The elder D'Aubigné and his son.
On others, and especially upon those whose hearts throbbed with patriotic devotion, a less transient impression was made. Some months after, the young Agrippa d'Aubigné, then a mere child of ten years, was traversing the city of Amboise with his father. The impaled heads of the victims were still to be recognized. The barbarous sight moved the elder D'Aubigné's soul to its very depths. "They have beheaded France, hangmen that they are!" he cried out in the hearing of the hundreds that were present at the fair. Then, spurring his horse, he scarcely escaped the hands of the rabble who had caught his words. Afterward, when his young son had rejoined him, he placed his hand on Agrippa's head, and exclaimed, full of emotion: "My child, you must not spare your head after mine, to avenge these chieftains full of honor, whose heads you have just seen! If you spare yourself in this matter, you will have my curse."[841]
Peril of the Prince of Condé.
He is summoned by the king.
Condé's defiance.
Guise's offer.
The Prince of Condé had set out for the court about the time of the discovery of the conspiracy. If the coldness of the courtiers whom he met on the way did not convince him that he was suspected, the position in which he soon found himself at Amboise left him no doubts. Surrounded by spies, he was viewed more as a prisoner than as a guest. The Guises even counselled Francis to stab him with his dagger while pretending to sport with him. The crime was averted both by the caution of the prince and by a reluctance on the part of the young king to imbrue his hands in the blood of his kinsman—a sentiment which the Guises interpreted as cowardice.[842] But, unable to resist the urgency of those who accused Condé of being the true head of the conspiracy, and maintained that the testimony of many of the prisoners rendered the fact indubitable, Francis at length summoned the young Bourbon to his presence. He informed him of the accusations, and assured him that, should they prove true, he would make him feel the difficulty and the danger of attacking a king of France. At Condé's request an assembly of all the princes, and of the members of the Privy Council and of the Order of St. Michael, was summoned, that he might return his answer to the charges laid against him.[843] In the midst of the august gathering, Louis of Bourbon arose and recited the conversation which he had had with the king. He knew, he said, that he had enemies about him who sought his entire ruin and that of his house. He had, therefore, solicited to be heard in this company, and his answer was: that, excepting the person of the king, his brothers, and the queens, his mother and wife—and he said it with all respect to their presence—whoever had asserted to the king that Condé was the chief of certain seditious individuals who were said to have conspired against his person and estate, had "falsely and miserably lied." To prove his innocence he offered to waive for the time the privileges of his rank as prince of the blood, and in single combat force his accuser at the point of the sword to confess himself a poltroon and a calumniator. As Condé looked proudly around, no one ventured to accept the gauntlet he had thrown down. On the contrary, the Duke of Guise, his most bitter enemy, promptly stepped forward to offer him his services as second in the single combat proposed! Hereupon Condé begged the king to esteem him hereafter a faithful and honorable man, and entreated his Majesty to lend no ear to the authors of such calumnies, but to regard them as common enemies of the crown and of the public peace.[844]
An alleged admission of disloyal intentions by La Renaudie.
It is well known that the Huguenots were accused by their enemies of intending to remodel the government of France. According to some, the king was to be retained, but shorn of his authority; according to others, he was to be dispensed with altogether. Under any circumstances, the Swiss confederation was to be imitated or reproduced in France. That which gave the pretended scheme most of its air of probability, in the eyes of the unreflecting, and compensated for the entire absence of proof of its substantial reality, was the familiarity of many of the Huguenots—both religious and political—with Geneva, Basle, Berne, and other small republican states. These were fountains of Protestant doctrine; these had afforded many a refugee shelter from persecution in France. It was notorious that the free institutions of these cities were the object of admiration on the part of the Calvinists.[845]