“But,” said his brother Albert, “if she seconds the Guises does she not play into the hands of a usurpation? We have to do with men who see a crown to seize in the coming struggle between Catholicism and Reform. It is possible to support the Reformers without abjuring.”
“Reflect, madame, that your family, which ought to have been wholly devoted to the king of France, is at this moment the servant of the king of Spain; and to-morrow it will be that of the Reformation if the Reformation could make a king of the Duke of Florence.”
“I am certainly disposed to lend a hand, for a time, to the Huguenots,” said Catherine, “if only to revenge myself on that soldier and that priest and that woman!” As she spoke, she called attention with her subtile Italian glance to the duke and cardinal, and then to the second floor of the chateau on which were the apartments of her son and Mary Stuart. “That trio has taken from my hands the reins of State, for which I waited long while the old woman filled my place,” she said gloomily, glancing toward Chenonceaux, the chateau she had lately exchanged with Diane de Poitiers against that of Chaumont. “Ma,” she added in Italian, “it seems that these reforming gentry in Geneva have not the wit to address themselves to me; and, on my conscience, I cannot go to them. Not one of you would dare to risk carrying them a message!” She stamped her foot. “I did hope you would have met the cripple at Ecouen—he has sense,” she said to Chiverni.
“The Prince de Conde was there, madame,” said Chiverni, “but he could not persuade the Connetable to join him. Monsieur de Montmorency wants to overthrow the Guises, who have sent him into exile, but he will not encourage heresy.”
“What will ever break these individual wills which are forever thwarting royalty? God’s truth!” exclaimed the queen, “the great nobles must be made to destroy each other, as Louis XI., the greatest of your kings, did with those of his time. There are four or five parties now in this kingdom, and the weakest of them is that of my children.”
“The Reformation is an idea,” said Charles de Gondi; “the parties that Louis XI. crushed were moved by self-interests only.”
“Ideas are behind selfish interests,” replied Chiverni. “Under Louis XI. the idea was the great Fiefs—”
“Make heresy an axe,” said Albert de Gondi, “and you will escape the odium of executions.”
“Ah!” cried the queen, “but I am ignorant of the strength and also of the plans of the Reformers; and I have no safe way of communicating with them. If I were detected in any manoeuvre of that kind, either by the queen, who watches me like an infant in a cradle, or by those two jailers over there, I should be banished from France and sent back to Florence with a terrible escort, commanded by Guise minions. Thank you, no, my daughter-in-law!—but I wish you the fate of being a prisoner in your own home, that you may know what you have made me suffer.”
“Their plans!” exclaimed Chiverni; “the duke and the cardinal know what they are, but those two foxes will not divulge them. If you could induce them to do so, madame, I would sacrifice myself for your sake and come to an understanding with the Prince de Conde.”