CHAPTER VIII.
The existence of a monarch, without his lot be cast amidst very halcyon days indeed, is much like the life of a seaman, borne up upon uncertain and turbulent waves. Exposed to a thousand storms, from which a peasant's cot would be sufficient shelter, his whole being is spent in watching for the tempest, and his whole course is at the mercy of the wind.
It was with bitterness of heart, and agony of spirit, that Philip Augustus saw gathering on the political horizon around many a dark cloud that threatened him with a renewal of all those fatigues, anxieties, and pains, from which he had hoped, at least, for some short respite. He saw it with a wrung and burning bosom, but he saw it without dismay; for, strong in the resources of a mind above his age, he resolved to wreak great and signal vengeance on the heads of those who should trouble his repose; and, knowing that the sorrow must come, he prepared, as ever with him, to make his revenge a handmaid to his policy, and, by the punishment of his rebellious vassals, not only to augment his own domains as a feudal sovereign, but to extend the general force and prerogative of the crown, and form a large basis of power on which his successors might build a fabric of much greatness.
However clearly he might see the approach of danger, and however vigorously he might prepare to repel it, Philip was not of that frame of mind which suffers remote evil long to interfere with present enjoyment. For a short space he contemplated them painfully, though firmly; but soon the pain was forgotten, and like a veteran soldier who knows he may be attacked during the night, and sleeps with his arms beside him, but still sleeps tranquilly, Philip saw the murmured threatening of his greater feudatories, and took every means of preparation against what he clearly perceived would follow: but this once done, he gave himself up to pleasures and amusements; seeming anxious to crowd into the short space of tranquillity that was left him, all the gaieties and enjoyments which might otherwise have been scattered through many years of peace. Fêtes, and pageants, and tournaments succeeded each other rapidly; and Philip of France, with his fair queen, seemed to look upon earth as a garden of smiles, and life as a long chain of unbroken delights.
Yet, even in his pleasures, Philip was politic. He had returned to Paris, though the summer heat had now completely set in, and June was far advanced; and sitting in the old palace on the island, he was placed near one of the windows, through which poured the free air of the river, while he arranged with his beloved Agnes the ceremonies of a banquet. Philip was famous for his taste in every sort of pageant; and now he was giving directions himself to various attendants who stood round, repeating with the most scrupulous exactness every particular of his commands, as if the very safety of his kingdom had depended on their correct execution.
While thus employed, his minister Guerin, now elected bishop of Senlis, though he still, as I have said, retained the garments of the knights of St. John, entered the apartment, and stood by the side of the king, while he gave his last orders, and sent the attendants away.
"Another banquet, sire!" said the bishop, with that freedom of speech which in those days was admitted between king and subject; and speaking in the grave and melancholy tone which converts an observation into a reproach.
"Ay, good brother!" replied Philip, looking up smilingly; "another banquet in the great salle du palais; and on the tenth of July a tournament at Champeaux. Sweet Agnes! laugh at his grave face! Wouldest thou not say, dear lady mine, that I spake to the good bishop of a defeat and a funeral, instead of a feast and a passe d'armes?"
"The defeat of your finances, sire, and the burial of your treasury," replied Guerin coldly.
"I have other finances that you know not of, bishop," replied the king, still keeping his good humour. "Ay, and a private treasury too, where gold will not be wanting."
"Indeed, my liege!" replied the bishop. "May I crave where?" Philip touched the hilt of his sword. "Here is an unfailing measure of finance!" said he; "and as for my treasury, 'tis in the purses of revolted barons, Guerin!"
"If you make use of that treasury, sire," answered the bishop, "for the good of your state, and the welfare of your people, 'tis indeed one that may serve you well; but if you spend it----." The bishop paused, as if afraid of proceeding, and Philip took up the word.
"If I spend it, you would say, in feasting and revelry," said the king, "I shall make the people murmur, and my best friends quit me. But," continued he in a gayer tone, "let us quit all sad thoughts, and talk of the feast,--the gay and splendid feast,--where you shall smile, Guerin, and make the guests believe you the gentlest counsellor that ever king was blest withal. Nay, I will have it so, by my faith! As to the guests, they are all choice and gay companions, whom I have chosen for their merriment. Thou shalt laugh heartily when placed between Philip of Champagne, late my sworn enemy, but who now becomes my good friend and humble vassal, and brings his nephew and ward, the young Thibalt, count of all Champagne, to grace his suzerain's feast--when placed between him, I say, and Pierre de Courtenay, whose allegiance is not very sure, and whose brother, the Count of Namur, is in plain rebellion. There shalt thou see also Bartholemi de Roye, and the Count de Perche, both somewhat doubtful in their love to Philip, but who, before that feast is over, shall be his humblest creatures. Fie, fie, Guerin!" he added, in a more reproachful tone, "will you never think that I have a deeper motive for my actions than lies upon the surface? As to the tournament, too, think you I do not propose to try men's hearts as well as their corslets, and see if their loyalty hold as firm a seat as they do themselves?"
"I never doubt, sire," replied the bishop, "that you have good and sufficient motives for all your actions; but, this morning, a sad account has been laid before me of the royal domains; and when I came to hear of banquets and tournaments, it pained me to think what you, sire, would feel, when you saw the clear statement."
"How so?" cried Philip Augustus. "It cannot be so very bad!--Let me see it, Guerin!--let me see it. 'Tis best to front such things at once.--Let me see it, man, I say!"
"I have it not here, sire," answered the bishop; "but I will send it by the clerk who drew it up; and who can give you farther accounts, should it be necessary."
"Quick then!" cried the king,--"quick, good bishop!" And walking up and down the hall, with an unquiet and somewhat irritated air, he repeated, "It cannot be so bad! The last time I made the calculation, 'twas somewhere near a hundred thousand livres. Bad enough, in truth--but I have known that long! Now, sir clerk," he continued, as a secretary entered, "read me the account, if it be as I see on wax. Was no parchment to be had, that you must draw the charter on wax[[10]] to blind me? Read, read!"
The king spoke in the hasty manner of one whose brighter hopes and wishes--for Imagination is always a great helpmate of Ambition, and as well as its first prompter, is its indefatigable ally--in the manner of one whose brighter hopes and wishes had been cut across by cold realities; and the clerk replied in the dull and snuffling tone peculiar to clerks, and monstrously irritating to every hasty man.
"Accounts of the Prévôt de Soissons, sire," said the clerk: "Receipts: six hundred livres, seven sous, two deniers. Expenses: eighteen livres, to arm three cross-bowmen; twenty livres to the holy clerk; seventy livres for clothing and arming twenty serjeants on foot. Accounts of the sénéchal of Pontoise," continued the clerk, in the same slow and solemn manner: "Receipts: five hundred livres, Parisis. Expenses: thirty-three livres, for wax-tapers for the church of the blessed St. Millon; twenty-eight sous for the carriage to Paris of the two living lions, now at the kennel of the wolf-hounds, without the walls; twenty livres, spent for the robes for four judges; and baskets for twenty eels--for seventeen young wolves."
"Death to my soul!" cried the impatient king: "make an end, man!--come to the sum total! How much remains?"
"Two hundred livres, six sous, one denier," replied the clerk.
"Villain, you lie!" cried the enraged monarch, striking him with his clenched fist, and snatching the tablets from his hand. "What! am I a beggar? 'Tis false, by the light of heaven!--It cannot be," he added, as his eye ran over the sad statement of his exhausted finances,--"it cannot surely be! Go, fellow! bid the bishop of Senlis come hither! I am sorry that I struck thee. Forget it! Go, bid Guerin hither,--quick!"
While this was passing, Agnes de Meranie had turned to one of the windows, and was gazing out upon the river and the view beyond. She would fain have made her escape from the hall, when first she found the serious nature of the business that had arisen out of the preparations for the fête; but Philip stood between her and either of the doors, both while he was speaking with his minister, and while he was receiving the statement from the clerk; and Agnes did not choose, by crossing him, to call his attention from his graver occupation. As soon, however, as the clerk was gone, Philip's eye fell upon her, as she leaned against the casement, with her slight figure bending in as graceful an attitude as the Pentelican marble was ever taught to show; and there was something in her very presence reproved the monarch for the unworthy passion into which he had been betrayed. When a man loves deeply, he would fain be a god in the eyes of the woman that he loves, lest the worship that he shows her should lessen him in his own. Philip was mortified that she had been present; and lest any thing equally mortal should escape him while speaking with his minister, he approached and took her hand.
"Agnes," said he, "I have forgot myself; but this tablet has crossed me sadly," pointing to the statement. "I shall be no longer able to give festal orders. Go you, sweet! and, in the palace gardens, bid your maidens strip all the fairest flowers to deck the tables and the hall----"
"They shall spare enough for one crown, at least," replied Agnes, "to hang on my royal Philip's casque on the tournament-day. But I will speed, and arrange the flowers myself." Thus saying, she turned away, with a gay smile, as if nothing had ruffled the current of the time; and left the monarch expecting thoughtfully the bishop of Senlis's return.
The minister did not make the monarch wait; but he found Philip Augustus in a very different mood from that in which he left him.
"Guerin," said the king, with a grave and careful air, "you have been my physician, and a wise one. The cup you have given me is bitter, but 'tis wholesome; and I have drunk it to the dregs."
"It is ever with the most profound sorrow," said the hospitaller, with that tone of simple persuasive gravity that carries conviction of its sincerity along with it, "that I steal one from the few scanty hours of tranquillity that are allotted to you, sire, in this life. Would it were compatible with your honour and your kingdom's welfare, that I should bear all the more burthensome part of the task which royalty imposes, and that you, sire, should know but its sweets! But that cannot be; and I am often obliged, as you say, to offer my sovereign a bitter cup that willingly I would have drunk myself."
"I believe you, good friend--from my soul, I believe you!" said the king. "I have ever observed in you my brother, a self-denying zeal, which is rare in this corrupted age; or used but as the means of ambition. Raise not your glance as if you thought I suspected you. Guerin, I do not! I have watched you well; and had I seen your fingers itch to close upon the staff of power,--had you but stretched out your hand towards it,--had you sought to have left me in idle ignorance of my affairs,--ay! or even sought to weary me of them with eternal reiteration, you never should have seen the secrets of my heart, as now you shall--I would have used you Guerin, as an instrument, but you never would have been my friend. Do you understand me, ha?
"I do, royal sir," replied the knight, "and God help me, as my wish has ever been only to serve you truly!"
"Mark me, then, Guerin!" continued the king. "This banquet must go forward--the tournament also--ay, and perhaps another. Not because I love to feast my eyes with the grandeur of a king--no, Guerin,--but because I would be a king indeed! I have often asked myself," proceeded the monarch, speaking slowly, and, as was sometimes his wont, laying the finger of his right-hand on the sleeve of the hospitaller's robe--"I have often asked myself whether a king would never fill the throne of France, who should find time and occasion fitting to carry royalty to that grand height where it was placed by Charlemagne. Do not start! I propose not--I hope not--to be the man; but I will pave the way, tread it who will hereafter. I speak not of acting Charlemagne with this before my eyes;" and he laid his hand upon the tablets, which showed the state of his finances, "But still I may do much--nay, I have done much."
Philip paused, and thought for a moment, seeming to recall, one by one, the great steps he had taken to change the character of the feudal system; then raising his eyes, he continued:--"When the sceptre fell into my grasp, I found that it was little more dignified than a jester's bauble. France was not a kingdom,--'twas a republic of nobles, of which the king could hardly be said to be the chief. He had but one prerogative left,--that of demanding homage from his vassals; and even that homage he was obliged to render himself to his own vassals, for feofs held in their mouvances. At that abuse was aimed my first blow."
"I remember it well, sire," replied the hospitaller, "and a great and glorious blow it was; for, by that simple declaration, that the king could not and ought not to be vassal to any man, and that any feof returning to the crown by what means soever, was no longer a feof, but became domaine of the crown, you re-established at once the distinction between the king and his great feudatories."
"'Twas but a step," replied the monarch; "the next was, Guerin, to declare that all questions of feudal right were referable to our court of peers. The proud Suzerains thought that there they would be their own judges; but they found that I was there the king. But, to be short,--Guerin I have followed willingly the steps that circumstances imposed upon my father. I have freed the commons,--I have raised the clergy,--I have subjected my vassals to my court. So have I broken the feudal hierarchy;--so have I reduced the power of my greater feudatories; and so have I won both their fear and their hatred. It is against that I must guard. The lesser barons love me--the clergy--the burghers;--but that is not enough; I must have one or two of the sovereigns. Then let the rest revolt if they dare! By the Lord that liveth! if they do, I will leave the domaines of the crown to my son, tenfold multiplied from what I found them. But I must have one or two of my princes. Philip of Champagne is one on whom words and honours work more than real benefits. He must be feasted and set on my right-hand. Pierre de Courtney is one whose heart and soul is on chivalry; and he must be won by tournaments and lance-breakings. Many, many others are alike; and while I crush the wasps in my gauntlet, Guerin, I must not fail to spread out some honey to catch the flies." So spake Philip Augustus, with feelings undoubtedly composed of that grand selfishness called ambition; but, at the same time, with those superior powers, both of conception and execution that not only rose above the age, but carried the age along with him.
"I am not one, sire," said the minister, "to deem that great enterprises may not be accomplished with small means; but, in the present penury of the royal treasury, I know not what is to be done. I will see, however, what may be effected amongst your good burghesses of Paris."
"Do so, good bishop!" replied the king, "and in the mean time I will ride forth to the hermit of Vincennes. He is one of those men, Guerin, of whom earth bears so few, who have new thoughts. He seems to have cast off all old ideas and feelings, when he threw from him the corslet and the shield, and took the frock and sandal. Perhaps he may aid us. But, ere I go, I must take good order that every point of ceremony be observed in our banquet: I would not, for one half France, that Philip of Champagne should see a fault or a flaw! I know him well; and he must be my own, if but to oppose to Ferrand of Flanders, who is the falsest vassal that ever king had!"
"I trust that the hermit may suggest the means!" replied Guerin, "and I doubt little that he will; but I beseech you, sire, not to let your blow fall on the heads of the Jews again. The hermit's advice was wise, to punish them for their crimes, and at the same time to enrich the crown of France; but having now returned by your royal permission, and having ever since behaved well and faithfully, they should be assured of protection."
"Fear not, fear not!" replied the king; "they are as safe as my honour can make them." So saying, he turned to prepare for the expedition he proposed.
Strange state of society! when one of the greatest monarchs that France ever possessed was indebted, on many occasions, for the re-establishment of his finances, and for some of his best measures of policy, to an old man living in solitude and abstraction, removed from the scenes and people over whose fate he exercised so extraordinary a control, and evincing, on every occasion, his disinclination to mingle with the affairs of the world.[[11]]
But it is time we should speak more fully of a person whose history and influence on the people amongst whom he lived, strongly developes the character of the age.