Montmorencys, the Princes of Scotland, the Cardinals, and
the Bouillons, he aimed at distinction by his gracious man-
ners, his elegance, and his wit, which won him the favors
of the most charming women, and the heart of many he
never thought about. He was a man privileged by nature,
whose fascinations were irresistible, and who owed to his love
affairs the means of keeping up his rank. The Bourbons
would not have taken offence, like Jarnac, at la Chataignerie's
scandal; they were very ready to accept lands and houses
from their mistresses — witness the Prince de Conde, who
had the estate of Saint- Valery from Madame la Marechale
de Saint-Andre.
During the first twenty days of mourning for Henri II.,
a sudden change came over the Vidame's prospects. Courted
by the Queen-mother, and courting her as a man may court
a queen, in the utmost secrecy, he seemed fated to play an
important part; and Catherine, in fact, resolved to make
him useful. "The Prince received letters from her to the
Prince de Conde, in which she pointed out the necessity for
a coalition against the Guises. The Guises, informed of this
intrigue, made their way into the Queen's chamber to compel
her to sign an order consigning the Vidame to the Bastille,
and Catherine found hprself under the cruel necessity of
ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MBDIOl 43
submitting. The Vidame died after a few months' captivity,
on the day when he came out of prison, a short time before
tlie Amboise conspiracy.
Tliis was the end of Catherine de' Medici's first and only
love affair. Protestant writers declared that the Queen had
him poisoned to bury the secret of her gallantries in the
tomb.
Such was this woman's apprenticeship to the exercise of
royal power.
44 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI
PART 1
THE CALVINIST MARTYR
Few persons in these days know how artless were the dwell-
ings of the citizens of Paris in the sixteentli century, and
how simple their lives. This very simplicity of habits and
thought perhaps was the cause of the greatness of this primi-
tive citizen class — for they were certainly great, free and
noble, more so perhaps than the citizens of our time. Their
history remains to be written; it requires and awaits a man
of genius. Inspired by an incident which, though little known,
forms the basis of this narrative, and is one of the most re-
markable in the history of the citizen class, this reflection
will no doubt occur to every one who shall read it to the end.
Is it the first time in history that the conclusion has come
before the facts?
In 1560, the houses of the Eue de la Vieille-Pelleterie lay
close to the left bank of the Seine, between the Pont Notre-
Dame and the Pont au Change. The public way and the
houses occupied the ground now given up to the single path
of the present quay. Each house, rising from the river, had
a way down to it by stone or wooden steps, defended by strong
iron gates, or doors of nail-studded timber. These houses,
like those of Venice, had a door to the land and one to the
water. At the moment of writing this sketch, only one house
remains of this kind as a reminiscence of old Paris, and that
is doomed soon to disappear; it stands at the corner of the
Petit-Pont, the little bridge facing the guard-house of the
Hotel-Dieu.
Of old each dwellinsr presented, on the river side, the
ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 45
peculiar physiognomy stamped on it either by the trade and
the habits of its owners, or by tlie eccentricity of tlie con-
structions devised by them for utilizing or defiling the Seine,
The bridges being built, and almost all choked up by more
mills than were convenient for the requirements of naviga-
tion, the Seine in Paris was divided into as many pools as
there were bridges. Some of these old Paris basins would
have afforded delightful studies of color for the painter.
What a forest of timbers was built into the cross-beams that
supported the mills, with their immense sails and wheels !
What curious effects were to be found in the joists that shored
up the houses from the river. Genre painting as yet, un-
fortunately, was not, and engraving in its infancy; so we
have no record of the curious scenes which may still be found,
on a small scale, in some provincial towns where the rivers
are fringed with wooden houses, and where, as at Vendome,
for instance, the pools, overgrown with tall grasses, are di-
vided by railings to separate the various properties on each
bank.
The name of this street, which has now vanished from the
map, sufficiently indicates the kind of business carried on
there. At that time the merchants engaged in any particular
trade, far from dispersing themselves about the city, gath-
ered together for mutual protection. Being socially bound
by the guild which limited their increase, they were also
united into a brotherhood by the Church. This kept up
prices. And then the masters were not at the mercy of their
workmen, and did not yield, as they do now, to all their
vagaries; on the contrary, they took charge of them, treated
them as their children, and taught them the finer raystexies
of their craft. A workman, to become a master, was required
to produce a masterpiece — always an offering to the patron
saint of the guild. And will you venture to assert that
the absence of competition diminished their sense of perfec-
tion, or hindered beauty of workmanship, when your admira-
tion of the work of the older craftsmen has created the new
trade of dealers in hi'ic-d-bracf
46 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the fur trade was
one of the most flourishing industries. The difficulty of
obtaining furs, which, coming from the North, necessitated
long and dangerous voyages, gave a high value to skins and
furriers' work. Then, as now, high prices led to demand,
for vanity knows no obstacles.
In France, and in other kingdoms, not only was the use
of furs restricted by law to the great nobility, as is proved
by the part played by ermine in ancient coats-of-arms ; but
certain rare furs, such as vair^ which was beyond doubt im-
perial sable, might be worn only by kings, dukes, and men of
high rank holding certain offices. Vair (a name still used in
heraldry, vaii- and counter vair) was sub-divided into grand
vair and menu vair. The word has within the last hundred
years fallen so completely into disuse, that in hundreds of
editions of Perrault's fairy tales, Cinderella's famous slipper,
probably of fur, menu vair, has become a glass slipper, pan-
toufle de verre. Not long since a distinguished French poet
was obliged to restore and explain the original spelling of
this word, for the edification of his brethren of the press,
when giving an account of the "Cenerentola," in which a
ring is substituted for the symbolical slipper — an unmeaning
change.
The laws against the use of fur were, of course, perpetually
transgressed, to the great advantage of the furriers. The
high price of textiles and of furs made a garment in
those days a durable thing, in keeping with the furni-
ture, armor, and general details of the sturdy life of the time.
A nobleman or lady, every rich man as well as every citizen,
possessed at most two dresses for each season, and they lasted
a lifetime or more. These articles were bequeathed to their
children. Indeed, the clauses relating to weapons and rai-
ment in marriage contracts, in these days unimportant by
reason of the small value of clothes that are constantly re-
newed, were at that period of great interest. High prices
had led to durability.
A lady's outfit represented a vast sum of money; it was
ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 47
included in her fortune, and safely bestowed in those enor-
mous chests which endanger the ceilings of modern houses.
The full dress of a lady in 1840 would have been the
deshahille of a fine lady of 1540. The discovery of America,
the facility of transport, the destruction of social distinctions,
which has led to the effacement of visible distinctions, have
all contributed to reduce the furrier's craft to the low ebb
at which it stands, almost to nothing. The article sold by af
furrier at the same price as of old — say twenty livres — hasj
fallen in value with the money : the livre or franc was then'
worth twenty of our present money. The citizen's wife or
the courtesan who, in our day, trims her cloak with sable,
does not know that in 144:0 a malignant constable of the
watch would have taken her forthwith into custody, and
haled her before the judge at le Chatelet. The English
ladies who are so fond of ermine are unconscious of the fact
that formerly none but queens, duchesses, and the Chancellor
of France were permitted to wear this royal fur. There are
at this day various ennobled families bearing the name of
Pelletier or Lepelletier, whose forebears were obviously
wealthy furriers; for most of our citizen names were origi-
nally surnames of that kind.
This digression not only explains the long squabbles as
to precedence which the Drapers' Guild carried on for two
centuries with the Mercers and the Furriers, each insisting
on marching first, as being the most important, but also ac-
counts for the consequence of one Master Lecamus, a furrier
honored with the patronage of the two Queens, Catherine
de' Medici and Mary Stuart, as well as that of the legal
profession, who for twenty years had been the Syndic of his
Corporation, and who lived in this street. The house oc-
cupied by Lecamus was one of the three forming the three
corners of the cross-roads at the end of the Pont au Change,
where only the tower now remains that formed the fourth
comer. At the angle of this house, forming the corner of
the bridge and of the quay, now called the Quai aux Fleurs,
48 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI
the architect had placed a niche for a Madonna, before whom
tapers constantly burned, with posies of real flowers in their
season, and artificial flowers in the winter.
On the side towards the Eue du Pont, as well as on that
to the Eue de la Vieille-Pelleterie, the house was supported
on wooden pillars. All the houses of the trading quarters
were thus constructed, with an arcade beneath, where foot
passengers walked under cover on a floor hardened by the
mud they brought in, which made it a rather rough pave-
•nient. In all the towns of France these arcades have been
called piliers — in England roivs — a general term to which
the name of a trade is commonly added, as "Piliers des
Halles," "Piliers de la Boucherie." These covered ways,
required by the changeable and rainy climate of Paris, gave
the town a highly characteristic feature, but they have en-
tirely disappeared. Just as there now remains one house
only on the river-bank, so no more than about a hundred feet
are left of the old Piliers in the market, the last that have
survived till now; and in a few days this remnant of the
gloomy labyrinth of old Paris will also be destroyed. The
existence of these relics of the Middle Ages is, no doubt, in-
compatible with the splendor of modern Paris. And these
remarks are not intended as a lament over those fragments
of the old city, but as a verification of this picture by the
last surviving examples now falling into dust, and to win
forgiveness for such descriptions, which will be precious in
the future which is following hard on the heels of this age.
The walls were of timber covered with slates. The spaces
between the timbers had been filled up with bricks, in a way
that may still be seen in some provincial towns, laid in a
zigzag pattern known as Point de Hongrie. The window-
sills and lintels, also of wood, were handsomely carved, as
were the corner tabernacle above the Madonna, and the pillars
in front of the shop. Every window, every beam dividing
the stories, was graced with arabesques of fantastic figures
and animals wreathed in scrolls of foliage. On the street side,
as on the river side, the house was crowned with a high-
ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 4fl
pitched roof having a gable to the river and one to the
street. Tliis roof, like that of a Swiss chalet, projected far
enough to cover a balcony on the second floor, with an orna-
mental balustrade; here the mistress might walk under shel-
ter and command a view of the street, or of the pool shut
in between two bridges and two rows of houses.
Houses by the river were at that time highly valued. The
system of drainage and water supply was not yet invented;
the only main drain was one round Paris, constructed by
Aubriot, the first man of genius and determination who —
in the time of Charles V. — thought of sanitation for Paris.
Houses situated like this of the Sieur Lecamus found in the
river a necessary water-suppl}^ and a natural outlet for
rain water and waste. The vast works of this kind under
the direction of the Trade Provosts are only now disappear-
ing. None but octogenarians can still remember having
seen the pits which swallowed up the surface waters, in the
Eue Montmartre, Eue du Temple, etc. These hideous yawn-
ing culverts were in their day of inestimable utility. Their
place will probably be for ever marked by the sudden rising
of the roadway over what was their open channel — another
archaeological detail which, in a couple of centuries, the his-
torian will find inexplicable.
One day, in 1816, a little girl, who had been sent to an
actress at the Ambigu with some diamonds for the part of
a queen, was caught in a storm, and so irresistibly swept
away by the waters to the opening of the drain in the Eue
du Temple, that she would have been drowned in it but for
the help of a passer-by, who was touched by her cries. But
she had dropped the jewels, which were found in a man-hole. ,
This accident made a great commotion, and gave weight
to the demands for the closing of these gulfs for swallowing
water and little girls. These curious structures, five feet
high, had more or less movable gratings, which led to the
flooding of cellars when the stream produced by heavy rain
was checked by the grating being choked with rubbish, which
the residents often forgot to remove.
50 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEt)ICl
The front of Master Lecamus' shop was a large window,
but filled in with small panes of leaded glass, wliich made
the place very dark. The furs for wealthy purchasers were
carried to them for inspection. To those who came to buy
in the shop, the goods were displayed outside between the
pillars, which, during the day, were always more or less
blocked by tables and salesmen sitting on stools, as they
could still be seen doing under the arcade of the Halles some
fifteen years since. From these outposts the clerks, appren-
tices, and sewing girls could chat, question, and answer each
other, and hail the passer-by in a way which Walter Scott has
depicted in the Fortunes of Nigel. The signboard, repre-
senting an ermine, was hung out as we still see those of
village inns, swinging from a handsome arm of pierced and
gilt ironwork. Over the ermine were these words :
L E C .^ M U S
Furrier
To Her Majesty the Queen and the King our
Sovereign Lord
On one side, and on the other:
"To Her Majesty the Queen Mother
And to the Gentlemen of the Parlement."
The words "To Her Majesty the Queen" had been lately
added; the gilt letters were new. This addition was a con-
sequence of the recent changes produced by Henri II. 's sudden
and violent death, which overthrew many fortunes at Court,
and began that of the Guises.
The back shop looked over the river. In tnis room sat
the worthy citizen and his wife, Mademoiselle Lecamus. The
wife of a man who was not noble had not at any time any
right to the title of Dame, or lady; but the wives of the
citizens of Paris were allowed to call themselves Demoiselle
ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 51
(as we might say Mistress), as part of the privileges granted
and confirmed to their husbands by many kings to whom
they had rendered great services. Between this back room
and the front shop was a spiral ladder or staircase of wood,
a sort of corkscrew leading up to the next story, where the
furs were stored, to the old couple's bedroom, and again to
the attics, lighted by dormer windows, where their children
slept, the maid-servant, the clerks, and the apprentices.
This herding of families, servants, and apprentices, and
the small space allotted to each in the dwelling, where the
apprentices all slept in one large room under the tiles, ac-
counts for the enormous population at that time crowded
together in Paris on a tenth of the ground now occupied by
the city, and also for the many curious details of mediaeval
life, and the cunning love affairs, though these, pace the
grave historian, are nowhere recorded but by the story writers,
and without them would have been lost.
At this time a grand gentleman — such as the Admiral de
Coligny, for instance — had three rooms for himself in Paris,
and his people lived in a neighboring hostelry. There were
not fifty mansions in all Paris, not fifty palaces, that is to say,
belonging to the sovereign princes or great vassals, whose ex-
istence was far superior to that of the greatest German rulers,
such as the Duke of Bavaria or the Elector of Saxony.
The kitchen in the Lecamus' house was on the river side
below the back shop. It had a glass door opening on to
an ironwork balcony, where the cook could stand to draw
up water in a pail and to wash the household linen. Thus
the back shop was at once the sitting-room, the dining-room,
and the counting-house. It was in this important room —
always fitted with richly-carved wood, and adorned by some
chest or artistic article of furniture — that the merchant spent
most of his life; there ho had jolly suppers after his day's
work; there were held secret debates on the political interests
of the citizens and the Royal family. The formidable guilds
of Paris could at that time arm a hundred thousand men.
Their resolutions were stoutly upheld by their serving-men.
52 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI
their clerks, their apprentices, and their workmen. Then*
Provost was their commander-in-chief, and they had, in the
Hotel de Villa, a palace where they had a right to assemble.
In that famous "citizens' parlor" {parlouer aux bourgeois)
very solemn decisions were taken. But for the continual,
sacrifices which had made war unendurable to the Guilds,
wearied out with losses and famine, Henri IV., a rebel-made'
king, might never have entered Paris.
Ever^r reader may now imagine for himself the character-
istic appearance of this corner of Paris where the bridge and
the Quay now open out, where the trees rise from the Quai
aux Fleurs, and where nothing is left of the past but the
lofty and famous clock-tower whence the signal was tolled
for the Massacre of Saint-Bartholomew. Strange coinci-
dence ! One of the houses built round the foot of that tower
— at that time surrounded by wooden shops — the house of
the Lecamus, was to be the scene of one of the incidents
that led to that night of horrors, which proved, unfortunately,
propitious rather than fatal to Calvinism.
At the moment when this story begins, the audacity of the
new religious teaching was setting Paris by the ears. A
Scotchman, named Stuart, had just assassinated President
Minard, that member of the Parlement to whom public
opinion attributed a principal share in the execution of Anne
du Bourg, a councillor burnt on the Place de Greve after the
tailor of the late King, who had been tortured in the presence
of Henri II. and Diane de Poitiers. Paris was so closely
watched, that the archers on guard compelled every passer-by
to pray to the Virgin, in order to detect heretics, who yielded
unwillingly, or even refused to perform an act opposed to
their convictions.
The two archers on guard at the corner of the Lecamus'
house had just gone off dutv; thus Christophe, the furrier's
son, strongly suspected of deserting the Catholic faith, had
been able to go out without fear of being compelled to adore
the Virgin's image. At seven in the evening of an April day,
â– I am Ctiauaieu ( "
ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 53
1560, night was falling, and the apprentices, seeing only a
few persons walking along the arcades on each side of the
street, were carrying in the goods laid out for inspection
preparatory to closing the house and the shop. Christophe
Lecamus, an ardent youth of two-and-twenty, was standing
in the door, apparently engaged in looking after the appren-
tices.
"Monsieur," said one of these lads to Christophe, pointingi
out a man who was pacing to and fro under the arcade with
a doubtful expression, "that is probably a spy or a thief,
but whatever he is, such a lean wretch cannot be an honest
man. If he wanted to speak to us on business, he would come
up boldly instead of creeping up and down as he is doing. —
And what a face !" he went on, mimicking the stranger,
"with his nose hidden in his cloak ! What a jaundiced eye,
and what a starved complexion !"
As soon as the stranger thus described saw Christophe
standing alone in the doorway, he hastily crossed from the
opposite arcade where he was walking, came under the pillars
of the Lecamus' house, and passing along by the shop before
the apprentices had come out again to close the shutters, he
went up to the young man.
"I am Chaudieu !" he said in a low voice.
On hearing the name of one of the most famous ministers,
and one of the most heroic actors in the terrible drama called
the Eeformation, Christophe felt such a thrill as a faithful
peasant would have felt on recognizing his King under a
disguise.
"Would you like to see some furs?" said Christophe, to
deceive the apprentices whom he heard behind him. "Though
it is almost dark, I can show you some myself."
He invited the minister to enter, but the man replied that
he would rather speak to him out of doors. Christophe
fetched his cap and followed the Calvinist.
Chaudieu, though banished by an edict, as secret pleni-
potentiary of Theodore de Beze and Calvin — who directed
the Eeformation in France from Geneva — went and came,
-5
54 ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI
defying the risk of the horrible death inflicted by the Parle-
ment, in concert with the Cliurch and the Monarcli, on a
leading reformer, the famous Anne du Bourg. This man,
whose brother was a captain in the army, and one of Admiral
Coligny's best warriors, was the arm used by Calvin to stir
up France at the beginning of the twenty-two years of re-
l^ligious wars which were on the eve of an outbreak. This
preacher of the reformed faith was one of those secret wheels
which may best explain the immense spread of the Eeforma-
tion.
Chaudieu led Christophe dowrr to the edge of the water
by an underground passage like that of the Arche Marion,
filled in some ten years since. This tunnel between the house
of Lecamus and that next it ran under the Rue de la Vieille-
Pelleterie, and was known as le Pont aux Fourreurs. It was
used by the dyers of the Cite as a way down to the river to
wash their thread, silk, and materials. A little boat lay
there, held and rowed by one man. In the bows sat a stranger,
a small man, and very simply dressed. In an instant the boat
was in the middle of the river, and the boatman steered it
under one of the wooden arches of the Pont au Change, where
he quickly secured it to an iron ring. ISTo one had said a
word.
"Here we may talk in safety, there are neither spies nor
traitors," said Chaudieu to the two others. "Are you filled
with the spirit of self-sacrifice that should animate a martyr?
Are you ready to suffer all things for our holy Cause? Do
you fear the torments endured by the late King's tailor, and
the Councillor du Bourg, which of a truth await us all?"
He spoke to Christophe, looking at him with a radiant face.
"I will testify to the Gospel," replied Christophe simply,
looking up at the windows of the back shop.
The familiar lamp standing on a table, where his father
was no doubt balancing his books, reminded him by its mild
beam of the peaceful life and family joys he was renouncing.
It was a brief but complete vision. The young man's fancy
took in the homely harmony of the whole scene — the places
ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI 55
where he had spent his happy childhood, where Babette Lal-
lier lived, his future wife, where everything promised him
a calm and busy life ; he saw the past, he saw the future, and
he sacrificed it all. At any rate, he staked it.
Such were men in those days.
"We need say no more," cried the impetuous boatman.