Queen Jezebel

Six

CATHERINE, THROWING OFF THE RIGOURS OF HER INCREASING YEARS, trying to ignore the nagging pain of her rheumatic limbs, for the first time being careful of what she ate—for too many years she had shown little restraint where those foods which she loved were concerned—bestirred herself to fresh energies. Disaster was near. Her power might at any moment be snatched from her. She realized that during the last few years she had followed will-o’-the-wisps; she had travelled about the country making peace, removing her enemies, keeping the crown safe—so she had thought; and because one man had seemed to lose his ambition, to have been content with his place in life, she had ignored him; and thus he had been free to continue with his secret work and, like some underground creature, he had tunnelled beneath the very foundations of her power, so that instead of its being on firm ground, it was ready to totter. She should have known that the most ambitious man in France would never lose his ambition. She should never have allowed her attention to be diverted from Henry, Duke of Guise.

What did he plan? His League was now the most powerful force in France. Insidiously it had grown, and in silence, while the attention of those who should have watched it had been cunningly directed to minor dangers. And the League was working against the King.

Catherine looked back on the years of her son’s reign. The clever though effeminate young man he had been in his teens had changed. The better side of his nature had been suppressed, so that now, apart from those moments when he displayed his wit and an unexpected grasp of affairs, he seemed nothing but a decadent fop. His health was poor, his constitution weak; and there was a strain of cynicism in him which seemed to indicate his belief that his life could not be a long one and that he intended to use it exactly as he pleased for that reason. He had disappointed his mother, and she had allowed herself to be hurt. There had been times when she had let her love for an ungrateful son override her love of power. She should have been wiser and remembered a bitter lesson which another beloved Henry had taught her years ago; and she thought now of those years of misery and humiliation, of the wasted torture of watching her husband and his mistress through a hole in the floor; so much unhappiness had been the result of self-inflicted wounds. She was surprised that she had not learned how futile that line of conduct could be, for evidently she had not learned this lesson, since, with this Henry as with the other, she had allowed her emotions to intrude into her plan for living. Emotion should have had no part whatsoever in the life of Catherine de’ Medici.

But that was over now; yet it had taken the threat of disaster to show her the folly of her ways. She loved her son, but it was more important to keep her power than his affection. If necessary, she might have to work against him.

Events had been moving out of her knowledge. Where were her spies? They had doubtless done their best, but the Guises’ spies were better. Hers had helped her to discover one thing, however—that Henry of Guise had dared to communicate with Spain as though he were already the ruler of France.

That old fool, the Cardinal of Bourbon—brother of that greater fool, Antoine de Bourbon, who had made such a laughing-stock of himself at her court years ago—was to take the throne on the death of Henry. Henry was a young man still and the Bourbon was an old one, so what was in the minds of the Guises? What other secret documents had passed between the Duke of Guise and Philip of Sapin? Did Philip really think that Guise intended to stand by and let the Cardinal take the crown? Perhaps Guise wished to rule through the Cardinal. There was a great advantage, as she could have told him, in being the power behind the throne.

The Cardinal was sixty-four. How could he be expected to outlive Henry, unless . . . But she would not let herself believe that it was possible for them to be planning to destroy her son; she must forget that she was a sick and ailing woman, for she had much to do.

The Bourbon, an ardent follower of the Guises, such a good Catholic, had agreed to ignore the prior right of his nephew, Henry of Navarre, and to take the throne himself; he had sworn that when he was King he would forbid heretical worship.

Catherine summoned Guise to her and demanded to know why he had communicated with the King of Spain without the knowledge and consent of his King.

Guise was arrogant—more arrogant than ever, she thought. It was evident that he knew more of what was happening than she did. His manner, but for his aristocratic bearing, would have bordered on the insolent.

‘Madame,’ said Guise, ‘France would never tolerate a Huguenot King, and should the King die without heirs—which God forbid—the Huguenot King of Navarre would feel he had a right to the throne unless the people of France had already chosen their new King.’

She gazed at him in thoughtful silence. The sunlight which came through the embrasured window, shone on his hair, turning it to gold and silver. He was taller than any man at court and that spareness of his gave him a look of added strength; the scar on his cheek but augmented the warlike look. She was not surprised that a man of such presence should have the people of Paris at his feet. The King of Paris! they called him; and one would have been a fool not to realize that, when he talked of the future king of France, he was not thinking so much of an old Cardinal in his sixties as of a handsome Duke in his thirties.

Then she said: ‘You presume to negotiate with a foreign power without consulting the wishes of your King, Monsieur!’

‘The King occupies himself with other matters, Madame. There was the wedding of Joyeuse, which was followed by the wedding of Epernon. I did approach the King, but he was discussing the garments he would wear at the weddings and he told me he was too busy to talk of anything else.’

What insolence! What arrogance! she thought; but she was aware of a slight feeling of pleasure. Had he been her son, how different everything would have been! She made up her mind then; she was going to walk in step with the arrogant Duke . . . for a little way at least. It was, after all, the only wise thing to do. Matters had gone too far from her control for her to be able to ignore him; and if she could not show herself to be his enemy, she must appear to be his friend.

‘Ah well, Monsieur,’ she said, ‘you are right when you say that the people of France would never tolerate a Huguenot King.’

‘Madame, it delights me that you approve my action.’ He bent and kissed her hand.

‘My son,’ she said, looking at him tenderly. ‘Yes! I call you son. Were you not brought up with my children? My son, these are bad days for France. The King delights in his pleasure, surrounded by frivolous young men. But France has no place for frivolous young men at this hour. You and I must work together . . . for the good of France.’

‘You are right, Madame,’ said Guise.

For the good of France! she thought, as she watched him retire. He is clever enough to know that I shall work for the good of the Queen Mother, while he works for the good of Monsieur de Guise.

‘Holy Mother of God!’ she muttered. ‘Nothing that man does in future must escape my notice.’

Margot was not happy in Béarn. Life had become very dull. Her husband had taken her back, but he had let her see that he had been in two minds about it.

He was still devoted to La Corisanda, who was by no means the stupid little creature La Fosseuse had been; and he had decided that Margot, though still the Queen of Navarre, should realize that it was the King who ruled.

‘You have changed,’ she told him, ‘since you have taken a step nearer the throne of France.’

‘Nay!’ he answered. ‘I am the same man. I still do not wash my feet.’

‘That is no concern of mine,’ she retorted.

‘I am glad that you have learned some sense,’ was his answer, for I do not intend that it shall be any concern of yours.’

She was furious.

He made it quite clear that there would be no resumption of their intermittent conjugal relationship; he told her carelessly that he had taken her back solely because the concessions her brother had offered, if he would do so, were very necessary to him. She was bored as well as furious; she was restive, looking for new adventures, and none of the men of her husband’s court pleased her.

News had come that the Pope had excommunicated Navarre as a heretic, and that release was offered to any of his subjects from their oath of fidelity; moreover, Navarre was, by edict of Rome, denied the succession to the French crown.

Navarre’s eyes blazed with wrath. He cursed the Pope; he cursed the Duke of Guise; and he cursed the Queen Mother. He was seriously perturbed, as he knew that the Pope’s edict would carry great weight in France. He raged against his uncle, the Cardinal of Bourbon, who had, he declared, betrayed him.

Margot listened, not without sympathy.

‘I am my father’s son!’ he cried. ‘I am heir to the throne of France. My uncle deceives himself if he allows the Pope and the Guises to convince him he is right. Ventre Saint Gris! If I had the old man here I’d lop off his head and throw it over the battlements. It is a conspiracy. The Guises have done this, and your mother is behind them.’

‘I do not believe that my mother agrees with this,’ said Margot.

‘She is continually with Guise in council. That is the news we get from Paris.’

‘Even now you do not know my mother. She may seem to agree with the Guises; she may applaud all that is said by Philip of Spain and the Pope of Rome; but you may depend on it, she has made her own plans, and while there remains one of her children to sit on the throne, she will never willingly stand by and see any other take it.’

‘Ah,’ he said, smiling at her, ‘I see you have your eyes on the throne, Madame.’

She returned the smile. They were allies. They must be, for their interests ran together.

Navarre became more energetic than he had ever been before. Not only did he publish his protests throughout France, but he had them posted in Rome and on the very doors of the Vatican.

This forthright action astonished all, and even the Pope secretly expressed admiration for the young man. This boldness of his, said the Pope, made it all the more necessary for him to be most closely watched.

Margot was not content merely to play the part of consort to the young man who seemed to be growing in importance now that the might of Spain, Rome, and France was directed against him. She must have excitement; she could not endure being bored. She took to the pen and wrote long letters to her friends at the French court; her mother wrote to her kindly and affectionately, and Margot replied. It was easy for Margot to forget the past and all that she had suffered at those maternal hands. She began to send accounts of all events of importance at her husband’s court.

Any correspondence with Catherine de’ Medici seemed, to the friends of the King of Navarre, a dangerous procedure, and one of his gentlemen decided to tell him that his wife was acting as the Queen Mother’s spy in Béarn.

The enraged Henry of Navarre determined, now that so much was at stake, to be increasingly watchful, and had one of Margot’s couriers arrested just as he was leaving Nérac for Paris. This man, a certain Ferrand, was brought into the King’s presence and, greatly daring, even as he stood before him, managed to throw quantities of paper on to the fire. These roared into such a blaze that they were burned before they could be recovered. The remaining letters were taken from him, but these proved to be only love letters from Margot and her women to lovers they had known in Paris.

After he had laughed at these revealing epistles, Navarre had Ferrand arrested, and during painful cross-examination, Ferrand told the King that the Queen was planning to poison him because of the insulting way in which he treated her.

In horror, Navarre confronted Margot.

You are exposed, Madame,’ he said.

‘How so?’

‘Your evil plans concerning me are known.’

‘I know of no evil plans: She was genuinely surprised, being quite innocent of the charge. She was no crafty poisoner; all her sins were committed impetuously. Moreover she was always most furious when she was falsely accused, and when she heard from her husband of what Ferrand had said against her, her rage broke forth.

‘How dare he suggest such a thing! It is cruel; it is folly.’ ‘You are in communication with your mother, are you not?’ ‘Why should I not be?’

‘She has declared herself in favour of the Cardinal’s succession.’

‘What a fool you are! She is in favour of my succession, and that must be yours. And you are foolish enough to think I would poison you!’

‘You are your mother’s daughter.’

‘I am my father’s daughter also. I do not love you; that would be impossible. But I realize my position rests with yours. Do not be such a fool as to believe the confession of a man, made under torture. You will have to be shrewder than that if you are ever going to win what is yours by right.’

‘Your mother is in constant council with Guise. To my mind, he is the one who, backed by the League, is going to make a bid for the throne.’

Margot smiled faintly. Yes, she thought; and if all had gone as I once wished it to, I should be with him now.

She thought of him—tall, spare and handsome still; more noble now, more distinguished, some said, than he had been even in ‘the fresh beauty of his youth. There was a yearning within her, a longing for Paris, for a different life, to go back and act differently. Marriage with the man who now stood before her had been inevitable; but there had been an occasion later when she had had a chance to break away from him. She had refused it in her blind and stupid pride.

‘You,’ she said at length, ‘have suspected me of trying to bring about your death, and I find that hard to forgive. I am tired of your court. I am tired of your people. I do not like your mistress, who is the real Queen of Navarre; and that is something I cannot happily endure. I would like to leave Nérac for a while.’

‘You shall not go to Paris,’ he said.

‘I was not thinking of Paris. During the Lenten season a great Jesuit father is to preach at the cathedral at Agen. May I have your permission to make the journey there?’

He hesitated. It would be a relief to be rid of her. How did he know what secrets had been in those documents which she sent to Paris? How could he be sure that,- however closely she was watched, she would not smuggle out important information? If she went, he could see that she was well guarded.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Go to Agen for the Lenten season. I will give my consent.’

She was happy now. She thought: once I have left him, I will never return to him. Why should I tolerate a husband who scorns me—me, the daughter of France, the sun of the court of Paris, the most beautiful of Princesses . . . when he is nothing but a provincial oaf!

But why concern herself with a man who meant little to her? Her thoughts were of another—that man whom she firmly believed would be King of France, for he was surely destined for greatness; the gods had fashioned him for it.

Margot was now deep in intrigue such as she loved. She would hold the town of Agen for the Catholic League. She would show France and Henry of Guise whose side she was on.

Catherine saw clearly for what Henry of Guise had been working all these years. He had decided not to depend entirely on his popularity. Rumour was circulated throughout the country that the Guises had been proved to have a stronger claim to the throne than had the Valois; and although these rumours did not appear to spring from Henry of Guise, Catherine knew that he was behind them.

It was said that ‘The line of Capets had succeeded to the temporal administration of the kingdom of Charlemagne but it had not succeeded to the apostolic benediction which appertained to none other but the posterity of Charlemagne. The House of Lorraine sprang from the issue of Charlemagne, and as certain members of the line of Capet were possessed of a spirit of giddiness and stupidity while others were heretic and excommunicated, it was now time to restore the crown to its new heirs . . .’

This was ominous. So he would be King, not by popular acclaim only, but by right. That was typical of Guise, she was beginning to understand. He must be King not only because the people wished it, but because he was heir to the throne. As an aristocrat of aristocrats, he worshipped law and order; and mob rule nauseated him.

Catherine was disturbed to realize that this was not only being said throughout France, but that Cardinal Pellevé, a firm supporter of the League, had given his approval of it, and that it was being submitted to Rome and Spain. She knew that she had not been wrong when she had guessed that Guise and his supporters had no intention of allowing the Cardinal of Bourbon to rule.

She sought out Guise at once.

‘There is much in this account of the House of Lorraine’s being descended from Charlemagne,’ she said. ‘You know of what I speak, of course?’

The Duke admitted that he had heard the rumours.

‘My lord Duke, it seems to me that there is one course we must take. If it is true that the Capets have forfeited their right to the throne, then the Cardinal of Bourbon has no right.°

‘That is so,’ admitted Guise; but apart from the brightness of his eye above the scar he showed no sign of emotion.

‘The House of Lorraine,’ she said slowly, ‘according to this new authority should be the rulers of France. There will be some to agree with that, and some to dispute it.’

‘There are always some who are for us and some who are against us, Madame.’

‘And it is wise in some cases to placate both sides. Do you agree?’

He indicated his agreement, wondering what suggestion she was going to offer. He was certain that it concerned Margot. Divorce for him; divorce for Margot; and that marriage, which had been proposed before, could take place.

Catherine understood his line of thought and let him pursue it. Then she spoke. ‘I was thinking of the son of my dear daughter Claude, a boy whose parents were a Duke of Lorraine and a daughter of Valois. What could be more suitable? The supporters of my House would be pleased; the supporters of yours should be pleased.’

In his astonishment, he was silent for a second or two before he regained his composure. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘that is a most excellent proposition.’

They smiled at each other; but she knew that he intended that no man should mount the throne of France after the death of Henry the Third but Henry of Guise; and he knew that she knew it.

Events were moving fast in the lives of the three Henrys of France—Henry the Third, Henry of Guise, and Henry, King of Navarre.

Guise was growing daily more powerful. The Treaty of Joinville, which Guise and the leading Catholics of France had made with Philip of Spain, was followed by Philip’s promise of troops and money for the cause to which Guise had pledged himself—the defence of the faith, the wiping out of heretics, and the disinheriting of Henry of Navarre. The League was everywhere; all over France it had sprung up in small groups to work not only against the Huguenots, but against the throne, Guise was now in control of a great army, one section of which was commanded by himself, the other by his brother, the Duke of Mayenne. The Pope, however, was now suspecting that the League had not been formed so much for the sake of Catholicism as for the elevation and advancement of the House of Guise and Lorraine. He foresaw that the arrogant man who was making a bid to rule France would be no humble vassal of Rome and Spain, for he had already announced that high offices of the Church should be appointed by the League and not as hitherto by Rome. The Pope was watchful; it might be that the pleasure-loving King would be easier to handle than the warlike Guise.

Catherine, eagerly watching, had, as she had planned, walked step by step with Guise. The League was now putting forward demands which the King must either concede or refuse; and if he refused, he would have to face the mighty army of the League. The King was angry at being bothered, for he was in the midst of a delightful carnival. He wanted peace in which to enjoy himself. So he allowed Catherine to treat with Guise. The King was to force all his subjects to accept the Catholic Faith, and those towns which had been given to the Huguenots were to be taken from them and given to the League.

Catherine toyed with the idea of playing Navarre off against Guise, in accordance with her well-tried policy, but she decided that Guise was her man. The Catholics were in the ascendant, and if Philip of Spain sent the help he had promised Guise, Navarre’s case was hopeless.

She flattered the Duke and tried to convince him that she was his ally, while between them they kept up the fiction that her grandson should be King of France if the present King should die.

‘I am old,’ she told Guise. ‘I am weary. I have worked hard in my long life and I now have need of peace. You, my dear Duke, are as a son to me; you are my helper, my counsellor.’

She was seen walking with him, arm in arm; and when she referred to him it was affectionately as ‘le baton de ma vieillesse’.

Navarre watched from afar, gathering his followers, waiting for the moment when he would ask them to prove their allegiance. Meanwhile, the familiar clouds of civil war were gathering over the land.

Margot, her husband was relieved to contemplate, had been separated from him for some time. She had acted’ with her usual careless impetuosity at Agen. She had settled in at the château there and declared that she had come to hold the town for the League. The townsfolk had been sympathetic at first; they had been enchanted by her vivacity and her dark beauty; they had seen in her a romantic Princess fleeing from the husband to whom she had been married against her will, the husband who had a faith different from her own. But very soon scandalous stories of the happenings inside the castle seeped out. It was said that there were scenes of unparalleled immorality between Margot and certain gentlemen of the castle; and that her women were no better than she was. The people of Agen did not wish to be ‘protected’, as Margot called it, by such an immoral woman; they now began to believe the stories which for so long had been circulating about her. They became threatening, and in the end Margot had been forced to leave Agen, fleeing as her brother had fled from Poland—in a manner more dramatic than was necessary. She had ridden pillion with her lover of the moment, the Lord of Lignerac; and her women had followed in the same manner on the horses of the officers of her court. Lignerac had taken her to his castle in the mountains of Auvergne and kept her there as his prisoner, so enamoured of her was he, so distrustful of her fidelity. There the troublesome prisoner was forced to stay, although it was said that she was making attempts to evade the old lover with the help of several new ones.

Navarre could smile at the exploits of Margot; but his own life was too exciting just now for him to think very much about her. He knew that in the civil war which seemed inevitable, Guise and the King of France would be uneasy allies; and that he would be the opponent of both of them. He knew that he would be faced by a formidable force, so he asked that, rather than plunge the country into another war, Guise should meet him in single combat, or, if it was preferred, with ten men aside, or twenty—the number could be decided on.

‘It would give me great happiness, he wrote, ‘to deliver at the price of my blood, the King our sovereign lord from the travails and trials a-brewing for him, and his kingdom from trouble and confusion, his noblesse from ruin, and all his people from misery.’

The Duke of Guise replied that he must decline the honour while appreciating it; had this been a private quarrel between them, then gladly would he have accepted Navarre’s proposal; but it was no private quarrel; theirs was the cause of the true religion against the false. It could not be settled by two men’s fighting together or even by ten or twenty on each side.

Navarre now knew that war was inevitable; and within a very short time after he had made his offer and Guise had replied to it, the War of the Three Henrys had begun.

It was called The War of the Three Henrys, although one of these Henrys, the King of France, wished to have nothing to do with it. He was more furious when he heard of Guise’s successes than when he heard of those of Navarre; he was piqued and jealous on account of Guise’s. He was a strange creature, this King of France; in his early years he had been by no means stupid, but his love of his mignons and all those young men stood for had blighted that intellect which had undoubtedly been his. It emerged occasionally when he addressed the council meetings; there he could show by a sharpness of wit that he was a man who had profited from his reading of the greatest books of his age; but the determination to pursue pleasure at all costs, his great vanity concerning his personal appearance, the dominance of those worthless young men whose elegance, beauty and charm had won him—together these things had almost succeeded in suppressing the intellectual side of his character. But he still had enough sense to realize that in this war of the Henrys, it was his ally, Henry of Guise, of whom he must be wary—far more wary than of his enemy, Henry of Navarre.

Guise was fighting in the north against the Germans and the Swiss who had come in to help the Huguenots, and news came of the tremendous victory he had scored over these foreign troops. He had surprised the Germans while they were sleeping and so demoralized them that before they were able to collect themselves together, there was no German army. At this the Swiss took fright and were bribed to withdraw. News of this great victory was brought to the King. But it was a Guise victory; it was not even called a King’s victory.

In the south events did not turn out so happily for the King’s forces. Against the advice of Guise and his mother, the King had given the command of the southern army to Joyeuse, who, having been a successful mignon and bridegroom, now wished to make his name as a soldier. He had cajoled and wept when asking for the command of the army; and he had looked so charming a suppliant that the King had been unable to refuse him. And so, with six thousand foot, two thousand horse and six pieces of cannon, Joyeuse marched into the Gironde country to meet the little army at the head of which was the King of Navarre.

There were members of that tiny Huguenot force who trembled at the thought of the mighty army which had come to attack them; but when Henry of Navarre heard who was at their head he laughed aloud.

Before his men went into battle, he addressed them in his coarse Béarnais fashion, which, though it might offend the ears of elegant ladies, put great heart into soldiers about to go into battle.

‘My friends, here is a quarry different from your past prizes. It is a brand-new bridegroom with his marriage-money still in his coffers. Will you let yourselves go down before this handsome dancing-master and his minions? No! They are ours. I see it by your eagerness to fight.’

He looked about him at the glowing faces of the men touched by the faint dawn-light. His shrewd eyes twinkled. They would beat the dancing-master no matter how many cannon he had against their two, no matter if he had five hundred men to twenty of themselves.

Now for that little touch of spirituality which, he was aware, was so necessary to men such as these before they went into battle.

‘My friends,’ he resumed, ‘all events are in the hands of God. Let us sing the twenty-fourth verse of the one hundred and fifteenth psalm.’

Their voices rose on the morning air: ‘This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.’

The sun now appeared above the horizon and, before it was high in the sky, Navarre, at the cost of twenty-five men had inflicted a loss of three thousand on the enemy.

Joyeuse, bewildered, found himself surrounded by Huguenots, and saw that they recognized him. Fresh from the court, he believed his, beauty must appeal to these men as it had to others; but these warriors saw no handsome mignon; they saw their enemy, a sinner from the cities of the plain who had led the King into extravagance and folly.

Joyeuse in horror cried out: ‘Gentlemen, you must not kill me! You could take me and demand a reward of a hundred thousand crowns. The King would pay it. I assure you that he would.’

There was a second’s pause, and then the shot rang out. Joyeuse opened his beautiful eyes in astonishment before he fell bleeding to the ground.

This was the greatest victory that the Huguenots had ever won, and all knew that they owed it to that quality in their leader which almost amounted to genius. The King’s army had been a mighty one, and even though it had been under the command of Joyeuse, would, but for Navarre, have gained the victory. The careless philanderer could throw off his laziness after all; he was a great soldier; the careless joker was, after all, a great King.

It was a fact that the character of the King of Navarre had been gradually undergoing a change for some time. There were occasions when he was a great leader, but almost immediately afterwards he would revert to the man they all knew so well. He was a man of contrasts, of a strange and complex nature. The rough Béarnais with his coarse, crude manners hated to see suffering; it affected him more deeply than it did most people of his time; and yet the emotion of horror and pity which it aroused in him were so fleeting that they would pass if he did not act at once. Now these feelings came to him as he surveyed the carnage of that battlefield, and it robbed him of his feeling of triumph. His men rejoiced while he mourned for the slain. He was a great soldier who hated war; he was a coarse and careless man, fond of horseplay and discomfiting his enemies, who in a moment could change to one far in advance of his time to whom cruelty and suffering could be utterly distasteful. He had little relish now for the conqueror’s feast which was prepared for him; he commanded that the fallen men should be treated with respect, and that everything possible should be done for the relief of the wounded.

He knew that he had won not only a great battle but a moral victory. He could push on while his men were drunk with success, for they were now ready to face anyone—even Henry of Guise.

But this new King of Navarre had suddenly reverted to the old one, and he was filled with one desire and one only. He longed for his Corisanda. Loving was so much more satisfying that killing; dallying with a beautiful mistress more to his taste than contemplating carnage. He was a great soldier, but he was an even greater lover; for while the former calling gave him brief triumph, the latter, he knew, would not lose its charm for him as long as there was life in his body.

And so, neglecting the great opportunity that he had won, he prepared to forget military matters and return to Corisanda.

The war dragged on; in some parts of France there were local truces; in others the battles still blazed. The King of France, overcome with grief, must have fresh entertainments to stifle his sorrow in the loss of Joyeuse. The country was in revolt—Catholics and Huguenots together—against the fantastic extravagances of the King. The yearly cost of keeping his birds and dogs, with the great retinue of attendants he must employ solely to look after them, was enough to feed a town for that period. He paid great sums for miniatures which were bought by him from the greatest artists, but when they were his he cut them up that he might paste them on his walls. He wallowed in all the luxuries and comforts which went with his position and lightly discarded every responsibility.

The Sorbonne voted in secret that the crown should be taken from a King unworthy to wear it. Guise had made a trip to Rome to confer with the Cardinal Pellevé, who had supported his claim. As a result of these two moves, a third followed—the League presented the King with an ultimatum. He must establish the Inquisition in France while he took every measure to suppress the Huguenots.

The King was filled with rage at the arrogance of the Leaguers. Catherine begged him to ask for time to consider this proposal. Meanwhile, she secretly let Guise know that she was working for the League and him, and meant to do everything in her power to persuade the King to do as Guise and his Leaguers demanded.

She was beset by fainting fits and nausea at this time, and her rheumatism was so bad that she could scarcely walk; the gout was attacking her; and it seemed to the worst of bad fortune that, now when she needed all her faculties, she should be denied that good health which had been hers throughout her life. She was nearly sixty-nine, which was a great age; but her mind was as good as it had ever been, and she cursed her failing body. Her spies seemed less alert than they had once been; that was because she herself was failing. She was no longer the energetic Queen Mother, gliding about the palace, opening doors with her secret keys and coming, upon people unawares. Now she must walk with the aid of a stick whose tapping betrayed her; or she must be carried in a litter; the pain in her joints had become so great that even such a stoic as herself could not ignore it. Those fainting fits betrayed her. All the people whom she had successfully governed in their youth had now grown up. The three Henrys were the most important figures, and the Queen Mother—who had once held their destinies in her hands—was being forced into the background; and not because her mind had weakened, not because her purpose had failed, but because of the disgusting decay of a body which was becoming senile while her mind retained its full vigour.

She had never given in; and she would not do so now. She would go on with what she had begun; the throne should be kept for Henry, even though he, in his folly, had left his mother’s side and tried to hold his power on ground undermined by the folly of his favourites, by the impudence of Navarre and the secret aspirations of the Duke of Guise.

The House of Valois had never been in such a dangerous position as it was now; and this, to Catherine, was like a nightmare. That which she had dreaded above all things was about to come to pass, unless she could find some means of preventing it.

Philip of Spain had offered Guise three hundred thousand crowns, six thousand lanzknechts and twelve hundred lances, to be sent to his aid as soon as he broke with the King and established the Inquisition and the Catholic faith in France as it was in Spain.

Epernon, cleverer than Joyeuse, had not met with disaster in the field. He had bribed the Swiss mercenaries, who had been fighting for the Huguenots, to join the King’s army and link up with the King’s Swiss Guard in Paris. He was now just outside Paris with the guards, waiting for the King to summon him to the city. Guise had announced his intention of coming to Paris. He declared he had heard that there was a plot among the Huguenots to rise and murder Catholics in retaliation for the St Bartholomew massacre. The King’s answer was to forbid Guise to come to Paris.

Catherine, in that magnificent palace, the Hôtel de Soissons, which she had built for herself, lay in bed too weak to rise, her mind tortured with the knowledge of impending catastrophe.

The King was at the Louvre, which was well fortified with his Swiss Guard; the people of Paris were tense, waiting. If ever a city had been on the edge of revolt, Paris was at that moment.

As Catherine’s thoughts meandered through those gloomy avenues, one of her dwarfs, who was standing by the window, turned to her in great excitement

‘Madame,’ he cried, ‘the Duke of Guise comes this way.’

Catherine painfully lifted herself. ‘Nonsense! The King has forbidden the Duke to come to Paris. He would not dare.’ She thought: this cannot be. This cannot be. This must not be. He would not dare to come. The King is protected by his Swiss Guard, but the people of Paris would give their allegiance to Guise if he came among them now.

The excited dwarf jumped up and down, clapping his hands, pulling at the tassels on his red coat. ‘But, Madame, I swear it is the Duke of Guise.’

‘Take him away!’ cried Catherine. ‘Whip him. I will teach him not to tell lies to me!’

The dwarf began to whimper and to point to the window; and others had joined him there now.

‘Madame,’ said Madalenna, ‘he does not lie.’

Catherine could hear the shouting in the streets. So Henry of Guise had ignored the King’s command.

Henry of Guise was determined to see the King, for in commanding Guise not to enter Paris the King had shown he was not aware of current events. The last place which must be forbidden to the man who saw himself as the future ruler of France was its capital.

Guise knew that he was walking into danger. The King was sure to be well guarded, and if Guise entered the Louvre he would be in the midst of enemies. He had therefore decided to enter the city in disguise and present himself to Catherine—who had declared herself to be his friend—in order to explain his desires to her and insist that she accompany him to the Louvre. She still had some influence over her foolish son and she might be able to maintain the peace between them, while Guise laid before the King the demands of the League. But even though he was enveloped in a long cloak and a big slouched hat covered his face, he was very soon recognized, for there were few men in France of the stature of Guise. He had scarcely entered the city when a young man ran along beside him crying: ‘Monseigneur, show yourself to the people. There is no sight they would rather see.’

Guise wrapped his cloak more tightly about him and pulled the brim of his hat down over his face. But it was no use: too many recognized him, and a crowd quickly gathered about him.

‘It is Le Balafré himself. Praise the saints he has come to rescue us.’

The people came running into the streets. The news spread quickly that their hero was among them.

‘Vive Guise!’ they cried. ‘Le Balafré is here.’

They kissed his cloak; they brought out their rosaries and rubbed them against his garments.

‘Vive le pilier de l’église!’

Flowers were strewn before him; a garland was placed about his neck. Men brought out their knives to show him. ‘Let any traitor lay hands on our great Prince, and we shall know how to deal with him.’

Guise pushed his way through the hysterical crowd.

‘À Rheims!’ someone shouted; and the crowd took up the cry.

And so at length he came to the Hôtel de Soissons.

As soon as Catherine was sure that he was on his way, she dispatched a messenger to the King to tell him that Guise was in Paris. Then she prepared herself to receive the Duke.

As he knelt by her bed, she saw at once that he was not quite so calm and self-assured as usual.

‘Madame,’ he said, ‘I have come to you first, knowing that you are my friend.’

‘That was wise of you,’ she said. ‘But why are you in Paris? Do you not know that this may cost you your life?’

The roar of the crowd outside seemed to grow louder in the silence which followed those words. It might cost Guise his life, but what other lives would that mob demand as a reprisal for the man they adored?

‘I know it,’ he answered, ‘and for that reason I come to you first. You have agreed with me that the King dare not stand against the League. He must agree to its demands. Delay is dangerous to him . . . and to France. I must see him at once; and therefore I have come here to ask you to accompany me to the Louvre.’

She must accompany him, she knew. Ill as she was, she dared not let him go alone. Who knew what her son might do if he imagined that for a moment he had the upper hand? And what dreadful consequences might follow! If ever her son had had need of her, he had need of her now.

She called her attendants to help her dress, and when she was ready was helped into her litter. Through the streets her litter was carried, while the Duke of Guise walked beside it.

Even Catherine, in all her years of danger, had never experienced anything quite like that walk from the Hôtel de Soissons to the Louvre. She laughed cynically to herself. Here was the woman the Parisians hated most, side by side with the man they loved and admired more than any other. Madame Serpent, the Italian Woman, Queen Jezebel! And with her as her friend and ally, Henry of Guise, Le Balafré, the most aristocratic and adored Prince in France.

She listened to the mingling jeers and cheers.

There she is. She dare not show her face. Murderess! Italian! Remember the Queen of Navarre! Remember the Dauphin Francis! That was a long time ago. That was the beginning. It went ill with us when we let Italians into France.’

But for Le Balafré they would have broken up her litter; they would have dragged her from it and torn her flesh from her body; they would have kicked her corpse through the streets. That was their mood. Before this they had hated sullenly; now they hated vociferously; before they had uttered insults; now they were ready to hurl stones and use knives. The mood of Paris had changed and the storm was rumbling louder.

But beside her, to protect her, was their hero. The cheers were for him; the insults for her.

‘How beautiful he is!’ they cried. ‘Ah, there he goes. A true King! Shall we tolerate these vipers . . . these Italians!’

They were illogical; they were fools. She wanted to shout: ‘My mother was French, my father Italian. This Duke’s father was French—or of Lorraine, if that is enough—but his mother was Italian!’

They would answer: ‘Ah, but you are the daughter of merchants; he is a Prince. You were brought up in Italy; he was brought up in France. He fights with the sword; you with your morceaux Italianizés, which you learned in your vile country how to use.’

Catherine lay back in her litter. She was stimulated rather than frightened. She felt better, riding in a litter with a murderous populace about her, than she had in bed surrounded by her attendants. Now her ailments were forgotten.

Her expression did not change when she heard the ominous shout in the crowd: ‘À Rheims! Monseigneur, when do you go to Rheims?’

They reached the Louvre, and they were received in grim silence. The Swiss Guard filled the corridors and staircases. The Duke walked through them with apparent unconcern, but surely even he must tremble. Catherine noticed with some satisfaction that his face had lost its healthy colour. It was like a man’s might be if he knew he was walking into a lion’s den. King Henry was waiting to receive them, his hands trembling, his eyes betraying his fear. One of his courtiers had, when he had heard that the Duke was on the way, offered to kill him as he came into the room. The King had hesitated. He wanted Guise out of the way, but he was not sure whether he dare give the order for the deed to be done.

He was in a state of terrible uncertainty when the Duke with Catherine came into the audience chamber, where he stood, surrounded by counsellors and guards, waiting to receive them. As soon as his eyes fell on the Duke his fury burst forth.

‘Why do you come here thus?’ he demanded. ‘You received my orders?’

The Duke did not say that he took orders from no one, but his haughty looks implied it. Catherine sent a warning glance at the Duke; and from him she turned to her son; her eyes pleaded with him to be calm, for she knew that he was so angry that he could be capable of any folly.

‘Did I command you not to come, or did I not?’ cried the King. ‘Did I command you to wait?’

Guise said coldly: ‘Sir, I was not given to understand that my coming would be disagreeable to you.’

‘Then it is!’ cried the King. ‘It is.’

‘Sir, there are matters of which we must speak.’

‘I shall be judge of that.’ The King looked about him for the man who had offered to kill Guise, but Catherine had intercepted that look and understood its meaning.

‘My lord,’ she said quickly, ‘I must speak with you. Come with me.’ She did not lead him from the room, but to the window. About the Louvre the crowd had gathered. They carried sticks and knives. They were crying: ‘Vive Guise! Hurrah for our great Prince!’

Catherine murmured: ‘My son, you dare not. This is not the time. This is not the way. You have your guards, but he has Paris.’

The King was shaken. Like his brother Charles, he was terrified of the people. He remembered that whenever he went into the streets, he was greeted by silence; or if any spoke it was not to wish him long life, but to fling at him some insulting epithet: ‘Concierge of the palace! His wife’s hairdresser! Keeper of beggars!’ Remarks which were thrown quickly and sullenly at him; and those who delivered them made off before they could be recognized, while the mob made way for the traitor and laughed behind their hands at their King.

How he hated that man, with his tall spare figure and that masculine beauty which appealed to the people! How dared they treat Guise as their King while they insulted their true ruler!

‘Mother,’ he said, ‘you are right, Not yet . . . this is not the time,’

He returned to the Duke and after a brief discussion the meeting broke up.

‘I shall call again on you, sir,’ said the Duke, ‘when I shall hope to receive a satisfactory answer.’

When he had left, the King roared aloud in his fury. ‘Who is the King of this realm?’ he demanded. ‘The King of France or the King of Paris?’

Catherine looked on uneasily, asking herself what would happen next.

Guise had set up his headquarters in his hôtel in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. He was not quite certain how to act. A great part of the army was with the King; and it was largely the mob on whom Guise must rely to support him: and when he stood at his window and looked at those people, cheering him madly, tears streaming down their grimy faces, it occurred to him that that hysterical adoration could quickly be turned to hatred. He was not of the people; he was an aristocrat of aristocrats; and he did not trust the people. He was almost at the summit of his ambition, but he was wise enough to know that the road grew more slippery towards the top.

He waited.

The next day he presented himself at the King’s Levee, but he did not go alone this time; he took four hundred armed men with him. The meeting was fruitless.

The King, in great terror, refused to take his mother’s advice to stay in the Louvre and ignore the state of the city while giving no sign of his fear; she had begged him to give no special instructions for his protection, and certainly to make no attempt to double his guard. But the King would not listen, and he sent for Epernon and the Swiss Guard whom the favourite had with him outside Paris.

The people watched the soldiers march in. They knew how to act then. By sending for the foreign soldiers, the King, they declared, was making war on them. Merchants ran into the streets with their apprentices; students, restaurateurs, fathers, mothers and their children came hurrying into the streets, to be joined by beggars and the homeless. The King had called in foreign soldiers against Paris, and Paris was ready. Arms were brought out from secret places; chains were placed across streets; the barricades went up all over the city. All churches and public places were boarded up. And the battle began.

The people killed fifty of the Swiss Guard before the rest surrendered, declaring to the enraged mob that they were good Catholics. The French guards gave up their arms, and the King was barricaded in the Louvre.

The streets were filled with shouting people.

Guise stood at his window watching the demonstration with feigned astonishment, as though it had nothing to do with him. Catherine, ill as she was, went bravely through the streets from the Hôtel de Soissons to the Hôtel de Guise. The people allowed her to pass in silence, as they knew whither she was bound.

Guise received her coolly. He was the master now. The King, he told her, should immediately appoint him Lieutenant-General of the country and carry out the demands of the League.

Catherine was desperate. ‘I am a weak woman,’ she said, ‘and a sick one. What can I do? I do not rule this realm. My dear Duke, where will this end? What are you urging these people to do? Assassinate their King and set up another in his place? You forget that death begets death. The people should not be taught that it is an easy matter to assassinate a King.’

After she had left, Guise thought of her words; indeed, he could not forget them. ‘Death begets death.’ She was right. Before he allowed himself to be set up as King he must make sure that he could hold the throne. It must be no brief triumph for him.

The people in the streets were growing impatient. The King was their prisoner; they were thirsty for his blood.

As the evening drew on Guise went into the streets; he was unarmed and he carried a white wand. The people clustered round him. ‘Vive Guise!Vive le Balafré!’ They thought that he would lead them to the Louvre, that under his guidance they would drag the shrinking King from his apartments, that he would order them to kill Henry of Valois as he had ordered them to kill Gaspard de Coligny.

To them it was all so simple. They wished one King out of the way and another to be crowned. They thought that that would mean an end of their troubles. This was the most important hour in the life of Henry of Guise, but it found him unsure, uncertain how to act.

He wanted to be cautious. He wanted to make sure of what he had won.

‘My friends,’ he cried, ‘do not shout, Vive Guise! I thank you for this expression of your love for me. But now I ask you to shout Vive le Roi! No violence, my friends. Keep up your barricades. We must act with care, my friends. I would not see any of you lose his life for a little lack of caution. Will you wait for instructions from me?’

They roared their approval. He was their hero. His word was law. He had but to state his wishes.

He made them bring out their Swiss prisoners, who fell on their knees before him.

‘I know you for good Catholics, my friends,’ he said. ‘You are at liberty.’

He then freed the French guards; and he knew immediately that he had acted wisely in this. He was now the soldiers’ hero, for he had saved their lives; with tears streaming down their faces they promised that those lives should be dedicated to him.

The people fell on their knees, blessing him. Bloodshed was averted, they cried, by the wisest Prince in France. They loved him; they were his to command. They would follow him to death . . . or to Rheims.

For a short while danger had been averted. Guise wrote to the Governor of Lyons asking that men and arms be sent to Paris.

‘I have defeated the Swiss,’ he wrote, ‘and cut in pieces a part of the King’s Guard. I hold the Louvre invested so closely that I will render a good account of whatsoever is in it. This is so great a victory that it will be remembered for ever.’

Guise had taken over the Hôtel de Ville and the Arsenal. The tocsins were sounding in the streets. The spies of Spain were urging the immediate assassination of the King, the setting up of Guise in his place and the introduction of the Inquisition, which would result in an automatic suppression of Huguenots.

Guise’s sister, the Duchesse de Montpensier, marched through the streets at the head of a procession, urging people to rally to her brother. This energetic lady was already known throughout Paris as the Fury of the League; there was no restraining her. She had distributed pamphlets throughout the city; she had had a picture painted to represent Elizabeth of England torturing Catholics. She was urging people to revolution, to the assassination of the King and the crowning of her brother.

But Henry of Guise could not bring himself to that climax which must mean the killing of the King. lie could not share the emotional enthusiasm of his sister. He looked further ahead than she did. The title of King of France would not be so easily held as that of King of Paris, and in reaching for the first he might lose the second. Jesuits from the Sorbonne were congregating in the streets before the university declaring their determination to go to the Louvre and get Brother Henry. Guise knew that it would not be long before one of these fanatics—many of whom believed that the quickest way to achieve a martyr’s crown was to plunge a knife into the heart of an enemy of Rome—found his way to the King and killed him.

He could not count on an army of sufficient size to back him up. He must not forget that it would be folly to put too much trust in Spain. The English, if he found himself in a weak position, would be ready to move in against him. In the Netherlands his enemies would be waiting; and he knew that Philip was more likely to squander his men and money in that country than to help to the throne of France a man who he was unsure would prove a good vassal. Nor must he forget the armies of Navarre, not yet subdued; the brilliant victory over Joyeuse could not easily be forgotten.

If the King was assassinated now, the King of Paris would immediately become the King of France; and the King of Paris was not yet ready to assume that responsibility.

He had set a guard round the Louvre; he had declared that he would account for what was inside the palace; but he was careful to leave one exit unguarded. Let the King escape and, in escaping, postpone a situation with which the man who intended eventually to be King felt he could not yet adequately deal.

And so the gate to the Tuileries was left unguarded, and it did not take the King’s friends long to discover this.

Catherine talked urgently to her son.

‘It would be your greatest folly to leave Paris now. You must stay. I know it is very alarming, but if you went .you would show your fear. You would leave Paris completely in the hands of Guise. You should not admit defeat.’

The King paced up and down his apartments, pretending to consider her words. He looked at her sharply. ‘Mother,’ he said with a nervous laugh, ‘there have been times of late when I have wondered whether you have served me or . . . the baton of your old age.’

She laughed with something like her old abandon. ‘Then you have been a fool. Whom should I ever serve but you? If I have seemed to be over-friendly with that man, it was that I might win his confidence.’

‘It has been said that he fascinates you as he fascinates others.’

She blew with her lips as though to blow away in disgust that which was not worthy of consideration.

‘You are my life,’ she said. ‘If aught happened to you, I should no longer wish to live. You have allowed evil counsels to lead you to this. You have not watched the growing discontent of the people, and the people of France are not a patient and long-suffering people. They love and they hate; and they do these things in good measure. Your young men, my dear son, have not pleased the people.’

‘You are right, Mother. Ah, had I but listened to you! Go to Guise now, I beg of you. Plead with him. Tell him that I am inclined to accept his terms, and tell him he must control the people and take away those ridiculous barricades. Tell him he cannot keep his King a prisoner.’

She smiled. ‘That is wise. You must pretend to agree with these Leaguers. You must lull their suspicions, and then, when all is peaceful again, we shall decide what we must do.’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you are wise. You are subtle. You are the great dissembler. My mother, I know you have learned the art of saying one thing and meaning another. Go now to Guise. See what you can do. Mother, you gave me my kingdom; you must keep it for me.’

She embraced him warmly. ‘Joyeuse is dead,’ she said. ‘Do not heed Epernon. Listen to your mother, who loves you, who has only your good at heart.’

‘Mother, I shall listen.’

She told him what she planned to say to Guise. She felt almost young. The reins were in her hands once more. Never mind if she had to travel over the most treacherous country she had yet encountered.

She went in her litter to the Hôtel de Guise.

As soon as she had left, he strolled quietly out to the unguarded gate, walking slowly as though deep in melancholy thought. A few friends were waiting for him with horses; he mounted and rode away; he did not stop until he had reached the top of Chaillot, then pulling up, he turned to his friends and smiled ruefully; but when he looked back at Paris there were tears in his eyes.

‘Oh, ungrateful city!’ he muttered. ‘I have loved thee more than my own wife; I will not enter thy walls again but by the breach.’

Then he turned abruptly and rode on.

The crowned King had fled to Chartres, and Guise was the uncrowned King for a spell. The Château of Vincennes, with the Arsenal and the Bastille, were in his hands; he insisted on the election of a new town council and provost of traders; and all these were naturally composed of members of the League. He was still uncertain. He shrank from violence and ardently desired a bloodless coup. He therefore allowed royalists to leave the city for Chartres if they so desired; his enemies, considering this action and the fact that the King had been allowed to escape, detected a weakness in him He was now doing all in his power to restore calm, but the people’s blood was up, and they would not be satisfied without violence. Atrocities were being committed and Guise knew himself powerless to stop them. All Huguenots were turned out of office; and there were Leaguers in control of all the churches. They shouted from the pulpits: ‘France is sick and Paris has wealth enough to make war on four Kings. France needs a draught of French blood. Receive Henry of Valois back into your towns, and you will see your preachers massacred, your women violated, your friends hanging from the gibbets.’

The Guise family arrived in Paris. The Duke’s wife, who was pregnant, was greeted as though she were the Queen of France, and all her children the heirs of a royal house. The Duke of Elboeuf came with her, as did their staunch ally, the Cardinal of Bourbon.

Catherine, closely watching events, had insidiously slid to the side of Guise. It was with her help that he formed a new government. She knew that her effort to have her grandson recognized as heir to the throne had failed; but while she feigned to work with Guise she was plotting secretly to depose him and put the King back in his place.

Epernon had escaped from Paris, but only with his life; he had tried to take his treasures with him on mules laden with those priceless gifts he had amassed during the years when he had enjoyed the King’s favour; but the mules had been stopped and searched; so Epernon lost his treasure.

Never had Catherine worked harder than she did now; never had she displayed her craft to better advantage. She understood that Guise had deliberately made it possible for the King to escape, and although she deplored her son’s action of running away, she construed Guise’s conduct as weakness, for hesitation was the most fatal weakness a man could display at such a time. He was a great man, this Guise; she had always recognized that quality in him; he had ambition and courage; but he had failed to take an opportunity which could have put him immediately on the throne; he had hesitated at a crucial moment; he had been unsure. She, like the Parisians, had thought at one time that he was a god among men; but he was no god; he was human; he had a weakness, and his greatest folly was in showing that weakness to her. She knew her man now, and she would be equal to him.

How she longed for her youth! How she longed to throw off the nagging pains of her body!

She suggested to Guise that he should command the army, that he should be heir to the throne, and that Navarre’s claim should be ignored, that the Duke of Mayenne should take charge of a wing of the army and go out to attack Navarre. She saw that, in order to avert revolution—which was very near—the King must join the League; and she would take it upon herself to persuade him to do so. Guise had to trust her; she was the only possible go-between. Her suggestion, if carried out, would be the only way of restoring temporary order in France.

She went to Chartres. The King had been badly frightened. Epernon had fled, so there was no one to advise him but his mother. On her advice, he signed documents which Guise had prepared for him. He could tell himself, if he liked, that he was now the head of the Catholic League, for the Catholic League had become royalist.

But when the Pope heard that Guise had allowed the King to escape from Paris he was filled with wrath.

‘What poor creature of a Prince is this,’ he cried, ‘to have let such a chance escape him of getting rid of one who will destroy him at the first opportunity?’

Navarre in his stronghold roared with laughter when he heard the news. ‘So all is well between the King of France and the King of Paris! What an uneasy friendship!’ He spat. ‘I would not give that for it! Wait, my friends. We shall soon see what happens. There could be little better news than that I might hear that she who was once Queen of Navarre—and is now so no longer, for I’ll not have her back—has been strangled; that, and the death of the lady’s mother, would make me sing the song of Simeon!’

Meanwhile, Catherine did all in her power to nourish that uneasy friendship between her son and Guise.

The King was in a fury, and all his fury was directed against one man. He would never be happy while Guise lived. If I do not kill him, he thought, he will kill me. The wiser of us two will be the one who strikes first.

Guise had become generalissimo of the armies, and was ready to make another bid for the throne. He was growing more and more powerful; he had the army with him, and the fastidious aristocrat need not now rely only on the mob.

When the States. General had met at Blois, and the King had addressed it, the Duke of Guise, as steward of his household, had sat at his feet. Guise had not applauded the King’s speech—and numbers of the men in the hall, all Guisards, followed their master’s example—for the King had deliberately attacked them when he had said: ‘Certain grandees of my kingdom have formed leagues and associations which in every well-ordered monarchy are crimes of high treason. But, showing my wonted indulgence, I am willing to let bygones be bygones in this respect.’

Guise had prevented the publication of those words.

The King had been more or less ordered to meet his committee, and there he had been respectfully but firmly informed that he must alter that pronouncement, for it was not his prerogative to forgive benignly; it was his duty to take orders.

Catherine had been there beside Guise, and it was she who had advised the King to comply, but it was obvious that no self-respecting King could bow to such tyranny.

It had come to the King’s ears that the Cardinal of Guise had proposed the health of his brother—referring to him not as the Duke of Guise, but as the King of France.

Philip of Spain had been Guise’s ally, but, a few months ago, that monarch had suffered a defeat so great that the whole of Europe was agape, for many believed that the greatest power in the world had been quenched for ever. There had been placards posted in the towns of France. Frenchmen had read them and tried to look perturbed while they laughed in their beards:

‘Lost. Somewhere off the English coast, the great and magnificent Spanish Armada. Anyone bringing information of its whereabouts to the Spanish Embassy shall be rewarded.’

Spain was crushed, for there was nothing to be done which could minimize that disaster. Spain, which lived by her sea power, had lost her sea power; and a small island off the coast of Europe had risen high in significance during that fateful summer. In place of mighty Philip, Gomez, Parma and Alva, other great men had arisen: Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, Lord Howard of Effingham. The little island had become a country of great importance. The red-headed Queen was smiling serenely on her throne; and she was a Protestant Queen ruling a Protestant people. The previous year, on the pretext of having discovered that her cousin was involved in a plot against the crown, Elizabeth had sent the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots to the block. She had snapped her fingers at Spain then; and this year her sailors had delivered what might well prove to be the final blow.

Guise’s ally, Spain, was not going to be so useful to him as had seemed possible a few months ago.

When he had considered these matters, the King determined on action. Either he or his enemy must die, he was sure. It must be his enemy.

A plot fermented in the diseased mind of the King. He would not discuss it with his mother, as he knew she would not approve of it. She had taken to her bed once more; she was ageing fast; her skin was yellow and wrinkled, and those eyes which had once been alert now had a glassy look.

There was many a brawl, in the weeks that followed, between the supporters of Guise and those of the King. Men on guard in the courtyards picked quarrels, and often these would result in duels which were fatal.

The King hinted to one or two men whom he trusted that he did not intend to let traitors live. ‘There is not room for two Kings in France,’ he said. ‘One has to go, and I am determined that I shall not be that one.’

He thought constantly of his mother and wished that she would join him in this. She was a murderess of great experience; there was not a woman in the world who had removed so many enemies with such a deft touch. But she was old; she had lost her sharp wits; she was—for nothing she could say would convince her son to the contrary—fascinated by Guise. It might be the fascination of hatred; it might be the fascination of fear; but fascination there was. She had always wished to ally her-herself, at least outwardly, with the powerful party of the moment; and there was no doubt that she now looked on Guise as the most important man in France. No! The King could not take her into his confidence, but he could emulate her ways.

He arranged a public reconciliation with Guise; and at this meeting he declared he was going to hand over his authority to the Duke and his mother jointly; for, he said, he himself had had a call from God. He was going to spend the rest of his life in prayer and penance.

Catherine had left her bed in order to be present and hear this declaration. She smiled on her son. This was the way to lull suspicion. Her son was learning wisdom at last.

Guise was sceptical. The King had not deceived him, and he told Catherine so.

‘You are wrong, my dear Duke,’ she said. ‘The King speaks truth. He is weary and he lacks the physical strength of a man like yourself. You cannot understand his abandoning his power, but I can. You see, I am getting old. My son also feels his age. He-is a young man, but he lacks your physical perfections.’

She smiled at the ambitious man; she was telling him: ‘you will not be bothered much, for I also am too old to care for power. All power can be yours. You are virtually King of France.

The King made plans and as usual abandoned them. He talked to his friends so frequently and with such lack of caution that his schemes inevitably leaked out.

One day Guise was sitting at table when a note was handed to him. On it was written: ‘Take care. The King plots to kill you.’ Guise read it and smiled. He asked for a pen, and when it was brought to him, he wrote on the note: ‘He dare not.’ Then, to show his contempt, he threw it under the table.

His brother, the Cardinal of Guise, remonstrated with him.

‘You must leave Blois at once. You are not safe here another hour. Go at once to Paris.’

‘My brother,’ said the Duke, ‘I have always been lucky. I will go when my time comes.’

‘Why do you not leave at once?’ demanded the Cardinal. Guise lifted his shoulders, and his brother came closer to him. ‘Could it be because of an appointment with the Marquise de Noirmoutiers?’

‘That might be,’ said Guise with a smile.

The Cardinal laughed bitterly. ‘You would not be the first man who has been lured to his death by a woman. This Charlotte de Noirmoutiers was the Queen Mother’s creature when she was Charlotte de Sauves. Her marriage with Noirmoutiers did not break the power of her mistress. Depend upon it, the King and his mother plot to kill you through that woman.’

Guise shook his head. ‘The Queen Mother does not wish me dead. That fool the King does, I know. But he is weak and quite stupid. He has been plotting my death for months, but he is afraid to make the attempt.’

‘Charlotte de Sauves is the tool of Catherine de’ Medici.’ ‘Dear brother, the Escadron ceased to be effective when the Queen Mother lost her power.’

‘You are wrong to trust Jezebel. She has always been a serpent and her fangs are poisonous.’

‘She is a sick serpent who no longer has the power to lift her head and strike.’

‘So you are determined to spend the night with Madame de Noirmoutiers?’

Guise nodded.

The Cardinal walked away in exasperation, but before he left the apartment a messenger arrived with a letter which he handed to the Duke.

‘Leave Blois at once,’ this said. ‘Your life is in imminent danger. Do not spend another night there.’

Guise screwed up the paper in his hands. He was thinking a little of Charlotte and a good deal of death.

In his apartments Charlotte was waiting for him. She had never been so happy in the whole of her life. Guise was the only man she had ever loved. She was freed from the evil bondage in which Catherine had once held her, for she was no longer young, and in any case the Escadron was breaking up. How could the Queen Mother, so often sick and ailing, keep control over her women? How could she lead them in the hunt? There were some who, from time to time, were commanded to fascinate ministers of state, but age was robbing the Queen Mother of her vitality; and there was much that went on at court of which she knew nothing.

The Baron de Sauves had died two years ago and Charlotte had then married the Marquis de Noirmoutiers. She had not wished for this marriage, but it had been arranged for her by her family and approved by Catherine; she had found that her new husband was not so complaisant as the Baron de Sauves had been. He had threatened to kill Guise unless she ceased to be his mistress; but this she would not do. She sometimes wondered whether her husband would kill her as Villequier had killed his wife; she did not care. Her passion for Guise obsessed her; she was only happy when she was with him.

As he came in she noted that his stern expression changed when he saw her; he was as passionately in need of her as she of him. There were times when he thought of Margot, but he believed that the Margot of today was a different person from the Margot of his youth. He had loved Margot and she had disappointed him; she had allowed her pride to ruin the life they might have had together; he could forgive her most things, but not that which had seemed to him the height of folly. He had turned light-heartedly to Charlotte, and it was this woman—this loose woman of the Escadron—in whom he had found what he sought. It was many years since they had become lovers, but theirs was a devotion which had strengthened. Charlotte had her service to the Queen Mother; Guise had his service to France: these two facts had kept them apart for long periods; but they assured each other that they lived for those times when they were together, and there was truth in this.

Should I lose this, Guise asked himself, on account of plots and schemes to kill me?

But he could not help knowing—although he tried to disguise this fact even from himself—that it was not solely on Charlotte’s account that he stayed.

She embraced him fervently, but she was aware all through the night that he was uneasy, that the sighing of the December winds in the hangings made him start up and sometimes reach for his sword.

As they lay in the darkness she said: ‘Something has happened. You are listening for something . . . waiting . . . For what, my darling?’

‘For an assassin, perhaps.’

She shivered. She knew well that he was constantly in danger, but this could only mean that that danger had moved nearer to him. She would not rest until he had told her of the warnings he had received.

‘You must leave at once,’ she urged him. ‘Tomorrow . No . . . Now. Do not wait until the morning.’

‘It seems as though you would wish to be rid of me.’ ‘I fear for your safety, my dearest.’

‘Ah? he said lightly. ‘Are you sure you are not trying to get rid of me for the sake of another lover?’ And he began to sing the popular, ditty.

‘My little rose, a little spell

Of absence changed that heart of thine . . .’

But she had begun to weep silently. ‘You must go,’ she said. ‘You must.’

To comfort her, he answered: ‘Do not fret, my love. Never fear that I cannot defend myself. To please you, I will go tomorrow.’

But when the morning came he had changed his mind.

‘How can I go?’ he demanded. ‘How do I know when I shall see you again?’

‘Every hour you spend at Blois is a dangerous one. I know it. Go to Paris. You will be safe in Paris.’

‘What!’ he cried. ‘I in Paris! You in Blois! What use is that?’

She was frightened. She realized that he was fully aware of his danger and that he contemplated it with a delight which was beyond bravery. She knew him well, but she had never known him like this before. She had a feeling that he was eager for death.

He met her eyes and a quizzical expression crept into his own. He was aware that he had betrayed his most secret thoughts to the woman who loved him. She knew that the greatest man in the country, as he had seemed to so many, was afraid—of life more than of death. That for which he had longed all his life was almost within his grasp, but he was afraid of the last few steps he must take to reach it. He was half egoist, half idealist; and the two were in conflict. The bravest man in France was afraid—afraid of the price he must pay for the greatness he desired. He could only take the crown when he had murdered the King, and the general who had organized the killing of thousands on the battlefield—like the fastidious aristocrat that he was—shrank from the cold-blooded murder of one useless man.

He had come so far, and he now stood face to face with this murder he must commit; he could not turn back. There was only one road to escape the result of ambition. That was the road to his own death.

Charlotte was looking at him through her tears. ‘You will go?’ she begged. ‘You must leave Blois today.’

‘Later,’ he said. ‘Later.’

And as the day wore on he told her: ‘I will stay tonight and go tomorrow. Just one more night with you and then . . . I promise I will go.’

All through her life Charlotte remembered that day. During the supper they ate together, five notes of warning were brought to him. His cousin, the Duke of Elboeuf, arrived and asked to see him.

‘There is not a moment to lose,’ said Elboeuf. ‘Your horses are ready. Your men are waiting. If you value your life, go at once.’

Charlotte looked at him pleadingly, but he would not see the plea in her eyes.

He said: ‘If I saw Death coming in at the window, I would not go out by the door to avoid it.’

‘This is folly,’ said Elboeuf.

‘My love, he is right,’ said Charlotte. ‘Go . . . go now. Lose not another moment, I beg of you.’

He kissed her hand. ‘My dearest, how could you ask me to leave you? That is more cruel than any assassin’s knife.’

She said angrily: ‘This is no time for foolish gallantry.’

Guise looked from his mistress to his cousin, and answered with deep feeling: ‘He who runs away loses the game. If it be necessary to give my life in order to reap what we have sown. then I shall not regret it.’

Charlotte cried out: ‘You deceive yourself. It is not necessary to give your life. That is the pity of it!’

‘If I had a hundred lives,’ he went on as though she had not spoken, ‘I would devote them to preserving the Catholic faith in France and to the relief of the poor people for whom my heart bleeds. Go to your bed, cousin. And leave us to ours.’

Elboeuf, shrugging his shoulders in exasperation, eventually retired.

‘You are determined?’ asked Charlotte.

He nodded. ‘No more of death,’ he said. let it be life and love from now on.’

But when they were in bed, yet another messenger was brought to the bedchamber. He had a note for Guise which he had been ordered to hand to none other than the Duke himself, and that with all speed.

Guise read it and pushed it under the bolster.

‘Another warning?’ asked Charlotte fearfully.

He kissed her, but refused to answer.

The morning was dark and the rain beat against the windows of the Château of Blois. Catherine, racked with pain, lay in her bed. The King had risen early; he had urgent matters which demanded his attention. Guise did not awaken until eight o’clock. Then he raised himself and looked down on his Fleep-ing mistress.

Today there would be more warnings; today he would be asked to leave for Paris. All his friends would beg him to go, and Charlotte would join her appeals to theirs.

He shrugged his shoulders and got out of bed.

He put on a new grey satin suit in which he would attend the meeting of the council that morning. Charlotte, watching him, tried to chase away her fears. She found this easier by day, even on such a dark and gloomy day as this one was.

‘You like it?’ he asked, posing before her, speaking lightly, trying to cheer her.

‘Charming! But it is a little light for such a dark day, you will agree?’

He kissed her. ‘Charlotte, I am going to ask you to do something for me.’

‘Anything I can do for you I will gladly do.’

‘Then do not ask me today to leave Blois.’

‘But you said you would leave today.’

‘To ride through the rain, to spend the night at some gloomy chateau when I might spend it with you?’

She put her arms about him and laughed, because it was easy to laugh in the light of day; and when she looked at him, so much taller than all others, so much more distinguished than any man she had ever seen, she believed him to be invulnerable.

He was late for the meeting. As he walked through the corridors he seemed to sense the doom which lurked there. He felt a little cold, but he would not admit that was due to apprehension. It is a chilly morning, he thought.

He turned to one of the gentlemen who stood in the hall. ‘Go to the staircase door,’ he said, ‘and there you will see one of my pages. Ask him to bring me a handkerchief.’

He could not help but be aware of the strangeness about him, of the fear in the faces of his friends. It seemed that a long time elapsed before one of his valets brought the handkerchief to him.

‘How cold it is!’ he said. ‘Light the fire. I feel quite faint with the cold. Is there some trifle in the cupboard which might revive me?’

One of the men opened the King’s cupboard and found in it four Brignolles plums.

Guise ate one of these. ‘Would anyone care to eat some?’ he asked.

One of the King’s men appeared at the door of the chamber; the man looked pale and his hands were trembling.

‘Monsieur,’ he said, bowing to Guise, ‘the King requests your presence; he is in his old cabinet.’

The man did not wait for a reply, but rushed away unceremoniously. Guise’s friends looked at him; their glances warned him, but he would not see the warning.

He threw his cloak over his arm, and, picking up his gloves, walked to the door which led to the King’s apartments.

The King was aroused early that morning. He had many preparations to make, and he had asked to be called at four o’clock.

The Queen, who was with him, looked at him in bewilderment for the candlelight showed how pale he was and yet how purposeful; he took no pains with his appearance that morning.

He went into his privy closet, where forty-five men were waiting for him, as he had instructed they should. Inspecting them all closely, he ordered them to show him their daggers. There was a long time to wait, for he had risen too early. There would have been enough time to make his preparations had he been called at six. Standing there, speaking now and then in whispers, he was reminded of the Eve of St Bartholomew. He thought of his priests and pastors who Were already praying to Heaven for forgiveness for the crime which he had not yet committed.

He had had the corridors cleared so that none of the Duke’s supporters might be near him, for he was terrified that his plan might miscarry, and of what might happen if it did. One of them had to die—the King of France or the King of Paris—and, as he saw it, the one who survived would be the one who struck first.

One of his men came hurrying in with great agitation. He told the King that the Duke was in the council chamber, but that he had sent one of his gentlemen for a handkerchief, and this gentleman would discover that the corridors and staircases, on the King’s orders, had been cleared of the Duke’s followers, and would guess the reason. If he carried this story to Guise, the latter would know at once that his assassination was to take place this morning.

The King gave hurried orders. ‘When the valet approaches with the handkerchief, seize him, make him prisoner and bring the handkerchief to me.’

This was done. The King’s hand trembled as he held it out to take the handkerchief. It was neatly folded and, inside it was a hastily scrawled note:

‘Sauvez-vous, ou vous êtes mort.’

The King felt elated. His prompt action had been a wise one. He took the note and handed the handkerchief to one of his serving men—a humble man who would not be known to the Guisards in the chamber.

‘Take this,’ said the King. ‘Knock on the door of the council chamber and hand it to the nearest gentleman. Keep yourself hidden as much as possible and murmur that it is the handkerchief for which the Duke asked; then hurry away.’

It was done as the King ordered, and the gentleman who received the handkerchief did not realize that he who had given it had been one of the King’s men.

The time was at hand. The King looked at his men. Were they ready? he asked them; and their answer was to lay their hands on their daggers.

‘Révol,’ said the King to one of his secretaries, ‘go to the council chamber, knock on the door and tell the Duke of Guise that I wish to see him in my old cabinet. What is the matter, man? Do not look like that. You are the colour of parchment and you shake like a leaf in the wind. Pull yourself together. You will betray us all.’

Révol departed.

The King retired to his bedchamber, and in the old cabinet, the assassins, their daggers unsheathed, awaited the coming of the Duke of Guise.

Guise walked through the little doorway into. the King’s apart- ments. One of King’s guards shut the door behind him. As the Duke entered the old cabinet, a man who was standing by the door lurched forward suddenly and trod on Guise’s foot. Guise looked into the man’s face, immediately recognizing the look of warning there, and he knew that this was a last appeal to save himself. He was certain now that he was in acute danger, and with this knowledge came agreat desire to preserve his life. Perhaps when he had contemplated death so light-heartedly he had not seriously thought that the King would dare attempt to take his life; but as he stood in the gloomy cabinet he realized that men like Henry the Third will suddenly and recklessly throw off their hesitancy and act rashly.

He heard a movement behind him and turned; but he was too late. They had already plunged their daggers into his back.

He said on a faint note of surprise: ‘My friends . . . my friends . . .’

He felt for his sword, but it had become entangled in his cloak. He reeled, and one of the assassins struck him in the chest. His blood gushed forth, staining the new grey satin as he sank to the floor of the old cabinet.

He was not yet dead, and dying seemed to acquire the strength of two men. He had one of the assassins by the throat, and managed to crawl, dragging the man with him, across the floor of the cabinet.

‘The King . . . awaits me . . .’ he gasped. ‘I . . . will go to the King.’

And with an effort which astonished those who had stabbed him he dragged himself into the King’s bedchamber, and it was not until he reached the state bed that he collapsed and lay stretched out while his blood stained the King’s carpet.

‘My God,’ he muttered. ‘My God . . . have mercy on me.’

He lay still and the King came to look at him, while the murderers with their bloodstained daggers came to stand beside the King.

‘Is he dead?’ whispered the King.

One of the men knelt beside the Duke and opened the bloodstained coat.

‘He is dead, Sire. The glorious King of Paris is no more.’ The King touched Guise lightly with his foot.

‘There lies the man who wished to be King of France,’ he said. You see, my friends, where his ambition has led him. My God, how tall he is! He seems even taller now that he is dead than he did when he was living.’ Then he began to laugh. ‘Ah, my friends,’ he went on, ‘you have only one King to rule you now, and I am he.’

A little later the King went to his mother’s apartments. She lay very still in her bed. The King was now gorgeously dressed, his face freshly painted, his hair exquisitely curled; he was smiling.

‘How are you this morning, my dear mother?’ he asked.

She smiled painfully. She hated to admit how ill she felt; always despising illness in others, she had no wish to complain of her own; she never gave sympathy and she expected none.

‘I am improving, thank you,’ she said. ‘I expect to be about again very soon. I am tired of lying abed. And how is Your Majesty?’

‘Ah, very well, Madame. Very well, indeed. There is a reason.’

‘A reason?’ She raised herself a little and tried not to wince from the pain in her limbs.

‘Yes, Madame. I am truly the King of France this day, for there is no longer a King of Paris.’

She had grown pale. ‘My son, what do you mean?’

‘He died this morning?’

‘Died! Died . . . of what?’

‘Of loyal thrusts, Madame. The friends of the King removed his enemy.’

She lost control. She was weak from her pain and unaccustomed inaction. She said shrilly: ‘You mean you have killed Guise?’

‘You do not seem pleased, Madame. I had forgotten he was a favourite of yours.’

She cried out: ‘Oh, my son, where will this end? What have you done? Do you not know what you have done?’

‘I know that I am the true King of France now, and that is all I care.’

‘Make sure,’ she said grimly, ‘that you are not soon the King of nothing at all.’

His eyes glinted. ‘I understand, Madame. You grieve for your very dear friend!’

‘I have no friends. I have only my devotion to you.’

‘Yet that devotion sets you weeping for my enemies?’

‘Enemy he was, my son; but there are some enemies who must be allowed to live. You have done murder.’

The King laughed aloud. ‘You, Madame, to accuse me of murder! How often during your lifetime have you done murder?’

She sat up in bed; her eyes were tired and quite expressionless. Not foolish murder,’ she said; ‘never foolish murder. You have killed a man whom Paris loved. I pray that Paris will forgive you.’

The King was bordering on hysteria. ‘You dare to talk thus to me! If I have learned to murder, from whom did I learn? Who is the most notorious murderess in France?’

‘You do not learn your lessons well, my son,’ she answered wearily. ‘But what is done is done. God grant that no ill will come of it.’ She was weeping from very weakness, but she quickly controlled her tears. ‘You should not be here. You must take Orleans at once. You must not give them a chance to arm against you. Oh, my son, what will Paris do? You dare not show yourself in Paris. I beg of you, inform the Legate: She lay back on her pillows. ‘Holy Mother of God!’ she murmured. ‘Where will this end? I cannot say. I only know that what I have worked for all my life lies in ruins about me. Where are my children? Only two left to me! My daughter, a runaway, a wanton wife! My son, the King of France, but for, how long? Oh, God, how long?’

The King stared at her. He sensed that she was in a prophetic mood and her words terrified him.

But she had thrown off her gloom. The lifelong habit, of never looking back, of accepting what it was impossible to reject, returned to her.

She began giving orders.

‘Where is the Cardinal of Guise?’

‘He has been arrested.’

‘Let him go free:

The King narrowed his eyes. He would follow his mother’s lead. He would do as she used to do in the days of her prime. He must not forget that she was a sick old woman now, very weak, and probably wandering in her mind. He would humour her. The Cardinal of Guise should be let out of the dungeon in which he had been placed after the murder of the Duke, but only to face the daggers of the King’s friends.

‘My son,’ pleaded Catherine, ‘you must listen to me:

‘Mother,’ he said gently, ‘you have been ill. You do not know how matters go. Rest assured that I shall forget nothing that you have taught me. Have no fear—I will handle this affair as you yourself would handle it:

She lay fretting in her bed. She had tried to rise, but nausea had overtaken her, and she fell back fainting. Her women were about her and she looked at them with distaste. Where was Madalenna? Where were the ladies of her EscadronVolant? What had they been doing? Why had she not been warned of these terrible plans of her son’s?

They thought her old. They thought her finished; but she would never be finished while there was breath in her body. She sent for Madalenna.

‘What has happened to you?’ she demanded. ‘Why was I not informed? What news? What news?’

‘Madame, the Cardinal of Bourbon has been arrested. The Duke’s mother, the Prince of Joinville and the Duke of Elboeuf are all in prison. All those Guises on whom the King could lay his hands . . . all of them are in prison.’

She cried: ‘I cannot lie here while such things are happening. Have my litter prepared. I will be carried to the Cardinal of Bourbon. I must talk to him.’

While her litter was being prepared, news was brought to her that the Cardinal of Guise had been murdered.

Does the King not see, she asked herself, that he brings the knife near to his own throat? Does he not see that when he pulls down the pillars of our state, like Samson, he destroys himself?

She was carried into the prison of the Cardinal of Bourbon.

‘Monsieur,’ she said, ‘you are my friend, my wise old friend.’

But the old man lifted his head and laughed at her; there was hatred and contempt for her in his glance. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘these are your deeds. These are your tricks. Ever since you came into France you have played your tricks. And now. . . you are killing us all.’

‘I had nothing to do with the murder of Guise . . . nor that of his brother,’ she cried. ‘This crime breaks my heart. May God damn me if I ever sought it.’

‘Madame,’ said the Cardinal, ‘I can say now what I have not dared say to you before: I do not believe you.’

‘You must believe me. Why should I commit such folly? Do you think I am ignorant of what this means?’

He turned away from her. He was too old to care what happened to him. He was worn out, as she was.

She felt the tears on her cheeks. She was faint and sick, and the journey, she knew, had used up most of her waning strength. ‘There is nothing I can do,’ she said. ‘I see that now. No one will believe that I had no hand in this.’

‘Madame,’ said the Cardinal, ‘why should they believe you when your hands are red with the blood of so many?’

‘He was a great man . . . whom France needed.’

‘There have been other great men, Madame, whom France needed.’

The close air of the dungeon was too much for her; she felt that she would faint if she stayed.

‘This is too much for me to bear,’ she muttered. ‘I am too old now for such shocks. My sorrow will cause my death. I know it . . . as I know these things.’

She was taken back to her bed, and the news spread through the castle that she was very ill indeed.

When, in her exile, Margot heard that the Duke was dead, she wept bitter tears for the lover of her youth.

It seemed to her that the men she had loved best had all died violent deaths. Guise, La Mole and Bussy . . . all dead, for Bussy had been killed by the husband of one of his mistresses when, in the lady’s bedchamber, disturbed by the husband, he had climbed through the window, and in doing so had caught his doublet on a nail, where he had hung until the husband had arrived to stab him to death.

She wept afresh for each of them in turn; but in particular she wept for Guise; and she shuddered to contemplate the future of her family, for, like her mother, she knew that her brother would pay for his crime.

She waited from day to day for news, desolate because she had been put outside the sphere of action, and there was only a lover left to her whom she must continually compare with the incomparable Guise.

The King of Navarre heard the news with gravity, for he knew that these events would affect him more than any man in France. In the weeks that followed the murder of Guise, while he waited for news, he seemed to age, to acquire new dignity; and it was as though that other Navarre, who had at times looked out of his shrewd eyes, took over the control from the irresponsible adventurer. The time would come when he must be ready to take on his responsibilities, eventually to show himself as one of the greatest Kings the French were ever to know.

There were times when Catherine was too ill to know what was said to her. News was brought to her, for when she was conscious, she demanded that it should be; but she was not always sure where she was. She thought she was a little girl in the Convent of the Murate, stitching at an altar cloth while the nuns told her the story of the Virgin’s cloak; she thought she was, riding through the streets of Florence while the Florentines called for Medici blood; then she was a bride with a sullen bridegroom; she was a queen with a husband who loved her not and did honour only to his mistress; she was a jealous wife peering through a hole in the floor of her apartment; she was mixing a potion for someone whom she wished to remove; she was withholding Paré from her son, Francis; she was scorning Mary Queen of Scots; she was instructing mad Charles’ tutors how to pervert him; she was waiting for the tocsin which would tell Paris that the St Bartholomew was about to begin. The shades of what she had been seemed to stand about her bed.

This was death; she knew it and she accepted it.

But when her strength rallied a little she must know what was happening about her; death receded then and she remembered the tragic state of affairs which she had been unable to avert. Then she would know that Paris was mad with fury, and that it called for the blood of the King; she knew that the man who had murdered the hero of Paris would never be allowed to evade the terrible retribution which Paris would demand.

The Duke’s widow was enceinte, which made her a pathetic figure. She was known as the Sainted Widow. She went through the streets of the capital in deep mourning, while the people crowded about her, kissing her robes and calling for vengeance on the man who had murdered the Duke. The sister of Guise, Madame de Montpensier, the Fury of the League, led a procession which marched through the streets, torches held high, mourning the death of the idol, calling for the death of the royal murderer.

So Paris was in tumult, and Catherine, who knew her son so well, guessed that he waited in terrible apprehension, expecting at any hour to feel the cold steel in his heart. Did he realize now, she wondered, that he should have consulted his mother before ordering the murder of such a man as Guise; did he understand at last that she, the arch-murderess, had succeeded only because of the infinite pains she had taken to accomplish her evil deeds?

Henry, the King of France, had become like an old man. His limbs shook continually, and his thinning hair was quickly going grey. He moved restlessly from room to room, because he could never be happy in any apartment; he feared that an assassin waited for him, hidden in the hangings.

And in Paris, during those tumultuous weeks, a young Dominican named James Clément sharpened his dagger every day, because he believed that an angel had appeared to him and had bidden him put to death great Guise’s royal murderer, who was the tyrant of France.

Catherine de’ Medici was dying.

People talked of it in the streets. They recalled the day she had come into France escorted by King Francis. Ah, little did he know what he was bringing into France when he brought the Italian woman!

‘They say they will send her body to Paris . . . to be laid in the magnificent tomb she has prepared for it.’

‘Let them bring her here. Let them! We shall know what to do with Jezebel’s bones. Even the dogs would scorn to eat them. There’ll be nothing for it but to throw them into the Seine. That’s what we will do with Jezebel.’

And meanwhile Catherine lay watching the fading light in her chamber. The end. She knew, as though she had lived to see it, that her son would not long survive her. She had worked to keep her sons on the throne and rule through them; and this she had achieved. She had ruled as long as she had had the strength to retain her power.

‘She cannot last the night,’ said one of her women, ‘My God, she looks dead already. Is she?’

‘No; not yet.’

‘I would not care to have her sins on my soul. What she will have to answer for!’

Catherine heard them and smiled faintly. Fools! They did not understand. She had worshipped no god; she had worshipped power. She had no religion and no desire for eternal life. She had had one great wish—to rule France through her children; and this had, in large measure, been granted her.

She heard someone whisper: ‘No one ever really loved her. How terrible that is! To go through life unloved.’

Yes, thought Catherine. None loved me. But many feared me.

And after a while she slipped away into darkness.

‘Catherine de’ Medici is dead!’

The news reached Paris.

‘The Italian woman is no more. It is her turn to face her Maker.’

The people of Paris now hoped that her body would be brought to their city that they might have the pleasure of throwing it into the Seine.

Revolution threatened the whole of France; but in Paris, while some talked angrily of the retribution in store for the King, others found time to chant:

‘L’une ruyne d’Israel,

L’autre, ruyne de la France.’