III. MARIE TOUCHET
The little house of Madame de Belleville, where Charles IX. had deposited his prisoners, was the last but one in the rue de l’Autruche on the side of the rue Saint-Honore. The street gate, flanked by two little brick pavilions, seemed very simple in those days, when gates and their accessories were so elaborately treated. It had two pilasters of stone cut in facets, and the coping represented a reclining woman holding a cornucopia. The gate itself, closed by enormous locks, had a wicket through which to examine those who asked admittance. In each pavilion lived a porter; for the king’s extremely capricious pleasure required a porter by day and by night. The house had a little courtyard, paved like those of Venice. At this period, before carriages were invented, ladies went about on horseback, or in litters, so that courtyards could be made magnificent without fear of injury from horses or carriages. This fact is always to be remembered as an explanation of the narrowness of streets, the small size of courtyards, and certain other details of the private dwellings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The house, of one story only above the ground-floor, was capped by a sculptured frieze, above which rose a roof with four sides, the peak being flattened to form a platform. Dormer windows were cut in this roof, with casings and pediments which the chisel of some great artist had covered with arabesques and dentils; each of the three windows on the main floor were equally beautiful in stone embroidery, which the brick of the walls showed off to great advantage. On the ground-floor, a double portico, very delicately decorated, led to the entrance door, which was covered with bosses cut with facets in the Venetian manner,—a style of decoration which was further carried on round the windows placed to right and left of the door.
A garden, carefully laid out in the fashion of the times and filled with choice flowers, occupied a space behind the house equal to that of the courtyard in front. A grape-vine draped its walls. In the centre of a grass plot rose a silver fir-tree. The flower-borders were separated from the grass by meandering paths which led to an arbor of clipped yews at the farther end of the little garden. The walls were covered with a mosaic of variously colored pebbles, coarse in design, it is true, but pleasing to the eye from the harmony of its tints with those of the flower-beds. The house had a carved balcony on the garden side, above the door, and also on the front toward the courtyard, and around the middle windows. On both sides of the house the ornamentation of the principal window, which projected some feet from the wall, rose to the frieze; so that it formed a little pavilion, hung there like a lantern. The casings of the other windows were inlaid on the stone with precious marbles.
In spite of the exquisite taste displayed in the little house, there was an air of melancholy about it. It was darkened by the buildings that surrounded it and by the roofs of the hotel d’Alencon which threw a heavy shadow over both court and garden; moreover, a deep silence reigned there. But this silence, these half-lights, this solitude, soothed a royal soul, which could there surrender itself to a single emotion, as in a cloister where men pray, or in some sheltered home wherein they love.
It is easy now to imagine the interior charm and choiceness of this haven, the sole spot in his kingdom where this dying Valois could pour out his soul, reveal his sufferings, exercise his taste for art, and give himself up to the poesy he loved,—pleasures denied him by the cares of a cruel royalty. Here, alone, were his great soul and his high intrinsic worth appreciated; here he could give himself up, for a few brief months, the last of his life, to the joys of fatherhood,—pleasures into which he flung himself with the frenzy that a sense of his coming and dreadful death impressed on all his actions.
In the afternoon of the day succeeding the night-scene we have just described, Marie Touchet was finishing her toilet in the oratory, which was the boudoir of those days. She was arranging the long curls of her beautiful black hair, blending them with the velvet of a new coif, and gazing intently into her mirror.
“It is nearly four o’clock; that interminable council must surely be over,” she thought to herself. “Jacob has returned from the Louvre; he says that everybody he saw was excited about the number of the councillors summoned and the length of the session. What can have happened? Is it some misfortune? Good God! surely he knows how suspense wears out the soul! Perhaps he has gone a-hunting? If he is happy and amused, it is all right. When I see him gay, I forget all I have suffered.”
She drew her hands round her slender waist as if to smooth some trifling wrinkle in her gown, turning sideways to see if its folds fell properly, and as she did so, she caught sight of the king on the couch behind her. The carpet had so muffled the sound of his steps that he had slipped in softly without being heard.
“You frightened me!” she said, with a cry of surprise, which was quickly repressed.
“Were you thinking of me?” said the king.
“When do I not think of you?” she answered, sitting down beside him.
She took off his cap and cloak, passing her hands through his hair as though she combed it with her fingers. Charles let her do as she pleased, but made no answer. Surprised at this, Marie knelt down to study the pale face of her royal master, and then saw the signs of a dreadful weariness and a more consummate melancholy than any she had yet consoled. She repressed her tears and kept silence, that she might not irritate by mistaken words the sorrow which, as yet, she did not understand. In this she did as tender women do under like circumstances. She kissed that forehead, seamed with untimely wrinkles, and those livid cheeks, trying to convey to the worn-out soul the freshness of hers,—pouring her spirit into the sweet caresses which met with no response. Presently she raised her head to the level of the king’s, clasping him softly in her arms; then she lay still, her face hidden on that suffering breast, watching for the opportune moment to question his dejected mind.
“My Charlot,” she said at last, “will you not tell your poor, distressed Marie the troubles that cloud that precious brow, and whiten those beautiful red lips?”
“Except Charlemagne,” he said in a hollow voice, “all the kings of France named Charles have ended miserably.”
“Pooh!” she said, “look at Charles VIII.”
“That poor prince!” exclaimed the king. “In the flower of his age he struck his head against a low door at the chateau of Amboise, which he was having decorated, and died in horrible agony. It was his death which gave the crown to our family.”
“Charles VII. reconquered his kingdom.”
“Darling, he died” (the king lowered his voice) “of hunger; for he feared being poisoned by the dauphin, who had already caused the death of his beautiful Agnes. The father feared his son; to-day the son dreads his mother!”
“Why drag up the past?” she said hastily, remembering the dreadful life of Charles VI.
“Ah! sweetest, kings have no need to go to sorcerers to discover their coming fate; they need only turn to history. I am at this moment endeavoring to escape the fate of Charles the Simple, who was robbed of his crown, and died in prison after seven years’ captivity.”
“Charles V. conquered the English,” she cried triumphantly.
“No, not he, but du Guesclin. He himself, poisoned by Charles de Navarre, dragged out a wretched existence.”
“Well, Charles IV., then?”
“He married three times to obtain an heir, in spite of the masculine beauty of the children of Philippe le Bel. The first house of Valois ended with him, and the second is about to end in the same way. The queen has given me only a daughter, and I shall die without leaving her pregnant; for a long minority would be the greatest curse I could bequeath to the kingdom. Besides, if I had a son, would he live? The name of Charles is fatal; Charlemagne exhausted the luck of it. If I left a son I would tremble at the thought that he would be Charles X.”
“Who is it that wants to seize your crown?”
“My brother d’Alencon conspires against it. Enemies are all about me.”
“Monsieur,” said Marie, with a charming little pout, “do tell me something gayer.”
“Ah! my little jewel, my treasure, don’t call me ‘monsieur,’ even in jest; you remind me of my mother, who stabs me incessantly with that title, by which she seems to snatch away my crown. She says ‘my son’ to the Duc d’Anjou—I mean the king of Poland.”
“Sire,” exclaimed Marie, clasping her hands as though she were praying, “there is a kingdom where you are worshipped. Your Majesty fills it with his glory, his power; and there the word ‘monsieur,’ means ‘my beloved lord.’”
She unclasped her hands, and with a pretty gesture pointed to her heart. The words were so musiques (to use a word of the times which depicted the melodies of love) that Charles IX. caught her round the waist with the nervous force that characterized him, and seated her on his knee, rubbing his forehead gently against the pretty curls so coquettishly arranged. Marie thought the moment favorable; she ventured a few kisses, which Charles allowed rather than accepted, then she said softly:—
“If my servants were not mistaken you were out all night in the streets, as in the days when you played the pranks of a younger son.”
“Yes,” replied the king, still lost in his own thoughts.
“Did you fight the watchman and frighten some of the burghers? Who are the men you brought here and locked up? They must be very criminal, as you won’t allow any communication with them. No girl was ever locked in as carefully, and they have not had a mouthful to eat since they came. The Germans whom Solern left to guard them won’t let any one go near the room. Is it a joke you are playing; or is it something serious?”
“Yes, you are right,” said the king, coming out of his reverie, “last night I did scour the roofs with Tavannes and the Gondis. I wanted to try my old follies with the old companions; but my legs were not what they once were; I did not dare leap the streets; though we did jump two alleys from one roof to the next. At the second, however, Tavannes and I, holding on to a chimney, agreed that we couldn’t do it again. If either of us had been alone we couldn’t have done it then.”
“I’ll wager that you sprang first.” The king smiled. “I know why you risk your life in that way.”
“And why, you little witch?”
“You are tired of life.”
“Ah, sorceress! But I am being hunted down by sorcery,” said the king, resuming his anxious look.
“My sorcery is love,” she replied, smiling. “Since the happy day when you first loved me, have I not always divined your thoughts? And—if you will let me speak the truth—the thoughts which torture you to-day are not worthy of a king.”
“Am I a king?” he said bitterly.
“Cannot you be one? What did Charles VII. do? He listened to his mistress, monseigneur, and he reconquered his kingdom, invaded by the English as yours is now by the enemies of our religion. Your last coup d’Etat showed you the course you have to follow. Exterminate heresy.”
“You blamed the Saint-Bartholomew,” said Charles, “and now you—”
“That is over,” she said; “besides, I agree with Madame Catherine that it was better to do it yourselves than let the Guises do it.”
“Charles VII. had only men to fight; I am face to face with ideas,” resumed the king. “We can kill men, but we can’t kill words! The Emperor Charles V. gave up the attempt; his son Philip has spent his strength upon it; we shall all perish, we kings, in that struggle. On whom can I rely? To right, among the Catholics, I find the Guises, who are my enemies; to left, the Calvinists, who will never forgive me the death of my poor old Coligny, nor that bloody day in August; besides, they want to suppress the throne; and in front of me what have I?—my mother!”
“Arrest her; reign alone,” said Marie in a low voice, whispering in his ear.
“I meant to do so yesterday; to-day I no longer intend it. You speak of it rather coolly.”
“Between the daughter of an apothecary and that of a doctor there is no great difference,” replied Touchet, always ready to laugh at the false origin attributed to her.
The king frowned.
“Marie, don’t take such liberties. Catherine de’ Medici is my mother, and you ought to tremble lest—”
“What is it you fear?”
“Poison!” cried the king, beside himself.
“Poor child!” cried Marie, restraining her tears; for the sight of such strength united to such weakness touched her deeply. “Ah!” she continued, “you make me hate Madame Catherine, who has been so good to me; her kindness now seems perfidy. Why is she so kind to me, and bad to you? During my stay in Dauphine I heard many things about the beginning of your reign which you concealed from me; it seems to me that the queen, your mother, is the real cause of all your troubles.”
“In what way?” cried the king, deeply interested.
“Women whose souls and whose intentions are pure use virtue wherewith to rule the men they love; but women who do not seek good rule men through their evil instincts. Now, the queen made vices out of certain of your noblest qualities, and she taught you to believe that your worst inclinations were virtues. Was that the part of a mother? Be a tyrant like Louis XI.; inspire terror; imitate Philip II.; banish the Italians; drive out the Guises; confiscate the lands of the Calvinists. Out of this solitude you will rise a king; you will save the throne. The moment is propitious; your brother is in Poland.”
“We are two children at statecraft,” said Charles, bitterly; “we know nothing except how to love. Alas! my treasure, yesterday I, too, thought all these things; I dreamed of accomplishing great deeds—bah! my mother blew down my house of cards! From a distance we see great questions outlined like the summits of mountains, and it is easy to say: ‘I’ll make an end of Calvinism; I’ll bring those Guises to task; I’ll separate from the Court of Rome; I’ll rely upon my people, upon the burghers—’ ah! yes, from afar it all seems simple enough! but try to climb those mountains and the higher you go the more the difficulties appear. Calvinism, in itself, is the last thing the leaders of that party care for; and the Guises, those rabid Catholics, would be sorry indeed to see the Calvinists put down. Each side considers its own interests exclusively, and religious opinions are but a cloak for insatiable ambition. The party of Charles IX. is the feeblest of all. That of the king of Navarre, that of the king of Poland, that of the Duc d’Alencon, that of the Condes, that of the Guises, that of my mother, are all intriguing one against another, but they take no account of me, not even in my own council. My mother, in the midst of so many contending elements, is, nevertheless, the strongest among them; she has just proved to me the inanity of my plans. We are surrounded by rebellious subjects who defy the law. The axe of Louis XI. of which you speak, is lacking to us. Parliament would not condemn the Guises, nor the king of Navarre, nor the Condes, nor my brother. No! the courage to assassinate is needed; the throne will be forced to strike down those insolent men who suppress both law and justice; but where can we find the faithful arm? The council I held this morning has disgusted me with everything; treason everywhere; contending interests all about me. I am tired with the burden of my crown. I only want to die in peace.”
He dropped into a sort of gloomy somnolence.
“Disgusted with everything!” repeated Marie Touchet, sadly; but she did not disturb the black torpor of her lover.
Charles was the victim of a complete prostration of mind and body, produced by three things,—the exhaustion of all his faculties, aggravated by the disheartenment of realizing the extent of an evil; the recognized impossibility of surmounting his weakness; and the aspect of difficulties so great that genius itself would dread them. The king’s depression was in proportion to the courage and the loftiness of ideas to which he had risen during the last few months. In addition to this, an attack of nervous melancholy, caused by his malady, had seized him as he left the protracted council which had taken place in his private cabinet. Marie saw that he was in one of those crises when the least word, even of love, would be importunate and painful; so she remained kneeling quietly beside him, her head on his knee, the king’s hand buried in her hair, and he himself motionless, without a word, without a sigh, as still as Marie herself,—Charles IX. in the lethargy of impotence, Marie in the stupor of despair which comes to a loving woman when she perceives the boundaries at which love ends.
The lovers thus remained, in the deepest silence, during one of those terrible hours when all reflection wounds, when the clouds of an inward tempest veil even the memory of happiness. Marie believed that she herself was partly the cause of this frightful dejection. She asked herself, not without horror, if the excessive joys and the violent love which she had never yet found strength to resist, did not contribute to weaken the mind and body of the king. As she raised her eyes, bathed in tears, toward her lover, she saw the slow tears rolling down his pallid cheeks. This mark of the sympathy that united them so moved the king that he rushed from his depression like a spurred horse. He took Marie in his arms and placed her on the sofa.
“I will no longer be a king,” he cried. “I will be your lover, your lover only, wholly given up to that happiness. I will die happy, and not consumed by the cares and miseries of a throne.”
The tone of these words, the fire that shone in the half-extinct eyes of the king, gave Marie a terrible shock instead of happiness; she blamed her love as an accomplice in the malady of which the king was dying.
“Meanwhile you forget your prisoners,” she said, rising abruptly.
“Hey! what care I for them? I give them leave to kill me.”
“What! are they murderers?”
“Oh, don’t be frightened, little one; we hold them fast. Don’t think of them, but of me. Do you love me?”
“Sire!” she cried.
“Sire!” he repeated, sparks darting from his eyes, so violent was the rush of his anger at the untimely respect of his mistress. “You are in league with my mother.”
“O God!” cried Marie, looking at the picture above her prie-dieu and turning toward it to say her prayer, “grant that he comprehend me!”
“Ah!” said the king suspiciously, “you have some wrong to me upon your conscience!” Then looking at her from between his arms, he plunged his eyes into hers. “I have heard some talk of the mad passion of a certain Entragues,” he went on wildly. “Ever since their grandfather, the soldier Balzac, married a viscontessa at Milan that family hold their heads too high.”
Marie looked at the king with so proud an air that he was ashamed. At that instant the cries of little Charles de Valois, who had just awakened, were heard in the next room. Marie ran to the door.
“Come in, Bourguignonne!” she said, taking the child from its nurse and carrying it to the king. “You are more of a child than he,” she cried, half angry, half appeased.
“He is beautiful!” said Charles IX., taking his son in his arms.
“I alone know how like he is to you,” said Marie; “already he has your smile and your gestures.”
“So tiny as that!” said the king, laughing at her.
“Oh, I know men don’t believe such things; but watch him, my Charlot, play with him. Look there! See! Am I not right?”
“True!” exclaimed the king, astonished by a motion of the child which seemed the very miniature of a gesture of his own.
“Ah, the pretty flower!” cried the mother. “Never shall he leave us! He will never cause me grief.”
The king frolicked with his son; he tossed him in his arms, and kissed him passionately, talking the foolish, unmeaning talk, the pretty, baby language invented by nurses and mothers. His voice grew child-like. At last his forehead cleared, joy returned to his saddened face, and then, as Marie saw that he had forgotten his troubles, she laid her head upon his shoulder and whispered in his ear:—
“Won’t you tell me, Charlot, why you have made me keep murderers in my house? Who are these men, and what do you mean to do with them? In short, I want to know what you were doing on the roofs. I hope there was no woman in the business?”
“Then you love me as much as ever!” cried the king, meeting the clear, interrogatory glance that women know so well how to cast upon occasion.
“You doubted me,” she replied, as a tear shone on her beautiful eyelashes.
“There are women in my adventure,” said the king; “but they are sorceresses. How far had I told you?”
“You were on the roofs near by—what street was it?”
“Rue Saint-Honore, sweetest,” said the king, who seemed to have recovered himself. Collecting this thoughts, he began to explain to his mistress what had happened, as if to prepare her for a scene that was presently to take place in her presence.
“As I was passing through the street last night on a frolic,” he said, “I chanced to see a bright light from the dormer window of the house occupied by Rene, my mother’s glover and perfumer, and once yours. I have strong doubts about that man and what goes on in his house. If I am poisoned, the drug will come from there.”
“I shall dismiss him to-morrow.”
“Ah! so you kept him after I had given him up?” cried the king. “I thought my life was safe with you,” he added gloomily; “but no doubt death is following me even here.”
“But, my dearest, I have only just returned from Dauphine with our dauphin,” she said, smiling, “and Rene has supplied me with nothing since the death of the Queen of Navarre. Go on; you climbed to the roof of Rene’s house?”
IV. THE KING’S TALE
“Yes,” returned the king. “In a second I was there, followed by Tavannes, and then we clambered to a spot where I could see without being seen the interior of that devil’s kitchen, in which I beheld extraordinary things which inspired me to take certain measures. Did you ever notice the end of the roof of that cursed perfumer? The windows toward the street are always closed and dark, except the last, from which can be seen the hotel de Soissons and the observatory which my mother built for that astrologer, Cosmo Ruggiero. Under the roof are lodging-rooms and a gallery which have no windows except on the courtyard, so that in order to see what was going on within, it was necessary to go where no man before ever dreamed of climbing,—along the coping of a high wall which adjoins the roof of Rene’s house. The men who set up in that house the furnaces by which they distil death, reckoned on the cowardice of Parisians to save them from being overlooked; but they little thought of Charles de Valois! I crept along the coping until I came to a window, against the casing of which I was able to stand up straight with my arm round a carved monkey which ornamented it.”
“What did you see, dear heart?” said Marie, trembling.
“A den, where works of darkness were being done,” replied the king. “The first object on which my eyes lighted was a tall old man seated in a chair, with a magnificent white beard, like that of old l’Hopital, and dressed like him in a black velvet robe. On his broad forehead furrowed deep with wrinkles, on his crown of white hair, on his calm, attentive face, pale with toil and vigils, fell the concentrated rays of a lamp from which shone a vivid light. His attention was divided between an old manuscript, the parchment of which must have been centuries old, and two lighted furnaces on which heretical compounds were cooking. Neither the floor nor the ceiling of the laboratory could be seen, because of the myriads of hanging skeletons, bodies of animals, dried plants, minerals, and articles of all kinds that masked the walls; while on the floor were books, instruments for distilling, chests filled with utensils for magic and astrology; in one place I saw horoscopes and nativities, phials, wax-figures under spells, and possibly poisons. Tavannes and I were fascinated, I do assure you, by the sight of this devil’s-arsenal. Only to see it puts one under a spell, and if I had not been King of France, I might have been awed by it. ‘You can tremble for both of us,’ I whispered to Tavannes. But Tavannes’ eyes were already caught by the most mysterious feature of the scene. On a couch, near the old man, lay a girl of strangest beauty,—slender and long like a snake, white as ermine, livid as death, motionless as a statue. Perhaps it was a woman just taken from her grave, on whom they were trying experiments, for she seemed to wear a shroud; her eyes were fixed, and I could not see that she breathed. The old fellow paid no attention to her. I looked at him so intently that, after a while, his soul seemed to pass into mine. By dint of studying him, I ended by admiring the glance of his eye,—so keen, so profound, so bold, in spite of the chilling power of age. I admired his mouth, mobile with thoughts emanating from a desire which seemed to be the solitary desire of his soul, and was stamped upon every line of the face. All things in that man expressed a hope which nothing discouraged, and nothing could check. His attitude,—a quivering immovability,—those outlines so free, carved by a single passion as by the chisel of a sculptor, that IDEA concentrated on some experiment criminal or scientific, that seeking Mind in quest of Nature, thwarted by her, bending but never broken under the weight of its own audacity, which it would not renounce, threatening creation with the fire it derived from it,—ah! all that held me in a spell for the time being. I saw before me an old man who was more of a king than I, for his glance embraced the world and mastered it. I will forge swords no longer; I will soar above the abysses of existence, like that man; for his science, methinks, is true royalty! Yes, I believe in occult science.”
“You, the eldest son, the defender of the Holy Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church?” said Marie.
“I.”
“What happened to you? Go on, go on; I will fear for you, and you will have courage for me.”
“Looking at a clock, the old man rose,” continued the king. “He went out, I don’t know where; but I heard the window on the side toward the rue Saint-Honore open. Soon a brilliant light gleamed out upon the darkness; then I saw in the observatory of the hotel de Soissons another light replying to that of the old man, and by it I beheld the figure of Cosmo Ruggiero on the tower. ‘See, they communicate!’ I said to Tavannes, who from that moment thought the matter frightfully suspicious, and agreed with me that we ought to seize the two men and search, incontinently, their accursed workshop. But before proceeding to do so, we wanted to see what was going to happen. After about fifteen minutes the door opened, and Cosmo Ruggiero, my mother’s counsellor,—the bottomless pit which holds the secrets of the court, he from whom all women ask help against their husbands and lovers, and all the men ask help against their unfaithful wives and mistresses, he who traffics on the future as on the past, receiving pay with both hands, who sells horoscopes and is supposed to know all things,—that semi-devil came in, saying to the old man, ‘Good-day to you, brother.’ With him he brought a hideous old woman,—toothless, humpbacked, twisted, bent, like a Chinese image, only worse. She was wrinkled as a withered apple; her skin was saffron-colored; her chin bit her nose; her mouth was a mere line scarcely visible; her eyes were like the black spots on a dice; her forehead emitted bitterness; her hair escaped in straggling gray locks from a dirty coif; she walked with a crutch; she smelt of heresy and witchcraft. The sight of her actually frightened us, Tavannes and me! We didn’t think her a natural woman. God never made a woman so fearful as that. She sat down on a stool near the pretty snake with whom Tavannes was in love. The two brothers paid no attention to the old woman nor to the young woman, who together made a horrible couple,—on the one side life in death, on the other death in life—”
“Ah! my sweet poet!” cried Marie, kissing the king.
“‘Good-day, Cosmo,’ replied the old alchemist. And they both looked into the furnace. ‘What strength has the moon to-day?’ asked the elder. ‘But, caro Lorenzo,’ replied my mother’s astrologer, ‘the September tides are not yet over; we can learn nothing while that disorder lasts.’ ‘What says the East to-night?’ ‘It discloses in the air a creative force which returns to earth all that earth takes from it. The conclusion is that all things here below are the product of a slow transformation, but that all diversities are the forms of one and the same substance.’ ‘That is what my predecessor thought,’ replied Lorenzo. ‘This morning Bernard Palissy told me that metals were the result of compression, and that fire, which divides all, also unites all; fire has the power to compress as well as to separate. That man has genius.’ Though I was placed where it was impossible for them to see me, Cosmo said, lifting the hand of the dead girl: ‘Some one is near us! Who is it’ ‘The king,’ she answered. I at once showed myself and rapped on the window. Ruggiero opened it, and I sprang into that hellish kitchen, followed by Tavannes. ‘Yes, the king,’ I said to the two Florentines, who seemed terrified. ‘In spite of your furnaces and your books, your sciences and your sorceries, you did not foresee my visit. I am very glad to meet the famous Lorenzo Ruggiero, of whom my mother speaks mysteriously,’ I said, addressing the old man, who rose and bowed. ‘You are in this kingdom without my consent, my good man. For whom are you working here, you whose ancestors from father to son have been devoted in heart to the house of Medici? Listen to me! You dive into so many purses that by this time, if you are grasping men, you have piled up gold. You are too shrewd and cautious to cast yourselves imprudently into criminal actions; but, nevertheless, you are not here in this kitchen without a purpose. Yes, you have some secret scheme, you who are satisfied neither by gold nor power. Whom do you serve,—God or the devil? What are you concocting here? I choose to know the whole truth; I am a man who can hear it and keep silence about your enterprise, however blamable it maybe. Therefore you will tell me all, without reserve. If you deceive me you will be treated severely. Pagans or Christians, Calvinists or Mohammedans, you have my royal word that you shall leave the kingdom in safety if you have any misdemeanors to relate. I shall leave you for the rest of the night and the forenoon of to-morrow to examine your thoughts; for you are now my prisoners, and you will at once follow me to a place where you will be guarded carefully.’ Before obeying me the two Italians consulted each other by a subtle glance; then Lorenzo Ruggiero said I might be assured that no torture could wring their secrets from them; that in spite of their apparent feebleness neither pain nor human feelings had any power of them; confidence alone could make their mouth say what their mind contained. I must not, he said, be surprised if they treated as equals with a king who recognized God only as above him, for their thoughts came from God alone. They therefore claimed from me as much confidence and trust as they should give to me. But before engaging themselves to answer me without reserve they must request me to put my left hand into that of the young girl lying there, and my right into that of the old woman. Not wishing them to think I was afraid of their sorcery, I held out my hands; Lorenzo took the right, Cosmo the left, and each placed a hand in that of each woman, so that I was like Jesus Christ between the two thieves. During the time that the two witches were examining my hands Cosmo held a mirror before me and asked me to look into it; his brother, meanwhile, was talking with the two women in a language unknown to me. Neither Tavannes nor I could catch the meaning of a single sentence. Before bringing the men here we put seals on all the outlets of the laboratory, which Tavannes undertook to guard until such time as, by my express orders, Bernard Palissy, and Chapelain, my physician, could be brought there to examine thoroughly the drugs the place contained and which were evidently made there. In order to keep the Ruggieri ignorant of this search, and to prevent them from communicating with a single soul outside, I put the two devils in your lower rooms in charge of Solern’s Germans, who are better than the walls of a jail. Rene, the perfumer, is kept under guard in his own house by Solern’s equerry, and so are the two witches. Now, my sweetest, inasmuch as I hold the keys of the whole cabal,—the kings of Thune, the chiefs of sorcery, the gypsy fortune-tellers, the masters of the future, the heirs of all past soothsayers,—I intend by their means to read you, to know your heart; and, together, we will find out what is to happen to us.”
“I shall be glad if they can lay my heart bare before you,” said Marie, without the slightest fear.
“I know why sorcerers don’t frighten you,—because you are a witch yourself.”
“Will you have a peach?” she said, offering him some delicious fruit on a gold plate. “See these grapes, these pears; I went to Vincennes myself and gathered them for you.”
“Yes, I’ll eat them; there is no poison there except a philter from your hands.”
“You ought to eat a great deal of fruit, Charles; it would cool your blood, which you heat by such excitements.”
“Must I love you less?”
“Perhaps so,” she said. “If the things you love injure you—and I have feared it—I shall find strength in my heart to refuse them. I adore Charles more than I love the king; I want the man to live, released from the tortures that make him grieve.”
“Royalty has ruined me.”
“Yes,” she replied. “If you were only a poor prince, like your brother-in-law of Navarre, without a penny, possessing only a miserable little kingdom in Spain where he never sets his foot, and Bearn in France which doesn’t give him revenue enough to feed him, I should be happy, much happier than if I were really Queen of France.”
“But you are more than the Queen of France. She has King Charles for the sake of the kingdom only; royal marriages are only politics.”
Marie smiled and made a pretty little grimace as she said: “Yes, yes, I know that, sire. And my sonnet, have you written it?”
“Dearest, verses are as difficult to write as treaties of peace; but you shall have them soon. Ah, me! life is so easy here, I wish I might never leave you. However, we must send for those Italians and question them. Tete-Dieu! I thought one Ruggiero in the kingdom was one too many, but it seems there are two. Now listen, my precious; you don’t lack sense, you would make an excellent lieutenant of police, for you can penetrate things—”
“But, sire, we women suppose all we fear, and we turn what is probable into truths; that is the whole of our art in a nutshell.”
“Well, help me to sound these men. Just now all my plans depend on the result of their examination. Are they innocent? Are they guilty? My mother is behind them.”
“I hear Jacob’s voice in the next room,” said Marie.
Jacob was the favorite valet of the king, and the one who accompanied him on all his private excursions. He now came to ask if it was the king’s good pleasure to speak to the two prisoners. The king made a sign in the affirmative, and the mistress of the house gave her orders.
“Jacob,” she said, “clear the house of everybody, except the nurse and Monsieur le Dauphin d’Auvergne, who may remain. As for you, stay in the lower hall; but first, close the windows, draw the curtains of the salon, and light the candles.”
The king’s impatience was so great that while these preparations were being made he sat down upon a raised seat at the corner of a lofty fireplace of white marble in which a bright fire was blazing, placing his pretty mistress by his side. His portrait, framed in velvet, was over the mantle in place of a mirror. Charles IX. rested his elbow on the arm of the seat as if to watch the two Florentines the better under cover of his hand.
The shutters closed, and the curtains drawn, Jacob lighted the wax tapers in a tall candelabrum of chiselled silver, which he placed on the table where the Florentines were to stand,—an object, by the bye, which they would readily recognize as the work of their compatriot, Benvenuto Cellini. The richness of the room, decorated in the taste of Charles IX., now shone forth. The red-brown of the tapestries showed to better advantage than by daylight. The various articles of furniture, delicately made or carved, reflected in their ebony panels the glow of the fire and the sparkle of the lights. Gilding, soberly applied, shone here and there like eyes, brightening the brown color which prevailed in this nest of love.
Jacob presently gave two knocks, and, receiving permission, ushered in the Italians. Marie Touchet was instantly affected by the grandeur of Lorenzo’s presence, which struck all those who met him, great and small alike. The silvery whiteness of the old man’s beard was heightened by a robe of black velvet; his brow was like a marble dome. His austere face, illumined by two black eyes which cast a pointed flame, conveyed an impression of genius issuing from solitude, and all the more effective because its power had not been dulled by contact with men. It was like the steel of a blade that had never been fleshed.
As for Cosmo Ruggiero, he wore the dress of a courtier of the time. Marie made a sign to the king to assure him that he had not exaggerated his description, and to thank him for having shown her these extraordinary men.
“I would like to have seen the sorceresses, too,” she whispered in his ear.
V. THE ALCHEMISTS
Again absorbed in thought, Charles IX. made her no answer; he was idly flicking crumbs of bread from his doublet and breeches.
“Your science cannot change the heavens or make the sun to shine, messieurs,” he said at last, pointing to the curtains which the gray atmosphere of Paris darkened.
“Our science can make the skies what we like, sire,” replied Lorenzo Ruggiero. “The weather is always fine for those who work in a laboratory by the light of a furnace.”
“That is true,” said the king. “Well, father,” he added, using an expression familiar to him when addressing old men, “explain to us clearly the object of your studies.”
“What will guarantee our safety?”
“The word of a king,” replied Charles IX., whose curiosity was keenly excited by the question.
Lorenzo Ruggiero seemed to hesitate, and Charles IX. cried out: “What hinders you? We are here alone.”
“But is the King of France here?” asked Lorenzo.
Charles reflected an instant, and then answered, “No.”
The imposing old man then took a chair, and seated himself. Cosmo, astonished at this boldness, dared not imitate it.
Charles IX. remarked, with cutting sarcasm: “The king is not here, monsieur, but a lady is, whose permission it was your duty to await.”
“He whom you see before you, madame,” said the old man, “is as far above kings as kings are above their subjects; you will think me courteous when you know my powers.”
Hearing these audacious words, with Italian emphasis, Charles and Marie looked at each other, and also at Cosmo, who, with his eyes fixed on his brother, seemed to be asking himself: “How does he intend to get us out of the danger in which we are?”
In fact, there was but one person present who could understand the boldness and the art of Lorenzo Ruggiero’s first step; and that person was neither the king nor his young mistress, on whom that great seer had already flung the spell of his audacity,—it was Cosmo Ruggiero, his wily brother. Though superior himself to the ablest men at court, perhaps even to Catherine de’ Medici herself, the astrologer always recognized his brother Lorenzo as his master.
Buried in studious solitude, the old savant weighed and estimated sovereigns, most of whom were worn out by the perpetual turmoil of politics, the crises of which at this period came so suddenly and were so keen, so intense, so unexpected. He knew their ennui, their lassitude, their disgust with things about them; he knew the ardor with which they sought what seemed to them new or strange or fantastic; above all, how they loved to enter some unknown intellectual region to escape their endless struggle with men and events. To those who have exhausted statecraft, nothing remains but the realm of pure thought. Charles the Fifth proved this by his abdication. Charles IX., who wrote sonnets and forged blades to escape the exhausting cares of an age in which both throne and king were threatened, to whom royalty had brought only cares and never pleasures, was likely to be roused to a high pitch of interest by the bold denial of his power thus uttered by Lorenzo. Religious doubt was not surprising in an age when Catholicism was so violently arraigned; but the upsetting of all religion, given as the basis of a strange, mysterious art, would surely strike the king’s mind, and drag it from its present preoccupations. The essential thing for the two brothers was to make the king forget his suspicions by turning his mind to new ideas.
The Ruggieri were well aware that their stake in this game was their own life, and the glances, so humble, and yet so proud, which they exchanged with the searching, suspicious eyes of Marie and the king, were a scene in themselves.
“Sire,” said Lorenzo Ruggiero, “you have asked me for the truth; but, to show the truth in all her nakedness, I must also show you and make you sound the depths of the well from which she comes. I appeal to the gentleman and the poet to pardon words which the eldest son of the Church might take for blasphemy,—I believe that God does not concern himself with human affairs.”
Though determined to maintain a kingly composure, Charles IX. could not repress a motion of surprise.
“Without that conviction I should have no faith whatever in the miraculous work to which my life is devoted. To do that work I must have this belief; and if the finger of God guides all things, then—I am a madman. Therefore, let the king understand, once for all, that this work means a victory to be won over the present course of Nature. I am an alchemist, sire. But do not think, as the common-minded do, that I seek to make gold. The making of gold is not the object but an incident of our researches; otherwise our toil could not be called the GREAT WORK. The Great Work is something far loftier than that. If, therefore, I were forced to admit the presence of God in matter, my voice must logically command the extinction of furnaces kept burning throughout the ages. But to deny the direct action of God in the world is not to deny God; do not make that mistake. We place the Creator of all things far higher than the sphere to which religions have degraded Him. Do not accuse of atheism those who look for immortality. Like Lucifer, we are jealous of our God; and jealousy means love. Though the doctrine of which I speak is the basis of our work, all our disciples are not imbued with it. Cosmo,” said the old man, pointing to his brother, “Cosmo is devout; he pays for masses for the repose of our father’s soul, and he goes to hear them. Your mother’s astrologer believes in the divinity of Christ, in the Immaculate Conception, in Transubstantiation; he believes also in the Pope’s indulgences and in hell, and in a multitude of such things. His hour has not yet come. I have drawn his horoscope; he will live to be almost a centenarian; he will live through two more reigns, and he will see two kings of France assassinated.”
“Who are they?” asked the king.
“The last of the Valois and the first of the Bourbons,” replied Lorenzo. “But Cosmo shares my opinion. It is impossible to be an alchemist and a Catholic, to have faith in the despotism of man over matter, and also in the sovereignty of the divine.”
“Cosmo to die a centenarian!” exclaimed the king, with his terrible frown of the eyebrows.
“Yes, sire,” replied Lorenzo, with authority; “and he will die peaceably in his bed.”
“If you have power to foresee the moment of your death, why are you ignorant of the outcome of your researches?” asked the king.
Charles IX. smiled as he said this, looking triumphantly at Marie Touchet. The brothers exchanged a rapid glance of satisfaction.
“He begins to be interested,” thought they. “We are saved!”
“Our prognostics depend on the immediate relations which exist at the time between man and Nature; but our purpose itself is to change those relations entirely,” replied Lorenzo.
The king was thoughtful.
“But, if you are certain of dying you are certain of defeat,” he said, at last.
“Like our predecessors,” replied Lorenzo, raising his hand and letting it fall again with an emphatic and solemn gesture, which presented visibly the grandeur of his thought. “But your mind has bounded to the confines of the matter, sire; we must return upon our steps. If you do not know the ground on which our edifice is built, you may well think it doomed to crumble with our lives, and so judge the Science cultivated from century to century by the greatest among men, as the common herd judge of it.”
The king made a sign of assent.
“I think,” continued Lorenzo, “that this earth belongs to man; he is the master of it, and he can appropriate to his use all forces and all substances. Man is not a creation issuing directly from the hand of God; but the development of a principle sown broadcast into the infinite of ether, from which millions of creatures are produced,—differing beings in different worlds, because the conditions surrounding life are varied. Yes, sire, the subtle element which we call life takes its rise beyond the visible worlds; creation divides that principle according to the centres into which it flows; and all beings, even the lowest, share it, taking so much as they can take of it at their own risk and peril. It is for them to protect themselves from death,—the whole purpose of alchemy lies there, sire. If man, the most perfect animal on this globe, bore within himself a portion of the divine, he would not die; but he does die. To solve this difficulty, Socrates and his school invented the Soul. I, the successor of so many great and unknown kings, the rulers of this science, I stand for the ancient theories, not the new. I believe in the transformations of matter which I see, and not in the possible eternity of a soul which I do not see. I do not recognize that world of the soul. If such a world existed, the substances whose magnificent conjunction produced your body, and are so dazzling in that of Madame, would not resolve themselves after your death each into its own element, water to water, fire to fire, metal to metal, just as the elements of my coal, when burned, return to their primitive molecules. If you believe that a certain part of us survives, we do not survive; for all that makes our actual being perishes. Now, it is this actual being that I am striving to continue beyond the limit assigned to life; it is our present transformation to which I wish to give a greater duration. Why! the trees live for centuries, but man lives only years, though the former are passive, the others active; the first motionless and speechless, the others gifted with language and motion. No created thing should be superior in this world to man, either in power or in duration. Already we are widening our perceptions, for we look into the stars; therefore we ought to be able to lengthen the duration of our lives. I place life before power. What good is power if life escapes us? A wise man should have no other purpose than to seek, not whether he has some other life within him, but the secret springs of his actual form, in order that he may prolong its existence at his will. That is the desire which has whitened my hair; but I walk boldly in the darkness, marshalling to the search all those great intellects that share my faith. Life will some day be ours,—ours to control.”
“Ah! but how?” cried the king, rising hastily.
“The first condition of our faith being that the earth belongs to man, you must grant me that point,” said Lorenzo.
“So be it!” said Charles de Valois, already under the spell.
“Then, sire, if we take God out of this world, what remains? Man. Let us therefore examine our domain. The material world is composed of elements; these elements are themselves principles; these principles resolve themselves into an ultimate principle, endowed with motion. The number THREE is the formula of creation: Matter, Motion, Product.”
“Stop!” cried the king, “what proof is there of this?”
“Do you not see the effects?” replied Lorenzo. “We have tried in our crucibles the acorn which produces the oak, and the embryo from which grows a man; from this tiny substance results a single principle, to which some force, some movement must be given. Since there is no overruling creator, this principle must give to itself the outward forms which constitute our world—for this phenomenon of life is the same everywhere. Yes, for metals as for human beings, for plants as for men, life begins in an imperceptible embryo which develops itself. A primitive principle exists; let us seize it at the point where it begins to act upon itself, where it is a unit, where it is a principle before taking definite form, a cause before being an effect; we must see it single, without form, susceptible of clothing itself with all the outward forms we shall see it take. When we are face to face with this atomic particle, when we shall have caught its movement at the very instant of motion, then we shall know the law; thenceforth we are the masters of life, masters who can impose upon that principle the form we choose,—with gold to win the world, and the power to make for ourselves centuries of life in which to enjoy it! That is what my people and I are seeking. All our strength, all our thoughts are strained in that direction; nothing distracts us from it. One hour wasted on any other passion is a theft committed against our true grandeur. Just as you have never found your hounds relinquishing the hunted animal or failing to be in at the death, so I have never seen one of my patient disciples diverted from this great quest by the love of woman or a selfish thought. If an adept seeks power and wealth, the desire is instigated by our needs; he grasps treasure as a thirsty dog laps water while he swims a stream, because his crucibles are in need of a diamond to melt or an ingot of gold to reduce to powder. To each his own work. One seeks the secret of vegetable nature; he watches the slow life of plants; he notes the parity of motion among all the species, and the parity of their nutrition; he finds everywhere the need of sun and air and water, to fecundate and nourish them. Another scrutinizes the blood of animals. A third studies the laws of universal motion and its connection with celestial revolutions. Nearly all are eager to struggle with the intractable nature of metal, for while we find many principles in other things, we find all metals like unto themselves in every particular. Hence a common error as to our work. Behold these patient, indefatigable athletes, ever vanquished, yet ever returning to the combat! Humanity, sire, is behind us, as the huntsman is behind your hounds. She cries to us: ‘Make haste! neglect nothing! sacrifice all, even a man, ye who sacrifice yourselves! Hasten! hasten! Beat down the arms of DEATH, mine enemy!’ Yes, sire, we are inspired by a hope which involves the happiness of all coming generations. We have buried many men—and what men!—dying of this Search. Setting foot in this career we cannot work for ourselves; we may die without discovering the Secret; and our death is that of those who do not believe in another life; it is this life that we have sought, and failed to perpetuate. We are glorious martyrs; we have the welfare of the race at heart; we have failed but we live again in our successors. As we go through this existence we discover secrets with which we endow the liberal and the mechanical arts. From our furnaces gleam lights which illumine industrial enterprises, and perfect them. Gunpowder issued from our alembics; nay, we have mastered the lightning. In our persistent vigils lie political revolutions.”
“Can this be true?” cried the king, springing once more from his chair.
“Why not?” said the grand-master of the new Templars. “Tradidit mundum disputationibus! God has given us the earth. Hear this once more: man is master here below; matter is his; all forces, all means are at his disposal. Who created us? Motion. What power maintains life in us? Motion. Why cannot science seize the secret of that motion? Nothing is lost here below; nothing escapes from our planet to go elsewhere,—otherwise the stars would stumble over each other; the waters of the deluge are still with us in their principle, and not a drop is lost. Around us, above us, beneath us, are to be found the elements from which have come innumerable hosts of men who have crowded the earth before and since the deluge. What is the secret of our struggle? To discover the force that disunites, and then, then we shall discover that which binds. We are the product of a visible manufacture. When the waters covered the globe men issued from them who found the elements of their life in the crust of the earth, in the air, and in the nourishment derived from them. Earth and air possess, therefore, the principle of human transformations; those transformations take place under our eyes, by means of that which is also under our eyes. We are able, therefore, to discover that secret,—not limiting the effort of the search to one man or to one age, but devoting humanity in its duration to it. We are engaged, hand to hand, in a struggle with Matter, into whose secret, I, the grand-master of our order, seek to penetrate. Christophe Columbus gave a world to the King of Spain; I seek an ever-living people for the King of France. Standing on the confines which separate us from a knowledge of material things, a patient observer of atoms, I destroy forms, I dissolve the bonds of combinations; I imitate death that I may learn how to imitate life. I strike incessantly at the door of creation, and I shall continue so to strike until the day of my death. When I am dead the knocker will pass into other hands equally persistent with those of the mighty men who handed it to me. Fabulous and uncomprehended beings, like Prometheus, Ixion, Adonis, Pan, and others, who have entered into the religious beliefs of all countries and all ages, prove to the world that the hopes we now embody were born with the human races. Chaldea, India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, the Moors, have transmitted from one to another Magic, the highest of all the occult sciences, which holds within it, as a precious deposit the fruits of the studies of each generation. In it lay the tie that bound the grand and majestic institution of the Templars. Sire, when one of your predecessors burned the Templars, he burned men only,—their Secret lived. The reconstruction of the Temple is a vow of an unknown nation, a race of daring seekers, whose faces are turned to the Orient of life,—all brothers, all inseparable, all united by one idea, and stamped with the mark of toil. I am the sovereign leader of that people, sovereign by election, not by birth. I guide them onward to a knowledge of the essence of life. Grand-master, Red-Cross-bearers, companions, adepts, we forever follow the imperceptible molecule which still escapes our eyes. But soon we shall make ourselves eyes more powerful than those which Nature has given us; we shall attain to a sight of the primitive atom, the corpuscular element so persistently sought by the wise and learned of all ages who have preceded us in the glorious search. Sire, when a man is astride of that abyss, when he commands bold divers like my disciples, all other human interests are as nothing. Therefore we are not dangerous. Religious disputes and political struggles are far away from us; we have passed beyond and above them. No man takes others by the throat when his whole strength is given to a struggle with Nature. Besides, in our science results are perceivable; we can measure effects and predict them; whereas all things are uncertain and vacillating in the struggles of men and their selfish interests. We decompose the diamond in our crucibles, and we shall make diamonds, we shall make gold! We shall impel vessels (as they have at Barcelona) with fire and a little water! We test the wind, and we shall make wind; we shall make light; we shall renew the face of empires with new industries! But we shall never debase ourselves to mount a throne to be crucified by the peoples!”
In spite of his strong determination not to be taken in by Italian wiles, the king, together with his gentle mistress, was already caught and snared by the ambiguous phrases and doublings of this pompous and humbugging loquacity. The eyes of the two lovers showed how their minds were dazzled by the mysterious riches of power thus displayed; they saw, as it were, a series of subterranean caverns filled with gnomes at their toil. The impatience of their curiosity put to flight all suspicion.
“But,” cried the king, “if this be so, you are great statesmen who can enlighten us.”
“No, sire,” said Lorenzo, naively.
“Why not?” asked the king.
“Sire, it is not given to any man to foresee what will happen when thousands of men are gathered together. We can tell what one man will do, how long he will live, whether he will be happy or unhappy; but we cannot tell what a collection of wills may do; and to calculate the oscillations of their selfish interests is more difficult still, for interests are men plus things. We can, in solitude, see the future as a whole, and that is all. The Protestantism that now torments you will be destroyed in turn by its material consequences, which will turn to theories in due time. Europe is at the present moment getting the better of religion; to-morrow it will attack royalty.”
“Then the Saint-Bartholomew was a great conception?”
“Yes, sire; for if the people triumph it will have a Saint-Bartholomew of its own. When religion and royalty are destroyed the people will attack the nobles; after the nobles, the rich. When Europe has become a mere troop of men without consistence or stability, because without leaders, it will fall a prey to brutal conquerors. Twenty times already has the world seen that sight, and Europe is now preparing to renew it. Ideas consume the ages as passions consume men. When man is cured, humanity may possibly cure itself. Science is the essence of humanity, and we are its pontiffs; whoso concerns himself about the essence cares little about the individual life.”
“To what have you attained, so far?” asked the king.
“We advance slowly; but we lose nothing that we have won.”
“Then you are the king of sorcerers?” retorted the king, piqued at being of no account in the presence of this man.
The majestic grand-master of the Rosicrucians cast a look on Charles IX. which withered him.
“You are the king of men,” he said; “I am the king of ideas. If we were sorcerers, you would already have burned us. We have had our martyrs.”
“But by what means are you able to cast nativities?” persisted the king. “How did you know that the man who came to your window last night was King of France? What power authorized one of you to tell my mother the fate of her three sons? Can you, grand-master of an art which claims to mould the world, can you tell me what my mother is planning at this moment?”
“Yes, sire.”
This answer was given before Cosmo could pull his brother’s robe to enjoin silence.
“Do you know why my brother, the King of Poland, has returned?”
“Yes, sire.”
“Why?”
“To take your place.”
“Our most cruel enemies are our nearest in blood!” exclaimed the king, violently, rising and walking about the room with hasty steps. “Kings have neither brothers, nor sons, nor mothers. Coligny was right; my murderers are not among the Huguenots, but in the Louvre. You are either imposters or regicides!—Jacob, call Solern.”
“Sire,” said Marie Touchet, “the Ruggieri have your word as a gentleman. You wanted to taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge; do not complain of its bitterness.”
The king smiled, with an expression of bitter self-contempt; he thought his material royalty petty in presence of the august intellectual royalty of Lorenzo Ruggiero. Charles IX. knew that he could scarcely govern France, but this grand-master of Rosicrucians ruled a submissive and intelligent world.
“Answer me truthfully; I pledge my word as a gentleman that your answer, in case it confesses dreadful crimes, shall be as if it were never uttered,” resumed the king. “Do you deal with poisons?”
“To discover that which gives life, we must also have full knowledge of that which kills.”
“Do you possess the secret of many poisons?”
“Yes, sire,—in theory, but not in practice. We understand all poisons, but do not use them.”
“Has my mother asked you for any?” said the king, breathlessly.
“Sire,” replied Lorenzo, “Queen Catherine is too able a woman to employ such means. She knows that the sovereign who poisons dies by poison. The Borgias, also Bianca Capello, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, are noted examples of the dangers of that miserable resource. All things are known at courts; there can be no concealment. It may be possible to kill a poor devil—and what is the good of that?—but to aim at great men cannot be done secretly. Who shot Coligny? It could only be you, or the queen-mother, or the Guises. Not a soul is doubtful of that. Believe me, poison cannot be twice used with impunity in statecraft. Princes have successors. As for other men, if, like Luther, they are sovereigns through the power of ideas, their doctrines are not killed by killing them. The queen is from Florence; she knows that poison should never be used except as a weapon of personal revenge. My brother, who has not been parted from her since her arrival in France, knows the grief that Madame Diane caused your mother. But she never thought of poisoning her, though she might easily have done so. What could your father have said? Never had a woman a better right to do it; and she could have done it with impunity; but Madame de Valentinois still lives.”
“But what of those waxen images?” asked the king.
“Sire,” said Cosmo, “these things are so absolutely harmless that we lend ourselves to the practice to satisfy blind passions, just as physicians give bread pills to imaginary invalids. A disappointed woman fancies that by stabbing the heart of a wax-figure she has brought misfortunes upon the head of the man who has been unfaithful to her. What harm in that? Besides, it is our revenue.”
“The Pope sells indulgences,” said Lorenzo Ruggiero, smiling.
“Has my mother practised these spells with waxen images?”
“What good would such harmless means be to one who has the actual power to do all things?”
“Has Queen Catherine the power to save you at this moment?” inquired the king, in a threatening manner.
“Sire, we are not in any danger,” replied Lorenzo, tranquilly. “I knew before I came into this house that I should leave it safely, just as I know that the king will be evilly disposed to my brother Cosmo a few weeks hence. My brother may run some danger then, but he will escape it. If the king reigns by the sword, he also reigns by justice,” added the old man, alluding to the famous motto on a medal struck for Charles IX.
“You know all, and you know that I shall die soon, which is very well,” said the king, hiding his anger under nervous impatience; “but how will my brother die,—he whom you say is to be Henri III.?”