“Having,” continues Marguerite, “failed in the principal purpose, which was not so much against the Huguenots as against the Princes of the blood—the King my husband, and the Prince of Condé—the Queen, my mother, came to me and ‘asked me to break my marriage.’ But I replied that I would not; being sure that she only proposed this in order to murder my husband.”[15]
The magic mirror of Ruggiero had revealed the truth; Henry of Navarre led a charmed life. Of his escape, against the express command of the all-powerful Catherine, various accounts are related. He is said to have been saved by his wife, but of this she says nothing. It is believed on good authority that, with the Prince de Condé, he went out unusually early, before daybreak even, in order to prepare for playing that identical game of rackets, of which he spoke to Marguerite and which probably saved his life. When it is discovered that these two princes, Condé and Navarre, are both alive, they are summoned to the King’s presence. They find Charles, arquebuse in hand, within the same small closet over the gate of the Louvre. He has been there since daybreak. A page stands by him, ready to reload his weapon. He is mad with exultation and excitement; he leans out of window to watch the crowds of fugitives rush by and to shout to the Swiss Guards below—“Kill—kill all—cut them all in pieces!” “Pardieu! see,” he roars out, pointing to the river, “there is a fellow yonder escaping. By the mass, look—one, two, three—they are swimming across the Seine—at them, at them—take good aim—shoot them down, the carrion!” Volleys of shot are the reply. Charles had recovered his nerves; he now looks on Huguenots as game, and has been potting them with remarkable precision from the window. With hideous mirth, he boasts to Navarre and Condé how many heretics he has brought down with his own hand. He counts upon his fingers the names of the Huguenot chiefs already slaughtered. He yells with fiendish laughter when he describes how Coligni, whom the night before he had called “father,” looked when dead. “By the light of God, it is a royal chase!” shrieks Charles, as the page quickly reloads his arquebuse. “That last shot was excellent. Not a heretic shall be left in France.” Again he points his gun and shoots; a piercing cry follows. Charles nods his head approvingly. “We will have them all—babies and their mothers. ‘Break the eggs and the nest will rot.’ Our mother says well—we must reign. We will no longer be contradicted by our subjects. We will teach them to revere us as the image of the living God. You, Princes,”—and as he turns to address the King of Navarre and Condé, his tall, gaunt figure, distorted countenance, bleared and bloodshot eyes, and matted hair are repulsive to look upon—“You, Princes, I have called hither, out of compassion for your youth, to give you a chance for your lives, as you are alive,—but by the holy Oriflamme, I thought you were both dead already. You are, both of you, rebels, and sons of rebels. You must instantly recant and enter the true Church or you must die. So down on your knees, both of you. Purge yourselves from your accursed sect. Give me your parole, and your swords too, Princes, that you will not leave the Louvre; or, Dieu des Dieux, you shall be massacred like the rest!”
Thus did Henry IV. and the Prince de Condé escape death, unknown to, and contrary to the express orders of Catherine.
Without, Paris is a charnel-house. The streets are choked up by murdered Huguenots. Carts and litters full of dead bodies, huddled together in a hideous medley, rumble along the rough causeways, to be shot into the Seine. The river runs red with blood; its current is dammed up with corpses. But the Court is merry. Catherine triumphs. Her ladies—la petite bande de la Reine—go forth and pick their way in the gory mud, to scrutinise the dead, piled in heaps against the walls and in the courts of the Louvre, to recognise friends or lovers.
On the 6th September the news of the massacre reaches Rome by letters from the Nuncio. Gregory XIII. commands solemn masses and thanksgivings to God for the event. The cannon of St. Angelo booms over the papal city; feux de joie are fired in the principal streets; a medal is struck; a jubilee is published; a legate is sent into France; a procession, in which the Pope, Cardinals, and Ministers to the See of Rome appear, visit the great Basilicas; the Cardinal de Lorraine, uncle to the Balafré, then at Rome, is present, and in the name of his master, Charles IX., congratulates his Holiness on the efficacy of his prayers these seventeen years past for the destruction of heretics.
Blood calls for blood![16] Charles IX., whose royal mandate authorised the massacre (which lasted seven days and seven nights), falls sick two years after at the Castle of Vincennes. “I know not what has befallen me,” he says to his surgeon, Ambrose Paré; “my mind and body both burn with fever. Asleep or awake, I see the mangled Huguenots pass before me. They drip with blood; they make hideous faces at me; they point to their open wounds and mock me. Holy Virgin! I wish, Paré, I had spared the old and the infirm and the infants at the breasts.” Aged twenty-four, Charles died, abhorring the mother whose counsels had led him to this execrable deed—abhorring her so intensely that he could not even bear her in his sight. In her place he called for the King of Navarre, and confided to him his last wishes. He died, poor misguided youth, piously thanking God that he left no children. The blood actually oozed from the pores of his skin. His cries and screams were horrible.
Thus another King of France passed into the world of spirits, bringing Henry of Navarre one step nearer the throne. Charles, according to the prediction of Ruggiero, had died young, bathed in his own blood.
And Catherine? Calm, undaunted, still handsome, she inaugurated a new reign—that of her third and best beloved son, Henri, Duc d’Anjou and King of Poland, popularly known by the style and title of Henry III., “by the favour of his mother inert King of France.”
CHAPTER XXI.
THE END OF CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI.
FIFTEEN years have passed. The Queen-mother is now seventy. She suffers from a mortal disease, and lies sick at the Château of Blois.