When this scene was reported to Marguerite, who, absorbed in the most passionate grief, had retired to her appartment, she vowed that she would not touch food until she had vengeance on the murderer; and she kept her word, as she persisted in her resolution till, on the third day after he had committed the crime, the unhappy young man was decapitated in front of the house, and almost upon the very spot still reeking with the blood of his victim. But the nerves of the ex-Queen could endure no further tension; and on the morrow she removed to a new residence in the Faubourg St. Germain, where she was shortly afterwards visited by Bassompierre, who was charged with the condolences of the King on her late loss.[308]
This fact alone tends more fully to develop the manners and morals (?) of the age than a thousand comments; and thus we have considered it our duty to place it upon record.
Meanwhile M. de Saint-Julien was far from having been the only favourite of the profligate Marguerite, who divided her time between devotional exercises and the indulgence of those guilty pleasures to which she was so unhappily addicted; but while the citizens were not slow to remark her excesses, she gained the love of the poor by a profuse alms-giving, and enjoyed a perfect impunity of action from the real or feigned ignorance of the King relative to the private arrangements of her household. She was, moreover, the avowed patroness of men of letters, by whom her table was constantly surrounded; and in whose society she took so much delight that she acquired, by this constant intercourse with the most learned individuals of the capital, a facility not only of expression, but also of composition, very remarkable in one of her sex at that period.[309] Carefully avoiding all political intrigue, she made no distinction of persons beyond that due to their rank; and thus, while her intercourse with the Queen was marked by an affectionate respect peculiarly gratifying to its object, she was no less urbane and condescending to the Marquise de Verneuil; who had, as may have been anticipated, already regained all her former influence over the mind of the monarch, his passion even appearing to have derived new strength from their temporary estrangement.
The peculiar situation of the Queen, however, who was about once more to become a mother, and whose tranquillity of mind he feared to disturb at such a moment, rendered the monarch unusually anxious to conceal this fact; and it was consequently not until some weeks afterwards that Marie de Medicis was apprised of the new triumph of her rival.
The month of December accordingly passed away without the domestic discord which must have arisen had the Queen been less happily ignorant of her real position; but it was nevertheless fated to be an eventful one. The death of M. de la Rivière, the King's body-surgeon, a loss which was severely felt by Henry, was succeeded by the execution of M. de Merargues[310], whose conspiracy to deliver up Marseilles to the Spaniards was revealed to the monarch by Marguerite; and who, tried and convicted of lèse-majesté, was decapitated in the Place de Grève, his body quartered and exposed at the four gates of the capital, and his head carried to Marseilles, and stuck upon a pike over the principal entrance to the city; while, on the very day of his execution, as the King was returning from a hunt and riding slowly across the Pont Neuf, at about five in the afternoon, a man suddenly sprang up behind him and threw him backwards upon his horse, attempting at the same time to plunge a dagger which he held into the body of his Majesty. Fortunately, however, Henry was so closely muffled in a thick cloak that before the assassin could effect his purpose the attendants were enabled to seize him and liberate their royal master, who was perfectly uninjured. The consternation was nevertheless universal; nor was it lessened by the calmness with which, when interrogated, the assassin declared that his intention had been to take the life of the sovereign. It was soon discovered, however, by the incoherency of his language that he was a maniac; and although many of the nobles urged that he should be put to death as an example to others, the King resolutely resisted their advice, declaring that the man's family, who had long been aware of his infirmity, were more to blame than himself; and commanding that he should be placed in security, and thus rendered unable to repeat any act of violence. He was accordingly conveyed to prison, where he shortly afterwards died.
At this period, whether it were that the King hoped, by occupying her attention with subjects of more moment, to be enabled to pursue his liaison with Madame de Verneuil with less difficulty, or that his advancing age rendered him in reality anxious to initiate her into the mysteries of government, it is certain that he endeavoured to induce the Queen to take more interest than she had hitherto done in questions of national importance; and revealed to her many state secrets, not one of which, as he afterwards declared to Sully, did she ever communicate, even to her most confidential friends. But Marie de Medicis was far from evincing the delight which he had anticipated at his avowed wish that she should share with him in the hopes and disappointments of royalty; her ambition had not then been thoroughly awakened; she still felt as a wife and as a woman rather than as a Queen; and an insolence from Madame de Verneuil occupied her feelings more nearly than a threatened conspiracy. So great, indeed, was her distaste to the new character in which she was summoned to appear, that when the King occasionally addressed her with a gay smile as Madame la Régente, a cloud invariably gathered upon her brow. Upon one occasion, when the royal couple were walking in the park at Fontainebleau, attended by all the Court, and that the monarch, who led the Dauphin by the hand, vainly endeavoured to induce him to jump across a little stream which ran beside their path, Henry became so enraged by his cowardice and obstinacy that he raised him in his arms to dip him into the pigmy current, a punishment which was, however, averted by the entreaties of his mother; and the King reluctantly consented that he should suffer nothing more than the mortification of being compelled to exchange her care for that of his governess, Madame de Montglat. As the child was led away the King sighed audibly, but in a few seconds he resumed the conversation which had been thus unpleasantly interrupted, and once more he addressed the Queen as Madame la Régente.
"I entreat of you, Sire, not to call me by that name," said Marie; "it is full of associations which cannot fail to be painful to me."
MARIE DE MEDICIS.