Everything seemed as if it would pass off in a regular way, without Charles allowing his vexation to break out. That prince, who knew so well how to restrain himself, raised a sensation, however, among the great personages around him. Addressing the pope, he demanded a cardinal's hat for three of his prelates: it was a trifling compliment (he thought) which Clement might well concede him; but the pope granted one hat only. The ambassador of France then came forward, and, on behalf of his master, demanded one for John, Bishop of Orleans and uncle of the Duke of Longueville, which was granted. Then the same ambassador, growing bolder, begged, on behalf of the King of England, a cardinal's hat for the Bishop of Winchester. This was too much for Charles. 'What! ask a favour for a king who has put away my aunt Catherine, who is quarrelling with the pope and rushing into schism!'... 'The emperor took this request,' says Du Bellay, 'in very bad part.'—'We can see clearly,' said Charles to those around him, 'that the affairs of these two kings are in the same scales; that one does not less for the other than for himself.' Then, throwing off his usual reserve, he openly expressed his disapprobation. 'This request of a hat for England,' said he, 'displeases me more than if the ambassador of France had asked four for his master.'[392] The diplomatists there present could not turn away their eyes from that face, usually so placid, and now so suddenly animated; they were secretly delighted at seeing any feeling whatever, especially one of ill-humour, on the features of that powerful monarch, all whose words and actions were the result of cold reflection and calculated with the nicest art. But no one was so rejoiced as Hawkins, the English ambassador: 'The emperor departed from hence evil-contented,' he wrote to Henry forthwith, 'and satisfied in nothing that he came for. All he did was to renew an old league, lest he should be seen to have done nothing.'[393] Charles was eager to leave the city where he had been duped by the pope and checkmated by the king, and already he repented having shown his displeasure. He descended the steps of the palace, threw himself into his carriage, and departed for Milan, where he had some business to settle before going to Genoa and Spain. It was, as we have said, Friday, the 28th of February.[394]
=MEETING OF FRANCIS AND CLEMENT.=
The pope remained ten days longer at Bologna. There was a talk of an interview between him and the King of France, to whom he had written with his own hand. The papal nuncio had proposed to the king that the emperor should be present also. 'Provided the King of England be the fourth,' answered Francis.[395] 'We should be unwilling, the King of England and I,' added he, 'to be present at the interview except with forces equal to those of the emperor, for fear of a surprise.... Now it might happen that, the escorts of these not very friendly princes being together, we should begin a war instead of ratifying a peace.'[396] They accordingly fell back upon the conference of two, pending which the marriage should be completed. Nice was at first selected as the place of meeting; but the Duke of Savoy, who did not like to see the French at Nice, objected. 'Well, then,' said the pope, 'I will go to Antibes, to Fréjus, to Toulon, to Marseilles.' To ally himself with the family of France, he would have gone beyond the columns of Hercules. Francis, on his side, desired that the pope, who had waited for the emperor in Italy, should come and seek him in his own kingdom. The pope thus showed him greater honour than he had shown Charles—on which point he was very sensitive. Marseilles was agreed upon.
At last all was in proper train. The blood of the Valois and of the Medici was about to be united. The clauses, conditions, and conventions were all arranged. The marriage ceremony was to be magnificently celebrated in the city of the Phocæans. The pope was at the summit of happiness, and the bride's eyes sparkled with delight. The die was cast; Catherine de Medici would one day sit on the throne of France; the St. Bartholomew was in store for that noble country, the blood of martyrs would flow in torrents down the streets of Paris, and the rivers would roll through the provinces long and speechless trains of corpses, whose ghastly silence would cry aloud to heaven.
But that epoch was still remote; and just now Paris presented a very different spectacle. It is time to return thither.
[368] Du Bellay, Mémoires, p. 179.
[369] Ibid. p. 180.
[370] Du Bellay, Mémoires, p. 180. Guicciardini, Wars of Italy, ii. bk. xvi. pp. 894-897.
[371] Guicciardini, ibid.
[372] 'Cæsar arbitratus illud conjugium quasi per simulationem a rege oblatum.'—Pallavicini, Hist. Concil. Trid. lib. iii. cap. ii. p. 274.