One of those chances which fate deals out only to those marked out by destiny gave me the subject of Henri III. by just such another accident as had led me to Christine. The only cupboard I had in my office—the office, it will be remembered, that I ardently coveted—I had to share with Féresse: I put my paper in it, he put his bottles there. One day, whether by inadvertence or to play a trick on me, or to show his superior rights over mine, he took away the key of this cupboard when going an errand. During his absence I used up all the paper lying about in my office, and, as I still had three or four reports to copy out, I went to get some more paper. A volume of Anquetil lay open, on a desk: I mechanically cast my eyes on it, and at page 95 I read the following lines:—
"Although attached to the king, and by rank an enemy of the Duc de Guise, Saint-Mégrin was none the less in love with the duchess, Catherine de Clèves, and it was said that she returned his love. The author of this anecdote gives us to understand that the husband was indifferent on the subject of his wife's actual or supposed infidelity. He opposed the entreaties of his relations that he should avenge himself, and only punished the indiscretion or the crime of the duchess by a joke. One day he entered her room early in the morning, holding a potion in one hand and a dagger in the other; after rudely awaking his wife and reproaching her, he said in tones of fury—
"Decide, madame, whether to die by dagger or poison!'
"In vain did she ask his forgiveness; he compelled her to make her choice. She drank the concoction and flung herself on her knees, recommending her soul to God and expecting nothing short of death. She spent an hour in fear; and then the duke came back with a serene countenance, and told her that what she had taken for poison was an excellent soup. Doubtless this lesson made her more circumspect afterwards."
I gained access to the Biographie; the Biographie referred me to the Mémoires de l'Estoile. I did not know what the Mémoires de l'Estoile were; I asked M. Villenave, who lent me them. The Mémoires de l'Estoile, volume i. page 35, contain these lines—:
"Saint-Mégrin, a young gentleman of Bordeaux, handsome, wealthy and good-hearted, was one of the curled darlings kept by the king. One night when coming away, at eleven o'clock, from the Louvre, where the king was, in the rue du Louvre, near the rue Saint-Honoré, he was set upon by some twenty to thirty unknown men, with pistols, swords and cutlasses, who left him on the pavement for dead; he died, indeed, the next day, and it was a wonder how he could have lived so long, for he had received thirty-four or thirty-five mortal wounds. The king ordered his dead body to be carried to Boisy, near the Bastille, where Quélus, his companion, had died, and buried at Saint-Paul with as much pomp and solemnity as his companions Maugiron and Quélus had been buried there before him. No inquiries were made concerning the assassination, His Majesty having been warned that it had been done through the instrumentality of the Duc de Guise, because of the reports of intimacy between the young mignon and the duke's wife, and that the blow had been dealt by one who bore the beard and features of his brother the Duc du Maine. When the King of Navarre heard the news, he said—
"'I am glad to hear that my cousin the Duc de Guise has not suffered himself to be cuckolded by a mignon de couchette such as Saint-Mégrin; I wish all the other gilded youths about court who hang round the princesses ogling them and making love to them could receive the same treatment'...."
Farther on, in the Mémoires de l'Estoile, came this passage, concerning the death of Bussy d'Amboise:—
"On Wednesday, 19 August, Bussy d'Amboise, first gentle-man-in-waiting of M. le Duc, Governor of Anjou, Abbé de Bourgueil, who assumed very high and mighty airs, because of the partiality of his master, and who had done all kinds of evil deeds and robbed the countries of Anjou and Maine, was slain by the Seigneur de Monsoreau, together with the wicked lieutenant of Saumur, in a house belonging to the said Seigneur de Monsoreau, where, at night, the said lieutenant, who was his love messenger, had brought him to sleep that night with the wife of the said Monsoreau, to whom Bussy had for a long time made love; with whom the said lady had purposely made this false assignation in order to have him surprised by her husband, Monsoreau; when he appeared towards midnight, he was immediately surrounded and attacked by ten or a dozen men who accompanied the Seigneur de Monsoreau, and who rushed upon him in fury to massacre him: this gentleman, seeing himself so contemptibly betrayed, and that he was alone (as on such expeditions people usually prefer to be), did not, however, cease to defend himself to the last, proving, as he had often said, that fear had never found room in his heart;—for so long as an inch of sword remained in his hand, he fought on till only the handle was left him, and then he made use of tables, forms, chairs and stools, with which he disabled three or four of his enemies, until, overpowered by numbers and bereft of all arms and means of defending himself, he was beaten down, close to a window, from which he had tried to fling himself in the hope of escape. Such was the end of Captain Bussy...."
It was from these two paragraphs relating to Bussy and to Saint-Mégrin that I built up my drama. M. Villenave told me that I should find details as to manners in two valuable books entitled the Confession de Sancy, and the Ile des Hermaphrodites.
In connection with Henri III. it is easy to see that the dramatic gift is born with certain people. I was twenty-five years of age, Henri III. was my second serious piece of work: let any conscientious critic take it and submit it to the most rigorous examination and he will find plenty to blame in the style, but nothing in the plot. I have written fifty dramas since Henri III., but not one of them is more cleverly constructed.