Henry saw Lescot’s admirable design for the reconstruction of the west wing of the Louvre completed. The architect had associated a famous sculptor, Jean Goujon, with him, who executed the beautiful figures in low relief which still adorn the quadrangle front between the Pavilion de l’Horloge and the south-west angle, and the noble Caryatides, which support the musicians’ gallery in the Salle Basse, or Salle des Fêtes, now known as the Salle des Caryatides. The agreement, dated 5th September 1550, awards forty-six livres each for the four plaster models and eighty crowns each for the four carved figures. Lescot preserved the external wall of the old château as the kernel of his new wing, and the enormous strength of the original building of Philip Augustus may be estimated by the fact that the embrasures of each of the five casements of the first floor looking westwards now serve as offices. So grandement satisfait was Henry with the perfection of Lescot’s work, that he determined to continue it along the remaining three wings, that the court of the Louvre might be a cour non-pareille. The south wing was, however, only begun when his tragic death occurred, and the present inconsequent and huge fabric is the work of a whole tribe of architects, whose intermittent activities extended over the reigns of nine French sovereigns.
Lescot and Goujon were also associated in the construction of the most beautiful Renaissance fountain in Paris, the Fontaine des Innocents, which formerly stood against the old church of the Innocents at the corner of the Rue aux Fers. Pajou added a fourth side in 1786, when the fountain was removed to the Square des Innocents. It was while working on one of the figures of this fountain that Jean Goujon is said to have been shot as a Huguenot during the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
Europe was now in travail of a new era, and unhappy France reeled under the tempest of the Reformation. A daring spirit of enquiry and of revolt challenged every principle on which the social fabric had been based, and the only refuge in the coming storm in France was the Monarchy. Never had its power been more absolute. The king’s will was law—a harbour of safety, indeed, if he were strong and wise and virtuous: a veritable quicksand, if feeble and vicious. And to pilot the state of France in these stormy times, Henry II. left a sickly progeny of four princes, miserable puppets, whose favours were disputed for thirty years by ambitious and fanatical nobles, queens and courtesans.
Francis II., a poor creature of sixteen years, the slave of his wife Marie Stuart and of the Guises, was called king of France for seventeen months. He it was who sat daily by Mary in the royal garden, on the terrace at Amboise overlooking the Loire, and, surrounded by his brothers and the ladies of the court, gazed at the revolting and merciless executions of the Protestant conspirators,[108] who, under the Prince of Condé, had plotted to destroy the Guises and to free the king from their influence. It was the first act in a horrible drama, a dread pursuivant of the civil and religious wars in France. The stake was a high one, for the victory of the reformers would sound the death-knell of the Catholic cause in Europe. There is little reason to doubt that the queen-mother, Catherine de’ Medici, who now emerges into prominence, was genuinely sincere in her disapproval of the horrors of Amboise, and in her efforts to bring milder counsels to bear in dealing with the Huguenots; but the fierce passions roused by civil and religious hatred were uncontrollable. When the Huguenot noble, Villemongis, was led to the scaffold at Amboise, he dipped his hands in the blood of his slaughtered comrades, and, lifting them to heaven, cried: “Lord, behold the blood of Thy children; Thou wilt avenge them.” A savage lust for blood among the Christian sectaries on either side, drawing its stimulus from the records of the ferocity of semi-barbarian Jewish tribes, smothered the gentle voice of Jesus, and during thirty years was never slaked. Treachery and assassination were the interludes of plots and battles. In 1563 the Duke of Guise was shot by a fanatical Huguenot with a pistol loaded with poisoned balls. In 1569, when the Protestant leader, Admiral Coligny, was surprised and attacked by the forces of the Duke of Anjou, Prince Condé, although wounded in the arm, hastened to his succour. As the prince passed on, his leg was broken by a kick from a vicious horse. Still charging forward, he cried: “Remember how a Louis of Bourbon goes to battle for Christ and Fatherland!” His horse was killed, himself captured; as he was handing over his sword to his captors, the Baron de Montesquieu, “brave et vaillant gentilhomme,” says Brantôme, arrived on the scene, and, on learning what was passing, exclaimed, “Mort Dieu! kill him! kill him!” and blew out Condé’s brains with a pistol. The body of the heroic Bourbon was then tied on an ass, and a mocking epitaph set upon it:—
“L’an mil cinq soixante neuf,
Entre Jarnac et Château neuf;
Fut porté mort sur une ânesse,
Cil qui voulait ôter la messe.”
The defeated Protestants were, however, soon roused to enthusiasm by the arrival of Jeanne of Navarre at their camp, leading her son Henry by one hand and the eldest son of Condé by the other. “Here,” cried the widowed queen, “are two orphans I confide to you; two leaders that God has given you.” One of these orphans was to become Henry IV. of France.