Note 46 — Chapter VII

Among the members of Queen Marguerite’s suite, was a youth of some twenty summers, the son of one Date, a carpenter of Arles, whom her Majesty ennobled, “avec six aunes d’étoffe,” and who forthwith blossomed into a Sieur de Saint-Julien. This Saint-Julien, if we are to believe the chroniclers of the time, was passionately beloved by his regal mistress, though perhaps, as a charitable biographer of Marguerite suggests, her affection for him may have been “merely platonic and maternal.” However that may be, he stood on the very pinnacle of favour, and was regarded with envy and hatred by his less fortunate rivals. One of these rivals, Vermont by name—not Charmont, as Bassompierre calls him—either because he was jealous of the privileges which Saint-Julien enjoyed, or, more probably, because he believed that the favourite had used his influence with the Queen to procure the disgrace of certain members of his family, suspected of having aided the intrigues of the Comte d’Auvergne, swore to be avenged. Nor was his vow an idle one, for one fine morning in April, 1606, at the very moment when Saint-Julien was assisting Marguerite to alight from her coach, on her return from hearing Mass at the Célestines, he stepped forward, and, levelling a pistol, shot him dead. The assassin endeavoured to escape, but was pursued and captured; and the bereaved princess, beside herself with rage and grief, vowed that she would neither eat nor drink until justice had been done, and wrote to the King “begging his Majesty very humbly to be pleased that the assassin should be punished.” The King sent orders for Vermont to be brought to trial without an hour’s delay; and he was condemned to death and executed the following morning in front of Marguerite’s hôtel, “declaring aloud,” writes L’Estoile, “that he cared not about dying, since he had accomplished his purpose.”