Volume 2 — CHAP. IX.

CHAP. IX.

It was in one of the saloons of the old Cardinal de Bourbon, in the town of Soissons, that Henry Duke of Guise, princely in his habit, princely in his aspect, with his foot raised upon a footstool of crimson and gold, a high plumed Spanish hat upon his head, manifold parchments before him, and a pen in his hand, sat alone on a day in the month of April with his eyes fixed upon a door at the other end of the room, as if waiting for the entrance of some one.

The next moment the door was thrown wide open, and, preceded by two servants announcing him to the Duke, appeared a small and not very striking personage plainly habited in black velvet. The moment the Duke saw him, he rose, and for an instant uncovered his head, then covering himself again he advanced to meet him, and took him by the hand, saying "Monsieur de Bellievre, I am delighted to see you. The King could not have chosen any one more gratifying to myself to receive: in the first place, because I know that I shall hear nothing but truth from the lips of Monsieur de Bellievre; and, in the next place, because I am sure no one will bear more exactly to his Majesty any reply I may have to make to the message with which I understand you are charged."

"The confidence which your Highness expresses in me," replied Bellievre, as the Duke led him towards the table, and made him seat himself beside him, "does great honour to so humble an individual as myself. Nevertheless, I must deliver the King's message, my Lord, precisely as it was given to me; and should there be any thing in it disagreeable to your Highness, I trust that you will excuse the bearer, and consider the matter dispassionately."

"Proceed, proceed," replied the Duke; "as in duty bound I shall receive his Majesty's communication with all deference and humility."

"Well, then," replied Bellievre, "I am charged by his Majesty to assure your Highness that his personal esteem and respect for you is very great; and that he has never, in any degree, given ear to the injurious reports which persons inimical to your Highness have been industrious in circulating to your disadvantage."

"Your pardon, Monsieur de Bellievre, for one moment," said the Duke, interrupting him. "To what injurious reports does his Majesty allude? I am ignorant that any one has dared to circulate injurious reports of me; and if such be the case, it is high time that I should proceed to the capital to confront and shame my accusers."

As this was not at all the point to which the King's envoy wished to bring the Duke, he looked not a little embarrassed what to reply. He answered, however, after a moment's pause, "It would, indeed, be requisite for you to do so, my Lord, if I did not bear you the King's most positive assurance that he gives no ear to such reports. But to proceed: his Majesty has bid me strongly express his full conviction of your attachment, fidelity, and affection, but has commanded me to add that, having heard it reported your intention is immediately to present yourself in Paris, he is unwillingly obliged, by state reasons of the utmost importance, to request that you would forbear the execution of that purpose."

It was not without some hesitation and apparent emotion that Bellievre spoke; but the Duke heard him with perfect calmness, though with a slight contraction of the brow.

"The report," he answered, "of my intention of visiting Paris is perfectly correct, Monsieur de Bellievre; nor can I, indeed, refrain from executing that purpose, with all due deference to his Majesty, for many reasons, amongst which those that you yourself give me of injurious rumours being rife in the capital regarding me, are not the least cogent. Thus, unless the King intends to signify by you, Monsieur de Bellievre, that he positively prohibits my coming into Paris--which, of course, he would not do--I see not how I can avoid doing simple justice to myself by returning to my own dwelling in the capital of this country."

"I grieve to say, your Highness," replied Bellievre, seeing that the worst must be told, "I grieve to say, that while the King has charged me to assure you of his regard and his confidence in you, he none the less instructed me to make the prohibition on his part absolute and distinct."

The Duke of Guise started up with his brow knit and his eyes flashing. "Is this the reward," he exclaimed, "of all the services I have rendered the state? Is this the recompense for having shed my blood so often in defence of France? to be dishonoured in the eyes of all the people, by being banished from the metropolis, to be excluded from the companionship of all my friends, to be cut off from transacting my own private affairs, to be talked of and pointed at as the exiled Duke of Guise, and to have the boys singing in the streets the woeful ditty of my sufferings and a King's ingratitude?" And as he spoke, the Duke took two or three rapid strides up and down the room.

"Indeed, indeed, your Highness," cried Bellievre, "you take it up too warmly. The King is far from ungrateful, but most thankful for your high services; but it is for the good of the state that you love, for the safety and security of the people of the capital who are in a tumultuous and highly excitable state, that he wishes you to refrain from coming----"

"That he sends me a message dishonouring to myself and to my House," replied the Duke. "That he marks me out from the rest of the nobles of the land, by a prohibition which I may venture to say is unjust and unmerited. I must take some days to think of this, Monsieur de Bellievre; nor can I in any way promise not to visit Paris. Were it but to protect, support, and guide my friends and relations, I ought to go; were it but on account of the church for which I am ready to shed my blood if it be necessary, persecuted, reviled, assailed as that holy church is; were it but for my attendants and supporters, who are attacked, abused, and ill-treated in the streets and public ways."

"As for the church, your Highness," replied Bellievre, "none is more sincerely attached to it than the King and the King's advisers. It will stand long, my Lord, depend upon it, without any further assistance than that which you have already so ably given it. Your relations, my Lord, and household," he said, "are not and cannot be ill-treated."

"How?" exclaimed the Duke. "Is not my dear sister Margaret even now, as it were, proscribed by the King and his court? Is not every thing done to drive her from Paris? Have not her servants been struck by those of Villequier in the open streets?"

"I know," replied Bellievre, "that a month or two ago Madame de Montpensier was subject to some little annoyance, but as soon as it came to the King's ears he had it instantly remedied, and only wished her to quit Paris for her own security."

"The House of Guise, sir, have always been secure in the capital of France," replied the Duke; "and I trust always will be."

"Nothing has occurred since I trust, my Lord," continued Bellievre. "The King is most anxious that you should have satisfaction in every thing, and will give you the strongest assurances that your family, your household, and your friends, shall be in every respect well treated and protected, as indeed he has always wished them to be."

The Duke threw himself down in his chair and rang the bell that stood upon the table violently. "Ho! without there!" he exclaimed. "Bring in that page that arrived hither a night or two ago, when I was absent at Jamets."

The attendant who had appeared retired, and the Duke sat silent, gazing with a frown at the papers on the table. "May I ask your Highness," said Bellievre, not knowing what interpretation to put upon this conduct, "May I ask your Highness whether I am to conceive my audience at an end?"

"No, Monsieur de Bellievre, no," replied the Duke in a milder tone; "for you I have a high respect and esteem, and will listen to you upon this subject longer than I would to most men. I wish you to hear and to know how the friends of the Duke of Guise are treated, what protection and favour is shown to them at the court of France. Perhaps you will hear some things that are new to you--perhaps they may be new to the King too," he added, a slight sneer curling his haughty lip. "But be that as it may, Monsieur de Bellievre, I think I can show you good cause why the Duke of Guise should be no longer absent from Paris. Come hither, boy," he added, as the page Ignati entered the room, "Come hither, boy, and answer my questions. Thou art both witty and honest, but give me plain straightforward replies. Stand at my knee and answer, so that this gentleman may hear."

The boy advanced, and did as the Duke bade him, turning his face towards Bellievre, with his left hand to the Duke.

"You went to Paris," said Guise, "with my friend the young Count of Logères; did you not? Were you aware of the cause of his going?"

"He went, I understood your Highness," replied the boy, "to seek a young lady, a relation of your own, who had been carried to Paris by a body of the King's troops while on her way to join your Highness."

"Can you tell what was Monsieur de Logères' success?" said the Duke.

"I know he saw the King," replied the boy, "and heard that he had been promised a letter to all the governors and commanders in different places to aid him in seeking for the young Lady, and bringing her back to your Highness. I heard also that it was for this paper he waited from day to day in Paris, but that it never came."

"I beg your Highness's pardon," said Bellievre interrupting the boy, "but you will remark that this is all hearsay. He does not seem to speak at all from his own knowledge."

"That will come after," answered the Duke somewhat sharply. "Go on, Ignati. What do you know more?"

"What I have said," replied the boy, "is more than hearsay, my Lord, for while we staid in Paris the good Count bade us always be ready at a moment's notice to set out, for he could not tell when the letter from Monsieur de Villequier would arrive. It never came, however, and one night the Count having, as I understood, gained information of where Mademoiselle de Clairvaut was, set out with his man Gondrin and myself to seek her. We found that she had been brought by a body of the King's troops to a château or a palace, for it looked more like a palace than a château, called Morvillette, I believe near Chateauneuf, where the plague was then raging, when the King's soldiers left her. By the time we arrived the plague had reached the château, six or seven people were dead, and all the rest had fled, leaving the young lady with nobody in the palace, and none but one old groom in the stables."

The Duke's eye fixed sternly upon the countenance of Bellievre, and he muttered between his teeth, "This is the doing, Monsieur de Bellievre, of my excellent good friend, the King of France. Go on, boy; go on! Proceed. What happened next?"

"The lady was most joyous of her deliverance," continued the boy, "and eager to come to your Highness; and we set out the next morning before day-break, and reached Chartres, where the Count bought a litter for her greater convenience. At a short distance from Chartres, however, we were met by the Duke of Epernon and his train wolf-hunting, and the Duke immediately stopped us, and insisted upon the Count going back with him to Epernon. The Count produced the King's passports, but the Duke said that there were doubts of his being authorised by you."

"Did he not show him my own letter?" exclaimed the Duke. "Did he not show him the authority I gave him under my own hand?"

"He did, my Lord; he did," replied the boy; "but the Duke of Epernon said he would show in what respect he held your Highness's letter, and tearing it in several pieces he threw it down under his horse's feet."

Bellievre continued to look down upon the ground with a brow which certainly displayed but little satisfaction. The Duke of Guise, however, though he had been frowning the moment before, now only smiled as the boy related the incident of the letter; the smile was somewhat contemptuous, indeed; but he said merely, "Go on, boy. What happened next?"

"Nay, my Lord," replied the boy, "what happened to them I know not, for seeing that the Duke held them prisoners, and was taking them back to Epernon, I made my escape as fast as I well could, and came hither to tell you into whose hands the young lady and Monsieur de Logères had fallen."

"You did quite right, boy," said the Duke; "and now you may retire. You hear, Monsieur de Bellievre," he continued, "with what kindness, protection, support, and generosity the King treats the friends of the Duke of Guise! First he casts my poor niece's child into the hands of Villequier, something worse than those of the hangman of Paris, and then between them they send her into the midst of the pestilence; then comes Monsieur d'Epernon to confirm all, arrests my friend bearing the King's own passports and safeguard, seizes upon my own relation and ward, and carries them both I know not whither."

"Perhaps your Highness," said Bellievre, "the Duke of Epernon might have motives that we do not know. At all events the King----"

"Fie, Monsieur de Bellievre, fie!" exclaimed the Duke vehemently. "I will tell you what! It is time the Duke of Guise were in Paris, if but to deliver the King from such Dukes of Epernon who abuse his authority, disgrace his name, absorb his favours, ruin the state, overthrow the church, and dare do acts that make men blush for shame. France will no longer suffer him, sir; France will no longer suffer him! If I free not the King from him and such as he is, the people will rise up and commit some foul attempt upon the royal authority. What," he continued, with fierce scorn, "What, though he be Baron of Caumont, Duke of Epernon, raised out of his place to sit near the princes of the blood, Governor of Metz and Normandy, of the Boulonnais, and Aunis, of Touraine, Saintonge, and Angoumois, Colonel-general of Infantry, and Governor of Anjou, a Knight of the order of the Holy Ghost! he shall find this simple steel sword of Henry of Guise sufficiently sharp to cut his parchments into pieces, and send him back a beggar to the class he sprung from."

The Duke spoke so rapidly, that to interrupt him was impossible; and so angrily, that Bellievre, overawed, remained silent for a moment or two after he had done, while the Prince bent his eyes down upon the table, and played with the golden tassels of his sword-knot, as if half ashamed of the vehemence he had displayed.

"I did not come here, your Highness," he said, "either as the envoy or the advocate of the Duke of Epernon. You must well know that there is no great love between us; and I doubt not, when your Highness comes to call him to account for his deeds, that justice will be found entirely on your side. But I came on the part of the King; and I beseech you to consider, my good Lord, what may be the consequences of pressing even any severe charges against the Duke of Epernon at this moment, when his Majesty is contending with the heretics on the one side, and is somewhat troubled by an unruly people on the other."

"Is he indeed contending with any body or any thing, Bellievre?" demanded the Duke. "Is he indeed contending against the Bearnois? Is he contending against the indolence of his own nature, or rather against the indolence into which corrupt favourites have cast him? Is he contending against the iniquities of Villequier, or the exactions of Epernon? Is he contending against any thing less contemptible than a spaniel puppy or an unteachable parrot? My love and attachment to the King and his crown, Bellievre, are greater than yours; and, as my final reply, I beg you humbly to inform his Majesty on my part, that if I do not promptly and entirely obey him in this matter of not coming to Paris, it is solely because I am compelled to do as I do, for the good of the church, for the safety of the state, for the security of my own relations and friends, and even for the benefit of his Majesty himself. This is my final reply."

"Yet one word, my Lord," replied Bellievre. "At all events, if your determination to visit the capital be taken, will you not at least, at my earnest prayer, delay your journey till I myself can return to Paris, and obtaining more ample explanations of the King's purposes, come back to you and confer with you farther on the subject."

"I see not, Monsieur de Bellievre," said the Duke of Guise, "what good could be obtained by such delay. I do not at all mean to say that you would take advantage of my confidence to prepare any evil measures against me; but others might do so: and besides, my honour calls me not to leave my friends in peril for a moment, even though I called upon my head the enmity of a whole host in stepping forward to rescue them."

"I pledge you my honour, my Lord," replied Bellievre, "that if you will consent to delay, no measures shall be taken against you; and I will do the very best I can to induce the King to make any atonement in his power to your friends. As to this young Count of Logères, I never heard of him before to-day, and know not what has been done with him at all; and in regard to Mademoiselle de Clairvaut, she is doubtless in the hands of Villequier, who, I understand, claims the guardianship."

"To which he has less right," replied the Duke angrily, "than that footstool; and if he contends with me, I will spurn him as I do it;" and he suited the gesture to the word. "But still I see not," continued the Duke, "what is to be gained by this delay to either party."

"This, my good Lord," replied Bellievre. "I am well aware that his Majesty the King has sent me here without sufficient powers to make you just and definite proposals. This I believe to have been entirely from the haste in which I came away, there being no time for thought. But if you permit me to return with assurance that you will wait but a few days, I feel convinced that I shall come back to you with offers so abundant, so satisfactory, and so well secured, that your Lordship will change your resolution."

The Duke mused for a moment or two. "Well, Monsieur de Bellievre," he said at length, "though I entertain no such hopes as you do, I must yield something to my loyalty, and to my real desire of obeying the King; although, perhaps, my duty to my country and to the church might well lead me to more prompt proceedings. I will, therefore, delay my journey for a day or two; but you must use all speed, and I must have no trifling. You know all my just grievances: those must be remedied, the church must be secured; and for the quiet and the satisfaction of the people who abhor and detest him, as well as for the relief of the nobles who have long been shut out from all favour by that unworthy minion, this John of Nogaret, this Duke of Epernon, must be banished from the court and councils of the King, and stripped of the places and dignities which he has won from the weak condescension of the Monarch. You understand me, Monsieur de Bellievre," he said in a sterner tone, seeing that Bellievre looked somewhat dismayed at the extent of his demands. "Undertake not the mission if you think that you cannot succeed in it; but let me on my way without more opposition."

"My Lord, I will do my best to succeed," replied Bellievre; "and trust that I shall do so. How many days will your Highness give me?"

"Nay, nay," replied the Duke; "that I cannot tell, Monsieur de Bellievre. Suffice it, I will delay as long as my honour permits me; and you on your part lose not an hour in making the necessary arrangements, and bringing the King's reply."

As he spoke the Duke rose to terminate the conference; and then added, "I fear, Monsieur de Bellievre, as I am expecting every moment my brother, the Cardinal de Guise, and his Eminence of Bourbon, to confer with me upon matters of importance, I cannot do the honours of the house to you as I could wish; but Pericard, my secretary and friend, will attend upon you, and insure that you have every sort of refreshment. I will send for him this moment." And so doing, he placed Bellievre in the hands of his secretary, and turned once more to other business.

The King's envoy sped back to Paris, scarcely giving himself time to take necessary refreshment; but on his arrival in the capital he first found a difficulty even in seeing the Monarch; and when he did see him, found him once more plunged in that state of luxurious and effeminate indolence from which he was only roused by occasional fits of excitement, which sometimes enabled him to resume the monarch and the man, but more frequently carried him into the wildest and most frantic excesses of debauchery.

Henry would scarcely listen to the business of Bellievre even when he granted him an audience on the following morning. He asked many a question about his cousin of Guise, about his health, about his appearance, about his dress itself; whether his shoes were pointed or square, and how far the haut-de-chausses came down above his knees. Bellievre was impatient, and pressed the King with some fire; but Henry only laughed, and tickled the ears of a monkey that sat upon the arm of his chair with a parrot's feather. The animal mouthed and chattered at the King, and strove to snatch the feather out of his hands; and Henry, stroking it down the head, called it "Mon Duc de Guise."

Bellievre bowed low, and moved towards the door. "Come back to-morrow, Bellievre; come back to-morrow," said the King; "Villequier will be here then. You see at present how importantly I am occupied with my fair cousin of Guise here;" and he pulled the monkey's whiskers as he spoke. "Villequier has told me all about it," he added. "He says the Duke will not come, and so says my mother; and if they both say the same thing who never agreed upon any point before, it must be true, Bellievre, you know."

"I trust it may, Sire," replied Bellievre dryly, and quitted the room with anger and indignation at his heart. Before he had crossed the anteroom, he heard a loud laugh ringing like that of a fool from the lips of the Monarch; and although it was doubtless occasioned by some new gambol of the monkey, it did not serve to diminish the bitter feelings which were in the diplomatist's bosom.