She who had engaged herself to pay for the crime cared for neither victim. She screamed indeed, but it was with a hysteric joy that threatened to slay her, and which was only allayed by the thought that the last King of the Valois race did not know that he had died by a dagger directed by a sister of Guise.
In testimony of her exultation she distributed green scarfs, the color of Lorraine, to the people of Paris. She brought up from the provinces the mother of Clement, to whom was accorded the distinction of a triumphal entry. Priests and people worshipped the mother of the assassin as she passed wonderingly on her way; and they blasphemously saluted her with the chanted words, “Blessed be the womb that bare him, and the paps that gave him suck.” She was led to the seat of honor at the table of Guise, and Rome sheltered the infamy of the assassin, and revealed its own, by pronouncing his work to be a god-like act. By authority of the Vatican, medals were struck in memory and honor of the dead; but the Huguenots who read thereon the murderer’s profession and name—Frère Jacques Clement—ingeniously discovered therein the anagrammatic interpretation “C’est l’enfer qui m’a crée”—“It is hell that created me.”
The last Valois, with his last breath, had named the Protestant Henri of Navarre as his legal successor to the throne; but between Henri and his inheritance there stood Rome and the Guise faction. Then ensued the successive wars of the League, during which the heavy Mayenne suffered successive defeats at the hands of Henri of the snowy plume. While the contest was raging, the people trusted to the pulpits for their intelligence from the scene of action. From those pulpits was daily uttered more mendacity in one hour than finds expression in all the horse-fairs of the United Kingdom in a year. When famine decimated those who lived within the walls, the people were reduced to live upon a paste made from human bones, and which they called “Madame de Montpensier’s cake.”
Henri of Navarre, their deliverer, did not arrive before the gates of Paris without trouble. In 1521, Charles of Guise, the young Duke, had escaped most gallantly, in open day, from the Castle of Tours, by sliding from the ramparts, down a rope, which simply blistered his hands and made a rent in his hose. He was speedily accoutred and in the field, with Spain in his rear to help him. Now, he was making a dash at Henri’s person; and, anon, leaping from his camp-bed to escape him. At other times he was idle, while his uncle Mayenne pursued the cherished object of their house—that crown which was receding from them more swiftly than ever. For the alert Bourbon, the slow and hard-drinking Mayenne was no match. The latter thought once to catch the former in his lady’s bower, but the wakeful lover was gayly galloping back to his quarters before the trumpets of Mayenne had sounded to “boot and saddle.” “Mayenne,” said the Pope, “sits longer at table than Henri lies in bed.”
The gates of Paris were open to Henri on the 21st of March, 1591. Old Cardinal Pellevi died of disgust and indignation, on hearing of the fact. The Duchess of Montpensier, after tearing her hair, and threatening to swoon, prudently concluded, with Henry IV., not only her own peace, but that of her family. The chief members of the house of Guise were admitted into places of great trust, to the injury of more deserving individuals. The young Duke de Guise affected a superabundant loyalty. In return, the King not only gave him the government of several chief towns, but out of compliment to him forbade the exercise of Protestant worship within the limits of the Duke’s government! Such conduct was natural to a King, who to secure his throne had abandoned his faith; who lightly said that he had no cannon so powerful as the canon of the mass, and who was destitute of most virtues save courage and good-nature. The latter was abused by those on whom it was lavished; and the various assaults upon his life were supposed to be directed by those very Guises, on whom he had showered places, pensions, and pardons, which they were constantly needing and continually deriding.
The young Duke of Guise enjoyed, among other appointments, that of Governor of Marseilles. He was light-hearted, selfish, vain, and cruel. He hanged his own old partisans in the city, as enemies to the king; and he made his name for ever infamous by the seduction of the beautiful and noble orphan-girl, Marcelle de Castellane, whom he afterward basely abandoned, and left to die of hunger. He sent her a few broad pieces by the hands of a lacquey; but the tardy charity was spurned, and the poor victim died. He had little time to think of her at the brilliant court of the first Bourbon, where he and those of his house struggled to maintain a reputation which had now little to support it, but the memories of the past—and many of those were hardly worth appealing to. He was a mere fine gentleman, bold withal, and therewith intriguing; ever hoping that the fortunes of his house might once more turn and bring it near a throne, and in the meantime, making himself remarkable for his vanity, his airs of greatness, and his affectation. Brave as he was, he left his brothers, the cardinal and chevalier, to draw their swords and settle the quarrels which were constantly raging on disputed questions touching the assumed Majesty of the House of Guise.
The streets of Paris formed the stage on which these bloody tragedies were played, but they, and all other pretensions, were suppressed by that irresistible putter-down of such nuisances—the Cardinal de Richelieu. He used the sword of Guise as long as it was needed, but when Charles became troublesome the Cardinal not only banished him, but wounded the pride of his family by placing garrisons in the hitherto sovereign duchy of Lorraine. When Cardinal Fleury subsequently annexed Lorraine itself to the territory of France, the Guises thought the world was at an end. The universe, however, survived the shock.
Duke Charles died in exile at Cune, near Sienne, in the year 1640. Of his ten children by the Duchess de Joyeuse, he left five surviving. He was succeeded by Henri, the eldest, who was bishop and cardinal. He had been raised to the episcopate while yet in the arms of his wet-nurse; and he was in frocks when on his long curls was placed the scarlet hat of a cardinal. He was twenty years of age when he became Duke of Guise. He at once flung away all he possessed of his religious profession—its dress and titles, and walked abroad, spurs on his heels, a plume in his cap, and a long sword and a bad heart between!
The whole life of this chivalrous scoundrel was a romance, no portion of which reflects any credit on the hero. He had scarcely reached the age of manhood, when he entered into a contract of marriage with the beautiful Anne of Gonzaga. He signed the compact, not in ink, but with his own blood, calling Heaven to witness, the while, that he would never address a vow to any other lady. The breath of perjury had scarcely passed his lips when he married the Countess of Bossu, and he immediately abandoned her to sun himself in the eyes of Mademoiselle de Pons—an imperious mistress, who squandered the property he lavished on her, and boxed the ex-cardinal’s ears, when he attempted, with degrading humility, to remonstrate with her for bringing down ruin upon his estate.
He was as disloyal to his King as to his “lady;” he tampered with rebellion, was sentenced to death, and was pardoned. But a state of decent tranquillity agreed ill with his constitution. To keep that and his nerves from rusting, he one day drew his sword in the street, upon the son of Coligny, whose presence seemed a reproach to him, and whom he slew on the spot. He wiped his bloody rapier on his mantle, and betook himself for a season to Rome, where he intrigued skilfully, but fruitlessly, in order to obtain the tiara for the brother of Mazarin. Apathy would now have descended upon him, but for a voice from the city of Naples, which made his swelling heart beat with a violence that almost threatened to kill.