a soft, warm evening such as we may sometimes find at that season on Lake Leman, two horsemen arrived at the Pre-l’Eveque,—thus called because it was the former country-place of the Bishop of Geneva, driven from Switzerland about thirty years earlier. These horsemen, who no doubt knew the laws of Geneva about the closing of the gates (then a necessity and now very ridiculous) rode in the direction of the Porte de Rive; but they stopped their horses suddenly on catching sight of a man, about fifty years of age, leaning on the arm of a servant-woman, and walking slowly toward the town. This man, who was rather stout, walked with difficulty, putting one foot after the other with pain apparently, for he wore round shoes of black velvet, laced in front.

“It is he!” said Chaudieu to the other horseman, who immediately dismounted, threw the reins to his companion, and went forward, opening wide his arms to the man on foot.

The man, who was Jean Calvin, drew back to avoid the embrace, casting a stern look at his disciple. At fifty years of age Calvin looked as though he were sixty. Stout and stocky in figure, he seemed shorter still because the horrible sufferings of stone in the bladder obliged him to bend almost double as he walked. These pains were complicated by attacks of gout of the worst kind. Every one trembled before that face, almost as broad as it was long, on which, in spite of its roundness, there was as little human-kindness as on that of Henry the Eighth, whom Calvin greatly resembled. Sufferings which gave him no respite were manifest in the deep-cut lines starting from each side of the nose and following the curve of the moustache till they were lost in the thick gray beard. This face, though red and inflamed like that of a heavy drinker, showed spots where the skin was yellow. In spite of the velvet cap, which covered the huge square head, a vast forehead of noble shape could be seen and admired; beneath it shone two dark eyes, which must have flashed forth flame in moments of anger. Whether by reason of his obesity, or because of his thick, short neck, or in consequence of his vigils and his constant labors, Calvin’s head was sunk between his broad shoulders, which obliged him to wear a fluted ruff of very small dimensions, on which his face seemed to lie like the head of John the Baptist on a charger. Between his moustache and his beard could be seen, like a rose, his small and fresh and eloquent little mouth, shaped in perfection. The face was divided by a square nose, remarkable for the flexibility of its entire length, the tip of which was significantly flat, seeming the more in harmony with the prodigious power expressed by the form of that imperial head. Though it might have been difficult to discover on his features any trace of the weekly headaches which tormented Calvin in the intervals of the slow fever that consumed him, suffering, ceaselessly resisted by study and by will, gave to that mask, superficially so florid, a certain something that was terrible. Perhaps this impression was explainable by the color of a sort of greasy layer on the skin, due to the sedentary habits of the toiler, showing evidence of the perpetual struggle which went on between that valetudinarian temperament and one of the strongest wills ever known in the history of the human mind. The mouth, though charming, had an expression of cruelty. Chastity, necessitated by vast designs, exacted by so many sickly conditions, was written upon that face. Regrets were there, notwithstanding the serenity of that all-powerful brow, together with pain in the glance of those eyes, the calmness of which was terrifying.

Calvin’s costume brought into full relief this powerful head. He wore the well-known cassock of black cloth, fastened round his waist by a black cloth belt with a brass buckle, which became thenceforth the distinctive dress of all Calvinist ministers, and was so uninteresting to the eye that it forced the spectator’s attention upon the wearer’s face.

“I suffer too much, Theodore, to embrace you,” said Calvin to the elegant cavalier.

Theodore de Beze, then forty-two years of age and lately admitted, at Calvin’s request, as a Genevese burgher, formed a violent contrast to the terrible pastor whom he had chosen as his sovereign guide and ruler. Calvin, like all burghers raised to moral sovereignty, and all inventors of social systems, was eaten up with jealousy. He abhorred his disciples; he wanted no equals; he could not bear the slightest contradiction. Yet there was between him and this graceful cavalier so marked a difference, Theodore de Beze was gifted with so charming a personality enhanced by a politeness trained by court life, and Calvin felt him to be so unlike his other surly janissaries, that the stern reformer departed in de Beze’s case from his usual habits. He never loved him, for this harsh legislator totally ignored all friendship, but, not fearing him in the light of a successor, he liked to play with Theodore as Richelieu played with his cat; he found him supple and agile. Seeing how admirably de Beze succeeded in all his missions, he took a fancy to the polished instrument of which he knew himself the mainspring and the manipulator; so true is it that the sternest of men cannot do without some semblance of affection. Theodore was Calvin’s spoilt child; the harsh reformer never scolded him; he forgave him his dissipations, his amours, his fine clothes and his elegance of language. Perhaps Calvin was not unwilling to show that the Reformation had a few men of the world to compare with the men of the court. Theodore de Beze was anxious to introduce a taste for the arts, for literature, and for poesy into Geneva, and Calvin listened to his plans without knitting his thick gray eyebrows. Thus the contrast of character and person between these two celebrated men was as complete and marked as the difference in their minds.

Calvin acknowledged Chaudieu’s very humble salutation by a slight inclination of the head. Chaudieu slipped the bridles of both horses through his arms and followed the two great men of the Reformation, walking to the left, behind de Beze, who was on Calvin’s right. The servant-woman hastened on in advance to prevent the closing of the Porte de Rive, by informing the captain of the guard that Calvin had been seized with sudden acute pains.

Theodore de Beze was a native of the canton of Vezelay, which was the first to enter the Confederation, the curious history of which transaction has been written by one of the Thierrys. The burgher spirit of resistance, endemic at Vezelay, no doubt, played its part in the person of this man, in the great revolt of the Reformers; for de Beze was undoubtedly one of the most singular personalities of the Heresy.

“You suffer still?” said Theodore to Calvin.

“A Catholic would say, ‘like a lost soul,’” replied the Reformer, with the bitterness he gave to his slightest remarks. “Ah! I shall not be here long, my son. What will become of you without me?”

“We shall fight by the light of your books,” said Chaudieu.

Calvin smiled; his red face changed to a pleased expression, and he looked favorably at Chaudieu.

“Well, have you brought me news? Have they massacred many of our people?” he said smiling, and letting a sarcastic joy shine in his brown eyes.

“No,” said Chaudieu, “all is peaceful.”

“So much the worse,” cried Calvin; “so much the worse! All pacification is an evil, if indeed it is not a trap. Our strength lies in persecution. Where should we be if the Church accepted Reform?”

“But,” said Theodore, “that is precisely what the queen-mother appears to wish.”

“She is capable of it,” remarked Calvin. “I study that woman—”

“What, at this distance?” cried Chaudieu.

“Is there any distance for the mind?” replied Calvin, sternly, for he thought the interruption irreverent. “Catherine seeks power, and women with that in their eye have neither honor nor faith. But what is she doing now?”

“I bring you a proposal from her to call a species of council,” replied Theodore de Beze.

“Near Paris?” asked Calvin, hastily.

“Yes.”

“Ha! so much the better!” exclaimed the Reformer.

“We are to try to understand each other and draw up some public agreement which shall unite the two churches.”

“Ah! if she would only have the courage to separate the French Church from the court of Rome, and create a patriarch for France as they did in the Greek Church!” cried Calvin, his eyes glistening at the idea thus presented to his mind of a possible throne. “But, my son, can the niece of a Pope be sincere? She is only trying to gain time.”

“She has sent away the Queen of Scots,” said Chaudieu.

“One less!” remarked Calvin, as they passed through the Porte de Rive. “Elizabeth of England will restrain that one for us. Two neighboring queens will soon be at war with each other. One is handsome, the other ugly,—a first cause for irritation; besides, there’s the question of illegitimacy—”

He rubbed his hands, and the character of his joy was so evidently ferocious that de Beze shuddered: he saw the sea of blood his master was contemplating.

“The Guises have irritated the house of Bourbon,” said Theodore after a pause. “They came to an open rupture at Orleans.”

“Ah!” said Calvin, “you would not believe me, my son, when I told you the last time you started for Nerac that we should end by stirring up war to the death between the two branches of the house of France? I have, at least, one court, one king and royal family on my side. My doctrine is producing its effect upon the masses. The burghers, too, understand me; they regard as idolators all who go to Mass, who paint the walls of their churches, and put pictures and statues within them. Ha! it is far more easy for a people to demolish churches and palaces than to argue the question of justification by faith, or the real presence. Luther was an argufier, but I,—I am an army! He was a reasoner, I am a system. In short, my sons, he was merely a skirmisher, but I am Tarquin! Yes, my faithful shall destroy pictures and pull down churches; they shall make mill-stones of statues to grind the flour of the peoples. There are guilds and corporations in the States-general—I will have nothing there but individuals. Corporations resist; they see clear where the masses are blind. We must join to our doctrine political interests which will consolidate it, and keep together the materiel of my armies. I have satisfied the logic of cautious souls and the minds of thinkers by this bared and naked worship which carries religion into the world of ideas; I have made the peoples understand the advantages of suppressing ceremony. It is for you, Theodore, to enlist their interests; hold to that; go not beyond it. All is said in the way of doctrine; let no one add one iota. Why does Cameron, that little Gascon pastor, presume to write of it?”

Calvin, de Beze, and Chaudieu were mounting the steep steps of the upper town in the midst of a crowd, but the crowd paid not the slightest attention to the men who were unchaining the mobs of other cities and preparing them to ravage France.

After this terrible tirade, the three marched on in silence till they entered the little place Saint-Pierre and turned toward the pastor’s house. On the second story of that house (never noted, and of which in these days no one is ever told in Geneva, where, it may be remarked, Calvin has no statue) his lodging consisted of three chambers with common pine floors and wainscots, at the end of which were the kitchen and the bedroom of his woman-servant. The entrance, as usually happened in most of the burgher households of Geneva, was through the kitchen, which opened into a little room with two windows, serving as parlor, salon, and dining-room. Calvin’s study, where his thought had wrestled with suffering for the last fourteen years, came next, with the bedroom beyond it. Four oaken chairs covered with tapestry and placed around a square table were the sole furniture of the parlor. A stove of white porcelain, standing in one corner of the room, cast out a gentle heat. Panels and a wainscot of pine wood left in its natural state without decoration covered the walls. Thus the nakedness of the place was in keeping with the sober and simple life of the Reformer.

“Well?” said de Beze as they entered, profiting by a few moments when Chaudieu left them to put up the horse at a neighboring inn, “what am I to do? Will you agree to the colloquy?”

“Of course,” replied Calvin. “And it is you, my son, who will fight for us there. Be peremptory, be arbitrary. No one, neither the queen nor the Guises nor I, wants a pacification; it would not suit us at all. I have confidence in Duplessis-Mornay; let him play the leading part. Are we alone?” he added, with a glance of distrust into the kitchen, where two shirts and a few collars were stretched on a line to dry. “Go and shut all the doors. Well,” he continued when Theodore had returned, “we must drive the king of Navarre to join the Guises and the Connetable by advising him to break with Queen Catherine de’ Medici. Let us all get the benefit of that poor creature’s weakness. If he turns against the Italian she will, when she sees herself deprived of that support, necessarily unite with the Prince de Conde and Coligny. Perhaps this manoeuvre will so compromise her that she will be forced to remain on our side.”

Theodore de Beze caught the hem of Calvin’s cassock and kissed it.

“Oh! my master,” he exclaimed, “how great you are!”

“Unfortunately, my dear Theodore, I am dying. If I die without seeing you again,” he added, sinking his voice and speaking in the ear of his minister of foreign affairs, “remember to strike a great blow by the hand of some one of our martyrs.”

“Another Minard to be killed?”

“Something better than a mere lawyer.”

“A king?”

“Still better!—a man who wants to be a king.”

“The Duc de Guise!” exclaimed Theodore, with an involuntary gesture.

“Well?” cried Calvin, who thought he saw disappointment or resistance in the gesture, and did not see at the same moment the entrance of Chaudieu. “Have we not the right to strike as we are struck?—yes, to strike in silence and in darkness. May we not return them wound for wound, and death for death? Would the Catholics hesitate to lay traps for us and massacre us? Assuredly not. Let us burn their churches! Forward, my children! And if you have devoted youths—”

“I have,” said Chaudieu.

“Use them as engines of war! our cause justifies all means. Le Balafre, that horrible soldier, is, like me, more than a man; he is a dynasty, just as I am a system. He is able to annihilate us; therefore, I say, Death to the Guise!”

“I would rather have a peaceful victory, won by time and reason,” said de Beze.

“Time!” exclaimed Calvin, dashing his chair to the ground, “reason! Are you mad? Can reason achieve conquests? You know nothing of men, you who deal with them, idiot! The thing that injures my doctrine, you triple fool! is the reason that is in it. By the lightning of Saul, by the sword of Vengeance, thou pumpkin-head, do you not see the vigor given to my Reform by the massacre at Amboise? Ideas never grow till they are watered with blood. The slaying of the Duc de Guise will lead to a horrible persecution, and I pray for it with all my might. Our reverses are preferable to success. The Reformation has an object to gain in being attacked; do you hear me, dolt? It cannot hurt us to be defeated, whereas Catholicism is at an end if we should win but a single battle. Ha! what are my lieutenants?—rags, wet rags instead of men! white-haired cravens! baptized apes! O God, grant me ten years more of life! If I die too soon the cause of true religion is lost in the hands of such boobies! You are as great a fool as Antoine de Navarre! Out of my sight! Leave me; I want a better negotiator than you! You are an ass, a popinjay, a poet! Go and make your elegies and your acrostics, you trifler! Hence!”

The pains of his body were absolutely overcome by the fire of his anger; even the gout subsided under this horrible excitement of his mind. Calvin’s face flushed purple, like the sky before a storm. His vast brow shone. His eyes flamed. He was no longer himself. He gave way utterly to the species of epileptic motion, full of passion, which was common with him. But in the very midst of it he was struck by the attitude of the two witnesses; then, as he caught the words of Chaudieu saying to de Beze, “The Burning Bush!” he sat down, was silent, and covered his face with his two hands, the knotted veins of which were throbbing in spite of their coarse texture.

Some minutes later, still shaken by this storm raised within him by the continence of his life, he said in a voice of emotion:—

“My sins, which are many, cost me less trouble to subdue, than my impatience. Oh, savage beast! shall I never vanquish you?” he cried, beating his breast.

“My dear master,” said de Beze, in a tender voice, taking Calvin’s hand and kissing it, “Jupiter thunders, but he knows how to smile.”

Calvin looked at his disciple with a softened eye and said:—

“Understand me, my friends.”

“I understand that the pastors of peoples bear great burdens,” replied Theodore. “You have a world upon your shoulders.”

“I have three martyrs,” said Chaudieu, whom the master’s outburst had rendered thoughtful, “on whom we can rely. Stuart, who killed Minard, is at liberty—”

“You are mistaken,” said Calvin, gently, smiling after the manner of great men who bring fair weather into their faces as though they were ashamed of the previous storm. “I know human nature; a man may kill one president, but not two.”

“Is it absolutely necessary?” asked de Beze.

“Again!” exclaimed Calvin, his nostrils swelling. “Come, leave me, you will drive me to fury. Take my decision to the queen. You, Chaudieu, go your way, and hold your flock together in Paris. God guide you! Dinah, light my friends to the door.”

“Will you not permit me to embrace you?” said Theodore, much moved. “Who knows what may happen to us on the morrow? We may be seized in spite of our safe-conduct.”

“And yet you want to spare them!” cried Calvin, embracing de Beze. Then he took Chaudieu’s hand and said: “Above all, no Huguenots, no Reformers, but Calvinists! Use no term but Calvinism. Alas! this is not ambition, for I am dying,—but it is necessary to destroy the whole of Luther, even to the name of Lutheran and Lutheranism.”

“Ah! man divine,” cried Chaudieu, “you well deserve such honors.”

“Maintain the uniformity of the doctrine; let no one henceforth change or remark it. We are lost if new sects issue from our bosom.”

We will here anticipate the events on which this Study is based, and close the history of Theodore de Beze, who went to Paris with Chaudieu. It is to be remarked that Poltrot, who fired at the Duc de Guise fifteen months later, confessed under torture that he had been urged to the crime by Theodore de Beze; though he retracted that avowal during subsequent tortures; so that Bossuet, after weighing all historical considerations, felt obliged to acquit Beze of instigating the crime. Since Bossuet’s time, however, an apparently futile dissertation, apropos of a celebrated song, has led a compiler of the eighteenth century to prove that the verses on the death of the Duc de Guise, sung by the Huguenots from one end of France to the other, was the work of Theodore de Beze; and it is also proved that the famous song on the burial of Marlborough was a plagiarism on it.[*]

XIV. CATHERINE IN POWER

The day on which Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu arrived in Paris, the court returned from Rheims, where Charles IX. was crowned. This ceremony, which Catherine made magnificent with splendid fetes, enabled her to gather about her the leaders of the various parties. Having studied all interests and all factions, she found herself with two alternatives from which to choose; either to rally them all to the throne, or to pit them one against the other. The Connetable de Montmorency, supremely Catholic, whose nephew, the Prince de Conde, was leader of the Reformers, and whose sons were inclined to the new religion, blamed the alliance of the queen-mother with the Reformation. The Guises, on their side, were endeavoring to gain over Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, a weak prince; a manoeuvre which his wife, Jeanne d’Albret, instructed by de Beze, allowed to succeed. The difficulties were plain to Catherine, whose dawning power needed a period of tranquillity. She therefore impatiently awaited Calvin’s reply to the message which the Prince de Conde, the king of Navarre, Coligny, d’Andelot, and the Cardinal de Chatillon had sent him through de Beze and Chaudieu. Meantime, however, she was faithful to her promises as to the Prince de Conde. The chancellor put an end to the proceedings in which Christophe was involved by referring the affair to the Parliament of Paris, which at once set aside the judgment of the committee, declaring it without power to try a prince of the blood. The Parliament then reopened the trial, at the request of the Guises and the queen-mother. Lasagne’s papers had already been given to Catherine, who burned them. The giving up of these papers was a first pledge, uselessly made by the Guises to the queen-mother. The Parliament, no longer able to take cognizance of those decisive proofs, reinstated the prince in all his rights, property, and honors. Christophe, released during the tumult at Orleans on the death of the king, was acquitted in the first instance, and appointed, in compensation for his sufferings, solicitor to the Parliament, at the request of his godfather Monsieur de Thou.

The Triumvirate, that coming coalition of self-interests threatened by Catherine’s first acts, was now forming itself under her very eyes. Just as in chemistry antagonistic substances separate at the first shock which jars their enforced union, so in politics the alliance of opposing interests never lasts. Catherine thoroughly understood that sooner or later she should return to the Guises and combine with them and the Connetable to do battle against the Huguenots. The proposed “colloquy” which tempted the vanity of the orators of all parties, and offered an imposing spectacle to succeed that of the coronation and enliven the bloody ground of a religious war which, in point of fact, had already begun, was as futile in the eyes of the Duc de Guise as in those of Catherine. The Catholics would, in one sense be worsted; for the Huguenots, under pretext of conferring, would be able to proclaim their doctrine, with the sanction of the king and his mother, to the ears of all France. The Cardinal de Lorraine, flattered by Catherine into the idea of destroying the heresy by the eloquence of the Church, persuaded his brother to consent; and thus the queen obtained what was all-essential to her, six months of peace.

A slight event, occurring at this time, came near compromising the power which Catherine had so painfully built up. The following scene, preserved in history, took place, on the very day the envoys returned from Geneva, in the hotel de Coligny near the Louvre. At his coronation, Charles IX., who was greatly attached to his tutor Amyot, appointed him grand-almoner of France. This affection was shared by his brother the Duc d’Anjou, afterwards Henri III., another of Anjou’s pupils. Catherine heard the news of this appointment from the two Gondis during the journey from Rheims to Paris. She had counted on that office in the gift of the Crown to gain a supporter in the Church with whom to oppose the Cardinal de Lorraine. Her choice had fallen on the Cardinal de Tournon, in whom she expected to find, as in l’Hopital, another crutch—the word is her own. As soon as she reached the Louvre she sent for the tutor, and her anger was such, on seeing the disaster to her policy caused by the ambition of this son of a shoemaker, that she was betrayed into using the following extraordinary language, which several memoirs of the day have handed down to us:—

“What!” she cried, “am I, who compel the Guises, the Colignys, the Connetables, the house of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, to serve my ends, am I to be opposed by a priestling like you who are not satisfied to be bishop of Auxerre?”

Amyot excused himself. He assured the queen that he had asked nothing; the king of his own will had given him the office of which he, the son of a poor tailor, felt himself quite unworthy.

“Be assured, maitre,” replied Catherine (that being the name which the two kings, Charles IX. and Henri III., gave to the great writer) “that you will not stand on your feet twenty-four hours hence, unless you make your pupil change his mind.”

Between the death thus threatened and the resignation of the highest ecclesiastical office in the gift of the crown, the son of the shoemaker, who had lately become extremely eager after honors, and may even have coveted a cardinal’s hat, thought it prudent to temporize. He left the court and hid himself in the abbey of Saint-Germain. When Charles IX. did not see him at his first dinner, he asked where he was. Some Guisard doubtless told him of what had occurred between Amyot and the queen-mother.

“Has he been forced to disappear because I made him grand-almoner?” cried the king.

He thereupon rushed to his mother in the violent wrath of angry children when their caprices are opposed.

“Madame,” he said on entering, “did I not kindly sign the letter you asked me to send to Parliament, by means of which you govern my kingdom? Did you not promise that if I did so my will should be yours? And here, the first favor that I wish to bestow excites your jealousy! The chancellor talks of declaring my majority at fourteen, three years from now, and you wish to treat me as a child. By God, I will be king, and a king as my father and grandfather were kings!”

The tone and manner in which these words were said gave Catherine a revelation of her son’s true character; it was like a blow in the breast.

“He speaks to me thus, he whom I made a king!” she thought. “Monsieur,” she said aloud, “the office of a king, in times like these, is a very difficult one; you do not yet know the shrewd men with whom you have to deal. You will never have a safer and more sincere friend than your mother, or better servants than those who have been so long attached to her person, without whose services you might perhaps not even exist to-day. The Guises want both your life and your throne, be sure of that. If they could sew me into a sack and fling me into the river,” she said, pointing to the Seine, “it would be done to-night. They know that I am a lioness defending her young, and that I alone prevent their daring hands from seizing your crown. To whom—to whose party does your tutor belong? Who are his allies? What authority has he? What services can he do you? What weight do his words carry? Instead of finding a prop to sustain your power, you have cut the ground from under it. The Cardinal de Lorraine is a living threat to you; he plays the king; he keeps his hat on his head before the princes of the blood; it was urgently necessary to invest another cardinal with powers greater than his own. But what have you done? Is Amyot, that shoemaker, fit only to tie the ribbons of his shoes, is he capable of making head against the Guise ambition? However, you love Amyot, you have appointed him; your will must now be done, monsieur. But before you make such gifts again, I pray you to consult me in affectionate good faith. Listen to reasons of state; and your own good sense as a child may perhaps agree with my old experience, when you really understand the difficulties that lie before you.”

“Then I can have my master back again?” cried the king, not listening to his mother’s words, which he considered to be mere reproaches.

“Yes, you shall have him,” she replied. “But it is not here, nor that brutal Cypierre who will teach you how to reign.”

“It is for you to do so, my dear mother,” said the boy, mollified by his victory and relaxing the surly and threatening look stamped by nature upon his countenance.

Catherine sent Gondi to recall the new grand-almoner. When the Italian discovered the place of Amyot’s retreat, and the bishop heard that the courtier was sent by the queen, he was seized with terror and refused to leave the abbey. In this extremity Catherine was obliged to write to him herself, in such terms that he returned to Paris and received from her own lips the assurance of her protection,—on condition, however, that he would blindly promote her wishes with Charles IX.

This little domestic tempest over, the queen, now re-established in the Louvre after an absence of more than a year, held council with her closest friends as to the proper conduct to pursue with the young king whom Cypierre had complimented on his firmness.

“What is best to be done?” she said to the two Gondis, Ruggiero, Birago, and Chiverni who had lately become governor and chancellor to the Duc d’Anjou.

“Before all else,” replied Birago, “get rid of Cypierre. He is not a courtier; he will never accommodate himself to your ideas, and will think he does his duty in thwarting you.”

“Whom can I trust?” cried the queen.

“One of us,” said Birago.

“On my honor!” exclaimed Gondi, “I’ll promise you to make the king as docile as the king of Navarre.”

“You allowed the late king to perish to save your other children,” said Albert de Gondi. “Do, then, as the great signors of Constantinople do,—divert the anger and amuse the caprices of the present king. He loves art and poetry and hunting, also a little girl he saw at Orleans; there’s occupation enough for him.”

“Will you really be the king’s governor?” said Catherine to the ablest of the Gondis.

“Yes, if you will give me the necessary authority; you may even be obliged to make me marshal of France and a duke. Cypierre is altogether too small a man to hold the office. In future, the governor of a king of France should be of some great dignity, like that of duke and marshal.”

“He is right,” said Birago.

“Poet and huntsman,” said Catherine in a dreamy tone.

“We will hunt and make love!” cried Gondi.

“Moreover,” remarked Chiverni, “you are sure of Amyot, who will always fear poison in case of disobedience; so that you and he and Gondi can hold the king in leading-strings.”

“Amyot has deeply offended me,” said Catherine.

“He does not know what he owes to you; if he did know, you would be in danger,” replied Birago, gravely, emphasizing his words.

“Then, it is agreed,” exclaimed Catherine, on whom Birago’s reply made a powerful impression, “that you, Gondi, are to be the king’s governor. My son must consent to do for one of my friends a favor equal to the one I have just permitted for his knave of a bishop. That fool has lost the hat; for never, as long as I live, will I consent that the Pope shall give it to him! How strong we might have been with Cardinal de Tournon! What a trio with Tournon for grand-almoner, and l’Hopital, and de Thou! As for the burghers of Paris, I intend to make my son cajole them; we will get a support there.”

Accordingly, Albert de Gondi became a marshal of France and was created Duc de Retz and governor of the king a few days later.

At the moment when this little private council ended, Cardinal de Tournon announced to the queen the arrival of the emissaries sent to Calvin. Admiral Coligny accompanied the party in order that his presence might ensure them due respect at the Louvre. The queen gathered the formidable phalanx of her maids of honor about her, and passed into the reception hall, built by her husband, which no longer exists in the Louvre of to-day.

At the period of which we write the staircase of the Louvre occupied the clock tower. Catherine’s apartments were in the old buildings which still exist in the court of the Musee. The present staircase of the museum was built in what was formerly the salle des ballets. The ballet of those days was a sort of dramatic entertainment performed by the whole court.

Revolutionary passions gave rise to a most laughable error about Charles IX., in connection with the Louvre. During the Revolution hostile opinions as to this king, whose real character was masked, made a monster of him. Joseph Cheniers tragedy was written under the influence of certain words scratched on the window of the projecting wing of the Louvre, looking toward the quay. The words were as follows: “It was from this window that Charles IX., of execrable memory, fired upon French citizens.” It is well to inform future historians and all sensible persons that this portion of the Louvre—called to-day the old Louvre—which projects upon the quay and is connected with the Louvre by the room called the Apollo gallery (while the great halls of the Museum connect the Louvre with the Tuileries) did not exist in the time of Charles IX. The greater part of the space where the frontage on the quay now stands, and where the Garden of the Infanta is laid out, was then occupied by the hotel de Bourbon, which belonged to and was the residence of the house of Navarre. It was absolutely impossible, therefore, for Charles IX. to fire from the Louvre of Henri II. upon a boat full of Huguenots crossing the river, although at the present time the Seine can be seen from its windows. Even if learned men and libraries did not possess maps of the Louvre made in the time of Charles IX., on which its then position is clearly indicated, the building itself refutes the error. All the kings who co-operated in the work of erecting this enormous mass of buildings never failed to put their initials or some special monogram on the parts they had severally built. Now the part we speak of, the venerable and now blackened wing of the Louvre, projecting on the quay and overlooking the garden of the Infanta, bears the monograms of Henri III. and Henri IV., which are totally different from that of Henri II., who invariably joined his H to the two C’s of Catherine, forming a D,—which, by the bye, has constantly deceived superficial persons into fancying that the king put the initial of his mistress, Diane, on great public buildings. Henri IV. united the Louvre with his own hotel de Bourbon, its garden and dependencies. He was the first to think of connecting Catherine de’ Medici’s palace of the Tuileries with the Louvre by his unfinished galleries, the precious sculptures of which have been so cruelly neglected. Even if the map of Paris, and the monograms of Henri III. and Henri IV. did not exist, the difference of architecture is refutation enough to the calumny. The vermiculated stone copings of the hotel de la Force mark the transition between what is called the architecture of the Renaissance and that of Henri III., Henri IV., and Louis XIII. This archaeological digression (continuing the sketches of old Paris with which we began this history) enables us to picture to our minds the then appearance of this other corner of the old city, of which nothing now remains but Henri IV.‘s addition to the Louvre, with its admirable bas-reliefs, now being rapidly annihilated.

When the court heard that the queen was about to give an audience to Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu, presented by Admiral Coligny, all the courtiers who had the right of entrance to the reception hall, hastened thither to witness the interview. It was about six o’clock in the evening; Coligny had just supped, and was using a toothpick as he came up the staircase of the Louvre between the two Reformers. The practice of using a toothpick was so inveterate a habit with the admiral that he was seen to do it on the battle-field while planning a retreat. “Distrust the admiral’s toothpick, the No of the Connetable, and Catherine’s Yes,” was a court proverb of that day. After the Saint-Bartholomew the populace made a horrible jest on the body of Coligny, which hung for three days at Montfaucon, by putting a grotesque toothpick into his mouth. History has recorded this atrocious levity. So petty an act done in the midst of that great catastrophe pictures the Parisian populace, which deserves the sarcastic jibe of Boileau: “Frenchmen, born malin, created the guillotine.” The Parisian of all time cracks jokes and makes lampoons before, during, and after the most horrible revolutions.

Theodore de Beze wore the dress of a courtier, black silk stockings, low shoes with straps across the instep, tight breeches, a black silk doublet with slashed sleeves, and a small black velvet mantle, over which lay an elegant white fluted ruff. His beard was trimmed to a moustache and virgule (now called imperial) and he carried a sword at his side and a cane in his hand. Whosoever knows the galleries of Versailles or the collections of Odieuvre, knows also his round, almost jovial face and lively eyes, surmounted by the broad forehead which characterized the writers and poets of that day. De Beze had, what served him admirably, an agreeable air and manner. In this he was a great contrast to Coligny, of austere countenance, and to the sour, bilious Chaudieu, who chose to wear on this occasion the robe and bands of a Calvinist minister.

The scenes that happen in our day in the Chamber of Deputies, and which, no doubt, happened in the Convention, will give an idea of how, at this court, at this epoch, these men, who six months later were to fight to the death in a war without quarter, could meet and talk to each other with courtesy and even laughter. Birago, who was coldly to advise the Saint-Bartholomew, and Cardinal de Lorraine, who charged his servant Besme “not to miss the admiral,” now advanced to meet Coligny; Birago saying, with a smile:—

“Well, my dear admiral, so you have really taken upon yourself to present these gentlemen from Geneva?”

“Perhaps you will call it a crime in me,” replied the admiral, jesting, “whereas if you had done it yourself you would make a merit of it.”

“They say that the Sieur Calvin is very ill,” remarked the Cardinal de Lorraine to Theodore de Beze. “I hope no one suspects us of giving him his broth.”

“Ah! monseigneur; it would be too great a risk,” replied de Beze, maliciously.

The Duc de Guise, who was watching Chaudieu, looked fixedly at his brother and at Birago, who were both taken aback by de Beze’s answer.

“Good God!” remarked the cardinal, “heretics are not diplomatic!”

To avoid embarrassment, the queen, who was announced at this moment, had arranged to remain standing during the audience. She began by speaking to the Connetable, who had previously remonstrated with her vehemently on the scandal of receiving messengers from Calvin.

“You see, my dear Connetable,” she said, “that I receive them without ceremony.”

“Madame,” said the admiral, approaching the queen, “these are two teachers of the new religion, who have come to an understanding with Calvin, and who have his instructions as to a conference in which the churches of France may be able to settle their differences.”

“This is Monsieur de Beze, to whom my wife is much attached,” said the king of Navarre, coming forward and taking de Beze by the hand.

“And this is Chaudieu,” said the Prince de Conde. “My friend the Duc de Guise knows the soldier,” he added, looking at Le Balafre, “perhaps he will now like to know the minister.”

This gasconade made the whole court laugh, even Catherine.

“Faith!” replied the Duc de Guise, “I am enchanted to see a gars who knows so well how to choose his men and to employ them in their right sphere. One of your agents,” he said to Chaudieu, “actually endured the extraordinary question without dying and without confessing a single thing. I call myself brave; but I don’t know that I could have endured it as he did.”

“Hum!” muttered Ambroise, “you did not say a word when I pulled the javelin out of your face at Calais.”

Catherine, standing at the centre of a semicircle of the courtiers and maids of honor, kept silence. She was observing the two Reformers, trying to penetrate their minds as, with the shrewd, intelligent glance of her black eyes, she studied them.

“One seems to be the scabbard, the other the blade,” whispered Albert de Gondi in her ear.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Catherine at last, unable to restrain a smile, “has your master given you permission to unite in a public conference, at which you will be converted by the arguments of the Fathers of the Church who are the glory of our State?”

“We have no master but the Lord,” said Chaudieu.

“But surely you will allow some little authority to the king of France?” said Catherine, smiling.

“And much to the queen,” said de Beze, bowing low.

“You will find,” continued the queen, “that our most submissive subjects are heretics.”

“Ah, madame!” cried Coligny, “we will indeed endeavor to make you a noble and peaceful kingdom! Europe has profited, alas! by our internal divisions. For the last fifty years she has had the advantage of one-half of the French people being against the other half.”

“Are we here to sing anthems to the glory of heretics,” said the Connetable, brutally.

“No, but to bring them to repentance,” whispered the Cardinal de Lorraine in his ear; “we want to coax them by a little sugar.”

“Do you know what I should have done under the late king?” said the Connetable, angrily. “I’d have called in the provost and hung those two knaves, then and there, on the gallows of the Louvre.”

“Well, gentlemen, who are the learned men whom you have selected as our opponents?” inquired the queen, imposing silence on the Connetable by a look.

“Duplessis-Mornay and Theodore de Beze will speak on our side,” replied Chaudieu.

“The court will doubtless go to Saint-Germain, and as it would be improper that this colloquy should take place in a royal residence, we will have it in the little town of Poissy,” said Catherine.

“Shall we be safe there, madame?” asked Chaudieu.

“Ah!” replied the queen, with a sort of naivete, “you will surely know how to take precautions. The Admiral will arrange all that with my cousins the Guises and de Montmorency.”

“The devil take them!” cried the Connetable, “I’ll have nothing to do with it.”

“How do you contrive to give such strength of character to your converts?” said the queen, leading Chaudieu apart. “The son of my furrier was actually sublime.”

“We have faith,” replied Chaudieu.

At this moment the hall presented a scene of animated groups, all discussing the question of the proposed assembly, to which the few words said by the queen had already given the name of the “Colloquy of Poissy.” Catherine glanced at Chaudieu and was able to say to him unheard:—

“Yes, a new faith!”

“Ah, madame, if you were not blinded by your alliance with the court of Rome, you would see that we are returning to the true doctrines of Jesus Christ, who, recognizing the equality of souls, bestows upon all men equal rights on earth.”

“Do you think yourself the equal of Calvin?” asked the queen, shrewdly. “No, no; we are equals only in church. What! would you unbind the tie of the people to the throne?” she cried. “Then you are not only heretics, you are revolutionists,—rebels against obedience to the king as you are against that to the Pope!” So saying, she left Chaudieu abruptly and returned to Theodore de Beze. “I count on you, monsieur,” she said, “to conduct this colloquy in good faith. Take all the time you need.”

“I had supposed,” said Chaudieu to the Prince de Conde, the King of Navarre, and Admiral Coligny, as they left the hall, “that a great State matter would be treated more seriously.”

“Oh! we know very well what you want,” exclaimed the Prince de Conde, exchanging a sly look with Theodore de Beze.

The prince now left his adherents to attend a rendezvous. This great leader of a party was also one of the most favored gallants of the court. The two choice beauties of that day were even then striving with such desperate eagerness for his affections that one of them, the Marechale de Saint-Andre, the wife of the future triumvir, gave him her beautiful estate of Saint-Valery, hoping to win him away from the Duchesse de Guise, the wife of the man who had tried to take his head on the scaffold. The duchess, not being able to detach the Duc de Nemours from Mademoiselle de Rohan, fell in love, en attendant, with the leader of the Reformers.

“What a contrast to Geneva!” said Chaudieu to Theodore de Beze, as they crossed the little bridge of the Louvre.

“The people here are certainly gayer than the Genevese. I don’t see why they should be so treacherous,” replied de Beze.

“To treachery oppose treachery,” replied Chaudieu, whispering the words in his companion’s ear. “I have saints in Paris on whom I can rely, and I intend to make Calvin a prophet. Christophe Lecamus shall deliver us from our most dangerous enemy.”

“The queen-mother, for whom the poor devil endured his torture, has already, with a high hand, caused him to be appointed solicitor to the Parliament; and solicitors make better prosecutors than murderers. Don’t you remember how Avenelles betrayed the secrets of our first uprising?”

“I know Christophe,” said Chaudieu, in a positive tone, as he turned to leave the envoy from Geneva.