Catherine De Medici

by Honoré de Balzac

So saying, he cast a look of contempt upon the cardinal and left the hall. He saw plainly enough that they meant to have his head. The next day, when Messieurs de Thou, de Viole, d’Espesse, the procureur-general Bourdin, and the chief clerk of the court du Tillet, entered his presence, he kept them standing, and expressed his regrets to see them charged with a duty which did not belong to them. Then he said to the clerk, “Write down what I say,” and dictated as follows:—

“I, Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Conde, peer of the kingdom,
Marquis de Conti, Comte de Soissons, prince of the blood of
France, do declare that I formally refuse to recognize any
commission appointed to try me, because, in my quality and in
virtue of the privilege appertaining to all members of the royal
house, I can only be accused, tried, and judged by the Parliament
of peers, both Chambers assembled, the king being seated on his
bed of justice.”

“You ought to know that, gentlemen, better than others,” he added; “and this reply is all that you will get from me. For the rest, I trust in God and my right.”

The magistrates continued to address him notwithstanding his obstinate silence. The king of Navarre was left at liberty, but closely watched; his prison was larger than that of the prince, and this was the only real difference in the position of the two brothers,—the intention being that their heads should fall together.

Christophe was therefore kept in the strictest solitary confinement by order of the cardinal and the lieutenant-general of the kingdom, for no other purpose than to give the judges proof of the culpability of the Prince de Conde. The letters seized on Lasagne, the prince’s secretary, though intelligible to statesmen, where not sufficiently plain proof for judges. The cardinal intended to confront the prince and Christophe by accident; and it was not without intention that the young Reformer was placed in one of the lower rooms in the tower of Saint-Aignan, with a window looking on the prison yard. Each time that Christophe was brought before the magistrates, and subjected to a close examination, he sheltered himself behind a total and complete denial, which prolonged his trial until after the opening of the States-general.

Old Lecamus, who by that time had got himself elected deputy of the tiers-etat by the burghers of Paris, arrived at Orleans a few days after the arrest of the Prince de Conde. This news, which reached him at Etampes, redoubled his anxiety; for he fully understood—he, who alone knew of Christophe’s interview with the prince under the bridge near his own house—that his son’s fate was closely bound up with that of the leader of the Reformed party. He therefore determined to study the dark tangle of interests which were struggling together at court in order to discover some means of rescuing his son. It was useless to think of Queen Catherine, who refused to see her furrier. No one about the court whom he was able to address could give him any satisfactory information about Christophe; and he fell at last into a state of such utter despair that he was on the verge of appealing to the cardinal himself, when he learned that Monsieur de Thou (and this was the great stain upon that good man’s life) had consented to be one of the judges of the Prince de Conde. The old furrier went at once to see him, and learned at last that Christophe was still living, though a prisoner.

Tourillon, the glover (to whom La Renaudie sent Christophe on his way to Blois), had offered a room in his house to the Sieur Lecamus for the whole time of his stay in Orleans during the sittings of the States-general. The glover believed the furrier to be, like himself, secretly attached to the Reformed religion; but he soon saw that a father who fears for the life of his child pays no heed to shades of religious opinion, but flings himself prone upon the bosom of God without caring what insignia men give to Him. The poor old man, repulsed in all his efforts, wandered like one bewildered through the streets. Contrary to his expectations, his money availed him nothing; Monsieur de Thou had warned him that if he bribed any servant of the house of Guise he would merely lose his money, for the duke and cardinal allowed nothing that related to Christophe to transpire. De Thou, whose fame is somewhat tarnished by the part he played at this crisis, endeavored to give some hope to the poor father; but he trembled so much himself for the fate of his godson that his attempts at consolation only alarmed the old man still more. Lecamus roamed the streets; in three months he had shrunk visibly. His only hope now lay in the warm friendship which for so many years had bound him to the Hippocrates of the sixteenth century. Ambroise Pare tried to say a word to Queen Mary on leaving the chamber of the king, who was then indisposed; but no sooner had he named Christophe than the daughter of the Stuarts, nervous at the prospect of her fate should any evil happen to the king, and believing that the Reformers were attempting to poison him, cried out:—

“If my uncles had only listened to me, that fanatic would have been hanged already.”

The evening on which this fatal answer was repeated to old Lecamus, by his friend Pare on the place de l’Estape, he returned home half dead to his own chamber, refusing to eat any supper. Tourillon, uneasy about him, went up to his room and found him in tears; the aged eyes showed the inflamed red lining of their lids, so that the glover fancied for a moment that he was weeping tears of blood.

“Comfort yourself, father,” said the Reformer; “the burghers of Orleans are furious to see their city treated as though it were taken by assault, and guarded by the soldiers of Monsieur de Cypierre. If the life of the Prince de Conde is in any real danger we will soon demolish the tower of Saint-Aignan; the whole town is on the side of the Reformers, and it will rise in rebellion; you may be sure of that!”