While besieging Paris, and before his public liaison with Gabrielle d'Estrées, Henry had sent to demand the portrait of Mademoiselle de Guise, giving her reason to believe that so soon as the war should be terminated he was desirous of making her his wife; a prospect which, as she very naively acknowledges, led her to despise the addresses of the Comte de Giury,[303] who was her declared suitor, as well as those of the other nobles who sought her favour. One day, however, during a brief truce of six hours, the Duchesse de Guise and herself, accompanied by several other ladies, having ascended the rampart to converse with such of their friends as were in the besieging army, all the young gallants crowded to the foot of the walls to pay their respects to the fair being whose presence offered so graceful a contrast to the objects by which they were more immediately surrounded; and among the rest came Roger, Duc de Bellegarde, at that period the handsomest man in France.
It was the first occasion upon which Mademoiselle de Guise and the Duke had met; and we have the authority of the lady for stating that the attraction was mutual. M. de Bellegarde had long been the avowed lover of la belle Gabrielle; but, inconstant as the fair D'Estrées herself, he at once surrendered his previously-occupied heart to this new goddess. His prior attachment was not, however, the only reason which should have deterred Mademoiselle de Guise from thus suffering her fancy to overcome her better feelings, as M. de Bellegarde was accused of having been accessory to the assassination of her father; but neither of these considerations appears to have had any weight with the young Princess. According to her own version of the circumstance, Gabrielle conceived so violent a jealousy that the Duke was compelled to condescend to every imaginable subterfuge in order to conceal the truth; while the King, who soon became aware of the secret intelligence which subsisted between the lovers, ceased to feel any inclination to raise Mademoiselle de Guise to the throne of France; although, as we have seen, he was by no means insensible either to the charm of her wit or the attraction of her beauty.
In order to follow up his great design of pacification, Henry, after having re-established Philip of Nassau in his principality of Orange, also effected his marriage with Eléonore de Bourbon,[304] by which union he secured another desirable ally.[305]
During the development of the late conspiracy the monarch had been indebted for much of the information which he had received relative to the intrigues of the Comte d'Auvergne to the intelligence afforded by the ex-Queen Marguerite, who, having come into possession of many facts which could not otherwise have been known to the King, had assiduously imparted to him every circumstance that she conceived to be of importance; a service for which he had not failed to express his gratitude. That Marguerite had, however, been in no small degree actuated in this matter by feelings of self-interest, there can be no doubt, D'Auvergne having long enjoyed the proprietorship of the county from whence he derived his title, and which had been bestowed on him by Henri III, as well as several other estates which that monarch had inherited from his mother, Catherine de Medicis, the said territories having formed a portion of her dowry on her union with Henri II. Marguerite's memories of her brother, as the reader will readily comprehend, were not sufficiently attaching to induce her to submit patiently to such a substitution, as she was aware that, by the marriage contract, the property in question was settled upon the female offspring of Catherine in default of male issue; and her lavish expenditure and errant adventures having exhausted her means, she resolved to exert every effort to establish her claim. She had already upon several occasions solicited permission to return to the French capital; and, although it had never been distinctly refused, it was so coldly conceded that her pride had hitherto prevented her from availing herself of an indulgence thus reluctantly accorded; but aware at the present moment that she could so materially serve the King as to ensure a more gracious reception than she might previously have anticipated, she resolved to seize the opportunity; and accordingly, greatly to the surprise, not only of the whole Court, but of the monarch himself, she arrived in Paris without having intimated her intention, lest the permission should be revoked.
For five-and-twenty years the last survivor of the illustrious house of Valois had existed in obscurity and poverty among the mountains and precipices of the inhospitable province of Auvergne, apparently forgetting for a time that world by which she had been so readily forgotten; but Marguerite began at length to yearn for a restoration of her privileges as a member of the great human family. She could not have chosen a more judicious moment in which to hazard so extreme a step; as in addition to the respect which, despite all her vices, she could still command as the descendant of a long line of sovereigns, she had latterly established many claims upon the gratitude of the King. It was impossible for him not to feel, and that deeply, the generous self-abnegation with which she had lent herself to the dissolution of their ill-omened marriage, when not only his own happiness, but that of the whole nation, required the sacrifice; nor could he fail to remember that while those upon whom he lavished alike his affection and his treasure, had constantly laboured to embitter his domestic life, and to undermine the dignity of his Queen, the repudiated wife had never once evinced the slightest disposition to withhold from her the deference and respect to which she was entitled.
Thus then, when her near approach to the capital was suddenly announced to him, Henry lost not a moment in hastening, with his royal consort and a brilliant retinue, to receive her before she could reach the gates; and gave orders that the palace of Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne should immediately be prepared in a befitting manner for her residence. Nor was Marie de Medicis less willing than himself to welcome the truant Princess, to whom she was aware that she owed many obligations; and the meeting was consequently a cordial one on both sides. After the usual ceremonies had been observed, Marguerite, abandoning the litter in which she had hitherto travelled, took her place in the state coach beside their Majesties, by whom she was conducted to her appointed abode; nor was it until repeated expressions of regard had been exchanged between the ex-Queen and her successor, that the royal party returned to the Tuileries.
After a sojourn of six weeks in the palace of Madrid, during which time Marguerite not only revealed to the monarch all the details of the Verneuil conspiracy, but also the particulars of another still more serious, as it involved the cession of Marseilles, Toulon, and other cities to the Spaniards, she became wearied of the forest villa, and established herself in the archiepiscopal Hôtel de Sens[306]; an arrangement to which the King consented on condition that she should make him two promises, one of which was that she would be more careful of her health, "and not turn night into day, and day into night," as she was accustomed to do; and the other, that she would restrain her liberality, and endeavour to economize. To these requests the Princess cheerfully answered that she would make an effort to obey his Majesty upon the first point, although it would be a privation almost beyond endurance, from the habit in which she had so long indulged of enjoying the sunrise before she retired to rest; but with regard to the other she must decline to give a pledge which she was certain to falsify, no Valois having ever succeeded in such an attempt. It is probable that Henry, from a consciousness of his own peculiar prodigalities, did not feel himself authorized to insist upon a rigid observance of his expressed wish, as although Marguerite had so frankly refused to regulate her expenditure with more prudence, she was nevertheless permitted to remain in the asylum which she had chosen; and this she continued to do until the 5th of April 1606, when she was driven from it by a tragedy that rendered it hateful to her.
Slender as was her retinue, it unfortunately included a young favourite named Saint-Julien,[307] who, from some private pique, had induced her to discharge from her service two attendants who had from their earliest youth been members of her household, the one as page, and the other as maid of honour; and who had ultimately married with her consent and approbation, but upon being thus cast off, had found themselves ruined, no noble house being willing to receive the dismissed attendants of the dishonoured Queen. Of this union a son had been born, possessed, however, of less patience and self-control than his unhappy parents, who, after having clung to Marguerite through good and evil fortune, now found themselves abandoned to all the miseries of poverty and neglect. This youth, called by L'Etoile Vermond, and by Bassompierre Charmond, made his way to Paris as best he might, and arrived in the capital after Marguerite had taken up her residence as already stated in the Faubourg St. Antoine. There can be no doubt that the utter destitution of his parents had made him desperate, for he could not rationally indulge the slightest hope of impunity; suffice it, that as the Princess was alighting from her coach on her return from attending mass at the abbey of the Celestines, between mid-day and one o'clock on the 5th of April, while her favourite stood beside the steps to assist her to descend, the unhappy Vermond shot him through the head, and then, turning his horse towards the gate of St. Denis, endeavoured to make his escape. He was, however, too ill-mounted to succeed in this attempt, the carriage of the ex-Queen having been followed by many of the nobles who were anxious to propitiate the favour of the King by so easy a display of respect to the dethroned Marguerite; and ere he reached the barrier the wretched young man found himself a prisoner.
The body of his victim had, meanwhile, been conveyed to an apartment on the ground floor of the hôtel, where on his arrival he was immediately confronted with it; but no sign of remorse or regret was visible as he gazed upon the corpse. "Turn it over," he said huskily, after he had gazed for awhile upon the glazed eyes and the parted lips. "Let me see if he be really dead." His request was complied with; and as he became convinced that life had indeed departed from the already stiffening form, he exclaimed joyfully: "It is well--I have not failed--my task is accomplished. Had it been otherwise I could yet have repaired the error."