furs to the two Queens, and at the same time to ask in my
father's behalf for the money owed him by the Queen-mother ;
nor had I time to ask him who had told him."

"But those papers, given to you without any wrapper or



140 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

seal, contain a treaty between the rebels and Queen Catherine.
You must have known that the}' exposed you to the risk of
suffering the punishment dealt out to those who are impli-
cated in a rebellion."

"Yes."

"The persons who induced you to commit an act of high
treason must have promised you some reward and the Queen-
mother's patronage."

"I did it out of attachment to Chaudieu, the only person
I saw."

"Then you persist in declaring that you did not see the
Prince de Conde?"

"Yes."

"Did not the Prince de Conde tell you that the Queen-
m_other was inclined to enter into his views in antagonism
to the Guises?"

"I did not see him."

"Take care. One of your accomplices, la Eenaudie, is
arrested. Strong as he is, he could not resist the torture
that awaits you, and at last confessed that he, as well as the
Prince, had had speech with you. If you wish to escape the
anguish of torture, I beg you to tell the simple truth. Then
perhaps you may win your pardon."

Christophe replied that he could not tell anything of which
he had no knowledge, nor betray accomplices, when he had
none. On hearing this, the provost nodded to the execu-
tioner, and went back into the adjoining room.

On seeing this, Christophe knit his brows, wrinkling his
forehead with a nervous spasm, and preparing to endure. He
clenched his fists with such a rigid clutch that the nails ran
into the flesh without his feeling it. The three men took him
up, carried him to the camp bed, and laid him there, his legs
hanging down. While the executioner tied him fast with
stout ropes, his two men each fitted a leg into a boot; the
cords were tightened by means of a wrench without giving
the victim any great pain. When each leg was thus held in
a vise, the executioner took up his mallet and his wedges, and
looked alternately at the sufferer and the clerk.



ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 142

"Do you persist in your denial ?" said the clerk.

"I have told the truth/' replied Christophe.

"Then go on," said the clerk, shutting his eyes.

The cords were tightened to the utmost, and this moment,
perhaps, was the most agonizing of all the torture; the flesh
was so suddenly compressed that the blood was violently
thrown back into the trunk. The poor boy could not help
screaming terribly; he seemed about to faint. The doctor
was called back. He felt Christophe's pulse, and desired the
executioner to wait for a quarter of an hour before driving
in the wedges, to give time for the blood to recover its circu-
lation and sensation to return.

The clerk charitably told Christophe that if he could not
better endure even the beginnings of the suffering he could
not escape, he would do better to reveal all he knew; but
Christophe's only reply was :

"The King's tailor! the King's tailor!"

"What do you mean by saying that ?" asked the clerk.

"Foreseeing the torments I shall go through," said Chris-
tophe, slowly, to gain time and to rest, "I am summoning all
my strength, and trying to reinforce it by remembering the
martyrdom endured for the sacred cause of the Reformation
by the late King's tailor, who was tortured in the presence
of the King and of Madame de Valentinois; I will try to be
worthy of him !"

While the physician was advising the hapless man not to
drive his torturers to extremities, the Cardinal and the Duke,
impatient to know the results of this examination, came in
and desired Christophe to reveal the truth at once. The
furrier's son repeated the only confession he would allow him-
self to make, implicating nobody but Chaudieu.

The Princes nodded. On this, the executioner and his
foreman seized their mallets, each took a wedge and drove
it home between the boots, one standing on the right, and the
other on the left. The executioner stood at the knees, the
assistant at the ankles, opposite. The eyes of the witnesses
of this hideous act were fixed on Christophe's, who, excited



142 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

no doubt by the presence of these grand personages, flashed
such a look at them that his eyes sparkled like flame.

At the two next wedges a horrible groan escaped him.
Then when he saw the men take up the wedges for the
severer torture, he remained silent ; but his gaze assumed such
dreadful fixity, and flashed at the two Princes such a piercing
magnetic fluid, that the Duke and the Cardinal were both
obliged to look down. Philippe le Bel had experienced the^
same defeat when he presided at the torture by hammer, in-
flicted in his presence on the Templars. This consisted in
hitting the victim on the chest with one arm of the balanced
hammer used to coin money, which was covered with a
leather pad. There was one knight whose eyes were so fixed
on the King that he was fascinated, and could not take his
gaze off the sufferer. At the third blow the King rose and
went away, after hearing himself called upon to appear before
the judgment of God within a year — as he did.

At the fifth wedge, the first of the greater torture, Chris-
tophe said to the Cardinal :

"Cut my misery short, monseigneur; it is useless."

The Cardinal and the Duke withdrew, and Christophe
could hear from the next room these words, spoken by
Queen Catherine:

"Go on, go on ; after all, he is only a heretic !"

She thought it prudent to appear more severe to her ac-
complice than his executioners were.

The sixth and seventh wedges were driven in, and Chris-
tophe complained no more, his face shone with a strange
radiance, due, no doubt, to the immense strength he derived
from fanatical excitement. In what else but in feeling can
, we hope to find the fulcrum enabling a man to endure such
anguish? At last, when the executioner was about to insert
the eighth wedge, Christophe smiled. This dreadful torment
had lasted one hour.

The clerk went to fetch the leech, to know whether the
eighth wedge could be driven in without endangering the
sufferer's life. The Duke meanwhile came in again to see
Christophe.



ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 143

"By our Lady ! you are a fine fellow/'^ said he, leaning down
to speak in his ear. "I like a brave man. Enter my service,
you shall be happy and rich, my favors will heal your bruised
limbs; I will ask you to do nothing cowardly, like rejoining
your own party to betray their plans ; there are always plenty
of traitors, and the proof is to be found in the prisons of Blois.
Only tell me on what terms are the Queen-mother and the
Prince de Conde."

"I know nothing about it, monseigneur," cried Lecamus.

The doctor came in, examined the victim, and pronounced
that he could bear the eighth wedge.

"Drive it in," said the Cardinal. "After all, as the Queen
says, he is only a heretic," he added, with a hideous smile
at Christophe.

Catherine herself slowly came in from the adjoining room,
stood in front of Christophe, and gazed at him coldly. She
was the object of attentive scrutiny to the two brothers, who
looked alternately at the Queen-mother and her accomplice.
The whole future life of this ambitious woman depended on
this solemn scrutiny; she felt the greatest admiration for
Christophe's courage, and she looked at him sternly; she
hated the Guises, and she smiled upon them.

"Come," said she, "young man, confess that you saw the
Prince de Conde; you will be well rewarded."

"Oh, madame, what a part you are playing !" cried Chris-
tophe, in pity for her.

The Queen started.

"He is insulting me ! Is he not to be hanged ?" said she
to the two brothers, who stood lost in thought.

"What a woman !" cried the Grand Master, who was con-
sulting his brother in the window recess.

"I will stay in France and be revenged," thought the
Queen. "Proceed, he must confess or let him die !" she ex-
claimed, addressing Monsieur de Montresor.

The provost turned away, the executioners were busy, Cath-
erine had an opportunity of giving the martyr a look, which
no one else saw, and which fell like dew on Christophe. The



144 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

great Queen's eyes seemed to glisten with moisture ; they were,
in fact, full of tears, two tears at once repressed and dry.
The wedge was driven home, one of the boards between which
it was inserted split. Christophe uttered a piercing cry;
then his face became radiant ; he thought he was dying.

"Let him die," said the Cardinal, echoing Queen Cath-
erine's words with a sort of irony. "No, no," he added to
the provost, "do not let us lose this clue."

The Duke and the Cardinal held a consultation in a low
voice.

"What is to be done with him ?" asked the executioner.

"Send him to prison at Orleans," said the Duke. — "And,
above all," he said to Monsieur de Montresor, "do not hang
him without orders from me."

The excessive sensitiveness of every internal organ, strung
to the highest pitch by the endurance which worked upon
every nerve in his frame, no less affected every sense in Chris-
tophe. He alone heard these words spoken by the Due de
Guise in the Cardinal's ear:

"I have not given up all hope of hearing the truth from this
little man."

As soon as the two Princes had left the room, the execu-
tioners unpacked the victim's legs, with no attempt at gentle
handling.

"Did you ever see a criminal with such fortitude?" said
the head man to his assistants. "The rogue has lived through
the infliction of the eighth wedge ; he ought to have died. I
am the loser of the price of his body."

"Untie me without hurting me, my good friends," said
poor Christophe. "Some day I will reward you."

"Come, show some humanity," said the doctor. "Mon-
seigneur the Duke esteems the young man, and commended
him to my care," cried the leech.

"I am off to Amboise with my men," said the executioner
roughly. "Take care of him yourself. And here is the
jailer."

The executioner went off, leaving Christophe in the hands



ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 145

of the smooth-spoken doctor, who, with the help of Chris-
tophe's warder, lifted him on to a bed, gave him some broth,
which he made him swallow, sat down by his side, felt his
pulse, and tried to comfort him.

"You are not dying," he said, "and you must feel a com-
fort to your mind when you reflect that you have done your
duty. The Queen charged me to take good care of you," he
added, in a low voice.

"The Queen is very good," said Christophe, in whom acute
anguish had developed n-onderful lucidity of mind, and who,
after enduring so much, was determined not to spoil the
results of his devotion. "But she might have saved me so
much suffering by not delivering me to my tormentors, and
by telling them herself the secrets, of which I know nothing."

On hearing this reply, the doctor put on his cap and cloak
and left Christophe to his fate, thinking it vain to hope to
gain anything from a man of that temper. The jailer had
the poor boy carried on a litter by four men to the town
prison, where Christophe fell asleep, in that deep slumber
which, it is said, comes upon almost every mother after the
dreadful pains of childbirth.

The two Princes of Lorraine, when they transferred the
Court to Amboise, had no hope of finding there the leader
of the Reformed party, the Prince de Conde, whom they had
ordered to appear in the King's name to take him in a
snare. As a vassal of the Crown, and as a Prince of the
Blood, Conde was bound to obey the behest of the King. Not
to come to Amboise would be a felony; but, by coming, he
would place himself in the power of the Crown. Now, at this
moment, the Crown, the Council, the Court, and every kind
of power, were in the hands of the Due de Guise and the
Cardinal de Lorraine.

In this difficult dilemma, the Prince de Conde showed the
spirit of decisiveness and astuteness, which made him a
worthy representative of Jeanne d'Albret and the brave Gen-
eral of the Reformers' forces He traveled at the heels of the



146 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

last conspirators to Vendome to support them in case of
success. But when this first rush to arms ended in the brief
skirmish in which the flower of the nobility whom Calvin
had misled all perished, the Prince, and a following of fifty
gentlemen, arrived at the chateau d'Amboise the very day
after this affair, which the Guises, with crafty policy, spoke
of as the riots at Amboise. On hearing of the Prince's ad-
vance, the Duke sent out the Marechal de Saint-Andre to
receive him with an escort of a hundred men-at-arms. When
the Bearnais came to the gate of tiie chateau, the marshal in
command refused to admit the Prince's suite.

"You must come in alone, sir," said the Chancellor Olivier,
Cardinal de Tournon, and Birague, who awaited him outside
the portcullis.

"And why?"

"You are suspected of felony," replied the Chancellor.

The Prince, who saw that his party was being cut off by
the Due de Nemours, quietly replied :

"If that is the case, I will go in to my cousin alone and
prove my innocence."

He dismounted and conversed with perfect freedom with
Birague, Tournon, the Chancellor Olivier, and the Due de
Nemours, from whom he asked details of the riot.

"Monseigneur," said the Due de Nemours, "the rebels had
sympathizers inside Amboise. Captain Lanoue had got in
some men-at-arms, who opened the gate to them through
which they got ijito the town, and of which they had the
command "

"That is to say, you got them into a sack," replied the
Prince, looking at Birague.

"If they had been supported by the attack that was to
have been made on the Porte des Bons-Hommes by Captain
Chaudieu, the preacher's brother, they would have succeeded,"
said the Due de Nemours, "but, from the position I had taken
up, in obedience to the Due de Guise, Captain Chaudieu was
obliged to make a detour to avoid fighting me. Instead of
arriving at night like the rest, that rebel did not come up till



ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 147

daybreak, just as the King's troops had crushed those who
had got into the town."

"And you had a reserve to recapture the gate that had
been given up to them ?"

"Monsieur le Marechal de Saint-Andre was on the spot
with five hundred men."

The Prince warmly praised these military manoeuvres.

"To have acted thus," said he in conclusion, "the Lieu-
tenant-General must have known the Eeformers' secrets.
They have evidently been betrayed."

The Prince was treated with greater strictness at each
step. After being parted from his followers on entering
the chateau, the Cardinal and the Chancellor stood in his
way when he turned to the stairs leading to the King's apart-
ments.

"We are instructed by the King, sir, to conduct you to
your own rooms."

"Am I then a prisoner?"

"If that were the King's purpose, you would not be at-
tended by a Prince of the Church and by me," replied the
Chancellor.

The two functionaries led the Prince to an apartment
where a guard — of honor so called — was allotted to him,
and where he remained for several hours without seeing any
one. From his window he looked out on the Loire, the rich
country which makes such a beautiful valley between Am-
boise and Tours, and he was meditating on his situation,
wondering what the Guises might dare to do to his person,
when he heard the door of his room open, and saw the King's
fool come in, Chicot, who had once been in his service.

"I heard you were in disgrace," said the Prince.

"You cannot think how sober the Court has become since
the death of Henri II."

"And yet the King loves to laugh, surely."

"Which King? Francis II. or Francis of Lorraine?"

"Are you so fearless of the Duke that you speak so?"

"He will not punish me for that, sir," replied Chicot,
smiling.



148 ABOUT Catherine de' medici

"'And to what do I owe the honor of this visit?"

"Was it not due to you after your coming here? I have
brought you my cap and bauble."

"I cannot get out then?"

"Try !"

"And if I do get out?"

"I will confess that you have won the game by playing
against the rules."

"Chicot, you frighten me. — Have you been sent by some
one who is interested in my fate?"

Chicot nodded "Yes." He went nearer to the Prince, and
conveyed to him that they were watched and overheard.

"What have you to say to me ?" asked Monsieur de Conde.

"That nothing but daring can get you out of the scrape,''
said the fool, whispering the words into his ear. "And this
is from the Queen-mother."

"Tell those who have sent you," replied the Prince, "that
I should never have come to this chateau if I had anything to
blame myself for, or to fear."

"I fly to carry j^our bold reply," said the fool.

Two hours later, at one in the afternoon, before the King's
dinner, the Chancellor and Cardinal de Tournon came to
fetch the Prince to conduct him to Francis II. in the great
hall where the Council had sat. There, before all the Court,
the Prince de Conde affected surprise at the cool reception
the King had given him, and he asked the reason.

"You are accused, cousin," said the Queen-mother sternly,
"of having meddled with the plots of the Reformers, and
you must prove yourself a faithful subject and a good
Catholic if you wish to avert the King's anger from your
House."

On hearing this speech, spoken by Catherine in the midst
of hushed silence, as she stood with her hand in the King's
arm and with the Due d'Orleans on her left hand, the Prince
de Conde drew back three steps, and with an impulse of dig-
nified pride laid his hand on his sword, looking at the persons
present.



ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 149

*-Those who say so, madame, lie in their throat !" he ex-
claimed in angry tones.

He flung his glove at the King's feet, saying:

"Let the man who will maintain his calumny stand forth !"

A shiver ran through the whole Court when the Due de
Guise was seen to quit his place; but instead of picking up
the glove as they expected, he went up to the intrepid hunch-
back.

"If you need a second. Prince, I beg of you to accept my
services," said he. "I will answer for you, and will show
the Reformers how greatly they deceive themselves if they
hope to have you for their leader."

The Prince de Conde could not help offering his hand to
the Lieutenant-General of the kingdom. Chicot picked up
the glove and restored it to Monsieur de Conde.

"Cousin," said the boy-King, "you should never draw your
sword but in defence of your country. — Come to dinner."

The Cardinal de Lorraine, puzzled by his brother's action,
led him off to their rooms. The Prince de Conde, having
weathered the worst danger, gave his hand to Queen Mary
Stuart to lead her to the dining-room; but, while making
flattering speeches to the young Queen, he was trying to
discern what snare was at this moment being laid for him
by the Balafre's policy. In vain he racked his brain, he
could not divine the Guises' scheme; but Queen Mary be-
trayed it.

"It would have been a pity," said she, laughing, "to see
so clever a head fall; you must allow that my uncle is mag-
nanimous."

"Yes, madame, for my head fits no shoulders but my own,
although one is larger than the other. — But is it magnanimity
in your uncle? Has he not rather gained credit at a cheap
rate? Do you think it such an easy matter to have the law
of a Prince of the Blood ?"

"We have not done yet," replied she. "We shall see how
you behave at the execution of the gentlemen, your friends,
over which the Council have determined to make the greatest
display."



150 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDIGl

"I shall do as the King does," said Conde.

"The King, the Queen-mother, and I shall all be present,
with all the Court and the Ambassadors "

"Quite a high day?" said the Prince ironically.

"Better than that," said the young Queen, "an auto-
da-fe, a function of high political purport. The gentlemen
of France must be subjugated by the Crown; they must be
cured of their taste for faction and manreuvring "

"You will not cure them of their warlike temper by show-
ing them their danger, madame, and at this game you risk the
Crown itself," replied the Prince.

At the end of this dinner, which was gloomy enough, Queen
Mary was so unfortunately daring as to turn the conversation
publicly on the trial which the nobles, taken under arms,
were at that moment undergoing, and to speak of the neces-
sity for giving the utmost solemnity to their execution.

"But, madame," said Francis II., "is it not enough for the
King of France to know that the blood of so many brave
gentlemen must be shed? Must it be a cause of triumph?"

"No, sir, but an example," replied Catherine.

"Your grandfather and your father were in the habit of
seeing heretics burned," said Mary Stuart.

"The kings who reigned before me went their way," said
Francis, "and I mean to go mine."

"Philip II.," Catherine went on, "who is a great king lately,
when he was in the Netherlands, had an auto-da-fe postponed
till he shoiild have returned to Valladolid."

"What do you think about it, cousin?" said the King to
the Prince de Conde.

"Sir, you cannot avoid going; the Papal Nuncio and the
Ambassadors must be present. For my part, I am delighted
to go if the ladies are to be of the party."

The Prince, at a glance from Catherine de' Medici, had
boldly taken his line.

While the Prince de Conde was being admitted to the
chateau of Amboise, the furrier to the two Queens was also
arriving from Paris, brought thither by the uneasiness pro-



ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 151

duced by the reports of the Eebellion, not only in himself and
his family, but also in the Lalliers.

At the gate of the chateau, when the old man craved ad-
mission, the captain of the Guard, at the words "Queen's
furrier," answered at once :

"My good man, if you want to be hanged, you have only
to set foot in the courtyard."

On hearing this, the unhappy father sat down on a rail
a little way off, to wait till some attendant on either of the
Queens, or some woman of the Court, should pass him, to
ask for some news of his son; but he remained there the
whole day without seeing anybody he knew, and was at last
obliged to go down into the town, where he found a lodging,
not without difficulty, in an inn on the Square where the
executions were to take place. He was obliged to pa}^ a livre
a. day to secure a room looking out on the Square.

On the following day, he was brave enough to look on
from his window at the rebels who had been condemned to the
wheel, or to be hanged, as men of minor importance; and
the Syndic of the Furriers' Guild was glad enough not to
find his son among the sufferers.

When it was all over, he went to place, himself in the
clerk's way. Having mentioned his name, and pressed a
purse full of crown-pieces into the man's hand, he begged him
to see whether, in the three former days of execution, the
name of Christophe Lecamus had occurred. The registrar,
touched by the despairing old father's manners and tone of
voice, conducted him to his own house. After carefully com-
paring notes, he could assure the old man that the said Chris-
tophe was not among those who had hitherto been executed,
nor was he named among those who were to die within the
next few days.

"My dear master," said the clerk to the furrier, "the
Parlement is now engaged in trying the lords and gentlemen
concerned in the business, and the principal leaders. So,
possibly, your son is imprisoned in the chateau, and will be
one in the magnificent execution for which my lords the Due



152 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine are making great
preparations. Twenty-seven barons are to be beheaded, with
eleven counts and seven marquises, fifty gentlemen in all,
and leaders of the Eeformers. As the administration of Jus-
tice in Touraine has no connection with that of the Paris
Parlement, if you positively must have some news of youi
son, go to my Lord the Chancellor Olivier, who, by the orders
of the Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, has the manage-
ment of the proceedings."

Three times did the poor old num go to the Chancellor's
house and stand in a file of people in the courtyard, in com-
mon with an immense number of people who had com.e to
pray for their relations' lives; but as titled folks were ad-
mitted before the middle class, he was obliged to give up all
hope of sj^eaking with the Chancellor, though he saw him
several times coming out of his house to go either to the
chateau or to the Commission appointed by the Parlement,