This fact alarmed the Council, who moreover could not contemplate without great apprehension the union and perfect understanding which had, throughout the whole proceedings, characterized the Protestant leaders, who had taken their usual oath to uphold each other and the faith which they professed; and who were, as the ministers well knew, able to redeem their pledge so effectively should they see fit to exert their power, that any demonstration on their part could not fail to convulse the nation from one extremity to the other. After considerable deliberation it was agreed that the only method by which the impending evil could be averted was to dissolve the Assembly before it could proceed from words to acts; and accordingly a pretext for this breach of faith was at once found in the declaration that the King had permitted the assembling of the reformed party to enable them to select six individuals, from among whom he might himself nominate two as general deputies; while at the same time the documents forwarded to the Court were returned, with an emphatic refusal to make any reply to their contents until such time as the required nomination had been made. All opposition, save what must have assumed a decidedly hostile character, was of course impossible on the part of the Protestants, whose indignation, loud as it naturally became for a time, was finally silenced, even if not extinguished, by the calm and dignified eloquence of the Comte du Plessis-Mornay, who reminded the Assembly that their first duty as Christians was obedience to the ruling powers.
"Let us separate," said this prudent and right-minded man, as exclamations of anger and violence resounded on all sides. "Let each, on leaving this spot, leave also all animosity behind him. We should only heighten the evil by spreading it through the provinces. Each has failed, yet each has done well. Let us now endeavour to obtain by respectful silence and Christian patience what has been refused to our remonstrances and requests." [116]
A short time subsequently, the death of M. de Créquy, governor of the town and citadel of Amiens, having taken place, a great number of the nobles were ambitious to succeed to the vacant dignity, among whom was the Marquis d'Ancre, whose insatiable ambition grasped at every opportunity of acquiring honour and advancement. Having confided his wish upon this subject to M. de Soissons, he was encouraged in his pretensions by that Prince; and having obtained the royal permission to absent himself for a time from the Court, he hastened to Picardy, attended by a hundred horsemen, in order to negotiate the affair with the entire sanction of the Queen; where, although opposed by the ministers who were anxious to curb his daily increasing power, he ultimately succeeded in his attempt.
Nevertheless the objections raised by the Council, not only to his acquirement of the government, but also to the marriage of his son with the daughter of M. de Soissons, which had been communicated to them by the Marquis de Rambouillet,[117] embittered his temper, and determined him to discover some means of revenging what he considered as an undue interference with his personal affairs. The extraordinary imprudence of which he was soon afterwards guilty rendered him, however, for a time unable to indulge his vindictiveness, and even threatened to involve him in the disgrace which he was so anxious to see visited upon his adversaries. In the first place, intoxicated by his newly acquired dignities, he affected the utmost attachment for M. de Soissons, who had exerted all his influence in his behalf; and remarked that the proposition lately made to him by the Prince for an alliance between their families was no longer so unequal as it had then appeared, although he was still aware that it would be a great honour conferred upon himself; but that as the Duc de Longueville was about to marry another daughter of the Prince, and that their governments were contiguous, the union of his own son with the sister of the bride might prove a mutual advantage, and of considerable service to M. de Soissons himself. This unseemly boast he followed up by a still more flagrant proof of presumption; for, being anxious to assert his entire authority over the citadel of Amiens, he entered into a financial treaty with M. de Rouillac the lieutenant, and M. de Fleury the ensign of the fortress, and replaced them by adherents of his own, without the sanction of the Regent; after which he borrowed, on his own responsibility, twelve thousand livres from the receiver-general of the province for the payment of his garrison.
Such an unprecedented disregard of the royal prerogative had never before occurred in France; and it no sooner became known to the ministers than they hastened to represent it in its most heinous aspect to the Queen, impressing upon her in no measured terms the danger of such a precedent, which could not fail to bring contempt upon her authority, and to introduce disorder into the finances of the nation; and entreating her to remember that should she sanction an alliance between the imprudent favourite and a Prince of the Blood, she could no longer hope to restrain his extravagances. Marie de Medicis was jealous of her dignity, and moreover fully conscious of the fault which had been committed by Concini, and her anger was consequently unbounded. In the first burst of her indignation she refused to see Madame d'Ancre, whom she accused of having incited her husband to these demonstrations of disrespect towards herself; and her wrath was skilfully increased by the Princesse de Conti, who looked upon the favour of the low-born Leonora with impatience and disgust, and could not desire a more ready means of ensuring her discredit than that of following up the arguments of the ministers, of dwelling upon the little respect which had been shown to the person and privileges of her royal mistress, and of expatiating on the ruinous effect of so pernicious an example upon the discontented nobility.
The effect of these frequent and confidential conversations may be imagined; the mind of the Queen became more and more excited against her former favourites, while she clung with the tenacity of helplessness to Madame de Conti, through whose medium the Princes began to hope that they should at length triumph over the detested Italian. But the sun of Concini was not destined to set so soon; and although he had fierce enemies, he still possessed zealous friends; the more zealous, perhaps, because they had accurately read the character of the Tuscan Princess, and were well aware that she had so long leant upon others that she had at last become incapable of perfect self-reliance. Through the medium of those friends, but undoubtedly still more from the daily and hourly ennui experienced by Marie herself while thus deprived of the society of her foster-sister, the pardon of Concini was finally obtained. He was declared to have erred through ignorance; and a perfect reconciliation took place which overthrew all the half-fledged projects of the disappointed courtiers.
Two circumstances alone tended to mitigate the satisfaction of the Marquis d'Ancre. The representations of the ministers had succeeded in so thoroughly awakening the apprehensions of the Regent, that she had, at their first interview, strictly forbidden him thenceforward to attempt the accomplishment of his anticipated alliance with the House of Bourbon; while he had found himself compelled to apologize to the Comte de Soissons for the excesses in which he had indulged in Picardy, and which had drawn down upon the Prince the resentment, not only of the Queen herself, but of the whole Council, by whom he was accused of having upheld the pretensions of the Italian in order to aggrandize his own daughter.
In the month of July Marie de Medicis bestowed great happiness upon the whole nation by remitting the arrears of taxes which had remained unpaid from the year 1597, until that of 1603; while she also, at the same period, decreed the abolition of the gaming academies to which allusion was made in the preceding volume; and, finally, ascertaining that the edict against duelling issued by the late King had been evaded by certain sophistical observances, she published a declaration setting forth that all hostile meetings, however arranged, would not only entail the penalties already denounced against them, but henceforward be regarded as acts of assassination. This wholesome and well-timed declaration was verified by the Parliament on the 11th of July, and great hopes were entertained that so stringent a measure would effectually terminate an abuse which, during the reign of the late King, had deprived France of several thousand of her best chivalry.[118]
Throughout the autumn, notwithstanding the gravity of the affairs then pending, the Court at Fontainebleau was one ceaseless scene of dissipation. High play still formed a prominent feature in the amusements of the palace, and the extent to which it was carried may be estimated by the fact that Concini, before his return to the capital, had lost at cards and dice the enormous sum of twenty-six thousand pistoles;[119] and while the branle and the gaming-table occupied the night, the day was devoted to hunting, a diversion in which the Queen constantly participated, accompanied by the Princesses and ladies of the Court, and attended by a suite of between four and five hundred of the principal nobles. The arrival of the Duchesse de Lorraine and the Cardinal de Gonzaga[120] gave a new impetus to the gaiety of the royal circle, while their sumptuous reception at the palace induced new outlay and new rivalry among the courtiers.[121]
It was in the midst of this splendid dissipation that the Regent received tidings of the death of the Duc de Mayenne, a loss which, from the good understanding recently established between herself and that Prince, was of serious importance to her authority; while the event produced a still more painful impression from the fact that his wife, Henrietta of Savoy, had died of grief a few days subsequently, and that they had been carried to the grave together.