"You are my prisoner, Madame," he exclaimed harshly: "prepare to accompany me to the Bastille."
"I am ready, Sir," replied the Maréchale, with the composure of utter despair, "All is as it should be. The murderer of the husband is well fitted to be the gaoler of the wife."
The rings belonging to the Crown were then removed from the fingers of the Marquise; and upon her refusal to reveal where the remainder of the jewels were secreted, her apartments were strictly searched; and not only were the royal ornaments carried off by De Vitry and his companions, but also every other article of value which fell into their hands. While this unmanly outrage was going on around her, the Maréchale d'Ancre passively permitted her women to fasten her mantle, and to adjust her mask and hood; her thoughts were evidently elsewhere. Within a few yards of where she was then seated, and within hearing of the tumult occasioned by the reckless insolence of the men-at-arms by whom she was surrounded, her foster-sister, the playmate of her girlhood, the friend of her youth, and the protectress of her latter years—whose tears she had so often wiped away, whose sorrows she had so often soothed, and whose hopes and fears she had equally shared throughout so long a period—remained cold and unmoved by her misery. It was a bitter pang: and drops of anguish, wrung from the deepest recesses of a bursting heart, fell large and heavy upon the cheek of the new-made widow and the abandoned favourite, and moistened her clasped hands. None, however, heeded her agony; each of her attendants, whatever might have been the previous attachment of all to her person, was absorbed by her own terrors; while the strangers who had invaded her privacy were eager, under the specious pretext of performing their duty to the King, to avail themselves to the uttermost of so favourable an opportunity of furthering their individual interests.
At length all was over: every cabinet and chest had been ransacked to its deepest recesses; every article of use or ornament had been displaced in search of plunder; and the wretched Leonora was warned that it was time to depart. She rose silent and rigid; and as De Vitry preceded her from the room, his guards closed up behind her. A carriage was in waiting at the foot of the staircase by which she descended; the twilight was rapidly deepening into night, and her melancholy path was lighted at intervals by the torches of the numerous attendants who were hurrying through the corridors in the service of their several employers. The long dark shadows of the Louvre lay heavy on the dull pavement of the court, save where they were broken at intervals by the resinous flambeaux which glared and flickered against the walls of the building. All looked wild, and sad, and strange; and not one kindly accent fell upon the ear of the unhappy captive as she was hurried onward. A few harsh words were uttered in a tone of authority: she was lifted into the conveyance which had been prepared for her: the cavalcade slowly traversed the enclosure; and then as the iron gates of the palace were passed, the horses were lashed into a gallop; and in less than an hour the life-long companion of Marie de Medicis, husbandless, childless, and friendless, was an occupant of the gloomy prison-chamber which had recently been vacated by the Prince de Condé.
The noise created by the entrance of the new prisoner, the clashing of arms, the grating of the heavy portcullis, as it groaned and strained in its ascent, the dull fall of the drawbridge, the voices of men, and the rattling of wheels, awakened the Prince; who, with the natural weariness of a captive, had already retired to rest. Summoning an attendant he demanded to know the cause of the disturbance.
"It is M. de Vitry, Monseigneur," was the reply; "who has just transferred the Maréchale d'Ancre to the safe keeping of the governor."
"Good!" said the Prince, as he once more settled himself to sleep; "I have now one enemy the less." [292]
This rapid succession of misfortunes produced an extraordinary effect upon the sensitive organization of Leonora Galigaï. As we have already hinted, she had for a considerable period suffered under mental hallucination; and the disease had latterly fastened so tenaciously upon her system that she had even shunned the presence of the Queen, believing that every eye which rested on her produced some baneful result; while her very attendants were dismissed from her presence when they had terminated their duties, and she thus remained hour after hour in solitude, brooding over the sickly fancies of her disordered brain. The sight of her husband's murderer had, however, instantly and for ever restored the healthful tone of her mind. She did not weep, for she had already exhausted all her tears; she asked no mercy, for she was aware that, whatever might be her fate, she was alike prejudged and pre-condemned; but she resigned herself passively into the hands of her persecutors, with a Spartan firmness which she maintained to the last hour of her existence.
Who shall venture to follow her to her prison-cell, and to trace the tide of back-flowing thought which rolled like a receding wave from the present to the past? Now, indeed, she left little behind her to regret. From the husband to whom she had once been devoted with a love which blinded her to all his errors and to all his egotism, she had, during the last two years, been almost utterly estranged; her first-born and idolized daughter was in her grave; the royal friend and almost relative, to whom she had clung from her youth up, had refused even a tear to her sufferings, or a shelter to her peril; her hoarded wealth was in the hands of her enemies; and of all that she once boasted there remained only her son. And what might be his fate?
But memory held wider stores than these; and who can doubt that throughout that first long night of captivity they were probed to their very depths! What palace-pageants—what closet-conspiracies—what struggles for pre-eminence and power—what heart-burnings at defeat, and exultation at success—must have swept hurricane-like across her awakened soul, to be forgotten in their turn as she recalled the childish sports of her early and hopeful years, under the sunny sky and among the orange-groves of her native Florence, where, with her royal playmate, she chased the hours along as though they were made only for the happy!