Anne of Austria, the queen consort, solicited by the Duke of Épernon and the principal nobility of the court, to intercede with the king, feared the cardinal’s misinterpretation, and applied to him in the first instance. He answered that he did not doubt the king’s granting any favour she desired, but that she herself should also consider, that the annoyance she was about to cause him would injure his health, which, since his malady at Lyons, he had never recovered; and Anne, seeing by the cardinal’s manner, that, by saving the captive she risked his anger, determined rather to let him die. The people assembled under the king’s windows, and their cry reached his ears: he asked its import, it was “Mercy for Montmorency!” The king merely permitted him to dispose of his property, notwithstanding the confiscation about to be pronounced, and the duke occupied himself with the payment of his debts and the care of his vassals. He wrote an affectionate farewell to his unhappy wife, who was not in a state to read it, and sent to Richelieu, who had once wished to possess it, a fine picture of St. Sebastian, as his dying gift.

The last night of his existence he slept during six hours, tranquilly, as if the coming events of the next day were unknown to him, and prayed fervently when he woke. The hour arrived for his being conducted to the palace, he received the Count of Charlus, who came to seek him, cheerfully as ever, but refused to allow his surgeon to dress his wounds, saying they would soon be cured. He asked for something to eat, and then got into the carriage, which was open. The Counts of Charlus and Launay followed, and four companies of soldiers escorted him; the rest of the army lined the streets he passed through, or filled the squares of the town. As he stood with mild demeanour and bareheaded before his judges, his noble presence was that of the governor, not the criminal. The judges seeing him they loved, and were perforce about to doom, looked down to hide the tears which rose in spite of them, or buried their faces in their handkerchiefs. He was desired to sit on the criminal’s stool, which however, contrary to custom, had been raised to the level of the judges’ seats, and, contrary to custom also, he was left unbound. He was painfully affected while replying to the question, “Whether he had children by his marriage,” for he mourned the want of an heir.

The trial over, he was conducted from the Palace of Justice back to the Hôtel de Ville, where he recommenced his devotions, and these ended, conversed with his friends and wrote some private instructions for his family; and the Count de Charlus, his face covered with tears, asking in the king’s name for his order of the Holy Ghost and bâton of marshal, he delivered them calmly, saying, “it was true that one crime had cancelled the services which obtained them;” and then took some slight refreshment. He next repaired to the chapel. The commissaries of the court arrived to read his sentence to him, he listened with perfect tranquillity, kneeling before the altar, and rising when they concluded, and sobbed with their emotion, he spoke to them with great kindness. He was informed that the royal favour (though indeed it was the cardinal’s fear) allowed his being executed within the courts of the Hôtel de Ville instead of on the public square. De Launay was at this time with the king, who had sent for him, and the duke’s friends felt hope revive; but Louis merely desired “that he should die unbound,” and this he declined, saying, “he would end life as he deserved, like a criminal.” He cut off his own hair, and changed his rich attire for the poor clothes of a soldier; he had bowed, as he came along, to the troops who guarded him, and bade them farewell. There was some delay, (perhaps in consequence of changing the place of execution,) and during this time the duke remained seated on a bench adjoining the chapel balustrade, and conversed with his confessor, too low for others to overhear. He asked for water to wash his mouth, for he suffered from sore throat: “Father,” he said, “can you explain to me my feelings? Before heaven I assure you that I go to death with satisfaction, without regret or dread; and if I had never believed in God until now, this firmness vouchsafed to my weak nature would make me adore him.” Efforts, even in this last hour, were made to save him, but in vain, though the Pope’s nuncio was one who pleaded. He calmly presented his arms to be bound by the executioner, and desired Father Arnoux to take from his hand the crucifix, since “the just might not be bound with the guilty.” He was led into the court where was the scaffold, and his surgeon cut his hair which he had left too long, and fainted when he had done; even the executioner wept. The marble statue of Henry the Fourth stood above one of the entrances, and he gazed at it earnestly. The confessor noticing it, he said, “Father, he was a good and generous prince.” Continuing to advance, he ascended the steps of the scaffold as firmly as if they had led to glory. He spoke to a jesuit who stood beneath: “I pray you,” he said, “prevent, if you may, my head from falling to the earth; receive it, if possible.” He kneeled and prayed once more, and adjusted himself on the block, which gave him great pain, as it was too low; a single stroke severed his head from his body. The gates were thrown open; people and troops thronged in with cries of grief, crowding round and on the scaffold, reverently dipping kerchiefs in his blood, which they held to be that of a martyr. That day, a soldier drew on the executioner to kill the wretch by whose vile hand the best and bravest of men had died. The people withheld and concealed him, for the cardinal caused search to be made that he might be put to death. His hatred was not quenched in Montmorency’s blood, for he persecuted his friends and relatives.

After the execution, the duke’s body was folded in a black silk velvet pall, and conveyed in a carriage to the abbey of St. Sernin, where it was buried in a chapel in which only the bones of saints had been laid, and the counts of Toulouse had been refused a sepulchre. Masses for the repose of his soul were said in every part of France, as well as by the command of the empress at Vienna, and the arch-duchess in the Low Countries. The king imprisoned the unhappy widow in the castle of Moulins, where she remained eight months reproaching herself with her husband’s untimely death; but feeling that time elapsed, that there could be no reason for doubting her, and ashamed of his rigour, he desired her to choose her place of residence, either within or without his kingdom; she staid at Moulins. Having purchased a house adjoining the convent of La Visitation, she there lived an exemplary life during ten years, her only consolation a portrait of the duke, gazing on which she spent whole days. Before her marriage she had wished to become a nun, and the desire now reviving, in her mistaken fervour, she believed it a duty to part with this which she looked on as a last tie to the world, and ere she entered the convent she wept over it once more and then parted from it.

Some time after, the king passing through Moulins, did her the honour of a visit, and the next day the cardinal sent to offer her his compliments. In her cell hung with black, the shadow of what she had been, the duchess received his officer: “Tell your master,” she said, “that I thank him, but that my tears are still undried!” After his general’s death, the king’s remorse was awakened; and he confessed that he repented of many things which had been done during his inauspicious journey to Languedoc. He once arrived late at Écouen, intending to pass the night there. It was evening, and the monarch passed slowly along one of the vast halls on his way to the apartment prepared for him. His suite followed at a little distance, but rushed to his side when he uttered a faint cry, and stretched his arm forth in the gloom as if to put back some one advancing on him.

“What ails you, sire,” they exclaimed as he stood still, and in an attitude of defence against what appeared to them empty space. “He was there! I saw Montmorency there,” said the king; “I cannot sleep in this castle;” and turning precipitately, Louis the Thirteenth left the hall. Écouen now again, as during the empire, belongs to the Legion of Honour. As we rode down the hill, the fine view of Paris once more stretched below us in the sunshine. I had not seen it for some years, and looked at it now with a strange sensation, pleasant and painful, for it seemed like home, because so much of early association is connected with it, and I felt it was not home, because death and marriage, time and revolution have so severed and scattered all the links which held me here, that I shall scarcely find a trace of where they were once riveted.

From Écouen to St. Denis the way seemed wearisome, for we had ridden fifteen leagues since morning, yet Fanny went prancing into the inn yard gay as at starting. A disagreeable hotel from its unconquerable bad air. To-day, 19th July, D—— is gone to Paris in search of apartments; and I, followed by John, have passed an hour in the cathedral. The Suisse, I believe, thought his countenance suspicious, for he was unwilling to lead the way. Near the principal entrance, on the left hand, is a strange monument, erected by St. Louis to Dagobert. This church (my authority is the Benedictine who wrote its history) was founded under singular circumstances. When Clotaire the Second was king its place was occupied by a small chapel, which had already miraculous properties, being built over St. Denis’s tomb. A stag, hard pressed, had one day taken refuge within, and the hounds were unable to follow. Prince Dagobert witnessed this fact. He soon after incurred his father’s anger by barbarously ill-treating his governor, and he repaired to the sanctuary. The royal guards sent to seize him were invisibly withheld, and the prince fell asleep while they rushed to and fro, vainly attempting to come nearer. St. Denis appeared to him in a dream, and desired that he would erect a building in his honour. Become king he obeyed the saint’s mandate; and when the day for the consecration of the church came (the 24th February, 636), and a great crowd assembled to witness it, the people were all forced to retire, excepting one poor leper, who hid himself in a corner of the chapel. Night closed in, and of a sudden he beheld a great light shining through one of the windows, filling the whole church; and continuing to fix his eyes on the same window, he saw the Saviour enter at it, followed by St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Rustique and St. Éleuthère, and also by a great multitude of saints and angels. He consecrated the church, walked round it, heading the procession, scattered holy water on the pavement, poured celestial oil on the walls, and at last perceived the leper: he commanded him to tell faithfully what he had seen to king and prelate. “Alas!” said the leper, “I cannot approach them for my rags and my leprosy.”

He had no sooner said this, than he felt the skin of his face gently lifted, and being cast against the wall it stuck there, and that which remained in its place was pure as a child’s; and looking at his clothes he saw he was richly habited: this miracle performed, he watched the Saviour and the celestial procession issue forth by the same window, and went and told the king.[[1]]

More interesting than Dagobert’s tomb, or those of Louis the Twelfth, and Anne of Brittany, and Henry the Second, and Catherine de Médicis, with her countenance telling of a life of intrigue, public massacre and private murder, is the slight marble column, at whose foot are three weeping angels,—for it was raised by Mary of Scotland to the memory of her young husband, who died when she had been a wife and queen of France but one short year. The monument of Francis the First is in the opposite aisle; the figures of himself and his wife Anne, kneeling on the top of the stone canopy, under which they are again represented dead. The alto relievo of the battle of Marignan, which surrounds the tomb, is very beautiful. On each side of the choir steps lead down to the crypt, and the Suisse unlocked the iron gate, though still I saw against his will, and we walked through the avenue of royal tombstones, wherein kings and queens do not sleep now; since a municipal decree, proceeding from St. Denis itself, in conformity with the decree of the Convention, ordered on the 12th of October, 1793, the breaking open of the monuments for the sake of the lead they might contain, and the scattering of bones, some of which had lain there near 1500 years. Curiosity induced the workmen to commence by the grave of Turenne. He was found in an extraordinary state of preservation, perfectly resembling the portraits and medals which we possess of him, only that the skin had darkened. The distortion of feature, caused by his violent death (by a cannon ball), remained, as the mouth was very wide open. He was, at the suggestion of some present, confided to one “Host,” keeper of the cathedral, and by him placed in an oaken case with a glass cover, and for eight months exhibited in the vestry. The vault of the Bourbons and the tomb of Henry the Fourth were next opened, and the body found so perfect, that the features had undergone no change. He also was exhibited during the two following days, and then borne to the churchyard, called De Valois, where he was buried in a grave dug at its extremity, on the right hand and north side. A soldier present at the time rushed towards the corpse, and with his sabre cut from it a lock of the long beard, exclaiming, that “He too was a Frenchman,” and henceforth would wear no other mustachio; and holding the lock on his upper lip, and saying he was sure of conquering any enemy of France, went away.

The remainder of the bodies, some in a state of putrefaction, which during this unnatural work produced malignant fever, others, reduced to skeletons or ashes, were dragged from their coffins, and flung by torchlight into one wide grave. The Suisse pointed out the side door near Mary Stuart’s funeral column, as that through which they were carried. The monuments in the crypt are ranged in chronological order: among the most ancient, those of the royal fury Frédégonde and her daughter-in-law Brunehaude, who died torn by wild horses. The vaults are but half under ground, and a dreary daylight enters, falling on the figures stretched on the tombs, for those only of the earliest period are mere outlines. The rest are dressed in the costume of their time, with hands crossed and raised, and the dog or lion couched at the feet. “Here,” said the Suisse, stopping before one of the Capetian race, and pointing to the very prominent nose which had been broken from his face and lay there yet uncemented, “is the token of the last English visit. A gentleman came, conversed with me, walked by my side, and when he thought me not attending to his movements, wrenched off this nose. I seized it in his hand in his coat pocket; he said he had broken it by mistake, and pocketed it in absence of mind. “Mon pauvre nez, que je n’ai pas encore restitué,” said the Suisse in indignation. I understood at last why he had an objection to showing the church, and tranquillized him by making John walk on before. Here were laid Clovis, the first Christian king, and his wife, Bertha, who converted him; King John after his ill-fortune at Poitiers; his excursion on his white horse through the streets of London, beside his conqueror, on his pony; his visit to his own kingdom, and voluntary return to captivity to die.