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+Project Gutenberg's The Historical Nights' Entertainment, by Rafael
+Sabatini
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
+no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use
+it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Historical Nights' Entertainment
+
+Author: Rafael Sabatini
+
+Release Date: December 22, 2008 [EBook #2636]
+Last Updated: March 10, 2018
+
+Last Updated: August 24, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Project Gutenberg Volunteer, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
+
+First Series
+
+
+By Rafael Sabatini
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+In approaching “The Historical Nights' Entertainment” I set myself the
+task of reconstructing, in the fullest possible detail and with all the
+colour available from surviving records, a group of more or less famous
+events. I would select for my purpose those which were in themselves
+bizarre and resulting from the interplay of human passions, and whilst
+relating each of these events in the form of a story, I would compel
+that story scrupulously to follow the actual, recorded facts without
+owing anything to fiction, and I would draw upon my imagination, if at
+all, merely as one might employ colour to fill in the outlines which
+history leaves grey, taking care that my colour should be as true to
+nature as possible. For dialogue I would depend upon such scraps
+of actual speech as were chronicled in each case, amplifying it by
+translating into terms of speech the paraphrases of contemporary
+chroniclers.
+
+Such was the task I set myself. I am aware that it has been attempted
+once or twice already, beginning, perhaps, with the “Crimes Celebres”
+ of Alexandre Dumas. I am not aware that the attempt has ever succeeded.
+This is not to say that I claim success in the essays that follow. How
+nearly I may have approached success--judged by the standard I had set
+myself--how far I may have fallen short, my readers will discern. I
+am conscious, however, of having in the main dutifully resisted the
+temptation to take the easier road, to break away from restricting fact
+for the sake of achieving a more intriguing narrative. In one instance,
+however, I have quite deliberately failed, and in some others I have
+permitted myself certain speculations to resolve mysteries of which no
+explanation has been discovered. Of these it is necessary that I should
+make a full confession.
+
+My deliberate failure is “The Night of Nuptials.” I discovered an
+allusion to the case of Charles the Bold and Sapphira Danvelt in
+Macaulay's “History of England”--quoted from an old number of the
+“Spectator”--whilst I was working upon the case of Lady Alice Lisle.
+There a similar episode is mentioned as being related of Colonel Kirke,
+but discredited because known for a story that has a trick of springing
+up to attach itself to unscrupulous captains. I set out to track it to
+its source, and having found its first appearance to be in connection
+with Charles the Bold's German captain Rhynsault, I attempted to
+reconstruct the event as it might have happened, setting it at least in
+surroundings of solid fact.
+
+My most flagrant speculation occurs in “The Night of Hate.” But in
+defence of it I can honestly say that it is at least no more flagrant
+than the speculations on this subject that have become enshrined in
+history as facts. In other words, I claim for my reconstruction of the
+circumstances attending the mysterious death of Giovanni Borgia, Duke of
+Gandia, that it no more lacks historical authority than do any other
+of the explanatory narratives adopted by history to assign the guilt to
+Gandia's brother, Cesare Borgia.
+
+In the “Cambridge Modern History” our most authoritative writers on this
+epoch have definitely pronounced that there is no evidence acceptable
+to historians to support the view current for four centuries that Cesare
+Borgia was the murderer.
+
+Elsewhere I have dealt with this at length. Here let it suffice to say
+that it was not until nine months after the deed that the name of Cesare
+Borgia was first associated with it; that public opinion had in the mean
+time assigned the guilt to a half-dozen others in succession; that no
+motive for the crime is discoverable in the case of Cesare; that the
+motives advanced will not bear examination, and that they bear on the
+face of them the stamp of having been put forward hastily to support
+an accusation unscrupulously political in purpose; that the first men
+accused by the popular voice were the Cardinal Vice-Chancellor Ascanio
+Sforza and his nephew Giovanni Sforza, Tyrant of Pesaro; and, finally,
+that in Matarazzo's “Chronicles of Perugia” there is a fairly detailed
+account of how the murder was perpetrated by the latter.
+
+Matarazzo, I confess, is worthy of no more credit than any other of the
+contemporary reporters of common gossip. But at least he is worthy of no
+less. And it is undeniable that in Sforza's case a strong motive for the
+murder was not lacking.
+
+My narrative in “The Night of Hate” is admittedly a purely theoretical
+account of the crime. But it is closely based upon all the known facts
+of incidence and of character; and if there is nothing in the surviving
+records that will absolutely support it, neither is there anything that
+can absolutely refute it.
+
+In “The Night of Masquerade” I am guilty of quite arbitrarily
+discovering a reason to explain the mystery of Baron Bjelke's sudden
+change from the devoted friend and servant of Gustavus III of Sweden
+into his most bitter enemy. That speculation is quite indefensible,
+although affording a possible explanation of that mystery. In the case
+of “The Night of Kirk o' Field,” on the other hand, I do not think any
+apology is necessary for my reconstruction of the precise manner in
+which Darnley met his death. The event has long been looked upon as one
+of the mysteries of history--the mystery lying in the fact that whilst
+the house at Kirk o' Field was destroyed by an explosion, Darnley's body
+was found at some distance away, together with that of his page, bearing
+every evidence of death by strangulation. The explanation I adopt seems
+to me to owe little to speculation.
+
+In the story of Antonio Perez--“The Night of Betrayal”--I have permitted
+myself fewer liberties with actual facts than might appear. I have
+closely followed his own “Relacion,” which, whilst admittedly a piece
+of special pleading, must remain the most authoritative document of the
+events with which it deals. All that I have done has been to reverse
+the values as Perez presents them, throwing the personal elements into
+higher relief than the political ones, and laying particular stress upon
+the matter of his relations with the Princess of Eboli. “The Night of
+Betrayal” is presented in the form of a story within a story. Of the
+containing story let me say that whilst to some extent it is fictitious,
+it is by no means entirely so. There is enough to justify most of it in
+the “Relaciori” itself.
+
+The exceptions mentioned being made, I hope it may be found that I have
+adhered rigorously to my purpose of owing nothing to invention in my
+attempt to flesh and clothe these few bones of history.
+
+I should add, perhaps, that where authorities differ as to motives,
+where there is a conflict of evidence as to the facts themselves, or
+where the facts admit of more than one interpretation, I have permitted
+myself to be selective, and confined myself to a point of view adopted
+at the outset.
+
+R. S.
+
+LONDON, August, 1917
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+PREFACE
+
+THE HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
+
+I. THE NIGHT OF HOLYROOD--The Murder of David Rizzio II. THE NIGHT OF
+KIRK O' FIELD--The Murder of Darnley III. THE NIGHT OF BETRAYAL--Antonio
+Perez and Philip II of Spain IV. THE NIGHT OF CHARITY--The Case Of
+The Lady Alice Lisle V. THE NIGHT OF MASSACRE--The Story Of The Saint
+Bartholomew VI. THE NIGHT OF WITCHCRAFT--Louis XIV and Madame De
+Montespan VII. THE NIGHT OF GEMS--The “Affairs” Of The Queen's Necklace
+VIII.    THE NIGHT OF TERROR--The Drownings At Nantes Under Carrier
+IX. THE NIGHT OF NUPTIALS--Charles The Bold And Sapphira Danvelt X. THE
+NIGHT OF STRANGLERS--Govanna Of Naples And Andreas Of Hungary XI.
+THE NIGHT OF HATE--The Murder Of The Duke Of Gandia XII. THE NIGHT
+OF ESCAPE--Casanova's Escape From The Piombi XIII. THE NIGHT OF
+MASQUERADE--The Assassination Of Gustavus III Of Sweden
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT
+
+
+
+
+I. THE NIGHT OF HOLYROOD--The Murder of David Rizzio
+
+The tragedy of my Lord Darnley's life lay in the fact that he was a
+man born out of his proper station--a clown destined to kingship by the
+accident of birth and fortune. By the blood royal flowing in his veins,
+he could, failing others, have claimed succession to both the English
+and the Scottish thrones, whilst by his marriage with Mary Stuart he
+made a definite attempt to possess himself of that of Scotland.
+
+The Queen of Scots, enamoured for a season of the clean-limbed grace and
+almost feminine beauty (“ladyfaced,” Melville had called him once) of
+this “long lad of nineteen” who came a-wooing her, had soon discovered,
+in matrimony, his vain, debauched, shiftless, and cowardly nature. She
+had married him in July of 1565, and by Michaelmas she had come to know
+him for just a lovely husk of a man, empty of heart or brain; and the
+knowledge transmuted affection into contempt.
+
+Her natural brother, the Earl of Murray, had opposed the marriage,
+chiefly upon the grounds that Darnley was a Catholic, and with Argyll,
+Chatellerault, Glencairn, and a host of other Protestant lords, had
+risen in arms against his sovereign and her consort. But Mary had chased
+her rebel brother and his fellows over the border into England, and by
+this very action, taken for the sake of her worthless husband, she sowed
+the first seeds of discord between herself and him. It happened that
+stout service had been rendered her in this affair by the arrogant
+border ruffian, the Earl of Bothwell. Partly to reward him, partly
+because of the confidence with which he inspired her, she bestowed
+upon him the office of Lieutenant-General of the East, Middle, and West
+Marches--an office which Darnley had sought for his father, Lennox.
+That was the first and last concerted action of the royal couple.
+Estrangement grew thereafter between them, and, in a measure, as it grew
+so did Darnley's kingship, hardly established as yet--for the Queen had
+still to redeem her pre-nuptial promise to confer upon him the crown
+matrimonial--begin to dwindle.
+
+At first it had been “the King and Queen,” or “His Majesty and Hers”;
+but by Christmas--five months after the wedding--Darnley was known
+simply as “the Queen's husband,” and in all documents the Queen's name
+now took precedence of his, whilst coins bearing their two heads, and
+the legend “Hen. et Maria,” were called in and substituted by a new
+coinage relegating him to the second place.
+
+Deeply affronted, and seeking anywhere but in himself and his own
+shortcomings the cause of the Queen's now manifest hostility, he
+presently conceived that he had found it in the influence exerted upon
+her by the Seigneur Davie--that Piedmontese, David Rizzio, who had come
+to the Scottish Court some four years ago as a starveling minstrel in
+the train of Monsieur de Morette, the ambassador of Savoy.
+
+It was Rizzio's skill upon the rebec that had first attracted Mary's
+attention. Later he had become her secretary for French affairs and the
+young Queen, reared amid the elegancies of the Court of France, grew
+attached to him as to a fellow-exile in the uncouth and turbulent land
+over which a harsh destiny ordained that she should rule. Using his
+opportunities and his subtle Italian intelligence, he had advanced so
+rapidly that soon there was no man in Scotland who stood higher with
+the Queen. When Maitland of Lethington was dismissed under suspicion of
+favouring the exiled Protestant lords, the Seigneur Davie succeeded him
+as her secretary; and now that Morton was under the same suspicion, it
+was openly said that the Seigneur Davie would be made chancellor in his
+stead.
+
+Thus the Seigneur Davie was become the most powerful man in Scotland,
+and it is not to be dreamt that a dour, stiff-necked nobility would
+suffer it without demur. They intrigued against him, putting it abroad,
+amongst other things, that this foreign upstart was an emissary, of the
+Pope's, scheming to overthrow the Protestant religion in Scotland. But
+in the duel that followed their blunt Scotch wits were no match for his
+Italian subtlety. Intrigue as they might his power remained unshaken.
+And then, at last it began to be whispered that he owed his high favour
+with the beautiful young Queen to other than his secretarial abilities,
+so that Bedford wrote to Cecil:
+
+“What countenance the Queen shows David I will not write, for the honour
+due to the person of a queen.”
+
+This bruit found credit--indeed, there have been ever since those who
+have believed it--and, as it spread, it reached the ears of Darnley.
+Because it afforded him an explanation of the Queen's hostility, since
+he was without the introspection that would have discovered the true
+explanation in his own shortcomings, he flung it as so much fuel upon
+the seething fires of his rancour, and became the most implacable of
+those who sought the ruin of Rizzio.
+
+He sent for Ruthven, the friend of Murray and the exiled lords--exiled,
+remember, on Darnley's own account--and offered to procure the
+reinstatement of those outlaws if they would avenge his honour and make
+him King of Scots in something more than name.
+
+Ruthven, sick of a mortal illness, having risen from a bed of pain to
+come in answer to that summons, listened dourly to the frothing speeches
+of that silly, lovely boy.
+
+“No doubt you'll be right about yon fellow Davie,” he agreed sombrely,
+and purposely he added things that must have outraged Darnley's every
+feeling as king and as husband. Then he stated the terms on which
+Darnley might count upon his aid.
+
+“Early next month Parliament is to meet over the business of a Bill
+of Attainder against Murray and his friends, declaring them by their
+rebellion to have forfeited life, land, and goods. Ye can see the power
+with her o' this foreign fiddler, that it drives her so to attaint her
+own brother. Murray has ever hated Davie, knowing too much of what lies
+'twixt the Queen and him to her dishonour, and Master Davie thinks so to
+make an end of Murray and his hatred.”
+
+Darnley clenched teeth and hands, tortured by the craftily administered
+poison.
+
+“What then? What is to do?” he cried,
+
+Ruthven told him bluntly.
+
+“That Bill must never pass. Parliament must never meet to pass it. You
+are Her Grace's husband and King of Scots.”
+
+“In name!” sneered Darnley bitterly.
+
+“The name will serve,” said Ruthven. “In that name ye'll sign me a bond
+of formal remission to Murray and his friends for all their actions and
+quarrels, permitting their safe return to Scotland, and charging the
+lieges to convoy them safely. Do that and leave the rest to us.”
+
+If Darnley hesitated at all, it was not because he perceived the irony
+of the situation--that he himself, in secret opposition to the Queen,
+should sign the pardon of those who had rebelled against her precisely
+because she had taken him to husband. He hesitated because indecision
+was inherent in his nature.
+
+“And then?” he asked at last.
+
+Ruthven's blood-injected eyes considered him stonily out of a livid,
+gleaming face.
+
+“Then, whether you reign with her or without her, reign you shall as
+King o' Scots. I pledge myself to that, and I pledge those others, so
+that we have the bond.”
+
+Darnley sat down to sign the death warrant of the Seigneur Davie.
+
+It was the night of Saturday, the 9th of March.
+
+A fire of pine logs burned fragrantly on the hearth of the small closet
+adjoining the Queen's chamber, suffusing it with a sense of comfort,
+the greater by contrast with the cheerlessness out of doors, where an
+easterly wind swept down from Arthur's Seat and moaned its dismal way
+over a snowclad world.
+
+The lovely, golden-headed young queen supped with a little company of
+intimates: her natural sister, the Countess of Argyll, the Commendator
+of Holyrood, Beaton, the Master of the Household, Arthur Erskine, the
+Captain of the Guard, and one other--that, David Rizzio, who from an
+errant minstrel had risen to this perilous eminence, a man of a swarthy,
+ill-favoured countenance redeemed by the intelligence that glowed in
+his dark eyes, and of a body so slight and fragile as to seem almost
+misshapen. His age was not above thirty, yet indifferent health, early
+privation, and misfortune had so set their mark upon him that he had
+all the appearance of a man of fifty. He was dressed with sombre
+magnificence, and a jewel of great price smouldered upon the middle
+finger of one of his slender, delicate hands.
+
+Supper was at an end. The Queen lounged on a long seat over against the
+tapestried wall. The Countess of Argyll, in a tall chair on the Queen's
+left, sat with elbows on the table watching the Seigneur Davie's fine
+fingers as they plucked softly at the strings of a long-necked lute. The
+talk, which, intimate and untrammelled, had lately been of the child
+of which Her Majesty was to be delivered some three months hence, was
+flagging now, and it was to fill the gap that Rizzio had taken up the
+lute.
+
+His harsh countenance was transfigured as he caressed the strings, his
+soul absorbed in the theme of his inspiration. Very softly--indeed, no
+more than tentatively as yet--he was beginning one of those wistful airs
+in which his spirit survives in Scotland to this day, when suddenly the
+expectant hush was broken by a clash of curtain-rings. The tapestries
+that masked the door had been swept aside, and on the threshold,
+unheralded, stood the tall, stripling figure of the young King.
+
+Darnley's appearance abruptly scattered the Italian's inspiration. The
+melody broke off sharply on the single loud note of a string too rudely
+plucked.
+
+That and the silence that followed it irked them all, conveying a sense
+that here something had been broken which never could be made whole
+again.
+
+Darnley shuffled forward. His handsome face was pale save for the two
+burning spots upon his cheekbones, and his eyes glittered feveredly. He
+had been drinking, so much was clear; and that he should seek the Queen
+thus, who so seldom sought her sober, angered those intimates who had
+come to share her well-founded dislike of him. King though he might be
+in name, into such contempt was he fallen that not one of them rose
+in deference, whilst Mary herself watched his approach with hostile,
+mistrusting eyes.
+
+“What is it, my lord?” she asked him coldly, as he flung himself down on
+the settle beside her.
+
+He leered at her, put an arm about her waist, pulled her to him, and
+kissed her oafishly.
+
+None stirred. All eyes were upon them, and all faces blank. After all,
+he was the King and she his wife. And then upon the silence, ominous
+as the very steps of doom, came a ponderous, clanking tread from the
+ante-room beyond. Again the curtains were thrust aside, and the Countess
+of Argyll uttered a gasp of sudden fear at the grim spectre she beheld
+there. It was a figure armed as for a tourney, in gleaming steel from
+head to foot, girt with a sword, the right hand resting upon the hilt of
+the heavy dagger in the girdle. The helmet's vizor was raised, revealing
+the ghastly face of Ruthven--so ghastly that it must have seemed the
+face of a dead man but for the blazing life in the eyes that scanned the
+company. Those questing eyes went round the table, settled upon Rizzio,
+and seemed horribly to smile.
+
+Startled, disquieted by this apparition, the Queen half rose, Darnley's
+hindering arm still flung about her waist.
+
+“What's this?” she cried, her voice sharp.
+
+And then, as if she guessed intuitively what it might portend, she
+considered her husband with pale-faced contempt.
+
+“Judas!” she called him, flung away from his detaining arm, and stood
+forth to confront that man in steel. “What seek ye here, my lord--and in
+this guise?” was her angry challenge.
+
+Ruthven's burning eyes fell away before her glance. He clanked forward a
+step or two, flung out a mailed arm, and with a hand that shook pointed
+to the Seigneur Davie, who stood blankly watching him.
+
+“I seek yon man,” he said gruffly. “Let him come forth.”
+
+“He is here by my will,” she told him, her anger mounting. “And so are
+not you--for which you shall be made to answer.”
+
+Then to Darnley, who sat hunched on the settle:
+
+“What does this mean, sir?” she demanded.
+
+“Why--how should I know? Why--why, nothing,” he faltered foolishly.
+
+“Pray God that you are right,” said she, “for your own sake. And you,”
+ she continued, addressing Ruthven again and waving a hand in imperious
+dismissal, “be you gone, and wait until I send for you, which I promise
+you shall be right soon.”
+
+If she divined some of the evil of their purpose, if any fear assailed
+her, yet she betrayed nothing of it. She was finely tempered steel.
+
+But Ruthven, sullen and menacing, stood his ground.
+
+“Let yon man come forth,” he repeated. “He has been here ower lang.”
+
+“Over long?” she echoed, betrayed by her quick resentment.
+
+“Aye, ower lang for the good o' Scotland and your husband,” was the
+brutal answer.
+
+Erskine, of her guards, leapt to his feet.
+
+“Will you begone, sir?” he cried; and after him came Beaton and the
+Commendator, both echoing the captain's threatening question.
+
+A smile overspread Ruthven's livid face. The heavy dagger flashed from
+his belt.
+
+“My affair is not with any o' ye, but if ye thrust yersels too close
+upon my notice--”
+
+The Queen stepped clear of the table to intervene, lest violence should
+be done here in her presence. Rizzio, who had risen, stood now beside
+her, watching all with a white, startled face. And then, before more
+could be said, the curtains were torn away and half a score of men,
+whose approach had passed unnoticed, poured into the room. First came
+Morton, the Chancellor, who was to be dispossessed of the great seal
+in Rizzio's favour. After him followed the brutal Lindsay of the Byres,
+Kerr of Faudonside, black-browed Brunston, red-headed Douglas, and a
+half-dozen others.
+
+Confusion ensued; the three men of the Queen's household were instantly
+surrounded and overpowered. In the brief, sharp struggle the table was
+overturned, and all would have been in darkness but that as the table
+went over the Countess of Argyll had snatched up the candle-branch, and
+stood now holding it aloft to light that extraordinary scene. Rizzio, to
+whom the sight of Morton had been as the removal of his last illusion,
+flung himself upon his knees before the Queen. Frail and feeble of body,
+and never a man of his hands, he was hopelessly unequal to the occasion.
+
+“Justice, madame!” he cried. “Faites justice! Sauvez ma vie!”
+
+Fearlessly, she stepped between him and the advancing horde of
+murderers, making of her body a buckler for his protection. White
+of face, with heaving bosom and eyes like two glowing sapphires, she
+confronted them.
+
+“Back, on your lives!” she bade them.
+
+But they were lost to all sense of reverence, even to all sense of
+decency, in their blind rage against this foreign upstart who had
+trampled their Scottish vanity in the dust. George Douglas, without
+regard for her condition either as queen or woman--and a woman almost
+upon the threshold of motherhood--clapped a pistol to her breast and
+roughly bade her stand aside.
+
+Undaunted, she looked at him with eyes that froze his trigger-finger,
+whilst behind her Rizzio grovelled in his terror, clutching her
+petticoat. Thus, until suddenly she was seized about the waist and half
+dragged, half-lifted aside by Darnley, who at the same time spurned
+Rizzio forward with his foot.
+
+The murderers swooped down upon their prey. Kerr of Faudonside flung
+a noose about his body, and drew it tight with a jerk that pulled the
+secretary from his knees. Then he and Morton took the rope between
+them, and so dragged their victim across the room towards the door.
+He struggled blindly as he went, vainly clutching first at an overset
+chair, then at a leg of the table, and screeching piteously the while
+to the Queen to save him. And Mary, trembling with passion, herself
+struggling in the arms of Darnley, flung an angry warning after them.
+
+“If Davie's blood be spilt, it shall be dear blood to some of you!
+Remember that, sirs!”
+
+But they were beyond control by now, hounds unleashed upon the quarry of
+their hate. Out of her presence Morton and Douglas dragged him, the rest
+of the baying pack going after them. They dragged him, screeching still,
+across the ante-chamber to the head of the great stairs, and there they
+fell on him all together, and so wildly that they wounded one another
+in their fury to rend him into pieces. The tattered body, gushing blood
+from six-and-fifty wounds, was hurled from top to bottom of the stairs,
+with a gold-hilted dagger--Darnley's, in token of his participation in
+the deed--still sticking in his breast.
+
+Ruthven stood forward from the group, his reeking poniard clutched in
+his right hand, a grin distorting his ghastly, vulturine face. Then he
+stalked back alone into the royal presence, dragging his feet a little,
+like a man who is weary.
+
+He found the room much as he had left it, save that the Queen had sunk
+back to her seat on the settle, and Darnley was now standing over her,
+whilst her people were still hemmed about by his own men. Without a “by
+your leave,” he flung himself into a chair and called hoarsely for a cup
+of wine.
+
+Mary's white face frowned at him across the room.
+
+“You shall yet drink the wine that I shall pour you for this night's
+work, my lord, and for this insolence! Who gave you leave to sit before
+me?”
+
+He waved a hand as if to dismiss the matter. It may have seemed to him
+frivolous to dwell upon such a trifle amid so much.
+
+“It's no' frae lack o' respect, Your Grace,” he growled, “but frae lack
+o' strength. I am ill, and I should ha' been abed but for what was here
+to do.”
+
+“Ah!” She looked at him with cold repugnance. “What have you done with
+Davie?”
+
+He shrugged, yet his eyes quailed before her own.
+
+“He'll be out yonder,” he answered, grimly evasive; and he took the wine
+one of his followers proffered him.
+
+“Go see,” she bade the Countess.
+
+And the Countess, setting the candle-branch upon the buffet, went out,
+none attempting to hinder her.
+
+Then, with narrowed eyes, the Queen watched Ruthven while he drank.
+
+“It will be for the sake of Murray and his friends that you do this,”
+ she said slowly. “Tell me, my lord, what great kindness is there between
+Murray and you that, to save him from forfeiture, you run the risk of
+being forfeited with him?”
+
+“What I have done,” he said, “I have done for others, and under a bond
+that shall hold me scatheless.”
+
+“Under a bond?” said she, and now she looked up at Darnley, standing
+ever at her side. “And was the bond yours, my lord?”
+
+“Me?” He started back. “I know naught of it.”
+
+But as he moved she saw something else. She leaned forward, pointing to
+the empty sheath at his girdle.
+
+“Where is your dagger, my lord?” she asked him sharply.
+
+“My dagger? Ha! How should I know?”
+
+“But I shall know!” she threatened, as if she were not virtually a
+prisoner in the hands of these violent men who had invaded her palace
+and dragged Rizzio from her side. “I shall not rest until I know!”
+
+The Countess came in, white to the lips, bearing in her eyes something
+of the horror she had beheld.
+
+“What is it?” Mary asked her, her voice suddenly hushed and faltering.
+
+“Madame--he is dead! Murdered!” she announced.
+
+The Queen looked at her, her face of marble. Then her voice came hushed
+and tense:
+
+“Are--you sure?”
+
+“Myself I saw his body, madame.”
+
+There was a long pause. A low moan escaped the Queen, and her lovely
+eyes were filled with tears; slowly these coursed down her cheeks.
+Something compelling in her grief hushed every voice, and the craven
+husband at her side shivered as her glance fell upon him once more.
+
+“And is it so?” she said at length, considering him. She dried her eyes.
+“Then farewell tears; I must study revenge.” She rose as if with labour,
+and standing, clung a moment to the table's edge. A moment she looked at
+Ruthven, who sat glooming there, dagger in one hand and empty wine-cup
+in the other; then her glance passed on, and came to rest balefully
+on Darnley's face. “You have had your will, my lord,” she said, “but
+consider well what I now say. Consider and remember. I shall never rest
+until I give you as sore a heart as I have presently.”
+
+That said she staggered forward. The Countess hastened to her, and
+leaning upon her arm, Mary passed through the little door of the closet
+into her chamber.
+
+That night the common bell was rung, and Edinburgh roused in alarm.
+Bothwell, Huntly, Atholl, and others who were at Holyrood when Rizzio
+was murdered, finding it impossible to go to the Queen's assistance, and
+fearing to share the secretary's fate--for the palace was a-swarm with
+the murderers' men-at-arms--had escaped by one of the windows. The alarm
+they spread in Edinburgh brought the provost and townsmen in arms to the
+palace by torchlight, demanding to see the Queen, and refusing to depart
+until Darnley had shown himself and assured them that all was well
+with the Queen and with himself. And what time Darnley gave them this
+reassurance from a window of her room, Mary herself stood pale and taut
+amid the brutal horde that on this alarm had violated the privacy of her
+chamber, while the ruffianly Red Douglas flashed his dagger before her
+eyes, swearing that if she made a sound they would cut her into collops.
+
+When at last they withdrew and left her to herself, they left her
+no illusions as to her true condition. She was a prisoner in her own
+palace. The ante-rooms and courts were thronged with the soldiers of
+Morton and Ruthven, the palace itself was hemmed about, and none might
+come or go save at the good pleasure of the murderers.
+
+At last Darnley grasped the authority he had coveted. He dictated
+forthwith a proclamation which was read next morning at Edinburgh Market
+Cross--commanding that the nobles who had assembled in Edinburgh to
+compose the Parliament that was to pass the Bill of Attainder should
+quit the city within three hours, under pain of treason and forfeiture.
+
+And meanwhile, with poor Rizzio's last cry of “justice!” still ringing
+in her ears, Mary sat alone in her chamber, studying revenge as she
+had promised. So that life be spared her, justice, she vowed, should
+be done--punishment not only for that barbarous deed, but for the very
+manner of the doing of it, for all the insult to which she had been
+subjected, for the monstrous violence done her feelings and her very
+person, for the present detention and peril of which she was full
+conscious.
+
+Her anger was the more intense because she never permitted it to diffuse
+itself over the several offenders. Ruthven, who had insulted her so
+grossly; Douglas, who had offered her personal violence; the Laird
+of Faudonside, Morton, and all the others who held her now a helpless
+prisoner, she hew for no more than the instruments of Darnley. It was
+against Darnley that all her rage was concentrated. She recalled in
+those bitter hours all that she had suffered at his vile hands, and
+swore that at whatever cost to herself he should yield a full atonement.
+
+He sought her in the morning emboldened by the sovereign power he
+was usurping confident that now that he showed himself master of the
+situation she would not repine over what was done beyond recall, but
+would submit to the inevitable, be reconciled with him, and grant him,
+perforce--supported as he now was by the rebellious lords--the crown
+matrimonial and the full kingly power he coveted.
+
+But her reception of him broke that confidence into shards.
+
+“You have done me such a Wrong,” she told him in a voice of cold hatred,
+“that neither the recollection of our early friendship, nor all the hope
+you can give me of the future, could ever make me forget it. Jamais!
+Jamais je n'oublierai!” she added, and upon that she dismissed him so
+imperiously that he went at once.
+
+She sought a way to deal with him, groped blindly for it, being as yet
+but half informed of what was taking place; and whilst she groped, the
+thing she sought was suddenly thrust into her land. Mary Beaton, one of
+the few attendants left her, brought her word later that day that the
+Earl of Murray, with Rothes and some other of the exiled lords, was
+in the palace. The news brought revelation. It flooded with light
+the tragic happening of the night before, showed her how Darnley was
+building himself a party in the state. It did more than that. She
+recalled the erstwhile mutual hatred and mistrust of Murray and Darnley,
+and saw how it might serve her in this emergency.
+
+Instantly she summoned Murray to her presence with the message that
+she welcomed his return. Yet, despite that message, he hardly
+expected--considering what lay between them--the reception that awaited
+him at her hands.
+
+She rose to receive him, her lovely eyes suffused with tears. She
+embraced him, kissed him, and then, nestling to him, as if for comfort,
+her cheek against his bearded face, she allowed her tears to flow
+unchecked.
+
+“I am punished,” she sobbed--“oh, I am punished! Had I kept you at home,
+Murray, you would never have suffered men to entreat me as I have been
+entreated.”
+
+Holding her to hin, he could but pat her shoulder, soothing her, utterly
+taken aback, and deeply moved, too, by this display of an affection for
+him that he had never hitherto suspected in her.
+
+“Ah, mon Dieu, Jamie, how welcome you are to one in my sorrow!” she
+continued. “It is the fault of others that you have been so long out of
+the country. I but require of you that you be a good subject to me, and
+you shall never find me other to you than you deserve.”
+
+And he, shaken to the depths of his selfish soul by her tears, her
+clinging caresses, and her protestations of affection, answered with
+an oath and a sob that no better or more loyal and devoted subject than
+himself could all Scotland yield her.
+
+“And, as for this killing of Davie,” he ended vehemently, “I swear by my
+soul's salvation that I have had no part in it, nor any knowledge of it
+until my return!”
+
+“I know--I know!” she moaned. “Should I make you welcome, else? Be my
+friend, Jamie; be my friend!”
+
+He swore it readily, for he was very greedy of power, and saw the door
+of his return to it opening wider than he could have hoped. Then he
+spoke of Darnley, begging her to receive him, and hear what he might
+have to say, protesting that the King swore that he had not desired the
+murder, and that the lords had carried the matter out of his hands and
+much beyond all that he had intended.
+
+Because it suited her deep purpose, Mary consented, feigning to be
+persuaded. She had realized that before she could deal with Darnley, and
+the rebel lords who held her a prisoner, she must first win free from
+Holyrood.
+
+Darnley came. He was sullen now, mindful of his recent treatment, and in
+fear--notwithstanding Murray's reassurance--of further similar rebuffs.
+She announced herself ready to hear what he might have to say, and she
+listened attentively while he spoke, her elbow on the carved arm of her
+chair, her chin in her hand. When he had done, she sat long in thought,
+gazing out through the window at the grey March sky. At length she
+turned and looked at him.
+
+“Do you pretend, my lord, to regret for what has passed?” she challenged
+him.
+
+“You tempt me to hypocrisy,” he said. “Yet I will be frank as at an
+Easter shrift. Since that fellow Davie fell into credit and familiarity
+with Your Majesty, you no longer treated me nor entertained me after
+your wonted fashion, nor would you ever bear me company save this Davie
+were the third. Can I pretend, then, to regret that one who deprived
+me of what I prized most highly upon earth should have been removed? I
+cannot. Yet I can and do proclaim my innocence of any part or share in
+the deed that has removed him.”
+
+She lowered her eyes an instant, then raised them again to meet his own.
+
+“You had commerce with these traitor lords,” she reminded him. “It is
+by your decree that they are returned from exile. What was your aim in
+this?”
+
+“To win back the things of which this fellow Davie had robbed me, a
+share in the ruling and the crown matrimonial that was my right, yet
+which you denied me. That and no more. I had not intended that Davie
+should be slain. I had not measured the depth of their hatred of that
+upstart knave. You see that I am frank with you.”
+
+“Aye, and I believe you,” she lied slowly, considering him as she spoke.
+And he drew a breath of relief, suspecting nothing of her deep guile.
+“And do you know why I believe you? Because you are a fool.”
+
+“Madame!” he cried.
+
+She rose, magnificently contemptuous.
+
+“Must I prove it? You say that the crown matrimonial which I denied
+you is to be conferred on you by these lawless men? Believing that, you
+signed their pardon and recall from exile. Ha! You do not see, my lord,
+that you are no more than their tool, their cat's-paw. You do not see
+that they use you but for their ends, and that when they have done with
+you, they will serve you as they served poor Davie? No, you see none of
+that, which is why I call you a fool, that need a woman's wit to open
+wide your eyes.”
+
+She was so vehement that she forced upon his dull wits some of
+the convictions she pretended were her own. Yet, resisting those
+convictions, he cried out that she was at fault.
+
+“At fault?” She laughed. “Let my memory inform your judgment. When these
+lords, with Murray at their head, protested against our marriage, in
+what terms did they frame their protest? They complained that I had set
+over them without consulting them one who had no title to it, whether
+by lineal descent of blood, by nature, or by consent of the Estates.
+Consider that! They added, remember--I repeat to you the very words
+they wrote and published--that while they deemed it their duty to endure
+under me, they deemed it intolerable to suffer under you.”
+
+She was flushed, and her eyes gleamed with excitement. She clutched
+his sleeve, and brought her face close to his own, looked deep and
+compellingly into his eyes as she continued:
+
+“Such was their proclamation, and they took arms against me to enforce
+it, to pull you down from the place to which I had raised you out of the
+dust. Yet you can forget it, and in your purblind folly turn to these
+very men to right the wrongs you fancy I have done you. Do you think
+that men, holding you in such esteem as that, can keep any sort of faith
+with you? Do you think these are the men who are likely to fortify
+and maintain your title to the crown? Ask yourself, and answer for
+yourself.”
+
+He was white to the lips. As much by her vehement pretence of sincerity
+as by the apparently irrefragable logic of her arguments, she forced
+conviction upon him. This brought a loathly fear in its train, and the
+gates of his heart stood ever wide to fear. He stepped aside to a chair,
+and sank into it, looking at her with dilating eyes--a fool confronted
+with the likely fruits of his folly.
+
+“Then--then--why did they proffer me their help? How can they achieve
+their ends this way?”
+
+“How? Do you still ask? Do you not see what a blind tool you have been
+in their crafty hands? In name at least you are king, and your signature
+is binding upon my subjects. Have you not brought them back from exile
+by one royal decree, whilst by another you have dispersed the Parliament
+that was assembled to attaint them of treason?”
+
+She stepped close up to him, and bending over him as he sat there,
+crushed by realization, she lowered her voice.
+
+“Pray God, my lord, that all their purpose with you is not yet complete,
+else in their hands I do not think your life is to be valued at an
+apple-paring. You go the ways poor Davie went.”
+
+He sank his handsome head to his hands, and covered his face. A while
+he sat huddled there, she watching him with gleaming, crafty eyes. At
+length he rallied. He looked up, tossing back the auburn hair from his
+white brow, still fighting, though weakly, against persuasion. “It is
+not possible,” he, cried. “They could not! They could not!”
+
+She laughed, betwixt bitterness and sadness.
+
+“Trust to that,” she bade him. “Yet look well at matters as they are
+already. I am a prisoner here in these men's hands. They will not let
+me go until their full purpose is accomplished--perhaps,” she added
+wistfully, “perhaps not even then.”
+
+“Ah, not that!” he cried out.
+
+“Even that,” she answered firmly. “But,” and again she grew vehement,
+“is it less so with you? Are you less a prisoner than I? D'ye think you
+will be suffered to come and go at will?” She saw the increase of fear
+in him, and then she struck boldly, setting all upon the gamble of a
+guess. “I am kept here until I shall have been brought to such a state
+that I will add my signature to your own and so pardon one and all for
+what is done.”
+
+His sudden start, the sudden quickening of his glance told her how
+shrewdly she had struck home. Fearlessly, then, sure of herself, she
+continued. “To that end they use you. When you shall have served it you
+will but cumber them. When they shall have used you to procure their
+security from me, then they will deal with you as they have ever sought
+to deal with you--so that you trouble them no more. Ah, at last you
+understand!”
+
+He came to his feet, his brow gleaming with sweat, his slender hands
+nervously interlocked.
+
+“Oh, God!” he cried in a stifled voice.
+
+“Aye, you are in a trap, my lord. Yourself you've sprung it.”
+
+And now you behold him broken by the terror she had so cunningly evoked.
+He flung himself upon his knees before her, and with upturned face and
+hands that caught and clawed at her own, he implored her pardon for
+the wrong that in his folly he had done her in taking sides with her
+enemies.
+
+She dissembled under a mask of gentleness the loathing that his
+cowardice aroused in her.
+
+“My enemies?” she echoed wistfully. “Say rather your own enemies. It
+was their enmity to you that drove them into exile. In your rashness you
+have recalled them, whilst at the same time you have so bound my hands
+that I cannot now help you if I would.”
+
+“You can, Mary,” he cried, “or else no one can. Withhold the pardon they
+will presently be seeking of you. Refuse to sign any remission of their
+deed.”
+
+“And leave them to force you to sign it, and so destroy us both,” she
+answered.
+
+He ranted then, invoking the saints of heaven, and imploring her in
+their name--she who was so wise and strong--to discover some way out of
+this tangle in which his madness had enmeshed them.
+
+“What way is there short of flight?” she asked him. “And how are we to
+fly who are imprisoned here you as well as myself? Alas, Darnley, I fear
+our lives will end by paying the price of your folly.”
+
+Thus she played upon his terrors, so that he would not be dismissed
+until she had promised that she would consider and seek some means of
+saving him, enjoining him meanwhile to keep strict watch upon himself
+and see that he betrayed nothing of his thoughts.
+
+She left him to the chastening of a sleepless night, then sent for him
+betimes on Monday morning, and bade him repair to the lords and tell
+them that realizing herself a prisoner in their hands she was disposed
+to make terms with them. She would grant them pardon for what was done
+if on their side they undertook to be loyal henceforth and allowed her
+to resume her liberty.
+
+The message startled him. But the smile with which she followed it was
+reassuring.
+
+“There is something else you are to do,” she said, “if we are to turn
+the tables on these traitorous gentlemen. Listen.” And she added matter
+that begat fresh hope in Darnley's despairing soul.
+
+He kissed her hands, lowly now and obedient as a hound that had been
+whipped to heel, and went below to bear her message to the lords.
+
+Morton and Ruthven heard him out, but betrayed no eagerness to seize the
+opportunity.
+
+“All this is but words that we hear,” growled Ruthven, who lay stretched
+upon a couch, grimly suffering from the disease that was, slowly eating
+up his life.
+
+“She is guileful as the serpent,” Morton added, “being bred up in the
+Court of France. She will make you follow her will and desire, but she
+will not so lead us. We hold her fast, and we do not let her go without
+some good security of what shall follow.”
+
+“What security will satisfy you?” quoth Darnley.
+
+Murray and Lindsay came in as he was speaking, and Morton told them of
+the message that Darnley had brought. Murray moved heavily across to a
+window-seat, and sat down. He cleared a windowpane with his hand, and
+looked out upon the wintry landscape as if the matter had no interest
+for him. But Lindsay echoed what the other twain had said already.
+
+“We want a deal more than promises that need not be kept,” he said.
+
+Darnley looked from one to the other of them, seeing in their
+uncompromising attitude a confirmation of what the Queen had told him,
+and noting, too--as at another time he might not have noted--their utter
+lack of deference to himself, their King.
+
+“Sirs,” he said, “I vow you wrong Her Majesty. I will stake my life upon
+her honour.”
+
+“Why, so you may,” sneered Ruthven, “but you'll not stake ours.”
+
+“Take what security you please, and I will subscribe it.”
+
+“Aye, but will the Queen?” wondered Morton.
+
+“She will. I have her word for it.”
+
+It took them the whole of that day to consider the terms of the articles
+that would satisfy them. Towards evening the document was ready,
+and Morton and Ruthven representing all, accompanied by Murray, and
+introduced by Darnley, came to the chamber to which Her Majesty was
+confined by the guard they had set upon her.
+
+She sat as if in state awaiting them, very lovely and very tearful,
+knowing that woman's greatest strength is in her weakness, that tears
+would serve her best by presenting her as if broken to their will.
+
+In outward submission they knelt before her to make the pretence of
+suing for the pardon which they extorted by force of arms and duress.
+When each in his turn had made the brief pleading oration he had
+prepared, she dried her eyes and controlled herself by obvious effort.
+
+“My lords,” she said, in a voice that quivered and broke on every other
+word, “when have ye ever found me blood-thirsty, or greedy of your lands
+or goods that you must use me so, and take such means with me? Ye have
+set my authority at naught, and wrought sedition in this realm. Yet I
+forgive you all, that by this clemency I may move you to a better love
+and loyalty. I desire that all that is passed may be buried in oblivion,
+so that you swear to me that in the future you will stand my friends and
+serve me faithfully, who am but a weak woman, and sorely need stout men
+to be my friends.”
+
+For a moment her utterance was checked by sobs. Then she controlled
+herself again by an effort so piteous to behold that even the
+flinty-hearted Ruthven was moved to some compassion.
+
+“Forgive this weakness in me, who am very weak, for very soon I am to be
+brought to bed as you well know, and I am in no case to offer resistance
+to any. I have no more to say, my lords. Since you promise on your side
+that you will put all disloyalty behind you, I pledge myself to remit
+and pardon all those that were banished for their share in the late
+rising, and likewise to pardon those that were concerned in the killing
+of Seigneur Davie. All this shall be as if it had never been. I pray
+you, my lords, make your own security in what sort you best please, and
+I will subscribe it.”
+
+Morton proffered her the document they had prepared. She conned it
+slowly, what time they watched her, pausing ever and anon to brush aside
+the tears that blurred her vision. At last she nodded her lovely golden
+head.
+
+“It is very well,” she said. “All is here as I would have it be between
+us.” And she turned to Darnley. “Give me pen and ink, my lord.”
+
+Darnley dipped a quill and handed it to her. She set the parchment
+on the little pulpit at her side. Then, as she bent to sign, the pen
+fluttered from her fingers, and with a deep, shuddering sigh she sank
+back in her chair, her eyes closed, her face piteously white.
+
+“The Queen is faint!” cried Murray, springing forward.
+
+But she rallied instantly, smiling upon them wanly.
+
+“It is naught; it is past,” she said. But even as she spoke she put a
+hand to her brow. “I am something dizzy. My condition--” She faltered on
+a trembling note of appeal that increased their compassion, and aroused
+in them a shame of their own harshness. “Leave this security with me. I
+will subscribe it in the morning--indeed, as soon as I am sufficiently
+recovered.”
+
+They rose from their knees at her bidding, and Morton in the name of all
+professed himself full satisfied, and deplored the affliction they had
+caused her, for which in the future they should make her their amends.
+
+“I thank you,” she answered simply. “You have leave to go.”
+
+They departed well satisfied; and, counting the matter at an end, they
+quitted the palace and rode to their various lodgings in Edinburgh town,
+Murray going with Morton.
+
+Anon to Maitland of Lethington, who had remained behind, came one of
+the Queen's women to summon him to her presence. He found her disposing
+herself for bed, and was received by her with tearful upbraidings.
+
+“Sir,” she said, “one of the conditions upon which I consented to the
+will of their lordships was that an immediate term should be set to the
+insulting state of imprisonment in which I am kept here. Yet men-at-arms
+still guard the very door of my chamber, and my very attendants are
+hindered in their comings and goings. Do you call this keeping faith
+with me? Have I not granted all the requests of the lords?”
+
+Lethington, perceiving the justice of what she urged, withdrew shamed
+and confused at once to remedy the matter by removing the guards from
+the passage and the stairs and elsewhere, leaving none but those who
+paced outside the palace.
+
+It was a rashness he was bitterly to repent him on the morrow, when
+it was discovered that in the night Mary had not only escaped, but had
+taken Darnley with her. Accompanied by him and a few attendants, she had
+executed the plan in which earlier that day she had secured her scared
+husband's cooperation. At midnight they had made their way along the now
+unguarded corridors, and descended to the vaults of the palace, whence a
+secret passage communicated with the chapel. Through this and across the
+graveyard where lay the newly buried body of the Siegneur Davie--almost
+across the very grave itself which stood near the chapel door they had
+won to the horses waiting by Darnley's orders in the open. And they had
+ridden so hard that by five o'clock of that Tuesday morning they were in
+Dunbar.
+
+In vain did the alarmed lords send a message after her to demand her
+signature of the security upon which she had duped them into counting
+prematurely.
+
+Within a week they were in full flight before the army at the head of
+which the prisoner who had slipped through their hands was returning
+to destroy them. Too late did they perceive the arts by which she had
+fooled them, and seduced the shallow Darnley to betray them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+II. THE NIGHT OF KIRK O' FIELD--The Murder of Darnley
+
+Perhaps one of the greatest mistakes of a lifetime in which mistakes
+were plentiful was the hesitancy of the Queen of Scots in executing upon
+her husband Darnley the prompt vengeance she had sworn for the murder of
+David Rizzio.
+
+When Rizzio was slain, and she herself held captive by the murderers in
+her Palace of Holyrood, whilst Darnley ruled as king, she had simulated
+belief in her husband's innocence that she might use him for her
+vengeful ends.
+
+She had played so craftily upon his cowardly nature as to convince
+him that Morton, Ruthven, and the other traitor lords with whom he had
+leagued himself were at heart his own implacable enemies; that they
+pretended friendship for him to make a tool of him, and that when he had
+served their turn they would destroy him.
+
+In his consequent terror he had betrayed his associates, assisting her
+to trick them by a promise to sign an act of oblivion for what was
+done. Trusting to this the lords had relaxed their vigilance, whereupon,
+accompanied by Darnley, she had escaped by night from Holyrood.
+
+Hope tempering at first the rage and chagrin in the hearts of the lords
+she had duped, they had sent a messenger to her at Dunbar to request
+of her the fulfilment of her promise to sign the document of their
+security.
+
+But Mary put off the messenger, and whilst the army she had summoned
+was hastily assembling, she used her craft to divide the rebels against
+themselves.
+
+To her natural brother, the Earl of Murray, to Argyll, and to all those
+who had been exiled for their rebellion at the time of her marriage--and
+who knew not where they stood in the present turn of events, since
+one of the objects of the murder had been to procure their
+reinstatement--she sent an offer of complete pardon, on condition that
+they should at once dissociate themselves from those concerned in the
+death of the Seigneur Davie.
+
+These terms they accepted thankfully, as well they might. Thereupon,
+finding themselves abandoned by all men--even by Darnley in whose
+service they had engaged in the murder--Morton, Ruthven, and their
+associates scattered and fled.
+
+By the end of that month of March, Morton, Ruthven, Lindsay of the
+Byres, George Douglas, and some sixty others were denounced as rebels
+with forfeiture of life and goods, while one Thomas Scott, who had been
+in command of the guards that had kept Her Majesty prisoner at Holyrood,
+was hanged, drawn, and quartered at the Market Cross.
+
+News of this reached the fugitives to increase their desperate rage.
+But what drove the iron into the soul of the arch-murderer Ruthven
+was Darnley's solemn public declaration denying all knowledge of or
+complicity in Rizzio's assassination; nor did it soothe his fury to know
+that all Scotland rang with contemptuous laughter at that impudent and
+cowardly perjury. From his sick-bed at Newcastle, whereon some six weeks
+later he was to breathe his last, the forsaken wretch replied to it by
+sending the Queen the bond to which he had demanded Darnley's signature
+before embarking upon the business.
+
+It was a damning document. There above the plain signature and seal of
+the King was the admission, not merely of complicity, but that the thing
+was done by his express will and command, that the responsibility
+was his own, and that he would hold the doers scatheless from all
+consequences.
+
+Mary could scarcely have hoped to be able to confront her worthless
+husband with so complete a proof of his duplicity and baseness. She sent
+for him, confounded him with the sight of that appalling bond, made an
+end to the amity which for her own ends she had pretended, and drove him
+out of her presence with a fury before which he dared not linger.
+
+You see him, then, crushed under his load of mortification, realizing at
+last how he had been duped on every hand, first by the lords for their
+own purpose, and then by the Queen for hers. Her contempt of him was now
+so manifest that it spread to all who served him--for she made it plain
+that who showed him friendship earned her deep displeasure--so that
+he was forced to withdraw from a Court where his life was become
+impossible. For a while he wandered up and down a land where every door
+was shut in his face, where every man of whatsoever party, traitor or
+true, despised him alike. In the end, he took himself off to his father,
+Lennox, and at Glasgow he sought what amusement he could with his dogs
+and his hawks, and such odd vulgar rustic love-affairs as came his way.
+
+It was in allowing him thus to go his ways, in leaving her
+vengeance--indeed, her justice--but half accomplished, that lay the
+greatest of the Queen's mistakes. Better for her had she taken with
+Darnley the direct way that was her right. Better for her, if acting
+strongly then, she had banished or hanged him for his part in the
+treason that had inspired the murder of Rizzio. Unfortunately, a factor
+that served to quicken her abhorrence of him served also to set a curb
+of caution upon the satisfaction of it.
+
+This factor that came so inopportunely into her life was her regard for
+the arrogant, unscrupulous Earl of Bothwell. Her hand was stayed by fear
+that men should say that for Bothwell's sake she had rid herself of a
+husband become troublesome. That Bothwell had been her friend in the
+hour when she had needed friends, and knew not whom she might trust;
+that by his masterfulness he seemed a man upon whom a woman might lean
+with confidence, may account for the beginnings of the extraordinary
+influence he came so swiftly to exercise over her, and the passion he
+awakened in her to such a degree that she was unable to dissemble it.
+
+Her regard for him, the more flagrant by contrast with her contempt for
+Darnley, is betrayed in the will she made before her confinement in
+the following June. Whilst to Darnley she bequeathed nothing but the
+red-enamelled diamond ring with which he had married her--“It was with
+this that I was married,” she wrote almost contemptuously. “I leave it
+to the King who gave it me”--she appointed Bothwell to the tutelage of
+her child in the event of her not surviving it, and to the government of
+the realm.
+
+The King came to visit her during her convalescence, and was scowled
+upon by Murray and Argyll, who were at Holyrood, and most of all
+by Bothwell, whose arrogance by now was such that he was become the
+best-hated man in Scotland. The Queen received him very coldly, whilst
+using Bothwell more than cordially in his very presence, so that he
+departed again in a deeper humiliation than before.
+
+Then before the end of July there was her sudden visit to Bothwell
+at Alloa, which gave rise to so much scandal. Hearing of it, Darnley
+followed in a vain attempt to assert his rights as king and husband,
+only to be flouted and dismissed with the conviction that his life was
+no longer safe in Scotland, and that he had best cross the Border.
+Yet, to his undoing, detained perhaps by the overweening pride that
+is usually part of a fool's equipment, he did not act upon that wise
+resolve. He returned instead to his hawking and his hunting, and was
+seldom seen at Court thereafter.
+
+Even when in the following October, Mary lay at the point of death at
+Jedburgh, Darnley came but to stay a day, and left her again without any
+assurance that she would recover. But then the facts of her illness, and
+how it had been contracted, were not such as to encourage kindness in
+him, even had he been inclined to kindness.
+
+Bothwell had taken three wounds in a Border affray some weeks before,
+and Mary, hearing of this and that he lay in grievous case at Hermitage,
+had ridden thither in her fond solicitude--a distance of thirty
+miles--and back again in the same day, thus contracting a chill which
+had brought her to the very gates of death.
+
+Darnley had not only heard of this, but he had found Bothwell at
+Jedburgh, whither he had been borne in a litter, when in his turn he had
+heard of how it was with Mary; and Bothwell had treated him with more
+than the contempt which all men now showed him, but which from none
+could wound him so deeply as from this man whom rumour accounted Mary's
+lover.
+
+Matters between husband and wife were thus come to a pass in which they
+could not continue, as all men saw, and as she herself confessed at
+Craigmillar, whither she repaired, still weak in body, towards the end
+of November.
+
+Over a great fire that blazed in a vast chamber of the castle she sat
+sick at heart and shivering, for all that her wasted body was swathed in
+a long cloak of deepest purple reversed with ermine. Her face was thin
+and of a transparent pallor, her eyes great pools of wistfulness amid
+the shadows which her illness had set about them.
+
+“I do wish I could be dead!” she sighed.
+
+Bothwell's eyes narrowed. He was leaning on the back of her tall chair,
+a long, virile figure with a hawk-nosed, bearded face that was sternly
+handsome. He thrust back the crisp dark hair that clustered about his
+brow, and fetched a sigh.
+
+“It was never my own death I wished when a man stood in my road to aught
+I craved,” he said, lowering his voice, for Maitland of Lethington--now
+restored to his secretaryship--was writing at a table across the room,
+and my Lord of Argyll was leaning over him.
+
+She looked up at him suddenly, her eyes startled.
+
+“What devil's counsel do you whisper?” she asked him. And when he would
+have answered, she raised a hand. “No,” she said. “Not that way.”
+
+“There is another,” said Bothwell coolly. He moved, came round, and
+stood squarely upon the hearth, his back to the fire, confronting her,
+nor did he further trouble to lower his voice. “We have considered it
+already.”
+
+“What have you considered?”
+
+Her voice was strained; fear and excitement blended in her face.
+
+“How the shackles that fetter you might be broken. Be not alarmed.
+It was the virtuous Murray himself propounded it to Argyll and
+Lethington--for the good of Scotland and yourself.” A sneer flitted
+across his tanned face. “Let them speak for themselves.” He raised his
+voice and called to them across the room.
+
+They came at once, and the four made an odd group as they stood there in
+the firelit gloom of that November day--the lovely young Queen, so frail
+and wistful in her high-backed chair; the stalwart, arrogant Bothwell,
+magnificent in a doublet of peach-coloured velvet that tapered to a
+golden girdle; Argyll, portly and sober in a rich suit of black; and
+Maitland of Lethington, lean and crafty of face, in a long furred gown
+that flapped about his bony shanks.
+
+It was to Lethington that Bothwell addressed himself.
+
+“Her Grace is in a mood to hear how the Gordian knot of her marriage
+might be unravelled,” said he, grimly ironic.
+
+Lethington raised his eyebrows, licked his thin lips, and rubbed his
+bony hands one in the other.
+
+“Unravelled?” he echoed with wondering stress. “Unravelled? Ha!” His
+dark eyes flashed round at them. “Better adopt Alexander's plan, and cut
+it. 'Twill be more complete, and--and final.”
+
+“No, no!” she cried. “I will not have you shed his blood.”
+
+“He himself was none so tender where another was concerned,” Bothwell
+reminded her--as if the memory of Rizzio were dear to him.
+
+“What he may have done does not weigh upon my conscience,” was her
+answer.
+
+“He might,” put in Argyll, “be convicted of treason for having consented
+to Your Grace's retention in ward at Holyrood after Rizzio's murder.”
+
+She considered an instant, then shook her head.
+
+“It is too late. It should have been done long since. Now men will say
+that it is but a pretext to be rid of him.” She looked up at Bothwell,
+who remained standing immediately before her, between her and the fire.
+“You said that my Lord of Murray had discussed this matter. Was it in
+such terms as these?”
+
+Bothwell laughed silently at the thought of the sly Murray rendering
+himself a party to anything so direct and desperate. It was Lethington
+who answered her.
+
+“My Lord Murray was for a divorce. That would set Your Grace free,
+and it might be obtained, he said, by tearing up the Pope's bull of
+dispensation that permitted the marriage. Yet, madame, although Lord
+Murray would himself go no further, I have no cause to doubt that were
+other means concerted, he would be content to look through his fingers.”
+
+Her mind, however, did not seem to follow his speech beyond the matter
+of the divorce. A faint flush of eagerness stirred in her pale cheeks.
+
+“Ah, yes!” she cried. “I, too, have thought of that--of this divorce.
+And God knows I do not want for grounds. And it could be obtained, you
+say, by tearing up this papal bull?”
+
+“The marriage could be proclaimed void thereafter,” Argyll explained.
+
+She looked past Bothwell into the fire, and took her chin in her hand.
+
+“Yes,” she said slowly, musingly, and again, “yes. That were a way. That
+is the way.” And then suddenly she looked up, and they saw doubt and
+dread in her eyes. “But in that case--what of my son?”
+
+“Aye!” said Lethington grimly. He shrugged his narrow shoulders, parted
+his hands, and brought them together again. “That's the obstacle, as we
+perceived. It would imperil his succession.”
+
+“It would make a bastard of him, you mean?” she cried, demanding the
+full expansion of their thoughts.
+
+“Indeed it would do no less,” the secretary assented.
+
+“So that,” said Bothwell, softly, “we come back to Alexander's method.
+What the fingers may not unravel, the knife can sever.”
+
+She shivered, and drew her furred cloak the more closely about her.
+
+Lethington leaned forward. He spoke in kindly, soothing accents.
+
+“Let us guide this matter among us, madame,” he murmured, “and we'll
+find means to rid Your Grace of this young fool, without hurt to your
+honour or prejudice to your son. And the Earl of Murray will look the
+other way, provided you pardon Morton and his friends for the killing
+they did in Darnley's service.”
+
+She looked from one to the other of them, scanning each face in turn.
+Then her eyes returned to a contemplation of the flaming logs, and she
+spoke very softly.
+
+“Do nothing by which a spot might be laid on my honour or conscience,”
+ she said, with an odd deliberateness that seemed to insist upon the
+strictly literal meaning of her words. “Rather I pray you let the matter
+rest until God remedy it.”
+
+Lethington looked at the other two, the other two looked at him. He
+rubbed his hands softly.
+
+“Trust to us, madame,” he answered. “We will so guide the matter
+that Your Grace shall see nothing but what is good and approved by
+Parliament.”
+
+She committed herself to no reply, and so they were content to take
+their answer from her silence. They went in quest of Huntly and
+Sir James Balfour, and the five of them entered into a bond for the
+destruction of him whom they named “the young fool and proud tiranne,”
+ to be engaged in when Mary should have pardoned Morton and his
+fellow-conspirators.
+
+It was not until Christmas Eve that she signed this pardon of some
+seventy fugitives, proscribed for their participation in the Rizzio
+murder, towards whom she had hitherto shown herself so implacable.
+
+The world saw in this no more than a deed of clemency and charity
+befitting the solemn festival of good-will. But the five who had entered
+into that bond at Craigmillar Castle beheld in it more accurately the
+fulfilment of her part of the suggested bargain, the price she paid in
+advance to be rid of Darnley, the sign of her full agreement that the
+knot which might not be unravelled should be cut.
+
+On that same day Her Grace went with Bothwell to Lord Drummond's, where
+they abode for the best part of a week, and thence they went on
+together to Tullibardine, the rash and open intimacy between them giving
+nourishment to scandal.
+
+At the same time Darnley quitted Stirling, where he had lately been
+living in miserable conditions, ignored by the nobles, and even stinted
+in his necessary expenses, deprived of his ordinary servants, and his
+silver replaced by pewter. The miserable youth reached Glasgow deadly
+sick. He had been taken ill on the way, and the inevitable rumour was
+spread that he had been poisoned. Later, when it became known that his
+once lovely countenance was now blotched and disfigured, it was realized
+that his illness was no more than the inevitable result of the debauched
+life he led.
+
+Conceiving himself on the point of death, Darnley wrote piteously to the
+Queen; but she ignored his letters until she learnt that his condition
+was improving, when at last (on January 29th) she went to visit him at
+Glasgow. It may well be that she nourished some hope that nature would
+resolve the matter for her, and remove the need for such desperate
+measures as had been concerted. But seeing him likely to recover, two
+things became necessary, to bring him to the place that was suitable for
+the fulfilment of her designs, and to simulate reconciliation with him,
+and even renewed and tender affection, so that none might hereafter
+charge her with complicity in what should follow.
+
+I hope that in this I do her memory no injustice. It is thus that I read
+the sequel, nor can I read it in any other way.
+
+She found him abed, with a piece of taffeta over his face to hide its
+disfigurement, and she was so moved--as it seemed--by his condition,
+that she fell on her knees beside him, and wept in the presence of her
+attendants and his own; confessing penitence if anything she had done
+in the past could have contributed to their estrangement. Thus
+reconciliation followed, and she used him tenderly, grew solicitous
+concerning him, and vowed that as soon as he could be moved, he must be
+taken to surroundings more salubrious and more befitting the dignity of
+his station.
+
+Gladly then he agreed to return with her to Holyrood.
+
+“Not to Holyrood,” she said. “At least, not until your health is mended,
+lest you should carry thither infection dangerous to your little son.”
+
+“Whither then?” he asked her, and when she mentioned Craigmillar, he
+started up in bed, so that the taffeta slipped from his face, and it was
+with difficulty that she dissembled the loathing with which the sight of
+its pustules inspired her.
+
+“Craigmillar!” he cried. “Then what I was told is true.”
+
+“What were you told?” quoth she, staring at him, brows knit, her face
+blank.
+
+A rumour had filtered through to him of the Craigmillar bond. He had
+been told that a letter drawn up there had been presented to her for her
+signature, which she had refused. Thus much he told her, adding that he
+could not believe that she would do him any hurt; and yet why did she
+desire to bear him to Craigmillar?
+
+“You have been told lies,” she answered him. “I saw no such letter; I
+subscribed none, nor was ever asked to subscribe any,” which indeed was
+literally true. “To this I swear. As for your going to Craigmillar, you
+shall go whithersoever you please, yourself.”
+
+He sank back on his pillows, and his trembling subsided.
+
+“I believe thee, Mary. I believe thou'ld never do me any harm,” he
+repeated, “and if any other would,” he added on a bombastic note, “they
+shall buy it dear, unless they take me sleeping. But I'll never to
+Craigmillar.”
+
+“I have said you shall go where you please,” she assured him again.
+
+He considered.
+
+“There is the house at Kirk o' Field. It has a fine garden, and is in a
+position that is deemed the healthiest about Edinburgh. I need good air;
+good air and baths have been prescribed me to cleanse me of this plague.
+Kirk o' Field will serve, if it be your pleasure.”
+
+She gave a ready consent, dispatched messengers ahead to prepare the
+house, and to take from Holyrood certain furnishings that should improve
+the interior, and render it as fitting as possible a dwelling for a
+king.
+
+Some days later they set out, his misgivings quieted by the tenderness
+which she now showed him--particularly when witnesses were at hand.
+
+It was a tenderness that grew steadily during those twelve days in which
+he lay in convalescence in the house at Kirk o' Field; she was playful
+and coquettish with him as a maid with her lover, so that nothing was
+talked of but the completeness of this reconciliation, and the hope that
+it would lead to a peace within the realm that would be a benefit to
+all. Yet many there were who marvelled at it, wondering whether the
+waywardness and caprice of woman could account for so sudden a change
+from hatred to affection.
+
+Darnley was lodged on the upper floor, in a room comfortably furnished
+from the palace. It was hung with six pieces of tapestry, and the floor
+was partly covered by an Eastern carpet. It contained, besides the
+handsome bed--which once had belonged to the Queen's mother--a couple of
+high chairs in purple velvet, a little table with a green velvet cover,
+and some cushions in red. By the side of the bed stood the specially
+prepared bath that was part of the cure which Darnley was undergoing. It
+had for its incongruous lid a door that had been lifted from its hinges.
+
+Immediately underneath was a room that had been prepared for the Queen,
+with a little bed of yellow and green damask, and a furred coverlet. The
+windows looked out upon the close, and the door opened upon the passage
+leading to the garden.
+
+Here the Queen slept on several of those nights of early February, for
+indeed she was more often at Kirk o' Field than at Holy-rood, and when
+she was not bearing Darnley company in his chamber, and beguiling the
+tedium of his illness, she was to be seen walking in the garden with
+Lady Reres, and from his bed he could hear her sometimes singing as she
+sauntered there.
+
+Never since the ephemeral season of their courtship had she been on such
+fond terms with him, and all his fears of hostile designs entertained
+against him by her immediate followers were stilled at last. Yet not
+for long. Into his fool's paradise came Lord Robert of Holyrood, with a
+warning that flung him into a sweat of panic.
+
+The conspirators had hired a few trusted assistants to help them carry
+out their plans, and a rumour had got abroad--in the unaccountable way
+of rumours--that there was danger to the King. It was of this rumour
+that Lord Robert brought him word, telling him bluntly that unless he
+escaped quickly from this place, he would leave his life there. Yet when
+Darnley had repeated this to the Queen, and the Queen indignantly had
+sent for Lord Robert and demanded to know his meaning, his lordship
+denied that he had uttered any such warning, protested that his words
+must have been misunderstood--that they referred solely to the King's
+condition, which demanded, he thought, different treatment and healthier
+air.
+
+Knowing not what to believe, Darnley's uneasiness abode with him. Yet,
+trusting Mary, and feeling secure so long as she was by his side, he
+became more and more insistent upon her presence, more and more fretful
+in her absence. It was to quiet him that she consented to sleep as often
+as might be at Kirk o' Field. She slept there on the Wednesday of that
+week, and again on Friday, and she was to have done so yet again on that
+fateful Sunday, February 9th, but that her servant Sebastien--one
+who had accompanied her from France, and for whom she had a deep
+affection--was that day married, and Her Majesty had promised to be
+present at the masque that night at Holyrood, in honour of his nuptials.
+
+Nevertheless, she did not utterly neglect her husband on that account.
+She rode to Kirk o' Field early in the evening, accompanied by Bothwell,
+Huntly, Argyll, and some others; and leaving the lords at cards below
+to while away the time, she repaired to Darnley, and sat beside his bed,
+soothing a spirit oddly perturbed, as if with some premonition of what
+was brewing.
+
+“Ye'll not leave me the night,” he begged her once.
+
+“Alas,” she said, “I must! Sebastien is being wed, and I have promised
+to be present.”
+
+He sighed and shifted uneasily.
+
+“Soon I shall be well, and then these foolish humours will cease to
+haunt me. But just now I cannot bear you from my sight. When you are
+with me I am at peace. I know that all is well. But when you go I am
+filled with fears, lying helpless here.”
+
+“What should you fear?” she asked him.
+
+“The hate that I know is alive against me.”
+
+“You are casting shadows to affright yourself,” said she.
+
+“What's that?” he cried, half raising himself in sudden alarm. “Listen!”
+
+From the room below came faintly a sound of footsteps, accompanied by a
+noise as of something being trundled.
+
+“It will be my servants in my room--putting it to rights.”
+
+“To what purpose since you do not sleep there tonight?” he asked. He
+raised his voice and called his page.
+
+“Why, what will you do?” she asked him, steadying her own alarm.
+
+He answered her by bidding the youth who had entered go see what was
+doing in the room below. The lad departed, and had he done his errand
+faithfully, he would have found Bothwell's followers, Hay and
+Hepburn, and the Queen's man, Nicholas Hubert better known as French
+Paris--emptying a keg of gunpowder on the floor immediately under the
+King's bed. But it happened that in the passage he came suddenly face
+to face with the splendid figure of Bothwell, cloaked and hatted, and
+Bothwell asked him whither he went.
+
+The boy told him.
+
+“It is nothing,” Bothwell said. “They are moving Her Grace's bed in
+accordance with her wishes.”
+
+And the lad, overborne by that commanding figure which so effectively
+blocked his path, chose the line of lesser resistance. He went back to
+bear the King that message as if for himself he had seen what my Lord
+Bothwell had but told him.
+
+Darnley was pacified by the assurance, and the lad withdrew.
+
+“Did I not tell you how it was?” quoth Mary. “Is not my word enough?”
+
+“Forgive the doubt,” Darnley begged her. “Indeed, there was no doubt of
+you, who have shown me so much charity in my affliction.” He sighed, and
+looked at her with melancholy eyes.
+
+“I would the past had been other than it has been between you and me,”
+ he said. “I was too young for kingship, I think. In my green youth I
+listened to false counsellors, and was quick to jealousy and the follies
+it begets. Then, when you cast me out and I wandered friendless, a devil
+took possession of me. Yet, if you will but consent to bury all the
+past into oblivion, I will make amends, and you shall find me worthier
+hereafter.”
+
+She rose, white to the lips, her bosom heaving under her long cloak.
+She turned aside and stepped to the window. She stood there, peering out
+into the gloom of the close, her knees trembling under her.
+
+“Why do you not answer me?” he cried.
+
+“What answer do you need?” she said, and her voice shook. “Are you not
+answered already?” And then, breathlessly, she added: “It is time to go,
+I think.”
+
+They heard a heavy step upon the stairs and the clank of a sword against
+the rails. The door opened, and Bothwell, wrapped in his scarlet cloak,
+stood bending his tall shoulders under the low lintel. His gleaming
+eyes, so oddly mocking in their glance, for all that his face was set,
+fell upon Darnley, and with their look flung him into an inward state of
+blending fear and rage.
+
+“Your Grace,” said Bothwell's deep voice, “it is close upon midnight.”
+
+He came no more than in time; it needed the sight of him with its
+reminder of all that he meant to her to sustain a purpose that was being
+sapped by pity.
+
+“Very well,” she said. “I come.”
+
+Bothwell stood aside to give her egress and to invite it. But the King
+delayed her.
+
+“A moment--a word!” he begged, and to Bothwell: “Give us leave apart,
+sir!”
+
+Yet, King though he might be, there was no ready obedience from the
+arrogant Border lord, her lover. It was to Mary that Bothwell looked for
+commands, nor stirred until she signed to him to go. And even then he
+went no farther than the other side of the door, so that he might be
+close at hand to fortify her should any weakness assail her now in this
+supreme hour.
+
+Darnley struggled up in bed, caught her hand, and pulled her to him.
+
+“Do not leave me, Mary. Do not leave me!” he implored her.
+
+“Why, what is this?” she cried, but her voice lacked steadiness. “Would
+you have me disappoint poor Sebastien, who loves me?”
+
+“I see. Sebastien is more to you than I?”
+
+“Now this is folly. Sebastien is my faithful servant.”
+
+“And am I less? Do you not believe that my one aim henceforth will be to
+serve you and faithfully? Oh, forgive this weakness. I am full of evil
+foreboding to-night. Go, then, if go you must, but give me at least some
+assurance of your love, some pledge of it in earnest that you will come
+again to-morrow nor part from me again.”
+
+She looked into the white, piteous young face that had once been so
+lovely, and her soul faltered. It needed the knowledge that Bothwell
+waited just beyond the door, that he could overhear what was being said,
+to strengthen her fearfully in her tragic purpose.
+
+She has been censured most for what next she did. Murray himself spoke
+of it afterwards as the worst part of the business. But it is possible
+that she was concerned only at the moment to put an end to a scene that
+was unnerving her, and that she took the readiest means to it.
+
+She drew a ring from her finger and slipped it on to one of his.
+
+“Be this the pledge, then,” she said; “and so content and rest
+yourself.”
+
+With that she broke from him, white and scared, and reached the door.
+Yet with her hand upon the latch she paused. Looking at him she saw that
+he was smiling, and perhaps horror of her betrayal of him overwhelmed
+her. It must be that she then desired to warn him, yet with Bothwell
+within earshot she realized that any warning must precipitate the
+tragedy, with direst consequences to Bothwell and herself.
+
+To conquer her weakness, she thought of David Rizzio, whom Darnley had
+murdered almost at her feet, and whom this night was to avenge. She
+thought of the Judas part that he had played in that affair, and sought
+persuasion that it was fitting he should now be paid in kind. Yet,
+very woman that she was, failing to find any such persuasion, she found
+instead in the very thought of Rizzio the very means to convey her
+warning.
+
+Standing tense and white by the door, regarding him with dilating eyes,
+she spoke her last words to him.
+
+“It would be just about this time last year that Davie was slain,” she
+said, and on that passed out to the waiting Bothwell.
+
+Once on the stairs she paused and set a hand upon the shoulder of the
+stalwart Borderer.
+
+“Must it be? Oh, must it be?” she whispered fearfully.
+
+She caught the flash of his eyes in the half gloom as he leaned over
+her, his arm about her waist drawing her to him.
+
+“Is it not just? Is it not full merited?” he asked her.
+
+“And yet I would that we did not profit by it,” she complained.
+
+“Shall we pity him on that account?” he asked, and laughed softly and
+shortly. “Come away,” he added abruptly. “They wait for you!” And so,
+by the suasion of his arm and his imperious will, she was swept onward
+along the road of her destiny.
+
+Outside the horses were ready. There was a little group of gentlemen to
+escort her, and half a dozen servants with lighted torches, whilst Lady
+Reres was in waiting. A man stood forward to assist her to mount, his
+face and hands so blackened by gunpowder that for a moment she failed to
+recognize him. She laughed nervously when he named himself.
+
+“Lord, Paris, how begrimed you are!” she cried; and, mounting, rode away
+towards Holyrood with her torchbearers and attendants.
+
+In the room above, Darnley lay considering her last words. He turned
+them over in his thoughts, assured by the tone she had used and how she
+had looked that they contained some message.
+
+“It would be just about this time last year that Davie was slain.”
+
+In themselves, those words were not strictly accurate. It wanted yet a
+month to the anniversary of Rizzio's death. And why, at parting, should
+she have reminded him of that which she had agreed should be forgotten?
+Instantly came the answer that she sought to warn him that retribution
+was impending. He thought again of the rumours that he had heard of a
+bond signed at Craigmillar; he recalled Lord Robert's warning to him,
+afterwards denied.
+
+He recalled her words to himself at the time of Rizzio's death:
+“Consider well what I now say. Consider and remember. I shall never rest
+until I give you as sore a heart as I have presently.” And further,
+he remembered her cry at once agonized and fiercely vengeful: “Jamais,
+jamais je n'oublierai.”
+
+His terrors mounted swiftly, to be quieted again at last when he
+looked at the ring she had put upon his finger in pledge of her renewed
+affection. The past was dead and buried, surely. Though danger might
+threaten, she would guard him against it, setting her love about him
+like a panoply of steel. When she came to-morrow, he would question her
+closely, and she should be more frank and open with him, and tell him
+all. Meanwhile, he would take his precautions for to-night.
+
+He sent his page to make fast all doors. The youth went and did as he
+was bidden, with the exception of the door that led to the garden. It
+had no bolts, and the key was missing; yet, seeing his master's nervous,
+excited state, he forbore from any mention of that circumstance when
+presently he returned to him.
+
+Darnley requested a book of Psalms, that he might read himself to sleep.
+The page dozed in a chair, and so the hours passed; and at last the King
+himself fell into a light slumber. Out of this he started suddenly at
+a little before two o'clock, and sat upright in bed, alarmed without
+knowing why, listening with straining ears and throbbing pulses.
+
+He caught a repetition of the sound that had aroused him, a sound akin
+to that which had drawn his attention earlier, when Mary had been with
+him. It came up faintly from the room immediately beneath: her room.
+Some one was moving there, he thought. Then, as he continued to listen,
+all became quiet again, save his fears, which would not be quieted.
+He extinguished the light, slipped from the bed, and, crossing to the
+window, peered out into the close that was faintly illumined by a
+moon in its first quarter. A shadow moved, he thought. He watched with
+increasing panic for confirmation, and presently saw that he had been
+right. Not one, but several shadows were shifting there among the
+trees. Shadows of men, they were, and as he peered, he saw one that
+went running from the house across the lawn and joined the others, now
+clustered together in a group. What could be their purpose here? In the
+silence, he seemed to hear again the echo of Mary's last words to him:
+
+“It would be just about this time last year that Davie was slain.”
+
+In terror, he groped his way to the chair where the page slept and shook
+the lad vigorously.
+
+“Afoot, boy!” he said, in a hoarse whisper. He had meant to shout it,
+but his voice failed him, his windpipe clutched by panic. “Afoot--we are
+beset by enemies!”
+
+At once the youth was wide awake, and together the King just in his
+shirt as he was--they made their way from the room in the dark, groping
+their way, and so reached the windows at the back. Darnley opened one of
+these very softly, then sent the boy back for a sheet. Making this
+fast, they descended by it to the garden, and started towards the wall,
+intending to climb it, that they might reach the open.
+
+The boy led the way, and the King followed, his teeth chattering as much
+from the cold as from the terror that possessed him. And then, quite
+suddenly, without the least warning, the ground, it seemed to them,
+heaved under their feet, and they were flung violently forward on their
+faces. A great blaze rent the darkness of the night, accompanied by
+the thunders of an explosion so terrific that it seemed as if the whole
+world must have been shattered by it.
+
+For some instants the King and his page lay half stunned where they had
+fallen, and well might it have been for them had they so continued. But
+Darnley, recovering, staggered to his feet, pulling the boy up with him
+and supporting him. Then, as he began to move, he heard a soft whistle
+in the gloom behind him. Over his shoulder he looked towards the house,
+to behold a great, smoking gap now yawning in it. Through this gap
+he caught a glimpse of shadowy men moving in the close beyond, and he
+realized that he had been seen. The white shirt he wore had betrayed his
+presence to them.
+
+With a stifled scream, he began to run towards the wall, the page
+staggering after him. Behind them now came the clank and thud of a score
+of overtaking feet. Soon they were surrounded. The King turned this way
+and that, desperately seeking a way out of the murderous human ring that
+fenced them round.
+
+“What d'ye seek? What d'ye seek?” he screeched, in a pitiful attempt to
+question with authority.
+
+A tall man in a trailing cloak advanced and seized him.
+
+“We seek thee, fool!” said the voice of Bothwell.
+
+The kingliness that he had never known how to wear becomingly now fell
+from him utterly.
+
+“Mercy--mercy!” he cried.
+
+“Such mercy as you had on David Rizzio!” answered the Border lord.
+
+Darnley fell on his knees and sought to embrace the murderer's legs.
+Bothwell stooped over him, seized the wretched man's shirt, and pulled
+it from his shivering body; then, flinging the sleeves about the royal
+neck, slipped one over the other and drew them tight, nor relaxed his
+hold until the young man's struggles had entirely ceased.
+
+Four days later, Mary went to visit the body of her husband in the
+chapel of Holyrood House, whither it had been conveyed, and there, as a
+contemporary tells us, she looked upon it long, “not only without grief,
+but with greedy eyes.” Thereafter it was buried secretly in the night by
+Rizzio's side, so that murderer and victim lay at peace together in the
+end.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III. THE NIGHT OF BETRAYAL--Antonio Perez and Philip II of Spain
+
+“You a Spaniard of Spain?” had been her taunt, dry and contemptuous. “I
+do not believe it.”
+
+And upon that she had put spur to the great black horse that bore her
+and had ridden off along the precipitous road by the river.
+
+After her he had flung his answer on a note of laughter, bitter and
+cynical as the laughter of the damned, laughter that expressed all
+things but mirth.
+
+“Oh, a Spaniard of Spain, indeed, Madame la Marquise. Very much a
+Spaniard of Spain, I assure you.”
+
+The great black horse and the woman in red flashed round a bend of
+the rocky road and were eclipsed by a clump of larches. The man leaned
+heavily upon his ebony cane, sighed wearily, and grew thoughtful. Then,
+with a laugh and a shrug, he sat down in the shade of the firs that
+bordered the road. Behind him, crowning the heights, loomed the brown
+castle built by Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix, two hundred years ago,
+and the Tower of Montauzet, its walls scarred by the shots of the
+rebellious Biscayans. Below him, nourished by the snows that were
+dissolving under the sunshine of early spring, sped the tumbling river;
+beyond this spread pasture and arable land to the distant hills, and
+beyond those stood the gigantic sharp-summited wall of the Pyrenees, its
+long ridge dominated by the cloven cone of the snow clad Pic du Midi.
+There was in the sight of that great barrier, at once natural and
+political, a sense of security for this fugitive from the perils and
+the hatreds that lurked in Spain beyond. Here in Bearn he was a king's
+guest, enjoying the hospitality of the great Castle of Pau, safe from
+the vindictive persecution of the mean tyrant who ruled in Spain. And
+here, at last, he was at peace, or would have been but for the thought
+of this woman--this Marquise de Chantenac--who had gone to such lengths
+in her endeavours to soften his exile that her ultimate object could
+never have been in doubt to a coxcomb, though it was in some doubt to
+Antonio Perez, who had been cured for all time of Coxcombry by suffering
+and misfortune, to say nothing of increasing age. It was when he
+bethought him of that age of his that he was chiefly intrigued by the
+amazing ardour of this great lady of Bearn. A dozen years ago--before
+misfortune overtook him--he would have accepted her flagrant wooing as
+a proper tribute. For then he had been the handsome, wealthy, witty,
+profligate Secretary of State to His Catholic Majesty King Philip II,
+with a power in Spain second only to the King's, and sometimes even
+greater. In those days he would have welcomed her as her endowments
+merited. She was radiantly lovely, in the very noontide of her
+resplendent youth, the well-born widow of a gentleman of Bearn. And
+it would not have lain within the strength or inclinations of Antonio
+Perez, as he once had been, to have resisted the temptation that she
+offered. Ever avid of pleasure, he had denied himself no single cup of
+it that favouring Fortune had proffered him. It was, indeed, because
+of this that he was fallen from his high estate; it was a woman who had
+pulled him down in ruin, tumbling with him to her doom. She, poor soul,
+was dead at last, which was the best that any lover could have wished
+her. But he lived on, embittered, vengeful, with gall in his veins
+instead of blood. He was the pale, faded shadow of that arrogant,
+reckless, joyous Antonio Perez beloved of Fortune. He was fifty, gaunt,
+hollow-eyed, and grey, half crippled by torture, sickly from long years
+of incarceration.
+
+What, he asked himself, sitting there, his eyes upon the eternal snows
+of the barrier that shut out his past, was there left in him to
+awaken love in such a woman as Madame de Chantenac? Was it that his
+tribulations stirred her pity, or that the fame of him which rang
+through Europe shed upon his withering frame some of the transfiguring
+radiance of romance?
+
+It marked, indeed, the change in him that he should pause to question,
+whose erstwhile habit had been blindly to accept the good things tossed
+by Fortune into his lap. But question he did, pondering that
+parting taunt of hers to which, for emphasis, she had given an odd
+redundancy--“You a Spaniard of Spain!” Could her meaning have been
+plainer? Was not a Spaniard proverbially as quick to love as to
+jealousy? Was not Spain, that scented land of warmth and colour, of
+cruelty and blood, of throbbing lutes under lattices ajar, of mitred
+sinners doing public penance, that land where lust and piety went hand
+in hand, where passion and penitence lay down together--was not Spain
+the land of love's most fruitful growth? And was not a Spaniard the very
+hierophant of love?
+
+His thoughts swung with sudden yearning to his wife Juana and their
+children, held in brutal captivity by Philip, who sought to slake upon
+them some of the vindictiveness from which their husband and father had
+at last escaped. Not that Antonio Perez observed marital fidelity more
+closely than any other Spaniard of his time, or of any time. But Antonio
+Perez was growing old, older than he thought, older than his years. He
+knew it. Madame de Chantenac had proved it to him.
+
+She had reproached him with never coming to see her at Chantenac,
+neglecting to return the too assiduous visits that she paid him here at
+Pau.
+
+“You are very beautiful, madame, and the world is very foul,” he had
+excused himself. “Believe one who knows the world, to his bitter cost.
+Tongues will wag.”
+
+“And your Spanish pride will not suffer that clods may talk of you?”
+
+“I am thinking of you, madame.”
+
+“Of me?” she had answered. “Why, of me they talk already--talk their
+fill. I must pretend blindness to the leering eyes that watch me each
+time I come to Pau; feign unconsciousness of the impertinent glances of
+the captain of the castle there as I ride in.”
+
+“Then why do you come?” he had asked point-blank. But before her sudden
+change of countenance he had been quick to add: “Oh, madame, I am
+full conscious of the charity that brings you, and I am deeply, deeply
+grateful; but--”
+
+“Charity?” she had interrupted sharply, on a laugh that was
+self-mocking. “Charity?”
+
+“What else, madame?”
+
+“Ask yourself,” she had answered, reddening and averting her face from
+his questioning eyes.
+
+“Madame,” he had faltered, “I dare not.”
+
+“Dare not?”
+
+“Madame, how should I? I am an old man, broken by sickness, disheartened
+by misfortune, daunted by tribulation--a mere husk cast aside by
+Fortune, whilst you are lovely as one of the angels about the Throne of
+Heaven.”
+
+She had looked into the haggard face, into the scars of suffering that
+seared it, and she had answered gently: “Tomorrow you shall come to me
+at Chantenac, my friend.”
+
+“I am a Spaniard, for whom to-morrow never comes.”
+
+“But it will this time. To-morrow I shall expect you.”
+
+He looked up at her sitting her great black horse beside which he had
+been pacing.
+
+“Better not, madame! Better not!” he had said.
+
+And then he saw the eyes that had been tender grow charged with scorn;
+then came her angry taunt:
+
+“You a Spaniard of Spain! I do not believe it!”
+
+Oh, there was no doubt that he had angered her. Women of her temperament
+are quick to anger as to every emotion. But he had not wished to anger
+her. God knows it was never the way of Antonio Perez to anger lovely
+women--at least not in this fashion. And it was an ill return for her
+gentleness and attention to himself. Considering this as he sat there
+now, he resolved that he must make amends--the only amends it was
+possible to make.
+
+An hour later, in one of the regal rooms of the castle, where he enjoyed
+the hospitality of King Henri IV of France and Navarre, he announced
+to that most faithful equerry, Gil de Mesa, his intention of riding to
+Chantenac to-morrow.
+
+“Is it prudent?” quoth Mesa, frowning.
+
+“Most imprudent,” answered Don Antonio. “That is why I go.”
+
+And on the morrow he went, escorted by a single groom. Gil de Mesa had
+begged at first to be allowed to accompany him. But for Gil he had other
+work, of which the instructions he left were very full. The distance was
+short--three miles along the Gave de Pau--and Don Antonio covered it on
+a gently ambling mule, such as might have been bred to bear some aged
+dignitary of Holy Church.
+
+The lords of Chantenac were as noble, as proud, and as poor as most
+great lords of Bearn. Their lineage was long, their rent-rolls short.
+And the last marquis had suffered more from this dual complaint than
+any of his forbears, and he had not at all improved matters by a certain
+habit of gaming contracted in youth. The chateau bore abundant signs of
+it. It was a burnt red pile standing four-square on a little eminence,
+about the base of which the river went winding turbulently; it was
+turreted at each of its four angles, imposing in its way, but in a sad
+state of dilapidation and disrepair.
+
+The interior, when Don Antonio reached it, was rather better; the
+furnishings, though sparse, were massive and imposing; the tapestries on
+the walls, if old, were rich and choice. But everywhere the ill-assorted
+marriage of pretentiousness and neediness was apparent. The floors of
+hall and living-room were strewn with fresh-cut rushes, an obsolescent
+custom which served here alike to save the heavy cost of carpets and to
+lend the place an ancient baronial dignity. Whilst pretence was made of
+keeping state, the servitors were all old, and insufficient in number
+to warrant the retention of the infirm seneschal by whom Don Antonio was
+ceremoniously received. A single groom, aged and without livery, took
+charge at once of Don Antonio's mule, his servant's horse, and the
+servant himself.
+
+The seneschal, hobbling before him, conducted our Spaniard across the
+great hall, gloomy and half denuded, through the main living-room of the
+chateau into a smaller, more intimate apartment, holding some trace of
+luxury, which he announced as madame's own room. And there he left him
+to await the coming of the chatelaine.
+
+She, at least, showed none of the outward disrepair of her surroundings.
+She came to him sheathed in a gown of shimmering silk that was of the
+golden brown of autumn tints, caught to her waist by a slender girdle of
+hammered gold. Eyes of deepest blue pondered him questioningly, whilst
+red lips smiled their welcome. “So you have come in spite of all?” she
+greeted him. “Be very welcome to my poor house, Don Antonio.”
+
+And regally she proffered her hand to his homage.
+
+He took it, observing the shapely, pointed fingers, the delicately
+curving nails. Reluctantly, almost, he admitted to himself how complete
+was her beauty, how absolute her charm. He sighed--a sigh for that lost
+youth of his, perhaps--as he bowed from his fine, lean height to press
+cold lips of formal duty on that hand.
+
+“Your will, madame, was stronger than my prudence,” said he.
+
+“Prudence?” quoth she, and almost sneered. “Since when has Antonio Perez
+stooped to prudence?”
+
+“Since paying the bitter price of imprudence. You know my story?”
+
+“A little. I know, for instance, that you murdered Escovedo--all the
+world knows that. Is that the imprudence of which you speak? I have
+heard it said that it was for love of a woman that you did it.”
+
+“You have heard that, too?” he said. He had paled a little. “You have
+heard a deal, Marquise. I wonder would it amuse you to hear more, to
+hear from my own lips this story of mine which all Europe garbles? Would
+it?”
+
+There was a faint note of anxiety in his voice, a look faintly anxious
+in his eyes.
+
+She scanned him a moment gravely, almost inscrutably. “What purpose
+can it serve?” she asked; and her tone was forbidding--almost a tone of
+fear.
+
+“It will explain,” he insisted.
+
+“Explain what?”
+
+“How it comes that I am not this moment prostrate at your feet; how it
+happens that I am not on my knees to worship your heavenly beauty; how I
+have contrived to remain insensible before a loveliness that in happier
+times would have made me mad.”
+
+“Vive Dieu!” she murmured, half ironical. “Perhaps that needs
+explaining.”
+
+“How it became necessary,” he pursued, never heeding the interruption,
+“that yesterday you should proclaim your disbelief that I could be, as
+you said, a Spaniard of Spain. How it happens that Antonio Perez has
+become incapable of any emotion but hate. Will you hear the story--all
+of it?”
+
+He was leaning towards her, his white face held close to her own, a
+smouldering fire in the dark, sunken eyes that now devoured her.
+
+She shivered, and her own cheeks turned very pale. Her lips were faintly
+twisted as if in an effort to smile.
+
+“My friend--if you insist,” she consented.
+
+“It is the purpose for which I came,” he announced.
+
+For a long moment each looked into the other's eyes with a singular
+intentness that nothing here would seem to warrant.
+
+At length she spoke.
+
+“Come,” she said, “you shall tell me.”
+
+And she waved him to a chair set in the embrasure of the mullioned
+window that looked out over a tract of meadowland sweeping gently down
+to the river.
+
+Don Antonio sank into the chair, placing his hat and whip upon the floor
+beside him. The Marquise faced him, occupying the padded window-seat,
+her back to the light, her countenance in shadow.
+
+And here, in his own words, follows the story that he told her as she
+herself set it down soon after. Whilst more elaborate and intimate
+in parts, it yet so closely agrees throughout with his own famous
+“Relacion,” that I do not hesitate to accept the assurance she has
+left us that every word he uttered was burnt as if by an acid upon her
+memory.
+
+THE STORY OF ANTONIO PEREZ
+
+As a love-story this is, I think, the saddest that ever was invented by
+a romancer intent upon wringing tears from sympathetic hearts. How sad
+it is you will realize when I tell you that daily I thank God on my
+knees--for I still believe in God, despite what was alleged against me
+by the inquisitors of Aragon--that she who inspired this love of which
+I am to tell you is now in the peace of death. She died in exile at
+Pastrana a year ago. Anne de Mendoza was what you call in France a great
+parti. She came of one of the most illustrious families in Spain, and
+she was a great heiress. So much all the world knew. What the world
+forgot was that she was a woman, with a woman's heart and mind, a
+woman's natural instincts to select her mate. There are fools who envy
+the noble and the wealthy. They are little to be envied, those poor
+pawns in the game of statecraft, moved hither and thither at the will
+of players who are themselves no better. The human nature of them is a
+negligible appendage to the names and rent-rolls that predetermine their
+place upon the board of worldly ambition, a board befouled by blood, by
+slobberings from the evil mouth of greed, and by infamy of every kind.
+
+So, because Anne was a daughter of the House of Mendoza, because her
+endowments were great, they plucked her from her convent at the age of
+thirteen years, knowing little more of life than the merest babe, and
+they flung her into the arms of Ruy Gomez, Prince of Eboli, who was
+old enough to have been her father. But Eboli was a great man in Spain,
+perhaps the greatest; he was, first Minister to Philip II, and between
+his House and that of Mendoza an alliance was desired. To establish it
+that tender child was sacrificed without ruth. She discovered that life
+held nothing of all that her maiden dreamings had foreseen; that it was
+a thing of horror and greed and lovelessness and worse. For there was
+much worse to come.
+
+Eboli brought his child-princess to Court. He wore her lightly as
+a ribbon or a glove, the insignificant appendage to the wealth and
+powerful alliance he had acquired with her. And at Court she came
+under the eye of that pious satyr Philip. The Catholic King is very
+devout--perfervidly devout. He prays, he fasts, he approaches the
+sacraments, he does penance, all in proper season as prescribed by
+Mother Church; he abominates sin and lack of faith--particularly in
+others; he has drenched Flanders in blood that he might wash it clean
+of the heresy of thinking differently from himself in spiritual matters,
+and he would have done the same by England but that God--Who cannot,
+after all, be quite of Philip's way of thinking--willed otherwise. All
+this he has done for the greater honour and glory of his Maker, but he
+will not tolerate his Maker's interference with his own minor pleasures
+of the flesh. He is, as you would say, a Spaniard of Spain.
+
+This satyr's protruding eyes fell upon the lovely Princess of Eboli--for
+lovely she was, a very pearl among women. I spare you details. Eboli was
+most loyal and submissive where his King was concerned, most complacent
+and accommodating. That was but logical, and need not shock you at all.
+To advance his worldly ambitions had he taken Anne to wife; why should
+he scruple, then, to yield her again that thus he might advance those
+ambitions further?
+
+If poor Anne argued at all, she must have argued thus. For the rest,
+she was told that to be loved by the King was an overwhelming honour,
+a matter for nightly prayers of thankfulness. Philip was something very
+exalted, hardly human in fact; almost, if not quite, divine. Who and
+what was Anne that she should dispute with those who knew the world, and
+who placed these facts before her? Never in all her little life had she
+belonged to herself. Always had she been the property of somebody else,
+to be dealt with as her owner might consider best. If about the Court
+she saw some men more nearly of her own age--though there were not many,
+for Philip's Court was ever a gloomy, sparsely peopled place--she took
+it for granted that such men were not for her. This until I taught her
+otherwise, which, however, was not yet a while. Had I been at Court in
+those days, I think I should have found the means, at whatever cost, of
+preventing that infamy; for I know that I loved her from the day I saw
+her. But I was of no more than her own age, and I had not yet been drawn
+into that whirlpool.
+
+So she went to the arms of that rachitic prince, and she bore him a
+son--for, as all the world knows, the Duke of Prastana owns Philip for
+his father. And Eboli increased in power and prosperity and the favour
+of his master, and also, no doubt, in the contempt of posterity. There
+are times when the thought of posterity and its vengeances is of great
+solace.
+
+It would be some six years later when first I came to Court, brought
+thither by my father, to enter the service of the Prince of Eboli as one
+of his secretaries. As I have told you, I loved the Princess from the
+moment I beheld her. From the gossip of the Court I pieced together
+her story, and pitied her, and, pitying her, I loved her the more. Her
+beauty dazzled me, her charm enmeshed me, and she had grown by now in
+worldly wisdom and mental attainments. Yet I set a mask upon my passion,
+and walked very circumspectly, for all that by nature I was as reckless
+and profligate as all the world could ever call me. She was the wife of
+the puissant Secretary of State, the mistress of the King. Who was I to
+dispute their property to those exalted ones?
+
+And another consideration stayed me. She seemed to love the King. Young
+and lacking in wisdom, this amazed me. In age he compared favourably
+with her husband he was but thirteen years older than herself--but in
+nothing else. He was a weedy, unhealthy-looking man, weakly of frame,
+rachitic, undersized, with spindle-shanks, and a countenance that was
+almost grotesque, with its protruding jaw, gaping mouth, great, doglike
+eyes, and yellow tuft of beard. A great king, perhaps, this Philip,
+having so been born; but a ridiculous man and an unspeakable lover. And
+yet this incomparable woman seemed to love him.
+
+Let me pass on. For ten years I nursed that love of mine in secret.
+I was helped, perhaps, by the fact that in the mean time I had
+married--oh, just as Eboli himself had married, an arrangement dictated
+by worldly considerations--and no better, truer mate did ever a man find
+than I in Juana Coello. We had children and we were happy, and for a
+season--for years, indeed--I began to think that my unspoken passion for
+the Princess of Eboli was dead and done with. I saw her rarely now, and
+my activities increased with increasing duties. At twenty-six I was one
+of the Ministers of the Crown, and one of the chief supporters of
+that party of which Eboli was the leader in Spanish politics. I sat
+in Philip's Council, and I came under the spell of that taciturn,
+suspicious man, who, utterly unlovable as he was, had yet an uncanny
+power of inspiring devotion. From the spell of it I never quite escaped
+until after long years of persecution. Yet the discovery that one by
+nature so entirely antipathetic to me should have obtained such sway
+over my mind helped me to understand Anne's attachment to him.
+
+When Eboli died, in 1573, I had so advanced in ability and Royal favour
+that I took his place as Secretary of State, thus becoming all but the
+supreme ruler of Spain. I do not believe that there was ever in Spain
+a Minister so highly favoured by the reigning Prince, so powerful as
+I became. Not Eboli himself in his halcyon days had been so deeply
+esteemed of Philip, or had wielded such power as I now made my own.
+All Europe knows it--for it was to me all Europe addressed itself for
+affairs that concerned the Catholic King.
+
+And with my power came wealth--abundant, prodigious wealth. I was housed
+like a Prince of the blood, and no Prince of the blood ever kept greater
+state than I, was ever more courted, fawned upon, or flattered. And
+remember I was young, little more than thirty, with all the strength and
+zest to enjoy my intoxicating eminence. I was to my party what Eboli had
+been, though the nominal leader of it remained Quiroga, Archbishop of
+Toledo. On the other side was the Duke of Alva with his following.
+
+You must know that it was King Philip's way to encourage two rival
+parties in the State, between which he shared his confidence and sway.
+Thus he stimulated emulation and enlightened his own views in the
+opposing opinions that were placed before him. But the power of my party
+was absolute in those days, and Alva himself was as the dust beneath our
+feet.
+
+Such eminences, they say, are perilous. Heads that are very highly
+placed may at any moment be placed still higher--upon a pike. I am all
+but a living witness to the truth of that, and yet I wonder would it so
+have fallen out with me had I mistrusted that slumbering passion of
+mine for Anne. I should have known that where such fires have once been
+kindled in a man they never quite die out as long as life endures. Time
+and preoccupations may overlay them as with a film of ashes, but more
+or less deeply down they smoulder on, and the first breath will fan them
+into flame again.
+
+It was at the King's request I went to see her in her fine Madrid house
+opposite Santa Maria Mayor some months after her husband's death. There
+were certain matters of heritage to be cleared up, and, having regard
+to her high rank, it was Philip's wish that I--who was by now Eboli's
+official successor--should wait on her in person.
+
+There were documents to be conned and signed, and the matter took some
+days, for Eboli's possessions were not only considerable, but scattered,
+and his widow displayed an acquired knowledge of affairs and a natural
+wisdom that inspired her to probe deeply. To my undoing, she probed
+too deeply in one matter. It concerned some land--a little property--at
+Velez. She had been attached to the place, it seemed, and she missed all
+mention of it from the papers that I brought her. She asked the reason.
+
+“It is disposed of,” I told her.
+
+“Disposed of!” quoth she. “But by whom?”
+
+“By the Prince, your husband, a little while before he died.”
+
+She looked up at me--she was seated at the wide, carved writing-table,
+I standing by her side--as if expecting me to say more. As I left my
+utterance there, she frowned perplexedly.
+
+“But what mystery is this?” she asked me. “To whom has it gone?”
+
+“To one Sancho Gordo.”
+
+“To Sancho Gordo?” The frown deepened. “The washerwoman's son? You will
+not tell me that he bought it?”
+
+“I do not tell you so, madame. It was a gift from the Prince, your
+husband.”
+
+“A gift!” She laughed. “To Sancho Gordo! So the washerwoman's child is
+Eboli's son!”
+
+And again she laughed on a note of deep contempt.
+
+“Madame!” I cried, appalled and full of pity, “I assure you that you
+assume too much. The Prince--”
+
+“Let be,” she interrupted me. “Do you dream I care what rivals I may
+have had, however lowly they may have been? The Prince, my husband, is
+dead, and that is very well. He is much better dead, Don Antonio. The
+pity of it is that he ever lived, or else that I was born a woman.”
+
+She was staring straight before her, her hands fallen to her lap, her
+face set as if carved and lifeless, and her voice came hard as the sound
+of one stone beating upon another.
+
+“Do you dream what it can mean to have been so nurtured on indignities
+that there is no anger left, no pride to wound by the discovery of yet
+another nothing but cold, cold hate? That, Don Antonio, is my case. You
+do not know what my life has been. That man--”
+
+“He is dead, madame,” I reminded her, out of pity.
+
+“And damned, I hope,” she answered me in that same cold, emotionless
+voice. “He deserves no less for all the wrongs he did to me, the least
+of which was the great wrong of marrying me. For advancement he acquired
+me; for his advancement he bartered and used me and made of me a thing
+of shame.”
+
+I was so overwhelmed with grief and love and pity that a groan escaped
+me almost before I was aware of it. She broke off short, and stared at
+me in haughtiness.
+
+“You presume to pity me, I think,” she reproved me. “It is my own
+fault. I was wrong to talk. Women should suffer silently, that they may
+preserve at least a mask of dignity. Otherwise they incur pity--and pity
+is very near contempt.”
+
+And then I lost my head.
+
+“Not mine, not mine!” I cried, throwing out my arms; and though that
+was all I said, there was such a ring in my choking voice that she rose
+stiffly from her seat and stood tense and tall confronting me, almost
+eye to eye, reproof in every line of her.
+
+“Princess, forgive me!” I cried. “It breaks my heart in pieces to hear
+you utter things that have been in my mind these many years, poisoning
+the devotion that I owed to the late Prince, poisoning the very loyalty
+I owe my King. You say I pity you. If that were so, none has the better
+right.”
+
+“Who gave it you?” she asked me, breathless.
+
+“Heaven itself, I think,” I answered recklessly. “What you have
+suffered, I have suffered for you. When I came to Court the infamy was
+a thing accomplished--all of it. But I gathered it, and gathering it,
+thanked Heaven I had been spared the pain and misery of witnessing it,
+which must have been more than ever I could have endured. Yet when I
+saw you, when I watched you--your wistful beauty, your incomparable
+grace--there was a time when the thought to murder stirred darkly in my
+mind that I might at least avenge you.”
+
+She fell away before me, white to the very lips, her eyes dilating as
+they regarded me.
+
+“In God's name, why?” she asked me in a strangled voice.
+
+“Because I loved you,” I replied, “always, always, since the day I saw
+you. Unfortunately, that day was years too late, even had I dared to
+hope--”
+
+“Antonio!” Something in her voice drew my averted eyes. Her lips had
+parted, her eyes kindled into life, a flush was stirring in her cheeks.
+
+“And I never knew! I never knew!” she faltered piteously.
+
+I stared.
+
+“Dear Heaven, why did you withhold a knowledge that would have upheld
+me and enheartened me through all that I have suffered? Once, long, long
+ago I hoped--”
+
+“You hoped!”
+
+“I hoped, Antonio--long, long ago.”
+
+We were in each other's arms, she weeping on my shoulder as if her heart
+would burst, I almost mad with mingling joy and pain--and as God lives
+there was more matter here for pain than joy.
+
+We sat long together after that, and talked it out. There was no help
+for it. It was too late on every count. On her side there was the King,
+most jealous of all men, whose chattel she was become; on mine, there
+was my wife and children, and so deep and true was my love for Anne that
+it awakened in me thoughts of the loyalty I owed Juana, thoughts that
+had never troubled me hitherto in my pleasure-loving life--and this not
+only as concerned Anne herself, but as concerned all women. There was
+something so ennobling and sanctifying about our love that it changed
+at once the whole of my life, the whole tenor of my ways. I abandoned
+profligacy, and became so staid and orderly in my conduct that I was
+scarcely recognizable for the Antonio Perez whom the world had known
+hitherto.
+
+We parted there that day with a resolve to put all this behind us; to
+efface from our minds all memory of what had passed between us! Poor
+fools were we to imagine we could resist the vortex of circumstance
+which had caught us. For three months we kept our engagement
+scrupulously; and then, at last, resistance mutually exhausted, we
+yielded each to the other, both to Fate.
+
+But because we cherished our love we moved with caution. I was
+circumspect in my comings and goings, and such were the precautions
+we observed, that for four years the world had little suspicion, and
+certainly no knowledge, that I had inherited from the Prince of Eboli
+more than his office as Secretary of State. This secrecy was necessary
+as long as Philip lived, for we were both fully aware of what manner of
+vengeance we should have to reckon with did knowledge of our relations
+reach the jealous King. And I think that but for Don John of Austria's
+affairs, and the intervention in them of the Escovedo whom you say--whom
+the world says I murdered, all might have been well to this day.
+
+Escovedo had been, like myself, one of Eboli's secretaries in his day,
+and it was this that won him after Eboli's death a place at the Royal
+Council board. It was but an inferior place, yet the King remarked him
+for a man shrewd and able, who might one day have his uses.
+
+That day was not very long in coming, though the opportunity it afforded
+Escovedo was scarcely such as, in his greedy, insatiable ambition, he
+had hoped for. Yet the opportunity, such as it was, was afforded him
+by me, and had he used it properly it should have carried him far,
+certainly much farther than his talent and condition warranted.
+
+It came about through Don John of Austria's dreams of sovereignty. You
+will have heard--as who has not?--so much of Don John, the natural son
+of Charles V, that I need tell you little concerning him. In body and
+soul he was a very different man, indeed, from his half-brother Philip
+of Spain. As joyous as Philip was gloomy, as open and frank as Philip
+was cloudy and suspicious, and as beautiful as Philip was grotesque, Don
+John was the Bayard of our day, the very mirror of all knightly graces.
+To the victory of Lepanto, which had made him illustrious as a soldier,
+he had added, in '73--the year of Eboli's death--the conquest of Tunis,
+thereby completing the triumph of Christianity over the Muslim in the
+Mediterranean. Success may have turned his head a little. He was young,
+you know, and an emperor's son. He dreamt of an empire for himself, of
+sovereignty, and of making Tunis the capital of the kingdom he would
+found.
+
+We learnt of this. Indeed, Don John made little secret of his
+intentions. But they went not at all with Philip's views. It was far
+from his notions that Don John should go founding kingdoms of his own.
+His valour and talents were required to be employed for the greater
+honour and glory of the Crown of Spain, and nothing further.
+
+Philip consulted me, who was by then the depositary of all his secrets,
+the familiar of his inmost desires. There was evidence that Don John's
+ambitions were being fomented by his secretary, who dreamt, no doubt,
+of his own aggrandizement in the aggrandizement of his master. Philip
+proposed the man's removal.
+
+“That would be something,” I agreed. “But not enough. He must be
+replaced by a man of our own, a man loyal to Your Majesty, who will not
+only seek to guide Don John in the course that he should follow, but
+will keep close watch upon his projects, and warn you should they
+threaten to neglect your interests the interests of Spain, for his own.”
+
+“And such a man? Where shall we find him?”
+
+I considered a moment, and bethought me of Escovedo. He was able; he
+had charm and an ingratiating manner; I believed him loyal, and imagined
+that I could quicken that loyalty by showing him that advancement would
+wait upon its observation; he could well be spared from the Council,
+where, as I have said, he occupied a quite inferior post; lastly, we
+were friends, and I was glad of the opportunity to serve him, and place
+him on the road to better things.
+
+All this I said to Philip, and so the matter was concluded. But Escovedo
+failed me. His abilities and ingratiating manner endeared him quickly to
+Don John, whilst himself he succumbed entirely, not only to Don John
+of Austria's great personal charm, but also to Don John's ambitious
+projects. The road to advancement upon which I had set him seemed to him
+long and toilsome by contrast with the shorter cut that was offered by
+his new master's dreams. He fell as the earlier secretary had fallen,
+and more grievously, for he was the more ambitious of the two, and from
+merely seconding Don John's projects, it was not long before he spurred
+them on, not long before he was dreaming dreams of his own for Don John
+to realize.
+
+From Tunis, which had by now been recovered by the Turks, and any hopes
+concerned with which King Philip had discouraged, the eyes of Don John
+were set, at Escovedo's bidding, I believe, upon the crown of England.
+
+He had just been invited by Philip to make ready to take in hand the
+affairs of Flanders, sadly disorganized under the incompetent rule of
+Alva. It occurred to him that if he were to issue victoriously from that
+enterprise--and so far victory had waited upon his every venture--if
+he were to succeed in restoring peace and Spanish order in rebellious
+Flanders, he would then be able to move against England with the Spanish
+troops under his command, overthrow Elizabeth, deliver Mary Stuart from
+the captivity in which she languished, and by marriage with her set
+the crown of England on his brow. To this great project he sought the
+support of Rome, and Rome accorded it very readily being naturally
+hostile to the heretic daughter of Anne Boleyn.
+
+It was Escovedo himself who went as Don John's secret ambassador to the
+Vatican in this affair Escovedo, who had been placed with Don John to
+act as a curb on that young man's ambitions. Nor did he move with the
+prudence he should have observed.
+
+Knowledge of what was brewing reached us from the Papal Nuncio in
+Madrid, who came to see me one day in the matter.
+
+“I have a dispatch from Rome,” he announced, “in which His Holiness
+instructs me to enjoin upon the King that the expedition against England
+be now executed, and that he consider bestowing its crown upon Don John
+of Austria for the greater honour and glory of Holy Church.”
+
+I was thunderstruck. The expedition against England, I knew, was no new
+project. Three years before a secret envoy from the Queen of Scots, an
+Italian named Ridolfi, had come to propose to Philip that, in concert
+with the Pope, he should reestablish the Catholic faith in England and
+place Mary Stuart upon the throne. It was a scheme attractive to Philip,
+since it agreed at once with his policy and his religion. But it had
+been abandoned under the dissuasions of Alva, who accounted that it
+would be too costly even if successful. Here it was again, emanating now
+directly from the Holy See, but in a slightly altered form.
+
+“Why Don John of Austria?” I asked him.
+
+“A great soldier of the faith. And the Queen of Scots must have a
+husband.”
+
+“I should have thought that she had had husbands enough by now,” said I.
+
+“His Holiness does not appear to share that view,” he answered tartly.
+
+“I wonder will the King,” said I.
+
+“The Catholic King is ever an obedient child of Mother Church,” the oily
+Nuncio reminded me, to reprove my doubt.
+
+But I knew better--that the King's own policy was the measure of his
+obedience. This the Nuncio should learn for himself; for if I knew
+anything of Philip's mind, I knew precisely how he would welcome this
+proposal.
+
+“Will you see the King now?” I suggested maliciously, anxious to witness
+the humbling of his priestly arrogance.
+
+“Not yet. It is upon that I came to see you. I am instructed first to
+consult with one Escoda as to the manner in which this matter shall be
+presented to His Majesty. Who is Escoda?”
+
+“I never heard of him,” said I. “Perhaps he comes from Rome.”
+
+“No, no. Strange!” he muttered, frowning, and plucked a parchment from
+his sleeve. “It is here.” He peered slowly at the writing, and slowly
+spelled out the name: “Juan de Escoda.”
+
+In a flash it came to me.
+
+“Escovedo you mean,” I cried,
+
+“Yes, yes--Escovedo, to be sure,” he agreed, having consulted the
+writing once more. “Where is he?”
+
+“On his way to Madrid with Don John,” I informed him. “He is Don John's
+secretary.”
+
+“I will do nothing, then, until he arrives,” he said, and took his
+leave.
+
+Oh, monstrous indiscretion! That dispatch from Rome so cunningly
+and secretly contrived in cipher had yet contained no warning that
+Escovedo's share in this should be concealed. There are none so
+imprudent as the sly. I sought the King at once, and told him all that
+I had learnt. He was aghast. Indeed, I never saw him more near to anger.
+For Philip of Spain was not the man to show wrath or any other emotion.
+He had a fish-like, cold, impenetrable inscrutability. True, his yellow
+skin grew yellower, his gaping mouth gaped wider, his goggle eyes
+goggled more than usual. Left to himself, I think he would have
+disgraced Don John and banished Escovedo there and then, as he did,
+indeed, suggest. And I have since had cause enough to wish to God that I
+had left him to himself.
+
+“Who will replace Don John in Flanders?” I asked him quietly. He stared
+at me. “He is useful to you there. Use him, Sire, to your own ends.”
+
+“But they will press this English business.”
+
+“Acquiesce.”
+
+“Acquiesce? Are you mad?”
+
+“Seem to acquiesce. Temporize. Answer them, 'One thing at a time.'
+Say, 'When the Flanders business is happily concluded, we will think of
+England.' Give them hope that success in Flanders will dispose you
+to support the other project. Thus you offer Don John an incentive to
+succeed, yet commit yourself to nothing.”
+
+“And this dog Escovedo?”
+
+“Is a dog who betrays himself by his bark. We will listen for it.”
+
+And thus it was determined; thus was Don John suckled on the windy pap
+of hope when presently he came to Court with Escovedo at his heels.
+Distended by that empty fare he went off to the Low Countries, leaving
+Escovedo in Madrid to represent him, with secret instructions to advance
+his plans.
+
+Now Escovedo's talents were far inferior to my conception of them.
+
+He was just a greedy schemer, without the wit to dissemble his appetite
+or the patience necessary to secure attainment.
+
+Affairs in Flanders went none too well, yet that did not set a curb
+upon him. He pressed his master's business upon the King with an ardour
+amounting to disrespect, and disrespect was a thing the awful majesty of
+Philip could never brook. Escovedo complained of delays, of indecision,
+and finally--in the summer of '76--he wrote the King a letter of fierce
+upbraidings, criticizing his policy in terms that were contemptuous, and
+which entirely exasperated Philip.
+
+It was in vain I strove to warn the fellow of whither he was drifting;
+in vain I admonished and sought to curb his headlong recklessness. I
+have said that I had a friendship for him, and because of that I took
+more pains, perhaps, than I should have taken in another's case.
+
+“Unless you put some judgment into that head of yours, my friend, you
+will leave it in this business,” I told him one day.
+
+He flung into a passion at the admonition, heaped abuse upon me, swore
+that it was I who thwarted him, I who opposed the fulfilment of Don
+John's desires and fostered the dilatory policy of the King.
+
+I left him after that to pursue his course, having no wish to quarrel
+with this headstrong upstart; yet, liking him as I did, I spared no
+endeavour to shield him from the consequences he provoked. But that
+letter of his to Philip made the task a difficult one. Philip showed it
+to me.
+
+“If that man,” he said, “had uttered to my face what he has dared to
+write, I do not think I should have been able to contain myself without
+visible change of countenance. It is a sanguinary letter.”
+
+I set myself to calm him as best I could.
+
+“The man is indiscreet, which has its advantage, for we always know
+whither an indiscreet man is heading. His zeal for his master blinds him
+and makes him rash. It is better, perhaps, than if he were secretive and
+crafty.”
+
+With such arguments I appeased his wrath against the secretary. But I
+knew that his hatred of Escovedo, his thirst for Escovedo's blood, dated
+from that moment in which Escovedo had forgotten the reverence due to
+majesty. I was glad when at last he took himself off to Flanders to
+rejoin Don John. But that was very far from setting a term to his
+pestering. The Flanders affair was going so badly that the hopes of an
+English throne to follow were dwindling fast. Something else must
+be devised against the worst, and now Don John and Escovedo began to
+consider the acquisition of power in Spain itself. Their ambition aimed
+at giving Don John the standing of an Infante. Both of them wrote to me
+to advance this fresh project of theirs, to work for their recall,
+so that they could ally themselves with my party--the Archbishop's
+party--and ensure its continuing supreme. Escovedo wrote me a letter
+that was little better than an attempt to bribe me. The King was ageing,
+and the Prince was too young to relieve him of the heavy duties of
+State. Don John should shoulder these, and in so doing Escovedo and
+myself should be hoisted into greater power.
+
+I carried all those letters to the King, and at his suggestion I even
+pretended to lend an ear to these proposals that we might draw from
+Escovedo a fuller betrayal of his real ultimate aims. It was dangerous,
+and I enjoined the King to move carefully.
+
+“Be discreet,” I warned him, “for if my artifice were discovered, I
+should not be of any further use to you at all. In my conscience I am
+satisfied that in acting as I do I am performing no more than my duty. I
+require no theology other than my own to understand that much.”
+
+“My theology,” he answered me, “takes much the same view. You would have
+failed in your duty to God and me had you failed to enlighten me on the
+score of this deception. These things,” he added in a dull voice, “appal
+me.”
+
+So I wrote to Don John, urging him as one who counselled him for his
+good, who had no interest but his own at heart, to remain in Flanders
+until the work there should be satisfactorily completed. He did so,
+since he was left no choice in the matter, but the intrigues continued.
+Later we saw how far he was from having forsaken his dreams of England,
+when I discovered that he had engaged the Pope to assist him with six
+thousand men and one hundred and fifty thousand ducats when the time for
+that adventure should be ripe.
+
+And then, quite suddenly, entirely unheralded, Escovedo reappeared in
+Madrid, having come to press Philip in person for reinforcements that
+should enable Don John to finish the campaign. He brought news that
+there had been a fresh rupture of the patched-up peace, that Don John
+had taken the field once more, and had forcibly made himself master
+of Namur. This was contrary to all the orders we had sent, a direct
+overriding of Philip's wishes. The King desired peace in the Low
+Countries because he was in no case just then to renew the war, and
+Escovedo's impudently couched demands completed his exasperation.
+
+“My will,” he said, “is as naught before the ambitions of these two.
+You sent my clear instructions to Escovedo, who was placed with Don John
+that he might render him pliant to my wishes. Instead, he stiffens him
+in rebellion. There must be an end to this man.”
+
+“Sire,” I cried, “it may be they think to advance your interests.”
+
+“Heaven help me!” he cried. “Did ever villain wear so transparent a mask
+as this dog Escovedo? To advance my interests--that will be his tale, no
+doubt. He will advance them where I do not wish them advanced; he will
+advance them to my ruin; he will stake all on a success in Flanders that
+shall be the preliminary to a descent upon England in the interests of
+Don John. I say there must be an end to this man before he works more
+mischief.”
+
+Again I set myself to calm him, as I had so often done before, and again
+I was the shield between Escovedo and the royal lightnings, of whose
+menace to blot him out the fool had no suspicion. For months things hung
+there, until, in January of '78, when war had been forced in earnest
+upon Spain by Elizabeth's support of the Low Countries, Don John won the
+great victory of Gemblours. This somewhat raised the King's depression,
+somewhat dissipated his overgrowing mistrust of his half-brother, and
+gave him patience to read the letters in which Don John urged him to
+send money--to throw wood on the fire whilst it was alight, or else
+resign himself to the loss of Flanders for all time. As it meant also
+resigning himself to the loss of all hope of England for all time,
+Escovedo's activities were just then increased a hundredfold.
+
+“Send me money and Escovedo,” was the burden of the almost daily letters
+from Don John to me, and at my elbow was Escovedo, perpetually pressing
+me to bend the King to his master's will. Another matter on which he
+pressed me then was that I should obtain for himself the governorship of
+the Castle of Mogro, which commands the port of Santander, an ambition
+this which intrigued me deeply, for I confess I could not fathom what it
+had to do with all the rest.
+
+And then something else happened. From the Spanish Ambassador at the
+Louvre we learnt one day of a secret federation entered into between Don
+John and the Guises, known as the Defence of the Two Crowns. Its object
+was as obscure as its title. But it afforded the last drop to the cup
+of Philip's mistrust. This time it was directly against Don John that
+he inveighed to me. And to defend Don John, in the interests of common
+justice, I was forced to place the blame where it belonged.
+
+“Nay, Sire,” I assured him, “these ambitions are not Don John's. With
+all his fevered dreams of greatness, Don John has ever been, will ever
+be, loyal to his King.”
+
+“If you know anything of temptation,” he answered me, “you should know
+that there is a breaking-point to every man's resistance of it. How long
+will Don John remain loyal while Escovedo feeds his disloyalty, adds
+daily to the weight of temptation the burden of a fresh ambition? I tell
+you, man, I feel safe no longer.” He rose up before me, a blotch on his
+sallow face, his fingers tugging nervously at the tuft of straw-coloured
+beard. “I tell you some blow is about to fall unless we avert it. This
+man this fellow Escovedo--must be dispatched before he can kill us.”
+
+I shrugged and affected carelessness to soothe him.
+
+“A contemptible dreamer,” I said. “Pity him, Sire. He has his uses.
+To remove him would be to remove a channel through which we can always
+obtain knowledge precisely of what is doing.”
+
+Again I prevailed, and there the matter hung a while. But the King was
+right, his fears were well inspired. Escovedo, always impatient,
+was becoming desperate under persistent frustration. I reasoned with
+him--was he not still my friend?--I held him off, urged prudence and
+patience upon him, and generally sought to temporize. I was as intent
+upon saving him from leaving his skin in this business as I was, on the
+other hand, intent upon doing my duty without pause or scruple to my
+King. But the fool forced my hand. A Court is a foul place always, even
+so attenuated a Court as that which Philip of Spain encouraged. Rumour
+thrives in it, scandal blossoms luxuriantly in its fetid atmosphere.
+And rumour and scandal had been busy with the Princess of Eboli and me,
+though I did not dream it.
+
+We had been indiscreet, no doubt. We had been seen together in public
+too often. We had gone to the play together more than once; she had been
+present with me at a bull-fight on one occasion, and it was matter of
+common gossip, as I was to learn, that I was a too frequent visitor at
+her house.
+
+Another visitor there was Escovedo when in Madrid. Have I not said
+that in his early days he had been one of Eboli's secretaries? On
+that account the house of Eboli remained open to him at all times. The
+Princess liked him, was kindly disposed towards him, and encouraged his
+visits. We met there more than once. One day we left together, and
+that day the fool set spark to a train that led straight to the mine on
+which, all unconsciously, he stood.
+
+“A word of advice in season, Don Antonio,” he said as we stepped forth
+together. “Do not go so often to visit the Princess.”
+
+I sought to pull my arm from his, but he clung to it and pinned it to
+his side.
+
+“Nay, now--nay, now!” he soothed me. “Not so hot, my friend. What the
+devil have I said to provoke resentment? I advise you as your friend.”
+
+“In future advise that other friend of yours, the devil,” I answered
+angrily, and pulled my arm away at last. “Don Juan, you have presumed, I
+think. I did not seek your advice. It is yourself that stands in need of
+advice this moment more than any man in Spain.”
+
+“Lord of the World,” he exclaimed in amiable protest, “listen to him!
+I speak because I owe friendship to the Princess. Men whisper of your
+comings and goings, I tell you. And the King, you know well, should he
+hear of this I am in danger of losing my only friend at Court, and so--”
+
+“Another word of this,” I broke in fiercely, “now or at any other time,
+and I'll skewer you like a rabbit!”
+
+I had stopped. My face was thrust within a hand's-breadth of his own; I
+had tossed back my cloak, and my fingers clutched the hilt of my sword.
+He became grave. His fine eyes--he had great, sombre, liquid eyes, such
+as you'll scarcely ever see outside of Spain--considered me thoughtfully
+a moment. Then he laughed lightly and fell back a pace.
+
+“Pish!” said he. “Saint James! I am no rabbit for your skewering. If
+it comes to skewers, I am a useful man of my hands, Antonio. Come,
+man”--and again he took my arm--“if I presume, forgive it out of the
+assurance that I am moved solely by interest and concern for you. We
+have been friends too long that I should be denied.”
+
+I had grown cool again, and I realized that perhaps my show of anger had
+been imprudent. So I relented now, and we went our ways together without
+further show of ill-humour on my part, or further advice on his. But
+the matter did not end there. Indeed, it but began. Going early in the
+afternoon of the morrow to visit Anne, I found her in tears--tears, as I
+was to discover, of anger.
+
+Escovedo had been to visit her before me, and he had dared to reproach
+her on the same subject.
+
+“You are talked about, you and Perez,” he had informed her, “and the
+thing may have evil consequences. It is because I have eaten your bread
+that I tell you this for your own good.”
+
+She had risen up in a great passion.
+
+“You will leave my house, and never set foot in it again,” she had told
+him. “You should learn that grooms and lackeys have no concern in the
+conduct of great ladies. It is because you have eaten my bread that I
+tell you this for your own good.”
+
+It drove him out incontinently, but it left her in the condition in
+which I was later to discover her. I set myself to soothe her. I swore
+that Escovedo should be punished. But she would not be soothed. She
+blamed herself for an unpardonable rashness. She should not have taken
+that tone with Escovedo. He could avenge himself by telling Philip,
+and if he told Philip, and Philip believed him--as Philip would, being
+jealous and mistrustful beyond all men--my ruin must follow. She had
+thought only of herself in dismissing him in that high-handed manner.
+Coming since to think of me it was that she had fallen into this
+despair. She clung to me in tears.
+
+“Forgive me, Antonio. The fault is all mine--the fault of all. Always
+have I known that this danger must overhang you as a penalty for loving
+me. Always I knew it, and, knowing it, I should have been stronger. I
+should have sent you from me at the first. But I was so starved of love
+from childhood till I met you. I hungered so for love--for your love,
+Antonio--that I had not the strength. I was weak and selfish, and
+because I was ready and glad to pay the price myself, whatever it should
+be and whenever asked, I did not take thought enough for you.”
+
+“Take no thought now,” I implored her, holding her close.
+
+“I must. I can't help it. I have raised this peril for you. He will go
+to Philip.”
+
+“Not he; he dare not. I am his only hope. I am the ladder by which he
+hopes to scale the heaven of his high ambition. If he destroys me, there
+is the kennel for himself. He knows it.”
+
+“Do you say that to comfort me, or is it really true?”
+
+“God's truth, sweetheart,” I swore, and drew her closer.
+
+She was comforted long before I left her. But as I stepped out into
+the street again a man accosted me. Evidently he had been on the watch,
+awaiting me. He fell into step beside me almost before I realized his
+presence. It was Escovedo.
+
+“So,” he said, very sinister, “you'll not be warned.”
+
+“Nor will you,” I answered, no whit less sinister myself.
+
+It was broad daylight. A pale March sunshine was beating down upon the
+cobbled streets, and passers-by were plentiful. There was no fingering
+of hilts or talk of skewering on either side. Nor must I show any of
+the anger that was boiling in me. My face was too well known in Madrid
+streets, and a Secretary of State does not parade emotions to the
+rabble. So I walked stiff and dignified amain, that dog in step with me
+the while.
+
+“She will have told you what I have said to her,” he murmured.
+
+“And what she said to you. It was less than your deserts.”
+
+“Groom and lackey, eh?” said he. “And less than I deserve--a man of my
+estate. Oh, ho! Groom and lackey! Those are epithets to be washed out in
+blood and tears.”
+
+“You rant,” I said.
+
+“Or else to be paid for--handsomely.” His tone was sly--so sly that
+I answered nothing, for to answer a sly man is to assist him, and my
+business was to let him betray the cause of this slyness. Followed a
+spell of silence. Then, “Do you know,” said he, “that several of her
+relatives are thinking seriously of killing you?”
+
+“Many men have thought seriously of that--so seriously that they never
+attempted it. Antonio Perez is not easily murdered, Don Juan, as you may
+discover.”
+
+It was a boast that I may claim to have since justified.
+
+“Shall I tell you their names?” quoth he.
+
+“If you want to ruin them.”
+
+“Ha!” It was a short bark of a laugh. “You talk glibly of ruining--but
+then you talk to a groom and lackey.” The epithets rankled in his mind;
+they were poison to his blood, it seemed. It takes a woman to find words
+that burn and blister a man. “Yet groom and lackey that I am, I hold you
+both in the hollow of my hand. If I close that hand, it will be very bad
+for you, very bad for her. If, for instance, I were to tell King Philip
+that I have seen her in your arms--”
+
+“You dog!”
+
+“I have--I swear to God I have, with these two eyes--at least with one
+of them, applied to the keyhole half an hour ago. Her servants passed me
+in; a ducat or two well bestowed--you understand?”
+
+We had reached the door of my house. I paused and turned to him.
+
+“You will come in?” I invited.
+
+“As the wolf said to the lamb, eh? Well, why not?” And we went in.
+
+“You are well housed,” he commented, his greedy, envious eyes
+considering all the tokens of my wealth. “It were a pity to lose so
+much, I think. The King is at the Escurial, I am told.”
+
+He was. He had gone thither into retreat, that he might cleanse his
+pious, murky soul against the coming of Eastertide.
+
+“You would not, I am sure, compel me to undertake so tedious a journey,”
+ said he.
+
+“Will you put off this slyness and be plain?” I bade him. “You have some
+bargain in your mind. Propound it.”
+
+He did, and left me aghast.
+
+“You have temporized long enough, Perez,” he began. “You have been
+hunting with the dogs and running with the stag. There must be an end
+to all that. Stand by me now, and I will make you greater than you are,
+greater than you could ever dream to be. Oppose me, betray me--for I am
+going to be very frank--and the King shall hear things from me that will
+mean your ruin and hers. You understand?”
+
+Then came his demands. First of all the command of the fortress of Mogro
+for himself. I must obtain him that at once. Secondly, I must see to
+it that Philip pledged himself to support Don John's expedition against
+England and Elizabeth and to seat Don John upon the throne with Mary
+Stuart for his wife. These things must come about, and quickly, or I
+perished. Nor was that all. Indeed, no more than a beginning. He opened
+out the vista of his dreams, that having blackmailed me on the one hand,
+he might now bribe me on the other. Once England was theirs, he aimed at
+no less than a descent upon Spain itself. That was why he wanted Mogro
+to facilitate a landing at Santander. Thus, as the Christians had
+originally come down from the mountains of the Asturias to drive the
+Moors from the Peninsula, so should the forces of Don John descend again
+to reconquer it for himself.
+
+It was a madman's fancy utterly--fruit of a brain that ambition had
+completely addled; and I do not believe that Don John had any part in it
+or even knowledge of it. Escovedo saw himself, perhaps, upon the throne
+of one or the other of the two kingdoms as Don John's vice-regent--for
+himself and for me, if I stood by him, there was such power in store as
+no man ever dreamed of. If I refused, he would destroy me.
+
+“And if I go straight to the Escurial and lay this project before the
+King?” I asked him.
+
+He smiled.
+
+“You will force me to tell him that it is a lie invented to deliver you
+from a man who can destroy you by the knowledge he possesses, knowledge
+which I shall at once impart to Philip. Think what that will mean to
+you. Think,” he added very wickedly, “what it will mean to her.”
+
+As I am a Christian, I believe that had it been but the consideration
+of myself I would have flung him from my house upon the instant and bade
+him do his worst. But he was well advised to remind me of her. Whatever
+Philip's punishment of me, it would be as nothing to his punishment of
+that long-suffering woman who had betrayed him. Oh, I assure you it is
+a very evil, ill judged thing to have a king for rival, particularly a
+fish-souled tyrant of King Philip's kind.
+
+I was all limp with dread. I passed a hand across my brow, and found it
+chill and moist.
+
+“I am in your hands, Escovedo,” I confessed miserably.
+
+“Say, rather, that we are partners. Forget all else.” He was eager,
+joyous, believing all accomplished, such was his faith in my influence
+with Philip. “And now, Mogro for me, and England for Don John. About it
+with dispatch.”
+
+“The King is in retreat. We must wait some days.”
+
+“Till Easter, then.” And he held out his hand. I took it limply, thus
+clenching the bargain of infamy between us. What else was there for me.
+What, otherwise, was to become of Anne?
+
+Oh, I may have been self-seeking and made the most of my position, as
+was afterwards urged against me. I may have been extortionate and venal,
+and I may have taken regal bribes to expedite affairs. But always was
+I loyal and devoted to the King. Never once had I been bribed to aught
+that ran counter to his interests; never until now, when at a stroke I
+had sold my honour and pledged myself to this betrayal of my trust.
+
+Not in all Spain was there a more miserable man than I. All night I sat
+in the room where I was wont to work, and to my wife's entreaties that
+I should take some rest I answered that the affairs of Spain compelled
+attention. And when morning found me haggard and distraught came a
+courier from Philip with a letter.
+
+“I have letters from Don John,” he wrote, “more insistent than ever in
+their tone. He demands the instant dispatch of money and Escovedo. I
+have been thinking, and this letter confirms my every fear. I have cause
+to apprehend some stroke that may disturb the public peace and ruin
+Don John himself if he is allowed to retain Escovedo any longer in his
+service. I am writing to Don John that I will see to it that Escovedo is
+promptly dispatched as he requests. Do you see him dispatched, then,
+in precise accordance with his deserts, and this at once, before the
+villain kills us.”
+
+My skin bristled as I read. Here was fatality itself at work. Philip was
+at his old fears--and, Heaven knows, he was not without justification of
+his intuitions, as I had learnt by now--that Escovedo meditated the most
+desperate measures. He was urging me again, as he had urged me before,
+and more than once, to dispatch this traitor whose restless existence so
+perpetually perturbed him. I was not deceived as to the meaning he set
+upon that word “dispatch.” I knew quite well the nature of the dispatch
+he bade me contrive.
+
+Conceive now my temptation. Escovedo dead, I should be safe, and Anne
+would be safe, and this without any such betrayal as was being forced
+upon me. And that death the King himself commanded a secret, royal
+execution, such as his confessor Frey Diego de Chaves has since defended
+as an expedient measure within the royal prerogative. He had commanded
+it before quite unequivocally, but always I had stood between Escovedo
+and the sword. Was I to continue in that attitude? Could it humanly be
+expected of me in all the circumstances again to seek to deflect the
+royal wrath from that too daring head? I was, after all, only a man,
+subject to the temptations of the flesh, and there was a woman whom I
+loved better than my own salvation to whose peace and happiness that
+fellow Escovedo was become a menace.
+
+If he lived, and for as long as he lived, she and I were to be as slaves
+of his will, and I was to drag my honour and my loyalty through the foul
+kennels of his disordered ambitions. And the King my master was bidding
+me clearly see to it that he died immediately.
+
+I sat down and wrote at once, and the burden of my letter was: “Be more
+explicit, Sire. What manner of dispatch is it your will that Escovedo
+should be given?”
+
+On the morrow, which was Thursday of Holy Week, that note of mine
+was returned to me, and on the margin of it, in Philip's own hand,
+Escovedo's death-warrant. “I mean that it would be well to hasten the
+death of this rascal before some act of his should render it too late;
+for he never rests, nor will anything turn him from his usual ways. Do
+it, then, and do it quickly, before he kills us.”
+
+There was no more to be said. My instructions were clear and definite.
+Obedience alone remained. I went about it.
+
+Just as all my life I have been blessed with the staunchest friends, so
+have I, too, been blessed with the most faithful servants. And of these
+none was more faithful than my steward, Diego Martinez, unless, indeed,
+it be my equerry, Gil de Mesa, who to this day follows my evil fortunes.
+But Mesa at that time was as yet untried, whilst in Diego I knew that I
+had a man devoted to me heart and soul, a man who would allow himself to
+be torn limb from limb on the rack on my behalf.
+
+I placed the affair in Diego's hands. I told him that I was acting
+under orders from the King, and that the thing at issue was the private
+execution of a dangerous traitor, who could not be brought to trial lest
+there he should impeach of complicity one whose birth and blood must be
+shielded from all scandal. I bade him get what men he required, and see
+the thing done with the least possible delay. And thereupon I instantly
+withdrew from Madrid and went to Alcala.
+
+Diego engaged five men to assist him in the task; these were a young
+officer named Enriquez, a lackey named Rubio, the two Aragonese--Mesa
+and Insausti--and another whose name was Bosque. He clearly meant to
+take no chances, but I incline to think that he overdid precaution, and
+employed more hands than were necessary for the job. However, the six of
+them lurked in waiting on three successive nights for Escovedo near his
+house in the little square of Santiago. At last, on the night of Easter
+Monday, March 31st, they caught him and dispatched him. He died almost
+before he realized himself beset, from a sword-thrust with which
+Insausti transfixed him. But there were at least half a dozen wounds in
+the body when it was found. Diego, I have said, was a man who made quite
+certain.
+
+No sooner was it done than they dispersed, whilst the lackey Rubio,
+instantly quitting Madrid, brought me news of the deed to Alcala, and
+the assurance that no arrests had been made. But there was a great ado
+in Madrid upon the morrow, as you may imagine, for it is no everyday
+occurrence to find a royal secretary murdered in the streets.
+
+The alcaldes set out upon a rigorous search, and they began by arresting
+and questioning all who attempted to leave the city. On the next day
+they harassed with their perquisitions all those who let lodgings.
+They were still at this work in the evening when I returned to Madrid,
+brought back--as it would seem--from my country rest by the news of this
+murder of my friend and colleague. I bore myself as I should have done
+had I no knowledge of how the thing had been contrived. That was a
+necessity as imperative as it was odious, and no part of it more odious
+than the visit of condolence I was forced to pay to the Escovedo family,
+which I found plunged in grief.
+
+From the very outset suspicion pointed its finger at me, although there
+were no visible traces to connect me with the deed. Rumour, however,
+was astir, and as I had powerful friends, so, too, I had the powerful
+enemies which envy must always be breeding for men in high places
+such as mine. Escovedo's wife mistrusted me, though at first she seems
+equally to have suspected in this deed the hand of the Duke of Alva, who
+was hostile to Don John and all his creatures. Very soon, as a result of
+this, came the Court alcalde to visit and question me. His stated object
+was in the hope that I might give him information which would lead to
+the discovery of the assassin; but his real object, rendered apparent
+by the searching, insistent nature of his questions, was to lead me
+to incriminate myself. I presented a bold front. I pretended to see in
+this, perhaps, the work of the Flemish States. I deplored--that I might
+remind him of it--my absence from Madrid at the time.
+
+He was followed by another high official, who came in simulated
+friendship to warn me that certain rumours linking me with the deed were
+in circulation, in reality to trap me into some admission, to watch my
+countenance for some betraying sign.
+
+I endured it stoutly, but inwardly I was shaken, as I wrote to Philip,
+giving him full details of what had been said and what answers I had
+returned, what bitter draughts I had been forced to swallow.
+
+He wrote in reply: “I find that you answered very well. Continue to
+be prudent. They will tell you a thousand things, not for the sake
+of telling them, but in the hope of drawing something out of you.
+The bitter draughts you mention are inevitable. But use all the
+dissimulation and address of which you are capable.”
+
+We corresponded daily after that, and I told him of every step I took;
+how I kept my men about me, for fear that if they attempted to leave
+Madrid they would be arrested, and how, finally, I contrived their
+departure one by one, under conditions that placed them beyond all
+suspicion. Juan de Mesa set out for Aragon on a mission concerned with
+the administration of some property of the Princess of Eboli's. Rubio,
+Insausti, and Enriquez were each given an ensign's commission, bearing
+the King's own signature, and ordered to join the armies in various
+parts of Italy; the first was sent to Milan, the second to Sicily, and
+the last to Naples. Bosque went back to Aragon. Thus all were placed
+beyond the reach of the active justice of Castile, all save myself--and
+the King, who wrote to me expressing his satisfaction that there had
+been no arrests.
+
+But rumour continued to give tongue, and the burden of its tale was that
+the murder had been my work, in complicity with the Princess of Eboli.
+How they came to drag her name into the affair I do not know. It may
+have been pure malice trading upon its knowledge of the relations
+between us. She may have lent colour to the charge by her own
+precipitancy in denying it. She announced indignantly that she was
+being accused, almost before this had come to pass, and as indignantly
+protested against the accusation, and threatened those who dared to
+voice it.
+
+The end of it all was that, a month later, the Escovedo family drew up
+a memorial for the consideration of the King, in which they laid the
+murder to my charge, and Philip consented to receive Don Pedro de
+Escovedo--the dead man's son--and promised him that he would consider
+the memorial, and that he would deliver up to justice whomsoever he
+thought right. He was embarrassed by these demands of the Escovedos, my
+own danger, his duty as king, and his interests as an accomplice, or,
+rather, as the originator of the deed.
+
+The Escovedos were powerfully seconded by Vasquez, the Secretary of the
+Council, a member of Alva's party, a secret enemy of my own, consumed
+by jealousy of my power, and no longer fearing to disclose himself and
+assail me since he believed himself possessed of the means of ruining
+me. He spoke darkly to the King of a woman concerned in this business,
+without yet daring to mention Anne by name, and urged him for the
+satisfaction of the State, where evil rumours were abroad, to order an
+inquiry that should reveal the truth of the affair.
+
+It was Philip himself who informed me of what had passed, sneering at
+the wildness of rumours that missed the truth so wildly, and when I
+evinced distress at my position, he sought to reassure me; he even wrote
+to me after I had left him: “As long as I live you have nothing to fear.
+Others may change, but I never change, as you should know who know me.”
+
+That was a letter that epitomized many others written me in those days
+to Madrid from the Escurial, whither he had returned. And those letters
+comforted me not only by their expressed assurances, but by the greater
+assurance implicit in them of the King's good faith. I had by now a
+great mass of his notes dealing with the Escovedo business, in almost
+every one of which he betrayed his own share as the chief murderer,
+showing that I was no more than his dutiful instrument in that
+execution. With those letters in my power what need I ever fear? Not
+Philip himself would dare to betray me.
+
+But I went now in a new dread--the dread of being myself murdered. There
+were threats of it in the air. The Escovedo family and their partisans,
+who included all my enemies, and even some members of the Eboli family,
+who considered that I had sullied the honour of their name by my
+relations with Anne, talked openly of vengeance, so that I was driven to
+surround myself by armed attendants whenever now I went abroad.
+
+I appealed again to Philip to protect me. I even begged him to permit
+me to retire from my Ministerial office, that thus the clamant envy that
+inspired my persecution might be deprived of its incentive. Finally,
+I begged him to order me to stand my trial, that thus, since I was
+confident that no evidence could be produced against me, I should force
+an acquittal from the courts and lay the matter to rest for all time.
+
+“Go and see the President of Castile,” he bade me. “Tell him the causes
+that led to the death of Escovedo, and then let him talk to Don Pedro de
+Escovedo and to Vasquez, so as to induce them to desist.”
+
+I did as I was bidden, and when the president, who was the Bishop of
+Pati, had heard me, he sent for my two chief enemies.
+
+“I have, Don Pedro,” he said, “your memorial to the King in which you
+accuse Don Antonio Perez of the murder of your father. And I am to
+assure you in the King's name that justice will be done upon the
+murderer, whoever he may be, without regard to rank. But I am first
+to engage you to consider well what evidence you have to justify your
+charge against a person of such consideration. For should your proofs be
+insufficient I warn you that matters are likely to take a bad turn for
+yourself. Finally, before you answer me, let me add, upon my word as a
+priest, that Antonio Perez is as innocent as I am.”
+
+It was the truth--the absolute truth, so far as it was known to Philip
+and to the Bishop--for, indeed, I was no more than the instrument of my
+master's will.
+
+Don Pedro looked foolish, almost awed. He was as a man who suddenly
+becomes aware that he has missed stepping over the edge of a chasm in
+which destruction awaited him. He may have bethought him at last that
+all his rantings had no better authority than suspicions which no
+evidence could support.
+
+“Sir,” he faltered, “since you tell me this, I pledge you my word on
+behalf of myself and my family to make no more mention of this death
+against Don Antonio.”
+
+The Bishop swung then upon Vasquez, and his brow became furrowed with
+contemptuous anger.
+
+“As for you, sir, you have heard--which was more than your due, for
+it is not your business by virtue of your office, nor have you any
+obligations towards the deceased, such as excuse Don Pedro's rashness,
+to pursue the murderers of Escovedo. Your solicitude in this matter
+brings you under a suspicion the more odious since you are a priest.
+I warn you, sir, to abstain, for this affair is different far from
+anything that you imagine.”
+
+But envy is a fierce goad, a consuming, irresistible passion, corroding
+wisdom and deaf to all prudent counsels. Vasquez could not abstain.
+Ridden by his devil of spite and jealousy, he would not pause until he
+had destroyed either himself or me.
+
+Since Escovedo's immediate family now washed their hands of the affair,
+Vasquez sought out more distant relatives of the murdered man, and
+stirred them up until they went in their turn to pester the courts,
+not only with accusations against myself, but with accusations that now
+openly linked with mine the name of the Princess of Eboli.
+
+We were driven to the brink of despair, and in this Anne wrote to
+Philip. It was a madness. She made too great haste to excuse herself.
+She demanded protection from Vasquez and the evil rumours he was putting
+abroad, implored the King to make an example of men who could push
+so far their daring and irreverence, and to punish that Moorish dog
+Vasquez--I dare say there was Moorish blood in the fellow's veins--as he
+deserved.
+
+I think our ruin dated from that letter. Philip sent for me to the
+Escurial. He wished to know more precisely what the accusations were.
+I told him, denying them. Then he desired of the Princess proof of what
+she alleged against Vasquez, and she had no difficulty in satisfying
+him. He seemed to believe our assurance that all was lies. Yet he did
+not move to punish Vasquez. But then I knew that sluggishness was his
+great characteristic. “Time and I are one,” he would say when I pressed
+on matters.
+
+After that it was open war in the Council between me and Vasquez. The
+climax came when I was at the Escurial. I had sent a servant to Vasquez
+for certain State papers to be submitted to the King. He brought them,
+and folded in them a fiercely denunciatory letter full of insults and
+injuries, not the least of which was the imputation that my blood was
+not clean, my caste not good.
+
+In a passion I sought Philip, beside myself almost, trembling under the
+insult.
+
+“See, Sire, what this Moorish thief has dared to write me. It transcends
+all bearing. Either you take satisfaction for me of these insults or you
+permit me to take it for myself.”
+
+He appeared to share my indignation, promised to give me leave to
+proceed against the man, but bade me first wait a while until certain
+business in the competent hands of Vasquez should be transacted. But
+weeks grew into months, and nothing was done. We were in April of '79,
+a year after the murder, and I was grown so uneasy, so sensitive to
+dangers about me, that I dared no longer visit Anne. And then Philip's
+confessor, Frey Diego de Chaves, came to me one day with a request on
+the King's part that I should make my peace with Vasquez.
+
+“If he will retract,” was my condition. And Chaves went to see my enemy.
+What passed between them, what Vasquez may have told him, what he may
+have added to those rumours of my relations with Anne, I do not know.
+But I know that from that date there was a change in the King's attitude
+towards me, a change in the tone of the letters that he sent me, and,
+this continuing, I wrote to him at last releasing him from his promise
+to afford me satisfaction against Vasquez, assuring him that since,
+himself, he could forgive the injuries against us both, I could easily
+forgive those I had received myself, and finally begging his permission
+to resign my office and retire.
+
+Anne had contributed to this. She had sent for me, and in tears had
+besought me to make my peace with Vasquez since the King desired it,
+and this was no time in which to attempt resistance to his wishes. I
+remained with her some hours, comforting her, for she was in the very
+depths of despair, persuaded that we were both ruined, and inconsolable
+in the thought that the blame of this was all her own.
+
+It may be that I was watched, perhaps more closely than I imagined. It
+may be that spies were close about us, set by the jealous Philip, who
+desired confirmation or refutation of the things he had been told, the
+rumours that were gnawing at his vitals.
+
+I left her, little dreaming that I was never to see her again in this
+life. That night I was arrested at my house by the Court alcalde upon an
+order from the King. The paltry reason advanced was my refusal to make
+my peace with Vasquez, and this when already the King was in possession
+of my letter acknowledging my readiness to do so; for the King was in
+Madrid, unknown to me. He came, it seems, that he might be present at
+another arrest effected that same night. From the porch of the Church
+of Santa Maria Mayor, he watched his alguazils enter the house of the
+Princess of Eboli, bring her forth, bestow her in a waiting carriage
+that was to bear her away to the fortress of Pinto, to an imprisonment
+which was later exchanged for exile to Pastrana lasting as long as life
+itself.
+
+To sin against a Prince is worse, it seems, than to sin against God
+Himself. For God forgives, but princes, wounded in their vanity and
+pride, know nothing of forgiveness.
+
+I was kept for four months a prisoner by the alcalde, no charge being
+preferred against me. Then, because my health was suffering grievously
+from confinement and the anxiety of suspense, I was moved to my own
+house, and detained there for another eight months under close guard. My
+friends besought the King in vain either to restore me to liberty or
+to bring me to trial. He told them the affair was of a nature very
+different from anything they deemed, and so evaded all demands.
+
+In the summer of 1580, Philip went to Lisbon to take formal possession
+of the crown of Portugal, which he had inherited. I sent my wife to him
+to intercede for me. But he refused to see her, and so I was left to
+continue the victim of his vindictive lethargy. After a year of this,
+upon my giving a formal promise to renounce all hostility towards
+Vasquez, and never seek to do him harm in any way, I was accorded some
+degree of liberty. I was allowed to go out and to receive visitors, but
+not to visit any one myself.
+
+Followed a further pause. Vasquez was now a man of power, for my party
+had fallen with me, and his own had supplanted it in the royal councils.
+It was by his work that at last, in '84, I was brought to trial upon a
+charge of corruption and misappropriation. I knew that my enemies had,
+meanwhile, become possessed of Enriquez, and that he was ready to give
+evidence, that he was making no secret of his share in the death of
+Escovedo, and that the King was being pressed by the Escovedos to bring
+me to trial upon the charge of murder. Instead, the other charge alone
+was preferred.
+
+It was urged against me that I had kept a greater state than any grandee
+of Spain, that when I went abroad I did so with a retinue befitting
+a prince, that I had sold my favour and accepted bribes from foreign
+princes to guard their interests with the King of Spain.
+
+They sentenced me to two years' imprisonment in a fortress, to be
+followed by ten years of exile, and I was to make, within nine days,
+restitution of some twenty million maravedis*--the alleged extent of
+my misappropriations--besides some jewels and furniture which I had
+received from the Princess of Eboli, and which I was now ordered to
+deliver up to the heirs of the late Prince.
+
+
+*Ten thousand pounds, but with at least five times the present
+purchasing power of that sum.
+
+Perquisitions had been made in my house, and my papers ransacked. Well
+I knew what they had sought. For the thought of the letters that had
+passed between Philip and myself at the time of Escovedo's death must
+now be troubling his peace of mind. I had taken due precautions when
+first I had seen the gathering clouds foreshadowing this change of
+weather. I had bestowed those papers safely in two iron-bound chests
+which had been concealed away against the time when I might need them
+to save my neck. And because now he failed to find what he
+sought--the evidence of his own share in the deed and his present base
+duplicity--Philip dared not slip the leash from those dogs who would
+be at my throat for the murder of Escovedo. That was why he bade them
+proceed against me only on the lesser charge of corruption.
+
+I was taken to the fortress of Turruegano, and there they came to
+demand of me the surrender of my papers which the alcalde had failed to
+discover at my house. I imagined the uneasiness of Philip in dispatching
+those emissaries. I almost laughed as I refused. Those papers were my
+buckler against worse befalling me than had befallen already. Even now,
+if too hard pressed, I might find the opportunity of breaking my bonds
+by means of them. I sometimes wonder why I did not apply myself to that.
+Yet there is small cause for wonder, really. From boyhood, almost, King
+Philip had been my master. Loyalty to him was a habit that went to the
+very roots of my being. I had served him without conscience and without
+scruple, and the notion of betraying him, save as a very last and very
+desperate resource, was inconceivable. I do not think he ever knew the
+depth and breadth of that loyalty of mine.
+
+My refusal led those sons of dogs to attempt to frighten my wife with
+threats of unmentionable horrors unless she delivered up the papers
+I had secreted. She and our children were threatened with perpetual
+imprisonment on bread and water if she persisted in refusing to
+surrender them. But she held out against all threats, and remained firm
+even under the oily persecution to the same end of Philip's confessor,
+Frey Diego. Finally, I was notified that, in view of her stubbornness
+and my own, she and our children were cast into prison, and that there
+they would remain until I saw fit to become submissive to the royal
+will.
+
+It is a subtle form of mental torture that will bid a man contemplate
+the suffering for his sake to which those who are dear to him are being
+subjected.
+
+I raged and stormed before the officer who brought me this infamous
+piece of news. I gave vent to my impotent anger in blasphemous
+expressions that were afterwards to be used against me. The officer was
+subtly sympathetic.
+
+“I understand your grief, Don Antonio,” he said. “Believe me, I feel
+for you--so much that I urge you to set an end to the captivity of those
+dear ones who are innocent, who are suffering for your sake.”
+
+“And so make an end of myself?” I asked him fiercely.
+
+“Reflection may show that even that is your duty in the circumstances.”
+
+I looked into his smug face, and I was within an ace of striking him.
+Then I controlled myself, and my will was snapped.
+
+“Very well,” I said. “The papers shall be surrendered. Let my steward,
+Diego Martinez, come to me here, and he shall receive my instructions
+to deliver the chests containing them to my wife, that she in turn may
+deliver them to the King.”
+
+He withdrew, well pleased. No doubt he would take great credit to
+himself for this. Within three days, such haste did they make, my
+faithful steward stood before me in my prison at Turruegano.
+
+You conceive the despair that had overwhelmed me after giving my
+consent, the consciousness that it was my life I was surrendering with
+those papers,--that without them I should be utterly defenceless. But
+in the three days that were sped I had been thinking, and not quite in
+vain.
+
+Martinez left me with precise instructions, as a result of which those
+two iron-bound chests, locked and sealed, were delivered, together
+with the keys, to the royal confessor. Martinez was asked what they
+contained.
+
+“I do not know,” he answered. “My orders are merely to deliver them.”
+
+I can conceive the King's relief and joy in his conviction that thus had
+he drawn my teeth, that betide now what might, I could never defend or
+justify myself. The immediate sequel took me by surprise. We were at
+the end of '85, and my health was suffering from my confinement and
+its privations. And now my captivity was mitigated. My wife Juana even
+succeeded in obtaining permission that I should be taken home to Madrid,
+and there for fourteen months I enjoyed a half liberty, and received the
+visits of my old friends, among whom were numbered most of the members
+of the Court.
+
+I imagined at first that since my teeth were drawn the King despised me,
+and intended nothing further. But I was soon to be disillusioned on that
+score. It began with the arrest of Martinez on a charge of complicity in
+the murder of Escovedo. And then one day I was again arrested, without
+warning, and carried off for a while to the fortress of Pinto. Thence
+I was brought back in close captivity to Madrid, and there I learnt at
+last what had been stirring.
+
+In the previous summer King Philip had gone into Aragon to preside
+over the Cortes, and Vasquez, who had gone with him, had seized
+the opportunity to examine the ensign Enriquez, who had, meanwhile,
+denounced himself of complicity in the murder of Escovedo. Enriquez made
+a full confession--turned accuser under a promise of full pardon
+for himself and charged Mesa, Rubio, and my steward Martinez with
+complicity, denouncing Martinez as the ringleader of the business. The
+other two, Insausti and Bosque, were already dead.
+
+Immediately Vasquez attempted to seize the survivors. But Mesa had gone
+to earth in Aragon, and Rubio was with him. Martinez alone remained,
+and him they seized and questioned. He remained as cool and master of
+himself as he was true and loyal to me. Their threats made no impression
+on him. He maintained that the tale was all a lie, begotten of spite,
+that I had been Escovedo's best friend, that I had been greatly
+afflicted by his death, and that no man could have done more than I to
+discover his real murderers. They confronted him with Enriquez, and
+the confrontation no whit disturbed him. He handled the traitor
+contemptuously as a perjured, suborned witness, a false servant, a man
+who, as he proceeded to show, was a scoundrel steeped in crime, whose
+word was utterly worthless, and who, no doubt, had been bought to bring
+these charges against his sometime master.
+
+The situation, thanks to Martinez's stoutness, had reached a deadlock.
+Between the assertions of one man, who was revealed to the judges for a
+worthless scoundrel, and the denials of the other, against whom nothing
+was known, it was impossible for the court of inquiry to reach any
+conclusion. At least another witness must be obtained. And Vasquez
+laboured with all his might and arts and wiles to draw Rubio out of
+Aragon into the clutches of the justice of Castile. But he laboured in
+vain, for I had secretly found the means to instruct my trusty Mesa to
+retain the fellow where he was.
+
+In this inconclusive state of things the months dragged on and my
+captivity continued. I wrote to Philip, imploring his mercy, complaining
+of these unjust delays on the part of Vasquez, which threatened to go
+on forever, and begging His Majesty to command the conclusion of the
+affair. That was in August of '89. You see how time had sped. All that
+came of my appeal was at first an increased rigour of imprisonment, and
+then a visit from Vasquez to examine and question me upon the
+testimony of Enriquez. As you can imagine, the attempt to lure me into
+self-betrayal was completely fruitless. My enemy withdrew, baffled, to
+go question my wife, but without any better success.
+
+Nevertheless, Vasquez proclaimed the charge established against myself
+and Martinez, and allowed us ten days in which to prepare our answer.
+Immediately upon that Don Pedro de Escovedo lodged a formal indictment
+against us, and I was put into irons.
+
+To rebut the evidence of one single, tainted witness I produced six
+witnesses of high repute, including the Secretary of the Council of
+Aragon. They testified for me that I was at Alcala at the time of
+Escovedo's death, that I had always been Escovedo's friend, that I was
+a good Christian incapable of such a deed, and that Enriquez as an evil
+man whose word was worthless, a false witness inspired by vengeance.
+
+Thus, in spite of the ill-will of my judges and the hatred of my
+enemies, it was impossible legally to condemn me upon the evidence.
+There were documents enough in existence to have proved my part in the
+affair; but not one of them dared the King produce, since they would
+also show me to have been no more than his instrument. And so, desiring
+my death as it was now clear he did, he must sit impotently brooding
+there with what patience he could command, like a gigantic, evil spider
+into whose web I obstinately refused to fling myself.
+
+My hopes began to revive. When at last the court announced that it
+postponed judgment whilst fresh evidence was sought, there was an outcry
+of indignation on all sides. This was a tyrannical abuse of power,
+men said; and I joined my voice to theirs to demand that judgment
+be pronounced and my liberty restored to me, pointing out that I
+had already languished years in captivity without any charge against
+me--beyond that of corruption, which had been purged by now--having been
+established.
+
+Then at last the King stirred in his diabolical underground manner. He
+sent his confessor to me in prison. The friar was mild and benign.
+
+“My poor friend,” he said, “why do you allow yourself to suffer in this
+fashion, when a word from you can set a term to it? Confess the deed
+without fear, since at the same time you can advance a peremptory reason
+of State to justify it.”
+
+It was too obvious a trap. Did I make confession, indeed, upon such
+grounds, they would demand of me proof of what I asserted; and meanwhile
+the documents to prove it had been extorted from me and had passed into
+the King's possession. In the result I should be ruined completely as
+one who, to the crime of murder, added a wicked, insidious falsehood
+touching the honour of his King.
+
+But I said naught of this. I met guile with guile. “Alas! I have been
+tempted,” I answered him. “But I thank Heaven I have known even in my
+extremity how to resist the temptation of such disloyalty. I cannot
+forget, Brother Diego, that amongst the letters from the King was one
+that said, 'Be not troubled by anything your enemies may do against you.
+I shall not abandon you, and be sure their animosity cannot prevail. But
+you must understand that it must not be discovered that this death took
+place by my order.”'
+
+“But if the King were to release you from that command?” he asked.
+
+“When His Majesty in his goodness and generosity sends me a note in his
+own hand to say, 'You may confess that it was by my express order that
+you contrived the death of Escovedo,' then I shall thankfully account
+myself absolved from the silence his service imposes on me.”
+
+He looked at me narrowly. He may have suspected that I saw through the
+transparent device to ruin me, and that in a sense I mocked him with my
+answer.
+
+He withdrew, and for some days nothing further happened. Then the
+rigours of my captivity were still further increased. I was allowed
+to communicate with no one, and even the alguazil who guarded me was
+forbidden, under pain of death, to speak to me.
+
+And in January I was visited by Vasquez, who brought me a letter from
+the King, not, indeed, addressed to me and in the terms I had suggested,
+but to Vasquez himself, and it ran:
+
+You may tell Antonio Perez from me, and, if necessary, show him this
+letter, that he is aware of my knowledge of having ordered him to put
+Escovedo to death and of the motives which he told me existed for this
+measure; and that as it imports for the satisfaction of my conscience
+that it be ascertained whether or not those motives were sufficient, I
+order him to state them in the fullest detail, and to advance proof of
+what he then alleged to me, which is not unknown to yourself, since I
+have clearly imparted it to you. When I shall have seen his answers, and
+the reasons he advances, I shall give order that such measures be taken
+as may befit.
+
+I, THE KING
+
+You see what a twist he had given to the facts. It was I who had urged
+the death of Escovedo; it was I who had advanced reasons which he had
+considered sufficient, trusting to my word; and it was because of this
+he had consented to give the order. Let me confess so much, let me prove
+it, and prove, too, that the motives I had advanced were sound ones, or
+I must be destroyed. That was all clear. And that false king held fast
+the two trunks of papers that would have given the lie to this atrocious
+note of his, that would have proved that again and again I had shielded
+Escovedo from the death his king designed for him.
+
+I looked into the face of my enemy, and there was a twisted smile on my
+lips.
+
+“What fresh trap is this?” I asked him. “King Philip never wrote that
+note.”
+
+“You should know his hand. Look closer,” he bade me harshly.
+
+“I know his hand--none better. But I claim, too, to know something of
+his heart. And I know that it is not the heart of a perjured liar such
+as penned those lines.”
+
+That was as near as a man dared to go in expressing his true opinion of
+a prince.
+
+“For the rest,” I said, “I do not understand it. I know nothing of the
+death of Escovedo. I have nothing to add to what already I have said in
+open court unless it be to protest against you, who are a passionate,
+hostile judge.”
+
+Six times in the month that followed did Vasquez come to me, accompanied
+now by a notary, to press me to confess. At last, seeing that no
+persuasions could bend my obstinacy, they resorted to other measures.
+
+“You will drive us to use the torture upon you so that we may loosen
+your tongue!” snarled Vasquez fiercely, enraged by my obduracy.
+
+I laughed at the threat. I was a noble of Spain, by birth immune from
+torture. They dared not violate the law. But they did dare. There was
+no law, human or divine, the King was not prepared to violate so that
+he might slake his vengeance upon the man who had dared to love where he
+had loved.
+
+They delivered me naked into the hands of the executioner, and I
+underwent the question at the rope. They warned me that if I lost my
+life or the use of any of my limbs, it would be solely by my own fault.
+I advanced my nobility and the state of my health as all-sufficient
+reasons why the torture should not be applied to me, reminding them that
+for eleven years already I had suffered persecution and detention, so
+that my vigour was all gone.
+
+For the last time they summoned me to answer as the King desired. And
+then, since I still refused, the executioner was recalled, he crossed my
+arms upon my breast, bound them securely, thrust a long rod beneath the
+cord, and, seizing one end of this in either hand, gave the first turn.
+
+I screamed. I could not help it, enfeebled as I was. But my spirit being
+stouter than my flesh, I still refused to answer. Not indeed, until
+they had given the rope eight turns, not until it had sliced through my
+muscles and crushed the bone of one of my arms, so that to this day
+it remains of little use to me, did they conquer me. I had reached the
+limit of endurance.
+
+“In Christ's name, release me!” I gasped. “I will say anything you
+wish.”
+
+Released at last, half swooning, smothered in blood, agonized by pain,
+I confessed that it was myself had procured the death of Escovedo for
+reasons of State and acting upon the orders of the King. The notary made
+haste to write down my words, and, when I had done, it was demanded of
+me that I should advance proof of the State reasons which I had alleged.
+
+Oh, I had never been under any delusion on that score, as I have shown
+you. The demand did not take me by surprise at all. I was waiting
+for it, knowing that my answer to it would pronounce my doom. But I
+delivered it none the less.
+
+“My papers have been taken from me, and without them I can prove
+nothing. With them I could prove my words abundantly.”
+
+They left me then. On the morrow, as I afterwards learnt, they read my
+confession to my devoted Martinez, and the poor fellow, who hitherto had
+remained staunch and silent under every test, seeing that there was no
+further purpose to be served by silence, gave them the confirmation they
+desired of Enriquez's accusation.
+
+Meanwhile, I was very ill, in a raging fever as you may well conceive,
+and in answer to my prayer my own doctor was permitted to visit me in
+prison. He announced that he found my case extremely grave, and that I
+must perish unless I were relieved. As a consequence, and considering my
+weakness and the uselessness just then of both my arms, one of which was
+broken, first a page of my own, then other servants, and lastly my wife
+were allowed to come and tend me.
+
+That was at the end of February. By the middle of April my wounds had
+healed, I had recovered the use of my limbs, though one remains half
+maimed for life, and my condition had undergone a very considerable
+improvement. But of this I allowed no sign to show, no suspicion even. I
+continued to lie there day after day in a state of complete collapse,
+so that whilst I was quickly gathering strength it was believed by my
+gaolers that I was steadily sinking, and that I should soon be dead.
+
+My only hope, you see, lay now in evasion, and it was for this that
+I was thus craftily preparing. Once out of Castile I could deal with
+Philip, and he should not find me as impotent, as toothless as he
+believed. But I go too fast.
+
+One night at last, on April 20th, by when all measures had been
+concerted, and Gil de Mesa awaited me outside with horses--the whole
+having been contrived by my dear wife--I made the attempt. My apparent
+condition had naturally led to carelessness in guarding me. Who would
+guard a helpless, dying man? Soon after dark I rose, donned over my own
+clothes a petticoat and a hooded cloak belonging to my wife, and thus
+muffed walked out of my cell, past the guards, and so out of the prison
+unchallenged. I joined Gil de Mesa, discarded my feminine disguise,
+mounted and set out with him upon that ninety-mile journey into Aragon.
+
+We reached Saragossa in safety, and there my first act was to surrender
+myself to the Grand Justiciary of Aragon to stand my trial for the
+murder of Escovedo with which I was charged.
+
+It must have sent a shudder through the wicked Philip when he received
+news of that. A very stricken man he must have been, for he must
+have suspected something of the truth, that if I dared, after all the
+evidence amassed now against me, including my own confession under
+torture, openly to seek a judgment, it was because I must possess some
+unsuspected means of establishing all the truth--the truth that must
+make his own name stink in the nostrils of the world. And so it was.
+Have you supposed that Antonio Perez, who had spent his life in studying
+the underground methods of burrowing statecraft, had allowed himself to
+be taken quite so easily in their snare? Have you imagined that when I
+sent for Diego Martinez to come to me at Turruegano and instructed him
+touching the surrender of those two chests of documents, that I did
+not also instruct him carefully touching the abstraction in the first
+instance of a few serviceable papers and the renewal of the seals that
+should conceal the fact that he had tampered with the chests? If you
+have thought that, you have done me less than justice. There had been so
+much correspondence between Philip and myself, so many notes had passed
+touching the death of Escovedo, and there was that habit of Philip's of
+writing his replies in marginal notes to my own letters and so returning
+them, that it was unthinkable he should have kept them all in his
+memory, and the abstraction of three or four could not conceivably be
+detected by him.
+
+Ever since then those few letters, of a most deeply incriminating
+character, selected with great acumen by my steward, had secretly
+remained in the possession of my wife. Yet I had not dared produce them
+in Castile, knowing that I should instantly have been deprived of them,
+and with them of my last hope. They remained concealed against precisely
+such a time as this, when, beyond the immediate reach of Philip's
+justice, I should startle the world and clear my own character by their
+production.
+
+You know the ancient privileges enjoyed by Aragon, privileges of which
+the Aragonese are so jealous that a King of Castile may not assume the
+title of King of Aragon until, bareheaded, he shall have received from
+the Grand Justiciary of Aragon the following admonition: “We, who are of
+equal worth and greater power than you, constitute you our king on the
+condition that you respect our privileges, and not otherwise.” And to
+that the king must solemnly bind himself by oath, whose violation would
+raise in revolt against him the very cobbles of the streets. No king of
+Spain had ever yet been found to dare violate the constitution and
+the fueros of Aragon, the independence of their cortes, or parliament,
+composed of the four orders of the State. The Grand Justiciary's Court
+was superior to any royally constituted tribunal in the kingdom; to
+that court it was the privilege of any man to appeal for justice in any
+cause; and there justice was measured out with a stern impartiality that
+had not its like in any other State of Europe.
+
+That was the tribunal to which I made surrender of my person and my
+cause. There was an attempt on the part of Philip to seize me and drag
+me back to Castile and his vengeance. His officers broke into the prison
+for that purpose, and already I was in their power, when the men of the
+Justiciary, followed by an excited mob, which threatened open rebellion
+at this violation of their ancient rights, delivered me from their
+hands.
+
+Baffled in this--and I can imagine his fury, which has since been vented
+on the Aragonese--Philip sent his representatives and his jurists to
+accuse me before the Court of the Grand Justiciary and to conduct my
+prosecution.
+
+The trial began, exciting the most profound interest, not only in
+Aragon, but also in Castile, which, as I afterwards learnt, had openly
+rejoiced at my escape. It proceeded with the delays and longueurs that
+are inseparable from the sluggish majesty of the law. One of these
+pauses I wrote to Philip, inviting him to desist, and to grant me the
+liberty to live out my days in peace with my family in some remote
+corner of his kingdom. I warned him that I was not helpless before his
+persecution, as he imagined; that whilst I had made surrender of two
+chests of papers, I yet retained enough authentic documents--letters in
+his own hand--to make my innocence and his guilt apparent in a startling
+degree, with very evil consequences to himself.
+
+His answer was to seize my wife and children and cast them into prison,
+and then order the courts of Madrid to pronounce sentence of death
+against me for the murder of Escovedo. Such were the sops with which he
+sought to quench his vindictive rage.
+
+Thereupon the trial proceeded. I prepared my long memorial of the
+affair, supporting it with proofs in the shape of those letters I had
+retained. And then at last Philip of Spain took fright. He was warned
+by one of his representatives that there was little doubt I should be
+acquitted on all counts, and, too late, he sought to save his face by
+ordering the cessation of the prosecution he had instructed.
+
+He stated that since I had chosen a line of defence, to answer which--as
+it could be answered--it would be necessary to touch upon matters of
+a secrecy that was inviolable, and to introduce personages whose
+reputation and honour was of more consequence to the State than the
+condemnation of Antonio Perez, he preferred to renounce the prosecution
+before the tribunal of Aragon. But he added a certificate upon his royal
+word to the effect that my crimes were greater than had ever been the
+crimes of any man, and that, whilst he renounced the prosecution before
+the courts of Aragon, he retained the right to demand of me an account
+of my actions before any other tribunal at any future time.
+
+My acquittal followed immediately. And immediately again that was
+succeeded by fresh charges against me on behalf of the King. First
+it was sought to prove that I had procured the death of two of my
+servants--a charge which I easily dispersed by proving them to have
+died natural deaths. Then it was sought to prosecute me on the charge of
+corruption, for which I had once already been prosecuted, condemned, and
+punished. Confidently I demanded my release, and Philip must have ground
+his teeth in rage to see his prey escaping him, to see himself the butt
+of scorn and contempt for the wrongs that it became clear he had done
+me.
+
+One weapon remained to him, and a terrible weapon this--the Holy Office
+of the Inquisition, a court before which all temporal courts must bow
+and quail. He launched its power against me, and behold me, in the
+moment when I accounted myself the victor in the unequal contest,
+accused of the dread sin of heresy. Words lightly weighed--uttered by me
+in prison under stress--had been zealously gathered up by spies.
+
+On one occasion I had exclaimed: “I think God sleeps where my affairs
+are concerned, and I am in danger of losing my faith.” The Holy Office
+held this to be a scandalous proposition, offensive to pious ears.
+
+Again, when I heard of the arrest of my wife and children I had cried
+out in rage: “God sleeps! God sleeps! There cannot be a God!”
+
+This they argued at length to be rank heresy, since it is man's duty
+positively to believe, and who does not believe is an infidel.
+
+Yet again it seems I had exclaimed: “Should things so come to pass,
+I shall refuse to believe in God!” This was accounted blasphemous,
+scandalous, and not without suspicion of heresy.
+
+Upon these grounds the Supreme Council of the Inquisition at Madrid drew
+up its impeachment, and delivered it to the inquisitors of Aragon at
+Saragossa. These at once sent their familiars to demand the surrender of
+me from the Grand Justiciary, in whose hands I still remained. The Grand
+Justiciary incontinently refused to yield me up.
+
+Thereupon the three Inquisitors drew up a peremptory demand, addressed
+to the lieutenants of the Justiciary, summoning them by virtue of holy
+obedience, under pain of greater excommunication, of a fine in the case
+of each of them of one thousand ducats, and other penalties to which
+they might later be condemned, to deliver me up within three hours to
+the pursuivants of the Holy Office.
+
+This was the end of the Justiciary's resistance. He dared not refuse
+a demand so framed, and surrender of me was duly made. But the news
+of what was doing had run abroad. I had no lack of friends, whom I
+instantly warned of what was afoot, and they had seen to it that the
+knowledge spread in an inflammatory manner. Saragossa began to stir at
+once. Here was a thinly masked violation of their ancient privileges. If
+they suffered this precedent of circumventing their rights, what was
+to become of their liberties in future, who would be secure against an
+unjust persecution? For their sympathies were all with me throughout
+that trial.
+
+I was scarcely in the prison of the Holy Office before the dread cry of
+Contrafueros! was ringing through the streets of Saragossa, summoning
+the citizens to arm and come forth in defence of their inviolable
+rights. They stormed the palace of the Grand Justiciary, demanded that
+he should defend the fueros, to whose guardianship he had been elected.
+Receiving no satisfaction, they attacked the palace of the Inquisition,
+clamouring insistently that I should immediately be returned to the
+Justiciary's prison, whence I had so unwarrantably been taken.
+
+The Inquisitors remained firm a while, but the danger was increasing
+hourly. In the end they submitted, for the sake of their skins, and
+considering, no doubt, a later vengeance for this outrage upon their
+holy authority. But it was not done until faggots had been stacked
+against the Holy House, and the exasperated mob had threatened to burn
+them out of it.
+
+“Castilian hypocrites!” had been the insurgent roar. “Surrender your
+prisoner, or you shall be roasted in the fire in which you roast so
+many!”
+
+Blood was shed in the streets. The King's representative died of wounds
+that he received in the affray, whilst the Viceroy himself was assailed
+and compelled to intervene and procure my deliverance.
+
+For the moment I was out of danger. But for the moment only. There was
+no question now of my enlargement. The Grand Justiciary, intimidated
+by what had taken place, by the precise expression of the King's
+will, dared not set me at liberty. And then the Holy Office, under the
+direction of the King, went to work in that subterranean way which it
+has made its own; legal quibbles were raised to soothe the sensibilities
+of the Aragonese with respect to my removal from the Justiciary's prison
+to that of the Holy Office. Strong forces of troops were brought to
+Saragossa to overawe the plebeian insolence, and so, by the following
+September, all the preliminaries being concluded, the Inquisition came
+in force and in form to take possession of me.
+
+The mob looked on and murmured; but it was intimidated by the show of
+ordered force; it had perhaps tired a little of the whole affair, and
+did not see that it should shed its blood and lay up trouble for itself
+for the sake of one who, after all, was of no account in the affairs of
+Aragon. I stood upon the threshold of my ruin. All my activities were
+to go unrewarded. Doom awaited me. And then the unexpected happened.
+The alguazil of the Holy Office was in the very act of setting the gyves
+upon my legs when the first shot was fired, followed almost at once by a
+fusillade.
+
+It was Gil de Mesa, faithfullest servant that ever any man possessed.
+He had raised an armed band, consisting of some Aragonese gentlemen
+and their servants, and with this he fell like a thunderbolt upon the
+Castilian men-at-arms and the familiars of the Inquisition. The Alguazil
+fled, leaving me one leg free, the other burdened by the gyve, and as
+he fled so fled all others, being thus taken unawares. The Inquisitors
+scuttled to the nearest shelter; the Viceroy threw himself into his
+house and barricaded the door. There was no one to guide, no one to
+direct. The soldiery in these circumstances, accounting themselves
+overpowered, offered no resistance. They, too, fled before the fusillade
+and the hail of shot that descended on them.
+
+Before I realized what had happened, the iron had been struck from my
+leg, I was mounted on a horse, and, with Gil at my side, I was galloping
+out of Saragossa by the gate of Santa Engracia, and breasting the slopes
+with little cause to fear pursuit just yet, such was the disorder we had
+left behind.
+
+And there, very briefly, you have the story of my sufferings and my
+escapes. Not entirely to be baulked, numerous arrests were made by the
+Inquisitors in Saragossa when order was at last restored. There followed
+an auto-da-fe, the most horrible and vindictive of all those horrors, in
+which many suffered for having displayed the weakness of charity towards
+a persecuted man. And, since my body was no longer in their clutches,
+they none the less sentenced me to death as contumaciously absent, and
+my effigy was burnt in the holy fires they lighted, amongst the human
+candles which they offered up for the greater honour and glory of a
+merciful God. Let me say no more, lest I blaspheme in earnest.
+
+After months of wandering and hiding, Gil and I made our way here into
+Navarre, where we remain the guests of Protestant King Henri IV, who
+does not love King Philip any better since he has heard my story.
+
+Still King Philip's vengeance does not sleep. Twice has he sent after me
+his assassins--since assassination is the only weapon now remaining to
+him. But his poor tools have each time been taken, exposed to Philip's
+greater infamy and shame--and hanged as they deserve who can so vilely
+serve so vile a master. It has even been sought to bribe my faithful
+Gil de Mesa into turning his hand against me, and that attempt, too, has
+been given the fullest publication. Meanwhile, my death to-day could
+no longer avail Philip very much. My memorial is published throughout
+Europe for all to read. It has been avidly read until Philip of Spain
+has earned the contempt of every upright man. In his own dominions the
+voice of execration has been raised against him. One of his own nobles
+has contemptuously announced that Spain under Philip has become unsafe
+for any gentleman, and that a betrayal of a subject by his king is
+without parallel in history.
+
+That is some measure of vengeance. But if I am spared I shall not leave
+it there. Henry of Navarre is on the point of turning Catholic that his
+interests may be better served. Elizabeth of England remains. In her
+dominions, where thrives the righteous hatred of Philip and all the
+evil that he stands for, I shall find a welcome and a channel for the
+activities that are to show him that Antonio Perez lives. I have sent
+him word that when he is weary of the conflict he can signify his
+surrender by delivering from their prison my wife and children, upon
+whom he seeks still to visit some of the vengeance I have succeeded in
+eluding. When he does that, then will I hold my hand. But not before.
+
+“That, madame, is my story,” said Don Antonio, after a pause, and from
+narrowing eyes looked at the beauty who had heard him through.
+
+Daylight had faded whilst the tale was telling. Night was come, and
+lights had long since been fetched, the curtains drawn over the long
+windows that looked out across the parkland to the river.
+
+Twice only had he paused in all that narrative. Once when he had
+described the avowal of his love for Anne, Princess of Eboli, when a
+burst of sobs from her had come to interrupt him; again when a curious
+bird-note had rung out upon the gathering dusk. Then he stopped to
+listen.
+
+“Curious that,” he had said--“an eagle's cry. I have not heard it these
+many months, not since I left the hills of Aragon.”
+
+Thereafter he had continued to the end.
+
+Considering her now, his glance inscrutable, he said:
+
+“You weep, madame. Tell me, what is it that has moved you--the
+contemplation of my sufferings, or of your own duplicity?”
+
+She started up, very white, her eyes scared.
+
+“I do not understand you. What do you mean, sir?”
+
+“I mean, madame, that God did not give you so much beauty that you
+should use it in the decoying of an unfortunate, that you should hire it
+at an assassin's fee to serve the crapulous King of Spain.”
+
+He rose and towered before her, a figure at once of anger, dignity, and
+some compassion.
+
+“So much ardour from youth and beauty to age and infirmity was in itself
+suspicious. The Catholic King has the guile of Satan, I remembered. I
+wondered, and hoped my suspicions might be unfounded. Yet prudence made
+me test them, that the danger, if it existed, should manifest itself and
+be destroyed. So I came to tell you all my story, so that if you did the
+thing I feared, you might come to the knowledge of precisely what it was
+you did. I have learnt whilst here that what I suspected is--alas! quite
+true. You were a lure, a decoy sent to work my ruin, to draw me into
+a trap where daggers waited for me. Why did you do this? What was the
+bribe that could corrupt you, lovely lady?”
+
+Sobs shook her. Her will gave way before his melancholy sternness.
+
+“I do not know by what wizardry you have discovered it!” she cried.
+“It was true; but it is true no longer. I knew not what I did. By that
+window, across the meadows, you can reach the river in safety.” She
+rose, controlling her emotion that she might instruct him. “They wait
+for you in the enclosed garden.”
+
+He smiled wistfully.
+
+“They waited, madame. They wait no longer, unless it be for death. That
+eagle's cry, thrice repeated, was the signal from my faithful Gil, not
+only that the trap was discovered, but that those who baited it were
+taken. Suspecting what I did, I took my measures ere I came. Antonio
+Perez, as I have told you, is not an easy man to murder. Unlike Philip,
+I do not make war on women, and I have no reckoning to present to you.
+But I am curious, madame, to know what led you to this baseness.”
+
+“I--I thought you evil, and--and they bribed me. I was offered ten
+thousand ducats for your head. We are very poor, we Chantenacs, and so
+I fell. But, sir--sir”--she was on her knees to him now, and she had
+caught his hand in hers--“poor as I am, all that I have is yours to do
+with as you will, to help to avenge yourself upon that Spanish monster.
+Take what you will. Take all I have.”
+
+His smile grew gentler. Gently he raised her.
+
+“Madame,” he said, “I am myself a sinner, as I have shown you, a man
+unequal to resisting temptation when it took me in its trammels. Of all
+that you offer, I will take only the right to this kiss.”
+
+And bending, he bore her hand to his lips.
+
+Then he went out to join Gil and his men, who waited in the courtyard,
+guarding three prisoners they had taken.
+
+Perez considered them by the light of the lantern that Gil held aloft
+for him.
+
+“One of you,” he announced, “shall return to Castile and give tidings to
+Philip, his master, that Antonio Perez leaves for England and the Court
+of Elizabeth, to aid her, by his knowledge of the affairs of Spain, in
+her measures against the Catholic King, and to continue his holy work,
+which is to make the name of Philip II stink in the nostrils of all
+honest men. One of you I will spare for that purpose. You shall draw
+lots for it in the morning. The other two must hang.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE NIGHT OF CHARITY--The Case Of The Lady Alice Lisle
+
+Of all the cases tried in the course of that terrible circuit, justly
+known as the Bloody Assizes, the only one that survives at all in the
+popular memory is the case of the Lady Alice Lisle. Her advanced age,
+the fact that she was the first woman known in English history to have
+suffered death for no worse an offence than that of having exercised the
+feminine prerogative of mercy, and the further fact that, even so, this
+offence--technical as it was--was never fully proved against her, are
+all circumstances which have left their indelible stamp of horror upon
+the public mind. There is also the further circumstance that hers was
+the first case tried in the West by that terrible Chief Justice, Baron
+Jeffreys of Wem.
+
+But the feature that renders her case peculiarly interesting to the
+historical psychologist--and it is a feature that is in danger of being
+overlooked--is that she cannot really be said to have suffered for the
+technical offence for which she took her trial. That was the pretext
+rather than the cause. In reality she was the innocent victim of a
+relentless, undiscerning Nemesis.
+
+The battle of Sedgemoor had been fought and lost by the Protestant
+champion, James, Duke of Monmouth. In the West, which had answered the
+Duke's summons to revolt, there was established now a horrible reign of
+terror reflecting the bigoted, pitiless, vindictive nature of the King.
+Faversham had left Colonel Percy Kirke in command at Bridgwater, a
+ruthless ruffian, who at one time had commanded the Tangier garrison,
+and whose men were full worthy of their commander. Kirke's Lambs they
+were called, in an irony provoked by the emblem of the Paschal Lamb on
+the flag of this, the First Tangier Regiment, originally levied to wage
+war upon the infidel.
+
+From Bridgwater Colonel Kirke made a horrible punitive progress to
+Taunton, where he put up at the White Hart Inn. Now, there was a very
+solid signpost standing upon a triangular patch of green before the
+door of the White Hart, and Colonel Kirke conceived the quite facetious
+notion of converting this advertisement of hospitality into a gallows--a
+signpost of temporal welfare into a signpost of eternity. So forth he
+fetched the prisoners he had brought in chains from Bridgwater, and
+proceeded, without any form of trial whatsoever, to string them up
+before the inn. The story runs that as they were hoisted to that
+improvised gibbet, Kirke and his officers, standing at the windows,
+raised their glasses to pledge their happy deliverance; then, when
+the victims began to kick convulsively, Kirke would order the drums
+to strike up, so that the gentlemen might have music for their better
+dancing.
+
+The colonel, you see, was a humorist, as humour was then understood upon
+the northern shores of Africa, where he had been schooled.
+
+When, eventually, Colonel Kirke was recalled and reprimanded, it was not
+because of his barbarities many of which transcend the possibilities of
+decent print--but because of a lenity which this venal gentleman began
+to display when he discovered that many of his victims were willing to
+pay handsomely for mercy.
+
+Meanwhile, under his reign of terror, men who had cause to fear the
+terrible hand of the King's vengeance went into hiding wherever they
+could. Among those who escaped into Hampshire, thinking themselves safer
+in a county that had not participated in the war, were a dissenting
+parson named George Hicks, who had been in Monmouth's army, and a lawyer
+named Richard Nelthorp, outlawed for participation in the Rye House
+Plot. In his desperate quest for shelter, Hicks bethought him of the
+charitable Nonconformist lady of Moyle's Court, the widow of that John
+Lisle who had been one of Cromwell's Lords Commissioners of the Great
+Seal, and most active in bringing King Charles I to justice.
+
+John Lisle had fled to Switzerland at the Restoration; but Stuart
+vengeance had followed him, set a price upon his head, and procured
+his murder at Lausanne. That was twenty years ago. Since then his lady,
+because she was known to have befriended and sheltered many Royalists,
+and because she had some stout Tory friends to plead for her, was
+allowed to remain in tranquil possession of her estates. And there the
+Lady Alice Lisle--so called by courtesy, since Cromwell's titles did not
+at law survive the Restoration--might have ended her days in peace, but
+that it was written that those who hated her--innocent and aged though
+she was--for the name she bore, who included her in the rancour which
+had procured her husband's assassination, were to be fully satisfied.
+And the instrument of fate was this parson Hicks. He prevailed upon
+Dunne, a baker of Warminster, and a Nonconformist, to convey to the Lady
+Lisle his prayer for shelter. With that message Dunne set out on July
+25th for Ellingham, a journey of some twenty miles. He went by way of
+Fovant and Chalk to Salisbury Plain. But as he did not know the way
+thence, he sought out a co-religionist named Barter, who undertook, for
+a consideration, to go with him and direct him.
+
+Together the pair came in the late afternoon of that Saturday to the
+handsome house of Moyle's Court, and to my lady's steward, who received
+them. Dunne, who appears to have been silly and imprudent, states that
+he is sent to know if my lady will entertain a minister named Hicks.
+
+Carpenter, the steward, a staid, elderly fellow, took fright at once.
+Although he may not have associated an absconding Presbyterian parson
+with the late rebellion, he must have supposed at least that he was one
+of those against whom there were warrants for preaching in forbidden
+private meetings. So to her ladyship above stairs Carpenter conveyed a
+warning with the message.
+
+But that slight, frail, homely lady of seventy, with kindly eyes of
+a faded blue, smiled upon his fears. She had sheltered fugitives
+before--in the old days of the Commonwealth--and nothing but good had
+ever come of it. She would see this messenger.
+
+With misgivings, Carpenter haled Dunne into her presence, and left them
+alone together. The impression conveyed by Dunne was that Hicks was
+in hiding from the warrants that were out against all Nonconformist
+preachers. But when he mentioned that Hicks had a companion, she desired
+to know his name.
+
+“I do not know, my lady. But I do not think he has been in the army,
+either.”
+
+She considered a while. But in the end pity conquered doubt in her
+sweetly charitable soul.
+
+“Very well,” she said, “I will give them entertainment for a week.
+Bring them on Tuesday after dark, and come by the back way through the
+orchard, that they may not be seen.”
+
+And upon this she rose, and took up an ebony cane, herself to reconduct
+him and to see to his entertainment before he left. Not until they came
+to the kitchen did she realize that he had a companion. At sight of
+Barter, who rose respectfully when she entered, she checked, turned to
+Dunne, and whispered something, to which his answer provoked from her a
+laugh.
+
+Now Barter, intrigued by this whispering and laughing, of which he
+deemed himself the object, questioned Dunne upon it as they rode forth
+again together.
+
+“She asked me if you knew aught of the business,” replied Dunne; “and I
+answered 'No.”'
+
+“Business, say'st thou?” quoth Barter. “What business?”
+
+“Sure, the business on which we came,” Dunne evaded; and he laughed.
+
+It was an answer that left Barter uneasy. Nor was his mind set at rest
+by the parting words with which Dunne accompanied the half-crown for his
+services.
+
+“This is but an earnest of what's to come if you will meet me here on
+Tuesday to show me the way to Moyle's Court again. I shall be bringing
+two gentlemen with me--wealthy men, of a half-score thousand pounds a
+year apiece. I tell you there will be a fine booty for my part, so fine
+that I shall never want for money again all the days of my life. And, so
+that you meet us here, you too may count upon a handsome reward.”
+
+Consenting, Barter went his ways home. But as he pondered Dunne's silly
+speech, and marvelled that honest men should pay so disproportionately
+for an honest service, he came to the reasonable conclusion that he had
+to do with rebels. This made him so uneasy that he resolved at last to
+lodge information with the nearest justice.
+
+Now, it happened, by the irony of Fate, that the justice sought by
+Barter was one Colonel Penruddock--the vindictive son of that Penruddock
+whom the late John Lisle--whilst Lord President of the High Court--had
+sentenced to death some thirty years ago for participation in an
+unsuccessful Wiltshire rising against the Commonwealth.
+
+The colonel, a lean, stark man of forty-five, heard with interest
+Barter's story.
+
+“Art an honest fellow!” he commended him. “What are the names of these
+rogues?”
+
+“The fellow named no names, sir.”
+
+“Well, well, we shall discover that for ourselves when we come to take
+them at this trysting-place. Whither do you say you are to conduct
+them?”
+
+“To Moyle's Court, sir, where my Lady Lisle is to give them
+entertainment.”
+
+The colonel stared a moment; then a heavy smile came to light the
+saturnine face under the heavy periwig. Beyond that he gave no sign of
+what was passing in his mind.
+
+“You may go,” he said slowly, at last. “Be sure we shall be at the tryst
+to take these rascals.”
+
+But the colonel did not keep his promise. To Barter's surprise, there
+were no soldiers at the tryst on Salisbury Plain on the following
+Tuesday; and he was suffered to lead Dunne and the two men with him the
+short, corpulent Mr. Hicks and the long, lean Nelthorp--to Moyle's Court
+without interference.
+
+The rich reward that Dunne had promised him amounted in actual fact
+to five shillings, that he had from Nelthorpe at parting. Puzzled by
+Colonel Penruddock's failure to do his part, Barter went off at once
+to the colonel's house to inform him that the pair were now at Lady
+Lisle's.
+
+“Why, that is very well,” said the colonel, his smile more sinister than
+ever. “Trouble not yourself about that.”
+
+And Barter, the unreasoning instrument of Fate, was not to know that
+the apprehending of a couple of traitorous Jack Presbyters was of small
+account to Colonel Penruddock by comparison with the satisfaction of the
+blood-feud between himself and the House of Lisle.
+
+Meanwhile the fugitives were being entertained at Moyle's Court, and
+whilst they sat at supper in a room above-stairs, Dunne being still of
+the party, my lady came in person to see that they had all that they
+required, and stayed a little while in talk with them. There was some
+mention of Monmouth and the battle of Sedgemoor, which was natural, that
+being the topic of the hour.
+
+My lady asked no questions at the time regarding Hicks's long, lean
+companion. But it occurred to her later that perhaps she should know
+more about him. Early next morning, therefore, she sent for Hicks as he
+was in the act of sitting down to breakfast, and by her direct questions
+elicited from him that this companion was that Richard Nelthorp outlawed
+for his share in the Rye House Plot. Not only was the information
+alarming, but it gave her a sense that she had not been dealt with
+fairly, as indeed she told him.
+
+“You will see, sir,” she concluded, “that you cannot bide here. So long
+as I thought it was on the score of Nonconformity alone that you were
+suffering persecution, I was willing to take some risk in hiding you.
+But since your friend is what he is, the risk is greater than I should
+be asked to face, for my own sake and for that of my daughters. Nor
+can I say that I have ever held plottings and civil war in anything but
+abhorrence--as much in the old days as now. I am a loyal woman, and as
+a loyal woman I must bid you take your friend hence as soon as your fast
+is broken.”
+
+The corpulent and swarthy Hicks stood dejectedly before her. He might
+have pleaded, but at that moment there came a loud knocking at the gates
+below, and instantly Carpenter flung into the room with a white, scared
+face and whirling gestures.
+
+“Soldiers, my lady!” he panted in affright. “We have been betrayed. The
+presence of Mr. Hicks here is known. What shall we do? What shall we
+do?”
+
+She stood quite still, her countenance entirely unchanged, unless it
+were to smile a little upon Carpenter's terror. The mercy of her nature
+rose dominant now.
+
+“Why, we must hide these poor fellows as best we can,” said she; and
+Hicks flung down upon one knee to kiss her hand with protestations that
+he would sooner be hanged than bring trouble upon her house.
+
+But she insisted, calm and self-contained; and Carpenter carried Hicks
+away to bestow him, together with Dunne, in a hole in the malt-house
+under a heap of sacking. Nelthorp had already vanished completely on his
+own initiative.
+
+Meanwhile, the insistent knocking at the gate continued. Came shouted
+demands to open in the name of the King, until from a window my lady's
+daughters looked out to challenge those who knocked.
+
+Colonel Penruddock, who had come in person with the soldiers to raid the
+house of his hereditary foe, stood forth to answer, very stiff and brave
+in his scarlet coat and black plumed hat.
+
+“You have rebels in the house,” he announced, “and I require you in the
+King's name to deliver them up to me.”
+
+And then, before they could answer him, came Carpenter to unbar the
+door, and admit them to the court. Penruddock, standing squarely before
+the steward, admonished him very sternly.
+
+“Friend,” said he, “you had best be ingenuous with me and discover
+who are in your lady's house, for it is within my knowledge that some
+strangers came hither last night.”
+
+The stricken Carpenter stood white-faced and trembling.
+
+“Sir--sir--” he faltered.
+
+But the colonel was impatient.
+
+“Come, come, my friend. Since I know they are here, there's an end on't.
+Show me where they are hid if you would save your own neck from the
+halter.”
+
+It was enough for Carpenter. The pair in the malthouse might have
+eluded all search but for the steward's pusillanimity. Incontinently, he
+betrayed the hiding-place.
+
+“But, sir, of your charity do not tell my mistress that I have told you.
+Pray, sir--”
+
+Penruddock brushed him aside as if he had been a pestering fly, and with
+his men went in, and straight to the spot where Hicks and Dunne were
+lurking. When he had taken them, he swung round on Carpenter, who had
+followed.
+
+“These be but two,” he said, “and to my knowledge three rogues came
+hither last night. No shufling with me, rascal. Where have you bestowed
+the other?”
+
+“I swear, as Heaven's my witness, I do not know where he is,” protested
+the afflicted steward, truly enough.
+
+Penruddock turned to his men.
+
+“Make search,” he bade them; and search was made in the ruthless manner
+of such searches.
+
+The brutal soldiers passed from room to room beating the wainscoting
+with pike and musket-butts, splintering and smashing heedlessly. Presses
+were burst open and their contents scattered; chests were broken into
+and emptied, the searchers appropriating such objects as took their
+fancy, with true military cynicism. A mirror was shattered, and some
+boards of the floor were torn up because a sergeant conceived that the
+blows of his halbert rang hollow.
+
+When the tumult was at its height, came her ladyship at last into the
+room, where Colonel Penruddock stood watching the operations of his men.
+She stood in the doorway leaning upon her ebony cane, her faded eyes
+considering the gaunt soldier with reproachful question.
+
+“Sir,” she asked him with gentle irony, masking her agitation, “has my
+house been given over to pillage?”
+
+He bowed, doffing his plumed hat with an almost excessive courtesy.
+
+“To search, madame,” he corrected her. And added: “In the King's name.”
+
+“The King,” she answered, “may give you authority to search my house,
+but not to plunder it. Your men are robbing and destroying.”
+
+He shrugged. It was the way of soldiers. Fine manners, he suggested,
+were not to be expected of their kind. And he harangued her upon the
+wrong she had done in harbouring rebels and giving entertainment to the
+King's enemies.
+
+“That is not true,” said she. “I know of no King's enemies.”
+
+He smiled darkly upon her from his great height. She was so frail a body
+and so old that surely it was not worth a man's while to sacrifice
+her on the altar of revenge. But not so thought Colonel Penruddock.
+Therefore he smiled.
+
+“Two of them, a snivelling Jack Presbyter named Hicks and a rascal named
+Dunne, are taken already. Pray, madame, be so free and ingenuous with me
+aye, and so kind to yourself--as if there be any other person concealed
+in your house--and I am sure there is somebody else--to deliver him up,
+and you shall come to no further trouble.”
+
+She looked up at him, and returned him smile for smile.
+
+“I know nothing,” she said, “of what you tell me, or of what you ask.”
+
+His countenance hardened.
+
+“Then, mistress, the search must go on.”
+
+But a shout from the adjoining room announced that it was at an end.
+Nelthorp had been discovered and dragged from the chimney into which he
+had crept.
+
+Almost exactly a month later--on August 27th the Lady Alice Lisle was
+brought to the bar of the court-house at Winchester upon a charge of
+high treason.
+
+The indictment ran that secretly, wickedly, and traitorously she did
+entertain, conceal, comfort, uphold, and maintain John Hicks, knowing
+him to be a false traitor, against the duty of her allegiance and
+against the peace of “our sovereign lord the King that now is.”
+
+Demurely dressed in grey, the little white-haired lady calmly faced the
+Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys and the four judges of oyer and terminer who
+sat with him, and confidently made her plea of “Not Guilty.”
+
+It was inconceivable that Christian men should deal harshly with her for
+a technical offence amounting to an act of Christian charity. And the
+judge, sitting there in his robe of scarlet reversed with ermine, looked
+a gentle, kindly man; his handsome, oval, youthful face--Jeffreys was in
+his thirty-sixth year--set in the heavy black periwig, was so pale that
+the mouth made a vivid line of scarlet; and the eyes that now surveyed
+her were large and liquid and compassionate, as it seemed to her.
+
+She was not to know that the pallor which gave him so interesting an
+air, and the dark stains which lent his eyes that gentle wistfulness,
+were the advertisements at once of the debauch that had kept him from
+his bed until after two o'clock that morning and of the inexorable
+disease that slowly gnawed away his life and enraged him out of all
+humanity.
+
+And the confidence his gentle countenance inspired was confirmed by
+the first words he had occasion to address to her. She had interrupted
+counsel to the Crown when, in his opening address to the jury--composed
+of some of the most considerable gentlemen of Hampshire--he seemed to
+imply that she had been in sympathy with Monmouth's cause. She was, of
+course, without counsel, and must look herself to her defence.
+
+“My lord,” she cried, “I abhorred that rebellion as much as any woman in
+the world!”
+
+Jeffreys leaned forward with a restraining gesture.
+
+“Look you, Mrs. Lisle,” he admonished her sweetly, “because we must
+observe the common and usual methods of trial in your case I must
+interrupt you now.” And upon that he promised that she should be fully
+heard in her own defence at the proper time, and that himself he would
+instruct her in the forms of law to her advantage. He reassured her
+by reverent allusions to the great Judge of Heaven and Earth, in whose
+sight they stood, that she should have justice. “And as to what you say
+concerning yourself,” he concluded, “I pray God with all my heart you
+may be innocent.”
+
+He was benign and reassuring. But she had the first taste of his true
+quality in the examination of Dunne--a most unwilling witness.
+
+Reluctantly, under the pressure put upon him, did Dunne yield up the
+tale of how he had conducted the two absconders to my lady's house with
+her consent, and it was sought to prove that she was aware of their
+connection with the rebellion. The stubbornly evasive Dunne was asked at
+last:
+
+“Do you believe that she knew Mr. Hicks before?”
+
+He returned the answer that already he had returned to many questions of
+the sort.
+
+“I cannot tell truly.”
+
+Jeffreys stirred in his scarlet robes, and his wistful eyes grew
+terrible as they bent from under beetling brows upon the witness.
+
+“Why,” he asked, “dost thou think that she would entertain any one she
+had no knowledge of merely upon thy message? Mr. Dunne, Mr. Dunne! Have
+a care. It may be more is known to me of this matter than you think
+for.”
+
+“My lord, I speak nothing but the truth!” bleated the terrified Dunne.
+
+“I only bid you have a care,” Jeffreys smiled; and his smile was more
+terrible than his frown. “Truth never wants a subterfuge; it always
+loves to appear naked; it needs no enamel nor any covering. But lying
+and snivelling and canting and Hicksing always appear in masquerade.
+Come, go on with your evidence.”
+
+But Dunne was reluctant to go on, and out of his reluctance he lied
+foolishly, and pretended that both Hicks and Nelthorp were unknown to
+him. When pressed to say why he should have served two men whom he had
+never seen before, he answered:
+
+“All the reason that induced me to it was that they said they were men
+in debt, and desired to be concealed for a while.”
+
+Then the thunder was heard in Jeffreys' voice.
+
+“Dost thou believe that any one here believes thee? Prithee, what trade
+art thou?”
+
+“My lord,” stammered the unfortunate, “I--I am a baker by trade.”
+
+“And wilt thou bake thy bread at such easy rates? Upon my word, then,
+thou art very kind. Prithee, tell me. I believe thou dost use to bake on
+Sundays, dost thou not?”
+
+“No, my lord, I do not!” cried Dunne indignantly.
+
+“Alackaday! Art precise in that,” sneered the judge. “But thou canst
+travel on Sundays to lead rogues into lurking-holes.”
+
+Later, when to implicate the prisoner, it was sought to draw from Dunne
+a full account of the reception she had given his companions, his terror
+under the bullying to which he was subjected made him contradict himself
+more flagrantly than ever. Jeffreys addressed the jury.
+
+“You see, gentlemen, what a precious fellow this is; a very pretty tool
+to be employed upon such an errand; a knave that nobody would trust for
+half a crown. A Turk has more title to an eternity of bliss than these
+pretenders to Christianity.”
+
+And as there was no more to be got from Dunne just then, he was
+presently dismissed, and Barter's damning evidence was taken.
+Thereafter the wretched Dunne was recalled, to be bullied by Jeffreys in
+blasphemous terms that may not be printed here.
+
+Barter had told the Court how my lady had come into the kitchen with
+Dunne, and how, when he had afterwards questioned Dunne as to why they
+had whispered and laughed together, Dunne told him she had asked “If
+he knew aught of the business.” Jeffreys sought now to wring from Dunne
+what was this business to which he had so mysteriously alluded--this
+with the object of establishing Lady Lisle's knowledge of Hicks's
+treason.
+
+Dunne resisted more stubbornly than ever. Jeffreys, exasperated--since
+without the admission it would be difficult to convict her
+ladyship--invited the jury to take notice of the strange, horrible
+carriage of the fellow, and heaped abuse upon the snivelling, canting
+sect of which he was a member. Finally, he reminded Dunne of his oath to
+tell the truth, and addressed him with a sort of loving ferocity.
+
+“What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own
+soul?” bellowed that terrible judge, his eyes aflame. “Is not this the
+voice of Scripture itself? And wilt thou hazard so dear and precious a
+thing as thy soul for a lie? Thou wretch! All the mountains and hills of
+the world heaped upon one another will not cover thee from the vengeance
+of the Great God for this transgression of false-witness bearing.”
+
+“I cannot tell what to say, my lord,” gasped Dunne.
+
+In his rage to see all efforts vain, the judge's language became that
+of the cockpit. Recovering at last, he tried gentleness again, and very
+elaborately invited Dunne, in my lady's own interest, to tell him what
+was the business to which he had referred to Barter.
+
+“She asked me whether I did not know that Hicks was a Nonconformist.”
+
+“That cannot be all. There must be something more in it.”
+
+“Yes, my lord,” Dunne protested, “it is all. I know nothing more.”
+
+“Was there ever such an impudent rascal?” roared the judge. “Dolt think
+that, after all the pains I have been at to get an answer, thou canst
+banter me with such sham stuff as this? Hold the candle to his brazen
+face, that we may see it clearly.”
+
+Dunne stood terrified and trembling under the glance of those terrible
+eyes.
+
+“My lord,” he cried, “I am so baulked, I am cluttered out of my senses.”
+
+Again he was put down whilst Colonel Penruddock gave his evidence of
+the apprehension of the rebels. When he had told how he found Hicks and
+Dunne concealed under some stuff in the malt-house, Dunne was brought
+back yet again, that Jeffreys might resume his cross-examination.
+
+“Dunne, how came you to hide yourself in the malthouse?”
+
+“My lord,” said Dunne foolishly, “I was frighted by the noise.”
+
+“Prithee, what needest thou be afraid of, for thou didst not know
+Hicks nor Nelthorp; and my lady only asked thee whether Hicks were a
+Nonconformist parson. Surely, so very innocent a soul needed no occasion
+to be afraid. I doubt there was something in the case of that business
+we were talking of before. If we could but get out of thee what it was.”
+
+But Dunne continued to evade.
+
+“My lord, I heard a great noise in the house, and did not know what it
+meant. So I went and hid myself.”
+
+“It is very strange thou shouldst hide thyself for a little noise, when
+thou knewest nothing of the business.”
+
+Again the witness, with a candle still held close to his nose,
+complained that he was quite cluttered out of his senses, and did not
+know what he was saying.
+
+“But to tell the truth would not rob thee of any of thy senses, if ever
+thou hadst any,” Jeffreys told him angrily. “But it would seem that
+neither thou nor thy mistress, the prisoner, had any; for she knew
+nothing of it either, though she had sent for them thither.”
+
+“My lord,” cried her ladyship at that, “I hope I shall not be condemned
+without being heard.”
+
+“No, God forbid, Mrs. Lisle,” he answered; and then viciously flashed
+forth a hint of the true forces of Nemesis at work against her. “That
+was a sort of practice in your late husband's time--you know very well
+what I mean--but God be thanked it is not so now.”
+
+Came next the reluctant evidence of Carpenter and his wife, and after
+that there was yet a fourth equally futile attempt to drag from Dunne
+an admission that her ladyship was acquainted with Hicks's share in the
+rebellion. But if stupid, Dunne at least was staunch, and so, with a
+wealth of valedictory invective, Jeffreys dismissed him, and addressed
+at last the prisoner, inviting her to speak in her own defence.
+
+She rose to do so, fearlessly yet gently.
+
+“My lord, what I have to say is this. I knew of nobody's coming to my
+house but Mr. Hicks, and for him I was informed that he did abscond by
+reason of warrants that were out against him for preaching in private
+meetings; for that reason I sent to him to come by night. But I had
+never heard that Nelthorp was to come with him, nor what name Nelthorp
+had till after he had come to my house. I could die upon it. As for
+Mr. Hicks, I did not in the least suspect that he had been in the army,
+being a Presbyterian minister that used to preach and not to fight.”
+
+“But I will tell you,” Jeffreys interrupted her, “that there is not one
+of those lying, snivelling, canting Presbyterian rascals but one way or
+the other had a hand in the late horrid conspiracy and rebellion.”
+
+“My lord, I abhorred both the principles and the practices of the late
+rebellion,” she protested; adding that if she had been tried in London,
+my Lady Abergavenny and many other persons of quality could have
+testified with what detestation she had spoken of the rebellion, and
+that she had been in London until Monmouth had been beheaded.
+
+“If I had known the time of my trial in the country,” she pursued, “I
+could have had the testimony of those persons of honour for me. But,
+my lord, I have been told, and so I thought it would have been, that
+I should not have been tried for harbouring Mr. Hicks until he should
+himself be convict as a traitor. I did abhor those that were in the plot
+and conspiracy against the King. I know my duty to my King better, and
+have always exercised it. I defy anybody in the world that ever knew
+contrary to come and give testimony.”
+
+His voice broke harshly upon the pause. “Have you any more to say?”
+
+“As to what they say to my denying Nelthorp to be in the house,” she
+resumed. “I was in very great consternation and fear of the soldiers,
+who were very rude and violent. I beseech your lordship to make that
+construction of it, and not harbour an ill opinion of me because of
+those false reports that go about of me, relating to my carriage towards
+the old King, that I was anyways consenting to the death of King Charles
+I; for, my lord, that is as false as God is true. I was not out of my
+chamber all the day in which that king was beheaded, and I believe I
+shed more tears for him than any other woman then living.
+
+“And I do repeat it, my lord, as I hope to attain salvation, I never did
+know Nelthorp, nor did I know of anybody's coming but Mr. Hicks. Him I
+knew to be a Nonconformist minister, and there being, as is well known,
+warrants out to apprehend all Nonconformist ministers, I was willing to
+give him shelter from these warrants, which I knew was no treason.”
+
+“Have you any more to say for yourself?” he asked her.
+
+“My lord,” she was beginning, “I came but five days before this into the
+country.”
+
+“Nay,” he broke in, “I cannot tell when you came into the country, nor I
+don't care. It seems you came in time to harbour rebels.”
+
+She protested that if she would have ventured her life for anything, it
+would have been to serve the King.
+
+“But, though I could not fight for him myself, my son did; he was
+actually in arms on the King's side in this business. It was I that bred
+him in loyalty and to fight for the King.”
+
+“Well, have you done?” he asked her brutally.
+
+“Yes, my lord,” she answered; and resumed her seat, trembling a little
+from the exertion and emotion of her address.
+
+His charge to the jury began. It was very long, and the first half of
+it was taken up with windy rhetoric in which the Almighty was invoked
+at every turn. It degenerated at one time into a sermon upon the text of
+“render unto Caesar,” inveighing against the Presbyterian religion. And
+the dull length of his lordship's periods, combined with the monotone
+in which he spoke, lulled the wearied lady at the bar into slumber. She
+awakened with a start when suddenly his fist crashed down and his voice
+rose in fierce denunciation of the late rebellion. But she was dozing
+again--so calm and so little moved was she--before he had come to apply
+his denunciations to her own case, and this in spite of all her protests
+that she had held the rebellion in abhorrence.
+
+It was all calculated to prejudice the minds of the jurymen before
+he came to the facts and the law of the case. And that charge of his
+throughout, far from being a judicial summing-up, was a virulent address
+for the prosecution, just as his bearing hitherto in examining and
+cross-examining witnesses had been that of counsel for the Crown. The
+statement that she had made in her own defence he utterly ignored, save
+in one particular, where he saw his opportunity further to prejudice her
+case.
+
+“I am sorry,” he said, his face lengthening, “to remember something that
+dropped even from the gentlewoman herself. She pretends to religion and
+loyalty very much--how greatly she wept at the death of King Charles the
+Martyr--and owns her great obligations to the late king and his royal
+brother. And yet no sooner is one in the grave than she forgets all
+gratitude and entertains those that were rebels against his royal
+successor.
+
+“I will not say,” he continued with deliberate emphasis, “what hand
+her husband had in the death of that blessed martyr; she has enough to
+answer for her own guilt; and I must confess that it ought not, one way
+or other, to make any ingredient into this case what she was in former
+times.”
+
+But he had dragged it in, protesting that it should not influence the
+case, yet coldly, calculatingly intending it to do so. She was the widow
+of a regicide, reason and to spare in the views of himself and his royal
+master why she should be hounded to her death upon any pretext.
+
+Thereafter he reviewed the evidence against her, dwelt upon the
+shuffling of Dunne, deduced that the reason for so much lying was to
+conceal the damning truth--namely, that she knew Hicks for a rebel when
+she gave him shelter, and thus became the partner of his horrible
+guilt. Upon that he charged them to find their verdict “without any
+consideration of persons, but considering only the truth.”
+
+Nevertheless, although his commands were clear, some of the jury would
+seem to have feared the God whom Jeffreys invoked so constantly. One
+of them rose to ask him pertinently, in point of law, whether it was
+treason to have harboured Hicks before the man had been convicted of
+treason.
+
+Curtly he answered them that beyond doubt it was, and upon that
+assurance the jury withdrew, the Court settled down into an expectant
+silence, and her ladyship dozed again in her chair.
+
+The minutes passed. It was growing late, and Jeffreys was eager to be
+done with this prejudged affair, that he might dine in peace. His voice
+broke the stillness of the court, protesting his angry wonder at the
+need to deliberate in so plain a case. He was threatening to adjourn
+and let the jury lie by all night if they did not bring in their verdict
+quickly. When, at the end of a half-hour, they returned, his fierce,
+impatient glance found them ominously grave.
+
+“My lord,” said Mr. Whistler, the foreman, “we have to beg of your
+lordship some directions before we can bring our verdict. We have some
+doubt upon us whether there be sufficient proof that she knew Hicks to
+have been in the army.”
+
+Well might they doubt it, for there was no proof at all. Yet he never
+hesitated to answer them.
+
+“There is as full proof as proof can be. But you are judges of the
+proof. For my part, I thought there was no difficulty in it.”
+
+“My lord,” the foreman insisted, “we are in some doubt about it.”
+
+“I cannot help your doubts,” he said irritably. “Was there not proved
+a discourse of the battle and of the battle and of the army at
+supper-time?”
+
+“But, my lord, we are not satisfied that she had notice that Hicks was
+in the army.”
+
+He glowered upon them in silence for a moment. They deserved to be
+themselves indicted for their slowness to perceive where lay their duty
+to their king.
+
+“I cannot tell what would satisfy you,” he said; and sneered. “Did she
+not inquire of Dunne whether Hicks had been in the army? And when he
+told her he did not know, she did not say she would refuse if he had
+been, but ordered him to come by night, by which it is evident she
+suspected it.”
+
+He ignored, you see, her own complete explanation of that circumstance.
+
+“And when Hicks and Nelthorp came, did she not discourse with them about
+the battle and the army?” (As if that were not at the time a common
+topic of discussion.) “Come, come, gentlemen,” he said, with amazing
+impudence, “it is plain proof.”
+
+But Mr. Whistler was not yet satisfied.
+
+“We do not remember, my lord, that it was proved that she asked any such
+question.”
+
+That put him in a passion.
+
+“Sure,” he bellowed, “you do not remember anything that has passed. Did
+not Dunne tell you there was such a discourse, and she was by? But if
+there were no such proof, the circumstances and management of the thing
+are as full proof as can be. I wonder what it is you doubt of!”
+
+Mrs. Lisle had risen. There was a faint flush of excitement on her grey
+old face.
+
+“My lord, I hope--” she began, in trembling tones, to get no further.
+
+“You must not speak now!” thundered her terrible judge; and thus struck
+her silent.
+
+The brief resistance to his formidable will was soon at an end. Within
+a quarter of an hour the jury announced their verdict. They found her
+guilty.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said his lordship, “I did not think I should have occasion
+to speak after your verdict, but, finding some hesitancy and doubt among
+you, I cannot but say I wonder it should come about; for I think, in my
+conscience, the evidence was as full and plain as it could be, and if I
+had been among you, and she had been my own mother, I should have found
+her guilty.”
+
+She was brought up for sentence on the morrow, together with several
+others subsequently convicted. Amid fresh invectives against the
+religion she practised, he condemned her to be burned alive--which was
+the proper punishment for high treason--ordering the sheriff to prepare
+for her execution that same afternoon.
+
+“But look you, Mrs. Lisle,” he added, “we that are the judges shall stay
+in town an hour or two. You shall have pen, ink, and paper, and if, in
+the mean time, you employ that pen, ink, and paper and that hour or two
+well--you understand what I mean it may be that you shall hear further
+from us in a deferring of this execution.”
+
+What was this meaning that he assumed she understood? Jeffreys had
+knowledge of Kirke's profitable traffic in the West, and it is known
+that he spared no means of acquiring an estate suitable to his rank
+which he did not possess by way of patrimony. Thus cynically he invited
+a bribe.
+
+It is the only inference that explains the subsequent rancour he
+displayed against her, aroused by her neglect to profit by his
+suggestions. The intercession of the divines of Winchester procured
+her a week's reprieve, and in that week her puissant friends in London,
+headed by the Earl of Abergavenny, petitioned the King on her behalf.
+Even Feversham, the victor of Sedgemoor, begged her life of the
+King--bribed to it, as men say, by an offer of a thousand pounds. But
+the King withheld his mercy upon the plea that he had promised Lord
+Jeffreys he would not reprieve her, and the utmost clemency influential
+petitions could wring from James II was that she should be beheaded
+instead of burned.
+
+She suffered in the market-place of Winchester on September 2d.
+Christian charity was all her sin, and for this her head was demanded
+in atonement. She yielded it with a gentle fortitude and resolution. In
+lieu of speech, she left with the sheriff a pathetic document wherein
+she protests her innocence of all offence against the King, and forgives
+her enemies specifically--the judge, who prejudiced her case, and
+forgot that “the Court should be counsel for the prisoner,” and Colonel
+Penruddock, “though he told me he could have taken those men before they
+came to my house.”
+
+Between those lines you may read the true reason why the Lady Alice
+Lisle died. She died to slake the cruelly vindictive thirst of King
+James II on the one hand, and Colonel Penruddock on the other, against
+her husband who had been dead for twenty years.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+V. THE NIGHT OF MASSACRE--The Story Of The Saint Bartholomew
+
+There are elements of mystery about the massacre of Saint Bartholomew
+over which, presumably, historians will continue to dispute as long as
+histories are written. Indeed, it is largely of their disputes that the
+mystery is begotten. Broadly speaking, these historians may be divided
+into two schools--Catholic and anti-Catholic. The former have made it
+their business to show that the massacre was purely a political affair,
+having no concern with religion; the latter have been equally at pains
+to prove it purely an act of religious persecution having no concern
+with politics. Those who adopt the latter point of view insist that
+the affair was long premeditated, that it had its source in something
+concerted some seven years earlier between Catherine of Medicis and
+the sinister Duke of Alva. And they would seem to suggest that Henry of
+Navarre, the nominal head of the Protestant party, was brought to Paris
+to wed Marguerite de Valois merely so that by this means the Protestant
+nobles of the kingdom, coming to the capital for the wedding, should be
+lured to their destruction.
+
+It does not lie within the purview of the present narrative to enter
+into a consideration of the arguments of the two schools, nor will it be
+attempted.
+
+But it may briefly be stated that the truth lies probably in a middle
+course of reasoning--that the massacre was political in conception and
+religious in execution; or, in other words, that statecraft deliberately
+made use of fanaticism as of a tool; that the massacre was brought about
+by a sudden determination begotten of opportunity which is but another
+word for Chance.
+
+Against the theory of premeditation the following cardinal facts may be
+urged:
+
+(a) The impossibility of guarding for seven years a secret that several
+must have shared;
+
+(b) The fact that neither Charles IX nor his mother Catherine were in
+any sense bigoted Catholics, or even of a normal religious sincerity.
+
+(c) The lack of concerted action--so far as the kingdom generally was
+concerned--in the execution of the massacre.
+
+A subsidiary disproof lies in the attempted assassination of Coligny two
+days before the massacre, an act which might, by putting the Huguenots
+on their guard, have caused the miscarriage of the entire plan--had it
+existed.
+
+It must be borne in mind that for years France had been divided by
+religious differences into two camps, and that civil war between
+Catholic and Huguenot had ravaged and distracted the country. At
+the head of the Protestant party stood that fine soldier Gaspard de
+Chatillon, Admiral de Coligny, virtually the Protestant King of
+France, a man who raised armies, maintaining them by taxes levied upon
+Protestant subjects, and treated with Charles IX as prince with prince.
+At the head of the Catholic party--the other imperium in imperio--stood
+the Duke of Guise. The third and weakest party in the State, serving, as
+it seemed, little purpose beyond that of holding the scales between the
+other turbulent two, was the party of the King.
+
+The motives and events that precipitated the massacre are set forth in
+the narration of the King's brother, the Duke of Anjou (afterwards
+Henri III). It was made by him to Miron, his physician and confidential
+servant in Cracow, when he ruled there later as King of Poland, under
+circumstances which place it beyond suspicion of being intended to serve
+ulterior aims. For partial corroboration, and for other details of the
+massacre itself, we have the narratives, among others, of Sully, who was
+then a young man in the train of the King of Navarre, and of Lusignan,
+a gentleman of the Admiral's household. We shall closely follow these in
+our reconstruction of the event and its immediate causes.
+
+The gay chatter of the gallants and ladies thronging the long gallery
+of the Louvre sank and murmured into silence, and a movement was made to
+yield a free passage to the King, who had suddenly made his appearance
+leaning affectionately upon the shoulder of the Admiral de Coligny.
+
+The Duke of Anjou, a slender, graceful young man in a gold-embroidered
+suit of violet, forgot the interest he was taking in his beautiful
+hands to bend lower over the handsome Madame de Nemours what time the
+unfriendly eyes of both were turned upon the Admiral.
+
+The King and the great Huguenot leader came slowly down the gallery,
+an oddly contrasting pair. Coligny would have been the taller by a
+half-head but for his stoop, yet in spite of it there was energy and
+military vigour in his carriage, just as there was a severe dignity
+amounting to haughtiness in his scarred and wrinkled countenance. A
+bullet that had pierced his cheek and broken three of his teeth at the
+battle of Moncontour had left a livid scar that lost itself in his long
+white beard. His forehead was high and bald, and his eyes were of
+a steely keenness under their tufted brows. He was dressed with
+Calvinistic simplicity entirely in black, and just as this contrasted
+with the King's suit of sulphur-coloured satin, so did the gravity of
+his countenance contrast with the stupidity of his sovereign's.
+
+Charles IX, a slimly built young man in his twenty-fourth year, was of
+a pallid, muddy complexion, with great, shifty, greenish eyes, and a
+thick, pendulous nose. The protruding upper lip of his long, thin mouth
+gave him an oafish expression, which was increased by his habit of
+carrying his head craned forward.
+
+His nature was precisely what you would have expected from his
+appearance--dull and gross. He was chiefly distinguished among men of
+birth for general obscenity of speech and morphological inventiveness in
+blasphemy.
+
+At the end of the gallery Coligny stooped to kiss the royal hand in
+leave-taking. With his other hand Charles patted the Admiral's shoulder.
+
+“Count me your friend,” he said, “body and soul, heart and bowels, even
+as I count you mine. Fare you well, my father.”
+
+Coligny departed, and the King retraced his steps, walking quickly, his
+head hunched between his shoulders, his baleful eyes looking neither to
+left nor right. As he passed out, the Duke of Anjou quitted the side
+of Madame de Nemours, and went after him. Then at last the suspended
+chatter of the courtiers broke loose again.
+
+The King was pacing his cabinet--a simple room furnished with a medley
+of objects appertaining to study, to devotion, and to hunting. A large
+picture of the Virgin hung from a wall flanked on either side by an
+arquebus, and carrying a hunting-horn on one of its upper corners. A
+little alabaster holy-water font near the door, crowned by a sprig of
+palm, seemed to serve as a receptacle for hawk-bells and straps. There
+was a writing-table of beautifully carved walnut near the leaded window,
+littered with books and papers--a treatise on hunting lay cheek by jowl
+with a Book of Hours; a string of rosary beads and a dog-whip lay
+across an open copy of Ronsard's verses. The King was quite the vilest
+poetaster of his day.
+
+Charles looked over his shoulder as his brother entered. The scowl on
+his face deepened when he saw who came, and with a grunt he viciously
+kicked the liver-coloured hound that lay stretched at his feet. The
+hound fled yelping to a corner, the Duke checked, startled, in his
+advance.
+
+“Well?” growled the King. “Well? Am I never to have peace? Am I never to
+be alone? What now? Bowels of God! What do you want?”
+
+His green eyes smouldered, his right hand opened and closed on the gold
+hilt of the dagger at his girdle:
+
+Scared by the maniac ferocity of this reception, the young Duke
+precipitately withdrew.
+
+“It is nothing. Another time, since I disturb you now.” He bowed and
+vanished, followed by an evil, cackling laugh.
+
+Anjou knew how little his brother loved him, and he confesses how much
+he feared him in that moment. But under his fear it is obvious that
+there was lively resentment. He went straight in quest of his mother,
+whose darling he was, to bear her the tale of the King's mood, and what
+he accounted, no doubt rightly, the cause of it.
+
+“It is the work of that pestilential Huguenot admiral,” he announced, at
+the end of a long tirade, “It is always thus with him after he has seen
+Coligny.”
+
+Catherine of Medicis considered. She was a fat, comfortable woman, with
+a thick nose, pinched lips, and sleepy eyes.
+
+“Charles,” she said at length, in her monotonous, emotionless voice, “is
+a weathercock that turns with every wind that blows upon him. You should
+know him by now.” And she yawned, so that one who did not know her and
+her habit of perpetually yawning might have supposed that she was but
+indifferently interested.
+
+They were alone together in the intimate little tapestried room she
+called her oratory. She half sat, half reclined upon a couch of rose
+brocade. Anjou stood over by the window, his back to it, so that his
+pale face was in shadow. He considered his beautiful hands, which he was
+reluctant to lower, lest the blood should flow into them and mar their
+white perfection.
+
+“The Admiral's influence over him is increasing,” he complained, “and he
+uses it to lessen our own.”
+
+“Do I not know it?” came her dull voice.
+
+“It is time to end it,” said Anjou passionately, “before he ends us.
+Your influence grows weaker every day and the Admiral's stronger.
+Charles begins to take sides with him against us. We shall have him a
+tool of the Huguenot party before all is done. Ah, mon Dieu! You should
+have seen him leaning upon the shoulder of that old parpaillot, calling
+him 'my father,' and protesting himself his devoted friend 'body
+and soul, heart and bowels,' in his own words. And when I seek him
+afterwards, he scowls and snarls at me, and fingers his dagger as if he
+would have it in my throat. It is plain to see upon what subject the old
+scoundrel entertained him.” And again he repeated, more fiercely than
+before: “It is time to end it!”
+
+“I know,” she said, ever emotionless before so much emotion. “And it
+shall be ended. The old assassin should have been hanged years ago for
+guiding the hand that shot Francois de Guise. Daily he becomes a greater
+danger, to Charles, to ourselves, and to France. He is embroiling us
+with Spain through this Huguenot army he is raising to go and fight the
+battles of Calvinism in Flanders. A fine thing that. Ah, per Dio!” For a
+moment her voice was a little warmed and quickened. “Catholic France at
+war with Catholic Spain for the sake of Huguenot Flanders!” She laughed
+shortly. Then her voice reverted to its habitual sleepy level. “You
+are right. It is time to end it. Coligny is the head of this rebellious
+beast. If we cut off the head, perhaps the beast will perish. We will
+consult the Duke of Guise.” She yawned again. “Yes, the Duke of Guise
+will be ready to lend us his counsel and his aid. Decidedly we must get
+rid of the Admiral.”
+
+That was on Monday, August 18th of that year 1572, and such was the firm
+purpose and energy of that fat and seemingly sluggish woman, that within
+two days all necessary measures were taken, and Maurevert, the
+assassin, was at his post in the house of Vilaine, in the Cloisters
+of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, procured for the purpose by Madame de
+Nemours, who bore the Admiral a mortal hatred.
+
+It was not, however, until the following Friday that Maurevert was given
+the opportunity of carrying out the task to which he had been hired. On
+that morning, as the Admiral was passing, accompanied by a few gentlemen
+of his household, returning from the Louvre to his house in the Rue
+Betisy, the assassin did his work. There was a sudden arquebusade from
+a first-floor window, and a bullet smashed two fingers of the Admiral's
+right hand, and lodged itself in the muscles of his left arm.
+
+With his maimed and bleeding hand he pointed to the window whence the
+shot had been fired, bidding his gentlemen to force a way into the house
+and take the assassin. But whilst they were breaking in at the front,
+Maurevert was making his escape by the back, where a horse waited for
+him, and, though pursued, he was never overtaken.
+
+News of the event was instantly borne to the King. It found him at
+tennis with the Duke of Guise and the Admiral's son-in-law, Teligny.
+
+“In this assassin's work, Sire,” said the blunt gentleman whom Coligny
+had sent, “the Admiral desires you to see the proof of the worth of the
+agreement between himself and Monsieur de Guise that followed upon the
+treaty of peace of Saint-Germain.”
+
+The Duke of Guise drew himself stiffly up, but said no word. The King,
+livid with rage, looked at him balefully a moment, then to vent some of
+his fury he smashed his racket against the wall.
+
+“God's Blood!” he cried, mouthing horribly. “Am I then never to have
+rest?” He flung away the broken remnants of his racket, and went out
+cursing. Questioning the messenger further, he learnt that the shot had
+been fired from the house of Vilaine, a sometime tutor to the Duke of
+Guise, and that the horse upon which the assassin had fled had been held
+for him by a groom in the Guise livery.
+
+Meanwhile the Duke and Monsieur de Teligny had gone their ways with
+no word spoken between them--Guise to shut himself up in his hotel and
+assemble his friends, Teligny to repair at once to his father-in-law.
+
+At two o'clock in the afternoon, in response to an urgent request
+from the Admiral, the King went to visit him, accompanied by the
+Queen-Mother, by his brothers Anjou and Alencon, and a number of
+officers and courtiers. The royal party saw nothing of the excitement
+which had been prevailing in the city ever since the morning's event,
+an excitement which subsided at their approach. The King was gloomy,
+resentful, and silent, having so far refused to discuss the matter with
+any one, denying audience even to his mother. Catherine and Anjou were
+vexed by the miscarriage of the affair, anxious and no less silent than
+the King.
+
+They found the Admiral awaiting them, calm and composed. The famous
+Ambroise Pare had amputated the two broken fingers, and had dealt with
+the wound in the arm. But although Coligny might be considered to have
+escaped lightly, and not to be in any danger, a rumour was abroad that
+the bullet was poisoned; and neither the Admiral nor his people seem to
+have rejected the possibility. One suspects, indeed, that capital was
+made out of it. It was felt, perhaps, that thus should the Admiral
+maintain a greater influence with the King. For in any uncertainty as
+to whether Coligny would live or die, the King's feelings must be more
+deeply stirred than if he knew that the wound carried no peril to life.
+
+Followed closely by his mother and his brothers, Charles swept through
+the spacious ante-chamber, thronged now with grim-faced, resentful
+Huguenot gentlemen, and so entered the room where Coligny reclined upon
+a day bed near the window. The Admiral made shift to rise, but this the
+King hurried forward to prevent.
+
+“Rest yourself, my dear father!” he cried, in accents of deep concern.
+“Heart of God! What is this they have done to you? Assure me, at least,
+that your life is safe, or, by the Mass, I'll--”
+
+“I hold my life from God,” the Admiral replied gravely, “and when He
+requires it of me I will yield it up. That is nothing.”
+
+“Nothing? God's Blood! Nothing? The hurt is yours, my father, but the
+outrage mine; and I swear to you, by the Blood and the Death, that I
+will take such a vengeance as shall never be forgotten!”
+
+Thereupon he fell into such a storm of imprecation and blasphemy that
+the Admiral, a sincerely devout, God-fearing heretic, shuddered to hear
+him.
+
+“Calm, Sire!” he begged at last, laying his sound hand upon the King's
+velvet sleeve. “Be calm and listen, for it is not to speak of myself, of
+these wounds, or of the wrong done me, that I have presumed to beg you
+to visit me. This attempt to murder me is but a sign of the evil that
+is stirring in France to sap your authority and power. But--” He checked
+and looked at the three who stood immediately behind the King. “What I
+have to say is, if you will deign to listen, for your private ear.”
+
+The King jerked round in a fashion peculiar to him; his every action was
+abrupt and spasmodic. He eyed his mother and brothers shiftily. It was
+beyond his power to look any one directly in the face.
+
+“Outside!” he commanded, waving an impatient hand almost in their faces.
+“Do you hear? Leave me to talk with my father the Admiral.”
+
+The young dukes fell back at once, ever in dread of provoking the
+horrible displays of passion that invariably followed upon any
+resistance of his feeble will. But the sluggish Catherine was not so
+easily moved.
+
+“Is Monsieur de Coligny strong enough, do you think, to treat of affairs
+at present? Consider his condition, I beg,” she enjoined in her level
+voice.
+
+“I thank you for your consideration, madame,” said the Admiral, the
+ghost of an ironic smile about his lips. “But I am strong enough, thank
+God! And even though my strength were less than it is, it would be more
+heavily taxed by the thought that I had neglected my duty to His Majesty
+than it ever could be by the performance of that duty.”
+
+“Ha! You hear?” snapped the King. “Go, then; go!”
+
+They went, returning to the ante-chamber to wait until the audience
+should conclude. The three stood there in the embrasure of a window that
+looked out upon the hot, sunlit courtyard. There, as Anjou himself
+tells us, they found themselves hemmed about by some two hundred sullen,
+grim-faced gentlemen and officers of the Admiral's party, who eyed them
+without dissembling their hostility, who preserved a silence that was
+disturbed only by the murmurs of their constant whisperings, and who
+moved to and fro before the royal group utterly careless of the proper
+degree of deference and respect.
+
+Isolated thus in that hostile throng, Catherine and her sons became more
+and more uneasy, so that, as the Queen-Mother afterwards confessed, she
+was never in any place where her tarrying was attended by so much fear,
+or her departure thence by so much pleasure.
+
+It was this fear that spurred her at last to put an end to that secret
+conference in the room beyond. She did it in characteristic manner. In
+the most complete outward composure, stifling a yawn as she went,
+she moved deliberately across to the door, her sons following, rapped
+shortly on the panel, and entered without waiting to be bidden.
+
+The King, who was standing by the Admiral's side, wheeled sharply at
+the sound of the opening door. His eyes blazed with sudden anger when he
+beheld his mother, but she was the first to speak.
+
+“My son,” she said, “I am concerned for the poor Admiral. He will have
+the fever if you continue to permit him to weary himself with affairs at
+present. It is not to treat him as a friend to prolong this interview.
+Let business wait until he is recovered, which will be the sooner if he
+is given rest at present.”
+
+Coligny stroked his white beard in silence, while the King flared out,
+striding towards her:
+
+“Par la Mort Dieu! What is this sudden concern for the Admiral?”
+
+“Not sudden, my son,” she answered in her dull voice, her eyes intent
+upon him, with something magnetic in their sleepy glance that seemed
+to rob him of half his will. “None knows more accurately than I the
+Admiral's precise, value to France.”
+
+Anjou behind her may have smiled at that equivocal phrase.
+
+“God's Bowels! Am I King, or what am I?”
+
+“It ill becomes a king to abuse the strength of a poor wounded subject,”
+ she returned, her eyes ever regarding him steadily. “Come, Charles.
+Another day, when the Admiral shall have recovered more fully, you may
+continue this discourse. Come now.”
+
+His anger was subdued to mere sullenness, almost infantile in its
+outward petulant expression. He attempted to meet her glance, and he was
+completely lost.
+
+“Perhaps... Ah, Ventre Dieu, my mother is right! Let the matter rest,
+then, my father. We will talk of it again as soon as you are well.”
+
+He stepped up to the couch, and held out his hand.
+
+Coligny took it, and his eyes looked up wistfully into the weak young
+face of his King.
+
+“I thank you, Sire, for coming and for hearing me. Another day, if I am
+spared, I may tell you more. Meanwhile, bear well in mind what I have
+said already. I have no interests in this world but your own, Sire.” And
+he kissed the royal hand in farewell.
+
+Not until they were back in the Louvre did the Queen attempt to break
+upon the King's gloomy abstraction, to learn--as learn she must--the
+subject of the Admiral's confidential communication.
+
+Accompanied by Anjou, she sought him in his cabinet, nor would she
+be denied. He sat at his writing-table, his head sunken between his
+shoulders, his receding chin in his cupped palms. He glared at the pair
+as they entered, swore savagely, and demanded their business with him.
+
+Catherine sat down with massive calm. Anjou remained standing beside and
+slightly behind her, leaning upon the back of her tall chair.
+
+“My son,” she said bluntly, “I have come to learn what passed between
+you and Coligny.”
+
+“What passed? What concern is that of yours?”
+
+“All your concerns are mine,” she answered tranquilly. “I am your
+mother.”
+
+“And I am your king!” he answered, banging the table. “And I mean to be
+king!”
+
+“By the grace of God and the favour of Monsieur de Coligny,” she
+sneered, with unruffled calm.
+
+“What's that?” His mouth fell open, and his eyes stared. A crimson flush
+overspread his muddy complexion. “What's that?”
+
+Her dull glance met and held his own whilst calmly she repeated her
+sneering words.
+
+“And that is why I have come to you,” she added. “If you are unable
+to rule without guidance, I must at least do what I can so that the
+guidance shall not be that of a rebel, of one who guides you to the end
+that he may master you.”
+
+“Master me!” he screamed. He rose in his indignation and faced her. But
+his glance, unable to support her steady eyes, faltered and fell away.
+Foul oaths poured from his royal lips. “Master me!” he repeated.
+
+“Aye--master you,” she answered him. “Master you until the little
+remnant of your authority shall have been sapped; until you are no more
+than a puppet in the hands of the Huguenot party, a roi faineant, a king
+of straw.”
+
+“By God, madame, were you not my mother--”
+
+“It is because I am your mother that I seek to save you.”
+
+He looked at her again, but again his glance faltered. He paced the
+length of the room and back, mouthing and muttering. Then he came to
+stand, leaning on the prie-dieu, facing her.
+
+“By God's Death, madame, since you demand to know what the Admiral said,
+you shall. You prove to me that what he told me was no more than true.
+He told me that a king is only recognized in France as long as he is a
+power for good or ill over his subjects; that this power, together
+with the management of all State affairs, is slipping, by the crafty
+contrivances of yourself and Anjou there, out of my hands into your own;
+that this power and authority which you are both stealing from me may
+one day be used against me and my kingdom. And he bade me be on my guard
+against you both and take my measures. He gave me this counsel, madame,
+because he deemed it his duty as one of my most loyal and faithful
+servants at the point of death, and--”
+
+“The shameless hypocrite!” her dull, contemptuous voice interrupted him.
+“At the point of death! Two broken fingers and a flesh-wound in the arm
+and he represents himself as in articulo mortis that he may play upon
+you, and make you believe his lies.”
+
+Her stolidity of manner and her logic, ponderous and irresistible, had
+their effect. His big, green eyes seemed to dilate, his mouth fell open.
+
+“If--” he began, and checked, rapped out an oath, and checked again.
+“Are they lies, madame?” he asked slowly.
+
+She caught the straining note of hope in that question of his--a hope
+founded upon vanity, the vanity to be king in fact, as well as king in
+name. She rose.
+
+“To ask me that--me, your mother--is to insult me. Come, Anjou.”
+
+And on that she departed, craftily, leaving her suggestion to prey upon
+his mind.
+
+But once alone in her oratory with Anjou, her habitual torpor was
+sloughed away. For once she quivered and crimsoned and raised her voice,
+whilst for once her sleepy eyes kindled and flashed as she inveighed
+against Coligny and the Huguenots.
+
+For the moment, however, there was no more to be done. The stroke had
+failed; Coligny had survived the attempt upon his life, and there was
+danger that on the recoil the blow might smite those who had launched
+it. But on the morrow, which was Saturday, things suddenly assumed a
+very different complexion.
+
+That great Catholic leader, the powerful, handsome Duke of Guise, who,
+more than suspected of having inspired the attempted assassination, had
+kept his hotel since yesterday, now sought the Queen-Mother with news
+of what was happening in the city. Armed bands of Huguenot nobles were
+riding through the streets, clamouring:
+
+“Death to the assassins of the Admiral! Down with the Guisards!”
+
+And, although a regiment of Gardes Francaises had been hastily brought
+to Paris to keep order, the Duke feared grave trouble in a city
+which the royal wedding had filled with Huguenot gentlemen and their
+following. Then, too, there were rumours that the Huguenots were
+arming everywhere--rumours which, whether true or not, were, under the
+circumstances, sufficiently natural and probable to be taken seriously.
+
+Leaving Guise in her oratory, and summoning her darling Anjou, Catherine
+at once sought the King. She may have believed the rumours, and she may
+even have stated them as facts beyond dispute so as to strengthen and
+establish her case against Gaspard de Coligny.
+
+“King Gaspard I,” she told him, “is already taking his measures. The
+Huguenots are arming; officers have been dispatched into the provinces
+to levy troops. The Admiral has ordered the raising of ten thousand
+horse in Germany, and another ten thousand Swiss mercenaries in the
+Cantons.”
+
+He stared at her vacuously. Some such rumour had already reached him,
+and he conceived that here was definite confirmation of it.
+
+“You may determine now who are your friends, who your loyal servants,”
+ she told him. “How is so much force to be resisted in the state in which
+you find yourself? The Catholics exhausted, and weary as they are by a
+civil war in which their king was of little account to them, are going
+to arm so as to offer what resistance they can without depending upon
+you. Thus, within your State you will have two great parties under arms,
+neither of which can be called your own. Unless you stir yourself, and
+quickly, unless you choose now between friends and foes, you will find
+yourself alone, isolated, in grave peril, without authority or power.”
+
+He sank overwhelmed to a chair, and took his head in his hands,
+cogitating. When next he looked at her there was positive fear in his
+great eyes, a fear evoked by contemplation of the picture which her
+words had painted for him.
+
+He looked from her to Anjou.
+
+“What then?” he asked. “What then? How is the danger to be averted?”
+
+“By a simple stroke of the sword,” she answered calmly. “Slice off at a
+blow the head of this beast of rebellion, this hydra of heresy.”
+
+He huddled back, horror in his eyes. His hands slid slowly along the
+carved arms of his chair, and clenched the ends so tightly that his
+knuckles looked like knobs of marble.
+
+“Kill the Admiral?” he said slowly.
+
+“The Admiral and the chief Huguenot leaders,” she said, much in the tone
+she might have used, were it a matter of wringing the necks of a dozen
+capons.
+
+“Ah, ca! Par la Mort Dieu!” He heaved himself up, raging. “Thus would
+your hatred of him be served. Thus would you--”
+
+Coolly she sliced into his foaming speech.
+
+“Not I--not I!” she said. “Do nothing upon my advice. Summon your
+Council. Send for Tavannes, Biragues, Retz, and the others. Consult with
+them. They are your friends; you trust and believe in them. When they
+know the facts, see if their counsel will differ from your mother's.
+Send for them; they are in the Louvre now.”
+
+He looked at her a moment.
+
+“Very well,” he said; and reeled to the door, bawling hoarsely his
+orders.
+
+They came, one by one--the Marshal de Tavannes, the Duke of Retz, the
+Duke of Nevers, the Chancellor de Biragues, and lastly the Duke of
+Guise, upon whom the King scowled a jealous hatred that was now fully
+alive.
+
+The window, which overlooked the quay and the river, stood open to admit
+what air might be stirring on that hot day of August.
+
+Charles sat at his writing-table, sullen and moody, twining a string of
+beads about his fingers. Catherine occupied the chair over beyond the
+table, Anjou sitting near her on a stool. The others stood respectfully
+awaiting that the King should make known his wishes. The shifty royal
+glance swept over them from under lowering brows; then it rested almost
+in challenge upon his mother.
+
+“Tell them,” he bade her curtly.
+
+She told them what already she had told her son, relating all now with
+greater detail and circumstance. For some moments nothing was heard in
+that room but the steady drone of her unemotional voice. When she had
+finished, she yawned and settled herself to hear what might be answered.
+
+“Well,” snapped the King, “you have heard. What do you advise? Speak
+out!”
+
+Nevers was the first to answer.
+
+“There is no other way,” he said stiffly, “but that which Her Majesty
+advises. The danger is grave. If it is to be averted, action must be
+prompt and effective.”
+
+Tavannes clasped his hands behind him and said much the same, as did
+presently the Chancellor.
+
+Twisting and untwisting his chaplet of beads about his long fingers,
+his eyes averted, the King heard each in turn. Then he looked up. His
+glance, deliberately ignoring Guise, settled upon the Duke of Retz, who
+held aloof.
+
+“And you, Monsieur le Marechal, what is your counsel?”
+
+Retz drew himself up, as if bracing himself to meet opposing forces. He
+was a little pale, but quite composed.
+
+“If there is a man whom I should hate,” he said, “it is this Gaspard de
+Coligny, who has defamed me and all my family by the foul accusations he
+has put abroad. But I will not,” he added firmly, “take vengeance upon
+my enemies at the expense of my king and master. I cannot counsel a
+course so disastrous to Your Majesty and the whole kingdom. Did we
+act as we have been advised, Sire, can you doubt that we should
+be taxed--and rightly taxed in view of the treaty that has been
+signed--with perfidy and disloyalty?”
+
+Dead silence followed that bombshell of opposition, coming from a
+quarter whence it was least expected. For Catherine and Anjou had
+confidently counted upon the Duke's hatred of Coligny to ensure his
+support of their designs.
+
+A little colour crept into the pale cheeks of the King. His glance
+kindled out of its sullenness. He was as one who sees sudden hope amid
+despair.
+
+“That is the truth,” he said. “Messieurs, and you, madame my mother, you
+have heard the truth. How do you like it?”
+
+“Monsieur de Retz is deceived by an excess of loyalty,” said Anjou
+quickly. “Because he bears a personal enmity to the Admiral, he
+conceives that it would hurt his honour to speak otherwise. It must
+savour to him, as he has said, of using his king and master to avenge
+his own personal wrongs. We can respect Monsieur de Retz's view,
+although we hold it mistaken.”
+
+“Will Monsieur de Retz tell us what other course lies open?” quoth the
+bluff Tavannes.
+
+“Some other course must be found,” cried the King, rousing himself. “It
+must be found, do you hear? I will not have you touch the life of my
+friend the Admiral. I will not have it--by the Blood!”
+
+A hubbub followed, all speaking at once, until the King banged the
+table, and reminded them that his cabinet was not a fish-market.
+
+“I say that there is no other way,” Catherine insisted. “There cannot be
+two kings in France, nor can there be two parties. For your own safety's
+sake, and for the safety of your kingdom, I beseech you so to contrive
+that in France there be but one party with one head--yourself.”
+
+“Two kings in France?” he said. “What two kings?”
+
+“Yourself and Gaspard I--King Coligny, the King of the Huguenots.”
+
+“He is my subject--my faithful, loyal subject,” the King protested, but
+with less assurance.
+
+“A subject who raises forces of his own, levies taxes of his own,
+garrisons Huguenot cities,” said Biragues. “That is a very dangerous
+type of subject, Sire.”
+
+“A subject who forces you into war with Protestant Flanders against
+Catholic Spain,” added the blunt Tavannes.
+
+“Forces me?” roared the King, half rising, his eyes aflash. “That is a
+very daring word.”
+
+“It would be if the proof were absent. Remember, Sire, his very speech
+to you before you permitted him to embark upon preparations for this
+war. 'Give us leave,' he said, 'to make war in Flanders, or we shall be
+compelled to make war upon yourself.'”
+
+The King winced and turned livid. Sweat stood in beads upon his brow. He
+was touched in his most sensitive spot. That speech of Coligny's was of
+all things the one he most desired to forget. He twisted the chaplet so
+that the beads bit deeply into his fingers.
+
+“Sire,” Tavannes continued, “were I a king, and did a subject so address
+me, I should have his head within the hour. Yet worse has happened
+since, worse is happening now. The Huguenots are arming. They ride
+arrogantly through the streets of your capital, stirring up rebellion.
+They are here in force, and the danger grows acute and imminent.”
+
+Charles writhed before them. He mopped his brow with a shaking hand.
+
+“The danger--yes. I see that. I admit the danger. But Coligny--”
+
+“Is it to be King Gaspard or King Charles?” rasped the voice of
+Catherine.
+
+The chaplet snapped suddenly in the King's fingers. He sprang to his
+feet, deathly pale.
+
+“So be it!” he cried. “Since it is necessary to kill the Admiral, kill
+him, then. Kill him!” he screamed, in a fury that seemed aimed at those
+who forced this course upon him. “Kill him--but see to it also that at
+the same time you kill every Huguenot in France, so that not one shall
+be left to reproach me. Not one, do you hear? Take your measures and let
+the thing be done at once.” And on that, his face livid and twitching,
+his limbs shaking, he flung out of the room and left them.
+
+It was all the warrant they required, and they set to work at once
+there in the King's own cabinet, where he had left them. Guise, who
+had hitherto been no more than a silent spectator, assumed now the most
+active part. Upon his own shoulders he took the charge of seeing the
+Admiral done to death.
+
+The remainder of the day and a portion of the evening were spent in
+concerting ways and means. They assured themselves of the Provost of
+the merchants of Paris, of the officers of the Gardes Francaises and
+the three thousand Swiss, of the Captains of the quarters and other
+notoriously factious persons who could be trusted as leaders. By ten
+o'clock at night all preparations were made and it was agreed that the
+ringing of the bell of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois for matins was to be
+the signal for the massacre.
+
+A gentleman of the Admiral's household taking his way homeward that
+night passed several men bearing sheaves of pikes upon their shoulders,
+and never suspected whom these weapons were to arm. He met several small
+companies of soldiers marching quietly, their weapons shouldered, their
+matches glowing, and still he suspected nothing, whilst in one quarter
+he stopped to watch a man whose behaviour seemed curious, and discovered
+that he was chalking a white cross upon the doors of certain houses.
+
+Meeting soon afterwards another man with a bundle of weapons on his
+shoulder, the intrigued Huguenot gentleman asked him bluntly what he
+carried and whither he went.
+
+“It is for the divertissement at the Louvre tonight,” he was answered.
+
+But in the Louvre the Queen-Mother and the Catholic leaders, the labours
+of preparation ended, were snatching a brief rest. Between two and three
+o'clock in the morning Catherine and Anjou repaired again to the King's
+cabinet. They found him waiting there, his face haggard and his eyes
+fevered.
+
+He had spent a part of the evening at billiards, and among the players
+had been La Rochefoucauld, of whom he was fond, and who had left him
+with a jest at eleven o'clock, little dreaming that it was for the last
+time.
+
+The three of them crossed to the window overlooking the river. They
+opened it, and peered out fearfully. Even Catherine trembled now that
+the hour approached. The air was fresh and cool, swept clean by the
+stirring breeze of the dawn, whose first ghostly gleams were already in
+the sky. Suddenly, somewhere near at hand, a pistol cracked. The noise
+affected them oddly. The King fell into an ague and his teeth chattered
+audibly. Panic seized him.
+
+“By the Blood, it shall not be! It shall not be!” he cried suddenly.
+
+He looked at his mother and his brother and they looked at him; ghastly
+were the faces of all three, their eyes wide and staring with horror.
+
+Charles swore in his terror that he would cancel all commands. And
+since Catherine and Anjou made no attempt to hinder him, he summoned an
+officer and bade him seek out the Duke of Guise at once and command him
+to stay his hand.
+
+The messenger eventually found the Duke in the courtyard of the
+Admiral's house, standing over the Admiral's dead body, which his
+assassins had flung down from the bedroom window. Guise laughed, and
+stirred the head of the corpse with his foot, answering that the
+message came too late. Even as he spoke the great bell of Saint-Germain
+l'Auxerrois began to ring for matins.
+
+The royal party huddled at that window of the Louvre heard it at the
+same moment, and heard, as if in immediate answer, shots of arquebus
+and pistol, cries and screams near at hand, and then, gradually swelling
+from a murmur, the baying of the fierce multitude. Other bells gave
+tongue, until from every steeple in Paris the alarm rang out. The red
+glow from thousands of torches flushed the heavens with a rosy tint as
+of dawn, the air grew heavy with the smell of pitch and resin.
+
+The King, clutching the sill of the window, poured out a stream of
+blasphemy from between his chattering teeth. Then the hubbub rose
+suddenly near at hand. The neighbourhood of the Louvre was populous
+with Huguenots, and into it now poured the excited Catholic citizens
+and soldiers. Soon the quay beneath the palace windows presented the
+fiercest spectacle of any quarter, of Paris.
+
+Half-clad men, women, and children fled screaming before the assassins,
+until they were checked by the chains that everywhere had been placed
+across the streets. Some sought the river, hoping to find a way of
+escape. But with Satanic foresight, the boats usually moored there had
+been conveyed to the other side. Thus some hundreds of Huguenots were
+brought to bay, and done to death under the very eyes of the King who
+had unleashed this horror. Doors were crashed open, flames rose to
+heaven, men and women were shot down under the palace wall, bodies were
+flung from windows, and on every side--in the words of D'Aubigne--the
+blood now flowed, seeking the river.
+
+The King watched a while, screams and curses pouring from his lips to
+be lost in the horrible uproar. He turned, perhaps to upbraid his mother
+and his brother, but found that they were no longer at his side.
+Behind him in the room a page was crouching, watching him with a white,
+horrified face.
+
+Suddenly the King laughed--it was the fierce, hysterical laugh of a
+madman. His eyes fell on the arquebuses flanking the picture of the
+Mother of Mercy. He took one of them down, then caught the boy by the
+collar of his doublet and dragged him forward to the window.
+
+“Hither, and load for me!” he bade him, between peals of his terrible
+laughter. Then he levelled the weapon across the sill of the window.
+“Parpaillots! Parpaillots!” he screamed. “Kill! Kill!” and he discharged
+the arquebus into a fleeing group of Huguenots.
+
+Five days later, the King--who by now had thrown the blame of the whole
+affair, with its slaughter of some two thousand Huguenots, upon the
+Guises and their hatred of Coligny--rode out to Montfaucon to behold the
+decapitated body of the Admiral, which hung from the gallows in chains.
+A courtier of a poor but obtrusive wit leaned towards him.
+
+“The Admiral becomes noisome, I think,” he said.
+
+The King's green eyes considered him, his lips curling grimly.
+
+“The body of a dead enemy always smells sweet,” he said.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VI. THE NIGHT OF WITCHCRAFT--Louis XIV and Madame De Montespan
+
+If you scrape the rubbish-heap of servile, coeval flattery that usually
+smothers the personality of a monarch, you will discover a few kings
+who have been truly great; many who have achieved greatness because they
+were wisely content to serve as masks for the great intellects of their
+time; and, for the rest, some bad kings, some foolish kings, and some
+ridiculous kings. But in all that royal gallery of history you will
+hardly find a more truly absurd figure than that of the resplendent Roi
+Soleil, the Grand Monarque, the Fourteenth Louis of France.
+
+I am not aware that he has ever been laughed at; certainly never to the
+extent which he deserves. The flatterers of his day, inevitable products
+of his reign, did their work so thoroughly that even in secret they do
+not appear to have dared to utter--possibly they did not even dare
+to think--the truth about him. Their work survives, and when you have
+assessed the monstrous flattery at its true worth, swept it aside and
+come down to the real facts of his life, you make the discovery that
+the proudest title their sycophancy could bestow and his own fatuity
+accept--Le Roi Soleil, the Sun-King--makes him what indeed he is: a
+king of opera bouffe. There is about him at times something almost
+reminiscent of the Court buffoons of a century before, who puffed
+themselves out with mock pride, and aped a sort of sovereignty to excite
+laughter; with this difference, however, that in his own case it was not
+intended to be amusing.
+
+A heartless voluptuary of mediocre intelligence, he contrived to wrap
+himself in what Saint-Simon has called a “terrible majesty.” He was
+obsessed by the idea of the dignity, almost the divinity--of kingship. I
+cannot believe that he conceived himself human. He appears to have
+held that being king was very like being God, and he duped the world by
+ceremonials of etiquette that were very nearly sacramental. We find
+him burdening the most simple and personal acts of everyday life with a
+succession of rites of an amazing complexity. Thus, when he rose in the
+morning, princes of the blood and the first gentlemen of France were in
+attendance: one to present to him his stockings, another to proffer
+on bended knee the royal garters, a third to perform the ceremony of
+handing him his wig, and so on until the toilette of his plump, not
+unhandsome person was complete. You miss the incense, you feel that some
+noble thurifer should have fumigated him at each stage. Perhaps he never
+thought of it.
+
+The evil fruits of his reign--evil, that is to say, from the point
+of view of his order, which was swept away as so much anachronistic
+rubbish--did not come until a hundred years later. In his own day France
+was great, and this not because but in spite of him. After all, he was
+not the absolute ruler he conceived himself. There were such capable men
+as Colbert and Louvois at the King's side'; there was the great genius
+of France which manifests itself when and as it will, whatever the
+regime--and there was Madame de Montespan to whose influence not a
+little of Louis's glory may be ascribed, since the most splendid years
+of his reign were those between 1668 and 1678 when she was maitresse en
+titre and more than Queen of France. The women played a great part at
+the Court of Louis XIV, and those upon whom he turned his dark eyes were
+in the main as wax under the solar rays of the Sun-King. But Madame de
+Montespan had discovered the secret of reversing matters, so that in her
+hands it was the King who became as wax for her modelling. It is with
+this secret--a page of the secret history of France that we are here
+concerned.
+
+Francoises Athenais de Tonnay-Charente had come to Court in 1660 as
+a maid of honour to the Queen. Of a wit and grace to match her superb
+beauty, she was also of a perfervid piety, a daily communicant, a model
+of virtue to all maids of honour. This until the Devil tempted her. When
+that happened, she did not merely eat an apple; she devoured an entire
+orchard. Pride and ambition brought about her downfall. She shared the
+universal jealousy of which Louise de la Valliere was a victim,
+and coveted the honours and the splendour by which that unfortunate
+favourite was surrounded.
+
+Not even her marriage with the Marquis de Montespan some three years
+after her coming to Court sufficed to overcome the longings born of
+her covetousness and ambition. And then, when the Sun-King looked with
+favour upon her opulent charms, when at last she saw the object of her
+ambition within reach, that husband of hers went very near to wrecking
+everything by his unreasonable behaviour. This preposterous marquis had
+the effrontery to dispute his wife with Jupiter, was so purblind as not
+to appreciate the honour the Sun-King proposed to do him.
+
+In putting it thus, I but make myself the mouthpiece of the Court.
+
+When Montespan began to make trouble by railing furiously against the
+friendship of the King for his wife, his behaviour so amazed the King's
+cousin, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, that she called him “an extravagant
+and extraordinary man.” To his face she told him that he must be mad to
+behave in this fashion; and so incredibly distorted were his views, that
+he did not at all agree with her. He provoked scenes with the King, in
+which he quoted Scripture, made opposite allusions to King David which
+were in the very worst taste, and even ventured to suggest that the
+Sun-King might have to reckon with the judgment of God. If he escaped
+a lettre de cachet and a dungeon in the Bastille, it can only have been
+because the King feared the further spread of a scandal injurious to the
+sacrosanctity of his royal dignity.
+
+The Marchioness fumed in private and sneered in public. When
+Mademoiselle de Montpensier suggested that for his safety's sake she
+should control her husband's antics, she expressed her bitterness.
+
+“He and my parrot,” she said, “amuse the Court to my shame.”
+
+In the end, finding that neither by upbraiding the King nor by beating
+his wife could he prevail, Monsieur de Montespan resigned himself after
+his own fashion. He went into widower's mourning, dressed his servants
+in black, and came ostentatiously to Court in a mourning coach to take
+ceremonious leave of his friends. It was an affair that profoundly
+irritated the Sun-King, and very nearly made him ridiculous.
+
+Thereafter Montespan abandoned his wife to the King. He withdrew first
+to his country seat, and, later, from France, having received more than
+a hint that Louis was intending to settle his score with him. By that
+time Madame de Montespan was firmly established as maitresse en titre,
+and in January of 1669 she gave birth to the Duke of Maine, the first
+of the seven children she was to bear the King. Parliament was to
+legitimize them all, declaring them royal children of France, and the
+country was to provide titles, dignities, and royal rent-rolls for them
+and their heirs forever. Do you wonder that there was a revolution
+a century later, and that the people, grown weary of the parasitic
+anachronism of royalty, should have risen to throw off the intolerable
+burden it imposed upon them?
+
+The splendour of Madame de Montespan in those days was something the
+like of which had never been seen at the Court of France. On her estate
+of Clagny, near Versailles, stood now a magnificent chateau. Louis had
+begun by building a country villa, which satisfied her not at all.
+
+“That,” she told him, “might do very well for an opera-girl”; whereupon
+the infatuated monarch had no alternative but to command its demolition,
+and call in the famous architect, Mansard, to erect in its place an
+ultraroyal residence.
+
+At Versailles itself, whilst the long-suffering Queen had to be content
+with ten rooms on the second floor, Madame de Montespan was installed
+in twice that number on the first; and whilst a simple page sufficed
+to carry the Queen's train at Court, nothing less than the wife of a
+marshal of France must perform the same office for the favourite. She
+kept royal state as few queens have ever kept it. She was assigned a
+troop of royal bodyguards for escort, and when she travelled there was a
+never-ending train to follow her six-horse coach, and officers of State
+came to receive her with royal honours wherever she passed.
+
+In her immeasurable pride she became a tyrant, even over the King
+himself.
+
+“Thunderous and triumphant,” Madame de Sevigne describes her in those
+days when the Sun-King was her utter and almost timid slave.
+
+But constancy is not a Jovian virtue. Jupiter grew restless, and
+then, shaking off all restraint, plunged into inconstancy of the most
+scandalous and flagrant kind. It is doubtful if the history of royal
+amours, with all its fecundity, can furnish a parallel. Within a few
+months, Madame de Soubise, Mademoiselle de Rochefort-Theobon, Madame
+de Louvigny, Madame de Ludres, and some lesser ones passed in rapid
+succession through the furnace of the Sun-King's affection--which is to
+say, through the royal bed--and at last the Court was amazed to see the
+Widow Scarron, who had been appointed governess to Madame de Montespan's
+royal children, empanoplied in a dignity and ceremony that left no doubt
+on the score of her true position at Court.
+
+And so, after seven years of absolute sway in which homage had been
+paid her almost in awe by noble and simple alike, Madame de Montespan,
+neglected now by Louis, moved amid reflections of that neglect, with
+arrogantly smiling lips and desperate rage in her heart. She sneered
+openly at the royal lack of taste, allowed her barbed wit to make
+offensive sport with the ladies who supplanted her; yet, ravaged
+by jealousy, she feared for herself the fate which through her had
+overtaken La Valliere.
+
+That fear was with her now as she sat in the window embrasure, hell in
+her heart and a reflection of it in her eyes, as, fallen almost to the
+rank of a spectator in that comedy wherein she was accustomed to the
+leading part, she watched the shifting, chattering, glittering crowd.
+And as she watched, her line of vision was crossed to her undoing by the
+slender, wellknit figure of de Vanens, who, dressed from head to foot in
+black, detached sharply from that dazzling throng. His face was pale and
+saturnine, his eyes dark, very level, and singularly piercing. Thus
+his appearance served to underline the peculiar fascination which he
+exerted, the rather sinister appeal which he made to the imagination.
+
+This young Provencal nobleman was known to dabble in magic, and there
+were one or two dark passages in his past life of which more than
+a whisper had gone abroad. Of being a student of alchemy, a
+“philosopher”--that is to say, a seeker after the philosopher's stone,
+which was to effect the transmutation of metals--he made no secret. But
+if you taxed him with demoniacal practices he would deny it, yet in a
+way that carried no conviction.
+
+To this dangerous fellow Madame de Montespan now made appeal in her
+desperate need.
+
+Their eyes met as he was sauntering past, and with a lazy smile and a
+languid wave of her fan she beckoned him to her side.
+
+“They tell me, Vanens,” said she, “that your philosophy succeeds so well
+that you are transmuting copper into silver.”
+
+His piercing eyes surveyed her, narrowing; a smile flickered over his
+thin lips.
+
+“They tell you the truth,” he said. “I have cast a bar which has been
+purchased as good silver by the Mint.”
+
+Her interest quickened. “By the Mint!” she echoed, amazed. “But, then,
+my friend--” She was breathless with excitement. “It is a miracle.”
+
+“No less,” he admitted. “But there is the greater miracle to come--the
+transmutation of base metal into gold.”
+
+“And you will perform it?”
+
+“Let me but conquer the secret of solidifying mercury, and the rest is
+naught. I shall conquer it, and soon.”
+
+He spoke with easy confidence, a man stating something that he knew
+beyond the possibility of doubt. The Marquise became thoughtful. She
+sighed.
+
+“You are the master of deep secrets, Vanens. Have you none that will
+soften flinty hearts, make them responsive?”
+
+He considered this woman whom Saint-Simon has called “beautiful as the
+day,” and his smile broadened.
+
+“Look in your mirror for the alchemy needed there,” he bade her.
+
+Anger rippled across the perfect face. She lowered, “I have looked--in
+vain. Can you not help me, Vanens, you who know so much?”
+
+“A love-philtre?” said he, and hummed. “Are you in earnest?”
+
+“Do you mock me with that question? Is not my need proclaimed for all to
+see?”
+
+Vanens became grave.
+
+“It is not an alchemy in which myself I dabble,” he said slowly. “But I
+am acquainted with those who do.”
+
+She clutched his wrist in her eagerness.
+
+“I will pay well,” she said.
+
+“You will need to. Such things are costly.” He glanced round to see that
+none was listening, then bending nearer: “There is a sorceress named La
+Voisin in the Rue de la Tannerie, well known as a fortuneteller to many
+ladies of the Court, who at a word from me will do your need.”
+
+La Montespan turned white. The piety in which she had been reared--the
+habits of which clung to her despite the irregularity of her life--made
+her recoil before the thing that she desired. Sorcery was of the Devil.
+She told him so. But Vanens laughed.
+
+“So that it be effective. . .” said he with a shrug.
+
+And then across the room floated a woman's trilling laugh. She looked
+in the direction of the sound and beheld the gorgeous figure of the King
+bending--yet haughty and condescending even in adoration--over handsome
+Madame de Ludres. Pride and ambition rose up in sudden fury to trample
+on religious feeling. Let Vanens take her to this witch of his, for be
+the aid what it might, she must have it.
+
+And so, one dark night late in the year, Louis de Vanens handed a masked
+and muffled lady from a coach at the corner of the Rue de la Tannerie,
+and conducted her to the house of La Voisin.
+
+The door was opened for them by a young woman of some twenty years
+of age--Marguerite Monvoisin, the daughter of the witch--who led them
+upstairs to a room that was handsomely furnished and hung with fantastic
+tapestry of red designs upon a black ground--designs that took monstrous
+shapes in the flickering light of a cluster of candles. Black curtains
+parted, and from between them stepped a short, plump woman, of a certain
+comeliness, with two round black beads of eyes. She was fantastically
+robed in a cloak of crimson velvet, lined with costly furs and closely
+studded with double-headed eagles in fine gold, which must have been
+worth a prince's ransom; and she wore red shoes on each of which there
+was the same eagle design in gold.
+
+“Ah, Vanens!” she said familiarly.
+
+He bowed.
+
+“I bring you,” he announced, “a lady who has need of your skill.”
+
+And he waved a hand towards the tall cloaked figure at his side.
+
+La Voisin looked at the masked face.
+
+“Velvet faces tell me little, Madame la Marquise,” she said calmly.
+“Nor, believe me, will the King look at a countenance that you conceal
+from me.”
+
+There was an exclamation of surprise and anger from Madame de Montespan.
+She plucked off her mask.
+
+“You knew me?”
+
+“Can you wonder?” asked La Voisin, “since I have told you what you carry
+concealed in your heart?”
+
+Madame de Montespan was as credulous as only the very devout can be.
+
+“Since that is so, since you know already what I seek, tell me can you
+procure it me?” she asked in a fever of excitement. “I will pay well.”
+
+La Voisin smiled darkly.
+
+“Obdurate, indeed, is the case that will not yield to such medicine as
+mine,” she said. “Let me consider first what must be done. In a few days
+I shall bring you word. But have you courage for a great ordeal?”
+
+“For any ordeal that will give me what I want.”
+
+“In a few days, then, you shall hear from me,” said the witch, and so
+dismissed the great lady.
+
+Leaving a heavy purse behind her, as Vanens had instructed her, the
+Marchioness departed with her escort. And there, with that initiation,
+as far as we can ascertain, ended Louis de Vanens's connection with the
+affair.
+
+At Clagny Madame de Montespan waited for three days in a fever of
+impatience for the coming of the witch. But when at last La Voisin
+presented herself, the proposal that she had to make was one before
+which the Marchioness recoiled in horror and some indignation.
+
+The magic that La Voisin suggested involved a coadjutor, the Abbe
+Guibourg, and the black mass to be celebrated by him. Madame de
+Montespan had heard something of these dread sacrificial rites to Satan;
+sufficient to fill her with loathing and disgust of the whitefaced,
+beady-eyed woman who dared to insult her by the proposal. She fumed and
+raged a while, and even went near to striking La Voisin, who looked
+on with inscrutable face and stony, almost contemptuous, indifference.
+Before that impenetrable, almost uncanny, calm, Madame de Montespan's
+fury at last abated. Then the urgency of her need becoming paramount,
+she desired more clearly to be told what would be expected of her.
+What the witch told her was more appalling than anything she could have
+imagined. But La Voisin argued:
+
+“Can anything be accomplished without cost? Can anything be gained in
+this life without payment of some kind?”
+
+“But the price of this is monstrous!” Madame de Montespan protested.
+
+“Measure it by the worldly advantages to be gained. They are not small,
+madame. To enjoy boundless wealth, boundless power, and boundless
+honour, to be more than queen--is not all this worth some sacrifice?”
+
+To Madame de Montespan it must have been worth any sacrifice in this
+world or the next, since in the end she conquered her disgust, and
+agreed to lend herself to this horror.
+
+Three masses, she was told, would be necessary to ensure success, and
+it was determined that they should be celebrated in the chapel of the
+Chateau de Villebousin, where Guibourg had been almoner, to which he had
+access, and which was at the time untenanted.
+
+The chateau was a gloomy mediaeval fortress, blackened by age, and
+standing, surrounded by a moat, in a lonely spot some two miles to the
+south of Paris. Thither on a dark, gusty night of March came Madame de
+Montespan, accompanied by her confidential waiting-woman, Mademoiselle
+Desceillets. They left the coach to await them on the Orleans road, and
+thence, escorted by a single male attendant, they made their way by a
+rutted, sodden path towards the grim castle looming faintly through the
+enveloping gloom.
+
+The wind howled dismally about the crenellated turrets; and a row of
+poplars, standing like black, phantasmal guardians of the evil place,
+bent groaning before its fury. From the running waters of the moat,
+swollen by recent rains, came a gurgling sound that was indescribably
+wicked.
+
+Desocillets was frightened by the dark, the desolate loneliness and
+eeriness of the place; but she dared utter no complaint as she stumbled
+forward over the uneven ground, through the gloom and the buffeting
+wind, compelled by the suasion of her mistress's imperious will. Thus,
+by a drawbridge spanning dark, oily waters, they came into a vast
+courtyard and an atmosphere as of mildew. A studded door stood ajar, and
+through the gap, from a guiding beacon of infamy, fell a rhomb of yellow
+light, suddenly obscured by a squat female figure when the steps of the
+Marchioness and her companions fell upon the stones of the yard.
+
+It was La Voisin who stood on the threshold to receive her client. In
+the stone-flagged hall behind her the light of a lantern revealed her
+daughter, Marguerite Monvoisin, and a short, crafty-faced, misshapen
+fellow in black homespun and a red wig--a magician named Lesage, one of
+La Voisin's coadjutors, a rogue of some talent who exploited the witches
+of Paris to his own profit.
+
+Leaving Leroy--the Marchioness's male attendant below in this fellow's
+company, La Voisin took up a candle and lighted Madame de Montespan up
+the broad stone staircase, draughty and cold, to the ante-room of the
+chapel on the floor above. Mademoiselle Desceillets followed closely and
+fearfully, and Marguerite Monvoisin came last.
+
+They entered the ante-room, a spacious chamber, bare of furniture save
+for an oaken table in the middle, some faded and mildewed tapestries,
+and a cane-backed settle of twisted walnut over against the wall. An
+alabaster lamp on the table made an island of light in that place of
+gloom, and within the circle of its feeble rays stood a gross old man of
+some seventy years of age in sacerdotal garments of unusual design: the
+white alb worn over a greasy cassock was studded with black fir-cones;
+the stole and maniple were of black satin, with fir-cones wrought in
+yellow thread.
+
+His inflamed countenance was of a revolting hideousness: his cheeks were
+covered by a network of blue veins, his eyes squinted horribly, his lips
+vanished inwards over toothless gums, and a fringe of white hair hung
+in matted wisps from his high, bald crown. This was the infamous
+Abbe Guibourg, sacristan of Saint Denis, an ordained priest who had
+consecrated himself to the service of the Devil.
+
+He received the great lady with a low bow which, despite herself, she
+acknowledged by a shudder. She was very pale, and her eyes were dilating
+and preternaturally bright. Fear began to possess her, yet she suffered
+herself to be ushered into the chapel, which was dimly illumined by a
+couple of candles standing beside a basin on a table. The altar light
+had been extinguished. Her maid would have hung back, but that she
+feared to be parted from her mistress. She passed in with her in the
+wake of Guibourg, and followed by La Voisin, who closed the door,
+leaving her daughter in the ante-room.
+
+Although she had never been a participant in any of the sorceries
+practised by her mother, yet Marguerite was fully aware of their extent,
+and more than guessed what horrors were taking place beyond the closed
+doors of the chapel. The very thought of them filled her with loathing
+and disgust as she sat waiting, huddled in a corner of the settle. And
+yet when presently through the closed doors came the drone of the voice
+of that unclean celebrant, to blend with the whine of the wind in the
+chimney, Marguerite, urged by a morbid curiosity she could not conquer,
+crept shuddering to the door, which directly faced the altar, and going
+down on her knees applied her eye to the keyhole.
+
+What she saw may very well have appalled her considering the exalted
+station of Madame de Montespan. She beheld the white, sculptural form of
+the royal favourite lying at full length supine upon the altar, her arms
+outstretched, holding a lighted candle in each hand. Immediately before
+her stood the Abbe Guibourg, his body screening the chalice and its
+position from the eye of the watching girl.
+
+She heard the whine of his voice pattering the Latin of the mass, which
+he was reciting backwards from the last gospel; and occasionally
+she heard responses muttered by her mother, who with Mademoiselle
+Desceillets was beyond Marguerite's narrow range of vision.
+
+Apart from the interest lent to the proceedings by the presence of
+the royal favourite the affair must have seemed now very stupid and
+pointless to Marguerite, although she would certainly not have found it
+so had she known enough Latin to understand the horrible perversion
+of the Credo. But when the Offertory was reached, matters suddenly
+quickened. In stealing away from the door, she was no more than in time
+to avoid being caught spying by her mother, who now issued from the
+chapel.
+
+La Voisin crossed the ante-room briskly and went out.
+
+Within a very few minutes she was back again, her approach now heralded
+by the feeble, quavering squeals of a very young child.
+
+Marguerite Monvoisin was sufficiently acquainted with the ghastly rites
+to guess what was impending. She was young, and herself a mother.
+She had her share of the maternal instinct alive in every female
+animal--with the occasional exception of the human pervert--and the
+hoarse, plaintive cries of that young child chilled her to the soul with
+horror. She felt the skin roughening and tightening upon her body, and a
+sense of physical sickness overcame her. That and the fear of her mother
+kept her stiff and frozen in an angle of the settle until La Voisin had
+passed through and reentered the chapel bearing that piteous bundle in
+her arms.
+
+Then, when the door had closed again, the girl, horrified and
+fascinated, sped back to watch. She saw that unclean priest turn and
+receive the child from La Voisin. As it changed hands its cries were
+stilled.
+
+Guibourg faced the altar once more, that little wisp of humanity that
+was but a few days old held now aloft, naked, in his criminal hands.
+His muttering, slobbering voice pronouncing the words of that demoniac
+consecration reached the ears of the petrified girl at the keyhole.
+
+“Ashtaroth, Asmodeus, Princes of Affection, I conjure you to acknowledge
+the sacrifice I offer to you of this child for the things I ask of
+you, which are that the King's love for me shall be continued, and that
+honoured by princes and princesses nothing shall be denied me of all
+that I may ask.”
+
+A sudden gust of wind smote and rattled the windows of the chapel and
+the ante-room, as if the legions of hell had flung themselves against
+the walls of the chateau. There was a rush and clatter in the chimney of
+the ante-room's vast, empty fireplace, and through the din Marguerite,
+as her failing limbs sank under her and she slithered down in a heap
+against the chapel door, seemed to hear a burst of exultantly cruel
+satanic laughter. With chattering teeth and burning eyes she sat
+huddled, listening in terror. The child began to cry again, more
+violently, more piteously; then, quite suddenly, there was a little
+choking cough, a gurgle, the chink of metal against earthenware, and
+silence.
+
+When some moments later the squat figure of La Voisin emerged from the
+chapel, Marguerite was back in the shadows, hunched on the settle to
+which she had crawled. She saw that her mother now carried a basin under
+her arm, and she did not need the evidence of her eyes to inform her of
+the dreadful contents that the witch was bearing away in it.
+
+Meanwhile in the chapel the ineffably blasphemous rites proceeded. To
+the warm human blood which had been caught in the consecrated chalice,
+Guibourg had added, among other foulnesses, powdered cantharides, the
+dust of desiccated moles, and the blood of bats. By the addition of
+flour he had wrought the ingredients into an ineffable paste, and over
+this, through the door, which La Voisin had left ajar, Marguerite heard
+his voice pronouncing the dread words of Transubstantiation.
+
+Marguerite's horror mounted until it threatened to suffocate her. It
+was as if some hellish miasma, released by Guibourg's monstrous
+incantations, crept through to permeate and poison the air she breathed.
+
+It would be a half-hour later when Madame de Montespan at last came out.
+She was of a ghastly pallor, her limbs shook and trembled under her as
+she stepped forth, and there was a wild horror in her staring eyes. Yet
+she contrived to carry herself almost defiantly erect, and she spoke
+sharply to the half-swooning Desceillets, who staggered after her.
+
+She took her departure from that unholy place bearing with her the
+host compounded of devilish ingredients which when dried and reduced to
+powder was to be administered to the King to ensure the renewal of his
+failing affection for her.
+
+The Marchioness contrived that a creature of her own, an officer of
+the buttery in her pay, should introduce it into the royal soup. The
+immediate and not unnatural result was that the King was taken violently
+ill, and Madame de Montespan's anxiety and suspense were increased
+thereby. On his recovery, however, it would seem that the demoniac
+sacrament--thrice repeated by then--had not been in vain.
+
+The sequel, indeed, appeared to justify Madame de Montespan's faith
+in sorcery, and to compensate her for all the horror to which in
+her despair she had submitted. Madame de Ludres found herself coldly
+regarded by the convalescent King. Very soon she was discarded, the
+Widow Scarron neglected, and the fickle monarch was once more at the
+feet of the lovely marchioness, her utter and devoted slave.
+
+Thus was Madame de Montespan “thunderously triumphant” once more,
+and established as firmly as ever in the Sun-King's favour. Madame de
+Sevigne, in speaking of this phase of their relations, dilates upon the
+completeness of the reconciliation, and tells us that the ardour of
+the first years seemed now to have returned. And for two whole years it
+continued thus. Never before had Madame de Montespan's sway been more
+absolute, no shadow came to trouble, the serenity of her rule.
+
+But it proved, after all, to be no more than the last flare of an
+expiring fire that was definitely quenched at last, in 1679, by
+Mademoiselle de Fontanges. A maid of honour to madame, she was a child
+of not more than eighteen years, fair and flaxen, with pink cheeks and
+large, childish eyes; and it was for this doll that the regal Montespan
+now found herself discarded.
+
+Honours rained upon the new favourite. Louis made her a duchess with
+an income of twenty thousand livres, and deeply though this may have
+disgusted his subjects, it disgusted Madame de Montespan still more.
+Blinded by rage she openly abused the new duchess, and provoked a fairly
+public scene with Louis, in which she gave him her true opinion of him
+with a disturbing frankness.
+
+“You dishonour yourself,” she informed him among other things. “And you
+betray your taste when you make love to a pink-and-white doll, a little
+fool that has no more wit nor manners than if she were painted on
+canvas!” Then, with an increase of scorn, she delivered herself of an
+unpardonable apostrophe: “You, a king, to accept the inheritance of that
+chit's rustic lovers!”
+
+He flushed and scowled upon her.
+
+“That is an infamous falsehood!” he exclaimed. “Madame, you are
+unbearable!” He was very angry, and it infuriated him the more that
+she should stand so coldly mocking before an anger that could bow the
+proudest heads in France. “You have the pride of Satan, your greed is
+insatiable, your domineering spirit utterly insufferable, and you have
+the most false and poisonous tongue in the world!”
+
+Her brutal answer bludgeoned that high divinity to earth.
+
+“With all my imperfections,” she sneered, “at least I do not smell as
+badly as you do!”
+
+It was an answer that extinguished her last chance. It was fatal to
+the dignity, to the “terrible majesty” of Louis. It stripped him of
+all divinity, and revealed him authoritatively as intensely and even
+unpleasantly human. It was beyond hope of pardon.
+
+His face turned the colour of wax. A glacial silence hung over the
+agonized witnesses of that royal humiliation. Then, without a word, in a
+vain attempt to rescue the dignity she had so cruelly mauled, he turned,
+his red heels clicked rapidly and unsteadily across the polished floor,
+and he was gone.
+
+When Madame de Montespan realized exactly what she had done, nothing
+but rage remained to her--rage and its offspring, vindictiveness. The
+Duchess of Fontanges must not enjoy her victory, nor must Louis escape
+punishment for his faithlessness. La Voisin should afford her the means
+to accomplish this. And so she goes once more to the Rue de la Tannerie.
+
+Now, the matter of Madame de Montespan's present needs was one in which
+the witches were particularly expert. Were you troubled with a rival,
+did your husband persist in surviving your affection for him, did those
+from whom you had expectations cling obstinately and inconsiderately
+to life, the witches by incantations and the use of powders--in which
+arsenic was the dominant charm--could usually put the matter right for
+you. Indeed, so wide and general was the practice of poisoning become,
+that the authorities, lately aroused to the fact by the sensational
+revelations of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, had set up in this
+year 1670 the tribunal known as the Chambre Ardente to inquire into the
+matter, and to conduct prosecutions.
+
+La Voisin promised help to the Marchioness. She called in another witch
+of horrible repute, named La Filastre, her coadjutor Lesage, and two
+expert poisoners, Romani and Bertrand, who devised an ingenious plot for
+the murder of the Duchess of Fontanges. They were to visit her, Romani
+as a cloth merchant, and Bertrand as his servant, to offer her their
+wares, including some Grenoble gloves, which were the most beautiful
+gloves in the world and unfailingly irresistible to ladies. These gloves
+they prepared in accordance with certain magical recipes in such a way
+that the Duchess, after wearing them, must die a lingering death in
+which there could be no suspicion of poisoning.
+
+The King was to be dealt with by means of a petition steeped in similar
+powders, and should receive his death by taking it into his hands. La
+Voisin herself was to go to Saint-Germain to present this petition on
+Monday, March 13th, one of those days on which, according to ancient
+custom, all comers were admitted to the royal presence.
+
+Thus they disposed. But Fate was already silently stalking La Voisin.
+
+It is to the fact that an obscure and vulgar woman had drunk one glass
+of wine too many three months earlier that the King owed his escape.
+
+If you are interested in the almost grotesque disparity that can lie
+between cause and effect, here is a subject for you. Three months
+earlier a tailor named Vigoureux, whose wife secretly practised magic,
+had entertained a few friends to dinner, amongst whom was an intimate
+of his wife's, named Marie Bosse. This Marie Bosse it was who drank that
+excessive glass of wine which, drowning prudence, led her to boast of
+the famous trade she drove as a fortune-teller to the nobility, and even
+to hint of something further.
+
+“Another three poisonings,” she chuckled, “and I shall retire with my
+fortune made!”
+
+An attorney who was present pricked up his ears, bethought him of the
+tales that were afloat, and gave information to the police. The police
+set a trap for Marie Bosse, and she betrayed herself. Later, under
+torture, she betrayed La Vigoureux. La Vigoureux betrayed others, and
+these others again.
+
+The arrest of Marie Bosse was like knocking down the first of a row of
+ninepins, but none could have suspected that the last of these stood in
+the royal apartments.
+
+On the day before she was to repair to Saint-Germain, La Voisin,
+betrayed in her turn, received a surprise visit from the police--who, of
+course, had no knowledge of the regicide their action was thwarting--and
+she was carried off to the Chatelet. Put to the question, she revealed
+a great deal; but her terror of the horrible punishment reserved
+for regicides prevented her to the day of her death at the stake--in
+February of 1680 from saying a word of her association with Madame de
+Montespan.
+
+But there were others whom she betrayed under torture, and whose arrest
+followed quickly upon her own, who had not her strength of character.
+Among these were La Filastre and the magician Lesage. When it was found
+that these two corroborated each other in the incredible things which
+they related, the Chambre Ardente took fright. La Reynie, who presided
+over it, laid the matter before the King, and the King, horror-stricken
+by the discovery of the revolting practices in which the mother of
+his children had been engaged, suspended the sittings of the Chambre
+Ardente, and commanded that no further proceedings should be taken
+against Lesage and La Filastre, and none initiated against Romani,
+Bertrand, the Abbe Guibourg, and the scores of other poisoners and
+magicians who had been arrested, and who were acquainted with Madame de
+Montespan's unholy traffic.
+
+But it was not out of any desire to spare Madame de Montespan that the
+King proceeded in this manner; he was concerned only to spare himself
+and his royal dignity. He feared above all things the scandal and
+ridicule which must touch him as a result of publicity, and because
+he feared it so much, he could impose no punishment upon Madame de
+Montespan.
+
+This he made known to her at the interview between them procured by his
+minister Louvois, at about the time that the sittings of the Chambre
+Ardente were suspended.
+
+To this interview that proud, domineering woman came in dread, and in
+tears and humility for once. The King's bearing was cold and hard. Cold
+and hard were the words in which he declared the extent of his knowledge
+of her infamy, words which revealed the loathing and disgust this
+knowledge brought him. If at first she was terror-stricken, crushed
+under the indictment, yet she was never of a temper to bear reproaches
+long. Under his scorn her anger kindled and her humility was sloughed.
+
+“What then?” she cried at last, eyes aflash through lingering tears. “Is
+the blame all mine? If all this is true, it is no less true that I
+was driven to it by my love for you and the despair to which your
+heartlessness and infidelity reduced me. To you,” she continued,
+gathering force at every word, “I sacrificed everything--my honour, a
+noble husband who loved me, all that a woman prizes. And what did you
+give me in exchange? Your cruel fickleness exposed me to the low mockery
+of the lick-spittles of your Court. Do you wonder that I went mad, and
+that in my madness I sacrificed what shreds of self-respect you had left
+me? And now it seems I have lost all but life. Take that, too, if it
+be your pleasure. Heaven knows it has little value left for me! But
+remember that in striking me you strike the mother of your children--the
+legitimate children of France. Remember that!”
+
+He remembered it. Indeed, he was never in danger of forgetting it; for
+she might have added that he would be striking also at himself and at
+that royal dignity which was his religion. And so that all scandalous
+comment might be avoided she was actually allowed to remain at Court,
+although no longer in her first-floor apartments; and it was not until
+ten years later that she departed to withdraw to the community of Saint
+Joseph.
+
+But even in her disgrace this woman, secretly convicted among other
+abominations of attempting to procure the poisoning of the King and of
+her rival, enjoyed an annual pension of 1,200,000 livres; whilst none
+dared proceed against those who shared her guilt--not even the infamous
+Guibourg, the poisoners Romani and Bertrand, and La Filastre--nor yet
+against some scores of associates of these, who were known to live by
+sorcery and poisonings, and who might be privy to the part played by
+Madame de Montespan in that horrible night of magic at the Chateau de
+Villebousin.
+
+The hot blast of revolution was needed to sweep France clean.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VII. THE NIGHT OF GEMS--The “Affairs” Of The Queen's Necklace
+
+Under the stars of a tepid, scented night of August of 1784, Prince
+Louis de Rohan, Cardinal of Strasbourg, Grand Almoner of France, made
+his way with quickened pulses through the Park of Versailles to a
+momentous assignation in the Grove of Venus.
+
+This illustrious member of an illustrious House, that derived from both
+the royal lines of Valois and Bourbon, was a man in the prime of life,
+of a fine height, still retaining something of the willowy slenderness
+that had been his in youth, and of a gentle, almost womanly beauty of
+countenance.
+
+In a grey cloak and a round, grey hat with gold cords, followed closely
+by two shadowy attendant figures, he stepped briskly amain, eager to
+open those gates across the path of his ambition, locked against him
+hitherto by the very hands from which he now went to receive the key.
+
+He deserves your sympathy, this elegant Cardinal-Prince, who had been
+the victim of the malice and schemings of the relentless Austrian
+Empress since the days when he represented the King of France at the
+Court of Vienna.
+
+The state he had kept there had been more than royal and royal in
+the dazzling French manner, which was perturbing to a woman of Marie
+Therese's solid German notions. His hunting-parties, his supper-parties,
+the fetes he gave upon every occasion, the worldly inventiveness, the
+sumptuousness and reckless extravagance that made each of these affairs
+seem like a supplement to “The Arabian Nights' Entertainments,” the
+sybaritic luxury of his surroundings, the incredible prodigality of
+his expenditure, all served profoundly to scandalize and embitter the
+Empress.
+
+That a priest in gay, secular clothes should hunt the stag on horseback
+filled her with horror at his levity; that he should flirt discreetly
+with the noble ladies of Vienna made her despair of his morals; whilst
+his personal elegance and irresistible charm were proofs to her of a
+profligacy that perverted the Court over which she ruled.
+
+She laboured for the extinction of his pernicious brilliance, and
+intrigued for his recall. She made no attempt to conceal her hostility,
+nor did she love him any the better because he met her frigid
+haughtiness with an ironical urbanity that seemed ever to put her in the
+wrong. And then one day he permitted his wit to be bitingly imprudent.
+
+“Marie Therese,” he wrote to D'Aiguillon, “holds in one hand a
+handkerchief to receive her tears for the misfortunes of oppressed
+Poland, and in the other a sword to continue its partition.”
+
+To say that in this witticism lay one of the causes of the French
+Revolution may seem at first glance an outrageous overstatement. Yet
+it is certain that, but for that imprudent phrase, the need would never
+have arisen that sent Rohan across the Park of Versailles on that August
+night to an assignation that in the sequel was to place a terrible
+weapon in the hands of the Revolutionary party.
+
+D'Aiguillon had published the gibe. It had reached the ears of Marie
+Antoinette, and from her it had travelled back to her mother in Vienna.
+It aroused in the Empress a resentment and a bitterness that did not
+rest until the splendid Cardinal-Prince was recalled from his embassy.
+It did not rest even then. By the ridicule to which the gibe exposed
+her--and if you know Marie Therese at all, you can imagine what that
+meant--it provoked a hostility that was indefatigably to labour against
+him.
+
+The Cardinal was ambitious, he had confidence in his talents and in
+the driving force of his mighty family, and he looked to become another
+Richelieu or Mazarin, the first Minister of the Crown, the empurpled
+ruler of France, the guiding power behind the throne. All this he looked
+confidently to achieve; all this he might have achieved but for the
+obstacle that Marie Therese's resentment flung across his path. The
+Empress saw to it that, through the person of her daughter, her hatred
+should pursue him even into France.
+
+Obedient ever to the iron will of her mother, sharing her mother's
+resentment, Marie Antoinette exerted all her influence to thwart this
+Cardinal whom her mother had taught her to regard as a dangerous,
+unprincipled man.
+
+On his return from Vienna bearing letters from Marie Therese to Louis
+XVI and Marie Antoinette, the Cardinal found himself coldly received by
+the dull King, and discouraged from remaining at Court, whilst the Queen
+refused to grant him so much as the audience necessary for the delivery
+of these letters, desiring him to forward them instead.
+
+The chagrined Cardinal had no illusions. He beheld here the hand
+of Marie Therese controlling Marie Antoinette, and, through Marie
+Antoinette, the King himself. Worse followed. He who had dreamt himself
+another Richelieu could only with difficulty obtain the promised
+position of Grand Almoner of France, and this solely as a result of the
+powerful and insistent influence exerted by his family.
+
+He perceived that if he was to succeed at all he must begin by softening
+the rigorous attitude which the Queen maintained towards him. To that
+end he addressed himself. But three successive letters he wrote to the
+Queen remained unanswered. Through other channels persistently he begged
+for an audience that he might come in person to express his regrets for
+the offending indiscretion. But the Queen remained unmoved, ruled ever
+by the Austrian Empress, who through her daughter sought to guide the
+affairs of France.
+
+Rohan was reduced to despair, and then in an evil hour his path was
+crossed by Jeanne de la Motte de Valois, who enjoyed the reputation
+of secretly possessing the friendship of the Queen, exerting a sort of
+back-stair influence, and who lived on that reputation.
+
+As a drowning man clutches at a straw, so the Cardinal-Prince Louis de
+Rohan, Grand Almoner of France, Landgrave of Alsace, Commander of the
+Order of the Holy Ghost, clutched at this faiseuse d'affaires to help
+him in his desperate need.
+
+Jeanne de la Motte de Valois--perhaps the most astounding adventuress
+that ever lived by her wits and her beauty--had begun life by begging
+her bread in the streets. She laid claim to left-handed descent from
+the royal line of Valois, and, her claim supported by the Marchioness
+Boulainvilliers, who had befriended her, she had obtained from the Crown
+a small pension, and had married the unscrupulous Marc Antoine de la
+Motte, a young soldier in the Burgundy regiment of the Gendarmerie.
+
+Later, in the autumn of 1786, her protectress presented her to Cardinal
+de Rohan. His Eminence, interested in the lady's extraordinary history,
+in her remarkable beauty, vivacity, and wit, received the De la Mottes
+at his sumptuous chateau at Saverne, near Strasbourg, heard her story in
+greater detail, promised his protection, and as an earnest of his
+kindly intentions obtained for her husband a captain's commission in the
+Dragoons.
+
+Thereafter you see the De la Mottes in Paris and at Versailles, hustled
+from lodging to lodging for failure to pay what they owe; and finally
+installed in a house in the Rue Neuve Saint-Gilles. There they kept
+a sort of state, spending lavishly, now the money borrowed from the
+Cardinal, or upon the Cardinal's security; now the proceeds of pawned
+goods that had been bought on credit, and of other swindles practised
+upon those who were impressed by the lady's name and lineage and the
+patronage of the great Cardinal which she enjoyed.
+
+To live on your wits is no easy matter. It demands infinite address,
+coolness, daring, and resource qualities which Madame de la Motte
+possessed in the highest degree, so that, harassed and pressed by
+creditors, she yet contrived to evade their attacks and to present a
+calm and, therefore, confidence-inspiring front to the world.
+
+The truth of Madame de la Motte de Valois's reputation for influence
+at Court was never doubted. There was nothing in the character of Marie
+Antoinette to occasion such doubts. Indiscreet in many things, Her
+Majesty was most notoriously so in her attachments, as witness her
+intimacy with Madame de Polignac and the Princesse de Lambelle. And the
+public voice had magnified--as it will--those indiscretions until it had
+torn her character into shreds.
+
+The fame of the Countess Jeanne de Valois--as Madame de la Motte now
+styled herself--increasing, she was employed as an intermediary by
+place-seekers and people with suits to prefer, who gratefully purchased
+her promises to interest herself on their behalf at Court.
+
+And then into her web of intrigue blundered the Cardinal de Rohan, who,
+as he confessed, “was completely blinded by his immense desire to regain
+the good graces of the Queen.” She aroused fresh hope in his despairing
+heart by protesting that, as some return for all the favours she had
+received from him, she would not rest until she had disposed the Queen
+more favourably towards him.
+
+Later came assurances that the Queen's hostility was melting under her
+persuasions, and at last she announced that she was authorized by Her
+Majesty to invite him to submit the justification which so long and so
+vainly he had sought permission to present.
+
+Rohan, in a vertigo of satisfaction, indited his justification,
+forwarded it to the Queen by the hand of the Countess, and some days
+later received a note in the Queen's hand upon blue-edged paper adorned
+by the lilies of France.
+
+“I rejoice,” wrote Marie Antoinette, “to find at last that you were not
+in fault. I cannot yet grant you the audience you desire, but as soon as
+the circumstances allow of it I shall let you know. Be discreet.”
+
+Upon the advice of the Countess of Valois, His Eminence sent a reply
+expressive of his deep gratitude and joy.
+
+Thus began a correspondence between Queen and Cardinal which continued
+regularly for a space of three months, growing gradually more
+confidential and intimate. As time passed his solicitations of an
+audience became more pressing, until at last the Queen wrote announcing
+that, actuated by esteem and affection for him who had so long been kept
+in banishment, she herself desired the meeting. But it must be secret.
+An open audience would still be premature; he had numerous enemies at
+Court, who, thus forewarned, might so exert themselves against him as
+yet to ruin all.
+
+To receive such a letter from a beautiful woman, and that woman a queen
+whose glories her inaccessibility had magnified a thousandfold in his
+imagination, must have all but turned the Cardinal's head. The secrecy
+of the correspondence, culminating in a clandestine meeting, seemed to
+establish between them an intimacy impossible under other circumstances.
+
+Into the warp of his ambition was now woven another, tenderly romantic,
+though infinitely respectful, feeling.
+
+You realize, I hope, the frame of mind in which the Cardinal-Prince took
+his way through that luminous, fragrant summer night towards the Grove
+of Venus. He went to lay the cornerstone of the proud edifice of
+his ambitions. To him it was a night of nights--a night of gems, he
+pronounced it, looking up into the jewelled vault of heaven. And in that
+phrase he was singularly prophetic.
+
+By an avenue of boxwood and yoke-elm he entered into an open glade,
+in the middle of which there was a circle where the intended statue of
+Venus was never placed. But if the cold marble effigy of a goddess were
+absent, the warm, living figure of a queen stood, all in shimmering
+white amid the gloom, awaiting him.
+
+Rohan checked a moment, his breath arrested, his pulses quickened. Then
+he sped forward, and, flinging off his wide-brimmed hat, he prostrated
+himself to kiss the hem of her white cambric gown. Something--a rose
+that she let fall--brushed lightly past his cheek. Reverently he
+recovered it, accounting it a tangible symbol of her favour, and
+he looked up into the proud, lovely face--which, although but dimly
+discernible, was yet unmistakable to him protesting his gratitude and
+devotion. He perceived that she was trembling, and caught the quiver in
+the voice that answered him.
+
+“You may hope that the past will be forgiven.”
+
+And then, before he could drink more deeply of this cup of delight,
+came rapid steps to interrupt them. A slender man, in whom the Cardinal
+seemed to recognize the Queen's valet Desclaux, thrust through the
+curtains of foliage into the grove.
+
+“Quick, madame!” he exclaimed in agitation. “Madame la Comtesse and
+Mademoiselle d'Artois are approaching!”
+
+The Queen was whirled away, and the Cardinal discreetly effaced himself,
+his happiness tempered by chagrin at the interruption.
+
+When, on the morrow, the Countess of Valois brought him a blue-bordered
+note with Her Majesty's wishes that he should patiently await a
+propitious season for his public restoration to royal favour, he
+resigned himself with the most complete and satisfied submission. Had
+he not the memory of her voice and the rose she had given him? Soon
+afterwards came a blue-bordered note in which Marie Antoinette advised
+him to withdraw to his Bishopric of Strasbourg until she should judge
+that the desired season of his reinstatement had arrived.
+
+Obediently Rohan withdrew.
+
+It was in the following December that the Countess of Valois's good
+offices at Court were solicited by a new client, and that she first
+beheld the famous diamond necklace.
+
+It had been made by the Court jewellers of the Rue Vendome--Bohmer and
+Bassenge--and intended for the Countess du Barry. On the assembling of
+its component gems Bohmer had laboured for five years and travelled all
+over Europe, with the result that he had achieved not so much a necklace
+as a blazing scarf of diamonds of a splendour outrivalling any jewel
+that the world had ever seen.
+
+Unfortunately, Bohmer was too long over the task. Louis XV died
+inopportunely, and the firm found itself with a necklace worth two
+million livres on its hands.
+
+Hopes were founded upon Marie Antoinette's reputed extravagance. But
+the price appalled her, while Louis XVI met the importunities of the
+jeweller with the reply that the country needed a ship of war more
+urgently than a necklace.
+
+Thereafter Bohmer offered it in various Courts of Europe, but always
+without success. Things were becoming awkward. The firm had borrowed
+heavily to pay for the stones, and anxiety seems to have driven Bohmer
+to the verge of desperation. Again he offered the necklace to the
+King, announcing himself ready to make terms, and to accept payment in
+instalments; but again it was refused.
+
+Bohmer now became that pest to society, the man with a grievance that he
+must be venting everywhere. On one occasion he so far forgot himself
+as to intrude upon the Queen as she was walking in the gardens of the
+Trianon. Flinging himself upon his knees before her, he protested with
+sobs that he was in despair, and that unless she purchased the necklace
+he would go and drown himself. His tears left her unmoved to anything
+but scorn.
+
+“Get up, Bohmer!” she bade him. “I don't like such scenes. I have
+refused the necklace, and I don't want to hear of it again. Instead of
+drowning yourself, break it up and sell the diamonds separately.”
+
+He did neither one nor the other, but continued to air his grievance;
+and among those who heard him was one Laporte, an impecunious visitor at
+the house of the Countess of Valois.
+
+Bohmer had said that he would pay a thousand louis to any one who found
+him a purchaser for the necklace. That was enough to stir the needy
+Laporte. He mentioned the matter to the Countess, and enlisted her
+interest. Then he told Bohmer of her great influence with the Queen, and
+brought the jeweller to visit her with the necklace.
+
+Dazzled by the fire of those gems, the Countess nevertheless
+protested--but in an arch manner calculated to convince Bohmer of the
+contrary--that she had no power to influence Her Majesty. Yet yielding
+with apparent reluctance to his importunities, she, nevertheless, ended
+by promising to see what could be done.
+
+On January 3d the Cardinal came back from Strasbourg. Correspondence
+with the Queen, through Madame de Valois, had continued during his
+absence, and now, within a few days of his return, an opportunity was
+to be afforded him of proving his readiness to serve Her Majesty, and of
+placing her under a profound obligation to him.
+
+The Countess brought him a letter from Marie Antoinette, in which the
+Queen expressed her desire to acquire the necklace, but added that,
+being without the requisite funds at the moment, it would be necessary
+to settle the terms and arrange the instalments, which should be paid at
+intervals of three months. For this she required an intermediary who in
+himself would be a sufficient guarantee to the Bohmers, and she ended by
+inviting His Eminence to act on her behalf.
+
+That invitation the Cardinal, who had been waiting ever since the
+meeting in the Grove of Venus for an opportunity of proving himself,
+accepted with alacrity.
+
+And so, on January 24th, the Countess drives up to the Grand Balcon, the
+jewellers' shop in the Rue Vendome. Her dark eyes sparkle, the lovely,
+piquant face is wreathed in smiles.
+
+“Messieurs,” she greets the anxious partners, “I think I can promise you
+that the necklace will very shortly be sold.”
+
+The jewellers gasp in the immensity of the hope her words arouse.
+
+“The purchase,” she goes on to inform them, “will be effected by a very
+great nobleman.”
+
+Bassenge bursts into voluble gratitude. She cuts it short.
+
+“That nobleman is the Cardinal-Prince Louis de Rohan. It is with him
+that you will arrange the affair, and I advise you,” she adds in a
+confidential tone, “to take every precaution, especially in the matter
+of the terms of payment that may be proposed to you. That is all,
+I think, messieurs. You will, of course, bear in mind that it is no
+concern of mine, and that I do not so much as want my name mentioned in
+connection with it.”
+
+“Perfectly, madame,” splutters Bohmer, who is perspiring, although the
+air is cold--“perfectly! We understand, and we are profoundly grateful.
+If--” His hands fumble nervously at a case. “If you would deign, madame,
+to accept this trifle as an earnest of our indebtedness, we--”
+
+There is a tinge of haughtiness in her manner as she interrupts him.
+
+“You do not appear to understand, Bohmer, that the matter does not at
+all concern me. I have done nothing,” she insists; then, melting into
+smiles, “My only desire,” she adds, “was to be of service to you.”
+
+And upon that she departs, leaving them profoundly impressed by her
+graciousness and still more by her refusal to accept a valuable jewel.
+
+On the morrow the great nobleman she had heralded, the Cardinal himself,
+alighted at the Grand Balcon, coming, on the Queen's behalf, to see the
+necklace and settle the terms. By the end of the week the bargain was
+concluded. The price was fixed at 1,600,000 livres, which the Queen was
+to pay in four instalments extending over two years, the first falling
+due on the following August 1st.
+
+These terms the Cardinal embodied in a note which he forwarded to Madame
+de la Motte, that they might be ratified by the Queen.
+
+The Countess returned the note to him next day.
+
+“Her Majesty is pleased and grateful,” she announced, “and she approves
+of all that you have done. But she does not wish to sign anything.”
+
+On that point, however, the Cardinal was insistent. The magnitude of
+the transaction demanded it, and he positively refused to move further
+without Her Majesty's signature.
+
+The Countess departed to return again on the last day of the month
+with the document completed as the Cardinal required, bearing now the
+signature “Marie Antoinette de France,” and the terms marked “approved”
+ in the Queen's hand.
+
+“The Queen,” Madame de la Motte informed him, “is making this purchase
+secretly, without the King's knowledge, and she particularly begs that
+this note shall not leave Your Eminence's hands. Do not, therefore,
+allow any one to see it.”
+
+Rohan gave the required promise, but, not conceiving that the Bohmers
+were included in it, he showed them the note and the Queen's signature
+when they came to wait upon him with the necklace on the morrow.
+
+In the dusk of evening a closed carriage drew up at the door of Madame
+de la Motte Valois's lodging on the Place Dauphine at Versailles. Rohan
+alighted, and went upstairs with a casket under his arm.
+
+Madame awaited him in a white-panelled, indifferently lighted room, to
+which there was an alcove with glass doors.
+
+“You have brought the necklace?”
+
+“It is here,” he replied, tapping the box with his gloved hand.
+
+“Her Majesty is expecting it to-night. Her messenger should arrive at
+any moment. She will be pleased with Your Eminence.”
+
+“That is all that I can desire,” he answered gravely; and sat down in
+answer to her invitation, the precious casket on his knees.
+
+Waiting thus, they talked desultorily for some moments. At last came
+steps upon the stairs.
+
+“Quick! The alcove!” she exclaimed. “You must not be seen by Her
+Majesty's messenger.”
+
+Rohan, with ready understanding, a miracle of discretion, effaced
+himself into the alcove, through the glass doors of which he could see
+what passed.
+
+The door was opened by madame's maid with the announcement:
+
+“From the Queen.”
+
+A tall, slender young man in black, the Queen's attendant of that other
+night of gems--the night of the Grove of Venus--stepped quickly into the
+room, bowed like a courtier to Madame de la Motte, and presented a note.
+
+Madame broke the seal, then begged the messenger to withdraw for a
+moment. When he had gone, she turned to the Cardinal, who stood in the
+doorway of the alcove.
+
+“That is Desclaux, Her Majesty's valet,” she said; and held out to him
+the note, which requested the delivery of the necklace to the bearer.
+
+A moment later the messenger was reintroduced to receive the casket from
+the hands of Madame de la Motte. Within five minutes the Cardinal was in
+his carriage again, driving happily back to Paris with his dreams of a
+queen's gratitude and confidence.
+
+Two days later, meeting Bohmer at Versailles, the Cardinal suggested to
+him that he should offer his thanks to the Queen for having purchased
+the necklace.
+
+Bohmer sought an opportunity for this in vain. None offered. It was also
+in vain that he waited to hear that the Queen had worn the necklace.
+But he does not appear to have been anxious on that score. Moreover,
+the Queen's abstention was credibly explained by Madame de la Motte to
+Laporte with the statement that Her Majesty did not wish to wear the
+necklace until it was paid for.
+
+With the same explanation she answered the Cardinal's inquiries in
+the following July, when he returned from a three months' sojourn in
+Strasbourg.
+
+And she took the opportunity to represent to him that one of the reasons
+why the Queen could not yet consider the necklace quite her own was that
+she found the price too high.
+
+“Indeed, she may be constrained to return it, after all, unless the
+Bohmers are prepared to be reasonable.”
+
+If His Eminence was a little dismayed by this, at least any nascent
+uneasiness was quieted. He consented to see the jewellers in the matter,
+and on July 10th--three weeks before the first instalment was due--he
+presented himself at the Grand Balcon to convey the Queen's wishes to
+the Bohmers.
+
+Bohmer scarcely troubled to prevent disgust from showing on his
+keen, swarthy countenance. Had not his client been a queen and her
+intermediary a cardinal, he would, no doubt, have afforded it full
+expression.
+
+“The price agreed upon was already greatly below the value of the
+necklace,” he grumbled. “I should never have accepted it but for the
+difficulties under which we have been placed by the purchase of the
+stones--the money we owe and the interest we are forced to pay. A
+further reduction is impossible.”
+
+The handsome Cardinal was suave, courtly, regretful, but firm. Since
+that was the case, there would be no alternative but to return the
+necklace.
+
+Bohmer took fright. The annulment of the sale would bring him face to
+face with ruin. Reluctantly, feeling that he was being imposed upon, he
+reduced the price by two hundred thousand livres, and even consented to
+write the Queen the following letter, whose epistolary grace suggests
+the Cardinal's dictation:
+
+MADAME,--We are happy to hazard the thought that our submission with
+zeal and respect to the last arrangement proposed constitutes a proof
+of our devotion and obedience to the orders of Your Majesty. And we have
+genuine satisfaction in thinking that the most beautiful set of diamonds
+in existence will serve to adorn the greatest and best of queens.
+
+Now it happened that Bohmer was about to deliver personally to the Queen
+some jewels with which the King was presenting her on the occasion of
+the baptism of his nephew. He availed himself of that opportunity, two
+days later, personally to hand his letter to Her Majesty. But chance
+brought the Comptroller-General into the room before she had opened it,
+and as a result the jeweller departed while the letter was still unread.
+
+Afterwards, in the presence of Madame de Campan, who relates the matter
+in her memoirs, the Queen opened the note, pored over it a while, and
+then, perhaps with vivid memories of Bohmer's threat of suicide:
+
+“Listen to what that madman Bohmer writes to me,” she said, and read the
+lines aloud. “You guessed the riddles in the 'Mercure' this morning. I
+wonder could you guess me this one.”
+
+And, with a half-contemptuous shrug, she held the sheet in the flame
+of one of the tapers that stood alight on the table for the purpose of
+sealing letters.
+
+“That man exists for my torment,” she continued. “He has always some mad
+notion in his head, and must always be visiting it upon me. When next
+you see him, pray convince him how little I care for diamonds.”
+
+And there the matter was dismissed.
+
+Days passed, and then a week before the instalment of 350,000 livres
+was due, the Cardinal received a visit from Madame de la Motte on the
+Queen's behalf.
+
+“Her Majesty,” madame announced, “seems embarrassed about the
+instalment. She does not wish to trouble you by writing about it. But
+I have thought of a way by which you could render yourself agreeable to
+her and, at the same time, set her mind at rest. Could you not raise a
+loan for the amount?”
+
+Had not the Cardinal himself dictated to Bohmer a letter which Bohmer
+himself had delivered to the Queen, he must inevitably have suspected by
+now that all was not as it should be. But, satisfied as he was by that
+circumstance, he addressed himself to the matter which Madame de la
+Motte proposed. But, although Rohan was extraordinarily wealthy, he had
+ever been correspondingly lavish.
+
+Moreover, to complicate matters, there had been the bankruptcy of his
+nephew, the Prince de Guimenee, whose debts had amounted to some three
+million livres. Characteristically, and for the sake of the family
+honour, Rohan had taken the whole of this burden upon his own shoulders.
+Hence his resources were in a crippled condition, and it was beyond his
+power to advance so considerable a sum at such short notice. Nor did he
+succeed in obtaining a loan within the little time at his disposal.
+
+His anxieties on this score were increased by a letter from the Queen
+which Madame de la Motte brought him on July 30th, in which Her Majesty
+wrote that the first instalment could not be paid until October 1st; but
+that on that date a payment of seven hundred thousand livres--half of
+the revised price--would unfailingly be made. Together with this letter,
+Madame de la Motte handed him thirty thousand livres, interest on the
+instalment due, with which to pacify the jewellers.
+
+But the jewellers were not so easily to be pacified. Bohmer, at the
+end of his patience, definitely refused to grant the postponement or
+to receive the thirty thousand livres other than as on account of the
+instalment due.
+
+The Cardinal departed in vexation. Something must be done at once,
+or his secret relations with the Queen would be disclosed, thus
+precipitating a catastrophe and a scandal. He summoned Madame de la
+Motte, flung her into a panic with his news and sent her away to see
+what she could do. What she actually did would have surprised him.
+Realizing that a crisis had been reached calling for bold measures, she
+sent for Bassenge, the milder of the two partners. He came to the Rue
+Neuve Saint-Gilles, protesting that he was being abused.
+
+“Abused?” quoth she, taking him up on the word. “Abused, do you say?”
+ She laughed sharply. “Say duped, my friend; for that is what has
+happened to you. You are the victim of a swindle.”
+
+Bassenge turned white; his prominent eyes bulged in his rather pasty
+face.
+
+“What are you saying, madame?” His voice was husky.
+
+“The Queen's signature on the note in the Cardinal's possession is a
+forgery.”
+
+“A forgery! The Queen's signature? Oh, mon Dieu!” He stared at her, and
+his knees began to tremble. “How do you know, madame?”
+
+“I have seen it,” she answered.
+
+“But--but--”
+
+His nerveless limbs succumbing under him, he sank without ceremony to
+a chair that was opportunely near him. With the same lack of ceremony,
+mechanically, in a dazed manner, he mopped the sweat that stood in beads
+on his brow, then raised his wig and mopped his head.
+
+“There is no need to waste emotion,” said she composedly. “The Cardinal
+de Rohan is very rich. You must look to him. He will pay you.”
+
+“Will he?”
+
+Hope and doubt were blended in the question.
+
+“What else?” she asked. “Can you conceive that he will permit such a
+scandal to burst about his name and the name of the Queen?”
+
+Bassenge saw light. The rights and wrongs of the case, and who might
+be the guilty parties, were matters of very secondary importance. What
+mattered was that the firm should recover the 1,600,000 livres for which
+the necklace had been sold; and Bassenge was quick to attach full value
+to the words of Madame de la Motte.
+
+Unfortunately for everybody concerned, including the jewellers
+themselves, Bohmer's mind was less supple. Panic-stricken by Bassenge's
+report, he was all for the direct method. There was no persuading him to
+proceed cautiously, and to begin by visiting the Cardinal. He tore away
+to Versailles at once, intent upon seeing the Queen. But the Queen,
+as we know, had had enough of Bohmer. He had to content himself with
+pouring his mixture of intercessions and demands into the ears of Madame
+de Campan.
+
+“You have been swindled, Bohmer,” said the Queen's lady promptly. “Her
+Majesty never received the necklace.”
+
+Bohmer would not be convinced. Disbelieving, and goaded to fury, he
+returned to Bassenge.
+
+Bassenge, however, though perturbed, retained his calm. The Cardinal,
+he insisted, was their security, and it was impossible to doubt that
+the Cardinal would fulfil his obligations at all costs, rather than be
+overwhelmed by a scandal.
+
+And this, no doubt, is what would have happened but for that hasty visit
+of Bohmer's to Versailles. It ruined everything. As a result of it,
+Bohmer was summoned to wait instantly upon the Queen in the mater of
+some paste buckles.
+
+The Queen received the jeweller in private, and her greeting proved that
+the paste buckles were a mere pretext. She demanded to know the meaning
+of his words to Madame de Campan.
+
+Bohmer could not rid himself of the notion that he was being trifled
+with. Had he not written and himself delivered to the Queen a letter
+in which he thanked her for purchasing the necklace, and had not that
+letter remained unanswered--a silent admission that the necklace was in
+her hands? In his exasperation he became insolent.
+
+“The meaning, madame? The meaning is that I require payment for my
+necklace, that the patience of my creditors is exhausted, and that
+unless you order the money to be paid, I am a ruined man!”
+
+Marie Antoinette considered him in cold, imperious anger.
+
+“Are you daring to suggest that your necklace is in my possession?”
+
+Bohmer was white to the lips, his hands worked nervously.
+
+“Does Your Majesty deny it?”
+
+“You are insolent!” she exclaimed. “You will be good enough to answer
+questions, not to ask them. Answer me, then. Do you suggest that I have
+your necklace?”
+
+But a desperate man is not easily intimidated.
+
+“No, madame; I affirm it! It was the Countess of Valois who--”
+
+“Who is the Countess of Valois?”
+
+That sudden question, sharply uttered, was a sword of doubt through
+the heart of Bohmer's confidence. He stared wide-eyed a moment at the
+indignant lady before him, then collected himself, and made as plain a
+tale as he could of the circumstances under which he had parted with
+the necklace Madame de la Motte's intervention, the mediation of the
+Cardinal de Rohan with Her Majesty's signed approval of the terms, and
+the delivery of the necklace to His Eminence for transmission to the
+Queen.
+
+Marie Antoinette listened in increasing horror and anger. A flush crept
+into her pale cheeks.
+
+“You will prepare and send me a written statement of what you have just
+told me,” she said. “You have leave to go.”
+
+That interview took place on August 9th. The 15th was the Feast of the
+Assumption, and also the name-day of the Queen, therefore a gala day at
+Court, bringing a concourse of nobility to Versailles. Mass was to be
+celebrated in the royal chapel at ten o'clock, and the celebrant, as by
+custom established for the occasion, was the Grand Almoner of France,
+the Cardinal de Rohan.
+
+But at ten o'clock a meeting was being held in the King's cabinet,
+composed of the King and Queen, the Baron de Breteuil, and the Keeper of
+the Seals, Miromesnil. They were met, as they believed, to decide upon a
+course of action in the matter of a diamond necklace. In reality, these
+puppets in the hands of destiny were helping to decide the fate of the
+French monarchy.
+
+The King, fat, heavy, and phlegmatic, sat in a gilded chair by an
+ormolu-encrusted writing-table. His bovine eyes were troubled. Two
+wrinkles of vexation puckered the flesh above his great nose. Beside,
+and slightly behind him, stood the Queen, white and imperious, whilst
+facing them stood Monsieur de Breteuil, reading aloud the statement
+which Bohmer had drawn up.
+
+When he had done, there was a moment's utter silence. Then the King
+spoke, his voice almost plaintive.
+
+“What is to be done, then? But what is to be done?”
+
+It was the Queen who answered him, harshly and angrily.
+
+“When the Roman purple and a princely title are but masks to cover a
+swindler, there is only one thing to be done. This swindler must be
+exposed and punished.”
+
+“But,” the King faltered, “we have not heard the Cardinal.”
+
+“Can you think that Bohmer, that any man, would dare to lie upon such a
+matter?”
+
+“But consider, madame, the Cardinal's rank and family,” calmly
+interposed the prudent Miromesnil; “consider the stir, the scandal that
+must ensue if this matter is made public.”
+
+But the obedient daughter of Marie Therese, hating Rohan at her mother's
+bidding and for her mother's sake, was impatient of any such wise
+considerations.
+
+“What shall the scandal signify to us?” she demanded. The King looked at
+Breteuil.
+
+“And you, Baron? What is your view?”
+
+Breteuil, Rohan's mortal enemy, raised his shoulders and flipped the
+document.
+
+“In the face of this, Sire, it seems to me that the only course is to
+arrest the Cardinal.”
+
+“You believe, then--” began the King, and checked, leaving the sentence
+unfinished.
+
+But Breteuil had understood.
+
+“I know that the Cardinal must be pressed for money,” he said. “Ever
+prodigal in his expenditure, he is further saddled with the debts of the
+Prince de Guimenee.”
+
+“And you can believe,” the King cried, “that a Prince of the House of
+Rohan, however pressed for money, could--Oh, it is unimaginable!”
+
+“Yet has he not stolen my name?” the Queen cut in. “Is he not proven a
+common, stupid forger?”
+
+“We have not heard him,” the King reminded her gently.
+
+“And His Eminence might be able to explain,” ventured Miromesnil. “It
+were certainly prudent to give him the opportunity.”
+
+Slowly the King nodded his great, powdered head. “Go and find him. Bring
+him at once!” he bade Breteuil; and Breteuil bowed and departed.
+
+Very soon he returned, and he held the door whilst the handsome
+Cardinal, little dreaming what lay before him, serene and calm, a
+commanding figure in his cassock of scarlet watered silk, rustled
+forward into the royal presence, and so came face to face with the Queen
+for the first time since that romantic night a year ago in the Grove of
+Venus.
+
+Abruptly the King launched his thunderbolt.
+
+“Cousin,” he asked, “what purchase is this of a diamond necklace that
+you are said to have made in the Queen's name?”
+
+King and Cardinal looked into each other's eyes, the King's narrowing,
+the Cardinal's dilating, the King leaning forward in his chair, elbows
+on the table, the Cardinal standing tense and suddenly rigid.
+
+Slowly the colour ebbed from Rohan's face, leaving it deathly pale. His
+eyes sought the Queen, and found her contemptuous glance, her curling
+lip. Then at last his handsome head sank a little forward.
+
+“Sire,” he said unsteadily, “I see that I have been duped. But I have
+duped nobody.”
+
+“You have no reason to be troubled, then. You need but to explain.”
+
+Explain! That was precisely what he could not do. Besides, what was
+the nature of the explanation demanded of him? Whilst he stood stricken
+there, it was the Queen who solved this question.
+
+“If, indeed, you have been duped,” she said scornfully, her colour high,
+her eyes like points of steel, “you have been self-duped. But even then
+it is beyond belief that self-deception could have urged you to the
+lengths of passing yourself off as my intermediary--you, who should know
+yourself to be the last man in France I should employ, you to whom I
+have not spoken once in eight years.” Tears of anger glistened in her
+eyes; her voice shrilled up. “And yet, since you have not denied it,
+since you put forward this pitiful plea that you have been duped, we
+must believe the unbelievable.”
+
+Thus at a blow she shattered the fond hopes he had been cherishing ever
+since the night of gems--of gems, forsooth!--in the Grove of Venus; thus
+she laid his ambition in ruins about him, and left the man himself half
+stunned.
+
+Observing his disorder, the ponderous but kindly monarch rose.
+
+“Come, my cousin,” he said more gently, “collect yourself. Sit down here
+and write what you may have to say in answer.”
+
+And with that he passed into the library beyond, accompanied by the
+Queen and the two Ministers.
+
+Alone, Rohan staggered forward and sank nervelessly into the chair. He
+took up a pen, pondered a moment, and began to write. But he did not
+yet see clear. He could not yet grasp the extent to which he had been
+deceived, could not yet believe that those treasured notes from Marie
+Antoinette were forgeries, that it was not the Queen who had met him in
+the Grove of Venus and given him the rose whose faded petals kept those
+letters company in a portfolio of red morocco. But at least it was clear
+to him that, for the sake of honour--the Queen's honour--he must assume
+it so; and in that assumption he now penned his statement.
+
+When it was completed, himself he bore it to the King in the library.
+
+Louis read it with frowning brows; then passed it to the Queen.
+
+“Have you the necklace now?” he asked Rohan.
+
+“Sir, I left it in the hands of this woman Valois.”
+
+“Where is this woman?”
+
+“I do not know, Sire.”
+
+“And the letter of authority bearing the Queen's signature, which the
+jewellers say you presented to them--where is that?”
+
+“I have it, Sire. I will place it before you. It is only now that I
+realize that it is a forgery.”
+
+“Only now!” exclaimed the Queen in scorn.
+
+“Her Majesty's name has been compromised,” said the King sternly. “It
+must be cleared. As King and as husband my duty is clear. Your Eminence
+must submit to arrest.”
+
+Rohan fell back a step in stupefaction. For disgrace and dismissal he
+was prepared, but not for this.
+
+“Arrest?” he whispered. “Ah, wait, Sire. The publicity! The scandal!
+Think of that! As for the necklace, I will pay for it myself, and so pay
+for my credulous folly. I beseech you, Sire, to let the matter end here.
+I implore it for my own sake, for the sake of the Prince de Soubise
+and the name of Rohan, which would be smirched unjustly and to no good
+purpose.”
+
+He spoke with warmth and force; and, without adding more, yet conveyed
+an impression that much more could be said for the course he urged.
+
+The King hesitated, considering. Noting this, the prudent, far-seeing
+Miromesnil ventured to develop the arguments at which Rohan had hinted,
+laying stress upon the desirability of avoiding scandal.
+
+Louis was nodding, convinced, when Marie Antoinette, unable longer to
+contain her rancour, broke into opposition of those prudent measures.
+
+“This hideous affair must be disclosed,” she insisted. “It is due to me
+that it should publicly be set right. The Cardinal shall tell the world
+how he came to suppose that, not having spoken to him for eight years,
+I could have wished to make use of his services in the purchase of this
+necklace.”
+
+She was in tears, and her weak, easily swayed husband accounted her
+justified in her demand. And so, to the great consternation of all the
+world, Prince Louis de Rohan was arrested like a common thief.
+
+A foolish, indiscreet, short-sighted woman had allowed her rancour to
+override all other considerations--careless of consequences, careless of
+injustice so that her resentment, glutted by her hatred of the Cardinal,
+should be gratified. The ungenerous act was terribly to recoil upon her.
+In tears and blood was she to expiate her lack of charity; very soon she
+was to reap its bitter fruits.
+
+Saint-Just, a very prominent counsellor of the Parliament, one of the
+most advanced apostles of the new ideas that were to find full fruition
+in the Revolution, expressed the popular feeling in the matter.
+
+“Great and joyful affair! A cardinal and a queen implicated in a forgery
+and a swindle! Filth on the crosier and the sceptre! What a triumph for
+the ideas of liberty!”
+
+At the trial that followed before Parliament, Madame de la Motte, a
+man named Reteaux de Villette--who had forged the Queen's hand and
+impersonated Desclaux and a Mademoiselle d'Oliva--who had used her
+striking resemblance to Marie Antoinette to impersonate the Queen in the
+Grove of Venus were found guilty and sentenced. But the necklace was not
+recovered. It had been broken up, and some of the diamonds were already
+sold; others were being sold in London by Captain de la Motte, who had
+gone thither for the purpose, and who prudently remained there.
+
+The Cardinal was acquitted, amid intense public joy and acclamation,
+which must have been gall and wormwood to the Queen. His powerful
+family, the clergy of France, and the very people, with whom he had ever
+been popular, had all laboured strenuously to vindicate him. And thus
+it befell that the one man the Queen had aimed at crushing was the only
+person connected with the affair who came out of it unhurt. The Queen's
+animus against the Cardinal aroused against her the animus of his
+friends of all classes. Appalling libels of her were circulated
+throughout Europe. It was thought and argued that she was more deeply
+implicated in the swindle than had transpired, that Madame de la Motte
+was a scapegoat, that the Queen should have stood her trial with the
+others, and that she was saved only by the royalty that hedged her.
+
+Conceive what a weapon this placed in the hands of the men of the new
+ideas of liberty--men who were bent on proving the corruption of a
+system they sought to destroy!
+
+Marie Antoinette should have foreseen something of this. She might have
+done so had not her hatred blinded her, had she been less intent upon
+seizing the opportunity at all costs to make Rohan pay for his barbed
+witticism upon her mother. She might have been spared much had she but
+spared Rohan when the chance was hers. As it was, the malevolent echoes
+of the affair and of Saint-Just's exultation were never out of her
+ears. They followed her to her trial eight years later before the
+revolutionary tribunal. They followed her to the very scaffold, of which
+they had undoubtedly supplied a plank.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII, THE NIGHT OF TERROR--The Drownings At Nantes Under Carrier
+
+The Revolutionary Committee of the city of Nantes, reinforced by some
+of the administrators of the district and a few members of the People's
+Society, sat in the noble hall of the Cour des Comptes, which
+still retained much of its pre-republican sumptuousness. They sat
+expectantly--Goullin, the attorney, president of the committee, a
+frail, elegant valetudinarian, fierily eloquent; Grandmaison, the
+fencing-master, who once had been a gentleman, fierce of eye and
+inflamed of countenance; Minee, the sometime bishop, now departmental
+president; Pierre Chaux, the bankrupt merchant; the sans-culotte Forget,
+of the People's Society, an unclean, ill-kempt ruffian; and some thirty
+others called like these from every walk of life.
+
+Lamps were lighted, and under their yellow glare the huddled
+company--for the month was December, and the air of the vast room was
+chill and dank--looked anxious and ill at ease.
+
+Suddenly the doors were thrown open by an usher; and his voice rang loud
+in announcement--
+
+“The Citizen Representative Carrier.”
+
+The great man came in, stepping quickly. Of middle height, very frail
+and delicate, his clay-colored face was long and thin, with arched
+eyebrows, a high nose, and a loose, coarse mouth. His deeply sunken dark
+eyes glared fiercely, and wisps of dead-black hair, which had escaped
+the confining ribbon of his queue, hung about his livid brow. He was
+wrapped in a riding-coat of bottle-green, heavily lined with fur, the
+skirts reaching down to the tops of his Hessian boots, and the enormous
+turned-up collar almost touching the brim of his round hat. Under the
+coat his waist was girt with the tricolour of office, and there were
+gold rings in his ears.
+
+Such at the age of five-and-thirty was Jean Baptiste Carrier,
+Representative of the Convention with the Army of the West, the attorney
+who once had been intended by devout parents for the priesthood. He had
+been a month in Nantes, sent thither to purge the body politic.
+
+He reached a chair placed in the focus of the gathering, which sat in a
+semicircle. Standing by it, one of his lean hands resting upon the back,
+he surveyed them, disgust in his glance, a sneer curling his lip, so
+terrible and brutal of aspect despite his frailness that more than one
+of those stout fellows quailed now before him.
+
+Suddenly he broke into torrential speech, his voice shrill and harsh:
+
+“I do not know by what fatality it happens, but happen it does, that
+during the month that I have been in Nantes you have never ceased to
+give me reason to complain of you. I have summoned you to meet me here
+that you may justify yourselves, if you can, for your ineptitude!” And
+he flung himself into the chair, drawing his fur-lined coat about him.
+“Let me hear from you!” he snapped.
+
+Minee, the unfrocked bishop, preserving still a certain episcopal
+portliness of figure, a certain episcopal oiliness of speech,
+respectfully implored the representative to be more precise.
+
+The invitation flung him into a passion. His irascibility, indeed,
+deserved to become a byword.
+
+“Name of a name!” he shrilled, his sunken eyes ablaze, his face
+convulsed. “Is there a thing I can mention in this filthy city of yours
+that is not wrong? Everything is wrong! You have failed in your duty to
+provide adequately for the army of Vendee. Angers has fallen, and now
+the brigands are threatening Nantes itself. There is abject want in the
+city, disease is rampant; people are dying of hunger in the streets and
+of typhus in the prisons. And sacre nom!--you ask me to be precise! I'll
+be precise in telling you where lies the fault. It lies in your lousy
+administration. Do you call yourselves administrators? You--” He became
+unprintable. “I have come here to shake you out of your torpor, and
+by--I'll shake you out of it or I'll have the blasted heads off the lot
+of you.”
+
+They shivered with chill fear under the wild glare of his sunken eyes.
+
+“Well?” he barked after a long pause. “Are you all dumb as well as
+idiots?”
+
+It was the ruffian Forget who had the courage to answer him:
+
+“I have told the People's Society that if the machine works badly it is
+because the Citizen Carrier refuses to consult with the administration.”
+
+“You told them that, did you, you--liar?” screeched Carrier. “Am I not
+here now to consult with you? And should I not have come before had you
+suggested it? Instead, you have waited until, of my own accord, I should
+come to tell you that your administration is ruining Nantes.”
+
+Goullin, the eloquent and elegant Goullin, rose to soothe him:
+
+“Citizen Representative, we admit the truth of all that you have said.
+There has been a misunderstanding. We could not take it upon ourselves
+to summon the august representative of the Sacred People. I We have
+awaited your own good pleasure, and now that you have made this
+manifest, there is no reason why the machine should not work
+effectively. The evils of which you speak exist, alas! But they are not
+so deeply rooted that, working under your guidance and advice, we cannot
+uproot them, rendering the soil fertile once more of good under the
+beneficent fertilizing showers of liberty.”
+
+Mollified, Carrier grunted approval.
+
+“That is well said, Citizen Goullin. The fertilizer needed by the
+soil is blood--the bad blood of aristocrats and federalists, and I
+can promise you, in the name of the august people, that it shall be
+abundantly provided.”
+
+The assembly broke into applause, and his vanity melted to it. He stood
+up, expressed his gratification at being so completely understood,
+opened his arms, and invited the departmental president, Minee, to come
+down and receive the kiss of brotherhood.
+
+Thereafter they passed to the consideration of measures of improvement,
+of measures to combat famine and disease. In Carrier's view there was
+only one way of accomplishing this--the number of mouths to be fed must
+be reduced, the diseased must be eliminated. It was the direct, the
+radical, the heroic method.
+
+That very day six prisoners in Le Bouffay had been sentenced to death
+for attempting to escape.
+
+“How do we know,” he asked, “that those six include all the guilty? How
+do we know that all in Le Bouffay do not share the guilt? The prisoners
+are riddled with disease, which spreads to the good patriots of Nantes;
+they eat bread, which is scarce, whilst good patriots starve. We must
+have the heads off all those blasted swine!” He took fire at his own
+suggestion. “Aye, that would be a useful measure. We'll deal with it at
+once. Let some one fetch the President of the Revolutionary Tribunal.”
+
+He was fetched--a man of good family and a lawyer, named Francois
+Phelippes.
+
+“Citizen President,” Carrier greeted him, “the administration of Nantes
+has been considering an important measure. To-day you sentenced to
+death six prisoners in Le Bouffay for attempting to escape. You are to
+postpone execution so as to include all the Bouffay prisoners in the
+sentence.”
+
+Although an ardent revolutionary, Phelippes was a logically minded
+man with a lawyer's reverence for the sacredness of legal form. This
+command, issued with such cynical coldness, and repudiated by none
+of those present, seemed to him as grotesque and ridiculous as it was
+horrible.
+
+“But that is impossible, Citizen Representative,” said he.
+
+“Impossible!” snarled Carrier. “A fool's word. The administration
+desires you to understand that it is not impossible. The sacred will of
+the august people--”
+
+Phelippes interrupted him without ceremony.
+
+“There is no power in France that can countermand the execution of a
+sentence of the law.”
+
+“No--no power!”
+
+Carrier's loose mouth fell open. He was too amazed to be angry.
+
+“Moreover,” Phelippes pursued calmly, “there is the fact that all the
+other prisoners in Le Bouffay are innocent of the offence for which the
+six are to die.”
+
+“What has that to do with it?” roared Carrier. “Last year I rode a
+she-ass that could argue better than you! In the name of--, what has
+that to do with it?”
+
+But there were members of the assembly who thought with Phelippes, and
+who, whilst lacking the courage to express themselves, yet found courage
+to support another who so boldly expressed them.
+
+Carrier sprang up quivering with rage before that opposition. “It seems
+to me,” he snarled, “that there are more than the scoundrels in Le
+Bouffay who need to be shortened by a head for the good of the nation.
+I tell you that you are slaying the commonweal by your slowness and
+circumspection. Let all the scoundrels perish!”
+
+A handsome, vicious youngster named Robin made chorus.
+
+“Patriots are without bread! It is fitting that the scoundrels should
+die, and not eat the bread of starving patriots.”
+
+Carrier shook his fist at the assembly.
+
+“You hear, you--! I cannot pardon whom the law condemns.”
+
+It was an unfortunate word, and Phelippes fastened on it.
+
+“That is the truth, Citizen Representative,” said Phelippes. “And as for
+the prisoners in Le Bouffay, you will wait until the law condemns them.”
+
+And without staying to hear more, he departed as firmly as he had come,
+indifferent to the sudden uproar.
+
+When he had gone, the Representative flung himself into his chair again,
+biting his lip.
+
+“There goes a fellow who will find his way to the guillotine in time,”
+ he growled.
+
+But he was glad to be rid of him, and would not have him brought
+back. He saw how the opposition of Phelippes had stiffened the weaker
+opposition of some of those in the assembly. If he was to have his
+way he would contrive better without the legal-minded President of the
+Revolutionary Tribunal. And his way he had in the end, though not
+until he had stormed and cursed and reviled the few who dared to offer
+remonstrances to his plan of wholesale slaughter.
+
+When at last he took his departure, it was agreed that the assembly
+should proceed to elect a jury which was to undertake the duty of
+drawing up immediately a list of those confined in the prisons of
+Nantes. This list they were to deliver when ready to the committee,
+which would know how to proceed, for Carrier had made his meaning
+perfectly clear. The first salutary measure necessary to combat the
+evils besetting the city was to wipe out at once the inmates of all the
+prisons in Nantes.
+
+In the chill December dawn of the next day the committee--which had sat
+all night under the presidency of Goullin forwarded a list of some
+five hundred prisoners to General Boivin, the commandant of the city of
+Nantes, together with an order to collect them without a moment's delay,
+take them to L'Eperonniere, and there have them shot.
+
+But Boivin was a soldier, and a soldier is not a sans-culotte. He took
+the order to Phelippes, with the announcement that he had no intention
+of obeying it. Phelippes, to Boivin's amazement, agreed with him.
+He sent the order back to the committee, denouncing it as flagrantly
+illegal, and reminding them that it was illegal to remove any prisoner,
+no matter by whose order, without such an order as might follow upon a
+decision of the Tribunal.
+
+The committee, intimidated by this firmness on the part of the President
+of the Revolutionary Tribunal, dared not insist, and there the matter
+remained.
+
+When Carrier learnt of it the things he said were less than ever fit for
+publication. He raved like a madman at the very thought that a quibbling
+lawyer should stand in the very path of him, the august representative
+of the Sacred People.
+
+It had happened that fifty-three priests, who had been brought to Nantes
+a few days before, were waiting in the sheds of the entrepot for prison
+accommodation, so that their names did not yet appear upon any of the
+prison registers. As a solatium to his wounded feelings, he ordered his
+friends of the Marat Company to get rid of them.
+
+Lamberty, the leader of the Marats, asked him how it should be done.
+
+“How?” he croaked. “Not so much mystery, my friend. Fling the swine into
+the water, and so let's be rid of them. There will be plenty of their
+kind left in France.”
+
+But he seems to have explained himself further, and what precisely were
+his orders, and how they were obeyed, transpires from a letter which
+he wrote to the Convention, stating that those fifty-three wretched
+priests, “being confined in a boat on the Loire, were last night
+swallowed up by the river.” And he added the apostrophe, “What a
+revolutionary torrent is the Loire!”
+
+The Convention had no illusions as to his real meaning; and when Carrier
+heard that his letter had been applauded by the National Assembly, he
+felt himself encouraged to break down all barriers of mere legality
+that might obstruct his path. And, after all, what the Revolutionary
+Committee as a body--intimidated by Phelippes--dared not do could be
+done by his faithful and less punctilious friends of the Marat Company.
+
+This Marat Company, the police of the Revolutionary Committee, enrolled
+from the scourings of Nantes' sans-culottism, and captained by a ruffian
+named Fleury, had been called into being by Carrier himself with the
+assistance of Goullin.
+
+On the night of the 24th Frimaire of the year III (December 14, 1793,
+old style), which was a Saturday, Fleury mustered some thirty of his
+men, and took them to the Cour des Comptes, where they were awaited by
+Goullin, Bachelier, Grandmaison, and some other members of the committee
+entirely devoted to Carrier. From these the Marats received their formal
+instructions.
+
+“Plague,” Goullin informed them, “is raging in the gaols, and its
+ravages must be arrested. You will therefore proceed this evening to the
+prison of Le Bouffay in order to take over the prisoners whom you will
+march up to the Quay La Fosse, whence they will be shipped to Belle
+Isle.”
+
+In a cell of that sordid old building known as Le Bouffay lay a
+cocassier, an egg and poultry dealer, arrested some three years before
+upon a charge of having stolen a horse, and since forgotten. His own
+version was that a person of whom he knew very little had entrusted
+him with the sale of the stolen animal in possession of which he was
+discovered.
+
+The story sounds familiar; it is the sort of story that must have done
+duty many times; and it is probable that the cocassier was no better
+than he should have been. Nevertheless Fate selected him to be one of
+her unconscious instruments. His name was Leroy, and we have his own
+word for it that he was a staunch patriot. The horse business was
+certainly in the best vein of sans-culottism.
+
+Leroy was awakened about ten o'clock that night by sounds that were very
+unusual in that sombre, sepulchral prison. They were sounds of unbridled
+revelry--snatches of ribald song, bursts of coarse, reverberating
+laughter and they proceeded, as it seemed to him, from the courtyard and
+the porter's lodge.
+
+He crawled from the dank straw which served him for a bed, and
+approached the door to listen. Clearly the porter Laqueze was
+entertaining friends and making unusually merry. It was also to be
+gathered that Laqueze's friends were getting very drunk. What the devil
+did it mean?
+
+His curiosity was soon to be very fully gratified. Came heavy steps up
+the stone staircase, the clatter of sabots, the clank of weapons, and
+through the grille of his door an increasing light began to beat.
+
+Some one was singing the “Carmagnole” in drunken, discordant tones.
+Keys rattled, bolts were drawn; doors were being flung open. The noise
+increased. Above the general din he heard the detestable voice of the
+turnkey.
+
+“Come and see my birds in their cages. Come and see my pretty birds.”
+
+Leroy began to have an uneasy premonition that the merrymaking portended
+sinister things.
+
+“Get up, all of you!” bawled the turnkey. “Up and pack your traps.
+You're to go on a voyage. No laggards, now. Up with you!”
+
+The door of Leroy's cell was thrown open in its turn, and he found
+himself confronting a group of drunken ruffians. One of these--a
+red-capped giant with long, black mustaches and a bundle of ropes over
+one arm suddenly pounced upon him. The cocassier was an active, vigorous
+young man. But, actuated by fear and discretion, he permitted himself
+tamely to be led away.
+
+Along the stone-flagged corridor he went, and on every hand beheld his
+fellow-prisoners in the same plight, being similarly dragged from their
+cells and similarly hurried below. At the head of the stairs one fellow,
+perfectly drunk, was holding a list, hiccupping over names which he
+garbled ludicrously as he called them out. He was lighted in his task by
+a candle held by another who was no less drunk. The swaying pair seemed
+to inter-support one another grotesquely.
+
+Leroy suffered himself to be led down the stairs, and so came to the
+porter's lodge, where he beheld a half-dozen Marats assembled round a
+table, with bumpers of wine before them, bawling, singing, cursing, and
+cracking lewd jests at the expense of each prisoner as he entered. The
+place was in a litter. A lamp had been smashed, and there was a puddle
+of wine on the floor from a bottle that had been knocked over. On a
+bench against the wall were ranged a number of prisoners, others lay
+huddled on the floor, and all of them were pinioned.
+
+Two or three of the Marats lurched up to Leroy, and ran their hands
+over him, turning out his pockets, and cursing him foully for their
+emptiness. He saw the same office performed upon others, and saw them
+stripped of money, pocket-books, watches, rings, buckles, and whatever
+else of value they happened to possess. One man, a priest, was even
+deprived of his shoes by a ruffian who was in want of foot-gear.
+
+As they were pinioning his wrists, Leroy looked up. He confesses that he
+was scared.
+
+“What is this for?” he asked. “Does it mean death?”
+
+With an oath he was bidden to ask no questions.
+
+“If I die,” he assured them, “you will be killing a good republican.”
+
+A tall man with an inflamed countenance and fierce, black eyes, that
+were somewhat vitreous, now leered down upon him.
+
+“You babbling fool! It's not your life, it's your property we want.”
+
+This was Grandmaison, the fencing-master, who once had been a gentleman.
+He had been supping with Carrier, and he had only just arrived at Le
+Bouffay, accompanied by Goullin. He found the work behind time, and told
+them so.
+
+“Leave that fellow now, Jolly. He's fast enough. Up and fetch the rest.
+It's time to be going... time to be going.”
+
+Flung aside now that he was pinioned, Leroy sat down on the floor and
+looked about him. Near him an elderly man was begging for a cup of
+water. They greeted the prayer with jeering laughter.
+
+“Water! By Sainte Guillotine, he asks for water!” The drunken
+sans-culottes were intensely amused. “Patience, my friend--patience, and
+you shall drink your fill. You shall drink from the great cup.”
+
+Soon the porter's lodge was crowded with prisoners, and they were
+overflowing into the passage.
+
+Came Grandmaison cursing and swearing at the sluggishness of the Marats,
+reminding them--as he had been reminding them for the last hour--that it
+was time to be off, that the tide was on the ebb.
+
+Stimulated by him, Jolly--the red-capped giant with the black
+mustaches--and some others of the Marat Company, set themselves to tie
+the prisoners into chains of twenty, further to ensure against
+possible evasion. They were driven into the chilly courtyard, and there
+Grandmaison, followed by a fellow with a lantern, passed along the ranks
+counting them.
+
+The result infuriated him.
+
+“A hundred and five!” he roared, and swore horribly. “You have been here
+nearly five hours, and in all that time you have managed to truss up
+only a hundred and five. Are we never to get through with it? I tell you
+the tide is ebbing. It is time to be off.”
+
+Laqueze, the porter of Le Bouffay, with whose food and wine those
+myrmidons of the committee had made so disgracefully free, came to
+assure him that he had all who were in the prison.
+
+“All?” cried Grandmaison, aghast. “But according to the list there
+should have been nearer two hundred.” And he raised his voice to call:
+“Goullin! Hola, Goullin! Where the devil is Goullin?”
+
+“The list,” Laqueze told him, “was drawn up from the register. But you
+have not noted that many have died since they came--we have had the
+fever here--and that a few are now in hospital.”
+
+“In hospital! Bah! Go up, some of you, and fetch them. We are taking
+them somewhere where they will be cured.” And then he hailed the elegant
+Goullin, who came up wrapped in a cloak. “Here's a fine bathing-party!”
+ he grumbled. “A rare hundred of these swine!”
+
+Goullin turned to Laqueze.
+
+“What have you done with the fifteen brigands I sent you this evening?”
+
+“But they only reached Nantes to-day,” said Laqueze, who understood
+nothing of these extraordinary proceedings. “They have not yet been
+registered, not even examined.”
+
+“I asked you what you have done with them?” snapped Goullin.
+
+“They are upstairs.”
+
+“Then fetch them. They are as good as any others.”
+
+With these, and a dozen or so dragged from sick-beds, the total was made
+up to about a hundred and thirty.
+
+The Marats, further reinforced now by half a company of National Guards,
+set out from the prison towards five o'clock in the morning; urging
+their victims along with blows and curses.
+
+Our cocassier found himself bound wrist to wrist with a young Capuchin
+brother, who stumbled along in patient resignation, his head bowed, his
+lips moving as if he were in prayer.
+
+“Can you guess what they are going to do with us?” murmured Leroy.
+
+He caught the faint gleam of the Capuchin's eyes in the gloom.
+
+“I do not know, brother. Commend yourself to God, and so be prepared for
+whatever may befall.”
+
+The answer was not very comforting to a man of Leroy's temperament. He
+stumbled on, and they came now upon the Place du Bouffay, where the
+red guillotine loomed in ghostly outline, and headed towards the Quai
+Tourville. Thence they were marched by the river the whole length of the
+Quai La Fosse. Fear spreading amongst them, some clamours were raised,
+to be instantly silenced by blows and assurances that they were to be
+shipped to Belle Isle, where they were to be set to work to build a
+fort.
+
+The cocassier thought this likely enough, and found it more comforting
+than saying his prayers--a trick which he had long since lost.
+
+As they defiled along the quays, an occasional window was thrown up, and
+an inquisitive head protruded, to be almost instantly withdrawn again.
+
+On the Cale Robin at last they were herded into a shed which opened on
+to the water. Here they found a large lighter alongside, and they beheld
+in the lantern-light the silhouettes of a half-dozen shipwrights busily
+at work upon it, whilst the place rang with the blows of hammers and the
+scream of saws.
+
+Some of those nearest the barge saw what was being done. Two great
+ports were being opened in the vessel's side, and over one of these thus
+opened the shipwrights were nailing planks. They observed that these
+ports, which remained above the water-line now that the barge was empty,
+would be well below it once she were laden, and conceiving that they
+perceived at last the inhuman fate awaiting them, their terror rose
+again. They remembered snatches of conversation and grim jests uttered
+by the Marats in Le Bouffay, which suddenly became clear, and the alarm
+spreading amongst them, they writhed and clamoured, screamed for mercy,
+cursed and raved.
+
+Blows were showered upon them. In vain was it sought to quiet them again
+with that fable of a fort to be constructed on Belle Isle. One of them
+in a frenzy of despair tore himself free of his bonds, profited by a
+moment of confusion, and vanished so thoroughly that Grandmaison and
+his men lost a quarter of an hour seeking him in vain, and would have
+so spent the remainder of the night but for a sharp word from a man in
+a greatcoat and a round hat who stood looking on in conversation with
+Goullin.
+
+“Get on, man! Never mind that one! We'll have him later. It will be
+daylight soon. You've wasted time enough already.”
+
+It was Carrier.
+
+He had come in person to see the execution of his orders, and at his
+command Grandmaison now proceeded to the loading. A ladder was set
+against the side of the lighter by which the prisoners were to descend.
+The cords binding them in chains were now severed, and they were left
+pinioned only by the wrists. They were ordered to embark. But as
+they were slow to obey, and as some, indeed, hung back wailing and
+interceding, he and Jolly took them by their collars, thrust them to the
+edge, and bundled them neck and crop down into the hold, recking nothing
+of broken limbs. Finding this method of embarkation more expeditious,
+the use of the ladder was neglected thenceforth.
+
+Among the last to be thus flung aboard was our cocassier Leroy. He fell
+soft upon a heaving, writhing mass of humanity, which only gradually
+shook down and sorted itself out on the bottom of the lighter when the
+hatches overhead were being nailed down. Yet by an odd chance the young
+Capuchin and Leroy, who had been companions in the chain, were not
+separated even now. Amid the human welter in that agitated place of
+darkness, the cries and wails that rang around him, Leroy recognized the
+voice of the young friar exhorting them to prayer.
+
+They were in the stern of the vessel, against one of the sides, and
+Leroy, who still kept a grip on the wits by which he had lived, bade the
+Capuchin hold up his wrists. Then he went nosing like a dog, until at
+last he found them, and his strong teeth fastened upon the cord that
+bound them, and began with infinite patience to gnaw it through.
+
+Meanwhile that floating coffin had left its moorings and was gliding
+with the stream. On the hatches sat Grandmaison, with Jolly and two
+other Marats, howling the “Carmagnole” to drown the cries of the
+wretches underneath, and beating time with their feet upon the deck.
+
+Leroy's teeth worked on like a rat's until at last the cord was severed.
+Then, lest they should be parted in the general heaving and shifting of
+that human mass, those teeth of his fastened upon the Capuchin's sleeve.
+
+“Take hold of me!” he commanded as distinctly as he could; and the
+Capuchin gratefully obeyed. “Now untie my wrists!”
+
+The Capuchin's hands slid along Leroy's arms until they found his hands,
+and there his fingers grew busy, groping at the knots. It was no easy
+matter to untie them in the dark, guided by sense of touch alone. But
+the friar was persistent and patient, and in the end the last knot ran
+loose, and our cocassier was unpinioned.
+
+It comforted him out of all proportion to the advantage. At least his
+hands were free for any emergency that might offer. That he depended in
+such a situation, and with no illusions as to what was to happen, upon
+emergency, shows how tenacious he was of hope.
+
+He had been released not a moment too soon. Overhead, Grandmaison and
+his men were no longer singing. They were moving about. Something bumped
+against the side of the vessel, near the bow, obviously a boat, and
+voices came up from below the level of the deck. Then the lighter
+shuddered under a great blow upon the planks of the forecastle port.
+The cries in the hold redoubled. Panting, cursing, wailing men hurtled
+against Leroy, and almost crushed him for a moment under their weight as
+the vessel heaved to starboard. Came a succession of blows, not only on
+the port in the bow, but also on that astern. There was a cracking and
+rending of timbers, and the water rushed in.
+
+Then the happenings in that black darkness became indescribably
+horrible. In their frenzy not a few had torn themselves free of their
+bonds. These hurled themselves towards the open ports through which the
+water was pouring. They tore at the planks with desperate, lacerated
+hands. Some got their arms through, seeking convulsively to widen the
+openings and so to gain an egress. But outside in the shipwrights' boat
+stood Grandmaison, the fencing-master, brandishing a butcher's sword.
+
+With derision and foul objurgations he slashed at protruding arms and
+hands, thrust his sword again and again through the port into that
+close-packed, weltering mass, until at last the shipwrights backed away
+the boat to escape the suction of the sinking lighter.
+
+The vessel, with its doomed freight of a hundred and thirty human
+lives, settled down slowly by the head, and the wailing and cursing
+was suddenly silenced as the icy waters of the Loire eddied over it and
+raced on.
+
+Caught in the swirl of water, Leroy had been carried up against the deck
+of the lighter. Instinctively he had clutched at a crossbeam. The water
+raced over his head, and then, to his surprise, receded, beat up once or
+twice as the lighter grounded, and finally settled on a level with his
+shoulders.
+
+He was quick to realize what had happened. The lighter had gone down by
+the head on a shallow. Her stern remained slightly protruding, so that
+in that part of her between the level of the water and the deck there
+was a clear space of perhaps a foot or a foot and a half. Yet of the
+hundred and thirty doomed wretches on board he was the only one who had
+profited by this extraordinary chance.
+
+Leroy hung on there; and thereafter for two hours, to use his own
+expression, he floated upon corpses. A man of less vigorous mettle,
+moral and physical, could never have withstood the ordeal of a two
+hours' immersion in the ice-cold water of that December morning. Leroy
+clung on, and hoped. I have said that he was tenacious of hope. And soon
+after daybreak he was justified of his confidence in his luck. As the
+first livid gleams of light began to suffuse the water in which he
+floated, a creaking of rowlocks and a sound of voices reached his ears.
+A boat was passing down the river.
+
+Leroy shouted, and his voice rang hollow and sepulchral on the morning
+stillness. The creak of oars ceased abruptly. He shouted again, and was
+answered. The oars worked now at twice their former speed. The boat was
+alongside. Blows of a grapnel tore at the planking of the deck until
+there was a hole big enough to admit the passage of his body.
+
+He looked through the faint mist which he had feared never to see again,
+heaved himself up with what remained him of strength until his breast
+was on a level with the deck, and beheld two men in a boat.
+
+But, exhausted by the effort, his numbed limbs refused to support him.
+He sank back, and went overhead, fearing now, indeed, that help had
+arrived too late. But as he struggled to the surface the bight of a rope
+smacked the water within the hold. Convulsively he clutched it, wound it
+about one arm, and bade them haul.
+
+Thus they dragged him out and aboard their own craft, and put him ashore
+at the nearest point willing out of humanity to do so much, but daring
+to do no more when he had told them how he came where they had found
+him.
+
+Half naked, numbed through and through, with chattering teeth and
+failing limbs, Leroy staggered into the guard-house at Chantenay.
+Soldiers of the Blues stripped him of his sodden rags, wrapped him in a
+blanket, thawed him outwardly before a fire and inwardly with gruel, and
+then invited him to give an account of himself.
+
+The story of the horse will have led you to suppose him a ready liar.
+He drew now upon that gift of his, represented himself as a mariner
+from Montoir, and told a harrowing tale of shipwreck. Unfortunately, he
+overdid it. There was present a fellow who knew something of the sea,
+and something of Montoir, to whom Leroy's tale did not ring quite true.
+To rid themselves of responsibility, the soldiers carried him before the
+Revolutionary Committee of Nantes.
+
+Even here all might have gone well with him, since there was no member
+of that body with seacraft to penetrate his imposture. But as
+ill-chance would have it, one of the members sitting that day was the
+black-mustached sans-culotte Jolly, the very man who had dragged Leroy
+out of his cell last night and tied him up.
+
+At sight of him Jolly's eyes bulged in his head.
+
+“Where the devil have you come from?” he greeted him thunderously.
+
+Leroy quailed. Jolly's associates stared. But Jolly explained to them:
+
+“He was of last night's bathing party. And he has the impudence to come
+before us like this. Take him away and shove him back into the water.”
+
+But Bachelier, a man who, next to the President Goullin, exerted the
+greatest influence in the committee, was gifted with a sense of humour
+worthy of the Revolution. He went off into peals of laughter as he
+surveyed the crestfallen cocassier, and, perhaps because Leroy's
+situation amused him, he was disposed to be humane.
+
+“No, no!” he said. “Take him back to Le Bouffay for the present. Let the
+Tribunal deal with him.”
+
+So back to Le Bouffay went Leroy, back to his dungeon, his fetid straw
+and his bread and water, there to be forgotten again, as he had been
+forgotten before, until Fate should need him.
+
+It is to him that we owe most of the materials from which we are able
+to reconstruct in detail that first of Carrier's drownings on a grand
+scale, conceived as an expeditious means of ridding the city of
+useless mouths, of easing the straitened circumstances resulting from
+misgovernment.
+
+Very soon it was followed by others, and, custom increasing Carrier's
+audacity, these drownings--there were in all some twenty-three
+noyades--ceased to be conducted in the secrecy of the night, or to be
+confined to men. They were made presently to include women--of whom at
+one drowning alone, in Novose, three hundred perished under the most
+revolting circumstances--and even little children. Carrier himself
+admitted that during the three months of his rule some three thousand
+victims visited the national bathing-place, whilst other, and no doubt
+more veracious, accounts treble that number of those who received the
+National Baptism.
+
+Soon these wholesale drownings had become an institution, a sort of
+national spectacle that Carrier and his committee felt themselves in
+duty bound to provide.
+
+But at length a point was reached beyond which it seemed difficult to
+continue them. So expeditious was the measure, that soon the obvious
+material was exhausted. The prisons were empty. Yet habits, once
+contracted, are not easily relinquished. Carrier would be looking
+elsewhere for material, and there was no saying where he might look,
+or who would be safe. Soon the committee heard a rumour that the
+Representative intended to depose it and to appoint a new one, whereupon
+many of its members, who were conscious of lukewarmness, began to grow
+uneasy.
+
+Uneasy, too, became the members of the People's Society. They had sent
+a deputation to Carrier with suggestions for the better conduct of
+the protracted campaign of La Vendee. This was a sore point with the
+Representative. He received the patriots with the foulest abuse, and had
+them flung downstairs by his secretaries.
+
+Into this atmosphere of general mistrust and apprehension came the most
+ridiculous Deus ex machina that ever was in the person of the very young
+and very rash Marc Antoine Jullien. His father, the Deputy Jullien,
+was an intimate of Robespierre's, by whose influence Marc Antoine was
+appointed to the office of Agent of the Committee of Public Safety,
+and sent on a tour of inspection to report upon public feeling and the
+conduct of the Convention's Representatives.
+
+Arriving in Nantes at the end of January of '94, one of Marc Antoine's
+first visits happened to be to the People's Society, which was still
+quivering with rage at the indignities offered by Carrier to its
+deputation.
+
+Marc Antoine was shocked by what he heard, so shocked that instead of
+going to visit the Representative on the morrow, he spent the morning
+inditing a letter to Robespierre, in which he set forth in detail the
+abuses of which Carrier was guilty, and the deplorable state of misery
+in which he found the city of Nantes.
+
+That night, as Marc Antoine was sinking into the peaceful slumber of the
+man with duty done, he was rudely aroused by an officer and a couple
+of men of the National Guard, who announced to him that he was under
+arrest, and bade him rise and dress.
+
+Marc Antoine flounced out of bed in a temper, and flaunted his
+credentials. The officer remained unmoved. He was acting upon orders
+from the Citizen Representative.
+
+Still in a temper, Marc Antoine hurriedly dressed himself. He would soon
+show this Representative that it is not safe to trifle with Agents of
+the Public Safety. The Citizen Representative should hear from him. The
+officer, still unimpressed, bundled him into a waiting carriage, and
+bore him away to the Maison Villetreux, on the island where Carrier had
+his residence.
+
+Carrier had gone to bed. But he was awake, and he sat up promptly when
+the young muscadin from Paris was roughly thrust into his room by the
+soldiers. The mere sight of the Representative sufficed to evaporate
+Marc Antoine's anger, and with it his courage.
+
+Carrier's pallor was of a grey-green from the rage that possessed him.
+His black eyes smouldered like those of an animal seen in the gloom, and
+his tumbled black hair, fluttering about his moist brow, increased the
+terrific aspect of his countenance. Marc Antoine shrank and was dumb.
+
+“So,” said Carrier, regarding him steadily, terribly, “you are the thing
+that dares to denounce me to the Safety, that ventures to find fault
+with my work!” From under his pillow he drew Marc Antoine's letter to
+Robespierre. “Is this yours?”
+
+At the sight of this violation of his correspondence with the
+Incorruptible, Marc Antoine's indignation awoke, and revived his
+courage.
+
+“It is mine,” he answered. “By what right have you intercepted it?”
+
+“By what right?” Carrier put a leg out of bed. “So you question my
+right, do you? You have so imposed yourself upon folk that you are given
+powers, and you come here to air them, by--”
+
+“You shall answer to the Citizen Robespierre for your conduct,” Marc
+Antoine threatened him.
+
+“Aha!” Carrier revealed his teeth in a smile of ineffable wickedness. He
+slipped from the bed, and crouching slightly as if about to spring, he
+pointed a lean finger at his captive.
+
+“You are of those with whom it is dangerous to deal publicly, and you
+presume upon that. But you can be dealt with privily, and you shall. I
+have you, and, by--, you shall not escape me, you--!”
+
+Marc Antoine looked into the Representative's face, and saw there the
+wickedness of his intent. He stiffened. Nature had endowed him with
+wits, and he used them now.
+
+“Citizen Carrier,” he said, “I understand. I am to be murdered to-night
+in the gloom and the silence. But you shall perish after me in daylight,
+and amid the execrations of the people. You may have intercepted my
+letters to my father and to Robespierre. But if I do not leave Nantes,
+my father will come to ask an account of you, and you will end your life
+on the scaffold like the miserable assassin that you are.”
+
+Of all that tirade, but one sentence had remained as if corroded into
+the mind of Carrier. “My letters to my father and to Robespierre,” the
+astute Marc Antoine had said. And Marc Antoine saw the Representative's
+mouth loosen, saw a glint of fear replace the ferocity in his dark eyes.
+
+What Marc Antoine intended to suggest had instantly leapt to Carrier's
+mind--that there had been a second letter which his agents had missed.
+They should pay for that. But, meanwhile, if it were true, he dare not
+for his neck's sake go further in this matter. He may have suspected
+that it was not true. But he had no means of testing that suspicion.
+Marc Antoine, you see, was subtle.
+
+“Your father?” growled the Representative. “Who is your father?”
+
+“The Deputy Jullien.”
+
+“What?” Carrier straightened himself, affecting an immense astonishment.
+“You are the son of the Deputy Julien?” He burst into a laugh. He came
+forward, holding out both his hands. He could be subtle, too, you see.
+“My friend, why did you not say so sooner? See in what a ghastly mistake
+you have let me flounder. I imagined you--of course, it was foolish of
+me--to be a proscribed rascal from Angers, of the same name.”
+
+He had fallen upon Marc Antoine's neck, and was embracing him.
+
+“Forgive me, my friend!” he besought him. “Come and dine with me
+to-morrow, and we will laugh over it together.”
+
+But Marc Antoine had no mind to dine with Carrier, although he promised
+to do so readily enough. Back at his inn, scarce believing that he had
+got away alive, still sweating with terror at the very thought of his
+near escape, he packed his valise, and, by virtue of his commission,
+obtained post-horses at once.
+
+On the morrow from Angers, safe beyond the reach of Carrier, he wrote
+again to Robespierre, and this time also to his father.
+
+“In Nantes,” he wrote, “I found the old regime in its worst form.” He
+knew the jargon of Liberty, the tune that set the patriots a-dancing.
+“Carrier's insolent secretaries emulate the intolerable haughtiness of
+a ci-devant minister's lackeys. Carrier himself lives surrounded by
+luxury, pampered by women and parasites, keeping a harem and a court. He
+tramples justice in the mud. He has had all those who filled the prisons
+flung untried into the Loire. The city of Nantes,” he concluded, “needs
+saving. The Vendean revolt must be suppressed, and Carrier the slayer of
+Liberty recalled.”
+
+The letter had its effect, and Carrier was recalled to Paris, but not
+in disgrace. Failing health was urged as the solicitous reason for his
+retirement from the arduous duties of governing Nantes.
+
+In the Convention his return made little stir, and even when early in
+the following July he learnt that Bourbotte, his successor at Nantes,
+had ordered the arrest of Goullin, Bachelier, Grandmaison, and his
+other friends of the committee, on the score of the drownings and the
+appropriation of national property confiscated from emigres, he remained
+calm, satisfied that his own position was unassailable.
+
+But the members of the Committee of Nantes were sent to Paris for trial,
+and their arrival there took place on that most memorable date in the
+annals of the Revolution, the 10th Thermidor (July 29, 1794, O.S.), the
+day on which Robespierre fell and the floodgates of vengeance upon the
+terrorists were flung open.
+
+You have seen in the case of Marc Antoine Jullien how quick Carrier
+could be to take a cue. In a coach he followed the tumbril that bore
+Robespierre to execution, radiant of countenance and shouting with the
+loudest, “Death to the traitor!” On the morrow from the rostrum of
+the Convention, he passionately represented himself as a victim of
+the fallen tyrant, cleverly turning to his own credit the Marc Antoine
+affair, reminding the Convention how he had himself been denounced
+to Robespierre. He was greeted with applause in that atmosphere of
+Thermidorean reaction.
+
+But Nemesis was stalking him relentlessly if silently.
+
+Among a batch of prisoners whom a chain of curious chances had brought
+from Nantes to Paris was our old friend Leroy the cocassier, required
+now as a witness against the members of the committee.
+
+Having acquainted the court with the grounds of his arrest, and the
+fact that for three years he had lain forgotten and without trial in the
+pestilential prison of Le Bouffay, Leroy passed on to a recital of his
+sufferings on that night of terror when he had gone down the Loire in
+the doomed lighter. He told his tale with an artlessness that rendered
+it the more moving and convincing. The audience crowding the chamber
+of justice shuddered with horror, and sobbed over the details of his
+torments, wept for joy over his miraculous preservation. At the close
+he was applauded on all sides, which bewildered him a little, for he had
+never known anything but abuse in all his chequered life.
+
+And then, at the promptings of that spirit of reaction that was abroad
+in those days when France was awakening from the nightmare of terror,
+some one made there and then a collection on his behalf, and came to
+thrust into his hands a great bundle of assignats and bank bills, which
+to the humble cocassier represented almost a fortune. It was his turn to
+weep.
+
+Then the crowd in the court which had heard his story shouted for the
+head of Carrier. The demand was taken up by the whole of Paris,
+and finally his associates of the Convention handed him over to the
+Revolutionary Tribunal.
+
+He came before it on November 25th, and he could not find counsel to
+defend him. Six advocates named in succession by the President refused
+to plead the cause of so inhuman a monster. In a rage, at last Carrier
+announced that he would defend himself. He did.
+
+He took the line that his business in Nantes had been chiefly concerned
+with provisioning the Army of the West; that he had had little to do
+with the policing of Nantes, which he left entirely to the Revolutionary
+Committee; and that he had no knowledge of the things said to have taken
+place. But Goullin, Bachelier, and the others were there to fling
+back the accusation in their endeavours to save their own necks at the
+expense of his.
+
+He was sentenced on the very anniversary of that terrible night on which
+the men of the Marat Company broke into the prison of Le Bouffay, and he
+was accompanied in the tumbril by Grandmaison the pitiless, who was now
+filled with self-pity to such an extent that he wept bitterly.
+
+The crowd, which had hooted and insulted him from the Conciergerie to
+the Place de Greve, fell suddenly silent as he mounted the scaffold, his
+step firm, but his shoulders bowed, and his eyes upon the ground.
+
+Suddenly upon the silence, grotesquely, horribly merry, broke the sound
+of a clarinet playing the “Ca ira!”
+
+Jerking himself erect, Carrier turned and flung the last of his terrible
+glances at the musician.
+
+A moment later the knife fell with a thud, and a bleeding head rolled
+into the basket, the eyes still staring, but powerless now to inspire
+terror.
+
+Upon the general silence broke an echo of the stroke.
+
+“Vlan!” cried a voice. “And there's a fine end to a great drowner!”
+
+It was Leroy the cocassier. The crowd took up the cry.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IX. THE NIGHT OF NUPTIALS--Charles The Bold And Sapphira Danvelt
+
+When Philip the Good succumbed at Bruges of an apoplexy in the early
+part of the year 1467, the occasion was represented to the stout folk
+of Flanders as a favourable one to break the Burgundian yoke under which
+they laboured. It was so represented by the agents of that astute king,
+Louis XI, who ever preferred guile to the direct and costly exertion of
+force.
+
+Charles, surnamed the Bold (le Temeraire), the new Duke of Burgundy, was
+of all the French King's enemies by far the most formidable and menacing
+just then; and the wily King, who knew better than to measure himself
+with a foe that was formidable, conceived a way to embarrass the Duke
+and cripple his resources at the very outset of his reign. To this
+end did he send his agents into the Duke's Flemish dominions, there to
+intrigue with the powerful and to stir up the spirit of sedition that
+never did more than slumber in the hearts of those turbulent burghers.
+
+It was from the Belfry Tower of the populous, wealthy city of
+Ghent--then one of the most populous and wealthy cities of Europe--that
+the call to arms first rang out, summoning the city's forty thousand
+weavers to quit their looms and take up weapons--the sword, the pike,
+and that arm so peculiarly Flemish, known as the goedendag. From Ghent
+the fierce flame of revolt spread rapidly to the valley of the Meuse,
+and the scarcely less important city of Liege, where the powerful guilds
+of armourers and leather workers proved as ready for battle as the
+weavers of Ghent.
+
+They made a brave enough show until Charles the Bold came face to face
+with them at Saint-Trond, and smashed the mutinous burgher army into
+shards, leaving them in their slaughtered thousands upon the stricken
+field.
+
+The Duke was very angry. He felt that the Flemings had sought to take a
+base advantage of him at a moment when it was supposed he would not be
+equal to protecting his interests, and he intended to brand it for all
+time upon their minds that it was not safe to take such liberties with
+their liege lord. Thus, when a dozen of the most important burghers of
+Liege came out to him very humbly in their shirts, with halters round
+their necks, to kneel in the dust at his feet and offer him the keys of
+the city, he spurned the offer with angry disdain.
+
+“You shall be taught,” he told them, “how little I require your keys,
+and I hope that you will remember the lesson for your own good.”
+
+On the morrow his pioneers began to smash a breach, twenty fathoms wide,
+in one of the walls of the city, rolling the rubble into the ditch to
+fill it up at the spot. When the operation was complete, Charles rode
+through the gap, as a conqueror, with vizor lowered and lance on
+thigh at the head of his Burgundians, into his city of Liege, whose
+fortifications he commanded should be permanently demolished.
+
+That was the end of the Flemish rising of 1467 against Duke Charles the
+Bold of Burgundy. The weavers returned to their looms, the armourers to
+their forges, and the glove-makers and leather workers to their shears.
+Peace was restored; and to see that it was kept, Charles appointed
+military governors of his confidence where he deemed them necessary.
+
+One of these was Claudius von Rhynsault, who had followed the Duke's
+fortunes for some years now, a born leader of men, a fellow of infinite
+address at arms and resource in battle, and of a bold, reckless courage
+that nothing could ever daunt. It was perhaps this last quality that
+rendered him so esteemed of Charles, himself named the Bold, whose view
+of courage was that it was a virtue so lofty that in the nature of its
+possessor there could, perforce, be nothing mean.
+
+So now, to mark his esteem of this stalwart German, the Duke made him
+Governor of the province of Zeeland, and dispatched him thither to stamp
+out there any lingering sparks of revolt, and to rule it in his name as
+ducal lieutenant.
+
+Thus, upon a fair May morning, came Claud of Ryhnsault and his hardy
+riders to the town of Middelburg, the capital of Zeeland, to take up his
+residence at the Gravenhof in the main square, and thence to dispense
+justice throughout that land of dykes in his master's princely name.
+This justice the German captain dispensed with merciless rigour,
+conceiving that to be the proper way to uproot rebellious tendencies. It
+was inevitable that he should follow such a course, impelled to it by a
+remorseless cruelty in his nature, of which the Duke his master had seen
+no hint, else he might have thought twice before making him Governor
+of Zeeland, for Charles--despite his rigour when treachery was to be
+punished--was a just and humane prince.
+
+Now, amongst those arrested and flung into Middelburg gaol as a result
+of Rhynsault's ruthless perquisitions and inquisitions was a wealthy
+young burgher named Philip Danvelt. His arrest was occasioned by a
+letter signed “Philip Danvelt” found in the house of a marked rebel
+who had been first tortured and then hanged. The letter, of a date
+immediately preceding the late rising, promised assistance in the shape
+of arms and money.
+
+Brought before Rhynsault for examination, in a cheerless hall of the
+Gravenhof, Danvelt's defence was a denial upon oath that he had ever
+taken or offered to take any part in the rebellion. Told of the letter
+found, and of the date it bore, he laughed. That letter made everything
+very simple and clear. At the date it bore he had been away at Flushing
+marrying a wife, whom he had since brought thence to Middelburg. It was
+ludicrous, he urged, to suppose that in such a season--of all seasons
+in a man's life--he should have been concerned with rebellion or
+correspondence with rebels, and, urging this, he laughed again.
+
+Now, the German captain did not like burghers who laughed in his
+presence. It argued a lack of proper awe for the dignity of his
+office and the importance of his person. From his high seat at the
+Judgment-board, flanked by clerks and hedged about by men-at-arms, he
+scowled upon the flaxen-haired, fresh-complexioned young burgher who
+bore himself so very easily. He was a big, handsome man, this Rhynsault,
+of perhaps some thirty years of age. His thick hair was of a reddish
+brown, and his beardless face was cast in bold lines and tanned by
+exposure to the colour of mahogany, save where the pale line of a scar
+crossed his left cheek.
+
+“Yet, I tell you, the letter bears your signature,” he grumbled sourly.
+
+“My name, perhaps,” smiled the amiable Danvelt, “but assuredly not my
+signature.”
+
+“Herrgott!” swore the German captain. “Is this a riddle? What is the
+difference?”
+
+Feeling himself secure, that very foolish burgher ventured to be mildly
+insolent.
+
+“It is a riddle that the meanest of your clerks there can read for you,”
+ said he.
+
+The Governor's blue eyes gleamed like steel as they, fastened upon
+Danvelt, his heavy jaw seemed to thrust itself forward, and a dull flush
+crept into his cheeks. Then he swore.
+
+“Beim blute Gottes!” quoth he, “do you whet your trader's wit upon me,
+scum?”
+
+And to the waiting men-at-arms:
+
+“Take him back to his dungeon,” he commanded, “that in its quiet he may
+study a proper carriage before he is next brought before us.”
+
+Danvelt was haled away to gaol again, to repent him of his pertness and
+to reflect that, under the governorship of Claudius von Rhynsault, it
+was not only the guilty who had need to go warily.
+
+The Governor sat back in his chair with a grunt. His secretary, on his
+immediate right, leaned towards him.
+
+“It were easy to test the truth of the man's assertion,” said he. “Let
+his servants and his wife attend and be questioned as to when he was in
+Flushing and when married.”
+
+“Aye,” growled von Rhynsault. “Let it be done. I don't doubt we shall
+discover that the dog was lying.”
+
+But no such discovery was made when, on the morrow, Danvelt's household
+and his wife stood before the Governor to answer his questions. Their
+replies most fully bore out the tale Danvelt had told, and appeared in
+other ways to place it beyond all doubt that he had taken no part, in
+deed or even in thought, in the rebellion against the Duke of Burgundy.
+His wife protested it solemnly and piteously.
+
+“To this I can swear, my lord,” she concluded. “I am sure no evidence
+can be brought against him, who was ever loyal and ever concerned with
+his affairs and with me at the time in question. My lord”--she held
+out her hands towards the grim German, and her lovely eyes gleamed
+with unshed tears of supplication--“I implore you to believe me, and in
+default of witnesses against him to restore my husband to me.”
+
+Rhynsault's blue eyes kindled now as they considered her, and his full
+red lips slowly parted in the faintest and most inscrutable of smiles.
+She was very fair to look upon--of middle height and most exquisite
+shape. Her gown, of palest saffron, edged with fur, high-waisted
+according to the mode, and fitted closely to the gently swelling bust,
+was cut low to display the white perfection of her neck. Her softly
+rounded face looked absurdly childlike under the tall-crowned hennin,
+from which a wispy veil floated behind her as she moved.
+
+In silence, then, for a spell, the German mercenary pondered her with
+those slowly kindling eyes, that slowly spreading, indefinite smile.
+Then he stirred, and to his secretary he muttered shortly:
+
+“The woman lies. In private I may snare the truth from her.”
+
+He rose--a tall, massively imposing figure in a low-girdled tunic of
+deep purple velvet, open at the breast, and gold-laced across a white
+silken undervest.
+
+“There is some evidence,” he informed her gruffly. “Come with me, and
+you shall see it for yourself.”
+
+He led the way from that cheerless hall by a dark corridor to a
+small snug room, richly hung and carpeted, where a servant waited. He
+dismissed the fellow, and in the same breath bade her enter, watching
+her the while from under lowered brows. One of her women had followed;
+but admittance was denied her. Danvelt's wife must enter his room alone.
+
+Whilst she waited there, with scared eyes and fluttering bosom, he went
+to take from an oaken coffer the letter signed “Philip Danvelt.” He
+folded the sheet so that the name only was to be read, and came to
+thrust it under her eyes.
+
+“What name is that?” he asked her gruffly.
+
+Her answer was very prompt.
+
+“It is my husband's, but not the writing--it is another hand; some other
+Philip Danvelt; there will be others in Zeeland.”
+
+He laughed softly, looking at her ever with that odd intentness, and
+under his gaze she shrank and cowered in terror; it spoke to her of some
+nameless evil; the tepid air of the luxurious room was stifling her.
+
+“If I believed you, your husband would be delivered from his
+prison--from all danger; and he stands, I swear to you, in mortal
+peril.”
+
+“Ah, but you must believe me. There are others who can bear witness.”
+
+“I care naught for others,” he broke in, with harsh and arrogant
+contempt. Then he softened his voice to a lover's key. “But I might
+accept your word that this is not your husband's hand, even though I did
+not believe you.”
+
+She did not understand, and so she could only stare at him with those
+round, brown eyes of hers dilating, her lovely cheeks blanching with
+horrid fear.
+
+“Why, see,” he said at length, with an easy, gruff good-humour, “I place
+the life of Philip Danvelt in those fair hands to do with as you please.
+Surely, sweeting, you will not be so unkind as to destroy it.”
+
+And as he spoke his face bent nearer to her own, his flaming eyes
+devoured her, and his arm slipped softly, snake-like round her to draw
+her to him. But before it had closed its grip she had started away,
+springing back in horror, an outcry already on her pale lips.
+
+“One word,” he admonished her sharply, “and it speaks your husband's
+doom!”
+
+“Oh, let me go, let me go!” she cried in anguish.
+
+“And leave your husband in the hangman's hands?” he asked.
+
+“Let me go! Let me go!” was all that she could answer him, expressing
+the only thought of which in that dread moment her mind was capable.
+
+That and the loathing on her face wounded his vanity for this beast was
+vain. His manner changed, and the abysmal brute in him was revealed in
+the anger he displayed. With foul imprecations he drove her out.
+
+Next day a messenger from the Governor waited upon her at her house with
+a brief note to inform her that her husband would be hanged upon the
+morrow. Incredulity was succeeded by a numb, stony, dry-eyed grief, in
+which she sat alone for hours--a woman entranced. At last, towards dusk,
+she summoned a couple of her grooms to attend and light her, and
+made her way, ever in that odd somnambulistic state, to the gaol of
+Middelburg. She announced herself to the head gaoler as the wife of
+Philip Danvelt, lying under sentence of death, and that she was come to
+take her last leave of him. It was not a thing to be denied, nor had the
+gaoler any orders to deny it.
+
+So she was ushered into the dank cell where Philip waited for his doom,
+and by the yellow wheel of light of the lantern that hung from the
+shallow vaulted ceiling she beheld the ghastly change that the news of
+impending death had wrought in him. No longer was he the self-assured
+young burgher who, conscious of his innocence and worldly importance,
+had used a certain careless insolence with the Governor of Zeeland. Here
+she beheld a man of livid and distorted face, wild-eyed, his hair and
+garments in disarray, suggesting the physical convulsions to which he
+had yielded in his despair and rage.
+
+“Sapphira!” he cried at sight of her. A sigh of anguish and he flung
+himself, shuddering and sobbing, upon her breast. She put her arms about
+him, soothed him gently, and drew him back to the wooden chair from
+which he had leapt to greet her.
+
+He took his head in his hands and poured out the fierce anguish of
+his soul. To die innocent as he was, to be the victim of an arbitrary,
+unjust power! And to perish at his age!
+
+Hearing him rave, she shivered out of an agony of compassion and also
+of some terror for herself. She would that he found it less hard to die.
+And thinking this she thought further, and uttered some of her thought
+aloud.
+
+“I could have saved you, my poor Philip.”
+
+He started up, and showed her again that livid, distorted face of his.
+
+“What do you mean?” he asked hoarsely. “You could have saved me, do you
+say? Then--then why--”
+
+“Ah, but the price, my dear,” she sobbed.
+
+“Price?” quoth he in sudden, fierce contempt. “What price is too great
+to pay for life? Does this Rhynsault want all our wealth, then yield it
+to him yield it so that I may live--”
+
+“Should I have hesitated had it been but that?” she interrupted.
+
+And then she told him, whilst he sat there hunched and shuddering.
+
+“The dog! The foul German dog!” he muttered through clenched teeth.
+
+“So that you see, my dear,” she pursued brokenly, “it was too great a
+price. Yourself, you could not have condoned it, or done aught else but
+loathe me afterwards.”
+
+But he was not as stout-mettled as she deemed him, or else the
+all-consuming thirst of life, youth's stark horror of death, made him a
+temporizing craven in that hour.
+
+“Who knows?” he answered. “Certes, I do not. But a thing so done, a
+thing in which the will and mind have no part, resolves itself perhaps
+into a sacrifice--”
+
+He broke off there, perhaps from very shame. After all he was a man, and
+there are limits to what manhood will permit of one.
+
+But those words of his sank deeply into her soul. They rang again and
+again in her ears as she took her anguished way home after the agony of
+their farewells, and in the end they drove her out again that very night
+to seek the Governor of Zeeland.
+
+Rhynsault was at supper when she came, and without quitting the table
+bade them usher her into his presence. He found her very white, but
+singularly calm and purposeful in her bearing.
+
+“Well, mistress?”
+
+“May I speak to you alone?”
+
+Her voice was as steady as her glance.
+
+He waved away the attendants, drank a deep draught from the cup at his
+elbow, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and sat back in his
+tall chair to hear her.
+
+“Yesterday,” she said, “you made, or seemed to make, me a proposal.”
+
+He looked up at first in surprise, then with a faint smile on his
+coarse, red mouth. His glance had read her meaning clearly.
+
+“Look you, mistress, here I am lord of life and death. Yet in the case
+of your husband I yield up that power to you. Say but the word and I
+sign the order for his gaol delivery at dawn.”
+
+“I have come to say that word,” she informed him.
+
+A moment he looked up at her, his smile broadening, a flush mounting to
+his cheek-bones. Then he rose and sent his chair crashing behind him to
+the ground.
+
+“Herrgott!” he grunted; and he gathered her slim, trembling body to his
+massive gold-laced breast.
+
+Soon after sunrise on the morrow she was beating at the gates of
+Middelburg gaol, a paper clutched convulsively in her left hand.
+
+She was admitted, and to the head gaoler she showed the paper that she
+carried.
+
+“An order from the Governor of Zeeland for the gaol delivery of Philip
+Danvelt!” she announced almost hysterically.
+
+The gaoler scanned the paper, then her face. His lips tightened.
+
+“Come this way,” he said; and led her down a gloomy corridor to the cell
+where yesterday she had seen her husband.
+
+He threw wide the door, and Sapphira sprang in.
+
+“Philip!” she cried, and checked as suddenly.
+
+He lay supine and still upon the miserable pallet, his hands folded
+upon his breast, his face waxen, his eyes staring glassily through
+half-closed lids.
+
+She sped to his side in a sudden chill of terror. She fell on her knees
+and touched him.
+
+“Dead!” she screamed, and, kneeling, span round questioning to face the
+gaoler in the doorway. “Dead!”
+
+“He was hanged at daybreak, mistress,” said the gaoler gently.
+
+She rocked a moment, moaning, then fell suddenly forward across her
+husband's body in a swoon.
+
+That evening she was again at the Gravenhof to see Rhynsault, and again
+she was admitted--a haggard faced woman now, in whom there was no trace
+of beauty left. She came to stand before the Governor, considered him
+in silence a moment with a loathing unutterable in her glance, then
+launched into fierce recriminations of his broken faith.
+
+He heard her out, then shrugged and smiled indulgently.
+
+“I performed no less than I promised,” said he. “I pledged my word to
+Danvelt's gaol delivery, and was not my gaol delivery effective? You
+could hardly suppose that I should allow it to be of such a fashion as
+to interfere with our future happy meetings.”
+
+Before his leering glance she fled in terror, followed by the sound of
+his bestial laugh.
+
+For a week thereafter she kept her house and brooded. Then one day she
+sallied forth all dressed in deepest mourning and attended by a train
+of servants, and, embarking upon a flat-bottomed barge, was borne up the
+river Scheldt towards Antwerp. Bruges was her ultimate destination, of
+which she left no word behind her, and took the longest way round to
+reach it. From Antwerp her barge voyaged on to Ghent, and thence by
+canal, drawn by four stout Flemish horses, at last to the magnificent
+city where the Dukes of Burgundy kept their Court.
+
+Under the June sunshine the opulent city of Bruges hummed with activity
+like the great human hive it was. For Bruges at this date was the market
+of the world, the very centre of the world's commerce, the cosmopolis
+of the age. Within its walls were established the agencies of a score of
+foreign great trading companies, and the ambassadors of no less a
+number of foreign Powers. Here on a day you might hear every language of
+civilization spoken in the broad thoroughfares under the shadow of such
+imposing buildings as you would not have found together in another city
+of Europe. To the harbour came the richly laden argosies from Venice
+and Genoa, from Germany and the Baltic, from Constantinople and from
+England, and in her thronged markets Lombard and Venetian, Levantine,
+Teuton, and Saxon stood jostling one another to buy and sell.
+
+It was past noon, and the great belfry above the Gothic Cloth Hall in
+the Grande Place was casting a lengthening shadow athwart the crowded
+square. Above the Babel of voices sounded on a sudden the note of a
+horn, and there was a cry of “The Duke! The Duke!” followed by a general
+scuttle of the multitude to leave a clear way down the middle of the
+great square.
+
+A gorgeous cavalcade some twoscore strong came into sight, advancing
+at an amble, a ducal hunting party returning to the palace. A hush fell
+upon the burgher crowd as it pressed back respectfully to gaze; and
+to the din of human voices succeeded now the clatter of hoofs upon the
+kidney-stones of the square, the jangle of hawkbells, the baying of
+hounds, and the occasional note of the horn that had first brought
+warning of the Duke's approach.
+
+It was a splendid iridescent company, flaunting in its apparel every
+colour of the prism. There were great lords in silks and velvets of
+every hue, their legs encased in the finest skins of Spain; there
+were great ladies, in tall, pointed hennins or bicorne headdresses and
+floating veils, with embroidered gowns that swept down below the
+bellies of their richly harnessed palfreys. And along the flanks of this
+cavalcade ran grooms and huntsmen in green and leather, their jagged
+liripipes flung about their necks, leading the leashed hounds.
+
+The burghers craned their necks, and Levantine merchant argued with
+Lombard trader upon an estimate of the wealth paraded thus before them.
+And then at last came the young Duke himself, in black, as if to detach
+himself from the surrounding splendour. He was of middle stature, of
+a strong and supple build, with a lean, swarthy face and lively eyes.
+Beside him, on a white horse, rode a dazzling youth dressed from head
+to foot in flame-coloured silk, a peaked bonnet of black velvet set upon
+his lovely golden head, a hooded falcon perched upon his left wrist,
+a tiny lute slung behind him by a black ribbon. He laughed as he rode,
+looking the very incarnation of youth and gaiety.
+
+The cavalcade passed slowly towards the Prinssenhof, the ducal
+residence. It had all but crossed the square when suddenly a voice--a
+woman's voice, high and tense--rang out.
+
+“Justice, my Lord Duke of Burgundy! Justice, Lord Duke, for a woman's
+wrongs!”
+
+It startled the courtly riders, and for a moment chilled their gaiety.
+The scarlet youth at the Duke's side swung round in his saddle to obtain
+a view of her who called so piteously, and he beheld Sapphira Danvelt.
+
+She was all in black, and black was the veil that hung from her steeple
+head-dress, throwing into greater relief her pallid loveliness which the
+youth's glance was quick to appraise. He saw, too, from her air and from
+the grooms attending her, that she was a woman of some quality, and the
+tragic appeal of her smote home in his gay, poetic soul. He put forth a
+hand and clutched the Duke's arm, and, as if yielding to this, the Duke
+reined up.
+
+“What is it that you seek?” Charles asked her not unkindly, his lively
+dark eyes playing over her.
+
+“Justice!” was all she answered him very piteously, and yet with a
+certain fierceness of insistence.
+
+“None asks it of me in vain, I hope,” he answered gravely. “But I do not
+dispense it from the saddle in the public street. Follow us.”
+
+And he rode on.
+
+She followed to the Prinssenhof with her grooms and her woman Catherine.
+There she was made to wait in a great hall, thronged with grooms and
+men-at-arms and huntsmen, who were draining the measure sent them by the
+Duke. She stood apart, wrapped in her tragic sorrow, and none molested
+her. At last a chamberlain came to summon her to the Duke's presence.
+
+In a spacious, sparsely furnished room she found the Duke awaiting her,
+wearing now a gown of black and gold that was trimmed with rich fur. He
+sat in a tall chair of oak and leather, and leaning on the back of it
+lounged gracefully the lovely scarlet youth who had ridden at his side.
+
+Standing before him, with drooping eyes and folded hands, she told her
+shameful story. Darker and darker grew his brow as she proceeded with
+it. But it was the gloom of doubt rather than of anger.
+
+“Rhynsault?” he cried when she had done. “Rhynsault did this?”
+
+There was incredulity in his voice and nothing else.
+
+The youth behind him laughed softly, and shifted his attitude.
+
+“You are surprised. Yet what else was to be looked for in that Teuton
+swine? Me he never could deceive, for all his--”
+
+“Be silent, Arnault,” said the Duke sharply. And to the woman: “It is
+a grave, grave charge,” he said, “against a man I trusted and have
+esteemed, else I should not have placed him where he is. What proof have
+you?”
+
+She proffered him a strip of parchment--the signed order for the gaol
+delivery of Philip Danvelt.
+
+“The gaoler of Middelburg will tell Your Grace that he was hanged
+already when I presented this. My woman Catherine, whom I have with
+me, can testify to part. And there are some other servants who can bear
+witness to my husband's innocence. Captain von Rhynsault had ceased to
+doubt it.”
+
+He studied the parchment, and fell very grave and thoughtful.
+
+“Where are you lodged?” he asked.
+
+She told him.
+
+“Wait there until I send for you again,” he bade her. “Leave this order
+with me, and depend upon it, justice shall be done.”
+
+That evening, a messenger rode out to Middelburg to summon von Rhynsault
+to Bruges, and the arrogant German came promptly and confidently,
+knowing nothing of the reason, but conceiving naturally that
+fresh honours were to be conferred upon him by a master who loved
+stout-hearted servants. And that Rhynsault was stout-hearted he showed
+most of all when the Duke taxed him without warning with the villainy he
+had wrought.
+
+If he was surprised, he was not startled. What was the life of a Flemish
+burgher more or less? What the honour of a Flemish wife? These were not
+considerations to daunt a soldier, a valiant man of war. And because
+such was his dull mood--for he was dull, this Rhynsault, as dull as
+he was brutish--he considered his sin too venial to be denied. And the
+Duke, who could be crafty, perceiving that mood of his, and simulating
+almost an approval of it, drew the German captain into self-betrayal.
+
+“And so this Philip Danvelt may have been innocent?”
+
+“He must have been, for we have since taken the guilty man of the same
+name,” said the German easily. “It was unfortunate, but--”
+
+“Unfortunate!” The Duke's manner changed from silk to steel. He heaved
+himself out of his chair, and his dark eyes flamed. “Unfortunate! Is
+that all, you dog?”
+
+“I conceived him guilty when I ordered him to be hanged,” spluttered the
+captain, greatly taken aback.
+
+“Then, why this? Answer me--why this?”
+
+And under his nose the Duke thrust the order of gaol delivery Rhynsault
+had signed.
+
+The captain blenched, and fear entered his glance. The thing was
+becoming serious, it seemed.
+
+“Is this the sort of justice you were sent to Middelburg to administer
+in my name? Is this how you dishonour me? If you conceived him guilty,
+why did you sign this and upon what terms? Bah, I know the terms. And
+having made such foul terms, why did you not keep your part of the
+bargain, evil as it was?”
+
+Rhynsault had nothing to say. He was afraid, and he was angry too. Here
+was a most unreasonable bother all about nothing, it seemed to him.
+
+“I--I sought to compromise between justice and--and--”
+
+“And your own vile ends,” the Duke concluded for him. “By Heaven, you
+German dog, I think I'll have you shortened by a head!”
+
+“My lord!” It was a cry of protest.
+
+“There is the woman you have so foully wronged, and so foully swindled,”
+ said the Duke, watching him. “What reparation will you make to her? What
+reparation can you make? I can toss your filthy head into her lap. But
+will that repair the wrong?”
+
+The captain suddenly saw light, and quite a pleasant light it was, for
+he had found Sapphira most delectable.
+
+“Why,” he said slowly, and with all a fool's audacity, “having made her
+a widow, I can make her a wife again. I never thought to wive, myself.
+But if Your Grace thinks such reparation adequate, I will afford it
+her.”
+
+The Duke checked in the very act of replying. Again the expression of
+his countenance changed. He strode away, his head bowed in thought; then
+slowly he returned.
+
+“Be it so,” he said. “It is not much, but it is all that you can do, and
+after a fashion it will mend the honour you have torn. See that you wed
+her within the week. Should she not consent, it will be the worse for
+you.”
+
+She would not have consented--she would have preferred death,
+indeed--but for the insistence that the Duke used in private with her.
+And so, half convinced that it would in some sort repair her honour,
+the poor woman suffered herself to be led, more dead than living, to the
+altar in the Duke's private chapel, and there, scarcely knowing what she
+did, she became the wife of Captain Claudius von Rhynsault, the man she
+had most cause to loathe and hate in all the world.
+
+Rhynsault had ordered a great banquet to celebrate his nuptials, for on
+the whole he was well satisfied with the issue of this affair. But as he
+left the altar, his half-swooning bride upon his arm, the Duke in person
+tapped his shoulder.
+
+“All is not yet done,” he said. “You are to come with me.”
+
+The bridal pair were conducted to the great hall of the Prinssenhof,
+where there was a great gathering of the Court--to do honour to his
+nuptials, thought the German captain. At the broad table sat two clerkly
+fellows with quills and parchments, and by this table the Duke took
+his stand, Arnault beside him--in peacock-blue to-day--and called for
+silence.
+
+“Captain von Rhynsault,” he said gravely and quietly, “what you have
+done is well done; but it does not suffice. In the circumstances of this
+marriage, and after the revelation we have had of your ways of thought
+and of honour, it is necessary to make provision against the future. It
+shall not be yours, save at grave cost, to repudiate the wife you have
+now taken.”
+
+“There is no such intent--” began Rhynsault, who misliked this homily.
+
+The Duke waved him into silence.
+
+“You are interrupting me,” he said sharply. “You are a wealthy man,
+Rhynsault, thanks to the favours I have heaped upon you ever since
+the day when I picked you from your German kennel to set you where you
+stand. Here you will find a deed prepared. It is in the form of a will,
+whereby you bequeath everything of which you are to-day possessed--and
+it is all set down--to your wife on your death, or on the day on which
+you put her from you. Your signature is required to that.”
+
+The captain hesitated a moment. This deed would fetter all his future.
+The Duke was unreasonable. But under the steady, compelling eyes of
+Charles he moved forward to the table, and accepted the quill the clerk
+was proffering. There was no alternative, he realized. He was trapped.
+Well, well! He must make the best of it. He stooped from his great
+height, and signed in his great sprawling, clumsy, soldier's hand.
+
+The clerk dusted the document with pounce, and handed it to the Duke.
+Charles cast an eye upon the signature, then taking the quill himself,
+signed under it, then bore the document to the half-swooning bride.
+
+“Keep this secure,” he bade her. “It is your marriage-gift from me.”
+
+Rhynsault's eyes gleamed. If his wife were to keep the deed, the thing
+was none so desperate after all. But the next moment he had other things
+to think of.
+
+“Give me your sword,” the Duke requested.
+
+Wondering, the German unsheathed the weapon, and proffered the hilt
+to his master. Charles took it, and a stern smile played about his
+beardless mouth. He grasped it, hilt in one hand and point in the other.
+Suddenly he bent his right knee, and, bearing sharply downward with the
+flat of the weapon upon his thigh, snapped in into two.
+
+“So much for that dishonourable blade,” he said, and cast the pieces
+from him. Then he flung out an arm to point to Rhynsault. “Take him
+out,” he commanded; “let him have a priest, and half an hour in which to
+make his soul, then set his head on a spear above the Cloth Hall, that
+men may know the justice of Charles of Burgundy.”
+
+With the roar of a 'goaded bull the German attempted to fling forward.
+But men-at-arms, in steel and leather, who had come up quietly behind
+him, seized him now. Impotent in their coiling arms, he was borne
+away to his doom, that thereby he might complete the reparation of his
+hideous offence, and deliver Sapphira from the bondage of a wedlock
+which Charles of Burgundy had never intended her to endure.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+X. THE NIGHT OF STRANGLERS--Govanna Of Naples And Andreas Of Hungary
+
+Charles, Duke of Durazzo, was one of your super chess-players, handling
+kings and queens, knights and prelates of flesh and blood in the game
+that he played with Destiny upon the dark board of Neapolitan politics.
+And he had no illusions on the score of the forfeit that would be
+claimed by his grim opponent in the event of his own defeat. He knew
+that his head was the stake he set upon the board, and he knew, too,
+that defeat must inevitably follow upon a single false move. Yet he
+played boldly and craftily, as you shall judge.
+
+He made his first move in March of 1343, some three months after the
+death of Robert of Anjou, King of Jerusalem and Sicily, as ran the title
+of the ruler of Naples. He found his opportunity amid the appalling
+anarchy into which the kingdom was then plunged as a result of a wrong
+and an ill judged attempt to right it.
+
+Good King Robert the Wise had wrested the crown of Naples from his elder
+brother, the King of Hungary, and had ruled as a usurper. Perhaps to
+quiet his conscience, perhaps to ensure against future strife between
+his own and his brother's descendants, he had attempted to right the
+wrong by a marriage between his brother's grandson Andreas and his
+own granddaughter Giovanna, a marriage which had taken place ten years
+before, when Andreas was but seven years of age and Giovanna five.
+
+The aim had been thus to weld into one the two branches of the House of
+Anjou. Instead, the rivalry was to be rendered more acute than ever, and
+King Robert's fear of some such result contributed to it not a little.
+On his deathbed he summoned the Princes of the Blood--the members of
+the Houses of Durazzo and Taranto--and the chief nobles of the kingdom,
+demanding of them an oath of allegiance to Giovanna, and himself
+appointing a Council of Regency to govern the kingdom during her
+minority.
+
+The consequence was that, against all that had been intended when the
+marriage was contracted, Giovanna was now proclaimed queen in her
+own right, and the government taken over in her name by the appointed
+Council. Instantly the Court of Naples was divided into two camps, the
+party of the Queen, including the Neapolitan nobility, and the party of
+Andreas of Hungary, consisting of the Hungarian nobles forming his
+train and a few malcontent Neapolitan barons, and guided by the sinister
+figure of Andreas's preceptor, Friar Robert.
+
+This arrogant friar, of whom Petrarch has left us a vivid portrait, a
+red-faced, red-bearded man, with a fringe of red hair about his tonsure,
+short and squat of figure, dirty in his dress and habits, yet imbued
+with the pride of Lucifer despite his rags, thrust himself violently
+into the Council of Regency, demanding a voice in the name of his
+pupil Andreas. And the Council feared him, not only on the score of
+his over-bearing personality, but also because he was supported by the
+populace, which had accepted his general filthiness as the outward sign
+of holiness. His irruption occasioned so much trouble and confusion that
+in the end the Pope intervened, in his quality as Lord Paramount--Naples
+being a fief of Holy Church--and appointed a legate to rule the kingdom
+during Giovanna's minority.
+
+The Hungarians, with Andreas's brother, King Ludwig of Hungary, at their
+head, now appealed to the Papal Court of Avignon for a Bull commanding
+the joint coronation of Andreas and Giovanna, which would be tantamount
+to placing the government in the hands of Andreas. The Neapolitans,
+headed by the Princes of the Blood--who, standing next in succession,
+had also their own interests to consider clamoured that Giovanna alone
+should be crowned.
+
+In this pass were the affairs of the kingdom when Charles of Durazzo,
+who had stood watchful and aloof, carefully weighing the chances,
+resolved at last to play that dangerous game of his. He began by the
+secret abduction of Maria of Anjou, his own cousin and Giovanna's
+sister, a child of fourteen. He kept her concealed for a month in his
+palace, what time he obtained from the Pope, through the good offices
+of his uncle the Cardinal of Perigord, a dispensation to overcome the
+barrier of consanguinity. That dispensation obtained, Charles married
+the girl publicly under the eyes of all Naples, and by the marriage--to
+which the bride seemed nowise unwilling--became, by virtue of his wife,
+next heir to the crown of Naples.
+
+That was his opening move. His next was to write to his obliging
+uncle the Cardinal of Perigord, whose influence at Avignon was very
+considerable, urging him to prevail upon Pope Clement VI not to sign the
+Bull in favour of Andreas and the joint coronation.
+
+Now, the high-handed action of Charles in marrying Maria of Anjou had
+very naturally disposed Giovanna against him; further, it had disposed
+against him those Princes of the Blood who were next in the succession,
+and upon whom he had stolen a march by this strengthening of his own
+claims. It is inevitable to assume that he had counted precisely
+upon this to afford him the pretext that he sought--he, a Neapolitan
+prince--to ally himself with the Hungarian intruder.
+
+Under any other circumstances his advances must have been viewed with
+suspicion by Andreas, and still more by the crafty Friar Robert. But,
+under the circumstances which his guile had created, he was received
+with open arms by the Hungarian party, and his defection from the Court
+of Giovanna was counted a victory by the supporters of Andreas. He
+protested his good-will towards Andreas, and proclaimed his hatred of
+Giovanna's partisans, who poisoned her mind against her husband. He
+hunted and drank with Andreas--whose life seems to have been largely
+made up of hunting and drinking--and pandered generally to the rather
+gross tastes of this foreigner, whom in his heart he despised for a
+barbarian.
+
+From being a boon companion, Charles very soon became a counsellor to
+the young Prince, and the poisonous advice that he gave seemed shrewd
+and good, even to Friar Robert.
+
+“Meet hostility with hostility, ride ruthlessly upon your own way,
+showing yourself confident of the decision in your favour that the Pope
+must ultimately give. For bear ever in your mind that you are King of
+Naples, not by virtue of your marriage with Giovanna, but in your own
+right, Giovanna being but the offspring of the usurping branch.”
+
+The pale bovine eyes of Andreas would kindle into something like
+intelligence, and a flush would warm his stolid countenance. He was
+a fair-haired young giant, white-skinned and well-featured, but dull,
+looking, with cold, hard eyes suggesting the barbarian that he was
+considered by the cultured Neapolitans, and that he certainly looked
+by contrast with them. Friar Robert supporting the Duke of Durazzo's
+advice, Andreas did not hesitate to act upon it; of his own authority
+he delivered prisoners from gaol, showered honours upon his Hungarian
+followers and upon such Neapolitan barons as Count Altamura, who was
+ill-viewed at Court, and generally set the Queen at defiance. The
+inevitable result, upon which again the subtle Charles had counted, was
+to exasperate a group of her most prominent nobles into plotting the
+ruin of Andreas.
+
+It was a good beginning, and unfortunately Giovanna's own behaviour
+afforded Charles the means of further speeding up his game.
+
+The young Queen was under the governance of Filippa the Catanese, an
+evil woman, greedy of power. This Filippa, once a washerwoman, had in
+her youth been chosen for her splendid health to be the foster-mother
+of Giovanna's father. Beloved of her foster-child, she had become
+perpetually installed at Court, married to a wealthy Moor named Cabane,
+who was raised to the dignity of Grand Seneschal of the kingdom, whereby
+the sometime washerwoman found herself elevated to the rank of one of
+the first ladies of Naples. She must have known how to adapt herself to
+her new circumstances, otherwise she would hardly have been appointed,
+as she was upon the death of her foster-son, governess to his infant
+daughters. Later, to ensure her hold upon the young Queen, and being
+utterly unscrupulous in her greed of power, she had herself contrived
+that her son, Robert of Cabane, became Giovanna's lover.
+
+One of Giovanna's first acts upon her grandfather's death had been to
+create this Robert Count of Evoli, and this notwithstanding that in
+the mean time he had been succeeded in her favour by the handsome
+young Bertrand d'Artois. This was the group--the Catanese, her son,
+and Bertrand--that, with the Princes of the Blood, governed the Queen's
+party.
+
+With what eyes Andreas may have looked upon all this we have no means
+of determining. Possibly, engrossed as he was with his hawks and his
+hounds, he may have been stupidly blind to his own dishonour, at least
+as far as Bertrand was concerned. Another than Charles might have
+chosen the crude course of opening his eyes to it. But Charles was too
+far-seeing. Precipitancy was not one of his faults. His next move must
+be dictated by the decision of Avignon regarding the coronation.
+
+This decision came in July of 1345, and it fell like a thunderbolt upon
+the Court. The Pope had pronounced in favour of Andreas by granting the
+Bull for the joint coronation of Andreas and Giovanna.
+
+This was check to Charles. His uncle the Cardinal of Perigord had done
+his utmost to oppose the measure, but he had been overborne in the
+end by Ludwig of Hungary, who had settled the matter by the powerful
+argument that he was himself the rightful heir to the crown of Naples,
+and that he relinquished his claim in favour of his younger brother. He
+had backed the argument by the payment to the Pope of the enormous sum,
+for those days, of one hundred thousand gold crowns, and the issue,
+obscure hitherto, had immediately become clear to the Papal Court.
+
+It was check to Charles, as I have said. But Charles braced himself, and
+considered the counter-move that should give him the advantage. He went
+to congratulate Andreas, and found him swollen with pride and arrogance
+in his triumph.
+
+“Be welcome, Charles,” he hailed Durazzo. “I am not the man to forget
+those who have stood my friends whilst my power was undecided.”
+
+“For your own sake,” said the smooth Charles, as he stepped back from
+that brotherly embrace, “I trust you'll not forget those who have been
+your enemies, and who, being desperate now, may take desperate means to
+avert your coronation.”
+
+The pale eyes of the Hungarian glittered.
+
+“Of whom do you speak?”
+
+Charles smoothed his black beard thoughtfully, his dark eyes narrowed
+and pensive. There must be a victim, to strike fear into Giovanna's
+friends and stir them to Charles's purposes.
+
+“Why, first and foremost, I should place Giovanna's counsellor Isernia,
+that man of law whose evil counsels have hurt your rights as king. Next
+come--”
+
+But here Charles craftily paused and looked away, a man at fault.
+
+“Next?” cried Andreas. “Who next? Speak out!” The Duke shrugged.
+
+“By the Passion, there is no lack of others. You have enemies to spare
+among the Queen's friends.”
+
+Andreas paled under his faint tan. He flung back his crimson robe as
+if he felt the heat, and stood forth, lithe as a wrestler, in his
+close-fitting cote-hardie and hose of violet silk.
+
+“No need, indeed, to name them,” he said fiercely.
+
+“None,” Charles agreed. “But the most dangerous is Isernia. Whilst
+he lives you walk amid swords. His death may spread a panic that will
+paralyze the others.”
+
+He would say no more, knowing that he had said enough to send Andreas,
+scowling and sinister, to sow terror in hearts that guilt must render
+uneasy now, amongst which hearts be sure that he counted Giovanna's own.
+
+Andreas took counsel with Friar Robert. Touching Isernia, there was
+evidence and to spare that he was dangerous, and so Isernia fell on the
+morrow to an assassin's sword as he was in the very act of leaving the
+Castel Nuovo, and it was Charles himself who bore word of it to the
+Court, and so plunged it into consternation.
+
+They walked in the cool of evening in the pleasant garden of the Castel
+Nuovo, when Charles came upon them and touched the stalwart shoulder of
+Bertrand d'Artois. Bertrand the favourite eyed him askance, mistrusting
+and disliking him for his association with Andreas.
+
+“The Hungarian boar,” said Charles, “is sharpening his tusks now that
+his authority is assured by the Holy Father.”
+
+“Who cares?” sneered Bertrand.
+
+“Should you care if I added that already he has blooded them?”
+
+Bertrand changed countenance. The Duke explained himself.
+
+“He has made a beginning upon Giacomo d' Isernia. Ten minutes ago he
+was stabbed to death within a stone's throw of the castle.” So Charles
+unburdened himself of his news. “A beginning, no more.”
+
+“My God!” said Bertrand. “D' Isernia! Heaven rest him.” And devoutly he
+crossed himself.
+
+“Heaven will rest some more of you if you suffer Andreas of Hungary to
+be its instrument,” said Charles, his lips grimly twisted.
+
+“Do you threaten?”
+
+“Nay, man; be not so hot and foolish. I warn. I know his mood. I know
+what he intends.”
+
+“You ever had his confidence,” said Bertrand, sneering.
+
+“Until this hour I had. But there's an end to that. I am a Prince of
+Naples, and I'll not bend the knee to a barbarian. He was well enough
+to hunt with and drink with, so long as he was Duke of Calabria with no
+prospect of being more. But that he should become my King, and that
+our lady Giovanna should be no more than a queen consort--” He made a
+gesture of ineffable disgust.
+
+Bertrand's eyes kindled. He gripped the other's arm, and drew him along
+under a trellis of vines that formed a green cloister about the walls.
+
+“Why, here is great news for our Queen,” he cried. “It will rejoice her,
+my lord, to know you are loyal to her.”
+
+“That is no matter,” he replied. “What matters is that you should be
+warned--you, yourself in particular, and Evoli. No doubt there will be
+others, too. But the Hungarian's confidences went no further.”
+
+Bertrand had come to a standstill. He stared at Charles, and slowly the
+colour left his face.
+
+“Me?” he said, a finger on his heart.
+
+“Aye, you. You will be the next. But not until the crown is firmly on
+his brow. Then he will settle his score with the nobles of Naples who
+have withstood him. Listen,” and Charles's voice sank as if under the
+awful burden of his news; “a black banner of vengeance is to precede him
+to his coronation. And your name stands at the head of the list of the
+proscribed. Does it surprise you? After all, he is a husband, and he has
+some knowledge of what lies between the Queen and you--”
+
+“Stop!”
+
+“Pish!” Charles shrugged. “What need for silence upon what all Naples
+knows? When have you and the Queen ever used discretion? In your place
+I should not need a warning. I should know what to expect from a husband
+become king.”
+
+“The Queen must be told.”
+
+“Indeed, I think so, too. It will come best from you. Go tell her, so
+that measures may be taken. But go secretly and warily. You are safe
+until he wears the crown. And above all--whatever you may decide--do
+nothing here in Naples.”
+
+And on that he turned to depart, whilst Bertrand sped to Giovanna. On
+the threshold of the garden Charles paused and looked back. His eyes
+sought and found the Queen, a tall, lissome girl of seventeen, in a
+close-fitting, revealing gown of purple silk, the high, white gorget
+outlining an oval face of a surpassing loveliness, crowned by a wealth
+of copper-coloured hair. She was standing in a stricken attitude,
+looking up into the face of her lover, who was delivering himself of his
+news.
+
+Charles departed satisfied.
+
+Three days later a man of the Queen's household, one Melazzo, who was
+in Duke Charles's pay, brought him word that the seed he had cast had
+fallen upon fertile soil. A conspiracy to destroy the King had been laid
+by Bertrand d'Artois, Robert of Cabane, Count of Evoli, and the
+latter's brothers-in-law, Terlizzi and Morcone. Melazzo himself, for his
+notorious affection for the Queen, had been included in this band, and
+also a man named Pace, who was body servant to Andreas, and who, like
+Melazzo, was in Charles's pay.
+
+Charles of Durazzo smiled gently to himself. The game went excellently
+well.
+
+“The Court,” he said, “goes to Aversa for a month before the coronation.
+That would be a favourable season to their plan. Advise it so.”
+
+The date appointed for the coronation was September 20th. A month
+before--on August 20th--the Court removed itself from the heat and
+reek of Naples to the cooler air of Aversa, there to spend the time of
+waiting. They were housed in the monastery of Saint Peter, which
+had been converted as far as possible into a royal residence for the
+occasion.
+
+On the night of their arrival there the refectory of the monastery was
+transfigured to accommodate the numerous noble and very jovial company
+assembled there to sup. The long, stone-flagged room, lofty and with
+windows set very high, normally so bare and austere, was hung now with
+tapestries, and the floor strewn with rushes that were mingled with
+lemon verbena and other aromatic herbs. Along the lateral walls and
+across the end of the room that faced the double doors were set the
+stone tables of the Spartan monks, on a shallow dais that raised them
+above the level of the floor. These tables were gay now with the gleam
+of crystal and the glitter of gold and silver plate. Along one side of
+them, their backs to the walls, sat the ladies and nobles of the
+Court. The vaulted ceiling was rudely frescoed to represent the
+open heavens--the work of a brother whose brush was more devout than
+cunning--and there was the inevitable cenacolo above the Abbot's table
+at the upper end of the room.
+
+At this table sat the royal party, the broad-shouldered Andreas of
+Hungary, slightly asprawl, his golden mane somewhat tumbled now, for
+he was drinking deeply in accordance with his barbarian habit; ever and
+anon he would fling down a bone or a piece of meat to the liver-coloured
+hounds that crouched expectant on the rushes of the floor.
+
+They had hunted that day in the neighbourhood of Capua, and Andreas had
+acquitted himself well, and was in high good-humour, giving now little
+thought to the sinister things that Charles of Durazzo had lately
+whispered, laughing and jesting with the traitor Morcone at his side.
+Behind him in close attendance stood his servant Pace, once a creature
+of Durazzo's. The Queen sat on his right, making but poor pretence to
+eat; her lovely young face was of a ghostly pallor, her dark eyes were
+wide and staring. Among the guests were the black-browed Evoli and his
+brother-in-law, Terlizzi; Bertrand of Artois and his father; Melazzo,
+that other creature of Charles's, and Filippa the Catanese, handsome and
+arrogant, but oddly silent to-night.
+
+But Charles of Durazzo was not of the company. It is not for the player,
+himself, to become a piece upon the board.
+
+He had caught a whisper that the thing he had so slyly prompted to
+Bertrand d'Artois was to be done here at Aversa, and so Charles had
+remained at Naples. He had discovered very opportunely that his wife was
+ailing, and he developed such concern for her that he could not bring
+himself to leave her side. He had excused himself to Andreas with a
+thousand regrets, since what he most desired was to enjoy with him the
+cool, clean air of Aversa and the pleasures of the chase; and he had
+presented the young King at parting with the best of all his falcons in
+earnest of affection and disappointment.
+
+The night wore on, and at last, at a sign from the Queen, the ladies
+rose and departed to their beds. The men settled down again. The
+cellarers redoubled their activities, the flagons circulated more
+briskly, and the noise they made must have disturbed the monks
+entrenched in their cells against these earthly vanities. The laughter
+of Andreas grew louder and more vacuous, and when at last he heaved
+himself up at midnight and departed to bed, that he might take some rest
+against the morrow's hunt, he staggered a little in his walk.
+
+But there were other hunters there whose impatience could not keep until
+the morrow, whose game was to be run to death that very night. They
+waited--Bertrand d'Artois, Robert of Cabane, the Counts of Terlizzi and
+Morcone, Melazzo and Andreas's body servant Pace--until all those who
+lay at Aversa were deep in slumber. Then at two o'clock in the morning
+they made their stealthy way to the loggia on the third floor, a long
+colonnaded gallery above the Abbot's garden. They paused a moment before
+the Queen's door which opened upon this gallery, then crept on to that
+of the King's room at the other end. It was Pace who rapped sharply
+on the panels thrice before he was answered by a sleepy growl from the
+other side.
+
+“It is I--Pace--my lord,” he announced. “A courier has arrived from
+Naples, from Friar Robert, with instant messages.”
+
+From within there was a noisy yawn, a rustle, the sound of an
+overturning stool, and, lastly, the rasp of a bolt being withdrawn. The
+door opened, and in the faint light of the dawning day Andreas appeared,
+drawing a furlined robe about his body, which was naked of all but a
+shirt.
+
+He saw no one but Pace. The others had drawn aside into the shadows.
+Unsuspecting, he stepped forth.
+
+“Where is this messenger?”
+
+The door through which he had come slammed suddenly behind him, and he
+turned to see Melazzo in the act of bolting it with a dagger to prevent
+any one from following that way--for the room had another door opening
+upon the inner corridor.
+
+Instead, Melazzo might have employed his dagger to stab Andreas behind,
+and so have made an instant end. But it happened to be known that
+Andreas wore an amulet--a ring that his mother had given him--which
+rendered him invulnerable to steel or poison. And such was the credulity
+of his age, such the blind faith of those men in the miraculous power
+of that charm, that none of them so much as attempted to test it with a
+dagger. It was for the same reason that no recourse was had to the still
+easier method of disposing of him by poison. Accepting the amulet at
+its legendary value, the conspirators had resolved that he must be
+strangled.
+
+As he turned now they leapt upon him, and, taking him unawares, bore
+him to the ground before he could realize what was happening. Here they
+grappled with him, and he with them. He was endowed with the strength of
+a young bull, and he made full use of it. He rose, beating them off, to
+be borne down again, bellowing the while for help. He smote out blindly,
+and stretched Morcone half senseless with a blow of his great fist.
+
+Seeing how difficult he proved to strangle, they must have cursed that
+amulet of his. He struggled to his knees again, then to his feet, and,
+at last, with bleeding face, leaving tufts of his fair hair in their
+murderous hands, he broke through and went bounding down the loggia,
+screaming as he ran, until he came to his wife's door. Against that he
+hurled himself, calling her.
+
+“Giovanna! Giovanna! For the love of God crucified! Open! Open! I am
+being murdered!”
+
+From within came no answer--utter silence.
+
+“Giovanna! Giovanna!” He beat frenziedly upon the door.
+
+Still no answer, which yet was answer enough.
+
+The stranglers, momentarily discomfited, scared, too, lest his cries
+should rouse the convent, had stood hesitating after he broke from them.
+But now Bertrand d'Artois, realizing that too much had been done already
+to admit of the business being left unfinished, sprang upon him suddenly
+again. Locked in each other's arms, those wrestlers swayed and panted in
+the loggia for a moment, then with a crash went down, Bertrand on
+top, Andreas striking his head against the stone floor as he fell. The
+Queen's lover pinned him there, kneeling upon his breast.
+
+“The rope!” he panted to the others who came up.
+
+One of them threw him a coil of purple silk interwrought with gold
+thread, in which a running noose had been tied. Bertrand slipped it
+over Andreas's head, drew it taut, and held it so, despite the man's
+desperate, convulsive struggles. The others came to his assistance.
+Amongst them they lifted the writhing victim to the parapet of the
+loggia, and flung him over; whilst Bertrand, Cabane, and Pace bore upon
+the rope, arresting his fall, and keeping him suspended there until he
+should be dead. Melazzo and Morcone came to assist them, and it was then
+that Cabane observed that Terlizzi held aloof, as if filled with horror.
+
+Peremptorily he called to him:
+
+“Hither, and lend a hand! The rope is long enough to afford you a grip.
+We want accomplices, not witnesses, Lord Count.”
+
+Terlizzi obeyed, and then the ensuing silence was broken suddenly by
+screams from the floor below the screams of a woman who slept in the
+room immediately underneath, who had awakened to behold in the grey
+light of the breaking day the figure of a man kicking and writhing at a
+rope's end before her window.
+
+Yet a moment the startled stranglers kept their grip of the rope until
+the struggles at the end of it had ceased; then they loosed their hold
+and let the body go plunging down into the Abbot's garden. Thereafter
+they scattered and fled, for people were stirring now in the convent,
+aroused by the screams of the woman.
+
+Thrice, so the story runs, came the monks to the Queen's door to knock
+and demand her orders for the disposal of the body of her husband
+without receiving any answer to their question. It remained still
+unanswered when later in the day she departed from Aversa in a closed
+litter, and returned to Naples escorted by a company of lances, and
+for lack of instructions the monks left the body in the Abbot's garden,
+where it had fallen, until Charles of Durazzo came to remove it two days
+later.
+
+Ostentatiously he bore to Naples the murdered Prince--whose death he had
+so subtly inspired--and in the cathedral before the Hungarians, whom he
+had assembled, and in the presence of a vast concourse of the people, he
+solemnly swore over the body vengeance upon the murderers.
+
+Having made a cat's-paw of Giovanna--through the person of her lover,
+Bertrand d'Artois, and his confederate assassins--and thus cleared away
+one of those who stood between himself and the throne, he now sought
+to make a cat's-paw of justice to clear away the other. Meanwhile, days
+grew into weeks and weeks into months, and no attempt was made by the
+Queen to hunt out the murderers of her husband, no inquiry instituted.
+Bertrand d'Artois, it is true, had fled with his father to their
+stronghold of Saint Agatha for safety. But the others--Cabane, Terlizzi,
+and Morcone--continued unabashed about Giovanna's person at the Castel
+Nuovo.
+
+Charles wrote to Ludwig of Hungary, and to the Pope, demanding that
+justice should be done, and pointing out the neglect of all attempt
+to perform it in the kingdom itself, and inviting them to construe for
+themselves that neglect. As a consequence, Clement VI issued, on June
+2d of the following year, a Bull, whereby Bertrand des Baux, the
+Grand Justiciary of Naples, was commanded to hunt down and punish the
+assassins, against whom--at the same time--the Pope launched a second
+Bull, of excommunication. But the Holy Father accompanied his commands
+to Des Baux by a private note, wherein he straitly enjoined the Grand
+Justiciary for reasons of State to permit nothing to transpire that
+might reflect upon the Queen.
+
+Des Baux set about his task at once, and inspired, no doubt, by Charles,
+proceeded to the arrest of Melazzo and the servant Pace. It was not for
+Charles to accuse the Queen or even any of her nobles, whereby he might
+have aroused against himself the opposition of those who were her
+loyal partisans. Sufficient for him to point out the two meanest of the
+conspirators, and depend upon the torture to wring from them confessions
+that must gradually pull down the rest, and in the end Giovanna herself.
+
+Terlizzi, alive to his danger when he heard of the arrest of those two,
+made a bold and desperate attempt to avert it. Riding forth with a band
+of followers, he attacked the escort that was bearing Pace to prison.
+The prisoner was seized, but not to be rescued. All that Terlizzi wanted
+was his silence. By his orders the wretched man's tongue was torn out,
+whereupon he was abandoned once more to his guards and his fate.
+
+Had Terlizzi been able to carry out his intentions of performing
+the like operation upon Melazzo, Charles might have been placed in a
+difficult position. So much, however, did not happen, and the horrible
+deed upon Pace was in vain. Put to the question, Melazzo denounced
+Terlizzi, and together with him Cabane, Morcone, and the others.
+Further, his confession incriminated Filippa, the Catanese, and her two
+daughters, the wives of Terlizzi and Morcone. Of the Queen, however, he
+said nothing, because, one of the lesser conspirators, little more
+than a servant like Pace, he can have had no knowledge of the Queen's
+complicity.
+
+The arrest of the others followed instantly, and, sentenced to death,
+they were publicly burned in the Square of Sant' Eligio, after suffering
+all the brutal, unspeakable horrors of fourteenth-century torture, which
+continued to the very scaffold, with the alleged intention of inducing
+them to denounce any further accomplices. But though they writhed and
+fainted under the pincers of the executioners, they confessed nothing.
+Indeed, they preserved a silence which left the people amazed, for the
+people lacked the explanation. The Grand Justiciary, Hugh des Baux,
+had seen to it that the Pope's injunctions should be obeyed. Lest the
+condemned should say too much, he had taken the precaution of having
+their tongues fastened down with fish-hooks.
+
+Thus Charles was momentarily baulked, and he was further baulked by the
+fact that Giovanna had taken a second husband, in her cousin, Louis
+of Taranto. Unless matters were to remain there and the game end in
+a stalemate, bold measures were required, and those measures Charles
+adopted. He wrote to the King of Hungary now openly accusing Giovanna
+of the murder, and pointing out the circumstances that in themselves
+afforded corroboration of his charge.
+
+Those circumstances Ludwig embodied in a fulminating letter which
+he wrote to Giovanna in answer to her defence against the charge of
+inaction in the matter of her late husband's murderers: “Giovanna, thy
+antecedent disorderly life, thy retention of the exclusive power in the
+kingdom, thy neglect of vengeance upon the murderers of thy husband, thy
+having taken another husband, and thy very excuses abundantly prove thy
+complicity in thy husband's death.”
+
+So far this was all as Charles of Durazzo could have desired it. But
+there was more. Ludwig was advancing now in arms to take possession of
+the kingdom, of which, under all the circumstances, he might consider
+himself the lawful heir, and the Princes of Italy were affording
+him unhindered passage through their States. This was not at all to
+Charles's liking. Indeed, unless he bestirred himself, it might prove to
+be checkmate from an altogether unexpected quarter, rendering vain all
+the masterly play with which he had conducted the game so far.
+
+It flustered him a little, and in his haste to counter it he blundered.
+
+Giovanna, alarmed at the rapid advance of Ludwig, summoned her barons to
+her aid, and in that summons she included Charles, realizing that at
+all costs he must be brought over to her side. He went, listened, and
+finally sold himself for a good price the title of Duke of Calabria,
+which made him heir to the kingdom. He raised a powerful troop of
+lances, and marched upon Aquila, which had already hoisted the Hungarian
+banner.
+
+There it was that he discovered, and soon, his move to have been a bad
+one. News was brought to him that the Queen, taken with panic, had fled
+to Provence, seeking sanctuary at Avignon.
+
+Charles set about correcting his error without delay, and marched out
+of Aquila to go and meet Ludwig that he might protest his loyalty, and
+range himself under the invader's banner.
+
+At Foligno, the King of Hungary was met by a papal legate, who in the
+name of Pope Clement forbade him under pain of excommunication to invade
+a fief of Holy Church.
+
+“When I am master of Naples,” answered Ludwig firmly, “I shall count
+myself a feudatory of the Holy See. Until then I render account to none
+but God and my conscience.” And he pushed on, preceded by a black banner
+of death, scattering in true Hungarian fashion murder, rape, pillage,
+and arson through the smiling countryside, exacting upon the whole land
+a terrible vengeance for the murder of his brother.
+
+Thus he came to Aversa, and there quartered himself and his Hungarians
+upon that convent of Saint Peter where Andreas had been strangled a year
+ago. And it was here that he was joined by Charles, who came protesting
+loyalty, and whom the King received with open arms and a glad welcome,
+as was to be expected from a man who had been Andreas's one true friend
+in that land of enemies. Of Charles's indiscreet escapade in the matter
+of Aquila nothing was said. As Charles had fully expected, it was
+condoned upon the score both of the past and the present.
+
+That night there was high feasting in that same refectory where Andreas
+had feasted on the night when the stranglers watched him, waiting, and
+Charles was the guest of honour. In the morning Ludwig was to pursue his
+march upon the city of Naples, and all were astir betimes.
+
+On the point of setting out, Ludwig turned to Charles.
+
+“Before I go,” he said, “I have a mind to visit the spot where my
+brother died.”
+
+To Charles, no doubt, this seemed a morbid notion to be discouraged. But
+Ludwig was insistent.
+
+“Take me there,” he bade the Duke.
+
+“Indeed, I scarce know--I was not here, remember,” Charles answered
+him, rendered faintly uneasy, perhaps by a certain grimness in the gaunt
+King's face, perhaps by the mutterings of his own conscience.
+
+“I know that you were not; but surely you must know the place. It will
+be known to all the world in these parts. Besides, was it not yourself
+recovered the body? Conduct me thither, then.”
+
+Perforce, then, Charles must do his will. Arm-in-arm they mounted the
+stairs to that sinister loggia, a half-dozen of Ludwig's escorting
+officers following.
+
+They stepped along the tessellated floor above the Abbot's garden,
+flooded now with sunshine which drew the perfume from the roses blooming
+there.
+
+“Here the King slept,” said Charles, “and yonder the Queen. Somewhere
+here between the thing was done, and thence they hanged him.”
+
+Ludwig, tall and grim, stood considering, chin in hand. Suddenly he
+wheeled upon the Duke who stood at his elbow. His face had undergone a
+change, and his lip curled so that he displayed his strong teeth as a
+dog displays them when he snarls.
+
+“Traitor!” he rasped. “It is you--you who come smiling and fawning upon
+me, and spurring me on to vengeance--who are to blame for what happened
+here.”
+
+“I?” Charles fell back, changing colour, his legs trembling under him.
+
+“You!” the King answered him furiously. “His death would never have
+come about but for your intrigues to keep him out of the royal power, to
+hinder his coronation.”
+
+“It is false!” cried Charles. “False! I swear it before God!”
+
+“Perjured dog! Do you deny that you sought the aid of your precious
+uncle the Cardinal of Perigord to restrain the Pope from granting the
+Bull required?”
+
+“I do deny it. The facts deny it. The Bull was forthcoming.”
+
+“Then your denial but proves your guilt,” the King answered him, and
+from the leather pouch hanging from his belt, he pulled out a parchment,
+and held it under the Duke's staring eyes. It was the letter he had
+written to the Cardinal of Perigord, enjoining him to prevent the Pope
+from signing the Bull sanctioning Andreas's coronation.
+
+The King smiled terribly into that white, twitching face.
+
+“Deny it now,” he mocked him. “Deny, too, that, bribed by the title of
+Duke of Calabria, you turned to the service of the Queen, to abandon
+it again for ours when you perceived your danger. You think to use us,
+traitor, as a stepping-stone to help you to mount the throne--as you
+sought to use my brother even to the extent of encompassing his murder.”
+
+“No, no! I had no hand in that. I was his friend--”
+
+“Liar!” Ludwig struck him across the mouth.
+
+On the instant the officers of Ludwig laid hands upon the Duke, fearing
+that the indignity might spur him to retaliation.
+
+“You are very opportune,” said Ludwig; and added coldly, “Dispatch him.”
+
+Charles screamed a moment, even as Andreas had screamed on that same
+spot, when he found himself staring into the fearful face of death. Then
+the scream became a cough as a Hungarian sword went through him from
+side to side.
+
+They picked up his body from the tessellated floor of the loggia,
+carried it to the parapet as Andreas's had been carried, and flung it
+down into the Abbot's garden as Andreas's had been flung. It lay in a
+rosebush, dyeing the Abbot's roses a deeper red.
+
+Never was justice more poetic.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XI. THE NIGHT OF HATE--The Murder Of The Duke Of Gandia
+
+The Cardinal Vice-Chancellor took the packet proffered him by the
+fair-haired, scarlet-liveried page, and turned it over, considering it,
+the gentle, finely featured, almost ascetic face very thoughtful.
+
+“It was brought, my lord, by a man in a mask, who will give no name. He
+waits below,” said the scarlet stripling.
+
+“A man in a mask, eh? What mystery!”
+
+The thoughtful brown eyes smiled, the fine hands broke the fragment of
+wax. A gold ring fell out and rolled some little way along the black
+and purple Eastern rug. The boy dived after it, and presented it to his
+lordship.
+
+The ring bore an escutcheon, and the Cardinal found graven upon this
+escutcheon his own arms the Sforza lion and the flower of the quince.
+Instantly those dark, thoughtful eyes of his grew keen as they flashed
+upon the page.
+
+“Did you see the device?” he asked, a hint of steel under the silkiness
+of his voice.
+
+“I saw nothing, my lord--a ring, no more. I did not even look.”
+
+The Cardinal continued to ponder him for a long moment very searchingly.
+
+“Go--bring this man,” he said at last; and the boy departed, soon
+to reappear; holding aside the tapestry that masked the door to give
+passage to a man of middle height wrapped in a black cloak, his face
+under a shower of golden hair, covered from chin to brow by a black
+visor.
+
+At a sign from the Cardinal the page departed. Then the man, coming
+forward, let fall his cloak, revealing a rich dress of close-fitting
+violet silk, sword and dagger hanging from his jewelled girdle; he
+plucked away the mask, and disclosed the handsome, weak face of Giovanni
+Sforza, Lord of Pesaro and Cotignola, the discarded husband of Madonna
+Lucrezia, Pope Alexander's daughter.
+
+The Cardinal considered his nephew gravely, without surprise. He had
+expected at first no more than a messenger from the owner of that
+ring. But at sight of his figure and long, fair hair he had recognized
+Giovanni before the latter had removed his mask.
+
+“I have always accounted you something mad,” said the Cardinal softly.
+“But never mad enough for this. What brings you to Rome?”
+
+“Necessity, my lord,” replied the young tyrant. “The need to defend my
+honour, which is about to be destroyed.”
+
+“And your life?” wondered his uncle. “Has that ceased to be of value?”
+
+“Without honour it is nothing.”
+
+“A noble sentiment taught in every school. But for practical purposes--”
+ The Cardinal shrugged.
+
+Giovanni, however, paid no heed.
+
+“Did you think, my lord, that I should tamely submit to be a derided,
+outcast husband, that I should take no vengeance upon, that villainous
+Pope for having made me a thing of scorn, a byword throughout Italy?”
+ Livid hate writhed in his fair young face. “Did you think I should,
+indeed, remain in Pesaro, whither I fled before their threats to my
+life, and present no reckoning?”
+
+“What is the reckoning you have in mind?” inquired his uncle, faintly
+ironical. “You'll not be intending to kill the Holy Father?”
+
+“Kill him?” Giovanni laughed shortly, scornfully. “Do the dead suffer?”
+
+“In hell, sometimes,” said the Cardinal.
+
+“Perhaps. But I want to be sure. I want sufferings that I can witness,
+sufferings that I can employ as balsam for my own wounded honour. I
+shall strike, even as he has stricken me--at his soul, not at his body.
+I shall wound him where he is most sensitive.”
+
+Ascanio Sforza, towering tall and slender in his scarlet robes, shook
+his head slowly.
+
+“All this is madness--madness! You were best away, best in Pesaro.
+Indeed, you cannot safely show your face in Rome.”
+
+“That is why I go masked. That is why I come to you, my lord, for
+shelter here until--”
+
+“Here?” The Cardinal was instantly alert. “Then you think I am as mad as
+yourself. Why, man, if so much as a whisper of your presence in Rome got
+abroad, this is the first place where they would look for you. If you
+will have your way, if you are so set on the avenging of past wrongs
+and the preventing of future ones, it is not for me, your kinsman,
+to withstand you. But here in my palace you cannot stay, for your own
+safety's sake. That page who brought you, now; I would not swear he did
+not see the arms upon your ring. I pray that he did not. But if he did,
+your presence is known here already.”
+
+Giovanni was perturbed.
+
+“But if not here, where, then, in Rome should I be safe?”
+
+“Nowhere, I think,” answered the ironical Ascanio. “Though perhaps you
+might count yourself safe with Pico. Your common hate of the Holy Father
+should be a stout bond between you.”
+
+Fate prompted the suggestion. Fate drove the Lord of Pesaro to act
+upon it, and to seek out Antonio Maria Pico, Count of Mirandola, in his
+palace by the river, where Pico, as Ascanio had foreseen, gave him a
+cordial welcome.
+
+There he abode almost in hiding until the end of May, seldom issuing
+forth, and never without his mask--a matter this which excited no
+comment, for masked faces were common in the streets of Rome in the
+evening of the fifteenth century. In talk with Pico he set forth
+his intent, elaborating what already he had told the Cardinal
+Vice-Chancellor.
+
+“He is a father--this Father of Fathers,” he said once. “A tender,
+loving father whose life is in his children, who lives through them
+and for them. Deprive him of them, and his life would become empty,
+worthless, a living death. There is Giovanni, who is as the apple of his
+eye, whom he has created Duke of Gandia, Duke of Benevento, Prince
+of Sessa, Lord of Teano, and more besides. There is the Cardinal of
+Valencia, there is Giuffredo, Prince of Squillace, and there is my wife,
+Lucrezia, of whom he has robbed me. There is, you see, an ample heel to
+our Achilles. The question is, where shall we begin?”
+
+“And also, how,” Pico reminded him.
+
+Fate was to answer both those questions, and that soon.
+
+They went on June 1st--the Lord of Pesaro, with his host and his host's
+daughter, Antonia--to spend the day at Pico's vineyard in Trastevere. At
+the moment of setting out to return to Rome in the evening the Count was
+detained by his steward, newly returned from a journey with matters to
+communicate to him.
+
+He bade his guest, with his daughter and their attendants, to ride on,
+saying that he himself would follow and overtake them. But the steward
+detained him longer than he had expected, so that, although the company
+proceeded leisurely towards the city, Pico had not come up with them
+when they reached the river. In the narrow street beyond the bridge the
+little escort found itself suddenly confronted and thrust aside by a
+magnificent cavalcade of ladies and gallants, hawk on wrist and followed
+by a pack of hounds.
+
+Giovanni had eyes for one only in that gay company--a tall, splendidly
+handsome man in green, a Plumed bonnet on his auburn head, and a
+roguish, jovial eye, which, in its turn, saw nobody in that moment but
+Madonna Antonia, reclining in her litter, the leather curtains of which
+she had drawn back that she might converse with Giovanni as they rode.
+
+The Lord of Pesaro beheld the sudden kindling of his brother-in-law's
+glance, for that handsome gallant was the Duke of Gandia, the Pope's
+eldest son, the very apple of the Holy Father's eye. He saw the Duke's
+almost unconscious check upon his reins; saw him turn in the saddle to
+stare boldly at Madonna Antonia until, grown conscious of his regard,
+she crimsoned under it. And when at last the litter had moved on, he
+saw over his shoulder a mounted servant detach from the Duke's side to
+follow them. This fellow dogged their heels all the way to the Parione
+Quarter, obviously with intent to discover for his master where the
+beautiful lady of the litter might be housed.
+
+Giovanni said naught of this to Pico when he returned a little later.
+He was quick to perceive the opportunity that offered, but far from sure
+that Pico would suffer his daughter to be used as a decoy; far, indeed,
+from sure that he dared himself so employ her. But on the morrow,
+chancing to look from a window out of idle curiosity to see what horse
+it was that was pacing in the street below, he beheld a man in a rich
+cloak, in whom at once he recognized the Duke, and he accounted that the
+dice of destiny had fallen.
+
+Himself unseen by that horseman, Giovanni drew back quickly. On the spur
+of the moment, he acted with a subtlety worthy of long premeditation.
+Antonia and he were by an odd fatality alone together in that chamber of
+the mezzanine. He turned to her.
+
+“An odd fellow rides below here, tarrying as if expectant. I wonder
+should you know who he is.”
+
+Obeying his suggestion, she rose--a tall, slim child of some eighteen
+years, of a delicate, pale beauty, with dark, thoughtful eyes and long,
+black tresses, interwoven with jewelled strands of gold thread. She
+rustled to the window and looked down upon that cavalier; and, as she
+looked, scanning him intently, the Duke raised his head. Their eyes met,
+and she drew back with a little cry.
+
+“What is it?” exclaimed Giovanni.
+
+“It is that insolent fellow who stared at me last evening in the street.
+I would you had not bidden me look.”
+
+Now, whilst she had been gazing from the window, Giovanni, moving softly
+behind her, had espied a bowl of roses on the ebony table in the room's
+middle. Swiftly and silently he had plucked a blossom, which he now held
+behind his back. As she turned from him again, he sent it flying through
+the window; and whilst in his heart he laughed with bitter hate and
+scorn as he thought of Gandia snatching up that rose and treasuring it
+in his bosom, aloud he laughed at her fears, derided them as idle.
+
+That night, in his room, Giovanni practised penmanship assiduously,
+armed with a model with which Antonia had innocently equipped him. He
+went to bed well pleased, reflecting that as a man lives so does he die.
+Giovanni Borgia, Duke of Gandia, had been ever an amiable profligate, a
+heedless voluptuary obeying no spur but that of his own pleasure, which
+should drive him now to his destruction. Giovanni Borgia, he considered
+further, was, as he had expressed it, the very apple of his father's
+eye; and since, of his own accord, the Duke had come to thrust his
+foolish head into the noose, the Lord of Pesaro would make a sweet
+beginning to the avenging of his wrongs by drawing it taut.
+
+Next morning saw him at the Vatican, greatly daring, to deliver in
+person his forgery to the Duke. Suspicious of his mask, they asked him
+who he was and whence he came.
+
+“Say one who desires to remain unknown with a letter for the Duke of
+Gandia which his magnificence will welcome.”
+
+Reluctantly, a chamberlain departed with his message. Anon he was
+conducted above to the magnificent apartments which Gandia occupied
+during his sojourn there.
+
+He found the Duke newly risen, and with him his brother, the
+auburn-headed young Cardinal of Valencia, dressed in a close-fitting
+suit of black, that displayed his lithe and gracefully athletic
+proportions, and a cloak of scarlet silk to give a suggestion of his
+ecclesiastical rank.
+
+Giovanni bowed low, and, thickening his voice that it might not be
+recognized, announced himself and his mission in one.
+
+“From the lady of the rose,” said he, proffering the letter.
+
+Valencia stared a moment; then went off into a burst of laughter.
+Gandia's face flamed and his eyes sparkled. He snatched the letter,
+broke its seal, and consumed its contents. Then he flung away to a
+table, took up a pen, and sat down to write; the tall Valencia watching
+him with amused scorn a while, then crossing to his side and setting a
+hand upon his shoulder.
+
+“You will never learn,” said the more subtle Cesare. “You must forever
+be leaving traces where traces are not to be desired.”
+
+Gandia looked up into that keen, handsome young face.
+
+“You are right,” he said; and crumpled the letter in his hand.
+
+Then he looked at the messenger and hesitated.
+
+“I am in Madonna's confidence,” said the man in the mask.
+
+Gandia rose. “Then say--say that her letter has carried me to Heaven;
+that I but await her commands to come in person to declare myself. But
+bid her hasten, for within two weeks from now I go to Naples, and thence
+I may return straight to Spain.”
+
+“The opportunity shall be found, Magnificent. Myself I shall bring you
+word of it.”
+
+The Duke loaded him with thanks, and in his excessive gratitude pressed
+upon him at parting a purse of fifty ducats, which Giovanni flung into
+the Tiber some ten minutes later as he was crossing the Bridge of Sant'
+Angelo on his homeward way.
+
+The Lord of Pesaro proceeded without haste. Delay and silence he knew
+would make Gandia the more sharp-set, and your sharp-set, impatient
+fellow is seldom cautious. Meanwhile, Antonia had mentioned to her
+father that princely stranger who had stared so offendingly one evening,
+and who for an hour on the following morning had haunted the street
+beneath her window. Pico mentioned it to Giovanni, whereupon Giovanni
+told him frankly who it was.
+
+“It was that libertine brother-in-law of mine, the Duke of Gandia,” he
+said. “Had he persisted, I should have bidden you look to your daughter.
+As it is, no doubt he has other things to think of. He is preparing
+for his journey to Naples, to accompany his brother Cesare, who goes as
+papal legate to crown Federigo of Aragon.”
+
+There he left the matter, and no more was heard of it until the night of
+June 14th, the very eve of the departure of the Borgia princes upon that
+mission.
+
+Cloaked and masked, Giovanni took his way to the Vatican at dusk that
+evening, and desired to have himself announced to the Duke. But he was
+met with the answer that the Duke was absent; that he had gone to take
+leave of his mother and to sup at her villa in Trastevere. His return
+was not expected until late.
+
+At first Giovanni feared that, in leaving the consummation of his plot
+until the eleventh hour, he had left it too late. In his anxiety he at
+once set out on foot, as he was, for the villa of Madonna Giovanna de
+Catanei. He reached it towards ten o'clock that night, to be informed
+that Gandia was there, at supper. The servant went to bear word to
+the Duke that a man in a mask was asking to see him, a message which
+instantly flung Gandia into agitation. Excitedly he commanded that the
+man be brought to him at once.
+
+The Lord of Pesaro was conducted through the house and out into the
+garden to an arbour of vine, where a rich table was spread in the
+evening cool, lighted by alabaster lamps. About this table Giovanni
+found a noble company of his own relations by marriage. There was
+Gandia, who rose hurriedly at his approach, and came to meet him; there
+was Cesare, Cardinal of Valencia, who was to go to Naples to-morrow as
+papal legate, yet dressed tonight in cloth of gold, with no trace of his
+churchly dignity about him; there was their younger brother Giuffredo,
+Prince of Squillace, a handsome stripling, flanked by his wife, the
+free-and-easy Donna Sancia of Aragon, swarthy, coarse-featured, and
+fleshy, despite her youth; there was Giovanni's sometime wife; the
+lovely, golden-headed Lucrezia, the innocent cause of all this hate that
+festered in the Lord of Pesaro's soul; there was their mother, the nobly
+handsome Giovanozza de Catanei, from whom the Borgias derived their
+auburn heads; and there was their cousin, Giovanni Borgia, Cardinal of
+Monreale, portly and scarlet, at Madonna's side.
+
+All turned to glance at this masked intruder who had the power so oddly
+to excite their beloved Gandia.
+
+“From the lady of the rose,” Giovanni announced himself softly to the
+Duke.
+
+“Yes, yes,” came the answer, feverishly impatient. “Well, what is your
+message?”
+
+“To-night her father is from home. She will expect your magnificence at
+midnight.”
+
+Gandia drew a deep breath.
+
+“By the Host! You are no more than in time. I had almost despaired,
+my friend, my best of friends. To-night!” He pronounced the word
+ecstatically. “Wait you here. Yourself you shall conduct me. Meanwhile,
+go sup.”
+
+And beating his hands, he summoned attendants.
+
+Came the steward and a couple of Moorish slaves in green turbans, to
+whose care the Duke commanded his masked visitor. But Giovanni neither
+required nor desired their ministrations; he would not eat nor drink,
+but contented himself with the patience of hatred to sit for two long
+hours awaiting the pleasure of his foolish victim.
+
+They left at last, a little before midnight the Duke, his brother
+Cesare, his cousin Monreale, and a numerous attendance, his own retinue
+and those of the two cardinals. Thus they rode back to Rome, the Borgias
+very gay, the man in the mask plodding along beside them.
+
+They came to the Rione de Ponte, where their ways were to separate, and
+there, opposite the palace of the Cardinal Vice-Chancellor, Gandia drew
+rein. He announced to the others that he went no farther with them,
+summoned a single groom to attend him, and bade the remainder return to
+the Vatican and await him there.
+
+There was a last jest and a laugh from Cesare as the cavalcade went on
+towards the papal palace. Then Gandia turned to the man in the mask,
+bade him get up on the crupper of his horse, and so rode slowly off
+in the direction of the Giudecca, the single attendant he had retained
+trotting beside his stirrup.
+
+Giovanni directed his brother-in-law, not to the main entrance of the
+house, but to the garden gate, which opened upon a narrow alley. Here
+they dismounted, flinging the reins to the groom, who was bidden to
+wait. Giovanni produced a key, unlocked the door, and ushered the Duke
+into the gloom of the garden. A stone staircase ran up to the loggia
+on the mezzanine, and by this way was Gandia now conducted, treading
+softly. His guide went ahead. He had provided himself with yet another
+key, and so unlocked the door from the loggia which opened upon the
+ante-room of Madonna Antonia. He held the door for the Duke, who
+hesitated, seeing all in darkness.
+
+“In,” Giovanni bade him. “Tread softly. Madonna waits for you.”
+
+Recklessly, then, that unsuspecting fellow stepped into the trap.
+
+Giovanni followed, closed the door, and locked it. The Duke, standing
+with quickened pulses in that impenetrable blackness, found himself
+suddenly embraced, not at all after the fond fashion he was expecting. A
+wrestler's arms enlaced his body, a sinewy leg coiled itself snake-wise
+about one of his own, pulling it from under him. As he crashed down
+under the weight of his unseen opponent, a great voice boomed out:
+
+“Lord of Mirandola! To me! Help! Thieves!”
+
+Suddenly a door opened. Light flooded the gloom, and the writhing Duke
+beheld a white vision of the girl whose beauty had been the lure that
+had drawn him into this peril which, as yet, he scarcely understood. But
+looking up into the face of the man who grappled with him, the man who
+held him there supine under his weight, he began at last to understand,
+or, at least, to suspect, for the face he saw, unmasked now, leering at
+him with hate unspeakable through the cloud of golden hair that half
+met across it, was the face of Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, whom his
+family had so cruelly wronged. Giovanni Sforza's was the voice that now
+fiercely announced his doom.
+
+“You and yours have made me a thing of scorn and laughter. Yourself have
+laughed at me. Go laugh in hell!”
+
+A blade flashed up in Giovanni's hand. Gandia threw up an arm to fend
+his breast, and the blade buried itself in the muscles. He screamed with
+pain and terror. The other laughed with hate and triumph, and stabbed
+again, this time in the shoulder.
+
+Antonia, from the threshold, watching in bewilderment and panic, sent
+a piercing scream to ring through the house, and then the voice of
+Giovanni, fierce yet exultant, called aloud:
+
+“Pico! Pico! Lord of Mirandola! Look to your daughter!”
+
+Came steps and voice, more light, flooding now the chamber, and through
+the mists gathering before his eyes the first-born of the house of
+Borgia beheld hurrying men, half dressed, with weapons in their hands.
+But whether they came to kill or to save, they came too late: Ten times
+Giovanni's blade had stabbed the Duke, yet, hindered by the Duke's
+struggles and by the effort of holding him there, he had been unable to
+find his heart, wherefore, as those others entered now, he slashed his
+victim across the throat, and so made an end.
+
+He rose, covered with blood, so ghastly and terrific that Pico, thinking
+him wounded, ran to him. But Giovanni reassured him with a laugh, and
+pointed with his dripping dagger.
+
+“The blood is his--foul Borgia blood!”
+
+At the name Pico started, and there was a movement as of fear from the
+three grooms who followed him. The Count looked down at that splendid,
+blood-spattered figure lying there so still, its sightless eyes
+staring up at the frescoed ceiling, so brave and so pitiful in his
+gold-broidered suit of white satin, with the richly jewelled girdle
+carrying gloves and purse and a jewelled dagger that had been so useless
+in that extremity.
+
+“Gandia” he cried; and looked at Giovanni with round eyes of fear and
+amazement. “How came he here?”
+
+“How?”
+
+With bloody hand Giovanni pointed to the open door of Antonia's chamber.
+
+“That was the lure, my lord. Taking the air outside, I saw him slinking
+hither, and took him for a thief, as, indeed, he was--a thief of honour,
+like all his kind. I followed, and--there he lies.”
+
+“My God!” cried Pico. And then hoarsely asked, “And Antonia?”
+
+Giovanni dismissed the question abruptly.
+
+“She saw, yet she knows nothing.”
+
+And then on another note:
+
+“Up now, Pico!” he cried. “Arouse the city, and let all men know how
+Gandia died the death of a thief. Let all men know this Borgia brood for
+what it is.”
+
+“Are you mad?” cried Pico. “Will I put my neck under the knife?”
+
+“You took him here in the night, and yours was the right to kill. You
+exercised it.”
+
+Pico looked long and searchingly into the other's face. True, all the
+appearances bore out the tale, as did, too, what had gone before and
+had been the cause of Antonia's complaint to him. Yet, knowing what lay
+between Sforza and Borgia, it may have seemed to Pico too extraordinary
+a coincidence that Giovanni should have been so ready at hand to defend
+the honour of the House of Mirandola. But he asked no questions. He was
+content in his philosophy to accept the event and be thankful for it on
+every count. But as for Giovanni's suggestion that he should proclaim
+through Rome how he had exercised his right to slay this Tarquin, the
+Lord of Mirandola had no mind to adopt it.
+
+“What is done is done,” he said shortly, in a tone that conveyed much.
+“Let it suffice us all. It but remains now to be rid of this.”
+
+“You will keep silent?” cried Giovanni, plainly vexed.
+
+“I am not a fool,” said Pico gently.
+
+Giovanni understood. “And these your men?”
+
+“Are very faithful friends who will aid you now to efface all traces.”
+
+And upon that he moved away, calling his daughter, whose absence was
+intriguing him. Receiving no answer, he entered her room, to find her
+in a swoon across her bed. She had fainted from sheer horror at what she
+had seen.
+
+Followed by the three servants bearing the body, Giovanni went down
+across the garden very gently. Approaching the gate, he bade them wait,
+saying that he went to see that the coast was clear. Then, going forward
+alone, he opened the gate and called softly to the waiting groom:
+
+“Hither to me!”
+
+Promptly the man surged before him in the gloom, and as promptly
+Giovanni sank his dagger in the fellow's breast. He deplored the
+necessity for the deed, but it was unavoidable, and your cinquecentist
+never shrank from anything that necessity imposed upon him. To let the
+lackey live would be to have the bargelli in the house by morning.
+
+The man sank with a half-uttered cry, and lay still.
+
+Giovanni dragged him aside under the shelter of the wall, where the
+others would not see him, then called softly to them to follow.
+
+When the grooms emerged from Pico's garden, the Lord of Pesaro was
+astride of the fine white horse on which Gandia had ridden to his death.
+
+“Put him across the crupper,” he bade them.
+
+And they so placed the body, the head dangling on one side, the legs on
+the other. And Giovanni reflected grimly how he had reversed the order
+in which Gandia and he had ridden that same horse an hour ago.
+
+At a walk they proceeded down the lane towards the river, a groom
+on each side to see that the burden on the crupper did not jolt off,
+another going ahead to scout. At the alley's mouth Giovanni drew rein,
+and let the man emerge upon the river-bank and look to right and left to
+make sure that there was no one about.
+
+He saw no one. Yet one there was who saw them--Giorgio, the timber
+merchant, who lay aboard his boat moored to the Schiavoni, and who,
+three days later, testified to what he saw. You know his testimony. It
+has been repeated often--how he saw the man emerge from the alley and
+look up and down, then retire, to emerge again, accompanied now by the
+horseman with his burden, and the other two; how he saw them take the
+body from the crupper of the horse, and, with a “one, two, and three,”
+ fling it into the river; how he heard the horseman ask them had they
+thrown it well into the middle, and their answer of, “Yes my lord”; and
+finally, when asked why he had not come earlier to report the matter,
+how he had answered that he had thought nothing of it, having in his
+time seen more than a hundred bodies flung into the Tiber at night.
+
+Returned to the garden gate, Giovanni bade the men go in without
+him. There was something yet that he must do. When they had gone, he
+dismounted, and went to the body of the groom which he had left under
+the wall. He must remove that too. He cut one of the stirrup-leathers
+from the saddle, and attaching one end of it to the dead man's arm,
+mounted again, and dragged him thus--ready to leave the body and ride
+off at the first alarm--some little way, until he came to the Piazza
+della Giudecca. Here, in the very heart of the Jewish quarters, he left
+the body, and his movements hereafter are a little obscure. Perhaps he
+set out to return to Pico della Mirandola's house, but becoming, as was
+natural, uneasy on the way, fearing lest all traces should, after all,
+not have been effaced, lest the Duke should be traced to that house, and
+himself, if found there, dealt with summarily upon suspicion, he
+turned about, and went off to seek sanctuary with his uncle, the
+Vice-Chancellor.
+
+The Duke's horse, which he had ridden, he turned loose in the streets,
+where it was found some hours later, and first gave occasion to rumours
+of foul play. The rumours growing, with the discovery of the body of
+Gandia's groom, and search-parties of armed bargelli scouring Rome, and
+the Giudecca in particular, in the course of the next two days, forth at
+last came Giorgio, that boatman of the Schiavoni, with the tale of what
+he had seen. When the stricken Pope heard it, he ordered the bed of the
+river to be dragged foot by foot, with the result that the ill-starred
+Duke of Gandia was brought up in one of the nets, whereupon the
+heartless Sanazzaro coined his terrible epigram concerning that
+successor of Saint Peter, that Fisherman of Men.
+
+The people, looking about for him who had the greatest motive for that
+deed, were quick to fasten the guilt upon Giovanni Sforza, who by that
+time was far from Rome, riding hard for the shelter of his tyranny of
+Pesaro; and the Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, who was also mentioned, and
+who feared to be implicated, apprehensive ever lest his page should have
+seen the betraying arms upon the ring of his masked visitor--fled also,
+nor could be induced to return save under a safe-conduct from the Holy
+Father, expressing conviction of his innocence.
+
+Later public rumour accused others; indeed, they accused in turn every
+man who could have been a possible perpetrator, attributing to some of
+them the most fantastic and incredible motives. Once, prompted no doubt
+by their knowledge of the libertine, pleasure-loving nature of the dead
+Duke, rumour hit upon the actual circumstances of the murder so closely,
+indeed, that the Count of Mirandola's house was visited by the bargelli
+and subjected to an examination, at which Pico violently rebelled,
+appealing boldly to the Pope against insinuations that reflected upon
+the honour of his daughter.
+
+The mystery remained impenetrable, and the culprit was never brought to
+justice. We know that in slaying Gandia, Giovanni Sforza vented a hatred
+whose object was not Gandia, but Gandia's father. His aim was to deal
+Pope Alexander the cruellest and most lingering of wounds, and if he
+lacked the avenger's satisfaction of disclosing himself, at least he
+did not lack assurance that his blow had stricken home. He heard--as all
+Italy heard--from that wayfarer on the bridge of Sant' Angelo, how the
+Pope, in a paroxysm of grief at sight of his son's body fished from the
+Tiber, had bellowed in his agony like a tortured bull, so that his
+cries within the castle were heard upon the bridge. He learnt how the
+handsome, vigorous Pope staggered into the consistory of the 19th of
+that same month with the mien and gait of a palsied old man, and, in a
+voice broken with sobs, proclaimed his bitter lament:
+
+“Had we seven Papacies we would give them all to restore the Duke to
+life.”
+
+He might have been content. But he was not. That deep hate of his
+against those who had made him a thing of scorn was not so easily to be
+slaked. He waited, spying his opportunity for further hurt. It came a
+year later, when Gandia's brother, the ambitious Cesare Borgia, divested
+himself of his cardinalitial robes and rank, exchanging them for
+temporal dignities and the title of Duke of Valentinois. Then it was
+that he took up the deadly weapon of calumny, putting it secretly about
+that Cesare was the murderer of his brother, spurred to it by worldly
+ambition and by other motives which involved the principal members of
+the family.
+
+Men do not mount to Borgia heights without making enemies. The evil tale
+was taken up in all its foul trappings, and, upon no better authority
+than the public voice, it was enshrined in chronicles by every scribbler
+of the day. And for four hundred years that lie has held its place in
+history, the very cornerstone of all the execration that has been
+heaped upon the name of Borgia. Never was vengeance more terrible,
+far-reaching, and abiding. It is only in this twentieth century of ours
+that dispassionate historians have nailed upon the counter of truth the
+base coin of that accusation.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XII. THE NIGHT OF ESCAPE--Casanova's Escape From The Piombi
+
+Patrician influence from without had procured Casanova's removal in
+August of that year, 1756, from the loathsome cell he had occupied
+for thirteen months in the Piombi--so called from the leaded roof
+immediately above those prisons which are simply the garrets of the
+Doge's palace.
+
+That cell had been no better than a kennel seldom reached by the light
+of day, and so shallow that it was impossible for a man of his fine
+height to stand upright in it. But his present prison was comparatively
+spacious and it was airy and well-lighted by a barred window, whence he
+could see the Lido.
+
+Yet he was desperately chagrined at the change, for he had almost
+completed his arrangements to break out of his former cell. The only ray
+of hope in his present despair came from the fact that the implement to
+which he trusted was still in his possession, safely concealed in the
+upholstery of the armchair that had been moved with him into his present
+quarters. That implement he had fashioned for himself with infinite
+pains out of a door-bolt some twenty inches long, which he had found
+discarded in a rubbish-heap in a corner of the attic where he had been
+allowed to take his brief daily exercise. Using as a whetstone a small
+slab of black marble, similarly acquired, he had shaped that bolt into a
+sharp octagonal-pointed chisel or spontoon.
+
+It remained in his possession, but he saw no chance of using it now, for
+the suspicions of Lorenzo, the gaoler, were aroused, and daily a couple
+of archers came to sound the floors and walls. True they did not sound
+the ceiling, which was low and within reach. But it was obviously
+impossible to cut through the ceiling in such a manner as to leave the
+progress of the work unseen.
+
+Hence his despair of breaking out of a prison where he had spent over a
+year without trial or prospect of a trial, and where he seemed likely to
+spend the remainder of his days. He did not even know precisely why
+he had been arrested. All that Giacomo Casanova knew was that he
+was accounted a disturber of the public peace. He was notoriously a
+libertine, a gamester, and heavily in debt: also--and this was more
+serious--he was accused of practising magic, as indeed he had done, as a
+means of exploiting to his own profit the credulity of simpletons of all
+degrees. He would have explained to the Inquisitors of State of the Most
+Serene Republic that the books of magic found by their apparitors in
+his possession--“The Clavicula of Solomon,” the “Zecor-ben,” and other
+kindred works--had been collected by him as curious instances of human
+aberration. But the Inquisitors of State would not have believed him,
+for the Inquisitors were among those who took magic seriously. And,
+anyhow, they had never asked him to explain, but had left him as if
+forgotten in that abominable verminous cell under the leads, until his
+patrician friend had obtained him the mercy of this transfer to better
+quarters.
+
+This Casanova was a man of iron nerve and iron constitution. Tall and
+well-made, he was boldly handsome, with fine dark eyes and dark brown
+hair. In age he was barely one and twenty; but he looked older, as
+well he might, for in his adventurer's way he had already gathered more
+experience of life than most men gain in half a century.
+
+The same influence that had obtained him his change of cell had also
+gained him latterly the privilege--and he esteemed it beyond all
+else--of procuring himself books. Desiring the works of Maffai, he
+bade his gaoler purchase them out of the allowance made him by the
+Inquisitors in accordance with the Venetian custom. This allowance was
+graduated to the social status of each prisoner. But the books being
+costly and any monthly surplus from his monthly expenditure being
+usually the gaoler's perquisite, Lorenzo was reluctant to indulge him.
+He mentioned that there was a prisoner above who was well equipped with
+books, and who, no doubt, would be glad to lend in exchange.
+
+Yielding to the suggestion, Casanova handed Lorenzo a copy of Peteau's
+“Rationarium,” and received next morning, in exchange, the first volume
+of Wolf. Within he found a sheet bearing in six verses a paraphrase of
+Seneca's epigram, “Calamitosus est animus futuri anxius.” Immediately
+he perceived he had stumbled upon a means of corresponding with one who
+might be disposed to assist him to break prison.
+
+In reply, being a scholarly rascal (he had been educated for the
+priesthood), he wrote six verses himself. Having no pen, he cut the long
+nail of his little finger to a point, and, splitting it, supplied
+the want. For ink he used the juice of mulberries. In addition to the
+verses, he wrote a list of the books in his possession, which he placed
+at the disposal of his fellow-captive. He concealed the written sheet in
+the spine of that vellum-bound volume; and on the title-page, in warning
+of this, he wrote the single Latin word “Latet.” Next morning he handed
+the book to Lorenzo, telling him that he had read it, and requesting the
+second volume.
+
+That second volume came on the next day, and in the spine of it a long
+letter, some sheets of paper, pens, and a pencil. The writer announced
+himself as one Marino Balbi, a patrician and a monk, who had been four
+years in that prison, where he had since been given a companion in
+misfortune, Count Andrea Asquino.
+
+Thus began a regular and very full correspondence between the prisoners,
+and soon Casanova--who had not lived on his wits for nothing--was able
+to form a shrewd estimate of Balbi's character. The monk's letters
+revealed it as compounded of sensuality, stupidity, ingratitude, and
+indiscretion.
+
+“In the world,” says Casanova, “I should have had no commerce with a
+fellow of his nature. But in the Piombi I was obliged to make capital
+out of everything that came under my hands.”
+
+The capital he desired to make in this instance was to ascertain whether
+Balbi would be disposed to do for him what he could not do for himself.
+He wrote inquiring, and proposing flight.
+
+Balbi replied that he and his companion would do anything possible to
+make their escape from that abominable prison, but his lack of resource
+made him add that he was convinced that nothing was possible.
+
+“All that you have to do,” wrote Casanova in answer, “is to break
+through the ceiling of my cell and get me out of this, then trust to me
+to get you out of the Piombi. If you are disposed to make the attempt, I
+will supply you with the means, and show you the way.”
+
+It was a characteristically bold reply, revealing to us the utter
+gamester that he was in all things.
+
+He knew that Balbi's cell was situated immediately under the leads, and
+he hoped that once in it he should be able readily to find a way through
+the roof. That cell of Balbi's communicated with a narrow corridor,
+no more than a shaft for light and air, which was immediately above
+Casanova's prison. And no sooner had Balbi written, consenting, than
+Casanova explained what was to do. Balbi must break through the wall
+of his cell into the little corridor, and there cut a round hole in the
+floor precisely as Casanova had done in his former cell--until nothing
+but a shell of ceiling remained--a shell that could be broken down by
+half a dozen blows when the moment to escape should have arrived.
+
+To begin with, he ordered Balbi to purchase himself two or three dozen
+pictures of saints, with which to paper his walls, using as many as
+might be necessary for a screen to hide the hole he would be cutting.
+
+When Balbi wrote that his walls were hung with pictures of saints, it
+became a question of conveying the spontoon to him. This was difficult,
+and the monk's fatuous suggestions merely served further to reveal his
+stupidity. Finally Casanova's wits found the way. He bade Lorenzo buy
+him an in-folio edition of the Bible which had just been published, and
+it was into the spine of this enormous tome that he packed the precious
+spontoon, and thus conveyed it to Balbi, who immediately got to work.
+
+This was at the commencement of October. On the 8th of that month Balbi
+wrote to Casanova that a whole night devoted to labour had resulted
+merely in the displacing of a single brick, which so discouraged the
+faint-hearted monk that he was for abandoning an attempt whose
+only result must be to increase in the future the rigour of their
+confinement.
+
+Without hesitation, Casanova replied that he was assured of
+success--although he was far from having any grounds for any such
+assurance. He enjoined the monk to believe him, and to persevere,
+confident that as he advanced he would find progress easier. This
+proved, indeed, to be the case, for soon Balbi found the brickwork
+yielding so rapidly to his efforts that one morning, a week later,
+Casanova heard three light taps above his head--the preconcerted signal
+by which they were to assure themselves that their notions of the
+topography of the prison were correct.
+
+All that day he heard Balbi at work immediately above him, and again on
+the morrow, when Balbi wrote that as the floor was of the thickness of
+only two boards, he counted upon completing the job on the next day,
+without piercing the ceiling.
+
+But it would seem as if Fortune were intent upon making a mock of
+Casanova, luring him to heights of hope, merely to cast him down again
+into the depths of despair. Just as upon the eve of breaking out of his
+former cell mischance had thwarted him, so now, when again he deemed
+himself upon the very threshold of liberty, came mischance again to
+thwart him.
+
+Early in the afternoon the sound of bolts being drawn outside froze his
+very blood and checked his breathing. Yet he had the presence of mind to
+give the double knock that was the agreed alarm signal, whereupon Balbi
+instantly desisted from his labours overhead.
+
+Came Lorenzo with two archers, leading an ugly, lean little man of
+between forty and fifty years of age, shabbily dressed and wearing a
+round black wig, whom the tribunal had ordered should share Casanova's
+prison for the present. With apologies for leaving such a scoundrel in
+Casanova's company, Lorenzo departed, and the newcomer went down upon
+his knees, drew forth a chaplet, and began to tell his beads.
+
+Casanova surveyed this intruder at once with disgust and despair.
+Presently his disgust was increased when the fellow, whose name was
+Soradici, frankly avowed himself a spy in the service of the Council
+of Ten, a calling which he warmly defended from the contempt
+universally--but unjustly, according to himself--meted out to it. He had
+been imprisoned for having failed in his duty on one occasion through
+succumbing to a bribe.
+
+Conceive Casanova's frame of mind--his uncertainty as to how long this
+monster, as he calls him, might be left in his company, his curbed
+impatience to regain his liberty, and his consciousness of the horrible
+risk of discovery which delay entailed! He wrote to Balbi that
+night while the spy slept, and for the present their operations were
+suspended. But not for very long. Soon Casanova's wits resolved how to
+turn to account the weakness which he discovered in Soradici.
+
+The spy was devout to the point of bigoted, credulous superstition. He
+spent long hours in prayer, and he talked freely of his special devotion
+to the Blessed Virgin, and his ardent faith in miracles.
+
+Casanova--the arch-humbug who had worked magic to delude the
+credulous--determined there and then to work a miracle for Soradici.
+Assuming an inspired air, he solemnly informed the spy one morning that
+it had been revealed to him in a dream that Soradici's devotion to
+the Rosary was about to be rewarded; that an angel was to be sent from
+heaven to deliver him from prison, and that Casanova himself would
+accompany him in his flight.
+
+If Soradici doubted, conviction was soon to follow. For Casanova
+foretold the very hour at which the angel would come to break into the
+prison, and at that hour precisely--Casanova having warned Balbi--the
+noise made by the angel overhead flung Soradici into an ecstasy of
+terror.
+
+But when, at the end of four hours, the angel desisted from his labours,
+Soradici was beset by doubts. Casanova explained to him that since
+angels invariably put on the garb of human flesh when descending upon
+earth, they labour under human difficulties. He added the prophecy that
+the angel would return on the last day of the month, the eve of All
+Saints'--two days later--and that he would then conduct them out of
+captivity.
+
+By this means Casanova ensured that no betrayal should be feared from
+the thoroughly duped Soradici, who now spent the time in praying,
+weeping, and talking of his sins and of the inexhaustibility of divine
+grace. To make doubly sure, Casanova added the most terrible oath that
+if, by a word to the gaoler, Soradici should presume to frustrate the
+divine intentions, he would immediately strangle him with his own hands.
+
+On October 31st Lorenzo paid his usual daily visit early in the morning.
+After his departure they waited some hours, Soradici in expectant
+terror, Casanova in sheer impatience to be at work. Promptly at noon
+fell heavy blows overhead, and then, in a cloud of plaster and broken
+laths, the heavenly messenger descended clumsily into Casanova's arms.
+
+Soradici found this tall, gaunt, bearded figure, clad in a dirty shirt
+and a pair of leather breeches, of a singularly unangelic appearance;
+indeed, he looked far more like a devil.
+
+When he produced a pair of scissors, so that the spy might cut
+Casanova's beard, which, like the angel's, had grown in captivity,
+Soradici ceased to have any illusions on the score of Balbi's celestial
+nature. Although still intrigued--since he could not guess at the secret
+correspondence that had passed between Casanova and Balbi--he perceived
+quite clearly that he had been fooled.
+
+Leaving Soradici in the monk's care, Casanova hoisted himself through
+the broken ceiling and gained Balbi's cell, where the sight of Count
+Asquino dismayed him. He found a middle-aged man of a corpulence which
+must render it impossible for him to face the athletic difficulties that
+lay before them; of this the Count himself seemed already persuaded.
+
+“If you think,” was his greeting, as he shook Casanova's hand, “to break
+through the roof and find a way down from the leads, I don't see how you
+are to succeed without wings. I have not the courage to accompany you,”
+ he added, “I shall remain and pray for you.”
+
+Attempting no persuasions where they must have been idle, Casanova
+passed out of the cell again, and approaching as nearly as possible to
+the edge of the attic, he sat down where he could touch the roof as
+it sloped immediately above his head. With his spontoon he tested the
+timbers, and found them so decayed that they almost crumbled at the
+touch. Assured thereby that the cutting of a hole would be an easy
+matter, he at once returned to his cell, and there he spent the ensuing
+four hours in preparing ropes. He cut up sheets, blankets, coverlets,
+and the very cover of his mattress, knotting the strips together with
+the utmost care. In the end he found himself equipped with some two
+hundred yards of rope, which should be ample for any purpose.
+
+Having made a bundle of the fine taffeta suit in which he had been
+arrested, his gay cloak of floss silk, some stockings, shirts, and
+handkerchiefs, he and Balbi passed up to the other cell, compelling
+Soradici to go with them. Leaving the monk to make a parcel of his
+belongings, Casanova went to tackle the roof. By dusk he had made a hole
+twice as large as was necessary, and had laid bare the lead sheeting
+with which the roof was covered. Unable, single-handed, to raise one of
+the sheets, he called Balbi to his aid, and between them, assisted by
+the spontoon, which Casanova inserted between the edge of the sheet and
+the gutter, they at last succeeded in tearing away the rivets. Then by
+putting their shoulders to the lead they bent it upwards until there was
+room to emerge, and a view of the sky flooded by the vivid light of the
+crescent moon.
+
+Not daring in that light to venture upon the roof, where they would be
+seen, they must wait with what patience they could until midnight, when
+the moon would have set. So they returned to the cell where they had
+left Soradici with Count Asquino.
+
+From Balbi, Casanova had learnt that Asquino, though well supplied with
+money, was of an avaricious nature. Nevertheless, since money would be
+necessary, Casanova asked the Count for the loan of thirty gold sequins.
+Asquino answered him gently that, in the first place, they would not
+need money to escape; that, in the second, he had a numerous family;
+that, in the third, if Casanova perished the money would be lost; and
+that, in the fourth, he had no money.
+
+“My reply,” writes Casanova, “lasted half an hour.”
+
+“Let me remind you,” he said in concluding his exhortation, “of your
+promise to pray for us, and let me ask you what sense there can be
+in praying for the success of an enterprise to which you refuse to
+contribute the most necessary means.”
+
+The old man was so far conquered by Casanova's eloquence that he offered
+him two sequins, which Casanova accepted, since he was not in case to
+refuse anything.
+
+Thereafter, as they sat waiting for the moon to set, Casanova found his
+earlier estimate of the monk's character confirmed. Balbi now broke into
+abusive reproaches. He found that Casanova had acted in bad faith
+by assuring him that he had formed a complete plan of escape. Had he
+suspected that this was a mere gambler's throw on Casanova's part, he
+would never have laboured to get him out of his cell. The Count added
+his advice that they should abandon an attempt foredoomed to failure,
+and, being concerned for the two sequins with which he had so
+reluctantly parted, he argued the case at great length. Stifling his
+disgust, Casanova assured them that, although it was impossible for him
+to afford them details of how he intended to proceed, he was perfectly
+confident of success.
+
+At half-past ten he sent Soradici--who had remained silent
+throughout--to report upon the night. The spy brought word that in
+another hour or so the moon would have set, but that a thick mist was
+rising, which must render the leads very dangerous.
+
+“So long as the mist isn't made of oil, I am content,” said Casanova.
+“Come, make a bundle of your cloak. It is time we were moving.”
+
+But at this Soradici fell on his knees in the dark, seized Casanova's
+hands, and begged to be left behind to pray for their safety, since he
+would be sure to meet his death if he attempted to go with them.
+
+Casanova assented readily, delighted to be rid of the fellow. Then in
+the dark he wrote as best he could a quite characteristic letter to the
+Inquisitors of State, in which he took his leave of them, telling them
+that since he had been fetched into the prison without his wishes
+being consulted, they could not complain that he should depart without
+consulting theirs.
+
+The bundle containing Balbi's clothes, and another made up of half the
+rope, he slung from the monk's neck, thereafter doing the same in his
+own case. Then, in their shirt-sleeves, their hats on their heads, the
+pair of them started on their perilous journey, leaving Count Asquino
+and Soradici to pray for them.
+
+Casanova went first, on all fours, and thrusting the point of his
+spontoon between the joints of the lead sheeting so as to obtain a hold,
+he crawled slowly upwards. To follow, Balbi took a grip of Casanova's
+belt with his right hand, so that, in addition to making his own way,
+Casanova was compelled to drag the weight of his companion after him,
+and this up the sharp gradient of a roof rendered slippery by the mist.
+
+Midway in that laborious ascent, the monk called to him to stop. He had
+dropped the bundle containing the clothes, and he hoped that it had not
+rolled beyond the gutter, though he did not mention which of them should
+retrieve it. After the unreasonableness already endured from this man,
+Casanova's exasperation was such in that moment that, he confesses, he
+was tempted to kick him after this bundle. Controlling himself, however,
+he answered patiently that the matter could not now be helped, and kept
+steadily amain.
+
+At last the apex of the roof was reached, and they got astride of it
+to breathe and to take a survey of their surroundings. They faced the
+several cupolas of the Church of Saint Mark, which is connected with
+the ducal palace, being, in fact, no more than the private chapel of the
+Doge.
+
+They set down their bundles, and, of course, in the act of doing so
+the wretched Balbi must lose his hat, and send it rolling down the roof
+after the bundle he had already lost. He cried out that it was an evil
+omen.
+
+“On the contrary,” Casanova assured him patiently, “it is a sign of
+divine protection; for if your bundle or your hat had happened to
+roll to the left instead of the right it would have fallen into the
+courtyard, where it would be seen by the guards, who must conclude that
+some one is moving on the roof, and so, no doubt, would have discovered
+us. As it is your hat has followed your bundle into the canal, where it
+can do no harm.”
+
+Thereupon, bidding the monk await his return, Casanova set off alone on
+a voyage of discovery, keeping for the present astride of the roof in
+his progress. He spent a full hour wandering along the vast roof, going
+to right and to left in his quest, but failing completely to make any
+helpful discovery, or to find anything to which he could attach a rope.
+In the end it began to look as if, after all, he must choose between
+returning to prison and flinging himself from the roof into the canal.
+He was almost in despair, when in his wanderings his attention was
+caught by a dormer window on the canal side, about two-thirds of the way
+down the slope of the roof. With infinite precaution he lowered himself
+down the steep, slippery incline until he was astride of the little
+dormer roof. Leaning well forward, he discovered that a slender grating
+barred the leaded panes of the window itself, and for a moment this
+grating gave him pause.
+
+Midnight boomed just then from the Church of Saint Mark, like a reminder
+that but seven hours remained in which to conquer this and further
+difficulties that might confront him, and in which to win clear of
+that place, or else submit to a resumption of his imprisonment under
+conditions, no doubt, a hundredfold more rigorous.
+
+Lying flat on his stomach, and hanging far over, so as to see what he
+was doing, he worked one point of his spontoon into the sash of the
+grating, and, levering outwards, he strained until at last it came away
+completely in his hands. After that it was an easy matter to shatter the
+little latticed window.
+
+Having accomplished so much, he turned, and, using his spontoon as
+before, he crawled back to the summit of the roof, and made his way
+rapidly along this to the spot where he had left Balbi. The monk,
+reduced by now to a state of blending despair, terror, and rage, greeted
+Casanova in terms of the grossest abuse for having left him there so
+long.
+
+“I was waiting only for daylight,” he concluded, “to return to prison.”
+
+“What did you think had become of me?” asked Casanova.
+
+“I imagined that you had tumbled off the roof.”
+
+“And is this abuse the expression of your joy at finding yourself
+mistaken?”
+
+“Where have you been all this time?” the monk counter-questioned
+sullenly.
+
+“Come with me and you shall see.”
+
+And taking up his bundle again, Casanova led his companion forward until
+they were in line with the dormer. There Casanova showed him what he
+had done, and consulted him as to the means to be adopted to enter the
+attic. It would be too risky for them to allow themselves to drop from
+the sill, since the height of the window from the floor was unknown to
+them, and might be considerable. It would be easy for one of them to
+lower the other by means of the rope. But it was not apparent how,
+hereafter, the other was to follow. Thus reasoned Casanova.
+
+“You had better lower me, anyhow,” said Balbi, without hesitation; for
+no doubt he was very tired of that slippery roof, on which a single
+false step might have sent him to his account. “Once I am inside you can
+consider ways of following me.”
+
+That cold-blooded expression of the fellow's egoism put Casanova in
+a rage for the second time since they had left their prison. But, as
+before, he conquered it, and without uttering a word he proceeded to
+unfasten the coil of rope. Making one end of it secure under Balbi's
+arms, he bade the monk lie prone upon the roof, his feet pointing
+downwards, and then, paying out rope, he lowered him to the dormer. He
+then bade him get through the window as far as the level of his waist,
+and wait thus, hanging over and supporting himself upon the sill. When
+he had obeyed, Casanova followed, sliding carefully down to the roof of
+the dormer. Planting himself firmly, and taking the rope once more, he
+bade Balbi to let himself go without fear, and so lowered him to the
+floor--a height from the window, as it proved, of some fifty feet. This
+extinguished all Casanova's hopes of being able to follow by allowing
+himself to drop from the sill. He was dismayed. But the monk, happy to
+find himself at last off that accursed roof, and out of all danger of
+breaking his neck, called foolishly to Casanova to throw him the rope so
+that he might take care of it.
+
+“As may be imagined,” says Casanova, “I was careful not to take this
+idiotic advice.”
+
+Not knowing now what was to become of him unless he could discover some
+other means than those at his command, he climbed back again to the
+summit of the roof, and started off desperately upon another voyage of
+discovery. This time he succeeded better than before. He found about a
+cupola a terrace which he had not earlier noticed, and on this terrace
+a hod of plaster, a trowel, and a ladder some seventy feet long. He
+saw his difficulties solved. He passed an end of rope about one of the
+rungs, laid the ladder flat along the slope of the roof, and then, still
+astride of the apex, he worked his way back, dragging the ladder with
+him, until he was once more on a level with the dormer.
+
+But now the difficulty was how to get the ladder through the window,
+and he had cause to repent having so hastily deprived himself of his
+companion's assistance. He had got the ladder into position, and lowered
+it until one of its ends rested upon the dormer, whilst the other
+projected some twenty feet beyond the edge of the roof. He slid down
+to the dormer, and placing the ladder beside him, drew it up so that he
+could reach the eighth rung. To this rung he made fast his rope, then
+lowered the ladder again until the upper end of it was in line with
+the window through which he sought to introduce it. But he found it
+impossible to do so beyond the fifth rung, for at this point the end of
+the ladder came in contact with the roof inside, and could be pushed no
+farther until it was inclined downward. Now, the only possible way to
+accomplish this was by raising the other end.
+
+It occurred to him that he might, by so attaching the rope as to bring
+the ladder across the window frame, lower himself hand over hand to the
+floor of the attic. But in so doing he must have left the ladder there
+to show their pursuers in the morning, not merely the way they had gone,
+but for all he knew at this stage, the place where they might then be
+still in hiding. Having come so far, at so much risk and labour, he was
+determined to leave nothing to chance. To accomplish his object then, he
+made his way down to the very edge of the roof, sliding carefully on
+his stomach until his feet found support against the marble gutter, the
+ladder meanwhile remaining hooked by one of its rungs to the sill of the
+dormer.
+
+In that perilous position he lifted his end of the ladder a few inches,
+and so contrived to thrust it another foot or so through the window,
+whereby its weight was considerably diminished. If he could but get it
+another couple of feet farther in he was sure that by returning to the
+dormer he would have been able to complete the job. In his anxiety to do
+this and to obtain the necessary elevation, he raised himself upon his
+knees.
+
+But in the very act of making the thrust he slipped, and, clutching
+wildly as he went, he shot over the edge of the roof. He found himself
+hanging there, suspended above that terrific abyss by his hands and his
+elbows, which had convulsively hooked themselves on to the edge of the
+gutter, so that he had it on a level with his breast.
+
+It was a moment of dread the like of which he was never likely to
+endure again in a life that was to know many perils and many hairbreadth
+escapes. He could not write of it nearly half a century later without
+shuddering and growing sick with horror.
+
+A moment he hung there gasping, then almost mechanically, guided by
+the sheer instinct of self-preservation, he not merely attempted, but
+actually succeeded in raising himself so as to bring his side against
+the gutter. Then continuing gradually to raise himself until his waist
+was on a level with the edge, he threw the weight of his trunk forward
+upon the roof, and slowly brought his right leg up until he had obtained
+with his knee a further grip of the gutter. The rest was easy, and
+you may conceive him as he lay there on the roof's edge, panting and
+shuddering for a moment to regain his breath and nerve.
+
+Meanwhile, the ladder, driven forward by the thrust that had so nearly
+cost him his life, had penetrated another three feet through the window,
+and hung there immovable. Recovered, he took up his spontoon, which he
+had placed in the gutter, and, assisted by it, he climbed back to
+the dormer. Almost without further difficulty, he succeeded now in
+introducing the ladder until, of its own weight, it swung down into
+position.
+
+A moment later he had joined Balbi in the attic, and together they
+groped about in the dark, until finding presently a door, they passed
+into another chamber, where they discovered furniture by hurtling
+against it. Guided by a faint glimmer of light, Casanova made his way to
+one of the windows and opened it. He looked out upon a black abyss, and,
+having no knowledge of the locality, and no inclination to adventure
+himself into unknown regions, he immediately abandoned all idea of
+attempting to climb down. He closed the window again, and going back to
+the other room, he lay down on the floor, with the bundle of ropes for a
+pillow, to wait for dawn.
+
+And so exhausted was he, not only by the efforts of the past hours, and
+the terrible experience in which they had culminated, but also because
+in the last two days he had scarcely eaten or slept, that straightway,
+and greatly to Balbi's indignation and disgust, he fell into a profound
+sleep.
+
+He was aroused three and a half hours later by the clamours and shakings
+of the exasperated monk. Protesting that such a sleep at such a time was
+a thing inconceivable, Balbi informed him that it had just struck five.
+
+It was still dark, but already there was a dim grey glimmer of dawn
+by which objects could be faintly discerned. Searching, Casanova
+found another door opposite that of the chamber which they had entered
+earlier. It was locked, but the lock was a poor one that yielded to half
+a dozen blows of the spontoon, and they passed into a little room
+beyond which by an open door they came into a long gallery lined with
+pigeon-holes stuffed with parchments, which they conceived to be the
+archives. At the end of this gallery they found a short flight of
+stairs, and below that yet another, which brought them to a glass door.
+Opening this, they entered a room which Casanova immediately identified
+as the ducal chancellery. Descent from one of its windows would have
+been easy, but they would have found themselves in the labyrinth of
+courts and alleys behind Saint Mark's, which would not have suited them
+at all.
+
+On a table Casanova found a stout bodkin with a long wooden handle, the
+implement used by the secretaries for piercing parchments that were to
+be joined by a cord bearing the leaden seals of the Republic. He opened
+a desk, and rummaging in it, found a letter addressed to the Proveditor
+of Corfu, advising a remittance of three thousand sequins for the
+repair of the fortress. He rummaged further, seeking the three thousand
+sequins, which he would have appropriated without the least scruple.
+Unfortunately they were not there.
+
+Quitting the desk, he crossed to the door, not merely to find it locked,
+but to discover that it was not the kind of lock that would yield to
+blows. There was no way out but by battering away one of the panels, and
+to this he addressed himself without hesitation, assisted by Balbi, who
+had armed himself with the bodkin, but who trembled fearfully at the
+noise of Casanova's blows. There was danger in this, but the danger must
+be braved, for time was slipping away. In half an hour they had broken
+down all the panel it was possible to remove without the help of a saw.
+The opening they had made was at a height of five feet from the ground,
+and the splintered woodwork armed it with a fearful array of jagged
+teeth.
+
+They dragged a couple of stools to the door, and getting on to these,
+Casanova bade Balbi go first. The long, lean monk folded his arms, and
+thrust head and shoulders through the hole; then Casanova lifted him,
+first by the waist, then by the legs, and so helped him through into the
+room beyond. Casanova threw their bundles after him, and then placing a
+third stool on top of the other two, climbed on to it, and, being almost
+on a level with the opening, was able to get through as far as his
+waist, when Balbi took him in his arms and proceeded to drag him out.
+But it was done at the cost of torn breeches and lacerated legs, and
+when he stood up in the room beyond he was bleeding freely from the
+wounds which the jagged edges of the wood had dealt him.
+
+After that they went down two staircases, and came out at last in the
+gallery leading to the great doors at the head of that magnificent
+flight of steps known as the Giant's Staircase. But these doors--the
+main entrance of the palace--were locked, and, at a glance, Casanova saw
+that nothing short of a hatchet would serve to open them. There was no
+more to be done.
+
+With a resignation that seemed to Balbi entirely cynical, Casanova sat
+down on the floor.
+
+“My task is ended,” he announced. “It is now for Heaven or Chance to do
+the rest. I don't know whether the palace cleaners will come here to-day
+as it is All Saints', or to-morrow, which will be All Souls'. Should any
+one come, I shall run for it the moment the door is opened, and you had
+best follow me. If no one comes, I shall not move from here, and if I
+die of hunger, so much the worse.”
+
+It was a speech that flung the monk into a passion. In burning terms he
+reviled Casanova, calling him a madman, a seducer, a deceiver, a liar.
+Casanova let him rave. It was just striking six. Precisely an hour had
+elapsed since they had left the attic.
+
+Balbi, in his red flannel waistcoat and his puce-coloured leather
+breeches, might have passed for a peasant; but Casanova, in torn
+garments that were soaked in blood, presented an appearance that was
+terrifying and suspicious. This he proceeded to repair. Tearing a
+handkerchief, he made shift to bandage his wounds, and then from his
+bundle he took his fine taffeta summer suit, which on a winter's day
+must render him ridiculous.
+
+He dressed his thick, dark brown hair as best he could, drew on a pair
+of white stockings, and donned three lace shirts one over another. His
+fine cloak of floss silk he gave to Balbi, who looked for all the world
+as if he had stolen it.
+
+Thus dressed, his fine hat laced with point of Spain on his head,
+Casanova opened a window and looked out. At once he was seen by some
+idlers in the courtyard, who, amazed at his appearance there, and
+conceiving that he must have been locked in by mistake on the previous
+day, went off at once to advise the porter. Meanwhile, Casanova, vexed
+at having shown himself where he had not expected any one, and little
+guessing how excellently this was to serve his ends, left the window
+and went to sit beside the angry friar, who greeted him with fresh
+revilings.
+
+A sound of steps and a rattle of keys stemmed Balbi's reproaches in full
+flow. The lock groaned.
+
+“Not a word,” said Casanova to the monk, “but follow me.”
+
+Holding his spontoon ready, but concealed under his coat, he stepped to
+the side of the door. It opened, and the porter, who had come alone
+and bareheaded, stared in stupefaction at the strange apparition of
+Casanova.
+
+Casanova took advantage of that paralyzing amazement. Without uttering a
+word, he stepped quickly across the threshold, and with Balbi close upon
+his heels, he went down the Giant's Staircase in a flash, crossed the
+little square, reached the canal, bundled Balbi into the first gondola
+he found there, and jumped in after him.
+
+“I want to go to Fusine, and quickly,” he announced. “Call another
+oarsman.”
+
+All was ready, and in a moment the gondola was skimming the canal.
+Dressed in his unseasonable suit, and accompanied by the still more
+ridiculous figure of Balbi in his gaudy cloak and without a hat, he
+imagined he would be taken for a charlatan or an astrologer.
+
+The gondola slipped past the custom-house, and took the canal of the
+Giudecca. Halfway down this, Casanova put his head out of the little
+cabin to address the gondolier in the poop.
+
+“Do you think we shall reach Mestre in an hour?”
+
+“Mestre?” quoth the gondolier. “But you said Fusine.”
+
+“No, no, I said Mestre--at least, I intended to say Mestre.”
+
+And so the gondola was headed for Mestre by a gondolier who professed
+himself ready to convey his excellency to England if he desired it.
+
+The sun was rising, and the water assumed an opalescent hue. It was a
+delicious morning, Casanova tells us, and I suspect that never had any
+morning seemed to that audacious, amiable rascal as delicious as this
+upon which he regained his liberty, which no man ever valued more
+highly.
+
+In spirit he was already safely over the frontiers of the Most Serene
+Republic, impatient to transfer his body thither, as he shortly did,
+through vicissitudes that are a narrative in themselves, and no part of
+this story of his escape from the Piombi and the Venetian Inquisitors of
+State.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII. THE NIGHT OF MASQUERADE--The Assassination Of Gustavus III Of
+Sweden
+
+Baron Bjelke sprang from his carriage almost before it had come to a
+standstill and without waiting for the footman to let down the steps.
+With a haste entirely foreign to a person of his station and importance,
+he swept into the great vestibule of the palace, and in a quivering
+voice flung a question at the first lackey he encountered:
+
+“Has His Majesty started yet?”
+
+“Not yet, my lord.”
+
+The answer lessened his haste, but not his agitation. He cast off the
+heavy wolfskin pelisse in which he had been wrapped, and, leaving it in
+the hands of the servant, went briskly up the grand staircase, a tall,
+youthful figure, very graceful in the suit of black he wore.
+
+As he passed through a succession of ante-rooms on his way to the
+private apartments of the King, those present observed the pallor of his
+clean-cut face under the auburn tie-wig he affected, and the feverish
+glow of eyes that took account of no one. They could not guess that
+Baron Bjelke, the King's secretary and favourite, carried in his hands
+the life of his royal master, or its equivalent in the shape of the
+secret of the plot to assassinate him.
+
+In many ways Bjelke was no better than the other profligate minions of
+the profligate Gustavus of Sweden. But he had this advantage over them,
+that his intellect was above their average. He had detected the first
+signs of the approach of that storm which the King himself had so
+heedlessly provoked. He knew, as much by reason as by intuition, that,
+in these days when the neighbouring State of France writhed in the
+throes of a terrific revolution against monarchic and aristocratic
+tyranny, it was not safe for a king to persist in the abuse of his
+parasitic power. New ideas of socialism were in the air. They were
+spreading through Europe, and it was not only in France that men
+accounted it an infamous anachronism that the great mass of a community
+should toil and sweat and suffer for the benefit of an insolent
+minority.
+
+Already had there been trouble with the peasantry in Sweden, and Bjelke
+had endangered his position as a royal favourite by presuming to warn
+his master. Gustavus III desired amusement, not wisdom, from those
+about him. He could not be brought to realize the responsibilities which
+kingship imposes upon a man. It has been pretended that he was endowed
+with great gifts of mind. He may have been, though the thing has been
+pretended of so many princes that one may be sceptical where evidence
+is lacking. If he possessed those gifts, he succeeded wonderfully in
+concealing them under a nature that was frivolously gay, dissolute, and
+extravagant.
+
+His extravagance forced him into monstrous extortions when only a
+madman would have wasted in profligacy the wealth so cruelly wrung from
+long-suffering subjects. From extortion he was driven by his desperate
+need of money into flagrant dishonesty. At a stroke of the pen he had
+reduced the value of the paper currency by one-third--a reduction so
+violent and sudden that, whilst it impoverished many, it involved
+some in absolute ruin--and this that he might gratify his appetite
+for magnificence and enrich the rapacious favourites who shared his
+profligacy.
+
+The unrest in the kingdom spread. It was no longer a question of the
+resentment of a more or less docile peasantry whose first stirrings of
+revolt were easily quelled. The lesser nobility of Sweden were angered
+by a measure--following upon so many others--that bore peculiarly
+heavily upon themselves; and out of that anger, fanned by one man--John
+Jacob Ankarstrom--who had felt the vindictive spirit of royal injustice,
+flamed in secret the conspiracy against the King's life which Bjelke had
+discovered.
+
+He had discovered it by the perilous course of joining the conspirators.
+He had won their confidence, and they recognized that his collaboration
+was rendered invaluable by the position he held so near the King. And
+in his subtle wisdom, at considerable danger to himself, Bjelke had kept
+his counsel. He had waited until now, until the moment when the blow was
+about to fall, before making the disclosure which should not only save
+Gustavus, but enable him to cast a net in which all the plotters must be
+caught. And he hoped that when Gustavus perceived the narrowness of his
+escape, and the reality of the dangers amid which he walked, he would
+consider the wisdom of taking another course in future.
+
+He had reached the door of the last ante-chamber, when a detaining
+hand was laid upon his arm. He found himself accosted by a page--the
+offspring of one of the noblest families in Sweden, and the son of one
+of Bjelke's closest friends, a fair-haired, impudent boy to whom the
+secretary permitted a certain familiarity.
+
+“Are you on your way to the King, Baron?” the lad inquired.
+
+“I am, Carl. What is it?”
+
+“A letter for His Majesty--a note fragrant as a midsummer rose--which a
+servant has just delivered to me. Will you take it?”
+
+“Give it to me, impudence,” said Bjelke, the ghost of a smile lighting
+for a moment his white face.
+
+He took the letter and passed on into the last antechamber, which was
+empty of all but a single chamberlain-in-waiting. This chamberlain bowed
+respectfully to the Baron.
+
+“His Majesty?” said Bjelke.
+
+“He is dressing. Shall I announce Your Excellency?”
+
+“Pray do.”
+
+The chamberlain vanished, and Bjelke was left alone. Waiting, he stood
+there, idly fingering the scented note he had received from the page.
+As he turned it in his fingers the superscription came uppermost, and
+he turned it no more. His eyes lost their absorbed look, their glance
+quickened into attention, a frown shaped itself between them like a
+scar; his breathing, suspended a moment, was renewed with a gasp. He
+stepped aside to a table bearing a score of candles clustered in a
+massive silver branch, and held the note so that the light fell full
+upon the writing.
+
+Standing thus, he passed a hand over his eyes and stared again, two
+hectic spots burning now in his white cheeks. Abruptly, disregarding
+the superscription, his trembling fingers snapped the blank seal and
+unfolded the letter addressed to his royal master. He was still reading
+when the chamberlain returned to announce that the King was pleased to
+see the Baron at once. He did not seem to hear the announcement. His
+attention was all upon the letter, his lips drawn back from his teeth in
+a grin, and beads of perspiration glistening upon his brow.
+
+“His Majesty--” the chamberlain was beginning to repeat, when he broke
+off suddenly. “Your Excellency is ill?”
+
+“Ill?”
+
+Bjelke stared at him with glassy eyes. He crumpled the letter in his
+hand and stuffed one and the other into the pocket of his black satin
+coat. He attempted to laugh to reassure the startled chamberlain, and
+achieved a ghastly grimace.
+
+“I must not keep His Majesty waiting,” he said thickly, and stumbled
+on, leaving in the chamberlain's mind a suspicion that His Majesty's
+secretary was not quite sober.
+
+But Bjelke so far conquered his emotion that he was almost his usual
+imperturbable self when he reached the royal dressing-room; indeed, he
+no longer displayed even the agitation that had possessed him when first
+he entered the palace.
+
+Gustavus, a slight, handsome man of a good height, was standing before
+a cheval-glass when Bjelke came in. Francois, the priceless valet
+His Majesty had brought back from his last pleasure-seeking visit
+to pre-revolutionary Paris some five years ago, was standing back
+judicially to consider the domino he had just placed upon the royal
+shoulders. Baron Armfelt whom the conspirators accused of wielding the
+most sinister of all the sinister influences that perverted the King's
+mind--dressed from head to foot in shimmering white satin, lounged on a
+divan with all the easy familiarity permitted to this most intimate of
+courtiers, the associate of all royal follies.
+
+Gustavus looked over his shoulder as he entered.
+
+“Why, Bjelke,” he exclaimed, “I thought you had gone into the country!”
+
+“I am at a loss,” replied Bjelke, “to imagine what should have given
+Your Majesty so mistaken an impression.” And he might have smiled
+inwardly to observe how his words seemed to put Gustavus out of
+countenance.
+
+The King laughed, nevertheless, with an affectation of ease.
+
+“I inferred it from your absence from Court on such a night. What has
+been keeping you?” But, without waiting for an answer, he fired another
+question. “What do you say to my domino, Bjelke?”
+
+It was a garment embroidered upon a black satin ground with tongues of
+flame so cunningly wrought in mingling threads of scarlet and gold that
+as he turned about now they flashed in the candlelight, and seemed to
+leap like tongues of living fire.
+
+“Your Majesty will have a great success,” said Bjelke, and to himself
+relished the full grimness of his joke. For a terrible joke it was,
+seeing that he no longer intended to discharge the errand which had
+brought him in such haste to the palace.
+
+“Faith, I deserve it!” was the flippant answer, and he turned again to
+the mirror to adjust a patch on the left side of his chin. “There is
+genius in this domino, and it is not the genius of Francois, for the
+scheme of flames is my very own, the fruit of a deal of thought and
+study.”
+
+There Gustavus uttered his whole character. As a master of the revels,
+or an opera impresario, this royal rake would have been a complete
+success in life. The pity of it was that the accident of birth should
+have robed him in the royal purple. Like many another prince who has
+come to a violent end, he was born to the wrong metier.
+
+“I derived the notion,” he continued, “from a sanbenito in a Goya
+picture.”
+
+“An ominous garb,” said Bjelke, smiling curiously. “The garment of the
+sinner on his way to penitential doom.”
+
+Armfelt cried out in a protest of mock horror, but Gustavus laughed
+cynically.
+
+“Oh, I confess that it would be most apt. I had not thought of it.”
+
+His fingers sought a pomatum box, and in doing so displaced a
+toilet-case of red morocco. An oblong paper package fell from the top of
+this and arrested the King's attention.
+
+“Why, what is this?” He took it up--a letter bearing the superscription:
+
+
+To His MAJESTY THE KING SECRET AND IMPORTANT
+
+“What is this, Francois?” The royal voice was suddenly sharp.
+
+The valet glided forward, whilst Armfelt rose from the divan and, like
+Bjelke, attracted by the sudden change in the King's tone and manner,
+drew near his master.
+
+“How comes this letter here?”
+
+The valet's face expressed complete amazement. It must have been placed
+there in his absence an hour ago, after he had made all preparations for
+the royal toilette. It was certainly not there at the time, or he must
+have seen it.
+
+With impatient fingers Gustavus snapped the seal and unfolded the
+letter. Awhile he stood reading, very still, his brows knit.
+
+Then, with a contemptuous “Poof!” he handed it to his secretary.
+
+At a glance Bjelke recognized the hand for that of Colonel Lillehorn,
+one of the conspirators, whose courage had evidently failed him in the
+eleventh hour. He read:
+
+SIRE,--Deign to heed the warning of one who, not being in your service,
+nor solicitous of your favours, flatters not your crimes, and yet
+desires to avert the danger threatening you. There is a plot to
+assassinate you which would by now have been executed but for the
+countermanding of the ball at the opera last week. What was not done
+then will certainly be done to-night if you afford the opportunity.
+Remain at home and avoid balls and public gatherings for the rest of the
+year; thus the fanaticism which aims at your life will evaporate.
+
+“Do you know the writing?” Gustavus asked.
+
+Bjelke shrugged. “The hand will be disguised, no doubt,” he evaded.
+
+“But you will heed the warning, Sire?” exclaimed, Armfelt, who had read
+over the secretary's shoulder, and whose face had paled in reading.
+
+Gustavus laughed contemptuously. “Faith, if I were to heed every
+scaremonger, I should get but little amusement out of life.”
+
+Yet he was angry, as his shifting colour showed. The disrespectful tone
+of the anonymous communication moved him more deeply than its actual
+message. He toyed a moment with a hair-ribbon, his nether lip thrust out
+in thought. At last he rapped out an oath of vexation, and proffered the
+ribbon to his valet.
+
+“My hair, Francois,” said he, “and then we will be going.”
+
+“Going!”
+
+It was an ejaculation of horror from Armfelt, whose face was now as
+white as the ivory-coloured suit he wore.
+
+“What else? Am I to be intimidated out of my pleasures?” Yet that his
+heart was less stout than his words his very next question showed.
+“Apropos, Bjelke, what was the reason why you countermanded the ball
+last week?”
+
+“The councillors from Gefle claimed Your Majesty's immediate attention,”
+ Bjelke reminded him.
+
+“So you said at the time. But the business seemed none so urgent when we
+came to it. There was no other reason in your mind--no suspicion?”
+
+His keen, dark blue eyes were fixed upon the pale masklike face of the
+secretary.
+
+That grave, almost stern countenance relaxed into a smile.
+
+“I suspected no more than I suspect now,” was his easy equivocation.
+“And all that I suspect now is that some petty enemy is attempting to
+scare Your Majesty.”
+
+“To scare me?” Gustavus flushed to the temples. “Am I a man to be
+scared?”
+
+“Ah, but consider, Sire, and you, Bjelke,” Armfelt was bleating. “This
+may be a friendly warning. In all humility, Sire, let me suggest that
+you incur no risk; that you countermand the masquerade.”
+
+“And permit the insolent writer to boast that he frightened the King?”
+ sneered Bjelke.
+
+“Faith, Baron, you are right. The thing is written with intent to make a
+mock of me.”
+
+“But if it were not so, Sire?” persisted the distressed Armfelt. And
+volubly he argued now to impose caution, reminding the King of his
+enemies, who might, indeed, be tempted to go the lengths of which the
+anonymous writer spoke. Gustavus listened, and was impressed.
+
+“If I took heed of every admonition,” he said, “I might as well become
+a monk at once. And yet--” He took his chin in his hand, and stood
+thoughtful, obviously hesitating, his head bowed, his straight, graceful
+figure motionless.
+
+Thus until Bjelke, who now desired above all else the very thing he had
+come hot-foot to avert, broke the silence to undo what Armfelt had done.
+
+“Sire,” he said, “you may avoid both mockery and danger, and yet attend
+the masquerade. Be sure, if there is indeed a plot, the assassins will
+be informed of the disguise you are to wear. Give me your flame-studded
+domino, and take a plain black one for yourself.”
+
+Armfelt gasped at the audacity of the proposal, but Gustavus gave no
+sign that he had heard. He continued standing in that tense attitude,
+his eyes vague and dreamy. And as if to show along what roads of
+thought his mind was travelling, he uttered a single word a name--in a
+questioning voice scarce louder than a whisper.
+
+Ankarstrom?
+
+Later again he was to think of Ankarstrom, to make inquiries concerning
+him, which justifies us here in attempting to follow those thoughts of
+his. They took the road down which his conscience pointed. Above all
+Swedes he had cause to fear John Jacobi Ankarstrom, for, foully as he
+had wronged many men in his time, he had wronged none more deeply than
+that proud, high-minded nobleman. He hated Ankarstrom as we must always
+hate those whom we have wronged, and he hated him the more because he
+knew himself despised by Ankarstrom with a cold and deadly contempt that
+at every turn proclaimed itself.
+
+That hatred was more than twenty years old. It dated back to the time
+when Gustavus had been a vicious youth, and Ankarstrom himself a boy.
+They were much of an age. Gustavus had put upon his young companion an
+infamous insult, which had been answered by a blow. His youth and
+the admitted provocation alone had saved Ankarstrom from the dread
+consequence of striking a Prince of the Royal Blood. But they had not
+saved him from the vindictiveness of Gustavus. He had kept his lust of
+vengeance warm, and very patiently had he watched and waited for his
+opportunity to destroy the man, who had struck him.
+
+That chance had come four years ago--in 1788--during the war with
+Russia. Ankarstrom commanded the forces defending the island of
+Gothland. These forces were inadequate for the task, nor was the
+island in a proper state of defence, being destitute of forts. To have
+persevered in resistance might have been heroic, but it would have been
+worse than futile, for not only would it have entailed the massacre of
+the garrison, but it must have further subjected the inhabitants to all
+the horrors of sack and pillage.
+
+In the circumstances, Ankarstrom had conceived it his duty to surrender
+to the superior force of Russia, thereby securing immunity for the
+persons and property of the inhabitants. In this the King perceived his
+chance to indulge his hatred. He caused Ankarstrom to be arrested
+and accused of high treason, it being alleged against him that he had
+advised the people of Gothland not to take up arms against the Russians.
+The royal agents found witnesses to bear false evidence against
+Ankarstrom, with the result that he was sentenced to twenty years'
+imprisonment in a fortress. But the sentence was never carried out.
+Gustavus had gone too far, as he was soon made aware. The feelings
+against him which hitherto had smouldered flamed out at this crowning
+act of injustice, and to repair his error Gustavus made haste, not,
+indeed, to exonerate Ankarstrom from the charges brought against him,
+but to pardon him for his alleged offences.
+
+When the Swedish nobleman was brought to Court to receive this pardon,
+he used it as a weapon against the King whom he despised.
+
+“My unjust judges,” he announced in a ringing voice, the echoes of which
+were carried to the ends of Sweden, “have never doubted in their hearts
+my innocence of the charges brought against me, and established by means
+of false witnesses. The judgment pronounced against me was unrighteous.
+This exemption from it is my proper due. Yet I would rather perish
+through the enmity of the King than live dishonoured by his clemency.”
+
+Gustavus had set his teeth in rage when those fierce words were reported
+to him, and his rage had been increased when he was informed of the
+cordial reception which everywhere awaited Ankarstrom on his release.
+He perceived how far he had overshot his mark, and how, in seeking
+treacherously to hurt Ankarstrom, he had succeeded only in hurting
+himself. Nor had he appeased the general indignation by his pardon.
+True, the flame of revolt had been quelled. But he had no lack of
+evidence that the fire continued to burn steadily in secret, and to eat
+its way further and further into the ranks of noble and simple alike.
+
+It is little wonder, then, that in this moment, with that warning lying
+there before him, the name of Ankarstrom should be on his lips, the
+thought of Ankarstrom, the fear of Ankarstrom, looming big in his mind.
+It was big enough to make him heed the warning. He dropped into a chair.
+
+“I will not go,” he said, and Bjelke saw that his face was white, his
+hands shaking.
+
+But when the secretary had repeated the proposal which had earlier gone
+unheard, Gustavus caught at it with sudden avidity, and with but little
+concern for the danger that Bjelke might be running. He sprang up,
+applauding it. If a conspiracy there was, the conspirators would thus be
+trapped; if there were no conspiracy, then this attempt to frighten him
+should come to nothing; thus he would be as safe from the mockery of his
+enemies as from their knives. Nor did Armfelt protest or make further
+attempts to dissuade him from going. In the circumstances proposed by
+Bjelke, the risk would be Bjelke's, a matter which troubled Armfelt
+not at all; indeed, he had no cause to love Bjelke, in whom he beheld a
+formidable rival, and it would be to him no cause for tears if the knife
+intended for the royal vitals should find its way into Bjelke's instead.
+
+So Baron Bjelke, arrayed in the domino copied from the penitential sack,
+departed for the Opera House, leaving Gustavus to follow. Yet, despite
+the measure of precaution, no sooner had the masked King himself entered
+the crowded theatre, leaning upon the arm of the Count of Essen, than he
+conceived that he beheld confirmation of the warning, and regretted that
+he had not heeded it to the extent of remaining absent. For one of the
+first faces he beheld, one of the few unmasked faces in that brilliantly
+lit salon, was the face of Ankarstrom, and Ankarstrom appeared to be
+watching the entrance.
+
+Gustavus checked in his stride, a tremor ran through him, and he
+stiffened in his sudden apprehension, for the sight of the tall figure
+and haughty, resolute face of the nobleman he had wronged was of more
+significance than at first might seem. Ever since his infamous trial
+Ankarstrom had been at pains to seize every occasion of marking his
+contempt for his Prince. Never did he fail upon the King's appearance
+in any gathering of which he was a member to withdraw immediately; and
+never once had he been known deliberately to attend any function which
+was to be graced by the presence of Gustavus. How, then, came he here
+to this ball given by the King's own command unless he came for the fell
+purpose of which the letter had given warning?
+
+The King's impulse was to withdraw immediately. He was taken by a
+curious, an almost unreasoning, fear that was quite foreign to him,
+who, for all his faults, had never yet lacked courage. But, even as
+he hesitated, a figure swept past him in a domino flecked with flames,
+surrounded by revellers of both sexes, and he remembered that if
+Ankarstrom were bent on evil his attention would be held by that figure
+before which the crowd fell back, and opened out respectfully, believing
+it to be the King's. Yet none the less it was Gustavus himself that
+Ankarstrom continued to regard in such a way that the King had a feeling
+that his mask was made of glass.
+
+And then quite suddenly, even as he was on the point of turning, another
+wave of revellers swept frantically up, and in a moment Gustavus and the
+Count of Essen were surrounded. Another moment and the buffeting crowd
+had separated him from his grand equerry. He found himself alone in the
+centre of this knot of wild fellows who, seeming to mistake him for one
+of themselves, forced him onward with them in their career. For a moment
+he attempted to resist. But as well might he have resisted a torrent.
+Their rush was not to be stemmed. It almost swept him from his feet, and
+to save himself he must perforce abandon himself to the impetus. Thus
+he was swirled away across the floor of the amphitheatre, helpless as
+a swimmer in strong waters, and with the fear of the drowning clutching
+now at his heart.
+
+He had an impulse to unmask, proclaim himself, and compel the respect
+that was his due. But to do so might be to expose himself to the very
+danger of whose presence he was now convinced. His only hope must lie
+in allowing himself to be borne passively along until a chance opening
+allowed him to escape from these madmen.
+
+The stage had been connected with the floor of the theatre by a broad
+flight of wooden steps. Up this flight he was carried by that human
+wave. But on the stage itself he found an anchorage at last against one
+of the wings. Breathing hard, he set his back to it, waiting for the
+wave to sweep on and leave him. Instead, it paused and came to rest with
+him, and in that moment some one touched him on the shoulder. He turned
+his head, and looked into the set face of Ankarstrom, who was close
+behind him. Then a burning, rending pain took him in his side, and he
+grew sick and dizzy. The uproar of voices became muffled; the lights
+were merged into a luminous billow that swelled and shrank and then went
+out altogether.
+
+The report of the pistol had been lost in the general din to all but
+those who stood near the spot where it had been fired. And these found
+themselves suddenly borne backwards by the little crowd of maskers that
+fell away from the figure lying prone and bleeding on the stage.
+
+Voices were raised, shouting “Fire! Fire!” Thus the conspirators sought
+to create confusion, that they might disperse and lose themselves in the
+general crowd. That confusion, however, was very brief. It was stemmed
+almost immediately by the Count of Essen, who leapt up the steps to the
+stage with a premonition of what had happened. He stooped to rip away
+the mask from the face of the victim, and, beholding, as he had feared,
+the livid countenance of his King, he stood up, himself almost as pale.
+
+“Murder has been done!” he roared. “Let the doors be closed and guarded,
+and let no one leave the theatre.” Instantly was his bidding done by the
+officers of the guard.
+
+Those of the King's household who were in attendance came forward now
+to raise Gustavus, and help to bear him to a couch. There presently he
+recovered consciousness, whilst a physician was seeing to his hurt, and
+as soon as he realized his condition his manner became so calm that,
+himself, he took command of the situation. He issued orders that the
+gates of the city should be closed against everybody, whilst himself
+apologizing to the Prussian minister who was near him for issuing that
+inconvenient but necessary order.
+
+“The gates shall remain closed for three days, sir,” he announced.
+“During that time you will not be able to correspond with your Court;
+but your intelligence, when it goes, will be more certain, since by that
+time it should be known whether I can survive or not.”
+
+His next order, delivered in a voice that was broken by his intense
+suffering, was to the chamberlain Benzelstjerna, commanding that all
+present should unmask and sign their names in a book before being
+suffered to depart. That done, he bade them bear him home on the couch
+on which he had been placed that he might be spared the agony of more
+movement than was necessary.
+
+Thus his grenadiers bore him on their shoulders, lighted by torches,
+through the streets that were now thronged, for the rumour had now gone
+forth that the King was dead, and troops had been called out to keep
+order. Beside him walked Armfelt in his suit of shimmering white satin,
+weeping at once for his King and for himself, for he knew that he was of
+those who must fall with Gustavus. And, knowing this, there was bitter
+rage in his heart against the men who had wrought this havoc, a rage
+that sharpened his wits to an unusual acuteness.
+
+At last the King was once more in his apartments awaiting the physicians
+who were to pronounce his fate, and Armfelt kept him company among
+others, revolving in his mind the terrible suspicion he had formed.
+
+Presently came Duke Charles, the King's brother, and Benzelstjerna with
+the list of those who had been present at the ball.
+
+“Tell me,” he asked, before the list was read to him, “is the name of
+Ankarstrom included in it?”
+
+“He was the last to sign, Sire,” replied the chamberlain.
+
+The King smiled grimly. “Tell Lillesparre to have him arrested and
+questioned.”
+
+Armfelt flung forward. “There is another who should be arrested, too!”
+ he cried fiercely. And added, “Bjelke!”
+
+“Bjelke?”
+
+The King echoed the name almost in anger at the imputation. Armfelt
+spoke torrentially. “It was he persuaded you to go against your own
+judgment when you had the warning, and at last induced you to it by
+offering to assume your own domino. If the assassins sought the King,
+how came they to pass over one who wore the King's domino, and to
+penetrate your own disguise that was like a dozen others? Because they
+were informed of the change. But by whom--by whom? Who was it knew?”
+
+“My God!” groaned the unfortunate King, who had in his time broken faith
+with so many, and was now to suffer the knowledge of this broken faith
+in one whom he had trusted above all others.
+
+Baron Bjelke was arrested an hour later, arrested in the very act of
+entering his own home. The men of Lillesparre's police had preceded him
+thither to await his return. He was quite calm when they surged suddenly
+about him, laid hands upon him, and formally pronounced him their
+prisoner.
+
+“I suppose,” he said, “it was to have been inferred. Allow me to take my
+leave of the Baroness, and I shall be at your disposal.”
+
+“My orders, Baron, are explicit,” he was answered by the officer in
+charge. “I am not to suffer you out of my sight.”
+
+“How? Am I to be denied so ordinary a boon?” His voice quivered with
+sudden anger and something else.
+
+“Such are my orders, Baron.”
+
+Bjelke pleaded for five minutes' grace for that leavetaking. But the
+officer had his orders. He was no more than a machine. The Baron raised
+his clenched hands in mute protest to the heavens, then let them fall
+heavily.
+
+“Very well,” he said, and suffered them to thrust him back into his
+carriage and carry him away to the waiting Lillesparre.
+
+He found Armfelt in the office of the chief of the police, haranguing
+Ankarstrom, who was already there under arrest. The favourite broke off
+as Bjelke was brought in.
+
+“You were privy to this infamy, Bjelke,” he cried. “If the King does not
+recover--”
+
+“He will not recover.” It was the cold, passionless voice of Ankarstrom
+that spoke. “My pistol was loaded with rusty nails. I intended to make
+quite sure of ridding my country of that perjured tyrant.”
+
+Armfelt stared at the prisoner a moment with furious, bloodshot eyes.
+Then he broke into imprecations, stemmed only when Lillesparre ordered
+Ankarstrom to be removed. When he was gone, the chief of police turned
+to Bjelke.
+
+“It grieves me, Baron, that we should meet thus, and it is with
+difficulty that I can believe what is alleged against you. Baron Armfelt
+is perhaps rendered hasty by his grief and righteous anger. But I hope
+that you will be able to explain--at least to deny your concern in this
+horrible deed.”
+
+Very tense and white stood Bjelke.
+
+“I have an explanation that should satisfy you as a man of honour,” he
+said quietly, “but not as chief of the police. I joined this conspiracy
+that I might master its scope and learn the intentions of the plotters.
+It was a desperate thing I did out of love and loyalty to the King, and
+I succeeded. I came to-night to the palace with information which should
+not only have saved the King's life, but would have enabled him to
+smother the conspiracy for all time. On the threshold of his room this
+letter for the King was delivered into my hands. Read it, Lillesparre,
+that you may know precisely what manner of master you serve, that you
+may understand how Gustavus of Sweden recompenses love and loyalty. Read
+it, and tell me how you would have acted in my place!”
+
+And he flung the letter on to the writing-table at which sat
+Lillesparre.
+
+The chief of police took it up, began to read, turned back to the
+superscription, then resumed his reading, a dull flush overspreading his
+face. Over his shoulder Armfelt, too, was reading. But Bjelke cared
+not. Let all the world behold that advertisement of royal infamy,
+that incriminating love-letter from Bjelke's wife to the King who had
+dishonoured him.
+
+Lillesparre was stricken dumb. He dared not raise his eyes to meet the
+glance of the prisoner. But the shameless Armfelt sucked in a breath of
+understanding.
+
+“You admit your guilt, then?” he snarled.
+
+“That I sent the monster to the masquerade, knowing that there the
+blessed hand of Ankarstrom would give him his passport out of a world he
+had befouled--yes.”
+
+“The rack shall make you yield the name of every one of the
+conspirators.”
+
+“The rack!” Bjelke smiled disdainfully, and shrugged. “Your men,
+Lillesparre, were very prompt and very obdurate. They would not allow me
+to take leave of the Baroness, so that she has escaped me. But I am not
+sure that it is not a fitter vengeance to let her live and remember.
+That letter may now be delivered to the King, for whom it is intended.
+Its fond messages may lighten the misery of his remaining hours.”
+
+His face was contorted, with rage, thought Armfelt, who watched him, but
+in reality with pain caused by the poison that was corroding his vitals.
+He had drained a little phial just before stepping into the presence
+of Lillesparre, as they discovered upon inquiries made after he had
+collapsed dead at their feet.
+
+This caused them to bring back Ankarstrom, that he might be searched,
+lest he, too, should take some similar way of escaping them. When he
+search was done, having discovered nothing, Lillesparre commanded that
+he should not have knife or fork or metal comb, or anything with which
+he might take his life.
+
+“You need not fear that I shall seek to evade the sacrifice,” he assured
+them, his demeanour haughty, his eyes aglow with fanatic zeal. “It is
+the price I pay for having rid Nature of a monster and my country of a
+false, perjured tyrant, and I pay it gladly.” As he ceased he smiled,
+and drew from the gold lace of his sleeve a surgeon's lancet. “This was
+supplied me against my need to open a vein. But the laws of God and man
+may require my death upon the scaffold.”
+
+And, smiling, he placed the lancet on Lillesparre's table.
+
+Upon his conviction execution followed, and it lasted three days--from
+April 19th to 21 st--being attended by all the horrible and gradual
+torturings reserved for regicides. Yet possibly he did not suffer more
+than his victim, whose agony had lasted for thirteen days, and who
+perished miserably in the consciousness that he deserved his fate,
+whilst Ankarstrom was uplifted and fortified by his fanaticism.
+
+The scaffold was erected on the Stora Torget, facing the Opera House
+of Stockholm, where the assassination had taken place. Thence the
+dismembered remains of Ankarstrom were conveyed to the ordinary gallows
+in the suburb of Sodermalm to be exhibited, the right hand being nailed
+below the head. Under this hand on the morrow was found a tablet bearing
+the legend:
+
+
+Blessed the hand That saved the Fatherland.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Historical Nights'
+Entertainment, by Rafael Sabatini
+
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