Catherine, who, wholly unmoved, was contemplating the death of her enemies the Huguenots, turned with a terrible frown towards her son, handing him some strong essence with which to revive Mary. As her senses returned, even the basilisk eyes of her dreaded mother-in-law could not restrain her. One glance at the awful spectacle gave her courage; she gave a wild scream, and rushing forward, flung herself passionately at the feet of her uncle, Francis of Guise.
“Uncle, dear uncle, stay this fearful massacre. Speak to the Queen, or I shall die. Oh! why was I brought here to behold such a sight?”
“My niece,” answered the Duke solemnly, raising her from the ground, and tenderly kissing her on the cheek, “have courage; these are but a few pestilent heretics who would have dethroned you and your husband, the King, and set up a false religion. By their destruction we are doing good service to God and to the blessed Virgin. Such vermin deserve no pity. You ought to rejoice in their destruction.”
“Alas! my mother,” said Francis, also rising, “I too am overcome at this horrible sight, I also would crave your highness’s permission to retire; the blood of my subjects, even of my enemies, is horrible to see. Let us go!”
“My son, I command you to stay!” broke in Catherine, furious with passion, and imperiously raising her hand to stay him. “Duc de Guise, support your niece, the Queen of France. Teach her the duty of a sovereign.”
Again Francis, intimidated by his mother’s violence, reseated himself along with the unhappy Mary, motionless beside him. Again the steel of the axe flashed in the sunshine, and horrible contortions writhed the bodies of the slain. It was too much. Mary, young, tender, compassionate—afraid to plead for mercy as though committing a crime, again fainted, and was again recovered. The Queen-mother, to whom the savage scene was a spectacle of rapture, again commanded her to be reseated; but Francis, now fully aroused by the sufferings of his wife, interposed.
“My mother, I can no longer permit your Majesty to force the Queen to be present. You are perilling her health. Govern my kingdom and slay my subjects, but let me judge what is seemly for my wife.”
So, bearing her in his arms, with the assistance of her ladies, Francis withdrew.
When the butchery was over, and the headless bodies were floating in the river or strung up on the branches of the trees or piled in heaps about the castle, Catherine retired. She commanded that the remains of the chief conspirators should be hung in chains from the iron balustrades of the stone balcony which protects the windows of the royal gallery and which still remains intact, on the north front of the castle, towards the river. The remainder were to be thrown into the Loire. This stone balcony borders now, as then, the whole length of the state apartments towards the river. A fall of some hundred feet down a sheer mass of grey rock on which the castle stands makes the head dizzy. Over this precipice the headless bodies dangled, swaying to and fro in the March wind, a hideous and revolting sight. No one could pass through any of the apartments of the castle without beholding it. But despised humanity in the shape of the murdered Huguenots asserted its claim on the attention of the Court, and the stench of these bodies hung to the balcony, and of those strung up on the trees, and the rotting corpses that dammed up the river, soon became so overwhelming, that even Catherine herself was forced to retreat, and accompany her son and the young Queen to Chenonceau. The shock and excitement were, however, too much for the sickly Francis. Rapidly he pined and died; no physician was found who could cure a nameless malady.
Mary Stuart, a widow at eighteen, passionate and romantic, clung fondly to that “pleasant land” where she had spent such happy days with the gracious Francis. She had been created Duchesse de Touraine at her marriage, and craved earnestly to be allowed to enjoy that apanage rather than be banished to reign in a barren land, which she dreaded like a living tomb. But her ambitious uncles, the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine, who were to her as parents, obstinately insisted on her departure for Scotland. So she sailed from Calais; and, from the deck of the ship that bore her across the seas, as the shores of France—which she was never more to see—gradually faded from her view, she sang to her lute that plaintive song, so identified with her memory:—