The Works of Honoré de Balzac: About Catherine de' Medici, Seraphita, and Other Stories. Honore de Balzac
but shall we be strong enough to take in the Huguenots, the Bourbons, and the Guises? In front of three such foes we are justified in feeling our pulse," said she.
"They have not the King," replied Albert. "You must always win, having the King on your side."
"Maladetta Maria!" said Catherine, between her teeth.
"The Guises are already thinking of diverting the affections of the middle class," said Birague.
The hope of snatching the Crown had not been premeditated by the two heads of the refractory House of Guise; there was nothing to justify the project or the hope; circumstances suggested such audacity. The two Cardinals and the two Balafrés were, as it happened, four ambitious men, superior in political gifts to any of the men about them. Indeed, the family was only subdued at last by Henri IV., himself a leader of faction, brought up in the great school of which Catherine and the Guises were the teachers—and he had profited by their lessons.
At this time these two brothers were the arbiters of the greatest revolution attempted in Europe since that carried through in England under Henry VIII., which had resulted from the invention of printing. They were the enemies of the Reformation, the power was in their hands, and they meant to stamp out heresy; but Calvin, their opponent, though less famous than Luther, was a stronger man. Calvin saw Government where Luther had only seen Dogma. Where the burly, beer-drinking, uxorious German fought with the Devil, flinging his inkstand at the fiend, the man of Picardy, frail and unmarried, dreamed of plans of campaign, of directing battles, of arming princes, and of raising whole nations by disseminating republican doctrines in the hearts of the middle classes, so as to make up, by increased progress in the Spirit of Nations, for his constant defeats on the battle-field.
The Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duc de Guise knew quite as well as Philip II. and the Duke of Alva where the Monarchy was aimed at, and how close the connection was between Catholicism and sovereignty. Charles V., intoxicated with having drunk too deeply of Charlemagne's cup, and trusting too much in the strength of his rule, for he believed that he and Soliman might divide the world between them, was not at first conscious that his front was attacked; as soon as Cardinal Granvelle showed him the extent of the festering sore, he abdicated.
The Guises had a startling conception; they would extinguish heresy with a single blow. They tried to strike that blow for the first time at Amboise, and they made a second attempt on Saint-Bartholomew's Day; this time they were in accord with Catherine de' Medici, enlightened as she was by the flames of twelve years' wars, and yet more by the ominous word "Republic" spoken and even published at a later date by the writers of the Reformation, whose ideas Lecamus, the typical citizen of Paris, had already understood. The two Princes, on the eve of striking a fatal blow to the heart of the nobility, in order to cut it off from the first from a religious party whose triumph would be its ruin, were now discussing the means of announcing their Coup d'État to the King, while Catherine was conversing with her four counselors.
"Jeanne d'Albret knew what she was doing when she proclaimed herself the protectress of the Huguenots! She has in the Reformation a battering-ram which she makes good play with!" said the Grand Master, who had measured the depth of the Queen of Navarre's scheming.
Jeanne d'Albret was, in point of fact, one of the cleverest personages of her time.
"Théodore de Bèze is at Nérac, having taken Calvin's orders."
"What men those common folk can lay their hands on!" cried the Duke.
"Ay, we have not a man on our side to match that fellow la Renaudie," said the Cardinal. "He is a perfect Catiline."
"Men like him always act on their own account," replied the Duke. "Did not I see la Renaudie's value? I loaded him with favors, I helped him to get away when he was condemned by the Bourgogne Parlement, I got him back into France by obtaining a revision of his trial, and I intended to do all I could for him, while he was plotting a diabolical conspiracy against us. The rascal has effected an alliance between the German Protestants and the heretics in France by smoothing over the discrepancies of dogma between Luther and Calvin. He has won over the disaffected nobles to the cause of the Reformation without asking them to abjure Catholicism. So long ago as last year he had thirty commanders on his side! He was everywhere at once: at Lyons, in Languedoc, at Nantes. Finally, he drew up the Articles settled in Council and distributed throughout Germany, in which theologians declare that it is justifiable to use force to get the King out of our hands, and this is being disseminated in every town. Look for him where you will, you will nowhere find him!
"Hitherto I have shown him nothing but kindness! We shall have to kill him like a dog, or to make a bridge of gold for him to cross and come into our house."
"Brittany and Languedoc, the whole kingdom indeed, is being worked upon to give us a deadly shock," said the Cardinal. "After yesterday's festival, I spent the rest of the night in reading all the information sent me by my priesthood; but no one is involved but some impoverished gentlemen and artisans, people who may be either hanged or left alive, it matters not which. The Colignys and the Condés are not yet visible, though they hold the threads of the conspiracy."
"Ay," said the Duke; "and as soon as that lawyer Avenelles had let the cat out of the bag, I told Braguelonne to give the conspirators their head: they have no suspicions, they think they can surprise us, and then perhaps the leaders will show themselves. My advice would be that we should allow ourselves to be beaten for forty-eight hours——"
"That would be half-an-hour too long," said the Cardinal in alarm.
"How brave you are!" retorted la Balafré.
The Cardinal went on with calm indifference:
"Whether the Prince de Condé be implicated or no, if we are assured that he is the leader, cut off his head. What we want for that business is judges rather than soldiers, and there will never be any lack of judges! Victory in the Supreme Court is always more certain than on the field of battle, and costs less."
"I am quite willing," replied the Duke. "But do you believe that the Prince de Condé is powerful enough to inspire such audacity in those who are sent on first to attack us? Is there not——?"
"The King of Navarre," said the Cardinal.
"A gaby who bows low in my presence," replied the Duke. "That Florentine woman's graces have blinded you, I think——"
"Oh, I have thought of that already," said the prelate. "If I aim at a gallant intimacy with her, is it not that I may read to the bottom of her heart?"
"She has no heart," said his brother sharply. "She is even more ambitious than we are."
"You are a brave commander," said the Cardinal; "but take my word for it, our skirts are very near touching, and I made Mary Stuart watch her narrowly before you ever suspected her. Catherine has no more religion in her than my shoe. If she is not the soul of the conspiracy, it is not for lack of goodwill; but we will draw her out and see how far she will support us. Till now I know for certain that she has not held any communication with the heretics."
"It is time that we should lay everything before the King, and the Queen-mother, who knows nothing," said the Duke, "and that is the only proof of her innocence. La Renaudie will understand from my arrangements that we are warned. Last night Nemours must have been following up the detachments of the Reformed party, who were coming in by the cross-roads, and the conspirators will be compelled to attack us at Amboise; I will let them all in.—Here," and he pointed to the three steep slopes of rock on which the Château de Blois is built, just as Chiverni had done a moment since, "we should have a fight with no result; the Huguenots could come and go at will. Blois is a hall with four doors, while Amboise is a sack."
"I will not leave the Florentine Queen," said the Cardinal.
"We have made one mistake," remarked the Duke, playing with his dagger, tossing it in the air, and catching it again by the handle; "we ought to have behaved to her as to the Reformers, giving her liberty to move, so as to take her in the act."
The Cardinal looked at his brother for a minute, shaking his head.
"What