An Enemy to the King / From the Recently Discovered Memoirs of the Sieur de la Tournoire

by Robert Neilson Stephens

"I fear he would rather revenge himself on the King for what he has had to endure at court."

Presently Malerain left to go on duty at the Louvre, and soon I followed, to take up my station in sight of the window where Mlle. d'Arency slept. The night, which had set in, was very dark, and gusts of cold wind came up from the Seine. The place where, in my infatuation and affectation, I kept my lover's watch, was quite deserted. The Louvre loomed up gigantic before me, the lights gleaming feebly in a few of its many windows, serving less to relieve its sombre aspect than to suggest unknown, and, perhaps, sinister doings within.

I laugh at myself now for having maintained those vigils by night beneath a court lady's window; but you will presently see that, but for this boyish folly, my body would have been sleeping in its grave these many years past, and I should have never come to my greatest happiness.

Suddenly my attention was attracted to another window than that on which I had fixed my gaze. This other window appertained to the apartments of the King's sister, Queen Marguerite, and what caused me to transfer my attention to it was the noise of its being opened. Then a head was thrust out of it,—the small and graceful head of Marguerite herself. She looked down at the moat beneath, and in either direction, and apparently saw no one, I being quite in shadow; then she drew her head in.

Immediately a rope was let down into the moat, whose dry bed was about five times a tall man's length below the window, which was on the second story. Out of the window came a man of rather squat figure, who let himself boldly and easily down the rope. As soon as he had reached the bed of the moat, he was followed out of the window and down the rope by a second man, who came bunglingly, as if in great trepidation. This person, in his haste, let go the rope before he was quite down, but landed on his feet. Then a third figure came out from the chamber and down the cable, whereupon Marguerite's head again appeared in the opening, and I could see the heads of two waiting-women behind her. But the Queen of Navarre manifestly had no intention of following the three men. These now clambered up the side of the moat, and the one who had been first down turned and waved her a silent adieu, which she returned with a graceful gesture of her partly bare arm. The three men then rapidly plunged into one of the abutting streets and were gone. All this time I stood inactive and unobserved.

Marguerite remained at the window to cast another look around. Suddenly, from out the darkness at the base of the Louvre, as if risen from the very earth at the bottom of the moat, sprang the figure of a man, who started toward the guard-house as if his life depended on his speed. Marguerite drew her head in at once with a movement of great alarm. An instant later the rope was drawn up and the window closed.

Two conjectures came into my head, one after the other, each in a flash. The one was that Marguerite had availed herself of the fraternal quarrel that occupied the King's attention to plan an escape to her husband, King Henri of Navarre, and that these three men had gone from a consultation in her apartments to further the project. The other conjecture was that they were but some of Monsieur's followers who had transgressed the new rule, requiring their departure from the palace at nightfall, and had taken this means of leaving to avoid discovery. If the former conjecture embodied the truth, my sympathies were with the plot; for it little pleased me that the wife of our Huguenot leader should remain at the French court, a constant subject of scandalous gossip. If the second guess was correct, I was glad of an opportunity to avert, even slight, trouble from the wilful but charming head of Marguerite. In either case, I might serve a beautiful woman, a queen, the wife of a Huguenot king. Certainly, if that man, paid spy or accidental interloper, should reach the guard-house with information that three men had left the Louvre by stealth, the three men might be overtaken and imprisoned, and great annoyance brought to Marguerite. All this occupied my mind but an instant. Before the man had taken ten steps, I was after him.

He heard me coming, looked around, saw my hand already upon my sword-hilt, and shouted, "The guard! Help!" I saw that, to avoid a disclosure, I must silence him speedily; yet I dared not kill him, for he might be somebody whose dead body found so near the palace would lead to endless investigations, and in the end involve Marguerite, for suppose that the King had set him to watch her? Therefore I called to him, "Stop and face me, or I will split you as we run!"

The man turned at once, as if already feeling my sword-point entering his back. Seeing that I had not even drawn that weapon, he, himself, drew a dagger and raised it to strike. But I was too quick and too long of arm for him. With my gloved fist I gave him a straight blow on the side of the chin, and he dropped like a felled tree, at the very moat's edge, over which I rolled him that he might recover in safety from the effects of the shock.

I knew that, when he should awake, he would not dare inform the guard, for the three men would then be far away, and he would have no evidence to support his story. He would only put himself in danger of having fabricated a false accusation against the King's sister.