“In this extremity I knew not what to resolve on. I could not quit the château; and even had it been in my power, I felt bound by charity and my conscience to dispose the marquis to die. I returned then to the gallery, and embracing the unhappy man, who was drowned in tears, I exhorted him to turn all his thoughts to God and his conscience, as there was no hope for him on earth.
“At this news, having uttered two or three melancholy cries, he kneeled down before me as I sat on one of the benches, and commenced his confession, which having nearly concluded, he rose and cried aloud twice. He then ended his confession, mingling French, Latin, and Italian in his fear and confusion. The Queen’s almoner at that moment entered, and the marquis, without waiting to receive absolution, went to him, conceiving hopes from his favour with her majesty. They whispered apart, holding one another by the hand for some time, and then the almoner went out, taking with him the chief of the three. The latter returned alone, and said, ‘Marquis, you must die without more delay: have you confessed?’ Saying this, he pressed him against the wall at that end of the gallery where hangs the picture of St. Germain en Laye, and I could not so suddenly turn aside as to avoid seeing him struck in the chest on the right side, and that he, trying to ward off the blow, caught the blade in his right hand, from which, as the other drew it back, it cut off three fingers.
“He then exclaimed that he wore a shirt of mail, as in truth he did, one which weighed nine or ten pounds, and the same man repeated the blow, aiming it at his face, and the marquis cried out, ‘Father, father!’ I went to him, and the other retreated a little, and he confessed somewhat more, and I gave him absolution, imposing on him for penitence that he should suffer a violent death. He threw himself on the floor, and as he fell, one of the men gave him a blow on the head, which carried away part of the skull; and, being stretched on his face, he made signs that they should cut his throat; and they wounded him there several times, but not mortally, because the shirt of mail rose high under the collar of his doublet, and deadened the blows. All this time I exhorted him to think of heaven, and bear all patiently. The chief of the three then asked me whether he should finish him, and I answered angrily, and said, I had no advice to give, as I had prayed not for his death, but his life; and then he begged my pardon, and said he was wrong to ask me such a question.
“The poor marquis, who lay expecting the last stroke, now heard the door of the gallery open, and recalled his courage, seeing the almoner enter, and dragged himself towards him, supporting himself against the wainscoting. I was on his right hand, and the almoner passed to his left, and the marquis, joining his hands, said something, as if he was confessing; and the almoner, having first asked my leave, gave him absolution and retired, desiring me to remain while he went to the Queen. At this moment, the same who had wounded him in the throat before, and who had stood by the almoner’s side, pierced it through with a long narrow sword, whereupon the marquis fell on his right side, and did not speak again, but continued to breathe yet a quarter of an hour, during which time I exhorted him as well as I was able. Having lost all his blood, he expired at three quarters past three. I recited the De Profundis, and the chief of the three men moved a leg and then an arm, to see if he were really dead, and searched his pockets, but found nothing, excepting a small knife and a prayer book: we then all three departed to receive the Queen’s orders. She said she regretted having been forced to command his execution; but that she had done justice, and prayed heaven to pardon him. She desired me to see that his corpse was carried away and buried, and that masses were said for the repose of his soul. I had a coffin made, and because of the darkness, the bad road, and the weight, it was placed in a cart, and I sent with it my chaplain and vicar to the church of Avon, with three men to assist, and orders to bury the body within the church near the ‘bénitier,’ and this was done at three quarters past five that same evening.
Lebel.”
The church, or rather chapel of the Holy Trinity, was founded by Francis the First, but ornamented in Henry the Fourth’s reign. The niches near the altar contain the statues in white marble of Charlemagne, and Louis the Ninth, the sainted king. Louis the Fifteenth’s marriage with the daughter of the unfortunate Stanislas, king of Poland, was celebrated here, and latterly that of the Duke of Orleans with the Princess Helen.
It is to be repaired without delay, not before reparation is needful, as the deep cracks through the ceilings and faded frescoes testify. The Galerie de François Premier was built and decorated in his time and yet unrestored; the pale salamanders are barely visible on the walls. The queen’s antechamber was the imperial dining-room in Napoleon’s time, and the Salon de Reception the apartment in which Louis the Thirteenth was born. King Henry threw open one of those windows to announce the news to his courtiers, who were walking in the oval court below. The chamber of St. Louis formed part of a pavilion built during his reign, but bears no trace of ancient architecture; over its chimney is a fine Henry the Fourth on horseback, in white marble; it belonged to a chimney piece, which gave its name to the hall, changed in Louis the Fifteenth’s time to a shabby theatre, for it was called Salle de la belle Cheminée. The statues of Strength and Peace were the chivalrous king’s fitting supporters. The whole was thrown aside in the stores of the Château, and left there dusty and forgotten, till Louis Philip’s command replaced the equestrian statue in St. Louis’s chamber, and the other two in the Salle des Gardes adjoining.
A corridor conducts to the gallery of Henry the Second. It was built by Francis the First, and decorated by his son; and now its ancient glory revived with scrupulous fidelity, the deep ornamented recesses in which the five tall windows on each side are sunk, the gorgeous ceiling, the walls covered with gold, and frescoes by Primatice or Nicolo, are, even to the silver crescent and the cypher, reappearing at every step, the same as when Diana of Poitiers and her royal lover trod its floor. The only loss it has sustained is that of the two bronze satyrs eight feet high which supported the chimney-piece: they were seized for ammunition in 1793, and Napoleon replaced them by two pillars now standing. The chimney-piece was the work of Rondelet, Francis the First’s famous sculptor; its centre exhibits the arms of France, encircled by a wreath and crowned by Diana’s crescent. There are two pictures at this end of the hall; one of Francis killing a wild boar in the forest, the other of the famous combat of a condemned man with a loup-cervier, which desolated the country round Fontainebleau. He was a nobleman, and besought permission to meet his death in this manner, but, having exterminated the monster, he was pardoned. At one time this hall was called Galerie des Réformés; for the Calvinists, with Admiral Coligny at their head, here presented to Francis the Second the first petition in which they styled themselves “Reformers.” The Admiral was their organ to the young king, whose brother was to be his murderer. The ball on the Duke of Orleans’ marriage was given in this hall. The windows to the park look on the Étang and its pavilion, which bore the name of Cabinet de Conseil, when Catherine de Médicis, and after her the Cardinal de Richelieu, retired there with their secret advisers. Directly beneath the gallery is the Salle Louis Philippe, which was, in Louis the Fourteenth’s reign, the Dauphin’s apartments, now a magnificent dining-hall, supported by Doric columns, and ornamented in the taste of the Renaissance. Opposite its five windows, on the parterre, are three superb entrances, opening on a corridor lighted by glass doors, which look on the Cour Ovale; a fourth entrance communicates with the Porte Dorée. It is a splendid porch or portico, brilliant with gilding and just revived frescos, its length the width of the dining-hall—at one end opening on the Allée de Maintenon, named, by the proudest and vainest king in Europe, after his plebeian wife; at the other on the Oval Court, which I mentioned before, but did not tell you that the donjon which terminates it is the spot where Louis the Thirteenth was christened when seven years old. A flight of steps on either side of the entrance arch conducts to the open chamber it supports, and the child was named there in public; all catholic ceremonial observed, that no doubts of his creed might rest on the people’s minds.
Perhaps my long description of Fontainebleau has wearied you, and yet I might continue it much longer; so large a portion of French history is connected with its walls. The guide pointed to the tower in which the Marshal, Duc de Biron, past the night after his arrest, ere he was transferred to the Bastille. Notwithstanding that Henry the Fourth had three times saved his life in battle, and designed to make him his son-in-law, he conspired against him with the Duke of Savoy. France was to be divided into as many petty sovereignties as provinces, all placed under the protection of the king of Spain; and the bribe which seduced Biron, who was the vainest and bravest man of his day, consisted of Franche Comté and Burgundy, and a marriage with a daughter of Spain or Savoy. Lafin, confidant of the traitor-duke, betrayed him in turn, but had the art to persuade him of the king’s ignorance, when he summoned his former friend to his presence, and the marshal denied everything.
“Marshal,” said the king, “I must hear from your own mouth what I unhappily know already. Speak to me but frankly, and whatever your crime against me, I promise you protection and pardon.”