Catherine De Medici (31 page)

To the Sieur Lecamus, /syndic of the guild of furriers/:

Monseigneur le Prince de Conde desires me to express his regret that he cannot do what you ask for his late companion in the tower of Saint-Aignan, whom he perfectly remembers, and to whom, meanwhile, he offers the place of gendarme in his company; which will put your son in the way of making his mark as a man of courage, which he is.

The queen of Navarre awaits an opportunity to reward the Sieur Christophe, and will not fail to take advantage of it.

Upon which, Monsieur le syndic, we pray God to have you in His keeping.

Pibrac,

At Nerac.
Chancellor of Navarre.

"Nerac, Pibrac, crack!" cried Babette. "There's no confidence to be placed in Gascons; they think only of themselves."

Old Lecamus looked at his son, smiling scornfully.

"They propose to put on horseback a poor boy whose knees and ankles were shattered for their sakes!" cried the mother. "What a wicked jest!"

"I shall never see you a counsellor of Navarre," said his father.

"I wish I knew what Queen Catherine would do for me, if I made a claim upon her," said Christophe, cast down by the prince's answer.

"She made you no promise," said the old man, "but I am certain that /she/ will never mock you like these others; she will remember your sufferings. Still, how can the queen make a counsellor of the Parliament out of a protestant burgher?"

"But Christophe has not abjured!" cried Babette. "He can very well keep his private opinions secret."

"The Prince de Conde would be less disdainful of a counsellor of the Parliament," said Lallier.

"Well, what say you, Christophe?" urged Babette.

"You are counting without the queen," replied the young lawyer.

A few days after this rather bitter disillusion, an apprentice brought Christophe the following laconic little missive:--

Chaudieu wishes to see his son.

"Let him come in!" cried Christophe.

"Oh! my sacred martyr!" said the minister, embracing him; "have you recovered from your sufferings?"

"Yes, thanks to Pare."

"Thanks rather to God, who gave you the strength to endure the torture. But what is this I hear? Have you allowed them to make you a solicitor? Have you taken the oath of fidelity? Surely you will not recognize that prostitute, the Roman, Catholic, and apostolic Church?"

"My father wished it."

"But ought we not to leave fathers and mothers and wives and children, all, all, for the sacred cause of Calvinism; nay, must we not suffer all things? Ah! Christophe, Calvin, the great Calvin, the whole party, the whole world, the Future counts upon your courage and the grandeur of your soul. We want your life."

It is a remarkable fact in the mind of man that the most devoted spirits, even while devoting themselves, build romantic hopes upon their perilous enterprises. When the prince, the soldier, and the minister had asked Christophe, under the bridge, to convey to Catherine the treaty which, if discovered, would in all probability cost him his life, the lad had relied on his nerve, upon chance, upon the powers of his mind, and confident in such hopes he bravely, nay, audaciously put himself between those terrible adversaries, the Guises and Catherine. During the torture he still kept saying to himself: "I shall come out of it! it is only pain!" But when this second and brutal demand, "Die, we want your life," was made upon a boy who was still almost helpless, scarcely recovered from his late torture, and clinging all the more to life because he had just seen death so near, it was impossible for him to launch into further illusions.

Christophe answered quietly:--

"What is it now?"

"To fire a pistol courageously, as Stuart did on Minard."

"On whom?"

"The Duc de Guise."

"A murder?"

"A vengeance. Have you forgotten the hundred gentlemen massacred on the scaffold at Amboise? A child who saw that butchery, the little d'Aubigne cried out, 'They have slaughtered France!'"

"You should receive the blows of others and give none; that is the religion of the gospel," said Christophe. "If you imitate the Catholics in their cruelty, of what good is it to reform the Church?"

"Oh! Christophe, they have made you a lawyer, and now you argue!" said Chaudieu.

"No, my friend," replied the young man, "but parties are ungrateful; and you will be, both you and yours, nothing more than puppets of the Bourbons."

"Christophe, if you could hear Calvin, you would know how we wear them like gloves! The Bourbons are the gloves, we are the hand."

"Read that," said Christophe, giving Chaudieu Pibrac's letter containing the answer of the Prince de Conde.

"Oh! my son; you are ambitious, you can no longer make the sacrifice of yourself!--I pity you!"

With those fine words Chaudieu turned and left him.

Some days after that scene, the Lallier family and the Lecamus family were gathered together in honor of the formal betrothal of Christophe and Babette, in the old brown hall, from which Christophe's bed had been removed; for he was now able to drag himself about and even mount the stairs without his crutches. It was nine o'clock in the evening and the company were awaiting Ambroise Pare. The family notary sat before a table on which lay various contracts. The furrier was selling his house and business to his head-clerk, who was to pay down forty thousand francs for the house and then mortgage it as security for the payment of the goods, for which, however, he paid twenty thousand francs on account.

Lecamus was also buying for his son a magnificent stone house, built by Philibert de l'Orme in the rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs, which he gave to Christophe as a marriage portion. He also took two hundred thousand francs from his own fortune, and Lallier gave as much more, for the purchase of a fine seignorial manor in Picardy, the price of which was five hundred thousand francs. As this manor was a tenure from the Crown it was necessary to obtain letters-patent (called /rescriptions/) granted by the king, and also to make payment to the Crown of considerable feudal dues. The marriage had been postponed until this royal favor was obtained. Though the burghers of Paris had lately acquired the right to purchase manors, the wisdom of the privy council had been exercised in putting certain restrictions on the sale of those estates which were dependencies of the Crown; and the one which old Lecamus had had in his eye for the last dozen years was among them. Ambroise was pledged to bring the royal ordinance that evening; and the old furrier went and came from the hall to the door in a state of impatience which showed how great his long-repressed ambition had been. Ambroise at last appeared.

"My old friend!" cried the surgeon, in an agitated manner, with a glance at the supper table, "let me see your linen. Good. Oh! you must have wax candles. Quick, quick! get out your best things!"

"Why? what is it all about?" asked the rector of Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs.

"The queen-mother and the young king are coming to sup with you," replied the surgeon. "They are only waiting for an old counsellor who agreed to sell his place to Christophe, and with whom Monsieur de Thou has concluded a bargain. Don't appear to know anything; I have escaped from the Louvre to warn you."

In a second the whole family were astir; Christophe's mother and Babette's aunt bustled about with the celerity of housekeepers suddenly surprised. But in spite of the apparent confusion into which the news had thrown the entire family, the precautions were promptly made, with an activity that was nothing short of marvellous.
Christophe, amazed and confounded by such a favor, was speechless, gazing mechanically at what went on.

"The queen and king here in our house!" said the old mother.

"The queen!" repeated Babette. "What must we say and do?"

In less than an hour all was changed; the hall was decorated; the supper-table sparkled. Presently the noise of horses sounded in the street. The light of torches carried by the horsemen of the escort brought all the burghers of the neighborhood to their windows. The noise soon subsided and the escort rode away, leaving the queen-mother and her son, King Charles IX., Charles de Gondi, now Grand-master of the wardrobe and governor of the king, Monsieur de Thou, Pinard, secretary of State, the old counsellor, and two pages, under the arcade before the door.

"My worthy people," said the queen as she entered, "the king, my son, and I have come to sign the marriage-contract of the son of my furrier,--but only on condition that he remains a Catholic. A man must be a Catholic to enter Parliament; he must be a Catholic to own land which derives from the Crown; he must be a Catholic if he would sit at the king's table. That is so, is it not, Pinard?"

The secretary of State entered and showed the letters-patent.

"If we are not all Catholics," said the little king, "Pinard will throw those papers into the fire. But we are all Catholics here, I think," he continued, casting his somewhat haughty eyes over the company.

"Yes, sire," replied Christophe, bending his injured knees with difficulty, and kissing the hand which the king held out to him.

Queen Catherine stretched out her hand to Christophe and, raising him hastily, drew him aside into a corner, saying in a low voice:--

"Ah ca! my lad, no evasions here. Are you playing above-board now?"

"Yes, madame," he answered, won by the dazzling reward and the honor done him by the grateful queen.

"Very good. Monsieur Lecamus, the king, my son, and I permit you to purchase the office of the goodman Groslay, counsellor of the Parliament, here present. Young man, you will follow, I hope, in the steps of your predecessor."

De Thou advanced and said: "I will answer for him, madame."

"Very well; draw up the deed, notary," said Pinard.

"Inasmuch as the king our master does us the favor to sign my daughter's marriage contract," cried Lallier, "I will pay the whole price of the manor."

"The ladies may sit down," said the young king, graciously: "As a wedding present to the bride I remit, with my mother's consent, all my dues and rights in the manor."

Old Lecamus and Lallier fell on their knees and kissed the king's hand.

"/Mordieu/! sire, what quantities of money these burghers have!" whispered de Gondi in his ear.

The young king laughed.

"As their Highnesses are so kind," said old Lecamus, "will they permit me to present to them my successor, and ask them to continue to him the royal patent of furrier to their Majesties?"

"Let us see him," said the king.

Lecamus led forward his successor, who was livid with fear.

"If my mother consents, we will now sit down to table," said the little king.

Old Lecamus had bethought himself of presenting to the king a silver goblet which he had bought of Benvenuto Cellini when the latter stayed in Paris at the hotel de Nesle. This treasure of art had cost the furrier no less than two thousand crowns.

"Oh! my dear mother, see this beautiful work!" cried the young king, lifting the goblet by its stem.

"It was made in Florence," replied Catherine.

"Pardon me, madame," said Lecamus, "it was made in Paris by a Florentine. All that is made in Florence would belong to your Majesty; that which is made in France is the king's."

"I accept it, my good man," cried Charles IX.; "and it shall henceforth be my particular drinking cup."

"It is beautiful enough," said the queen, examining the masterpiece, "to be included among the crown-jewels. Well, Maitre Ambroise," she whispered in the surgeon's ear, with a glance at Christophe, "have you taken good care of him? Will he walk again?"

"He will run," replied the surgeon, smiling. "Ah! you have cleverly made him a renegade."

"Ha!" said the queen, with the levity for which she has been blamed, though it was only on the surface, "the Church won't stand still for want of one monk!"

The supper was gay; the queen thought Babette pretty, and, in the regal manner which was natural to her, she slipped upon the girl's finger a diamond ring which compensated in value for the goblet bestowed upon the king. Charles IX., who afterwards became rather too fond of these invasions of burgher homes, supped with a good appetite.
Then, at a word from his new governor (who, it is said, was instructed to make him forget the virtuous teachings of Cypierre), he obliged all the men present to drink so deeply that the queen, observing that the gaiety was about to become too noisy, rose to leave the room. As she rose, Christophe, his father, and the two women took torches and accompanied her to the shop-door. There Christophe ventured to touch the queen's wide sleeve and to make her a sign that he had something to say. Catherine stopped, made a gesture to the father and the two women to leave her, and said, turning to Christophe:

"What is it?"

"It may serve you to know, madame," replied Christophe, whispering in her ear, "that the Duc de Guise is being followed by assassins."

"You are a loyal subject," said Catherine, smiling, "and I shall never forget you."

She held out to him her hand, so celebrated for its beauty, first ungloving it, which was indeed a mark of favor,--so much so that Christophe, then and there, became altogether royalist as he kissed that adorable hand.

"So they mean to rid me of that bully without my having a finger in it," thought she as she replaced her glove.

Then she mounted her mule and returned to the Louvre, attended by her two pages.

Christophe went back to the supper-table, but was thoughtful and gloomy even while he drank; the fine, austere face of Ambroise Pare seemed to reproach him for his apostasy. But subsequent events justified the manoeuvres of the old syndic. Christophe would certainly not have escaped the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew; his wealth and his landed estates would have made him a mark for the murderers. History has recorded the cruel fate of the wife of Lallier's successor, a beautiful woman, whose naked body hung by the hair for three days from one of the buttresses of the Pont au Change. Babette trembled as she thought that she, too, might have endured the same treatment if Christophe had continued a Calvinist,--for such became the name of the Reformers. Calvin's personal ambition was thus gratified, though not until after his death.