"You have no people. You are a mere puppet in the hands of an ambitious woman and an unprincipled adventurer."
"A puppet!" echoed Louis haughtily. "Do I not wear the crown of France?"
"So did Charles IX," was the unmoved reply; "yet he died to make way for Henri III. Concini and his wife, Sire, come from the same country as Catherine de Medicis. Isabeau de Bavière was a mother, yet she preferred her lover to her son." [264]
"Enough, enough, Sir," said Louis, clutching the hilt of his sword; "I will hear no more, lest it should make me mad!"
De Luynes bowed in silence; he knew that the poisonous seed was sown, and he was content to wait until it should germinate.
The pecuniary difficulties of the kingdom exercised no influence over the festivities of the Court; balls, banquets, and comedies took place in rapid succession; and the young Queen danced in a ballet which was the admiration of all the spectators; an example which was followed by the nobles of the royal household.[265] Still, however, it was necessary to recruit the national treasury; and, accordingly, on the 10th of March a declaration was published by which the King confiscated all the property of the disaffected Princes, and made it forfeit to the Crown; while at the same time three separate bodies of troops attacked the rebels with complete success, and the royal arms were everywhere triumphant, when intelligence was forwarded to their leaders from the capital which induced an immediate cessation of hostilities.[266]
We have seen the effect of the insolence of Concini, and the insidious inferences of De Luynes, upon the mind of the young King, who had only six months previously been taught a lesson of dissimulation on the occasion of the arrest of Condé; and consequently it can scarcely be subject of surprise that, wounded to the heart's core, he was easily persuaded to exert in his own cause the subtlety which he had evinced at the bidding of another. He was now between fifteen and sixteen years of age, and was deeply imbued by the idea that he possessed an unlimited control alike over the properties, the liberty, the honour, and the lives of his subjects; but he was still utterly incapable of fulfilling his duties as a sovereign. His conceptions of right and wrong were confused and unstable; and he willingly listened to the advice of those whose counsels flattered his selfishness and his resentment. De Luynes had skilfully availed himself of this weakness; and as he was all-powerful with his suspicious and saturnine master, who saw in every one by whom he was approached either an enemy to be opposed, or a spy to be deceived, he was careful to introduce to him none save individuals whose insignificance rendered them incapable of interfering with his own interests, and who might be dismissed without comment or danger whenever he should deem their absence desirable. Against this arrangement neither the Queen-mother nor her ministers entered any protest. Louis truly was, as his favourite had so insolently asserted, a mere puppet in their hands; and the consequence of this undignified neglect was fatal to the intellectual progress of the young sovereign. On the pretext of requiring assistance in training the royal falcons, De Luynes had presented to Louis two young nobles, MM. du Tronçon and de Marcillac, men of good birth, but who had become dishonoured by their own vices; the former being accused of having betrayed his master, and the latter his sisters in order to enrich himself;[267] facts of which the favourite was, however, careful that the King should remain ignorant.
In addition to these disreputable adventurers, De Luynes also introduced to the intimacy of his royal patron Déageant,[268] the principal clerk of Barbin, whom he had won over by promises of aggrandizement should he succeed in effecting the disgrace of Concini, which, as a natural consequence, must also involve that of his master; and, finally, a private soldier, and one of the gardeners of the palace. All these persons were instructed to excite the suspicions of the King against his mother and her ministers, a task in which it was by no means difficult to succeed; particularly when the treacherous Déageant had placed in his hands a number of forged letters, wherein Barbin, at the pretended instigation of Concini, was supposed to entertain a design against his life, in order not only to prolong the authority of the Queen-mother, but also to ensure the crown to her second and favourite son, Gaston d'Orléans.[269]
Skilfully as De Luynes conducted this affair, and despite the natural dissimulation of Louis XIII, the reiterated assertions and cautions of his familiar associates did not fail to produce an involuntary effect upon his manner and deportment which aroused the suspicions of the Italian; who, with an infatuation almost incredible, instead of endeavouring to conciliate the young King, and to render himself less obnoxious to the people, resolved to make all bow before him, and to break the stubborn spirits that he failed to bend. In this desperate and insane policy he was, moreover, seconded by the counsels of Barbin, whose impetuous temper and anxiety to secure his own safety alike urged him to support any measure which promised to maintain the government in the hands of Marie de Medicis and her favourite, in whose ruin he could not fail to be involved. So intemperately, indeed, did he pursue his purpose, that even Marie herself became alarmed; her most faithful adherents were absent with the army, while she had daily evidence of the activity of her enemies; and more than once at this period she declared her determination to withdraw from all participation in state affairs, and to resign her delegated authority, in order that her son might rule as he saw fit. From this purpose she was, however, constantly dissuaded by Barbin. "Madame," he said on one occasion when the Queen-mother appeared more than ever resolved to follow out her determination, "if you once abandon the administration of government you will cut the throats of your children. Should you cease to rule they will be utterly lost." [270]
No wonder that her tenderness as a mother, joined to her ambition as a Queen, induced Marie de Medicis to yield to the representations of one of her most trusted counsellors, even while the cloud was deepening around her. As the great nobles murmured at the insolence and tyranny of the audacious Italian, their murmurs were echoed by the curses of the people; and in every murmur and in every curse the name of the Queen-mother was coupled with that of Concini and his wife. Even the Maréchal himself at length betrayed tokens of alarm; he never ventured to traverse the streets of Paris without a numerous retinue, and even so attended he cowered beneath the menacing looks and gestures which he encountered on all sides. Again and again he urged Leonora to leave France; but he urged in vain; and finally he resolved to take measures for securing a safe retreat in his government of Normandy, should he be compelled to escape from the capital. As a preliminary and important step towards the accomplishment of this purpose, he caused the fortifications of Quilleboeuf to be put into a state of perfect repair, and endeavoured to purchase the governments of several other places upon the Loire and the Seine; which, had he been enabled to carry out his object, could not have failed to render him independent of the royal authority. He also lavished large sums on every side, in order to secure partisans; and so excited the apprehensions of the citizens that bitter complaints were made, and threats uttered against himself, his royal mistress, and the new ministry.